AMERICAN
CULTURE: Melting Pot or Stone Soup?
Multiculturalism
Doctrine
asserting value of different cultures coexisting within single society;
Globally,
vision of cultural diversity deliberately fostered and protected
“Americans are
not a narrow tribe. Our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a
thousand noble currents all pouring into one” Herman Melville
Multiculturalism is: A ruling idea of American culture
Diversity is one of the highest American values
à
The first
principle
of Multiculturalism is the equality of all cultures
Measures to deal with the increasing immigration:
until
1790 no measures
1840: Castle Garden was built as an advice center in New York
1892: Ellis Island was built as the primary processing center in New York
1917: first laws: exclusion of Asians, requirement of literacy
1921/24: limitation quotes for each country outside the western
hemisphere
(300.000/165.000 immigrants a year)
1965: waiting lists after hemisphere quotes
(1978
abolished)
today: ordinary 675.000 immigrants each year
Risks of
Multiculturalism: Theses for a discussion
Richard
Bernstein in a recent publication "Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and
the Battle for America's Future" advances the following picture. He charges that
'ideological multiculturalism' has brought about 'a great inversion in
American intellectual life'.
He continues: 'the threat of intellectual
tyranny now comes from the left, and it now has to do with collective guilt, an
overweening moralism, and multiculturalism. The danger to such things as free
speech and genuine diversity of opinion is no longer due to conservatism; it is
due to the triumph of a modish, leftist, moralistic liberalism.'
In a short
thesis: When a false picture of Multiculturalism gets popular, there’s the risk
of misunderstandings. The equality could change into a thing, that doesn’t
accepts questions against the minority culture.
This implies an
anti-multiculturalism-wave opposite to a mainstream-multiculturalism-wave
