4.0877 Further Responses on Multiculturalism, etc. (3/87)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 10 Jan 91 19:43:25 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0877. Thursday, 10 Jan 1991.
(1) Date: Wed, 9 Jan 1991 20:37:08 EST (30 lines)
From: TVICKERY@SUNRISE.ACS.SYR.EDU (Tom Rusk Vickery)
Subject: RE: 4.0872 ... Multiculturalism ...
(2) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 91 12:00 +0200 (29 lines)
From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS
Subject: RE: 4.0872 ... Multiculturalism ...
(3) Date: Thu, 10 Jan 91 17:42:24 EST (28 lines)
From: BRIANW@VM2.YorkU.CA
Subject: Re: 4.0872 ... Multiculturalism ...
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 1991 20:37:08 EST
From: TVICKERY@SUNRISE.ACS.SYR.EDU (Tom Rusk Vickery)
Subject: RE: 4.0872 ... Multiculturalism ...
John Slatin's evocation of Emerson's call for a new American nation to
reject its European biases in favor of developing its own culture ignores
one very crucial difference between that time and the present call for
multiculturalism. Emerson was speaking to a people who lived an ocean
apart from Europe. To apply Emerson's call here is to ask not for
multiculturalism but particularism which tears at whatever threads
there be that hold together this nation.
There is a tremendous difference between developing a sense of the
heritage of one's racial and/or ethnic group and learning to respect and
be tolerant of others from different racial and/or ethnic groups, on the
one hand, and being taught a politically correct vision of oneself that
promotes disengagement from a multicultural society, on the other. The
latter one of my colleagues refers to as making Pollacks where there
were none.
I am delighted to see this discussion underway. This may be the
first such forum in which the discussion of multiculturalism produces
more light than heat.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* Tom Rusk Vickery, 265 Huntington Hall *
* Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-2340 *
* 315-443-3450 TVICKERY@SUNRISE.ACS.SYR.EDU *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 91 12:00 +0200
From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS
Subject: RE: 4.0872 ... Multiculturalism ...
James O'Donnell <JODONNEL@PENNSAS.UPENN.EDU> writes:
*Subject: 4.0869 Multiculturalism, Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism
*Racism is racism and this is the century of racism. Alas. David Kelly
*and others may not have espied a particular book that is being relied on
*in the Afrocentric debates: Martin Bernal, *Black Athena*, first of
*several volumes slated to appear. This is, I think it *objective* to
*say, a crank book, by a professor of Chinese politics who, in the course
*of rediscovering his own ethnic and cultural roots, came to the
conclusion that Greek wisdom is really Levantine and African....
*********************************************************************
I do not know Professor Bernal, but speaking of ethnic/cultural
roots, the Bernal family of Ireland has a tradition that they are
descended from Marranos who fled Iberia and subsequently reached
Ireland where they eventually became "true" Catholics.
__Bob Werman
rwerman@hujivms
Jerusalem
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------37----
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 91 17:42:24 EST
From: BRIANW@VM2.YorkU.CA
Subject: Re: 4.0872 ... Multiculturalism ...
The most powerful characteristic of the "western tradition" or the
Eurocentric tradition is probably the habit of seeing one's own
culture in a tension, either creative or destructive, with a more
prestigious foreign culture. I am most familiar in my own research
with the attempts of sixteenth-century English writers to both
import the best from the Greeks and Romans and at the same time
to develop a distinctive culture of their own. Sir Philip Sidney's
_Defence of Poetry_ is one of the classics in this vein. Bossuet's
_Defense et Illustration du Langue Francaise_ made a similar case
for French literature. In Italy, the explicit tradition goes back
at least to Dante's _De Vulgari Eloquentia_.
In our own time, the struggle is less often against Eurocentrism
than against Americacentrism... whether English departments outside
the United States should consider teaching as much of their own
literature as they do of American literature. In the social
sciences, there are parallel questions of whether the discussion
of race anbd ethnicity should be dominated by the study of black
American culture even at schools where the majority of black
students are from Africa or the West Indies, and the largest
"visible minority" may be Chinese or East Indian.
Brian Whittaker
Atkinson College, York University