Multiculturalism

[Mike11]

Here in Canada eh we've been multicultural for a while. Quebec has its own constitution, laws and language and the First Nations are on the path to self government. On the phone you can press 3 or 4 and get Cantonese or Punjabi with most big companies. We aren't really proud of our conquest of Quebec or the reservation system. Yet the sky is not falling and two plus two still makes four.

Why is it that in the States this issue is shown in such stark terms? Blacks having Afrocentric courses in college to teach their narrative or natives telling the truth about Columbus being a slave trading maniac is like having the Huns burning down the White House apparently.

I really do not understand how the terms "Multiculturalism" and "Third Reich" or "Evil" get linked together in the States as often as they do.

Perhaps someone could enlighten me?

[Peter]

You sound like the bigot. You say Columbus was a slave trading maniac? Do you look down on Italians? Navigators and explorers? I know, just on slave traders but there was a lot considered normal during different eras, slavery being one of them. You would have to slam, the slave cultures of Africa, Islam, India, and China too.

Now in today's context, of course it is universally seen as evil . . . . except in the sex trade and at certain country's haciendas, etc.

Joel I say, Hiss! And this from our 51st state, Canadia.

Peter

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I really do not understand how the terms "Multiculturalism" and "Third Reich" or "Evil" get linked together in the States as often as they do.

Joel,

The class warfare mind.

The USA is founded on the sanctity of the individual. Multiculturalists usually think only in terms of this collective against that collective. There's still a strong pro-individual influence in the USA and it is getting stronger. Collectivists generally try to stifle individualism and they get hostility in return.

About Columbus, you are making an historical error called "presentism." If Columbus were transported to today and he somehow managed to do what he did, your description might fit. But not for the times in which he lived.

And, please, try to read more history than what Howard Zinn or Zinn derivatives wrote. They're OK for one perspective, but they bear a 100% class warfare mentality. (How do I know my presumption about who has influenced you? Your description of Columbus.) I highly recommend original sources for documents of the time when you can find them.

Michael

[caroljane]

Here in Canada eh we've been multicultural for a while. Quebec has its own constitution, laws and language and the First Nations are on the path to self government. On the phone you can press 3 or 4 and get Cantonese or Punjabi with most big companies. We aren't really proud of our conquest of Quebec or the reservation system. Yet the sky is not falling and two plus two still makes four.

Why is it that in the States this issue is shown in such stark terms? Blacks having Afrocentric courses in college to teach their narrative or natives telling the truth about Columbus being a slave trading maniac is like having the Huns burning down the White House apparently.

I really do not understand how the terms "Multiculturalism" and "Third Reich" or "Evil" get linked together in the States as often as they do.

Perhaps someone could enlighten me?

Even before 9/11, which will ever after dominate any discussion like this somehow or other, the American melting pot ideal always denied the possibility of a multicultural society, I think. The foundation of America itself was a very narrow culture - North American Englishmen who didn't want to be English any more. As is often pointed out, it didn't include the African slaves. The Republic was founded on the noblest of ideals, and the most pragmatic of property rights. America's glorious success allowed immigrants to become successful by becoming American. It has always been a package deal.

They shouldn't fear that Muslims will set fire to the White House. The only foreigners that ever did that were, er, us.

[caroljane]

As I wrote that last post, I just started watching Ken Burns' Civil War again, seeing again what tore the glorious new Republic apart after a hundred years.

Edited April 6, 2011 by daunce lynam

[9thdoctor]

They shouldn't fear that Muslims will set fire to the White House. The only foreigners that ever did that were, er, us.

Uh, bad example. Flight 93 and the plane that hit the Pentagon were reportedly supposed to hit the Capital and the White House.

As to that little incident during the War of 1812, careful how you provoke our resentment, you Canuckistani.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAYMJnO9LBQ

[caroljane]

They shouldn't fear that Muslims will set fire to the White House. The only foreigners that ever did that were, er, us.

Uh, bad example. Flight 93 and the plane that hit the Pentagon were reportedly supposed to hit the Capital and the White House.

As to that little incident during the War of 1812, careful how you provoke our resentment, you Canuckistani.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAYMJnO9LBQ

Moi, a true daughter of Peace Order and Good Government, provoke resentment? Just when you mentioned that what 21st century murderous hijackers failed to do, 19th Century Canadian regular troops did? I provoke but patient smiles and the occasional eye-roll.

[studiodekadent]

"Multiculturalism" is problematic in that many people package-deal various things into the word.

People that criticize "multiculturalism" are often accused of being racist and anti-Cosmopolitan. But they are different things.

"Cosmopolitan" - A society where people of different beliefs, attitudes, racial and cultural backgrounds live together in the same areas.

Multiculturalism is NOT the same thing.

"Multiculturalism" - A doctrine based on accepting the following ideas:

1) The individual 'self' is 'socially constructed' by the culture they are born into; people don't have a 'self' independent of their cultural group. Their culture is constitutive of their selves.

2) As a result, the culture someone is born into is their own authentic culture and people are most happy when living in their own authentic culture.

3) Because people's thinking is a product of their cultural group, different groups will naturally come into conflict with each other; cultures will clash.

4) Since everyone is hopelessly biased by their own cultural background, the State must implement policies which smooth over this conflict (Political Correctness, laws against hate speech, etc) as well as provide the ability for individuals of various cultural groups to feel 'connected' to their own authentic culture (which is, according to multiculturalism, vital for their happiness). This implies the government should create incentives for cultural groups to stick together and live according to their own culture.

Point 4 blatantly conflicts with the classical American position that the government's role should be small and unobtrusive. This is one of the reasons multiculturalism is so loathed in America. However, there are plenty of other reasons for this loathing...

Point 1 flatly contradicts the entire Enlightenment basis of the Declaration of Independence. America's founding philosophy was based on the self-sovereign individual. Point 1 denies even the existence of the individual and makes the individual a product of the collective. Multiculturalism shares with Marxism the idea that the individual psyche is a product of the individual's class. They differ on the 'mechanism' of such conditioning (cultural background vs. relationship to the means of production) but both philosophies are methodologically collectivist, they analyze society not as constituted by individuals, but constituted by several smaller groups.

Point 2 is the kind of romanticism/noble savage belief that many people on both the hard left and hard right share... you know, romanticizing rural poverty, living the way one's ancestors lived, being socialized into local groups, believing in the moral beliefs that are traditional for your community, listening to folk music etc. (for the record, the right do this with rural America, you know, what Sarah Palin called "the real America" or "the pro-America parts of America" with Country music as their folk music. Same shit, different smell). Now, this idea is popular... I mean Avatar made billions off of it. However, the idea DOES make many people uncomfortable at least subconsciously to SOME degree. The idea fundamentally damns modern society with its technology and cosmopolitanism as oppressive and something that alienates people from their "true selves."

This part is a critical irony in multiculturalism; many people think multiculturalism is somehow cosmopolitan, but it isn't. Cosmopolitanism is, according to multiculturalists, damaging unless people have resources avaliable to access their own "real" culture. Multiculturalists may CLAIM to like Cosmopolitan societies, but they deny the existence of the Cosmopolitan self.

Irrespective, this romanticism (of the Rousseau style) is very spiritually opposed to the Enlightenment foundation of the United States. Enlightenment venerates exploration, novelty, expansion, technological progress, increasing human knowledge, etc. Romanticism reverses this entirely and venerates the local, traditional, 'holistic' and the like.

This is another reason for Multiculturalism's bad rep in the US; at least on some level, people can detect how anti-modernity it is.

Naturally, I'm greatly against multiculturalism but I'm strongly for cosmopolitanism. People's cultures, so long as they don't violate individual rights, are NOT matters for the State. Plus, the more cosmopolitan a place is, the wider the variety of local restaurants

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol,

Just curious (and I know you didn't do this, but your posts brought it to mind).

Whenever people point to the Civil War as proof of some criticism or other about racism or hypocrisy or whatever they have about the USA, how come they always leave out the people who fought to end it?

The last I looked, they are Americans, too.

How come only the bad side is America in the criticisms?

Even today, we get the charge of lack of tolerance for other cultures and races, yet all those intolerant people actually elected a black man as President. Those folks are Americans and they didn't move out of the country.

I say the good thing about America is that we eventually tame our bad elements, irrespective of color or creed or culture. I think that's about as fair as it can get for all cultures in the USA over the long haul.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

[my insert]

Even today, we get the charge of lack of tolerance for other cultures and races, yet all [or at least a percentage of] those intolerant people actually elected a black man as President. Those folks are Americans and they didn't move out of the country.

I'm reminded of a quip I've thought of often from Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate. In a chapter where he discusses -- borrowing from an earlier work by Thomas Sowell (A Conflict of Visions), and changing the terminology -- what Pinker calls the Tragic and the Utopian views of human nature (Sowell's terms were "Constrained" and "Unconstrained"), Pinker quips to the effect:

The representative democracies remain the countries those who vote with their feet, or their boats, choose to go to.

(OK, Pinker doesn't quite get the difference between a democracy and a republic. Nonetheless, why is it, if the ideal implemented in the US most of all, however imperfectly, is so oppressive that there have been so many people who wanted to come here or go to the next best choice? Not saying we aren't getting dangerously bad here, but some glimmer still remains of the beacon which has given so many hope of a life of freedom.)

Ellen

[bmacwilliam]

Multiculturalism is a simple nonsensical contradiction. If the desired outcome of racial respect/harmony is desired, multiculturalism works directly against this. All that is required for racial or cultural discrimination to thrive is a disparity of value to exist.

If 'Tony' the Italian business owner really doesn't like blacks, he preferentially hires Italians. If Tony likes blacks, but really embraces and loves his Italian culture more, he preferentially hires Italians. Same difference.

People forget racism has two sides. "Embracing" your culture is racism, pure and simple.

Bob

[BaalChatzaf]

People forget racism has two sides. "Embracing" your culture is racism, pure and simple.

Bob

It is more like following the line of least resistance. People act in ways that are comfortable for them to act.

it is easier to work on the basis of habit than on thinking things out carefully and critically.

Conclusion: it is more laziness than racism.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Mike11]

Interesting perspectives.

As Studiodekadent defined the term I can see why there would be a problem, such thinking does lead down the road of extreme racism. One point I would make is generally people, particularly first generation immigrants, are happier connected to their own culture. Look at many American Jews, they maintain their language, history and religion for a reason. Its easy for us to say there is no difference, being English in English countries but clearly, in Canada at least, it does make a difference for many.

No one in Canada would define multiculturalism in such terms as you guys have. Just the differences in our national histories I guess. Here dealing with distinct, semi-sovereign, ethnic groups has simply been a fact of life. We never experienced the kind of Anglo-Saxon dominance America has and when we attempted it, it met with disaster.

MSK, I am not a Howard Zinn fan, is book was basically crap imho. Columbus was a great explorer but he was also a vile slave trader. Does it hurt so much to admit that? As for Presentism, I am very surprised to hear an Objectivist use that as a defense.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Joel,

So who was an non-vile slave trader back then?

Do you really think that if Columbus had the same concept of Africans that we have today, he would have traded in slaves?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Back then, black folks were seen as something not quite human. I'm not justifying that perspective, merely noting that it existed.

We can call it vile, but they didn't. And I mean the entire European society.

Michael

[bmacwilliam]

No one in Canada would define multiculturalism in such terms as you guys have. Just the differences in our national histories I guess. Here dealing with distinct, semi-sovereign, ethnic groups has simply been a fact of life. We never experienced the kind of Anglo-Saxon dominance America has and when we attempted it, it met with disaster.

You mean other than the integration of Quebec into the British Empire and the ongoing resentment of the English ruling class?

Bob

[syrakusos]

Back then, black folks were seen as something not quite human. I'm not justifying that perspective, merely noting that it existed.

Yes and no. (I wish Ted Keer were still here. I am second place to him in languages.) In many languages, the native word for "us guys" is "human" or "people" or "men." Everyone else is not human by definition, and at root, perhaps going back to when there were different humanoids or anthropoids. So, there is that. Every tribe defines itself has the only true humans. (As a generalization.)

However, the racialist pseudo-science you refer to only goes back to the 19th century. There was no such racism before that. People enslaved their own kind, as well as "others." Aristotle said that it was wrong for Greeks to enslave other Greeks. Obviously they did it, or he could not have condemned it.

Slavery was palatable to Columbus because of Spain's exposure to Moorish culture. Slavery was less a part of northern cultures, though, again, slaves always existed as perhaps integral to any agricultural society. But it had nothing to do with "race" as we understand it. That came much later.

Peaking in the 1830s in America, there were "Black Laws" which disenfranchised Negroes who had been free, property-holding legal equals going back generations. It was not clear in early colonial law that the children of a slave would be born slaves any more than the children of an endentured servant would be born servants. That all came later. Columbus did not treat the Natives any differently than then English treated the Dutch, waterboarding merchants when colonies were captured, for instance.

If anyone wants to discuss who believes what about Columbus, you need to find actual textbooks really being used in existing classroom that in fact claim those things. Then we can condemn those books. Otherwise, this is all strawmen.

[caroljane]

my post disappeare

..along with that "d". It was a very long post too.I am discourage

Edited April 7, 2011 by daunce lynam

[syrakusos]

Here in Canada eh we've been multicultural for a while. ... Yet the sky is not falling and two plus two still makes four. ...

Why is it that in the States this issue is shown in such stark terms?

It depends on what you mean, who you talk to, and what they mean. You need to be more specific. Just to bring two things together, there is a thread here on OL about a book on "Nullification." That does not make Nullification a popular or common idea. You have to validate your generalizations. I agree that the "multiculturalism debate" exists and is emotional. But without citations, we just have strawmen.

Blacks having Afrocentric courses in college to teach their narrative or natives telling the truth about Columbus being a slave trading maniac is like having the Huns burning down the White House apparently.

Indeed, we do have university curricula, bachelor's through doctorate in African-American Studies. Some people don't like that. They don't take those courses. Other people don't take those courses for other reasons entirely. You need to be specific because you can always find an "author" who wrote a book that other people bought. (See above on Nullification.) In a sense that, too, is an expression of American multiculturalism, if you want to think of it that way: minority reports of all kinds.

Regarding Columbus, see my comments to MSK above. You need to be specific. Then we will point out the errors.

I really do not understand how the terms "Multiculturalism" and "Third Reich" or "Evil" get linked together in the States as often as they do.

Specific citations?

Perhaps someone could enlighten me?

To complete my degrees, I took eight sociology courses (two graduate; six under). My take on "multiculturalism" is that the "cultural relativism" privileges some cultures over others by way of vengeance. European culture ("North Atlantic" or "American" or "White") was or is oppressive, so to equalize things, we raise other banners. The result, however, is to trample down that other culture and pick and choose from the elements of the preferred cultures to reinforce an ideological program of collectivism, altruism, and mysticism, shading from the mildly Marxist to the rabidly post-modernist. As individualists, most of the people who visit here and post regularly, find that offensive if not personally dangerous to their well-being.

"The sociological perspective" is sold as the ability to see cultural relativism, to understand that people are products of their societies and that none is really privileged. It is wrong for us to judge other people negatively just because their culture is different from ours. Fine... ( you would think...)

My story is this: In my classes, I sat through one condemnation of capitalism after another, time and again for five years from associate's through bachelor's through master's. Twice I asked: But these people just have their own culture. Don't they have a right to set their own prices or agree to their own practices? I raised this point with insurance wholesalers being investigated by Eliot Spitzer and in the case of Bernard Madoff. Clearly, that kind of multi-culturalism is not allowed.

You mention the Nazis - Godwin's Law comes up now - but I offered that as well when a graduate criminology class was studying "urban culture." The rap and hip-hop of black males is only their anger against racism, etc., etc. Nonsense, I replied. I could make the same case for Nazi Skinheads and their heavy metal. They feel oppressed by the international Jewish banking conspiracy. Do we endorse them as well?

Multiculturalism would be fine with an objective standard.

I have a positive example. You will find on my website a paper about Reintegrative Shaming and Restorative Justice. John Braithwaite came to this theory studying regulation of the pharmaceutical industry in Australia. But he found roots in many cultures including the Visigoths and the Cheyenne. There are many ways to find justice. Every culture needs it and they all seek it by traditions they know, us as well, of course. (We argue formally and the winner is the one with the best argument. We used to have trial by combat and trial by ordeal.) Among your Canadian Inuit the White Courts were odd because their culture has the claimants say nothing while everyone else argues until everyone agrees. The white courts were called "where you are made to talk about yourself." So, that's all fine... as far as it goes...

What is not fine is submerging reality, reason and rights to collective whims. The rational-empirical method of the Enlightenment led to the greatest expansion of wealth, health, and opportunity ever known in history. That was not an accident. It did not come from the Inuit or the Visigoths or the Ashanti -- even as their cultures have interesting and commendable aspects. It came from a corner of the world that experienced a confluence of factors never before enjoyed. That is an objective fact that gets buried by the nominal "equivalency" of any and all cultures.

[Jonathan]

I first became aware of the American "multiculturalism" movement in junior high when a speaker was brought into our classroom to lecture us about how racist we were, and how unfair our "white" education system was.

We were given a test which was supposed to demonstrate the effects of cultural bias. It was a series of questions about the meanings of words and phrases from the urban street lingo of the time, and, since I and my classmates were white, middle class kids living in rural Wisconsin, we had no idea which hip new nicknames big city pimps were using when referring to their prostitutes, cars and favorite illegal drugs, so we all failed the test. It was then explained to us that poor, urban, non-white kids weren't stupid, but that our "white" tests were like a foreign language to them, which only made them appear to be failing the tests: they didn't know our language just as the test had shown that we didn't know theirs.

We then had a Q&A session, and I asked the speaker if she was saying that non-white kids were being taught math and history, etc., but that they were failing the standard tests because they were written in "white" language, and if so, what were the "street" words that urban teachers were using to teach concepts like "multiplication" and "supplementary angle," etc., to their non-white students. I asked her if we were to translate the question "What is the area of a circle with a radius of 13.582 inches?" to street lingo, was she saying that non-white kids would then be able to answer correctly, or was she suggesting that teaching non-white kids concepts such as "multiplication" and "supplementary angle" was forcing "whiteness" on them, and that they should only be expected to learn about prostitution, cars and illegal drugs?"

She looked flustered, mumbled something about how hostile and prejudiced I was, continued with her Q&A, and avoided taking questions from or even looking in the area where I was seated.

J

Edited April 7, 2011 by Jonathan

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

However, the racialist pseudo-science you refer to only goes back to the 19th century.

Michael,

What pseudo-science are you talking about?

I didn't discuss anything of the sort.

I was talking about a mainstream attitude within the European culture at the time Columbus was alive, not any science, pseudo or otherwise.

My point was to show that the word "vile" as applied to slave-trader is a value judgment we hold now, not one the people of the times would have held.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

my post disappeare

..along with that "d". It was a very long post too.I am discourage

Carol,

Welcome to the club.

You are now an officially indoctrinated user of computers.

If that ain't happened to you at least once, you are a piker.

A word of advice. If your post starts getting long, I suggest you copy-paste it to Notepad or something like that until it is up.

I don't always take my own advice and I have had to rewrite (and abandon a couple of times) several long posts when they were sucked into the wormhole.

We get great value from computers and the Internet, especially with respect to instant communication with large numbers of people. But sometimes we have to pay the piper.

In the famous words of Richard Pryor, "Life's a bitch... and then you die."

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

my post disappeare

..along with that "d". It was a very long post too.I am discourage

Avoid using the Google spell checker until after the initial posting--then go back with the "edit" function.

--Brant

[caroljane]

my post disappeare

..along with that "d". It was a very long post too.I am discourage

Avoid using the Google spell checker until after the initial posting--then go back with the "edit" function.

--Brant

Brant, I never use the spellcheck. I know more than it does.

Modestly,

Carol

[caroljane]

my post disappeare

..along with that "d". It was a very long post too.I am discourage

Carol,

Welcome to the club.

You are now an officially indoctrinated user of computers.

If that ain't happened to you at least once, you are a piker.

A word of advice. If your post starts getting long, I suggest you copy-paste it to Notepad or something like that until it is up.

I don't always take my own advice and I have had to rewrite (and abandon a couple of times) several long posts when they were sucked into the wormhole.

We get great value from computers and the Internet, especially with respect to instant communication with large numbers of people. But sometimes we have to pay the piper.

In the famous words of Richard Pryor, "Life's a bitch... and then you die."

Michael

Thanks Michael, I was frustrated that there seemed to be no way to save a reply when your internet connection is always threatening to go on strike. (I think of my net connection as "Galt")

Looking on Pryor's bright side, every day there is really ever only one thing we have to do.

I loved Pryor. One fave was his report on an appearance he made at San Quentin or some similar venue. "I just did a gig at a penitentiary. I tell you it was a enlightenin', life-changin' experience. I went in there, I met those men, I felt those prison walls around me. I come out and I tell you what I think - Thank GOD we got penitentiaries!"

[Selene]

Well, the misogynist said,

"Life is a bitch, then you grow up and...

Then you marry one!