For many years the only way to find the speeches of Thomas Jefferson was to look for them in a book. Books, however, like television, are an example of a highly sophisticated and successful mass medium. Indeed, this has already begun to happen. Writing, like all media, continually creates fictions, but it is necessary to keep these fictions tuned to the continual demands and imperatives of multiculturalism. I don't remember much of the song, but the ending was, I once built a snow man And put him in the hall With a white man there's no man at all.
Multiculturalism implies a continual effort of construction and deconstruction.
It allows us to test our concepts by bringing them home, taking them inside, and seeing whether we end up with something more solid than a puddle of water. With a white man there's no man at all. This talk was delivered to the San Francisco Italian American Historical Society on August 3, 2000. For me, it was a particularly interesting experience. No one challenged me on that.