Is multiculturalism a battleground or a meeting ground? To answer this question, Ronald Takaki identifies two emerging perspectives—particularism and pluralism. The culture war over the content of the curriculum is presented as a debate, a clash of ideas: Allan Bloom, Diane Ravitch, and Arthur Schlesinger versus Gerald Graff, Henry Louis Gates, and Takaki himself. The university should be a stimulating contested terrain where scholars of different viewpoints engage each other over the meaning and content of culture, but whether it can become such a place of intellectual encounters may be in doubt.
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References
1.
1. David J. Weber, ed., Foreigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), p. vi.
2.
Ronald Takaki , Iron Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Knopf, 1979).
3.
Dinesh D'Souza , Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: Free Press, 1991).
4.
4. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 19, 91-93, 340-341, 344.
5.
5. Ibid., pp. 27, 29, 33, 35, 89, 90, 347.
6.
6. University of Wisconsin—Madison: The Madison Plan (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1988).
7.
7. Rodney King's statement to the press; see New York Times, 2 May 1992, p. 6.
8.
8. “Beyond Black and White,”Newsweek, 18 May 1992, p. 28.
Kerby A. Miller , Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
11.
Benjamin Ringer , “We the People” and Others: Duality and America's Treatment of Its Racial Minorities (New York: Tavistock, 1983).
12.
12. Ravitch, “Multiculturalism,” pp. 341, 354.
13.
13. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Knoxville, TN: Whittle Communications, 1991), pp. 2, 24, 14, 81-82.
14.
14. Ibid., pp. 58, 66.
15.
idem , Disuniting of America, p. 20.
16.
16. Schlesinger, Disuniting of America, pp. 2, 21, 64.
17.
17. Gerald Graff, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (New York: Norton, 1992), p. 15.
18.
For an example of the debate format, see Ronald Takaki, From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
19.
19. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 114.
20.
Lislie Marmon Silko , Ceremony (New York: New American Library, 1978), p. 2.
21.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. , “When Ethnic Studies Are Un-American,”Wall Street Journal, 23 Apr. 1990.
22.
22. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 282.
23.
23. Ibid., p. 65.
24.
E. D. Hirsch, Jr. , Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1987), pp. xiii, xvii, 2, 18, 96, 152-215.
25.
Richard Hofstadter , The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Random House, 1955), pp. 131-173.
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26. Lawrence Auster, “The Forbidden Topic,”National Review, 27 Apr. 1992, pp. 42-44.
