Multiculturalism, Good and Bad
I recall Clifford Geertz (quoting someone else, I think), saying, "If you only know one culture, you don't know any." That is, you don't really see your own culture, as a whole, without an outside perspective from which to look at it. And that perspective can only be a second culture, since there are no "views from nowhere." That effort to learn a second culture is the "good multiculturalism" of this post's title. It is very hard work. For one thing, you're going to have to become fluent in the language of that other culture. Without that, you're not even close. And to become fluent, you're going to have to absorb huge swaths of the rest of a culture. That, of course, is way too much work for most Americans today. So what we get instead is multiculturalism that means, "Hey, I listen to Fela, know how to eat with chopsticks, and took three years of high-school Spanish!" Then this little cultural pu pu platter is used ...