Diversity Is Weakness—Even At State Fairs

Joe Guzzardi:

Ethnic days at the state fair, whose nickname is "Big Fun", had become anything but.

An outing at Cal Expo should be highlighted by typical fair activities like riding the Ferris wheel or eating cotton candy. Instead, on a cultural day, a fair-goer had the distinct possibility of having his car vandalized, witnessing a gang stabbing or being randomly punched in the face.

Black Culture Day was the most feared. One journalist, David Klein classified it as "somewhere between 'melee' and 'riot.'"

Efforts to minimize the risk of violence by closing the fair early on its last day, and imploring the youth to "Cool It Down", failed abjectly. ("Violence at Black Culture Days Must Be Addressed," David Klein, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, September 16, 2003)

The overriding reason to end cultural days certainly revolved around the safety of the attendees. As someone who regularly attends the fair, I find it easier not to have to check what "Day" was being celebrated before I made my plans.

But someone on the state appointed Board of Directors must finally have realized that it is bad business to designate one day for a particular ethnicity, thereby dramatically reducing the chances that anyone from any other ethnicity is going to show up on that same day.

And the board surely grew weary of demands that other ethnic days…like Russian Day as an example…be added.

California took about twenty-five years to wake up to the foolishness of cultural days.

But will states just beginning to see large increases in their ethnic populations learn from our mistakes?

Or will they, as is more likely, forge blindly ahead on the path to headaches and violence?

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