The Fallacy of Multiculturalism

I do not wish to inflame too many with the following article; it is merely the product of my concrete lived experience, it is what is true for me, what I believe to be the case and thus although I do not wish to insult, in any way, shape or form, what you believe or what you think, please allow me to present what I believe to be true. And here we go.Allow me to step outside my own experience for a moment. I do wish to inflame people with this argument. My intention is indeed to impinge upon what you believe, possibly even to undermine it and destroy it. These are not beliefs, thoughts, wishes, whims or opinions, but words on a page, utterly independent of James Murphy and his experiences, and open to criticism from any and all that feel so compelled. This is not a displacement of my self-confidence and self-respect onto a newspaper article, it is not the sum total of my worth and it is not impervious to error. With that in mind, let us begin discussing the substance of this article.

The topic at hand is multiculturalism. Multiculturalism was introduced to the United States by Canada and the United Kingdom in the 1970s, and is the latest attempt to establish a socio-cultural methodology for resolving interethnic tension. It became apparent towards the end of the Progressive Era (late 1910s-early 1920s) that this melting pot was not quite hot enough; large chunks remained at the bottom. The American population looked a lot more like a salad bowl than a melting pot. Once the intense anti-Communism and patriotism of the 50s and 60s began to subside, it became clear that a new methodology was needed, and hence multiculturalism came into the national discourse.

Multiculturalism suggests that if each disparate culture celebrates its own presence within the given organizational body, be it a nation, a campus, a corporation or a city, the population at large will come to see value in these differences. Inter-ethnic strife, according to this solution, is a problem primarily of fear and ignorance. Celebration and education are the mechanisms by which the nation's long history of race war will finally resolve itself.

That is the state in which we find college and university campuses today, operating under this massively popular multicultural ideology. Everywhere difference has become an object of value. Trinity College's campus has its own "Office of Multicultural Affairs." Corporations and businesses have diversity councils or committees. It is difficult to find an institution without some celebration of diversity, and if you did, the multiculturalist standing behind you would most likely scream "racism!" and a new committee would exist within the hour.

Yet the problems remain. Enormous socioeconomic disparities exist between the different races and white males retain myriad social privileges withheld from others, revealing not the inadequate or insufficient application of multiculturalism, but an excess of it. An integral part of celebrating our differences is assuming that each person is, at their core, equal. Difference is to be celebrated because beneath our superficial tendencies, what food we eat, what language we speak, what ethnicity we call our own, there lies a basic individual entity that was born into the world on equal footing with all others. A person's actions in the world are insignificant, or at least should not affect our treatment of him or her.

This sounds great provided that we limit actions, behaviors and beliefs to expressions of a particular culture. The situation is further complicated by the overflow of multiculturalism into more ethically significant areas of discourse, such as that of politics. That each individual person has something of worth to say on these topics may in fact be the case, but that what they present as truth shall have merit merely because they are their own freestanding individual is simply frightening.

A divergence of opinion does not necessarily connote value. Today's classrooms and lecture halls are filled with this tendency: to believe what a person says or believes is important merely because they open their mouth to say it. This phenomenon can be seen in the incredible entwinement of a person's conception of their self worth with the view they present.

This last manifestation of this multicultural environment is the most delicate, and I do not wish my condemnation of it to be too sweeping. I fully support passionate debate; emotional investment in an argument lends itself to a fantastic energy on the part of the debater, and in the end, if truth is only accessible through the violent clash of personalities, it is truth nonetheless. The concern I have is with the desire to cultivate the individual student's passion for an argument, which necessitates an acceptance of their past cognitive paradigms.

If I have always been a Democrat, and suddenly in the classroom I am presented with a body of knowledge that my past beliefs cannot dispute, I must drop my Democratic inclination. That is the necessary step that I believe is missing. An individual does have certain positive rights that I believe must stand in a humane society, but the right to claim dominance over an idea is not one of them.

As our professors continue to teach us, and as we continue to throw our emotional well-being into our arguments, it is incumbent upon the academy to guide the process carefully. Our beliefs and actions cannot be trumped by our own inherent worth, and as soon as higher education comes to accept and act on this principal, than we may indeed arrive at the idealistic vision the creators of multiculturalism had in mind.