The need for special consideration

    Beside general structures needed to safeguard common needs, those favoring diversity or multiculturalism believe that traditionally disadvantaged groups need additional protection or special support; new standards need to be developed to ensure that old forms of disadvantage and exploitation are eliminated. Multiculturalism is partly a response to the failures of the past. Multiculturalists believe that any attempt to insure a full range of social opportunities for all runs into problems because the social system has been organized and controlled by white males who continue to have the best opportunities. The system has given power to white males, and along with power has gone the basis for self-respect.   In order to adequately meet the demands of social life, people must all have a basis for self-respect growing from social respect. According to many multiculturalists, since minorities and women have been denied this, at least to a degree, governmental and social resources should be used to strengthen respect for those disadvantaged groups. This involves new standards, which must be imposed and instilled by education, law, morality, and social practice until they are adequately internalized and institutionalized in social life.     Top

Guiding values

    New multicultural standards involve considerations that contemporary liberals have traditionally claimed ought to be left up to the individual. According to a multicultural perspective, speech, whom one associates with, values, and university curriculum should be guided by moral values and institutional control, apparently against the contemporary liberal's support for individual freedom. Offensive vocabulary is thought to be a serious part of the exploiting behavior and so needs to be eliminated. Sensitivity to the reactions of those in traditionally oppressed or disadvantaged groups should be required both in private and in public. Members of those exploited groups know best what sort of behavior has caused them disadvantage, and so they best placed to determine the limitations needed. Behavior others believe to be harmless may foster an environment of unequal opportunity and exploitation. Positive images need to be secured by ensuring that the contributions to society of those in all groups are taught and learned.
    Those supporting diversity insist that each group has its unique and valuable heritage, but in order for such diverse values to flourish, common standards need to promote individual growth within disadvantaged groups. The proper response to plural cultural perspectives is to ensure, through social policy, that each group receives adequate attention, and that all become especially aware and supportive of the needs of women and minorities.     Top

Multiculturalism: a limited pluralism

    Multiculturalism is not a full pluralism but a selective one. Values supported by those in some groups are given preference over other values, such as the value placed by liberals on free speech. This conflict is interesting because contemporary liberals, long supporters of welfare and civil rights, now have intellectual sympathy for those supporting special advantage and special concern for some over others, based on the categories once thought to be morally irrelevant. The liberal's previous answer to pluralism, providing a strong social environment and tolerating all private action, is challenged as failing to provide the sense of individual worth and effectiveness needed to bring about a genuine expression of equally valid cultural and gender backgrounds.
    Multiculturalism underscores the need to carefully examine such basic values as nonharm, freedom, welfare, and equality.    Under multiculturalism each is redefined. Questions about the extent to which old values are improperly violated or whether multiculturalism properly amends those values require serious, open consideration.     Top

     FEMINIST ETHICS
     PLURALISM
     SOCIAL EQUALITY