Assimilation, American Style / We Are All Multiculturalists Now

...But the administration has been slow to enforce the law against Tripoli, and in October, Qaddafi even endorsed Clinton for president...

...Moreover, whereas the older assimilationist dispensation accorded immigrants full rights as citizens (except the right torun for president) provided they learned English, took pride in being Americans, and agreed to live by the precepts of the Protestant ethic—to be hardworking, upstanding, self-reliant citizens—the new multiculturalism explicitly rejects these requirements...

...Mario Cuomo, and Arthur Schlesinger—none of them pillars of the conservative establishment...

...School curricula that denigrate American history are the products of such governmental bodies as New York State's Social Studies Review and Development Commission...

...Any attempt to roll back multiculturalism's gains would encounter fierce resistance from blacks, who along with their Hispanic, feminist, gay, lesbian, and liberal allies constitute, in Glazer's view, an unbeatable political coalition...

...English proficiency is •no longer seen as the sine qua non of American citizenship, and the view that children of immigrants should be instructed in English as quickly as possible is regarded as hopelessly antiquated...

...indeed, he was one of the New Left's fiercest critics...

...Two years later, some $200 million in debt, he sold 70 percent to the Libyan Arab Foreign Bank, rejecting a bid from Kuwait...

...71 Renew my subscription for one year (twelve issues—$35) CI Payment enclosed 71 Bill me later 71 At various times TAS rents its subscriber list to other organizations...

...In fact, Glazer used to be an outspoken opponent of multiculturalism...

...At Adams/Timmerman (Continued from page 35) a pipeline to bring untapped Caspian Sea oil reserves to the West...

...and the right to have their culture protected, and their self-esteem nurtured, in all public institutions, particularly educational ones...

...That's all there is to it...

...The Caspian pipeline and Libyan sanctions make a pretty full agenda by themselves, but there is still another area where Tamraz might have wanted to exert influence...

...Since multiculturalism is basically an elitist ideology that first took hold among liberal-minded academics and intellectuals, it follows that a change of opinion in academic precincts would eventually trickle down to the rest of society...

...Bilingual education began as a poorly thought-out pedagogical response to the sudden influx of Spanish-speaking youngsters in the schools and then became a way of cutting Latinos into the game of ethnic federalism...

...In a larger sense, black soldiers were in the army that liberated the camps...

...The United States, however, is a "civic nation" that discounts ethnicity in favor of a common culture...

...This might strike readers as surprising, inasmuch as Salins calls Glazer, Emeritus Professor of Education and Sociology at Harvard, "America's leading scholar of ethnicity," and quotes his writings extensively and approvingly...

...These ethnic groups are endowed with certain inalienable rights—including the right to speak their "native" tongue at school and work, as well as at home...

...To his great credit, Glazer was not among these academic appeasers...

...the right to proportional representation in every walk of American life...

...In August 1996, Clinton signed a bill imposing unilateral sanctions on companies doing business with Iran and Libya...

...Naqvi has consistently failed to proffer new information in a significant investigation or prosecution of unindicted individuals or anyone else in the United States," Morgenthau wrote...

...Akbar left the bank in 1986 with about $27 million in hush money to head a commodity trading firm called Capcom...

...NSC official Sheila Heslin, who handles Central Asian and Caspian Sea affairs, later told the Wall Street Journal that she felt his pipeline proposal didn't have much chance and recommended against further meetings with him...

...Internal BCCI docu80 May 1997 • The American Spectator...

...But is it really inevitable that American blacks will increasingly come to reject the straightforward Americanism of a Benjamin 0. Davis or a Colin Powell in favor of Kwanzaa, Ebonics, and the alleged cultural glories of Nubia and Kush...

...soldiers as being among those who liberated the concentration camps...

...UNSAVORY FRIENDS Tamraz had another possible agenda, soothing the tense relations between the United States and his friends Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi...

...If the emphasis [of multiculturalism] moves to oppression, discrimination, grievance, certainly the effects could well undermine national unity...

...Partisans of this approach also like to portray themselves as hard-nosed realists who are merely acquiescing to the inevitable, and here again, Glazer runs true to form...

...What makes We Are All Multiculturalists Now so pernicious is that it seeks to induce opponents of multiculturalism to lay down their arms and acquiesce in a state of affairs that, as Salins persuasively argues, can only bring ruin to America...

...Trashing American history...was the product of post-Vietnam war cynicism and a specious sophistication that viewed old-fashioned patriotism and American exceptionalism as dated and corny...

...Another problem is that the bulk of Tamraz's financing is pledged by the People's Republic of China...

...Spokesmen for this culture tend to focus on the schools and universities, where multiculturalism is deeply entrenched, and to ignore, as Glazer does, institutions like the U.S...

...Assimilating its vast immigrant population to this common culture has been one of America's greatest success stories, and one measure of that success is that we have been largely exempt from the kinds of ethnic conflict that are tearing other nations apart...

...For just as a computer virus gradually destroys its host's memory, leaving it unable to function, so multiculturalism dissolves what Lincoln called the "mystic chords of memory" that bind America together and enable it to function...

...Bork, Gore, and a host of others trumpet the bad news: Civilization is hurtling toward destruction...

...Name: (Please Print) Address: City: State: Zip: Date of change: L VCAFRM 1 The American Spectator • May 1997 79 Or perhaps the great student of American assimilation has himself become assimilated to a liberal culture that sharply disapproves of sustained political combat in a decidedly "incorrect" cause...

...Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, Central Asian oil has been the focus of much geopolitical wrangling...

...Proud of his name recognition, however, Tamraz brought the Tamoil label to the U.S...

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...The British had apparently been tipped off by the American State Department, and Gokal remains in British custody...

...Blacks are the storm troops in the battles over multiculturalism," he writes...

...And quotas, preferences, and welfare policies are all solidly embedded in national, state, and local laws...

...Salins attributes much of the current antagonism toward new immigrants—and particularly the belief that, coming from Third World countries, they are inherently unassimil44 Just as a computer virus destroys its host's memory, multiculturalism dissolves what binds America together...

...But the company still appears on the U.S...

...How to account for Glazer's about-face...

...Glazer's position derives in part from personal experience...

...hasn't let up on Qaddafi...

...Glazer is also a leading neoconservative intellectual, and so might have been expected to serve as a rallying point for scholars opposed to the reigning antiassimilationist orthodoxy...

...Herman offers the good news: It has been for a long time...

...Somehow, I doubt it...

...Congress added Libya...

...He served on a New York State committee that was charged with developing a history curriculum acceptable to minorities, and his experience with some of his fellow committeemembers—who strongly objected to what struck Glazer as the most innocuous statements about American history—alerted him to the abyss separating Americans over the most basic issues of national identity...

...What we should have learned from the pessimists is that history is not preordained and that human beings are not helpless before historical forces...

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...What should we have done about the assertions of historians who knew the details that the facts were not exactly as presented, that black soldiers were not among those who first reached the camps...

...The report that Glazer eventually helped draft, he readily admits, contained many ridiculous suggestions, and was roundly denounced by Time magazine, the New Republic, Gov...

...Societies of free individuals operating in fallible man-made institutions can alter their destiny for the better...

...At any rate, the answer to the appeasers and defeatists is always the same: They may be right about the future —who can tell...

...Should the movie have been shown to children...

...They are by far the largest group involved, they feel the issues most urgently, their problems are the most severe, and their claim that they must play a larger role in the teaching of American literature and history, indeed should serve to reshape these subjects, has a far greater authority and weight than that of any other group...

...And extolling the Protestant ethic is regarded as "blaming the victim," since the only way that immigrant and native-born poor can realistically hope to overcome the racism and discrimination that are the root causes of their plight is through extensive government assistance...

...By then, the situation in the schools may well have changed, so we'll need a fourth commission to update our data base, a fifth commission to look into the fourth commission's conclusions, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum...

...See "The Ties That Blind," TAS, August 1994...

...arrive at a simple judgment...

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...Some of the leading promoters of an assimilationist perspective, like Lawrence Fuchs, Richard Alba, Stephen Themstrom, Abigail Thernstrom and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., are prominent academics, and the mounting number of anti-ethnocentric articles and books suggests that their ranks are growing...

...As a result of these incremental initiatives, anti-assimilationism is now "hardwired," as Salins puts it, into a growing body of laws and regulations...

...another partner was Clinton fundraiser and trade representative Mickey Kantor...

...Shortly before announcing the project, Tamraz spelled it out to a National Security Council specialist on June 2. The meeting went badly...

...Capcom had extremely close ties to the Chicago firm Refco, from which Hillary Clinton made her killing in cattle futures...

...In 1983, Tamraz bought a northern Italian chain of gas stations and a refinery from Chicago-based Amoco, calling it Tamoil...

...Many neonativists," he writes, "would oppose the admission of large numbers of immigrants, no matter how effectively or quickly they assimilated, but a revival of the assimilationist ethos might get a majority of ordinary Americans to smile on immigration again...

...Treasury's list of blocked foreign assets under the name Gatoil Suisse, SA...

...Caspian reserves could equal those of Kuwait or even Saudi Arabia —and four pipeline consortia are already exploring routes through the tricky terrain of Russia or Iran...

...But at a time when the United States is experiencing a massive upsurge in immigration, mainly from non-Western countries, and when the need to assimilate these immigrants is a matter of considerable urgency, the anti-assimilation policies that go under the rubric of multiculturalism are a positive menace...

...He denies there's a connection to Libya, and on the surface the U.S...

...Other countries are "ethnic nations" in which the main bond uniting the citizenry is a common ethnicity...

...but so long as there is at least a glimmer of a chance that they are wrong, we are morally obliged to fight on...

...Does this coalition pose a threat to American unity...

...They are not, however, endowed with any overarching American loyalty that transcends their ethnic loyalty...

...Nonetheless, Glazer feels that given the passions surrounding multiculturalism, and the political clout of its supporters, his committee's report was about as good a document as it is possible to get...

...Bilingual education is mandated by the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 and a 1974 Supreme Court decision...

...All the more reason, then, why his failure to take on the multiculturalists is so shocking today...

...Glazer's exquisite non-judgmentalism, his firm refusal to say anything unkind about multiculturalism, pervades his book...

...The Tamraz route would avoid Russia and Iran and eliminate the shipping bottleneck of the Bosphorus, but it requires the diplomatic feat of reconciling newly independent Armenia and Azerbaijan, whose ethnic rivalries span millennia...

...But in We Are All Multiculturalists Now, he has changed his mind...

...The ideology that displaced assimilation generally goes under the name of "multiculturalism," but Salins claims that a better term would be "ethnic federalism...

...One of the cases that Naqvi could have helped reached into the White House...

...78 May 1997 The American Spectator Whereas Salins lays much of the blame for this state of affairs on America's elites, Glazer emphasizes the role of blacks...

...Glazer refuses to say...

...Box 655, Mt...

...Its major shareholders included Kamal Adham...

...Robert Morgenthau...

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...The demise of the assimilation paradigm actually occurred, under cover of media darkness, in barely noticeable increments, as one assimilation-subverting policy was piled upon another...

...His complaints about the uncooperative Justice Department under Bush Attorney General Richard Thornburgh may have been a major factor in Thomburgh's failure to win Pennsylvania's special Senate election in 1991, an upset widely misread as a demand for healthcare reform...

...Salins believes it is not only immigrants who are threatened by the new anti-assimilationism...

...His brilliant Assimilation, American Style argues that, over the past thirty JOSEPH SHATTAN is consulting editor of The American Spectator...

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...Both the Bush and Clinton administrations have shown a marked reluctance to get to the bottom of the BCCI case, which is why the lead in unraveling the fraud has fallen to Manhattan D.A...

...Amen ator...

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...A radical departure from traditional American practice would be worrisome even under the best of circumstances...

...Given his long and distinguished involvement in the wars that have rocked the American intellectual community over the past half century, Glazer has certainly earned the right to be tired intellectually—and perhaps that explains it...

...17 able —to policies devised by America's liberal elite to obstruct assimilation...

...Rather than come out unequivocally against multiculturalism, as Salins does, let's first appoint a commission to gather all the data...

...Then let's appoint a second commission to analyze the first commission's findings...

...years, our "opinion and policy elites" have turned their backs on America's historic commitment to assimilation in favor of a policy that aims at preserving and enhancing ethnic consciousness...

...A former BCCI official named S.Z.A...

...Privately, other investigators say Naqvi was rewarded for not talking...

...The China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Company, owned by the China National Petroleum Company, agreed to put up $1.5 billion, and provide engineering, construction, and raw materials...

...One would have to see more examples of multicultural curricula, more examples of how they operate concretely in the schools, before one could make a judgment...

...Taking pride in one's American identity is not considered possible, given that American history "is a story of oppression, racism and genocide aimed at American Indians, blacks and most immigrants other than northern Europeans...

...This is the oldest dodge in the world...

...The head of the firm, Charles Manatt, was a former Democratic National Committee head...

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...Assimilation, American Style Peter D. Salins New Republic—Basic Books 259 pages / $26 We Are All Multiculturalists Now Nathan Glazer Harvard University Press 179 pages / $19.95 REVIEWED BY Joseph Shattan Although not exactly in vogue today...

...What happened was that these leaders' faith in the validity, or even the necessity, of the [assimilation] paradigm eroded at the same time that some key social and political developments were at work...

...That academe may change its mind is not an entirely vain hope," Salins writes...

...Progress is not inevitable, but what many people have done in recent years is give up on the idea that progress is possible...

...B ut if there are serious dangers looming in America's not-too-distant future, the situation is not hopeless...

...It recalls all those nice, well-meaning liberal academics who, confronted by some outrageous act of New Left hooliganism, always carefully avoided "taking a stand on the matter," but never refrained from pious expressions of "respect" for the vandals' "good will...

...Maybe, in his golden years, he is simply reverting to an earlier self...

...They could profit from Herman's book, a chronicle of the many ways Westerners have deluded themselves that all is lost...

...After the United Nations slapped a partial embargo on Libya over the terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103, Libya turned over a controlling stake in Tamoil to private Italian investors...

...To someone like me, who was an undergraduate in the late sixties and early seventies, this passage has a familiar ring to it...

...On June 6,1995, Tamraz announced his own plan: his New York-based Oil Capital Corporation wants to build a $2 billion pipeline spanning the Caucasus and traversing Turkey...

...I am not taking a stand on the matter, but one must respect the good will of those who made the movie...

...Should our common culture finally crack under the hammer blows of a federally mandated multicultural regime, Salins foresees a huge upsurge in interethnic conflict, "the scourge of almost all other nations with ethnically diverse populations...

...while en route to New York, police arrested him in Frankfurt in the name of Great Britain's Serious Fraud Office...

...Army, where it is not...

...Meanwhile, until all the facts are in and everything is conclusively proved, we must carefully refrain from expressing any opinion, lest we — God forbid...

...According to Salins: There was never actually a moment of decision...

...That same month, the Justice Department sponsored a plea bargain with the BCCI's number two man, Swaleh Naqvi, provoking an unusual protest to the sentencing judge from Morgenthau...

...Glazer still dislikes multiculturalism, but now believes that further resistance is futile: Multiculturalism in education—so strongly denounced by so many powerful voices in American life, by historians, publicists, labor leaders, the occasion for so many major battles in American education during the nineties, and so much at odds with the course of American culture, society, and education at least up until the 1960's — has, in a word, won...

...Then again, Glazer began his intellectual career on the left, and maybe, in his golden years, he is simply reverting to an earlier self.r MOVING...

...How did ethnic federalism come to replace assimilation as the lens through Multicultural Meltdown_ The American Spectator • May 1997 77 which America's political and intellectual leaders view their society...

...It comes out most clearly in the following passage: A few years ago a controversy arose over the movie The Liberators, which depicted black LL Glazer began his intellectual career on the left...

...But curious things have happened under Clinton, too...

...Naqvi was represented by the well-known former prosecutors Joseph DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, who were then partners in the law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips...

...Whereas the old paradigm saw America as a single nation composed of individuals who all subscribed to the truths contained in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address, no matter what their ethnic background, the new ethnic federalism regards the United States as a multiethnic confederacy—a "salad bowl," "kaleidoscope," or "gorgeous mosaic" — made up of groups rather than individuals...

...Significantly, Nathan Glazer's name does not appear on Salins's list of pro-assimilation academics...

...Then, of course, we'll need a third commission to check the work of the second commission...

...According to backers of the measure, however, the original administration version applied only to Iran...

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...The movie was promoted as a way to improve black-Jewish relations...

...Policies of race-conscious preferences replaced those of color blindness ostensibly to speed up the economic progress of blacks...

...In July 1994, a key witness named Abbas Gokal decided to cooperate with Morgenthau's investigators...

...Peter D. Salins, professor of urban affairs at New York's Hunter College and former editor-in-chief of City Journal, believes this blissful state may not endure for long...

...Unless this approach is reversed, Salins warns, America will lose its exceptional character and "soon join the dismal ranks of the world's other multiethnic nations as a battleground of perpetual ethnic discord...

...in 1995, incorporating an American version in Delaware...

...American exceptionalism"—the belief that the United States is at heart different from the world's other nations—is, in one respect at least, obviously true...