The merits and faults of ethnic food festivals

From the Gladsome Light Dialogues, a post entitled My Big Fat Greek Festival:

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We just closed the doors of another Greek Festival at Saint John’s. We are all happy, but tired, and some may think, and we cannot blame them, why we do this every year? A short answer would be: we need the money! And it is a good answer, but maybe we could find other ways to raise the needed funds. Still I think, even though we might manage to get there, we should continue doing the festival. And I will present my argument for it.

In the present times the American society has an identity crisis. Most people have a hard time defining even what makes them American: the simple fact of living in the USA or speaking English or eating steaks? It is not an easy answer. It is even more difficult for the people that come from an ethnic background. Because it is apparent that we cannot give a unique answer to this question, we tend to accept more and more that maybe we shouldn’t even try to find a unique answer, but we should rather accept the multicultural complexity of our world.

However, even if we may not be able to define ourselves as a nation, we can do this at a community level. We have to do this exercise because if we do not know who we are, we will find ourselves somewhat lost in space and time, without roots and without a direction for advancement...

Complete article here.