Case Dining Hall of N.C. State’s University Dining offered students an array of Mexican dishes Monday as an observation of the Mexican-based celebration, Cinco de Mayo.

The day marks an historic event in which the Mexican army defeated the French in Puebla, Mexico, thus warding off a French invasion on the United States of America in 1862.

Case observed the holiday by giving students sombreros and mustache-shaped chocolates, which students reasonably deemed offensive.

Before the day ended, University Dining released an apology on its Facebook page. The apology stated that although those who planned the event did so with good intentions, they offended “many members of our campus community.”

“We learned a valuable lesson,” the post said, “and it’s not a mistake we will make again.”

It’s good to see University Dining taking ownership of the event and apologizing for its offensive content, but it seems as though too few people understand why it is offensive, much less why that offense matters.

Offering symbols of Mexican cultures such as sombreros, ponchos and mustaches as means for celebrating Cinco de Mayo does nothing more than to perpetuate stereotypes against Mexican people.

As Yaseline Munoz, who posted an impassioned response to University Dining’s event onto the Wolfpack Students Facebook Page, said, “The fact that NCSU Dining has reflected and downgraded the rich Mexican culture to simply ‘sombreros’ and ‘mustaches’ is not only ‘uncool’ but completely disrespectful.”

There is much more depth to Mexican culture than just sombreros and ponchos, which historically have been implemented to mock the culture.

Even this year, MSNBC’s The Day Ahead featured a white male staffer wearing a sombrero and guzzling tequila (or something meant to be tequila) for the sake of a joke.

The depiction of Mexicans as sombrero- and poncho-wearing mustachios are what we most commonly see in cartoons and leads people to think of all Hispanic cultures as one type—Mexican, which contradicts the very idea of diversity, according to Crystal Vivanco, president of Mi Familia at N.C. State.

These sort of behaviors and attitudes toward Mexicans are not indicative of a cultural appreciation, as some would argue, but of racial superiority.

Since Americans first began observing Cinco de Mayo as a way of celebrating Mexico’s role in diverting the French from attacking the United States, an argument could be made that our celebrating within the U.S. is an extension of that gratitude.

However, since so few people seem to know the historic background of the day, often confusing it for Mexico’s independence day, that argument doesn’t quite hold up.

That’s not to say no one can appreciate Mexican culture. People of non-Mexican ethnicities are certainly free to appreciate the culture, but not to appropriate it. Perhaps, have a toast to those who fought the Battle of Puebla rather than trying to dress like them. 

When people who are not Mexican don a sombrero or poncho, they are reducing the entire culture into props for their own amusement. No one sees white people in sombreros and thinks, “They sure do appreciate Mexican culture!” because that is not what appreciation looks like.

Non-Mexican people do not have to deal with the societal and institutional hardships endured by Mexican people, and they never will. Culture is not something from which people can pick, choose and customize on a day-to-day basis.

When it comes down to it, Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the United States are nothing more than a bastardization of Mexican tradition and heritage, serving to perpetuate harmful stereotypes about the people supposedly celebrated.

Some may argue that celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in the United States is the same to Irish people as Cinco de Mayo is to Mexican people. To an extent, this is true.

However, Irish people can walk the streets of pretty much anywhere in the United States without feeling in some way ostracized.

Mexicans, on the other hand, are forced to deal with racial profiling, such as that of the anti-immigration laws proposed and passed in the Deep South (among other states). Mexicans have to deal with “They took our jobs!” jokes on a near-regular basis.

Yes, the Irish have been discriminated against in the past, and it certainly has not been a cakewalk for them. But their oppression is nothing like that against Mexican people today.

(And, really, can we not have a discussion about appropriating Mexican culture without pulling at straws to make whites seem like an oppressed group too? The fact that anyone cares to bring up St. Patrick’s Day in a discussion about Cinco de Mayo indicates some inherently oppressive tendency to make everything about whiteness. If whites were really so oppressed, we wouldn’t need to tack the supposed offenses against us onto every conversation about other social groups.)

If University Dining decides to host another Cinco de Mayo event in the future, hopefully it will only entail Mexican food. Perhaps chips and “Case-o,” if they must.

Send Nicky your thoughts at technician-viewpoint@ncsu.edu.