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At a deeper level, to be p.c. means to debunk the enduring intellectual values of American life. For the generations that fought World War II and the cold war, those values were pluralism, freedom of individual opportunity, integration and free speech. The goal of universities, cultural institutions and most journals of scholarship and opinion was to open the American experience -- ipso facto a virtuous and desirable one -- to all comers, regardless of race, creed, color or, later on, gender. American culture was considered so good that no one should be denied a chance at it, and no one should be assumed unable to appreciate or comprehend it.
For much of the generation that attends American universities today, almost all those comforting assumptions are either suspect or condemned. In place of integration has come a renewed separatism or tribalism. Women's studies, assorted ethnic studies and, increasingly, gay studies are premised on the idea that people derive their identity less from their individuality than from some group. Strength comes from clustering with the like-minded rather than from grappling with differences. In place of individual opportunity, consequently, p.c. thinking emphasizes the betterment of the group. In place of pluralism and intellectual freedom, it champions the normative rights of the community. In place of freedom of speech has come a demand for freedom from speech, if that speech is deemed offensive by any victim group. And in place of the assumption that America represents the highest aspirations of mankind is a conviction that the U.S. was, and to a considerable degree still is, an oppressor nation, its history a chronicle of injustice and deceit. Some conservative critics point to p.c. and multicultural rhetoric as proof that the American campus is the last bastion of Marxism. Much p.c. analysis is indeed tinged with scorn for capitalism and its correlative, the proverbial marketplace of ideas. But the movement has more to do with the social contract, with how people interact, than with any economic theory.
The pageant of American history has always looked rather different to the descendants of slaves than it does to descendants of slave owners. Not surprisingly, it also appears less than festive to the descendants of conquered natives, exploited migrant workers or Chinese railroad coolies. To them the vital history lesson is not the myth embodied in the Statue of Liberty but the reality of immigration laws that sharply restricted the chances of Hispanic and Asians. They value less the dazzling engineering feat of the transcontinental railroad than the abuse of laborers. They see the culture that shaped America not as a desirable legacy to be embraced, but as at best an alien heritage and at worst a tainted pattern for elitism. As their numbers grow, they want other Americans to see things the same way.
It is this redefinition of the American past that makes p.c. and multiculturalism so distressing to the mainstream. Patriotism and national pride are at stake. In effect, the movements demand that mainstream white Americans aged 35 and over clean out their personal psychic attics of nearly everything they were taught -- and still fervently believe -- about what made their country great. Like the black and women's movements before them, the new movements rely heavily on the unwelcome rhetoric of guilt.