The path to a middle ground between apathy and guilt has to deal with multiculturalism’s tendency to categorize people and treat them according to the category they’re in.
Categorization sucks. Biologists now speculate that the reason it took so long for humans to come up with the theory of evolution is that we are either hardwired or programmed by our use of language to categorize objects. The insight that led to the theory of evolution (and then to systems theory and behaviorism) depended on looking at a flock of birds and, instead of seeing them as all the same or all nearly the same, seeing them as all different. Natural selection operates on these differences. Even people who have no intellectual resistance to the idea of evolution can have trouble with this concept—they imagine nature selecting one species and not another. Putting animals and plants in categories and treating them as if they are all the same inside the category hindered the development of biology by untold centuries. Let’s not allow the categorization of humans to have the same effect on psychology and political science.
Because it is useful to learn about other cultures as a way to evaluate our own, and because all cultures have done so much harm by trumpeting their own virtues and their own definitions of normalcy, multiculturalism is reluctant to condemn any cultural attitude—except those of white guys. Cultural relativism is useful for evaluating the culpability of an individual—criminal behavior in a criminal neighborhood often tells us little about the person and a lot about the neighborhood—but it is stupid to honor a practice just because a lot of people do it. Think of culture as “some other people.” This liberates you from qualms about criticizing another culture. I met a Chinese woman who hated herself for having big feet (big feet, you could say, ran in her family). She said that in Chinese culture, big feet are ugly. Instead of saying her feet offended her culture, she needed to say only that her feet offended some other people. This quickly opens the way to finding yet another group of Chinese people who were not offended by her feet. If over a third of Utahans voted for Obama—if even a staunchly stereotyped group like Utahans can show that much diversity—I’m pretty sure you can find a lot of Chinese people who are not obsessed with small feet. Making girls feel bad about themselves because they have big feet is wrong. It’s easier to say that some other people are wrong than to say that a culture is wrong. But if you don’t know that clitorectomies and honor killings are wrong, then you are too lost even to use the words right and wrong. I realize that there are people all over the world who would say the same thing about me for not thinking that female sexuality is dangerous and vile. But you and I both know which of those perspectives is wrong. You don’t have to say, clitorectomy is wrong because; you don’t have to appeal to a rule; you can just say that it’s wrong.
What multiculturalism also gets wrong is its general, but not complete, failure to appreciate American culture. In some academic classes, for example, students are instructed to write essays about their ethnic heritage, but they’re not allowed to choose American. American students can choose Italian, or Irish, or even English, but American is not counted as an ethnicity. I assume Canadian is also forbidden. I have two coffee cups in my office, one with a picture of Fenway Park, and one with the Bill of Rights. I like being an American—racism, warmongering, scientific stupidity, and strutting patriotism notwithstanding.
Enlightenment values have made America and its progeny the best places in the world to live by any reasonable standard of measurement (except weather). And it was white guys who championed Enlightenment values of scientific inquiry, critical thinking, free trade, civil liberty, separation of church and state, and above all the free exchange of ideas. (It was, of course, white guys who stood in their way, but so what?) It was white guys who founded a country on suspicion of power, the consent of the governed, intolerance of corruption, separation of church and state, the right to self-expression, and the right to complain about the status quo. This last is under-appreciated, in my opinion. The First Amendment guarantees the right to complain—to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Complaining about the party line by the marginalized is the essence of what multiculturalism should be about; complaints lead to change and inclusion, not just if they’re acted on, but even if they’re only voiced. Only those who had not been allowed to complain could have thought to include this as a basic right, but the health of every group, every individual, every society, depends on a feedback loop between the dissatisfied and the powerful.
Though undoubtedly racist and sexist and homophobic at first and in many ways still, the structure of divided government and the Bill of Rights was easily applied to women and blacks (and is in the process of being applied to gays) once they were recognized by the normals as fully human, a recognition sped up by the free marketplace of ideas—and by communication technology, itself a child of the free-thinking that produced science. Women are better off in the democracies than anywhere else in the world or in history. There’s a strain of feminism that asks whether women should secede from the multicultural agenda, since all other cultures besides Western or Westernized democracies are so awful. Black people, though living in a country built on slavery and steeped in racism, are better off by any reasonable measure in America than in black Africa. This is because of their own industry, talent, and intelligence, but these traits needed a society built on Enlightenment values—a society built by white guys—to flourish.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 
Excellent series of posts Michael! I have thoroughly enjoyed them and wanted to join the conversation.
You briefly touched on the issue of power within multiculturalism seminars. I wanted to expand the thought and address a couple of difficulties with multiculturalism in the classroom: power and class size.
There is already a power differential that takes place within the classroom. The professor/teacher/seminar leader holds the power of grade giving in a classroom setting. This can directly or indirectly cause the students to behave differently within the Multicultural class. Students may feel they need to voice or write certain ideas or likewise self censor others. Rather than get a raw perspective and free flowing conversation, the idea that what you say can affect your grade, can lead to students simply playing role in the classroom. Grades are important but grades in a multicultural course(s) can be even more important. A student who has straight A’s in every course except multiculturalism may raise the eyebrow of a potential internship supervisor? Certain questions regarding the student’s attitude toward multiculturalism may be questioned. In the hyper-competitive environment that is Internship and later the Post Doc applications, questioning a person’s approach to multiculturalism can doom an applicant. Therefore, some students may decide that even if they disagree with certain aspects of what their professor says, it is not worthwhile to openly or publicly make those objections known. Rather it is better to nod affirmatively, echo the professor’s thoughts in classroom discussion and later in the written assignments.
The second issue of class size can also effect the quality and perhaps quality of differing opinion. The larger the group the less likely it is that differing opinions will get voiced. We are all aware of the notions of group think and social referencing theory. It is a potentially scary situation to voice a differing opinion regarding multiculturalism, in a group of 30 people, even if they are 30 people you know. Therefore, students who may have differing opinions will choose to be silent rather than joint he discussion.
While I applaud the APA for encouraging and later requiring school’s to include multiculturalism in the curriculum, I wonder if the current approach is the best way to accomplish the goal. I would suggest addressing it, when appropriate in each class. Whether it is a class that deals with assessment, therapy, theory, etc there are always opportunities to address multiculturalism. Build it into each course as opposed to artificially segregating it into a couple of classes. I would also suggest creating small discussion groups (like Voices) to foster discussion. Limiting the groups to a handful of participants and removing it graded aspect would allow
faculty and students could sit together and have more honest and open discussions.
Thanks for the input. I had a few reactions, mainly enhancements of what you said. Regarding power, I agree completely, but I would like to emphasize that pointing to real-world effects of the professor’s power (like grades and internship letters), while relevant and important, shouldn’t downplay the professor’s power to define the situation, that is, to have the last word on whether or not the student is fit to do clinical work, on whether the student is a racist. Even if there were no real-world effects, this effect of losing face would be extremely powerful.
I agree about class size. Another way of saying it is that in any group, the norm becomes the commonality, and the larger the group, the more likely that the perceived commonality is something other than all being human (because it’s hard to imagine that everyone is fully authorized to be there–because it’s unlikely that so many people are behaving normatively). It’s hard enough sitting alone in the quiet of one’s study (or sitting with a good therapist) to accept all the ideas one person has!
As to curriculum, I think there is no good answer. If everyone were sophisticated, then each class could include multiculturalism as a lens for analyses. But some students have rarely thought of multiple perspectives, racism, and oppression, so they have to be introduced to it rather bluntly. But then the introduction becomes a set of marching orders. Sigh.