"Multicultural" my you-know-what. It's just plain old garden variety racism that says all humanity is divided into "white" and "colored" and any amount of "color" makes you "colored". Most white people in this country have a very superficial understanding of racism, and that includes the left as well as the right. The left ends up promoting racism sometimes in their more confused moments but at least they have the virtue of being officially against it whereas the right sees it as a nifty organizing tool, if not a sacred trust.

Rather sweeping generalizations of "the left" and "the right" and what people in those categories might believe, Doretta. I don't agree with the characterizations in your final sentence, particularly the viewpoint you ascribe to "the right". Not all racists are right-wingers, not everyone on the right is racist. Lumping people into "the left" and "the right" and then assigning a standardized viewpoint on racism seems like another way of sorting into Us and Them. In reality, most people defy categorization with a single determining factor.

Try again, Amanda. It was Dave's article, described by you as "sensitive, sensible" that set out the sweeping generalization of the left/right dichotomy with respect to attitudes about race and culture. I merely played along. The left is against "racism", whereas the right is against "multiculturalism". Generalizations have their usefulness and also their limitations. That one is no exception. Dave took a situation he knows most Oregonians are unhappy with and attributed it to "multiculturalism" in order to pin the debacle on the left. I asserted that what he is labelling "multiculturalism" is really just "racism". I never said all racists are right-wingers nor that everyone on the right is racist. Is there anyone left in this town who does not come down with an extreme case of "straw man generation syndrome" every time the subject of racism is mentioned? My personal view of the specific situation to which Dave is referring in his article is that both the left and the right have made significant contributions to the current less-than-ideal state of affairs.

Dave wrote, "Those on the extreme left" and "those on the extreme right". You changed that to "the left" and "the right" in your first comment, distorting what he said. And now you equate his use of the word "multiculturalism" with racism, and I question your purpose in doing that. My personal view of the specific situation to which Dave is referring in his article is that both the left and the right have made significant contributions to the current less-than-ideal state of affairs. That is different from your previous comment, and makes more sense to me. In fact, it's the gist of what I gathered from his OpEd, and why I posted it under the title sensitive and sensible.

I'm not "equating" Dave's use of the word "multiculturalism" with the word "racism". They are parallel constructs in this context not equal ones. Dave didn't invent either concept nor how the sides he mentions use them but he is working straight from the right wing playbook in the way he uses the word "multiculturalism". Dave pulled a "bait and switch" with the "extreme left" and "extreme right" language and you fell for it. He used those descriptions in his introductory remarks but the actual people he went on to accuse of "multiculturalism" are low-level state government bureaucrats. He pulled the switch in the sentence "State government, which has demonstrated that it is well to the left with regard to the multicultural debate, controls Gabriel's fate." Right wing proclamations to the contrary, Oregon state government is not a bastion of the "extreme left" on this or any other topic. If he's really only talking about the extremes, his whole argument vanishes. Yes, what you quoted is different from my original comment because my original comment did not address what I think of that specific situation. It only addressed Dave's attempt to pin the unfortunate state of affairs squarely on the left.

Coincidentally, Paul Krugman's column in the NYT today addresses right wing use of racism as an organizing tool: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hp

It only addressed Dave's attempt to pin the unfortunate state of affairs squarely on the left. I didn't read it that way. Evidently you felt his article was divisive and finger-pointing; I thought it was unifying and grounding. We each bring our own perspective to any issue .... that's why it's good to have people with different backgrounds and ideological frameworks weighing in - in OpEds, here, in general. I appreciate you posting your contrasting viewpoint, Doretta. A lot of people who agree with you likely would have read my post, tutted in exasperation, and not taken the time to flesh it out. I still disagree with you in this particular instance, but I'm now more aware of why someone wouldn't share my view of Dave's article.