<i> A look at noteworthy addresses in the Southland.</i>

Tribalism

“Ethnic and racial warfare, it seems evident, will now replace the warfare of ideologies as the explosive issue of our time. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, India, South Africa; they are all in crisis. Ethnic tensions disturb and divide Sri Lanka . . . Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Cypress, Ethiopia. . . . Even nations as stable and civilized as Britain and France, Belgium and Spain and Austria face growing ethic and racial troubles. The virus of tribalism, as the British magazine the Economist said recently, ‘risks becoming the AIDS of international politics; lying dormant for years, then flaring up to destroy countries.’ ”

Multiculturalism in Public Education

Our public schools, in particular, have been along with the workplace a great agency of assimilation, a great means of transforming newcomers into Americans. . . In a way, the debate about the curriculum is a debate about what it means to be an American. What about multicultural education? When multicultural education means teaching our kids about women’s history, black history, Latino history, African history, Asian history--I am all for it. . . . And of course history should be taught from a variety of perspectives. It is well that our children try to imagine the arrival of Columbus from the viewpoint of those who met him as from the viewpoint of those who sent him. (However) when it calls on education to harden ethnic loyalties and to promote and perpetuate the separate ethnic and racial communities, that is a very different matter. Multicultural education in this militant sense leads to fragmentation, segregation, ghetto-ism. . . . It is not that the Western cultures are superior to other cultures as much as it is, for better or worse--our culture. . . . The aim of public education surely should be to strengthen the bonds of cohesion, not to weaken them. (Its aim) should be . . . to show how minorities have contributed to formation of the common culture and the distinctive American identity. Students from a minority background should not be herded away among their own, but should be taught to become participants and . . . shapers of the common culture.”

The Economy

“Hard times sharpen animosity and conflict. . . . Demagogues like David Duke and Leonard Jeffries are alike, portents of an angry and dangerous future. If the U.S. goes into a depression it will not be a melting pot, it will be a boiling pot. The bonds of national cohesion are potentially fragile already. . . . Jobs can do a great deal to relieve ethnic hostility, to reduce ethnic tensions and to encourage people of diverse ethnic origins to live together in harmony. . . . Let our leaders now make economic revival our top priority, let them be compelled to do so by reviving interracial coalitions of years passed, where whites and nonwhites join together. . . . Everyone who wants a job in this republic should be able to find one and the government itself can become the employer of last resort.”

Looking Ahead

* Sunday: Jackie Goldberg, former president of the Los Angeles Board of Education, will speak to the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research at 5:30 p.m. at the Miramar Sheraton in Santa Monica. For information, call (213) 759-6063.

* Monday: Amine Gemayel, former president of Lebanon, will speak to Town Hall at 8 p.m. at the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City. For information, call (213) 628-8141.

Announcements concerning prominent speakers in Los Angeles should be sent to Speaking Up, c/o Times researcher Michael Meyers, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.