Multiculturalism and its Critics

Schlesinger: Multiculturalism Threatens the Intellectual Basis of National Unity

"To Deny the Essentially European Origins of American Culture is to Falsify History."

"We Invite the Fragementation of our own Culture into a Quarrelsome Spatter of Enclaves, Ghettoes and Tribes."

"The Rejection of the Melting Pot Points the Republic in the Direction of Incoherence and Chaos."

Takakiís Defense of Multiculturalism

The Real Threat to National Unity is "the Continuing Economic and Racial Inequality in the United States."

What We Need is Multiculturalism That Helps Us "to Comprehend the Dynamic, Dialectical Process in which Different Groups Came Together from Different Shores to Create a New Society in North America."

Lowe: the Dangers of Liberal Multiculturalism

Additive Approaches:

Serve to Protect Western Intellectual & Cultural Traditions from Critical Analysis

Mask the Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Inequities

"Depend on ëForgettingí the Historically Produced Spatial Discipline and Geographical Separations and Ghettoizations of Black Americans and the Poorest of These immigrant Groups."

Lowe's two Examples of the Potential Problems of Liberal Multiculturalism: Ethnic Studies & Multicultural Cultural Festivals

If ethnic studies and muliticultural festivals remain onlly additions to the traditional western-oriented curricula and/or cultural life of a university/community/nation, they run the risk of becoming simply "opening acts"/"side shows" to the real story: the unchanged narrative of the Western/American cultural tradition. And by figuratively "standing next" to the unchanged Western narrative, they effectively legitimate the exclusive nature of that tradition. "It's okay that the main content of the curricula/cultural program remains western-oriented because we also offer so much "multicultural" content.