We Are All Multiculturalists Now

by Nathan Glazer

Book Overview

The melting pot is no more. Where not very long ago we sought assimilation, we now pursue multiculturalism. Nowhere has this transformation been more evident than in the public schools, where a traditional Eurocentric curriculum has yielded to diversity--and, often, to confrontation and confusion. In a book that brings clarity and reason to this highly charged issue, Nathan Glazer explores these sweeping changes. He offers an incisive account of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067494836X
• ISBN13: 9780674948365
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A Must Read for All Educators

Dr. Glazer's book is thought-provoking, definitive and authoritative, yet describes the cultural and racial divides in the United States with a fatalistic tone.As a teacher (working outside of the U.S.) I feel this book has helped me to understand how to improve my own teaching skills. When teaching, every educator must consider cultural factors that ideally, determine the manner in which a teacher's class is conducted. As Glazer states, African-American students often fail to excel in academics because there are not enough teachers who project a teaching style these students can identify with, and consequently, African-American students struggle to attain the academic success that comes easily to other races.Being a teacher of Asian students, I have found that this group excels because it is steeped within most Asian cultures that all authority (parents, teachers, elders) are to be followed without question. This severe upbringing may contribute to higher academic performance and subsequently greater income, but it is not a doctrine that I personally agree with, nor would I ever want my fellow Americans to be inflicted with an imposed order so oppressive and unfair. After reading this book, it is painfully clear that America's war on racism has a long, long way to go. Lamentably, Glazer's solutions to racial prejudice and segregation are marked with too much of a penchant for uncertainty, a tone of fatalism and touch grey area that could be his trademark. While refusing to state that the solution indeed lies within the government's role of drafting progressive policies and enforcing racial quotas, or even by proposing advances in civil rights and integration, Glazer instead professes an almost naive belief that segregation (in public schools and in America's reidential neighborhoods) is a problem that can be solved by individuals by their own choosing. He admits that such change would be slow, while his writing exudes a lack of faith in the government that must trouble any reader who is to the left of Colin Powell. Dr. Glazer has crafted a near-masterpiece in sociology/education, but I also believe that the Harvard professor very easily could have been one of the swing voters duped by then-Texas Governor George W. Bush's compassionate conservativism campaign in 2000. Individuals can do right by practicing integration and embracing cultures different from their own, yet it is an insurmountable task for every minority group, race and ethnicity to maintain and celebrate their own distinctiveness and authenticity without fear of coercion to assimilate or conform to the majority, unless the United States government steps up the pace on the lagging Civil Rights movement and passes new laws that criminalize every form of discrimination in all corners of American life.

Culture and education

This is a very thoughtful book on the development of multiculturalism and the issues that arise from it. The focus is on education, where the topic of multiculturalism is most apparent, and Glazer explains what multiculturalism is about, and what the arguments for and against it are. He is especially concerned about "civic harmony" and whether multiculturalism highlights differences between people at the expense of defending the view that America is a country that has been trying to move towards inclusion. He goes on to attack what he sees as the excesses of the multiculturalist movement in showing the absurd emphasis on topics in history that are insignificant or false.It takes a few chapters before the book develops its central theme. At this point, it begins to discuss identity, diversity, and the possibility of cooperation and equality. Glazer's argument is that multiculturalism is essentially a black phenomenon, and that it has gained momentum because America has been unable to assimilate blacks in the way that it has done so with European immigrants, Asians, and Hispanics. The reason for this, he maintains, is that blacks have a different history than immigrants, and a reaction to prolonged inequality had to result.Many people will disagree with Glazer's views. But fortunately for you, it is very evident where he stands, and he is candid in displaying what he believes. Regardless of whether you agree with him, this book contains a good deal of information about the history of multiculturalism that anyone interested can benefit from. Indeed, multiculturalism is here to stay, and we should all know what it's about. Here's one educated point of view that is, if not always agreeable, very temperate and reasonable.

On the frontline of the cultural wars

Mr Glazer has been on the frontline for a long time, as far back as the 1960's when he wrote 'Beyond the Melting Pot' except that back then we talked about the need for 'area studies'. It seems to me that the battle seems to have taken it's toll on Mr Glazer. Here he writes with a fatalistic, almost disillusioned approach; wistful in that he "feels warmly attached to the old America" and yet resigned to the fact that 'We are all Multiculturalists Now'. The book is not a critique of multiculturalism because he allows some of the more egregious examples of it's extremes to go without comment, reporting them as if in acceptance of their permanence. Nor is the book an endorsement; his statement that "multiculturalism in education ...has, in a word, won" is a simple remark, presented without enthusiasm or rancor, but with fatalism. This switch from optimism of earlier days to a more pessimistic outlook today, comes through in how surprised he is that "we can disagree on what seems to me to be simple truths," and in the emergence of "a hard institutionalization of differences." It's unfortunate that Mr Glazer focused on the signs and symptoms of multicultural malaise in his early chapters because it obscures his most profound point. One that although unpleasant, is a truth, and if widely accepted as a starting point, would go a long way to soften some of those hard positions and allow debate to return in place of vitriol. Glazer, on the African-American condition says "where the community of descent defines an inescapable community of fate, where knowledge and moral values are indeed grounded in blood and history...[multiculturalism]...is the price America is paying for it's inability or unwillingness to incorporate into it's society African-Americans, in the same way and to the same degree it has incorporated so many groups." A great synopsis of what Orlando Patterson calls 'the Ordeal of Integration'. If this recognition is all that multiculturalism demands at it's most basic level then we do not have to cater to it's extremes. There are in fact encouraging signs that many students of the subject are demanding mid-course corrections. I think that Mr Glazer's book is needlessly pessimistic and that there will emerge, again, a proper discourse on the subject. Sane, rational and compassionate voices such as his are still very much in need and it would be a shame if years 'in the trenches' were to take it's toll and quieten him.