St. Patrick’s Day is a very diverse day on the American social calendar: it’s a day where booze and potatoes can stand, side-by-side, poisoning people’s digestive systems—ultimately leading such individuals to add their morning breakfasts to the green dye that flows through our city rivers. Indeed, the only excuse these extremists seem to have for the Jack Daniels bottles that pollute our gutters and the Celtic Women CDs that drive our children to euphoric madness and early drug abuse is that these hooligans are “Irish.” You heard me, in this great melting pot, or as I like to call it, this cultural wasteland (that is the United States), there are real people that pray to a pint-sized ginger who leaves “gold” for all his followers as if these Keebler elves are comparable to the great Buddha. Now, I’m not racist—in fact, I don’t think anybody in this country isn’t part Irish, but I am simply pointing out that it is very contradictory that one race appears to get a day all to themselves when the idea of race itself is something that the Statue of Liberty suggested we leave at the door.

                 I mean, sure, there’s black history month, and Holocaust awareness day, mother’s day, and even El Salvadorian Sunday—but these holidays, or well, I guess I shouldn’t call them that, but these occasions are so much more than the promotion of alcohol and religion—these other, black sheep holidays are all about historical awareness. The only substance that is popular during black history month is that which resides in the soul of Ruby Bridges, that little African-American girl who defied segregation and drank at everybody’s water fountain back in the sixties. St. Patrick’s Day is a holiday that even the actual Irish don’t make such a fuss about, with one man from Dublin stating on his nationalistic blog, “Tha difference bee’twin us an’ thee Americans is tha’ we don’ nee’ a hooliday ta geet peesed!”  Though this is of course a sad reality, this is also a very bold, accurate statement about American society. And what these native people are trying to say is that there is much more to even the Irish than St. Patrick’s Day would have you know.

                 As I have mentioned, a historical event that has something to do with a specific ethnicity should be one of merit. St. Patrick’s Day is a pat on the back for everybody who has a “Mc” in their name and a “beer” in their hand. St. Patrick’s Day could, however, be about the great strife of the potato famine and how an island of green became an island with very little green at all—in the name of money. Certainly, cloth-ridden people digging through piles of dirt is no easy image, and we Irish-Americans should capitalize on it instead of pinching all the poor ethnic kids for not sticking to such silly Americanized Irish traditions (such as wearing green). St. Patrick’s Day is a prime example that beer may not discriminate, but the United States certainly does.