JOHN R.
SEAR.LE
699
crudely, all cu ltures are equal. Not only are they morally equal, as human
beings are morally equal, but all cultures are intellectually equal as well.
According to this view, the idea that we have more to learn from the
representatives of one race, gender, class, or ethnic group than we do
£i·om the representatives of others is simply racism and old-fashioned im–
peralism. It is simply a residue of Eurocentric imperalism to suppose, as
the traditionalists have been supposing, that certain works of European
white males are somehow superior to the products of other cultures,
classes, genders, and ethnic groups. Belief in the superiority of the
Western canon is a priori objectionable because all authors are essentially
representatives of their culture, and all cultures arc intellectually equal.
In
this alternative view, a third feature is that when it comes to se–
lecting what you should read, representativeness is obviously crucial.
In
a
multiculturalist educational democracy, every culture must be represented.
The difficulty with the prevailing system is that most groups are under–
represented, and certain groups are not represented at all. The proposal
of opening up doors just to let a few superstars in is no good, because
that still leaves you, in plain and simple terms, with too many dead,
white, European males. Even if you include every great woman novelist
that you want to include - every Jane Austen, George Eli ot, and
Virginia Woolf - you are still going to have too many dead, white,
European males on your list.
It
is part of the elitism, the hegemonism,
and the patriarchalism of the existing ideology that it tries to perpetuate
the same patterns of repression even while pretending to be opening up.
Worse yet, the lack of diversity in the curriculum is matched by an equal
lack of
diversity in the faCIlity.
It 's no use getting rid of the hegemony of
dead
white males in the curriculum if the faculty that teaches the multi–
cultural curriculum is still mostly
living
white males. Representativeness is
crucial not only in the curriculum but even more so in the composition
of the faculty.
I want to pause here to contrast these three assumptions of the
challengers with those of the traditionalists. The traditionalists think they
are selecting both reading lists and facu lty members on grounds of quality
and not on grounds of representation. They think they select Plato and
Shakespeare, for example, because they produced works of genius, not
because they are specimens or representatives of some group. The chal–
lengers think this is self-deception at best, oppression at worst. They
think that since the canon consists mostly of white European males, the
authors must have been selected
because
they are white European males.
And they think that because most of the professors are white males, this
fact by itself is proof that there is someth ing wrong with the composi–
tion of the faculty.
