Cultural pluralism

‘Pluralism’ is a term that has taken on a great many meanings. There is a pluralism of pluralisms. But in an American context, there has been a distinctive history of the meaning of pluralism – especially cultural pluralism. It is a story that has its roots in the pragmatism of William James and John Dewey (and the influence of their students). The expression ‘Cultural Pluralism’ was popularized by Horace Kallen, a student of William James and a close colleague of John Dewey. The idea of cultural pluralism, as we shall see, came to prominence in the opening decades of the 20^th century. Between 1870 and 1920 more than 27 million immigrants were admitted to the United States. The vast majority came from southern and eastern Europe. There is probably no other time in history when a country was so welcoming to immigrants. By 1910, 40 per cent of the population of New York was foreign-born. But it is a myth to believe that this wave of immigration was a smooth and welcoming process. There was widespread discrimination and fear of the ‘pernicious’ influence of foreigners. Even our universities and colleges set strict religious quotas to exclude some immigrant groups. Throughout the country (not just in the South) there were hotels, resorts and restaurants that would not accept Jews or Catholics, and, of course, Blacks were forbidden – and this lasted well into the 1960s. Despite the great waves of immigrants – America, at the beginning of the 20^th century was primarily a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) country – and many wanted to keep it that way. There was ‘scholarly’ research that reinforced stereotypes and justified racism. In short, there was a significant backlash to the open immigration policies. And after the First World War some of the most restrictive immigration policies were enacted by Congress. By 1924 new federal laws severely limited immigration; ‘experts’ on eugenics supported the idea that immigrants from some foreign countries were racially inferior to ‘Nordic’ stock. Lynching of Blacks was common, as were anti-miscegenation laws. It was only in 1967 that the United States Supreme Court ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.

It is against this background that we can appreciate the significance of the pluralism of the pragmatic thinkers. In 1908 William James, the American philosopher who was a gifted popular lecturer, was invited to give a series of lectures at Oxford University on the present situation in philosophy. A year later the lectures were published with the title A Pluralistic Universe. At the time various forms of absolute and monistic idealism were extremely fashionable among philosophers in the United States and England. This philosophy of Absolute Idealism was inspired by Hegel – or more accurately by the Anglo-American interpretations of Hegel. Absolute Idealism sharply opposed all forms of empiricism – especially the type of empiricism that claims that all knowledge is ultimately based on discrete and separate perceptions or sense data. James – already in his Principles of Psychology (1981[1890]) – had criticized the atomistic tendency in the empiricist tradition. He emphasized the flow and the dynamic quality of all experience. ‘The continuous flow of the mental stream is sacrificed, and in its place an atomism, a brickbat plan of construction, is preached … These words are meant to impeach the entire English psychology derived from Locke and Hume, and the entire German psychology derived from Herbart, so far as both treat “ideas” as separate subjective entities that come and go’ (James, 1981: I, 195). But James was just as critical of the absolute or monistic idealists who claimed that all of reality consists of a single interrelated totality. He felt that both of these extreme philosophic positions were guilty of a ‘vicious intellectualism’; they were guilty of substituting intellectual abstractions for the concrete dynamic plurality of experience. There was something desperately wrong with disjointed empirical atomism and block universe monisms.

Prima facie the world is a pluralism, as we find it, its unity seems to be that of any collection; and our higher thinking consists chiefly of an effort to redeem it from the first crude form. Postulating more unity than the first experiences yield, we also discover more. But absolute unity, in spite of brilliant dashes in its direction, still remains undiscoverable, still remains a Grenzbegriff … To the very last, there are various ‘points of view’ which the philosopher must distinguish in discussing the world; and what is inwardly clear from one point of view remains a bare externality and datum to the other. The negative, the alogical, is never wholly banished. Something – call it ‘fate, chance, freedom, spontaneity, the devil, what you will’ – is still wrong and other and outside and unincluded, from your point of view, even though you be the greatest of philosophers. (James, 1977: 5–6)

For James, there are and always will be competing ‘points of view’. There is no single God’s-eye point of view that humans can achieve. James makes a metaphysical point – that reality of the universe itself is pluralistic and the craving to see the universe as consisting of a single total unified system is misguided. James knew that his radical pluralism was offensive to many philosophers – but nevertheless he believed it was far more truthful to the tangled quality of experience and reality.

It is curious how little countenance radical pluralism has ever had from philosophers. Whether materialistically or spiritualistically minded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with which the world apparently is filled. They have substituted economical and orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether these were morally elevated or only intellectually neat, they were at any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of structure. As compared with all these rationalizing pictures, the pluralistic empiricism which I profess offers but a sorry appearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of an affair, without a sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. (James, 1977: 26)

Although his lectures were primarily concerned with a pluralistic vision of the universe, it is clear that James’ pluralism has strong ethical and political consequences. In such essays as ‘On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings’ and ‘What Makes Life Significant’ James argues that frequently we are blind and insensitive to other human beings who are genuinely different from us. We are too quick to scorn and condemn them. We fail to make the effort to see how the world looks and feels from the perspective of those whose life experiences are radically different from ours. James’ pluralism is not flabby or sentimental. He calls for both understanding and critical engagement with other points of views and with other visions.

When James gave his lectures at Oxford there were two former Harvard philosophy students in the audience, Horace Kallen and Alain Locke. Both were to play critical roles in developing the religious, ethnic and racial consequences of James’ pluralism. Horace Kallen was born in Germany (1882) and came to the United States as a young child. His father was an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. Kallen was educated at Harvard and although a student of George Santayana, he was inspired also by William James. He was at Oxford when James lectured because he had been given a traveling scholarship by Harvard. Alain Locke, who was an undergraduate philosophy student at Harvard when Kallen was an instructor (and James was a professor), was the first Black American to receive the prestigious Rhodes scholarship to attend Oxford University. Despite his being awarded the Rhodes scholarship, many Oxford colleges refused to accept him because of his race. Indeed the white students from the southern United States who had also received Rhodes scholarships wrote a letter demanding that Locke’s scholarship be rescinded. And when Locke arrived at Oxford, most of his fellow American students (with the exception of Kallen) snubbed him. Alain Locke later became one of the intellectual leaders of what is known as the Negro Harlem Renaissance. He remained friends with Kallen throughout his life and he argued for a form of cultural pluralism that would include African-Americans.

To appreciate the contributions of Kallen and Locke (as well as others) we need to appreciate the cultural context that they were addressing. There were powerful voices arguing for the ‘Americanization’ of all immigrants. In the 1912 presidential election Theodore Roosevelt declared: ‘We have room for but one language here … We intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and not dwellers in a polyglot boardinghouse.’ Roosevelt’s reference to a ‘crucible’ calls to mind a play that had been extremely popular – a play that Roosevelt himself had seen and enthusiastically approved. In The Melting Pot, by Israel Zangwill, the protagonist declares: ‘America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming … Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen, and Englishmen, Jews and Christians, Jews and Russians – into the Crucible with all! God is making the American’ (Gerstle, 2001: 51). The metaphor of ‘The Melting Pot’ was (and still is) a powerful one in the United States. It was taken to mean that foreigners should leave their strange customs, languages and cultures behind and melt into a homogeneous society. More cynically, it meant that immigrants should assimilate to the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture to become ‘true’ Americans. When Horace Kallen published his classic article ‘Democracy versus the Melting Pot’ (1996[1915]) in the progressive journal, The Nation, he sharply criticized this idea of America as a society that obliterates cultural differences. A ‘melting pot’ suggests that all elements are put into the pot and become a single homogenous mass. In contrast Kallen writes:

At his core no human being, even in a ‘state of nature,’ is a mere mathematical unit of action like ‘economic man.’ Behind him in time and tremendously in him in quality are his ancestors; around him in space are his relatives and kin looking back with him to a remoter common ancestry. In all these he lives and moves and has his being. (Kallen, 1996[1915]: 78)

Kallen hoped that different religious and ethnic groups would take pride in their cultural heritage. He envisioned the United States as a nation in which cultural differences would be acknowledged and respected. And he strongly believed that such cultural differences would enrich a vital democracy. ‘What do we will to make of the United States – a unison, singing the old Anglo-Saxon theme “America,” the America of the New England school, or a harmony, in which that theme shall be dominant, perhaps, among others, but one among many, not the only one?’ (Kallen, 1996[1915]: 89). For Kallen ‘unison’ is the symbol of leveling and homogeneity: it means the triumph of cultural monism. Harmony, in contrast, exists only if there are different voices (Kallen, 1996: 92) – without drowning out or obliterating any of the distinctive voices. Drawing on a figure of speech that William James had used in his lectures on pluralism, Kallen speaks of ‘the form of a Federal republic; its substance a democracy of nationalities, cooperating voluntarily and autonomously in the enterprise of self-realization through the perfection of men according to their kind’ (ibid.: 92). Kallen, who was attracted to musical metaphors, concludes his article with an extended analogy to a symphony orchestra:

As in an orchestra, every type of instrument has its specific timbre and tonality, founded in its substance and form; as every type has its appropriate theme and melody in the whole symphony, so in society each ethnic group is the natural instrument, its spirit and culture are its theme and melody and the harmony and dissonances and discords of them all make the symphony of civilization, with this difference: a musical symphony is written before it is played: in the symphony of civilization the playing is the writing so that within the limits set by nature they may vary at will, and the range and variety of the harmony may become wider and richer and more beautiful. (Kallen, 1996[1915]:42)

But the primary question is, do the dominant classes in America want such a society (Kallen, 1996[1915]: 92)?

In a private communication, John Dewey suggested that the metaphor of a symphony orchestra may have suggested more fixity than Kallen might have intended. Dewey wrote to Kallen:

I quite agree with your orchestra idea, but upon condition we really get a symphony and not a lot of different instruments playing simultaneously. I never did care for the melting pot metaphor, but genuine assimilation to one another – not to Anglo-Saxondom – seems to be essential to an American. That each cultural section should maintain its distinctive literary and artistic traditions seems to me most desirable, but in order that it might have the more to contribute to others. I am not sure you mean more than this, but there seems to be an implication of segregation geographical and otherwise. That we should recognize the segregation that undoubtedly exists is requisite but in order that it may not be fastened upon us. (Menand, 2001: 400)

A year later, when Dewey made his own contribution to the discussion of cultural pluralism, he wrote:

The way to deal with hyphenism [German-American, Jewish-American and so on] … is to welcome it, but to welcome it in the sense of extracting from each people its special good so that it shall surrender into a common fund of wisdom and experience what it especially has to contribute. All of these surrenders and contributions taken together create the national spirit of America. The dangerous thing is for each factor to isolate itself, to try to live off its past, and then to attempt to impose itself on other elements, or at least keep itself intact and thus refuse to accept what other cultures have to offer, so as thereby to be transmuted into authentic Americanism. (Menand, 2001: 400–1)

Some of Kallen’s critics have attacked him for advocating a fixity and essentialism to various cultural, ethnic and religious groups. In ‘Democracy versus the Melting Pot’ Kallen did not use the expression ‘cultural pluralism’ but did employ this label in his later work. And he also clarified his views to accommodate the need for a greater appreciation of the dynamic and changing quality of different cultures. In effect, he was following his mentor William James who always insisted on the fluidity and changing character of both individuals and groups. In his 1956 book, Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea, Kallen wrote:

Cultures live and grow in and through the individual, and their vitality is a function of individual diversities of interests and associations. Pluralism is the sine qua non of their persistence and prosperous growth. But not the absolute pluralism which the concept of the unfaltering and inalienable Monad discloses. On the contrary, the sine qua non is a fluid, relational pluralism, which the living individual encounters in the transactions wherewith he constructs his personal history moving out of groups and into groups, engaging in open or hidden communion with societies of his fellows, every one different from the others and all teamed together, and struggling to provide and maintain their common means which nourish, assure, enhance the different, and often competing values they differently cherish. (Kallen, 1956: 55)

If we step back we can appreciate what is distinctive about this forging a democratic society that encourages cultural pluralism – and why it is still so relevant today throughout the world. As the above passage makes clear there is no suggestion of a fixed ‘politics of identity’ or a type of ‘multiculturalism’ that isolates and segregates cultures. The cultural pluralists advocate the ideal of a democratic society enriched by differences. The pragmatic thinkers and the cultural pluralists were not naïve sentimentalists; they were fully aware of the conflicts that arise among different religious and ethnic groups. They were well aware of the strong resistance to diversity and difference. There is also an important subtext in the plea of these thinkers for cultural diversity. Many immigrants that arrived in the United States were poor unskilled workers who were being exploited by a well-entrenched wealthy minority. These progressive thinkers objected to the abuses of unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism. And many of them were involved in teaching at community centers that were specifically intended to help and educate immigrants. They were progressive thinkers who sought to further economic, political and cultural equality in the nation. But with the outbreak of World War I (even before the United States entered the war in 1917) there was a backlash against ‘foreigners’ from the ‘old country’. The cultural pluralists were concerned about the growing xenophobia and parochial nationalism in the United States.

There was another famous essayist who helped to develop the ideas of cultural pluralism: Randolph Bourne. Bourne studied with Dewey at Columbia University and he was also a great admirer of William James. Unfortunately, his life was cut short when he died in the 1918 flu pandemic. Bourne developed Kallen’s ideas in an even more radical and nuanced manner. In 1916 – a year after Kallen had published ‘Democracy and the Melting Pot’ – Bourne published his famous essay ‘Trans-National America’. Bourne, unlike Kallen, had a long Anglo-Saxon background in the United States, but he strongly identified himself with progressive causes. He also condemned the idea of a ‘melting-pot’ and ‘Americanization’. ‘We act as if we want Americanization to take place on our own terms, and not by the consent of the governed.’ ‘We are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born’ (Bourne, 1996[1916]: 94). Like Kallen, Bourne was interested in what America might yet become – not in clinging to an imagined past. He advocated a new cosmopolitan ideal for the United States – a transnational America. This would fulfill the democratic vision embodied in the spirit of Emerson, Whitman, James and Dewey. ‘It is not what we are now that concerns us, but what this plastic next generation may become in the light of a new cosmopolitan ideal.’

If freedom means democratic cooperation in determining the ideals and purposes and the industrial and social institutions of a country, then the immigrant has not been free, and the Anglo-Saxon element is guilty of just what every dominant race is guilty of in every European country: the imposition of its own culture upon the minority peoples. The fact that this imposition has been so mild and, indeed, semi-conscious does not alter its quality. (Bourne, 1996[1916]: 97)

Bourne thought of himself as developing Kallen’s idea of cultural pluralism. But we can see that he was also sensitive to the danger that Dewey had noted – the danger of segregating and isolating different cultural groups. He stressed how America could become a truly cosmopolitan society – a post-nationalist society. Despite their different emphases, these thinkers shared a vision of what America ought to become – a country that respects (but does not reify) cultural differences; a society that will become more democratic because it is vitalized by different cultural groups.

Bourne strongly opposed Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter into the First World War. And he vehemently attacked John Dewey, his former teacher and mentor, for supporting Wilson’s policies. Dewey, Bourne claimed, was betraying his own pragmatic ideals. But what most disturbed Bourne were the belligerent war fever and the ‘patriotic’ parochial nationalism that threatened the vision of a cosmopolitan society.

America is a unique sociological fabric, and it bespeaks poverty of imagination not to be thrilled at the incalculable potentialities of so novel a union of men. To seek no other goal than the weary old nationalism, belligerent, exclusive, inbreeding, the poison of which we are witnessing now in Europe is to make patriotism a hollow sham and to declare that, in spite of our boastings, America must ever be a follower and not a leader of nations. (Bourne, 1996[1916]: 104)

When Bourne speaks of America as a ‘leader of nations’ he certainly does not mean military might or imposing its ideals on other nations. Rather his hope was that America might lead by becoming an exemplar of a cosmopolitan society in which cultural differences are acknowledged and respected. Bourne passionately expressed this ideal when he wrote:

The failure of the melting-pot, far from closing the great American democratic experiment means that it has only just begun. Whatever American nationalism turns out to be, we see already that it will have a color richer and more exciting than our ideal has hitherto encompassed. In a world that has dreamed of internationalism, we find that we have all unawares been building up the first international nation. The voices which have cried for a tight and jealous nationalism of the European pattern are failing … America is already a world-federation in miniature, the continent where for the first time in history has been achieved that miracle of hope, the peaceful living side by side, with character substantially preserved, of the most heterogeneous peoples under the sun … Notwithstanding our tragic failures of adjustment, the outlines are already too clear not to give us a new vision and a new orientation of the American mind in the world. It is for the American of the younger generation to accept this cosmopolitanism, and carry it along with self-conscious and fruitful purpose. (Bourne, 1996[1916]: 102)

Had Bourne lived a few more years he would have witnessed the enormous disparity between his cosmopolitan ideal and what actually happened in the United States – the backlash against the ideal of a culturally heterogeneous cosmopolitan society, a backlash that still persists in the failure of the United States to come to grips with its new immigrant populations – no longer primarily from Europe but from Latin America. The concrete realization of Bourne’s democratic vision of transnational cosmopolitanism is even more urgent today than when he first proposed it.

There is a paradox about the emergence of cultural pluralism in the United States. Cultural pluralists frequently mentioned race, but when they spoke about ‘hyphenated’ Americans they were thinking primarily of ‘German-Americans’, ‘Jewish-Americans’, ‘Italian-Americans’, ‘Irish-Americans’, etc., but not African-Americans – the descendants of African slaves. The pragmatists had always opposed racial, religious and ethnic discrimination. James strongly protested against ‘the lynching epidemic’ of African-Americans in the United States. He condemned the bloodthirsty mob violence that incited lynching. (Lynching of Blacks was still quite common in America through the 1960s.) Dewey helped to found the NAACP – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which became the leading organization to defend the rights and cultural development of African-Americans. But the cultural pluralists were primarily concerned with the democratic integration of immigrants from Europe and Russia – not the integration of African-Americans. The prevailing prejudice in America during the early decades of the 20^th century – even by some progressive thinkers – was that the descendant of slaves really had no distinctive culture.

W. E. B. Dubois and Alain Locke, two of America’s most significant Black intellectuals, extended the ideas of cultural pluralism to include African-Americans.

Earlier I mentioned that Alain Locke was the first American Black Rhodes scholar. Dubois, who was 17 years older than Locke, was the first African-American to be awarded a PhD from Harvard. Both studied philosophy at Harvard and were deeply influenced by William James’ pluralism. Both became forceful critics of racism in America. Both argued that Blacks should take pride in their African cultural heritage. In Dubois’ famous early book, The Soul of Black Folk (1903) he portrayed the distinctive genius and humanity of ‘Black Folk’. All his life he was fully engaged in the political fight to achieve full equality, respect and dignity for African-Americans. Indeed, it is largely due to the influence of Dubois that the word ‘Black’ became a positive symbol of pride for African-American self-esteem rather than a derogatory label. When Harvard University – in the 1920s – excluded Black students from its dormitories, Dubois was outraged. He condemned this as an attempt to renew the Anglo-Saxon cult; the worship of the Nordic totem, the disenfranchisement of the Negroes, Jews, Irishmen, Italians, Asiatics and South Sea Islanders – the world rule of Nordic whites through brute force.

Alain Locke is not as well known as W. E. B Dubois because he was not primarily a political activist. But he had an enormous influence on fostering the creative cultural activity of African-Americans. He became a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance – a group of Black novelists, poets, musicians and dancers who sought to give expression to the distinctive cultural expressions of African-American life. Locke first publicly addressed the issue of race in a remarkable series of lectures that he gave at Howard University in 1915 – at about the same time that Kallen’s ‘Democracy versus Melting Pot’ appeared. Howard University was founded by white Christian ministers to educate black professionals. Ironically, the white administrators of Howard were opposed to Locke’s proposal to teach a course on race because they did not want Howard to be associated with such ‘controversial subjects’ as race. Consequently, Locke gave his lectures, entitled ‘Race Contacts and Interracial Relations’, under the auspices of the Howard chapter of the NAACP. These lectures – published posthumously – show how advanced his thinking was about the concept of race. At the time it was widely believed that race was rooted in biology and that Blacks were an inferior biological race. Drawing on the scientific work of Franz Boas – who is considered one of the founders of modern anthropology – Locke argues that there are no fixed factors – biological, sociological, anthropological, or cultural – that determine race. What Boas’ investigations showed was the ‘plasticity of human types’. And Boas was one of the first to speak about the plurality of cultures that change over time. It was Boas’ anthropological research that helped to explode the dogma of the concept of fixed races. Racism is a pernicious ideology that has no scientific credibility. The concept of human plasticity is fundamental for all the pragmatists. In effect, Locke was deconstructing the fixity of the concept of race. He speaks of race as ‘ethical fiction’. Today we might say that he was showing that race is a social construction. But this does not mean that his fiction does not have powerful real effects. He shared with W. E. B Dubois the conviction that African-Americans need a positive idea of race in order to achieve a sense of self- esteem, self-respect and dignity. They need to assertively counter what has been thrust upon them – that they are biologically and culturally inferior to whites. And they can do this by achieving artistic and literary excellence that is a basis for self-pride. Locke sought to advance the ideal of a dynamic cultural pluralism that would also include African-American culture.

I want to conclude by suggesting that the best way to understand the movement of cultural pluralism in America is to understand it as a dynamic movement in which there are different points of view and different emphases. The conversation itself has been pluralistic. But a shared vision emerges of what a truly democratic society may yet become. This would be a cosmopolitan democratic society that no longer seeks to obliterate or reify differences but rather is a society where cultural differences are appreciated, respected and cultivated. Because of their deep commitment to the plasticity of human beings, these men argue that a democracy becomes more vigorous and robust when it benefits from the contributions of different cultural, ethnic, religious and racial groups – groups that can take pride in their distinctive cultural achievements and also share common values. The cultural pluralists were not naïve about the practical difficulties and obstacles that stand in the way of achieving such a cultural pluralistic cosmopolitan society. But the ideal of such a cultural diversity of society can guide our praxis. Cultural pluralism emerged in America during the first decades of the 20^th century. Today during the first decades of the 21^st century, the ideas and ideals of the cultural pluralists still have a freshness and contemporary relevance. They have an even more universal and urgent significance. Societies throughout the world – including the United States – are facing the problem of how to deal with alien immigrant (legal and illegal) populations. There is still fear, anxiety and deep prejudices about those who are different and foreign. Racism and prejudice persist. The same extremes that the cultural pluralists were confronting and rejecting – assimilation or segregation – still threaten us. Their vision of what America might yet become – a dynamic democratic society that respects and is enriched by cultural differences – is now a democratic vision that is truly international and cosmopolitan.