Reviews in Anthropology, Vol. 32, pp.

207222
Copyright Taylor & Francis Inc.
ISSN: 0093-8157 print
DOI: 10.1080/00988150390230390

Culture and the Individual in Multicultural

Societies
Paul B. Kern

Clausen, Christopher. Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America.

Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. viii + 209 pp. including notes and index. $25.00
cloth, $14.95 paper.
Cohen, Mark Nathan. Culture of Intolerance: Chauvinism, Class, and Racism in the United States. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press,
1998. xiii + 325 pp. including suggested readings and index. $40.00 cloth.
Ignatieff, Michael. The Rights Revolution. Toronto: House of Anansi Press,
2000. xi + 170 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $16.95 paper.

Is multiculturalism possible in a society based on individual freedom? In

one way or another, these three books address that question. Mark Nathan
Cohen says yes, but only if we take off our cultural blinders, something he
believes Americans are far from doing. Michael Ignatieff more optimistically
believes there has been a rights revolution that has opened the way to a
free multicultural society. Christopher Clausen argues that the verdict is
already in and the answer is no: Different cultures cannot peacefully and
freely survive in close proximity to one another. The United States has
found the only alternative to cultural violence and oppression by becoming
the first postcultural society. Behind these judgments stand three very

PAUL B. KERN is Professor of History at Indiana University Northwest. His most recent publication is Ancient Siege Warfare (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press,
1999). He is currently working on a history of the maritime culture of ancient Greece.
Address correspondence to Paul B. Kern, Department of History, Indiana University
Northwest, 3400 Broadway, Gary, IN 46408. E-mail: pkern@iun.edu

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different views of North American society and culture. All three books aim
at a general reading audience and engage broad cultural and public policy
issues.
As his title indicates, Cohen thinks that America has a culture of intolerance, and that matters are getting worse, not better. In his words, racism,
greed, and indifference to the needs of others are back in fashion (p. 1).
The evidence that Cohen adduces to support this argument includes such
things as the influence of right-wing Christians, the popularity of conservative talk show hosts, rising criticism of affirmative action policies, the strength
of the Republican Party, and the extra-ordinary popularity of The Bell
Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, (1994) a book that
argues that racial differences in intelligence test scores are genetically determined. It is a weakness of Cohens book that he ignores evidence, such as
the rise of intermarriage between ethnic groups, the vogue for ethnicity and
diversity, and the constant emphasis on tolerance as the supreme virtue,
that American society is becoming more rather than less tolerant. Cohens
premise that the United States has a culture of intolerance remains an unproven, and I think wrong, assertion. The description of American society
that he draws to advance his argument is a one-sided caricature and his
book has the tone of a political polemic.
In the forefront of Cohens concern about intolerance in America is his
fear that the surge of genetic research will be misunderstood and misused
to reinforce racial prejudice. He thinks the danger is great because the idea
of innate superiority and inferiority of groups is a tenet dear to the heart of
much historic and current American political philosophy (pp. 89). This is
typical of Cohens over-the-top approach in which he mixes valid points, in
this case that racism has played an important role in American history, with
dubious ones, in this example that theories of racial inferiority are a tenet
dear to the heart of current American political philosophy. Such rhetorical
flourishes irritate rather than convince.
Nevertheless, Cohen is right that the current mania for genetic explanations has disturbing implications, which he goes to great pains to dispel in
a chapter titled The Innocent Scapegoat: Human Biological Variation and
Race. He argues that the old nature-culture dichotomy is a false one because the interaction is so great they cannot be separated. He emphasizes
environmental rather than genetic causes of diseases. Interaction between
genes and the environment determines whether a gene is good or bad.
Cohen argues that most modern diseases have been caused by our industrialized environment and are thus social problems rather than a problem of
individual weaknesses. He points out that genetic variations do not follow a
racial pattern and that there is much luck or chance in genetic inheritance.
In any case, races do not exist as a scientific category; they are socially

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constructed. Cohen points out that racial categories artificially divide people
into sharply differentiated groups when actually there is a spectrum of human differences, such as skin color. Only the historical accident of bringing
equatorial peoples together with northern Europeans produced the sharp
skin color differences upon which Americans have constructed their racial
concepts.
In a chapter titled Justifying Inequality: Cultural Assumptions About
Intelligence and Competence, Cohen attacks the idea that intelligence is
genetically determined. He concedes that intelligence runs in families, but
argues that the mechanism of inheritance is cultural, not genetic. The idea
of intelligence genes is an unproven hypothesis that Cohen sees as more
a product of American racism than a scientific theory. He is especially critical of Herrnstein and Murrays The Bell Curve (1994), which Cohen believes
to have been enormously influential. In fact, the book prompted a torrent
of hostile books and articles. Cohen believes that it was politically influential, but my impression is that no politician wanted to touch that book with
a ten-foot pole. Cohen believes that Americans are freer to express racist
and fascist ideas than communist ones, a judgment that seems absurd. Racist has become one of the most damning epithets in our society, the kiss of
death for any public person, as the hapless Al Campanis, an official in the
Los Angeles Dodger baseball organization, discovered when he ventured
the opinion that Blacks did not have the necessaries to be baseball managers. No amount of apologies could save his job and he was promptly
sacked. Jimmy the Greek suffered a similar fate when he expressed his silly
Social Darwinist theory to explain why so many professional athletes are
Black.
Cohens main fear is that Herrnstein and Murrays book will reinforce
the great American myth that success is based on merit rather than inherited
privilege, luck, insider knowledge, and crooked dealings. Cohen casts doubt
on the very concept of intelligence as a scientifically measurable entity. He
vigorously argues that the idea of intelligence is based on cultural expectations and that it cannot be reduced to an abstract quantity expressed by a
single number. Cohen also argues that Herrnstein and Murrays suggestion
that genetic inferiority causes the lower performance on intelligence tests
by Blacks reveals a lack of awareness of the genetic diversity among African
Americans as well as among Africans. He points out that the history of IQ
testing has been one of abuse. He believes that the idea that a culturally
neutral test can be constructed is a mirage. Test-giving itself is a cultural
exercise. Cohen admits that tests such as the SAT have some predictive
correlation with academic success, but he points out that education itself is
based on the same cultural expectations as the tests. If some immigrant
groups from different cultures have been successful on SAT tests and aca-

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demics in general, it is because, superficial cultural differences aside, on a

deeper cultural level of family structure, self-expectations, and understanding of what it takes to get ahead, they are more like White Americans. If
African Americans actually do better on content-based cultural items than
on abstract reasoning questions, it is because they can see through the
cultural bias of the content questions, while the bias of the so-called abstract questions is more subtle and deeply buried in underlying cultural
structures.
For these reasons, Cohen is a strong advocate of affirmative action to
compensate for a woeful legacy of past discrimination. In the chapter Affirmative Action and Curriculum Inclusion, he argues that equality of opportunity is not enough; there must be equality of results as well. Toward this
end, admission test scores should be adjusted upward for African Americans to compensate for the cultural bias of the test. Cohen believes that
discrimination against White males is not an issue because the only ones
who will be affected are the fraction of white males who have always been
mediocre or worse but survived for lack of competition (p. 271).
In any case, Cohen argues that affirmative action is nothing new in
American society. The entire ideology of individual freedom and responsibility has been affirmative action for those born with wealth and power
(p. 263). Colleges have never admitted students simply on the basis of test
scores, but have granted special consideration to such groups as athletes
and the children of alumni. The constitutional issues surrounding racial
preferences do not concern Cohen because he has contempt for the constitution of the United States. In Cohens view the Founding Fathers were rich
men who wrote a constitution designed to protect their wealth and privilege rather than promote equality. He thinks the Supreme Court should not
be bound by narrow constitutional legalities, but should take off its cultural
blinders and think creatively about how to promote true equality in America.
Indeed, Cohen believes that all of American society needs to take off
its cultural blinders if it is to break out of the culture of intolerance, beginning with gaining a better understanding of American history. Cohen cites
the Marxist historian Howard Zinns Peoples History of the United States
(1980) as the version of American history we need to adopt. He wants us to
stop making cardboard heroes out of the founding fathers and see that our
vision of American history has served racism, chauvinism, and intolerance.
We need to understand that our foreign policy has been coercive and imperialistic and that this has caused us to be feared and hated by others. In an
eerie anticipation of the events of September 11, 2001, Cohen presciently
asks is it so surprising that American embassies and civilians are cursed,
reviled, and sometimes attacked by suicide bombers? (pp. 188189) Cohen
does not make it clear who he thinks is propagating a hero-worshiping,

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chauvinistic version of American history. Presumably he does not have his

colleagues in the history department at Plattsburgh State in mind. When one
considers the pained protests of conservatives when the national history
standards for secondary education came out a few years ago, it seems unlikely that knee-jerk patriotism is the order of the day even at the high
school level.
Cohen offers a scathing indictment of American society in his chapter
Some Assumptions of American Culture and the Problems They Create.
He believes that only when we take off our cultural blinders will we be able
to see that our freedom is an illusion, that we live in a country dominated
by special interest politics and corporate greed, that we have no real political choices, that the major media publish or broadcast racist garbage, that
our free market ideology is a stalking-horse for imperialism, that private
property is mere social convention, not a natural right, that we have a
wasteful agricultural system that is ruining farmers all around the world,
that progress is an illusion and economic growth has not improved people
lives, that, on the contrary, our go-go global economy has impoverished
millions of people through the coercive policies of such institutions as the
World Bank. Cohen believes that only when we wake up and impose heavy
taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals will we be able to achieve a
just society. For Cohen, the culture of intolerance and social injustice go
hand in hand. The only way out is for us to remove our cultural blinders.
Cohen also believes taking off cultural blinders is necessary for us to
develop the toleration that a multicultural society needs. The major challenge of our time is to maintain cultural loyalty without falling into racism
and chauvinism. He rejects the melting pot and assimilation, which he believes are based on the false liberal idea that deep down all people are
alike. Instead we should learn to appreciate the real depth and subtlety of
difference among us and learn to live together with those differences (p.
86).
Cohen sees cultural relativism as the key to multiculturalism. In a chapter titled The Real Meaning of Cultural Relativism, he rejects as a caricature the criticism that cultural relativism paralyzes moral judgment. He believes in moral absolutes, such as the judgment that behavior that causes
physical harm is wrong. For Cohen, cultural relativism means possessing
the ability to distinguish between things that are wrong and those that just
dont fit our cultural style. Cohen is aware that multiculturalism often takes
superficial forms, focusing on what he calls cultural details such as food
and dress (p. 67). He invites us to go beyond multicultural festivals and
learn that the real meaning of cultural differences is both exhilarating and
frighteningexhilarating because it opens up enormous new possibilities
that can greatly improve and enrich our lives, frightening because it sug-

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gests that dealing with others is more complicated and subtle than we thought
(p. 67). But Cohen is vague about what these deeper cultural differences
are. In the belief that we need a common language, he is not an advocate of
a multilingual society. He merely suggests that we not be language chauvinists. He also believes that some core set of beliefs is necessary for people to
live together harmoniously. He speaks somewhat airily about different styles
of doing things and different ways of solving problems, but it is not at all
clear what the multicultural society Cohen envisions would look like.
Cohen assumes that the barriers to assimilation are high and that the
problem in a multicultural society is one of toleration, not cultural survival.
Canadian Michael Ignatieff is under no such illusion. Rather than seeing the
melting pot as a myth, Ignatieff recognizes how powerful the forces of
assimilation are. For him the question of multiculturalism is the question of
Canadas viability as a country. If French-speaking Quebec cannot preserve
its language and culture within the framework of the Canadian State, it will
secede. It is no accident that the term multiculturalism originated in Canada.
For Canada, multiculturalism is a matter of survival.
Ignatieff finds the key to multiculturalism in what he calls the rights
revolution. Rather than growing intolerance, he believes that there has
been a fundamental political transformation that makes a multicultural society possible. By rights revolution, he means the rise of rights talk that
began in the 1960s and has dominated political life in the last third of the
twentieth century (p. 1). Womens rights, gay rights, childrens rights, aboriginal rights, language rightssuch are the issues that have transformed
political discourse. Ignatieff believes that the rights revolution is not just a
North American and European phenomenon but a global one in which the
Canadian experience is more relevant than that of the United States. Terrible conflicts in the Balkans, in Africa, and in the Islamic world offer eloquent testimony to the importance of the issues posed by the clash of cultures.
Michael Ignatieff is a biographer of Isaiah Berlin, perhaps the greatest
liberal thinker of the twentieth century, and whereas Cohen writes from the
perspective of 1960s radicalism, Ignatieff writes in the classical liberal tradition. Whereas Cohen views individual rights suspiciously as a bourgeois
fraud designed to keep power in the hands of an economic elite that has all
the advantages in individual competition, Ignatieff takes individual rights
very seriously. But the rights revolution goes beyond the individual rights
that were at the heart of the American and French revolutions. Ignatieff
argues that individualist rights regimes, such as France, Great Britain, and
the United States, do not confront the issues faced by multinational and
multilingual societies such as Canadas. At the heart of the rights revolution
is the struggle of minority groups for their right to equality with majority
groups and for their right to be different. Ignatieff is good at understanding

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the tensions between individual rights and group rights and the tensions
between the right to be equal and the right to be different. These dilemmas
pose the central challenge to the rights revolution.
Under what conditions should group rights take precedence over individual rights? Ignatieff argues that a group should have the right to protect
its language. His case in point, of course, is Quebec, where French is a
protected language. Only Anglo-Canadians have the right to English public
education in Quebec. Qubcois and immigrants must enroll their children
in French public schools. If they want their children to be educated in
English-speaking schools, they must send them to private schools at their
own expense. Ignatieff supports this legislation as necessary to preserve the
French language in Quebec. In this case, group rights trump individual
rights.
A more complicated case that Ignatieff explores is that of religious
groups, such as Orthodox Jews, who do not allow women a role equal to
men in their worship. Here, again, Ignatieff comes down on the side of a
groups right to preserve its culture, but, like Cohen, he qualifies the right
with the provision that the protected cultural practices do not physically
harm anyone. Ignatieff also emphasizes that the right of any individual to
leave a cultural group must be protected. Finally, Ignatieff agrees with Cohen
that affirmative action is warranted as a privilege granted to a group that has
experienced discrimination and oppression in the past.
Group rights, then, are essential to a multicultural society. But group
rights present difficulties, and Ignatieff is alert to them. For one thing, he
frets that rights talk has hijacked the revolution by shifting social criticism
away from economic issues to cultural issues. While middle class women
and middle class gays and middle class Qubcois have asserted their rights,
the working class and the poor have been shunted aside.
On a more fundamental level, group rights are divisive in a way that
the ordinary clash of interests in a society is not. A conflict of interest can
lead to a compromise and that is the stuff of politics. But rights cannot be
compromised. As Ignatieff puts it, Give me my rights is not an invitation
to compromise. Its a demand for unconditional surrender (p. 17). This
insight calls into question a multicultural societys ability to cohere rather
than fragment into its various components. A spirit of reciprocity is necessary to overcome this dilemma. Ignatieff argues that rights are not abstract.
Rather, their function is to protect real men and women in all their history,
language and culture (p. 43). The recognition of the real nature of rights
and the claims of others to these rights can create a rights-based society in
which the mutual respect of the rights of others creates the essential foundation of the society. It is the reciprocity of rights that makes them social.
This requires an understanding that rights talk is not a religious faith, but a

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constant dialogue about the nature of rights and the history that brought
different peoples together in the same country. It is not a comfortable process: Rights talk condemns modern society to a permanent self-inquisition
(p. 32).
Ignatieff believes that only a political process can create a rights-based
society. When group rights clash, political compromise is the only way out.
For example, if Canada grants its aboriginal citizens sovereignty in the vast
territories of northern Canada, how will issues such as land rights and fishing rights be resolved? Ignatieff believes the resources of Canada should be
shared by all its citizens. He rejects the term Native Americans because it
implies that the rights of other Canadian citizens to the land are somehow
illegitimate. By the same token, he does not believe the rights of nonFrancophone Canadian citizens in Quebec would be secure in an independent Quebec. If secession and sovereignty are the only solutions to group
rights, then the great Canadian experiment will fail. As Ignatieff concludes:
Either we will share power, land, resources, and sovereignty among the
nations of this country, or we will founder in civil strife (p. 84).
Another problem that has accompanied the rights revolution and deeply
concerns Ignatieff is the astonishingly high divorce rate, an index of an
increasingly narcissistic, selfish, and hedonistic society. The idea that rights
are the supreme value combined with the modern search for authenticity in
the midst of economic affluence threatens the idea of moral responsibility.
In the words of Ignatieff, Our rights culture endorses complaint and it
dignifies discontents (p. 107). Ignatieff devotes considerable time to the
weakening of the family in modern society. Is it possible, he asks, that
rights are destroying the very institution that teaches us moral virtue? (p.
93).
Ignatieff offers optimistic answers to this question. He argues that on
the one hand there have always been unhappy and dysfunctional families
and on the other hand family values can exist within a variety of family
forms. For example, same-sex parents can be good parents, if the measure
is the love and care they provide their children rather than a preconceived
notion that a childs parents should consist of a father and a mother. Shared
standards of decency are compatible with different sexual orientations. He
believes that the children of divorced parents can be happy. In this area
Ignatieffs argument is more based on hopeful rhetoric than evidence. He
contents himself with earnest exhortations that we should all treat our children with love and respect rather than examining any evidence of how
children of same-sex parents or children of divorced parents actually do get
along. He is on firmer ground when he calls for stronger legal and institutional support for families and comments that the real test of serious moral
commitment to families is a willingness to spend public money (p. 111).

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Ignatieff concludes that social problems brought on by the rights revolution

are simply the price of freedom. He quotes Isaiah Berlin, who commented
that freedom is a chilly virtue: it is not justice, equality, or a quiet life; it is
merely freedom (p. 112).
Ignatieff believes in human rights, that is, rights that are not the creation
of law but rather rights that are inherent in the moral worth of human
beings. In the liberal tradition, he believes that rights not only limit the
power of government, but also define its very purpose. Unfortunately, in
most parts of the world, people have no rights except their human rights.
Ignatieff does not hesitate to adopt the position John Locke took after the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 (1952) that when governments transgress their
limits and betray their purpose of protecting the rights of their citizens, they
can be overthrown.
Ignatieff goes further than asserting the right of revolution. He also
justifies foreign intervention to protect human rights. Individual rights are
superior to sovereign rights. Ignatieff rejects the argument that imposing a
Western concept of human rights on non-Western cultures is a form of
imperialism, first because he views human rights as universal and second
because the experience of our time has revealed the terrible human cost of
the refusal to intervene. Nevertheless, Ignatieff carefully qualifies the conditions that justify intervention. First, other peoples or other cultures must be
asking for help. Second, the abuses must be gross and systematic (pp. 50
51). The abuses must be affecting other countries, such as, for example,
creating a refugee problem. Third, the intervention must show promise of
being able to stop the abuses. Fourth, the intervention should be an international one; human rights abuse should not serve as a pretext for unilateral
military action. Fifth, it should not result in a permanent military occupation. And finally, military intervention should be a last resort.
Despite these qualifications, Ignatieffs argument significantly extends
the doctrine of just war. Usually just wars have been defined in terms of
self-defense or the defense of some vital national interest. Ignatieff does not
adequately explore the messy nature of war and the danger of unintended
consequences. The moral issues in civil conflicts are not always conveniently clear-cut. Moreover, political leaders have been naturally reluctant
to incur casualties in strictly humanitarian interventions and have tended to
use morally dubious methods, such as bombing, to minimize their own
casualties. Ignatieff draws an analogy that is telling in a way that he seems
not to suspect: You may have next door neighbors who fight. You can hear
their arguments through the wall. You dont have any right to intervene. But
if you hear a blow, a cry, and a call for help, youd be something less than
a citizen, and possible something less than a human being, if you didnt
come through the door to break up the dispute (p. 50). I dont think I need

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to point out how reluctant most people would be to do something as dangerous as breaking through the door of their neighbors to stop a fight. They
might end up dead. They might discover they had made an embarrassing
mistake. They might become heroes, but they might also find it an entirely
thankless task that has ambiguous results. We can admire Ignatieff for his
far-sighted vision of a world in which the abuse of human rights is not
tolerated, but he has failed to convince me that the use of military force is
not so fraught with moral ambiguity and uncertain outcomes that its use is
unlikely to further the cause of human rights. The world does not need to
add another pretext for war to the long list it already has.
Is Ignatieff correct that Canada points the way to a multicultural future,
not only for Canada, but for the United States as well? Christopher Clausen
does not think so. Clausen emphasizes a trend that Mark Cohen and Michael
Ignatieff ignore: the rising rates of intermarriage between ethnic groups in
the United States. Multiculturalists often state, as if it were a fact, that by
2050 whites will be a minority in the United States. Ignatieff, for example,
insists that in the next century, a majority of Americans will not be white,
Christian, or English speaking (p. 129). In a chapter titled Intermarriage
and the 2050 Fallacy, Clausen points out that the census data do not support this common idea. Americans have been quietly refuting Cohens notion that they live in a culture of intolerance in the most striking way possible, by marrying one another with little regard for race or ethnicity. Clausen
points to census data that show half of American-born Hispanics and Asians
marry outside of their ethnic group. The intermarriage rate for African Americans is much lower, but the trend there too is upward. Clausen sees no
reason that African American intermarriage will not continue to increase. In
other words, he believes race and ethnicity are rapidly losing meaning in
the United States.
Such an argument goes against much conventional wisdom in American social commentary and because of this Clausens book is the most
original and interesting of the three under review. Although Clausen demonstrates that the American melting pot is no myth, but a powerful force, he
does not mean that the traditional WASP culture of nineteenth century America
has triumphed. Instead, American society has proved a relentless destroyer
of all cultures, including WASP culture, and the United States has emerged
into what Clausen calls a postcultural society. One reflection of this is the
loose and attenuated meaning the term culture has acquired in postcultural
America. In a chapter titled The Cult of Culture, Clausen argues its use has
become so ubiquitous that the word has lost its meaning. Corporations,
government agencies, universities, firemen, the armed servicesthe list is
endlessall have cultures. Culture has become a trendy, pop-anthropology term so vague in its usage that the analytical rigor vested in it by mod-

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ern anthropology has been lost. Clausen is convinced all this nattering about
culture is possible because most Americans have never encountered a real
culture, if we define culture as Margaret Mead did as the systematic body
of learned behavior which is transmitted from parents to children (p. 22). It
is in this sense that Clausen believes culture no longer functions in American society.
Mark Cohen, and perhaps most anthropologists, would not agree with
Clausens concept of a postcultural society. Cohen defines culture as the
mostly unwritten rules and conventions of thought, communication, and
behavior that people use so that they can interact in an orderly way (p. 63).
Even if Cohen could agree that American society is not multicultural, he
would insist that it still has a culture. All societies have a culture: Everyone
has a culture and must have one to be human (p. 70). But Cohen knows
that cultures require loyalty and he recognizes the problem this presents to
his vision of a tolerant, multicultural society. If individuals are free to take
off the blinders cultures impose, a culture can atrophy and die. Cohen is
well aware of the mortality of cultures. How we can be free and tolerant
and yet preserve cultural boundaries is a major challenge for modern society (p. 104). Cohen wants us to be tolerant and to maintain cultural identities. Clausen believes that is impossible, except in the most superficial
ways.
Clausens view of America is very different from that of Cohen. Cohen
thinks we have a culture of intolerance; Clausen believes we have become
so tolerant that cultural boundaries have collapsed. While Cohen thinks that
our schools teach a chauvinistic version of American history that breeds
intolerance, Clausen believes that in our schools otherness long ago replaced motherhood as the official piety-in-chief and that our educational
system no longer stresses a detailed grounding in, or in many respects a
positive view of, American history (p. 10). Schools used to cater to a particular region or a particular religion, but now have increasingly become
more and more alike. All the diversity talk conceals the fact that twentiethcentury America has in fact been an expanding graveyard of cultures (p.
7). In a chapter called Multiculturalism as Museum, Clausen argues that
culture in America exists only as nostalgia. Ethnic studies programs and
regional study programs dot the academic world like grave markers after a
plague (p. 58). Clausen tellingly points out that the study of language, the
single most significant window into other cultures, has declined in American universities. While cultural diversity requirements proliferate, language
requirements fall by the wayside.
Clausen believes cultural explanations have become confused in contemporary anthropology. He sees culture as descriptive, not a cause of the
very things it is describing. Clausen argues that the paradox of cultural

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explanations of human behavior began with the battle against racism by

early anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead,
a battle that Mark Cohen is still fighting. In their anxiety to refute racial
explanations of human behavior, these anthropologists substituted cultural
explanations. In doing so, they abandoned both cultural determinism and
cultural relativism. If people can change their racial attitudes, then their
behavior is not culturally determined, and if racism is wrong, then it is a
cultural trait that is not beyond criticism. Cohen and Ignatieff are both in
this tradition, arguing that cultural relativism does not preclude core values
that lie at the heart of human rights. But Clausen argues that such contradictions rob the concept of culture of its scientific rigor. He, perhaps a little
unkindly, sums up the bankruptcy of cultural relativism: What cultural
relativism now usually amounts to in practice is that only those aspects of
non-European cultures that seem compatible with Western feminism and at
least a minimal notion of human rights are held up as examples of diversity
(p. 41). We are all multiculturalists now, but only in matters that are not
important.
Clausen argues that, ironically, in the politics of multiculturalism, culture has become race-based. Although anthropologists emphasize that race
and culture are two different things until they are blue in the face, when the
subject turns to affirmative action, curriculum reform, and diversity,
multiculturalism means racial diversity. Authors of color are included on
university course reading lists, not because their works are the product of a
different cultureon the contrary, most of them are novels written very
much in the Western traditionbut because of their race. Words like
multiculturalism and diversity help affirmative action advocates avoid
the embarrassing language of racial discrimination.
Clausen finds multiculturalism superficial and paradoxical. He cites a
program sponsored by Nike to encourage Navahoes to take up the yuppie
sport of jogging. Although he seems unaware that running was a part of
traditional Navaho training, Clausen is right to see paradox in the multicultural
rhetoric that explains the purpose of the program. Wearing his Nike running
shorts and shoes, one Navaho explains, Running increases pride, self-esteem, cultural identity. As Clausen drily comments, in this case assimilation has been described as its opposite (p. 69). Such are the anodyne forms
that multiculturalism takes. Multiculturalists do not want cultural conflict.
Clausen argues that multiculturalists actually base their ideas on a universal
ethic. They admire Buddhism because it confirms their own belief in peace
and equality, that is, they admire it for its universal traits. Genuinely different cultural practices, such as the Hindu caste system, Chinese foot-binding,
or female circumcision they reject in horroras indeed they should in
Clausens opinion. They say that they want cultural diversity, but they dont

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want any of what Clausen calls the sharp edges that cause bleeding (p.
74). When Cohen wants us to take off our cultural blinders, he is really
wishing for what we already have: a postcultural society in which culture
has lost its efficacy and exists only as nostalgia.
Clausen is ambivalent about postcultural America. On the one hand, he
has a much more optimistic view of the American story than Mark Cohen
and sees American values such as individual liberty, equality, and openness
to outside influences not as myths supporting a culture of intolerance, but
as salient forces in American history. Postculturalism is the logical consequence of American open-mindedness. On the other hand, the loss of culture has left individuals alone, free to follow their individual tastes. The
results have not been entirely happy. Clausen draws a sharply critical view
of American postculturalism in a chapter titled Mass Individualism and the
End of Culture. With no culture to instruct them, Americans have fallen
prey to a hedonistic consumerism driven by the mass media. Rather than
living in a multicultural society, Americans have never been more alike.
They all spend much time watching television, which is a mass shared
experience on an unprecedented scale. American individualism has come
face to face with American mass production and the result has been what
Clausen calls mass individualism. Commercials cater to the modern desire
to construct an authentic self, but the construction materials are distressingly uniform.
Herodotus famously commented that culture is king, but in the United
States the individual is king. Individualism has a noble tradition and Clausen
embraces it without the qualifications of Michael Ignatieff. Clausen does not
believe that cultures should be artificially sustained by restrictive legislation
such as Quebecs language laws. He believes that the freeing of individuals
from the shackles of a regressive group identity is one of the most powerful
and constructive ideals in all of history (p. 83). The idea that individuals
are the ultimate object of moral attention means that group rights can
never trump individual rights (p. 121). But if Clausen is an unashamed
individualist, he is not an admirer of mass individualism. He dislikes the
subjectivity that is one of its main characteristics and that has so much
influenced academic fashions and political styles. Subjectivity calls reason
and facts into question. It is closely related to relativism. No one wants to be
judgmental and Americans today are uncomfortable with judgments. While
Cohen sees the religious right as reflecting something very fundamental in
American society, Clausen recognizes that the religious right is an embattled
minority, disliked for its judgmental attitudes by the majority of Americans.
Clausen argues that subjectivity has produced an adolescent, emotional
style. News coverage has lost interest in issues and focuses on the personal
lives of politicians, as if they were entertainment celebrities. Clausen sees

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Bill Clinton as the first postcultural president, whose presidency marked the
final descent into the tabloid style even by the mainstream news organizations. Despite the presss removal of the last bit of distance and respect for
privacy in its coverage of Clinton, he survived because of the American
peoples reluctance to judge his lifestyle. Clausen draws a vivid picture of
the pathetic modern individual, conforming to the latest fashions, afraid to
make judgments, and so fragile that a whole range of pills has been created
to serve his emotional needs.
Despite this unflattering description of postcultural individualism,
Clausen prefers it to the primacy of the group. If individuals use their freedom to live insipid, materialistic, narcissistic lives, well, so be it. As long as
they are free, the future is still open to other possibilities. But individual
freedom is never secure. Government, society, and culture always threaten
it. Clausen believes that it is the individual that needs to be protected, not
the group.
In affirming individual rights, Clausen is affirming the Enlightenment.
He argues that multiculturalism is rooted in a nationalism that began with
Johann Herder and took root in nineteenth century romanticism. Despite
the revolutionary impact nationalism exerted in Europe, Clausen sees it as a
reactionary rejection of the universalism and individualism of the Enlightenment. He points to an ironic ideological shift in which todays conservatives
uphold the universal values of Enlightenment individualism and todays left
embraces the primacy of culture over the individual, a shift that has been
overlooked only because multiculturalism is so superficial. Because of the
frequent confusion of race and culture in American political discourse,
multiculturalism has amounted to little more than a government policy to
preserve doomed cultures. Clausen thinks this is a mistake. In an understanding of American history entirely different from the dour view of Mark
Cohen, Clausen believes the decline of cultures in postcultural America
may in fact be essential to the ideals of liberty, equality, and inclusiveness
that America has been gradually achieving over such a long period of time
(p. 160). Clausen believes that multiculturalism tells us more about the alienation of American intellectuals than it does about the direction of American
society.
Clausen does not share Michael Ignatieffs optimism that Canada can
serve as a multicultural model for the rest of the world. For example, Clausen
doubts that Inuit culture can be preserved except by prohibiting other Canadians from settling in Nunavut, a policy that Ignatieff opposes. In addition, Clausen believes Qubcois culture will require evermore repressive
legislation to survive the inexorable trend toward a postcultural society.
Cultures exist only in isolation. When they emerge from isolation to occupy
the same land, the barriers that have preserved them inevitably begin to

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weaken. The only way to preserve a multicultural society is to convert the

other into the enemy. Real multicultural societies are repressive and often
violent.
If Canadas great multicultural experiment is doomed to failure because Canada will either become a postcultural society or fragment into
three countries, does this portend a postcultural world? Are we back to the
notion that American culture will become a global culture, with a McDonalds
at every corner and an American movie on every screen and blue jeans on
every teenager? In his final chapter, Toward a Post-Cultural World?, Clausen
concludes that the future is not a postcultural world. Despite the diminishing number of languages in the world, the major languages are secure and
language is a powerful protector of cultures. One reason that culture is so
weak in the United States is that the language of immigrants is quickly
forgotten. Clausen points to census data that shows the United States is a
multilingual country only in the glib rhetoric of multiculturalists. Eighty-six
per cent of Americans speak only English at home. Only the constant influx
of immigrants preserves the multicultural illusion that American society is
becoming a multilingual society. Immigrant children continue to learn English and forget the old language, as the children of American immigrants
always have. Postcultural society is not a multilingual society.
Secondly, if the culture of immigrants is weak and fragile, that culture
on its home ground is strong. Cultures rarely disappear unless they are
overwhelmed by military conquest and incorporated into another culture.
And finally, nationalism is still too powerful an ideology in the world for the
world to become postcultural. We may heave a sigh of relief that the global
economy and American consumerism will not produce a bland, materialistic global postcultural world, but there is a price and that price is being paid
in the Balkans, in Africa, and in the Moslem world. Clausen points out that
states whose justification for existing is the expression of a specific group
identity are rarely models of human rights (p. 179). The language of cultural identity has now replaced the language of racism in nationalist rhetoric. In most of the world, Ruth Benedicts famous dictum still holds true:
Outside the closed group, there are no human beings (p. 181).
Clausen concludes that if we do not like the materialistic, narcissistic,
morally flabby society that is postcultural America, these negative qualities
are so intertwined with the benefits of postculturalismits individual freedom, its open-mindedness, its egalitarian principlesthat we cannot have
one without the other. Postculturalism is the logical consequence of American freedom and American uniqueness:
No other large country has ever been so open to outsiders. No other country has so undermined, through its founding ideals and actual ways of life, the identities of those who lived

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there. By gradually turning more and more categories of outsiders into insiders, a process
without logical limit, America began to solve some of the oldest problems of humanity while
systematically dismantling the whole basis of traditional cultures. For when everyone belongs, there is no other left for a culture to define itself against. (p. 186)

I think that Clausen has understood the fate of culture in the United
States and the meaning of this fate better than Cohen has. Cohen can be
eloquent in his denunciation of economic and social injustice, but reading
his book is like visiting an extinct volcano. Ideological blinders have prevented him from seeing culture in America as it really is. Michael Ignatieff
has written a thoughtful book that wrestles with difficult questions of the
interplay of individual rights, human rights, and cultural rights. We can
hope that he is right that Canada has worked out a modus vivendi that can
reconcile individual and cultural rights in a way that can hold that great
country together without sacrificing the freedom of individual Canadians.
But Christopher Clausen has shown us that much of the multicultural debate has missed the point: that culture is dying in America. Perhaps it is this
aspect of American society, more than anything else, that arouses the hatred
of those reactionary forces in the world that desire to assert the tyranny of
culture over the freedom of the individual.

REFERENCES
Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. A. (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in
American life. New York: Free Press.
Locke, J. (1952). Second treatise of government. New York: Liberal Arts Press.
Zinn, H. (1980). Peoples history of the United States. New York: Harper & Row.