(00:00:00) In 1994 color alone, no longer determines which school a child May attend where his parents may work where the family may live in what restaurants they may eat universities and employers now spend literally billions of dollars a year recruiting minorities and millions more accommodating the classroom and workplace to their needs and interests in the last three decades non-whites have narrowed the education in earnings Gap with whites and have expanded their political influence exponentially indeed the evidence suggests that racism while not yet eradicated has declined significantly. Yet our preoccupation with race persists. We are as likely as ever to categorize individuals by race. The difference is that we now Justified the need to do so by claiming that such efforts are for the benefit of the victims of discrimination rather than its perpetrators in the name of eliminating discrimination. We continue to pursue policies that Define people by color in schools and Universities at work at the polling place even in the courts race is an important sometimes deciding factor in admitting students are devising curricula hiring or promoting employees determining political representation selecting a jury. And it is now not only white supremacist who promote such policies but civil rights Advocates as well. The complaint against quotas are other forms of racial or ethnic preferences is that they force both benefactors and beneficiaries to elevate race and ethnicity in importance, which is fundamentally incompatible with reducing racism. It's not possible to argue that race or national origin alone entitle individuals to special consideration without also accepting that such characteristics are somehow intrinsically significant. Of course, those who promote preferential affirmative action programs argue that race and ethnicity are important because they are the basis on which individuals have been and continue to be discriminated against setting employment or College admission quotas by this reasoning is simply a way of compensating for the Discrimination that blacks Hispanics American Indians and Southern and some other minority groups face on the basis of their skin (00:02:39) color. But (00:02:41) many programs that confers special benefits to racial and ethnic minorities make no effort at all to determine whether the individuals who will receive these benefits have ever actually been victims of discrimination such programs are not compensatory, but presumptive. They assume that race equals disadvantage. While there are many blacks Hispanics Indians and Asians who have been discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity or race. There are many others who have not and there are still others For Whom the Discrimination was either trivial or even if more serious had no lasting (00:03:23) consequence (00:03:25) what ethnic or religious minority has not suffered its share of slights and prejudices certainly both Jews and Asians have faced significant levels of bigotry and discrimination in the United States Jews were often the victim of private discriminatory actions and Asians were historically the target of both private and state sponsored exclusion and bias. The Chinese for example were not allowed to become citizens or to own property or to enter certain professions or even to immigrate at all during certain periods of time. And Japanese Americans barely 50 years ago had their property confiscated and were forcibly removed from their homes and interned in camps in the west. Nonetheless despite persistent discrimination. These groups on average have excelled in this society and it is difficult to argue that they are entitled to compensatory preferential affirmative action on the basis of any current disadvantage. It is true that blacks American Indians and to a lesser degree Hispanics are far more likely to face present disadvantage some of it though. I believe a declining share the result of past discrimination. But again many affirmative action programs make little effort to distinguish among potential beneficiaries on the basis of actual disadvantage preferring instead to rely on race or ethnicity per se in awarding benefits. Some of the most prestigious affirmative action slot such as those at ivy league universities Fortune 500 companies or Wall Street law firms go to middle and upper middle-class blacks and Hispanics who suffer no clear disadvantage compared with their white counterparts. For example, a recent study at the University of California at Berkeley found that on average black Chicano and Asian students admitted through affirmative action guidelines come from families whose median income is actually higher than the national average indeed in 1989. One-third of Asian students 14 percent of blacks and 17% of Chicanos came from families whose annual income was more than $75,000 a year. And remember these are students who are being admitted in affirmative action programs. Affirmative action requirements are frequently. Sorry formative action recipients are frequently the graduates of elite prep schools universities and professional schools increasingly advocates for this select type of affirmative action as shoe traditional arguments about discrimination or disadvantage opting to instead to emphasize the presumed benefits of racial and ethnic diversity. But what is this diversity imply the current scientific consensus suggests that race or ethnicity is nothing more than a broad physical description of skin hair eye color bone structure. Hardly the basis for making moral claims or distinctions if race and ethnicity stripped of their power to demand retribution represent. Nothing more than common ancestry and similar physical attributes culture on the other hand events is something more consequential and enduring not surprisingly practitioners of the politics of race have seized on culture as their new weapon Americans of all Races have grown tired of affirmative action many of those who still support some racial preferences like Yale law professor Steven Carter admit that these preferences have been a mixed blessing for the beneficiaries conferring tangible benefits, but often undermining self-confidence. The politics of race requires a new rationale and a new vocabulary multiculturalism supplies both as I've said race-conscious policies now permeate not only employment in education but also the courts and even the Democratic process itself race or ethnicity often determines political representation and establishes voting procedures. In addition the list of groups eligible to benefit continues to grow and now Embraces, even the most recent immigrants including those who come here illegally who by definition have Pat have suffered no past discrimination. has the policies and the beneficiaries expand so has their rationale the compensatory model has given way to one based on culture which alleviates the necessity of proving past discrimination or even present disadvantage the demand to redress past or present wrongs evolves into the imperative to enhance and preserve culture America becomes not simply a multiracial multi-ethnic society made up of individuals of different backgrounds, which it surely is But a multicultural Nation the distinction is an important one, especially in the American context. It implies that Americans differ not only in skin color and origin but in values mores Customs temperament language all those attributes that endow culture with meaning indeed multiculturalism questions the very concept of an American people. Multiculturalism replaces affirmative action as the linchpin in the politics of race with a much more profound power to shape how all Americans not just racial and ethnic minorities think of themselves and conceive of the polity multiculturalists insist on treating race or ethnicity as if they were synonymous with culture. They presume that skin color or national origin which are immutable traits determined values mores language and other cultural attributes, which of course are learned. In the multiculturalist worldview African Americans Puerto. Ricans are Chinese Americans living in New York City. For example, share more in common with persons of their ancestral group living in Lagos or San Juan or Hong Kong then they do with other New Yorkers who are white Culture becomes a fixed entity transmitted as it were in the genes rather than through (00:10:19) experience (00:10:21) such convictions lead multiculturalist to conclude that in the words of molefi. Kete Asante. There is no common American culture. The logic is simple if wrongheaded since Americans or more often their forebears hail from many different places Each of which has its own specific culture. America must be Multicultural. And they claim it is becoming more. So every day is new immigrants bring their cultures with them when they come to the United States indeed multiculturalist. Hope to ride the Immigrant wave to greater power and influence and they have certainly done so in education The influx of non English speaking children into public schools has given added impetus to the Multicultural movement some 2.3 million children who cannot speak English. Well now attend public school and increase in of 1 million in the last 7 years alone. The Los Angeles Unified School District currently offers instruction to a hundred and sixty thousand students in Spanish Armenian Tagalog Cantonese Korean Russian and Japanese. In New York City for example students come from a hundred and sixty seven different countries speaking a hundred and twenty separate languages the cost for such programs are astronomical more than 300 million dollars a year for a hundred and twenty-six thousand students in New York City alone. Multicultural Advocates cite the presence of such children to demand bilingual education or more often native language instruction and other Multicultural Services federal and state governments now spend literally billions of dollars on these programs. Although an exact estimate of the total spending is difficult to obtain since it is allocated across several programs and several layers of government. The multiculturalists emphasis on education. However, undercuts their own argument that culture is inextricable from race or national origin. The multiculturalist are acutely aware just how fragile culture is and cultural identification in particular. If they were not they would be less adamant about preserving and reinforcing it the current emphasis on Afrocentric curricula for African-American Elementary and secondary students. For example would be unnecessary if race itself conferred culture Norwood multiculturalist have to insist on teaching immigrant children in their native language instructing them in the history and customs of their native land and include interviewing them with the reverence for the ancestral Heroes of their homelands, if ethnicity and national origin alone were antidotes to the appeal of American culture. Multiculturalist haven't lost faith in the power of assimilation. If anything they seem to believe that without a heavy dose of multi cultural indoctrination immigrants won't be able to resist assimilation and they're right though. It remains to be seen whether anything including the multiculturalist crude methods will ultimately do tour immigrants from the assimilationists path. The urge to assimilate has traditionally been overpowering in the United States, especially among the children of immigrants only groups that maintain strict rules against intermarriage and other social contact with persons outside the group such as Orthodox Jews or the Amish have ever succeeded in preserving distinct full-blown subcultures within American society after one or two generations of being here. It is interesting to note that religion seems to be a more effective deterrent to full assimilation than the secular elements of culture including language. Although many Americans worry that Hispanic immigrants for example, or not learning English and will therefore fail to assimilate into the American mainstream. There's little evidence that this is the case like other ethnic groups the majority of Hispanics speak only English by the third generation in the United States and are closer to other Americans on most measures of social and economic status than they are to Hispanic immigrants on one of the most rigorous gauges of assimilation. That is intermarriage Hispanics ranked High about one-third of young third-generation Hispanics, Mary non-hispanic whites a pattern by the way similar to that of Asians. Even for blacks exogamy rates in other words intermarriage have historically been quite low, but they are going up about three percent of blacks now marry outside their group, but the rate in western states is much higher 17 percent among black males marrying for the first time. The impetus for multiculturalism is not coming from immigrants even among groups such as Hispanics and Asians, but from their more affluent and I might add more assimilated native-born counterparts in their ethnic communities. The proponents are most often the elite best educated and most successful members of their respective racial and ethnic groups not surprisingly college campuses are fertile recruiting grounds where the most radical displays of multiculturalism often take (00:16:07) place (00:16:09) last May for example, a group of Mexican American students at UCLA frustrated that the university would not Elevate the school's 23 year old Chicano studies program to fold apartment status stormed the campus faculty Center breaking windows and furniture and causing a half a million dollars in damage during the same month a group of Asian American students at UC Irvine went on a hunger strike. Pressure administrators into hiring more professors to teach Asian American studies courses there. These were not immigrants or even by and large disadvantaged students but middle class beneficiaries of their parents or grandparents successful assimilation into the American mainstream. The protesters Quest has almost nothing to do with any effort to maintain their ethnic identity for the most part such students. Probably never thought of themselves as anything but American before they entered College according to the Berkeley study. I cited earlier most Hispanic and Asian students discovered their ethnic identity after they arrived on campus speaking of Asian students the researchers reported and I quote after being around Cal for one or two years students who were integrated into predominantly white worlds of friendship and Association in high school report a shift towards having predominantly Asian American friends roommates or affiliations with an Asian American organization. The same was true for other groups as well including blacks. Again, I quote on arrival on the Berkeley campus. These students are surprised to discover themselves. No longer token black person these students experience a new kind of pressure. It comes from other African American students on campus and it is experienced as pressure to make decisions about friends social networks. Even whom you sit with at lunch on the basis of race. For the first time many of these students also learn to Define themselves as victims as well. As one Mexican-American freshman summed it up. She was quote unaware of the things that have been going on with our people all the Injustice. We've suffered how the world really is. I thought racism didn't exist in here, you know, it just comes to light. The researchers went on to note that all students of color had difficulty pinpointing exactly what it was that constituted this subtle form of new racism instead of empirical evidence. The researchers said and again, I quote there was much talk about certain facial expressions, or the way people look and how white students take over the class and speak past you. But if terms like racism or discrimination can be applied to such an Oculus Behavior, what words do we use to describe the real thing as George Orwell said in his 1946 essay politics and the English language if thought corrupts language language can also corrupt thought by misusing words like racism. We undermine the very legitimacy of the concept itself. The re racialization of American society that takes place in the name of multiculturalism is not a progressive movement, but a step backward into the American past that existed before Brown versus Board of Education and the passage of the major civil rights laws of the 1960s. We are at a critical juncture in our history. Even if we are not is the multiculturalist claim about to become a majority minority Nation, nonetheless racial and ethnic division in our population is increasing. If we allow race and ethnicity to determine public policy, we invite the kind of cleavages that will pit one group against another in ways that cannot be good for the group's themselves or the society in which we all must live. The more diverse we become the more crucial it is that we commit ourselves to a shared Civic culture the distinguishing characteristic of American culture has always been its ability to incorporate. Into the characteristic of American culture disparate groups to form a new hole. American assimilation has always entailed some give-and-take in American culture itself has been enriched by what individual groups brought to it. It is important that all of us no matter where we come from or what circumstances brought us here that we think of ourselves as Americans. If we are to retain the sense that we are one people not simply a conglomeration of different and competing groups. It is nonsense to think we can do. So without being clear about our purposes we can begin by acknowledging that it is more important for immigrant children to learn English than to maintain their native language. Although the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. We should make sure that American students have a firm grasp of the history of this nation the people who helped build it and the institutions and principles on which it was found. We should be careful not to repeat past errors when American history courses excluded inconvenient facts, but neither should history becomes simply an exercise in building self-esteem of those who were previously excluded. Finally. We need to get beyond the point where race or ethnicity are the most important factors in the way. We identify ourselves or form our allegiances the principles and values that unite us remain far more important than our differences in ancestry a lesson which Bears repeating in our schools and our universities. Thank you very much.