Will Thanksgiving Be Hijacked as the Diversity Holiday? Students of history will recall that the Statue of Liberty was originally called “Liberty Enlightening the World” and was meant as a revolutionary symbol to the oppressed of the world to throw off their chains — not as a welcome mat to immigrants. No, that rewrite of reality came with the Emma Lazarus “huddled masses” poem which was deposited on the statue's base years later as something of an afterthought. Now there are signs that multiculturalists are eyeballing Thanksgiving as a likely subject for a holiday that celebrates diversity and immigration. And so easy to engineer — just throw together some turkey tamales. Voilà! An example is the 2001 film “What's Cooking?” which shows four varied Los Angeles families engaging in Thanksgiving. The families are Jewish, African-American, Vietnamese immigrant and Mexican immigrant. They all cook their ethnic versions of Thanksgiving dinner within a vignette film style with cuts back and forth between the families. In one interview the Indian director Gurinder Chadha stated that the film was culturally “subversive” in terms of America. It is that and more. Diversity is celebrated seamlessly, with interesting characters flawed enough to not be hopelessly sacharine. The film's only disapproval is reserved for those not embracing of the new civic virtue of multiculturalism. Interestingly, the female director shows the relentless sexism of the immigrant families throughout, but is not dissuaded from her underlying approval for ethnic diversity as the highest good. Americans have many things for which to be thankful, but preachy, fraudulent multiculturalism is not among them. — Brenda Walker