Commentary
Wednesday, February 15, 1995 Page 5
Redemption clock still ticking
The saga of the generation gap
continues. My particular chapter is
titled “Generation X,” and the
theme is attitude. More specifi
cally, the critics (otherwise known
as the current media) say my
generation has a cynical, lazy and
unfocused attitude about life.
I think we should be offended.
What they don’t see is that our
attitude is optimistic. It’s an
element of our survival in this
chaotic world.
“We” (my generation) are the
generation bom around the mid
’60s and the ’70s. “They” are the
Woodstock generation: the Viet
nam activists, soldiers, civil-rights
children, our parents. They’re
known as the generation that made
a change. They had a unifying
national focus for peace and love,
and they think the only issue we
have is trying to graduate from
college in four years.
They say the future of our
generation is in trouble because
we’re proven to be slackers. They
attribute our short attention span to
our MTV upbringing; our pro
longed college graduations to our
fear of the real world; our self
consumed attitude to the superficial
fads and uncreative subcultures to
which we belong. They say we’re
too lazy to enter the real world and
too lazy to find our own ideas.
Lazy, you say? Well, give me a
second to prove otherwise.
Foremost, their generation is not
putting itself in our shoes. The
forces against us are not as trite as
they may think. We may not have
the Vietnam War, but we have
nearly two million HIV-infected
people in the United States right
now, and we’ve watched nearly ^
200,000 of our friends and family
members die from AIDS since the
early ’80s.
Lara Duda
The two issues may not seem
comparable to them, but the
conceivable stress seems just as
real for us. We fear an abstract war
that every one of us is fighting
either directly or indirectly. We
feel the constant pressures of a
virus that has its highest death rate
in our generation, and yet we have
no one to blame. We can’t accuse
the government for innocent
deaths, but we must face the reality
of a possible doomed future for
ourselves and our children. We’ve
taken the issue into our own hands,
changing our lifestyles as a result.
But they haven’t acknowledged our
efforts; instead, they still call us
lazy.
Even if some of us do lack
motivation, isn’t it reasonable that
we wouldn’t be very anxious about
taking on the immense world
problems facing us, some of which
their generation has left to us?
Our depleting ecological system,
for instance, is a direct result of
generations of neglect. And with
the realization that each generation
gets its share of past burdens, we’re
tackling the issue. We’ve become
eco-activists, nature-hungry and at
the very least, recycle-conscious.
We can’t hide beneath the
clouds of free love and fun drugs.
^ In^^j^ime^ese were accepted.
They were considerecl experimental
phases expected for young adults.
Now we loiow the consequences,
and our serious and impatient
world insists that we don’t make
the same mistakes. We’re forced to
grow up faster. We’re pressured by
the forces of societal issues while,
just like past generations, we deal
with our own personal pressures.
But instead of one unifying
experimental phase of young
adulthood, we’ve created different
subcultures, into which we can
each mold so we can vent our
frustrations and pressures.
Our subcultures represent
rebellion, music, activism and
beliefs — the same things for
which their unified peace genera
tion stood. But their older genera
tion, part of which are the creators
of the Generation X term, ridicule
our subcultures for having uncre
ative trends and superficial con
cerns.
Yet if those who call us a
generation of selfish slackers would
look a little closer, they would see
that our intentions are good and our
efforts already have begun. In turn,
they would see that our subcultures
have the same intentions and serve
as the same creative outlet that the
unified Woodstock generation had.
Generation X has a fervent
concern in securing the future of
the world, but “they” haven’t given
us the time to prove ourselves.
When we are given the time, we
will not let down this generation or
the generations to come.
As the list of eternal bleakness
continues to balloon, our genera
tion must remember that we do
have a conscience and we’re not
slackers. The only attitude we have
is the one of realistic optimism in a
world that has been left to us.
Dnda is a Junior news-editorial and En
glish major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist
Instinct denies multiculturalisni
Nowadays the magic wand that
opens doors and flowers our speech
is the word multiculturalism. Not
only on our campus, but also
nationally and internationally,
multiculturalism is a concept that
fills the ears of the listener as much
as it does the mouth of the speaker.
With its round, full sounds, it is
as pleasant to pronounce as to hear.
Despite that its aesthetic and
conceptual beauty brought this
word into the spotlight, I still see a
problem with the whole idea. It lies
with the absolute hypocrisy that
surrounds multiculturalism, which
in itself is just a banal moderniza
tion of two Latin words. This
concept gained popularity thanks to
the over-simplistic attitude of
society as a whole, which sought to
erase decades of uniculturalism by
frantically waving the multicultural
banner.
I am obviously not against
multiculturalism as a concept; how
could I be? I am an Italian who
lived five years in Africa, married
to a Russian and studying in the
United States. My doubts, however,
arise when such a mask is used to
leave untouched the problems that
lie beneath the surface. I dislike the
whole concept of multiculturalism
when it’s used as a screen that
makes everyone more beautiful. It
is the nauseating “people’s per
sons” who promote the bettering of
humanity through a mutual
multicultural understanding. A
masterpiece of self-deception. The
destruction of such a notion is the
partial aim of my bi-weekly
reflections.
My position is that, alas, it is
merely utopian to think that we
ever will have a multicultural
society. It is simply against human
instincts, just like sincerity and
altruism.
It is an awful discovery, for you
Simon Uverani
“people’s persons,” but humanity
cannot do without prejudices and
preconceptions; that is who we are.
Partial proof of that lies right here
under our eyes, in the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln campus, where
despite the multitude of ethnicities
and nationalities, the strongest
bonds are formed among individu
als with the same cultural back
ground. This happens not by
chance, but by choice. Of course,
there can be the exception that
confirms the rule.
None of us wants to admit being
prejudiced, but the fundamental
reason that makes prejudices our
inseparable companions is that they
hold a basis of truth. Italians do
love fashion, Japanese do travel in
groups, Russians do drink vodka,
and on and on.
Thus, prejudices will remain. It
is, however, necessary to focus our
attention away from an artificial
cover to our problems and toward
knowing ourselves better. Painting
a house built with rotten wood will
make it look better, but it won’t
improve its structure. Similarly,
frantically waving the banner of
multiculturalism will not change
what’s inside the head. That,
instead, is what we have to work
on.
We should turn away from a
wishful-thinking view of the world
and ourselves to a more truthful
realization of our characteristics.
Only by taking control of our
thoughts will we be able to see the
inner paradoxes within a concept
such as multiculturalism. How can
we aspire to such an Eden-like
view of humanity, when Palestin
ians and Israelis kill each other
because of nationality?
Or in this country, where a
person is defined by the percentage
of blood he or she has of a certain
nationality. Never had I heard,
before coming to the United States,
a person being described like a
horse — as a quarter-, half- or
purebred. It seems incredible that
someone would actually keep track
of the origin of one’s blood. Ironic
is the fact that such classification
based on bloodlines emerged in the
melting pot of the world.
This proves that if people don’t
have physical boundaries to
respect, like in Europe, they create
their own. Very likely the biggest
void felt by newcomers to the New
World was the absence of preju
dices and nationalistic feelings,
which abound in the Old World.
As a reaction to the lack of such
reference points, a society with a
high number of prejudices was
bom. Evidence of this is the
multitude of nationalist jokes that
exist in the United States; this Is
unparalleled in any other country in
the world. Furthermore, the stark
divisions within the large cities of
the various ethnic groups show an
inborn need to associate with one’s
own kin.
If we cannot come close to a
multicultural society, we can be
tolerant of each other. Nowadays,
we have barely begun to be open to
new cultures, and that is a great
improvement compared to only a
few decades ago.
Liverani is ajaalor advertising major aad
a Dally Nebraskan colamaist
Legal procedures
may not be moral
Those trying to ram through
the appointment of Henry W.
Foster Jr. as surgeon general say
the abortions he performed and
his involuntary sterilization of
retarded women are (in the case
of abortion) or were (in the case
of the sterilization) “accepted
medical procedure” at the time.
This reasoning is what is
wrong with our culture. It
reflects our spiritual malnutri
tion, which has led to many of
the social problems we now
lament.
Even a spokeswoman for the
National Organization for
Women was shocked when she
heard about Foster’s sterilization
procedures. “I’m appalled,” said
Diane Welsh, president of the
New York City chapter of NOW
“NOW is an organization that’s
for choice for women in any
reproductive health matter, and
we’re utterly opposed to any
thing resembling forced steriliza
tion.”
(Does this mean NOW can be
expected to withdraw its support
of Foster? No, because abortion
is more important to NOW than
forced sterilization.)
In defending the
administration’s choice of Fostei
and his sterilizations of the
retarded, Health and Human
Services Secretary Donna
Shalala said, “Medicine has
changed.... In the ’60s (Foster
did) a procedure that was
legal at the time.” She is cer
tainly right about medicine
changing. Throughout most of
the profession’s history, a doctor
swore an oath never to perform
or assist in an abortion. When
the Supreme Court ruled in 1973
that abortion could not be made
illegal, Hippocrates was rewrit
ten along with the law.
We’ve seen before what
happens when medicine changes
based on shifting moral stan
dards rather than absolutes. The
eugenics movement came of age
in the 1930s, and its practice of
ensuring sound offspring was
nowhere more effectively
applied than in Germany.
When the Prussian Council or
Health met on July 2,1932, its
goal was to relate eugenics to
public welfare. (Isn’t that what
the Dr. Fosters of our time do
with the “unfit” and the unborn?)
According to members present
who reported on the meeting,
“the legal approval of a strict
eugenic sterilization (not
castration), under suitable
controls, is demanded.”
On July 14,1933, the Law for
the Prevention of Hereditary
Disease in Posterity was enacted,
Cal Thomas
effectively legalizing voluntary
and forced sterilization for
individuals with afflictions
defined by the state as contribut
ing to a dilution of the gene
pool. This law was necessary,
according to its backers, to guard
against an explosion of “defec
tive” people who might soon
• outnumber and overrun the
“normal” Germans.
The Journal of the American
Medical Association carried an
article in its Sept. 9, 1933, issue
called “Sterilization to Improve
the Race,” which helped form
part of the rationale accompany
ing the sterilization law: “Count
less individuals of inferior type
and possessing serious hereditary
defects are propagating un
checked, with the result that
their diseased progeny becomes
a burden to society and is
threatening, within three genera
tions, to overwhelm completely
the valuable strata ... sterilization
is the only sure means of
preventing the further hereditary
transmission of mental disease
and serious defects.”
Accepted medical procedure at
the time.
Perhaps during Foster’s
confirmation hearing (if the
nomination gets that far) some
one might ask him what caused
the change in accepted medical
procedure of sterilization, and
whether he now views that
practice as wrong and immoral.
Someone might also ask him if,
in view of the history of Ger
many, acceptability and legality
ought to be the only criteria by
which a physician decides
whether to engage in certain
practices. Might abortion, like
sterilization, someday be
regarded with the horror and
revulsion we now feel about
once-accepted medical proce
dures in Germany?
The goal of public health
should be preserving the welfare
of the least fortunate and the
weakest, from the unborn to the
mentally and physically handi
capped. That is accepted
medical procedure.
(c) 1995 Los Angeles Times Syndicate
I lit*®
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Mike Lukovich
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