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Curated links on inclusive and accessible learning, free images, font pairing, scenarios, and organization tools. Via Marta Torán 
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"Not even water bottles and milk jugs meet standards for recyclability, a new report finds ..." Via Leona Ungerer
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Maria Hoard's curator insight,
June 3, 2022 2:52 PM
When our classrooms closed down our walls opened up. Yes, education is different. Yes, teachers and students are different. Our world has shifted from where is was two years ago...BUT, we learned new tools and most importantly, we learned to adapt. Twitter was my go to when trying to figure out distance education and how to make the best learning environment for my students. That is when my PLN really started to grow. There is no need to wait for another pandemic. Grow your PLN now!
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Bir Tawil is the last truly unclaimed land on earth: a tiny sliver of Africa ruled by no state, inhabited by no permanent residents and governed by no laws. Via Michael Miller
bridget rosolanka's curator insight,
March 23, 2016 8:28 AM
Both Sudan and Egypt claim the rightful border between their countries should include the Hala'ib Triangle on their side of the border. This leaves Bir Tawil unclaimed and it pops up in the news when those hoping to create a micronation claim it. This bizarre case exemplifies some important principles of political geography with a tangible example to test the limits of political sovereignty and what it take to be called a country. If discussing the elements necessary to create a state, this article would help fuel a discussion, especially when some people are eager to create their own micronation.
Tags: political, states, unit 4 political. 
Tracy Ross's curator insight,
March 23, 2016 10:50 AM
Both Sudan and Egypt claim the rightful border between their countries should include the Hala'ib Triangle on their side of the border. This leaves Bir Tawil unclaimed and it pops up in the news when those hoping to create a micronation claim it. This bizarre case exemplifies some important principles of political geography with a tangible example to test the limits of political sovereignty and what it take to be called a country. If discussing the elements necessary to create a state, this article would help fuel a discussion, especially when some people are eager to create their own micronation.
Tags: political, states, unit 4 political. 
MsPerry's curator insight,
March 31, 2016 12:57 PM
Both Sudan and Egypt claim the rightful border between their countries should include the Hala'ib Triangle on their side of the border. This leaves Bir Tawil unclaimed and it pops up in the news when those hoping to create a micronation claim it. This bizarre case exemplifies some important principles of political geography with a tangible example to test the limits of political sovereignty and what it take to be called a country. If discussing the elements necessary to create a state, this article would help fuel a discussion, especially when some people are eager to create their own micronation.
Tags: political, states, unit 4 political.
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"The U.S. Census Bureau has designed a multimedia application experience, a story map, called 'Rural America: How Does the U.S. Census Bureau Define Rural?' This story map contains interactive web maps, tables, information, and images to help explain how the Census Bureau defines 'rural.' Many rural communities rely on American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, rather than ACS 1-year estimates, because of population thresholds. This story map helps data users understand the history and definition of 'rural.' Watch this video and then visit the story map to learn more." Visit the Story Map: http://go.usa.gov/x8yPZ Via Michael Miller
Matt Manish's curator insight,
February 16, 2018 10:57 PM
The U.S. Census Bureau defines "rural" as an area with less than 50,000 people living in it. The majority of the United States is actually considered rural while a small minority of the country is labeled as urban. But interestingly enough, most rural areas are clustered around urban areas rather than in random locations. It seems as though the further out one ventures out from the center of an urban area like a major city, the more the population begins to decrease. One can also see in the same situation, the area transition from urban to rural. U.S. Census data can tell us a lot about populations in rural and urban areas and the correlation between them which can be important to know for many reasons.
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Dennis Swender
from Useful Tools, Information, & Resources For Wessels Library
March 30, 2022 7:36 PM
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When discussing a student’s ability to achieve an undergraduate degree, the topic of textbooks has increasingly come to the fore. While less significant than tuition, room, or board, textbooks and other learning materials represent an increasingly significant cost for any undergraduate student. As a solution, many educators, organizations, and some companies have proposed Open Educational Resources (OER). While OER has often been viewed as a means to make college more affordable, few have drilled deeper into the issue. A recent study, however, proposes that OER can address issues of equity in higher education by making a bigger difference in college affordability for some communities who tend to be underrepresented on campus.
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Dennis Swender
from Metaglossia: The Translation World
March 18, 2022 3:12 AM
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The AMA again rejects "equality" in favor of "equity" -- The AMA is gone. It's influence needs to be minimized, because much like the American Bar Association, it can't be reformed.
The AMA again rejects “equality” in favor of “equity” — The AMA is gone. It’s influence needs to be minimized, because much like the American Bar Association, it can’t be reformed.
The American Medical Association is becoming the poster child for institutional devaluation at the hands of “antiracism” and other offshoots of Critical Race Theory. While the AMA has limited enforcement power, its influence is substantial.
While the injection of CRT into the medical field was a long time coming, November 2020 may have been the inflection point, when the AMA declared Racism is a threat to public health:
The AMA recognizes that racism negatively impacts and exacerbates health inequities among historically marginalized communities. Without systemic and structural-level change, health inequities will continue to exist, and the overall health of the nation will suffer,” said AMA Board Member Willarda V. Edwards, MD, MBA.
“As physicians and leaders in medicine, we are committed to optimal health for all, and are working to ensure all people and communities reach their full health potential,” Dr. Edwards said. “Declaring racism as an urgent public health threat is a step in the right direction toward advancing equity in medicine and public health, while creating pathways for truth, healing, and reconciliation.”
To that end, the AMA House of Delegates (HOD) adopted new policy to:
Acknowledge that, although the primary drivers of racial health inequity are systemic and structural racism, racism and unconscious bias within medical research and health care delivery have caused and continue to cause harm to marginalized communities and society as a whole. Recognize racism, in its systemic, cultural, interpersonal and other forms, as a serious threat to public health, to the advancement of health equity and a barrier to appropriate medical care. Support the development of policy to combat racism and its effects. Encourage governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations to increase funding for research into the epidemiology of risks and damages related to racism and how to prevent or repair them. Encourage the development, implementation and evaluation of undergraduate, graduate and continuing medical education programs and curricula that engender greater understanding of the causes, influences, and effects of systemic, cultural, institutional and interpersonal racism, as well as how to prevent and ameliorate the health effects of racism.
A “threat to public health” was just the starting point, the excuse to push the agenda deep into the organization and medical field.
We first covered the developments in March 2021, when an editor was forced out of the AMA’s flaghip journal for denying during a podcast that strutural racism still exists in medicine, Journal of American Medical Association Embraces “Structural Racism” Dogma, Succumbing To Critical Race Activism. I commented in that post:
JAMA is infected. The Editor-in-Chief has been placed on leave because one of his Deputy Editors disagreed in a podcast whether structural racism is a problem in medicine….
Medicine and other professions, including law, are being destroyed from within. You just don’t know it yet.
Don’t call medicine a victim of “wokeness” — that is too kind a word.
Our society cannot withstand this poison. That’s the point of it, isn’t it.
I followed up in May 2021, American Medical Association Rejects “Equality” and “Meritocracy” In Just-Released “Racial Justice” and “Equity” Strategic Plan:
While you weren’t watching, the American Medical Association surrendered to Critical Race Theory activism, rejecting “equality” and “meritocracy” as goals of medical education, and insisting the Critical Race Theory be a central part of medical education. While the AMA does not run the health care system, it is hugely influential and the radicalization of the organization is a precursor to pushing discriminatory “equity” programs deeper into medical schools and health care itself.
The American Medical Association on May 11, 2021, released its “first strategic plan dedicated to embedding racial justice and advancing health equity.” The President of the AMA also released a statement supporting the plan….
What this means in practice is that the AMA now is a social justice organization viewing race as central to health care:
Embedding racial justice and equity at the core of our AMA strategy means we value all people equally and create and sustain an optimal culture that supports effective action and ensures significant impact. We will accomplish this by consistently using lenses of racial, gender, LGBTQ+, disability, class and social justices; naming and disrupting dominant or malignant narratives that obscure the fundamental causes of health inequities; elevating the voices and ideas of those most proximal to experiencing injustice; ensuring systems meet patients’ individual-level medical and social needs; advocating for elimination of the social, structural, and political drivers of health inequities and the systems of power and oppression that sustain them; and continually pushing our own perceived boundaries to reimagine a just and liberated future.
While the AMA does not administer the health system, it is extremely influential, particularly when it comes to medical education. That education, the Strategic Plan insists, must reject “meritocracy” which is described as a “malignant narrative” ….
It is hard to overstate how radical the AMA becomes under this Strategic Plan. It rejects meritocracy in medical education explicitly embedding Critical Race Theory in that education, and rejects the core legal protection of “equality” substituting the goal of “equity.”
The AMA is gone. The medical schools will follow (some have already), and the health care system will inevitably be diminished and radicalized.
Now the AMA has taken it a step further. It’s demanding that physicians talk about race, and it’s dictating the terms of what they can say. Jesse Singal tweeted about the latest AMA missive:
The AMA Health Equity Center has directives on how to incorporate equity into private practice, but also a message from the President of the AMA on how to talk about race:
The dominant narratives in American medicine and society reflect the values and interests of the historically more privileged socioeconomic groups—white, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgendered, male, wealthy, English-speaking, Christian, U.S.-born.
These narratives have been deeply rooted in value systems and ingrained in cultural practices that have given preference to the interests of society’s most powerful social groups. But they can also be wielded as a weapon to oppress others.
That is the case, for example, with the use of adjectives that dehumanize individuals by reducing them to their diagnosis—simply referring to a patient living with diabetes as a “diabetic”—or that unfairly labels groups of people as “vulnerable” to chronic disease while ignoring the entrenched power structures, such as racism, that have put them at higher risk….
To refine our thinking and give us a fresh perspective about the language we commonly use, and to recognize the harmful effects of dominant narratives in medicine, the AMA Center for Health Equity and the Association of American Medical Colleges, led by its Center for Health Justice, have jointly released a new health equity guide to language, narrative and concepts.
This toolkit, “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative, and Concepts,” is designed for physicians and all health care workers, though it is applicable for everyone both in and outside of medical care. It is an essential piece of our shared efforts to advance health equity, giving us guidance on equity-focused, person-first language and why it matters.
The goal of this language guide is not to reprimand physicians for the words that have long been used in the delivery of care. We know the vast majority of us care deeply about our patients’ health and well-being and take great care with the words and language we use.
Shifting our thinking about language and dominant narratives can help ensure that we are indeed centering care around the lived experience of people and communities without reinforcing labels, objectification, stigmatization and marginalization. In short, it can help us become better doctors and help our patients achieve better outcomes.
The Guide (pdf.) defines (redefines) terms and demands that only certain terms be used, as summarized in this Table from the Guide:
The Guide continues:
Building on these principles, we offer alternatives for at-times problematic words commonly used in health care (see Table 2). These are words we have read and heard; words that have the potential to create and perpetuate harm. Additionally, Part 3 of the guide provides a larger glossary of key terms—from antiracist to gender to weathering. The list below is not meant to be exhaustive, but to promote critical reflection on language and word choice.
In many cases, person-first language will be preferred. Yet in other cases, the cause of equity and justice will be better served with adjective language. For example, some disability activist groups speak against openly objectifying language (i.e., “an autistic”) but actually promote adjective language rather than person-first (i.e., “autistic people” rather than “people with autism”). For some (but not all) disability activists, creating adjectives is preferred to signify a sense of identity rather than a more medicalized “condition.”
Again, context will matter. Our responsibility is to develop and embody critical consciousness and to be aware of how our choices of words reinforce dominant narratives, and when they open possibilities for moving toward equity (see Part 2).
The Guide advises against using the term “equality” and instead requires “equity”:
Equality as a process means providing the same amounts and types of resources across populations. Seeking to treat everyone the “same,” this ignores the historical legacy of disinvestment and deprivation through policy of historically marginalized and minoritized communities as well as contemporary forms of discrimination that limit opportunities. Through systematic oppression and deprivation from ethnocide, genocide, forced removal from land and slavery, Indigenous and Black people have been relegated to the lowest socioeconomic ranks of this country. The ongoing xenophobic treatment of undocumented brown people and immigrants (including Indigenous people disposed of theirland in other countries) is another example.28 Intergenerational wealth has mainly benefited and exists for white families. The “equality” framework, as applied, also fails individual patients and communities. For example, high-quality and safe care for a person with a disability does not translate to ‘equal’ care. A person with low vision receiving the ‘same’ care might receive documents that are illegible, depriving them of the ability to safely consent to and participate in their treatment.
The Guide goes on and on and on. It’s micromanagement.
It would be easy to dismiss this as just woke posturing. Except look how far it has gone in a short period. While the AMA does not run the health care system, it is hugely influential. This language policing will soon be the basis for policing licensing and used as a threat much as the JAMA editor was forced out. It will follow the path we saw with speech policing that migrated from campus to the culture.
The AMA is gone. It’s influence needs to be minimized, because much like the American Bar Association, it can’t be reformed.
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The AMA has been a captive of increasingly progressive factions since at least the mid-90’s (do you remember the JAMA article that coincidentally appeared during the Lewinsky scandal about whether oral sex was “having sexual relations”?).
They’ve also lost most of their influence on medical education and most of their relevance to the specialty societies since then.
They give complimentary memberships to medical students, but after that the fees are high enough and the value of membership is low enough that unless you’re an incorrigible joiner, you mostly don’t bother. I might have paid dues myself once or twice, but it’s been a long time and I can’t imagine doing it again.
I suspect this will be read warmly by the already woke, spur some anger at the periphery, and sink without a ripple for most physicians. Just like nearly everything else that’s come out of the AMA House of Delegates since, say, 1985.
The AMA has been pushing progressive agendas since its inception around 1909. One fact about the AMA is that it has very few members. Only about 5% of doctors are members of the AMA and all decisions are made by a small faction that maintains the board. In short, the organization does not speak for doctors and does not have their best interest at heart.
First doctors have moved left since the AMA moved left so more evidence needed for lack of influence.
Second you can’t overestimate their influence on the American public who are mostly not doctors, but are well highly influenced by fake science as their religion.
Well, correlation and causation are obviously different, but I don’t know that there’s even a lot of evidence that doctors have moved leftward more than the rest of the self-appointed elite classes. Most of the conservative doctors I know (and I know many) self-censor, so it’s a little hard to tell sometimes. But your point is a good one and I would love to see better evidence.
As far as the American public, I have very little faith that anyone other than the delegates themselves, whether “woke” or not, actually reads or understands the details of anything the AMA House of Delegates does. Actually, I’m not even sure the delegates read the resolutions.
The AMA has been called “the least effective trade association in history” as well as a lot of pithier things. In the 1950’s they tried to be the voice of Medicine. By the 1990’s they were hawking their symbol as an endorsement of home appliances (look up the “Sunbeam scandal” for some entertainment). Through recent decades, the Delegates have variously tried and failed to advance the cause of gun control, health care reform, and various payment-connected programs.
Most of the AMA’s funding comes from sources other than dues – for example, they profit handsomely from the sale of coding terminologies and other things that make medical care more expensive and complicated. As a source of moral inspiration, they rank somewhat ahead of the aldermen of the City of Chicago, and somewhat behind the government of Nigeria. Just my personal opinion, of course, but maybe some context for this particular action.
I wouldn’t be concerned about the “just personal opinion” part that goes for my pessimism on this to. You have brought in a lot of very good evidence that the AMA doesn’t have the kind of public influence I thought they did and I was glad to learn about the Sunbeam scandal.
That said in the past the religion of the left was Christianity, today it is wokism/scientism with popes like Dr. Fauci which is where my pessimism/thinking of the AMA as incredibly influential with the public comes from so I was glad to see evidence to the contrary.
That said even if the doctors (as a profession) left turn isn’t the sharp left turn it looks like we can’t get complacent. Even if the AMA isn’t that influential now the circumstances have changed enough that it could become one very easily.
ORWELLIAN
Altering language to conform with the neo-racist and pro-Marxist agenda.
The propaganda specialists are in full blitzkrieg mode.
Does this mean the AMA will be asking it’s members to relocate into the hollowed out small towns where the financial system ‘divested’ and relocated factories to Asia? Will they mandate a move to the small and rural communities negatively impacted by Obamacare where rural hospitals were closed, physicians left town or retired and the closest hospital is 90 minutes – two hours travel?
The answer should be affirmative if they were actually concerned about either equity or equality but they don’t really care. They are simply invoking the incantations of woke idolatry to stave off the day the beast they are feeding us to turns on them.
Katie Herzog in June and July wrote two excellent pieces related to this issue in medical education. They are found at Bari Weiss’s substack site, entitled:
What Happens When Doctors Can’t Tell the Truth?
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-doctors-cant-speak
Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/med-schools-are-now-denying-biological
Both well worth the read. Herzog has an interesting story, a pioneer of cancel culture.
To non gun-owners in the audience:
Welcome back, my friends /
To the show that never ends /
We’re so glad you could attend /
Come inside! Come inside!
This article has nothing whatsoever to do with guns think before you speak.
So when is the AMA going to advocate scrapping the “certificate of need” system that prevents construction of new hospitals? Serving more people is good right?
Imagine if they spent their time focussing on health care.
I know right…thats so terribly right wing violency of me!
This really is a place where only the best and brightest need promoted. We don’t need a box of crayons dealing with your health.
The AMA only represents about 20-25% of doctors…and half of them are not happy with the organization…so I’d have to say their influence continues to wane with every stupid action they take like this.
What about their influence with the general public? Complacency is how we lost the culture.
Can’t say they have much influence in that area either really. Ask ten Americans what is the AMA and what do they do…maybe 2 would know…maybe
As a Chiropractor, I am amused at how the AMA is so woke! Hey folks, you take a Hippocratic oath to do no harm, how does racism systemically play into your patient care??
Same way as asking the elves or a dragon for help.
Contrasting Conventional Phrasing with Equity-focused Language …
Wow. Two of the statements on the right are assertions of facts. Facts which can be shown to be true or false. Opposite these are editorial statements of opinion, which one must accept on faith as they are neither provable nor falsifiable.
The two remaining statements on the right state neutral ideals. Those opposite make accusations followed immediately by conclusions asserting these accusations to be true.
This is (at best) propaganda of a form that denies rationality, demands conformity and compliance, and all-too-obviously leaves no room for disagreement or challenge.
I realize the AMA has always been more about politics than science, but this is disgusting. Fortunately physicians are not required to join or support it.
Although at the same time few physicians are still in private practice, and most are therefore subject to the whims of huge organizations. Outside of which it has become increasingly difficult to make a living.
For example, the largest medical organization in the area where I live now asks one to identify not one’s “sex” but “gender assigned at birth.” Navigating this is like walking into a physician’s office only to see astrology and alchemy charts prominently displayed on the walls.
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Dennis Swender
from Useful Tools, Information, & Resources For Wessels Library
March 18, 2022 2:49 AM
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The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association: “Book challenges have been a hot topic in news and politics lately. The American Library Association (ALA) Executive Board and eight divisions recently released a statement affirming its opposition to widespread efforts to censor books in U.S. Schools. OIF has tracked 155 unique censorship incidents between June 1, 2021 and September 30, 2021. With the high volume of challenges right now, OIF has made available a clearinghouse of resources on its Fight Censorship page. The page is organized by different aspects of addressing censorship. First are resources for preparing and responding to challenges. This involves looping in ALA so that they can draw attention to the harms of censorship in addition to helping protect against challenges before they happen. For example, pertinent to recent censorship attempts there is a guide from the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) on maintain LGBTQ+ materials in school libraries. There are also resources on the rights of schools and students/minors, in addition to general guidelines on how to respond to challenges and concerns about resources. This includes suggested responses to informal complaints and verbal concerns. One of the biggest factors in fighting censorship is one’s community. There are various resources on working with the public. These include how to respond to questions about youth and access to library resources, tips for addressing challenges during a public meeting, and working with community leaders. The number of people that belong to a said community is increasing, mainly due to social media’s ability to further connect people. Fortunately, there is a guide on using social media, which includes toolkits for creating live streams and advocating via social media….”
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Dennis Swender
from Edumorfosis.it
January 6, 2022 5:49 PM
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Student discrimination based on racial bias affects the education environment largely, causing the black and brown students to fall back, while the white students inculcate toxicity in them as they grow up watching racial bias in education. Designing unbiased EdTech needs AI in education to be fully prepared with algorithms, that can overcome the racial injustices posed to the students and educators. Advanced EdTech, aims to bind every individual together irrespective of their historic background and events.
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Dennis Swender
from Educational Technology News
June 8, 2021 2:01 PM
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University of Nevada, Reno, works with Apple to give first-year students iPads and tech training opportunities. Will others follow?
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Dennis Swender
from Leadership in Distance Education
January 19, 2023 5:03 PM
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Dennis Swender
from Educational Technology News
June 8, 2022 2:00 PM
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Are you looking for a new activity to challenge students to learn in a new way? Students spend a large amount of their school day sitting in their seats and may have few opportunities to move and interact with their classmates. However, there are many different methods that we can bring into our classroom to get students up and moving and more importantly, collaborating.
One of them is the classroom escape room activity!
Sounds like an interesting idea. Has anyone done this in class or professional development with adult learners? I wonder if they will find it a bit too gimmicky and a waste of time. Your thoughts?
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Dennis Swender
from e-learning-ukr
June 4, 2022 9:57 PM
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Digitalisation Multi-layered digital inequalities in HEIs: the paradox of the post-digital society Laura Czerniewicz Abstract ICTS and digitalisation in Higher Education: Problem? What problem? How can HEIs, ICTs and digitalisation address these inequities and contribute to inclusive and...
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Dennis Swender
from HMHS History
April 26, 2022 12:04 PM
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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
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Dennis Swender
from HMHS History
April 26, 2022 12:01 PM
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"As the container shipping industry continues to boom, companies are adopting new technologies to move cargo faster and shifting to crewless ships. But it’s not all been smooth sailing and the future will see fewer players stay above water."
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Dennis Swender
from HMHS History
April 26, 2022 12:00 PM
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Do you know how the internet gets across the ocean? This amazing map shows every cable that makes it possible.
And no, not everything has turned virtual! We still rely on concrete stuff. Cables network says a lot about the way our World works.
This article deals with unit 1 because it has to do with maps. This map shows how underwater cables connect the internet throughout the world. The cables transmit 99% of international data instantly. On this map you can also see latency. Another map in this article shows 1912 trade routes and underwater cables today. The routes are similar and the interdependency has stayed but the methods and meanings for each of these things are different. To pass the ocean is risky by the investments, and trading. Sailors took tHess risks and now the tech companies are taking them. The cables are thin in the deep water equalling 3 inches across. In addition the cables are thicker in shallower water. The interesting thing is these cables can go as deep as Mount Everest is high.
Because globalization.
Tags: Time-Space Compression, development, technology, economic, globalization, industry, unit 6 industry.
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Dennis Swender
from Best
April 24, 2022 10:55 PM
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Powerful advances in genome sequencing technology, informatics, automation, and artificial intelligence, have propelled humankind to the threshold of a new beginning in understanding, utilizing, and conserving biodiversity. For the first time in history, it is possible to efficiently sequence the genomes of all known species, and to use genomics to help discover the remaining 80 to 90 percent of species that are currently hidden from science.
The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), a moonshot for biology, aims to sequence, catalog and characterize the genomes of all of Earth’s eukaryotic biodiversity over a period of ten years.
Create a new foundation for biology to drive
solutions for preserving biodiversity and sustaining human societies.
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Dennis Swender
from Educational Resources
March 30, 2022 7:33 PM
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This collection of research looks at what multicultural education is, how it has changed and the challenges schools face in teaching it.
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Dennis Swender
from Metaglossia: The Translation World
March 18, 2022 3:07 AM
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Multiculturalism is a threat to our freedom, not a benign model for mutual respect. It is concerned with one culture, the West, and particularly with America, which it wants to alter dramatically. Constitutional republicanism as we know it can exist only through the active participation of one united people working within the confines of the nation-state. Our current experiment with multiculturalism is dangerous because the sharing of a common culture and a common language creates the trust quotient necessary for our republic to succeed. The U.S. must end separatism and reembrace patriotic assimilation in order to protect its national identity and create real social solidarity.
KEY POINTS
Some liberals are beginning to understand that one of their most cherished goals, social solidarity, can be accomplished only in a republic that is not riven by internal division.
The Founders understood that their new country was a land of immigrants which therefore needed assimilation into one polity.
Patriotic assimilation worked here precisely because in America, the bonds were to the creed contained in the founding documents and adherence to the American virtues and national culture.
Even if we closed the immigration door tomorrow, we still need to end the separatism that passes for multiculturalism.
Nation-states have proved to be the best vehicles for the protection of individual liberties.
Freedom is an unalienable right granted to us by our Creator, but it is national governments that respect or violate these gifts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Gonzalez
Senior Fellow
The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy
2016 has been the year of national identity, not just in America, but throughout the industrialized West. Political entrepreneurs who have recognized the salience of this issue have experienced success—on the right and the left and on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, many of our most insightful public intellectuals, from Samuel Huntington on the right to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., on the center-left to Eric Hobsbawm on the Marxist left, predicted that we would be at this point—that right around now, our debates would be centered around identity and its symbols.
You do not have to be a nationalist to want to address this issue. I do not consider myself a nationalist. I have always thought of myself as a patriot, though, one who deeply believes in the exceptionalism of this country and in its goodness. Charles De Gaulle said patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism is when hate for people other than your own comes first. Put me in the first category: America’s national interest should always come first in any calculation.
In addressing this issue, it would help, I think, if we broke up our conversation into three important areas.
The first is to ask the question: What are the main threats to America’s national identity and to the concept of the nation-state in general? I will argue that one of the main threats is the current promotion of subnational group identities or identity politics in general—multiculturalism, diversity, and so forth.
Number two, does it really matter if we’re evolving on these issues? Yes, it does. America’s unprecedented levels of liberty and prosperity are linked to traditional American ways, virtues, and habits. This country is based on the belief that individuals, not groups, are endowed by their Creator with rights and that the government exists to guarantee those rights for individuals, not groups. And multiculturalism at home has an international counterpart in transnationalism. Liberals believe that our problems today are too large for us to solve them at the national level, so we must cede sovereignty to multilateral institutions.
Finally, number three, there are solutions to these problems. They are not acts of God. The solutions may not be easy, but they are certainly preferable to the alternatives. They are also easier to implement than the programs that liberal elites have rammed down our throats for decades. Yes, they will require political will, articulating winning arguments, and the fortitude necessary to withstand blowback from those we cannot convince. This may not be as hard as it sounds, however. Many liberals are getting it: They are beginning to understand that one of their most cherished goals, social solidarity, can only be accomplished in a republic that is not riven by internal division.
The Multiculturalist Threat
First, I should define what I mean by multiculturalism. One reason it is sometimes hard to describe multiculturalism is that its proponents offer nothing but anodyne blandishments when they’re asked to define it. It is nothing, they say, but simply respect for other cultures and letting others do as they please. It is about tolerance.
For those who do believe that this is what multiculturalism is, I gladly tell you that I have no problem with this multiculturalism. I was born in Cuba, of Spanish grandparents, and raised there, in Europe, and in New York. I married a Scot who was born and raised in Edinburgh, of Northern Irish Protestant parents. Two of our children were born in Belgium, where we lived for close to six years, and one of them was baptized in Hong Kong, where we lived for eight years. I also speak three languages and can read two additional ones.
I say these things not because I’m in love with my bio, but to make clear that if anyone were to deserve the title of multiculturalist, it would be me. However, it is a title that I reject, and for good reasons.
Multiculturalism has nothing to do with liking Victor Hugo, Mongolian throat singing, Szechuan cuisine, or Mayan history. In fact, multiculturalism has nothing to do with knowing anything about other cultures. Some of the most culturally ignorant people I know are multiculturalists. And it is not about tolerance.
Multiculturalism as a social model is concerned with one culture and one culture only, the West, especially America and its heritage, because it wants to destroy or at least alter it and replace it with something else. The multiculturalism I am concerned with is the blueprint for replacing the American narrative with a counter-narrative that is animated by values of the left such as state control over our lives, dependence on government to apportion participation in society, and thinking of people as groups rather than as individuals and their families.
Critical Theory
This blueprint builds—consciously or not—on the work of Marxist European thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse, Georg Lukacs, and Antonio Gramsci, whose “Critical Theory” has greatly influenced American progressives. Their idea was that because revolutions did not occur fast enough, it was better to take over societies from within existing institutions. As Antonio Gramsci wrote: “In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via the infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”[1]
Another step was to undermine society’s narrative by casting doubt on its legitimacy and replacing it with a counterhegemony. My colleague and friend John Fonte has done wonderful work in explaining this.[2] One of the main goals of politics, according to Critical Theory, is to “delegitimize” the norms and ideas that gave us the American project. The goal is to transfer power from the dominant group to the “oppressed” groups.
The third and most important element—the one that added the “multi” to the cultural—was splitting society into adversarial groups. Conveniently, Critical Theory holds that society is divided along racial, ethnic, and sexual lines. There is a “dominant” group (white males), and there are “marginalized” groups (ethnic, racial, linguistic, and sexual minorities).
Ethnicity
The proletariat could not be relied upon to carry out revolution, especially in highly mobile America, where economic status is fluid. Ethnicity is much stickier, especially when you have the long arm of the Census Bureau instructing 300 million people to identify themselves as one of the five groups in the ethno-racial pentagon of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and non-Latino whites.
These are synthetically made groups that correspond to none of the markers usually associated with real ethnicity—culture, race, language, history, and so on. Yet the powers that be in the government and culture are constantly trying to conjure up bonds of affection to these groups.
Commands to fall in line with your ethnic group are much more emotionally laden than those that depend on class. And ethnicity is really sticky if you give individuals in four of those groups economic incentives to always tick their box.
How was this all done? The contours of the new approach were designed in the decade of the 1970s. We progressively asked people to categorize themselves into these five synthetic groups in order to give those with “a history of discrimination” protected class status.
In 1977, the Office of Management and Budget issued Directive 15, which mandated the classifications we have to this day. Later, other identity groups based on sex and sexual orientation were progressively added to the mix. And that was that.
There were no clandestine Monday night meetings, no conspiracy really—just people in the bureaucracy and the foundations acting on a vague consensus. Many had good intentions. If you read what they wrote at the time, they wanted to get help to what they saw as communities in need and dismissed worries that their actions could split the country.
The Ford Foundation, one of the leading actors in this play, believed that the advances of the civil rights movement would not last unless the constituency was expanded beyond the originally intended beneficiaries, African-Americans, so Ford invested itself into expanding the franchise. It provided the seed money to create both La Raza and MALDEF,[3] and it funded a groundbreaking UCLA study that set out to reclassify people of Mexican origin as people of color.
This is how and why adversarial groups have been built. Gramsci’s observation in Prison Notebooks that “[t]he marginalized groups of history include not only the economically oppressed, but also women [and] racial minorities” influenced the thinking of many. Gramsci and his friends took Marxism out of the hands of boring economists and gave it to a much more interesting and creative class, conceiving Cultural Marxism. But make no mistake: Cultural Marxism serves the same ends as economic Marxism.
Of course, even if many of the bureaucrats who designed the groups system may not have been conscious Gramscians, Cultural Marxism is the conscious inspiration of those in the commanding heights of the culture—the academy, the entertainment industry, and the media—who celebrate multiculturalism and denigrate America from the Founding on down. Cultural Marxism begat cultural studies.
And let us not forget the key role played in the promotion of the budding Chicano movement by the very leftist President of Mexico in the early 1970s, Luis Echevarria, a subject I touch upon in an essay I wrote this summer for National Affairs.[4] He and his people sought to divide the loyalties of Mexican Americans by saying things like “Chicanos should not look to Wall Street or Washington to find their identity. Our destiny is to the south with a people like us.” The Chicano movement was a nice complement to Echevarria’s pro–Third World policies.
Post-industrialization, too, has lulled us into accepting the premise that we can sever our traditional affection for the nation, the church, and the family. It was not for nothing that Vox last week published a piece with the headline “How Godless Capitalism Made America Multicultural.”[5]
Which brings us to our second point: Why does it matter?
Why Multiculturalism Matters
Multiculturalism matters because what is at stake is nothing less than our sovereignty, self-determination, political unity, and ability to hold our leaders accountable—in other words, our very freedoms. It may be a truism and a tautology, but it is worth repeating that constitutional republicanism as we know it can only exist through the active participation of one united people working within the confines of the nation-state. It is the finite unit at which people have debates and come together to agree on principles.
The sharing of a common culture and language creates the trust quotient that is necessary to succeed. Francis Fukuyama wrote an entire book on how high-trust nations enjoy enormous economic and cultural advantages due to lower transaction costs. Robert Putnam at Harvard and many others have written about what happens when neighborhoods diversify: Individuals volunteer less, mistrust more—hunker in.
Volunteerism is a crucial component of America’s identity. I can vouch for this after living in seven or eight countries as a foreign correspondent. America’s identity is rooted in a unique culture that includes an exceptional attachment to volunteerism, constitutional government, and deriving satisfaction from a hard day’s labor—virtues intricately linked to America’s abundant freedom and prosperity.
Sharing a common culture and language permits and encourages the economic competition needed to improve our standard of living because it allows it to transpire as harmoniously as possible within the boundaries of social cooperation. We knew this already in the 19th century, when someone who spent a lot of time thinking about these matters, the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, stated that:
Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist.[6]
In fact, multinational states have many problems. Even when they are free and prosperous, like Canada and Belgium, they have difficulty staying together. They frequently require a strong hand, and when that hand is withdrawn, we see separatism erupt, usually accompanied by mayhem and bloodletting. Rarely, if ever, are such states free.
In the modern era, Josip Broz Tito, Saddam Hussein, and Mikhail Gorbachev held together the multinational states of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and the Soviet Union through force. The withdrawal of that force led to the disintegration of their states. This should remind us why our current experiment with multiculturalism is so dangerous. We are playing with powerful, volatile forces that we do not fully understand. As the liberal intellectual Arthur Schlesinger put it, “Countries break up when they fail to give ethnically diverse peoples compelling reasons to see themselves as part of the same nation.”[7]
Even short of dismemberment, multiculturalism poses a clear and present danger in the age of international terrorism because it makes life easier for radical recruiters. We all need to be part of something bigger than ourselves, especially young men. If we no longer imbue our people with patriotic fellow feeling, someone else will come along with another message.
Even short of that, academics who study the subject of ethnic and linguistic fractionalization within a society concur that the more fractionalized a country is, the more it will suffer negative consequences in quality of government, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth, tax compliance, and one more thing that suffers in fractionalized countries: share of transfers over GDP. As one paper put it, “It seems that governments have a much more difficult task achieving consensus for redistribution to the needy in a fractionalized society.”[8]
In other words, social solidarity suffers in a highly fractionalized state, and this is important as we move on to our final point: solutions. Social solidarity is something that concerns both conservatives and liberals. By stating the problem in this way, we hope to forge the coalitions that we need. We conservatives acting alone will not be able to implement solutions.
Solutions
There are people who think that this is a problem too enormous to solve, that the horses are out of the barn. In the Vox op-ed I referenced moments ago, the editors highlighted the following statement: “American national identity has already changed, and there’s no going back.”[9] I beg to differ, and I hope you do too.
The electoral and societal revolts we have seen on both sides of the Atlantic in the past 15 months are an indication that the people have intuited what has happened and do not like it. Politicians can only follow. The American public, sensing at the all-important gut level the link between America’s identity and its exceptionalism—between volunteerism and liberty and between hard work and prosperity—again and again tell pollsters they do not want the country to change.
Conservative intellectuals have been writing about this for years—authors such as John Fonte and Peter Berkowitz. But liberals have added their voices, too, including Jonathan Haidt at NYU and his colleague Jonathan Zimmerman. In the U.K., we also have Trevor Phillips and Kenan Malik. These are the people I call latter-day Patrick Moynihans, Nathan Glazers, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jrs. They understand that solidarity and redistribution—paradoxically the best reason for creating these groups in the first place—become politically untenable without social cohesion.
America has had the secret formula for being able to take in millions of immigrants and at the same time have a unified national culture. It is called patriotic assimilation—the marriage of patriotism and assimilation.
We have been a land of immigrants since the 1600s, when German Pietists began to stream into Pennsylvania. Millions of immigrants have come here from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, Albania, the Levant, Armenia, and they all became Americans.
Only America can truly do this because only America is a creedal nation created by far-thinking men after “reflection and choice,” in the words of the Federalist Papers.[10] Then, for reasons I have already discussed, we abandoned the formula. But the model is still there—and it is the truly inclusive one.
The Founders understood that their new country was a land of immigrants which therefore needed assimilation into one polity. Washington was the first to speak about assimilation, to use the word in that context, and Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and all the others agreed: Constitutional republics require an active citizenry. It is why Noah Webster put in place an educational system that would nurture Americans.
Lincoln, too, agreed, saying in 1858 that when immigrants internalized the creed that “all men are created equal,” they “have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration [of Independence], and so they are.”[11] This always reminds me of something similar Paul says in Galatians. It is through belief, Paul says, that “there is neither Jew nor Greek… [I]f ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
This is why Justice Clarence Thomas argued in his dissent from the Fisher case that the Constitution “abhors classifications based on race,” and that “does not change in the face of a ‘faddish theor[y]’ that racial discrimination may produce ‘educational benefits.’”[12] Patriotic assimilation worked precisely because here in America, the bonds were to the creed of the founding documents and adherence to the American virtues and national culture I have described.
What We Can Do
Let me end with five things we can do to protect and strengthen America’s national identity.
End separatism. First and foremost, let us stop encouraging separatism on the basis of what Berkowitz calls “an incoherent multiculturalism that denigrates identification with the nation-state while celebrating every other kind of partial identity.”[13] Concentrating on this is key.
If we conservatives internalize the division of the country and believe that we have a nation splintered into immutable sections, we are lost. Unfortunately, this is what we are doing and why our only two responses so far are to either do “minority outreach” or go all out to get as many white votes as possible. Neither of these options will do, for even if they succeed in the short term, we are dooming the republic in the long term. The only acceptable response is E Pluribus Unum. Even if we closed the immigration door tomorrow, we would still need to end the separatism that passes for multiculturalism.
End affirmative action. To do that, one of the first things we need to do is end affirmative action. Racial preferences only serve to preserve groups by bribing individuals to tick the box.
Return to the ethos of assimilation. Assimilation did not mean then, nor has it ever meant, abandoning the pride that comes from knowing your familiar roots, or the taste for grandma’s cooking, or maintaining your ancestral religion. It does mean America is our only country.
Teach patriotism. But before we try to Americanize newcomers, we must re-Americanize the natives. The very successful counter-hegemony campaign has left us with what Berkowitz rightly calls “a crippling loss of self-knowledge.”[14] Just as with individuals, if we erase a nation’s memory, the nation will not know where it came from and where it is going. Historic purposes will be wiped out. Let’s drive Howard Zinn and others of his ilk out of our schools. Patriotism must be taught; it’s not something that comes in our DNA.
Protect individual liberty. Finally, America’s historic purposes will only be served if we refuse to let our leaders tie us like Gulliver at Lilliput. Transnationalism is the real scam, not the Founding. Nation-states have proven to be the best vehicles for the protection of individual liberties. Freedom is an unalienable right granted to us by our Creator, but it is national governments that respect or violate these gifts from God. Florida and Wyoming are free because the United States is free, just as Guangzhou and Guangxi are unfree because China is unfree. As Jeremy Rabkin puts it, “Your freedom still depends on where you live.”[15]
Multiculturalism is a threat to our freedom. It is not a benign model for mutual respect. This matters to our liberty. And just as the problems we are seeing today are man-made, they can be man-unmade.
—Mike Gonzalez is a Senior Fellow in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation. This lecture was delivered at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr., Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship and is published with the kind permission of the Kirby Center.
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