Multiculturalism. Just writing it feels like a release. Have I said something dirty or invoked the truth?

What is at stake in multiculturalism? Why should we care? I ask this because I know that many students at Iowa State do not care. Well, you should. You have no choice.

The future is coming. It’s already here. You are the past. You are in love with the dead.

The right would have us believe that multiculturalism is one more weapon used by the all-powerful left. They recruit us at an early age. I remember in middle school a lesbian Bolshevik (dare I say Jew?) came to me and told me that one day I would join the great world conspiracy against the right-eous. The politically correct, affirmative action, civil rights — all are ploys of the left. And multiculturalism has its place too.

Multiculturalism is just one more way for the left to push its agenda of radical social change. As an idea, multiculturalism is obviously absurd, but here in the university the left can push it hard enough to make even semi-intelligent people believe it’s a noble cause. Once people get back out into the “real world”, they inevitably realize that multiculturalism just goes against common sense.

Well here’s your wake up call, white America. Multiculturalism is the real world. In a very few years, minorities combined will make up more of the population than whites. Multiculturalism is not an academic idea. It is the truth. If you are afraid of a future in which whites are a minority, then start getting afraid, because it’s going to happen. If you casually avoid sitting next to an African American when you get on the bus (and, honestly, how many of you do?), you’d better face the fact that soon, there will be no place else you can sit. Are you afraid?

The right is in love with an America that never was. They vow to take us back to the fifties, when all were white and all was right. The right says these things because they see the mad glaze in the eyes of white America. They see the fear.

Every time they see that fear they haul out the corpse of our “forefathers” and parade it around. They wag their fingers at the left, at homosexuals, at socialists, at all of us perverts who live on the fringe. But it is the fringe that is the heart of America. We are the future, and white America is afraid of real democracy.

You know, the plain truth is that many of the things the right says about our forefathers wanting this and that are correct. Our forefathers would probably be enthusiastic conservatives today, but, then, our forefathers had a limited view of democracy in which only landed white males could vote. Luckily, our forefathers are dead, and the dead have no vote. Who cares what they thought? We live, and we live in a republic. Let the better parts of the vision of our forefathers live in us. Do not mourn for the rest.

Multiculturalism is a more pressing issue for whites than it is for minorities. Minorities only have to watch the right parade around its corpse. Whites are asked to dance.

Are you afraid of minorities? It’s time to be honest. Do you see them as a mass of poor people who will destroy this country?

If you do, your vision of America belongs in a funeral home. Stop stinking up the place with your fears, because some of us want to live. The people who are different are alive. You are not.

But try something. Sometime, try walking through an ethnic community. You might find that it’s much easier to breathe. You might find that your fears are not your own. The right teaches you to fear change in the name of common sense and traditional values. You fear that we are coming for your children so that you will not have to face the fact that your children are coming to us. They can only stand so much of your fear and hatred, and that is good. They come to the fringe because that is where the life is.

The past is dead. White America is ending and thank God. It was never something that we owned. It was something that possessed us.

Now we have a chance to be free. We’ve always been told that we live in the land of the free, but throughout our history, most have been oppressed. But it won’t go on for much longer. Cling to the past if you feel you must. Dance with the dead. You are dancing into the sunset. The rest of us are headed toward the future with bright eyes.

If you believe in democracy, if you really love your fellow woman and man, then join us. All are welcome. As for the rest of you, keep on dancing. The music is fading.

Brian Johnson is a junior in English and philosophy from Amarillo, Texas.