A city in Florida has said it was forced to cancel its annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade due to anti-diversity laws.
The city of Delray Beach has also cancelled its Pride event in 2027 due to a state law signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis that prohibits local governments from promoting or funding diversity initiatives.
The city said in a statement that restrictions under the law “include certain programming and activities designed or implemented with reference to ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
As an American of largely Irish descent… Good.
Events that “celebrate heritage” serve to sew division between people, creating in-groups and out-groups. St. Patrick’s day is one of the least offensive of these because it is fairly inclusive. I have never seen any Irish person try to gatekeep the holiday from anyone else (i’m sure someone has, but it seems to be rare). Still, I think we can do better to have celebrations that are foundationally inclusive rather than ones that are just effectively, currently, inclusive.
-Lao Tzu
No. White people need to connect back with their roots and realize that white isn’t a culture. The melting pot is self colonization. It enforces the in-group/out group dichotomy of race that really drives division.
Ethnic and cultural violence pre-dates white colonialism by centuries.
And white people are not the only imperial colonizers in history.
“White” itself is a modern concept that has only existed for a couple hundred years, was invented by racists, and has changed over time. My Irish ancestors who came to America were not considered white. The Nazi’s called the Japanese honorary whites. To suggest that colonialism is a “white” issue is both racist and factually incorrect.
Wow. That’s such an amazing awful take that I can’t even come up with a suitable insult. Good job being genuinely that shitty
Thank you for contributing so much to a productive conversation.
As an Englishman, you’re celebrating how your ancestors survived my ancestors killing you on sight for like 1000 years my dude.
Within living memory English soldiers would shoot newborn babies in the head for being Irish.
Its slightly more complicated than that. For instance when British troops first arrived in Northern Ireland they were welcomed by the Irish-leaning community and given food and tea wherever they went. This made the militant activists on both sides very angry and one thing led to another.
A lot of people in the US have both Irish and English heritage, or aren’t even sure exactly where their ancestors came from.
We all came from Africa if you go back far enough. Our forefathers killing foreuncles.
I’ve got an American friend who married an Englishman and moved to England. She doesn’t do a lot of investigation on her own, and she had no idea why she and her husband encountered so many people in Ireland who were somewhat hostile to them- she thought it was just an unfriendly culture. She knew some things about the troubles and the famine, but not enough, and her husband told her the truth, but not explicitly enough for her to understand it (your comment is spectacular for that).
I gave her a brief overview of only the history since the glorious revolution, and she didn’t believe it. She didn’t think I was lying, just misinformed, because it’s just so shocking. I pulled up a couple of articles corroborating it, and she nearly vomited after she finally accepted it, but that could just be because she’s from a town called Cromwell, named after the demon himself.
I’m somewhat sympathetic, but as an immigrant myself, do your fucking research before moving to a new culture, even if you don’t need to learn a new language.
I have participated in several different cultural events and pride events. Never have I felt excluded regardless of if I belonged to the relevant community.
People are inherently different and I think a big part of these events is learning to celebrate that. I don’t think the idea of a melting pot culture is that everyone learns to assimilate, I think we’re just able to appreciate what every individual brings. You might not be interested in Haitian, South American, Chinese, or Korean food, or in listening to their music, or in learning their language, but seeing the community come together and be excited to share those things with you should engender feelings of closeness, not of othering.
Not sure what heritage celebrations you’ve been to, but all the ones I’m aware of have been super cool with activities to get non-natives familiarized with the culture.
St Patrick’s day is an exception to that heritage-specific division, out of pure success. everyone celebrates it and everyone seems welcome.
At least in the us. At least now. I have to admit to discomfort at a few of the things my Irish ex-mother-in-law celebrated though - there’s a long bloody history that should not make anyone proud