Multiculturalist Fascism

Multiculturalist Fascism

From the November 22, 2009 Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Do you believe in the American dream -- the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools -- at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus.

In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U's College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of "the American Dream" in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace -- and be prepared to teach our state's kids -- the task force's own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.

The comments are quite revealing. One commenter tells us:

There are some facts that hard to argue with. Our US society is diverse. You can dislike the idea of "multiculturalism," but the fact remains that we are not a homogenous society. Also, not everyone does as well in school, and the stats show racial and ethnic minorities, and anyone anyone from poverty stricken zip codes, are the ones falling behind. We disagree about the "why" and "how to fix it."

We are indeed not a homogenous society. But as this table from the August 26, 2009 Inside Higher Education shows, some of the "diverse" groups actually do better than whites on the Math section.

Group	Critical Reading Score	1-Year Change, Reading	Math Score	1-Year Change, Math	Writing Score	1-Year Change, Writing	Total 1-Year Change
American Indian	486	+1	493	+2	469	-1	+2
Asian American	516	+3	587	+6	520	+4	+13
Black	429	-1	426	+0	421	-3	-4
Mexican American	453	-1	463	+0	446	-1	-2
Puerto Rican	452	-4	450	-3	443	-2	-9
Other Latino	455	+0	461	+0	448	+0	+0
White	528	+0	536	-1	517	-1	-2

Now, you might be able to make the case that the Reading and Writing sections could reflect cultural biases--but Mathematics is about as pure from culture as you can imagine--and Asian Americans outperform whites pretty impressively--and blacks are far below whites. This isn't cultural bias. Remember that Asian Americans are often immigrants or the children of immigrants. Even those whose families have been here for several generations (as is typical for Japanese-Americans) can't have any special cultural advantage over blacks, whose families have been here for centuries.

Here's a horrifying reality for the left: the teachers--and even the schools--aren't the biggest problem. It's the values of the homes in which children are raised that matters most.