The Multicultural Caste System

Even before there were self-help books human beings wanted to improve themselves. They did it by imitating those who were more successful. When their neighbors did better than they did, they tried to do as their neighbors did.

The reasoning is deceptively simple. If their team keeps beating your team and if you notice that their team has a different training regimen you are likely to change the way your players train. If your team is losing you will normally try to improve performance by adopting the cultural habits that have produced success. 

Of course, some contrary souls do not care who wins or loses. They might be losing but they will see value in losing. Finding some saving virtue in being beaten they will refuse to change their ways. Their culture might be consigning them to ignominious defeat, but, it's easier to keep losing than to change.

Or else, they might say that they are too good to win or that they do not believe in a culture of competition. They might be losing out in the rat race but they are wringing more enjoyment out of life.

Today, people who find virtue is losing are called multiculturalists. They hold their belief to be a dogmatic truth. You can hear it being preached every other Sunday at the Church of the Liberal Pieties.

Thomas Sowell defines the multicultural dogma:

Multiculturalism is a tempting quick fix for groups that lag; it simply pronounces their cultures to be equal with others, or “equally valid,” in some vague and lofty sense. Cultural features are just different, not better or worse, according to this dogma.

And yet, Sowell continues, failing to imitate better and more successful cultures leaves you in the dust. Why? Because, no human culture has all the answers. If you do not tap into the collective wisdom, and especially the cultures that have been the most successful, you are setting yourself up for permanent failure:

Yet the borrowing of particular features from other cultures — such as replacing Roman numerals with Arabic numerals, even in Western cultures that derived from Rome — implies that some features are not simply different but better. Some of the most advanced cultures in history have borrowed from other cultures, because no given collection of human beings has created the best answers to all the questions of life.

Nevertheless, since multiculturalists see all cultures as equal or “equally valid,” they see no justification for schools to insist that black children learn standard English, for example. Instead, each group is encouraged to cling to its own culture and to take pride in its own past glories, real or imaginary.

In other words, members of minority groups that lag educationally, economically, or otherwise are to continue to behave in the future as they have in the past — and, if they do not get the same outcomes as others, it is society’s fault. That is the bottom-line message of multiculturalism.

But then, Sowell continues, multiculturalism in practice does not merely hold back minorities. It turns them into a social caste:

Multiculturalism, like the caste system, paints people into the corner where they happened to have been born. But at least the caste system does not claim to benefit those at the bottom.

Multiculturalism not only serves the ego interests of intellectuals, it serves the political interests of elected officials, who have every incentive to promote a sense of victimhood, and even paranoia, among groups whose votes they want in exchange for both material and psychic support.

The multicultural vision of the world also serves the interests of those in the media who thrive on moral melodramas, as well as serving the interests of whole departments of ethnic “studies” in academia and a whole industry of “diversity” consultants, community organizers, and other miscellaneous race hustlers.

The biggest losers in all this are those members of racial minorities who allow themselves to be led into the blind alley of resentment and rage even when there are broad avenues of opportunity available. And we all lose when society is polarized.

It is important to underscore that multiculturalism foments resentment and rage. If you believe that your team is just as good as the other team and you keep losing, you will start thinking that the other team is cheating, that the game is rigged and that you are a victim, not a competitor.

You might come to believe that the victors need to be punished and that they should be forced to share the spoils of victory with your team. After all, ever culture is just as good as every other culture.  It's called social justice and redistributionism.

How much has multiculturalism infiltrated the American mind? Consider this: when Amy Chua, the Tiger Mom wrote a book explaining how she had brought up her children, American parents rose up to protest.

They did not ask why children who were brought up according to traditional Confucian methods were doing so well in school. They expressed no interest in becoming Tiger Moms themselves.

Not at all. First, they denounced the Tiger Mom for being an abusive mother. Second, they denounced her children for being uptight. Third, they declared that even if their children did not excel in math or music or even in perseverance, they were leading the world in having fun.

But, this reason is not limited to American multiculturalists. Take another hot button example.

There is one great success story in the Middle East. There is one economic, social and political success in that turmoil-filled region. Of course, the state is Israel.

Now, you would think that Israel would be a beacon for its neighbors, showing them the way to a more prosperous future. But, Israel’s neighbors do not see things that way.

They believe that their culture is just as good as Israeli culture and that if Israelis have succeeded where Arabs have failed, it can only mean that Israelis cheat or that they have colluded with the United States to rig the game.

When losing cultures feel resentment and rage they set themselves the task of destroying or deconstructing what winning cultures have built. 

If losing cultures emulate their betters they can end up as winners. That makes it a win/win game.

When they believe that someone else’s success has come at their expense, they see the world as a zero-sum game.

When they are true-believing multiculturalists they decide that the best way to rectify the situation is to create a lose/lose game.