Professor Gregory Jay
Department of English
University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee
Last Revised December 2002
1. Who did we learn about in school today?
Like most words, "multiculturalism" needs to be
understood from both an historical and a conceptual perspective. Historically,
"multiculturalism" came into wide public use during the early 1980s in
the context of public school curriculum reform. Specifically, the argument
was made that the content of classes in history, literature, social studies,
and other areas reflected what came to be called a "Eurocentric" bias.
Few if any women or people of color, or people from outside the Western
European tradition, appeared prominently in the curriculums of schools
in the United States. This material absence was also interpreted as a value
judgment that reinforced unhealthy ethnocentric and even racist attitudes.
Observers
noted that teaching and administrative staffs in schools were also overwhelmingly
white and/or male (whiteness being pervasive at the teaching level, maleness
at the administrative level, reflecting the politics of gender and class
as well as race in the educational system). Eventually parallel questions
were raised (once more) about the ethno-racial or cultural biases of other
institutions, such as legislatures, government agencies, corporations,
religious groups, private clubs, etc. Each of these has in turn developed
its own response and policies regarding multiculturalism.Finally, "multiculturalism" may also have become
a popular term as "race" lost much of its former credibility as a concept.
Scientists agree that, in terms of DNA genetics, "race" has no significant
meaning as a way of categorizing human differences. Intermarried families
offer the puzzle of a parent and child considered as belonging to two different
races--clearly an absurd idea given that race was thought of as biologically
passed from parent to offspring. Thus "culture" began to replace "race"
as a term for distinguishing among distinct human groups.
2. Is there any justice in this world?
The
concern to create a more "culturally diverse" curriculum had roots in the
intellectual and social movements associated with the Civil Rights revolution
of the 1960s. These included Black Power,La
Raza, the American Indian Movement, and the Women's Liberation movement,
each of which challenged the norms and effects of educational policy. Multiculturalism
also is directly related to global shifts of power, population, and culture
in the era of "postcolonialism," as nations around the world take independence
in the wake of the decline of Western empires (whether European, Soviet,
or American). Perhaps more importantly, the Supreme Court ruling in Brown
vs. Board of Education (1954) --- which outlawed explicit school segregation
--- led to the admission of large numbers of non-white students to public
and some private schools (also occasioning the "white flight" that has
largely succeeded in re-segregating schools in most major cities). Teachers
and school administrators then faced a student body with very different
faces. This demographic cultural diversity was accelerated by postcolonial
immigration from non-Western European nations during the last two decades
-- especially from Mexico, Latin America, and Asia, which was hastened
by the liberalization of immigration laws in the mid-1960s.3. Melt or get out of the pot!
The historical event of multiculturalism brings
with it many complicated conceptual problems, causing a rich debate over
what multiculturalism is or should mean. America's traditional conception
of itself as a "melting pot" of diverse peoples joined in a common New
World culture has been challenged by some multiculturalists who consider
the "melting pot" metaphor a cover for oppressive assimilation. To them,
the only way you can melt in the pot is by assimilating -- becoming similar
to ---the dominant or "hegemonic" white culture. In this argument, assimilation
is rejected. Then multiculturalism becomes a movement that insists that
American society has never been white, but always in fact multiracial and
diverse. This movement seeks to preserve distinctly different ethnic, racial,
or cultural communities without melting them into a common culture. Here
the common culture is seen as white supremeacy, a culture of bigotry and
discrimination, and the remedy as an emphasis on the separate characteristics
and virtues of particular cultural groups.
4. Out of Africa?
Most controversial in this regard is the movement
known as "Afrocentrism," which in various versions seeks to document the
centrality of African cultural traditions to the foundation of American
and Western history, and to celebrate that African tradition so as to increase
the self-esteem and educational success of African-American students. Critics
of Afrocentrism dispute both its intellectual claims --- the scholarship
and historical conclusions it advances --- and its educational claims ---
especially regarding the effect of an ethnically-centered curriculum on
the academic achievement of students.
Defenders of multiculturalism have published a number
of respected books to substantiate their scholarly claims. They point out
that critics of Afrocentrism rarely investigate whether or not the traditional
Eurocentric curriculum has artificially improved the performance of white
students. See, for example, debates about the cultural biases of "standardized"
tests like the SAT or the GRE, on which many of the questions assume a
body of cultural knowledge more likely to be found among white suburbanites
than students in the ghetto or barrio. Or consider arguments that white
males in the past created an artificially easy time for themselves in college
admissions and job competition by excluding women and minorities. Critics
of Afrocentrism have had more success challenging some of the details of
its historical claims than in refuting the general charge of Eurocentrism.
Many middle-of-the-road writers claim to reject both "-isms" as making
the same mistake of asserting a dominant "center." They instead advocate
models of cultural hybridity and impurity that see each culture as a changing
node in a network without a single center.
5. Is identity political?
One
problem with certain strands of multiculturalism is their reliance on "identity
politics." "Identity politics" refers to the tendency to define one's political
and social identity and interests purely in terms of some group category:
race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality, religion, etc. Identity politics
became more popular after the 1960s for many of the same reasons that multiculturalism
did. The critique of America's "common culture" led many people to identify
with a particular group, rather than with the nation --- a nation, after
all, whose policies they believed had excluded or oppressed them. People
increasingly became Native-Americans, African-Americans, Latino-Americans,
Asian-Americans, Gay-Americans, etc., in an explosion of hyphenation.This movement for group solidarity did in many cases
provide individuals with the resources to defend their interests and express
their values, resources that as disparate individuals they could not possibly
attain. As the American economy began to decline in the late 1980s, the
scramble for a piece of the shrinking pie increased the tendency of people
to band together in groups that together might have enough power to defend
or extend their interests. American society is now often seen as a battleground
of special-interest groups, many of them defined by the racial, ethnic,
or cultural identity of their members. Hostility between these groups as
they compete for scarce resources is inevitable. In defense of identity
politics, others point out that these divisions between cultural groups
are less the voluntary decisions of individuals than the product of discrimination
and bigotry in the operation of the economy and the social institutions.
It is these that divide people up by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference,
etc., privileging the dominant group and subordinating the rest, they claim.
6. Breaking up is hard to do.
Still, most analysts admit that in practice individuals
belong to numerous different groups and have complex cultural identities.
The theoretical term for analyzing people in terms of their group affiliations
is "subject position." Each person occupies a variety of subject positions
-- is positioned socially, economically, and politically -- by virtue of
how his or her subjectivity is shaped by group identifications. When we
analyze our identities, we can break them up into numerous facets of ourselves,
until it seems that Humpty Dumpty can never be put back together again.
A person may think of herself or be treated at one
moment as a woman, at another moment as Asian, at another moment as upper-class,
at another moment as elderly, at another moment as a lesbian--each time
being either helped or hindered by the identification, depending on the
circumstances. The various parts of our cultural identities may not add
up to a neat and predictable whole. Multiculturalism, then, insofar as
it groups individuals into categories, may overlook the practical reality
that no one lives in just one box. Recent proponents of multiculturalism,
indeed, have emphasized the multiculturalism within each individual.
7. The end . . . and the beginning.
In my classes, the essays and stories we read, and
the films and videos we study, give expression to the history and conceptual
arguments over multiculturalism. There are many accounts of multiculturalism--many
"fictions" about it. I am personally less concerned with discovering the
"true" multiculturalism than I am with examining how different artists
and writers have expressed their experience of it. In literature and the
arts we tend to get the messy complexities in all their detail, rather
than the abstract rigidities we get from theorists, polemicists, and statisticians.
The texts (written and visual) should allow you to better comprehend the
character of multicultural life in America today and to respond by evaluating
your own personal relationship to the question of cultural identity.
Link:
Critical Contexts for Multiculturalism
Questions:
I. Is multiculturalism the same as multiracialism or multiethnicity?
A) yes, if race or ethnicity = culture
B) no, if culture is independent of race and ethnicity
II. Is multiculturalism a political concept?
A) yes, if it means the equal rights and respects accorded to
distinct cultural groups or traditions by laws and governmental practices
B) no, if it simply refers to the existence of distinct cultural
groups within the same nation-state, regardless of their relative legal
status
III. Does multiculturalism mean some kind of egalitarianism — equality of opportunity or equality of outcome?
A) If multiculturalism means equal rights and respect for distinct cultural groups, then do individuals deserve equality of opportunity regardless of race or ethnicity (or other defining category)? How does one define equality of opportunity?
B) Does the egalitarianism of multiculturalism require equality of outcome or result? That is, if 50% of the population in your city is Hispanic, should 50% of the police force or teachers or corporate executives be Hispanic? If only 5% are Hispanic, how do you explain the difference in outcome, especially if you maintain that there has been an equal opportunity to try?
1. Does the inequality of outcomes prove racial or ethnic discrimination? Is it the result of the social and sometimes legal/governmental discrimination practiced by some cultural groups against others? Does this mean that social and economic inequalities produce cultural differences?
2. Does the inequality of outcomes prove cultural differences in values and behaviors between groups? Are there groups that have better outcomes because of the relative superiority of their values, ideas, institutions, social practices, etc.? Does this mean that cultural differences produce economic inequalities?
3. Are inequalities of outcome statistically significant for whole cultural groups, or are these principally a matter of differences between individuals, who have distinct talents, skills, temperaments, etc.?
IV. How does multiculturalism change the way we write history, given that history is usually about the struggles of groups for land, power, wealth, social recognition, and cultural expression?
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Further Reading
On the Internet:
The Multicultural
Pavillion, which includes extensive links and resources and a good
definition
of multiculturalism page.