Arthur Ahrens of Branchport is the author of this article which is published here with permission. Views expressed by contributors are their own.

R.M.S. in Lebanon, CT, writes: I read that a recent poll reveals the majority of the U.S. disagrees with how President Trump is handling race relations.

This presents an excellent opportunity for the Biden campaign to put the Republicans on the defensive on racial issues. Biden ought to propose and call for a congressional vote on a constitutional amendment defining the United States as a multicultural society. This would compel the country to become more tolerant of different ethnic groups because multiculturalism asserts that: (1) all cultures that exist in this country are essential to its DNA and, (2) we will value participation from all individuals of any origin in all aspects of society.

If Biden did this, I think it would be devastating for the GOP. It would box in the Trump campaign as an opponent of ethnic tolerance, and it would badly split Republicans in Congress. Republicans who are more tolerant of social differences might support it, and those who are more nativist would vote against it. It would be sure to infuriate white nationalists and other ethnic extremists, but it would make them more marginalized than they are today.

Multiculturalism is also a worldview that more accurately reflects the reality of American history. Europeans, African-Americans, Hispanics, and hundreds of different Indigenous cultures have existed on what is now American soil since the colonial era. In other words, the country has been multicultural since its very beginning.

This would be nothing too radical, as Canada has had a constitutional provision defining the country as multicultural since the 1980s.

Arthur Ahrens

Branchport, NY 7/19/2020