Cultural Enrichment?

[1]1,115 words

Czech translation here [2]

If there’s one argument in favor of multiculturalism that I hear far too often, its that a racially mixed nation fosters the “cultural enrichment” of its inhabitants. In other words, the individual American somehow becomes more knowledgeable about the world and its peoples, more skilled in interpersonal interactions, and just overall more refined if he is surrounded by Africans, Hispanics, Arabs, Indians, Asians, Gypsies, etc. This is an outright myth that requires some deconstruction; in addition, we must take a look at the bleeding hearts who propagate this foolery.

I will begin with the latter, actually. The main proponents of multiculturalism as a means of enrichment are usually leftist college professors and other pundits. They speak of culture, but the majority of them actually know very little about the cultures they claim to want to see more of in America. In reality, they want to see a soulless, multiracial mass that embraces Marxism as its sole culture; the traditional folkways of Hindus, Muslims, African aborigines, and others mean nothing to them.

After all, most cultures are the outgrowths of religious worldviews, and the spiritual has no place in society according to leftists, who are generally secularists. The only thing about these alien cultures that they truly embrace is their food, but this does not a cultured man make. Any simpleton can eat fried rice or falafels. It doesn’t mean that he’s walking away with anything added to his soul.

I went to one of the most Marxist-ridden colleges in the nation. In my freshman year I once overheard a rather attractive young woman explaining to a few frat dullards why it was wrong to celebrate Columbus Day (“it is the celebration of a brutal invasion!”). I decided to interject, uninvited.

Over the course of conversation with the girl, we ended up discussing intercultural unions somehow. She told me that she thought it was “beautiful,” but upon me asking why, her answer was substandard: “Because, if I marry someone of a different ethnic group, I’ll get to eat a bunch of different great foods!” Hardly an end-all be-all justification for miscegenation, but it was the only one she had, and the only one that most multiculturalists have in my experience.

They seem to take it for granted that everyone will simply agree that multiculturalism is great if you call it “beautiful” or “enriching.” Sorry Lefty, but I am not one of the poorly bred degenerates that are able to sit, absorb, and not question your faulty logic.

Now a TRUE multiculturalist would, as the label suggests, be very familiar with the various literatures, religious texts, folk customs, and history of the plethora of races whose presence they find so enriching. This is simply not the case.

While the multiculty has read the Communist Manifesto, The Authoritarian Personality, and The Mismeasure of Man from front to back, I guarantee you that he has not read the Bhagavad-Gita or the Upanishads of Hindu culture, the Zend-Avesta or Koran of Middle Eastern culture, the Popol-Vuh or other codices from Native American culture, or the writings of Lao-Tzu or Confucius from the Far East.

I will bet the farm that he has not studied Farsi, Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Roma, Turkish, Swahili, Chinese, or Japanese for any great length of time.

I’m certain that he has not sat and observed an Islamic service in a mosque, a Buddhist service in a temple, a Zoroastrian service in a fire temple, or a Jewish Sabbath in a synagogue. (I would even surmise that he sees their religious views as primitive superstitions.)

I’d wager my spleen that he has not been an audience to a traditional folk concert of non-European origin.

No. I’m quite positive that the average multiculty’s “enrichment” does not go beyond a fetish for Puerto-Rican girls, an enjoyment of horrendous rap music, and a taste for egg rolls. These Leftists are really condescending cultural chauvinists themselves, as they really just want to see all peoples crushed under the yoke of technocratic totalitarianism.

Now that we know the messengers, let’s look at the message: if individuals are surrounded by many different races and cultures, they as individuals become more well-rounded and knowledgeable–a blatant falsehood if there ever was one. Being surrounded by Mandingos and Bedouins does not make one more knowledgeable about those peoples, nor does it bestow any particular insight. We may hear their foreign languages, see their foreign clothes, and smell their foreign fragrances, but this does little more than inform us that they exist.

No esoteric truth or life lesson is discovered by the man swimming in a sea of different cultures. Such things can only be acquired from studying those cultures intensively in a library or in their native lands. As few are willing to do this, there is very little enrichment taking place.

Perhaps it would be somewhat informative if these foreigners were all sages and learned men from their native lands, or but the majority are just average Joes who have come to the Western world for economic purposes.

If the European-American took a minute to examine his own ancestors’ culture, he would see that he had before him a doorway to all the enrichment he needs. Through that gateway he would find an endless library of literary marvels old and new: the works of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Aeneas, Livy, Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus, Aquinas, Dante, Machiavelli, Hobbes, More, London, Tolkien, and Lovecraft, among innumerable others.

He would find on another shelf a ceaseless array of religious texts: the Theogony and Works and Days of Hesiod, the odes of Pindar, the Celtic Mabinogion and Arthurian romances, the Germanic Eddas and Beowulf, and the boundless supply of Christian works.

He would encounter a never ending river of languages and folk customs, musical styles, art forms, political theories, and a smorgasbord of different delicious foods. Most importantly, he would stumble upon 10,000 + years of rich, interesting, breathtaking, often dramatic history, the study of which would bestow upon him countless lessons about life.

In short: a white European can pursue plenty of enrichment within his own culture, be he German, Irish, English, Scottish, Dutch, Italian, Belgian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, Balkan, or Baltic. He ought to look into the ways of his more recent ancestors, who bore the above names, as well as those of the ancient peoples from whence they descended: Germanics, Celts, Latins, Iberians, Hellenes, Slavs, Daco-Thracians, Pelasgians, and Minoans.

As a mix of a few of these nationalities, I have a life’s work ahead of me in becoming truly and fully culturally enriched.

It is a project to which Somali cab drivers, Levantine kebab hawkers, and Mexican leaf-blowers have nothing to contribute.

Source: Originally from Michael Bell’s now defunct blog