Monday, October 18, 2021

A Warning from 1997

 . . . [R]adical multiculturalism leads to disturbing distortions in scholarship and public discourse. Because they reject objectivity as a norm, the radicals are content to rely on personal stories as a basis for formulating views of social problems. These stories are often atypical or distorted by self-interest, yet any criticism of the stories is inevitably seen as a personal attack on the storyteller. More generally, because radical multiculturalists refuse to separate the speaker from the message, they can become sidetracked from discussing the merits of the message itself into bitter disputes about the speaker's authenticity and her right to speak on behalf of an oppressed group. Criticisms of radical multculturalists are seen as pandering to the power structure if they come from women or minorities, or as sexist and racist if they come from white men. This makes dialogue difficult at best.

- From Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law by Daniel R. Farber and Suzanna Sherry (1997)

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