Sadly, no. He went into the school and everything.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=468020&highlight=beaver
Fairly good chance that you’ve nailed the original source of the error, but by the time it got to Sam’s kid they were indeed teaching that frogs and beavers are both amphibians.
I know what you mean. I hate to go back to the food example once again, as culture is much more than whatever you eat, but to me a great illustration of the American melting pot is the fact that all over the world, people think of hot dogs and hamburgers as “American”, not German, food. Plenty of formerly “ethnic” elements have been integrated into American mainstream culture.
On the other hand, that’s not what most people have in mind when they think of multiculturalism. To them, what it means is that minority cultures (usually immigrant cultures) are allowed to keep some practices that are tradition for them, even if they are different from the practices of the majority culture. So it’s less of a question of “how diversity affects us all” and more of a question of “what does it mean to be a citizen of this country”. There is a lot of good in this idea, in the sense that in a country whose citizenry largely came through immigration, a variety of different practices is inevitable, and we want to recognize that it’s acceptable. But even countries largely built on immigration have some founding values that are not negotiable, so the answer to this question, “what does it mean to be a citizen of this country?”, is not “anything”. For example:
I think that in the case of France, the problem is more that some practices are judged incompatible with the values on which France is founded. For each of these practices, one may agree or disagree, but it’s not a preposterous idea.
I also want to comment on this:
I understand that erislover’s point is that some forms of multiculturalism seek to maintain the “cultures” separate, if not physically at least in terms of influence, to keep one of them pure and not change it at all. I suppose this could happen, but for the most part, I want to point out what I believe is a fact about multiculturalism that its proponents (and opponents) are not always aware of: as soon as an ethnic culture comes to general mainstream awareness, it’s necessarily “dead” in the sense that it’s split from its source and consists mostly of a collection of largely unchanging ideas and practices. Ukrainians in Canada aren’t the same as Ukrainians in Ukraine, for example. And when cultures are essentially dead, they eventually stop existing and remain only as folkloric quirks.
I find it funny that you think of potato salad, hot dogs (which I even mentioned in this post, without reading yours first!) and brownies as “non-ethnic” foods, while paella, noodles in peanut sauce and meatballs are ethnic. Maybe they won’t be so ethnic in the future, based on the experience of hot dogs. White Americans shouldn’t denigrate their culture, even when they have trouble defining it. It’s always hard to define majority cultures, since cultural and national identification are usually done in comparison to “the other”, but they’re still there, they’re good, and they’re not as bland as you may think.
I don’t disagree with your main point that in accommodating people of minority cultures, we should know where to draw the line, Sam, but surely the question of whether Mounties should be allowed to wear turbans or not isn’t really so major? If that’s the worse problem the shock of cultures causes us (it isn’t) we should consider ourselves lucky. And I think you’re largely arguing against strawman liberals. Plenty of progressives, feminists for example, will severely condemn any attempt to offer Sharia-based arbitration in Canada, to take another of your examples.
I’m aware that there’s not lock-step uniformity here. I also don’t agree that the Mountie symbolism is trivial - I can’t think of a more universally recognized symbol of Canada than a Mountie in his red uniform. It’s these symbols that help create a sense of shared culture. Water them down at your culture’s peril.
And the funny thing is, we go way out of our way to preserve such symbols in other cultures. We treat First Nations symbols with reverence. Should we treat our own Canadian symbols as somehow being expendable or trivial?
But let’s take a step back and look at the melting pot example. I was taught in school that the big difference between Canada and the U.S. was that the U.S. was a melting pot, and Canada was a ‘cultural mosaic’. I was also taught that there was no question that Canada’s way was superior.
What is meant by this is that there is an ‘American Culture’ that all Americans are expected to share. When you come to America, you are an American first. Sure, you can keep your cultural trappings. You can keep your religion, and all of that stuff. But you must also accept the shared values of America. Free speech, individual rights, the constitution in general. When you come to America, it’s supposed to be because you want to be an American - not a German or a Pakistani living within America’s border. You are expected to subordinate your own culture to the American culture when the two come into conflict. Americans generally hope that immigrants become more and more ‘American’ and leave more and more of their own culture behind.
A ‘Cultural Mosaic’ on the other hand, has no common underlying culture. Canada then becomes a place where different cultures can carve out their own little piece of Canada, and all our cultures together make a beautiful, multicultural tapestry. A country of of many cultures, bound together by geographical borders and a minimum of shared cultural norms. There is no expectation of assimilation, no expectation that you become ‘Canadian first’. Hell, there’s not even a common understanding of what it means to be ‘Canadian’, unless it’s “not American”.
A cultural mosaic is an explicitly multicultural construct. In Canada, we made it law with the Canadian Multiculturalism Act in 1988, which has these stated goals:
The act requires the Canadian government to go out of its way to keep immigrant cultures distinct, to promote the use of their own languages, and it demands that our political and economic institutions take into account the cultures of other countries. It also explicitly says that the character and laws of Canada going forward will be determined by considering the needs and desires of all the cultures within.
This isn’t a trivial difference from the way America works. It’s the philosophy that allows Quebec to protect its own culture, and for our constitution to be set up so that exceptions to our rights can be made circumstantially. It’s a philosophy which reflexively downplays any sort of Canadian exceptionalism (except the exceptionalism of saying we’re best because we don’t have exceptionalism). It’s also the attitude which demands that Canadians allow Sharia law within Canada.
I had a look at my daughter’s reading list in Social Studies this year (they studied Canadian history). It’s a very explicitly ‘balanced’ reading list. There’s a book about an immigrant from the Ukraine who comes to Canada - and finds out that Canada’s not all it’s cracked up to be. A book about what a bastard Sir John A. McDonald was, and about the poor treatment of workers on the Trans-Canada railroad. There are two books about Japanese internment in WWII. No books about Canadian heroism in that war, although we were plenty heroic. I didn’t see anything at all that mentioned Canadian valor in WWI and WWII.
Every book about the native population portrays them in an extremely flattering light. Not a single negative book. Nothing about the wars between the Cree and the Blackfoot, but several books on the whiskey trade and how it damaged the people of the First Nations. Other books on Canadian history focus on our failures, our mistreatment of natives, our rebellions - and finally our enlightenment as we learn to embrace other cultures and create the tapestry of the multicultural Canada.
As I said, it’s ‘balanced’. I don’t think there was a conscious effort to make Canada look bad or to denigrate Canadian culture. I just think the list was put together by people hyper-sensitive to ‘jingoism’ and who felt that any positive book about Canada must be offset by the ‘other point of view’, and whose beliefs in multiculturalism led them to avoid books critical of any other culture. In fact, the reading list comments beside the books repeat over and over again, “This book is good for a more balanced view of Canada, showing its negative aspects as well as its good aspects.”
No one denies that there are negative aspects to any culture or country, Canada included. But when all other cultures are presented in simplistic homilies and only their benefits described, while Canada’s culture is presented in a way designed to cast doubt on the essential goodness of Canada outside of the individual ethnic communities within, you set up a situation in which your own culture begins to look inferior - that it shouldn’t even exist other than as a generalized tolerance and acceptance of all other cultures.
The inherent contradiction here is that all cultures have value, so to promote the value of culture we’re going to explicitly deny that there is a uniquely Canadian culture worth protecting.
A “stated goal” is meaningless.
Reading the entire text of the Act, nowhere does it even suggest Canada should not have common culture or that Canadian should share values. There’s no logical connection between what it actually says and such a position.
In fact, the Act really says nothing at all. It mandates nothing.
Y’know what? I’d actually like to thank your leftist contributors here on the board. I now know that a substantial proportion of you eagerly dream of me and mine being horribly killed by a terrible disease, and that most of the rest find the thought at least amusing and pleasant to imagine, while daydreaming about hwo it would “cleanse the gene pool”. Ironically, this rather proves my point about the Leftist roots of Fascism. I am particualrly amused by modern-day liberals leaping back into the arguments of the Progressive progenitors of Eugenics and Nazi genocide.
Um… yeah. There’s nothing at all contradictory there.
Anyway, as far as the Mounties go… well, I’m not a Canadian, so this is going to take a certain amount of projection, here. But if I were patriotic Canadian, what would it be about the Mounties that made me proud of them? I don’t think it would be strictly the fashion sense, although those uniforms are pretty snazzy. I’d think it would be more along the lines of pride in the system of laws and protections that define Canada as a nation, and which the Mounties exist to serve and enforce. Which, of course, include a guarantee of religious freedom. So, when you have a situation where a Sikh wants to be a Mountie, and wants to wear the headdress mandated by his religion, the tension here isn’t between respecting Canadian culture and respecting Sikh culture. The tension is between respecting two different facets of Canadian culture: the Mountie as a symbol of Canadian law, and the idea that in Canada, any sort of job is open to everyone, regardless of their religion. The people who support allowing Sikhs to serve without wearing the standard issue hat aren’t doing so out of a disrespect for Canadian culture, they’re doing so out of a deep respect for a different aspect of Canadian culture. You ask what’s more Canadian than a Mountie? To me, it would be a Mountie wearing a turban. That’s more than just a uniform, that’s an explicit statement about the values that define your nation.
At least, that’s my opinion on the matter. Of course, I’m an American, so it’s pretty lucky that I know Canada is a whole separate country, and not just Really North Dakota.
We’ve only got a few nutcases answering that dreadful Pit thread with agreement. The TeaWhatevers are mostly just brainless dupes–albeit with nasty racist & xenophobic traits. Some of them might recover–and there’s no guarantee their children (“me and mine”) will follow them once they discover the real world. And here you are proudly swinging around your TeaWhatever!
I don’t share those fantasies, although I have wished that the Pioneers of Neoconservatism embarked on a long hunting trip with Dick Cheney. Their numbers might shrink, but they’re mostly past contributing to the gene pool anyway. (Their members have already shrunk.) And it’s just a coincidence that 99% of them are Old White Men–but that statement might just bring this thread back to the OP.
I think the main problem here is that definitions of “Multiculturalism” vary & its enemies tend to have define it in ways the rest of us don’t. How odd that most English Only folks aren’t all that good with their own language! Perhaps that’s why reviewers found Michael Lind’s cited book confusing. Good on him for overcoming his Neoconservatism, but this Texan was never so misguided as swallow it.
(To our Resident Canadian: Haven’t the Mounties abandoned The Red Uniform for everything but ceremonies? I loved Due South but always considered it Northern Magical Realism.)
Canada does have its own culture. And I think it’s getting stronger. My point is that this is not what the multiculturalists want. They want Canadians to be people who accept all cultures equally and who invite others to live here with their cultures intact, to add to our cultural mosaic.
Their belief in this causes them to often reflexively take the side of other cultures or to denigrate their own. Moral relativism is usually part of the currency of multiculturalism - we have no right to judge anyone else, because there is no absolute right or wrong - only culture and cultural identity.
I know I’m talking in generalities. I know that not every multiculturalist thinks this way. Think more of ‘tendencies toward’ rather than absolute lock-step conformity.
A Mountie in traditional gear may be a widely recognized symbol of Canada, but that’s the “Canada” of tourist gift shops, with beaver plush toys, “Canada, eh?” t-shirts and tiny bottles of maple syrup. Not anything that I really care about. And I honestly don’t hold the RCMP in any great esteem. Maybe it’s different for an Albertan, to whom the RCMP means law coming to the Great West and still being enforced today, but the point is that it’s not universal to all Canadians.
And without wishing to hijack this thread, I want to point out that I’m shocked that Alberta still doesn’t have a provincial police force and relies on the RCMP outside major cities. If there’s a province I’d expect to see take law enforcement into its own hands, it’s this one. Maybe the Mountie really is a highly respected Canadian symbol for Albertans.
Canadians build their national identity in contrast to the US, which is the obvious “other”. Doesn’t mean their perception is accurate. There is a Canadian culture, or perhaps a few distinct Canadian cultures, but in any case it’s not true that it’s a myriad of cultural communities sharing public space. Canada is as much of a melting pot as the US is.
You may have realized that in Canada as well, there is a debate about cultural minorities desiring their cultural practices to be accommodated by the majority. The consensus is that there is a line to be drawn somewhere, we just disagree about where to draw it.
As Rick points out the Act doesn’t really “require” much of anything. It reads more like a lofty statement of principles than a text of law.
Sorry Sam, but the philosophy of cultural mosaic is in no way what “allows” Quebec to protect its own culture. Nothing “allows” the culture of Quebec to exist and thrive, it does so because it’s been there, evolving and changing, since French colonists first arrived in Canada. We don’t exist through government fiat.
In fact it’s befuddling that you think the concept of cultural mosaic is responsible for the existence of Quebec as a society. Quebec isn’t a “cultural community” (one of the many in multicultural Canada), it’s a national group with its own cultural diversity. I get the feeling English Canadians are so used to think of ethno-cultural communities that this concept flies right over their heads.
It doesn’t seem to make Canadians any less patriotic. And in any case, the goal of historiography isn’t to inflame national pride but to be able to discern how events shaped our history, while keeping a critical eye on them. If you learn about the poor treatment of railway workers, chances are a link will be made with the construction of the railway and its influence on the country, and to the workers’ movement and its influence on the country and the world.
Maybe I went to school during another time, but I did learn that the Hurons were almost driven to extinction during their wars with the Iroquois. I’m not romanticizing the natives, but their importance in Canadian history is undeniable.
I’ll grant you that if there’s one word to describe the perception we have of ethno-cultural groups, it’s simplistic. But this is a consequence of what I described earlier: as ethnic groups integrate into Canadian society, they become less of living cultural groups and more of bearers of folklore. So you tell a few folk tales and describe a few presumably traditional recipes, and there you go. Frankly I don’t think being reduced to a few folk elements on top of the majority culture is anything to be envious of. You may think the majority culture is getting the short stick, but it’s always the default and presented much more three-dimensionally than any ethnic culture.
I don’t think people deny that there is a uniquely Canadian culture worth protecting. They may disagree with each other over what it is exactly, but in my experience Canadians are definitely patriotic and strongly hold on to their culture.
Did you mean to post this in another thread? Maybe [thread=571701]Imagine no teabaggers[/thread]? (And do note that the opinions you attribute to “leftist contributors” are actually that of the OP of this thread, who was bitten by I don’t know what bug today.)
I guess it’s just that I’ve never met such people or, for that matter, even heard of any, that makes me wonder who it is you’re disagreeing with. You seem to be branding “multiculturalism” as being made up of its very dumbest proponents.
I don’t think that “multiculturalism” means what Sam Stone & his compadres seem to think it means.
Hmm… I was going to resort to Stupid Internet Trick #37 & post an online definition of “multiculturalism”–to show that their unspoken definition of the word was incorrect. But I found something much more interesting–the Multiculturalism articles at The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
Now I know where Stone, et al., get their ideas. Guess what? The Randroids are agin’ multiculturalism.
Oh for God’s sake. Really? You’re going for the guilt by association ad hominem attack? How lame.
But Sam, that’s what you’re doing. You’re plucking select examples of “multiculturalists” out of thin air, implying they’re presentative of a significant portion, if not the majority, of supporters of multiculturalism, and assigning to them a position that you can’t demonstrate anyone actually holds.
Apparently many do expect ethnic subcultures to remain static, or at least distinct identities. There are “Black Nationalists,” for instance, who still maintain Malcom X’ idea of permanent separatism. My thinking is that the best conceivable future for African-Americans is one where there are plenty of black people everywhere but no black neighborhoods anywhere, and there is no “black community” any more save in the vague and attenuated sense that we now have an Irish-American community or an Italian-American community. Lind’s thinking on this point is similar.
At one time, Alberta did have its own provincial police force. But the province opted to disband that force and to go with the RCMP option. I believe cost-effectiveness had something to do with it, but I’m not sure. At any rate, Alberta has at least tried the idea, and decided it’s not for Alberta; and to the best of my knowledge, there are no plans or discussions to change the arrangement.
I will say that traffic enforcement outside major cities is now done by both the RCMP and a “county sheriff,” who can attend at accidents, and who has the power to enforce speeding laws, dangerous driving laws, and the like. In addition, the Alberta Ministry of Transport now also has roving patrols (similar to Ontario’s) looking for commercial carriers who may be overweight, or unsafe, or otherwise unfit to operate on provincial highways. It is true that neither of these functions resemble the breadth of powers of the OPP or SQ, but both of these provincial initiatives seem to have freed up the RCMP so it can get on with more important work in the province.
Did you ever read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? He ends it in Mecca–where he realized that there were Muslims of all colors. We really don’t know how his ideas would have developed further, because he was murdered soon after.
What new, fearful Black Separatist movement is recruiting members who want to live in walled ghettos? Really–where is this a threat?
I’m Irish-American but I could “pass” as a WASP if I wanted to. Should the NAACP disband to please Lind? I’m glad he got over that Neoconservative thing, but quite a few Texans were never fooled.
Ha, that’s too fitting not to mention: the German Football Association has released this spot before the world cup to celebrate the German team’s diversity by showing a garden party of their parents. It’s rather kitschy, but the sentiment is real in quite a lot of the population.
In that context, an article about the giant German flag that immigrants in Berlin have put up and needed to defend against left-wing activists.
Another article about the multicultural German team, and a German language interview with the Tunisian-German rapper who made the unofficial world cup song.
I think of it this way too. For example, I am a Latino college student. I get financial aid from programs that want to encourage diversity, which means I get money for being of a different race. However, I like to believe that all human beings are of the same race, the human race. But is that even possible? Is it possible to be different, yet the same? Why do we use the term minority and majority? Multiculturalism or all human beings are equal?