The New Yorker's Case of Canned Multiculturalism

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Comments on the latest New Yorker:

I already spoke on the latest New Yorker's article on Dave Koch. There's also an article on Churchill I have to read. I hope Gopnik does him justice.

Here's another Ongoing Irritant with The New Yorker again on the fiction section I've already noted the absence of gay people in the fiction section and black people only writing about black people and music in the entire magazine. This week's fiction selection is an Asian person writing about Asians. Last week it was a Hispanic writing on Hispanics and a fiction selection from a while back was an Ethiopian writing on Ethiopians. Do you notice a trend?

My point: multiculturalism in a can. Maybe the fiction editors believe they're being very liberal by displaying colored experiences by colored people but really it just amounts to marginalized, exotic views into lives otherwise ignored. The problem of canned multiculturalism is only one part of a critique pioneered by Anis Shivani which applies to literature as a whole today. The standards for what is good literature today need be pushed to a higher ideal. Critics and editors themselves sink into mediocrity when they look to local color for an easy fix. According to Shivani, a non-New Yorker example of canned multiculturalism would be the collected works of Amy Tan.

What's even more insincere is that the Asian, Hispanic, and Ethiopian make up the majority of the minority voices on The New Yorker's 20 Under 40, a list of young fiction writers who are supposedly the best. Many writers break their neck to get on that list but The New Yorker's idea of what's best is obviously in question. Shivani adds a former "20 under 40" Junot Diaz to Amy Tan on his list of "The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers."

It seems like colored people can only get published if they write colorful, tame, stylized, stereotypical, watered-down, non-political accounts about people of their respective color because that's the only thing white American want to hear from them. Can't these colored writers just write simple, straight-forward American fiction concerning human nature like their white counter-parts? Or are they forever consigned to Asian, African or Hispanic American fiction?

The canned multiculturalism choking today's literature must be post-modern criticism's whiny community-orientated, desperately-seeking-diversity response to modernism's universalistic and individualistic ideals but I'd prefer universalism to labels and canned multiculturalism. I challenge The New Yorker stop contributing to the editorial laziness plaguing the literature world and push literature forward to accept colored writers who want to just write good literature instead of simply scoring cheap points by writing about their color.

Comments on Earlier Articles of Note:

Petraeus stays out of mosque debate: The Swamp

General Petraeus is right to stay out that media circus. If President Obama was smart he would have also kept his mouth shut on America's newest spout of Islamophobia instead of shamefully equivocating and angering the left.

Think Progress - ‘Are You Muslim?’: Passenger Stabs NYC Muslim Cab Driver

I knew it would come to this. Nobody blinks and eye at the GOP’s vitriol until people start getting hurt (and even then some people still don't give up). What kind of America is this if a person cannot even be Muslim in peace.

ObamaCare Threatens College Health Plans - Business - The Atlantic

I don't see why college students would protest when under Obamacare they can stay on their parents' plan until they are twenty-six instead of until they are twenty-two or twenty-one. I'm in college and my parents' plan has all the qualifications of my college's offered insurance plan so my parents don't have to bother with the college insurance plan. It may be "cheaper" but it's really just another fee when I already have a good enough health insurance already.

RealClearPolitics - Where Are the New Jobs?

Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession: Rosenberg - CNBC

This "constant uncertainty" described in the Real Clear Politics article is caused by the media's echo chamber amplifying woes and worries on the recession (now a depression!) and unemployment. Of course this scares investors and employers and then we're stuck with the current quagmire.

Ugly report on existing home sales is latest setback for Democrats - The Hill's On The Money

Despite this, a lack of media attention isn’t going to make these numbers go away. Pres. Obama needs to stop being distracted by “mosques” and Sherrods and focus on getting people jobs and fixing the housing marker. If people don’t have tangible results that they can see then even if they are ideologically opposed to the views of the GOP they will not flock to the Democrats’ side in September. Since the Congress is currently on recess and will be concerned with reelection when they return I would encourage President Obama to make some strong statements on how he’s going to turn the economy around.

Last but Not Least

How the other side views progressive liberals. It's kind of funny and in a way kind of true. The near opposite could be said of the GOP/Tea Partier brain. Hope it doesn't offend anybody. Click to enlarge.

- Ryu