An Anatomy of Multiculturalism < "Where is the Zulu Tolstoy?" and other silliness>

"we happened to have been born in to meet on the ground of the universally significant."

"Multiculturalism has arisen through the spreading of the idea that the so-called universal was in fact only partial: one side of the story pretending to be the whole story, the interests of some groups passing themselves off as the interests of all."

"Tonto! Tonto! We are surrounded by Indians!" the Lone Ranger said in an old joke; and like Tonto, many contemporary readers have come to respond: "What do you mean 'we?'"

"there are always many parties to every human experience, and that their experiences of the same event are often profoundly divergent."

The current debate over the canon is growing polarized between defense of tradition against "barbaric" innovations, and defense of change against the "tyranny" of received wisdom. At the risk of making both sides unhappy, the dean of Yale College argues for a more nuanced approach.

There once was a time when literate culture -- the things educated people know and believe other people should know -- possessed certain well-marked features. The contents of literate culture were internally coherent; they were widely agreed to; and above all they were agreed to be universal in their interest or meaning. What happened in education, according to this understanding, was that we came out of whatever local, parochial origin we happened to have been born in to meet on the ground of the universally significant. In literature, we studied the work not of those who expressed themselves "like us," but of writers who transcended such limits of time and place -- writers with names like Homer and Shakespeare. In philosophy we read not those who thought the way people think where we came from, but thinkers of perennial, transcultural significance: Plato, for instance, or Rousseau.

A current caricature says that this model of education was only ever subscribed to by the elite, but historically this is quite untrue. During its long reign the concept of universal culture was often valued especially highly by outsiders. When W. E. B. DuBois, the great African-American intellectual of the turn of the last century, looked for an image of a profound human unity to set against the racial segregations being perfected in his time, he turned to the literary classics: "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not," he wrote in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). You would recoil if I sat next to you at the whites-only lunch counter, DuBois implies, but Shakespeare doesn't when I sit and read his plays. For DuBois, culture restores the common ground that local social arrangements deny.

The educational revolution for which multiculturalism is a shorthand name embodies an unravelling of this older consensus. Multiculturalism has arisen through the spreading of the idea that the so-called universal was in fact only partial: one side of the story pretending to be the whole story, the interests of some groups passing themselves off as the interests of all.

"Tonto! Tonto! We are surrounded by Indians!" the Lone Ranger said in an old joke; and like Tonto, many contemporary readers have come to respond: "What do you mean 'we?'" So a line like "The Odyssey exemplifies the fundamental human desire to wander and adventure," a classroom truism not long ago, would now provoke the quick retort: "'Human' to be sure, if humans are assumed to be men. But what about that wife who sat home while Odysseus got to wander?"

In recent years the growing suspicion of alleged universals has led to a heightened sense that there are always many parties to every human experience, and that their experiences of the same event are often profoundly divergent. In the wake of this realization, it has come to seem that real education is to be found not in the move from the local to the generalizedly "human," but in the effort to hear and attend to all the different voices of human history -- the voices of those who have dominated the official stories, but also those silenced or minimized by the official account. We know we are in the neighborhood of this new plan of education whenever history is given us in plural, contending versions: when the story of The Odyssey is also considered from Penelope's point of view; when Columbus's discovery of America is seen not just from the European but also from the Arawak or Taino vantage; when the history of the Pilgrim settlement takes into account the different history it produced for native populations; and so on.

We have all seen the profound educational shift that has taken place in this country as the second of these models has begun to displace the first in recent years. Having been taught in the older of these ways, but lived to teach and be reeducated in the newer one, I have had, by pure historical coincidence, an intimate experience of this great tectonic shift. Here I offer a few reflections on how this still-unfolding revolution looks to a person who has seen it from both sides.

There are, in truth, a great many things to say about this transformation. The first and most obvious is that it embodies a playing out in education of a contemporary social drama that ranges far beyond the sphere of education itself. When our successors look back on the second half of this century, the Civil Rights movement will surely strike them as one of the most decisive developments in the history of our time. As we know, this movement led a nation that had accepted legal segregation to become first embarrassed by, then to seek to reform, the practice of discrimination based on race. Having begun with this focus, the Civil Rights movement has extended itself by the force of analogy, creating the perception that many other forms of social differentiation -- the different treatment of women, of other minorities, of the disabled, and so on -- were as unjust and unjustifiable as racial discrimination. The modern sentiment that men and women should win advancement only on the grounds of individual ability, and not because of the groups they can be lumped into, has made for changes in college admissions, corporate hiring, professional recruitment, and virtually every other social practice in the United States.

In the world of education, it has expressed itself as multiculturalism. Multiculturalism embodies the ideal of equal opportunity implemented at the level of the curriculum -- the urge to open the field of study, like other places of visibility and prestige, to women, minorities, and others previously left out of account.

To its partisans, multicultural education is a matter of justice done at last. But there are many who are in sympathy with these social goals who still regard their educational effects as pernicious. One common cry is that this movement's political ends are leading it to abandon a long-cherished heritage education has passed down from generation to generation. But to this it can be replied that the history of education is a history of change more than any of us like to admit. We all tend to share the sense that the things we studied in school had probably been taught there since time immemorial, and so should continue to be taught until the end of time. But our schoolings were themselves often products of reforms that had succeeded and then been forgotten. What subject could seem more timeless than English? But English wasn't thought a fit matter for university study before the 19th century: it was a modern, vernacular literature, and education's business was with the Classical. My own field, American literature, entered college curricula later still, not much earlier than 1940, having been dismissed as a mere colonial appendage of English after English got itself academically accepted. "What . . . at one time has been held in little estimation, and has hardly found place in a course in liberal instruction, has, under other circumstances, risen to repute, and received a proportional share of attention," President Jeremiah Day wrote in the Yale Report of 1828. Seen against such a background, it may be possible to regard current curricular revolutions as the latest chapter of a long story of change, not an unprecedented deviance saved for modern times.

But the central objection to multicultural reforms comes from the belief that traditional literate culture is more meaningful than newly promoted objects of study -- that the lives and works of the hitherto ignored, however much we may wish to feature them for sentimental or political reasons, are less remarkable human achievements than the classics, and their study therefore less rewarding. (Saul Bellow meant this when he asked: "Where is the Zulu Tolstoy?") This is a weighty charge, but to it we might reply: How could you know that these things are less valuable except by having studied them, extended them your sympathy, and given them your patient attention? A silent premise of much of my education was that there were all manner of things not worth knowing about and that we could know they were not worth knowing without bothering to consult them. When I came to the study of American literature, for example, I often read that Hawthorne, Melville, and the other geniuses of the American Renaissance wrote in opposition to a popular sentimental literature of unimaginable banality, and -- in a beautiful convenience -- my contemporaries and I understood that there was no need to read this work in order to be confident of its perfect worthlessness. From a later vantage I can testify that when one takes the trouble to look into them, ignored or downvalued traditions -- even the mid-19th century sentimental novel -- can turn out to contain creations of extraordinary power and interest. (There would be no need to make this point for our own time, when the achievements of women and minorities are unmistakable; what contemporary literature course would leave out such great American writers as the Asian-American Maxine Hong Kingston, or the African-American Toni Morrison, or the Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez?) My own career in the last 15 years had led me to be increasingly engaged with writers from outside the traditional canon. In my courses I now frequently teach authors from hitherto ignored traditions together with their more famous contemporaries -- Frederick Douglass and Fanny Fern with Herman Melville, Louisa May Alcott and Charles W. Chesnutt with Mark Twain. And in my classes such writers do not just add new material, they substantially change and enrich the terms on which every author is grasped and understood.

In my experience then, without causing any defection from the classic authors I still love, teach, and value, the changes associated with multiculturalism have brought a real renovation, a widening of the field of knowledge and a deepened understanding of everything it contains. Yet without in any way retracting what I have said, it seems to me possible to wonder whether current ways of conceptualizing and implementing multicultural education are as problem-free as some proponents imply. If the older model of education had its limits, the new program has a potential to enmesh us in limits of its own; and a full assessment would want to reckon these dangers together with the advantages it might supply.

To mention three problems very quickly: Multiculturalism has promoted an inclusionistic curriculum. Its moral imperative not to discriminate leads it to want to put everything in and leave nothing out. But there is an undeniable danger that the practice of universal curricular representation can degenerate into high-minded tokenism. Everyone has seen the new-style school anthologies and curricular units with snippet samplings of all the nation's or world's peoples. Like all official school instruments, these show the strong sense of feeling answerable to a vigilant cultural authority that watches their every move. The old-style textbook paid obeisance to an imaginary censor who asked: "Are we being sufficiently patriotic? Are we avoiding blasphemy and smut?" The new one's choices show it similarly attentive to a moral overseer who asks for instance: "Have we got our Native American? Our Asian-American? Is our black a man? If so, have we also got a black woman?"

Multiculturalism seems to hang its hat on the racial divide and gains made in the 1960's.

Multiculturalism has triumphed according to the author.

Multiculturalism pats the loser on the back while minimising the achievements of the winner or the party that most achieved. Duly noted are the Zulus and native Indians whose cultural achievements are raised only by minimising those of the Western World.

Also noted is the grasp of the so-called "universal" and where multiplicity of perspective is revered.

Duke's Next President-2004 | Richard Brodhead's Selection as Duke's Ninth President

I'm still not sure what this person is trying to say.
Not all cultures are worth studying. That is self-evident. Challenging my reasons for believing that is a losing proposition. Arguments from sophistry just don't do it for me... nor do implications of inadequate intellectual curiosity.

I'll just repeat: where is zulu Tolstoy?

Asian-American Maxine Hong Kingston,
African-American Toni Morrison,
Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez

Now I've never read any of them. Thomas Pynchon is often considered to be one of the 20th century's great novelists, but then he's not a hypen-american. Anyone care to comment. I heard Rodriquez give a long reading of a non-fiction book about "the browning of America" and I can say the prose was very nice. Anyone read these guys? Who is the Zulu Tolstoy, or the "African American" Joyce for that matter.

Everybody knows that Shaka ate the Zulu Tolstoy!

Moving on down the road, I spend Saturday mornings watching two very important shows in my life. One is called "Pepsi Cartalera", featuring the current top 10 Spanish language songs!

You think they do some shaking in that "Shake it Like a Salt Shaker"? You ain't seen nothin' yet, but then again, there's some more sedate entertainment on "Pepsi...."

The other show has ancient Hindu epics. We have a couple of channels here that show lots and lots of Indian stuff on the weekends. The best part are the Indian equivalents of "The Bible".

The most remarkable thing about the top Spanish songs is that they are mostly about how good it is to live in Miami, Houston or Los Angeles as compared to some horrid little poverty stricken dusty village ~ except when you take a vacation to see grandma! Then, that Indian stuff ~ you talk about classics ~ some of the stories were millenia old when Alexander the Great came to visit.

It takes hard work to stay on top of this stuff ~ so much change, differences, moving around......

Then, that Indian stuff ~ you talk about classics ~ some of the stories were millenia old when Alexander the Great came to visit.

You seem unable to make the distinction between "classic" and simply "old". But, then, I am not surprised.
By your definition, coprolites are also "classics".

Spare me...

This was posted a few days ago

KISS THE OLD AMERICA GOODBYE / By Pat Buchanan
"Then, there is growing potential for the disuniting of America of which Arthur Schlesinger wrote. The old immigrants came here to become Americans. The tough-love country to which they came demanded they do so. In those melting pots of Americanization, the public and parochial schools of the early 20th century, the young were immersed in our language, literature, history, heroes, traditions, customs, faith, myths—and came to know and love them."
_____________________________________________________

The death of Western Civilization is upon us.

The elitist, unmititgated contempt for Christian America, and all that is stands for, by the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Americans for Separation of Church and State, People for The American Way, etc, was never more apparent.

These leftist haters have conspited to construct The Aberrant Culture in which American traditions are being replaced by gay marriage, gangsta rap, hard and softcore-porn in music, TV broadcasts, and movies.

This being proselytized in schools (without parents knowledge or consent) and is on the airwaves. It is living up to the perverted haters every expectation---- to foment have a chaotic, fully fornicating society, with abortion on demand to clean up the mess.

These hate-filled leftist revisionists are reinterpreting our history, literature and traditions. Even American heroes like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are subject to leftist revision and slander. We are at the point where having faith and espousing the Christian religion is close to being criminalized.

The question we should all be asking......When the diabolical ACLU-PP'hood types have effectively decimated all of our revered institutions, what do these depraved haters plan to erect in their place?

Brodhead suggests several problems including the disadvantages of the superficial (dismissive) glances at the many cultures that comprise our world. He does not emphasize enough the underlying lesson that the modern curriculum teaches; Everyone has a pigeon hole that he or she fits into and must therefore remain. Clearly identifying with a particular culture connects us with our roots but simultaneously tells us our place in society.

Brodhead does not mention the importance of knowing our own collective culture and the roles that European history, and other histories have played in the development of the American society. There needs to be a much greater emphasizes the blending that has occurred to make America the wonderful melting pot that it has become.

Furthermore, Brodhead barely mentions the benefits of reading the classics: particularly the personal growth that comes from the exposure to high quality rhetoric.

Critically important and glossed over is the fact that even the most mundane and low quality works are raised up to a level that exposes the weaknesses of some cultures, concurrently lowering expectations of performances from those individuals who have descended from those groups.

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