THE FAILURE OF MULTICULTURALISM

by Leonard Magruder

For years Nebraska has been one of the top teams in college football. So it is no surprise when Nebraska Assistant Coach Ron Brown was recruited by Stanford Univ. in California to be interviewed for the head coach position. He didn’t get very far. He was not discriminated against because he is black. Not at liberal Stanford. Brown’s problem at Stanford is that he is a Christian, apparently with rather firm beliefs on matters such as homosexuality and abortion. Said Alan Glenn, Assistant Athletic Director at Stanford, “Brown’s religion was definitely something that had to be considered. We have a very diverse community with a diverse alumni. Anything that would stand out that much is something that has to be looked at.”

Stanford prides itself in being in the vanguard of institutions which value “diversity” and “inclusion” .In fact it helped crystallize the movement to emphasize these ideas when on Jan. 15 , 1987, everyone, in a massive protest , started chanting “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Culture has got to go”, thereby launching the movement known as “multiculturalism.”

The Western canon, the generally accepted list of the greatest books of the West were now attacked as having been written by biased “dead white males” These books are generally based on universalism, the belief that there are universal truths that are potentially available to everybody. What Stanford now embraced was particularism, which says that what one may know is determined by the circumstances of one’s birth. Race, gender, and class became more important than ideas.

From this beginning there flowed out throughout the universities of America a whole new plague of totalitarian horrors, like “diversity”, “sensitivity training”, “political correctness”, “speech codes”, “dormitory re-education,” “deconstructionism”, and “gender feminism,” all under the general umbrella of “multiculturalism.”

That was 15 years ago. Lets take a look at a how it has all has turned out. Offhand, it looks like Stanford better hire every Christian it can find.

The brief comments that begin each section below are from “The Diversity Myth”, an almost definitive critique of multiculturalism by David Sacks and Peter Thiel, two former graduate students at Stanford University. (Independent Institute, $24.95) The book is especially recommended to students who wish to protect themselves from brainwashing by multiculturalists. Included are some other quotes, notably by Robert Bork, former Supreme Court nominee, along with comments by Mr. Magruder in parentheses, prefaced by LM.

(Sections of this article are reprinted with permission from the book , “The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance on Campus, by David Sacks and Peter Thiel. Copyright 1998. The Independent Institute , 100 Swan Way , Oakland , CA. 94621-1428;info@independent.org; )

Trustees, congressional representatives, alumni, and the general public have begun to perceive that the great multicultural experiment has brought the very opposite of higher learning. It has brought speech restrictions, a new kind of intolerance known as “political correctness” a hysterically anti-Western curriculum, the increasing politicization of student life, and campus polarization along racial and ethnic lines.

“It is impossible to imagine that academic inquiry flourishes where thought police abound. Indeed, the intellectual apparatus of the 60’s radicals now dominating the universities is built for intellectual oppression, not for inquiry” -Robert Bork

“Of the 55 top-ranked universities in the nation, not a single one requires a course in American history, and only 3 require a course in Western Civilization”-The American Council of Trustees and Alumni

Underneath a glossy veneer of open-ended and utopian rhetoric, multiculturalism depends upon very specific values to operate, and at Stanford the values that inform this process happen to be the radical values of the 60’s. Most of the multicultural faculty and administrators were student activists in the late l960’s.

( LM- Professors who were campus radicals in the 60’s love to begin the semester by bragging to students how idealistic they were in their betrayal of the 40 million people of Southeast Asia. The truth is, although they cloaked themselves in an aura of great moral purpose, the war protestors gave aid and comfort to the enemy, marched under the flag of the Viet Cong, allowed Hanoi to dictate their agenda, and turned their backs on the American soldier when they returned. Now they run the universities, teaching students how to betray the West, and to cover up their earlier betrayal they write history books riddled with lies about the Vietnam War and their role in it.).)

When a stray look can lead to a charge of sexual harassment or an ill-timed joke to a charge of a racial slur, careers and lives are needlessly destroyed. Hapless innocents get thrown out of housing, lose their jobs because of “insensitivity.” or spend years fighting frivolous lawsuits. The multiculturalist hunt for nonexistent “oppressors” who can be held responsible for all of America’s ills leads to the vilification of innocents .

“Said Brown University “sensitivity” consultant Donald Kae, “If you are feeling comfortable or normal then you are probably oppressing someone, whether that person is a woman, or a gay or whatever. We probably won’t rid our society of racism until everyone strives to be abnormal.” (LM- What horse—- !).

The speech code never had to be enforced because it had not really been needed, at least not for the stated reason of combating an epidemic of fighting words and similar abuse. In March 1995, the Santa Clara County Superior Court agreed with the students and found Stanford’s speech code unconstitutional. Because of the ruling, Stanford students can now speak as freely as the residents of neighboring Palo Alto.

(LM- Judge returns basic American freedoms to student victims of multiculturalist tyranny. What a hoot ! Free Students Now from Multiculturalist Oppression! Turn on to Truth! Tune out the lies! Drop Out of Multiculturalism !)

In a widely discussed editorial in “The Stanford Daily,” columnist Andrea Park described the ritual clitorectomies performed in some African cultures but stopped short of condemning the barbaric practice. As a feminist Park wished to condemn the custom; but after much “soul-searching”, Park wrote that she realized she could not judge other cultures by her own standards. “Is it relevant that I, an outsider, may find the practice cruel ? As hard as it is for me to admit, the answer is no. To treat the issue as a matter for feminist outrage would be to assume that one society, namely mine, has a privileged position from which to judge the practices of another.”

(LM- How does one live with such hypocrisy ? This is a perfect example of the moral coma brought about by the cultural relativism embraced by multiculturalists.)

“Radical feminism is the most destructive and fanatical movement to come down to us from the 60’s, it certainly deserves its own place in the halls of intellectual barbarism…women’s studies programs and courses are abysmal swamps of irrational dogma and hatred.” Bork

It is worth noting that all of these efforts have not had a positive impact on the level of AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, or abortions at Stanford, relative to American society at large. More than 100 Stanford women still have unwanted pregnancies each year, of which about 90 percent end in abortion. The resulting abortion rate at Stanford is about twice the national average. And as for AIDS, the rate of death at Stanford is perhaps four to five times that of the relatively “uneducated” society at large .One university residence now even has coed group showers.

(LM- What an inspiring example for American society multiculturalism is setting!)

“It is remarkable how vigorously the modern intellectual defends the descent of popular culture not merely into vulgarity but into obscenity… multiculturalism is barbarism, and it is bringing us to a barbarous epoch.”-Bork

In recent years race relations on campuses have taken a turn for the worse. King’s dream is rarely mentioned and the races remain divided There are even separate commencement ceremonies for Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans. It is not inconceivable that a minority student, if so inclined, could spend all four years at Stanford without ever eating, living, speaking, or graduating with someone from a different race.

“Multiculturalists have turned Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream into a nightmare. He asked that his children “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” But multiculturalists say, “Judge me by the color of my skin for therein lies my identity and my place in the world.” -Bork

“The result of multiculturalism can only be the fragmentation , resegregation, and tribalization of American life.”- the noted liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

The Western religious tradition seeks to redeem all of humanity, not just select subgroups. The multiculturalists, by contrast, are interested in the rehabilitation only of those of a particular race, gender, class, or sexual preference who happen to share their ideological commitments. Religious Studies 8 , “Religions in America”, devotes whole lectures to Shamanism, the Peyote Cult, and the Kodiak sect, but not one to the Catholic Church.

(LM- Multiculturalism is a massive assault on the Judeo-Christian values of the West at the very time that discoveries in physics and molecular biology are lending new support to natural theology and theism. Leftist academic thugs, however, continue to carry on the spirit of the 60’s by beating up dissenting guest speakers to keep students ignorant of the issues)

“The American university has become a culture of forbidden questions.” Leon Botstein – President of Bard College.

Despite its well-earned reputation as a school with perhaps the most competitive admissions process in the country, classwork at Stanford in many ways no longer demands the intellectual equivalent of sweat. Of all letter grades granted to students, about half are A’s, 39 % are B’s, only 10% are C’s and about 1% are D’s.

(LM- Pay-offs for buying into the multiculturalist agenda. As a college professor on three campuses over l5 years I’d say the true average grade of American students is a C minus. The juxtaposition of inflated grades with declining S.A.T. scores clearly exposes how educators, steeped in the values of the 60’s, are lying to both students and parents.)

“All have won and all must have prizes.” The Dodo Bird in “Alice in Wonderland”.

Western civilization and classical liberal arts education truly are dead, killed off in the same multicultural epidemic that expunged “dead white males” from the reading lists. To be certain, the buildings are well maintained, the lawns are well watered, the football team plays for cheering throngs of fans, the faculty and the staff are well paid, and the students attend classes and receive diplomas. The institution can keep going for a while on autopilot. But the heart of the university’s humanities program – involving the quest for universal truth – has decayed into dust.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
Everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Did we think it only rhetoric when Yeats asked us; “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” In multiculturalism we approach the logical outcome of the campus values of the 60’s- fascism.

Art after Art goes out, and all is Night
See skulking Truth to her old Cavern fled
Mountains of Casuistry heap’d o’er her head!
Philosophy, that lean’d on Heav’n before
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more
Lo! Thy dread Empire, Chaos ! is restored
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And Universal Darkness buries all. “Duncaid” -Alexander Pope

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