The Stuff Multiculturalism is Made of

I have to learn to write and edit to length. I didn't particularly care for the edited version of my submission to CC. Don't get me wrong, it needed editing! I was supposed to do about 500 words and landed somewhere just south of 700. Plus, some thoughts were needlessly complex. No doubt, it needed editing. However, in the copy editors' apparent attempt to "correct" my occasional use of colloquialism (and, strangely, eliminate every transition word), some of my meaning was (in my opinion) muddled.

I find solace in what a writer-friend of mine says, "They own it once you let it go." At least they put a brotha in print!

Nonetheless, it got me thinking. Perhaps the task of editing (and similar gate-keeping responsibilities) in the brave new world of more democratic access must be as interpretive as it was heretofore pragmatic. Perhaps gate-keepers must now also be anthropologists, increasingly immersed in the imaginative space (culture) of new democratic participants enough to translate thought as well as they proof text.

It's a bit much, I know, but such seems the stuff of which multicultural dreams are made.