On Saturday night, I prepared to head out for the celebration of Cinco de Mayo. I perused the listings that dotted the web for our area’s best parties and celebrations already underway at this late hour of the day.
As I scoped the offerings, many seemed too weak to hold my attention while some simply did not offer the pleasures of a Mexican beer consumed over dinner.
As we headed off towards our destination by default, I heard Michael say, “You know, Cabildo is playing at The Winchester tonight.”
So, with the click of my turn signal, we moved from right to left and in doing so changed not only my night’s destiny, but also my point of view.
The setting could not have been more perfect. Yes, it could have been warmer, sunnier, etc. But if you have lived in Michigan awhile, then you know that you just have to be patient. The weather here, like my night, can change very quickly.
I enjoyed a handmade margarita with a perfectly salted rim and a non-traditional (and non-Cinco de Mayo inspired) French Dip sandwich while listening to the music of Cabildo. I’ve enjoyed this local 8-10 piece Latin band since their debut many years ago. The lyrics of their music tested my decades-old Spanish lessons that apparently have retreated into nearly inaccessible regions of my brain. Since I couldn’t access my Spanish vocabulary quickly enough to keep up, I elected to stop trying to decipher the words and just sit back to enjoy the music.
Soon it became clear I could not ignore the beat and I got up on my feet to dance with friends who had also ventured out to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with this band.
It was, to say the least, exactly where I needed to be. But I would not know this until after the band had wrapped up for the night.
As band members popped in and out of conversations begun while the band was loading out, I was asked by one of my friends from Mexico, “Did you go downtown to celebrate Cinco de Mayo?”
Sadly, I replied, “No,” adding a quick, “How was it?”
“Not good,” he replied.
This intrigued me since I had seen the lineup of various venues andthe planned street celebration had a nice selection of bands. I was curious why when such careful programming had been planned, he thought it was not so good.
“It was sad to see how culturally insensitive people were as they sported fake skinny mustaches and sombreros as they filed up and down the street,” my friend said. “It is too bad that the message of this day is lost in the need to create a big party.”
I began to wonder what he meant. Later, I would discover the roots of Cinco de Mayo. The day is a regional holiday celebrated in honor of the Battle of Puebla when Mexico, outnumbered by the French army, won liberty from the French. It has since been exported over the years north to the U.S. with some of the earliest celebrations occurring in the 1860s. During that time, gold mine workers in California learned of Mexico’s triumph over the French and threw down their shovels, set off their guns, sang songs and made patriotic speeches. It was a joyous celebration where work was set aside and national pride took over long into the night.
As my friend explained, this was a time of celebration and a time to put aside work. Or, as he succinctly said, “It was our Labor Day.”
The reduction of a culture to just another opportunity for businesses to make money from events of national pride is certainly not a new phenomenon. I have seen other products recently besides sombreros and thin mustaches that are marketed during other patriotic celebrations. It could be the absurd American flag underwear or the ill-conceived Kmart and Sears MLK Super Sale campaign in 2012, which also came with an online MLKDAY coupon code just in case you needed a further reminder of the real reason for the sale…er, holiday.
Visibility of a community not a part of the mainstream is important for many reason, but none more important than the need to feel like they are a part of the greater community that has made cities great.
Reinforcement of segregation of a community can take many forms. Blackface minstrel shows from years ago inaccurately portrayed African Americans. Recently, Ashton Kutcher donned brown face, offending many people from India.
Four years after electing the first African American president and, according to a recent Newsweek poll, the optimism of a post-racial society has actually reversed: “… only 32 percent of Americans now think that race relations have improved since the president’s inauguration; roughly, the same number (30 percent) believe they have gotten worse. Factor in those who say nothing has changed and the result is staggering: nearly 60 percent of Americans are now convinced that race relations have either deteriorated or stagnated under Obama.”
Is it possible we can unhook our optimism (or in some circles, fear) that an elected official can change the course of our country and begin to think of how change can flow up from the bottom? There may be an argument there until we consider a few events from the last year.
In the past few months, we have seen two white men from Oklahoma arrested for a shooting rampage against blacks, our national shame the news and resulting comments from pundits and politicians over the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, and the firing of James Derbyshire from the National Review for suggesting, among many other inflammatory comments, that whites should avoid being in large groups of black people. For all our hope, we certainly have been acting like dopes.
These are harsh examples that should be cut and dry in our responses, but it is not the case. It is even harder to break patterns with our past where “it is just who we are” sets in as a argument used in Holland, Mich. to single out a group of people in the council’s “no” vote of protections in housing and employment for their city’s LGBT’s citizens last June. As witnessed in last Friday’s Until Love Is Equal’s love protest in Grand Rapids’ Maya Lin designed Rosa Parks Circle, this issue is not going away and is only going to get louder until justice is served to this group that has been made to feel not a part of their community.
Even here in our city becoming known more and more as an incubator city as we move quickly in our rush to get it done fast, we often misstep in areas we shouldn’t be stumbling with all that is at our disposal. Talk to any of the team leaders at TEDxGrandRapids. When our local chapter of the international TED enterprise published their list of volunteer organizers including a much talked about Karma Bank, TEDxGrandRapids, which had grown significantly from a handful in 2011’s launch to nearly 30 this year, the list of organizers in a group that prides itself on being on cutting edge, if not, representing dispatches from the future was still woefully shy of any minorities in a sea of white faces.
Thankfully, the local TEDxGrandRapids team moved this cultural misstep to the top of their list as they advanced toward their May 10 event with a renewed vision and put into place a greater focus on a diversity campaign to bring in more volunteers more representative of our communities changing face. Their response and willingness to listen to many members of the community on the importance of this topic allowed them to begin to make the changes important for our community. They still have a ways to go but as I always say, we have to give people room to grow, so I remain positive in the face of disappointment.
The source of much of this disappointment is that until you step into the shoes of an outsider, including but not limited to areas of gender, race, access and sexual orientation, one will never know the pain of looking up at a committee or corporate ladder in one’s community to discover it has no visibility of anyone who looks like them. People young and old yearn to feel they belong and so their visibility in leadership roles helps ensure people can feel connected and inspired to greatness in the community they call home.
For years, this may have been the status quo. Not anymore. We have seen in our time other cities embrace these issues and by doing so, provide inspiration that people do not have to accept their station in life as defined by the stereotype. They can achieve goals and are ultimately welcomed into the community because of the rich experience their past contributes to the present. Together, we collectively build a better future.
But we need to remove these barriers and we need to start somewhere. We need to give this generation and those that follow a visualization and a leadership role in our city’s and country’s future.
I am talking about a systems change for my city that is also your city, too. We are the people who know to do good and so we must advance good in this area.
My time spent with the Cabildo musicians (also artists) and fans after their performance reminded me of my current body of art and the supporting artist statement, which was all about disruption in the pursuit of advancement. When I began my artistic journey, how was I to know that the music of Cabildo would also enable me to make the leap into this area of our lives? That place is still uncomfortable for many. This is what disruption will bring for a while as we find our new footing, but we must have this conversation to get to the next part of our city’s advancement.
The power of art often can provide a stepping off point to the next, to the new.
I have no illusions that this is going to be hard and difficult work, and I know I may have even caused some discomfort for some who will read this as a personal attack. It truly is not. It is not in my nature to wish ill or harm, but to seek a way to build up a community through asking us to be bolder in becoming a more welcoming community to others.
As my Latino friends finished their drinks, I quickly learned that they all felt this way about the Cinco de Mayo celebrations gone wild. And as they each spoke they were not wearing sombreros or thin mustaches. These people were social workers, educators, marketers; they were really no different than me, apart from their ethnic background.
I am hoping we can declare today as victory over the army of “just the way it is.”
The Future Needs All of Us.
Tommy Allen, Lifestyle Editor
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