Henry Imler May 5th, 2008
I hate (celebrating) Cinco De Mayo (and seeing white people celebrate it with their all-white friends). I’m not Mexican; I don’t care about the first military victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla back in 1862. If you are of Mexican heritage and you wanna celebrate your actual history - wonderful, go ahead and knock your self out. If you are a white person looking for an excuse to drink and attempting to be “authentic,” give it a rest - we have appropriated plenty of other people’s holidays in an effort to have reasons to get smashed.
The End.
- Blogging
- Comments(6)
Is it acceptable to use this day for other celebrations? Can we celebrate speaking spanish with native speakers?
Also, this celebration corresponds to my own special day (getting out of the military).
But I agree, it is mostly an excuse to party.
You use the term “acceptable.” I’ve been wondering about this since you left your comment. What do you/I mean by acceptable? Firstly, all of the above are matters of culture, which is merely what people are doing. In that sense, anything people do is acceptable culture. So, I’d not really have anything to say about the acceptableness of any of these practices.
As a participant of this culture, I think a lot of things we do are stupid, this being one of them, for the reasons outlined above. I do like your alternate suggestions, however. Having your own personal celebration of important life events is wonderful, or joining in with someone who has an actual investment in the holiday is wonderful as well. A bunch of noisy, obnoxious drunk white people at a Mexican Resurant is annoying.
very true
I was in Mexico yesterday, We drove 90 km past many towns and villages and resorts and restaurants. I saw no mention of cinco de maya. The only display I saw was when I got back to the states last night and what I saw was at the airport in dallas ads encouraging people to drink
This one and this one are the two stuff white people like blogs that came to mind for me.
Dale,
That is hillarious. I talked to my students about this during their review session Monday night. I was surprised how many thought the holiday was a farce as well. then again, this was on the holiday itself, so I am sure those students that were ardent about celebrating were getting drunk at that time instead of attending the review session.
Scott,
Nice finds, I briefly looked, hoping to find a post that matched well with what I was saying, but was unsucessful.
Jake and Scott - I have heard rumors of Mario Kart/Galaxy/Smash/Brain Age sometime after church this week. Additionally, I have also hear rumors of a certain American cultural phenomenon returning to the airwaves this next week. Have you heard the same rumblings?