Essay About Multiculturalism Is The Aim

Now I confess to more than a bit of puzzlement over all this. American free enterprise is a clear victor in the struggle for what we once called the minds and hearts of the people.

Now I confess to more than a bit of puzzlement over all this. American free enterprise is a clear victor in the struggle for what we once called the minds and hearts of the people.

The American Council on Education, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching all agree that the problem of coercion from the politically correct is far less prevalent than the rising numbers of incidents of racial intolerance, homophobia, and sexism.2 So we puzzle about how the issue of multiculturalism got turned into "Left-wing Mc Carthyism" or "Fascism of the Left." But the issue of political correctness may be something of a red herring.

At the heart of the attack on multiculturalism lies a concern not for rights but for community.

Who has not participated in debates over revising the curriculum to meet the changing needs of students with new demographic profiles?

Who has not written and read reviews of the several books that indict campuses as hotbeds of political correctness?

To its opponents the idea of what constitutes America seems to be at stake; the meaning conjured up when we think of our nation is threatened.

That meaning is intimately tied to ideas about the nature of Western civilization and the particular humanistic values it is said to represent.

And we are engaged in a bitter debate over multiculturalism. Unemployment insurance, sexual harassment, national health care, abortion rights, family leave, civil rights, and a newly virulent conservatism are all burning issues of the moment.

None of them has occupied our daily thoughts more than issues of multiculturalism.

Who has not watched as "Firing Line," "Nightline,' "Mc Neil-Lehrer" and other television programs have each in turn provided a forum for debate?

And who has not noted with pain or pleasure the emergence of an oppositional group in the form of Teachers for a Democratic Culture?