America, the America that we identify with the United States of America, is a mixed bag.
Virtually everything that the United States has developed culturally since the 1870's has been of mixed heritage.
With, in particular, three very huge strands in that mix: the Jewish, the African, and the European.
And, also coloring large parts of it in the background, the Native American and Latino strands.
Nothing culturally that has come out of America since the 1870's has been pure.
Which is why it is okay for 'White' artists in America to borrow from 'Black' innovations.
For we are all in this together.
I did not grow up on the America of the 1840's.
That America is foreign to me.
If you deny me anything not of pure European heritage, you deny me my entire world.
If you deny me anything with African roots or 'Black' contributions, you deny me 95% of my world.
And if you get to deny me of the world I grew up in, then so do I.
For all of those 'Black' musics and dance are made up of mixed African and European roots.
If we have to abandon American culture, we have to both abandon it.
It is not okay to allow 'Blacks' to have access to a mixed heritage with part European roots and deny that same mixed heritage to 'Whites'.
If i have to give up my entire culture, than so do you.
If it's okay for you to live in a mixed world, than it is okay for me too.
Because my people's roots are in that mix too.
There is nothing in American culture today that is pure.
There is nothing that is pure Europe.
There is nothing that is pure Africa.
There is still stuff that is pure Native America, but the America of 'White' America and 'Black' America is mixed.
And when 'whites' borrow from 'black' innovations to create the music of, say, the Beach Boys, they are doing the very same thing that the 'black' innovators did to invent those 'black' musics in the first place.
Which is to take African elements, mix them with European elements, and experiment with the result.
It's not fair to deny one side or the other a mixed heritage that came from both.
And, quite frankly, this same principle works for other countries too.
Every living culture that exists out there has borrowed from others.
There are hundreds of native American cultures.
They were passing cultural elements back and forth for thousands of years.
The same thing with Afroeurasia.
Even the ancient Egyptians borrowed inspiration from ancient Sumerian innovations.
Western Europe borrowed science and technology from everyone from the Arabs to the Chinese, culture from Athens and Rome and Baghdad, culture that Athens and Rome and Baghdad got from Tyre and Sidon and Jerusalem and ancient Egypt in turn, and developed farther.
The only thing in western Europe that it is pure is its philosophy.
Because Western Europe didn't learn philosophy and wisdom from the wider world.
Which is why Western Europe doesn't know $#it about philosophy.
It is all science and logic-chopping and meaningless despair, for Europe never learned the key to wisdom from the older civilizations, and doesn't understand its own Bible and books on Plato, and barely reads its own books by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca.
The Arabs read and understood those books by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca.
Everything Western Europe is so good at- its art and science- was built on roots learned from thousands of years of older civilizations.
None of it was built in isolation.
By the time that truly high culture first rose in ancient Egypt, it had brought folk cultures in from Africa and Asia and the Mediterranean from all around Egypt, and taken inspiration from the innovations of ancient Sumeria in Iraq.
West African culture drew inspiration from ancient Egypt and Arabic culture, an ancient Egypt and Arabic culture that had already drawn inspiration from Africa before it, among many others. To say nothing of the passing of culture back and forth between West Africa and Ethiopia, Nubia, and the Swahili coast to the east, and of contact with India and China in Ethiopia and the Swahili coast, for thousands of years, and contributing to inspiring India and Southeast Asia and Arabia in turn.
By the time that we have anything recognizable as being anything like Native American culture today, regions in the Americas from Mexico to Peru to California and the Pacific northwest have all had a hand in it.
And now, in a world that has been revived from the disasters of 1914 by an Anglo-America of mixed heritage drawing from both sides, we're all in this together.
Let's not fight.
Let's get along.
Because that's how we built this glorious mixed heritage in the first place.
That mixed heritage is not the result of the times that we have fought, but of the times when we managed to get along despite it all.
Either we hang together, or we hang separately.
And I am not willing to simply abandon the magnificent mixed American culture that gave the entire world so much hope in the wake of the disasters of 1914.
We rebuilt and revived the world together.
I'm not willing to ababdon that world.
That world needs jazz, needs the mixed heritage of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson, Grace Slick and Joni Mitchell and George Harrison, George Lucas and Jim Henson, Don Bluth, Miyazaki and Steven Spielberg.
Miyazaki and John Lennon and George Harrison too all drew upon those mixed American roots. The world needs Miyazaki and George Harrison.
Let's get along, and continue to rebuild the world together.
For we're all in this together.
We always were.
And together, we brought so much hope to the world that suffered so much starting in 1914.
Together, we did great things!
Let's not abandon all that! The world needs it!
The world needs John Coltrane and Grace Slick and Steven Spielberg!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson