“The Crimes of Christopher Columbus”
Here’s a very interesting article that was a surprise to me considering its title. It’s about multiculturalism, relativism, and their failings. Here’s a couple quotes that really made the article for me:
“Religion, history, tradition, and morality have always been subjected to searching criticism in the name of rationality, truth, evidence, reason, and logic. Now reason, truth, rationality, and logic are themselves subject to these criticisms. The idea is that they’re as much a part of the dogmatic, superstitious, mystical, power-laden tradition as anything that they were used to attack.”
“all truths are ideological, and that cultures should therefore be placed on a roughly equal plane. Cultural relativism-the presumed equality of all cultures-is the intellectual foundation of contemporary multiculturalism”
“Multiculturalism is based on the relativist assumption that since all cultures are inherently equal, differences of power, wealth, and achievement between them are most likely due to oppression.”
“A sincere effort to study other cultures “from within” requires a rejection of the Western lens of cultural relativism. Multiculturalists who wish to take non-Western cultures seriously must take seriously their repudiation of relativism”
“Students do need to be exposed to the great accomplishments of other cultures, as well as their influence on the West. But when multiculturalism goes beyond this to insist that we should understand cultural differences without applying (inherently biased) standards of critical evaluation, it forbids at the outset the possibility that one culture may be in crucial respects superior to another. An initial openness to the truths of other cultures degenerates into a closed-minded denial of all transcultural standards. Seeking to avoid an acknowledgment of Western cultural superiority, relativism ends up denying the possibility of truth.”
That’s a lot of quote but these really give a good idea of the tone of this article. I found myself both agreeing with and disgusted it. There are passages that make a lot of sense and passages that sound simply crazy to me.
I highly recommend this and some other Columbus-related readings that I’ve linked to on the side.