The Labor Day carnival, which is a yearly multicultural extravaganza, is hosted at Crown Heights in Brooklyn New York. The parade takes place along the Eastern Parkway and attracts millions of participants and spectators.
Despite this event taking place in the USA and being organized by Americans, it draws a crowd consisting of people from different cultures mostly from Caribbean islands, Belize in Central America and Guyana in South America.
The parade involves a colorful display of costumes accompanied by Calypso and Soca music indigenous from Trinidad and Tobago. This flamboyant affair is organized and financed by the West Indian American Day Carnival Association (Moss, 2007).
This gathering of people from different cultures is a clear indication of the growth of the American society and illustrates how they have learnt to live together despite their different backgrounds.
The interaction of different cultures is a proof of diversity at its best, and the success stories written about the carnival show intercultural maturity in the USA. These celebrations are done during the national Labor Day celebrations and are a show of solidarity of the American people with the rest of the world (Flower, 2010).
The interaction between the different people has resulted in them understanding other people’s culture, and thus making them less judgmental of others. When such events take place, they leave very little room for any group of people to feel like they are outsiders in a foreign land.
Thus, the event fosters togetherness in any society since life in a cosmopolitan city like New York consists of interactions between people from different places and all of them have their own way of life (Ruben & Randy 2012).
The importance of people who are not natives from America being able to organize a multicultural event that allows other people of a different culture to showcase their cultural heritage is a reflection of how welcoming the American society is for other people regardless of their ancestral origin.
America boasts of diversity that is unrivaled elsewhere in the world since its community is made up of people from all over the world (Flower, 2010).
These annual celebrations have become a part of the new culture created by these interactions and as a result the celebration has found its way into the national calendar of events.
The various people with different cultures that came together to interact have since led to the creation of a new culture that includes all the residents of New York. This has even attracted tourists to the event. Even though the event has had incidences of violence and some elements of insecurity the organizers have found a way of curbing them (Flower, 2010).
The carnival is a tourist attraction and has led to the popularization of the event which has further inspired musicians such as Bob Marley and Jay Z to perform. The parade has shown how people can co-exist peacefully if only they can learn from each other’s culture and understand and at the same time appreciate the role that each of them plays in the society (Moss, 2007).
Despite the carnival being suspended for five years due to the violence experienced then, the organizers were able to deal with the incidences and the celebrations were again permitted. The ability of this event to grow from the late 1940s to date shows how cultural resilience prospers and how the different cultures get over their differences and resume planning an incidents-free celebration (Ruben & Randy 2012).
In conclusion, the Labor Day carnival as a festival in New York is a very prominent indication of diversity in the American society. The various cultures brought together by this celebration clearly show the multicultural nature of this society and their efforts to integrate others in their society.
Works Cited
Flower, Linda. Learning to rival: A literate practice for intercultural inquiry. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2010. Print.
Moss, Frank. The American metropolis from Knickerbocker days to the present time. London, UK: McGraw Hill, 2007. Print.
Ruben, Liz & Leonard, Randy. “Two Men Fatally Stabbed and Two are Shot as Violence Follows Parade”. The New York Times. 4 September, 2012. Web.