Multiculturalism

I was very intrigued by the article "The Challenge of 'Multiculturalism' In How Americans View the Past and the Future" . I had never given much thought to a multicultural history but after reading this article I agree that having one history for many cultures is never going to happen. I really liked the point made by Taylor in that, “History has winners and losers, and they see the same events with different eyes. At the same time, virtually every non-white group sees the conflicts of the past as struggles with whites, so multicultural history becomes a collection of perspectives that are often not merely non-white but anti-white.” Each culture has a different point of view for past events and trying to combine them would likely skew actual history. I grew up learning about a history as Taylor puts it, “about white people for white people” except for February when we then had “Black History Month”.  I feel that every culture’s history is just as important as the next and to limit our nations education to one, is quite sad. Yes, it would be impossible to combine all cultures into one history book, but spending time on each should be a priority for our schools curriculum. This country is considered the “Melting Pot” because we are a nation of so many different types of people, we should be learning and teaching about everyone in our nation, not just one group.

The article "Pithissippi Burning: Race, White, Nationalism and American Culture", was quite disturbing and in a way eye opening for me. It is very sad that there are people in the country who are SO closed minded. A quote that sticks with me the most is “For a very few people, this is exactly how they see the world today. They will not view The Brigade as an ugly, transparent piece of racial propaganda. Rather, they will open its pages and find a positive affirmation of what they already think, along with detailed directions on how to correct these ills in the goriest way possible.” I hope that one day multiculturalism would be apart of everyone and that how-to books on how to rid the world of non-whites is a thing of the past.

"Why Multiculturalism is Wrong",what? How would multiculturalism be wrong? I feel that as a future educator I should strive to teach multiculturalism every day. After reading the article I began to understand why some would think it was wrong. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines being multicultural as “relating to, reflecting, or adapted to diverse cultures.” I think that this article has pointed out a skewed perspective of multiculturalism. In the first paragraph it states, “It limits freedom, it limits possibility, and it limits possible futures” and then goes on to describe how it limits all of those things.  In my opinion that is not what multiculturalism is supposed to do at all! It is not supposed to limit what people can do; it is supposed to help provide new opportunities. I think that it is great that people have different points of view and different perspectives on things; however it’s crazy to think that something such as multiculturalism means the complete opposite in another country.