What is multiculturalism?

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When I ask different people about what multiculturalism is I get different answers. Some people tell me "Multiculturalism is when Muslim women want the right to wear Muslim headgear in their driver's licence photo even though other women don't have that right." Other people tell me "Multiculturalism is when people from different cultures can live in the same country as long as they follow the same laws." Which one is it? It can't be both.

I don't think that people should get special privileges due to their religion or cultural background but I don't understand why some people want the burqa to be banned entirely.

Last edited by DarthMetaKnight on 18 Nov 2012, 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would say the latter.
It's people living in the same area and getting along, despite different native languages, different food, different clothing styles, and different holidays.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SReDcW0fokE[/youtube]

Sounds like a good definition to me. Now a person might want to qualify the "getting along part." Traditionally and presently those countries with the highest diversity of cultures i.e. ethnic groups..have a bad habit of forgetting that part. Africa is a good example of the impact of a multicultural society. They kill each other like crazy.

self-segregation.

Add to that cultural relativism, polarised attitudes and sectarianism.

Okay ... Pat Condell is saying that people shouldn't get special privileges due to their religion and cultural background. I agree with him there.

Here's the thing: Pat Condell supported banning the burqa entirely in one of his other videos. I totally disagree with him there.

He didn't.

From the video Ban the burka:



He has never advocated an outright ban. I agree with his stance - I don't like the ugly, threatening thing, but I don't agree with a ban either.

I think of multiculturalism as the ability to understand that there are other cultures different from our own, not only because they wear funny clothes and eat different kinds of food or that sort of thing, but because they also have a different set of values than our own, and may have a different view of what's right and wrong, and that instead of judging them from our point of view and using our cultural values, we must try to understand why do they do the things they do, and where does that come from, and be patient when such differences arise.

See what I mean? Everyone ends up talking about Islam. No-one talks about the Chinese, Indians, Caribbeans, Eastern Europeans (although I also oppose the open door policy), most of whom are absolutely fine and simply don't cause us the same problems, even if they don't always integrate that much. I wonder why?

I'm glad that that has been cleared up.

If "multiculturalism" really means "special privileges for people from non-western cultures" then the definition of this word needs to be altered. Giving special privileges to people from other cultures should be called "culture-based legal discrimination".

"Multiculturalism" should mean "letting people from different cultures live together as long as no culture-based legal discrimination is taking place".

That sound better.

Well, aside from a brief mention in the OP, it's because you brought up Pat Condell and DMK mentioned another of his videos. That gave you an excuse to give your two pence on the burqa. Nobody "ended up talking about Islam", you just saw what you wanted to see. Again.

Multiculturalism is multiple cultures coexisting peacefully in the same country.

Dang you hit the nail squarely on the head. Very similar to MLK's dream. It was for equality of opportunity.not affirmative action..race based quotas etc. The same commie liberals who turned the dream into a night mare will no doubt turn multiculturalism into another bad dream come true.

In One, there are many.

The opposite of the melting pot.

The problem isn't the physical differences that separate groups, though even that could present issues.

The problem is the same as the problem with having many Gods... you have competing moralities and value systems. When that is tolerated, even sharia has a home in mainstream society, amongst many other competing forces.

America is a big country, so some groups who have the contempt of the many can flea to remote locations to practice their identity that is not tolerated. But for the most part, e pluribus unum still exists, but the Left in America has done a wonderful job eroding this foundational cornerstone of American society.

Multiple cultures living together.

The issue is complicated, because in order for multiple cultures to coexist, either one culture must have hegemony in some sense, or some new cultural medium has to be constructed as a compromise between the many. Multiple cultures with very different values cannot fully integrate.

So, let's take an example: Let's say that you're hiring employees. You have a culturally based expectation that employees are there on the dot. Your workers are from a culture that doesn't value punctuality. Whose values will win? How about this, your culture is willing to tolerate other religions or a certain racial/cultural sub-group, and their culture isn't. Your culture believes that women's education is a matter of moral regard and that treating women as less valuable than men is a violation of human dignity and even child abuse, and they don't care whether women are even literate.

When we have a conflict, the simple answer is that in the West, Western values dominate and incorporate more and more things into them. Western institutions control society and even increasingly try to incorporate other aspects into them.(think about Che Guevara shirts and how that's an effort of our current institutional framework to even incorporate dissonant values into itself) Other cultures are tolerated because the West values tolerance, but if a major conflict or an area where our tolerance runs thin occurs, the dominant cultural beliefs feel the importance of their role to step in. Western culture enforces LOTS of its mandates, all of the time. Even multiculturalism, in so much as it exists, is an outgrowth of Western culture, than it is a neutral thing that emerged out of some bargaining session with other cultures.

And I think that because it's a construct that acts as if it is an essence and deeply rooted, when in fact, it really can never be anything but Western, it becomes somewhat confusing.