Volume 41, Number 16 · October 6, 1994
The Culture Wars
By Louis Menand
Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America's Future
by Richard Bernstein
Knopf, 367 pp., $25.00
Richard Bernstein is a reporter for The New York Times, where he was, for four years, national cultural correspondent. In 1991, he went on leave from the paper in order to research and write this book. Dictatorship of Virtue is an analysis of the phenomenon known as 'multiculturalism,' informed by a wide range of examples. Bernstein was a witness to some of the incidents he describes; when he was not, he conducted interviews with people involved, followed press accounts, and dug up collateral material. A large number of his stories concern, as one would expect, educational institutions; but he has found evidence of what he regards as multiculturalist thinking in workplaces, museums, government agencies, and the press as well. Very little in the book is presented merely anecdotally or—even in the case of stories already widely publicized—at second-hand, from some other journalist's account. Almost everything bears the stamp of fresh and unusually detailed reporting.
Review, 6176 words
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