Sam Smith – Perhaps the most undiscussed aspect of multiculturalism is its positive effects on everyone. I’m as guilty as others in this regard, letting it slip thanks to the effort required to deal with the discriminatory ways in which it presently functions in our society.
But if we are to create a truly positive multicultural society, we not only need to undo the evil that exists but appreciate and enjoy the benefits that result.
For example, we do a lousy job of introducing children to the multicultural character of the land they are going to live in. And as we get older, we tend to define it by its unresolved problems rather than its advantages.
For instance, as a high school jazz musician in the 1950s I was already impressed by black culture. The civil rights movement came to me not just as a moral challenge but as logical fairness for those who had placed so many songs in my heart.
Living as a minority white in Washington DC for over half my life, I was blessed to enjoy the pleasures of multiculturalism but now find myself concerned by some of the tone of the current ethnic debate that is far stronger on condemnation than it is on resolution. There is little sense of what Martin Luther King described as “I have a dream that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
I’m familiar with the more pessimistic view. In the mid 1960s, I was working for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, handling public relations for its local director, Marion Barry, when national leader Stokely Carmichael showed up at one of our meetings in a church basement and announced that whites were no longer welcomed in the civil rights movement. But I soon got involved in the anti-freeway movement and the fight for DC statehood - both cross-ethnic efforts and the latter led by Julius Hobson, perhaps the most underrated civil rights leader of the 20th century. When I hear today’s activists bad mouthing whites collectively I recall Stokely Carmichael and how lucky I was to have run into a different approach.
And all this happened while I was still in my 20s. This young white guy had turned into an activist thanks to cultural experiences as well as pursuing laws and logic. Black culture was worth preserving not just because it was fair and decent but because it had added a lot to my own life.
This is just one fellow’s story. Part of the wonder of multiculturalism is that everyone’s story is different. And part of the secret of making it work is not just the right laws, protests and name calling but friendly gatherings, discovering what you have in common, thoughtful sharing and appreciation of what others are saying and doing. We shall know we have succeeded at multiculturalism when collectively we recognize that it is not only decent but it’s made life a lot better.
