The premise with which the multiculturalists
begin is unexceptional: that it is important to
recognize and to celebrate the wide range of
cultures that exist in the United States. In what
sounds like a reflection of traditional American
pluralism, the multiculturalists argue that we
must recognize difference, that difference is
legitimate; in its kindlier versions, multiculturalism
represents the discovery on the part of
minority groups that they can play a part in
molding the larger culture even as they are
molded by it. And on the campus multiculturalism,
defined more locally as the need to recognize
cultural variations among students, has tried
with some success to talk about how a racially
and ethnically diverse student body can enrich
everyone’s education.
Phillip Green, a political scientist at Smith
and a thoughtful proponent of multiculturalism,
notes that for a significant portion of the students
the politics of identity is all-consuming.
Students he says “are unhappy with the thin gruel
of rationalism. They require a therapeutic curriculum
to overcome not straightforward racism
but ignorant stereotyping.”

But multiculturalism’s hard-liners, who
seem to make up the majority of the movement,
damn as racism any attempt to draw the myriad
of American groups into a common American
culture. For these multiculturalists, differences
are absolute, irreducible, intractable—occasions
not for understanding but for separation. The
multiculturalist, it turns out, is not especially
interested in the great American hyphen, in the
syncretistic (and therefore naturally tolerant)
identities that allow Americans to belong to more
than a single culture, to be both particularists and
universalists.
The time-honored American mixture of
assimilation and traditional allegiance is
denounced as a danger to racial and gender
authenticity. This is an extraordinary reversal of
the traditional liberal commitment to a “truth”
that transcends parochialisms. In the new
race/class/gender formation, universality is
replaced by, among other things, feminist science
Nubian numerals (as part of an Afro-centric
science), and what Marilyn Frankenstein of the
University of Massachusetts-Boston describes as
“ethno-mathematics,” in which the cultural basis
of counting comes to the fore.
The multiculturalists insist on seeing all
perspectives as tainted by the perceiver’s particular
point of view. Impartial knowledge, they
argue, is not possible, because ideas are simply
the expression of individual identity, or of the
unspoken but inescapable assumptions that are
inscribed in a culture or a language. The problem,
however, with this warmed-over
Nietzscheanism is that it threatens to leave no
ground for anybody to stand on. So the multiculturalists
make a leap, necessary for their own
intellectual survival, and proceed to argue that
there are some categories, such as race and gender,
that do in fact embody an unmistakable
knowledge of oppression. Victims are at least
epistemologically lucky. Objectivity is a mask
for oppression. And so an appalled former 1960s
radical complained to me that self-proclaimed
witches were teaching classes on witchcraft.
“They’re not teaching students how to think,”
she said, “they’re telling them what to believe.”


Which one of the following best describes the
attitude of the writer toward the multicultural
movement?
(A) Tolerant. It may have some faults, but it
is well-meaning overall.
(B) Critical. A formerly admirable movement
has been taken over by radical
intellectuals.
(C) Disinterested. He seems to be presenting
an objective report.
(D) Enthusiastic. The author embraces the
multiculturalist movement and is trying to
present it in a favorable light.
(E) Ambivalent. Like a moth to a flame he is
simultaneously attracted and repulsed by
the movement.
_________________

I will rather do nothing than be busy doing nothing - Zen saying