Disuniting of America

In his recent work, Disuniting· of America, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., one of America's leading liberal historians, questions the current movement for multiculturalism in America. Although he acknowledges the need for a multicultural perspective, Schles­inger fears ethnic fragmentation. Schlesinger envisions warring ethnic groups, who place ethnic· solidarity above and beyond a unifying Ameri­can identity.

For Schlesinger, the American identity is based on the "American Creed". The creed is a blend of written laws, habits, and traditions which make America "one nation" or "one people" vision of the America that should be the defining principle for unity. But unity under the "one people" banner is undergoing serious questioning to the dismay of tradionalists like Schlesinger.

Thus, Schlesinger interprets the cur­rent effort to assert ethnic pride and rewrite American history as destruc­tive to the American Creed. "The ethnic upsurge (it can hardly be called a revival because it was unprecedented) began as a gesture of protest against the Anglocentric culture. It became a cult, and today it threatens to become a counterrevolution against the original theory of America as "one people", a common culture, a single nation."

Herein lays Schlesinger's distortion.

The effort to assert ethnic pride didn't have its origins as a protest against Anglocentric culture, but it was movement initiated by black Americans with progressive whites to change a heinous system of racism that has always been present in American society.

Multiculturalism owes its origin to the black consciousness movement of the sixties and seventies. During this period African-American activists and scholars fought for civil rights and to eliminate the slur of a racist American history that aided and abetted a white supremacy society. Joined by other ethnic minorities, African-Americans pioneered the movement for an accu­rate inclusion in American history. In his analysis, Schlesinger seriously misreads both the origin and nature of effort by dismissing its importance.

Ideologically confused, Schlesinger underestimates the damage done by Eurocentric curriculum and histories. In part, he acknowledges the racist limitations of historians Beard, Commager, Morison, and others, but there is no serious questioning of ideological racism of their methodology and what steps must be taken to counteract the poison of their systems of belief. While Schlesinger dismisses the racism of his mentor as minor lapse of judgement, he condemns the effort of ethnic mi­norities to correct historical lies, especially African-Americans, as hasty and disruptive.

Unfortunately, Schlesinger fails to examine the intrinsic racism of the "America Creed" whose principles have excluded many Americans. The "American Creed" was meaningless in word and deed, until African-Ameri­cans challenged the spirit and the letter of its laws and institutions. The "American Creed" has significance today, because of African-American blood, patience, and vision, vision born of the historical process of declaring ethnic pride. The African-American minority brought meaning to the otherwise empty proclamation. To consider this effort a cult is both racist and elitist, which has its origins in a perverted Anglocentric vision which Schlesinger pledges his allegiance. Essentially, Schlesinger believes ethnic identity should be subsumed by an Anglocentric or Eurocentric Creed to form "one people". The ethnics who reject this proposition, according to Schlesinger, subvert the American Creed.

The Disuniting of America centers on this conflict.

The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Paperback) by Arthur M. Schlesinger

A vital contradicition confronts America -- an ethnically diverse society with one "unifying" western creed. By omitting this very important consideration, Schlesinger's argument is skewed. He fails to grasp the reluc­tance of "the others" to totally accept Eurocentric values. Thus, Schlesinger targets those with the strongest reser­vations as being the most destructive. He sites "errant'" multiculturalists, and he singles out African-American scholars and activists as posing the greatest danger of subverting Ameri­can culture through the power they have over national curriculum. Specifically, Schlesinger accuses the Afro- . centricists of being misguided xeno­phobes, who represent the greatest threat to America. He attacks Afro­centricism as parochial and bogus. What seems to displease Schlesinger most is the power of the Afrocentrioists as they influence the state curriculum throughout America.

Commenting on the Afrocentric curriculum, Schlesinger states: "I am constrained to feel that the cult of ethnicity in general and the Afrocen­tric campaign in particular, do not bode well either for American educa­tion or for the future of the republic. Cultural pluralism is not the issue: these are legitimate subjects. The issue is the kind of history that the New York task force, the Portland Baseline essayists, and other Afrocentric ideo­logues propose for American children. The issue is the teaching of bad history under whatever ethnic banner.

Considering Schlesinger's commitment to the "one people" view, it is dif­ficult to accept this statement. The issue is ethnicity. Schlesinger poses any competing creed that would chal­lenge the Anglocentric "American Creed". Ethnic creeds, for a tradition­alist, mean subversion of a basic guid­ing principle of unity. The American identity is essentially an identity that subscribes to the Anglocentric views of government and cultural concerns, which would minimize ethnic identity in favor of a common identity.

Both the Afrocentric and Anglocen­tric ideologies appear to have rigid ideological missions. Presently, the Afrocentrists call for an African creed, and Schlesinger calls for a diverse peoples uniting under one Anglocen­tric creed. Despite this important similarity, Schlesinger still character­izes ethnic movements as cults. "A cult of ethnicity has arisen both among non-Anglo whites and among non­white minorities to denounce the idea of a melting pot, to challenge the concept of "one people," and to protect, promote and perpetuate separate ethnic and racial communities.

Within a racist America, ethnicity dominates. Anglocentric ethnicity plays an important role in molding and controlling the American ethos. The overriding danger, according to Sch­lesinger, presents itself when the An­glocentric ideology no longer dominates. He fears fragmentation will result and the "ethnic cults" and Anglocentrists and their likes will take power. Schlesinger's particular fear of Afrocentrists results from the power and influence they have garnered within a relatively short period.

Schlesinger attacks the Afrocentric view as a form of therapy. "The use of history as a therapy means the corrup­tion of history as history," comments Schlesinger. To confirm his fears, he cites the recent New York State Task Force report to change its curiculum. According to Schlesinger the curricu­lum suffers from changes imposed by minority pressure groups. "The report views division into racial groups as the basic framework for an understanding of American history. Its interest in history is not as an intellectual disci­pline but rather as social psychological therapy whose primary function is to raise the self-esteem of children from minority groups. Nor does the report regard the Constitution or the American creed as a means of improvement."

If Schlesinger were to examine the framework of traditional American historians, he would find that their historical interpretations use race as an analytic framework to include and to exclude minorities. The racism of American historians debased minori­ties when they included them and dismissed minorities as unimportant when they were exncluded. All of this was written and taught in the name of American cultural values and Ameri­can history. Failing to consider these glaring discrepancies, Schlesinger faults curriculum changes and labels multic­ulturalists and Afrocentrists as de­structive subversives. This is baiting of the worst kind.

The danger of Schlesinger's position is that it suffers from a partial analysis of the Afrocentric view. The Afrocen­tric view is more than therapeutic pastiche, but a genuine response to a traditional white, Anglo-Saxon, bias in American history. By baiting Afro­centricism and avoiding a thorough examination of the racist legacy of teaching American history, Schlesin­ger limits his critique. While attacking the Afrocentricists is convenient, it avoids an ongoing analysis of the problems and possibilities of Amer­ica's multi-ethnic society. The ques­tions posed by an Afrocentric histori­cal interpretation, as well as other ethnic interpretations of American history, are indeed quite healthy, be­cause they question the hegemony of elitists, like Schlesinger. The Disuniting of America' should be examined both for its dependence and allegiance to the past, as well as its reluctance to deal forthrightly with the new inter­pretations of multiculturalism, which include different theories and interpretations.

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