Blum

Summary:

"Antiracism, Multiculturalism and Interracial community:

Three Educational values for a multicultural society."

Lawrence Blum is a philosophy professor at University of Massachussetts. He starts off his article stating four values that are important to the education program. They are antiracism, multiculturalism, sense of community and individuality. Racism is when a person or group has attitudes over another. The goal of antiracism is to be "without racist attitudes". Multiculturalism is the understanding of another's culture, and the ways of a culture. Community involves saying that people in a community have a somewhat "bond" to other people of races and ethnicities. Individuality is recognizing the person as an individual when that person is a different race and different ethnic group.

He states that these values are different from each other. He also states that these values support each other, but there is tension between them.

Antiracism.

Blum defines racism as "referring both to an institutional or social structure of racial domination or injustice-as when we speak of a racist institution-and also to individual actions, beliefs, and attitudes, whether consciously held or not, which express, support or justify the superiority of ones racial group to another".(16)

Antiracism branches off to three parts; (a) all individuals are equal. We not only need to comprehend this, but we need to feel it. (b) what people don't grasp about racism is "a psychological, historical phenomenon" and ( c) opposing racial actions and attitudes. (17)

Blum also makes it a point to say that when the victims or racism don't take a stand for themselves, they "made their own history". (17)

Multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism breaks off into three parts. Affirming one's cultural identity, respecting and learning about other cultures and valuing diversity. Affirming one's own cultural identity involves learning about someone else's cultural heritage. So, in other words, inorder to understand another culture, you need to understand yours first. Respecting and learning about other cultures involves the desire to learn and understand about other cultures. Valuing of diversity involves the encouragement of appreciating groups of diversity. Blum states that he knows this is difficult, but it needs to be done.

Blum then goes on to state about the three dimensions of cultures that need to be taught in school. They are ancestor culture, historical experience, and current ethnic culture. Blum starts off speaking about ancestor culture and how many cultures celebrate their ancestors. He states, "While all ethnic cultures have an ancestor culture, not all current groups bear the same relationship to that ancestor culture". (18) He gives the example of African-Americans.

Another is historical experience. In an ethic group's historical experience is its many successes and failures, contributions, and many more achievements. He uses Chinese-Americans as an example to say that the experiences they go through in the Untied