A pox on multiculturalism

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Sept, 1995 by Gerald F. Kreyche

HOWEVER UPSETTING at the time, the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and its subsequent enforcement was a good and necessary thing for the nation. Americans all knew in their hearts that it was a moral imperative. Yet, what often begins as virtue, when pressed to the extreme, turns into vice. To redress past wrongs, governmental programs encouraged affirmative action. Soft-hearted liberals became soft-headed as they replaced one form of discrimination with another Affirmative action metamorphosed into quota systems and minority preference programs, and some civil "rights" begot civil "wrongs" and now civil unrest.

Children were used as pawns in school busing programs that upset nearly everyone, yet never achieved their purpose. Welfare became a monster of society's own making, as the citizenry was reluctant to criticize the disvalues produced by this dependence. "Sensitivity" legislation was passed that made "hate" crimes a special category--hate often being confused for dislike of antithetical value systems. Academe went one step further in prohibiting free speech that was considered offensive to minorities--an affront to the First Amendment. Educational institutions also were given far from uncertain "suggestions" to enroll and graduate minorities who couldn't qualify for admission otherwise.

Police and fire departments and other public agencies have been required to overlook a lack of qualifications and hire on the basis of minority status. The use of minority firms, in preference to experienced and established ones run by whites, often resulted in shoddy work. Such charges have been expressed sotto voce in reference to the much-delayed new Denver International Airport and elsewhere.

The hopeful outcome of integration only produced resentment and increased freely chosen segregation by minorities themselves. In academe, blacks and Hispanics wanted their own teachers, counselors, study programs, and organizations, as did women. They separated themselves in the cafeteria and dorms. Ethnic studies departments seldom were pillars of intellectual research, their very raison d'etre being political activism.

Paradoxically, the armed forces, which liberals seem to hate, are about the only successful example of integration, although problems persist with gays and women.

Integration having failed, next came the contradictory propagandist push toward multiculturalism and diversity. Pres. Clinton says he wants his administration to look like the nation, echoing the nation's ethnic and sexual mix. It seems he wants an idealized human version of Edward Hicks, painting, "The Peaceable Kingdom," in which nature's fiercest wild animals live in complete harmony.

Interestingly enough, Americans never are told why multiculturalism and diversity as such are necessarily good. They simply are declared so by fiat, strongly suggesting that their good is only a political one for an administration that is teetering on the edge.

To see the "benefits" of multiculturalism and diversity, take a hard look around the world. When Indians were America's sole inhabitants, it was a way of life for tribes to fight each other or make alliances to battle other coalitions. Crow and Blackfeet were hereditary enemies, as were Sioux and Mandan. Taking each other's scalps or using their enemies as slaves was commonplace. Even today in the Southwest, the Utes and Navajo want little or nothing to do with each other, and the Hopi and Navajo remain at odds over land disputes.

Canada has its national unity threatened by the language and ethnic dispute between French-speaking Quebec and the English-speaking provinces. In Europe, the disintegration of Yugoslavia triggered deadly conflict among Croatians, Serbs, Bosnians, and mixed Moslem groups. (Ask the beleaguered UN troops there about the good that multiculturalism has produced.) The Czechs and the Slovaks have split into two countries because of differences. Since the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Russia has had nothing but troubles with the Ukraine, Aberbaijan, and especially, Chechen rebels. Sporadically, Spain suffers terrorist attacks from separatist-minded Basques.

In the Middle East, Israel has all it can do to ameliorate differences among its secular, reformed, orthodox, and extreme conservative Sephardic citizens--in addition to having to deal with the issue of Palestinians working in the country. In Asia, Sri Lanka has political problems because of multicultural elements, as does India with its many different classes. One should not forget how quickly Chairman Mao Tse-tung of China changed his chaos-causing views of "Let many flowers bloom."

In Africa, multiculturalism can be blamed for the strife in Rwanda and Burundi, where the Tutus and the Hutus are deadly enemies. The death toll in the struggle between these tribes has exceeded 100,000. Ethiopia remains in constant ethnic ferment.

Africa clearly hates multiculturalism and, as a consequence, it keeps producing more nation-states. It already has 52, the greatest number of any continent, and it is likely more will emerge. Eritrea, the Western Sahara, the southern Sudan, or northern Somaliland may be the next, suggests the National Geographic News Service. The Zulus well may create a new one out of South Africa.