Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 31, 1995 TAG: 9507310026
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: J. BARRY GURDIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Rather than promoting tolerance, deep learning and respect for out-groups, multiculturalism has encouraged intolerance and mutual suspicion.
Other policies would better promote the general welfare, establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility.
In ``Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America's Future,'' Richard Bernstein writes: ``Anti-male, anti-white and anti-Semitic bigotry at institutions of higher learning is coddled in the belief that it is the natural expression of the rage of the culturally dispossessed.''
In Tikkun, a magazine of Jewish comment, Jeffrey C. Alexander and Chaim Seidler Feller relate anti-Semitism at UCLA to ``a campus policy that recognizes the special status of historically oppressed racial minorities and women, while casting Jews in the unfamiliar role of the white oppressor.''
Irving Louis Horowitz of Rutgers University, in ``The Decomposition of Society,'' writes: ``Ethnic `balance' turns out to entail putting a cap on hiring younger Jewish scholars as replacements. ... Affirmative action translates into a subtle shift in criteria for appointments and promotions.''
Tom W. Smith's survey, ``Anti-Semitism in Contemporary America,'' at the National Opinion Research Center, concludes: ``Anti-Semitism is stronger in social groups that are scattered and mutually hostile (e.g., Black Muslims, white supremacists) and often in societal segments that are declining in size and importance (older persons, those without a high-school education, the rural South).''
Instead of conferring individual equality before the law, multiculturalism gives preferences to particular social groups whose lower representation than in the general population in certain occupations is construed as proof of discrimination.
For example, sociologist T.K. Oommen classifies Jews in a separate category from other whites - but hides the fact that they are grouped together with other whites for purposes of affirmative action.
Jewish success in prestigious professions and science is translated by multiculturalism as ``overrepresentation.''
Michael Levin of the City University of New York calculates that if jobs were proportionately allotted to three minority groups - of which current practice includes many more - it would discriminate against ``10 percent of the adult Jewish male population.''
The investigation by Smith for the National Opinion Research Center found ``one in 10 white men has been injured by affirmative action.''
Quotas that earlier destroyed the careers of many Jewish men began to negatively impact Jewish women.
Tikkun magazine and the Bay Area media failed to cover the case of Rita Arno, a Jewish social worker in New York City who was harassed and eventually forced into early retirement from her civil-service position five years ago. The refugee from Romania claimed it was because she is white and Jewish, and last year she received an out-of-court settlement of $150,000.
The Tikkun editor, Michael Lerner, too readily downplayed the implications of empirical surveys, such as Smith's, that indicate that the attitudes of younger, educated, Northern and elite African Americans do not display the relative decline in anti-Semitism registered among white gentiles.
There are progressive alternatives to affirmative action. Controlling transnational corporations' exportation of jobs and redirecting our ``Peace Dividend'' to solar-based transportation and energy systems would recoup employment.
A 30-hour work week, national retraining programs, universal health insurance and a guaranteed annual income would promote all Americans' general welfare. However, voters will support such policies only if they stress the common good.
J. Barry Gurdin is a San Francisco psychologist and author of ``Amitie/Friendship: An Investigation into Cross-cultural Styles in Canada and the United States.'' He wrote this column for the San Francisco Examiner.
New York Times News Service
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