Multicultural Meanderings

This makes the apparent decline in mutual acceptance on campus all that much more worrisome.

During the 20th century, the United States was described, at various times, as:

• A melting pot, where immigrant groups shed their distinctive identities and melt into a single, unified culture.
• A salad bowl, a metaphor that suggests that the United States consists of distinct cultural groups that maintain a unique identity while co-existing side by side and contributing to the nation’s character.
• A nation of nations, in which each group retains its autonomy but all are united under a shared national identity.
• A tapestry, with ethnic group maintaining its own distinctive characteristics, yet woven together to create a vibrant mixture of languages, traditions, music, foods and art.
• A kaleidoscope, as a continually shifting pattern of cultures that change and re-form into new patterns, emphasizing the dynamism of American cultural interactions.

There are those, like John Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, who described an American as a “new man” who is distinctively individualistic, self-reliant, pragmatic and hardworking. Free to pursue self-defined goals, this new man rejects the ideological zeal and fixed identities that had characterized the Old World.

Then there are those who stress acculturation, the process through which individuals and groups absorb and adopt elements of the larger society. This doesn’t necessarily mean they fully assimilate; they can certainly maintain aspects of their original culture. And yet the tendency is to gradually adopt the customs, values and norms of the dominant culture—as a result, their original cultural identity fades or disappears.

Then, too, there are those who view the pressures for conformity and homogeneity much more negatively. This perspective looks at how schools, employers, mass media and the legal and political systems work together to suppress diversity and impose a high degree of cultural and linguistic uniformity—even as they nominally celebrate multiculturalism in cultural expression, dress, food and religion.

Assimilationist pressures can come from within or without: from a desire for social acceptance and belonging or economic advancement. From intermarriage, peer pressure, media influences and expectations in school and the workplace. From secularization, mass culture and consumerism, which have also contributed to a homogenized American identity.

Assimilation is, of course, a spectrum, not a binary outcome. Immigrants can adopt certain elements of American culture while retaining aspects of their original culture. I’d argue that the willingness to accept hybrid cultural identities, practices and traditions that has made assimilation easier.

Nor is American culture static. It is dynamic, undergoing a continual process of adaptation and change. In fact, one of American society’s distinctive features is a certain kind of cultural fluidity, adaptability and absorbative capacity.

Unlike France, the Western European country that, historically, was the most open to immigration, but which was also the most insistent on assimilation, the United States has been far less resolute in demanding that immigrants acculturate and its consumer industries far more eager to incorporate elements from the newcomers’ cultures, from foodways to music. Of course, this process was less a matter of cultural exchange than of cultural appropriation. The fact that the company previously known as Dunkin’ Donuts is the country’s larger purvey of bagels is telling.

Among this society’s most striking paradoxes is that largely in the absence of intensive “Americanization” campaigns, immigrants’ offspring became, within two generations, largely indistinguishable in attitudes, dress, language and politics from native-born Americans. Whether this pattern will persist in an age when it is far easier than in the past to maintain ties with one’s culture of origin remains uncertain. But rates of intermarriage suggest that it very well might.

It’s essential to emphasize that acculturation and assimilation co-existed with persistent discrimination and inequalities along lines of skin color. The burgeoning literature on the historical, social, legal and cultural construction of whiteness; on white privilege in terms of law enforcement, job prospects and access to educational opportunities, loans and health care; and on the normalization and invisibility of whiteness (and heterosexuality and maleness) as an identity remind us that identities are both fluid and profoundly consequential.

Which brings me to the topic of today: What can colleges and universities do to create a more civil and inclusive campus environment? After all, they’ve already taken certain obvious steps. Senior leadership has expressed a clear commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and has asserted that these principles lie at the core of their institution’s mission and values. Campuses have mandated diversity training and established protocols for reporting instances of discrimination, harassment and bias.

In addition, institutions have incorporated multicultural perspectives into the curriculum, established cultural centers to support diverse students’ needs and promoted international food fairs and other activities and events to celebrate diversity. Many have acknowledged their historical ties to slavery, racism, colonialism, eugenics and other problematic aspects of their past and, as a result, have removed statues, renamed buildings and engaged in acts of restorative justice.

Nothing wrong with any of that. But, obviously, these steps haven’t been sufficient.

Not surprisingly, many wealthy donors want something more. As The New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat has written in a piece entitled “Why Big Money Can’t Easily Change Campus Politics,” many of these donors strongly object to the leftward ideological drift on elite campuses and the “administrative temporizing over the proper response to Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians and pro-Hamas statements by certain student groups.”

However, Douthat is right: their efforts to pressure college presidents and boards of regents are doomed to failure because, in the columnist’s words, an ideologically conformist, increasingly left-wing professoriate controls the curriculum, hiring and tenure and, he would no doubt add, an even a more staunchly progressive student life staff shapes the campus’s culture. The best donors can do, in Douthat’s opinion, is to:

• Found or fund centers or institutes or programs or individual faculty members committed to heterodoxy and intellectual diversity and liberal ideals in some form.
• Support smaller and poorer mission-driven institutions where their money might actually make a difference.
• Give funds to student groups that do help those students who feel embattled and besieged and especially to student organizations that foster free debate.

Sounds good to me.

But let me add two other recommendations.

First, the college curriculum needs to treat diversity in a much more holistic, nuanced and comparative manner, especially at the lower-division level.

My students took U.S. history in fifth, eighth and 11th grades. I believe that they’d be better served by a course that looked systematically at various subcultures’ histories, traditions, values and challenges from a comparative vantage point and that looks at how these subcultures have interacted over time.

Wouldn’t undergraduates benefit from learning more, again from a comparative perspective, about these groups’ struggles for advancement and equality and the barriers they encountered?

Certainly, any course in comparative ethnic studies must avoid stereotyping, superficiality, tokenistic inclusivity and crude politicization. For some critiques of current approaches that lack the level of depth that I favor, see here and here. What we need instead is an approach that is truly analytical, fully inclusive and genuinely comparative.

Second, our campuses need to focus much more attention on local needs. I don’t believe there is a better way to foster a sense of community and connection on campus than by cultivating a shared commitment to addressing the problems that surround our institutions. Here’s how to do this:

• Conduct a community-needs assessment. Identify the educational, environmental, health and other social problems and challenges that neighboring communities face.
• Support research projects that address specific local challenges involving education, public health and environmental issues.
• Increase engagement with local schools by offering tutoring programs, after-school activities, enrichment programs and mentorship opportunities.
• Address local public health and social service issues and local environmental concerns by working with various local service providers.
• Embed service-learning opportunities across the curriculum, for example, by awarding credit for community service in local schools, clinics and shelters or providing research and technology support to local organizations.
• Host community events, forums, debates, workshops and theatrical events, art exhibitions and other performances on campus to foster constructive dialogue.
• Expand continuing education opportunities tailored to the needs of the local community, including adult education classes, vocational training, English language courses and workshops on various topics, from computer literacy to financial planning, tailored to the needs of the community.
• Research and acknowledge historical town-gown tensions and work toward reconciliation and trust-building.

Nothing I suggest here will address campus tensions over Middle East policy or the sense among many Jewish and Muslim students that their concerns are insufficiently acknowledged. But collaboration on issues of local concern might well advance cross-campus cooperation and communication, which are the essential underpinnings for positive interactions.

Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.