The Trouble With Diversity
What is “Culture” in Multiculturalism?

(This piece was supposed to have been a review of Walter Benn Michaels' book,
  The Trouble with Diversity, and was crossposted at The Valve)

I haven’t been able to get Michaels’ book yet (it’s on the truck!), but I’ve read scattered writings of his on the internet. Some of the below may seem self-evident or simple-minded, but I think that the some of the basic issues are hidden at a deep level too obvious for most people to bother with. Under other circumstances I could write something about what’s good in multiculturalism, because I’m not its sworn enemy in every respect.  But by and large I think that multiculturalism misunderstands the meaning of the word “culture”, and I think that the problem arises from a folk confusion between two different ways of defining the word.

The social-science meaning of “culture” is something like “All human traits and social structures which are learned and not innate”. In general non-innate traits are assumed to be variable from one society to the next, giving us multiple cultures. But the traditional meaning of culture was “high culture”—the various things that make someone a finer sort of person. Good manners, a taste for classical music, and so on.

Multiculturalism seems to use the first definition, but I believe that it’s been contaminated by second definition. The multiculturalists apply anthropological relativism to traditional high culture, arguing that the old high culture regime was wrongly elitist and Eurocentric, and that in fact all cultures (foreign, primitive, minority, or lower-class) are equally valid. But the problem is that “high culture” (as Veblen shows) was defined by optional choices in luxury consumption, and when the non-elite non-western cultures were upgraded, they were also upgraded as consumption choices.

So culture was defined in terms of cuisine, and fabrics and dress, and music and dance, and poetry, and myth, and so on --  we become multicultural by consuming non-western or non-white luxury products. Multiculturalism often seems to be a kind of consumerism-cum-noblesse-oblige displayed by the children of the elite, as they travel from Yucatan to Bali to Dali to Nepal spectating the exotic customs of colorful peoples living hard lives which they themselves would be unable to endure for even a week.

All this is a manifestation of the characteristic division of American (or capitalist) life into work (production) and play (consumption). Work is necessary and real, and play (culture) is optional and not really real -- the fact-value distinction all over again. (In fact many “realists” understand even ethics to be an optional, expensive “frill”.)

Consumer multiculturalism is fake. Hindu culture, for example, isn’t just a lot of nice stuff you can buy. It’s arranged marriage, purdah, the caste system, untouchability , food taboos, the rajahs (at least, before the British arrived), and so on. Nobody really wants to adopt the serious structural aspects of Hindu culture -- on these questions, we all want to continue to be Americans. Immigrants themselves usually want to live as Americans with regard to serious things like property rights and law, and if they don’t, very serious problems can arise (e.g., honor killing).

The viability of multiculturalism thus depends on its not being very real, and to the extent that multi-culturalism is seriously promoted as an ideal, terrible misunderstandings are likely. The most immediate examples come from the family system. The traditional Muslim, Hindu, or Chinese family cannot be brought to America, because American children are outside parental control after age 18. The emancipation of adult children one of the defining principles of American freedom,  though it isn’t often thought of that way -- mostly because it’s so well-established. But parental rights over adult children, especially daughters, are essential to many traditional cultures -- notably Islam. Thus, an aspect of Islam regarded as centrally important by many or most Muslims is incompatible with American life.

Multiculturalism seems to be found mostly in education, the arts world, the non-profit world,  government offices, and some of the large corporations. In public education it can be a good thing if it leads to better methods of teaching students of atypical ethnic backgrounds, or if it leads to reduced bullying and greater acceptance of minorities. On the other hand, if it leads to factionalization it’s bad. Elsewhere, in the worst case it leads to dog-and-pony-show sensitivity training, token hires from minority groups, multicultural knickknacks and decor, and grievance-collecting.

The culmination of multiculturalism comes when a now-middle-class Spanish-surnamed individual starts buying Latino-themed products off the internet in order to enhance his or her Latino-ness. At that point, multiculturalism has triumphed.

(I have also written about education and class here.)

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I am emersonj at gmail dot com.

Original materials copyright John J Emerson

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