In his book The Disuniting of America, Schlesinger has argued that multiculturalism has produced a “cult of ethnicity [which] has reversed the movement of American history, producing a nation of minorities” (30). As Rhodes rightly points out, the problem is not with minority or majority status. There is nothing wrong per se in having a reasonable level of pride in one’s ethnic heritage. But what is tragic is the perception that the basic American experience is membership in one or another ethnic group, with the result that instead of trying to seek common ground with the majority culture, it has been more normative “to declare one’s experience of ‘alienation from an oppressive, white, patriarchal, racist, sexist society’” (30-31). This cult of ethnicity “further isolates us in our ethnic enclaves and ‘nourishes a culture of victimization and a contagion of inflammable sensitivities” (31). There was a time when America celebrated the great “melting pot.” Now it praises “the unmeltable ethnics.” Ironically, as Schlesinger observes, multicultural ideology as a reaction against the ethnocentrism of the majority culture has developed its own ethnocentrism, increasingly referring only to non-Western, nonwhite cultures.
To help his readers understand modern America, Lind invites them to take a walk through an imaginary museum. They find in it
many beautiful and ornate rooms, each celebrating a distinct heritage and culture but with no entrance or exit to any of the other rooms. In order to go to another room, you first must go into the main gallery. But when you come to the main gallery, to which all the rooms are connected, there is nothing at all – it is absolutely empty, much in the way there is nothing at the center of Multicultural America to unite it” (32-33).
In effect the continuing modern erosion of Judaic-Christian values in Western cities is an ‘emptying of the main gallery’ and, therefore, a recipe for divisional disaster. What furniture and artefacts do New Atheists and others responsible for this onslaught propose to bring into the main gallery?
Posted October 18, 2010
www.facetofaceintercultural.com.au
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