I can go with that. I’m not a fan of one-eyed cultural dogmatism or absolutism, either–don’t get me wrong. I’d like everyone to respect differences, and growing up with a multicultural background, I understand how arbitrary a lot of these things can be. I also know the problem isn’t with Muslims per se, because there’s enough extremist Christians, too. And like I said, Islanders are another group having problems integrating, and they’re often Christian anyway.
I do think, in Australia at least, tensions have increased over the last 20 years or so. I think it’s simplistic to ascribe the cause to any one group (including the Anglos), but I think tolerance has decreased steadily from all corners.
A former professor of mine is a leading academic regarding Canadian multiculturalism. He believes that there multiculturalism can only succeed when common ground is maintained with the two fundamental basics being fluency in one of the two official languages (preferably English) and belief and participation in political process (anywhere from a grassroots local farmers market committee or other organization to federal politics). Language being the more important of the two. His major concern is with the growing ethnic enclaves in Toronto and its effects on primary and secondary education. While English (and at times, French) is the working language in Canadian public schools, many students in enclave schools have a poor grasp and will completely disregard the language outside of the classroom as they have no need for it within their community.
He also mentions that CDN multiculturalism shares differences from the American melting pot, it is not nearly as distinct as it general Canadian population is lead to believe.
As my nickname suggests, I revere the memory of the New Deal. It was only possible because civil rights legislation was not part of the agenda. Millions of Southern Democrats and Northern blue collar workers would not have voted for Franklin Roosevelt if that vote meant political and social equality with blacks.
I like European Social Democracy. It only seems to work in countries where nearly everyone is white, of European descent. Muslims have a value system that is incompatible with the Enlightenment. Blacks turn every neighborhood they move to into an asphalt jungle of crime and moral depravity.
I hope Europeans on the left figure that out before it is too late.
On the other hand, whites and East Asians get along fine.
I forgot to say, sincerely, thanks for the summary. I had not thought of some of these issues as parts of multicultural policy.
I think a great deal of the rest of the thread points to my suspicion that discussions of European multiculturalism is really just about immigration. America and Canada apparently have it right and I hope these countries continue to value the diversity that people who are free to do what they wish with their lives tends to create.
While I hate to veer away from this point of consensus, I have to ask how you place the past treatment of Aboriginals, including The Stolen Generations in that sense of past less tense times.
Up to recent decades that Aboriginal population was the main diversity Australia had to deal with. Only recently has immigration significantly increased, five to six fold from 1992 to 2007. And while it is the case that 24% of Australian residents were born outside of the country, that diversity is mostly people from New Zealand or Great Britain with the Asian nations of China, Viet Nam, and India next up.
The race riot you brought up was not about not tolerating Asians; it was about Muslims and specifically Muslims of Arab descent, who currently represent only 0.3- 0.4% of the Australian population, and not even the majority of the Australian Muslim population.
Ibn seems to have a point: the issue when “multiculturalism” is brought up is usually actually the perception that the mainstream has of insularity among Arab Muslim immigrant populations, how different that population’s dress and beliefs are to the mainstream, and painting that whole community with the actions and statements of a few of its more extreme elements, not about pluralism or diversity in general.
This comment displays a remarkable ignorance regarding the era you clim to revere.
I have seen a number ads from the campigns to elect FDR, and all of the larger ads, (such as movie shorts), include attacks on Jim Crow.
From a 21st Century perspective, the ads probably did not go far enough, (although, under the Plessy v Ferguson decision, there was already a limit to how far they could go to end segregation), but there was a clear attack on Jim Crow in the FDR campaigns, FDR appointed numerous black undersecretaries to cabinet officers, (forming what became known as “The Black Cabinet”), and there were other efforts, such as commissioning the Tuskeegee Airmen, to mitigate the racism corrupting the nation.
You are probably right that more effort would have led to disaffected Democratic voters, but FDR did not simply ignore the unfair treatment of blacks in the way that you would like to falsely remember that period.
At least in the United States, I believe this is how most people view multiculturalism which, if you think about it, is multiculturalism in its most superficial form. People don’t get up in arms about the hijab because it’s different they get upset because of what they think it represents. (Given the complexity of the hijab what they think may or may not be true.)
Odesio
PS: Given your previous posts over the years,Even Sven, I don’t think you have a superficial stance on multiculturalism. I just think most Americans do.
As someone who has lived in Toronto all his life, I think your prof has it wrong. The notion that the ethnic enclaves in Toronto represent a “major concern” because folks within them don’t need to speak English is a myth - I’ve seen little evidence for it, and much evidence to the contrary.
What tends to happen is this: folks cluster in ethnic enclaves when they first immigrate, set up small retail establishments catering to their community; then what happens is that some of their kids, over time, move out - they move into different jobs, no longer want to (say) run a fish stall in Kensington Market. Their place is taken by new ethnic groups moving in; the 2nd generation move to condos, to new but higher class ethnic areas, or to the burbs. There is also the process of “gentrification” whereby young people seeking affordable housing move into formerly all-ethnic enclaves.
What you get inevitably is a sort of mix, moving over time. True, some can survive speaking only Ukrainian or whatever - but only on a low social level, as nannies to middle-class Ukranian families or the like. Inevitably, most of their kids will not be satisfied with such an existence - it is really only for first-generation immigrants.
Take the “chinatown” stretch of Spadina and Kensington Market. That was originally a heavily Jewish neighbourhood (my mother’s family lived there), and you can still find traces of that - in the occasional hatters with Jewish names, or the like - but long ago they moved out. Now it is “chinatown” along Spadina and Kensington market is more mixed … but that isn’t permanent, either.
A similar trajectory is seen in the so-called “Asian Court” or Agincourt area:
Bloor West Village used to be a solid Ukranian and Polish working-class neighbourhood, with Ukranian-speaking schools … now it is super trendy and the Ukranian elements are fading.
In short, Toronto demonstrates that there is no real necesity to have specific laws or policies in place to ensure eventual integration. That more or less happens by itself, so long as the immigrants in question are not trapped by a cycle of poverty and violence (for example, the greatest problems with integration appear to be with the English-speaking but gang-ridden Jamacan community).
Exactly this. As an American living in Germany, I was surprised to read American news reporting Merkel saying that multiculturalism had failed. When I asked German friends about the speech, they said Merkel was actually saying that German policies had failed with respect to their immigrant populations, primarily Turks, who have been in Germany in large numbers for decades and have never really integrated. This was not an anti-immigration rant as I’ve seen it portrayed in the US media, and it’s highly unlikely Germany is going to be implementing restrictive immigration policies considering they have negative population growth without immigration.
Having grown up in Los Angeles, I think the US has been much more successful than Germany with respect to immigration, and multiculturalism has been a great success in California (YMMV). You only hear so much controversy about immigration in the US because the media thrives on people bitching and moaning about any damn thing.
What you’ve described in this post sounds a lot like where my mother grew up in New Jersey in the 1940s. She was the granddaughter of Polish and Slovak immigrants. They lived in an Eastern European ghetto where the locals spoke a sort of Slavic esperanto. My uncle - my mom’s older brother - spoke no English until he started school. But by the time I was alive and going to visit them in the 1970s, everyone except the first generation immigrants spoke perfect English. Today my uncle has no trace of a foreign accent.
It’s crossed my mind a couple times that if she were growing up today in similar circumstances, the anti-immigration crowd would probably be making dire predictions about her community and its failure to properly assimilate.
It’s citizenry. KInda obvious, I would think. I also think it would help the discussion to use the word “is”: “who gets to decide what a country’s culture is to include and not include?”
So, the question still stands for you:
do you think that a host country has a right to prefer and want to preserve their culture?
As you phrased it, no. However, consider a different phrasing: do people have a right to do the things they want to do, as long as they’re not interfering with the things other people want to do?
Absolutely so. But being favored by the government of a particular geographic area doesn’t privilege you in any way in this arrangement: your citizenship is immaterial. What is material is whether your culture fucks around with other people.
I can’t help noticing you didn’t answer any of my questions.
You can judge and prefer whatever you like and make up your own criteria to do so. The question is, why should anybody else give a damn what you prefer? Why should that be the basis for laws? Why should we pretend there’s a factual basis for your preference?
No. Why do they need to? Your feelings about a culture are a personal matter. Slavery and the rights of women are matters of law and we don’t need to “prefer” one culture over another to handle it.