The Difference Between Western Culture And Diversity Culture
At Minding The Campus, Daphne Patai writes about "how diversity came to mean 'downgrade the west,'" referencing a book by PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel and fellow Stanford alum David Sacks called "The Diversity Myth: 'Multiculturalism' and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford (1995)":
The book's title refers to the pretense that embracing "diversity" actually promotes diversity of all types, a claim commonly heard to this day. Thiel had been a student at Stanford when, in January 1987, demonstrators defending "the Rainbow Agenda" chanted "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture's got to go!" This protest led to the infamous "revision" (i.e., suppression) of the Western Culture requirement at Stanford, replaced with a freshman sequence called Cultures, Ideas, and Values, mandating an emphasis on race, gender, and class....Furthermore, "multiculturalism" did not involve greater emphasis on mastering foreign languages or carefully studying cultures other than those of the English-speaking world. Instead, work in literature and culture programs was (and still is) done increasingly in English and focused on contemporary writers. Nor did multiculturalism, any more than the word diversity, mean familiarizing students with a diversity of views. Rather, as Fox-Genovese summarized it, it meant requiring students "to agree with or even applaud views and values that mock the values with which they have been reared." And all this, she observed, was being accompanied by rampant grade inflation.
This is a big part of its appeal. There's a lack of values -- in fact, if there's a value, it's "don't judge."
This has, in recent years, affected (no, infected) the greater population.
Personally, I love my late friend Cathy Seipp's quote, when people would say, "Hey, that's a value judgment." Cathy: "I have values, so I make judgments."
On the very first page of their book, Sacks and Thiel commented on the double entendre implicit in the Stanford protesters' chant of "Western Culture's got to go." It was not just the required Western Culture course that was being denounced, ostensibly because most of the books studied had been written by "dead white males," a group that was by definition considered illegitimate. Rather, it was the Western tradition as a whole.
That's the opposite of actually diversity, huh?
The Diversity Myth noted the chilling potential consequences of such attacks, which are now entirely routine, hardly worth commenting on. "Whereas the Western Culture canon had been based upon a belief in universalism--the belief that the insights contained within the West's great works were potentially available to everybody--the new curriculum embraced particularism: What one may know is determined by the circumstances of one's birth."The assault wasn't merely on the idea of universalism, which assumed that, as Sidney Hook explained in a 1989 essay that Sacks and Thiel summarize: "There exist truths that transcend the accidents of one's birth, and these objective truths are in principle available to everyone--whether young or old, rich or poor, male or female, white or black." A distinct view of human nature was being proposed instead, one that rejected the belief that individuals, and indeed humanity as a whole, "are not trapped within a closed cultural space that predetermines what they may know." Sacks and Thiel warned that by this rejection, the Stanford protestors of 1987 "would pave the way for a very different kind of academy."
And what's really happened is that there's less diversity -- and in fact, authoritarianism about letting in speech that doesn't fit with the "diversity" mold:
To take just one example, which also demonstrates that to campus ideologues, having the correct politics trumps even race and gender, consider the case of Somalian-born writer and human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In 2014, Brandeis University rescinded an invitation to Hirsi Ali, who was to receive an honorary degree at Commencement. A campus petition objecting to the award, on the grounds of her impassioned criticisms of Islam, was signed by nearly 25% of Brandeis's faculty and 6,000 others inside and outside Brandeis.
And then there's the irony:
Although these university students are among the very people who benefit the most from all that Western culture has achieved, they evidently lack the imagination to grasp what it would mean to actually live in a society that controls their speech and movements, deprives them of the right to be heard, and imposes a rigid political ideology (not the one they happen to support) on their education. But to truly understand the values they so blithely reject, they'd probably need a course in Western culture.
via @instapundit
"That's the opposite of actually diversity, huh?"
That's the thing. Western culture is diversity. It's the only culture that has succeeded in overcoming the iron grip of tribe and caste. Look at the number of different cultural influences that have gone into forming what we call Western culture: English, Scottish, Irish, French, Spanish, Italian, Sicilian, Saxon, Bavarian, just to name a few of the roots. Then we have contributions from Japan, Korea, China, South America, Palestine (in the ancient sense), north Africa, sub-Saharan Africa to an extent, Australia, and more recently places like India and Russia and the Pacific island nations. It's all in there. Those who promote "multiculturism" are promoting a double lie -- first, they're excluding rather than including, and second, in a lot of cases they are perverting and sterotyping the things that they do include. The multicultis are notorious for demanding that ethnic people conform to a narrow and stereotypical cultural norm for their ethnicity.
"having the correct politics trumps even race and gender..."
But it doesn't trump caste. There are a lot of multiculti supporters who assume that, on the day that the revolution comes, they will be welcomed into the ruling class, and so will not have to suffer the depredations that will be imposed on everyone else. As a lot of the supporters of the Red Russians did, they'll find out different. The ruling class, like the 19th-century European aristocracy, is ultimately based not on philosophy, but on old money, family, connections and status. It is the ultimate tribe. Their philosophy, such as it is, centers around the idea that they are the only ones in the universe who matter. Everything and everyone else are just pieces on the chessboard.
Cousin Dave at September 15, 2016 6:55 AM
While there are certainly problems with Western Culture, and self-reflection and criticism is necessary for self-improvement, I think it is pretty awesome.
The problem is we want everything and can't have it. You can't have massive migration of men from misogynistic cultures and feminism at the same time. Letting males change in female locker rooms helps those with dysphoria but forces females to change with males, many of whom do not want to.
Then there are things like burkinis where on an individual level, sure, people should wear what they want. But it's like interracial BDSM... if it is just a few weirdos, whatever, but I don't think we would want to normalize White Doms with Black subs on leashes walking around.
It's hard to draw lines because we want to accommodate everyone, but it is impossible to do. Sometimes peoples' interests conflict.
NicoleK at September 15, 2016 7:46 AM
Thomas Sowell points out that what he calls the "tragic vision" means a person believes that individuals and society are not perfectable, and that order, law, and civilization are difficult to achieve, precious, and easily lost. Just look at Venezuela. When a movement, like these students, wants to "get rid of western civ" they are asking for anarchy. Change per se is not always good. Grade inflation, safe spaces, and getting rid of the classics is simply a desire to be lazy, to not be challenged. That is what is so dangerous about erosion of free speech and the rule of law (gov agencies ignoring court rulings, making up regulations, prosecuting arbitrarily).
Craig Loehle at September 15, 2016 8:59 AM
I am a straight white male. I know that when I hear diversity, it means anyone but me.
Steve Daniels at September 15, 2016 3:50 PM
"To truely understand the values they so blithely reject, they'd probably need a course in Western culture".
The problem being those who teach those courses and write the non- "old white man" books hate Western civilization.
Joe J at September 16, 2016 5:57 AM
I was delighted to be able to attend a panel at DragonCon, "Women in Science and Tech Careers". Of the six panelists, no two had the same background, and all had serious STEM chops. To my delight, their approach to encouraging more women to engage in the "hard" sciences was to start programs early, before high school. Though each had an experience with haters, and others who could not comprehend their level of expertise, none approved of grade inflation or quotas to push women into their fields.
Circulating among the panelists afterward, I suggested that there were two definitions of "diversity" in the field: one "street" definition based on skin color and quotas, and one "engineering" definition based on individual aptitude, conveyed by environment and heredity. This was generally accepted with enthusiasm, as each seemed to have experience with having to deal with someone who had not truly earned their degree(s).
It's sort of funny that the USA still thinks that women are generally incapable - at the same time we see the oppression of women overseas almost hourly on the news...
Panelists:
Elonka Dunin
Theda Daniels-Race
Kim Steadman
Tracey Wilson
Mika McKinnon
Cecilia Tran
Radwaste at September 16, 2016 9:09 AM
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