Books

OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN: White Teachers, Students of Color, and Other Cultural Conflicts in the Classroom, by Lisa Delpit. (The New Press, $23.)

Of these recently published books examining the role of multicultural education in the fight against racism, two fervently argue that teachers will continue to discriminate, unwittingly or not, against children of color unless they are made aware of the cultural differences that shape their learning styles. But the first, Richard Bernstein's Dictatorship of Virtue, takes a sharply critical view of that notion, arguing that multicultural zealots, desperately wanting to affirm minority cultures, actually isolate the very children they most want to help.

Bernstein acknowledges that racism yet flourishes, but he sees it as an evil that must be attacked with the ordinary but elusive virtues of courage and compassion. The new multiculturalism, he suggests, relies less upon a moral compass than upon an enlightened elite who attack the racist virus with steady doses of diversity. One goal of this pining insistence on diversity is to help teachers and students surrender an unconscious addiction to Eurocentrism, the festering canker of so...