MULTICULTURALISM

What is Multiculturalism?

•   Multiculturalism promotes the importance of multiple, co-existing, equal, cultural-identity
      groups to provide the cumulative essence of human civilization.
•   Multiculturalism defends the rights of cultural expression for vulnerable minorities, based
     upon the inalienable rights and dignity of all humans to express their identity as social beings.
•   Multiculturalism developed out of reaction to both liberalism and fascism.
•   Multiculturalism asserts the importance of group identity and rejects the exaltation of
     individualism in liberalism.
•   Multiculturalism rejects conformity to a single identity demanded by fascism.
•   Each of us possesses an essence that includes our self-understanding as a member of an
     ethnic group. We require this group identity not just for dignity, but as our right as social beings.
•   Multiculturalists claim that treating people only as individuals, without their group
     identity, represents the triumph of a dominant group over the dignity of vulnerable minorities.

Example--liberalism vs. multiculturalism:

          The French school system engages in a historic campaign to recreate the essence of a single, indivisible republic within every schoolchild. When Muslim schoolgirls demand the right to wear headscarves in school, they are rejecting that "assimilation" project. The veils serve as badges of identity and represent the demand for recognition of a right to be different.

What does liberalism argue?

          John Rawls argues that the true definition of justice in the liberal sense requires a veil to obscure the ethnicity, class or gender of another person.

          For example, the hiring authorities in the Boston Symphony Orchestra listen to candidates audition from behind a curtain so that only the quality of their music influences the hiring decision, separate from their identity. The symphony hired a diversity consultant, who issued a memo of complaints against the symphony for lack of sensitivity and consideration of diverse groups.

          "Opponents of the multicultural agenda charge, not surprisingly, that "diversity consultants" create the very racial and ethnic tensions they are hired to alleviate" (Hulliung 298).

What does multiculturalism argue?

          The history of America is filled with failures to apply the noble goal expressed in "All men are created equal" to all groups.

          Nevertheless, full liberal equality would not allow for special protection and resources to preserve the distinctive culture and way of life of Native Americans and African-Americans. Dignity as social creatures, expressed through distinctive cultures is a moral value even higher than equality.

          For example, Joseph de Maistre, criticized the concept of equality demanded by liberalism in the French Revolution by arguing that people become destructive if they are uprooted from their natural collective habitat as social creatures. The common ties of family and nationality preserve peace and security. De Maistre rejected the concept of individual reason, insisting instead on collective rationality because people define themselves in terms of their group membership.

          Liberals seek to liberate people from their prejudices by pulling people out of their group contexts. In contrast, multiculturalists understand morality in terms of the traditions, folkways and mores of groups.

How did multiculturalism develop?

We can define three processes that led to the development of multiculturalism:

1) New consensus in anthropology

          Anthropology originally developed as a means by which imperial countries tried to understand the nature of the peoples that they conquered. The success of imperialism supported the concept of social evolution and stages of development. These ideas claimed that industrial societies represented more advanced and superior developments of society compared to other more primitive societies. "Modernization theory" did not examine cultures in their own terms as successful strategies of survival in a given environment, but instead it rationalized empire.

          Sociologists and anthropologists did not take religion seriously as an enduring quality of the human existence. For example, Comte, a founder of French sociology, believed that religion was a dying force.

          Because scientists have determined from DNA genetic studies that race carries little significant meaning, culture became a more important term for distinguishing among groups. As anthropologists developed an understanding of other cultures, they concluded that all cultures are equal and all deserve protection. These are the foundational precepts of multiculturalism.

2) Political strategies in Canada

          Multiculturalism can be a descriptive term for multi-ethnic, multi-cultural immigrant societies and empires. As a political ideology, multiculturalism is a special kind of relationship adopted by the state towards different cultural communities. It developed as an experiment in Canada in 1971. The French speaking Quebecois refused to assimilate and integrate, but instead demanded special protection and state funding to preserve their culture. The indigenous "First Nations," such as the Inuit, challenged the hypocrisy of their exclusion from state policies granting formal recognition to only the two cultures of Quebecois and English-speaking. Multiculturalism justifies state funding for religious and first-language schools, festivals, cultural projects and book purchasing.

3) US Social movements in the 1960s

          In America, the protection of individual rights for members of minorities developed out of interest group politics. Hulliung argues that the liberal position supports

          The intellectual and social movements associated with the civil Rights revolution of the 1960s, including La Raza, Black Power, the American Indian Movement and the Women’s Liberation movement led to demands for a greater "cultural diversity" in the what schools teach. Discrimination and bigotry created initial divisions between cultural groups. These groups complained that public school classes in history, literature, and social studies reflected a Eurocentric bias and even racist attitudes.

          Defenders of the dignity of minority groups demanded protection for their ethnic, racial and cultural distinctions--against "oppressive assimilation." This represents the development of "identity politics" meaning defining political interests purely in terms of some group category such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, etc.

How do these developments illustrate the essence of multiculturalism?

          In both Canada and the US we see that identity groups provide resources that individuals can use in the competition for resources. Political competition strengthens these identities and reduces the potential for people to cross boundaries between groups or to live in multiple groups at various times.

          Classical liberalism argued for the protection of hateful speech while punishing harmful acts. Modern liberals debate the question: "Which is more wrong--restricting speech or tolerating intolerance that demeans without destroying?" Multiculturalism is therefore a symptom of the failure of liberalism and a self-criticism within liberalism.