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<p>Yet some traditionalists deride Chevrolet as part of “Government Motors”, and deride its decision to move into [advanced</a> energy efficient technology](<a href=“http://www.chevrolet.com/volt-electric-car.html]advanced”>Discontinued Chevrolet Cars, Trucks, and SUVs).</p>
<p>I prefer a car that’s made right here in America, like my Subaru.</p>
<p>Only white Protestants celebrate Christmas whaaaat? And I guess you’ve never been to a Raiders game.</p>
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My point is that there have always been plenty of Americans who don’t celebrate Christmas–but any attempt to accomodate their views becomes a “war on Christmas.” Catholics were also marginalized in many ways–you are probably aware that Catholicism was a big issue when JFK was running for President. Again, what I’m saying is that the majority group with most of the power thought that their culture was the culture of “real America,” but this was always something of an illusion.</p>
<p>I think the fact that you cannot come up with any American cultural icons that are uniquely white and Protestant disproves your theory.</p>
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Say what?</p>
<p>John Smith, Miles Standish, Priscilla Aldritch, Gov. Winthrop, Walter Raleigh, Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, William Penn, Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, George Washington, Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abigail Adams, Andrew Jackson, Lewis and Clark, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Upton Sinclair, George Armstrong Custer, Carrie Nation, Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John Pershing, William Randolph Hearst, Horatio Alger, JP Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Ernest Hemingway, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Thomas Pynchon, Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan . . . </p>
<p>Geez Louise!</p>
<p>Two years ago, on Mexican Independence Day, some kids in a high school in New Mexico (or Arizona?) sang the America, the Beautiful all day long.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole thread, but this seemed to fit into the subject at hand.</p>
<p>JHS,</p>
<p>I meant icon in the “thing” sense, not the person sense. That is what Hunt was discussing. Of course there are and have been millions of white Protestants who have had an influence on American culture. I doubt the average American would name any of those people as symbols of American culture. They have probably never heard of most of them.</p>
<p>The difference between observing Mexican Independence Day & Chinese New Year in U.S. public schools is that the 1st is celebrating the sovereignty of another country’s gov’t, i.e. a political event, and the 2nd is a non-political cultural event that is observed over much of Asia, not just China.</p>
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<p>And why do I have to press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish? Kids, offa my lawn!</p>
<p>I also suspect the extent to which one is disoriented may have to do with urbanicity levels. If you are in a rural, these things are much more of a culture shock than if you lived in, say, NYC, where you grew up just naturally were exposed to people of multiple cultures (Puerto Ricans, Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, Chinatown, etc.). There seems to be a trope that rural America = “the real America” (which I personally disagree with).</p>
<p>Well, I’ll give an example: Pat Boone. He was able to have big, nationwide hits with watered-down versions of Little Richard’s songs. And Elvis, who JHS mentioned, is well-known as the “white boy who can sing like a black boy.”</p>
<p>I don’t think we quite realize just how multicultural we’ve become as a nation.</p>
<p>I never got the “real America” thing, but maybe that is because I’ve lived in CA so long in an area that always felt like a melting pot.</p>
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I wonder why nobody ever gets upset about the fact that French language classes all across America recognize Bastille Day every year.</p>
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That puts it pretty succinctly, I think.</p>
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<p>Maybe because it is recognized in the context of a French class??</p>
<p>Yeah, my phyics teacher never brought up Bastile Day.</p>
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Because it’s during summer school.</p>
<p>Columbus Day is the original multicultural holiday.</p>
<p>So if there isn’t, then, this “real America” with “American” culture (as opposed to values, which as was pointed out, are widespread to near universal), then what is it that’s being threatened by “multicultural” lenses?</p>
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Where I grew up, we didn’t get Columbus Day off from school, although we did get Lee-Jackson Day off. How much more real American can you get than that?</p>
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<p>At this point, I am not sure. I think the OP’s objection is that we do spend a lot of effort discussing, observing and celebrating our differences, but not much time discussing what we have in common as Americans. I think this method has been going on for so long that we don’t presently have much that is uniquely American that we discuss, observe and celebrate together, so maybe its all moot. The OP was claiming that as a result of this approach, we Americans tend to identify by our race or ethnicity, not by our nationality. He would like to see more of a balance in the university curriculum, in what we emphasize per our identity.</p>