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Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning

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Pluribus & Unum

a
Carlos E. Cortés
a
The University of California-Riverside , USA
Published online: 09 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Carlos E. Cortés (1991) Pluribus & Unum, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 23:5, 8-13, DOI:
10.1080/00091383.1991.9939874

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00091383.1991.9939874

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 PLURIBUS
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&UNUM
T H E Q U E S T F O RC O M M U N I T Y

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determliism; the way
you play it is free will.” So said India’s Nehru. Ethnic diversity comprises a critical
aspect of America’s future, including the future of our nation’s colleges and
universities. According to a 1989Census Bureau projection, during the next four
decades (1990-2030), the white population of the United States will grow by about
25 percent. During that same @-year period, the African-American population
will increase by 68 percent, the Asian-American, Pacific Island-American, and
American Indian populations will grow by 79 percent, and the Latino or Hispanic
population of the United States will leap by 187 percent. That’s determinism!
The Population Reference Bureau has projected that, by the year 2080, the
United States of America may well be 24 percent Latino, 15 percent African-
American, and 12 percent Asian-American - more than half of the nation’s
population. Even recognizing that intermarriage complicates most racial and
ethnic statisticsand that all projections are merely informed guesswork,the United
States has obviously reached merely the diversity take-off stage. What we now
call “ethnic diversity” may well be viewed as relative homogeneity from a 21st-
century perspective.
CARLOS E. CORTES isprofessor of hktory at the University of California-Riverside.He k the
recipient ofthe California Councilfor the Humanities’ 1980 Dktingukhed CaliforniaHumankt
Award, and the American Societyfor Training and Development’s 1989 Multicultural Tminer of
the Year Award.
8 Change SeptemberIOctober 1991
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 “MY INTEREST IS IN THE
FUTURE BECAUSE I AM
GOING TO SPEND THE REST GRASPING AT THE SHADOW’ DEALT YOU IS DETERMINISM;
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OF MY LIFE THERE.”
- (;harks KchtttBring
Which brings me to the second part
3f Nehru’s wise adage. While this Di-
rrersity Revolution provides a major
:lement of our nation’s future deter-
ninism, the way that we play it in-
rrolves a great degree of free will.
Colleges and universities face two
nain questions in addressing the Diver-
;ity Revolution. First, how can they
ielp American society make the best of
hese inevitable demographic changes?
Second, how can they deal more effec-
ively with campus diversity in the
iuest for better institutional climate
md community?
I would like to suggest one construc-
ive response to both questions-Mul-
iculturalism, the omnipresent, often-
:elebrated, often-excoriated “M” word.
3arbara Tuchman once wrote: “Bias is
inly misleading when it is concealed.”
$0 let me unconceal my bias. I am a
Multiculturalist. However, since so
nany scholars and pundits have been
lefining, redefining, and distorting
his concept, and since not all Multicul-
uralists think alike, I need to further
ituate myself in the Multiculturalist
:osmos.
I am an E Pluribus Unum (EPU) Mul-
iiculturalist. That is, I see the Diversity
10
“BEWARE LEST YOU LOSE
THE SUBSTANCE BY
- Itwp
Revolution’s opportunities and chal-
lenges in terms of the historical Ameri-
can Pluribus-Unum balancing act de-
scribed incisively by R. Freeman Butts
in The Revival of Civic Learning. Such
Pluribus values as freedom, individual-
ism, and diversity live in constant and
inevitable tension with such Unum val-
ues as authority, conformity, and com-
monality. Constructive EPU Multicul-
turalism involves responding thought-
fully to both powerful Pluribus and
necessary Unum imperatives, as well as
carefully setting limits to Pluribus and
to Unum when they become poisonous
to climate and destructive to community.
The United States has been involved
in this Pluribus-Unum balancing act
since its inception. That’s what federal-
ism and the separation of powers are
all about. That’s what much of the
Constitution, myriad laws, and many
Supreme Court decisions have ad-
dressed. But the Diversity Revolution
has added a major new dimension to
the Pluribus-Unum relationship.
F or colleges and universities, the
Diversity Revolution has had
Pluribus-Unum demographic and
isychological ramifications for cam-
“LIFE IS LIKE A GAME OF
CARDS. THE HAND THAT IS
THE WAY YOU PLAY IT
IS FREE WILL.”
- iYtBhrl/
pus climate. Demographically, it has
:xpanded the presence of women and
persons of non-white backgrounds.
Psychologically, it has led to a “revo-
lution of rising expectations” that col-
leges and universities should not only
welcome diversity, but also become
nore responsive t o increasingly voiced
:thnic and women’s perspectives and
:oncerns.
At one time happy just to be admit-
.ed to the higher education party, mi-
iorities and women now rightfully
want a larger role in its planning and
mplementation. The result has been
nevitable disagreements and ultimate-
y a basic rethinking of the role and op-
:ration of higher education. While this
iiversity-impelled reconsideration of
he college as an educational communi-
y has affected many areas of campus
ife, I will focus on the implications of
b u r critical Pluribus-Unum areas for
:allege climate:
1) multicultural curricular reform;
2) ethnic isolation and multicultural
ntegration;
3) language and accent diversity; and
4) free speech and campus codes of
:onduct.
Multicultural Curricular Reform-
Change September/October 1991
 The process of multicultural curricular
reform provides the cornerstone for
EPU campus climate. Beginning in the
1%os, spurred by the civil rights move-
ment and the growing minority presence
on college campuses, the push came for
more curricular Pluribus-the establish-
ment of minority content courses and
ethnic studies programs, a call paralleled
in the area of women’s studies. Support-
ers of these Pluribus efforts saw such
courses and programs as the most viable
avenues for providing alternative schol-
arly interpretations and pedagogical per-
spectives seldom found in the traditional
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college curriculum. Although success has
varied-some ethnic and women’s stud-
ies programs have flourished, while oth-
ers have collapsed-the new knowledge,
insights, critical questions, and interpre-
tive challenges generated by these schol-
arly and pedagogical movements have
fueled the current second wave of multi-
cultural reform.
While generally still supporting sepa-
rate ethnic and women’s studies pro-
grams as important loci of teaching
and research about gender and ethnici-
ty, EPU MulticulturaJists no longer ac-
cept the sufficiency of Pluribus isola-
tionist specialization. Rather, they
have drawn upon new multicultural
knowledge and insights to rethink the
very bases of mainstream scholarship
and to work toward a more capacious,
future-oriented Unum curricular climate.
This curricular transformation has
taken many forms: the establishment
of required world civilization courses
(incorporating, not defrocking, West-
ern civilization); the institution of di-
versity-oriented course graduation re-
quirements; and the greater integration
of multicultural perspectives into main-
stream courses in such areas as American
history, literature, and society. In short,
EPU Multiculturalists have championed
the transformation of the Unum college
curriculum to expose all students to na-
tional and world Pluribus in order to
help better prepare them for the guar-
anteed future of ethnic diversity and
global interdependence. For the Mac-
beths of traditionalist curricular
Unum, Birnam wood, safely marginal-
ized in the 1960s and ’7Os, has come to
high Dunsinane hill.
This multicultural transformation of
curricular Unum is no clash between
Change SeptemberlOctober 1991
liberal, illiberal, and non-illiberal edu-
cators, no joust between accused clos-
ers and self-anointed openers of the
American mind-as satisfyingly sim-
plistic and journalistically marketable
as these polarizing dichotomies may
be. Highly publicized curricular de-
bates and student demonstrations at a
few major universities have dominated
media attention. Yet, on most campus-
es such curricular changes have occurred
not because of student protest or the
imposition of supposed “political cor-
rectness” on spineless colleagues by
campus radicals.
Curricular change has generally
come through the serious, contempla-
tive implementation of a new multicul-
tural educational vision based on the
desire to help students more effectively
engage the future, in particular, the op-
portunities and challenges of the Diver-
sity Revolution as well as growing global
interdependence. Even American busi-
ness in-service education has gone mul-
ticultural-witness the rapid rise of
company-instituted diversity train-
ing-while some of K-12education has
progressed multiculturally far beyond
colleges and universities. In carrying
out such reforms, multicultural re-
formers have followed Charles Ketter-
ing’s injunction: “My interest is in the
future because I am going to spend the
rest of my life there.”
Overwhelmingly, this curricular re-
form has involved no rejection of Ameri-
can Unum, no repudiation of Western
civilization, no adoption of valueless,
non-judgmental relativism. Rather, it
has involved a serious recasting of the
meaning of American Unum as a more
Pluribus concept that recognizes the
importance and value of engaging and
considering previously marginalized
voices and perspectives. In the words
of Arnita Jones, executive secretary of
the Organization of American Histori-
ans, Multiculturalism is “not a prob-
lem. It’s a wonderful opportunity to
bring some excellent new scholarship
to all levels of education.” Multicul-
tural reform-oriented college campuses
have merely been heeding the advice of
that old radical, Queen Victoria, when
;he admonished her followers: “Change
must be accepted . . . when it can no
longer be resisted.”
Ethnic Isolation and Multicultural
Integration-While the process of mul-
ticultural curricular reform has been
one major influence on campus cli-
mate, it has been accompanied by oth-
er Pluribus-Unum issues, including
ethnic isolation and multicultural inte-
gration. Colleges and universities have
historically supported the right of tem-
porary Pluribus group isolationism,
emerging from the desire of people to
spend time with others of shared con-
cerns and interests.
Such isolationism has taken many
forms. It encompasses students who
feel like being around those of the
same gender in sororities and fraterni-
ties. It involves persons who want to
worship a deity together, usually with-
in an isolationist religious setting, or to
socialize with persons who share the
same religious beliefs, like a Hillel or a
Newman Club. It includes students who
gather around common interests like a
school newspaper, common pursuits like
a football team, common pleasures like a
chess club, or common social goals like
working in a K-12outreach tutorial pro-
gram. And, of course, those groupings
may be based on race, ethnicity, and
culture, like African-American, Lati-
no, American Indian, Asian-Amen-
can, Italian-American, Arab-Amen-
can, or Polish-American student asso-
ciations, in which people gather periodi-
cally in ethnic comfort zones of shared
experiences, identities, and concerns.
Yet, some campus denizens and off-
campus critics, who accept, support, or
even participate in other types of Pluri-
bus isolationism without labeling them
as “Balkanization” or “tribalism,” be-
come apoplectic about isolationism, no
matter how transitory, involving race
or ethnicity. When students, staff, or
faculty of visibly similar ethnic appear-
ance eat together in school cafeterias,
sit together in classrooms, or, most ter-
rifyingly, form organizations, such
alarmist critics proclaim this as indis-
putable evidence of a collapsing Unum,
even a disintegrating society.
But since all of us, at various times
and places, function as Pluribus isola-
tionists-even professors gather in their
own disciplinary isolationism in depart-
ment meetings or scholarly conventions
-then there is nothing intrinsically
wrong with temporary isolationism,
even when based on race and ethnicity.
1
 The Unum problem for campus climate
and, likewise, for society, occurs when
racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gen-
der, political, disciplinary, or any other
type of isolationism-what The Carne-
gie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching report, Campus Lve: In
Search of Community, has called “little
loyalties”-becomes an overly encom-
passing element of one’s life. Isolation-
ism becomes injurious to a sense of
campus community when people decide
that only their groups matter, when
they lose (or fail to develop) concern
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THE DANGER OF PLURIBUS
ISOLATIONISM, THEN, LIES NOT lar endeavor. Did Henry Kissinger’s
IN ITS UNAVOIDABLE
EXISTENCE, BUT IN ITS
AVOIDABLE EXTREMISM.
lish guidelines for determining when an
accent “interferes materially” with job
performance or what accents are ac-
ceptable or unacceptable for a particu-
thick accent “interfere materially” with
his ability to teach history or serve as
Secretary of State? Everybody speaks
with an accent-just listen to a conver-
sation between an American, a Jamai-
can, and a Kenyan, or throw in a cou-
ple of people from England or India.
They all speak English, but each will
notice the others’ accents.

and consideration for other individu-
als, other groups, the campus at large,
and society as a whole.
The danger of Pluribus isolationism,
then, lies not in its unavoidable exist-
ence, but in its avoidable extremism.
The challenge for college campuses is
to create a climate in which temporary
Pluribus isolationism and continuous
Unum integration operate in a mutual-
ly constructive fashion.
Language and Accent Diversity-
Related to the isolation-integration is-
sue is the growing controversy over
foreign languages and accents. Bilin-
gual students, staff, and faculty, many
of whom speak English as a second lan-
guage, are increasing on college campus-
es. While necessarily using English
throughout most of their campus life,
many bilingual speakers enjoy moments
of non-English conversational respite
from the demanding labor of listening
to and speaking English. During these
intervals they can relax by speaking
their strongest language, a relief from
the stresses and strains of operating
continuously in a sometimes wearying
“foreign-language” English environ-
ment.
Such actions are as natural and Amer-
ican as apple pie. When Americans run
into each other in a foreign country,
even if they speak that nation’s lan-
guage, they normally switch to Eng-
lish. Why? Because it is easier and
more comfortable as well as emotional-
ly relaxing and cognitively rejuvenating
after hours of speaking and hearing the
foreign language. Why shouldn’t the
same occur for English-as-a-second-
language speakers on college campus-
es? Yet participants in such Pluribus
speech behavior, particularly college
employees, have become targets of ex-
12
However, I don’t want to trivialize the
accent issue. I have had students--
mainly immigrant and refugee students
-whose accents severely impeded their
ability to communicate orally and
probably rendered them less able to
perform certain jobs where oral com-
munication was important. Moreover,
American universities are currently ex-
periencing a sharp rise in student dis-
satisfaction with some foreign-born
professors and teaching assistants-
particularly in such areas as mathemat-
ics and the sciences-because of their
accents and limited ability in oral
English.
Such complaints raise perplexing
Pluribus-Unum issues. Students have
an Unum right to take courses from
professors whose English they can un-
derstand, but professors also have a
Pluribus right not to be victimized by
tremist Unum criticism. students who simply don’t like their ac-
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has cents. The Fragante case has added a
pushed the language issue one step fur- new legal twist to this Pluribus-Unum
ther into the area of accents. In 1990, the issue, with serious implications for
Court let stand a Ninth Circuit Court of multicultural campus climate. In what
Appeals ruling in the case of Fragante v. respects do professorial accents actual-
the Honolulu Depariment of Motor Ve- ly “interfere materially’’ with student
hicles. A Filipino immigrant, Manuel opportunities to learn? Or in what re-
Fragante had been denied a position spects d o some student complaints sim-
with the Department not because of his ply reflect “accentism,” plain old Unum
command of English, which he had al- anti-accent nativist bigotry (maybe we
ready demonstrated on the written ex- should call it “AC”-accent correct-
amination, but on the grounds that his ness)?
accent would restrict his ability to deal Free Speech and Campus Codes of
with the public. The Supreme Court Conduct-This brings us inevitably to
upheld the Department, ruling that the most controversial current Pluri-
such discrimination is acceptable if an bus-Unum issue spawned by the Diver-
accent “interferes materially” with the sity Revolution-the balancing of the
abiIity to perform a job. (In the mean- Pluribus value of free speech and the
time, Fragante was hired by the state of Unum value of creating a campus cli-
Hawaii for a position in which he con- mate of civility, in which people of di-
ducted telephone surveys-in English.) verse backgrounds can flourish. Ra-
Of course, the Court did not estab- cist, sexist, anti-religious, and homo-
Change September/October 1991
 phobic incidents have hypertrophied in
recent years-not only on college cam-
puses, but also in society at large. How
should colleges respond to these repre-
hensible acts, which poison campus cli-
mate and threaten campus community?
Some responses have increased po-
larization. On the one hand has come
rising petulance by some students and
faculty, who appear to be engaged in a
never-ending search for statements and
acts that they somehow can construe as
racist, sexist, or other kinds of “ist.”
Moreover, some campuses have insti-
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tuted ill-conceived speech codes that
have reached ludicrous extremes of at-
temptini to micro-manage the “unac-
ceptable.” Such actions have had the
unfortunate side effect of trivializing
the criticial issue of continuing campus
and societal bigotry, while at the same
time casting a pall on the entire higher
educational struggle against prejudice
and for multicultural understanding:
witness the growing charges of sup-
posed “political correctness” reigns of
terror.
At the other extreme stand the anti-
PC demonologists, who have etched
mini-careers of modern academic
witch-hunting, even branding the scar-
let PC on moderate multiculturalist
scholarly or curricular initiatives and
reforms. Despite their self-righteous
claims to being champions of societal
Unum through unfettered Pluribus
speech (provided, of course, that it is in
English), they further polarize campus
climate by disregarding variations in
ethnic, gender, or multicultural per-
spectives.
As the Los Angeles Times pointed
out in a May 13, 1991 editorial on PC,
“the label is often misused, for exam-
ple, as the new acceptable way to deni-
grate laudable and necessary attempts
to make the college curriculum inclu-
sive of the history and achievements of
women and minorities.” Even the 1991
Random House Webster’s College Dic-
tionary has been accused of being PC
because it has taken such steps as indi-
cating that certain derogatory terms
may be offensive. In truth, profession-
al anti-PCers have personified H. L.
Mencken’s warning that “criticism is
prejudice made plausible.”
Caught in the middle, college admin-
istrators try to contend with the ex-
:hange SeptemberlOctober 1991
iremes of insult-hunters and anti-mul- ing higher education: the creation of a
ticulturalism demagogues, as well as better E Pluribus Unum campus climate
with the wearying expressions of indi- and the role that colleges and universi-
vidual hypersensitivity and the appal- ties can play in contributing to our stu-
ling expressions of continuing racism, dents’ and our nation’s successful re-
sexism, and homophobia. But the is- sponse to the Diversity Revolution.
sues are not simple. The challenge of building campus
Should campus free speech reign su- community in a multicultural society
preme as a Pluribus absolute? (Remem- involves balancing Pluribus and Unum
ber, the First Amendment has long been imperatives, avoiding Pluribus and
limited by libel, slander, and defama- Unum extremism, and rejecting the
tion laws.) Or should colleges take prophets of polarization. For the com-
careful, limited, selective actions to re-plex dilemmas raised by the Diversity
strict certain kinds of Pluribus expres- Revolution, there are no simple solu-
sion that erode the Unum civility of tions. However, as Einstein pointed
campus climate by making some insti- out, “the formulation of a problem is
tutions unwelcome for certain groups often more essential than its solution.”
of students? These EPU administrative By providing a framework for weigh-
dilemmas defy the types of facile an- ing and responding to both Pluribus
swers currently colliding in the rhetori- and Unum as basic, sometimes con-
cal arena. flicting values of our society, EPU
Multiculturalism can help colleges and
A esop once warned: “Beware lest universities reformulate, clarify, and
you lose the substance by grasp- thereby more effectively address these
ing at the shadow.” The sound perplexing issues. Moreover, it also
and fury over such overblown, media- provides an educational vision for bet-
hyped topics as political correctness ter preparing college students to partic-
have obscured the larger, deeper, more ipate more constructively in what will
significant diversity-related issues fac- inevitably be a multicultural future. 0
SEXUAL
ORIENlAlION E
R A C E
Disability - L a ‘
Ethnic ity Gender
O E
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