Ideas Without Consequences.(Review)

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Now? Multicultural Conservatism in America, by Angela D. Dillard (New York University, 245 pp., $26.95)

Angela Dillard, a young black political historian of leftist views, has written a well-intentioned book about "multicultural conservative" intellectuals, whom she defines as blacks (such as Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and Clarence Thomas), Hispanics (e.g., Linda Chavez), gays (e.g., Andrew Sullivan), and women (e.g., Midge Decter and Gertrude Himmelfarb). Theoretically, lesbian conservatives would also qualify, but Dillard can find only two. Although she quotes a number of Asian conservatives, such as education reformer Arthur Hu, she can't make up her mind whether Asians are multicultural enough to count.

Obviously, there's not much conceptual coherence to her grouping. The euphemism "multicultural" is popular because it obfuscates the fact that most identity-politics categories are fundamentally biological. Blacks, for example, are a racial group defined by their possessing some degree of African ancestry. They are not a culture, per se. The notion that blacks are permanently stuck with a culture clearly separate from white America's (either because of white racism or genetic difference) is precisely what many black conservatives oppose. They envision an America that is multiracial but essentially monocultural.

Similarly, women belong to a sex, not a culture. If female conservatives were actually defined by a shared culture, then Decter and Himmelfarb could have passed it on to their sons John Podhoretz and William Kristol; but what they passed on was conservatism, not "female conservatism." And whatever it is that causes male homosexuality also seems to incline gay men away from antielitist multiculturalism and toward conserving the high culture of Dead White European Males. Just imagine how moribund ballet, sculpture, painting, opera, and the Broadway musical would be today without gay men. Nevertheless, the steady growth in the number of conservative pundits who are not straight white guys is an important topic.

The fact that Dillard treats her conservative subjects with a certain amount of respect makes her rather unique among leftists. Dillard deserves praise for overcoming her original prejudice that black conservatives must be "traitors, sellouts, and self-loathing lackeys." Within the claustrophobic limits imposed by her liberal perspective, she is surprisingly fair. For instance, she points out that although the first major black woman novelist, Zora Neale Hurston, is jealously worshiped by leftist feminists, she was in fact a staunch conservative. She also admits that the conservative establishment's warm reception of black intellectuals reflects a change in attitudes on race that her fellow leftists would prefer to ignore.

Sadly, however, Dillard is ill-equipped ...