United States lacks multiculturalism

To Talk of Many Things

The diversity in ethnic and cultural around the country is worthy of enormous praise. It has enabled people of different backgrounds to bridge cultural gaps, and live harmoniously through the realization that they are not so different from one another — that human beings are human beings, regardless of ethnic root. I come from a very diverse Northern Virginia town — Annandale — where the variety in ethnic background greatly enhances this understanding.

But, can the benefits of ethnic and cultural diversity be overstated or distorted? Undoubtedly, yes.

The United States has attracted people from many cultural backgrounds to live within its borders for centuries. Today, we have an extraordinarily multifaceted populace with ethnic origins from all over the world. However, our country does not possess what some might call a "multicultural society." Our nation is unquestionably a multiracial and multiethnic community, but multicultural it is not.

A multicultural society is predicated on the proposition that people of different cultural roots are wholly wedded to those cultures and, thus, society must accommodate them by forgoing a single cultural identity. Instead, the various cultures in the United States must be separately upheld as equally emblematic of the nation.

This way of thinking is not congruent with America's actual overall identity. We in America have many ethnic groups, but only one culture — American. The concept is personified in the famous "melting pot model," where people of various ethnic backgrounds join together to create a distinctly American culture. It is through this one "American identity" that all of us remain united as a people.

To be sure, people who immigrate here often maintain their traditional customs, and there are many subcultures that exist. However, all these cultures are connected by a common national identity that qualifies all citizens as American.

Multiculturalism, on the other hand, often highlights our differences more than what we have in common. It does so based on the idea that treating all cultures as equally valid is the only way to show respect for differing backgrounds, but this is a fallacy.

One of the greatest problems with multiculturalist doctrine is its infinite capacity to over-generalize the virtues of cultural tolerance instead of examining them on a case-by-case basis. Many people can say, "We want to be tolerant of people of all cultural origins," while forgetting that the person and the culture can be two different things. We should recognize that our Western-based culture, though far from perfect, has given us a better society than the societies many other cultures have developed.

Western culture, for example, has enabled us substantially to reduce the spread of AIDS in our country because our culture is receptive to new ideas — namely — education in contraception and abstinence. In too many African nations, neither contraception nor abstinence is accepted as part of the culture, and the abhorrent treatment of women as merely second-class birth-givers has caused the AIDS plague to rage out of control.

In America, our culture has allowed us to accommodate people of so many ethnic backgrounds while living in peace with one another. In the former Yugoslavia, the wide variety of nationalities has created hatred, tyranny and war because, unlike in the United States, the different ethnicities have no common identity to unite them.

Americans should be grateful for the Western-based culture that gives us a much better life to lead.

It is easy to forget just how good we have it in this country with all the rights and privileges we take for granted. Sadly, multiculturalism too often spurns Western culture as domineering and thus of less value than others. A perfect example of this view of Western Culture would be when a proposed theatrical performance of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" comes under fire from outside critics for being too "Eurocentric." A blind devotion to promoting cultures outside of Western civilization leads to just this kind of foolishness.

What is remarkable about our country's culture is that it has succeeded where so many others have failed; it has managed to bring together people from a wide diversity of ethnic backgrounds while maintaining a national identity. It is because of this single American identity that people feel a part of the same nation and are able to coexist in peace. That in itself is a testament to the positive characteristics of the culture.

Jonathan Kelly is a junior political science major.