Abstract

The ongoing debate over multiculturalism involves, among other issues, what might be called the quest for cultural validation: the desire of racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities to be seen as legitimate in their own right. Black, feminist, and gay subcultures, among others, wish to assert their particular differences from prevailing social norms and want to be accepted by the larger culture they are challenging. Legitimacy will be achieved when society incorporates the subcultural differences as normal social variation and when minorities secure the same rights and protections enjoyed by those in the mainstream. This process of validation and acceptance, slow though it may be, is characteristic of our liberal western democracy, so that the indigenous cultural "repertoire" or "palette" has become increasingly diverse.