Posted on 12/31/2001 7:00:48 AM PST by ouroboros
Year Ahead: The future of multiculturalism By Steve Sailer LOS ANGELES, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Multiculturalism is a word of great flexibility. In social life it often means no more than a benignly favorable attitude to the ethnic and cultural heritage of other Americans -- even to such developments as "fusion" cuisines that blend Asian and European recipes. In law and policy, however, it is a catchall term describing both attempts to ensure more equal economic outcomes between different ethnic groups, such as affirmative action preferences, and programs to preserve the cultural identity of such groups such as official bilingualism. Paradoxically, the future of such programs is threatened by their expansion. Multiculturalism began, in effect, as "biracialism." For generations, government had treated whites far better than blacks. From roughly 1948 to 1977, a reversal took place. Government policy paused briefly at equal treatment, or "color-blind" policies. By the early seventies, however, it was mandating an array of compensatory preferences for blacks in the name of "affirmative action." But legislators, bureaucrats, the courts, and activists for other groups -- such as women, the disabled, other ethnic minorities and certain immigrant groups -- soon expanded the programs to cover these other presumed victims of discrimination who became known as "protected classes." Thus, compensatory preferences for the descendents of slaves quickly mutated into a generalized system of ethnic preferences, taking from some groups and giving to others. But is multiculturalism (aka "diversity") a stable system? Two main factors determine popular support for it. First, programs that on average simply redistribute resources within families (such as quotas for women and the disabled) tend to generate less resentment than those that take from one set of families (such as white families) and give to another (such as Hispanic families). In the first case, we feel we are giving to ourselves; in the second to other people -- especially when government policy is emphasizing not the common nationhood of all Americans but their cultural and ethnic separateness. For example, wheelchair ramps are highly popular, in part because they are an insurance system that may someday benefit somebody in one's own household. Similarly, job quotas for women take from men and give to their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. So although there is some resentment among the white males thus disadvantaged, the net effect on families as a whole is not all that great. Second, and more important, the ratio of those who receive to those who must pay under affirmative action is critical. Blacks were a sizable minority when affirmative action preferences begin in 1969. On the other hand, with whites outnumbering blacks almost six to one, the cost to the typical white family was not large enough to persuade whites to oppose the programs strongly. For the same reason, very few people objected (or even noticed) in the early 1970s when preferences were quietly extended to new immigrant groups such as Hispanics -- and even to illegal aliens. The price paid then by the average non-Hispanic white family still looked to be trivial because there had been so little immigration since the cutoff in 1924. The political elite did not understand that the 1965 Immigration Act was about to radically change the ethnic balance of America. Today Hispanics outnumber African-Americans, and, owing to both immigration and relatively high birth rates, they are expected to continue growing rapidly in numbers. President Clinton publicly looked forward to whites becoming a minority by mid-century. And this rising number of non-black minority voters encourages politicians to grant them more special preferences, such as President Bush's proposed amnesty for Mexican "undocumented workers." At the same time, as the number of members of "protected classes" -- including legally favored immigrant groups -- increases, the cost to those not enjoying preferential status, mainly white males, rises proportionately. And this is likely to stimulate opposition to such preferences. Mass immigration is thus making the future of multiculturalism radically unstable. This long-term process has ominous implications for national unity and ethnic harmony. Whether the upsurge of national unity provoked by Sept. 11 will change matters is an open question. It has certainly altered the psychological balance between the common national identity of all Americans and their separate ethnic or sexual identities --emphasizing the former and downplaying the latter. Some feminists, for instance, have publicly worried that almost all the heroes at the World Trade Center were male and that the media failed to seek out some female role models. It might be possible in these circumstances to gain general public support for re-ordering official policies to compensate people along lines of actual individual need rather than presumed group discrimination. It would certainly be prudent in the light of immigration and America's changing demographics. But the ethnic pressure groups and government agencies that favor the current system of preferences have not disbanded -- and they see multiculturalism not as an antidote to patriotism but as the patriotism of an America that is just around the corner. -0- (Steve Sailer is UPI's National Correspondent, based in Los Angeles.) Copyright © 2001 United Press International
UPI National Correspondent
Published 12/30/2001 3:12 PM
Let's start and end here:
Similarly, job quotas for women take from men and give to their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. So although there is some resentment among the white males thus disadvantaged, the net effect on families as a whole is not all that great.
The author acts as if a white male is denied a job in favor of a female, the rest of his family, especially the wife and female kids are okay with that, because, after all, someday THEY may benefit by beating another male out of a job they are otherwise not entitled to. WHAT A CROCK.
Why do you think liberals give a damn about Lexington, Gettysburg, or the founding fathers?
Where such presumptions fail the resulting policies fail. And we know from experience that class distinctions are a rather rickety ladder on which to build this set of political conclusions - there are many other factors involved in unequal distribution of wealth that interclass politics do not touch (a higher number of females preferring part-time work due to child-rearing duties, for one example, different birthrates between ethnic groups due to cultural practices, for another). In short, both Marxist sociological theory and its resultant political policies see only a small part of the picture and tend to twist discordant fact to fit theory or simply discard it.
This is not the basis of a successful social policy, and it's beginning to show. Its continuation will create a truly oppressed class in the classical Marxist sense, we already see signs of the "alienation" phase, which is its first step. And this particular oppressed class is armed, wealthy, and increasingly resentful. The principal intermediate aim of this particular "multicultural" approach will be to disarm and fragment that class in the interest of further transfer of wealth. And when that class runs dry (assuming that it doesn't continue down the Marxist theory path to solidarity and revolution) there'll need to be another. The basis of this sort of social policy, as all Marxist economic theory, is theft.
Guys, "Multiculturalism" is just another form of separating the people into social classes in order for socialism to work. If people are treated equally under the law, a social hierarchy cannot develop. Peace and love, George.
LONG LIVE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONSTITUTION
WITH ITS ATTENDANT AMENDMENTS
=======================================
=======================================
HAPPY
NEW
YEAR
Patriotism is not an illness that needs an antidote. Muliticulturalism is the disease which needs to be cured.
Let's hope there isn't one.
Happy New Year and thanks for all the articles in '01.
Edd
Or its little stupid brother aculturism, anyway. You are right. Happy New Year.
Yes and to replace a strong culture we had before where people from different places became Americans and were united by language and a new and great American culture. By having them hang on to their pasts now instead and downplay the importance of a united America, they hope to destroy a great country.
Why would this be so? Multiculturalism in practice is essentially a destruction of the right of free association. That is not a libertarian value at all. Certainly enforcement of "multiculturalism" via state authority is totally anti-libertarian.
Furthermore, I'm sure you and I would agree that multiculturalism is a pathetically Orewellian term.
I haven't seen any evidence of that, multiculturalism is about the government promoting other cultures over the natural American culture. Libertarians are against the government being involved that way.
And they are doing a good job. Many white men and women cannot stand the color of their own skin.
---------------------------------------
More incomprehensible gibberish from the 'dust' master of bafflegab, formerly red, now a gold okie.
Same BS, different color, same smell.
Multiculturalism has had the opposite affect on me.
First, programs that on average simply redistribute resources within families (such as quotas for women and the disabled) tend to generate less resentment than those that take from one set of families (such as white families) and give to another (such as Hispanic families). In the first case, we feel we are giving to ourselves; in the second to other people -- especially when government policy is emphasizing not the common nationhood of all Americans but their cultural and ethnic separateness.
... job quotas for women take from men and give to their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. So although there is some resentment among the white males thus disadvantaged, the net effect on families as a whole is not all that great.
Not so. This aspect of AA has turned women into a separate class with interests that are irreconcilable with those of their husbands and brothers. This has helped drive families apart, as women see less of a bond with their husbands and brothers, than they do with other women. And since AA for white females has always depended on an implicit deal with blacks -- 'You support us (white women) and we'll either back you or remain silent, no matter how outrageous your racism' -- AA for white females has played a huge role as a wedge dividing the races.
Perhaps, but a lot of whites seem only to hate the color of OTHER whites' skin.
Backlash is heck, isn't it. But it is interesting how many minorities want to make the white people guilty for something they had no hand in, but when those same white people want to stand up for themselves, many minorities accuse them of hate. Sorry, your analysis doesn't work. Many white people are tired of minorities expecting them to bend over. The same thing holds true for the right versus the left. Eventually, people get fed up with the nonsense and hypocrisy of the whole mess.
Which one?
Me too! I am proud that my ancestors created the greatest Democratic Republic in history not to mention most of the major inventions we use today.
For example, A&E's 100 most influential people in the last 1000 years.
I cannot see whites liking their own color but not the color of other white's skin. I don't think that makes sense. I think they would change their own color if they could, but they cannot, so they have to chastise themselves and feel guilty. They have to show others how openminded they are. They are the white blacks. It is strictly a pyschological problem, a problem of maladjustment.
i.e., libertarianism as preached and championed by Noam Chomsky et al.
FR-style libertarians deny that libertarianism can be defined in this manner. But Chomsky-style libertarians repudiate FR-style libertarianism as private slavery for the benefit of the pathologically greedy and self-indulgent.
Both styles of libertarianism make my skin crawl.
You must LIKE having your skin crawl...I see you on just about EVERY 'libertarian' thread.......
redrock--Constitutional Terrorist
Well, we all came from other places,
Different creeds and different races,
To form a nation...to become as one.
Yet look at the harm a line has done--
A simple little line, and yet
As divisive as a line can get.
A crooked cross the Nazis flew,
And the Russian hammer and sickle too--
Time bombs in the lives of Man;
But none of these could ever fan
The flames of hatred faster than
The Hyphen.
The Russian hammer built a wall
That locks men's hearts from freedom's call.
A crooked cross flew overhead
Above twenty million tragic dead--
Among them men from this great nation,
Who died for freedom's preservation.
A hyphen is a line that's small;
It can be a bridge or be a wall.
A bridge can save you lots of time;
A wall you always have to climb.
The road to liberty lies true.
The Hyphen's use is up to you.
Used as a bridge, it can span
All the differences of Man.
Being free in mind and soul
Should be our most important goal.
If you use The Hyphen as a wall,
You'll make your life mean...and small.
An American is a special breed,
Whose people came to her in need.
They came to her that they might find
A world where they'd have peace of mind,
Where men are equal...and something more--
Stand taller than they stood before.
So you be wise in your decision,
And that little line won't cause division.
Let's join hands with one another...
For in this land, each man's your brother.
United we stand...divided we fall.
We're Americans...and that says it all.
In regard to libertarianism, the problem is that there are at least two libertarianisms: there is the low tax, no government interference, ruggedly individualist form that finds an audience here, and there is the expressivist, do your own thing and let someone else pay for it form that is more popular in segments of the general public. Moreover, I get the feeling that even beyond the obviously libertine segment, some in the libertarian movement do like the break up of established norms and social collectivities that unofficial multiculturalism promotes. They may not favor government sanctions enforcing it, but many corporations who have quotas have them by their own choice. So there's an interesting dilemma here. If GE or GM wants quotas by their own choice, one can't call it a government imposition. Does one accept that or have the government impose non-discrimination.
War, for all its evils, is the great equalizer. World War II, and the feeling that we were wasting valuable manpower led to desegregation of the military after the war. Now what we'll see is heroes of a variety of races. This will help to break down racial categories, but also show up the apparatus of official multiculturalism as an encumbrance. Faced with real challenges we will find out how much we are one country, regardless of race, and maybe we'll come to see quotas and affirmative action as superfluous.
It's a hope at least.
Government seems to be adding to the resentments when they promote one group over another group. Men and women in the workplace got along better 20 years ago when they weren't suing each other for every comment made, it's almost ridiculous how it has become today between them but it's all thanks to government and stupid laws.
I don't think it's a psychological problem. I'm not even sure how much of this is directly about race for the anti-white whites. They rabidly discriminate against whites with less money in hiring and college admissions, in favor of blacks, and then support black racial harassment and violence, as long as it affects the whites' social inferiors. Both tactics -- the anti-white discrimination and the support of black racism -- are meant to keep down working and lower-class whites.
... the first of which concepts is the essence of socialism, and the second of which is as Gramscian as it is Orwellian. In both cases, "multiculturalism" is a disguise for policies that dissolve unity, and serve as handmaiden for the disintegration of a cohesive national identity.
I'm not sure we should juxtapose multiculturalism and patriotism in this way- only adds to the problem.
It struck me that you agree with the Chomskian view of 'FR- style libertarians'.
You should pause and reflect.
Well put. Fitz, I've noticed your posts for a while, and you're always interesting and you always make sense.
Back in the days of Vaudeville, actors would perform by putting on fake noses and portraying the "cheap Jew," or applying a big red nose and portraying the "drunken Irishman." From what I've read about those days, Jews or Irishmen would sit in the audience and laugh as loudly as everyone else. I guess back then, people had a sense of humor about themselves. Now, you don't dare make even the mildest joke for fear of "offending," possibly losing your job or being forced to go to "sensitivity training." Enough, already!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.