The Diversity Myth

by David O Sacks

  Of course, none of this implies that institutions like Stanford will serve no function whatsoever. In the hard sciences and the engineering fields, our top colleges and universities will graduate people who have amassed an impressive array of scientific knowledge and technical skills. At the same time, the business, law, and medical schools will continue to churn out trained professionals. From the outside perspective of companies seeking to hire new computer engineers, biochemists, or investment bankers, everything will continue as before.

  But in the process, Stanford will have become a technical and vocational school, along the lines of MIT or Cal Tech—highly esteemed in narrow areas of expertise but not much more. Behind the facade of normalcy, much will have been lost. The university will have become transformed into a multiversity, no longer capable of providing a universal framework that enables students to integrate a wide assortment of knowledge into a coherent whole. That kind of framework, so essential for thinking about the larger problems facing individuals and societies, simply cannot be provided by science; it must be gleaned from the humanities, and can be reached only after rigorous study—in philosophy, literature, history. Though the loss of this framework cannot readily be translated into dollars and cents, it will be felt keenly nonetheless, by a generation of students increasingly alienated from an incoherent and senseless world, unable even to diagnose the source of their troubles.

  The nature and scope of the loss was hinted at, indirectly, by one of President Casper's most sweeping proposals, in which he suggested eliminating the college major and replacing the four-year undergraduate degree with a three-year degree.56 His proposed three-year degree was particularly heretical, because it suggested that students were not getting much added value out of a fourth year at Stanford and that the university's burdensome distribution requirements might need to be scrapped: “If resources were available, I'd say four years are wonderful, the more the better. On a cost-benefit analysis, there will be more questions as to whether these four years are sustainable in the long run.”57 In a narrow sense, Casper was clearly right: If there was no real humanities program left, then a technically focused education over a three-year time frame would represent a sensible change. At the same time, however, the call for such a drastic remedy indicated how much had been lost and how little else could be done about this loss.

  In the early 20th century, the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges envisioned a vast and fantastic library—infinite in size—that would contain every possible book, consisting of every possible combination of letters. Some of these books would contain great knowledge—the Grand Unified Theory of physics, the complete works of Shakespeare, the first million digits of the decimal expansion to pi, the true theory of religion, a dictionary from English to Maya, the code for the human genome, the perfect game of chess. Far more of the books would involve mistakes of one sort or another—there would be a hundred false refutations of Einstein's theory of relativity, a thousand false histories of the world, a million false reference books for the library itself. The overwhelming majority would be wholly meaningless—a book consisting of a string of the letters “AAA,” perhaps, or of some random string of letters resembling the work of a monkey on a typewriter. The Borgesian library simultaneously contains all the information in the world and none at all. And it provides a useful image for what the multicultural university has become: a vast repository of information, taken from all the corners of the planet, but with no framework to distill the information, to determine what is true and what is false, or even what is important and what is trivial. If one tries to find one's way around this intellectual Byzantium, one will only become ever more lost.

  If intellectual life in America is not altogether finished, then it may be in the process of a massive and unprecedented displacement. An intellectual renaissance in our traditional centers of higher learning may be a long time coming (see for instance, the excellent Independent Institute book The Academy in Crisis: The Political Economy of Higher Education58), but this does not necessarily imply that people simply will stop thinking in the intervening years. To the extent that it continues, intellectual life will shift from elite universities to historically less significant colleges that have survived the multicultural transformation, or move altogether outside the academic context.

  There is some precedent for such a displacement in other areas, such as the communications media, where in recent years cable television and radio talk shows have grown dramatically, in response to the failure by the major television networks to provide the desired programming. In a similar way, new educational venues may arise and meet demands that are no longer being satisfied by the existing institutions. One particularly promising area involves a number of new computer networks, in which people can connect with one another from disparate parts of the country, to discuss or learn about matters of common interest. Not surprisingly, a number of these networks are focusing on areas that no longer have much of a place in the multicultural academy, such as free-market economics or Thomistic theology. Because learning need not take place in the classroom, this sort of technological breakthrough may in time undermine the near-monopoly on higher education currently enjoyed by America's elite universities.

  But this sort of intellectual displacement will not occur as smoothly as the shift from network to cable television, in large measure because the idea of a university may have no ready substitute. There are reasons why its structure, centered on faculty committed to teaching and students committed to learning, served its function so well for so long. The benefits from an interactive education, from the total immersion in the learning process, and even from the economies of scale that exist at large Western universities may not have any real replacements. In addition, there seems to be a considerable danger that the learning process, even outside the multiversity, will acquire a distinctly Borgesian flavor. For every person who manages to find an Ariadne's thread of sorts, there may be many others striving to untie Gordian knots that were bypassed long ago. Without external standards to guide them, people will take the immediate as a good approximation for the important, and focus on developing particular skills; larger and more fundamental issues may recede into the background.

  Nevertheless, even if Stanford University does not survive the destruction of Western civilization on campus, chances are that Western civilization will survive the decline of universities like Stanford. In spite of the hurdles and difficulties, some people will continue to ask the same questions about life and the universe that vexed Plato—even if there no longer is any academic or cultural elite to guide them in their quest for answers or even to encourage them to ask the right questions. Those who wish to learn the truth will still have that opportunity, but henceforth may have to do so on their own, with no direction from anyone.

  The Culture of Blame

  Even if multiculturalism were only intellectual in nature, it should be of great concern to all Americans that our leading universities are turning into academic wastelands. But multiculturalism goes much deeper, and much more is at stake in these debates than the direction of our leading academies. The multicultural movement, taken as a whole, is concerned with a radical reordering of the entire culture—that is, not just with an assortment of new ideas, but also with the application of these new ideas throughout the country. Multiculturalism matters because it promises to transform America in a large number of fundamental ways, including race and gender relations, art and religion, the rules of law, and the ways in which different communities exist and relate.

  Many commentators have noted that America is quickly becoming a nation of victims. To extend the metaphor already used throughout this book, multiculturalism is turning America, like Stanford, into a kingdom of victims—a “Caliban's kingdom”—the likes of which were foreshadowed, but never explicitly described, in the plays of both Shakespeare and Cesaire. This alternative world represents a future in which Caliban's multicultural revolt over Prospero had been successful, a new king
dom in which self-proclaimed victims had become the kings.

  Shakespeare probably had an inkling of what Caliban's revolt might lead to, but decided to spare his audience all the sordid details. Cesaire's characterization of Caliban—as a sort of noble savage who would achieve genuine “liberation” by getting rid of Prospero once and for all—seemed little more than wishful thinking. But in important respects, Cesaire's dream has become today's reality, for increasingly we live in a culture of victimization, a hypertherapeutic world where “dysfunction” has become the standard and victims get to dominate.

  Rehabilitating victims is an American virtue as significant in our day as the Protestant work ethic was in an earlier era. In almost any situation, the way to win arguments and popular sympathy—as well as large settlements in court—is to portray oneself as the victim. In a celebrated case recently, an 81-year-old woman won a $2.9 million judgment from McDonald's for burns suffered when its coffee spilled out of a cup she held between her legs in a moving car.59 Victims can do no wrong, it seems. Lyle and Erik Menendez admitted to killing their parents, but were not convicted after a jury heard that the brothers were abused.60 Every day, guests on Oprah, Donahue, or even the evening news describe in unabashed detail matters once called family secrets, as well as an assortment of more mundane personal misfortunes, including but not limited to their blind dates, skin problems, and sexual deficiencies (circumstances that might otherwise warrant some sympathy, were commiseration not so obviously the desired goal). A sense of modesty or shame can only be an impediment in convincing others that one is a victim. The highest-rated talk show host, Oprah Winfrey, herself claims that she was abused, an unfortunate experience no doubt, but one indispensable to her role as an ambassador of sorts for the culture of victimization.61

  The more tragic extremes to which people will go to cast themselves as victims was revealed by the New York Times, which recently reported that many homosexual men in San Francisco have again begun practicing unprotected anal intercourse in a deliberate attempt to contract AIDS and achieve the victim status the disease confers.62 “I thought if I was H.I.V.-positive I'd be so much gayer,” explained a recently infected 32-year-old airline mechanic. “People are looking for that red badge of courage and you get that when you convert” from being H.I.V. negative to carrying the virus, he added.63 Experts say this attitude is so prevalent that the once-stable infection rate in San Francisco has doubled and for men under 25, has quadrupled.64

  The deliberate contraction of H.I.V. is only the most extraordinary case of people trading almost anything (their privacy, their health, even their lives) for the regal social station victimhood confers, even if this status may be as short-lived as 15 minutes of fame on daytime television or the 5- to 10-year incubation period of a deadly disease. As the name implies, Caliban's kingdom (a kingdom run by the oppressed) leads to such bizarrerie because it is profoundly self-contradictory. If the only people suited to be the “kings” are “victims” and if these “victims” have indeed become the “kings,” then in what sense can the new rulers still be thought of as genuine victims? Will the existence of this new culture not undermine the very reasons that gave birth to it in the first place?*

  This tension is reflected by the transmogrification of the Afrocentric movement, which, having succeeded in its initial goals to see racism wane and the legal playing field leveled, has shifted its purpose from ending racism (liberating Caliban) to promoting racial superiority (taking over the kingdom). Among its fantastical teachings are the beliefs that the ancient Egyptians were all black, that blacks really built the pyramids (and have been robbed of the credit for doing so), and even that melanin is some kind of chemical that makes people of color stronger, smarter, and more humane than light-skinned people.65 “Melanin allows us to receive the vibrations of the universe,” declares Professor Leonard Jeffries from his tenured perch at City College of New York.66 These incredulities are the subject of African-American Baseline Essays, a textbook published in 1987 by the Portland school district, which is currently being used in public school and college classes in Atlanta, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, and other cities.67

  The spread of Afrocentrism is intimately related to events at Stanford. The phenomenon is dependent upon the same multicultural principles that at Stanford render the gnosis of “victims” beyond reproach. For once one has agreed to suspend one's rational faculties and learn whatever a particular group claims is its special knowledge, it is difficult to explain why anything that group tells you is wrong. There is no logical limiting principle. Nobody can point out that the Afrocentrists are incorrect without also saying there are universal standards that transcend particular groups. Consequently, the Afrocentric position, unsubstantiated by facts and unsupported by reason, has been legitimized in schools and colleges, if not by open endorsements then by a failure to oppose its inclusion. By virtue of their putative victim status and accompanying gnosis, the Afrocentrists have achieved a privileged, kinglike position—even if, upon taking the throne, the one-time victims of racism have become the new racists.

  The multiculture is too busy manufacturing new victims and new grievances to notice these contradictions. The question asked by Oprah, Donahue, and Geraldo no longer is whether one has been victimized, but to what extent. By imagining that they are still “victims,” today's Calibans can pretend that their revolution is not successfully completed and can defer confronting their problematic vanguard status indefinitely.

  The disappearing distinction between real victims and self-proclaimed ones is evidenced by demands among a growing number of American blacks that they should receive restitution for slavery. Congress sparked the reparations movement in 1988, when it awarded payments of $20,000 to all Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, making some blacks wonder why they should not be entitled to similar treatment.68 Subsequently, U.S. Representative John Conyers introduced a bill in the House calling for a commission to study the question of reparations for blacks.69

  Unlike some Japanese Americans, however, there are no black Americans alive today who have suffered internment. Nor are there any former slave owners to pay reparations. Presumably, the descendents of slave owners would have to pay, but some reparations advocates intimate that all whites in this country might have to pay. In either case, the bill would be substantial (the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, the leading proponent of African American reparations, suggests $60,000 payments to individuals, depending on their needs, and awards of $100,000 to families).70 Just as the reparations movement makes no distinction between real victims (slaves) and false ones (the descendants of slaves), it makes no distinction between imaginary oppressors (whites today) and real ones (the slave owners of yesteryear).

  It is never made clear why those who did not inflict the harms of slavery should have to pay any more than it is explained why those who did not suffer these harms deserve to be paid. But the reparations movement is not concerned with a factual account of who did what to whom. Rather, it is more interested in depicting a larger story in which blacks are the universal victims and whites are the universal oppressors. This myth, which substitutes for a historical account, visits the sins of the great-great-great-grandfather upon the son. It is a multicultural version of the Fall from Grace, in which the descendents of particular groups are still tarnished with the guilt of original sin, passed down from generation to generation. They can do nothing to redeem themselves, and neither, one suspects, will their great-great-great grandchildren a hundred years hence.

  None of this melodrama would be quite so problematic if the culture of victimization did not lead to a culture of blame. But to maintain his identity, each multicultural actor requires a second, interdependent, yet antagonistic half. To reassure themselves that they are “victims,” multiculturalists must constantly seek out “victimizers.” As soon as multiculturalists vanquish their most recent enemy, a new one appears on the scene. This feature is not contingent—that is, a result
of our not having tried hard enough or waited long enough for all the nonmulticulturalists to disappear—but a necessary consequence of the way multiculturalism works. What is true for each particular multicultural actor is true of the multiculture as a whole: In order to exist, Caliban's kingdom must be divided against itself.

  A culture of blame might not be unjust if the accused were actually guilty of real crimes. Nothing would have been wrong with Salem's witch trials either if the accused women really had cast harmful spells on the rest of the populace. As in the case of Salem, however, the multiculture's victims are imaginary, and so, too, are the victimizers, who become targets of mythical accusations. In the case of reparations, the descendents of slave-owners, if not all whites, are held accountable. For Oprah as for the Menendez brothers, their parents are to blame for their current problems. For gays contracting AIDS in San Francisco, it is “homophobic” society. At Stanford, the Western tradition itself (or whoever was perceived as its incarnation) was singled out and attacked; the new Salem had no shortage of enemies and ritual expulsions, which served to refound the new culture periodically.

  Nevertheless, the Stanford community never fully paid the price of the multicultural experiment. Financially, U.S. taxpayers footed much of the bill. But the larger American society also provided for the multicultural experiment in a more intangible way: It constituted the imaginary oppressor, the missing half needed to complete Stanford's multiculture. Whatever measure of peace Stanford's multiculturalists achieved on campus resulted from the direction of the community's anger and resentments outward, against American society or the West at large. So long as Stanford could hate America, it would not have to hate itself. As multiculturalism moves from Stanford to America and from there to the rest of the world, this escape valve is gradually disappearing. With no outside left and no others to attack or to deconstruct, the citizens of Caliban's kingdom may be increasingly forced to turn against one another.