The Inflated Role of Narratives in Liberal Arts Education
My talk will focus on the role that humanities-centered narratives play in the educational system
at Brooklyn College. There is a continued privileging of the humanities in our Core, in the
running of the Scholars Program, and the freshman reading. As a result, quantitative evidence
through a social science lens is minimized, often reducing public policy discourse to a struggle
between competing narratives not an analysis of statistical evidence.1
This year’s freshman year selection is Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I’m Dying. Listed on the
Amazon.com website, the Bookmarks Magazine review ends:
The most poignant section focuses on Joseph's tragic trip to the United States at
age 81, but Danticat also tells a wider story about family and exile, the Haitian
diaspora, the Duvalier regime, and post-9/11 immigration policy. Emotionally
resonant and exceptionally clear-eyed, Brother, I'm Dying offers insight into a
talented writer, her family history, and the injustices of the modern world.
This summary illustrates perfectly the lament voiced four decades ago by Herb Gans, a
preeminent sociologist with impeccable progressive credentials. In his 1973 book, Popular and
High Culture, Gans wrote:
High culture's nonfiction is basically literary; relied on novelists for its analyses of social reality.
Today, the culture relies more on essayists for its nonfiction. [As a result] high culture is often
hostile to the social sciences, partly because they refuse to accept literary observations and
autobiographical impressions as evidence.
In some ways, the only significant change in these forty years seems to be that dead white men
have been replaced by multicultural voices anchored by identity politics.
A downside of these narratives, particularly when they are authentic and compelling, is that
they can too often be used to demonize dissenters. By providing the foundation for labeling the
opposition as racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, nativist, or xenophobic these narratives narrow
debate on public policy issues.
To concretize this thesis, let us look at recent articles in the New York Times. In early April,
the King hearings on the threat from radical Islam occurred. At the same time, UN workers in
Afghanistan were killed as retribution for the burning of the Koran by a Florida preacher who
represented 30 Americans. In response, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen (“Religion
Does Its Worst,” Apr 4) attempted to shift the discourse from radical Islam to allegedly
Islamophobic America. To support his position, he offered a factoid used three days earlier in an
editorial lambasting the King hearings. The editorial (“The Truth about Muslim Americans,” Apr
1) read in part,
1
Competing narratives are plentiful, particularly those that present a cultural-of-poverty framework. For Latinos,
see Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family; for Muslims, see Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel; and for blacks, see Sapphire,
Push and Jason DeParle, American Dream.
1
At the Justice Department, it’s called the post-Sept. 11 backlash — the steady stream of more than 800
cases of violence and discrimination suffered by American Muslims at the hands of know-nothing abusers.
These continuing hate crimes were laid bare at a valuable but barely noticed Senate hearing last week that
provided welcome contrast to Representative Peter King’s airing of his xenophobic allegation that the
Muslim-American community has been radicalized.
Offering federal data rather than mythic scapegoating of an easy political target, the Senate hearing
focused on the fact that while Muslims make up 1 percent of the population, they are victims in
14 percent of religious discrimination cases. (emphasis added)
This comparison borders on dishonesty. Since there are virtually no religious hate crimes against
Christians, of course, Muslims (and Jews) would disproportionately be victimized by religious
hate crimes.2 Indeed, as the actual hate crime statistics indicate, while Jews are less than two
percent of the population, they are victims of 80 percent of religious cases: I guess we live in a
rabidly anti-Semitic country!
By contrast, per capita hate crime statistics show that it remains that black Americans, and even
more so male homosexuals, are by far the major victims of hate crimes, with Latino and Muslim
2
This is the second use of this religious comparison by the New York Times. In 2010, when reporting claims of
discriminatory employment actions made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, New York Times
reporter, Steven Greenhouse (“Muslim Report Rising Discrimination at Work,” Sept 23) stated: “Although
Muslims make up less than 2 percent of the United States population, they accounted for about one-quarter of the
3,386 religious discrimination claims filed with the E.E.O.C. last year.” Not only are these allegations not EEOC
determinations but the article failed to report that they represented less than one percent of all discrimination
complaints received by the EEOC in 2009.
2
Americans far behind, and even behind Jewish Americans.3 This is the ordering even if we
restrict our observations to a subcategory of hate crimes: assaults.4
There certainly have been many narratives that highlight the brutalization of Latino
immigrants, particularly those who are undocumented. And increasingly we are presented with
narratives of the hardworking, deserving Latino youth who if given the chance by the DREAM
Act, would become worthy Americans. These narratives often highlight the nativist behavior of
opponents of expansive immigration of less educated individuals and their extended families.
Once again, these compelling narratives are used to silence critics. In particular, the campaign
by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that urged journalists not to seek information from
allegedly racist immigration groups was discussed in a recent New York Times Magazine article
by Jason DeParle (“The Anti-Immigration Crusader,” Apr 17).
After the defeat of the 1997 comprehensive immigration bill, the SPLC labeled some of the
opponents “hate groups” and was part of an organized effort demanding that Congress not meet
with these groups. Quoting one of its leaders, Frank Sharry, DeParle wrote:
Mr. Sharry acknowledges that he used to warn colleagues that charges of racism
would backfire. But he said the 2007 debate convinced him of his opponents’ ill will.
“I’ve gone from saying they’re part of the process to seeing them as extremists who
want to expel millions of people,” he said. While they started with a liberal gloss,
“their juice became culturally conservative Republicans who don’t like brown
people.”
While DeParle does note in passing that there are legitimate liberal arguments against expansive
immigration, he gives limited voice to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), one of the
groups that has been stained by the SPLC’s campaign of suppression. The pro-expansive
3
For a recent study that lowers the gay population estimate substantially, thus raising the incidence of gay hate
crimes, see Lisa Leff, “Demographer: U.S. Has 4 Million Adults Who Identify as Gays,” Associated Press (Apr 7)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110408/ap_on_re_us/us_counting_gays
4
Note that in 2010, the New York Times estimated Muslims as less than two percent of the U.S. population but in
2011 estimated them at one percent. This reflected the New York Times’ decision to no longer use the estimates
supplied by the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). For almost a decade, the New York Times has used
CAIR’s inflated estimates as it was the designated “moderate” group that was relied upon. Recently, Justice
Department lawyers recommended that a leader of CAIR and is founder be indicted as a co-conspirator on charges
of funneling funds to the terrorist organization Hamas. While political officials in the Justice Department have
rejected this recommendation, undoubtedly the New York Times is beginning to distance itself from the organization.
3
migration forces wish to suppress the reach of CIS because they believe it provides evidence that
gives cover to nativist, racist, xenophobes. That is, CIS’ estimates of the more than 200,000
annual births to women on temporary visas fuels groups which rail against “anchor babies;” the
evidence that over two-thirds of legal immigrants are for family unification fuels groups which
rail against “chain migration;” and its studies that show a link between immigration and the
collapse of teen employment and employment of less-educated black workers fuels groups which
otherwise are insensitive to the plight of African Americans.
For example, in a recent publication, CIS noted that Latino immigrants disproportionately
use federal welfare programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and have a
disproportionately large share of families that have no federal tax liabilities.5 There are similar
state studies that document large local tax burdens, especially in states like California that have
generous safety-net programs and large immigrant populations.
Steven A. Camarota, “Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children,” Center for Immigration Studies
(April 2011) http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011
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4
Elsewhere I evaluate this evidence and recommend legal immigration mirror the educational
distribution of native-born adults and constrain the set of relatives that qualify for family
unification.6 Here, however, I am using this data presented by CIS to illustrate why a more
constructive and productive discourse on immigration reform must center on evaluation of
statistical evidence not personal narratives. (This discussion is separate from what should be
done about the more than 10 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States.)
What Can Be Done
Once more, in the name of multiculturalism, the freshman reader presents a compelling
ethnic narrative that is politically and socially charged. Does this mean that the selection process
goes through a checklist of ethnic groups: Jewish, Italian, Polish, etc. Moreover, when these
types of narratives are chosen, they should be complemented by social science and historical
research that would enable students to judge how representative the experiences presented are
and how accurate the political and social claims made. Having presentations by the authors
doesn’t exactly promote the critical thinking that colleges should enhance.
More important, this essay has raised the issue of our Core; a set of requirements, in my
opinion, that overly emphasizes the humanities and minimizes the social sciences. It is hard to
justify a Core that excludes economics, psychology, and health science; disciplines that provide
importance foundational knowledge crucial for developing an informed citizenry. Among other
things, these are disciplines in which gaining an understanding of quantitative reasoning would
be provided.
The central CUNY administration is pressing for changes that will eliminate our Core
requirements. Rather than defend this outmoded emphasis on the humanities, we should
undertake a discussion of a distributional set of requirements that will help prepare students for
the personal and social problems faced in the twenty-first century with the knowledge and skills
to evaluate competiting policies and behavior to solve them.
Robert Cherry
Department of Economics
Brooklyn College
May, 2011
6
Robert Cherry with Robert Lerman, Moving Working Families Forward: Third Way Policies that Can Work (NYU
Press, Oct 2011).
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