The United States of America is a country based off the principle of people coming from other countries in order to live the “American Dream.” America thrives off the idea of being a land of cultural diversity in which we have influence from all around the world. During Sunday night’s Super Bowl, Coca-Cola aired a commercial which had the song “America The Beautiful” being sung in multiple different languages. This advertisement received a lot of controversial backlash, prominently on Twitter. There were many tweets regarding the ad being “un-American” and claiming that everyone should be speaking English instead of foreign languages. The tweets also included a variety of other racial connotations.

Pause for one moment and let that sink in. Did it not occur to any of those people that English is in fact a foreign language on American soil? I’m no history teacher, but I do remember learning that when America was discovered by the Europeans, there were already people here, the Native Americans. Guess what language they didn’t speak? English. In a country that was founded off of immigration, we should be more accepting of the fact that there will be people who speak different languages. We need to embrace the cultural diversity.

This Coca-Cola commercial wasn’t the first time that the company promoted American diversity. In July of 1971, Coca Cola aired their “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” commercial. This commercial featured a multicultural group of people singing this song and holding bottles of Coca-Cola labeled in different languages. The ad became such a hit that it was remade into a hit song and the commercial was replayed around the world. Although the commercial from this weekend doesn’t seem like it received the same positive attention, Coca-Cola does a great job in showing the power of unity in our country.

I really thought the commercial was well done and a great depiction of what America should be about. I think it is an honorable thing that people are taking their native language from ANOTHER country to sing a song about OUR country. People have to remember that being an American does not mean you have to be a white person who speaks English. Realize that white people weren’t even the first ones on this land and English was not the first language spoken. We are a country that is free and we take that for granted every single day.

Considering that this week is International Week in our school, everyone should take the time and appreciate the diversity that we are able to celebrate in our school. Be sure to participate in the various activities that we have going on throughout the week. I would hope that people could take the time and appreciate that people of many different races and cultures live in this country. All of them are American. and all of them have the right to sing that song.