Ishmael Reed’s essay “The World Is Here” is preceded by a well-chosen excerpt from a 1983 book. New York Times article that evokes an image that personifies the two-level concept of Ismael’s earlier essay. Reed offers several examples of cultural mixing from inside the walls of a McDonald’s to inside the walls of a respected university, and from Detroit to Houston. Reed aims to enlighten the general American population by removing the layers of half-truths, at best, that certain entities in the United States continue to foster while speculating the question “what is Western civilization?” and he follows his answer with various historical facts.
Reed claims that the mirror of our world today reflects an eclectic cornucopia of cultures that can no longer be ignored simply because it does not fit the fabricated concept of “Western Civilization.” He believes that as evident as the existence of a multicultural society is that there are those in power who refuse to accept the current reality and remain attached to the idea that the United States is the only descendant of this so-called European “Western civilization”, whose Reed existence questions first based on nearly a dozen examples of how America has tried to build its history on an already shaky foundation. Reed believes that the concept was created by the descendants of Puritan patriarchs who are still in power, as a smokescreen to obscure the historical facts and create a false hierarchy to justify acts of repression, hatred, persecution and murder towards other cultures here Same in the US Soil of the last century, of which Reed cites undeniable examples.
Reed ends his essay with a message to the ethnocentric entities mentioned in the article, the same Puritan gang that believed that their imperialist expansion was a “manifest destiny”, that it is too late for their failed agenda because the world is already here, integrated and interconnected. .
