African American

They're not mutually exclusive. American culture is way more than the white dominant culture. So in learning about Barack Obama, someone in a school will learn both at the same time.




You're asking a question about perspectives. Let's say you did go to Colombia and someone were to tell the story about your visit there, who would the viewer identify with? The white guy who's walking around Colombians in Colombia, or Colombians in their own country who just happens to have some white guy amongst them?

You can absolutely be true to your own culture while living in someone else's dominant culture. But to what extent? Are you going to live there, or are you just a tourist? Based on your intentions, expectations will vary. How are other American ex-pats in Colombia coping with their living there? They can either function as an oasis on American culture in an another country, and it would be up to the Colombians to accept their behavior, or they can work to inculcate themselves into the dominant culture.

Whether or not the Colombians themselves would choose to adopt and aspects of American culture into their own, it's their choice. But the fact that Americans are not immigrating to Colombia in enough numbers to impact their culture, the point is moot.



One thing that America does is that it appropriates other cultures without accrediting the value and origin of the cultures in which we appropriate. For example, how many times do we take from other cultures, change them to our own ways and then claim that we're "improving" them? We could talk all day about how white America initially rejects black and brown culture, as it's practiced by black and brown people, only to claim those very same cultures as their own once they're stolen from black and brown people?

Basically, this is the cruz of John Leguizamo's argument. When will white America respect non-white culture to the extent it demand non-whites to respect the dominant white culture? If you ask me... Probably never.



Learning is understanding another about the origins and values of another culture and not regarding those other cultures as inherently inferior because they're non-white. You mention Washington, Washington was also a slave owner. Washington also went to war against Indians. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/06/george-washington-letter-describes-killing-natives-villainy-149753

You can look at him, if he were supposedly representative of white Americans and see his actions against non-whites and his exploitation of non-whites as attributed to his own whiteness.

That's just one perspective.

About Cesar Chavez, he was born in Arizona and has lived and worked his entire life as an American in the United States of America. He's just as American as you or me. His story is EXCLUSIVELY American history.

All in all, you're quite right, you do need to think through what John Leguizamo is talking about. But aside from what you've read about him, I suggest that you take it much, much further and consider the relevance of endemic white supremacy as an element to this conversation.

Without that, you might miss a thing or two.