A wry statement of reluctant resignation to America's prevailing
cultural realities, by Glazer, a Harvard sociologist and
education/social-policy expert. In such books as Ethnic Dilemmas
(1983) and The Limits of Social Policy (1988) Glazer has
consistently argued that the antidiscrimination and voting-rights
legislation of 1964 and '65 alone - without measures like
affirmative action in employment or busing for school desegregation
- would support black economic and social mobility and lead to a
more equal society. However, in these eight short essays on
public-school curriculum reform and American society, he explores
why African-Americans live and go to school more separate than ever
from other Americans. It's a situation Glazer so deplores that it
prompts him to see his own previous attitudes as complacent. While
he still avows his faith in democracy's capacity for justice, he
cannot deny its failure so far to assimilate people of African
descent to the same extent that it has absorbed European immigrants
of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and even those increasingly
arriving from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. This is
certainly not what his previous studies of ethnicity (coauthored
with Daniel P. Moynihan) had led him to expect. One of the results
of the inability of the dominant society to absorb
African-Americans, Glazer suggests, is the rise of
multiculturalism, spurred by black anger at traditions that have
rejected them. Multiculturalism, he asserts, is now an unavoidable
element of American life, and one that we must come to grips with.
This book is remarkable for the plainspoken grace of its
concessions, and Glazer also maintains an eloquent honesty about
his reservations regarding government-imposed remedies, and about
his unaccustomed position of being stymied for answers. One of the
culture wars' quietly dedicated establishmentarian soldiers has
laid down his rhetorical arms to prepare for a more civil and
salutary engagement. (Kirkus Reviews)
The melting pot no longer defines us. Where not very long ago we
sought assimilation, we now pursue multiculturalism. Nowhere has
this transformation been more evident than in the public schools,
where a traditional Eurocentric curriculum has yielded to diversity
- and, often, to confrontation and confusion. In a book that brings
clarity and reason to this highly charged issue, Nathan Glazer
explores these sweeping changes. He offers an incisive account of
why we all - advocates and skeptics alike - have become
multiculturalists, and what this means for national unity, civil
society, and the education of our youth. Focusing particularly on
the impact in public schools, Glazer dissects the four issues
uppermost in the minds of people on both sides of the multicultural
fence: Whose "truth" do we recognize in the curriculum? Will an
emphasis on ethnic roots undermine or strengthen our national unity
in the face of international disorder? Will attention to social
injustice, past and present, increase or decrease civil disharmony
and strife? Does a multicultural curriculum enhance learning, by
engaging students' interest and by raising students' self-esteem,
or does it teach irrelevance at best and fantasy at worst? Glazer
argues cogently that multiculturalism arose from the failure of
mainstream society to assimilate African Americans; anger and
frustration at their continuing separation gave black Americans the
impetus for rejecting traditions that excluded them. But, willingly
or not, we are all multiculturalists now, Glazer asserts, and his
book gives us the clearest picture yet of what there is to know, to
fear, and to ask of ourselves about this new identity.
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