Cinco de Mayo, the story of a small Mexican army in Puebla, Mexico overcoming the mighty French army who had not known defeat for fifty years. A true story of victory for the people of Puebla and their whole region. Now there lies the problem. It happened in Mexico. It has limited significance for the rest of the Mexican population. Why exactly do we celebrate it in the United States? I believe we shouldn’t.
Yes, it is a symbol of heritage for Mexican-Americans, and it gets us a day off from school sometimes, but it has little or no significance to the U.S. overall. Why don’t we start officially celebrating Chinese New Year? Or French Independence Day? If we are going to officially celebrate ethnic holidays in the U.S., we should celebrate all of them. One ethnic group should not get special attention.
Everyone has the freedom to celebrate their own cultural holidays on their own time, but obscure holidays from another country should not be officially recognized by the United States.
Some will have the knee-jerk reaction to this, condemning it as racist and discriminatory. To that I say it is more racist to officially recognize one ethnicity’s holiday while not recognizing all the others. The U.S. government needs to end the unequal treatment of minorities and either officially recognize all cultural holidays or none of them.
ciarra petty • May 22, 2009 at 4:34 pm
i completely agree. that holiday is a waste of time. it’s not even a real holiday to american society. so i comend you on this 🙂
Brett Walker • May 6, 2009 at 8:16 pm
@unknown: I don’t think it’s the celebration of the holiday that Aaron has a problem with, it’s that such an insignificant holiday is recognized in the United States, while others are not.
unknown • May 6, 2009 at 4:28 pm
ok who says u have to celebrate it! america may celebrate with a parade and maybe some downtown partys but then y the heck do we celebrate st patricks day or april fools? i dont! only people who want to can! its another way to party! who wants to turn that down!