The Strawman that Broke My Back

I try to ignore most right-wing posts that purport to attack "multiculturalism." I know that they have no knowledge of the theoretical or academic underpinnings of multiculturalism, what the movement actual advocates for and represents, or even, beyond a bare-bones caricature, what the term even means. It is a waste of my time, and yours, to highlight every single boneheaded post or article that purports to indict multiculturalism simply by pointing out an instance of somebody doing something stupid or evil, with a racial/cultural component.

But browsing through Powerline, I came across this post by Scott Johnson which just popped my eyes out.

One of the basic tenets of the contemporary liberal faith is the beauty of "diversity." Every day the dogmas of multiculturalism are promulgated relentlessly by our schools, newspapers and media, and public authorities. The transformation of the United States by waves of immigration from non-European countries is always depicted as a phenomenon to be celebrated, as are the immigrants' religions and cultures.

Minneapolis and St. Paul have been deeply affected by the large number of Somali and Hmong immigrants who have made the Twin Cities metropolitan area their home. Their occasionally disturbing cultural practices and the related social costs are rarely discussed.

Despite the liberal dogmas of multiculturalism, for example, one of Minnesota's leading left-wing legislators was responsible for legislation criminalizing the Somali practice of female genital circumcision in Minnesota in 1994. Her feminism trumped her multiculturalism. Female genital mutilation was not much of a problem in Minnesota before Somalis settled here in the 1980's and 1990's.

Normally, I'd skip over some of the minor misrepresentations and just hit my main beefs, but I'm trying to achieve catharsis here so let's go for the whole hog. Briefly:

1) Multiculturalism is mocked by mainstream media sources--it's a running joke of liberalism gone amok. And certainly our schools don't teach it all beyond dull platitudes about how "everybody is special" but really we're all the same (which is kind of the opposite message from multiculturalism, but whatever). Certainly, I became a fan of multiculturalism in spite of my education at the uber-liberal Walt Whitman High School, not because of it. I can scarcely think of anything I learned from my HS curriculum that even remotely pointed towards a multiculturalist point of view.

2) I don't know who is "rarely" discussing problems within immigrant communities. Among conservatives, nothing seems to provide more glee that discussing how backwards and scary brown people are. And among liberals, I've noticed an acute awareness of difficulties in immigrant communities. Attending college in Minnesota for the past three years, I don't think anybody I've seen is not aware of the particular issues and problems faced by Hmong and Somali immigrants. Problems such as female genital mutilation (FGM) are hardly mysteries to American feminist and multicultural groups--I've seen countless discussions about how horrid the practice is, and what are the best strategies for ending it.

3) The idea that, because there are negative elements to a particular group culture, we should decry their presence entirely, is a particularly weird claim to make on a variety of levels. I'd imagine it is true that the twin cities did not have a big FGM problem until Somali immigrants started arriving, but that's about as meaningful as saying America didn't have a slavery problem until White people started arriving. Meanwhile, the absorption of the whole by the part also seems to be a bit of a double standard. Those of us with a bit more intellectual agility than Johnson possesses can believe there are benefits from incorporating a diverse array of cultures, backgrounds, and experiences into our institutions, without approving of each and every cultural practice that comes our way. For example, despite having many cultural practices I find abhorrent, offensive, or just annoying, I am generally pleased when a given institution has at least some American presence, and think the world is a better place when there is at least some American influence. I know that, while the "manifest destiny" mentality, or the long history of racism, or (ironically enough, given the topic of Johnson's post) our relative apathy towards spousal violence (demonstrated by a culture of silence, strong pressures not to go the police, misogynistic views that give men considerable latitude to deal with "their" women, and a general belief that such issues are "private" matters best kept out of the public eye--reasons that will sound familiar if you keep reading....) are all things about American culture that need to be critiqued and reformed, there are also plenty of good things about American culture that deserve to be promulgated throughout the world. Nimbleness is a useful trait to have.

4) This is perhaps the thing that most ticked me off: What evidence does Scott provide that multiculturalists sanction, ignore, or otherwise condone this behavior? Normally, here is where we get some fringe academic taken out of context to do the work, but Scott doesn't even provide that. Instead, he points out a "left-wing" legislator who worked to toughen penalties for FGM. Well gosh, wouldn't that seem to indicate that the defenders of multiculturalism are equally appalled by FGM and wish to put a stop to it? No, apparently it just means that the legislator let her "feminism trump[] her multiculturalism." Aside from the fact that this is the only time you will ever here Scott Johnson use "left-wing feminism" as anything but a swear word, the entire argument is just breath-taking in how far it has to stretch out to make sure it condemns the right people. As we will see below, even the barest familiarity with the multicultural position would show that it takes precisely the culture-conscious position Scott wants it to take, rendering his whole argument a bizarre "12 wrongs make a right" tenor.

Okay, back to the main. Johnson links to this story about an attempted murder of a wife by her husband in a Somali immigrant family. The story delves into how the particulars of Somali cultural practice often make these crimes hard to prosecute. There is a culture of silence surrounding domestic abuse, which prevents reform from penetrating. There are strong community norms that seek to "deal" with such abuses in-house, without informing relevant authorities. Victims are pressured into keeping silent and not going to the police. All of this "suggest[s] a specific cultural component that is uncomfortably subsumed within the category of 'domestic abuse.'" This obfuscation, we are led to believe, is a product of adherence to the multiculturalist dogma.

This, to be blunt, is a spectacularly ignorant claim. Why? Because the multiculturalist movement has been saying precisely what Scott is arguing for decades. Multiculturalists have specifically critiqued how maintaining a universal narrative of such concepts like "domestic abuse" tends to inadequately account for the way abuse plays out in minority communities, thus rendering them particularly under-protected and enhancing their subordinated status. I am baffled as to how anyone with even a remote awareness of the tenets of multiculturalism (and here we may have our problem) could miss this, as the need for particularized analysis of minority-group practices as part of reformist agendas is probably the single most central insight to the entire multiculturalist agenda. For example, here's Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, known as the founder of the Critical Race Feminism movement and certainly someone who would fit into the "multiculturalist" label, on some of the specific cultural barriers that make it more difficult for immigrant women to escape domestic abuse via "conventional" (mainstream, White) means:

[C]ultural barriers often further discourage immigrant women from reporting or escaping battering situations. Tina Shrum, a family counselor at a social service agency , points out that " .... Just to find the opportunity and courage to call us is an accomplishment for many [in the Asian community]." The typical immigrant spouse, she suggests, may live "[i]n an extended family where several generations live together, there may be no privacy on the telephone, no opportunity to leave the house and no understanding of public phones." As a consequence, many immigrant women are wholly dependent on their husbands as their link to the world outside their homes.

Language barriers present another structural problem that often limits opportunities of non-English-speaking women to take advantage of existing social support services. Such barriers not only limit access to information about shelters, but also limit access to the security shelters provide. Some shelters turn non-English-speaking women away for lack of bilingual personnel and resources. These examples illustrate how patterns of subordination intersect in women's experience of domestic violence." [Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, "Intersectionality and Identity Politics: Learning from VIolence against Women of Color," reprinted in Feminist Theory: A Reader 2nd Ed., Wendy K. Kolmar & Frances Bartkowski, eds. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2005), pp. 533-542, 535]

Far from ignoring the cultural component to such violence, Crenshaw stresses it as an integral part of determining how to redress it. If our normal anti-abuse measures involve women calling a hotline, for example, Shrum's experience would let us know this will be inadequate for many Asian immigrant women. I, too, have written posts on how knowledge of specific cultural practices is essential if we are to truly to enact a progressive agenda respecting the rights of women in a pluralist, multi-cultural society. Amazingly, this leads to yet another irony--dealing with the "cultural component" to abuse cases (among others) requires a viewpoint that is conscious of these differences and may require different resources and responses for different communities. In other words, it will be (shudder) color-conscious. So it is that, while Johnson is quite willing to pontificate on the problem, he probably will stand in opposition to the solutions that would be indicated by the issues he is bringing up because they won't be "color-blind" (who wants to do an over/under on how often "the soft bigotry of low expectations" will be deployed in that future post?).

I could elaborate on the multicultural prescription for dealing with domestic violence at greater length, but that would digress from the point of this post, which is that multicultural feminists have been doing exactly the work Johnson says we should be doing, for far longer than he's cared about the issue, and will continue to do so long after he loses interest in the plight of Somali immigrant women. Any good multiculturalist will tell you that spousal abuse is a problem in the Somali community, and a problem in the White American community, and that both problems will require different approaches to solve because both problems are tied up in particular cultural practices that change the structural terrain. Know thy enemy, and don't be ignorant. Sheesh.