Cultural appropriation? What about bagel?

You may wonder what a bagel has to do with cultural appropriation. I'm going to explain it. First of all, my Jewish mother, who never put an "s" on the word when it was plural, took us across town to buy "good bagel" when we were young. Not Lenders, the only supermarket bagel at the time, but the real thing. The bagel shop we visited was in the heart of Cedar Center, in Cleveland Hts, part of The East Side. We watched the workers boil the bagel in huge vats of water before baking (the only way to make good bagel). We bought sesame seed, plain, poppy, but NEVER fruit flavored or chocolate! It was unheard of to pollute a nice Jewish bagel with fruits. Onion, maybe. Never fruit. I thought fruit in bagel was barred by kosher law (it wasn't). We would take our treasures home to an almost all Catholic neighborhood on the West Side. 

Now, bagels (note the "s") are ubiquitous. I had a manicure, once, from a Thai immigrant who told me she ate "American breakfast, now". Asking what she ate that she considered American (I envisaged toast, pancakes, bacon, cereal), she replied with one word: Bagels. I did not correct her. Bagels are a part of our American cultural fabric, now, along with pizza, strudel, and hummus. In the Safeway, there are large displays of this last food with flavors that must stymie recent immigrants from the Middle East, not that they would't enjoy the novelty! At least there's no fruit in hummus--yet.

If food is appropriated for the cultural makeup of this crazy country, think of music! Just viewing Ken Burns' PBS series on Jazz will demonstrate the validity of African American influence on the culture of the United States. But I totally get that cultural "melting" into one pot hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows for the groups who contribute their cultural gifts. Big band music, a white appropriation of African American music in the thirties and forties, was popular during the time that white people were lynching blacks down south. As Jewish culture was poured into the so-called melting pot (delis! Reuben sandwiches! Jascha Heifetz!), so, too were anti-Semitic horror stories. During this period of cultural appropriation,  FDR was turning back a ship of Jews who were looking for asylum from the Jew-killing NAZI's. They all perished upon their return to Europe. Perhaps there was a cost to this "appropriation". But perhaps it all would have happened, anyway.

I sincerely enjoy the amazing diversity of our population. Here in the D.C. area, you can enjoy any food, music, or art that is part of the whole Megillah. Witness the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a beacon of light in a long, hot summer. You can't turn back the clock, or hold fast to your ethnic gems (I occasionally rail against fruit flavored cream cheese.Totally pointless). So, in the name of my Mother and Grandmother, who never put the "s" on bagel, let us eat, dance, and sing to a thousand different drum beats. God Bless America!