Come to me, baby.

...when Europeans (especially) tell us Americans that we can’t apply our understanding of race and ethnicity perfectly onto their own or whatever, that’s fair to a degree, but they really need to realize that the reverse is also true and that their interpretation of American ‘culture’ will always oversimplify or water down the realities of indigenous, immigrant, and diaspora groups here and the complexities of those identities. Like, it’s okay if you don’t understand it from the inside but you do have to learn from people on the inside instead of speaking from a pedestal talking down to Americans as if we are ‘less cultured’...

To add to this... ‘American’ dialects and traditions and foods that preserved what people could of their ethnic identities are all valid in the face of assimilation and I will take someone’s ‘cheap imitation’ over gatekeeping who gets to have culture and who doesn’t any day.

Happy October 1st!