Elian Gonzalez--abcnews.com story

[Spillenger, Clyde]

I don't see what this has to do with "multiculturalism," a term which
generally seems to refer to the ways in which a given society (such as the
United States) responds to the reality of numerous peoples and cultures
being present within its borders.  What the news story calls to mind is the
anthropological view concerning the relativity of cultural norms, which is a
pretty important event in twentieth-century thought and long predates the
debate over "multiculturalism."  Whether we are obliged to be agnostic
concerning practices such as those described in the story, simply because
"that's the way they do things" (if in fact that is the case), is an
interesting question in its own right (my answer is no); but I don't think
it's a question of "multiculturalism," which has become a convenient
scapegoat for all sorts of lamentations about the decline of (certain)
values.

Clyde Spillenger
UCLA School of Law
(310) 825-7470
spilleng at mail.law.ucla.edu
Odd word errors may be caused by speech misrecognition or advancing
senility.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scarberry, Mark [SMTP:mark.scarberry at PEPPERDINE.EDU]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 11:14 AM
> To:   CONLAWPROF at listserv.ucla.edu
> Subject:      Elian Gonzalez--abcnews.com story
>
> Apparently when Elian's grandmothers visited him, they engaged in some
> strange (at least from an American point of view) behavior. Does this
> change
> anyone's mind about whether he should be sent back? Was this a kind of
> intimidation? Does multiculturalism require us to accept such conduct?
> What
> if it had been grandfathers doing something similar to a girl (as Dennis
> Prager asked on his radio show)? Is that a fair comparison?
>
> Here is an excerpt from the abcnews.com story. (The full story is at
> http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20000203_3425.html .  It is
> interesting
> that the story has received little national media coverage.)
>
>
> ***
> Paternal grandmother Mariela Quintana, describing the  meeting with Elian
> on
> Cuban state television, said the boy was  sad and timid at the start of
> the
> meeting at the home of a Miami  nun. Quintana said that in an effort to
> get
> Elian to warm up to  them, she teased by boy by biting his tongue and
> unzipped his  pants to "see if it's grown."
>
> The episode raised no eyebrows among Cubans who watched the  program
> Tuesday. In Cuba, mothers and grandmothers often tease  their young sons
> and
> grandsons in this fashion and such actions  are considered normal gestures
> of endearment.
>
> But the clip from the program, shown on local television  networks
> Wednesday, provoked a very different reaction in Miami ***
> ***
> Quintana's account of the incident came after the  grandmothers were asked
> by a child psychologist on a Cuban  television to describe how Elian
> cheered
> up in their company.
>
> "We'd joked at the beginning about how he'd lost his  tongue, so I got his
> tongue out of his mouth and I bit it, I  started teasing him, I even
> opened
> his fly, I said, 'Let me  look' ... at his parts ... 'Let's see if it's
> grown,' you know,  teasing him to cheer him up. Because at that moment, we
> felt so  much pain," Quintana said.
> ***
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