Diane Ravitch writes in a recent article of the truly idiotic results of a 1976 California law that mandates positive portrayals of specified groups in school textbooks.
Recently, for example, Hindu organizations complained of descriptions of the caste system and the treatment of women in India inthe past. One group wanted the statement that women had “fewer” rights in ancient India changed to “different” rights.
What an irony! America has truly become a Disneyland, a World’s Fair, a theme park in which one can visit prettified exhibits of various cultures. Instead of immigrants coming to America and being grateful to leave behind the backwardness, the stifling customs, the bitter history, the sectarian violence of their homelands, they want to falsify these histories and convey only positive impressions of their backgrounds. So American children learn of all the sins and faults of their own history, while learning sanitized versions of the history of other cultures. Is it any wonder that a few decades of this has produced a generation so steeped in white guilt, as Shelby Steele writes, that it can no longer exercise authority in upholding American ideals?