The Tragedy of Multiculturalism

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 7/31/1991 | Irving Kristol

[SteveH]

The Tragedy of Multiculturalism

7/31/91

Irving Kristol

The Wall Street Journal

It is difficult, and even dangerous, to talk candidly about "multiculturalism" these days. Such candor is bound to provoke accusations of "insensitivity" at least, "racism" at worst.

Even some of the sharpest criticisms of multiculturalism are content to limit themselves to demonstrating how "illiberal" it is, how it violates traditional ideas about the substance of liberal education, and how it represents a deplorable deviation in the way our young Americans, so heterogeneous in their origins, are to be educated to live together. This criticism is certainly valid and welcome. But it also implicitly concedes too much by going along with the assumption that there really is such a thing as multiculturalism -- i.e., a sincere if overzealous effort by well-meaning educators to broaden the horizons of the conventional curriculum. Such educators doubtless exist, but their efforts end up being the victims of a far more aggressive mode of multiculturalism.

Though the educational establishment would rather die than admit it, multiculturalism is a desperate -- and surely self-defeating -- strategy for coping with the educational deficiencies, and associated social pathologies, of young blacks. Did these black students and their problems not exist, we would hear little of multiculturalism. There is no evidence that a substantial number of Hispanic parents would like their children to know more about Simon Bolivar and less about George Washington, or that Oriental parents feel that their children are being educationally deprived because their textbooks teach them more about ancient Greece than about ancient China.

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[SteveH]

You mean like this?

What is this, Texas Hold'Em? ;-) I'll see you and raise you with this:

;-) ;-) :-(

[KC_for_Freedom]

Note to self, the article was by Irvine Kristol, not Bill Kristol.