ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.Multiculturalism: Disunity?

By: Tania McMenamin

WHO WAS ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.?

• Historian• Pulitzer Prize-winning author (twice!)• Liberal Partisan• Kennedy confidante• Political speech writer and advisor• Harvard alum and professor• Wearer of polka-dotted bowties• Controversial critic of multiculturalism

A FAMILY HISTORY OF HISTORIANS

Arthur M. Schlesinger had history in his blood. He was the son of a famous

historian, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. His reputed ancestor was George Bancroft,

author of the 12-volume History of the United States from the Discovery of the

Continent, written from 1854 to 1878.

To learn more about Arthur, Jr.’s life, read his obituary here:

NY Times Article

George Bancroft Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.

AN ANECDOTE ILLUSTRATING HOW ONE (BAD) TEACHER CAN CHANGE THE COURSE OF A STUDENT’S LIFE:

“Schlesinger's parents originally sent him to public schools in

Cambridge, but his father, who was a Harvard history professor,

upon hearing that Arthur’s history teacher had taught him that

Albanians were albinos, shipped Arthur off to Phillips Exeter

Academy, before he returned home to attend Harvard College.”

Read more here

Questions to contemplate:

• Was there a time when you experienced a teacher’s fallibility? How

did it affect you?

• Did you ever have a teacher who changed the course of your life?

• How can you be the kind of teacher that can alter a student’s

educational trajectory?

Source: The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama by Eric Alterman

and Kevin Mattson.

REVISIONIST HISTORIAN?Schlesinger was criticized for leaving out any mention of the

removal and relocation of Native Americans during President

Andrew Jackson’s administration, in his first Pulitzer Prize-winning

book, The Age of Jackson.

Read what academic and historian Ronald Takaki has to say about it

in his essay, Multiculturalism: Battleground or Meeting Ground?

• Why do you think Schlesinger omitted this critical

component of our nation’s history?

• If a Harvard educated, award-winning historian like

Schlesinger can leave out important information, how can

we ever expect to get the full story?

• Do you agree with Takaki’s assessment that “behind

Schlesinger’s cant against multiculturalism is fear”?

Source: http://www.elegantbrain.com/edu4/classes/readings/depository/race/kiv_multicul_taka.pdf

TO BE, OR NOT TO BE, AMERICAN“[…] Most American-born members of minority groups, white or

non-white, while they may cherish particular heritages, still see

themselves primarily as Americans and not primarily as Irish or

Hungarians or Jews or Africans or Asians” (19).

• Would you agree with Schlesinger?

As a first-generation American, I was brought up with strong cultural ties

to the “old country.” In school, when someone asked what you were, I

don’t recall kids answering, “American.” However, whenever I referred to

myself as being Irish, my parents always corrected me by saying I was

American.

• Consider your own cultural identity. How do you think this will influence or

inform how you deal with the issue of multiculturalism in the classroom?

Source: “The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society” by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

IN SCHLESINGER’S DEFENSE

Schlesinger does recognize the value of multicultural education as a way to understand

many viewpoints, and to learn about others as a means to learning about ourselves. In

a way, he shares some common ground with Lisa Delpit.

Then what is all the fuss about?

Here comes the “but” …

Sources: “The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society” by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., pp. 15-16;

“The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children” by Lisa D. Delpit, p. 331.

“Of course history should be taught from a variety of perspectives. […] Living on a shrinking planet, aspiring to global leadership, Americans must learn much more about other races, other cultures, other continents. As they do, they acquire a more complex and invigorating sense of the world – and of themselves.”

To promote communication and heal resentments between white educators and educators of color, Lisa Delpit suggested the answer lay in ethnographic analysis – “identifying and giving voice to alternative worldviews.”

SCHLESINGER CLAIMS THAT WHEN WE GO “TOO FAR” WITH THE “CULT OF ETHNICITY” THERE ARE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES

He tells us, on pp. 16-17 of The Disuniting of America, that:

• “The new ethnic gospel rejects the unifying vision of individuals from all nations melted into a new race.”

• “Division into ethnic communities establishes the basic structure of American society and the basic meaning of American history,” which, Schlesinger writes, is “fatally misleading and wrong when presented as the whole picture.”

• “Instead of a transformative nation with an identity all its own, America in this new light is seen as a preservative of diverse alien identities.”

• “Multiethnic dogma abandons historic purposes, replacing assimilation by fragmentation, integration by separatism.”

IDENTITY CRISIS

James Baldwin vs. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

1964 1991

Imagine these great thinkers sharing a beer or a cup of tea. What an enlightening conversation that would be! Would they find common ground? Perhaps they would both vehemently dismiss the teaching of inauthentic history, no matter which ethnic group or culture is represented.

Sources: “The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society” by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., pp. 15-16; “A Talk to Teachers” by James Baldwin, p. 224.

“In no arena is the rejection of an overriding national identity more crucial than in our system of education.”

“It is not really a ‘Negro revolution’ that is upsetting the country. What is upsetting the country is a sense of its own identity.”

“If one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating not only Negroes, you’d be liberating white people who know nothing about their own history.”

“Even if black America had a spontaneous and authentic relationship with Africa, would learning about Africa improve the self-esteem of black children? So far as I can find out, there is no scientific study showing any correlation between ethnic-studies programs and the self-esteem of ethnic groups.”

ASSIMILATION: AN AMERICAN NECESSITY, OR A BAD

WORD?

Assimilation was believed to be necessary for success for my

parents’ generation when they came to this country. Today,

assimilation can be viewed as an incalculable loss of cultural identity

and sense of self. An example of this is the story of my sister-in-law

who, when she first went to school at five years old and only spoke

Italian, was told that she could not be taught until she learned to

speak English. The family went into panic mode to adapt, and the

cost was the children’s bilingual fluency.

Must our ethnically-diverse population give up so much of

its culture in order to keep the melting pot from giving way

to the Tower of Babel?

THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA REVISED

Schlesinger revised and expanded his book in 1998, to include what

he believed was an essential book list for understanding America,

called Schlesinger's Syllabus (pp. 167-169). Consider some of the

books he names, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn. Do these books even make the cut anymore on

schools’ approved reading lists?

HAVE SCHLESINGER’S IDEAS ABOUT MULTICULTURALISM COME AND GONE?

The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society was written more than 20 years ago. Schlesinger stated then that multiculturalism arose as a reaction against Anglo- or Eurocentrism, and that “the very word, instead of referring as it should to all cultures, has come to refer only to non-Western, nonwhite cultures.” (74)

• Would you agree? What’s your definition of multiculturalism?

“The situation in our universities … will soon right itself once the great silent majority of professors cry ‘enough’ and challenge what they know to be voguish nonsense.” (18)

• I am taking two courses this semester alone with the word “multicultural” in the name. What would Schlesinger make of our ongoing study of multiculturalism?

To What End Multiculturalism?

REFERENCES Alterman , E., & Mattson, K. (2012). The cause: The fight for American

liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama. New York, NY: Viking Penguin. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=BWfx_wu70JgC&pg=PT60&lpg=PT60&dq=schlesinger albinos come from albania&source=bl&ots=fHVlO0ukmW&sig=454E8jw3fi8cS95IeK5JznjyNXo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vykhUbmqL4jq9ASMsYGIDA&ved=0CGkQ6AEwCA

Baldwin, J. (1963). A talk to teachers. In W. Ayers & P. Ford (Eds.), City Kids, City Teachers (pp. 219-227). New York, NY: The New Press.

Delpit , L. D. (1988). The silenced ialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 330-345.

Indian removal. In Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal

Martin, D. (2007, March 1). Arthur Schlesinger, historian of power, dies at 89 . The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/us/01cnd-schlesinger.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Schlesinger, Jr. A. M. (1992). The disuniting of America. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.

Schlesinger, Jr., A. M. (1998). The disuniting of America: Reflections on a multicultural society (Revised and Enlarged Edition ed., pp. 167-179). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Disuniting-America-Reflections-Multicultural-Enlarged/dp/0393318540

Takaki, R. (n.d.). Multiculturalism: Battleground or meeting ground?. What is Multicultural America? Multiculturalism in the United States, 484-485. Retrieved from http://www.elegantbrain.com/edu4/classes/readings/depository/race/kiv_multicul_taka.pdf