Several years ago I began a post on Chicago Tribune generic (though black) liberal columnist Clarence Page, “Turn This Page Down,” as follows:
In the past I have dogeared a number of Pages (columns by Clarence Page, that is) as good examples of the thinking (or lack thereof) of mainstream liberal columnists/talking heads. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Today’s column, however, goes so far beyond his earlier attempts that I’m tempted to characterize it not as political analysis but humor, intended or otherwise.
A year later there was another one, but then I stopped paying attention. Now, however, hard on the heels of news of the U.S. attempt to export affirmative action to France comes blank Page’s pompously pretentious effort to instruct European leaders on “The way to do multiculturalism right.”
Typical of its insight is the observation that “Multiculturalism means different things to different people,” but the people leading European governments don’t have enough sense to pick a sensible one.
State multiculturalism has had “disastrous results,” says British Prime Minister David Cameron. It has “totally failed,” says German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Clearly, yes, it is a failure,” agrees French President Nicolas Sarkozy .
Has “multikulti,” as the Germans call it derisively, indeed failed Europe’s great leaders? Or are they simply not doing it right?
According to Page, they’re not doing it right; they should be more like us. And how do we do it? What is “ the American model”?
Our debate has centered in various ways on how cultural differences can be respected without causing our melting pot to boil over.
Sure, sometimes “panicky outbursts of xenophobia” break out in places like Arizona and Oklahoma, but those are exceptions that prove the rule:
Doing multiculturalism right calls for striking a balance between a respect for diverse cultures and respect for the common culture we all share.
“In this country,” Page preaches, multiculturalism
means a respect for cultural differences while remembering that, most of all, we’re all still Americans, part of a cultural mainstream that is worth assimilating into, even if our leaders sometimes make mistakes….
By contrast, Europe has allowed large communities of immigrants to grow in ethnic enclaves that endure from one generation to the next with remarkably little assimilation.
Don’t blame multiculturalism for that failure. Blame people. People will have to fix it.
Presumably those dumb Europeans should fix the mess they’ve made by emulating what we do. Alas, Page says absolutely nothing about how we actually do multiculturlism — all the ways we attempt to regulate race and ethnicity with affirmative action programs to ensure just the right amount of “inclusion” of this or that group, ways that so infuriate so many people — while providing nothing beyond a Pollyannaish gloss.
I find it remarkable that anyone, even a tiresomely predictable liberal journalist, could write about how we do multiculturalism, about how our multiculturalism is better than the Europeans’, without one word about either the illegal immigration that has swelled the numbers of those living in linguistically isolated ethnic enclaves, the cult of multiculturalism on campus and elsewhere that rejects assimilation altogether, or the preferential programs that reward some ethnicities at the expense of others.
