What is “Multiculturalism and Diversity”?

by

A. B. Caneday
Professor of New Testament Studies
& Biblical Theology
Northwestern College
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55113

Second Annual
Faculty Scholarship Symposium
Northwestern College
Saint Paul, Minnesota
May 6, 2005
9:45 AM

© Copyright 2005
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most

oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral

busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point

be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they

do so with the approval of their own conscience.

–C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 292.

People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority.

–Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (New
York: Basic Books, 1995), 3.

2
 Introduction

Whether it is coincidental or there is any integrated relationship between the two,

observant eyes have recognized a discernible increase with which advocates have pushed

―multiculturalism and diversity‖ in the United States of America, especially on America‘s

campuses and in the media, since the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union and its

satellites collapsed and fragmented. As Marxist-born political tyranny was collapsing in the East,

Marxist-born social and cultural tyranny was increasing in the West in the form of

―multiculturalism and diversity.‖ A new vision among the intellectual, political, and religious elite

has established a new and prevailing orthodoxy in the West. 1

What is important about that vision are not only its particular assumptions and their
corollaries, but also the fact that it is a prevailing vision–which means that its assumptions
are so much taken for granted by so many people, including so-called ―thinking people,‖
that neither those assumptions nor their corollaries are generally confronted with demands
for empirical evidence. Indeed, empirical evidence itself may be viewed as suspect, insofar
as it is inconsistent with that vision.2

This vision is religious in character, for it anoints all who embrace it with a ―special state of

grace.‖3 To believe in the vision is the way to gain the moral high ground. All who disagree with

this prevailing vision are not merely wrong; they are ―in sin.‖4 The anointed, those enlightened

with this vision for the world, look upon all who disagree with their vision not merely as

1
Cf. Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulations as a Basis for Social Policy
(New York: Basic Books, 1995).
2
Ibid, 2.

3
Ibid, 3. The imagery is Sowell‘s.

4
Ibid.

3
benighted but morally inferior, lacking compassion, needing ―to be made ‗aware,‘ to have their

‗consciousness raised.‘‖5 Visionaries admonish those who ―do not get it‖ for being ―mean-

spirited,‖ and they expose the ―real reasons‖ that ground any resistance to the vision of the

anointed.6 The strategy of the enlightened is to regard it unnecessary to discuss religious, moral,

social, and political questions on their merits. The tactic is to demonize all who oppose the vision,

the new orthodoxy.

This vision‘s new orthodoxy, ―multiculturalism and diversity,‖ has also marched

through the ivy adorned arches of colleges and universities and has ensconced itself in the stately

quadrangles, is preached in their chapels where formerly the gospel rang out, is taught in the

classrooms, publishes a new lexicon called ―political correctness‖ that governs all speech, imposes

a new virtue that none dare call by its proper name–― preferentialism,‖ modifies policies and

procedures with ―affirmative action,‖ and persists in suppressing questions and objections from

the benighted. This new orthodoxy that imposes a demand for what it calls diversity of culture

simultaneously imposes a demand for uniformity of thought and belief. ―Multiculturalism and

diversity‖ is intolerant of any diverse belief or idea that thoughtfully and critically assesses its

assumptions, its claims, its assertions, its belief system, its indiscriminate imposition, and its

uncritical acceptance.

―Multiculturalism and diversity‖ has become orthodoxy not merely on public and

private university campuses but on Christian college campuses also. Despite the fact that Christian

5
Ibid.

6
Cf. ibid.

4
universities and colleges claim to engage ideas critically and thoughtfully in the quest for truth,

where the best and most cogent arguments should prevail, the new orthodoxy suppresses debate

and looks with annoyance upon any who challenge its ascendancy. It intimidates students and

scholars into silence or barely a whisper behind closed doors, except for those few who, wearing

the designation ―fool‖ or ―prophet,‖ depending upon the origin of the epithet, dare raise their

voices to challenge the new orthodoxy with reasoned and thoughtful arguments.

The new orthodoxy is brilliantly conceived, for its allure is almost inescapable, given the

power of political correctness, which is a sprawling speech code that intimidates people to think

and speak in conformity with the new orthodoxy. From their tenured chairs political correctness

academes have politicized virtually every aspect of life. Forbidden are ordinary words of

description that might offend members of a ―protected class‖ as determined by new religionists

who legislate and police the new virtue while pretending to be religion-free or at least tolerant of

all religions.7

It is not as though no one warned us of these things, for George Orwell‘s Animal Farm

and 1984 forecast the power of ―newspeak,‖ the orthodoxy of language as power. Yet, given the

seductive power of its speech code, ―multiculturalism and diversity‖ allures evangelicals in

7
―Political correctness is a virus. Intimidation carries this contagion from one individual to another
as receiving hosts offer little resistance to the virus. Because the contagion exploits its host‘s reluctance to offend
the alleged sensibilities of hypersensitive people, political correctness seduces its host to accept the virus as newly
acquired virtue to be passed on to others with religious zeal. Herein is the genius and power of political correctness.
Once the host accepts political correctness as virtuous, external policing is rarely needed because the virus
internally intimidates one‘s conscience so that it becomes second nature to use newspeak and to chastise others
who do not. Hence the tyranny of political correctness: newspeak represents itself as virtue. . . . Political
correctness apes good manners we were taught as children while simultaneously making a virtue out of newspeak
etiquette, seducing people into postmodern self-righteousness‖(A. B. Caneday, ―The SBJT Forum: Racism,
Scripture, and History,‖ The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 8.2 [2004]: 87-88).

5
churches, colleges, seminaries, publishing houses, and magazines to embrace it as commensurate

with the gospel. Consequently, without adequately assessing it, many Christian colleges,

associated with the Coalition of Christian Colleges (now the CCCU) began to christen the world

view of multiculturalism and put it to work, especially since 1991, when the CCCU established

the Racial/Ethnic Diversity Initiative.8

Christian colleges throughout the CCCU network embrace the stated agenda of

multiculturalism, unity and harmony, while at the same time seeking the Bible‘s endorsement and

christening of multiculturalism‘s agenda. Regularly, the CCCU and the National Christian

Multicultural Student Leaders Conference (NCMSLC) sponsor meetings for college

administrators and students who are directly involved in the advancement of a christened version

of ―multiculturalism‖ on their respective campuses. 9 Word emerges from these meetings that

members of the departments of biblical studies at various Christian colleges pose as

obstructionists to the promotion and advancement of multiculturalism on their campuses. Why

would Christian biblical scholars endeavor to impede a movement that others regard as

innocuous, perhaps even virtuous and right? What would motivate them to oppose embracing

multiculturalism? Are they racists? Are they opposed to racial diversity on campus? What could

8
Principal among the arguments the CCCU leaders borrowed from the secular multiculturalism
world view was the claim that ―Coalition schools failed to mirror the ethnic diversity of the surrounding culture‖
(James A. Patterson, Shining Lights: A History of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 2001], 93).

9
The most recent CCCU initiative is the ―Advancing Intercultural Competencies.‖ Its mission is:
―The Intercultural Initiative is a vision of the CCCU board of directors. As part of this initiative, CCCU staff will
encourage, support and advance the intercultural efforts that our campuses are seeking to accomplish. The
initiative operates under the leadership of the Commission for Advancing Intercultural Competencies and seeks to
address the areas of race/ethnicity, world religions, internationalization, gender equity, human sexuality and
disenfranchisement.‖ (http://www.cccu.org/resourcecenter/ParentCatID.280/resourcecenter.asp).

6
prompt them to urge caution concerning policies and programs that advance the cause of

multiculturalism?

So pervasive is the new orthodoxy that many among us who regard themselves as the

enlightened are unaware that there is a vision of and for the world other than the one they hold or

the one which they assume all their challengers embrace. Despite the new orthodoxy‘s autocracy,

some, through arduous study and critical thought, have escaped its ideological belief system but in

doing so have provoked its frowning disapproval. 10 Thus, after years of making appeals for

caution lest Christians uncritically embrace the world‘s ideology called multiculturalism, and

having been understood less on this subject than on any other I have addressed, it is time to offer

an expanded, considered, measured, carefully researched, Christian exposé of my deep and

abiding concerns with regard to ―multiculturalism and diversity.‖ This presentation is the first of

four installments that aim at explaining why evidence, reason, and the biblical gospel have

compelled me conscientiously to reject and to oppose the new orthodoxy and vision called

―multiculturalism and diversity.‖ Because this presentation is only the first portion of a much

larger work that entails four parts, I beg your patient restraint of judgment, for all that needs to be

said cannot be said within this presentation. Before I can offer my own vision for the world that

counters the vision of ―multiculturalism and diversity,‖ it is necessary to offer evaluative

engagement of the prevailing vision to demonstrate what it is and why I reject it and to assist

those who embrace it, even if unknowingly, to see what it is that they actually embrace.

10
―Many of these ‗thinking people‘ could more accurately be characterized as articulate people, as
people whose verbal nimbleness can elude both evidence and logic. This can be a fatal talent, when it supplies the
crucial insulation from reality behind many historic catastrophes‖ (Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed, 6).

7
 The issue at stake is not whether we should welcome diverse peoples among us and

embrace them. No one can possibly oppose the embrace of diverse peoples and at the same time

retain a credible confession of being a Christian (James 2:9). The gospel of Jesus Christ obligates

us to love and to embrace all who are Christians despite non-confessional differences, whether

racial, social, or sexual. My burden, which I have not yet expressed fully and perhaps

inadequately, concerns the clash of orthodoxies, of the conflict of visions, of world views in

conflict. 11 As a Christian, I am governed by how Jesus expresses the matter–we are ―not of the

world‖ but also not yet have we been taken ―from the world‖ (John 17:14-16). While here, we are

to behave as children of light who are not ―unwise but wise, buying up time because the days are

evil,‖ as we seek to understand what the Lord‘s will is (Eph 5:8, 15-17) and do so in the tradition

of the ―sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should

do‖ (1 Chron 12:32).

What is Multiculturalism?

The American college campus has become increasingly balkanized throughout the past

two decades. First appearances suggest that the radicalized divisions are along color lines. Closer

examination indicates that fissures form across every accidental quality that distinguishes one

human from another–race, ethnicity, sex, economic status–but these are not the greatest sources

of division. The greatest source of division is ideology. The ideology is the new orthodoxy,

11
I acknowledge echoes of the titles of three books: Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies:
Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001); Thomas Sowell, The Conflict of
Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York: William Morrow, 1987); and Ronald Nash,
Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).

8
―multiculturalism and diversity.‖ Both ―multiculturalism‖ and ―diversity‖ are populist and

academic shorthand terms for philosophical, cultural, and religious pluralism, which is a world

view and an ideological belief system. Though many prefer to use one or the other of these two

terms–multiculturalism or diversity–for the sake of brevity and ease, the two terms belong

together as a hendiadys, ―multiculturalism and diversity,‖ the conjunctive joining of two synonyms

when one is ordinarily sufficient. The second noun, diversity, however, more adequately fills out

the sense of the first. Despite the fact that the hendiadys, ―multiculturalism and diversity,‖ is more

fully descriptive, because it is cumbersome, the remainder of this essay conforms to popular

shorthand use of multiculturalism as generally sufficient.

Multiculturalism: A World View, An Ideology

Multiculturalism is a political-social-cultural-educational-theological ideology or world

view that is an aspect of a constellation of intellectual movements of the twentieth century that

derive from interests in the use of language as power. Multiculturalism derives from the ―critical

theory‖ of the Frankfurt School, whose principal figures who influenced American academic

institutions and culture were Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse. 12

12
The Frankfurt School, established in 1923 as an independent division of the University of
Frankfurt, was a group of researchers associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research).
Carl Grünberg, the institute's first director, was an avowed Marxist and established the Institute on Marxism as the
theoretical basis for all its programs of research in philosophy and the social sciences. In 1930, after becoming its
director, Max Horkheimer expanded its focus when Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse, all
influenced by elements of psychoanalysis and existentialism, forged a version of Marxism called ―critical theory,‖
with its influential aesthetic theories and criticisms of capitalist culture. In 1933, with the rise of Nazism, the
Institute found exiled refuge first in Geneva, Switzerland (1933-1935) and then in the United States (1935 in New
York; 1941 in California). Thus, the Frankfurt School and its ―critical theory,‖ infiltrated American universities
with its ―cultural Marxism.‖ See Joseph Yeager, ―Cultural Communists,‖ Frontpage Magazine
(http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=7732). By 1953 the Institute was able to return to the
University of Frankfurt in Germany. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer became co-directors in 1955.
9
Multiculturalism emerged in conjunction with ―deconstructionism,‖ the literary theory of Jean-

François Lyotard, Jacques Derridá, Michel Foucault, and others. ―Critical theory,‖ often used

interchangeably with ―deconstructionism,‖ has inextricably embedded itself in virtually every

academic discipline.13 So, the intellectual movements of the twentieth century have resulted in

postmodernism with its multifaceted manifestations, including multiculturalism with its cultural,

religious, and moral pluralism.14 J. P. Moreland summarizes:

Postmodernism is a loose coalition of diverse thinkers from several different academic

disciplines, so it is difficult to characterize postmodernism in a way that would be fair to
this diversity. Still, it is possible to provide a fairly accurate characterization of
postmodernism in general, since its friends and foes understand it well enough to debate
its strengths and weaknesses. . . . As a philosophical standpoint, postmodernism is
primarily a reinterpretation of what knowledge is and what counts as knowledge. More
broadly, it represents a form of cultural relativism about such things as reality, truth,
reason, value, linguistic meaning, the self, and other notions. On a postmodernist view,
there is no such thing as objective reality, truth, value, reason, and so forth. All these are
social constructions, creations of linguistic practices and, as such, are relative not to
individuals, but to social groups that share a narrative [about the world]. . . .
Postmodernism denies the correspondence theory, claiming that truth is simply a
contingent creation of language which expresses customs, emotions, and values embedded
in a community‘s linguistic practices. For the postmodernist, if one claims to have the

13
Monash University (Berwyck, Victoria, Australia) inaugurated an online journal entitled The Bible
and Critical Theory in December 2004. Roland Boer, the editor, describes the journal‘s purpose: ―the journal
explores the intersections between critical theory, understood in the broad sense, and biblical studies. It publishes
articles that investigate the contributions from critical theory to biblical studies, and contributions from biblical
studies to critical theory. . . . By critical theory we mean a collection of methods and questions, often shortened to
the word 'theory' itself. These methods include post-structuralism, feminism, psychoanalysis, ideological criticism,
Marxism, eco-criticism, post-colonialism, queer theory, narratology, new historicism, utopian studies and so on. In
literary criticism outside biblical studies these methods and others like them engage the majority of critics. Biblical
studies remains in an extraordinary state of flux: the various methods of critical theory have been used by biblical
critics for some time now. These methods have raised questions about the Bible concerning race and ethnicity,
indigeneity, gender and sexual difference, the human-animal binary, class and ideology, hegemony and subversion,
the nature of history, texts and readers, and so on‖ (Boer Roland. Editorial. The Bible and Critical Theory; 1.
DOI:10.2104/bc040001).
14
Concerning philosophical pluralism, see D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity
Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 13-41.

10
 truth in the correspondence sense, this assertion is a power move that victimizes those
judged not to have the truth.15

If postmodernism is the larger theoretical philosophy of which multiculturalism is a substantial

aspect, multiculturalism is postmodernism‘s reach to infiltrate the institutional, educational,

religious, cultural, social, and political arenas with its philosophy, doing so with ―political

correctness‖ as its lexicon.

―Multiculturalism,‖ ―pluralism,‖ and ―diversity‖ are all terms capable of exploitation

because of their equivocal qualities.16 These terms are purposefully slippery, in keeping with their

15
J. P. Moreland, ―Truth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern Turn.‖ Advocates of
multiculturalism contend that ―race‖ is ―socially constructed.‖ Henry Louis Gates, Jr., claims that the concept of
race is a biological ―misnomer‖ and merely a ―metaphor,‖ for ―who has seen a black or red person, a white, yellow
or brown person? These terms are arbitrary constructs, not reports of reality‖ (Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture
Wars [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992], 48, 50). Nevertheless, Thomas Sowell rightly says, ―Cultures are
of course not spread randomly among the world‘s population but are concentrated separately in different peoples–
different racial or ethnic groups. Neither the races nor the cultures are pure, but both biological and cultural
differences can be discussed in general terms that correspond, at least roughly, to a recognizable social reality. . . .
Neither race nor related concepts can be used in any scientifically precise sense to refer to the people inhabiting
this planet today, after centuries of genetic intermixtures. The more generic term, race, [may] be used . . . in a
loose sense to refer to a social phenomenon with a biological component, rather than make a dichotomy whose
precision is illusory‖ (Race and Culture, 6).

D‘Souza makes the case that, true as it is that racial categories as used by the U.S. government‘s
Census Bureau ―have no scientific basis,‖ racial distinctions are not wholly ―socially constructed‖ as sociologists
insist. ―Race may indeed be a social construct as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. suggests, yet such constructs often provide
reliable transcripts of reality. The theories of gravity and relativity were constructed by human beings, yet they are
also accurate descriptions of the laws and workings of the physical universe. ‗Height‘ is a social construct, yet tall
and short people do exist. ‗Racism‘ is a social construct, yet presumably the term does refer to real people and real-
world phenomena. The concepts of ‗male‘ and ‗female‘ are social constructs in that they are definitional
contrivances. But it does not follow that the gender distinction between men and women is the product of social
fantasy, or that men and women would cease to be different if only society stopped labeling them differently. . . .
The dispute, therefore, is not over whether groups exhibit real differences, but only about where to draw lines of
demarcation. Admittedly, scientists and scholars disagree on the best system of classification for human beings, or
on how many races there are. . . . Biologically, men and women have more shared traits than differences. . . . But
none of this means that the differences between men and women, or between human beings and animals, are
insignificant. Just as variation among individuals explains why some individuals perform better than others, so
variation between groups could explain why some groups do better than others‖ (The End of Racism, 447-450).

16
On the exploitation of the newly coined use of ―diversity,‖ see Peter Wood, Diversity: The
Invention of a Concept (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), especially 82-98.
11
designers‘ view of language as power. Consequently, academic administrators, academicians,

politicians, racial activists, journalists, religious leaders, and others all routinely employ these

words with equivocation, usually because they have not adequately reflected upon the fact that

those who coined these expressions did so knowing the ingenuity of equivocation to advance their

ideology or world view, using language as power to achieve social engineering. 17 Because these

expressions are purposefully slippery, those who are ingenuous slide between uses without

awareness, but others who are lubricious do so with clever intention.

Consequently, academic administrators and professors who advocate multiculturalism

trade upon its confusion with multicultural education. The noun multiculturalism is a world view;

the adjective multicultural describes the long-standing tradition in education that exposes students

to the world‘s cultures with an attempt to examine the values and practices of other cultures as

objectively and as fairly as possible in a non-doctrinaire manner but in the Western tradition of

17
Elsewhere I describe the tyranny of political correctness: ―George Orwell‘s Newspeak in 1984
endeavored to prevent people from thinking thoughts contrary to party approval by changing language. Today,
political correctness is a sprawling speech code threatening people to think correctly by intimidating people to
speak correctly. Ensconced in their tenured chairs, political correctness academes have politicized virtually every
aspect of life. Forbidden are ordinary words of description that might offend members of a ‗protected class‘ as
determined by new religionists who legislate and enforce a new virtue while pretending to be religion-free or
tolerant of all religions. . . . Political correctness is a virus. Intimidation carries this contagion from one individual
to another as receiving hosts offer little resistance to the virus. Because the contagion exploits its host‘s reluctance
to offend the alleged sensibilities of hypersensitive people, political correctness seduces its host to accept the virus
as newly acquired virtue to be passed on to others with religious zeal. Herein is the genius and power of political
correctness. Once the host accepts political correctness as virtuous, external policing is rarely needed because the
virus internally intimidates one‘s conscience so that it becomes second nature to use newspeak and to chastise
others who do not. Hence the tyranny of political correctness: newspeak represents itself as virtue. . . . Political
correctness apes good manners we were taught as children while simultaneously making a virtue out of newspeak
etiquette, seducing people into postmodern self-righteousness‖ (A. B. Caneday, ―The SBJT Forum: Racism,
Scripture, and History,‖ The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 8.2 [2004]: 87-88).

12
liberal education.18 Multicultural education recognizes that of all world cultures American culture

historically has been the most diverse religiously and racially, but that such existing diversity is a

subcultural contribution to and subordinate to America‘s blended culture rather than existing

separately or independently from it. Multicultural education has always acknowledged the vast

and rich diversity of the world and within the United States.

As with the coinage of multiculturalism, advocates of multiculturalism also trade

heavily upon the ambiguity of their cherished redefined term, diversity. That diversity is a reality

throughout the world, and especially in American culture, is not what interests advocates of

multiculturalism. To them, diversity is a goal to be achieved, an agenda to be implemented, a

social restructuring to be engineered. If multiculturalism is slippery, even more so is the coinage

of diversity credited to Justice Lewis Powell in June 1978, in a portion of his opinion in Supreme

Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke which no other justice joined. Powell

asserted that the goal of ―attaining a diverse student body‖ is provided for in his view of academic

freedom that ―long has been viewed as a special concern of the First Amendment.‖ Following

Powell‘s independent voice, diversity became a goal to achieve, measured by quotas whether

stated or not, a goal that overrides the Fourteenth Amendment‘s guarantee of equal protection

under the law.19

18
On the demise of liberal education under assault by multiculturalism, see Dinesh D‘Souza,
Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press, 1991; New York:
Vintage Books, 1992).
19
Wood, Diversity, 99-145. Allen Bakke argued that he had been denied admission to the Univ. of
Calif., Davis, School of Medicine despite having credentials superior to those of others who were admitted because
of their ―minority‖ status. He won in the California Supreme Court but the Regents of the Univ. of Calif. appealed
to the U.S. Supreme court where they prevailed against Bakke.

13
 The world view of multiculturalism assumes cultural relativism, including religious

pluralism, as its foundational belief.20 There is no universal truth. Christianity can hold no

exclusive claims.21 It is the belief that each culture is to be judged relative to its own standards,

including its religious beliefs, for there are no universal standards by which to assess the value,

worth, or rightness of the world‘s cultures.

Multiculturalism is cultural Marxism, having its theoretical and historical roots in the

Frankfurt School, whose principal figures were Walter Benjamin, Theodore Adorno, and Herbert

Marcuse, all Marxists. These three and others conjectured how they might subvert Western

capitalist or free market society which they loathed even as they profited from it. They reasoned

that Western society‘s vulnerability was cultural far more than economic. So, if they could subvert

the cultural norms of Western society, they would subvert the cultural infrastructure, toppling

capitalism and making it possible to construct a communist society in the West. 22 To this end, the

Frankfurt School, which birthed multiculturalism, labeled belief in the God of the Bible

20
I am aware of the irony of speaking of the foundation of multiculturalism that is an aspect of
postmodernism which repudiates foundationalism. Those who cannot recognize the legitimate use of the imagery
of foundation, of course, may likely have visceral responses that confuse the imagery with Enlightenment‘s and
Modernism‘s foundationalism, Their reader response is fully anticipated.

21
As argued by Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, Divinity and Diversity: A Christian Affirmation of
Religious Pluralism (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003). For a contrary view, see Wood, Diversity, 146-174.
22
―The term ‗Euro-American culture‘ refers to those components of American culture that are
derived from the believes and practices of England and, to some degree, of Northern Europe and adapted to
American needs. Briefly, these beliefs are as follows: God created human beings and the world; human behavior is
to be judged as right or wrong, moral or immoral, in light of the Ten Commandments of the Bible; objective
knowledge is attainable; the rights, freedoms, responsibilities, and dignity of the individual take precedence over
those of groups; people are governed by the rule of law; laws are formulated democratically; every man or woman
is equal before the law; every accused individual is innocent until proven guilty in a fair trial where he or she can
face the accuser; people have the right not only to succeed but also to fail; and a free society that provides equal
opportunity does not guarantee equal outcome‖ (Alvin J. Schmidt, The Menace of Multiculturalism: Trojan Horse
in America [Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997], 3).

14
―compulsive and highly punitive.‖23 From its inception, multiculturalism has been the religious and

philosophical belief that vied to become the new universal or the new orthodoxy by displacing the

longstanding universal that had shaped and influenced Western culture, namely divine revelation,

the Bible.24 Against a God-centered world view, the Frankfurt School called upon those of liberal

mind to be ―centered in the idea of Utopia.‖25

Multiculturalism is a political ideology that simultaneously regards all cultures, with

their mores and institutions, as equal in value, but criticizes and vilifies Western culture, heavily

influenced by Christianity. This ideology professes to regard no culture as superior or inferior to

another; cultures are merely different. To render value judgments about cultures or any aspect of

a culture, including religious beliefs, is to commit a sin against multiculturalism‘s ―political

correctness‖ speech code of virtue.26 This same speech code of virtue acquits as virtuous anyone

23
Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality, 231. The beliefs Adorno labeled ―compulsive and highly
punitive‖ were: ―My belief is that, just as according to the Bible, there is a God–the world has gone alone and
needed a Savior, and there was one born, lived, died, risen again, and will come back some time; and the person
who has lived according to Christianity will live forever–those who have not will perish at that time.‖ During the
fourth and fifth decades of the twentieth century, when Adorno wrote his book, Christian churches and orthodox
doctrine of major denominations held these beliefs in consensus.
24
Concerning the transformative impact of the Frankfurt School upon Western culture, particularly
American culture, see Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims, esp. 53-62. Theodor Adorno, a Marxist (with Betty
Aron, Maria Hertz Levinson, and William Morrow), was convinced that his homeland‘s tyrant, Adolf Hitler, was
not unique but that all Western societies are full of authoritarian personalities ready to follow tyrants at any
moment. Adorno argued that anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, and every other kind of prejudice were forms of
psychological disorder, rooted in ―authoritarian personalities.‖ His bias was obvious: ―It is a well-known
hypothesis that susceptibility to fascism is most characteristically a middle-class phenomenon, that it is ‗in the
culture‘ and, hence, that those who conform the most to this culture will be the most prejudiced‖ (The
Authoritarian Personality [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950], 229).

25

Ibid, 783. ―The gist of [the liberal‘s] religion is contained in the statement: ‗Perhaps we will all be
saved.‘‖
26
―Political correctness‖ derives directly from the view of language and of rhetoric as ―power,‖
advocated by Theodore Adorno and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School.
15
who renders judgments of severe condemnation against Western culture, but especially against the

United States and against Christianity.27 Advocates of multiculturalism follow the lead of the

Frankfurt School, viewing the so-called ―Euro-American culture with its Judeo-Christian‖ world

view as the source of cultural tyranny–racism, sexism, and classism. Thus, they attack Western

culture and Christianity as the world‘s nemesis, the source of every form of oppression.

Multiculturalism, which its advocates embrace with religious and evangelistic zeal, is a doctrine of

paternalistic virtue and condescending righteousness that is born out of and nurtured on guilt of

privilege, of prosperity, and of blessing. 28 This doctrine is a Western academic invention, if not

principally American, philosophically rooted in the Marxist beliefs of those who fled to the United

States for political asylum during Fascism‘s Third Reich in Germany but funded largely by the

Ford Foundation to advance it on American university and college campuses.29

27
The case of Ward Churchill, chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado,
is a recent example of a radical academic whose contempt for Western culture and society is exhibited in the
classroom and in screeds. Churchill wrote an essay in which he compared the 3000 people who perished in the
World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, to ―little Eichmanns‖ who were properly punished by those who made
―gallant sacrifice‖ of their own lives to bring down the evil capitalist empire. Cf., also, the case of Professor
Nicholas DeGenova,at Columbia University, who while attending an anti-war rally in March 2003, declared that
―U.S. patriotism is inseparable from...white supremacy" and then expressed the "wish for a million Mogadishus in
Iraq‖ (a reference to the 1993 incident in Somalia when eighteen U. S. troops were killed). See, e.g., Edward
Alexander, ―Ward Churchill and the Politics of Campus Extremism,‖ Front Page Magazine
(http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=16917).

28
A corollary to this is to say, ―A universal human stupidity is the belief that our neighbor‘s success
is the cause of our failure‖ (Charles V. Roman, ―What the Negro May Reasonably Expect of the White Man,‖
American Civilization and the Negro (1916). Cited by John Perazzo, The Myths that Divide Us: How Lies Have
Poisoned American Race Relations, second ed. (Briarcliff Manor, New York: World Studies Books, 1999), 250.
29
See Charles Sykes and K. L. Billingsley, ―How the Ford Foundation Created Multiculturalism,‖
Heterodoxy also available at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=11674. See also Wood,
Diversity, 231.

16
Multicultualism: A Culture of Paternalism

Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s civil rights movement called for racial reform on the premise

of Christian morality preached by white ministers in pulpits throughout America, including the

South. Yet, ironically, the very moral principles that impelled King‘s message of non-violent

reform became ―stigmatized as the demonic instruments of racism.‖30 Christianity shaped virtues,

qualities, and principles that historically brought prominence and influence to the West, and

particularly to the United States. King did not call for whites to abandon those moral principles

but to live out their principles with equity and impartiality, particularly in the public square, to

judge all people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. Yet, after

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress began to structure society‘s betrayal of

those principles that had given moral authority to racial reform and had moved consciences to

take action. In their efforts to regain their own moral authority with American blacks, white

Americans, especially in governmental leadership, replaced actions grounded in principles with

actions based in preferentialism. Politicians stumble over one another to show that their remorse

over America‘s racial history supersedes their commitment to principles. The fallout is that

everywhere, throughout post-1960s America, ―any preoccupation with principles can only be read

as a failure of remorse. ‗Caring,‘ ‗compassion,‘ ‗feeling,‘ and ‗empathy‘ must be seen to displace

principles in public policy around race.‖31

30
Shelby Steele, ―The Culture of Deference,‖ Academic Questions 12 (1998-1999), 58.

31
Ibid.

17
 Regrettably remorse that abandons moral principles for activism invariably becomes

ostentatious exhibitionism in service of itself. Having lost their moral authority grounded in

principles, those in positions of leadership, whether in the public square or in private institutions,

attempt to regain their moral authority grounded in preferentialism. These white American

moralists in churches, government, academia, and business do not abdicate their positions of

authority to black Americans, for their motivation first is to ―fend off the stigma that weakens

their authority,‖ and it is not to lift up blacks. 32 The stark reality is that it is more important for

white American moralists to feel righteous by activism and show than by actually doing good for

American blacks. Consequently, advocates of multiculturalism, in public and private policy bring

about reform that

never raises expectations for blacks with true accountability, never requires that they
actually develop as Americans, and absolutely never blames blacks when they don‘t
develop. It always asks less of blacks and exempts them from the expectations, standards,
principles, and challenges that are considered demanding but necessary for the
development of competence and character in others. Deferential reform–everything from
welfare to affirmative action to multiculturalism–is the license to be spared the rigors of
development. And at its heart is a faith in an odd sort of magic–that the license that
excuses people from development is the best thing for their development.33

32
Ibid, 59.

33
Ibid. Steele continues, ―Nowhere in the ancient or modern world–except in the most banal utopian
writing–is there the idea that people will become self-sufficient if they are given a lifetime income that is slightly
better than subsistence with no requirement either to work or to educate themselves. Nowhere is there the idea that
young girls should be subsidized for having children out of wedlock, with more money for more children. And yet
this is precisely the form of welfare that came out of the 1960s–welfare as a license not to develop. Out of
deference this policy literally set up incentives that all but mandated inner-city inertia, that destroyed the normal
human relationship to work and family, and that turned the values of hard work, sacrifice, and delayed
gratification into a fool‘s game.‖ Cf. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves
America’s Poor and What We Can Do about It (Nashville: WND Books, 2003) and Mona Charen, Do-Gooders:
How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (And the Rest of Us) (New York: Sentinel, 2004).

18
 During the Jim Crow era the motivation to employ race paternalistically took the form

of ―white supremacy.‖ The great legal victory in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, marked

the loss of white moral authority. White supremacists cannot cloak themselves with white sheets

and expect to remain in power. Their white supremacy would be blatantly obvious. To regain

moral authority, now they cloak themselves with seeming virtue in the form of ―affirmative

action‖ and preferential ―set asides.‖ Because it is unprincipled and immoral, it remains

paternalism, except that it now wears a remorseful face instead of white sheets.

Multiculturalism proudly flies its banner of virtue called tolerance. This tolerance,

however, is not the Christian grace that once influenced and shaped social virtue. The Christian

grace is kind forbearance toward people with whom we differ, not merely in external matters such

as race, ethnicity, gender, and economic status, but perhaps even in fundamental beliefs and ways

of living, so that forbearance of persons does not show acceptance of the beliefs that govern their

sinful manner of life. Multiculturalism hijacks the jargon of Christianity but redefines it with its

own moral code. So, in America, ―the virtue of tolerance becomes a corruption of democratic

fairness–you don‘t merely accept people of different races; you validate their race or ethnicity as a

currency of power and entitlement over others.‖34

This is the perversion of social virtue that gave us a multiculturalism that has nothing to do

with culture. The goal of America‘s highly politicized multiculturalism is to create an

atavistic form of citizenship–a citizenship of preferential status in which race, ethnicity,

and gender are linked to historic victimization to justify entitlements unavailable to other

34
Steele, ―The Culture of Deference,‖ 61.

19
 citizens. Culture is a pretext, a cover. The trick of this multiculturalism is to pass off

atavisms as if they were culture. So people think they are being ―tolerant‖ of ―cultural

diversity‖ when, in fact they are supporting pure racial power. 35

Multiculturalism was not conceived by its originators to spread existing culture but to

forge a new culture that paternalistically supplants the old as it suppresses real ―diversity and

reduces everyone to interchangeable beings whose differences we must not learn about–making

nonsense of literature and history along the way.‖36

Multicultualism: The Autocratic New Orthodoxy

Because multiculturalism has successfully ―defined deviancy down‖ and has shaken

Western culture‘s social structures of authority by perverting the democratic ―self-evident‖

principle–―all men are created equal,‖ multiculturalism corrupts virtues and values instilled by

nature‘s God, inherited from classic civilization, and redeemed through the influence of the

Christian gospel.37 Multiculturalism hijacks the proposition that ―all men are created equal‖ while

circumventing its necessary affirmation of source, ―that they are endowed by their Creator,‖ to

embrace the corollary proposition that they possess ―certain unalienable rights.‖ Multiculturalism

hyper-extends the idea of ―equality before the law‖ to erase natural inequalities rooted in one‘s

place at any given stage of one‘s life within society‘s structures. Postmodernism‘s multiculturalists

35
Ibid. Steele continues, ―In fact multiculturalism actually suppresses America‘s rich cultural
variety, because much actual culture does not mesh with victimization.‖

36
Diane Ravitch, ―You Can‘t Say That,‖ The Wall Street Journal (February 13, 2004), W15.

37
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ―Defining deviancy down: How we've become accustomed to alarming
levels of crime and destructive behavior,‖ The American Scholar (Winter, 1993).

20
embrace the Enlightenment and Modernist view of human nature with its inherently abstract

notion of the equality of every person to such an extent so as to abolish not only social hierarchies

but also the idea of honor itself. Consequently, accompanying its corruption of ―forbearance of

persons‖ to ―tolerance of ideas,‖ multiculturalists pervert the classic virtue and Christian grace of

honor (e.g., Romans 12:10; 13:7) into recognition or validation of virtually every deviancy

except that which deviates from the new orthodoxy. 38

Shelby Steele observes that ―multiculturalism is the kind of thing that happens when a

democracy loses the moral authority to protect the individual citizen as the only inviolate unit of

rights.‖39 A new morality arises, and no ―one invents the moral mask better than those driven to

have their race, ethnicity, or gender bring them a preference over others–whether white

segregationists or minority supporters of affirmative action.‖ 40 Thus, now to criticize the new

orthodoxy‘s policy of ―affirmative action‖ is to risk being denounced as a racist by those who

make their living by preserving racism, of whom Dinesh D‘Souza says, ―Publicly inconsolable

about the fact that racism continues, these activists seem privately terrified that it has abated.‖ 41

38
See Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition” with commentary by Amy
Gutmann (ed.), Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ).
For some instructive guidance on shortcomings of Taylor‘s essay, see, Edward T. Oakes, ―Attention Must Be Paid:
A review of Multiculturalism and the “Politics of Recognition”, First Things 32 (April, 1993): 48-51.
39
Steele, ―The Culture of Deference,‖ 62.

40
Ibid.

41
―[I]t is the civil rights industry which now has a vested interest in the persistence of the ghetto,
because the miseries of poor blacks are the best advertisement for continuing programs of racial preferences and
set-asides. No one is more committed to the one-drop rule, and more likely to resist its demise, than these
professional blacks whose livelihoods depend on maintaining a large and resentful African American coalition.
Publicly inconsolable about the fact that racism continues, these activists seem privately terrified that it has abated.
Formerly a beacon of moral argument and social responsibility, the civil rights leadership has lost much of its
moral credibility, and has a fair representation of charlatans who exploit the sufferings of the underclass to collect
21
 In America, where the majority of society became ―stigmatized for past betrayal of

principles, and . . . those principles themselves are emblems of duplicity,‖ remorse without moral

principle gave birth to multiculturalism, the new social and cultural orthodoxy. Consequently,

multiculturalists, in their moral crusade, erase necessary and proper distinctions between right and

wrong or good and evil and replace these categories with proper and improper or appropriate

and inappropriate, but their new morality defines as inappropriate, and worthy of severe censure,

anyone or anything that endeavors to impede their righteous cause. The new orthodoxy‘s

righteous cause includes restructuring Western society‘s mores, values, beliefs, customs, and

speech about one‘s religious beliefs, family, race, ethnicity, sex, social and economic status, duty

to honor those to whom honor is do, and virtually all aspects of life, but especially racial matters.

Multiculturalism has redefined racism and enforces its new orthodoxy with heavy-handed

autocracy.

Multicultualism: Marxist Classism and Racism

Advocates of multiculturalism redefine racism to include everything from lynching to

the slightest innocent ruffling of the racial sensitivities of a hypersensitive person , and in so doing,

they trivialize actual racism.42 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., defines racism: ―Racism exists when one

generalizes about attributes of an individual, and treats him or her accordingly.‖ He presents a few

research grants, minority scholarships, racial preferences, and other subsidies for themselves‖ (D‘Souza, The End
of Racism, 554). See also Kenneth R. Timmerman, Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson (Washington, D.
C.: Regnery, 2002).
42
Thomas Sowell wisely says, ―Discrimination and segregation are and have been among the ugly
facts of life in various countries around the world. These facts need to be confronted where they exist–not
trivialized by having the terms applied by redefinition to situations where they do not exist, and where very
22
examples: ―Skip, sing me one of those old Negro spirituals,‖ ―You people sure can dance,‖ and

―Black people play basketball so remarkably well.‖ ―These,‖ Gates insists, ―are racist

statements.‖43 So, whether one innocently observes laudatory and distinguishable qualities about a

racial group or another person screams savage and contemptuous racist insults to deride and

ridicule the same group, multiculturalists equally condemn both as racism. Though at its worst,

the former may be called bad etiquette, and at its best the latter is still racial hatred,

multiculturalism‘s moralists equally regard both as acts of racism that require public humiliation

and apology.44 Because their commitment to multiculturalism trumps ordinary discrimination of

goodness from wickedness, they regard both as simply inappropriate. In doing so, they relativize

good and evil but also replace ―righteousness and sin‖ with ―appropriate and inappropriate.‖

Thus, multiculturalists trivialize real acts of racism, such as lynching, as they equate innocent

words or acts, that unintentionally prick hypersensitized emotions, with calculated, deliberate,

violent, and murderous acts of racism. It is unconscionable to place in the same category the

racist-born brutal murder of James Byrd (June 7, 1998), dragged to death behind a pickup truck,

and an innocent comment, done with no malice, yet received as racist by one who is

hypersensitized to do so.

different factors need to be confronted‖ (Race and Culture: A World View [San Francisco: Basic Books, 1994],
153).

43
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ―Talkin‘ That Talk,‖ in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., “Race,” Writing and
Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 403-404.
44
Amoja Three-Rivers thoroughly confounds bad inter-cultural etiquette and racism. In her booklet
entitled Cultural Etiquette, she equates the two: ―It is ethnocentric and racist to apply words like backward,
primitive, uncivilized, savage, barbaric, or undeveloped to people whose technology does not include plumbing,
microwaves, and micro-chips. Are people somehow more human or more humane if they have more technological
toys?‖ (Cultural Etiquette: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned [Gladstone, Va.: Market Wimmin, 1991]).

23
 Because the ideology of multiculturalism is founded upon cultural relativism, it is also

committed to enforce its speech code of political correctness. 45 Thus, with impunity black

comedians punctuate their comedic acts with words that multiculturalists would denounce as

―hate-speech,‖ if any white person were to use the same words, with an exemption for any well-

known white political leftist who embraces multiculturalism. 46 Numerous anecdotal examples

readily come to mind to illustrate the fact that anyone who embraces the ideology of

multiculturalism receives exemption from charges of racism for making the same remarks for

which others are chastised, excoriated, vilified, forced to apologize, and perhaps even fired. At a

popular or semi-academic level, Andrew Hacker states, ―the erotic abandon displayed in black

dancing has no white counterpart.‖47 Similarly, Thomas Kochman claims,

Where whites use the relatively detached and unemotional discussion mode to engage an
issue, blacks use the emotionally intense and involving mode of argument. Where whites
tend to understate their exceptional talents and abilities, blacks tend to boast about theirs.
Where white men, meeting women for the first time, defuse the potency of their sexual
messages . . . black men make their sexual interest explicit and hope to infuse their
presentations with sexual potency.48
45
Cultural relativism is the belief that all ethical truth is relative to a given culture. Thus, no one can
ever say that a particular behavior is right or wrong, for it can only be right or wrong relative to a specific society.
46
Reflect upon the minimal criticism of ex-Klansman Senator Robert Byrd who uses ―white nigger‖
in an interview with Tony Snow, March 5, 2001, on Fox News: ―There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white
niggers in my time …it you want to use that word. We all…we all just need to work together to make our country a
better country.‖ ―Or could it be that Black people have assigned a new qualification to Whites who use the ‗n-
word‘ - that somehow it maybe OK for a White man to use the term ‗nigger‘ provided that he had the letter ‗D‘
affixed to his name indicating his political party affiliation‖ (Cedric Muhammad, ―On Senator Byrd and ‗White
Niggers,‘‖ Black Electorate.Com (March 12, 2001 [http://www.blackelectorate.com/articles.asp?ID=337]).
Andrew D. Todd, ―What Is a ‗White Nigger‘ Anyway?‖ History News Network (January 20, 2003
[http://hnn.us/articles/1220.html]).

47
Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York:
Ballentine Books, 1992), 62.
48
Thomas Kochman, Black and White: Styles in Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1981), 107, 131, cited by D‘Souza, The End of Racism, 271-272.

24
Though both Hacker and Kochman are white, neither receives accusations of racism or calls to

apologize, for they advocate multiculturalism, and their views are popularly embraced among

blacks.49

While multiculturalists excoriate whites for congenital racism (―institutionalized

racism‖), they exhibit racism themselves. Their world view convinces them to view skin color as

intrinsically determinative of culture, which concerns group and individual identity, mores, values,

character, and thinking patterns. Multiculturalists, not their critics, confound skin coloration with

culture when they talk about ―black culture‖ and ―white culture.‖ This is racism. Though they may

deny this, their paternalistic behavior toward non-white people in the cause of multiculturalism

indicates that they view color of skin as an intrinsic determiner of culture, a culture that renders its

members victims and in need of preferentialism in the form of ―affirmative action.‖ For example,

when college admissions and student enrollment personnel use ―affirmative action‖ strategies to

identify prospective students as ―minorities‖ and to give preferential treatment to those whose

49
The multiculturalism belief system ―holds that, since racial and ethnic generalizations are
irrational, none of them can accurately reflect group differences. On one point the theory is sound: people‘s
perceptions of others are always filtered through the lens of their own prior experience. But the liberal [i.e.,
multiculturalists‘] understanding cannot explain how particular traits come to be identified with particular groups.
Only because group traits have an empirical basis in shared experience can we invoke them without fear of
contradiction. Think of how people would react if someone said that ‗Koreans are lazy‘ or that ‗Hispanics are
constantly trying to find ways to make money.‘ Despite the prevalence of anti-Semitism, Jews are rarely accused of
stupidity. Blacks are never accused of being tight with a dollar, or of conspiring to take over the world. By
reversing the stereotypes we can see how their persistence relies, not simply on the assumptions of the viewer, but
also on the characteristics of the group being described‖ (D‘Souza, The End of Racism, 273).

25
applications show that they are non-white, does this not show that they believe that culture is

determined on the basis of skin color?50

Formerly, racism was an individual’s overtly observable sin of prejudicial beliefs and

hateful deeds or words against another person on the basis of racial differences regarded as

rendering the other to be inferior. Now, however, multiculturalists teach people to view racism as

collective guilt, ―preattitudinally‖ endemic to American society and culture, which they judge as a

case of ―white supremacy.‖51 So, even though individuals may not be personally guilty of racism,

because they are white they need to be subjected to grievance-redress meetings and to diversity

training sessions. Here, multiculturalists subject them to numerous anecdotal accounts of

perceived racism, which with rare exceptions, are little more than windows into the

hypersensitivity of individuals exploited by their multiculturalist handlers to vent upon those of the

so-called ―majority culture,‖ indicting them as carriers of congenital racism and white supremacy

but simultaneously appealing to the accused for release from victim status which the accusers

50
D‘Souza makes the case that even though generalizations concerning people groups are wholly
legitimate, even necessary, ―This is no case for group traits having a biological foundation‖ (The End of Racism,
273).
51
Eugene Rivers asserts, ―Western civilization itself is saturated, not merely with racism, but with
the elementary gesture out of which racism is constructed, binary opposition: the splitting of the world into the
dominated and the dominant. In that sense racism antecedes the notion of race. Indeed, it generates the races.
Before there was an elaborate anthropological system devised by the West that established a biological and
anthropological hierarchy with the white West on the top and the black on the bottom, there was racism. There was
the presumption that the West . . . was a white civilization. . . . In other words, when we talk about racism we‘re
not simply talking about attitudinal bad faith (‗you don‘t like me because I‘m black, therefore you‘re a racist‘);
racism as the presupposition of the superiority of that which is Western and white is preattitudinal at the conscious
level. It is so deep that we almost preconsciously articulate this presupposition. Angel food cake is white; devil‘s
food cake is chocolate. Good guys wear white cowboy hats; bad boys wear the black hats. There are black lies and
there are white lies. There is black magic and there is white magic. There is an entire constellation of symbols and
images that permeate every dimension of our thinking. . . . White supremacy is the dominant ideology that
undergirds all of Western civilization‖ (―The Responsibility of Evangelical Intellectuals in the Age of White
Supremacy,‖ The Gospel in Black and White: Theological Resources for Racial Reconciliation, ed. by Dennis L.
Okholm [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1997], 17-18).
26
seem to cherish and hold fast because of the power it provides for the next grievance-redress

session.52

Multiculturalism‘s insidiousness, as devised by the Frankfurt School and its devotees,

has seduced many and caught them unaware that they unwittingly yield to and become

participants in a Marxist subversion of culture, digging the ground out from under their own

beliefs. This is no less true for evangelical ministers and members of Christian churches than for

civic leaders and citizens. By embracing multiculturalism with its principles and practices,

Christians do injury to the gospel they profess and proclaim, for the gospel of Jesus Christ

denounces preferentialism as sin (James 2:9). When told of multiculturalism‘s Marxist

philosophical origins and assumptions, they tend to scoff at the indictment and decry the

messenger for engaging in excess and hyperbole.

Nevertheless, many people intuitively resist being identified as racists simply because

they are white. Knowing themselves not to be racists, they object, ―I know myself, and I am

conscious of no racial prejudice in attitude, action, or word.‖ Diversity experts and those they

have indoctrinated trump such a claim: ―Your protest itself is evidence of your racial prejudice.

You still do not get it.‖ What is it that we do not get? Having lost their white moral authority,

52
―Of course, the group that will suffer the most from ‗diversity‘—and so many other mellifluous
ideas-of-the-good—is black Americans. Group preferences, multiculturalism, welfare rights, and diversity all
picture a world in which blacks have great power to shame institutions into exceptionalism but little or no agency
to transform themselves into full equality. In redemptive liberalism, black power moves others to action; it tries to
win action on behalf of blacks in the form of interventions, but it is not a power that individual blacks can use to
transform themselves: It is a power that attaches to ideas-of-the-good rather than to people. . . . Ideas-of-the-
good, which bring such a convenient power to institutions and to so many race professionals and researchers, are
now the worst enemy of blacks because they defeat us psychologically and spiritually. These ideas do not respond
to black need; they respond to American shame. They treat the nation‘s shame, not the people whose suffering
shames the nation‖ (―The Loneliness of the ‗Black conservative,‘‖ in Shelby Steel, A Dream Deferred: The Second
Betrayal of Black Freedom in America [San Francisco: HaperCollins Publishers, 1998], 88, 89).

27
multiculturalists have forged their own moral basis to retain their positions of power, namely,

remorse for America‘s racial legacy. Since remorse feels better by sharing it with others and by

distributing the guilt equally, they derive their livelihood from spreading the message of guilt: ―All

white individuals in our society are racist. Even if white people are totally free of all conscious

racial prejudice, they remain racists, for they received benefits distributed by a white racist society

through its institutions.‖53 Affirmative action brings redemption by assuaging guilt and quelling

remorse for its practitioners but doing injury to its recipients with a new form of subjugation and

indignity.

Multiculturalists impute presumption of racist guilt to all whites whom they regard as

beneficiaries of ―white majority culture,‖ and they bequeath presumption of victimization to all

blacks because society‘s structures allegedly shut them all out. Despite the fact that

multiculturalists fail to offer reasonable rationale to demonstrate the veracity of these

presumptions, sheer repetition of their assertions tends to wear down many and to intimidate them

to break and confess their participation in the collective racist guilt. 54 Even though they may be

conscious of no overt actions or words of racism to confess, they bow to the intimidation and

confess the nebulous and non-personal guilt of ―institutional racism,‖ a concept invented by

French essayist Albert Memmi. Memmi claims, ―Everyone, or nearly everyone, is an unconscious

racist, or a semi-conscious one, or even a conscious one.‖ Racism spreads through literature and

53
Jim Sleeper, The Closest of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990), 172.

54
Their rationale is to argue, for example, that the justice system in the United States is prejudicial
against blacks. What is their evidence? More black males occupy America‘s prisons than white males. Clearly, the
factor excluded from consideration is the higher incidence of criminal behavior among black males than among
white males. This is not to suggest that some black prisoners have been unjustly arrested, condemned, and
imprisoned.

28
religion, and is ―as intimate a part of the child‘s familial and social upbringing as the milk he sucks

in infancy.‖55 Thus, Sykes observes,

Put in this light, racism was a charge that could never be disproved; it had been endowed
with an immanent and metaphysical quality. . . . Racism was also different from overt and
provable acts of discrimination. Racism did not necessarily refer to behavior, but to a state
of mind. Equitable conduct was no longer enough to prove one‘s innocence; one‘s
innermost thoughts could now be brought to trial. 56

Unfortunately, this notion of ―institutional racism‖ made its way into law in 1986 in

Griggs v. Duke Power Company. The Supreme Court expressly ruled ―that preferential treatment

for previously victimized groups was permitted ‗even when those who benefit have not

themselves suffered from discrimination in the past and when those who are hurt have not

themselves been responsible for past discrimination.‘‖57 Herman Belz summarizes this court

decision. ―The theory holds that discrimination is not an individual act or injury or denial of rights

caused by racial prejudice (as it had traditionally been conceived of in civil rights law), but is

rather the sum of the unequal effects of employment procedures and business practices on racial

groups.‖58

Multicultualism: Racial Psychotherapeutics

Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School, gave the nascent alliance of psychology and

politics great impetus with The Authoritarian Personality. Charles Sykes explains:

55
Albert Memmi, Dominated Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 19. Ironically, Memmi‘s charge is
altogether too true of the assumptions that gave birth to multiculturalism.
56
Sykes, A Nation of Victims, 82.

57
Cited by Sykes, A Nation of Victims, 198.

58
Herman Belz, Equality Transformed (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1991), 3.
29
 It is difficult to know whether to speak of the psychologization of politics or the
politicization of psychology, for the processes were so closely intertwined that it has
become almost impossible to disentangle cause from effect. But the fateful consequences
of the transformation clearly included a shift in the nature of public debate from a political
to a therapeutic idiom; the stigmatization of a host of attitudes and practices not merely as
politically ―incorrect‖ but as psychologically diseased; and the redefinition of political and
psychological health, setting an extraordinarily demanding standard of emotional and
ideological conformity. This change predates the upheavals of the 1960s, although its
consequences would not be apparent until afterward.59

Adorno and his colleagues thought that in order to achieve their vision for society and

culture, they would have to fight the specter of Fascism in the family. On Adorno‘s F-scale (a

scale to identify levels of Fascism in individuals), he reasoned, ―If this can be generalized, and

consequences be drawn for high scores, we might postulate that the increasing significance of the

fascist character depends largely upon basic changes in the structure of the family itself.‖ 60 So,

incrementally the therapeutic nanny state emerged once the Frankfurt School collapsed politics

into psychotherapy and hijacked the whole of social policy from politics and transferred it to

psychology. Though it took some time, this eventuated in the newspeak of ―political correctness.‖

All things political and moral became therapeutic. Medical imageries became dominant as Adorno

named racial prejudice a ―social disease.‖ The prospect of treating the whole society as ―sick‖ and

in need of ―therapy‖ birthed the notion of treating the entire nation ―like a psychotherapeutic

ward,‖ a vision made real by Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, and other earlier and current but less

prominent ―therapists,‖ including Morton Downey, Jr. and his present counterpart, Jerry

59
Charles Sykes, A Nation of Victims, 53.

60
Adorno, et al., The Authoritarian Personality, 783.

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Springer. All this has ―the effect of making it unnecessary to discuss moral and political questions

on their merits.‖61

This cultural sea change shifted the entire basis of society and individual personality by

replacing religious beliefs with therapeutic sensibilities as the way to understand the world. ―Faith

and revelation had given way to analysis and psychotherapy as the windows to truth about the

human condition, eroding any sense of moral authority external to the individual.‖ 62 This was

Adorno‘s vision for the new ―liberal personality,‖ a vision that has transformed the Democrat

Party to such an extent that ―liberal‖ has little connection with its classic meaning. ―By identifying

the ‗liberal personality‘ as the antithesis of the authoritarian personality, [Adorno and his

colleagues] equated mental health with an approved political position.‖ 63

To address racism with psychotherapeutics shifts the issue onto a wholly different

premise from that established by Martin Luther King, Jr. ―The therapeutic approach to the world

clearly clashed with the religious and moral grounding of the early civil rights movement.‖ 64

The notion of incorrect attitudes–stereotypes–both expands and diminishes the extent of

the problem. No one is truly guilty here–no one is actually at fault–because it is society
that breeds wrong attitudes. Yet everyone must be subjected to self-examination, because
everyone harbors these attitudes. Thus any distinction between a racially motivated act . . .

61
Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991), 452.

62
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age
Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution [Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001], 44.

63
Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 453. Lasch continues, ―They defended liberalism not on the
grounds that liberal policies served the ends of justice and freedom but on the grounds that other positions had
their roots in personal pathology. They enlarged the definition of liberalism to include a critical attitude toward all
forms of authority, faith in science, relaxed and non-punitive child-rearing practices and flexible conceptions of sex
roles. This expansive, largely cultural definition of liberalism made it easy to interpret adherence to liberalism as a
―psychological matter.‖
64
Lasch-Quinn, Race Experts, 46.

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 and a passive misconception one might have about a group one has never known
intimately gets lost. This focus on attitudes of nebulous origin, and the misleading
assumption that they are universal and as lethal as racist acts, comes from a loss of
judgment and proportion. This loss of proportion and inability to distinguish among wrong
acts rests on the idea that stereotypes are responsible for racism, not individuals. 65
―Affirmative action,‖ consultant Mary P. Rowe of MIT Sloan School of Management,

contends, ―in the narrow sense of government regulation, ‗cannot get there from here.‘ By itself,

it is not really effective. . . . Affirmative action still deals with the outermost layer of the onion.

While it helps with recruitment issues, compliance-oriented affirmative action alone is not

sufficient to achieve healthy diversity.‖66 For affirmative action to be effective, Rowe asserts that

it must address ―subtle discrimination.‖ She explains,

Subtle discrimination is made up of covert, ephemeral or apparently trivial events that are
frequently unrecognized by the perpetrator and often not evident to the person injured by
them. By definition they are not legally actionable; they happen wherever people are
perceived to be ―different.‖ These ―micro-inequities‖ interfere with equal opportunity by
excluding the person who is different and by interfering with that person‘s self-confidence
and productivity.67

Discrimination may be so subtle that it consists of ―micro-inequities‖ that are difficult if not

impossible to recognize ―because they are infinitely various and often not intentional.‖

Nevertheless, Rowe claims that ―these subtle inequities may have great effect‖ because virtually

all women, regardless of race, and ―minority men were socialized to be super-sensitive to

disapproval or a possible threat from white males.‖68 So racial psychotherapeutics have

65
Ibid, 160.

66
Mary P. Rowe, ―Fostering Diversity: Some Major Hurdles Remain When the Playing Field is
Tilted,‖ Program Manager 24(March-April, 1995), 14.

67
Ibid, 16.

68
Ibid.

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supplanted the moral and religious beliefs that impelled the civil rights movement which had a

vision of a just society. Racial psychotherapeutics elevates to the level of a lynching any action,

word, or look that bears no intended racism to be so nonetheless, simply because someone

perceives it to be racist. Advocates of multiculturalism redefine reality by perceptions. By

regarding perceived racism as real, diversity training heightens racial tensions with an ―atmosphere

of hypersensitivity to differences in group attributes and evokes a generalized, looming,

omnipresent threat of discriminatory treatment. As such, it has created a kind of tinderbox in

which a wayward spark could create an explosion.‖69

Provisional Conclusions

Multiculturalism is a seductive philosophical vision of and for the world that recruits its

unsuspecting advocates by the power of language as it exploits language as power. It powerfully

allures with its speech code of virtuous-sounding political correctness. It infiltrates the lexicon of

any religious belief system, and in the process it imperceptibly transmogrifies religious expressions

and belief systems, including Christianity, to adjust to its values, virtues, and message. It seduces

many to suppose that its suppression of ill-mannered speech with ―political correctness‖ is of a

piece with Christian virtue and compatible with the Christian gospel.

Actually, multiculturalism finds its origins in the subversive endeavors of the Frankfurt

School, a school of thought that, frustrated with Marxism‘s failure to make advances in the West,

conceived ―cultural Marxism‖ in hope of subverting Western society culturally, but especially to

reverse Judeo-Christian influences. Multiculturalism is a psycho-political-social-cultural-religious

69
Lasch-Quinn, Race Experts, 189.

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agenda that professes to oppose every form of human oppression, but especially racism.

Nevertheless, since its emergence into the public square in the latter half of last century with

burgeoning impact, multiculturalism has wreaked havoc upon American society and has entered

Christian institutions and the church with the same effects. Wherever multiculturalism may be

found, it incites hostilities, stirring up latent racial activity, and denouncing whites as collectively

guilty of racism while at the same time looking to them as the collective group alone with power

to free the collective oppressed they unjustly hold down. Consequently, multiculturalism is an

ideology that assures its longevity through paternalism that boasts of caring for oppressed peoples

while sustaining their oppression and keeping them dependent. Multiculturalism is the social and

cultural twin of communism, having the same parentage from Marxist political theory.

Whether in society at large, on secular university campuses, on Christian college

campuses, or in churches, wherever multiculturalism allures devotees to implement its ideas and

policies, multiculturalism breeds a culture of prejudice, veiled in the form of preferentialism, and a

culture of fear, if not terror, with its ever mutating and burgeoning speech code that apes good

manners and Christian graces as it makes a virtue out of its newspeak etiquette and seduces

people into postmodern self-righteousness. Multiculturalism is a worldview, and as such it is

unitary ideology. Consequently, despite its allure, those who suppose that they can embrace

multiculturalism in part without altering their beliefs delude themselves. Because it is a worldview

that touches all facets of life, it rivals the Christian and the biblical worldview.

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