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PARTISAN REVIEW
actually presents himself at an examination is likely to emerge with
a certificate. I recently encountered a boy aged
16
in my clinic who
wrote Dear Sir as dee sur and I am as ime ... who passed a public
examination in English.
The British middle class has bought the multiculturalist cant, that,
where culture is concerned, there is only difference, not better or
worse....
The belief in the equality of cultures ... a long established peda –
gogic orthodoxy has now seeped into the population at large.
Today's slum dwellers are aggressively convinced of the sufficiency
of their knowledge ... and of their cultural life ... whatever it
might consist.
In the schools that the children of the underclass attend (as in com–
parable American schools) those who express a desire to learn "suffer
mockery, excommunication, and in some instances outright violence
from thei r peers."
Public housing where the underclass is sheltered is just as deplorable
as it is in this country: "What do the tenants think of their apartment
blocks? They vote with their urine. The public spaces and elevators of
all public housing blocks I know are so deeply impregnated with urine
that the odor is ineradicable. And anything smashable has been
smashed." There is also garbage everywhere that cannot be blamed on
poor architecture.
Most surprising is that in Britain, too, the attitude Shelby Steele des–
ignated (with reference to American blacks) "the victim focused identity"
has become widespread among groups whose historical experiences have
been very different from those of their American counterparts:
The sour satisfaction of being dependent on social security li.e.
welfarel resides in its automatic conferral of the status of the Vic–
tim, which in itself explains one's failure and absolves one of the
obligation to make something of oneself ... because of the unjust
nature of society which made one a victim in the first place.
The victimized sense of identity, amoral refusal
to
take responsibility
for one's life and behavior, and belief in social determinism are, of
course, intertwined. Dalrymple
had met ... suspected killers in prison ... to whom killing was no
more problematical, morally, than making a telephone call: men,
