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The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
The New York Times bestseller that reminded us what it means to be an American is more timely than ever in this updated and enlarged edition, including "Schlesinger's Syllabus," an annotated reading list of core books on the American experience. The classic image of the American nation ― a melting pot in which differences of race, wealth, religion, and nationality are submerged in democracy ― is being replaced by an orthodoxy that celebrates difference and abandons assimilation. While this upsurge in ethnic awareness has had many healthy consequences in a nation shamed by a history of prejudice, the cult of ethnicity, if pressed too far, threatens to fragment American society to a dangerous degree. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner in history and adviser to the Kennedy and other administrations, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., is uniquely positioned to wave the caution flag in the race to a politics of identity. Using a broader canvas in this updated and expanded edition, he examines the international dimension and the lessons of one polyglot country after another tearing itself apart or on the brink of doing so: among them the former Yugoslavia, Nigeria, even Canada. Closer to home, he finds troubling new evidence that multiculturalism gone awry here in the United States threatens to do the same. "One of the most devastating and articulate attacks on multiculturalism yet to appear."― Wall Street Journal "A brilliant book . . . we owe Arthur Schlesinger a great debt of gratitude."―C. Vann Woodward, New Republic
208 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1991
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About the author
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
670 books218 followersArthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger, was a Pulitzer Prize recipient and American historian and social critic whose work explored the liberalism of American political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. He served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy Administration, from the transition period to the president's state funeral, titled A Thousand Days. In 1968, he actively supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy until Kennedy's assassination in the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, and wrote the biography Robert Kennedy and His Times several years later.
He popularized the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration by writing the book The Imperial Presidency.
His father was also a well-known historian.
He popularized the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration by writing the book The Imperial Presidency.
His father was also a well-known historian.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
August 13, 2022
An interesting, if confused relic of that period in time when minorities in America were reaping the rewards of the Civil Rights Movement to the chagrin of liberal intellectuals like Schlesinger and C. Vann Woodward, who enjoyed progressivism in theory but grew uncomfortable when they witnessed it in practice. Thus, The Disuniting of America pinballs between noting the perils and virtues of multiculturalism with mixed results. One point that I could sympathise with was on the substitution of unpleasant history with well-meaning mythology (new origin stories, racial recasting of historic figures), a problem that both the right and the left have grappled with. This essay/book was written when "political correctness" had a more concrete association with pressure groups and quixotic advocacy, whereas today when someone calls you "PC" or "woke" they are more-or-less declaring that you aren't sufficiently bigoted. This really isn't a good book in light of its many contradictions, incorrect predictions and wishy-washy tone, but it is a stimulating read, hence the 3 stars. Yet it's hard to argue with Jarin Jove's one-star review, which frames Schlesinger's book as a masterclass in self-refutation. Ultimately, the book is the work of an elite intellectual increasingly out of step with the prevailing winds of American society.
February 2, 2017
Schlesinger as a famous liberal was quite conservative in this book as concerned that a hyphened-America, or one that kept strong allegiances and identities based on the race-ethnic heritages of countries of origin that immigrated to the US, was "disuniting" us as all-purpose, general "Americans" for Irish-American, Polish-American, Mexican-American, etc.. He strongly defends a pluralistic, multi-ethnic and multi-religious identity for the US, but is critical of what we'd today call "identity politics" in the public sphere.
August 18, 2010
This book was really interesting. It was not what I expected- I was surprised by the fact that it was not exactly what one would consider politically correct. As I was reading it, I came to find that the author, Arthur Schlesinger is an opponent of minority movements because he views them as separatist extremists. He also acknowledges that the usage of political correctness, the "corruption of history" (by some- especially the "Afro-centrics") and the manipulation of the educational system as their main weapons. In my opinion, he makes some very valid points but at the same time he was so open in his opinion about certain things that it was a bit shocking for me. This is definitely a very thought provoking book and I can see why it is considered so controversial. I am sure that this book has pissed A LOT of people off.
July 7, 2018
Self-refuting and unsubstantiated
Please note: I'm not giving a negative review on the basis of the thesis of the argument. I'm giving a negative review because of how bafflingly self-refuting the author's arguments were.
Reading this book, I held no real opinions on the matter. I was, to the best of my knowledge, impartial to the thesis being made. What I found bizarre was how inconsistent, arbitrary, and unfounded much of his arguments were.
I'll just begin with the examples;
The most glaring self-contradiction is when he quoted an argument in favor of recognizing Shakespeare, the Bible, and Huckleberry Finn as part of the US canon . . . and one page later, he argues that the US canon is an evolving and diverse canon and that new books will replace old ones. Within the context of the argument, he was trying to dismiss arguments that any other culture should have their books as part of the US canon besides the aforementioned books, and that they had no significant impact in Western culture . . . but then lists noteworthy philosophers who expressed viewpoints that they themselves claimed were influenced by reading Hindu and Buddhist schools of thought from translations during the 1800s. Nietzsche, in particular, studied philology and based a lot of his views from assessing the pros and cons of Buddhism which he labeled as superior to Christianity and it's known that the 1800s philology departments of Germany were translating and studying Indian languages and comparing them to Western languages to translate books from the East. The most baffling part of this is that he quoted several of the founders who claimed their connection to Western culture is dead and that the US culture will be distinct and separate from Western schools of thought as an argument in favor for a unique US culture, but seemed to confuse himself on what that meant since he's then making arguments in contradiction to the founders intentions by arguing the US is a western culture.
What's peculiar is that this author claims that US culture is heterogeneous but that any other culture that adapts to foreign influenced, especially Eastern culture making adaptions, is really just imitating the Western influences and shouldn't reflect positively on those cultures. So, evidently, when the US is suppose to be heterogeneous and adaptable to other cultures, but shouldn't adapt Eastern culture. And, if Eastern culture adapts and enjoys Western schools of thought, then it proves their inferior? Keep in mind, this man claims to be a historian but seems to be utterly ignorant of the systematic removal of "heathen" ideas of the East throughout several cultural campaigns in the West.
He claims ethnic studies should be taught . . . but then claims that ethnic studies aren't needed except for Native Americans, because kids get their cultural background understandings from their families and he doesn't seem to consider the timeframe of how long these families toil at work or have the chance to make a living. He celebrates West African children not knowing their cultural heritage or understanding their families native languages as proof of being more oriented towards US culture, but seems to ignore the fact this badly damages his previous argument that people maintain their cultural backgrounds from their families.
He claims Black Americans are the most inculcated in US culture because of the dislocation from native Africa, the destruction of their previous heritages, and the force fed adaption to whatever culture the White slave-owners forced upon them. He clearly states that Black Americans could be regarded as the most American. Then, he decries the horrors of teaching this false history in New York schools. The problem is though, having grown-up in New York State, I can freely say that he's wrong about all this racial overemphasis without regard for history. The only international class we had was focused on European history exclusively. We never learned anything about Africa besides their relation to the slave trade with Europe. His arguments about this anti-intellectual falsehood of Black history supposedly began in 1987 . . . but if that's the case, then I never once experienced it in the early 2000s. Looking back at it, all the author really did was cherrypick stupid quotes to make sweeping generalizations. It is genuinely untrue that any of this farce that he talks about ever happened in NY State high schools. All I learned was European history and that was it. He made such a big deal out of this, quoting stupid comments over and over, and none of it had any truth to it or any impact on the educational system. What I found particularly disgusting was that he's unwilling to condemn or recognize human genocides of multiple ethnic groups who want their trials and tribulations recognized in history books, but there is a strong rejection of this in favor of a stupid set of half-truths and outright falsehoods being taught in the education system today about US history. Half of the work is basically telling kids they're wrong about what the education system taught them in first grade. It's pathetic.
Much like his argument against the person who made the film Roots, he criticizes him for only going by his mother's genealogy and not his father's, who led all the way back to Irish descent. Yet, that isn't a good argument against racism by the West. The Irish were forced into slavery and sold to South America under British rule, suffered a horrible genocidal famine orchestrated by a racist lunatic who oversaw the problems with the corn and potato famine, and purposefully killed 2 million Irish people with their terrible policies. And, then the surviving refugees in the US suffered racist policies by anti-Catholics who discriminated them for their Irish heritage. The author, yet again, refuted their own argument.
The last portion made me raise an eyebrow. He argues that the Left has gone too far with ethnic issues . . . and then makes a total non-sequitur argument using ableism as an example of the Left taking social justice too far. Ableism is the discrimination against people with handicap issues in jobs, school facilities, shopping centers, and tourism. I honestly began shaking my head over the callous disregard for the plight of handicap people and wondered why he would list this as a trite and worthless issue. Disabled people, especially children, most assuredly need to have areas that help assist with their disabilities.
Overall, the thesis is unsubstantiated, and I honestly have no idea how someone could write a book that contradicted itself with no ability to make discernible or meaningful points on what they're arguing or what the end product of his ideas would even look like. Finally, if it's wrong to have an ethnocentric cult-like culture - which I don't disagree with - why then emphasize the West's ethnocentricity to rebuke the ethnocentric narrative?
Please note: I'm not giving a negative review on the basis of the thesis of the argument. I'm giving a negative review because of how bafflingly self-refuting the author's arguments were.
Reading this book, I held no real opinions on the matter. I was, to the best of my knowledge, impartial to the thesis being made. What I found bizarre was how inconsistent, arbitrary, and unfounded much of his arguments were.
I'll just begin with the examples;
The most glaring self-contradiction is when he quoted an argument in favor of recognizing Shakespeare, the Bible, and Huckleberry Finn as part of the US canon . . . and one page later, he argues that the US canon is an evolving and diverse canon and that new books will replace old ones. Within the context of the argument, he was trying to dismiss arguments that any other culture should have their books as part of the US canon besides the aforementioned books, and that they had no significant impact in Western culture . . . but then lists noteworthy philosophers who expressed viewpoints that they themselves claimed were influenced by reading Hindu and Buddhist schools of thought from translations during the 1800s. Nietzsche, in particular, studied philology and based a lot of his views from assessing the pros and cons of Buddhism which he labeled as superior to Christianity and it's known that the 1800s philology departments of Germany were translating and studying Indian languages and comparing them to Western languages to translate books from the East. The most baffling part of this is that he quoted several of the founders who claimed their connection to Western culture is dead and that the US culture will be distinct and separate from Western schools of thought as an argument in favor for a unique US culture, but seemed to confuse himself on what that meant since he's then making arguments in contradiction to the founders intentions by arguing the US is a western culture.
What's peculiar is that this author claims that US culture is heterogeneous but that any other culture that adapts to foreign influenced, especially Eastern culture making adaptions, is really just imitating the Western influences and shouldn't reflect positively on those cultures. So, evidently, when the US is suppose to be heterogeneous and adaptable to other cultures, but shouldn't adapt Eastern culture. And, if Eastern culture adapts and enjoys Western schools of thought, then it proves their inferior? Keep in mind, this man claims to be a historian but seems to be utterly ignorant of the systematic removal of "heathen" ideas of the East throughout several cultural campaigns in the West.
He claims ethnic studies should be taught . . . but then claims that ethnic studies aren't needed except for Native Americans, because kids get their cultural background understandings from their families and he doesn't seem to consider the timeframe of how long these families toil at work or have the chance to make a living. He celebrates West African children not knowing their cultural heritage or understanding their families native languages as proof of being more oriented towards US culture, but seems to ignore the fact this badly damages his previous argument that people maintain their cultural backgrounds from their families.
He claims Black Americans are the most inculcated in US culture because of the dislocation from native Africa, the destruction of their previous heritages, and the force fed adaption to whatever culture the White slave-owners forced upon them. He clearly states that Black Americans could be regarded as the most American. Then, he decries the horrors of teaching this false history in New York schools. The problem is though, having grown-up in New York State, I can freely say that he's wrong about all this racial overemphasis without regard for history. The only international class we had was focused on European history exclusively. We never learned anything about Africa besides their relation to the slave trade with Europe. His arguments about this anti-intellectual falsehood of Black history supposedly began in 1987 . . . but if that's the case, then I never once experienced it in the early 2000s. Looking back at it, all the author really did was cherrypick stupid quotes to make sweeping generalizations. It is genuinely untrue that any of this farce that he talks about ever happened in NY State high schools. All I learned was European history and that was it. He made such a big deal out of this, quoting stupid comments over and over, and none of it had any truth to it or any impact on the educational system. What I found particularly disgusting was that he's unwilling to condemn or recognize human genocides of multiple ethnic groups who want their trials and tribulations recognized in history books, but there is a strong rejection of this in favor of a stupid set of half-truths and outright falsehoods being taught in the education system today about US history. Half of the work is basically telling kids they're wrong about what the education system taught them in first grade. It's pathetic.
Much like his argument against the person who made the film Roots, he criticizes him for only going by his mother's genealogy and not his father's, who led all the way back to Irish descent. Yet, that isn't a good argument against racism by the West. The Irish were forced into slavery and sold to South America under British rule, suffered a horrible genocidal famine orchestrated by a racist lunatic who oversaw the problems with the corn and potato famine, and purposefully killed 2 million Irish people with their terrible policies. And, then the surviving refugees in the US suffered racist policies by anti-Catholics who discriminated them for their Irish heritage. The author, yet again, refuted their own argument.
The last portion made me raise an eyebrow. He argues that the Left has gone too far with ethnic issues . . . and then makes a total non-sequitur argument using ableism as an example of the Left taking social justice too far. Ableism is the discrimination against people with handicap issues in jobs, school facilities, shopping centers, and tourism. I honestly began shaking my head over the callous disregard for the plight of handicap people and wondered why he would list this as a trite and worthless issue. Disabled people, especially children, most assuredly need to have areas that help assist with their disabilities.
Overall, the thesis is unsubstantiated, and I honestly have no idea how someone could write a book that contradicted itself with no ability to make discernible or meaningful points on what they're arguing or what the end product of his ideas would even look like. Finally, if it's wrong to have an ethnocentric cult-like culture - which I don't disagree with - why then emphasize the West's ethnocentricity to rebuke the ethnocentric narrative?
January 23, 2016
I read this book some years ago and liked it. I especially liked the reaction of the political left when it was published: apostasy! Schlesinger was the bard of both the New Deal and the whole Camelot thing with the Kennedys. He was a Democrat's Democrat, and spent his career writing--very insightfully, I might add--about America during the days of the New Deal coalition (1930s-1980). You can imagine the gasps of disbelieving horror in the salons of New York City, or in the faculty lounges of Harvard University, when their champion looked at the evolving political landscape of America and decided something was rotten in the state of Denmark (to turn a phrase).
Basically, Mr. Schlesinger predicted what we see today: groups of people who identify by ethnicity forming Balkanized silos that demand government services and are treated as blocks of voters who must be appeased . Instead of the old melting pot metaphor, we have an angry tossed salad. By abandoning the idea of assimilation and adopting multiculturalism (and attacking Western Civ. as nothing but 'dead white guys') we have sewn the seeds of our destruction, and made it much harder to appeal to broad swathes of citizens with calls to a common cause. Our body politic is deeply divided right now, which is frustrating to both parties. The middle shrinks, while the left and right ends of the spectrum become ever more entrenched, hostile, and unwilling to compromise. In my opinion, the GOP is much, much worse about this than the Democrats are, but generally speaking both sides are run by assholes.
But don't take it from me! Take from the guy who served in the Kennedy White House and was a part of the old Democratic Party back before...well, back before. Why, an actor playing Arthur (who used to be called 'the dancing professor' because he liked to cut a rug) was in that Kevin Costner movie about Kennedy (13 days, I think it was called).
This was a thoughtful book. I used to read a lot more history than I do now. I'm not sure why I turned from it.
Basically, Mr. Schlesinger predicted what we see today: groups of people who identify by ethnicity forming Balkanized silos that demand government services and are treated as blocks of voters who must be appeased . Instead of the old melting pot metaphor, we have an angry tossed salad. By abandoning the idea of assimilation and adopting multiculturalism (and attacking Western Civ. as nothing but 'dead white guys') we have sewn the seeds of our destruction, and made it much harder to appeal to broad swathes of citizens with calls to a common cause. Our body politic is deeply divided right now, which is frustrating to both parties. The middle shrinks, while the left and right ends of the spectrum become ever more entrenched, hostile, and unwilling to compromise. In my opinion, the GOP is much, much worse about this than the Democrats are, but generally speaking both sides are run by assholes.
But don't take it from me! Take from the guy who served in the Kennedy White House and was a part of the old Democratic Party back before...well, back before. Why, an actor playing Arthur (who used to be called 'the dancing professor' because he liked to cut a rug) was in that Kevin Costner movie about Kennedy (13 days, I think it was called).
This was a thoughtful book. I used to read a lot more history than I do now. I'm not sure why I turned from it.
December 11, 2014
I see that Schlesinger's book is very controversial.Well count me in the the readers who loved this book.AS was btw a liberal,not a conservative or neocon.Nor did he hate black folks.I felt he was spot on about the extremes of multiculturalism.The lack of appreciation of our inherited Western Culture,which is the greatest culture in the world,bar none!
We Americans have become too PC,for example,alot of people have contributed to our nation,Asians,Indians,African-Americans,etc.But make no mistake but white people,especially Anglo-Saxons have contributed the most.But if a white politician said that he would be heavily criticized. We Americans need to be more nationalistic,we live the most freest country in the world. I WAS A PROUD AMERICAN WHEN I FIRST READ SCHLESINGER'S BOOK IN 1993 AND STILL AM PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN IN 2014,SOON TO BE 2015!
We Americans have become too PC,for example,alot of people have contributed to our nation,Asians,Indians,African-Americans,etc.But make no mistake but white people,especially Anglo-Saxons have contributed the most.But if a white politician said that he would be heavily criticized. We Americans need to be more nationalistic,we live the most freest country in the world. I WAS A PROUD AMERICAN WHEN I FIRST READ SCHLESINGER'S BOOK IN 1993 AND STILL AM PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN IN 2014,SOON TO BE 2015!
April 20, 2012
I absolutely love Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. I believe he was one of the greatest political scientists/historians in our generation. He is a fantastic writer and he is thorough in his research.
This book is probably one of the shortest he has ever written (at least of what I have read thus far) but it is no less important. It is interesting and he really gives his observations of American society and the different cultures that are in it.
I would classify this as a "must read" because it is a quick and easy read and his observations and reflections are on point and true.
This book is probably one of the shortest he has ever written (at least of what I have read thus far) but it is no less important. It is interesting and he really gives his observations of American society and the different cultures that are in it.
I would classify this as a "must read" because it is a quick and easy read and his observations and reflections are on point and true.
February 16, 2008
A definitive assessment of the state of the Union in the early 1990's, and the unfortunate rise of multiculturalist extremism and "political correctness", a quagmire from which the nation has yet to emerge. Schlesinger pulls no punches and doesn't shy away from sacred cows. You couldn't ask for a better book on the subject.
August 9, 2022
It's an extremely white supremacist view to suggest that any culture other than European being celebrated or included in America creates 'disunity'.
This is largely written in support and favor of a eurocentric & white supremacist version of history and holding to that view as our national story, despite claiming to be a multicultural nation.
He argues that slavery was good for Black folks. That losing our language and identity makes us the most 'american' but then doesn't want or views or experiences included in the American story.
It's weirdly racist. Like he wants to credit Black culture that resulted in Jazz, Rap, Hip-hop, etc to just be credited as american with our contributions diminished to not cause 'division'.
At the same time he feels like manifest destiny was true, that white men -specifically the descendants of anglo saxons- are the creators of the western world solely, and to be given credit for inventions that weren't theirs, Iike Jazz. But at the same time to be absolved of responsibility for the same aspects he's so proud of.
So which is it????
If manifest destiny is right and slavery and colonialism are okay because Europeans built roads and indoctrinated the globe in xtianity, then the problems that resulted from these policies also belong to anglo saxons, right? So that makes them RESPONSIBILE for the actions of their predecessors. Which this author feels is divisive.
He just wants to be praised and not critiqued and it reads as fragile, ridiculous
and immature.
This book exists as a response to 'Afrocentric' history. The forerunner to the current 1619 Project.
I'd say that Afrocentric History taught to Black folks in the 80's & 90's is likely why we have the 1619 Project today.
Unlike Afrocentric History which was taught primarily to Black students in Black school districts, the 1619 Project has a global and national audience.
It's being taught from pre K thru university level. I mean racists are really upset about it but it's happening regardless.
So for those that think white folks losing their shit over 'critical race theory' is new, nope, same shit different decade.
This author hasn't been liberal in decades before he wrote this.
However his views track as mostly liberal.
I appreciate that because it's important for BIPOC folks to remember that white liberals are often lying about their antiracist feelings, in their heart beats an unredeemable racist.
Always a good reminder.
This book contradicts itself in multiple places and largely functions as an angry rant that white anglo saxons created our society. They created the worst, most oppressive parts of it for sure. Pretty sure that's not what he meant but that's all I got for him.
This is old and dated so hopefully the author is dead and suffered while he died🤷🏾♀️
I saw this on hoopla but pirated a copy so the author won't make any money off of this.
This is largely written in support and favor of a eurocentric & white supremacist version of history and holding to that view as our national story, despite claiming to be a multicultural nation.
He argues that slavery was good for Black folks. That losing our language and identity makes us the most 'american' but then doesn't want or views or experiences included in the American story.
It's weirdly racist. Like he wants to credit Black culture that resulted in Jazz, Rap, Hip-hop, etc to just be credited as american with our contributions diminished to not cause 'division'.
At the same time he feels like manifest destiny was true, that white men -specifically the descendants of anglo saxons- are the creators of the western world solely, and to be given credit for inventions that weren't theirs, Iike Jazz. But at the same time to be absolved of responsibility for the same aspects he's so proud of.
So which is it????
If manifest destiny is right and slavery and colonialism are okay because Europeans built roads and indoctrinated the globe in xtianity, then the problems that resulted from these policies also belong to anglo saxons, right? So that makes them RESPONSIBILE for the actions of their predecessors. Which this author feels is divisive.
He just wants to be praised and not critiqued and it reads as fragile, ridiculous
and immature.
This book exists as a response to 'Afrocentric' history. The forerunner to the current 1619 Project.
I'd say that Afrocentric History taught to Black folks in the 80's & 90's is likely why we have the 1619 Project today.
Unlike Afrocentric History which was taught primarily to Black students in Black school districts, the 1619 Project has a global and national audience.
It's being taught from pre K thru university level. I mean racists are really upset about it but it's happening regardless.
So for those that think white folks losing their shit over 'critical race theory' is new, nope, same shit different decade.
This author hasn't been liberal in decades before he wrote this.
However his views track as mostly liberal.
I appreciate that because it's important for BIPOC folks to remember that white liberals are often lying about their antiracist feelings, in their heart beats an unredeemable racist.
Always a good reminder.
This book contradicts itself in multiple places and largely functions as an angry rant that white anglo saxons created our society. They created the worst, most oppressive parts of it for sure. Pretty sure that's not what he meant but that's all I got for him.
This is old and dated so hopefully the author is dead and suffered while he died🤷🏾♀️
I saw this on hoopla but pirated a copy so the author won't make any money off of this.
January 3, 2021
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was a historian and Democrat, noted for his tough anti-communism. By the 1990s he was mostly irrelevant, and The Disuniting of America illustrates that point. Schlesinger, while hardly a class reductionist, was distrustful of the multiculturalism that was rearing its head in the 1980s. This was a shot across the bow.
The book shows its age in a few points. There is an optimism about America, its future, and its demographics. He predicts that the leftist identarian movement will fail, America is unlikely to ever become majority-minority, and that the wave of political correctness on college campuses is unlikely to go any farther. All were proven wrong. Indeed, if he is so certain the PC forces will lose, why this essay masquerading as a book?
There are good pints, and moments of predictive power. He accurately saw that afrocenterism would not substantially help black people. He points out the ways such thinking limits people, as knowledge becomes balkanized. After all, nearly every great black author drew inspiration from white writers, as surely as American music is based around cross-pollination (as opposed to the idea that American music is merely black music stolen by whites). His defense of "the canon" is well said and points out that much of the canon is made up of dissident voices of a wide variety.
What I came away with was an optimistic man who saw a future where America could join the ranks of other diverse nations, where lacking a common ideology and the promise of upward mobility, are riven by fictionalized politics and de facto segregation. The book is a relic of a liberal order that lost its purpose as the Soviet Union receded and was then undone by individualism and the acceleration of the west's loss of faith, which started after World War I. Schlesinger could see people were atomized and hobbled by self-doubt. Such people are ripe to return to more collective ways of thinking, only class will not be the glue; it almost never is.
Pompey told Sulla, people worship the rising and not the setting sun. A book once touted as well written and argued, would today be called the death rattle of a straight white male liberal of privilege. That assessment would actually be correct for once.
The book shows its age in a few points. There is an optimism about America, its future, and its demographics. He predicts that the leftist identarian movement will fail, America is unlikely to ever become majority-minority, and that the wave of political correctness on college campuses is unlikely to go any farther. All were proven wrong. Indeed, if he is so certain the PC forces will lose, why this essay masquerading as a book?
There are good pints, and moments of predictive power. He accurately saw that afrocenterism would not substantially help black people. He points out the ways such thinking limits people, as knowledge becomes balkanized. After all, nearly every great black author drew inspiration from white writers, as surely as American music is based around cross-pollination (as opposed to the idea that American music is merely black music stolen by whites). His defense of "the canon" is well said and points out that much of the canon is made up of dissident voices of a wide variety.
What I came away with was an optimistic man who saw a future where America could join the ranks of other diverse nations, where lacking a common ideology and the promise of upward mobility, are riven by fictionalized politics and de facto segregation. The book is a relic of a liberal order that lost its purpose as the Soviet Union receded and was then undone by individualism and the acceleration of the west's loss of faith, which started after World War I. Schlesinger could see people were atomized and hobbled by self-doubt. Such people are ripe to return to more collective ways of thinking, only class will not be the glue; it almost never is.
Pompey told Sulla, people worship the rising and not the setting sun. A book once touted as well written and argued, would today be called the death rattle of a straight white male liberal of privilege. That assessment would actually be correct for once.
May 2, 2014
Courageous
Schlesinger served the Kennedy administration, heavily involved in advancing Civil Rights. Any memory of pre-1960s America justifies his passion. Even lynching of African Americans was not illegal until Truman made it so in 1948. Images of fire hose and German Shepard attacks on peaceful black protestors or their white supporters remains a stark American memory. His book, however, is an alert to those of reason regardless of affiliation that the movement has run off its tracks. But that hasn’t stopped its wreckage from continuing to plow a path of ruin through its original intent. As Schlesinger puts it, “A culture of ethnicity has arisen to denounce the idea of a melting pot, to protect and perpetuate separate ethnic and racial communities.” Its underlying philosophy is that America is not a nation of individuals but a nation of groups, he says; ethnicity is the defining experience; division into ethnic communities establishes the structure of American society and the fundamental meaning of American history. “Multiethnic dogma abandons historic purposes, replacing assimilation by fragmentation, integration by separation.” Our modern movements succeed where the Klan failed.
Referencing multiculturalism he asks if it is the school’s function to teach racial pride? When does obsession with difference threaten identity? Since this 1993 book, obsession has become an educational standard. Our calendar is split into months for one race pride or another (except white and European). It starts early – believing the purpose of history is therapeutic. He notes, “Once ethnic pride and self-esteem become the criterion for teaching history then certain things cannot be taught.” Schlesinger asks the question, “Why does anyone suppose that pride and inspiration are available only from people of the same ethnicity?” One wonders.
Schlesinger’s core warning is the same as that of the Founders, that “the virus of tribalism lies dormant, flaring up to destroy entire nations.” As Schlesinger notes, what began as valid leaders - like so much that began for the right reasons - have been hijacked for the benefits of opposition, not unification.
Schlesinger served the Kennedy administration, heavily involved in advancing Civil Rights. Any memory of pre-1960s America justifies his passion. Even lynching of African Americans was not illegal until Truman made it so in 1948. Images of fire hose and German Shepard attacks on peaceful black protestors or their white supporters remains a stark American memory. His book, however, is an alert to those of reason regardless of affiliation that the movement has run off its tracks. But that hasn’t stopped its wreckage from continuing to plow a path of ruin through its original intent. As Schlesinger puts it, “A culture of ethnicity has arisen to denounce the idea of a melting pot, to protect and perpetuate separate ethnic and racial communities.” Its underlying philosophy is that America is not a nation of individuals but a nation of groups, he says; ethnicity is the defining experience; division into ethnic communities establishes the structure of American society and the fundamental meaning of American history. “Multiethnic dogma abandons historic purposes, replacing assimilation by fragmentation, integration by separation.” Our modern movements succeed where the Klan failed.
Referencing multiculturalism he asks if it is the school’s function to teach racial pride? When does obsession with difference threaten identity? Since this 1993 book, obsession has become an educational standard. Our calendar is split into months for one race pride or another (except white and European). It starts early – believing the purpose of history is therapeutic. He notes, “Once ethnic pride and self-esteem become the criterion for teaching history then certain things cannot be taught.” Schlesinger asks the question, “Why does anyone suppose that pride and inspiration are available only from people of the same ethnicity?” One wonders.
Schlesinger’s core warning is the same as that of the Founders, that “the virus of tribalism lies dormant, flaring up to destroy entire nations.” As Schlesinger notes, what began as valid leaders - like so much that began for the right reasons - have been hijacked for the benefits of opposition, not unification.
November 14, 2011
Absolute crap. Wrote my undergrad thesis in opposition to everything it had to say about American history and multiculturalism. If I could give it no stars, I would.
February 10, 2017
Along with Samuel Huntington's "Who are we?", I've been reading and revisiting parts of this book for a couple years now. Both Huntington and Schlesinger offer important insights into why humans opt for what Schlesinger calls a "protective life-raft": his way of saying that in a fragmented world, people seek cohesion, meaning, and purpose within the groups they share the most with.
It's easy to either dismiss or deride the rise of right in the last few years among North Atlantic nations, but this is the kind of book that proves useful in showing why preserving the core culture of a place like the US matters to so many people.
But alas I am ambivalent about aspects of this book as well. As an American expatriate for close to a decade now, I've had the privilege to immerse myself in a couple of foreign cultures. This has been a great chance to discover aspects of countries that are integral to them, and quite different to the US. For example, the tempo of life in a country like Bulgaria is quite graceful. There's a kind of wisdom in societies that flow at a more leisurely pace. My foreign experience has also engendered a deeper reverence for what the US has to offer, things I didn't realize growing up there. That reverence however, doesn't land me on a position to become a nationalist. Perhaps it doesn't for Schlesinger either, but he and Huntington both seem to say that we should understand human provincialism from the lenses of psychology and the cultural values/events that bind us. I understand why plenty of people love their homeland and have little curiosity for the wider world or their "immigrant"neighbor, but there are also those of us who can have love for country and relish chances for meaningful cultural immersion and learning.
For anyone worried about the direction of the US under Trump, I would suggest this book on the grounds that you may be able to appreciate the views of various Americans you disagree with, such as conservatives. In many countries around the world, conserving heritage is an essential aspect of life, like in the Sultanate of Oman where I reside now. It's as if culture and heritage in a country like this are sacred ground that one (especially a foreigner) simply should not tread on or try to mess with. You can comment on the taste of food or something similarly benign, but don't dare go even surface level on questioning a significant and respected cultural practice. Meanwhile in the US, especially since the 1960s we have taken pleasure at all sorts of self-denigration about who we are. So many of us just see slave owners when we think of the founding fathers. It's tempting to think that conservatives or even Trump supporters are deranged bigots, but there is something to their dismay at how easily we disregard or forget what makes us who we are and how we've become such an incredible nation.
It's easy to either dismiss or deride the rise of right in the last few years among North Atlantic nations, but this is the kind of book that proves useful in showing why preserving the core culture of a place like the US matters to so many people.
But alas I am ambivalent about aspects of this book as well. As an American expatriate for close to a decade now, I've had the privilege to immerse myself in a couple of foreign cultures. This has been a great chance to discover aspects of countries that are integral to them, and quite different to the US. For example, the tempo of life in a country like Bulgaria is quite graceful. There's a kind of wisdom in societies that flow at a more leisurely pace. My foreign experience has also engendered a deeper reverence for what the US has to offer, things I didn't realize growing up there. That reverence however, doesn't land me on a position to become a nationalist. Perhaps it doesn't for Schlesinger either, but he and Huntington both seem to say that we should understand human provincialism from the lenses of psychology and the cultural values/events that bind us. I understand why plenty of people love their homeland and have little curiosity for the wider world or their "immigrant"neighbor, but there are also those of us who can have love for country and relish chances for meaningful cultural immersion and learning.
For anyone worried about the direction of the US under Trump, I would suggest this book on the grounds that you may be able to appreciate the views of various Americans you disagree with, such as conservatives. In many countries around the world, conserving heritage is an essential aspect of life, like in the Sultanate of Oman where I reside now. It's as if culture and heritage in a country like this are sacred ground that one (especially a foreigner) simply should not tread on or try to mess with. You can comment on the taste of food or something similarly benign, but don't dare go even surface level on questioning a significant and respected cultural practice. Meanwhile in the US, especially since the 1960s we have taken pleasure at all sorts of self-denigration about who we are. So many of us just see slave owners when we think of the founding fathers. It's tempting to think that conservatives or even Trump supporters are deranged bigots, but there is something to their dismay at how easily we disregard or forget what makes us who we are and how we've become such an incredible nation.
June 25, 2019
Written in 1991, this book is a frightening window into what the world was turning into, and today in 2019, 28 years later -- or an entire young adult human life cultivated later -- we see the "payoff" from exactly what Schlesinger warned about. Unbelievably prescient, and so compellingly ahead of its time.
Interestingly, Schlesinger himself is not one of my favorite people. He is one of the iconic liberal voices of the 20th Century, and I am solidly conservative. His voice helped build modern liberalism through decades in the mid to late 1900s.
But what is fascinating is that despite that, Schlesinger still remains an old school Kennedy-era liberal. By that I mean an advocate for pluralism, but not Balkanized, disunited, divergent multiculturalism. Schlesinger is an unapologetic believer in the American culture, and of the real version of the melting pot, whereby it is the goal of the assimilating population to melt into the prevailing culture, and it is the goal of the prevailing culture to take parts of the assimilating population and make them part of the larger culture.
The loss of that common culture and the retreat into groups -- often antagonistic to one another -- that have no interest in common culture is dangerous and recipe for the crumbling of the American Republic.
Schlesinger saw it, even back in 1991. We didn't really listen to him, and today we see the horrible reality of the future he was afraid of. Amazing to look back in time and see somebody see it coming.
Interestingly, Schlesinger himself is not one of my favorite people. He is one of the iconic liberal voices of the 20th Century, and I am solidly conservative. His voice helped build modern liberalism through decades in the mid to late 1900s.
But what is fascinating is that despite that, Schlesinger still remains an old school Kennedy-era liberal. By that I mean an advocate for pluralism, but not Balkanized, disunited, divergent multiculturalism. Schlesinger is an unapologetic believer in the American culture, and of the real version of the melting pot, whereby it is the goal of the assimilating population to melt into the prevailing culture, and it is the goal of the prevailing culture to take parts of the assimilating population and make them part of the larger culture.
The loss of that common culture and the retreat into groups -- often antagonistic to one another -- that have no interest in common culture is dangerous and recipe for the crumbling of the American Republic.
Schlesinger saw it, even back in 1991. We didn't really listen to him, and today we see the horrible reality of the future he was afraid of. Amazing to look back in time and see somebody see it coming.
November 26, 2017
Though written at the height of the multicultural movement in the U.S. over 25 years ago, this short book is very relevant to the current situation in America, in which we are becoming more and more fragmented as a society, and extremely “paranoid”, nationalistic, and exclusionary. The author notes toward the end that, in practical terms, America has been moving toward a more open and inclusionary society. That is not the case today. Stark lines are being drawn, again, along ethnic lines, causing adverse affects on our system of democracy, as well as societal behavior.
The author claims that the interplay of diverse traditions has resulted in the America that we know, and unifying political ideals allow people are free to live as they choose. “Belief in one’s own culture does not require disdain for other cultures.” That is not what is currently being experienced by many across the country...
Many Americans today (politicians included) could learn/remember a few things here, in a paragraph near the end, which resonates with me and relates to the situation in present-day America: “One powerful reason for the movement from exclusion to inclusion is that the American Creed facilitates the appeal from the actual to the idea. When we talk of the American democratic faith, we must understand in in its true dimensions. It is not an impervious, final, and complacent orthodoxy, intolerant of deviations and dissent, fulfilled in flag salutes, oaths of allegiance, and hands over heart. It is an ever-evolving philosophy, fulfilling its ideals through debate, self-criticism, protest, disrespect and irreverence; a tradition in which all have rights of heterodoxy and opportunities for self-assertion. The Creed has been the means by which Americans have haltingly but persistently narrowed the gap between performance and principle. It is what all Americans should learn, because it is what binds us together.”
The author claims that the interplay of diverse traditions has resulted in the America that we know, and unifying political ideals allow people are free to live as they choose. “Belief in one’s own culture does not require disdain for other cultures.” That is not what is currently being experienced by many across the country...
Many Americans today (politicians included) could learn/remember a few things here, in a paragraph near the end, which resonates with me and relates to the situation in present-day America: “One powerful reason for the movement from exclusion to inclusion is that the American Creed facilitates the appeal from the actual to the idea. When we talk of the American democratic faith, we must understand in in its true dimensions. It is not an impervious, final, and complacent orthodoxy, intolerant of deviations and dissent, fulfilled in flag salutes, oaths of allegiance, and hands over heart. It is an ever-evolving philosophy, fulfilling its ideals through debate, self-criticism, protest, disrespect and irreverence; a tradition in which all have rights of heterodoxy and opportunities for self-assertion. The Creed has been the means by which Americans have haltingly but persistently narrowed the gap between performance and principle. It is what all Americans should learn, because it is what binds us together.”
July 25, 2008
This book is a little gem; a must read for anyone interested in one of the major (if not the main) problems presently facing the United States. Let me say this: if you're a liberal then you'll probably poop your pants and give the book a low rating for Schlesinger gives sufficient reason to doubt the doctrine that 'you' tend to so arrogantly advocate: cultural relativism. But, obviously enough (or so I would think), not all cultures are the same in value (as demonstrated by the nature of the individuals and their characteristics it commonly claims). And, as Schlesinger argues through historical events and commentary, leaving such a premise (cultural relativism) unchecked can generate many undesired consequences in a multicultural society, such as the United States. Beware!—the compensatory historians and media hucksters are coming (are here!).
July 7, 2014
There were many time where he contradicted himself. He would say multiculturalism in a postive light, but in the next page say it in a negative one. He talked about the horrors of nationalism creating the past, yet defended another one.
However, it was good to get a liberal and moderate-leftist criticism of multiculturalism. Especially how he said not freedom of speech, but persecuting it on the basis of "hate speech" actually gives way to the right to ban speech they deem "hateful", and they are more of a threat.
However, it was good to get a liberal and moderate-leftist criticism of multiculturalism. Especially how he said not freedom of speech, but persecuting it on the basis of "hate speech" actually gives way to the right to ban speech they deem "hateful", and they are more of a threat.
October 15, 2015
This was a very good book by a liberal author on a subject that would likely make most liberals squirm because it tears apart the current and continued splitting of the people of this country into self segregated group, and being led by those that denounce segregation the most. Those that hate the term "melting pot" might have to reconsider their position.
March 26, 2017
An immensely frustrating book. Schlesinger acknowledges the realities of white racism without recognizing its role in producing the very identity groups he bemoans. Does he imagine minority groups have self-identified because they had nothing better to do? They did so because they were unable to gain admittance into dominant culture, despite their repeated attempts to do so.
July 25, 2018
A balanced and insightful review of an ever larger national challenge.
September 20, 2019
I enjoy these rabbit holes debate sends me down.
May 21, 2018
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was an American Presidential historian and biographer. His academic tenure was punctuated by a stints as a Democratic speechwriter and as a consultant in the Kennedy administration. The bulk of his work was in Presidential biographies, as well as first hand accounts of JFK’s time in office and a biography of Bobby Kennedy. Towards the end of his career in 1991, he wrote the brief but insightful “Disuniting America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.”
The work seeks to explain what it is that holds American society together – a nation which is expressly and proudly comprised of many diverse groups. Schlesinger suggests that the national narrative, as taught to children in the classroom, is of paramount importance in maintaining national cohesion.
Schlesinger focuses primarily on classroom curriculum. He navigates the tension between the teaching of a national, unified narrative against the understandable desire to teach the history of particular local communities which may include stories and actors which are more relatable to local students. Schlesinger views the task of classroom curriculum as that of combining “due appreciation of the splendid diversity of the nation with due emphasis on the great unifying Western ideas of individual freedom, political democracy, and human rights.” He warns that unrelenting focus on the sanctity of the subgroup in preference to the national identity is ultimately harmful and less likely to bring about a equitable, strong, happy nation. He warns that “mutual suspicion and hostility are bound to emerge in a society bent on defining itself in terms of jostling and competing groups.” Schlesinger advocates titling the scales away from Pluribus back towards Unum.
The book appears to have been written in the midst of a particular public debate about high school curricula in America in the early 1990’s which I know little about. Nonetheless, there were a number of points of more general application arose from the text which are worth consideration.
Does the formal curricula actually shape the student and nation?
Schlesinger says that “what students are taught in schools affects the way they will thereafter see and treat other Americans. The way they will thereafter conceive the purposes of the republic. The debate about the curriculum is a debate about what it means to be American.”
Schlesinger, having spent most of his adult life in the classroom (with the notable exception of some years in the White House), perhaps over-emphasises the power that formal curricula has on student’s outcomes later in life. Schlesinger takes it for granted that what is articulated in the curriculum is actually imbued to the child (rather than in one ear, out the other), and that that formal education plays an important role in moulding the nation’s character in the future.
I suspect formal curriculum does play a role, but less than the high pedestal he places it on. Culture is imbued into us from our families, our friends, film and media, religion and the economy. Formal education plays a part, but the effect is diluted amongst the broader culture and influences in a student’s life.
Perhaps in order to establish the size of the effect we would need to look more closely at the mechanism at work between the school experience and behaviour later in life? For instance, when a Year 9 civics teacher tells her students that it is important for the health of our political democracy that everyone’s voice be heard with respect, does that same student, 10 years later, then treat their political opponents with respect? When an adult is deciding whether to vote for a politician whose policies include harsh censorship of the media, does that adult remember what his high school textbook said about the importance of freedom of the press and vote accordingly?
How that mechanism works, and its size, is a vastly complex question and one whose answer would require its own thesis. For now I think it is reasonable to suggest that if all school children are properly taught a solid grounding and respect for, say, the history of the nation, the political process and the fundamentals of western thought, then that education will translate, in a non-negligible way, into a positive difference in the culture at large.
What subject should be included in a compulsory curriculum?
It is tempting when given this opportunity – carte blanche production of the nation’s curriculum – to produce a long shopping list of the best attributes we want our children to have. We wish them to be brilliant orators and writers, so we make English and literature compulsory. We also wish them to be technically adept in the 21st century, so we make science, mathematics and IT compulsory. We want them to be able to work overseas, to be truly cosmopolitan and have je ne sais quoi, so we make foreign language study compulsory. French, anyone?
But you can’t have everything. For every hour of class time devoted to one topic, an hour on another must be abandoned. (Our teachers work hard enough as it is!) Some children will be hopeless at languages but brilliant with numbers and their parents will understandably want to focus on one above another. It is desirable, unless a real need is proven to the contrary, that parents, children and schools be given as much freedom as possible to determine their child’s future. Any compulsory curriculum, therefore, must be limited to only the essentials.
So what is most important? Maths, English, Arts, Science? Schlesinger’s reflections don’t go down that rabbit hole. He starts and ends on the presumption that civics just is in the curriculum and the only debate is what subject matter it contains.
I am tempted to go on a limb and suggest that civics is the only course that ought to be made compulsory on the curriculum. The key word here is compulsory. It is not to say that the other courses – math, science, english et. al. – are not important to the individual student. They are incredibly important to the individual. Civics is, on a measure of benefit conferred on the individual, very far down the list unless the child happens to be pursuing a career in law, politics or academia. However if we presume, as we did above, that the civic education of each child plays a role in the functioning of our broader society, it arguably sits atop the list of subjects that are important to society as a whole.
It is that unique set of traits that may make civics the only candidate worthy of compulsory status: it provides no or limited direct benefit to the individual, but great benefit to society at large. But unlike the other subjects which do provide individual benefit, there is little individual incentive for families, children and communities to participate in its study – hence the need to make it compulsory. Civic education in that sense is a public good: something we all need to participate in and learn about, but which without some compulsion we have little incentive to do of our own accord. It is much like paying our taxes (although, hopefully students find it a little more enjoyable than adults do paying taxes!)
Should the content of civic education be a uniting, national narrative?
Schlesinger strongly advocates that what is taught in the history classroom ought to be a unifying, national narrative.
The history and story of sub-groups within a nation is of particular importance to the children and local communities to which they belong. We all want to know where we came from, our family tree and that of our local community. Schlesinger notes that what the child wants to forget, the grandchild wants to remember. I have certainly found that my interest in my own personal history and place in the world has grown steadily with age. It is understandable that people wish to know their own.
But as important as those local stories are to the individual and their community, it is not obvious why they should form part of the compulsory limb of formal civic education curriculum. As established above, the reason that civic education is compulsory at all is because teaching it confers benefits on society at large. Those benefits are derived from teaching those “great unifying Western ideas of individual freedom, political democracy, and human rights.” (In the American context, I might add to that list details of the mechanics of the constitution and voting processes, and history of American independence.) Unless the particular history of a sub-group within the nation forms a defining part of that broader narrative (which it very well may in some instances) or helps elucidate an idea within that narrative, then it ought not be part of the compulsory section of the curriculum. The litmus test ought to be: if it would not be appropriate to make it compulsory that all students in every corner of the nation are taught that particular part of the course, then it ought not be on the compulsory course.
Conclusion
Anyone with an interest in the concepts of national identity and narrative, and its interactions with formal education, will find Schlesinger’s brief work, ‘Disuniting America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society’, a stimulating read.
The work seeks to explain what it is that holds American society together – a nation which is expressly and proudly comprised of many diverse groups. Schlesinger suggests that the national narrative, as taught to children in the classroom, is of paramount importance in maintaining national cohesion.
Schlesinger focuses primarily on classroom curriculum. He navigates the tension between the teaching of a national, unified narrative against the understandable desire to teach the history of particular local communities which may include stories and actors which are more relatable to local students. Schlesinger views the task of classroom curriculum as that of combining “due appreciation of the splendid diversity of the nation with due emphasis on the great unifying Western ideas of individual freedom, political democracy, and human rights.” He warns that unrelenting focus on the sanctity of the subgroup in preference to the national identity is ultimately harmful and less likely to bring about a equitable, strong, happy nation. He warns that “mutual suspicion and hostility are bound to emerge in a society bent on defining itself in terms of jostling and competing groups.” Schlesinger advocates titling the scales away from Pluribus back towards Unum.
The book appears to have been written in the midst of a particular public debate about high school curricula in America in the early 1990’s which I know little about. Nonetheless, there were a number of points of more general application arose from the text which are worth consideration.
Does the formal curricula actually shape the student and nation?
Schlesinger says that “what students are taught in schools affects the way they will thereafter see and treat other Americans. The way they will thereafter conceive the purposes of the republic. The debate about the curriculum is a debate about what it means to be American.”
Schlesinger, having spent most of his adult life in the classroom (with the notable exception of some years in the White House), perhaps over-emphasises the power that formal curricula has on student’s outcomes later in life. Schlesinger takes it for granted that what is articulated in the curriculum is actually imbued to the child (rather than in one ear, out the other), and that that formal education plays an important role in moulding the nation’s character in the future.
I suspect formal curriculum does play a role, but less than the high pedestal he places it on. Culture is imbued into us from our families, our friends, film and media, religion and the economy. Formal education plays a part, but the effect is diluted amongst the broader culture and influences in a student’s life.
Perhaps in order to establish the size of the effect we would need to look more closely at the mechanism at work between the school experience and behaviour later in life? For instance, when a Year 9 civics teacher tells her students that it is important for the health of our political democracy that everyone’s voice be heard with respect, does that same student, 10 years later, then treat their political opponents with respect? When an adult is deciding whether to vote for a politician whose policies include harsh censorship of the media, does that adult remember what his high school textbook said about the importance of freedom of the press and vote accordingly?
How that mechanism works, and its size, is a vastly complex question and one whose answer would require its own thesis. For now I think it is reasonable to suggest that if all school children are properly taught a solid grounding and respect for, say, the history of the nation, the political process and the fundamentals of western thought, then that education will translate, in a non-negligible way, into a positive difference in the culture at large.
What subject should be included in a compulsory curriculum?
It is tempting when given this opportunity – carte blanche production of the nation’s curriculum – to produce a long shopping list of the best attributes we want our children to have. We wish them to be brilliant orators and writers, so we make English and literature compulsory. We also wish them to be technically adept in the 21st century, so we make science, mathematics and IT compulsory. We want them to be able to work overseas, to be truly cosmopolitan and have je ne sais quoi, so we make foreign language study compulsory. French, anyone?
But you can’t have everything. For every hour of class time devoted to one topic, an hour on another must be abandoned. (Our teachers work hard enough as it is!) Some children will be hopeless at languages but brilliant with numbers and their parents will understandably want to focus on one above another. It is desirable, unless a real need is proven to the contrary, that parents, children and schools be given as much freedom as possible to determine their child’s future. Any compulsory curriculum, therefore, must be limited to only the essentials.
So what is most important? Maths, English, Arts, Science? Schlesinger’s reflections don’t go down that rabbit hole. He starts and ends on the presumption that civics just is in the curriculum and the only debate is what subject matter it contains.
I am tempted to go on a limb and suggest that civics is the only course that ought to be made compulsory on the curriculum. The key word here is compulsory. It is not to say that the other courses – math, science, english et. al. – are not important to the individual student. They are incredibly important to the individual. Civics is, on a measure of benefit conferred on the individual, very far down the list unless the child happens to be pursuing a career in law, politics or academia. However if we presume, as we did above, that the civic education of each child plays a role in the functioning of our broader society, it arguably sits atop the list of subjects that are important to society as a whole.
It is that unique set of traits that may make civics the only candidate worthy of compulsory status: it provides no or limited direct benefit to the individual, but great benefit to society at large. But unlike the other subjects which do provide individual benefit, there is little individual incentive for families, children and communities to participate in its study – hence the need to make it compulsory. Civic education in that sense is a public good: something we all need to participate in and learn about, but which without some compulsion we have little incentive to do of our own accord. It is much like paying our taxes (although, hopefully students find it a little more enjoyable than adults do paying taxes!)
Should the content of civic education be a uniting, national narrative?
Schlesinger strongly advocates that what is taught in the history classroom ought to be a unifying, national narrative.
The history and story of sub-groups within a nation is of particular importance to the children and local communities to which they belong. We all want to know where we came from, our family tree and that of our local community. Schlesinger notes that what the child wants to forget, the grandchild wants to remember. I have certainly found that my interest in my own personal history and place in the world has grown steadily with age. It is understandable that people wish to know their own.
But as important as those local stories are to the individual and their community, it is not obvious why they should form part of the compulsory limb of formal civic education curriculum. As established above, the reason that civic education is compulsory at all is because teaching it confers benefits on society at large. Those benefits are derived from teaching those “great unifying Western ideas of individual freedom, political democracy, and human rights.” (In the American context, I might add to that list details of the mechanics of the constitution and voting processes, and history of American independence.) Unless the particular history of a sub-group within the nation forms a defining part of that broader narrative (which it very well may in some instances) or helps elucidate an idea within that narrative, then it ought not be part of the compulsory section of the curriculum. The litmus test ought to be: if it would not be appropriate to make it compulsory that all students in every corner of the nation are taught that particular part of the course, then it ought not be on the compulsory course.
Conclusion
Anyone with an interest in the concepts of national identity and narrative, and its interactions with formal education, will find Schlesinger’s brief work, ‘Disuniting America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society’, a stimulating read.
August 18, 2009
At the height of the “political correctness” mania in the late Eighties the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. got all upset about the excesses of “multiculturalists” in the United States and wrote this short but impassioned piece to zap them. It is a bit dated, but still a good book that: marshals the most telling anti-political-correctness arguments, and is (typical of Pulitzer prizewinner Schlesinger) very well written. His basic argument is this: the U.S. constitutes the greatest and most successful experiment in multiculturalism ever conducted. Why most successful? Because it is based on common ideals (“the American Creed” of individual liberty and opportunity), is oriented more toward the individual than the group, and looks to the future and not the past. In theory, the American Creed is color-blind, ethnology-blind, and gender-blind: it can be—and generally is—embraced by all. Therefore the thrust toward ethnocentrism and political correctness, being foisted on the American public and especially on the schools not so much by ethnic groups themselves as by their self-appointed radical spokespeople, threatens to weaken the very force that binds the country together. And it is shameful that school systems—including some of the most prominent universities such as Stanford and the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley—knuckle under to demands that, when reviewed outside their zone of academic insanity, read like either low comedy or the rantings of paranoiacs.
To wit:
*It’s All in the Melanin. ”The psychological difference between blacks and whites, some hold, has an organic base. Whites must strive for supremacy, according to the black psychiatrist Frances Cress, to make up for their racial inferiority, caused by their ‘genetic inability to produce the skin pigments of melanin which are responsible for all skin coloration.’ ‘Black superiority in the areas of mental development, neurological functioning, and psychomotor development,’ opines Amos Wilson, ‘[are:]…all related to the possession of a high level of melanin.’”
*The Ice People. “A provocative teacher at the City College of New York, [Dr. Leonard:] Jeffries describes Europeans as cold, individualistic, materialistic, and aggressive ‘ice people’ who grew up in caves and have brought the world the three D’s, ‘domination, destruction, and death,’ whereas Africans who grew up in sunlight, with intellectual and physical superiority provided by melanin, are warm, humanistic, and communitarian ‘sun people.’ (He also tells his CCNY classes that ‘rich Jews’ financed the slave trade.)”
*Conspiracy! Some blacks argue that school curricula should include the ‘facts’ “that Africa was the birthplace of science, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and art, and that Europe stole its civilization from Africa and then engaged in ‘malicious misrepresentation of African society and people…to support the enormous profitability of slavery.’ ‘It was not done by accident,’ adds Leonard Jeffries. ‘It was done as part of a conspiracy to prevent us from having a unified experience.’ The coordinator of multicultural/multi-ethnic education in Portland even says that Napoleon personally shot off the nose of the Sphinx so that the Sphinx would not be recognized as African.”
*Uniquely Emotional. “The ‘unique status’ of black psychology, claims the black psychologist Wade Nobles, derives from ‘basic African philosophy which dictates the values, customs, attitudes, and behavior of Africans in Africa and the New World.’ This line of thought has obvious affinities with Leopold Senghor’s concept of Negritude, which in its original formulation saw blacks everywhere as genetically endowed with distinctive human values, psychological makeup, and cultural style. ‘Emotion is Negro,’ said Senghor, ‘as reason is Hellenic.’”
*Vomit-drinking. “In another session Abena Walker said that Afrocentric education in the District of Columbia would lean heavily on ritual, music, and mantras; children would ‘learn through rhythm and rapping.’ Wade Nobles, dressed in a lilac-blue robe, carried to the podium a fetish to ward off evil and observed the African custom of seeking the permission of elders before beginning to speak. ‘When we adopt other people’s theories,’ he proceeded to say, ‘we are like Frankenstein [he meant Frankenstein’s monster:] doing other people’s wills. It’s like someone drinking some good stuff, vomiting it, and then we have to catch the vomit and drink it ourselves….Don’t become the vomit-drinkers!’”
*That Damn Carter. “Jeffries observes that ‘AIDS coming out of a laboratory and finding itself localized in certain populations certainly has to be looked at as part of a conspiratorial process.’ After a Jeffries class, 10 black students told the Times reporter that AIDS and drugs were indeed part of a white conspiracy. ‘During the Carter administration,’ one said, ‘there was a document put out that said by the year 2000, one hundred billion Africans had to be destroyed.’”
*ISMs. “The Office of Student Affairs at Smith College put out a bulletin listing types of oppression for people belatedly ‘realizing they are oppressed.’ Some examples of the Smith litany of sins:
ABLEISM: Oppression of the differently abled by the temporarily able.
HETEROSEXISM: Oppression of those of sexual orientation other than heterosexual, such as gays, lesbians, and bisexuals; this can take place by not acknowledging their existence.
LOOKISM: The belief that appearance is an indicator of a person’s value; the construction of a standard for beauty/attractiveness; and oppression through stereotypes and generalizations of both those who do not fit that standard and those who do.”
*Them Better Than Us? According to the National Endowment for the Humanities, students can graduate from 78 percent of American colleges and universities without taking a course in the history of Western civilization. A number of institutions—among them Dartmouth, Wisconsin and Mount Holyoke—require courses in third-world or ethnic studies but not in Western civilization.”
Enough!
Schlesinger makes some of the obvious counter-points to these absurdities, among them:
*The Ugly Euro-American? Slavery was a standard practice in Africa long before the Europeans arrived and remained after they left—and is still going on today.
*Whose Initiative? Who took the initiative to abolish slavery? Those dastardly white Europeans.
*Whose Arguments? Who provided the analytical tools and the pro-human-rights arguments employed by the ethnics against the dominant U.S. culture? Again, those dastardly white Euro-Americans.
*Complete Troublemakers? True, Western civilization has caused a lot of problems and perpetrated many horrors—but it has also done more than any other culture to devise self-correctives, antidotes.
*Rewrite History? When you fabricate history to boost the self-esteem of minorities you are actually prepping them for the opposite: eventually they will ask, “Am I so shaky that you had to lie to me?; didn’t you think I was competent and strong enough to deal with the truth?” Fabricated history is not history: it is propaganda.
*Who Else Would Put Up With You? What other dominant culture in history but the Euro-American (and especially the American) would put up with—much less yield to—such nonsense from minorities? (I added this one.)
And so on.
From one point of view the ethnic absurdities are highly amusing; from another, pathetic; and from still another, they represent cries of pain. But it is their promotion of divisiveness that concerns Schlesinger: the threat of minorities playing on white guilt to force the acceptance of nonsense that in any other context (or era) would be blown away by laughter. Many of these absurdities have already been installed in school systems across the country. And as Schlesinger points out, those most injured are the minorities themselves: “If some Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to devise an educational curriculum for the specific purpose of handicapping and disabling black Americans, he would not be likely to come up with anything more diabolically effective than Afrocentrism.”
Schlesinger closes with this:
“Our task is to combine due appreciation of the splendid diversity of the nation with due emphasis on the great unifying Western ideas of individual freedom, political democracy, and human rights. These are the ideas that define the American nationality—and that today empower people of all continents, races, and creeds.
“‘What then is the American, this new man?… Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of man.’ Still a good answer—still the best hope.”
To wit:
*It’s All in the Melanin. ”The psychological difference between blacks and whites, some hold, has an organic base. Whites must strive for supremacy, according to the black psychiatrist Frances Cress, to make up for their racial inferiority, caused by their ‘genetic inability to produce the skin pigments of melanin which are responsible for all skin coloration.’ ‘Black superiority in the areas of mental development, neurological functioning, and psychomotor development,’ opines Amos Wilson, ‘[are:]…all related to the possession of a high level of melanin.’”
*The Ice People. “A provocative teacher at the City College of New York, [Dr. Leonard:] Jeffries describes Europeans as cold, individualistic, materialistic, and aggressive ‘ice people’ who grew up in caves and have brought the world the three D’s, ‘domination, destruction, and death,’ whereas Africans who grew up in sunlight, with intellectual and physical superiority provided by melanin, are warm, humanistic, and communitarian ‘sun people.’ (He also tells his CCNY classes that ‘rich Jews’ financed the slave trade.)”
*Conspiracy! Some blacks argue that school curricula should include the ‘facts’ “that Africa was the birthplace of science, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and art, and that Europe stole its civilization from Africa and then engaged in ‘malicious misrepresentation of African society and people…to support the enormous profitability of slavery.’ ‘It was not done by accident,’ adds Leonard Jeffries. ‘It was done as part of a conspiracy to prevent us from having a unified experience.’ The coordinator of multicultural/multi-ethnic education in Portland even says that Napoleon personally shot off the nose of the Sphinx so that the Sphinx would not be recognized as African.”
*Uniquely Emotional. “The ‘unique status’ of black psychology, claims the black psychologist Wade Nobles, derives from ‘basic African philosophy which dictates the values, customs, attitudes, and behavior of Africans in Africa and the New World.’ This line of thought has obvious affinities with Leopold Senghor’s concept of Negritude, which in its original formulation saw blacks everywhere as genetically endowed with distinctive human values, psychological makeup, and cultural style. ‘Emotion is Negro,’ said Senghor, ‘as reason is Hellenic.’”
*Vomit-drinking. “In another session Abena Walker said that Afrocentric education in the District of Columbia would lean heavily on ritual, music, and mantras; children would ‘learn through rhythm and rapping.’ Wade Nobles, dressed in a lilac-blue robe, carried to the podium a fetish to ward off evil and observed the African custom of seeking the permission of elders before beginning to speak. ‘When we adopt other people’s theories,’ he proceeded to say, ‘we are like Frankenstein [he meant Frankenstein’s monster:] doing other people’s wills. It’s like someone drinking some good stuff, vomiting it, and then we have to catch the vomit and drink it ourselves….Don’t become the vomit-drinkers!’”
*That Damn Carter. “Jeffries observes that ‘AIDS coming out of a laboratory and finding itself localized in certain populations certainly has to be looked at as part of a conspiratorial process.’ After a Jeffries class, 10 black students told the Times reporter that AIDS and drugs were indeed part of a white conspiracy. ‘During the Carter administration,’ one said, ‘there was a document put out that said by the year 2000, one hundred billion Africans had to be destroyed.’”
*ISMs. “The Office of Student Affairs at Smith College put out a bulletin listing types of oppression for people belatedly ‘realizing they are oppressed.’ Some examples of the Smith litany of sins:
ABLEISM: Oppression of the differently abled by the temporarily able.
HETEROSEXISM: Oppression of those of sexual orientation other than heterosexual, such as gays, lesbians, and bisexuals; this can take place by not acknowledging their existence.
LOOKISM: The belief that appearance is an indicator of a person’s value; the construction of a standard for beauty/attractiveness; and oppression through stereotypes and generalizations of both those who do not fit that standard and those who do.”
*Them Better Than Us? According to the National Endowment for the Humanities, students can graduate from 78 percent of American colleges and universities without taking a course in the history of Western civilization. A number of institutions—among them Dartmouth, Wisconsin and Mount Holyoke—require courses in third-world or ethnic studies but not in Western civilization.”
Enough!
Schlesinger makes some of the obvious counter-points to these absurdities, among them:
*The Ugly Euro-American? Slavery was a standard practice in Africa long before the Europeans arrived and remained after they left—and is still going on today.
*Whose Initiative? Who took the initiative to abolish slavery? Those dastardly white Europeans.
*Whose Arguments? Who provided the analytical tools and the pro-human-rights arguments employed by the ethnics against the dominant U.S. culture? Again, those dastardly white Euro-Americans.
*Complete Troublemakers? True, Western civilization has caused a lot of problems and perpetrated many horrors—but it has also done more than any other culture to devise self-correctives, antidotes.
*Rewrite History? When you fabricate history to boost the self-esteem of minorities you are actually prepping them for the opposite: eventually they will ask, “Am I so shaky that you had to lie to me?; didn’t you think I was competent and strong enough to deal with the truth?” Fabricated history is not history: it is propaganda.
*Who Else Would Put Up With You? What other dominant culture in history but the Euro-American (and especially the American) would put up with—much less yield to—such nonsense from minorities? (I added this one.)
And so on.
From one point of view the ethnic absurdities are highly amusing; from another, pathetic; and from still another, they represent cries of pain. But it is their promotion of divisiveness that concerns Schlesinger: the threat of minorities playing on white guilt to force the acceptance of nonsense that in any other context (or era) would be blown away by laughter. Many of these absurdities have already been installed in school systems across the country. And as Schlesinger points out, those most injured are the minorities themselves: “If some Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to devise an educational curriculum for the specific purpose of handicapping and disabling black Americans, he would not be likely to come up with anything more diabolically effective than Afrocentrism.”
Schlesinger closes with this:
“Our task is to combine due appreciation of the splendid diversity of the nation with due emphasis on the great unifying Western ideas of individual freedom, political democracy, and human rights. These are the ideas that define the American nationality—and that today empower people of all continents, races, and creeds.
“‘What then is the American, this new man?… Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of man.’ Still a good answer—still the best hope.”
August 8, 2020
Much of this book is a polemic against teaching American history from an Afrocentric perspective, which mercifully I wasn't really aware of. I think it has largely petered out as a movement in the 20 years since his book was published. Probably for good reason, as it seemed to have been very contrived. Schlesinger argued that public schools are not responsible for increasing the self-esteem of their students, minority or otherwise. I'm not completely sure that's true, but I do think that presenting a "noble lie" of Afrocentric history isn't on balance a good idea.
I have said out loud the words "who is against multiculturalism?" I envisioned it as opposed to monoculturalism, and who doesn't think back on way they were taught social studies and thinks it wouldn't have benefitted from a more diverse, or complex, perspective. It hadn't occurred to me to place multiculturalism on a spectrum between that and ethnocentrism, or "militant multiculturalism." But upon more reflection I think the balancing act and the pitfalls on either side are clear.
I think "cultural pluralism" as Schlesinger puts it is a worthy pushback against the overly Anglo-Saxon mainstream culture of America. The melting pot analogy is valid insofar as immigrants and their culture do add flavor to the mainstream, but it's foolish to suggest that Western, European, and Angl0-Saxon culture don't take up the majority of the canvas. And contrary to what the Teddy Roosevelts and (to me) a surprising number of American statesman have said, I don't think that immigrants have to leave their culture at the door when they come here for the country to thrive. Certainly as a practicing Jew I don't see the maintenance of a cultural identity as a barrier to healthy American Republic, at least on an individual level. Then again, look at a more insular less insulated community, and you begin to see the problem.
Schlesinger is adamant that we accept this Angl0-Saxon domination as "the way it is," just as we should accept that the United States from a historical standpoint is a child of the Anglo-Saxon / European / Western tradition, and I think he's absolutely right. You can choose to ignore your history, but you can't change it. And I think he accepts multiculturalism and cultural pluralism as a sort of backlash to it.
In any event the portion of this book that I found the most interesting was a meditation on the other extreme, ethnocentrism. Basically, when Americans begin to identify with their ethnic background more than their Americanness, that's the beginning of the end. The clearest explanation to me was thinking back to the 90's when the USSR and Yugoslavia tore themselves apart in ethnic, tribal conflict. Looking around the world, this kind of destructive ethnic strife is the norm and not the exception for multi-ethnic countries, and it has been forever. The genius of America, as Schlesinger puts it, is that Americans have managed to create an American political identity based on participatory democratic government. The charisma of the constitution and the philosophy of individual freedom have been enough common ground to outlast the "snobbish" strife between different flavors of Europeans and, to a lesser extent, more recent immigrant groups of Asia and Latin America.
Blacks are the obvious exception, and Schlesinger echoes Tocqueville when he says that slavery (and its legacy) are the Achilles Heel of the republic. He also points out that while the practice of American history belied the theory of freedom and equality for all, the theory has gradually affected practice. And he believes that continued devotion to a "vital centrist" American political tradition affirming the original beliefs of the founders is the way to continue to bring reality closer to the founding ideals. Tangentially, he also points out that political unrest is historically more common when change is proceeding slowly than when it is paused, and looking at the present I would say that there is progress being made on racial inequality.
To what extent are the identity politics and ethnocentrism of today causing the harm that Schlesinger envisioned? Well, the "vital center" of American politics is going, going, gone. Respect for American institutions is destabilized. America doesn't present itself as a standard-bearer for freedom abroad. Political correctness is running a bit amok. It's not great!
I have said out loud the words "who is against multiculturalism?" I envisioned it as opposed to monoculturalism, and who doesn't think back on way they were taught social studies and thinks it wouldn't have benefitted from a more diverse, or complex, perspective. It hadn't occurred to me to place multiculturalism on a spectrum between that and ethnocentrism, or "militant multiculturalism." But upon more reflection I think the balancing act and the pitfalls on either side are clear.
I think "cultural pluralism" as Schlesinger puts it is a worthy pushback against the overly Anglo-Saxon mainstream culture of America. The melting pot analogy is valid insofar as immigrants and their culture do add flavor to the mainstream, but it's foolish to suggest that Western, European, and Angl0-Saxon culture don't take up the majority of the canvas. And contrary to what the Teddy Roosevelts and (to me) a surprising number of American statesman have said, I don't think that immigrants have to leave their culture at the door when they come here for the country to thrive. Certainly as a practicing Jew I don't see the maintenance of a cultural identity as a barrier to healthy American Republic, at least on an individual level. Then again, look at a more insular less insulated community, and you begin to see the problem.
Schlesinger is adamant that we accept this Angl0-Saxon domination as "the way it is," just as we should accept that the United States from a historical standpoint is a child of the Anglo-Saxon / European / Western tradition, and I think he's absolutely right. You can choose to ignore your history, but you can't change it. And I think he accepts multiculturalism and cultural pluralism as a sort of backlash to it.
In any event the portion of this book that I found the most interesting was a meditation on the other extreme, ethnocentrism. Basically, when Americans begin to identify with their ethnic background more than their Americanness, that's the beginning of the end. The clearest explanation to me was thinking back to the 90's when the USSR and Yugoslavia tore themselves apart in ethnic, tribal conflict. Looking around the world, this kind of destructive ethnic strife is the norm and not the exception for multi-ethnic countries, and it has been forever. The genius of America, as Schlesinger puts it, is that Americans have managed to create an American political identity based on participatory democratic government. The charisma of the constitution and the philosophy of individual freedom have been enough common ground to outlast the "snobbish" strife between different flavors of Europeans and, to a lesser extent, more recent immigrant groups of Asia and Latin America.
Blacks are the obvious exception, and Schlesinger echoes Tocqueville when he says that slavery (and its legacy) are the Achilles Heel of the republic. He also points out that while the practice of American history belied the theory of freedom and equality for all, the theory has gradually affected practice. And he believes that continued devotion to a "vital centrist" American political tradition affirming the original beliefs of the founders is the way to continue to bring reality closer to the founding ideals. Tangentially, he also points out that political unrest is historically more common when change is proceeding slowly than when it is paused, and looking at the present I would say that there is progress being made on racial inequality.
To what extent are the identity politics and ethnocentrism of today causing the harm that Schlesinger envisioned? Well, the "vital center" of American politics is going, going, gone. Respect for American institutions is destabilized. America doesn't present itself as a standard-bearer for freedom abroad. Political correctness is running a bit amok. It's not great!
August 5, 2025
This book was published in 1991, and if I could go back in time and read this book back then about what we now call the anti-racism movement and Critical Race Theory, my understanding of the current Marxist movement would have been accelerated by several decades. Because once you see how the oppressed/oppressor narrative rears its head in the education system - which this book convincingly describes - you see it in every other institution (health care, the arts, business, the military, the justice system). I wonder if Mr. Schlesinger could have imagined the destruction that has been wrought on Western civilization by this ideology
December 13, 2024
Far more interesting (and revealing) as a cultural relic than on its own merits. Self-contradictory, blinkered, and often bitter; nevertheless, there are a handful of salient points in here that suggest the "crisis of liberalism" is far from a recent phenomenon.
December 25, 2022
Fantastic book. Good intro to a terribly complex subject. As a non-American (whatever an American ‘is’!) this was compelling.
October 20, 2025
Hit and miss. I agree with his argument that accentuating our differentiating attributes tends to engender civic fragility; the ascendance of identitarian politics, in my view, largely corroborates his thesis. Nonetheless, I strongly disagree from his suggestion that African Americans have no particular need for Black exemplars. if anything, the inverse is closer to the truth. The prose is decidedly nonconformist and sometimes offensive, this will likely discomfit some readers.
September 9, 2020
Written in 1991 it is as current now as then, maybe more so!
A great read well worth the time. The idea of multiculturalism should be put to rest. The melting pot should be rekindled.
A great read well worth the time. The idea of multiculturalism should be put to rest. The melting pot should be rekindled.
September 9, 2019
A brief yet brilliant book that I believe all 12th graders in U.S. schools should be required to read and discuss. Like the debates held this year to narrow the huge field of Democratic presidential candidates, this reminds me that there should be debate over policies and philosophies, even on one’s own ideological “side”, that it’s OK to disagree and that disagreeing with others does not make you a monster.
This is a 138-page essay from 1991 by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., better known for writing about the Kennedys and Andrew Jackson. One thing I value about the author’s perspective is that he has a long view of American history and is able to place events of the 1980s into historical context. A good deal of the book consists of him saying “People’s interpretation of current events is X, but if you look at history, it would make even more sense to interpret it as Y.” He also argues in favor of teaching history accurately, neither painting our past as overly rosy nor overly dark. The main topics he tackles are immigration, assimilation, and multiculturalism, focusing perhaps most on trends in education around Afrocentrism.
Schlesinger’s argument is that we are doing the country a disservice by focusing on group rights, group history, and what makes ethnic groups different from one another. It harms the country as a whole, including the minority groups who are fighting for their rights. In his opinion, assimilation is a very positive thing, and ethnic groups should seek to become and be seen as Americans.
Regarding Afrocentric thought, he argues that its proponents are wrong to paint an inaccurate, idealized image of African history in an attempt to build the self-esteem of Blacks. There is no proof that self-esteem and academic performance can be bolstered that way. Instead, he says we should be teaching all American schoolchildren to look up to American ideals like equality and freedom.
This perspective sounds more likely to come from a conservative in 2019, seeing how commonplace it’s become for liberals/Democrats to support, for lack of a better word, the hypenization of American identity. (Democrats want to make sure you know they support, not “all Americans”, but specificities, like African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, GLBTetc-Americans, etc.) Yet the thing that’s interesting and even exciting about this book is that Schlesinger is clearly a liberal. I am basing this on the fact that he is quick to say that yes, American history is filled with injustice, and yes, African-Americans have been particularly traumatized. He doesn’t deny inequalities that exist, nor that people should be upset about them and want them rectified. This sentiment doesn’t feel tacked-on, either.
I suppose it’s open for debate whether this hangs together as a liberal perspective today. To me, it does, and it feels fresh and brave, as though Schlesinger weren’t afraid of being pilloried on Twitter for political incorrectness as would happen to someone writing now. I mean, challenging Afrocentrism and encouraging minorities to assimilate? As I said, it was a pleasant reminder that debate on the left is possible, and some of these old ideas are worth reconsidering.
This is a 138-page essay from 1991 by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., better known for writing about the Kennedys and Andrew Jackson. One thing I value about the author’s perspective is that he has a long view of American history and is able to place events of the 1980s into historical context. A good deal of the book consists of him saying “People’s interpretation of current events is X, but if you look at history, it would make even more sense to interpret it as Y.” He also argues in favor of teaching history accurately, neither painting our past as overly rosy nor overly dark. The main topics he tackles are immigration, assimilation, and multiculturalism, focusing perhaps most on trends in education around Afrocentrism.
Schlesinger’s argument is that we are doing the country a disservice by focusing on group rights, group history, and what makes ethnic groups different from one another. It harms the country as a whole, including the minority groups who are fighting for their rights. In his opinion, assimilation is a very positive thing, and ethnic groups should seek to become and be seen as Americans.
Regarding Afrocentric thought, he argues that its proponents are wrong to paint an inaccurate, idealized image of African history in an attempt to build the self-esteem of Blacks. There is no proof that self-esteem and academic performance can be bolstered that way. Instead, he says we should be teaching all American schoolchildren to look up to American ideals like equality and freedom.
This perspective sounds more likely to come from a conservative in 2019, seeing how commonplace it’s become for liberals/Democrats to support, for lack of a better word, the hypenization of American identity. (Democrats want to make sure you know they support, not “all Americans”, but specificities, like African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, GLBTetc-Americans, etc.) Yet the thing that’s interesting and even exciting about this book is that Schlesinger is clearly a liberal. I am basing this on the fact that he is quick to say that yes, American history is filled with injustice, and yes, African-Americans have been particularly traumatized. He doesn’t deny inequalities that exist, nor that people should be upset about them and want them rectified. This sentiment doesn’t feel tacked-on, either.
I suppose it’s open for debate whether this hangs together as a liberal perspective today. To me, it does, and it feels fresh and brave, as though Schlesinger weren’t afraid of being pilloried on Twitter for political incorrectness as would happen to someone writing now. I mean, challenging Afrocentrism and encouraging minorities to assimilate? As I said, it was a pleasant reminder that debate on the left is possible, and some of these old ideas are worth reconsidering.
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