I was walking around in downtown Mumbai and I heard these drums and fireworks, so I had to see what was going on and I came up on this parade going through town. I didn’t know it at the time but there is a 10 day Ganesha festival going on and today was the grand party thing. Anyway, I was watching this parade/party/people just going nuts throwing colored powder and dancing, and I started to take pictures. I wanted to get as close as possible to get some pictures and all of the sudden all of these children came up to me asking me to take their picture. It was really cool, all of these people covered in magenta powder just dancing literally in the middle of the street. I was just taking pictures then a bunch of the crazy magenta colored dancing people started pointing at me and motioning me to come over. I looked around and realized that I was the only white person around and made the “who me?” gesture and they all cheered and motioned more. I walked into the street and I was immediately mobbed by guys, girls, children, adults, all asking me my name and where I was from. They all wanted to shake my hand, like I was famous or something. I was shaking hands, talking to fifty different people at once while all these kids begged me to take their picture. Then this guy came up to me and asked if I dance, so I was like, “sure” and so he grabbed my hand and brought me into the middle of the street, threw a bunch of magenta powder on me and we all started dancing to the drums that were being played. It was crazy, there were these open trucks carrying a bunch of people just throwing colored powder, beating drums, laughing, and dancing. I kept getting pulled in fifty different directions by all of these people wanting to show me stuff. I got pulled into a huge room with a huge statue of Ganesha there and they wanted me to take a picture, so I did. Then they ran me over to this truck with a little Ganesha statue that had a plate of cake on it, and they handed me a handfull of cake to eat (it was good, that Ganesha sure can make a cake). I really am not describing it that well, it was just amazing. Everyone was so nice and just wanted me to take their picture or shake their hand. I have never hugged, hand shaked, and introduced myself so much.

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When generalizing members of a specific ethnicity, we tend to create a higher degree of social and cultural stratification within our society. One absolutely cannot assume that because the term “Black” is suitable for one American, that it will be suitable for the next, even if the two are associated with the same ethnic group. Each individual has his or her own ideas regarding how one should appropriately reference their ethnic group. One can easily make generalizations about a particular ethnic group based on observations and/or personal experience. However, these generalizations will by no means be accurate in all situations. Assigning a general term to describe an ethnicity will simply not suffice for every individual associated with that specific group. Most individuals have an opinion of how his or her ethnicity should be addressed and of how to go about addressing other ethnicities. For example, according to lets say, John, “black” might be a more informal expression generally used in a relaxed social setting by African Americans and non-African Ameicans alike, while “African American” is usually a more formal or scholarly term. However, both terms are perfectly polite and acceptable regardless of who uses them. On the other hand, a hypothetical Lisa, could regard the term “black” as offensive due to the color’s negative connotations and the fact that African Americans are in fact shades of brown. She is of the opinion that “African American” is the only polite term that should be used by non-African Americans. However, one could take this information and throw it out the window along with all of the other politically correct labels that have come and gone throughout the years. People of every ethnicity here in the United Stated are humans, Americans, and have names of their very own that would be the optimal term to be used when describing them. Insults lye in context and tenor, not actual words.

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