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Authors: Neil Postman
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for a new narrative must be fought. They conclude this paragraph by saying that Eurocentric knowledge must be replaced, since “[such] a singular, monovocal curriculum is one of the last institutional terrains of white, patriarchal, ruling-class hegemony.”
This is clearly not the language of “cultural pluralism,” which would have among its aims celebrating the struggles and achievements of nonwhite people as part of the story of humankind. In fact, the authors explicitly denounce any efforts to “heroize” (their word) such figures as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Crispus Attucks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. They believe that the “heroizing” approach conceals the “holocaustal atrocities, economic benefits, and dehumanization of [slavery’s] perpetrators.” Obviously, what “multiculturalism” aims at is not reconciliation with Eurocentric history and learning, but a thorough rejection of it so that a new beginning may be made, a new narrative constructed.
In order to accomplish this, the “multiculturalists” must do two things. First, they must reveal and highlight those ugly parts of history that are usually excluded from the various Eurocentric narratives. Second, they must show that themore humane parts of those narratives have their origin in nonwhite cultures.
The first task is relatively easy, since all narratives conceal or sanitize unsavory if not indefensible chapters. Narratives are not exactly histories at all, but a special genre of storytelling that uses history to give form to ideals. “The purpose of myth,” Claude Lévi-Strauss reminds us, “is to provide a model capable of overcoming a contradiction.” 11 That is why no serious harm is done to the great story of Christianity by revealing that a particular Pope was an ambitious, unscrupulous schemer. Neither is it lethal to speak of the Inquisition. The reality is that there has never been a Christian—not even St. Francis or Mother Teresa—who has lived in every particular a Christian life. The story of Christianity is only in part a history of Christians. It is largely the story of the poignant struggle of people to give life to a set of transcendent ideals. That they have stumbled on the way is embarrassing and sometimes shameful, but it does not discredit the purpose of the story, which in fact is about the discrepancy between reality and the ideal.
The same is true of the American story of democracy. To point out that the Constitution, when written, permitted the exclusion of women and nonproperty owners from voting, and did not regard slaves as fully human, is not to make a mockery of the story. The creation of the Constitution, including the limitations of the men who wrote it, is only an early chapter of a two-hundred-year-old narrative whose theme is the gradual and often painful expansion of the concepts of freedom and humanity. How difficult that struggle has been was expressed by Abraham Lincoln in 1856 in a response he made to the presidential campaign of the Know-Nothing party. “Our progress in degeneracy,” he observed sardonically, “appears to me pretty rapid. As a nation, webegan by declaring that ‘All men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘All men are created equal,
except Negroes.’
When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘All men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ ” 12
The Know-Nothings did not get control, but we know nonetheless how that reversion to degeneracy was stayed, at what cost, and how we have continued the journey that Jefferson charted. That we are far from reaching the goal is made abundantly clear by the robust complaints of those who are not yet adequately represented, including the “multiculturalists.” But the point is that it is possible, by ignoring its transcendent ideals, to tell America’s story as a history of racism, inequity, and violence. Is this the story we wish to be the foundation of American
This is clearly not the language of “cultural pluralism,” which would have among its aims celebrating the struggles and achievements of nonwhite people as part of the story of humankind. In fact, the authors explicitly denounce any efforts to “heroize” (their word) such figures as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Crispus Attucks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. They believe that the “heroizing” approach conceals the “holocaustal atrocities, economic benefits, and dehumanization of [slavery’s] perpetrators.” Obviously, what “multiculturalism” aims at is not reconciliation with Eurocentric history and learning, but a thorough rejection of it so that a new beginning may be made, a new narrative constructed.
In order to accomplish this, the “multiculturalists” must do two things. First, they must reveal and highlight those ugly parts of history that are usually excluded from the various Eurocentric narratives. Second, they must show that themore humane parts of those narratives have their origin in nonwhite cultures.
The first task is relatively easy, since all narratives conceal or sanitize unsavory if not indefensible chapters. Narratives are not exactly histories at all, but a special genre of storytelling that uses history to give form to ideals. “The purpose of myth,” Claude Lévi-Strauss reminds us, “is to provide a model capable of overcoming a contradiction.” 11 That is why no serious harm is done to the great story of Christianity by revealing that a particular Pope was an ambitious, unscrupulous schemer. Neither is it lethal to speak of the Inquisition. The reality is that there has never been a Christian—not even St. Francis or Mother Teresa—who has lived in every particular a Christian life. The story of Christianity is only in part a history of Christians. It is largely the story of the poignant struggle of people to give life to a set of transcendent ideals. That they have stumbled on the way is embarrassing and sometimes shameful, but it does not discredit the purpose of the story, which in fact is about the discrepancy between reality and the ideal.
The same is true of the American story of democracy. To point out that the Constitution, when written, permitted the exclusion of women and nonproperty owners from voting, and did not regard slaves as fully human, is not to make a mockery of the story. The creation of the Constitution, including the limitations of the men who wrote it, is only an early chapter of a two-hundred-year-old narrative whose theme is the gradual and often painful expansion of the concepts of freedom and humanity. How difficult that struggle has been was expressed by Abraham Lincoln in 1856 in a response he made to the presidential campaign of the Know-Nothing party. “Our progress in degeneracy,” he observed sardonically, “appears to me pretty rapid. As a nation, webegan by declaring that ‘All men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘All men are created equal,
except Negroes.’
When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘All men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ ” 12
The Know-Nothings did not get control, but we know nonetheless how that reversion to degeneracy was stayed, at what cost, and how we have continued the journey that Jefferson charted. That we are far from reaching the goal is made abundantly clear by the robust complaints of those who are not yet adequately represented, including the “multiculturalists.” But the point is that it is possible, by ignoring its transcendent ideals, to tell America’s story as a history of racism, inequity, and violence. Is this the story we wish to be the foundation of American
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