Part Twelve:  The Sinister Side of Multiculturalism—and How It’s Negatively Influencing American Culture

Although the majority of Americans believe people are free to pursue their own religious and political agendas, postmodernists (see parts seven and eight) exert tremendous pressure on Western societies to comply with their freedom-stifling ideologies. This is vividly seen in multiculturalism and its enforcer, political correctness (we’ll explore PC in next week’s blog).

Multiculturalism teaches that no single culture is superior to another. Thus, one culture’s beliefs, traditions, and customs are just as legitimate as any other culture. Moreover, no culture has a right to denigrate the beliefs and practices of another culture—or try to suppress their beliefs and practices. In reality, however, multiculturalism includes more than societies being composed of various distinct cultures or ideologies, as in Europe and America. Nor does it merely suggest that people should seek to understand, appreciate, and tolerate other cultures. Rather multiculturalism is loaded with philosophical, educational, social, and political goals and ambitions designed to advance their ideological agenda. In particular, they insist that dominant cultures, such as American and European, should not impose their values or religious beliefs on less-dominant cultures and minority groups within their own cultures.

This philosophy is particularly prevalent and propagated in Western universities and colleges. Researcher and author William Watkins comments on this:

Under the guise of a new approach to education, they [multiculturalists]  want to rid the classroom of what they call a eurocentric, ethnocentric, white-male-dominated, racist, heterosexist education. The emphasis on Western civilization—its history, religious foundations, intellectual and political movements, and achievements—must be marginalized in the curriculum and radically reinterpreted. In addition, they want to inaugurate studies that deride the West as bigoted and oppressive, as they uphold non-Western societies and other “oppressed peoples” as monuments to human fulfillment and keys to freedom. (The New Absolutes, 194)

Students who disagree with this philosophy, who challenge its inconsistency and irrationality—and yes, hypocrisy—are pigeonholed as narrow-minded and intolerant (i.e., racists, homophobes, male chauvinists, and so on).

Multiculturalism errs in many ways, but perhaps most notable is its assumption that every cultural ideology is equally legitimate. As Christian apologists Francis Beckwith and Greg Koukl correctly point out, “Some cultures, like some individuals, have discovered more knowledge and truth than others.” Referring to economist   George Reisman at Pepperdine University, they later add:

      [Reisman] argues that the trends toward “multicultural education” and “diversity” as well as critiques of “Eurocentric” or “Western” values are misguided and ill-informed.

     For one thing, these trends imply that all cultures have contributed to human progress and knowledge equally.  Reisman argues that this is false, since Western values—whether scientific, philosophical, economic, or moral—have proved to be vastly superior. Those societies that have embraced Western values, whether geographically in the Far East or in the West, reveal this.” (Relativism; Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, 81, 94.)

In sum, multiculturalism, especially as it plays out in university and college campuses, stifles progress and represses freedoms. ©

Next week’s blog post will explain how political correctness—the enforcer of multiculturalism—is exerting tremendous pressure on Western societies to comply with it freedom-stifling language restrictions.