America is known as the great melting pot; a nation where all different types of cultures and religions can come together and meld to become one. A blend of all the best parts of the world. Yet, that seems more an ideology that is believed to be true rather than the truth itself. Though America is home to many different people from throughout the world, there is no sense of nationalities blending together. Rather, there seems to be a constant struggle for dominance; like children who all want the biggest piece of cake, the nationalities in America squabble over who should be most recognized, with no one willing to agree that said cake can be shared equally.
It is quite unfortunate that this is so, because when different nationalities and customs are blended together, they can create something beautiful, much like in the above video. This blending is what Gloria Anzaldua argues for “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza”, because in the world that we live in today, “rigidity equals death” (2100). Focusing too hard on one specific culture does not work, for “All identities are hybrids, formed over time through the interaction of multiple cultures and constantly being transformed by new encounters…between one culture and another” (2097). Though it is tempting to ignore the cultures that one does not feel comfortable with, or a “part of”, it only does one a disservice by closing their mind to all that they can learn from said culture.
This video shows that one way to blend two or more cultures together is through music. There are elements of Latin and American culture mixed into this video seamlessly, and one does not need to know every phrase being uttered to grasp the meaning of the piece as a whole. It is the blending together of different cultures that makes this piece so interesting and entertaining, and if we could learn to do this on a larger scale, we might come out of the other side happier for it.
Anzaldua, Gloria. "Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 2095-109. Print.
"Shakira - Hips Don't Lie Ft. Wyclef Jean." YouTube. Web. 10 May 2011.
