OPINION & EDITORIAL
Multicultural organizations emphasize politics of difference
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Also by Sam Clegg:
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- Manning or O'Hagan: Do you want apathy or lies? (March 27, 2008)
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by Sam Clegg
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
I’ve been waiting a long time for a chance to reiterate and clarify a column of mine from last semester, a column that took an opposing position on the issue of university-implemented racial diversity. So when College Jeopardy! celeb Suchita Shah offered to do a point-counterpoint column with me, I was honored. I also saw an opportunity to make another inquiry into a system that, as I asserted last semester, widens the imaginary lines between us into chasms.
In my earlier column, I used financial evidence regarding the amount of money spent on Plan 2008 and the Creating Community Initiative to indicate we were financing goals that were fundamentally immoral. I stand by that. This time, however, I am hoping to focus on another segment of this unnecessary system of mandated diversity: “multicultural” student groups.
Asking this simple question can best approach the issue of the relevance of such organizations: In their own words, what is the mission of these organizations? The objective of one of the best-funded and most well-known organizations dedicated to students of color — the Multicultural Student Center — is to create an environment in which differences can be celebrated and understanding between students of color and their white counterparts can be raised.
But why then is MSC handing out Jimmie Hatz Sexually Transmitted Disease awareness pamphlets, pamphlets with a supposed emphasis on the hip-hop community that feature a black man and black woman, with the woman dressed up as a scantily-clad prostitute?
It is painfully easy to recognize the absurd implications behind the argument that students of color are more likely to comprehend an issue simply because the subject literature panders to their supposed appearance-based cultural preferences. And understanding, if that is the aim toward which the MSC strives, won’t be accomplished by constantly reminding us we are black or white and our intimate preferences are expected to follow from the aforementioned color.
Such a pamphlet is indicative of the message multicultural student groups perpetuate as a whole: Diversity is only contingent on appearance, and appearance will always be the best indicator by which to judge the character and the inclinations of an individual.
But perhaps the best argument against multicultural organizations can be made by simply walking over to UW’s College Library. I made such a trip a few days before writing this column, and what I noticed there is perhaps the most poignant example of why the MSC and all its associate groups are little more than unnecessary relics, perpetuating the very bogeyman they claim to be so intent on eradicating.
While in College Library I saw black, white, Asian and Hispanic students, studying casually — intermingling, if you will — without any exterior pressure whatsoever to do so. There wasn’t hip-hop music playing on the loudspeakers for the benefit of the black students, the white students weren’t constantly reminded of how privileged they were, and no one was present because they were conscious of a shared desire to “integrate” with one another.
That whole business sounds corny, artificial and painfully utopian.
But what is even more artificial is the argument that by creating the fiction of designated areas or times where integration can occur through a particular cultural paradigm, whatever its color, understanding will somehow improve. Maybe, just maybe, instead of creating both a lexicon and an atmosphere in which minority students are constantly reminded that their color is, in the end, what defines them, multicultural organizations should have enough respect to let students start bridging those “chasms” on their own.
Sam Clegg (sclegg@badgerherald.com) is a freshman majoring in political science and economics.
Anonymous (April 9, 2008 @ 11:47am):
Once again...Sam you have no idea what you are talking about? Why don't you come to such groups as the MCSC and explain yourself to them?
What a shame!
Anonymous (April 9, 2008 @ 1:23pm):
There are like 500 ways this argument could have been made better. F- for you.
Anonymous (April 9, 2008 @ 2:40pm):
Freshman.... interesting. I bet you have never had to educate others about the ways of your people, or advocate for disparities you face. Because you, are white, and privileged. You have a lot to learn young fellow, a lot to learn.
Anonymous (April 9, 2008 @ 3:21pm):
Perhaps if we just let people (whites) do things on their own time slavery would have eventually disappeared on its own, schools would have been integrated harmoniously and the youth of color incarceration rates and chasms between whites and people of color graduation rates for high school and college would all just disappear on their own. Come on kid...are you simplifying the issues because you're a simple-minded person or you just haven't been exposed to the data, the historical facts and reality? Wow...please say it's the latter and then read more and get out and stop being so sheltered and privileged.
Anonymous (April 9, 2008 @ 5:37pm):
"is to create an environment in which differences can be celebrated and understanding between students of color and their white counterparts can be raised."
The problem with these multiculturalist groups is contained right in their mission statement. Look at the overt racism contained in the idea that "understanding" is a matter of skin color. And that ideas are split down racial lines.
Also, notice the rejection of standards. We're called on to "embrace differences" as some sort of dogmatic commandment. Doesn't it depend on what those differences are? One should not embrace someone or some culture if the difference is that you believe in freedom and they believe in theocracy.
The rational thing to do is judge other people and other cultures based on their ideas, not on their ethnicity or skin color, nor on the blind fact that they are different.
Multiculturalism and "diversity" completely reverse this.
Anonymous (April 9, 2008 @ 8:27pm):
Sam never knows what he is talking about...although his point about the pamplet was on point. That was wrong. Everything else is a half truth, by a young white male who needs to get out into the real world! Oh and I am black and don't listen to hip hop..so let go of the sterotypes!
Anonymous (April 9, 2008 @ 11:01pm):
Multicultural PC stuff REALLY works, just ask the people in Londonstan or elsewhere in Eurabia.
Anonymous (April 10, 2008 @ 12:29am):
"is to create an environment in which differences can be celebrated and understanding between students of color and their white counterparts can be raised."
The problem with these multiculturalist groups is contained right in their mission statement. Look at the overt racism is the idea that "understanding" is a matter of skin color. That ideas are split down racial lines.
Also, notice the rejection of standards. We're called on to "embrace differences" as some sort of dogmatic commandment. Doesn't it depend on what those differences are? One should not embrace someone or some culture if the difference is that you believe in freedom and they believe in theocracy.
The rational thing to do is judge other people and other cultures based on their ideas, not on their ethnicity, skin color, nor the blind fact that they are different.
Multiculturalism and "diversity" completely reverses this.
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