May 19, 2004
Maryland and multiculturalism
My most recent blogs have looked at media coverage of the remarks on immigration and assimilation by Maryland's current Gov. Robert Ehrlich and former Gov. William Donald Schaefer.
Eight days after I noted the reckless inability of liberal critics to distinguish between the words multiethnic and multicultural, we finally have a catch-up op-ed in the Baltimore Sun, The 'multicultural' lie by H. George Hahn:
Rushing to dilute the curriculum further with "multicultural" course requirements, colleges across the country, like many of those outraged by Mr. Ehrlich's and Mr. Schaefer's remarks, fail to understand that American culture is English. Seeing America as a diverse nation, they conclude that diversity is its most important truth. And then, seeing diversity as multiethnic, they conclude that America is multicultural.It is not, of course, for a culture means far more than eating ethnic foods, celebrating ethnic holidays, singing in ethnic bands and donning ethnic costumes to dance at ethnic festivals. Are not the most important cultural truths about America crystallized in its Western heritage as transmitted by the English experience?
That experience is sixfold, as Russell Kirk says in his book,
America's British Culture: first and crucially, the English language; a history evolving from Britain; a legal system based on English common law; political ideas and structures patterned on the British model; a literary heritage that's British to the core; and social ideals rooted in Britain.
Of course, I broadly agree with Hahn's point that the United States is multiethnic but not multicultural.
But I think his article oversimplifies matters.
As someone who has lived in England, grew up in Maryland (part of the Crescent of New Africa, as discussed in my first book, 
An Amateur's Guide to the Planet), and traveled much of the world, one of the points stressed in An Amateur's Guide to the Planet is how ancestral memories play roles even after many generations in several of the world's diasporas, including Greater China, Greater Indonesia and Greater Africa.
Cultural survivals brought to the New World by Africans (generosity, forgiveness and a belief in redemption, see p. 97), the Irish (a reverence for books, reading and academic excellence, see p. 54), Germans (a love of recreation and weekends) and the Chinese (mercantile talent), among many others, make the United States hugely different from Britain.
In fact, older editions of the 
Encyclopedia Britannica argue that Irish (not English) immigration to the United States provided the momentum that made our nation English- rather than German-speaking. So although English is our national language, our American identity is something to my mind a grander achievement, for it merrily rejected many negative aspects of Britain and in fact Europe, and added good bits of string from wherever in the world they could be found.
The differences between the United States and Britain make for huge and unanticipated culture shock for tourists and expatriates alike, and the comparative ease of the tourist in, say, Ireland or the Netherlands demonstrates the more relaxed aspects of American culture compared to Britain's.
American culture is a work in progress, and will no doubt continue its inexorable sifting of additional worthy elements of Hispanic and South and Southeast Asian cultures brought by the newest immigrants. However, U.S.'s newest arrivals may have to learn that the United States, much as it rejected King George III's Upper Class Twit arrogance, will also have little patience for wholescale attempts to force an abandonment of its common language and its principles. American culture has always been free to change organically, but its precious idealistic core needs to be defended. As Hahn notes:
Though some multiculturalists would actually exchange courses in Shakespeare for ones in healing chants, few would replace automobiles with rickshaws or computers with signaling drums. And none would visit a witch doctor for coronary care, countenance female infanticide or clitorectomies, cast themselves on their husband's funeral pyre, applaud bloody coups and despots, be tolerant of cruel and unusual punishment, laudatory about theocracies and open-minded about slavery.Yet many multiculturalists teach, in the cause of liberal open-mindedness, as if they would grant cultures still practicing such customs a moral equity with - if not superiority to - Western ways. And having themselves studied Western civilization not so long ago in college, they would deny that privilege to their own students. Their ethical compass spins wildly.
The American compass points steadily to the classical West, via England. Our national culture believes in equality before the law, due process, civil rights, freedom to speak, to worship, to keep arms and defend ourselves, to own property, to vote, to move about freely.
P.S. Here's a funny line from Michelle Malkin on Schaefer's and Ehrlich's remarks: "Befuddled professors and reporters view the controversy as some kind of calculated political maneuver by Ehrlich, instead of a rare outbreak of common sense." As I noted earlier, The Sun published an article, "Ehrlich has no apology as immigrants protest" that portrayed the discussion of a matter crucial to the future identity of the United States as some sort of political grab by the governor toward the whiter suburban counties.
