Some Cultures Are Better
Two years ago, I was asked by the New York Archdiocese to read in Spanish at the televised midnight Mass from St. Patrick's Cathedral. In declining this great honor, I explained that I had enough stress being a lector in my parish and that appearing before a television audience of 3 million would probably give me a stroke. Besides, my Spanish is terrible. I can understand Spanish, but my vocabulary is definitely limited.
I've been criticized for my lack of fluency through the years by Hispanics who tell me that I have lost my "culture." They look offended when I tell them I was born in New York City and am an American. That's my culture, and it's a darn good one. In fact, it's the best.
Once upon a time, Hispanics would take a few generations to become completely assimilated, as was also the case with immigrants from Italy, Germany, etc. Grandparents would not speak English, parents would have accents, and grandchildren would be accent-free. My family was no different; I can't recall mi abuela (my grandmother) speaking a word of English.
My class at parochial school on East 111th Street was more than 90% Hispanic, yet we all spoke perfect English and studied American history, saluted the flag, and said the Pledge of Allegiance in English. The nuns paid respect to our cultural background at assemblies and plays — we sang Spanish hymns at Christmas pageants or dressed in native costumes — but we spoke our lines in English because, yoo-hoo, we live in America.
Then multiculturalism raised its head, and America suddenly had to adapt to varied national customs, meaning assimilation became less valued. Something went radically wrong during the early 1960s, when academia became saturated with self-loathing American Marxists determined to erase the principles and values that made this country great. To placate liberal angst, the importance of black power, brown power, and other such movements was elevated. In 1966, a Marxist activist and convicted felon named Ron Everett, aka Ron Karenga (who had served time for the assault and torture of two women), invented Kwanzaa to rival the celebration of Christmas. We now have California public schools accommodating Islam in ways that mock the precept of the separation of church and state.
How I wish that CORE's Martin Luther King Jr. dinner at the Hilton last week could have been televised nationally. I stood up and cheered (and believe me, that wasn't easy) after listening to honoree Ayaan Hirsi Ali's speech. This beautiful Somali woman suffered genital mutilation at age 5, fled from to the Netherlands to avoid an arranged marriage, educated herself, and became a member of the Dutch Parliament. She is now living in America, and she gave a perfect wakeup call on our endangered culture.
A few highlights of her speech follow: "Sixty years ago it was the Nazis in Europe who were bent on exterminating in the name of racial purity. Today it is a global network of radical Muslims who call for a holocaust in the name of their faith"; "Human beings are equal; cultures are not"; "A culture that spends millions on saving a baby girl's life is not equal to one that uses its first encounter with natal technology to undertake mass abortion simply because girls are not welcome."
Ms. Ali made several comparisons between America's culture, which respects the rights of women, and the one from which she escaped. She was raised in parts of Africa — Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya — which were independent. The white man had exited, but she claims he did not take oppression with him, saying: "Almost all the bigotry and persecution in Africa nowadays is committed by blacks against other blacks." Speaking from experience, she listed acts such as mutilation, beatings, rape, and murder that were "committed against girls and women in the most intimate setting of all, the home, by dad or mom, by a brother or a sister, by a husband or his mother."
Ms. Ali has dubbed our benign culture as "ladies first," because she had never heard those words until she came to a Western nation. She warns, however, that it is "this culture that is under threat today. Many of those born into it take it for granted or, worse, apologize for it."
Immigrants are not storming to get into Mexico or any Muslim country. They are seeking what was built by our "freedom for all" culture. Yet we are bending over backward to accommodate different cultures and making sure that others are not offended by all things Americana. This is not only irrational, it's suicidal.
