In the pursuit of egalitarianism, an ideal wrenched far beyond what the founding fathers took it to mean, we have willfully blinded ourselves to home truths those solons well understood, not least the simple fact that some people are better than others — smarter, harder working, more learned, more productive, harder to replace. Some ideas are better than others, some values more enduring, some works of art more universal.
Some cultures, though we dare not say it, are more accomplished than others and therefore more worthy of study. Every corner of the human race may have something to contribute. That does not mean that all contributions are equal. We may find romantic appeal, esthetic power, and even political insight in cultures that never achieved technological sophistication. That does not mean we should equate them with our own. It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose.
And even were all cultures equal, that would not mean they made equal contributions in the shaping of the American ideal. In the effort to wish it so, we have warpingly redefined contribution and reduced its meaning. It is not necessarily a conspiracy of silence that the historical record is so thin in detailing women painters and writers of the early Renaissance or black nuclear physicists and Hispanic political leaders of the early twentieth century. Sometimes the record is thin because the accomplishments were too.
I expect many people will reflexively find these observations racist. But I am not asserting that, say, people of African descent cannot compete equally — only that their ancestral culture did not give them the tools and opportunity to do so. To me the real racism lies in the condescending assumption that we must equate all cultures to assuage African Americans, or any other minorities, instead of challenging them to compete with, and equal, the best in the culture where they live now.
[From page 14; emphasis added; and paragraph breaks inserted for readability.]