Multiculturalism
POSTED BY: Wishimay
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 16:19
VIEWED: 7977
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I probably should put this in General Discussions, but I know some of you have actually been to other countries and might know stuff...
I'd like to host a Multicultural Day at my kids school-because it's obvious they're not gonna-and I'd like to have some suggestions to take to the principal and not just walk in empty handed.
The only idea I have so far is buying some kinda foreign candy or food and giving it out to any kids who can wear or bring in anything from another culture.
There's about 140 kids in the whole school, and I could prolly request a small amount from the PTO fund...
Any ideas would be appreciated!
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Hello,
Identify 10 or more different local restauranteurs who each represent a different cultural cuisine.
(Thai, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Cuban, American, French, Italian, Argentinian, etc)
Invite them to attend 'Food of the World' day at the school. They should each bring hot samples of some key foods along with coupons for their restaurants that the kids can bring to their parents. Or maybe coupon books can be prepared for distribution that have coupons to all of their restaurants.
At around lunch time, the kids can filter through the 'food of the world' stands taking little samples of the various cuisines, along with the coupon books. The children may possibly be invited to write essays about the different food they tried, and anything they learned from the food stand operators about the uniqueness or special quality of food in the regions represented.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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Multiculturalism works for foods, music, and interesting national costumes, but not so much for child-bride kidnap and rape (H'mong), female mutilation and other forms of repression (most of Africa and the Mideast); enabling of blatant corruption by low-level officials (Mexico and many other nations south of the border) etc.
Every nation, every economy, has to have some things that nearly everyone agrees on, otherwise that entity will dissolve: a common language and a common ethic. If the immigrants aren't able to accept the common ethic, they should go back home.
So stick with food, music, and costumes. Those are quaint and interesting.
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"I probably should put this in General Discussions"
Hello,
Yeah, on further review, that might have been for the best. Otherwise you might get the impression that the defining aspect of foreign cultures is rape, murder, and oppression.
Thanks, Signy.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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Jaded as it may be, might be on to something there...maybe having a poster representing the top ten countries of the world and listing some positive and some negative things about each might be a good way to get the kids to see no country is perfect.
And yeah, I realized when I put this here what I was getting into 
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Hello,
I wonder if the U.S. would make a top ten country list (by what criteria) and if so, what negative things would you be allowed to say about the U.S. without getting into hot water?
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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Quote:
but not so much for child-bride kidnap and rape (H'mong)
I've been trying to look this up but I can't find information on it other than they marry the girls off at about the age girls used to be married off in the United States. I'm not sure why they're so much worse than other cultures, or even our own, or why they've been brought up.
The African thing is accurate, with some rape going on there as well, but I'd also agree with Anthony that this is not the only aspect of the various cultures of Africa.
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My point is not that all foreign cultures are bad, but that in order to BE a culture, one must have a unified language and ethos.
The reason why I bring up language is because language is the summed history and knowledge of a group of people. It is the next thing you learn, after learning how to focus on faces and lift your head... it comes THAT early in the learning process. Language defines not only what you think of as "things" and "action", but also the logic that connects them. For example, did you know there is no past or future verb form in Chinese? Or that "he" and "she" are absent? So "She went to the store" literally cannot be constructed. In Hungarian, there is no word for "the". So people perforce tend to speak rather generically. In Navajo, there is no word for "I". What does that do to individualism?
And ethos... each culture assumes what is required to survive, and each culture has different ways of achieving survival. For the Mayans, for whom rain was a life-and-death matter, sacrificing thousands of humans made sense. So all I'm saying is that generic acceptance of "multiculturalism" is actually rather naive.
---------------
BYTE:
Hmong Refugee Sentenced to Prison for Child-Kidnap-Rape Diversity
www.limitstogrowth.org/articles/2010/07/04/hmong-refugee-sentenced-to-
prison-for-child-kidnap-rape-diversity/
The reason why I know about it is there is a large Hmong immigrant population in California's Central Valley, and this comes up every few years.
Again, not pejorative to all cultures, just a caution that many cultures come with ethics and practices that violate our fundamental ethics, and that broadly promoting "multiculturalism" is a little naive. The world is more than Disney's version of "It's a Small World After All"... and now damn it, the song is stuck in my head.
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Hello,
Sometimes, I am evil.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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