Did We Say That We Wanted to Be Transformed?

It's Un-American to Complain About or Even Point Out the Changes That Few Americans Want

Multiculturalism is transforming America. For decades policies have been foisted upon unsuspecting Americans who now are suddenly noticing that they are having to make the changes once expected to be made by immigrants moving into a country. America as we knew it is being abolished to be replaced by an unrecognizable landscape.

What Is Multiculturalism?

In America,

1. "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 (interest groups) 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? Apparently not in America. As America is the expression of white colonialism, White Americans can not be just and immigrants were moved in to increase America's justice quotient.

3. Melt or get out of the pot! In the past, Americans expected immigrants to assimilate. No more. The European culture that created the American base is considered to be oppressive and must abolished.

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.

Multiculturalism is complex, involving at least seven Critical Contexts.

1. Cultural Studies
2. Liberation Movements
3. Post Colonialism
4. Globalization
5. Postnationalsim
6. Postmodernism
7. Poststructuralism

Where is basic "American" history and the study of "American" culture? It won't be found as we remember it, for the forces that are transforming and abolishing America are re-writing history, marginalizing those that remember, and labeling as racists, bigots, or "un-American" those that complain or make mention of the changes. Even the U.S. Constitution is being downplayed in favor of "international" law.

An excellent explanation of who, why, and how this happened is given by Peter Brimelow in a speech entitled "Immigration's Impact on Education and Multiculturalism." Follow the links to an eye-opening revelation of how America is being abolished and why.

I don't recall reading about the abolishing of America in mainstream newspapers. From time to time reports about studies were given about the effect of immigrants on education, healthcare, crime, but no one explained the why, the how...and especially the who!

This is why Americans don't have a chance. Perhaps contacting your congressmen could help, but with all the special interest lobbyists and the "transformed" educational system, who is there to listen?

Is it too late? It is possible to turn back the tide or an avalanche or a tsunami? I'm afraid it maybe too late. All the talk of border control and immigration control in on the news and Washington is just that-- talk.

Nothing will come of it. Politicians will prattle on and the Minute Men Patrol will stand a lonely vigil while their leaders and special interest groups betray them and us as they abolish America and as Americans become strangers in their own land.