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21 comments

1 CuriousLurker  Mon, Jul 25, 2011 10:33:29pm

I'll start off with what it means to me, in a nutshell:

It means—if not pure delight in—at least courteous tolerance of other cultures. As long as the law treats everyone equally and doesn't favor one group over another, then all people who abide by those same laws deserve to be treated with equal dignity, regardless of how any individual or group personally feels about another group's or practices.

IOW, kindergarten stuff: Play nice. Share. Be helpful. Don't push & shove or act the bully. Don't lie, cheat or steal. Pick up after yourself. Be polite—say "please", "thank you", "excuse me", and don't make rude faces or stick out your tongue at others. All the stuff our parents (hopefully) taught us.

2 Dancing along the light of day  Mon, Jul 25, 2011 10:35:53pm

To me, multiculturalism means respecting other peoples values. Understanding that their values are as important to them, as yours are to you.

3 elizajane  Mon, Jul 25, 2011 11:03:17pm

re: #2 Floral Giraffe

To me, multiculturalism means respecting other peoples values. Understanding that their values are as important to them, as yours are to you.

To me that sounds like "tolerance," which is a more limited thing. Tolerance is what the Dutch were proud of having, like "we let the Jews live here and we don't hate them, we get that they're different, but we just ignore them," and then when the Nazis invaded it was like "Oh, the Jews? Well, they're not exactly part of us."

Multiculturalism is allowing parts of other cultures to actually become part of what everybody shares. It's recognizing and embracing the commonality of certain fundamentals, while also enjoying more superficial aspects of other cultures. It's allowing the values you bring into the mix to be inflected by the ones other people have brought in. This does not have to mean what the Right shuns as some sort of moral relativism, but it does mean contemplating alternative possibilities.

And on a one on one level, it means treating other people as human beings within your community, and judging them as acting individuals rather than as part of an "other" group. Again, it doesn't mean you can't make judgements. You just judge one person at a time, taking their own standards as well as your own into account.

4 OhCrapIHaveACrushOnSarahPalin  Mon, Jul 25, 2011 11:15:16pm

Applied in the real world, there are a lot of definitions. But to me, "multiculturalism" has simply become the latest Emmanuel Goldstein canard of the race-butthurt rightwing, be it here or in Europe.

You can tell, because every time you ask someone adamant against "multiculturalism" to define it, they never can. Never. Yet, they will tell you how awful, horrible, damaging and threatening to the very fabric of civilization it is, in a hot minute.

To add to it, the rwnj are now using "multiculturalist"/politically correct terminology as weapons to silence their critics. Example: can't stand Sarah Palin or talk about Michele Bachmann's migraines? Presto-changeo, you're "sexist"! Laugh at Herman Cain or Allen West, you're now "a racist".

ABB rails against "multiculturalism" as it's done in Norway, and also believes in using left concepts (as his addled social con mind perceives them) against the left. To me, this is not a coincidence.

Bottom line is, the race-crybaby bigots HATE having their white conservative authority displaced and discarded, and really, who can blame them, the poor dears lol. It can go by decolonization, multiculturalism, affirmative action, "forced busing", Title IX, gay rights, veteran's rights, headscarves in public schools, or whatever. They think they are supposed to rule, and "multiculturalism" denies them this natural right to treat others in whatever way they please. So they act out, bomb Federal Buildings, ram planes into skyscrapers, throw acid in the faces of women who leave the house alone, and shoot up summer camps of kids because they think those kind of tantrums will get them their way.

5 The Questionable Timing of a Flea  Mon, Jul 25, 2011 11:49:54pm

I don't think it comes down to one true definiton, but rather a family of interconnected ones. Multiculturalism is a term use in a variety of ways that are interrelated:

Mostly rudimentarily, it is acceptance cultural heterogeneity--people living in different modalities with different customs (physical practices) and/or worldviews (intellectual practices)--but in close proximity. This usage is basically an on-the-ground descriptor of de facto proximics, although it can carry a positive semantic weight attributable to pro-diversity sentiments (particularly in the US).

In current parlance, multiculturalism has another usage that encompasses issues, both social and polticial, of immigration and assimilation of immigrants. Multiculturalism is contextually used in this frame to encapsulate both the mindset required to accomodate new immigrants with different praxis and/or the bureaucratic and logistical mechanisms that accomodate new immigrants. In Europe, this usage is quite common in formal and informal dialogues about immigration issues, such as the memorable declaration by Chancellor Merkel.

Another usage is multiculturalism as a social program or awareness campaign designed with the intent of encouraging tolerance of heterogeneity--this version liasons elements the two usages mentioned above. This usage cross-hatches with the anthropological practice of cultural relativism--that is, the attempt to view other cultures dispassionately, and with an awareness of one's own engrained inclinations--though the two are not synonymous.

Finally, there is the amorphous usage with strong negative markings: it's hard to peg this as a definition, since individual usages can be quite variegated in what is intended by the usage. Disapproval of heterogeneity, tolerance, and/or programs that encourage or celebrate heterogeneity and tolerance are all possible permutations, but this negative-marked usage is often purposefully vague--the threatening connotation being more important than the specifics of denotation.
---

Further complicating the issue is that different individuals will draw lines on what constitutes heterogeneity/homogeneity, and thus define the threshold of multiculturalism differently. There is a very distinct eye-of-the-beholder effect at play. Language, phenotypic race, religion, foodways, family dynamics, regionality, nationality...all of these criteria can be used to construct an operational distinction of culture-versus-culture, and thus a sense of multiculturalism (or absence thereof). I'd reach further and say that "multiculturalism" is juxtaposed to the demand for assimilation. Unpacking the social and practical aspects of "assimilation" can be prickly, as--like multiculturalism--it's a term that wraps around a social phenomenon, but also a socio-political issue that reaches into the cultural realm of said phenomenon.

Pair this with difference in the category-sorting of acceptable and unacceptable forms of culture--ergo good versus bad heterogeneity--and the usage of MC as part of social or political critique gets blurry.

There is also the issue of "multiculturalism" as dogwhistle or coded language, as social propriety--and occasionally social ethics--disallow certain kinds of disapproving statements (racist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc)--in which the word is purposely without distinct denotation, instead acting as a proxy or synonym.

Finally--and this is as much a gripe as an observation--under the banner of mutliculturalism exists a kind of consumer-society fetishization of the (cultural) Other which goes hand-in-hand with the exercise of priveledge. Some people using the term are justifying a bower-bird like project of adorning themselves--materially and socially--with exoticism, and thus (in theory) accruing some level of exoticism themselves.

6 The Questionable Timing of a Flea  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 12:00:02am

Personally, I try to avoid the word "multicultural" whenever possible, and try to qualify it when I do. Nonetheless, it's an easy fallback word...when I use it unqualified, it's as the acceptance of heterogeneity. And by "acceptance" I mean that you're just as likely to be gritting your teeth as happy and smiling about how different people can be. The distant ideal is that everyone can agree to live under the same laws, yet accept that the details of each other's lives will follow different rhythms. I'm not sure it's attainable ever--people stake a lot of their identity from setting up us-versus-them, and a lot of ego from the inevitable judgement that "we" are better than "them."

The politics of MC...are completely screwed up. National and ethnic chauvinism are cheap shortcuts to establishing a collective identity for something as macro as a country. The only thing worse is when said chauvinism persists after the citizenry begin to feel their priveledge and sense of entitlement slip--at which points they become more shrill and more exclusive. Finally, MC is bound up in economics--specifically that of immigrant labor--which means that discussions of acceptance of the Other are subtextually fraught with abacus calculations about the bottom line of industries that require cheap menial/high intensity/high risk labor to persist.

re: #4 OhCrapIHaveACrushOnSarahPalin

To add to it, the rwnj are now using "multiculturalist"/politically correct terminology as weapons to silence their critics..

This is what I meant about "strong negative markings, weak denotation": it's become a scare word onto which can be map a mass of insecurities about changes in status quo, loss of priveledge, loss of self-perceived superiority (or authority), et cetera.

The best I can manage to clarify it is that there's a lot of people indignant at the prospect of "us" and "them" being redefined, as they've staked a lot on their sense of being part of a morally/spiritually/ethnically/as-you-like-it superior "us."

7 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 12:03:41am

re: #5 The Ghost of a Flea

An important observation about different defs - when European leaders say something like "multiculturalism failed" in their particular countries, they don't necessarily go all xenophobic. Rather, they state that in their countries the experiment failed in practice - due to whatever causes.

8 The Questionable Timing of a Flea  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 12:19:15am

re: #7 Sergey Romanov

An important observation about different defs - when European leaders say something like "multiculturalism failed" in their particular countries, they don't necessarily go all xenophobic. Rather, they state that in their countries the experiment failed in practice - due to whatever causes.

Eh. The situation in Europe is complex--and I really only have a grasp of the issues in three or four countries. As I wrote last night, I'm not exactly impressed by France and Germany's handling of immigration issues over the last sixty someodd years, so I find the current "it failed" statements to be disingenuous. It's not xenophobia--at least not for everyone doing the decision-making--but cultural differance is deployed to explain what went wrong.

It's the "due to whatever causes" part that digs at me, because you can see the stark difference between Britain--who in spite of the ugliness at least let the Indians and West Indians become citizenry--and France and Germans, who respectively have held their immigrant-worker population at arm's distance...yet even between those two you can see the smoother transition of the Turks into German culture. France has some ugly cultural stuff going on vis-a-vis the North Africans, and Sarkozy is totally leaning into it with stuff like the veil ban.

9 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 12:34:33am

re: #8 The Ghost of a Flea

If the "failed" statements try to lay blame on "anyone but" the govt, it's one thing. But they're, again, not necessarily wrong in the observational part. Whether one says "mc failed and we are to blame" or "mc failed and the immigrants are to blame for not integrating", the common element is that mc still failed. Again, there are different perspectives on whether it did fail - some will say yes, some will say no, but I think that both perspectives are politically legitimate for a discussion. And they're not necessarily equal to bashing of the multiculturalism as a general principle (which is not to say that many won't bash mc out of darker motives).

I guess my point is, when we hear political speech like this, we shouldn't substitute our understanding of mc, with all its penumbrae, for what the speakers mean by that, exactly because, as you point out, the issue is complex.

10 Bob Levin  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 12:44:43am

I think that before it's possible to define 'multiculturalism', it's important to define what a singular culture is. Within even one culture there are a number of different perspectives, from people within that culture. What if your particular culture has historically been defined by people outside of that culture--defining the group by skin color, for instance. Do people within that culture accept that definition, or is there something more that more accurately defines the group?

Is our culture something that comes from the essence of who we are, or does it comes from our appearance, or does it come from the way that we answer demographic questions? Is it possible to define a particular culture outside of the broad history, for most of us here, of Western Civilization? How big of a role does the simple fact that we exist within Western Civilization play into our definitions of who we are? For instance, there really isn't a good Western concept of 'essence'. There are barely any words that cover this aspect of reality. Therefore, are we forced to define ourselves and others by appearance--as the default setting?

How does the definition of culture merge with the definition of 'self'? There is a simple example from the extremely multicultural movie Casablanca. Paraphrasing, Major Strasser asks Bogart to identify his nationality, Bogart replies, "I'm a drunkard." The line works well because there is truth in the reply, yet the reply doesn't fit into Western preconceptions of nationality or culture.

The dynamics get even more complicated once you start building from the individual, to family, to community. At what point does this merging of selves become culture?

11 justaminute  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 1:36:06am

Multiculturalism for me is the definition of my family.

My father is an Oklahoman born and raised redneck (now reformed) that had an ethnic joke for every ethnicity. He's ethnicity is the standard English/Irish with generations just going to back to his grandparents. Hardly Mayflower material. But his world changed with his children.

A couple of days after my mom's funeral our family which was: my husband the Iranian (who is one quarter Russian,) my self, my son & daughter (half of their dad and half of me,) son's wife (half Hispanic) my brother & his 2nd wife (I don't know her ethnicity but her family worked in the circus, ha ha) my nephew (half Filipino) daughter's long time boyfriend (African American) all set down at a restaurant to dinner. My father with a bemused look on his face blurted out "This family looks like the damned United Nations!"

My brother is gone now and my father was an only son so his surname is carried by my nephew the half Filipino. My father the redneck's genes are world travelers. Showing up in places he would have never dreamed of. To me that the perfect form of "Multiculturalism!"

12 RadicalModerate  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 2:33:07am

One VERY IMPORTANT note here.
Our nation's founders, in my opinion were firm believers in a multi-cultural society. Remember, the original national motto was "E Pluribus Unum" - "Out of many, one", instituted in 1789, and stayed as our national motto until the religious conservatives changed it in 1956 to "In God We Trust".

13 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 4:29:09am

re: #12 RadicalModerate

Yeah. Unfortunately, for a long time all those many were meant to be white folks ;)

14 Randall Gross  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 4:37:10am

I don't like the word and think the term belongs in Europe. I love our country because we don't tolerate other cultures, we revel in them and consume them. We don't live in a European multicultural society where the legacy of feudalism keeps ancient tribal structures and traditions supported and other tribes are tolerated but never equal. We don't think the soil belongs to us by bloodright.

Anyone can be the ruling class here, and dinner might come from anywhere in the world. We are cultural thieves who live in a diverse, pluralistic society where other tribes aren't just tolerated, but joined. Where music is ever evolving because we take the best from every form of it in the world. Our culture is the best in the world simply because we are capable thieves who take everything we can glean from the world.

15 Gretchen G.Tiger  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 6:22:09am

re: #14 Thanos

I don't like the word and think the term belongs in Europe. I love our country because we don't tolerate other cultures, we revel in them and consume them. We don't live in a European multicultural society where the legacy of feudalism keeps ancient tribal structures and traditions supported and other tribes are tolerated but never equal. We don't think the soil belongs to us by bloodright.

Anyone can be the ruling class here, and dinner might come from anywhere in the world. We are cultural thieves who live in a diverse, pluralistic society where other tribes aren't just tolerated, but joined. Where music is ever evolving because we take the best from every form of it in the world. Our culture is the best in the world simply because we are capable thieves who take everything we can glean from the world.

So true, the great melting-pot.

16 Gretchen G.Tiger  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 6:45:14am

Jaunte posted this link a couple of days ago.

I thought it was a good legal overview.

Of the Critiques, this struck a chord with me:

3.5 Problem of vulnerable “internal minorities”

A final objection (and one that has received the most attention in recent scholarly debates about multiculturalism) argues that extending protections to minority groups may come at the price of reinforcing oppression of vulnerable members of those groups—what some have called the problem of “internal minorities” or “minorities within minorities”

17 jaunte  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 7:34:05am

C.L. thanks for making this a page. Sorry to post and go, but things are busy at work today. I'll just dump another reference, for those who are interested; a paper by Ssylvia Maier that goes into some detail about the respective histories of immigrants and assimilation in Germany and France. It's out there as a pdf:
Multicultural Jurisprudence:
Muslim Immigrants, Culture and the Law in France and Germany

...The human right to culture does not trump all other human rights, such as the right to life or bodily integrity, just as the right to gender equality does not always trump the right to culture or freedom of religion. In a culturally diverse society, the respective rights must be balanced against one another and the common standard should be the one that ensures the least intrusion into cultural minority traditions while protecting the physical and psychological well-being (or even survival) of the most vulnerable members of each and every group. I believe the criteria that Renteln (1994) has proposed and that I expanded upon are the most appropriate standards for the recognition of cultural minority rights claims.

The premise of this project is that culture matters. As we have seen, France and Germany are reluctant to recognize the need to protect cultural traditions even if they are constitutive to the way of a life of a religious minority. Nonetheless, the social fact remains that both countries are culturally pluralistic and likely to remain so, characterized by an ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural mosaic and the increasing appreciation by ethnic groups of their cultural heritage and a concern for the preservation of distinctive customs and traditions. It is now up to France and Germany to decide whether they wish to remain entrenched in outdated political ideals of sociocultural homogeneity or optimistically embrace the spirit of a multicultural European future.

18 Claire  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 9:18:29am

America does multiculturalism better than a lot of other countries, especially the noted ones, France and Germany, and apparently the Nordic countries. I guess we'll learn more about that situation as time passes.

A lot of people in other countries are in awe of our cultural mixes and that we basically all get along pretty well. America has had a lot of outside influences obviously and we've always invented ourselves as we go. We are not as wedded to centuries old notions of class and hierarchy as part of the reason we all came here was to escape that kind of thing. We are pretty good at shaking those cobwebs off as time passes. Yet we still have a cultural binder, based on a common attitude that society won't hinder the individual based on heritage. And the actual application of that ideal has been improving constantly over the decades. We are better at it in practice than a lot of places. We are (hopefully) consistently iterating towards a more perfect application of that, with bumps and stops and starts, but in general, that's the path we are on.

I don't think it can be said that it has failed in the US, but it has failed in Europe systemically as it has hit a wall where no progress is being made.

19 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 9:21:23am

re: #18 Claire

Yup - America's successful experiment is unique in many ways, but just because it works in America doesn't mean it will work on planet Gelgamek ;)

20 eightyfiv  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 10:32:30am

re: #18 Claire

It might simply come down to the fact that the US is not a nation-state, and most of the countries in Europe are. The national glue that we consistently to point to is not some complicated, ancestry-bound cultural concretion, but rather an abstract idea, that of personal and economic liberty and the evangelization thereof. Such an idea is inherently colorblind, even in the ugliest forms like anti-communist witch hunts. Not only does this provide a national identity that distracts from sectarian and economic issues (even important ones), the practical efficacy of the idea also provides a powerful motivation for immigrants to bury their differences, in the name of achieving the "American Dream". (Imagine the difference if the American Jewish community looked more like the Brooklyn ultra-orthodox than the amorphous, fuzzy, assimilated blob it is today.)

21 CuriousLurker  Tue, Jul 26, 2011 12:17:39pm

Wow, great response, everyone. Thanks!

I won't make any further comments until it looks like everyone is done.


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