by Lance T. Izumi

About the author: Lance T. Izumi is a fellow in California studies with the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco, California.

At an Asian American Lawyers convention in 1993, I sat on a panel that, among other things, attempted to predict the future of race relations in post-riot Los Angeles. As the panel’s only conservative, it was interesting to watch my liberal counterparts perform all manner of mental and rhetorical gymnastics so as to avoid addressing the obvious reality that their self-created multiculturalist world was in shambles.

The 1992 L.A. riots exposed the fact that multiculturalism is based on a lie. Stripped of its euphemistic cliches, multiculturalism’s fundamental characteristic is its hostility to the majority culture of white Americans. The liberal Asian American activists who sat on my panel, like...