Strange Fruit of Multiculturalism: The Odd Disappearance of Race
Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 8:29AM | by Otter As a long time college teacher, frequently of lower income students educated in inner city schools, I've had my eye for some time on a problem that I think is growing.
Students in general, and black students in particular, are not able to comprehend the history of race in America.
Ten years ago I received an essay from an African-American student who wrote, "America was started by four white men called The Four Fathers." That classic has given me a lot to laugh about, but I never did think I would yearn for the days when a student showed even a dim awareness that race and racial tension were inextricably tied up in America's history.
I don't know if it's because of the multicultural pipe-dream in which they've grown up or what. But a sort of haze has fallen over the racial past in my students' minds. It's not uncommon for them to write (as a student recently did) that Martin Luther King, Jr. freed the slaves. Just what slavery was like or how it flourished in the United States, they don't really know, and they seem almost shocked to learn that there were such things as The Three-Fifths Compromise, the decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, or even Jim Crow laws. Some have heard of Frederrick Douglass: none have read him. The memory of lynching vaguely sits in the back of the collective memory, but it has no real relation to the state of the world. It might as well have happened in China as Louisiana.
The 19th and 20th century intellectual props for racialism are almost unthinkable to them. That Anglo-Saxonism or Aryanism had serious intellectual force at the turn of the last century gains no purchase in my students' minds. They reject the ideas utterly (as they should), quickly and without really understanding them (which is inexcusable). Ideas with a more sophisticated pedigree, like Thomas Jefferson's refined thoughts on the Anglo-Saxon's democractic heritage, smacks of racialism, and they grow uncomfortable when they're exposed to the idea. Never mind that Jefferson's reflections more or less gave us American democracy.
Martin Luther King is lionized, but never read. My students cannot tell me what any of his ideas were or even when he lived or what precisely he accomplished. This year, out of 130 students at the start of my term, two had attempted "Letter From A Birmingham Jail," and neither had finished it.
White students and black ones seem to have been educated with the idea that race is something that's disappeared from America along with its history. It seems though rude to discuss it, an embarrassment. The gaze has turned outwards towards things like gay rights, a worthy thing to think about, but at the price of an astonishing forgetfulness. That was then; this is now. Hey, we all have cell-phones and XBox360. What's all the fuss? Their teachers and parents maybe were exhausted by the idea of racialism: maybe we're tired of talking about it.
I get that. But the near-total ignorance disturbs me.
Surely this is a luxury of amnesia that runs to indolence?
Reader Comments (7)
Do you think teachers are afraid to talk about it, lest they get labeled a racist or accused of hate and prejudice.
Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Just last week I had a conversation with a professor (Moody Bible Institute, I think) who was lamenting the same thing in her students—sort of a denial of racial tension via ignorance. She found it particularly disturbing because ignorance/denial of the past renders them incapable of correctly evaluating current social structures, etc. They can’t recognize (or correct) institutional injustice if they can’t bear to—or be bothered to— look at the past.
My own take on it is that it is just plain unfashionable to acknowledge ideas of prejudice or racism. Talking about those ideas seriously would be the social equivalent of wearing a bonnet. Listening to someone talk about them is like taking fashion advice from someone who wears high-rise jeans—you can hear them, but why on earth would you listen to someone so obviously out-of-touch?
Wait a sec... What are you saying about high rise jeans...?
Wow, this is making me wonder if today's kids are judging each other by the content of their character and not the color of their skin (MLKing Jr.). Have those crying, "I am color blind, your skin has no color," gotten their messsage across? Are they embracing the idea we are of one race, the human race? All that sounds great, but I think it's just a case of disinterest and denial of one's history. Lets face it, the birth of American concerning race is not a pretty picture. The idea that slaves were not even considered humans, makes me want to close that door on American history. It is one that needs to be taught, debated and understood. Without that history we have no idea how far we have come and how far we need to go.
I love the title and how you managed to connect it to its offspring, Multiculturalism. Strange Fruit, what a poignant song. Billie Holiday, with her smoky/ alcohol laden voice, opens your eyes as the song drips from her soul. It speaks to the heart of what is to be human.
Eavesdropper, this is a good point:
I don't think what we're seeing so much is MLK's dream of a world in which everybody is judged by their character, which would be good (for everybody except those of us with no character).
It's much more moral laziness and self-interest. You don't judge others because you don't want to be judged yourself, which is a harebrained way to think about community. King had in mind not that one person is as good as another, but rather that the good are better than the bad. And I think that part of our reluctance to force kids to confront badness (such as America's racial history) is that we're not committed to any particular idea of goodness.
"...we're not committed to any particular idea of goodness."
I was just discussing a version of this ideology at work. My question was, "are we so 'pc' that we can explain away blatant bad/evil deeds by examining what led a person to committ such acts?" Have we become so open to seeing everyones side of the issues that we have no opinions of our own? I remember when I was a teen, i read alot and filled my brain with different ideas; many contradictory to each other. Somehow I knew, once i got of the so called fence and decided what convictions I would live by, I would be an adult/mature. Maybe our youth has not made the decision that is more important to like oneself than it is to be liked by everyone else.