Staff Editorial | The Chronicle
There is a pattern in the United States that seems to be repeating, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Immigrant cultures are marketed and consumed while the actual people behind those cultures are simultaneously treated as unwelcome or viewed with suspicion. What gets celebrated is often separated from who it belongs to.
Scroll through social media or walk through any major city and the social contradiction is obvious. International grocery stores, boba shops, halal markets and taco trucks line the streets, all reflecting the influence of immigrant communities that have shaped everyday life in Mason, Ohio and the rest of America. Yet, immigrants are still attacked (whether as a “joke” or not) for being the origin of those same foods.
Mason’s own students reflect this disconnect at the annual culture fair. Tables are lined with flags, traditional clothing and food meant to represent identity and pride as lines form quickly for samosas, dumplings and agua frescas. Henna stations stay busy all afternoon, covering hands with elaborate designs that are quickly photographed, posted and forgotten by the next day. That is not to say spreading other cultures is wrong; it is the way people treat it. For a few hours, everyone gets to try on a culture.
But the shift happens just as quickly. The same students who line up for food and activities are quick to reduce these cultures to a punchline. They exaggerate accents in their group chats and throw around derogatory terms like colloquial slang. Someone who spent the fair getting their henna done can be heard days later mocking an Arabic girl’s name or imitating her parents’ pronunciation for laughs, as if identity is something flexible enough to be worn one day and ridiculed the next.
This contradiction is especially obvious when it comes to Mexican culture. People openly celebrate it through food, frequenting Mexican restaurants, going out with friends for Cinco De Mayo and embracing the cuisine as part of everyday life while still holding or expressing anti-immigrant attitudes. The same culture that is praised on a plate is criticized when it comes to the people themselves, revealing how easily appreciation turns into hypocrisy when it is no longer convenient.
As teenagers, our reliance on social media only amplifies this detachment. Trends ranging from lip-syncing K-pop to trying on clothes from other cultures borrow from immigrant backgrounds, but they tend to ignore the people from whom they actually come. The performance of embracing a culture turns more into separating the “cool” parts of a culture from what isn’t considered acceptable by our peers.
That is what makes this pattern so persistent. It is not just happening at a national level or in a political situation; it is reinforced in our everyday reactions in the hallways, in our casual comments, in the way people take note of what is worth celebrating and what is better off as mockery. Over time, that separation between culture and the people who live it becomes normal, even when it contradicts itself.
