Cheerios and Cola.
I was reading a lot of comments on Twitter and Facebook about the outcry against the "un-American" commercials during the Superbowl. The major ones being the Coca Cola and Cheerios commercials.
It breaks my heart that people argue so much over something that shouldn't even be a problem anymore. The fact that this level of racism is more than alive and well in our country should worry us. It should be something we all need to be more aware of. It should be something that we should not stand for.
If you haven't watched either, the videos are posted below.
Now, I may not agree with homosexual marriage being shown in the Cola commercial, but that's a different post. I'm focusing more on the fact that people were upset about the "other cultures" and "other people" depicted in the commercials.
Mainly "America the Beautiful" sung in multiple languages and a multi-racial family being portrayed.
Most of the tweets and posts basically said, "This is America, speak English," and "bi-racial families don't belong in commercials."
There were a lot of tweets saying, "America is a melting pot of cultures that blend in with ours."
What makes this country so special is not the conforming of many cultures to one, but the freedom to stand out as a culture among many.
Now the girl in the video below gets it. Plus she sang "America the Beautiful" in Tagalog, and it was amazing!
But this woman. I can't even. When I heard this clip the first time, I was completely stunned. When I heard it again, I was just pissed off. Just...listen for yourself.
What scares me the most is that this woman might not even realize how blatantly racist she is being with these guys. In her mind, she probably doesn't see it that way. A lot of people that I've met over the years have exhibited this kind of behavior; albeit sometimes in a less obvious way.
It breaks my heart that people argue so much over something that shouldn't even be a problem anymore. The fact that this level of racism is more than alive and well in our country should worry us. It should be something we all need to be more aware of. It should be something that we should not stand for.
We are citizens who live under the same flag whose Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal." To say that all immigrants should abandon their heritage and adopt a strictly white-American lifestyle is to abandon what has made America so great. To segregate each other based on the color of our skin is one of the many reasons why we had the civil rights movement in the first place.
Regardless of what people may think, we are still far from fully realizing MLK's "dream." There is still more work to be done and more people who need to be educated and made aware of this surviving disease in our country. And the time to do all that is now.
Regardless of what people may think, we are still far from fully realizing MLK's "dream." There is still more work to be done and more people who need to be educated and made aware of this surviving disease in our country. And the time to do all that is now.