There is de facto multiculturalism and there is ideological multiculturalism. Ideological multiculturalism is not okay by me. This is the kind of multiculturalism where it says, “you can’t say” whatever is to be said regarding cultural differences, and that if one already know where you’re from one knows who you always already are. It adheres to a really dumb version of what it is said, “better to say nothing about your ‘culture’ in order that it might offend others or even you.” When I have met others from other cultures, I have always been sensitive to their ways. Yet in ignorance, no matter what I have said, the person from elsewhere has been quite able to defend himself and educate me. Now, Howard Zinn and Michael Parenti on the other hand say all cultural relations (from the Anglo-American point of view) are brutal and always already oppression, racism and imperialism. I would say in response that even if Western ways simply involved war, racism and oppression, my friends from across the globe had already recognized the truth of so-called Western ways. We were able to be friends despite history and the convention of language. They understood me and me them. For all of the imperialism I was able to make friends, and it had nothing to with the degrading terms like racism and oppression.
But certain ideologies want you to question the possibility of friendship across language and culture. This is the kind of analysis that gives you a sociological definition in the abstract and then allegedly “proves” itself in newspaper examples of it after the fact. This apparently is exemplary of a scientific definition—even if it exemplifies something so nuanced as racism. You must live in terms of the scientific term—so you must be a racist as a consequence. I think this defines the religion of positivism. For instance, according to social science studies, status relationships deal with perceived issues of what is considered to be honored and there are some examples, e.g. politicians, rich businessmen, Hollywood celebrities, etc. who exemplify this trend of status.One need only look at the power these types have. Apparently the “power” such possess can be measured scientifically in the kind of legislation that Congress passes. As long as one memorizes the social science terms and internalizes these things as reality, then one can claim to be a scientist. All those suckers who don’t know fancy terms like “status” fall for phony distinctions that snake-oil salesmen of right and wrong sell as snake-oil. Snake-oil like God, natural right and other such socio-historical ideological constructions. If only they had learned their Max Weber in the simplified, dumbified and Americanized social science by Robert Merton and Talcott Parsons then they would know that abstractions like class, status, and power are reality, and that we the social scientists have all figured out. We the social scientists can even measure it—studies show. These studies ought to guide public policy because who wants stupidity guiding the most imprtant policies? And we ought to rule with what our studies show.
Apparently all these facts will tell us what is good. In this way social science will bridge the gap of is and ought, even if social science remains scientific and understood as a science which in terms of its peer reviewed methods shows the truth only in terms of value-free fact. We scientists have the knowledge of the facts that undergird the good. Who would ever question out probity?
Nowadays, if one names Darwin, then one has REAL authority, because such truth of biology is the truth of all things—even though one has a hard time of moving from the physis of matter in motion to the idea of the living local motion of bios. Give me the structure of the human brain and I can tell you everything that matters. This inquiry will tell us the good as much as Socrates’ pre-Socratic Anaxagorean studies of things beneath and above the earth gave him knowledge of the good.
So I mention de facto multiculturalism not to be hip, but only because I have met and have a good friendship with a Korean American Studies PhD candidate. You could say that he was a self-hating Korean in studying America, but I learned much about the greatness of Korean culture by being friends with this man. I learned much about America from him. Such an accusation is a great insult to my friend who was much more learned in the history of American politics and culture than most of your typical Americans—even if he lives in faraway Seoul. I have also been friends with Mexican pizza delivery drivers, French students of laboratory science of viruses, Nepali students of computer science, Cambodian students of political philosophy, French students of film studies, let alone brilliant friends from outlandish places like Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Marlboro, Massachusetts. My favorite is a Chinese ethnic who by way of the Philippines and Guatemala claims Oaxaca, Mexico as his home even if he lives and teaches in Texas, USA. My friend from Shanghai is not only a good economist, but a wise woman.
I too have also studied up at Oxford (and traveled throughout Europe) and while there I met a wonderful girl from Basel, Switzerland. She was a pianist who played Bach but was also studying Italian in order to read Dante in the original.
I suppose I have many friends who “happen to be . . . ” something other than my friends and acquaintances who happen to be from the USA. Some would say that this account is as racist as calling an African American articulate. But for me it is personal and I don’t see it that way at all. But the powers of critical race studies think otherwise. So be it.
Nonetheless, I’m not sure outside a personal level what multiculturalism is in its ideological motivations is expecting me to celebrate. I have been lucky enough to know people from all over the globe. I have been lucky enough to travel in Latin America and throughout Europe. Nowhere once was I required to make good for my “multicultural” bona fides. When I didn’t understand things of other’s ways I shut the hell up. I didn’t judge. Most of the time I enjoyed what I experienced.
But apparently in my person and speaking as I do in this manner I am exemplary of a larger cultural, political, economic, historical force called “America” which in theory represents the worst thing that could ever happen to humanity. I speak of friendship, but I am apparently naive. I should learn to see myself in terms of the abstraction that James Ceaser brilliantly identified as “America” in terms of its haters. Apparently I must join that hate in order not to be seduced by the charms of my so-called dear friends. But I have a hard time doing that—and by the way, so do my friends.
I never stated the matter as Cyrus (or was it Cambyses?—if so, even better) according to Herodotus who said custom is king, and no-one ever expected me to. I was lucky in that my friends and acquaintances understood nature too. Fire too burns in Persia. Friends who understand nature are the best friends. They tend to look upon their own customs in an ironic manner, and they are open to the truth too.
So popular multiculturalism whereby we must ignorantly celebrate other cultures and hate our own is really stupid. The multiculturalism whereby we can’t judge certain principles and practices of others is stupid too—but I will admit that one must know what one is talking about before one so judges. Regardless, I hate stupid multiculturalism whereby we can all eat tamales or fried rice and wonder why there was ever warfare in the past. I refuse to blink like a last man and state that all the world in the past was mad before our own mind numbing and leveling stupid multiculturalism as a cosmopolitanism of eunuchs and college administrators (even if they turn out to be the same thing).
Save me from the ideological conformity of multiculturalism.
