American Independence Day Celebrations!

Having stayed in this country for three years this is the first time I went to view the American independence day... ooops.. the 4th of July parade and fireworks display. The parade was held at the historic downtown McKinney, it was short, colorful and intense. Everyone from tiny tots to senior citizens participated in the parade enthusiastically waving flags, clapping, cheering and generally being happy to be a part of this country.

The show of support by the people in this quasi-official celebration is pretty impressive. The population of McKinney and surrounding towns might be just over 150,000 but I am pretty sure at least 10,000 people were there to watch the parade. Thoughts took me back to Bangalore, India which hosts over 6 million people and not even 1,000 people turn up for the independence day parade. I wonder why?

Anyway here are some pictures of the parade:

NPR/ KERA repeats identity blunder!

Ever since I came to the United States, I have been disturbed by the fact that even after 500 odd years, the Euro-American majority have not begun to attempt to correct the historical error. i.e. the wrong identity label stamped upon the original peoples of this country/ continent from whom the Europeans usurped the land and built this glorious nation. These original people continue to be referred to as "Indians" even though everyone in the world knows that only those people from India can be referred to by this identity label. The original peoples should be referred to by their ethnic identity, such as Cherokee, Chickasaw, Comanche, etc. There was not one or two such distinctly different ethnic groups but more than 700 before the first Europeans even stepped on this land.

Recently I was listening to National Public Radio while commuting to work and I hear about this important Native American ceremony. The news report was about the first peoples of this nation commemorating the birth of a White Buffalo Calf. The news report started off politically correct by referring to these people as "Native Americans" but as the story progressed it changed once again to refer to them as "Indians".

I wonder how many more centuries these Euro-Americans will take to realize that they need to correct their erroneous identity labels. More than that I am amazed at the billion plus Indians in India and the few million Indians in the United States of America who are silently watching this historical blunder repeat itself again and again. I don't know whether people from India are even aware of the misuse their ethnic identity is undergoing.

I know being one individual I can't fight the system that has been established for over 500 years but I can make my protest to this gross misuse of my ethnic identity label to refer to someone who is not even remotely associated to my culture, nationality, or ethnicity.