The Stove Has Been Turned Off

An interesting point was brought to my attention while I was at a local café. America is no longer a melting pot. Do not get me wrong, it is true that we are a country of immigrants and different nationalities. But do we really live together? Do we have a common goal? Or do we isolate ourselves to our own culture?

I often record in one of the poorest parts of San Francisco. One day I had to take my children with me until their mother could pick them up. My son looked at me and said “Daddy, there are two different Californias”. I looked at him and his wide eyes scanning the scenery, and said “yes son, there is”. This is one of those moments as a father you are waiting for. The moment to explain some real shit to your child.

My children have not been exposed to the real world. They’ve never seen streets filled with trash, homes that looked like they were going to collapse and police cars every 10 minutes. But this was nothing new to me at all. I was exposed to this as a child, and I knew that this was the real world to the black community. Even though my grandmother moved me away from the city when I was in kindergarten, I still had the black experience growing up.

My father use to take me to the barber shop in the Fillmore. I would buy clothes and shoes right next door. I would visit my Grandmother in the Bayview district and walk to the store for 10 cent candy. Then I would return home to stare at the ocean and fall asleep to the sound of the waves hitting the shore.  I grew up knowing that I was in one world but there were others struggling and suffering in another.

This is not about staying in the Asian, Black, or Latino community, but rather assimilate and become one. America should be a country with a common goal to make things better for everyone. What is our common goal? Do we have one at all? Can we please pick- and soon- before we have no chance at all?

In order for America to return to glory we to need to come together and realize that we are repeating history. Sure it may not be full out Civil Rights in the streets, but some of the scenes in the news could be changed to black and white and we may not be able to tell the difference.

While I lived in Texas, every day I would see the Texas flag everywhere I turned. It was sort of like a cult thing in a way, but it worked. I had pride for the state of Texas, and was proud to be a Texan even though I was a transplant. There was common goal in the Lone Star State pride, the pride of being a Texan. My son and daughter still have that pride to this day. They enjoy California and family and their new friends, but when you say “Texas” it makes them smile. The pride they have should be the same pride that we have when we see the American flag.

But in order for this to truly happen we have to assimilate, we have to define an American culture that has rituals that embrace our different cultures but remains focused on us being united. Without all citizens of a country being behind one goal we will accomplish nothing. We will continue to be divided by politics, religion, sexual preference, gender, and last but not least, class.

I am proud that my children have lived in Texas and California. I’ve learned how to assimilate myself in an environment that was not known to me. I knew that in order to be successful and to make it in Texas I would have to assimilate. Assimilating is not destroying your own cultural beliefs, but rather accepting the community that you live in and becoming one.

We do not need separate classes for children that speak one language; we need classes that teach our children all languages, so that we can compete in a global world. In order to return to number one we have to realize that we are no longer the top dog- we need an objective.

A melting pot is something that takes ingredients from all over the world and makes one delicious dinner- a common goal.