Silly Little Country

Multiculturalism bad?

I have found the many recent claims against 'multiculturalism', based on terrorist attacks real and accused in several Western countries, unconvincing. Of course much of the problem is defining what one is discussing.
This excellent column appeared in my Saturday National Post and coloured some of the rest of my weekend.
Let us look at some of what Andrew Coyne says.
First, what do you mean?

It’s a slippery word, with multiple meanings. Is it, as it is sometimes used, merely a synonym for the observed fact of ethnic and cultural diversity? Is it the ideology that all cultural norms are of equal moral value, the dreaded cultural relativism? Or is it the policy of official multiculturalism, complete with grants for folk-dancing and heritage language training?

If the latter, we can stop right here: it’s a silly policy, which has had very little impact for good or ill. To be sure, it has fed the careers of a few professional ethnics and their political patrons. But for the vast majority of immigrants, it is an irrelevance. Certainly, if the charge against official multiculturalism is that it encourages immigrants to live apart from the rest of society, the facts would seem to dispute it: ethnic minorities are measurably less ghettoized in Canada than in other countries -- again, Britain is an example.

We spend part of almost every year in Leeds in Yorkshire and it is fascinating to see the concentration of Muslim populations there (and this is the population that fed the British July bombings). Many of the years we have gone up for our week there, we have just followed sone neighbourhood riots. It is different from Canada.

The more troublesome definition of multiculturalism is that suggesting a broader cultural confusion, an inability to sort out which values ought to be shared and upheld by society at large, and which left to personal or community choice. But this kind of multiculturalism I think should be seen not as a cause, but a consequence: part of a broader malaise that leaves us unable to tell right from wrong, or to defend basic precepts of civilized life against either the sophistries of tenured radicals or the cruder assaults of their revolutionary cousins.

It is not immigrants who are barricading highways and vandalizing hydro towers to press their demands. It is not immigrants who have spent the last forty years threatening to detach a part of Canada from the rest. And while the publication of the Danish cartoons caused enormous offence to many Muslims, in Canada as elsewhere, it was difficult to explain to them why their hurt feelings should defer to the higher principle of free speech when we are so busy prosecuting free speech on similar grounds in other cases.

Amen! I had *NO* sympathy for the decisions of many Canadians to avoid the Danish cartoons, and I equally have none for the suppression of the speech of Holocaust deniers (which many seem to believe in). But the sad thing is we have no fundamental commitment in Canada to free speech.

The problem is that there we have provided them with so few Canadian values to absorb. We are the country of the notwithstanding clause, the country that exalts the virtues of pragmatism and compromise before all. We do not take a stand, we split the difference. Indeed, we cannot even bring ourselves to take a stand against our own destruction: it is “for Quebecers to decide.”

Not for us the Declaration of Independence and its absolutism.

Where other nations defined themselves by what they were, we defined ourselves by what we were not, viz. Americans. Where other nations aspired to the universal, we retreated into the particular, obsessed with what made us different, unique, special. Canadian nationalism invented itself as just another species of identity politics, with no higher claim than “we are not you.” Should we have been surprised to discover other identity groups within our midst, with the same claims?

In the Liberal leadership debate last weekend a mischievous question was asked. What experience have you had abroad that marked you as Canadian? Carolyn Bennett, whom I find largely appealing (actually like most of the candidates) walked off my plank by responding that she found herself once being treated with apparent suspicion by a border guard, but when he realized where she really came from, he was delighted and welcomed her happily. What was curious is that this is almost exactly how she phrased it, never mentioning the obvious point that she was thought initially to be from the United States. This is the world of Canadians who ostentatiously stick our flags on backpacks (as of course many citizens of the US would). It is a small-minded world at best. I take no pride in that world.

And maybe we are both fools, but Coyne speaks in a way I find valuable for what I think matters.

The answer to multiculturalism is not, however, monoculturalism. It is not, as the British writer Melanie Phillips suggested in her contribution to this series, to preserve traditional Canadian values from the insidious “doctrine of universalism,” or to exalt the majority’s culture over that of minorities. Precisely the contrary. It is to uphold universal human values -- starting with the idea that there are such values. And amongst those values is pluralism, the principle that every human being is entitled to pursue his own vision of the good life -- so far as this is compatible with the vision of others, on their own such quest.

And there is a particularly complex problem for Canada in terms of individuals versus their 'identities'.

Coyne says it again very well:

Let us say no to group rights, special status, and the endless exemptions of particularism. And let us say yes to a society whose solidarity is built on the sturdy foundation of the individual -- the individual, not as the alienated atom of caricature, but as the unique point of intersection of all those multiple group identities of which each of us is composed.

I grew up with an individual hostile position against a pretty small-minded Christian world. That world has evaporated, largely to my delight (though I admit I have found it disturbing to see leaders of some of our Christian churches merrily discarding basic principles of their religion at times). Today what am I?- I am what Coyne describes - an intersection, delightfully, of multiple identities, of Norwegian and Irish heritage, having lived in the US and England and Canada, having absorbed literature, music, at from all over the world. I think this is a result of enormous privielge, that Canada has given me, and should try to assure for everyone. I have NO desire to see walls built holding children in other ethnic and religious groups that confine those children. Some of our policy seems determined to recreate those walls.

Coyne again, and spot on:

The folly of multiculturalism is not its insistence on “diversity,” but rather its peculiarly narrow definition of diversity. Identity politics is not really about differences between groups, but rather enforcing sameness within the group. That’s as true of young Muslims, under pressure from fundamentalists to conform to their definition of a “good Muslim,” as it is of Quebec nationalists -- or Canadian nationalists.

A deeper commitment to diversity would respect the uniqueness of each individual. And it is our common experience of that uniqueness, of what it means to be human, that ultimately unites us.

I want to keep walking along the Danforth, the major street near which I live, and having the option of wandering into an Ethiopian restaurant, or a Greek one, or a Hungarian one, or whatever. This is a great gift that this wonderful city offers me. What I do not want to see is government policies that make ANY kid growing up in our society limited in his/her ability to explore all possible options in life, whether those serve or not the interests of the sub-community that child is born into.

It is not clear to me whether the diverse and interesting world I live in today can survive.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 8:19 AM