THE MEANING OF “UNUM,” Part I
The words of this posting are written as the body of John Lewis lies in state at the US Capitol. His long career in civil rights and as a Congressman reflects the issue of national division mostly along racial lines. While this writer does not attribute to Lewis a commitment to any critical multiculturalism this blog addressed not long ago, his passing does encourage one to think about the points of contention between multiculturalists and assimilationists.
While the reader is more than likely aware of how Lewis became nationally known – through his participation in a peaceful demonstration in Alabama that turned ugly – a short review is proper. That was an incident, “Bloody Sunday,” in 1965 when Lewis and people from a group organized by a top lieutenant of Martin Luther King, staged a march near the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The demonstrators were attacked by the Alabama State Troopers after the troopers had ordered the demonstrators to disperse, but they stood their ground. As a result, Lewis suffered a fractured skull after being hit by a trooper’s baton. And this was not the only time Lewis was hurt or jailed in his long career.
But from what this writer has heard, in terms of Lewis, through the years or through some of his allegiances, one would be hard pressed to label the civil rights icon a critical multiculturalist. Instead, the opinion here is that he was proud of his heritage, but that what he foresaw best for his fellow African Americans was for them to become respectfully assimilated – an assimilation that addressed the past wrongs while recognizing their rights to fully participate in what one can describe as partnering in their citizenship. After all, the 1965 effort was about respecting blacks’ constitutional right to vote, a cornerstone of such partnering.
So, how do those who favor assimilation see civil rights and the aims and goals Americans should strive for to achieve “E Pluribus Unum?” In short, what does “Unum” mean while maintaining the integrity of the “Pluribus.” To address this question, this posting revisits the thoughts of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian and presidential advisor.
Schlesinger was an advisor of the liberal president, John F. Kennedy, and also advised Robert F. Kennedy during the younger Kennedy’s run for the presidency. He, therefore, can be easily considered a left-of-center historical character. As such, his career reflected a serious commitment to a civil rights agenda as the assimilators defined those aims and goals. This posting’s account of his ideas is not in an effort to promote all of what the historian proposed, but as an attempt to share a well-thought-out argument explaining from where his sentiments originate.
But before reviewing that argument, here is a set of numbers that can serve as a backdrop for Schlesinger’s ideas. As of 2010 census, the following distribution in the American population exists: Western European (white) descendants account for 72.4% of the population; African Americans stand at 13%; Immigrant population, 14.4%; Latino/a population, 16.7%; Anglo-Saxon, 8.7%. These numbers have a factual effect, they serve to define the environment in which these concerns unfold.
And off these numbers, Schlesinger makes his first point in regard to striving toward the “Unum.” While immigrants, in the ’80s, accounted for about 30% of the population, this does not diminish the dominance of natural born citizens. More recent numbers indicate that in 2015, of the total population of 324 million, 22.2% was made up of immigrants who came to the US from 1965 to 2015. If one adds the black percentage, one can judge that roughly 70% of the population is European based and white. Schlesinger doubts a minority majority is in the cards any time soon.
He laments the fact that white “Europeans” have had such a dominant role in determining the American culture, but that is just the case. And therefore, while imperialist motivation might have influenced the behaviors of some – one has a hard time thinking of Irish and Italian immigrants making the trip over to pursue imperialist aims – the culture that the nation presently has is the product of these demographic facts and not of any imperialist plan by some dastardly minority.
And what should be the response to these facts? Should one ignore them as the history of the nation is described and explained to young school children? Yes, one should strive to include the presence, influence, and other contributions from that 30% – even justifiably glorifying it – in those lessons. But that is not the aim of multiculturalists; they strive to cast the majority culture and its people as ethnocentric and they, the multiculturalists, find little value in Western culture.
The curriculum should, according to multiculturalists, advance a message: that one should divorce oneself from that sinful cultural heritage and degrade its criminal past. But is this really possible? In Schlesinger’s words,
The “unmasking,” “demythologizing,” “[de-]canonizing,” “dehegemonizing,” blitz against Western culture depends on methods of critical analysis unique to the West – which surely testifies to the internally redemptive potentialities of the Western tradition. … [So, for example,] Afrocentric ideologues are intellectual children of the West they repudiate.
It is not by accident that the most viable anti-discrimination and anti-imperialistic movements have emanated from Western or Western founded states.
And part of the reason for that correlation is the liberalizing developments that Western philosophy and political evolvements have accrued. And it is with that notion that the next posting will continue this review of Schlesinger’s argument.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1992).
These percentages do not add up to 100% because certain groups are not included and there is overlapping among these groupings.
“Chapter 2: Immigration’s Impact on Past and Future U.S. Population Change,” Pew Research, Hispanic Trends, September 28, 2015, accessed July 27, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2015/09/28/chapter-2-immigrations-impact-on-past-and-future-u-s-population-change/ .
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America, 124.