Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas by Irene Taviss Thomson

Author:Irene Taviss Thomson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

However much most mainstream writers reject multiculturalism as a philosophy, it is nevertheless correct that “we are all multiculturalists now, “ as Glazer's (1997) book title suggests. In Glazer's account, multiculturalism has “won” despite being “strongly denounced” by “powerful voices in American life” and being “at odds with the course of American culture, society, and education” (4). Glazer makes clear that his title signifies not an endorsement of multiculturalism but rather a recognition that it is “unavoidable”—much in the way that Sir William Harcourt, after the passage of a progressive tax on estates in 1889, declared that “we are all socialists now” (160). Whereas public education had long functioned to integrate immigrants into American life, school curricula now pay attention to minority groups and their distinctiveness as well as to “the oppression of the minority culture by the majority” (11). The demands for multicultural curricula arose, Glazer argues, because of American society's failure to integrate African Americans. While contemporary immigrants generally seek to assimilate to American ways, African Americans have been excluded. Their rates of intermarriage remain low, and residential segregation remains high. Educators supported multiculturalism in the hope that the incorporation of black themes would improve black students’ achievement. Most blacks embrace multiculturalism because “they want … to become more like other Americans—for example, in educational achievement—not different from them, and believe that the way to becoming more like them is to take more account of difference, and yes, of ill-treatment, of past and current achievement, even if exaggerated” (Glazer 1991, 22).

Page 144 →In Glazer's version of multiculturalism, then, there really is but one American culture. And, indeed, from the perspective of at least some observers from other societies, the cultural differences subsumed under the umbrella of multiculturalism are not profound. Thus, one British philosopher has argued that true multiculturalism is a matter of “deep moral diversity.” Therefore, he says, “when I refer to multiculturalism I do not mean the trifling local debate on American national identity that has occupied many in the USA” (J. Gray 2000, 325). In addition, the overwhelming majority of the population, regardless of educational attainment, does not support the kind of proportional representation that some more ardent multiculturalists advocate. Thus, 87 percent of the most educated and 89 percent of those without high school degrees disapprove of having Congress mirror the country's ethnic makeup (Citrin et al. 2001, 263).

If both “multiculturalism” and “culture wars” in American society are new in their labels but not in their essence, some aspects of the struggles over cultural pluralism clearly are novel. For one thing, the sheer extent of diversity has grown as people from all continents and numerous religious and racial groups have arrived in substantial numbers in the United States. Globalization has meant a more radical interpenetration of very different cultures and cultural ideas than was previously the case. Another new element is that the definition of what constitutes a cultural group has been broadened. No longer confined to race and ethnicity, cultural groups are now based on gender, sexuality, disability, religion, and other shared systems of meaning.

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