Do you simply skip over any text that does not meet your preconceived notions? Japan has been criticized for their racism and xenophobia dozens of times on this board, (this haven of conservancy, I am sure you will agree) and has been publicly criticized for the same reasons for decades. (The 500 post cut-off on this board’s search function gets back to only December, 2008 when the search targets are “Japan* AND racism”.)
What is supposedly “common sense” about this? (Unless one is using the definition of common sense: the sum total of one’s prejudices.)
Many nations survive with multiple languages. Having a lingua franca is useful, but it hardly is required for government, economics, or other social functions.
Your claim of “linguistic imperialism” demonstrates a lack of historical awareness. The vast majority of native languages in North America were forcibly suppressed with students punished (or removed from their families) for continuing to speak them.
How common is it in countries where there is no majority race/ethnic group/religion etc for political parties and political issues to fall neatly along race/ethnic/religious lines? Brazil is usually held up as the example for this.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Your claim of “linguistic imperialism” demonstrates a lack of historical awareness. The vast majority of native languages in North America were forcibly suppressed with students punished (or removed from their families) for continuing to speak them.
[/QUOTE]
Yes. Spanish as well. When I was a kid it was frowned on a lot, to the point of physical punishment to speak Spanish in school. I have the memories of bruised knuckles to testify to this…and I’m not THAT old (well, ok…I’m definitely getting there). Native Americans were worse, IMHO unless you went to school on the pueblo, and even there it could be bad depending on the pueblo.
As to the overall question of the OP, I think diversity is good for all nations but I’d further refine it to within a nation and that it’s good both ways (i.e. whites need to be exposed to diversity, but so do other minorities, including to white folks). As a for instance, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to either black OR white (or Asian) people when I was a kid (and while I WAS exposed to native Americans it wasn’t a positive exposure either way). There just weren’t a lot of any of those types of people in my old neighborhood when I was growing up. Even in high school my main exposure to black or white was actually at the school (or the police). It wasn’t until I got out of the neighborhood and moved off and saw more of the world that I was exposed to different types of people as well as different ideal and cultures. Personally, I think that exposure has made me a much more well rounded (and not just my physical form :p) person than many of my peer group who never left the old neighborhood.
Okay, now I’m confused, because I didn’t say you said the thing you just said you didn’t say.
John, let’s put aside the semantic issue and look at the core question.
Suppose there are two countries: Mixotopia and Monotopia. Both have strong and stable multi-party democratic governments, rule of law, healthy capitalist free market economies, civil rights - in other words, all the things that make a country “good”. And they’re pretty equal in other significant factors like area, population, wealth, natural resources, education, etc.
So there’s one significant difference between them. The population of Mixotopia has a number of different ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups living in it - in fact, there’s no single identifiable group that forms a majority of the population. On the other hand, the population of Monotopia are all essentially members of one group - virtually everyone speaks the same language, has the same race, and belongs to the same religion. And these are just accidents of history that occurred peacefully. There were no wars or invasions or genocides or inquisitions that produced these situations.
Given these circumstances, which of the following do you feel is most generally true:
- Everything else being equal, I feel that Mixotopia is better off than Monotopia.
- Everything else being equal, I feel that Monotopia is better off than Mixotopia.
- I feel that the difference between the countries is insignificant and they are equal for all essential purposes.
For disclosure, I’ll say I picked choice #1, for the reasons I described in post #76 of this thread.
I already answered that question (see post #67), but you’re trying to narrow the discussion down to something narrower than it needs to be.
But did he say you didn’t say you said oh god I’ve gone cross-eyed.
FWIW, I vote for Mixotopia, because of the concern (by no means assured, just a slightly heightened risk) that, if diversity started to creep in to Monotopia, the citizenry would panic, and try to preserve their culture with restrictive laws.
Mixotopia, of course, is also at risk of restrictive laws, perhaps favoring one ethnic group over another, but at least they have the experience of diversity. The non-diverse country lacks this experience, and is slightly more likely to restrict immigration and have laws prohibiting “foreign” cultural practices.
Lo these many years ago, Collounsbury predicted failure for nation-building in Iraq. His reasoning was that people in Iraq were more loyal to their ethnic group than they were to the nation they lived in–and that a democracy cannot function under such circumstances. In order to have a stable democracy, people have to be willing to be a minority, to lose out on some issues important to them, because they consider the democratic process and the nation that runs it more important than they consider the success of their ethnic group.
I don’t know how completely I buy what he said, but it is at least a defensible position: a stable democracy is predicated on a common identity.
Japan is screwed up in many ways, but I’m struggling to see any positives of Finland welcoming in massive amounts of immigrants.
Count me on the ‘diversity is usually a negative’ side.
If your opponent has a stroke, technically, you win the debate.
I am curious what you don’t buy about that.
Nor am I sure if your last paraphrasing sentence is an accurate one. Willing to work as a minority in a larger structure doesn’t necessarily mean feeling a common identity. Maybe a common purpose. Eta: though you’re specifying a democracy, still would like that unboxed a little…
Well, he didn’t say he didn’t buy it. It’s an interesting idea, and on the face of it, quite plausible, but it’s also largely untestable and perhaps over-simplistic.
So you genuinely believe that if Syria was more homogenous, things would be fine?
In broken states, people will find stuff to fight about. If they don’t already have easy fault lines, they’ll just make some up. Between ethnicity, politics, religion, class, geography, etc. they will find something.
In functioning countries, people show an amazing ability not to kill each other, despite all kinds of diversity. It’s uncanny.
The important variable here is not diversity, it’s governance. Good governance and bad governance are both equally possible across difference ranges of diversity.
That would be your basic false dichotomy. I think it’s Humpty Dumpty, and won’t be able to be put back together again. If it weren’t so ethnically divided, maybe it could be.
I don’t think I was unclear.
Japan is, indeed, homogeneous in terms of ethnicity.
It’s not difficult at all. It’s just wrong.
Japan is not an ethnically diverse nation. They are nonetheless an economic powerhouse - the second largest economy in the world. So diversity is not necessarily a pre-condition for economic success.
Regards,
Shodan
Just to be clear, Japan is not 100% homogeneous. But on the diversity scale, it’s at the far end of “not diverse”. And, they don’t embrace what little diversity they do have, marginalizing those who aren’t “real Japanese”. In that sense, they take pains to NOT take advantage of what little diversity they do have.
That is demonstrably untrue, and I’m now confused about your motivations in this thread. Do you want to debate the meaning of homogeneous? I don’t get it. 
No, it is true. My motivation is to point out that a ethnically homogeneous nation like Japan can be economically successful. It addresses the question in the title.
Regards,
Shodan