FACES AND PLACES: Muddled multicultural mandarins (01/26/03)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Muddled multicultural mandarins

Multiculturalism deserves an early death in America - the earlier the better. It is a divisive concept that has consistently undermined American core values, revised American history and confused young Americans regarding their heritage.

"'Multiculturalism' is an ambiguous term," writes Daniel J. Flynn in his best-seller, "Why the Left Hates America." "To a university apparatchik, it is a code word for anti-Americanism. To a political leader, it may simply mean an appreciation for our diverse ethnic backgrounds. To a job applicant passed over because of his fair skin, it is euphemism for reverse racism. To a scholar, it may mean a pursuit of the best that foreign cultures have to offer."

Surely, you say, Ukrainian Americans have no objection to multiculturalism. We are American ethnics, proud of our Ukrainian heritage. Absolutely true. But the multicultural model of today does not include Ukrainian Americans. Nor does it embody Polish Americans, Norwegian Americans, Italian Americans or any other white European group that has bought into the American dream and has taken on American ideals. On the contrary, we are the bad guys. We have all the advantages. We should be paying reparations.

The multicultural ideal is separatism, not integration into mainstream American life, explains American historian Arthur M. Schlesigner Jr. in his monograph "The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society." Instead of a transformative nation with an identity all its own ... a struggle is taking place to redefine the national identity..." We see it everywhere, "in our politics, our voluntary organizations, our churches, our language - and in no area more crucial than our system of education."

Since 1776, four models have arisen to explain how the United States, a nation with roots in Great Britain and Western Europe, has incorporated groups of people from around the world.

The first model was Anglo-conformity, the goal of which was to assimilate new immigrants and inoculate them with certain, clear-cut democratic ideals. Even then, becoming an American was more about political assimilation than cultural amalgamation. This model lasted from approximately 1776 to 1865.

Following the Civil War, when thousands of immigrants arrived in America from Southern and Eastern Europe, it became clear that assimilation within one generation was unrealistic. A second model, the melting pot, was offered as an alternative. Emphasis was on the second generation, the sons and daughter of immigrants, who were urged to forget their ethnic heritage and to assimilate culturally as well as politically. "Americanization" became the buzzword in the schools and in various settlement houses in big cities.

As it became clear that various ethnic groups preferred to stay together, to preserve aspects of their culture and to create "Little Italies," "Ukrainian Villages" and "Germantowns," a third model, cultural pluralism, made its debut. First to articulate this ideal was Jewish American philosopher Horace Kallen, who wrote: "Men may change their clothes, their politics, their wives, their religions, their philosophies, to a greater or lesser extent; they cannot change their grandfathers."

Cultural pluralism as a popular model reached the peak of its acceptance during the 1970s, when Congress passed the Ethnic Heritage Act, the White House hired a Special Assistant for Ethnic Affairs, and the Ford Foundation funded a number of organizations - the National Project on Ethnic America, the Center for Urban-Ethnic Affairs, the Center for the Study of American Pluralism - to examine the nature and depth of the ethnic factor in American life. In his 1971 book, "The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnic," Michael Novak wrote that "To ethnics, America is almost a religion ... ethnics believe that they chose one route to moderate success in America, namely, loyalty, hard work, family discipline and gradual self-development." He was right on that score. That description certainly applied to Ukrainian Americans and many other ethnic groups with which I was associated during the 1970s. We identified ourselves as "Americans Plus."

Dr. Novak predicted that the 1970s would be the decade of the white ethnic, a time when ethnic contributions to America would be recognized and celebrated. Here, he was partly right. Americans participated in ethnic festivals, ate ethnic food and respected ethnic holidays. But that's about as far as the "celebration" went. More profound white ethnic contributions were largely ignored and gradually replaced with a focus on the travels of "preferred minorities," primarily African Americans, Hispanics and other groups that have been exploited by the West. Integration was no longer a goal for America's Afro-American leaders. Separatism is the elixir that will help black Americans define themselves.

Today, multiculturalism is dominated by two groups, both of which have wandered far from the original precepts of cultural pluralism. The first group is Afro-Centrists, primarily black academics who are busily deconstructing American and European history in the erroneous belief that African Americans will acquire self-esteem only when white Americans are debased. Here we find such commentators as Marimba Ani, who declared that "racism is endemic to European history," and Leonard Jeffries, who informs us that "Blacks are sun people, whites are ice people." This kind of thinking is divisive because it strengthens both the victimhood complex and the "we-they" syndrome among blacks. Worst of all, it exacerbates racial tensions.

Multicultural studies in the elementary grades have largely become monocultural studies with revisionist history books that focus on blacks almost exclusively. "The African American Baseline Series," a teacher's manual used as a guide for teachers in Detroit, the District of Columbia and Atlanta, for example, informs us that black Africans invented energy-generated batteries and flew around the ancient Egyptian pyramids in primitive airplanes.

A second, far more dangerous group associated with multiculturalism is American university professors of the left who promote the notion that most of the world's ills are the result of Western civilization. When a donor offered $20 million to Yale University to implement a program in Western civilization, for example, the faculty rejected it. "Western civilization?" asked an English professor, Sara Suleri, "why not a chair in colonialism, slavery, empire and poverty?"

The mandarins of multiculturalism will tell you that all cultures are equal. What they really mean, of course, is that some cultures are more equal than others.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is [email protected].

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