I know that studying Latin finally helped make sense of English for me. This urgently needs to be investigated. Perhaps if we can find out what went wrong we can do something to reverse its decline. I will not reiterate my own complex ideas about how the African cultural heritage of the United States has spread around, while African-Americans have managed to develop a distinct culture. I will instead insist that we should all examine carefully any claims being made for multicultural diversity, to see to what extent they really are multicultural.
Language is one of the most important aspects of culture.
Without understanding a person's language you cannot understand their culture and without a strong multilingual component, multiculturalism is a lie. By creating a stark contrast between Anglophone WASP assimilation on the one hand, and preservation of ethnic separatism on the other, the author ignores issues like intermarriage. In multiethnic households in the U.S. English will become the home language and maintenance of an ethnic language will become that much more difficult. I feel strongly that language requirements should be universalized at all levels of American education, and that they should be given teeth. Multilingualism is an issue that we as educators should be militant about.