Murder of a country

Shrewsbury, who is a bookdealer, writes:

A brand-new university-level American-history textbook just landed on Shrewsbury’s desk. The title is, “History of the American Peoples, 1840-1920.” And what a world of zealotry and malice may be disclosed in a simple plural.

LA replies:

This is the educational equivalent of Karl Rove’s hyper-multiculturalist statement to La Raza. I had never before heard even multiculturalists saying that diversity is everything that America has been; it took the top advisor to a Republican president to say that. But now from the title of this book I see that that is what is happening. When the multiculturalists introduced the idea of American “peoples” back around 1990, as in a New York Curriculum plan called “One Nation, Many Peoples” (which was blocked), they seemed to be speaking more about the present and the future, referring to the multicultural country they wanted to created, and suggesting that our new diversity was turning us into a plurality of peoples. But now, as with Rove’s saying that diversity is everything we have ever been, the multicultural publishers and universities are saying that even in the 19th century the American people were not a people, but “peoples.” This really is the murder of a country. It cannot be allowed to stand.

Clayton R. writes:

As I may have mentioned in a past email, I am a teacher. So, I recently had reason to visit the website for Bate Middle School in Danville, KY:

In the top left-hand corner of the site one finds the school’s motto next to the Bulldog logo and beneath the name of the school: “Our Strength is Our Diversity.” (The vast majority of the population in this region of Kentucky is white.)

It seems to me that such stuff as this insidiously softens up the minds of students, faculty, and administration. It’s such a small thing, but I really don’t like it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 13, 2006 11:01 PM | Send