The diversity movement has raised myriad issues regarding language and the exercise of speech. Indeed, some critics of diversity efforts have accused its advocates of undermining the U.S. tradition of free speech. Yet that argument is ill-founded, for two reasons. First, because totally “free” speech does not exist in the United States. Second, because establishing selective legal limits on speech is as historically American as apple pie.
This is the fifth in a series of columns based on my research as a past fellow of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. In earlier columns I argued that diversity advocates should not be drawn into the position of opposing free speech, because it does not really exist. Rather they should clarify and reframe the issue.
Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 5: Interculturalism – by Carlos E. Cortés
In previous generations, it could be reasonably assured that a monoculture would develop. Because of the nature of the distribution of media and the limited ways in which it could be communicated, entire generations of youth would grow up with roughly the same cultural experiences – watching the same shows and cartoons, consuming the same film and radio programs.
