EDUCATION BEYOND POLITICS
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"multiculturalism"
to
the other side. I think we're the multiculturalists.
The West is multicultural. The United States has been founded on it.
What the others are talking about really isn't multiculturalism, it's a
form of separatism, of different types of ethnocentricities. The fact is
there've been many borrowers within the West from cultures outside the
We t and from cultures within. The very nature of this country is multi–
cultural.
Roger Kimball:
That's a very important point. That whole rhetorical
battle is gruesome. I think the term "multiculturalism" has to be con–
ceded, unfortunately, because it's too contaminated. But it's not really a
battle between reactionaries and liberals, they being the liberals, we being
the reactionaries. It's between a certain kind of radicalism which is in–
deed not multiculturalist in the slightest, and good, old-style liberalism,
which believes in disinterested scholarship and the pursuit of truth. Why
should we concede terms like "virtue" and "diversity" to the other side?
Jean
Eishtain:
One of the best statements about America and diversity is
found in Randolph Bourne 's 1916 essay on the trans-national state, in
which he talks about his vision of a society that is trans-national, that is
weaving back and forth many different strands. Yet this metaphor is not a
sort of quilt where you have solid colors meeting on the margins and
not really having anything to do with one another: rather it is a genuine
sort of transnationality where the possibilities for engagement are always
present and you're learning who you are through the conspicuous con–
trasts that others who are different have to offer. I think that's very dif–
ferent from multiculturalism as a sort of code word for separatism and a
militant group-identity.
Edith Kurzweil:
There's something which keeps striking me whenever I
receive reports on multiculturalism and look at textbooks. It seems that
among Poles, Italians, Germans, Irish, all of the differences among them
are totally missing: they're lumped as "white." I've brought a sampling
of flyers, of stuff that routinely comes across my desk. It's nothing very
extraordinary, except for the fact that every publisher, obviously for
commercial reasons, has gone in for the "multiculturalist" line. And
whatever opposing viewpoints are incorporated are meaningless because
they are within that frame.
But I wanted to go back to some other points. What you've all been
saying is that the culture is being reflected in all our schools - in our
universities, our elementary schools and our high schools; that it's very
hard to keep things apart. But, in addition, schools are dealing with
federal and legal guidelines that are being implemented in the university.
