Posted on 01/03/2005 4:03:12 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Occasionally one thinks that, perhaps because it has become so tedious, multiculturalism has begun to pass from the scene. Unfortunately, such thoughts seem entirely too optimistic in light of the great extent to which multiculturalist slogans have become culturally and institutionally ensconced, the great emotional and financial stake that multiculturalists have in perpetuating their visions, and the degree to which, usually under false pretenses, multiculturalists are able to initiate new believers into their sect. So it probably is still of some value to offer a dissection and critique of the ideology of multiculturalism—a dissection and critique that focuses on the rotten core rather than the surface that is polished for marketing purposes.
Behind the mask of a benign celebration of diversity lies a deeply corrosive rejection of all general norms, rules, or truths. This rejection of general norms, both those dealing with knowledge and those dealing with morals, derives from multiculturalism's insistence that there are many essentially closed systems of perception, feeling, thought, and evaluation—each associated with some racially, ethnically, or sexually defined group. Thus, multiculturalism quite explicitly and appropriately sees itself as rejecting the Enlightenment belief in standards of reason, evidence, and objectivity, and principles of justice and freedom that apply to all human beings.
Cultural Relativism
Multiculturalism is, in effect, a dressed up and politicized version of cultural relativism—the doctrine that every group has its own distinct but equally sound patterns of perception, thought, and choice. According to cultural relativism, no one can validly object to beliefs and actions of any group which reflect that group's own indigenous worldview. While cultural relativists have always claimed to be friends of tolerance—indeed the only true friends of tolerance—this doctrine actually implies that no one can object to any group's intolerance, if intolerance is that group's thing. Neither the cultural relativist nor the multiculturalist can object to Mayan infant sacrifice, or Spanish Inquisitional torture, or Nazi genocide because each of these practices is validated by the perspective within which it arises. To criticize indigenous intolerance or any culturally authentic practice no matter how brutal or exploitative, one must apply general, trans-cultural norms which both cultural relativism and its multicultural descendent denounce as imperialist. But multiculturalism's moral relativism precludes any such appeal and, hence, it precludes any affirmative case for tolerance.
In addition to its moral relativism, multiculturalism also proclaims (as the one great Objective Truth) that all truth, objectivity, and evidence are also relative. Each culture has its own truth, objectivity, and standards of reason and evidence. Thus, whatever beliefs any culture emits, they are validated by the fact of their emission. This, of course, precludes any rational dialogue among individuals. Each individual is merely a representative of a certain biologically defined perspective with its own idiosyncratic, but self-validating, biases. Hence, each individual must agree with members of his or her own group and be unable to make rational contact with members of other groups.
By chanting his mantra of relativism, the multiculturalist can evade honest confrontation with all intellectual challenges. Consider the argument that multiculturalism cannot support tolerance since grotesquely intolerant social orders can be as true to their distinctive ways of perceiving, cognizing, and feeling, as any other social order. According to the multiculturalist mantra, this argument itself is merely an expression of one particular perspective, the Eurocentric—hence, linear and logocentric mode of perception and thought. Thus, this challenge, like all attempts at rational disputation, can be rejected by anyone who doesn't feel that way about it.
Tolerance
In contrast to the multiculturalist, the genuine advocate of tolerance believes that, despite the profound differences among individuals, there are some fundamental general norms—including standards of rational discourse and norms that extend freedom and the protection of justice to all persons in virtue of their common humanity. Only such general norms provide a principled basis for rejecting the suppression of disliked opinion, speech, religious conviction, economic decisions, and so on. It is precisely to the extent that we articulate and comply with such rules that each of us, strange as we are to others and strange as many others are to us, are able to live at peace, indeed, in fruitful mutual advantage with one another.
Multiculturalism modifies cultural relativism in two important ways. First, it ignores cultures as ordinarily understood and focuses instead on biologically defined groups within our society who may be recruited into political alliances based on heightening their sense of alienation and victimization. Thus, as the perceived political opportunities dictate, the multiculturalist focuses on the supposed existence of sui generis Afrocentric, Female, Hispanic, Homosexual, and/or Native American modes of thought and feeling.
Multiculturalism is fundamentally anti-individualistic because it expects each individual to conform in his or her perceptions, thoughts, and assessments to those pronounced to be the authentic perceptions, thoughts, and assessments of that individual's group. All genuine blacks must share the Black perspective. All genuine women must share the enshrined Female perspective. All homosexuals must share the Homosexual perspective—and so on. Your thoughts are either the collectively constituted thoughts of your racial, ethnic, or sexual group or they are thoughts insidiously imposed upon you by the dominant White Male perspective. Group-think is the mark of authenticity. Multicultural diversity both radically cleaves humanity into disparate biological collectivities and radically homogenizes people within these collectivities. For the multiculturalist, diversity is merely superficial.
Multiculturalism's second modification of cultural relativism consists in its expulsion of one supposed worldview—what multiculturalism misidentifies as the White Male perspective—from the Eden of equally sound worldviews. All group perspectives are equal, but one is less equal than others. The supposed reasoning on behalf of this expulsion is that the so-called White Male worldview is uniquely guilty of commitment to common objective norms of thought and action. Hence, it is said, this rogue perspective uniquely stands in judgment of other worldviews, subjecting them to its wickedly colonialist epistemic and moral standards. Thus, this perspective—as befits its White, Male, heterosexual roots—is uniquely totalizing, aggressive, and victimizing.
In reality, of course, what is being condemned by multiculturalism is not some idiosyncratic White male, heterosexual perspective, but rather the human enterprise of seeking, articulating, and employing general norms that help us to distinguish between the true and the false, the plausible and the implausible, the good and the evil, the permissible and the impermissible.
The irony is that multiculturalism wants to hew to its own judgments about the special defects of Western thought and the special injustice and oppressiveness of the liberal Western social and economic order while insisting that it cannot be expected to justify (or even identify) the philosophical or empirical premises of its own judgments. The excuse for this irresponsibility is the ritualistic claim that to accept these demands for justification is to succumb to the Eurocentric hegemony. Yet, at the same time, we are supposed to accept the truth of the multiculturalists' historical and cultural analyses and the verity of their all-embracing evaluations.
Multiculturalism presents us, then, with the spectacle of sweeping, confident, and impassioned moral, historical, economic, sociological, and aesthetic judgments and a simultaneous and often self-righteous refusal to take any intellectual responsibility for any of those judgments.
Was Hitler Evil?
In a campus debate a couple of years ago with an earnest multiculturalist, I strove to help her see that she could not both accept multiculturalism's relativism and continue confidently to proclaim the profound evils of various regimes. In desperation, I appealed to the instance of Hitler and Nazism. Given this relativism, I asked her, can you even assert that Hitler was evil? Well, she said after a moment of thought, I'm not valorizing him.
The primary purpose of multiculturalist educational proposals is to instill in students and (increasingly) in employees and the population at large the demonology that the apparently benign, tolerant, liberal order is actually the most profoundly oppressive order ever to have existed. People are to be initiated into the delights of victimhood. They are to learn how to perceive themselves as victims (or victimizers)—not of superficial wrongs like murder, mayhem, and robbery—but of ever so subtle, exquisitely cunning, psycholinguistic domination. It is psycholinguistic domination, i.e., the construction of seductively hegemonic themes and discourses, that make the derivative evils of racial or sexual exploitation possible (indeed, inevitable). To recognize oneself as such a victim is to attain multiculturalist enlightenment and, not inconveniently, an all-purpose ticket for the increasingly lucrative multiculturalist gravy train.
Students especially are to be taught that arguments, doctrines, works of art, or policy are never to be evaluated on their own merits. For there is no such thing as the objective merit or demerit of an argument, doctrine, work of art, or policy. Rather, these and all the other products of the human mind are to be revealed as mere valorizations of power. They are to be deconstructed to disclose their inner character as instruments of repression—or, presumably in the case of the privileged construction known as multiculturalism, as an instrument of heroic resistance.
But is resistance objectively different from repression? Is resistance objectively better than repression? These sly questions might tempt the unwary multiculturalist back into the clutches of Enlightenment discourse. But the well-versed multiculturalist can recognize the serpent with her alluring offer of knowledge and can, as his greatest act of resistance, doggedly close his mind.
Throughout the academy and eventually society at large, the multiculturalist demands that the classification of people by race, ethnicity, sex and/or sexual orientation be emphasized at every possible opportunity. Individuals are not to be seen or judged as individuals but as tokens of this or that tribe or caste. Since no one from one tribe (with the exception of white males) can be judged by members of any other tribe, each racial, ethnic, or sexual group must be assigned its own homeland, its own reservation within the university and within the worlds of commerce (cf., set-asides) and government (cf., Lani Guinier).
Between the homelands comprising this new form of apartheid there can be, if multiculturalism is correct, no rational discourse, no rational evaluation, and perhaps not even mutual understanding. Given the premises of multiculturalism, there cannot even be any rational accommodation among the worldviews that are now supposed to be strategically united in their struggle against the White Eurocentric devil.
Multiculturalism is the esoteric form of virulent ethnic politics. Remove what the multiculturalists describe as Male Eurocentric dominance and what, in reality, is the residue of liberal tolerance and belief in the efficacy of rational investigation and debate, and multiculturalism will proceed to do for the liberal university and for liberal society what ethnic politics has done for Yugoslavia.
Gee, I thought it was the Rockefeller Institute and the Carnegie Endowment.
The actual objective of Leftism is to convince the Prey that they have no inborn right to defend themselves against the Predators. It is a Predator con-game designed to freeze resistance
The solution is to not play their game. To me, "good" is that which (in my opinion, based on reason, according to the best data I may have available) promotes the long-term survival and happiness of myself, my family, my descendants, and my friends. Evil is that which puts that long-term survival at risk.
Once you have that as the firm foundation of your value system, it's hard to get confused or conned.
Multiculturalism is a fiction that tries to argue that multiple units pulling apart is stronger than one unit pulling together. It's an attempt to equate failed cultures with successful ones, and to abolish the concept of normalcy.
It's also a handy Marxist dialectical tool. It slices, dices, and makes julienne fries like a snap! And it's a top-notch engine coolant.
Outstanding! How refreshing to hear a rational understanding of values. However, you should know that many folks on this forum disagree with you.
That reminds me of that Al Gore speech that began (paraphrasing) "E pluribus unum--from one many."
They were upset with W's "uncertainty avoidance" and "intolerance of ambiguity." He had said, "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right," and "Look, my job isn't to nuance."
Multiculturalism would call that attitude "Ethnocentric."
That's cool. I don't mind. My viewpoint does not depend on anybody else agreeing with me. Somebody else might convince me to change an evaluation of whether something is good or evil thru rational argument and pointing out additional data. I won't care, however, if somebody chooses to disagree with me.
Continuing on what I said in the previous post, I will label a culture as “better” or “worse” than some other culture, on the basis of which culture seems like it will better promote the long-term happiness and prosperity of those I care about. I will not care about anybody’s arguments that my position is relative to my class. I will reply “damn right it is”. Currently, the best culture around seems to be American middle-class culture, although I prefer how things were before the 60’s
The usual fallacy on this forum is that there are absolute or objective values which are independent of any person.
Supporting multiculturalism means supporting the EU
The Nobel Prize now supports multiculturalism
The majority of politicians support multiculturalism
The majority of professional sportsmen/women support multiculturalism
The majority of the media support multiculturalism, with the BBC leading the pack
Unions generally support multiculturalism
The environmentalists support multiculturalism
The Queen of England supports Multiculturalism
Hillary Clinton supports multiculturalism
An abbreviation of multiculturalism is PC
“Walkers Wrong Colour” is an example of multiculturalism
The attack on Christmas is an example of multiculturalism
A generous welfare system supports multiculturalism
Schools are at the forefront of serenading the message of multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is attempting to rewrite history
If you don’t believe in multiculturalism you are intolerant and possibly racist
Censorship is a tool of multiculturalism
Countries with which I don’t associate multiculturalism include Japan, Korea, and Saudi Arabia.
Good post.
Western values are better, and superior, to non-western values.
Well since theres no such thing as right or wrong, You bet I agreed, I kept my damn mouth shut and nodded.
Great article! If all values are relative then so are regimes and ideologies. Multiculturalism, which supposedly favours democracy and tolerance, wants to elevate democracy to an untouchable universal status, but really can't make that claim if it believes everything is relative. Like most systems of thought it needs/wants to make a claim to a universal. It's the great irrational bandwagon that started with Nietzsche's critique of culture and which has recently gained speed in North America via Marxist/postmodern thought. That there are no trans historical values (eg. religious values) leads to a cultural nihilism and, possibly, the collapse of democracy through a demagogue or dictator (eg. Hitler and the Wiemar Republic). But to say something like this to an educator, especially in Canada, is a crime. Educators are paid by the state and they tow the line with the best of them -- my experience at teachers college.
I don't think your professor was trying to tell you that there is no such thing as right and wrong. He was trying to explain rather the nature of right and wrong.
My professor told me that right and wrong was an opinion. That there is no right or wrong. That in some countries killing is right.
By the way, I then asked about Nazi Germany.
The following Teddy Roosevelt quotes can be found in Edmund Morris, The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt Modern Library 2001)
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism...The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin...would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."
(Speech, New York, 1915)
http://www.presidentlincoln.com/Quote4.html
Then your professor was right.
That there is no right or wrong.
Then your professor was wrong.
That in some countries killing is right.
Then your professor was making an understatement. I don't know of any countries where killing is NEVER right. Maybe Nepal? Of course most Americans believe in rightful killing. I do. I'm suprised that you don't.
By the way, I then asked about Nazi Germany.
What did you ask, and what was your professor's reply?
Whether my professor was right or wrong is relative. In some cultures she would be right and in others she would be wrong.
Only in the sense of a moral judgement. As matter of correctly identifying concepts, it is not relative.
For example: 1+1=2 is right independent of what you think about it. However, the value you place on that fact is entirely a matter for your own judgement.
A moral statement is a statement of values. A value is a measure of worth by its possessor. Valuing is an essential act of human consciousness and therefore is quite real. Valuing cannot, however, be separated from a valuer.
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