Multiculturalism @ MindSay

I have created this blog to maintain continuous conversation among the busy lives of all us.  We must reflect critically on issues but also maintin an activism among these topics.  Please feel free to respond.  I encourage all thoughts; hoever, threats or comments not complementayr and constructive will be deleted.

-Antonio Garcia

Indiana University

            If you’ve seen the fliers plastered all over campus, or the ads in this newspaper, you’re aware that Sister Souljah, a recording artist, author, producer, and racist whose real name is Lisa Williams, will be the keynote speaker at this weekend’s Multicultural Student Leadership Conference in the Mendenhall Student Center.  Was David Duke not available?

            What’s next?  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressing the next meeting of Hillel?  How about Jesse Helms headlining the next B-GLAD event?  Neither one makes a whole lot of sense.  Equally unfathomable is Sister Souljah keynoting a multicultural leadership conference.

            Multiculturalism is defined as the idea that a society, notably one with a high rate of immigration, is enriched by celebrating the separate contributions of its component cultures.  To me that means all cultures, and, for better or for worse, that includes we white folk.  Yes, we have our bad apples, but for every David Duke, there’s an Abraham Lincoln.

            Sister Souljah came to national attention when then presidential candidate Bill Clinton criticized her remarks on race in a May, 1992, Washington Post interview.  Souljah was quoted as saying, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”

            Souljah has also been quoted as saying, “I'm not saying there aren’t any decent white people; I've just never met one.”

            Are these the comments of a leader? 

            To her credit, Sister Souljah has done a lot of good work for homeless and other disadvantaged youth in the black community through camps and other educational programs.  She has rallied against racially-motivated crimes—ironic given her remarks against the white race—and police brutality.  Such activities are admirable, but is it admirable to sow the seeds of hate as well?

            I don’t know whose idea it was to invite Sister Souljah to ECU, but surely someone who truly embraces multiculturalism could have been found.  We have many fine professors from all over the world, who are excellent role models, right here on our campus.  Probably at least one of them would have been glad to speak if asked.

            On her website, Souljah claims that “many people attempt to silence” her “powerful voice” because “a young influential woman who has achieved so much, yet remains down to earth, can be quite intimidating.” 

            No, but when someone calls for a week-long killing spree of members of your race and is embraced as a leader, it can be a little unsettling.

            Remember, Hitler was a leader too.

 

© 2007 by J.D. Lewis

 

Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) discusses multiculturalism is not an objectively legitimate form of education. Multiculturalism today tends to teach the “Politically Correct” therefore subjecting curriculum to half truths rather than real truth.

 

Journo’s article was written originally in 2004; however someone at ARI rightly felt it relevant to this time of BACK TO SCHOOL. I am on the ARI E-list and thus received on August 20, 2007.

 

JRH 8/20/07

**************************

 

Multiculturalism's War on Education

By Elan Journo
August 20, 2007 E-newsletter
Ayn Rand Institute

Back to school nowadays means back to classrooms, lessons and textbooks permeated by multiculturalism and its championing of "diversity." Many parents and teachers regard multiculturalism as an indispensable educational supplement, a salutary influence that "enriches" the curriculum. But is it?

With the world's continents bridged by the Internet and global commerce, multiculturalism claims to offer a real value: a cosmopolitan, rather than provincial, understanding of the world beyond the student's immediate surroundings. But it is a peculiar kind of "broadening." Multiculturalists would rather have students admire the primitive patterns of Navajo blankets, say, than learn why Islam's medieval golden age of scientific progress was replaced by fervent piety and centuries of stagnation.

Leaf through a school textbook and you'll find that there is a definite pattern behind multiculturalism's reshaping of the curriculum. What multiculturalists seek is not the goal they advertise, but something else entirely. Consider, for instance, the teaching of history.

One text acclaims the inhabitants of West Africa in pre-Columbian times for having prosperous economies and for establishing a university in Timbuktu; but it ignores their brutal trade in slaves and the proliferation of far more consequential institutions of learning in Paris, Oxford and elsewhere in Europe. Some books routinely lionize the architecture of the Aztecs, but purposely overlook or underplay the fact that they practiced human sacrifices. A few textbooks seek to portray Islam as peaceful in part by presenting the concept of "jihad" ("sacred war") to mean an internal struggle to surmount temptation and evil, while playing down Islam's actual wars of religious conquest.

What these textbooks reveal is a concerted effort to portray the most backward, impoverished and murderous cultures as advanced, prosperous and life-enhancing. Multiculturalism's goal is not to teach about other cultures, but to promote--by means of distortions and half-truths--the notion that non-Western cultures are as good as, if not better than, Western culture. Far from "broadening" the curriculum, what multiculturalism seeks is to diminish the value of Western culture in the minds of students. But, given all the facts, the objective superiority of Western culture is apparent, so multiculturalists must artificially elevate other cultures and depreciate the West.

If students were to learn the truth of the hardscrabble life of primitive farming in, say, India, they would recognize that subsistence living is far inferior to life on any mechanized farm in Kansas, which demands so little manpower, yet yields so much. An informed, rational student would not swallow the "politically correct" conclusions he is fed by multiculturalism. If he were given the actual facts, he could recognize that where men are politically free, as in the West, they can prosper economically; that science and technology are superior to superstition; that man's life is far longer, happier and safer in the West today than in any other culture in history.

The ideals, achievements and history of Western culture in general--and of America in particular--are therefore purposely given short-shrift by multiculturalism. That the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age were born and flourished in Western nations; that the preponderance of Nobel prizes in science have been awarded to people in the West--such facts, if they are noted, are passed over with little elaboration.

The "history" that students do learn is rewritten to fit multiculturalism's agenda. Consider the birth of the United States. Some texts would have children believe the baseless claim that America's Founders modeled the Constitution on a confederation of Indian tribes. This is part of a wider drive to portray the United States as a product of the "convergence" of three traditions--native Indian, African and European. But the American republic, with an elected government limited by individual rights, was born not of stone-age peoples, but primarily of the European Enlightenment. It is a product of the ideas of thinkers like John Locke, a British philosopher, and his intellectual heirs in colonial America, such as Thomas Jefferson.

It is a gross misconception to view multiculturalism as an effort to enrich education. By reshaping the curriculum, the purveyors of "diversity" in the classroom calculatedly seek to prevent students from grasping the objective value to human life of Western culture--a culture whose magnificent achievements have brought man from mud huts to moon landings.

Multiculturalism is no boon to education, but an agent of anti-Western ideology.

________________________

Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

 

We learn about racism from an early age. We all think we know what it means.

 

But do we?

 

Racism, according to the Collins Australian English Dictionary, is a 'hostile attitude or behaviour to members of other races, based on a belief in the innate superiority of one's own race.' Naturally, definitions of the word might differ depending on who you ask, but I think we all accept that racism is basically an attitude in which you dislike, persecute, or treat as inferior those who belong to a different racial background to yourself.

 

The classic example, of course, is Nazi Germany. That was an example of institutionalised racism, where any member of the Jewish race was firstly deprived of rights and discriminated against, and subsequently gassed in the concentration camps. This kind of thing still happens from time to time in the world, mostly in less extreme ways.

 

So, then, here is the relevant question: is Australia a racist country?

 

Many say yes, pointing to the government's treatment of illegal immigrants, history of oppression against the Aboriginal peoples and the popularity in the late 90s of Pauline Hanson's One Nation.

 

I want to talk about the latter of these, first: specifically, the feelings that gave One Nation so much popularity, and made the political party so popular for a brief period of time. Such feelings are still very prevalent among many Australians today, which is why discussion of this subject is still relevant.

 

One Nation had many party platforms, but the most publicised one was its seemingly radical anti-immigration stance. Hanson saw the relatively large numbers of Asian immigrants as bringing about the dilution of Australian culture. She was also opposed to multiculturalism - a theory in which a country is improved by an influx of different cultures, bringing about a greater degree of diversity and acceptance of differences.

 

You may have noticed something in the above paragraph. Without questioning the controversial nature of Hanson's ideas, 'race', as such, is curiously absent. The emphasis here seems to be, squarely, on 'culture'.

 

What is the difference between race and culture? Well, rather a lot. Race, today, is, or should be, largely irrelevant. We've all heard about how we should respect people no matter what their skin colour is, and theories such as racial superiority have been relegated to the fringes of society.

 

Culture, however, is a different matter altogether. Culture is one of the major factors in the way we are shaped as people - it can determine our political beliefs, our religious beliefs, and what we consider right or wrong. A society's 'culture' is really what creates that society.

 

This, I believe, is what drives fear of immigration, and the opposition of multiculturalism. It's not that such people 'don't like black people', it's that they are frightened of the possible results of other cultures' encroachment upon their own country.

 

Some might point out that there isn't as much complaint about the impact American culture has on Australia. However, even though there is some amount of anti-Americanism within this country, this particular intrusion is not viewed with as much fear because of the similarities between American and Australian culture. After all, both countries are basically derivatives of British society, whereas other societies have developed seperately over several thousands of years, and as such have far less in common with Australia.

 

No matter our political beliefs or intelligence, I don't think it can be denied that the majority of Australians would feel more comfortable in England than in Indonesia. Does that make us inherently 'racist'? Not really. Regardless of their skin colour or racial heritage, British people pretty much share our laws, customs, language, religious beliefs (or lack of) and societal expectations. It's simply natural that we would identify more with that.

 

After all, let's be honest - we all notice differences. Whether it's different skin colour, different facial structure, different accents or language, different behaviour or simply different ways of dressing, it is a human trait to be aware of such disparities. It starts from an early age, when the red-headed kid or the fat kid gets picked on at school - and it seems it's how much we mature with age that decides to what degree we continue to observe differences, rather than accepting and respecting people for who they are.

 

So, we've established that 'race' is only one factor in fear or distrust of other nationalities. Indeed, I would argue it is a comparatively small one: I contest that a person of Asian background with an Australian accent will be accepted as an "Australian" before a person of European background with, say, a French accent. And, above and beyond such superficial differences, cultural disparity is the biggest single factor in what most people call 'racism'.

 

Now, the question might be asked: am I playing with words? Isn't xenophobia (fear of foreigners) just as bad as racism, anyway?

 

I think there is an important difference. Racism cannot really be justified in any way; xenophobia, at least in the way it applies to many Australians, may actually have some rational basis.

 

What I believe such Australians really have a problem with, whether they are aware of it or not, is multiculturalism.

 

There is one major problem with multiculturalism - it doesn't really get openly questioned. This seems rather strange, as after all, multiculturalism is only a theory. Not only that, but it is a theory that has no actual prior evidence of having been successful.

 

Indeed, I am of the belief that multiculturalism is fundamentally flawed. Of course, I don't doubt that it has had positive results - diversity in food, for example. However, diversity brings something else: conflict.

 

It happens everywhere: Israel. America. The former Yugoslav republics (before they separated). Different cultures bring different ideas, different religious beliefs, different rules, different expectations.

 

Australia is no exception. Indigenous culture and white Australian culture is still in as much conflict as it has ever been. The Cronulla riots are another example. Cultural 'enclaves' (Redfern, Cabramatta) have a long history of problems.

 

While many praise multiculturalism because of the 'diversity' it brings, couldn't it be argued that 'unity' is a greater ideal?

 

It makes sense when you think about it. We could still welcome immigrants from other countries, but rather than encouraging them to hold onto their own cultural traditions and giving regard to their own heritages, they would be encouraged to become 'Australian'. 

 

It's not all that radical, really. When you come to a country, you have to assimilate to some degree, by accepting that country's law. An American who comes to live in Australia isn't allowed to bring his rifle collection. But, this should be the reason why you emigrate - because you prefer that country's laws, and its way of life, and by extension, its culture.

 

And here lies the problem, in the view of many Australians. While there is still a clear majority of Australians who subscribe to 'Australian' culture, growing immigration from other countries, combined with an encouragement of multiculturalism, could eventually lead to us having no culture. Australia, simply, would not be Australia any more. This, I think, is the real issue.

 

Feel free to disagree with any, or all, of this, but I hope I have provided a clearer insight to what drives fears over immigration and opposition of multiculturalism within Australia. What concerns me is that these feelings aren't treated with any respect, and are too often simplistically and inaccurately dismissed as 'racism'. No debate gains anything from one side being belittled, and I believe we can all learn something by trying to understand any ideas and beliefs, whether they be naziism or anarchism. Once we have understood them, we can truly assess them, and see if there is any merit to their argument.

In Newt Gingrich’s most recent “Winning the Future” e-newsletter he writes that English should be the language of Citizenship in America.

 

Gingrich also writes that English should not be made an exclusive language in America. The reasoning behind NOT making English exclusive is America’s history of a melting pot. America had a generation or space of time in which immigration was actively promoted. During this time many Western Europeans immigrated to America: Irish, Scandinavians, Italians, Germans, Jews, and Chinese (oops) and more.

 

Unfortunately there was also some forced immigration in the de-humanized marketing of Black slavery.

 

Most of the succeeding generations of these immigrants learned English as their primary language. It is called assimilation. That is the hall mark America should aim for immigrants to acquire citizenship: American cultural history and the English language. The American culture of the Revolutionary War period is what has set up the most prosperous and liberty conscious society the world has EVER known. This is a fact regardless of Left Wing America haters and the very reason Mohammedans hate America.

 

For an immigrant to seek citizenship, that immigrant should assimilate to what has made America great. A lack of willingness to do so should exclude an immigrant from American Citizenship.

 

Gingrich points out that Australia has already moved in the direction of the emphasis of Citizenship over validating multicultural validity. Canada appears to be exploring options to follow Australia’s path. These are friendly Western style democracies. America should move in the path of Citizenship more than multicultural diversity.