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  3. The premise with which the multiculturalists begin is unexceptional: that it is important to recognize and to celebrate the wide

The premise with which the multiculturalists begin is unexceptional: that it is important to recognize and to celebrate the wide

admin2012-01-05  15
问题    The premise with which the multiculturalists begin is unexceptional: that it is important to recognize and to celebrate the wide range of cultures that exist in the United States. In what sounds like a reflection of traditional American pluralism, the multiculturalists argue that we must recognize difference, that difference is legitimate; in its kindlier Versions, multiculturalism represents the discovery on the part of minority groups that they can play a part in molding the larger culture even as they are molded by it. And on the campus multiculturalism, defined more locally as the need to recognize cultural variations among students, has tried with some success to talk about how a racially and ethnically diverse student body can enrich everyone’s education.
   Phillip Green, a political scientist at Smith and a thoughtful proponent of multiculturalism, notes that for a significant portion of the students the politics of identity is all-consuming. Students, he says, "are unhappy with the thin gruel of rationalism. They require a therapeutic curriculum to overcome not straightforward racism but ignorant stereotyping. "
   But multiculturalism’s hard-liners, who seem to make up the majority of the movement, damn as racism any attempt to draw the myriad of American groups into a common American culture. For these multiculturalists, differences are absolute, irreducible, and intractable-occasions not for understanding but for separation. The multiculturalists, it turns out, is not especially interested in the great American hyphen, in the syncretistic (and therefore naturally tolerant) identities that allow Americans to belong to more than a single culture, to be both particularizes and universalisms.
   The time-honored American mixture of assimilation and traditional allegiance is denounced as a danger to racial and gender authenticity. This is an extraordinary reversal of the traditional liberal commitment to a "truth" that transcends parochialisms. In the new race/class/gender formation, universality is replaced by, among other things, feminist science Nubian numerals (as part of an A, fro-centric science), and what Marilyn Frankenstein of the University of Massachusetts-Boston describes as "ethno-mathematics," in which the cultural basis of counting comes to the fore.
   The multiculturalists insist on seeing all perspectives as tainted by the perceiver’s particular point of view. Impartial knowledge, they argue, is not possible, because ideas are simply the expression of individual identity, or of the unspoken but inescapable assumptions that are inscribed in a culture or a language. The problem, however, with this warmed-over Nietzscheanism is that it threatens to leave no ground for anybody to stand on, so the multiculturalists make a leap, necessary for their own intellectual survival, and proceed to argue that there are some categories, such as race and gender, that do in fact embody an unmistakable knowledge of oppression. Victims are at least epistemologically lucky. Objectivity is a mask for oppression. And so an appalled former 1960s radical complained to me that self-proclaimed witches were teaching classes on witchcraft. "They’re not teaching students how to think," she said, "they’re telling them what to believe."
Which one of the following best describes the attitude of the writer toward the multicultural movement?
选项 A、Tolerant. It may have some faults, but it is well-meaning overall.
B、Critical. A formerly admirable movement has been taken over by radical intellectuals.
C、Disinterested. He seems to be presenting an objective report.
D、EnthusiastiＣ. The author embraces the multiculturalists movement and is trying to present it in a favorable light.
答案B
解析 从最后一段，作者对多元文化主义者有关impartial knowledge的论点的叙述和批判，以及认为他们“denounced the time-honored assimilation”等处可判断，作者对那些激进的多元文化主义者持批判态度。
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