The Missing Link

February 24, 2006

The Prejudice Inherent in Multiculturalism

In the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner actor Sidney Poitier plays an accomplished black doctor hoping to marry a beautiful young white woman…if only her staunchly liberal parents will approve.

The father of the bride respects his daughter’s fiancée, and doesn’t doubt that the young couple loves one another deeply. At first, however, he refuses to give his blessing, arguing that a bigoted society won’t accept their marriage.

“There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives,� says Spencer Tracy, playing the role of the father. “You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say ‘screw all those people’!�

A modern viewer can’t help but feel gratified at how far society has progressed since those days. Today’s interracial couples may face difficulties, but nothing compared to what their predecessors faced even a generation ago.

At another point, however, I couldn’t help but feel pessimism.

“I love you,� Poitier’s character tells his father. “I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.�

As modern America accepts immigrants from all over the world (and racial divisions remain even among those born here), it is as important as ever to think of ourselves as human beings rather than members of a racial group.

Yet a strain of thought exists—it is called multiculturalism—that encourages us to think of people whose race, religion or cultural background is different from our own as somehow essentially different from us.

Multiculturalists believe that even within our own country positive steps should be taken to keep different cultures from blending together. They believe that group rights often trump individual rights. They assume that a person’s race, religion and cultural background always says something important—something quintessential—about who they are.

Whether or not the individual considers his race, religion or culture a defining trait is never considered.

A passage I read in The New Republic this week explains this dynamic nicely.

“If a young girl in a conservative immigrant family wants to go out on a date with an English boy, that would certainly be a multicultural initiative,� Amartya Sen writes. “In contrast, the attempt by her guardians to stop her from doing this (a common enough occurrence) is hardly a multicultural move, since it seeks to keep the cultures separate. And yet it is the parents' prohibition… that seems to garner the loudest and most vocal defense from alleged multiculturalists, on the ground of the importance of honoring traditional cultures--as if the cultural freedom of the young woman were of no relevance whatever, and as if the distinct cultures must somehow remain in secluded boxes.�

In 1967 liberals watched Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and cheered the idea that secluding people into boxes due to their race is a wrongheaded approach to the world. Today a faction among liberals takes the contrary view—that enlightened people must view those whose race, religion or cultural background is different through the prism of that trait.

Perhaps a remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is in order. Will Smith can play a successful black doctor who wants to marry a Persian beauty whose immigrant parents, moderate Muslims both, fled Iran during the Islamic revolution. In this remake the parents, seeing the love that exists between Smith and his fiancée, can support the marriage immediately. Society can be on board too, with friends, neighbors and colleagues celebrating the engagement.

Meanwhile a leftist ethnic studies professor, an activist group composed of her students and a traditionalist Islamic advocacy group can object to the marriage, not because they fear for the couple’s happiness or society’s tolerance for their union, but because they prioritize maintaining distinct cultures above individual happiness.

Of course, I’m being naïve. These days Hollywood doesn’t produce films that challenge orthodoxies of though on the left. So let’s take it upon ourselves to reject the prejudices and stereotyping inherent in multiculturalism. I don’t know whether or not Sidney Poitier will be behind the effort. But his character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner would’ve been.

Posted by Conor at February 24, 2006 12:01 PM