Multiculturalism, Liberal Democracy and future stability in the United States

Paper for the 7th Annual International Security Internal Safety (ISIS) Troy University, Montgomery, Alabama, March 23, 2013

Multiculturalism, Liberal Democracy and future stability in the United States

Kenneth V. Anthony, PhD

Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education

Mississippi State University

Kva3@msstate.edu

March 23, 2013

 

“Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others.”¹ So began Joseph Nye’s book The Paradox of American Power. In the book he detailed the nature of American power and the future of American hegemony in the world. His view was similar to others including Kagan and Huntington in that he saw few threats to the United State’s global hegemony. Even ascendant powers like China and India, he described as local competitors in their regions rather than threats to U.S. global hegemony. No great power lasts forever, in history we see the rise and fall of empires and great nations from ancient Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome to the modern empires of Spain, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and now the United States. What nation poses a threat to the United States’ continued position as the world’s one super power? Mearsheimer identified China as the greatest threat to United State’s hegemony, “It is clear that the most dangerous scenario the United States might face in the early twenty- first century is one in which China becomes a potential hegemon in Northeast Asia.”²

            A threat to U.S. hegemony locally in one part of the world whether it is in Northeast Asia by China or South Asia by India does not equal a threat to United States’ survival or even global hegemony. Is there a threat to the United States’ survival or hegemony out there? Samuel Huntington did not see a threat out there, but rather a threat inside the United States. In The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington argued that multiculturalism in American poses a threat to the United States. His thesis centered on the clash between Western civilizations and non Western civilizations and the idea that in the United States multiculturalism directly clashes with Western civilization. Consider a few of the Huntington’s statements:

 

The clash between the multiculturalists and the defenders of Western civilization and the American Creed is in James Kurth’s phrase, ‘the real clash’ within the American segment of Western civilization. Americans cannot avoid the issue: Are we a Western people or are we something else? The futures of the United States and of the West depend upon Americans reaffirming their commitment to Western civilization. Domestically this means rejecting the divisive siren calls of multiculturalism.³

 

A more immediate and dangerous challenge exists in the United States. Historically American national identity has been defined culturally by the heritage of Western Civilization and politically by the principles of the American Creed on which Americans overwhelmingly agree: liberty, democracy, individualism, equality before the law, constitutionalism, private property. In the late twentieth century both components of American identity have come under concentrated and sustained onslaught from a small but influential number of intellectuals and publicists. In the name of multiculturalism they have attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted racial, ethnic, and other subnational cultural identities and groupings. ⁴

 

The American multiculturalists similarly reject their country’s cultural heritage. Instead of attempting to identify the United States with another civilization, however, they wish to create a country of many civilizations, which is to say a country not belonging to any civilization and lacking a cultural core. History shows that no country so constituted can long endure as a coherent society. A multicultural United States will not be the United States; it will be the United Nations. ⁵

 

            Huntington’s argument that multiculturalism poses a threat to the United States in short is that multiculturalism undermines Americans’ collective belief in the founding ideology of America. Huntington asked and answered a central question, “What happens then to the United States if that ideology is disavowed by a significant portion of its citizens? The fate of the Soviet Union, the other major country whose unity, even more than that of the United States, was defined in ideological terms is a sobering example for Americans.”⁶ Later he stated that “Rejection of the Creed and of Western civilization means the end of the United States of America as we have known it.” ⁷

            How accurate is Huntington’s portrayal of the multicultural threat to the United States? If assimilation of the varied cultures that make up the United States ceases and the United States adopts a multicultural ideology will the United States become a cleft country⁸ and follow the pattern of other cleft countries including Yugoslavia, Bosnia, and the Soviet Union or will the United States continue, but as a nation based on group rights rather than individual rights?

                This paper explores the impact of multiculturalism on the United States’ society and stability. First the purpose of education in general is discussed, particularly the role that education plays in building national identity. Next the historic role education has played in the United States is explored in light of assimilation of immigrants and the building of an American identity. Third, multiculturalism is defined and the goals of the movement outlined. After multiculturalism is discussed, the various criticisms of multiculturalism are reviewed. Finally the nature and severity of the threat that multiculturalism may pose to the United States is evaluated.

 

The Purpose of Education in Building National Identity

            Education performs multiple roles in societies including socialization, teaching academic skills, and the preservation of “the cultural heritage of the nation.”⁹ Of interest for this article is the function to preserve the cultural heritage. One part of that function is to provide students with knowledge, beliefs, and experiences that “give students a common ground, to foster a sense of national unity and solidarity.”¹⁰ Of course there are always dissenting opinions about the nature of a society’s organization and there are those who see education as an attempt to control the masses and maintain the power of the elite or dominant culture group.¹¹ This view is held by some supporters of multiculturalism as will be seen in the discussion of multiculturalism.

            One aspect of preserving cultural heritage and building national unity focuses on civic education. Historically, an educated citizenry is valued in societies based on ideology rather than ethnicity, language, or nationalism. Aristotle in The Politics acknowledged that there was no agreement between societies on how to define citizenship. He rejected several definitions including “residence in a place” and “access to legal processes.” He settled on the idea that “participation” is what makes a citizen different from occupants of a state.¹² Aristotle concluded that by necessity the idea of citizen will vary according to the constitution that governs a state and that the definition of citizen is more important in a democracy than in other forms of government.¹³

            Aristotle’s definition is important for the argument made in this paper. If citizenship is defined by Aristotle as those who can and do participate in democracy rather than as mere residents or those with access to the judiciary then what knowledge and beliefs do nations want citizens to hold, how are those passed on to future generations, and what happens when they are not passed on to future generations?

            In Thomas More’s Utopia, Raphael Hythloday described the nature of education among the Utopians. He described the importance of reverence for elders and their knowledge as well as the need to pass on their “good manners and virtue.”¹⁴ The transmission of knowledge, manners, and virtue was done at dinner. The elders played a significant role in educating the young. In describing the role of the elders Raphael stated that the elders, “gladly hear also the young men, yea, and purposefully provoke them to talk, to the intent that they may have a proof of every man’s wit and towardness or disposition to virtue, which commonly in the liberty of feasting doth show and utter itself.”¹⁵

Raphael described why Utopians are different than Europeans or their neighbors in the New World, “These and such like opinions have they conceived partly by education, being brought up in that commonwealth whose laws and customs be far different from these kinds of folly, and partly by good literature and learning.”¹⁶ The education in Utopia was universal beginning with childhood and focused on the goals of building citizens who help maintain the values and virtues of Utopia.¹⁷ Finally, Utopians had a definition of virtue that was different from their neighbors, “For they define virtue to be life ordered according to nature, and that we be hereunto ordained of God, and that he doth follow the course of nature which, in desiring and refusing things, is ruled by reason.”¹⁸

Raphael contended that the Utopians were the “most excellent people” in the world with a “flourishing commonwealth.”¹⁹ The source of their greatness was their virtue as passed on from generation to generation through their education system. More’s fictional description of the Utopians and their virtue and education is important because it highlights the importance of virtue in building and maintaining a stable and vibrant society. What happens if or when the virtues from the past upon which a society is built are rejected and not passed on? Are other virtues offered to replace the rejected ones? If so are the new virtues as effective in maintaining the strength of the state as the rejected ones?

            If education is the method by which a state passes on the beliefs, values, and virtues necessary for its continuation and the citizens are those who actively participate in the government and society rather than just residents what happens to a society in which the citizens fail to participate or reject the historically dominate and driving ideology? Jean- Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas helped form the foundation of Western liberal democracy, particularly the idea that individuals give up certain rights and privileges in order to form a social contract to protect themselves collectively,²⁰ addressed what happened if the citizenry reached a point where they did not participate in the governing of society as required by the social contract.

 Rousseau described what happens when a private individual has a will that is separate from the general will. When this happened Rousseau wrote that, “he (the citizen) would enjoy the rights of a citizen without wanting to fulfill the duties of a subject, an injustice whose growth would bring about the ruin of the body politic.”²¹ What did Rousseau prescribe as a solution to this situation that he saw as detrimental to the continuation of the social contract? He wrote, “Thus, in order for the social compact to avoid being an empty formula, it tacitly entails the commitment- which alone can give force to others- that whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body. This means that merely that he will be forced to be free.”²² Rousseau also addressed what happens when citizens lose interest in serving their state, “Once public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they prefer to serve with their wallet rather than with their person, the state is already near its ruining,”²³ and “Once someone says what do I care? about the affairs of state, the state should be considered lost.”²⁴

Rousseau’s comments on the social contract and the danger of those who do not accept the principles upon which it is founded and the idea that they should be forced to do so are important to this discussion of the threat of multiculturalism to liberal democracy in general and the United States in particular. It has already been pointed out that some see education as forcing the beliefs of the dominant ethnic group or class on minorities in an effort to control the minorities as well as maintain the social order. Rousseau’s idea that they should be forced to do so flies in the face of existing beliefs about democracy and freedom of thought. It would be considered un-American to force others to accept the principles of the greater society, but as we will see in the discussion of the historical trends in American history that the United States has had little problem using the educational system to teach and reinforce the values and beliefs seen as necessary for the continuation of American society.

            So far in the current discussion of civil education in societies based on ideology the focus has been on the political and philosophical traditions that helped to build Western liberal democracy. Is the idea that societies must design their education systems in such a way as to guarantee the continuation of the constituted civil government and society an idea that is only found in the Western liberal democratic tradition? A look at a Western non liberal, non democratic political philosophy will help to answer that question.

Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels’ communist philosophy was the ideological basis for the Soviet Union and continues to be for the remaining communist nations in the world. In their short treatise on the establishment of a proletarian society in place of bourgeois’ society The Communist Manifesto, they briefly discussed the importance of education to their revolutionary goals. Marx and Engels saw the family as a means of bourgeois social control and therefore argued for its abolition. Further they argued that the socialization function of the family would be replaced by social education. They wrote,

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that social, and determined by the social conventions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they merely seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.²⁵

 

Marx and Engels emphasized the importance of education and ideas to their proletariat revolution by stating that “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”²⁶ In order to make changes to the current social order, the communist were required to change the nature of the ideas through education. Of particular interest to the idea that multiculturalism has the danger of undermining liberal society and poses a threat Marx and Engels wrote about the influence of new ideas on the current or old society, “When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.”²⁷ The idea that the old society holds and may even create the elements of the new is relevant because if multiculturalism is a threat to the United States it is only because the intellectual freedom available in a liberal democracy has allowed for the development and institutionalization of ideas that are considered by many to undermine the basis of civil society and the United States’ liberal democratic traditions. The ideas of Marx and Engels emphasize the importance of education and ideas in building and maintaining a society based on a particular ideology. 

            This review of the role of education in building and maintaining the social order has shown that over time and across ideological lines it is evident that societies based on ideology with a constitutional basis must be perpetuated by the transmission of civic values and virtues from one generation to another. Next is a discussion of the purpose and role of education in America.

 

The Role of Education in America

            The United States was the realization of the liberal ideas of the enlightenment. A constitution was written that guarded the rights of individuals.²⁸ The establishment of a nation on ideals rather than on the traditional means of language, ethnicity, or geographic proximity meant that the new nation would have to educate its citizenry with the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to promote the development and continuation of the democracy.

Mike Rose in the introduction to his ethnographic description of public schools in America wrote that “It is mind boggling to think of all that we as Americans demand from our public schools, an astounding range of expectations. There is, of course, the expectation that the schools will foster intellectual, social, and civil development… And we continue to look to our schools to address the effects of deindustrialization, immigration, and chronic poverty.”²⁹ In America common schools or public schools were seen as the way to

            Provide a common experience and a common heritage for the diverse children of the nation, they would also equip the young for the responsibilities of freedom, insure universal equality, and guarantee prosperity through the years to come. In sum, the reformers were telling the world, free schools would provide the bricks and mortar for the Heavenly City on earth.³⁰

 

            The vision of schools as a tool for building and sustaining civil society was tied to the ideas of the enlightenment. America’s foremost philosopher during the colonial and early period of American independence Thomas Jefferson recognized the need for a common education and the ability of the common man to be educated in such a way as to be able to participate in the democracy.³¹ In 1779, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill in Virginia to establish a state wide public education system for all citizens. It was not adopted, but the principle of a common education for all was advocated.³² Jefferson did not let the idea of a common education die with the defeat. In 1786, he wrote to George Washington that “It is an axiom in my mind that liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that, too, of the people with a certain degree of instruction.” He believed it was the responsibility of the state to provide that education. Jefferson believed that education was the key to an individual protecting his freedom and to maintain the strength of a country.³³

Jefferson also believed that education could build the moral foundation of the nation and redress the effects of poverty because education would be available to all children. He stated, “The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means to development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, in proportion to our population shall be the double or treble of what it is in most countries.”³⁴ Not only would individuals benefit from a common education by being lifted from poverty, but the country as a whole would benefit. Jefferson believed that education should help to build virtue and advance the happiness of man, “I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and the happiness of man.”³⁵

Jefferson saw schools as a method of social control, “The first stage of this education being the schools of the hundreds, wherein the great mass of the people will receive their instruction, the principal foundations of future order will be laid here... their memories may here be stored with the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman, European and American history. The first elements of morality too may be instilled into their minds…”.³⁶ But ever a protector of the rights of the individual citizen, in a letter to John Adams in 1813 he described how his educational plan would have been open to all men and would have helped to establish a meritocracy overcoming the effects of wealth and birth. He also claimed that his educational plan would have “raised the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety, and to orderly government.”³⁷ Jefferson is significant because as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the force behind the adoption of the Bill of Rights, and third President of the United States, his ideas carry considerable strength. It is especially important that he placed such a premium on the value of education as key to the success of the United States.

Thinkers throughout American history have consistently appealed to the ideas of Jefferson when advocating educational policy or their own particular positions. Former Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson in 1950 gave a speech on Founder’s Day at the University of Virginia. In the speech he highlighted the fact that Jefferson truly believed in democracy and saw education as a way to build and protect democracy. Johnson appealed to the “innate spiritual quality of our people and their faith in our democratic institutions” when explaining why the United States would win the Cold War struggles against the opponents of the United States. The quality of the people of the United States is based on the values and beliefs developed over time and passed on from generation to generation. Johnson, as Jefferson did, valued the quality of the United States’ people above the military in securing the United States.³⁸

Gordon E. Mercer in 1993 reinforced the idea that Jefferson viewed a reformed education for the masses (one without links to religion) was the key to establishing and preserving republican government and that “a reformed educational system and a republican form of government were inseperable.”³⁹ Mercer also pointed out that both John Dewey and James Conant, both influential educational leaders, were influenced by the ideas of Thomas Jefferson. Mercer concluded that even though Jefferson’s ideas about education provided a significant impact on American education his ideas have never been totally implemented or that the Jeffersonian revolution in American education has never been completed.”⁴⁰

Jefferson is not the only thinker to see education as necessary to the establishment and maintenance of the United States’ democracy. Samuel Harrison Smith won an essay contest in 1797 for the “best system of liberal education and literary instruction, adapted to the genius of the Government of the United States.” He believed that education should focus on making men virtuous and wise. He indicated that there was a relationship between knowledge and virtue,

That the diffusion of knowledge actually produces some virtues, which without it would have no existence, and that it strengthens and extends all such virtues as are generally deemed to have, in a limited degree, an existence independent of uncommon attainments. And that, the exercise of these virtues is the only certain means of securing happiness.⁴¹

 

Smith believed in the doctrine of the depravity of man and therefore education would help to build virtue in sinful man. One virtue that Smith believed should be developed through education was patriotism. This patriotism was not a blind loyalty to the country but rather one based on rationality and with a desire to improve the country. It was also not a link to the “soil” but to the “institutions and manners, or our country.”⁴²

            Lafitte du Courteil wrote with concern that the people of the United States were from various European nations and because of that they lacked a national character and unity. He believed that because “the inhabitants always being turned towards their native country”⁴³ there was little patriotism and loyalty to the United States. He believed that the focus on external commerce with Europe resulted in a colonial mentality and a weakness of national character because of dependency on Europe. He criticized the cosmopolitan nature of American merchants who he characterized as citizens of their towns with strong loyalties and ties to Europe, but not to the nation. He believed the solution to a lack of national character was a system of national education similar to the ancient Greek republics.⁴⁴

            In 1799, Samuel Knox wrote to the Maryland legislature about the necessity of a public liberal education system in the United States. He wrote that though most people in the United States agreed that education was necessary to building the republic, “all that might be reasonably done in so good a cause has not yet been effected,” because of this he asked “how many hundreds of our youth are deprived of the means of any instruction suitable to the offspring of free and independent citizens?”⁴⁵ He believed that the United States government and constitution were superior to the rest of the governments in the world at the time because they were not built on the “slavish ignorance” of the people. Because of this the government should develop a way to promote the dissemination of knowledge.⁴⁶

W.E.B. Du Bois hailed the goal of the various efforts to educate freedmen in the South by many organizations including the Freedmen’s Bureau. The goal of the bureau was to help make “the passage of our emancipated and yet to be emancipated blacks from the old condition of forced labor to their new state of voluntary industry.”⁴⁷ Raised in the North, but university educated in the South, Du Bois saw the value of education to the freed blacks in America. In describing the importance of the teachers from the North who headed South to teach freed blacks he wrote, “The teachers in these institutions came not to keep the Negroes in place, but to raise them out of the defilement of the places where slavery had wallowed them.”⁴⁸ Du Bois recognized the problem of racism for the integration of blacks into American society and identified the solution,

Again, we may decry the color-prejudice of the South, yet it remains a heavy fact…. They cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of legislature. And yet they must not be encouraged by being let alone. They must be recognized as facts, but unpleasant facts; things that stand in the way of civilization and religion and common decency. They can be met in but on way,- by the breadth and broadening of human reason, by catholicity of taste and culture.⁴⁹

 

Dubois saw that in order to facilitate the integration of freed slaves into society and end discrimination the education of both black Americans and the white population of the South was necessary. This problem was similar to the earlier issue of the varied nativity of Americans in the late 18^th century and to the problems that the new wave of immigration caused for assimilation at the turn of the twentieth century.

Like the freed black slaves, the new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe posed a problem for the United States. Unlike with the freed black slaves, the United States was more successful at integrating the new wave of European immigrants and would ultimately be more welcoming to them too. The failure of America to recognize and legitimize black freedom and equality was a “debt” that did not begin to be paid until the modern civil rights movement of the 1960s.⁵⁰ The result of this debt was that some black Americans gave up on the promise of liberty, equality, and individual rights as espoused in the American Creed and withdrew into a “sort of racial exclusiveness, rejecting white allies and white society. Withdrawal takes several organized forms, including a cult of negritude, one that rallies to the cry of Black Power, and black nationalists of the Muslim and other varieties, all glorifying race and exalting racial identity.”⁵¹ The failure of America to embrace black Americans and help their complete integration into the American experience sowed the seeds of separatism that helped to undermine the individual nature of rights, pushing the idea that only through the strength of the group could blacks realize equal rights and freedom in America.

            John Dewey recognized the importance of education in building a strong, vibrant society.  He believed that people do not form a society “by living in physical proximity,” but rather they are “cognizant of the common end” and cooperate and work to achieve it.⁵² Dewey was concerned with the type of education that would help build and maintain democracy made up of different groups of people. He saw the historical trends of the United States placing burdens on democracy and looked to education as part of the solution. He wrote, “with the development of commerce, transportation, intercommunication, and emigration, countries like the United States are composed of a combination of different groups with different customs. It is this situation which has, perhaps more than any other one cause, forced the demand for an educational institution which shall provide something like a homogenous and balanced environment for the young.”⁵³ The danger was the changing and heterogeneous nature of America; the solution was education. But what type of education? Dewey continued, “Common subject matter accustoms all to a unity of outlook upon a broader horizon than is visible to the members of any groups while it is isolated. The assimilative force of the American public school is eloquent testimony to the efficacy of the common and balanced appeal.”⁵⁴ The common subject matter of the public schools would help provide homogeneity of belief and knowledge necessary to sustain the democracy. Though Dewey called for a common subject matter, he was not calling for the unthinking transmission of tradition for traditions sake. He felt that each generation must decide what is most worthy to be passed on and what can allowed to fall to the way side. He wrote, “As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society.”⁵⁵

            The social studies movement grew out of the progressive education movement. Its purpose was to help build a stronger American society and to cultivate good citizenship. Though the founders of social studies envisioned humans as members of a wider world community, they realized that loyalty, responsibility, and obligation to the nation should come first. They wanted to develop in citizens “a sense of responsibility of the individual as a member of social groups, and the intelligence and the will to participate effectively in the promotion of the social well being.”⁵⁶ The term social studies was used to “designate formal citizenship education and placed squarely in the field all of those subjects that were believed to contribute to that end.” Social studies was more than just a body of knowledge that citizens needed to learn, it included a study of social problems.⁵⁷ What was the driving force behind the establishment of social studies as a discipline? It was primarily the increased immigration that began during the early 1900s. The advocates of social studies were “acutely aware of the problems generated through the arrival and settlement of these immigrants, and the Report reflects that awareness and concern.”⁵⁸ The immigrants had to be provided with the “knowledge of language, custom, health practices, and economic consumerism” necessary to participate effectively in American society. This education would benefit the immigrants individually and the United States collectively as they were quickly assimilated.⁵⁹ The basic curriculum that was spelled out in the 1916 Report on the Social Studies became the basis and has remained the basic model for social studies and civic education in the United States. Assimilation of immigrants was not the only goal of social studies. It was much broader in many ways. Its function was to train all Americans for citizenship.⁶⁰ As mentioned earlier the social studies movement, like other educational thinkers have, embraced Jefferson as an advocate of their movement. James J. Carpenter in 2004 wrote, “Jefferson believed history- a major component of today’s social studies curricula- was most important in learning what was necessary to function as a citizen.”⁶¹

The preceding review of American educational thought was to show the importance of education in building a vibrant and sustainable democracy. It also highlighted the view that the scope of the education should focus on the knowledge and skills necessary for all citizens including new immigrants and the newly freed slaves. It can be argued that America more readily accepted new white immigrants into full equality than black Americans which is part of the reason that some black Americans eventually rejected the American Creed. This rejection led to the development of black separatist movements that focused on group rights rather than individual rights.

 

A Review of Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism in many ways is a revision of the historical liberal enlightenment focus on individuals and individual rights into a focus on groups and group rights. Defining multiculturalism is difficult because it is used by different people in different ways. To some it is a celebration and appreciation of diversity. To others it is an affirmation of ethnic or linguistic rights in the face of domination by a suppressive majority. It is also seen as a way to correct past wrongs and achieve rights long denied as a part of a group.

Supporters of multiculturalism build their argument for multicultural education based on the increased diversity in the United States. An example of this is data presented by one of the most significant supporters of multicultural education James A. Banks. He wrote “The United States is now experiencing its largest influx of immigrants since the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The U.S. Census Bureau (2000) projects that ethnic groups of color- or ethnic minorities- will increase from 28% of the nation’s population today to 50% in 2050.”⁶² The next step is to argue that times change and the nature of democracy must change with it. This is important in order to “increase equality and social justice.”⁶³

Supporters of multiculturalism concede that their ideas challenge the liberal notions individual rights and citizenship. Banks wrote,

Group differences are not included in a universal conception of citizenship. Consequently, the differences of groups that have experienced structural exclusion and discrimination- such as women and people of color- are suppressed. A differentiated conception of citizenship, rather than a universal one, is needed to help marginalized groups attain civic equality and recognition in multicultural democratic nations.⁶⁴

 

Multiculturalists rightly acknowledge that American democracy has exercised exclusion and discrimination against minorities and because of this they advocate a change in the nature of the social contract. Rather than depend on the individual rights as protected in the Constitution, they seek power and protection in the numbers of their ethnic or culture group, “Individuals more successfully attain goals through the political system when working in groups than when working alone.”⁶⁵ How does this translate into education?

Non Whites have a much keener sense of their group interests than whites. They see very clearly that the future will have its winners and losers, just as history has had them. Thus, while virtually every school district with a white majority is trying to square the circle by teaching a history that is everything to everyone, school districts with black majorities are beginning to replace the old ‘Euro-centric curriculum with one that is openly ‘Afro-centric.’ They are not interested in supplementing the traditional history with different points of view. They want a single, African point of view.⁶⁶

 

Multiculturalists question the efficacy of the traditional nation-states’ civic education. They see the goals of civic education as “inconsistent” with the multicultural nature of the world.⁶⁷ They prefer a civic education that allows minority groups to maintain their language, customs and connections to their home country as well as one that develops a “cosmopolitan” view of the world in which citizens “allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings.”⁶⁸ Multiculturalists view citizenship education as practiced in American social studies classroom as maintaining the “status quo and the dominant power relationships in society.”⁶⁹

                Multiculturalists not only want to change the nature of the way that history and civic education are taught and change the concept of individual rights to group rights, they want the state to guarantee the survival of minority groups in society. To do this “the various minority groups would need control over public monies, segregated or partially segregated schools… and so on.”⁷⁰

                Not all multiculturalism is intended to totally transform society. The National Council for the Social Studies adopted “Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education” in 1976 that were revised in 1991. These based the need for multicultural education on the changing American demographics. The goals of the guidelines were to help students recognize and respect cultural diversity as well as to encourage students from previously discriminated against or marginalized groups to fully participate in the society. Consider one statement in the introduction to the guidelines: “Multicultural education seeks to actualize the idea of e pluribus unum within our nation and to create a society that recognizes and respects the cultures of its divers people, people united within a framework of overarching democratic values.”⁷¹

A similar view was espoused on the web site www.intime.uni.edu that is dedicated to multicultural education. Once again the case was made that multiculturalism is necessary because of the changes in American population. It is also relevant because the “nation’s students are becoming increasingly diverse, most of the nation’s teachers are White, middle-class, and female.” Multiculturalism can help decrease the divisions caused by differences. Teachers can learn how to better deal with the diversity in the classroom.⁷²

There is a growing literature of multiculturalism as it applies to teacher education. One example is research conducted by John Raible and Jason G. Irizarry entitled “Transracialized selves and the emergence of post-white teacher identities.” The researchers argued that teacher educators should actively move towards “post-whiteness” which is an “intentional movement towards the enactment of transracialized selfs through active identifications with racial other made in interracial discourses.” In short, those who engaged in relationships with individuals from other racial or ethic groups increased their commitment to social justice and appreciation of those who are racially different.⁷³ Lisa Delpit in her book Other People’s Children wrote that “many teachers- black, white, and ‘other’- harbor unexamined prejudices about people from ethnic groups or classes different from their own.” Delpit believed that this problem can be addressed by incorporating multicultural education into teacher education programs.⁷⁴

Interestingly some supporters of multiculturalism see attempts by individuals to be color blind or beyond race as an example of racism,

For example, it is not uncommon for participants to discover that advancing positive stereotypes or feigning color blindness helps protect them from being seen as racially prejudiced. When they apply these defense mechanisms on self- report posttests, participants may appear as though they have become less prone to stereotyping when in reality they are still guilty of making rigid generalizations or avoiding the topics of race, culture, and class together.⁷⁵

 

Another interesting view of some multiculturalists was that whites are not aware of their own whiteness and downplay it, “As the dominant racial group, white people often fail to acknowledge their identities in racial terms. Katz and Ivey explain, ‘Ask a white person what he or she is racially and you might get the answer ‘Italian,’ ‘English,’ ‘Catholic,’ or ‘Jewish.’ White people don’t see themselves as white.’ ” They believed that this leads white people to ignore the oppression that other races experience.⁷⁶

This review of multiculturalism is incomplete, but it gives a good idea of how it contrasts with the ideas of historic liberal education as espoused by the philosophers Aristotle, More, Rousseau, and Marx as well as American education thinkers including Jefferson, Du Bois, Dewey, and the founders of the social studies. It also shows how multiculturalism can mean different things to different people. It can be a call for understanding and appreciation of others to help build a more perfect union as well as a call for a restructuring of the nature of constitutional rights from individual based to group based.  Logically next should be a look at the response to multiculturalism. The response is typically from a historically liberal point of view and as a result is very critical of multiculturalism. This is because the writers reviewed see multiculturalism as a threat to liberal democracy. Rather than go directly to the response to multiculturalism next it is necessary to look at a point that must be addressed because it is critical to understanding the phenomena of multiculturalism- the failure of America historically to deal squarely with black Americans.

            Langston Hughes asked “What happens to a dream deferred?”⁷⁷ The history of black Americans in the United States has been a dream deferred. The way that most blacks got to America, the nature of slavery, the deferred equality following emancipation, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and segregation all worked to send a message that the America did not work for blacks. America was able to assimilate, even if with some difficulties, European and Asian immigrants, but the history of America with slavery and black Americans and deferred inequality interfered with the assimilation of black Americans fully into society. Black Americans received that message and rather than finding protection of their rights under the Constitution, many bound together as a group to fight for equal rights and protection under the law. They retreated into a group mentality to achieve what should have been theirs by birth right as Americans. One result of that retreat is multiculturalism.

 

Criticism of Multiculturalism            

Many in America are concerned about the effect multiculturalism will have on the future of the United States. Their reactions range from concerns that it resulted in a watering down of the school curriculum and distorted history by replacing facts with “compensatory history,”⁷⁸ distorted student understanding of history and demonized Western civilization and promoted non- Western cultures as superior⁷⁹ to the idea that a country such as the United States can not survive based on multiculturalism.

            Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind attacked the rejection of liberal education by modern American educators. His goal was not to attack multiculturalism per se, but rather educational practices that focus on the relativity of truth including the idea that Western culture is just one of many equal cultures. He wrote that Americans have abandoned the traditional values that the country was founded on and have adopted one cardinal virtue: openness.⁸⁰ His concern was that the concept of liberal education based on the founding fathers’ ideas of natural rights as the basis for the American society was no longer being taught in schools. This ties into multiculturalism because multiculturalism did two things that Bloom considered dangerous: 1) it focused on group rights rather than universal individual rights⁸¹, and 2) it used the mantra of cultural relativism to undermine the ideas of Western civilization and culture at the expense of other cultures that he considered less enlightened⁸². Why was this important?

            The U.S. Constitution was based on universal individual rights. Students were being taught that the concept of universal individual rights was an ideology designed not to bring equality into society, but rather as a method to enshrine one class of people over another. This distortion of American history combined with cultural relevancy led students on a search of other cultures for ideas and beliefs that could cure our sick system. The cultural relativists believed that no culture is wrong except their own. Bloom provided an interesting defense of cultural ethnocentrism though. He presented the story of an interaction he had with a college student from Mississippi that Bloom met in the 1960s. The college student defended Southern Jim Crow laws and black racial inferiority to Bloom. Bloom acknowledged that he did not agree with the student thus exhibiting a form of ethnocentrism- that is believing that his beliefs were universal. Evidently they were not, but under a system of cultural relevancy both Bloom’s beliefs in equality and the Mississippi student’s beliefs in white racial superiority were equal.⁸³ Bloom pointed out that a study of cultures revealed that all nation states feel that they are superior to others and this is the natural order of things. It is necessary, “Men must love and be loyal to their families and their peoples in order to preserve them. Only if they think their own things are good can they rest content with them. A father must prefer his child to other children, a citizen his country to others… A very great narrowness is not incompatible with the health of an individual or a people, whereas with great openness it is hard to avoid decomposition.”⁸⁴ Multiculturalism and its attendant relativism was open and undermined loyalty to the country and therefore could lead to the decomposition of society.

            E. D. Hirsch in a positive way criticized multicultural education. He did not directly attack it, but rather advocated cultural literacy. According to E. D. Hirsch cultural literacy was the way to equality in America. It rather than multiculturalism was democratic, “Literate culture is the most democratic culture in our land: it excludes nobody; it cuts across generations and social classes; it is not usually one’s first culture, but it should be everyone’s second, existing as it does beyond the narrow spheres of family, neighborhood, and region.”⁸⁵ Not only was cultural literacy more democratic, Hirsch believed that a common national curriculum was the key to educational reform.⁸⁶ To deny all citizens culturally literacy was to condemn them to “poverty, but also to the powerlessness of incomprehension.” Hirsch desired cultural literacy that teaches an American culture because it would help make American society more just and help realize both Jefferson’s and Martin Luther King’s dreams of equality and full participation by all citizens of the United States.⁸⁷ What role did multiculturalism have in education according to Hirsch? He wrote that it was a good thing to learn about and understand other cultures, because “it inculcates tolerance and provides a perspective on our own traditions and values,” but “it should not be the primary focus of national education.” Hirsch brought up an interesting rebuttal to multiculturalism: that it was a worthy topic of study, but the primary goal of a national educational system must be acculturation because students will “enter neither a narrow tribal culture nor a transcendent world culture but a national literate culture.”⁸⁸ He argued that the nature of education was to prepare children for the society they will live in and the society they live in requires certain knowledge and language to thrive and that was what American schools must teach. To teach anything else would hurt both the children and the country.

            Why does a country need a common literate culture? Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. argued that multiculturalism was a threat to America because it changed the “historic theory of America as one people- the theory that has thus far managed to keep American society whole.”⁸⁹ Schlesinger reminded the reader that the primary goal of American public education has been to assimilate and help form the American identity. He charged that “the militants of ethnicity now contend that a main objective of public education should be the protection, strengthening, celebration, and perpetration of ethnic origins and identities.” Why is this problematic? Because, “the separatism encouraged by multiculturalism “nourishes prejudices, magnifies differences, and stirs antagonisms.” Schlesinger saw multiculturalism resulting in an increase in “ethnic and racial conflict.”⁹⁰ Where multiculturalists saw increased diversity as a reason to teach a multicultural curriculum, Schlesinger saw it as an argument for a curriculum that focuses on unity through historic American ideals. Schlesinger did point out that part of the problem rests with the previous failures of the people of the United States in wanting to assimilate certain groups of people, particularly black Americans.⁹¹ He concluded his book reminding the reader that,

The genius of America lies in its capacity to forge a single nation from peoples of remarkably divers racial, religious, and ethnic origins. It has done so because democratic principles provide both the philosophical bond of union and practical experience in civic participation. The American Creed envisages a nation composed of individuals making their own choices and accountable to themselves, not a nation based on inviolable ethnic communities. The Constitution turns on individual rights, not on group rights.⁹²

 

Schlesinger feared that the result of multiculturalism was a divided rather than a united country that no longer was held together by the unifying ideals of individual liberty and equality as laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

            Multiculturalists have generally contended that the current period of immigration is different than previous periods and that America has lost its ability to assimilate new immigrants. This is a similar belief of those who historically have wanted to limit immigration. Both fear “the culture cannot assimilate large numbers of new immigrants.”⁹³ Joseph Nye cited Peter Brimelow’s concern that the ability of the United States to assimilate the new immigrants is hurt by multiculturalism. Nye is less concerned and countered that he as well as the multiculturalists “underestimate the continuing power of the melting pot…. Most evidence suggests that the latest immigrants are assimilating at least as quickly as their predecessors.”⁹⁴ Nye’s views were interesting because he did not believe multiculturalism was a danger to America, but his views also undermined one of the core tenants of the multicultural belief system- that the nature of America has changed in such a way as to necessitate multiculturalism rather than assimilation.

            This article began with extensive quotes from Samuel P. Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order asking whether his concerns about the danger of multiculturalism were overstated. There is no need to rehash his arguments again, except to remind the reader that he saw multiculturalism as the prime threat to America because it undermined the non- racially and non-ethnically based American identity. The result would be what he calls a “cleft society” that could fragment possibly leading to conflict.

            Francis Fukuyama’s description of the perils liberal democracy faced in helping maintain unity in a diverse society or country might best help summarize the beliefs of those who oppose multiculturalism. He believed that the United States might be atypical as a successful liberal democracy in a diverse society because, “Despite the diversity of backgrounds, lands, and races to which American traced their ancestry, on coming to America they abandoned those identities by and large and assimilated into a new society without sharply defined social classes or long standing ethnic and national divisions.” Like Schlesinger he acknowledged that America was less successful solving ethnic problems when related to American blacks. Rather than assimilation through peaceful means it took war and executive orders by the President to help achieve abolition, integration, and equal rights.⁹⁵ It was the very willingness of the diverse peoples to adopt uniquely American ideals and abandon their previous loyalties that has made America successful in building E Pluribus Unum. It was the failure of America to extend a hand of welcome to black Americans that prevented their complete integration and assimilation into America. Multiculturalism encourages continued loyalty to the home country or culture at the expense of the American identity. It even denies that an American identity exists.

 

The Nature of the Threat from Multiculturalism

            The question was asked, “is multiculturalism a true threat to the United States and if so to what degree?” A review of Aristotle’s The Politics, More’s Utopia, Rousseau’s On the Social Contract, and Marx’s Communist Manifesto has illustrated that historically and philosophically education has been seen as a way to build civil society and national identity. It has also been shown that in America, public education has been used to assimilate immigrants, educate for civic virtue and duty, and develop a uniquely American identity. Huntington’s threat of multiculturalism was explored next by recounting the words and ideas of its supporters and was followed by critics of the belief system. Now it is time to determine if it is indeed a threat and if so what the nature of the threat is.

            The first threat of multiculturalism is that there will be a shift in primary loyalties from the country to the ethnic, racial, or national group. At first glance this might not appear to be a possibility, but in An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America’s Future Kaplan addressed the changes that a multiethnic, globalist society posed to America. He described the attitude of new immigrants who maintained primary loyalties other than the United States, “They may love America, but they do not consider themselves dependent on it. They came here for the freedom to make the most of their lives, but they are citizens of the world in a way that previous immigrants were not.” He pessimistically predicted that, “While we insist upon the illusion of a permanent continental nation that has existed less than a third as long as the Moorish occupation of Spain, we may find that we have become instead the creators of its diluted successor, which may be the most we can hope for.”⁹⁶ His predictions of a coming America are similar to the goals of multiculturalists who want to create global citizens with a cosmopolitan outlook who are tied to the world rather than to the United States. What will be the result of diminished or divided loyalties? Will it lead to a loss of interest in the American nation? According to Rousseau if that has happened the country is already ruined.

In The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War, Kaplan again addressed the fragile nature of American democracy. He contrasted multicultural regimes to traditional nation states. Traditional nation states usually have had “mass conscription armies” and a “standardized public school system” and multicultural regimes have relied on “all-volunteer” armies with “private schools that teach competing values.” The United States in many ways has always been a multicultural nation, but it developed along the lines of a nation state because of a created American nationality based on ideology and beliefs. Now that is going away, not because of private schools, but because the state’s schools have adopted a multicultural curriculum that does not reinforce the ideology and beliefs that America was built upon. Nation states are perpetuated by the passing of common beliefs through the state education system. What happens to a nation state when it denies its past and cultural and philosophical heritage?  The problem of a volunteer army is that military service no longer can serve as a unifying factor in the nation.⁹⁷

Does reduction in loyalty to the American nation by citizens and immigrants pose a threat to the future? Rousseau believed decreased loyalty meant decreased participation and that these were threats to civil society. Jefferson, Dewey, the founders of social studies and others believed that education must promote a common civic virtue in America to help guarantee loyalty, because of our diversity. Kaplan believed that it undermines democracy, “Democracy loses meaning if both rulers and ruled cease to be part of a community tied to a specific territory. In this historical transition phase, lasting perhaps a century or more, in which globalization has begun but is not complete and loyalties are highly confused, civil society will be harder to maintain.”⁹⁸ As civil society breaks down as a result of declining loyalties Kaplan sees the United States devolving into a series of “city states” with loyalties based on trade or ethnic and racial loyalties and national government will be replaced by corporate governance.

The irony is that as multiculturalists strive for a greater democratic society based on group rights they may be undermining the very foundation of the United States’ democracy. Individuals are educated to see themselves as members of a group first and as Americans second. They learn the faults of their country, but few of the great things their country has done. There is no basis for national pride or patriotism, indeed patriotism is even considered a negative virtue. When this happens who will volunteer to defend the nation? If American national values are only WASP values designed to control others, what happens when black Americans and other peoples of color are the majority? What will motivate them to fight and possibly give up their lives? Fukuyama believed that the democracy would fail when diversity passed a certain limit.⁹⁹ When will America reach that limit? When it does what will be the nature of the American democracy? Will it be the city states Kaplan has envisioned linked together only for national defense or an amended constitutional arrangement based on group rights instead of individual rights? Whatever it is, the impact of multiculturalism if taken to its logical conclusion will mean the end of the traditional American Constitutional democracy based on individual rights. This leads to another question, if the nature of the democracy changes, “can the United States maintain a peaceful union based on group rights?”

An Example from Bosnia and Yugoslavia

            If democracies fail because of diversity then what does that failure look like? What happens when a society based on groups dissolves? History has shown that the dissolution is often violent: consider Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, and the former Soviet Republics of the Caucuses region. Of course there are instances of peaceful divorce between nation groups into separate national entities including Czechoslovakia, but many times the split is violent.

            Historically, Bosnia had deliberately maintained a multiethnic civic society. As a Yugoslav republic it was the only one whose borders did not align closely with a constituent nation group. The Serbs had Serbia, Croats had Croatia, Slovenians had Slovenia, etc. Bosnia was made up of three different groups: Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Muslims). Because of the multi ethnic nature of Bosnia, they truly “believed in ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ and agreed with that idea.”¹⁰⁰ Brotherhood and Unity was the unifying ideology that Tito had imposed on Yugoslavia after inter-ethnic violence in World War II.  Even after Bosnia went through the horrible war and ethnic cleansing of the 1990s, Bosnians remembered the way that the country was truly multiethnic and peaceful before the conflict, “I remember Bosnia as a beautiful and peaceful country. We all lived together. Before the war, it was unnecessary to know if your neighbor was Serb, Croat, Muslim, or Jew. We look only at what kind of person you were. We were all friends.”¹⁰¹ What killed Bosnia or even before that Yugoslavia? Susan L. Woodward in Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War wrote

The most significant political development in former Yugoslavia was the equation of individual rights with national rights... The shift from a conception of security in terms of human rights to demands for territorial autonomy and sovereign rights can be treacherous, particularly (nations in this case) are identified as the legitimate claimants of rights. The demand for ethnic group rights teeters dangerously between the demand for human rights that can be granted to individuals as members of a group and the argument that such rights can only be secured by the people themselves through the right to govern a particular territory.¹⁰²

 

The Yugoslavians and the Bosnians gave up the idea of brotherhood and unity in exchange for the security and protection provided for their groups. This led to limited conflict between the Serbians and Slovenes and the Serbians and Croatians in more limited wars. It led to a three way civil war with intervention from Serbia and Croatia in Bosnia resulting in horrible atrocities and the worst ethnic cleansing in Europe since the holocaust. Why was Bosnia different? The territorial demands overlapped between the Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, and Bosniaks and each group demonized the other breeding distrust and the abandonment of brotherhood and unity.

            What is disturbing about the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia is that technically it was not ethnic cleansing. The three groups of Bosnians “all trace their descent to tribes that migrated to the area around the sixth century and were Slavic in language and culture by the time they settled into the area.” The difference between them was that their ancestors at some point had converted to one of three religions: Serbs- Orthodoxy, Croats- Catholicism, and Bosniaks- Islam.¹⁰³ Michael Sells in the book The Bridge Betrayed contended that the Bosnians had a distinct culture that united Bosnians. This united culture was deliberately undermined worsening the conflict because it based it on created ethnic fears.

            What does this mean for America? America is not Bosnia- or is it? Warren Zimmerman the last United States ambassador to Yugoslavia believed that there were lessons that the United States and other multinational states could learn from Bosnia. He believed that the United States had a moral obligation to uphold and promote multinational democracy in Bosnia and not allow it to be divided into three smaller states. Zimmerman believed that the reason Yugoslavia and Bosnia fell into violence was because of the allegiance to group rights over individual rights. He wrote, “The ideal is to treat people as individual citizens rather than as members of groups. But that won’t soon be attainable in states where ethnic groups feel a strong sense of identity and nurse real or imagined grievances…. The U.S. Constitution, with its checks and balances, is a power- sharing device, though not an ethnic one.”¹⁰⁴ Zimmerman saw hope that the United States would remain the most successful multi ethnic democracy in the world in spite of the challenges of racism and multiculturalism, because we “see ourselves as an American nation in a nonethnic sense. The word “nation” appears five times among 272 words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Tragically, Yugoslavs never saw themselves as a nation.”¹⁰⁵ Is Zimmerman right? Do we still see ourselves as an American nation or is multiculturalism tearing at the fabric of the American nation? If so do we have the potential to retreat into our groups for shelter and protection and see others as the enemy within our own country?

 

The Verdict?

Bosnia is a much older multiethnic society than the United States. It didn’t tear itself apart after 200 years, but after over thirteen hundred years. When it came time to tear Bosnia apart the warring ethnic groups, particularly the Serbs and Croats, did an interesting thing they attempted to destroy every physical aspect of Bosnian culture at the expense of military necessity. One example was during the siege of Sarajevo the deliberate shelling and burning of the National Library. The goal was to destroy any remnants of a unified Bosnian culture. The Serbs and Croats wanted to break the ties of the people from a multiethnic unified Bosnian nation and reinforce the separatist group mentality.¹⁰⁶ Is that the effect of multiculturalism in America? Does it through education rather than violence destroy the unified American culture? If it does what will be the end result for America? Michael Sells in defending Bosnian culture made a parallel with American culture. He stated that if there is no Bosnian culture because there is no common religion or any of the nineteenth century trappings of nationalism then America has no culture. If America has no culture then should not it be divided into ethnic enclave states as Bosnia almost was?¹⁰⁷

            Huntington was right to see multiculturalism as a threat. The premise of multiculturalism collides with the liberal democratic tradition of America and undermines the historic civic foundation. Multiculturalism chops at the roots of the United States national identity by replacing loyalty to the country with loyalty to the group. Even so it is hard to predict the future and therefore hard to determine how much of an existential threat multiculturalism poses to America. The nature of the threat depends on several things. The first is the nature of the impact it has on the minds of students. If it serves to foster and increase tolerance of diversity it can be a positive force. If it undermines loyalty and respect for America and fosters a group loyalty it could lead to either a change in the nature of our Constitutional democracy or it could lead to worse- inter ethnic conflict. This conflict does not have to be violent, but it could be political, economic or social. The various ethnic and racial groups in the United States could work to further their own group interests at the expense of others and undermine the common good and security of all as happened in Bosnia. This could lead to the rise of quasi independent city states, ethnic enclaves, or even the dissolution of the Union. Who will be willing to fight and die for a rump United States that only a few are loyal to?

Whatever the future, unfettered multiculturalism that challenges the notion of a nation built on individual rights will transform the United States into something different than it is today. The threat may result in exactly what some multiculturalists want: a changed social compact based on group rights. The problem with this type of social compact is that it provides little incentive for the members of the group to participate in greater society whether in its defense or in its governance. Citizenship becomes only a means for protection of group rights and privileges and gradually attachments to the larger society fall away.

            Multiculturalism is an attempt by individuals whose piece of the American dream has been deferred and who no longer see the system working for them to change the power structure in the democracy from one based on guarantees of individual rights to group rights. They believe that this will lead to a more perfect union and democracy. This was the goal of the various national groups in Yugoslavia and recent history has shown us the result.

Interestingly multiculturalists are trading individual liberty for security and diversity when security and liberty were created in the United States by the guarantees of individual liberty. They undermine the very foundation of tolerance for diversity. Only in liberal democracy can true open diversity thrive. There have been past evils done and liberties denied to members of certain groups, but the beauty of the American system as designed by the founders was that it was self correcting. The belief that “all men are created equal,” slavery, racial segregation, and denying women the right to vote could not long inhabit the same land. Equality over time vanquished all of these foes of democracy. The abolitionists, Civil Rights leaders, and suffragists all appealed to the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the ideals of liberty and equality enshrined in them to call for redress. All Americans should read Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and see that he did not appeal to multicultural principles of diversity, but to the logic and reason of American liberal democracy to do what America had promised to do and cash the “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir” that being “the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”¹⁰⁸

            What should be done then if indeed multiculturalism poses at least a threat to undermine the existing Constitutional individual rights and replace them with rights based on groups and at worst result in the dissolution of the United States? America can not do as Rousseau argued and force adherence to the ideals of America- that would be undemocratic. The answer lies in education, but first, America must continue to address the areas where individuals are not fully sharing in the American dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America should continue to be self-correcting and fix existing inequalities. Second, America should educate her citizenry to love and appreciate the good in her history and system of government as well as to be wary and not totally trusting and understand that even in a great country evil has been committed in the past and can be committed in the future. Finally, America should educate her citizenry to value the diversity that exists in the Union and realize that the American nation is truly one created out of many.

 

Notes

 

¹Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of American Power (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2002), 1.

      ²John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), 401.

      ³Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 307.

      ⁴Ibid, 305.

      ⁵Ibid, 306.

      ⁶Ibid, 306.

      ⁷Ibid, 306.

      ⁸Ibid, 305.

      ⁹John A. Perry and Erna K. Perry, Contemporary Society: An Introduction to Social Science (New York: HarperCollins, Publishers, 1991), 312.

      ¹⁰Ibid, 313.

      ¹¹Ibid, 314.

      ¹²Aristotle, The Politics, trans. T.A. Sinclair revised by Trevor J. Saunders (London: Penguin Books, 1981), 168-169.

      ¹³Ibid, 170.

      ¹⁴Sir Thomas More, Utopia, trans. Ralph Robinson, ed. Wayne A. Rebhorn (New York: Barnes & Nobles Classics, 2005), 81-82.

      ¹⁶Ibid, 90.

      ¹⁷Ibid, 90-91.

      ¹⁸Ibid, 93.

      ¹⁹Ibid,103.

      ²⁰Jean- Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, trans. and ed. Donald A Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), 24.

      ²¹Ibid, 26.

      ²²Ibid, 26.

      ²³Ibid, 73.

      ²⁴Ibid, 74.

      ²⁵Karl Marx and Friederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore, ed. Joseph Katz (New York: Washington Square Press, 1964), 88.

      ²⁶Ibid, 91.

      ²⁷Ibid, 91.

      ²⁸John P. McKay, Bennett D. Hill, and John Buckner, A History of Western Society, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), 673-675.

      ²⁹Mike Rose, Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America, 2d ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), xxv-xxvi.

      ³⁰Maxine Greene, The Public School and the Private Vision: A Search for America in Education and Literature (New York: Random House, 1965; New York: The New Press, 2007), 1.

      ³¹ Mike Rose, Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America, 2d ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 432.

      ³²Maxine Greene, The Public School and the Private Vision: A Search for America in Education and Literature (New York: Random House, 1965; New York: The New Press, 2007), 7.

      ³³Ray J. Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1931; New York: Russell & Russell, Inc, 1964.

      ³⁴Ibid, 147-148.

      ³⁵John Dewey, ed., The Living Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), 112.

      ³⁶Ibid, 119.

      ³⁷Thomas Jefferson, Monticello to John Adams, 28 October 1813, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. XIII, ed. Albert Ellery Bergh (Washington, D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905), 399-401.

      ³⁸Louis Johnson, Jefferson and Education: Present Program of the Armed Forces, 13 April 1950, in Vital Speeches of the Day, XVI, no. 14 (May 1, 1950), 418- 419.

      ³⁹Gordon E. Mercer, “Thomas Jefferson A Bold Vision for American Education,” International Social Science Review 68, 1 (Winter 1993): 20-21.

      ⁴⁰Ibid, 24-25.

      ⁴¹Samuel Harrison Smith, Remarks on Education: Illustrating the Close Connection between Virtue and Wisdom to Which is Annexed A System of Liberal Education, Philadelphia, 1798, 19. Available from Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans,1639-1800, Mississippi State University On Line Library.

      ⁴²Ibid, 25.

      ⁴³Lafitte du Courteil, Proposal to Demonstrate the Necessity of a National Institution in the United States for the Education of Children of Both Sexes, Philadelphia, 1797, 3. Available from Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans,1639-1800, Mississippi State University On Line Library.

      ⁴⁴Ibid, 5-24.

      ⁴⁵Samuel Knox, An Essay on the Best System of Liberal Education: Adapted to the Genius of the Government of the United States, Baltimore, 1799, 5-6. Available from Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans,1639-1800, Mississippi State University On Line Library.

      ⁴⁶Ibid, 8.

      ⁴⁷W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: A.C. McClurg & Company, 1903; New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 18.

      ⁴⁸Ibid, 48.

      ⁴⁹Ibid, 76.

      ⁵⁰C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, Revised Edition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960; 1968), 85-86.

      ⁵¹Ibid, 184.

      ⁵²John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan Company, 1916; New York: The Free Press, 1997), 4-5.

      ⁵³Ibid, 21.

      ⁵⁴Ibid, 21-22.

      ⁵⁵Ibid, 20.

      ⁵⁶Murry R. Nelson, Ed., The Social Studies in Secondary Education: A Reprint of the Seminal 1916 Report with Annotations and Commentaries (Washington, D.C.: National Council for the Social Studies, 1994), 9.

      ⁵⁷Shirley H. Engle, “Introduction,” The Social Studies in Secondary Education: A Reprint of the Seminal 1916 Report with Annotations and Commentaries (Washington, D.C.: National Council for the Social Studies, 1994), vii.

      ⁵⁸Murry R. Nelson, “The Social Contexts of the Committee on Social Studies Report of 1916,” The Social Studies in Secondary Education: A Reprint of the Seminal 1916 Report with Annotations and Commentaries (Washington, D.C.: National Council for the Social Studies, 1994): 73.

      ⁵⁹Ibid, 74.

      ⁶⁰Earle U. Rugg, “A National Council for the Social Studies,” originally printed in Historical Outlook (May 1921) reprinted in Social Studies 87, no. 2 (March/April 1996): 1.

      ⁶¹James J. Carpenter, “Jefferson’s Views on Education: Implications for Today’s Social Studies,” The Social Studies (July/August 2004): 141.

      ⁶²James A. Banks, “Diversity, Group Identity, and Citizenship in a Global Age,” Educational Researcher 37 no. 3 (April 2008): 131.

      ⁶³Ibid, 130.

      ⁶⁴Ibid, 131.

      ⁶⁵Ibid, 131.

      ⁶⁶Samuel Taylor, “The Challenge of ‘Multiculturalism’ in How Americans View the Past and the Future,” Journal of Historical Review 12, no. 2: 163.

      ⁶⁷James A. Banks, “Diversity, Group Identity, and Citizenship in a Global Age,” Educational Researcher 37 no. 3 (April 2008): 132.

      ⁶⁸Ibid, 134.

      ⁶⁹Ibid, 135.

      ⁷⁰Eduardo Manuel Duarte, “Expanding the Borders of Liberal Democracy: Multicultural Education and the Struggle for Cultural Identity,” Multicultural Education, 6, no. 1 (Fall 1998), 10.

      ⁷¹ National Council for the Social Studies, ”Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education.” (1976; Revised 1991). Available from http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/multicultural.

      ⁷²”Multicultural Education Introduction,” Integrating New Technologies Into the Methods of Education. Available from www.intime.uni.edu/multiculture/intro.htm.

      ⁷³John Raible and Jason G. Irizarry, “Transracialized selves and the emergence of post-white teacher identities,” Race Ethnicity and Education 10, no. 2 (July 2007), 194-195.

      ⁷⁴Lisa Delpit, Other People’s Children (New York: The New Press, 2006): 181.

      ⁷⁵Rick Sperling, “Service Learning as a Method of Teaching Multiculturalism to White College Students,” Journal of Latinos and Education 6, no. 4, 312-313.

      ⁷⁶ John Raible and Jason G. Irizarry, “Transracialized selves and the emergence of post-white teacher identities,” Race Ethnicity and Education 10, no. 2 (July 2007): 188.

      ⁷⁷Langston Hughes, “Dream Deferred.” available from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dream-deferred

      ⁷⁸Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Knoxville, TN: Whittle Books, 1991; New York: W.W. Norton: 1993): 94.

      ⁷⁹Elan Journo, “Multiculturalism and Diversity,” Buck’s County Courier Times, 26 September 2004, downloaded from www.aynrand.org.

      ⁸⁰Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster Incorporated, 1987; 1988): 26.

      ⁸¹Ibid, 33.

      ⁸²Ibid, 35-39.

      ⁸³Ibid, 35.

      ⁸⁴Ibid, 37.

      ⁸⁵E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy: What every American needs to know (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987; Vintage Books, 1988): 21

      ⁸⁶Ibid, 94.

      ⁸⁷Ibid, 12.

      ⁸⁸Ibid, 18.

      ⁸⁹ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Knoxville, TN: Whittle Books, 1991; New York: W.W. Norton: 1993): 16.

      ⁹⁰Ibid, 17.

      ⁹¹Ibid, 19.

      ⁹²Ibid, 134.

      ⁹³Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of American Power (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2002), 117.

      ⁹⁴Ibid, 117-118.

      ⁹⁵Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992; Free Press, 2006): 117- 118.

      ⁹⁶Robert D. Kaplan, An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America’s Future (New York: Random House, Inc., 1998; New York: Vintage Books, 1999): 338.

      ⁹⁷Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dream of the Post Cold War (New York: Random House, Inc., 2000; New York: Vintage Books, 2001): 54.

      ⁹⁸Ibid, 87.

      ⁹⁹ Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992; Free Press, 2006): 121.

      ¹⁰⁰Stevan M. Weine, When History is a Nightmare: Lives and Memories of Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999): 13.

      ¹⁰¹Ibid, 13.

      ¹⁰²Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995): 337.

      ¹⁰³Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996): 13.

      ¹⁰⁴Warren Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 1996; Times Books, 1999): 240.

      ¹⁰⁵Ibid, 244.

      ¹⁰⁶ Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996): 149- 154.

      ¹⁰⁷Ibid, 151-152.

      ¹⁰⁸Martin Luther King, Jr., ”I Have a Dream” delivered August 23, 1963 Washington, D.C., in Speeches that Changed the World compiled by Cathy Lowne (London: Bounty Books, 2005): 113- 119.

 

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