Happy Birthday America

Today America turned 231. A surprising age for a nation so great and prosperous. Every year, Americans celebrate their nation on the 4th of July. Feasts and barbecues, parades and marches and fireworks all mark the huge celebrations of this day.
After getting our cameras ready, we stood next to hundreds of people on State Street waiting to watch the parade. The parade was divided into smaller parts. Different clubs such as the Chevrolet cars club and the Santa Barbara gymnasium team paraded in front of us but what really caught my attention is the militarization of the 4th of July parade. I saw many army cars and soldiers in their uniforms that day. Additionally, we saw military cars with phrases like “Iraq 2003” and “Vietnam war” written on them. I was looking for an “Afghanistan” but I didn’t see one.
I didn’t understand why the parade was militarized. I believe that it is because America is a superpower. A superpower must be a military, socio-cultural, economic and political power. This parade represented the aspects of a superpower. The army cars and war banners represented the great military power of America. The different ethnicities and other aspects such as the musical groups represented the socio-cultural aspect of America being a superpower. The cars clubs parading their luxurious cars and the ballerinas giving a show expressed the luxuries mostly available in developed and economically stable countires.

During the parade, I tried discovering the political aspect of it. Finally, when the “anti-patriot act” club joined the parade, I saw a bunch of people handing flyers and talking to people about their rights and how the bush administration crossed the lines. This was the most political part of the parade to me.

The individuals who participated in the parade were as American as everybody there. However, a large number of them were Hispanic-Americans or Asian-American. I thought that the audience was satisfied by most of the clubs except when the Chinese school joined the crowd. They Chinese seemed enthusiastic about it and they even had a larger than life American flag to emphasize on their Americaness. Apparently, they weren’t American enough. It seemed that the audience gave them the silent treatment. I didn’t hear any screams or happy 4th of July to you too for about 5 minutes. If I watched this part of the parade only , I was going to be shocked at how these Chinese-Americans who have been here for atleast one generation were treated. I was there for the entire parade and the reaction to other “Immigrant” groups was appropriate. People cheered many Latino’s in the parade but the Chinese group was definitely invisible to the crowd. During my stay in Santa Barbara , I noticed that the Asian-Americans there are usually wealthy and they seemed well integrated but what happened during the parade remains a mystery to me.