When I saw the Coke commercial during the Super Bowl, I immediately thought to myself that it would be interesting to see whether there would be a firestorm of negative comments. I havent quite seen a firestorm yet, but I have seen a few. My two cents worth: One of the basic premises of America is that it is the great melting pot of immigrants who came here seeking opportunity. So why be offended by a display of people from diverse backgrounds singing America the Beautiful in their many native languages? Oh, they are in America so they should speak English, you say? Check your assumptions, say I. How do you know that they dont also speak English? And, arent we all encouraged to be bi-lingual, or perhaps even to be polyglots, for a variety of reasons ranging from curiosity through education and tolerance to being prepared to compete and work in the global economy? How many of us have looked into our heritage and say with pride that we are of x,y or z extraction? Why wouldnt that pride extend to knowing our heritage languages, or even using them at appropriate personal times while using the official common language when also appropriate? Could it be possible that our love of our country and one of its celebratory songs might extend to wanting to meld that pride with the pride we have in our forebears and origins by translating the song into another tongue? Might more people become familiar with the good and beautiful things about America when they are shared in myriad ways? Yes, its fair to ask people who come here to live to generally conduct themselves according to our framework. Just as we should uncomplainingly conduct ourselves according to the framework we find if we go to live elsewhere. But in neither case should we, or should we be required, to completely cease being who we are. Would you never, ever, even in your private life speak English if you moved to Germany, or France, or Japan, for work or for whatever reason you had? To be asked to never, ever express your home culture for a second? Would you feel it would be OK if you were asked to by the people there? Then why should we expect people to drop everything about who they are to be here? And last but certainly not least, Im reminded of the joke that I saw circulating on the Internet recently about a man who told off a woman in a grocery store line ahead of him who was speaking a non-English language on her cell phone. After she hung up, he told her to stop speaking Spanish because she was in America now. She told him that she was speaking Navajo, the story goes, and that if he wanted to hear English spoken he should go back to England. I clearly found the ad startling and thought-provoking. I dont really quite have the right words yet, but this is another of those situations where I feel like theres a chance that many who will complain about the ad are, whether wittingly or unwittingly, behaving according to a double-standard, and/or making assumptions that may or may not be correct but may be based in the opposite of the benefit of the doubt and the kind of charitable, innocent-until-proven-guilty outlook Americans like to feel so superior to others for theoretically having. How dare we pride ourselves on our freedom to express individualism and diversity in one breath, and in the next rain venom upon those who exhibit individualism and diversity and pride in their roots?
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 05:54:59 +0000
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