Criticism of multiculturalism
Encyclopedia
Criticism of multiculturalism questions the multicultural
ideal of the co-existence of distinct ethnic cultures within one nation-state
. Multiculturalism is a particular subject of debate in certain European nations that were once associated with a single, homogeneous, national cultural identity. Critics of multiculturalism argue for assimilation
of different ethnic groups to a single national identity
.
in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924
. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Italians and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. Most of the European refugee
s fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States.
In the 1980s and 1990s many criticisms were expressed, from both the left and right. Criticisms come from a wide variety of perspectives, but predominantly from the perspective of liberal individualism
, from American conservatives
concerned about shared traditional values
, and from a national unity perspective.
The liberal-feminist
critique is related to the liberal
and libertarian
critique, since it is concerned with what happens inside the cultural groups. In her 1999 essay, later expanded into an anthology, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?" the feminist and political theorist Susan Okin argues that a concern for the preservation of cultural diversity should not overshadow the discriminatory nature of gender roles in many traditional minority cultures, that, at the very least, "culture" should not be used as an excuse for rolling back the women's rights
movement.
A prominent criticism in the US, later echoed in Europe, Canada and Australia, was that multiculturalism undermined national unity, hindered social integration and cultural assimilation, and led to the fragmentation of society into several ethnic factions (Balkanization
).
In 1991, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a former advisor to the Kennedy and other US administrations and Pulitzer Prize
winner, published a book criticial of multiculturalism with the title The Disuniting of America
: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.
In his 1991 work, Illiberal Education, Dinesh D'Souza
argues that the entrenchment of multiculturalism in American universities undermined the universalist values that liberal education once attempted to foster. In particular, he was disturbed by the growth of ethnic studies programs (e.g., black studies
).
Samuel P. Huntington
, political scientist and author, known for his Clash of Civilizations
theory, has described multiculturalism as "basically an anti-Western ideology." According to Huntington, multiculturalism has "attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted racial, ethnic, and other subnational cultural identities and groupings."
Criticism of multiculturalism in the US was not always synonymous with opposition to immigration
. Some politicians did address both themes, notably Patrick Buchanan, who in 1993 described multiculturalism as "an across-the-board assault on our Anglo-American heritage." Buchanan and other paleoconservatives argue that multiculturalism is the ideology of the modern managerial state
, an ongoing regime that remains in power, regardless of what political party holds a majority. It acts in the name of abstract goals, such as equality or positive rights, and uses its claim of moral superiority, power of taxation and wealth redistribution to keep itself in power.
Multiculturalism has also been attacked through satire, such as the following proposition by John Derbyshire
.
This theorem is held to be false by Derbyshire and other paleoconservatives.
Lawrence Auster
, another conservative critic of multiculturalism, has argued that although multiculturalism is meant to promote the value of each culture, the reality is that its real tendency has been to undermine America's traditional majority culture. In Auster's view, multiculturalism has tended to "downgrade our national culture while raising the status and power of other cultures."
He writes:
According to Auster:
Another critic of multiculturalism is the political theorist Brian Barry
. In his 2002 book Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism, he argues that some forms of multiculturalism can divide people, although they need to unite in order to fight for social justice.
Kevin B. MacDonald
, a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, has argued in his trilogy of books on Judaism that Jews have been prominent as main ideologues and promoters of multiculturalism in an attempt to end anti-semitism
. MacDonald considers multiculturalism to be dangerous to the West, concluding in his Jack London Literary Prize acceptance speech:
Finally, multiculturalism and cultural relativism have been fiercely attacked by American social thinker Lloyd deMause
, founder of psychohistory
. DeMause's central argument is that, in the past, the astronomical infanticidal ratios among the tribes gives the lie to the claim that the diverse cultures are basically equal. DeMause wrote: "The best estimate I could make from the statistics was that in antiquity about half of all children born were killed by their caretakers, declining to about a third by later medieval times and to a very small percentage by the seventeenth century in Western Europe and America."
Ethologist Frank Salter
writes:
by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, with the introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
, which included section 27, stating that the "Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians."
, welcoming people of all origins while insisting that they integrate into Quebec's French-speaking majority culture. In 2008, a Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, headed by sociologist Gerard Bouchard
and philosopher Charles Taylor
, recognized that Quebec is a de facto pluralist society, but that the Canadian multiculturalism model "does not appear well suited to conditions in Quebec". Four reasons were given by the commissioners against multiculturalism for Quebec society: a) anxiety over language is not an important factor in English Canada; b) minority insecurity is not found there; c) there is no longer a majority ethnic group in Canada (citizen of British origin account for 34% of the population, whereas citizen of French-Canadian origin form 79% of Quebec's population); d) less concern for the preservation of a founding cultural tradition is found in English Canada. Interculturalism, the commissioners pleaded, "seeks to reconcile ethnocultural diversity with the continuity of the French-speaking core and the preservation of the social link".
told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) party at Potsdam
, near Berlin
, that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany
had "utterly failed", stating: "The concept that we are now living side by side and are happy about it does not work". She continued to say that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values. This has added to a growing debate within Germany on the levels of immigration, its effect on Germany and the degree to which Muslim immigrants have integrated into German society.
, was formed by Pauline Hanson
in the late 1990s. The party enjoyed significant electoral success for a while, most notably in its home state of Queensland
, but is now electorally marginalized. One Nation called for the abolition of multiculturalism on the grounds that it represented "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", arguing that there was "no reason why migrant cultures should be maintained at the expense of our shared, national culture.".
A Federal Government proposal in 2006 to introduce a compulsory citizenship test, which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values, sparked renewed debate over the future of multiculturalism in Australia. Andrew Robb
, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration." The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60.
In January 2007 the Howard Government
removed the word "multicultural" from the name of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, changing its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
, sociologist Tanya Birrell and the political scientist Raymond Sestito. Chipman and Knopfelmacher were concerned with threats to social cohesion, while Birrell's concern was that multiculturalism obscures the social costs associated with large scale immigration that fall most heavily on the most recently arrived and unskilled immigrants. Sestito's arguments were based on the role of political parties. He argued that political parties were instrumental in pursuing multicultural policies, and that these policies would put strain on the political system and would not promote better understanding in the Australian community.
It was the high-profile historian Geoffrey Blainey
, however, who first achieved mainstream recognition for the anti-multiculturalist cause when he wrote that multiculturalism threatened to transform Australia into a "cluster of tribes". In his 1984 book All for Australia
, Blainey criticized multiculturalism for tending to "emphasize the rights of ethnic minorities at the expense of the majority of Australians" and also for tending to be "anti-British", even though "people from the United Kingdom and Ireland form the dominant class of pre-war immigrants and the largest single group of post-war immigrants."
According to Blainey, such a policy, with its "emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority," was unnecessarily creating division and threatened national cohesion. He argued that "the evidence is clear that many multicultural societies have failed and that the human cost of the failure has been high", and warned that "we should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world." Blainey wrote "For the millions of Australians who have no other nation to fall back upon, multiculturalism is almost an insult. It is divisive. It threatens social cohesion. It could, in the long-term, also endanger Australia's military security because it sets up enclaves which in a crisis could appeal to their own homelands for help."
Blainey remained a persistent critic of multiculturalism into the 1990s, denouncing multiculturalism as "morally, intellectually and economically ... a sham".
Following the upsurge of support for the One Nation Party
in 1996, Lebanese
-born Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage
published a critique in 1997 of Australian multiculturalism in the book White Nation.
, with its ideology of homogeneity, has traditionally rejected any need to recognize ethnic differences in Japan, even as such claims have been rejected by such ethnic minorities as the Ainu
. Former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso
has called Japan a “one race” nation.
In 2005, a report by Doudou Diène
, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights, expressed concerns about racism
in Japan and stated that the government needed to recognize the depth of the problem. Diène's nine-day investigation concluded that racial discrimination and xenophobia
in Japan primarily affects three groups: national minorities, Latin Americans of Japanese descent
, mainly Japanese Brazilians, and foreigners from other Asian countries. For example, according to the UNHCR, in 1999 Japan
accepted just 16 refugees for resettlement, while the United States
took in 85,010, and New Zealand
, which has a much smaller population than Japan, accepted 1,140. Between 1981, when Japan ratified the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
, and 2002, Japan recognized only 305 persons as refugees.
is among the world's most ethnically homogeneous nations. Historically, the country has tried hard to keep interaction between Koreans and non-Koreans as minimal as possible, forming a very distinct society. Koreans have traditionally valued an "unmixed blood" as the most important feature of Korean identity, often more important than their own lives. Most Koreans tend to equate nationality
or citizenship
with membership in a single, homogeneous ethnic group
sharing the same "blood" and history. A common language and culture are also viewed as important elements in Korean identity.
Those who do not share such features are often rejected by the Korean society or face discrimination. This includes Koreans themselves who may not share one of the elements of Korean identity. For example, Koreans brought up overseas often face discrimination by Koreans living in South Korea upon their return who may not speak the language properly or have developed a different culture. North Koreans who immigrated to South Korea, despite sharing the same Korean blood and history, face discrimination as they do not share all of the elements of Korean identity, such as speaking the Korean language with an accent. Even South Koreans brought up in rural areas, who may speak with a distinct accent, face some form of discrimination by those in the cities of South Korea. Racial discrimination is not uncommon in South Korea and is sometimes seen as socially acceptable among South Koreans.
The idea of multiracial or multiethnic nations, like Canada or the United States, is opposed in general and strikes many Koreans as odd or even contradictory. Relationships between Koreans and non-Koreans may be viewed skeptically by some South Koreans and often condemned. In particular, marriage between Koreans and Japanese is seen as undesirable and this can be attributed to the strong anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea
. The term "Kosian", referring to someone who has a Korean father and a non-Korean mother, is considered offensive by some who prefer to identify themselves or their children as Korean. Moreover, the Korean office of Amnesty International
has claimed that the word "Kosian" represents racial discrimination. According to Pearl S. Buck International, there are approximately 30,000 Kosians in South Korea. Kosian children, like those of other mixed-race backgrounds in Korea, often face discrimination.
on the issue: Western culture, the Rechtsstaat
(rule of law), and human rights
are superior to non-Western culture and values. They are the product of the Enlightenment
. Cliteur sees non-Western cultures not as merely different but as anachronistic. He sees multiculturalism primarily as an unacceptable ideology of cultural relativism
, which would lead to acceptance of barbaric practices, including those brought to the Western World by immigrants. Cliteur lists infanticide
, torture
, slavery
, oppression of women, homophobia
, racism, anti-Semitism, gangs, female genital cutting
, discrimination by immigrants, suttee, and the death penalty. Cliteur compares multiculturalism to the moral acceptance of Auschwitz, Stalin, Pol Pot
and the Ku Klux Klan
.
, although some commentators have questioned the dichotomy between diversity and integration that this critique presumes. It has been argued that the UK government has since 2001, moved away from policy characterised by multiculturalism and towards the assimilation of minority communities.
Opposition has grown to state sponsored multicultural policies, with some believing that it has been a costly failure. Critics of the policy come from many parts of British society. There is now a debate in the UK over whether explicit multiculturalism and "social cohesion and inclusion" are in fact mutually exclusive. In the wake of the July 7 Bombings 2005 David Davis
, the opposition Conservative
shadow home secretary, called on the government to scrap its "outdated" policy of multiculturalism. The British columnist Leo Mckinstry said of multiculturalism,
"Britain is now governed by a suicide cult bent on wiping out any last vestige of nationhood" and called it a "profoundly disturbing social experiment". The head of the Commission for Racial Equality
, who has called for an official end to multicultural policy and has criticised "politically correct liberals for their “misguided” pandering to the ethnic lobby".
In the May 2004 edition of Prospect Magazine, the editor David Goodhart
temporarily couched the debate on multiculturalism in terms of whether a modern welfare state and a "good society" is sustainable as its citizens become increasingly diverse.
In November 2005 John Sentamu
, the Archbishop of York
, stated, "Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me: let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains." The Bishop of Rochester
Michael Nazir-Ali
was also critical, calling for the Church to regain a prominent position in public life and blaming the "newfangled and insecurely founded doctrine of multiculturalism" for entrenching the segregation of communities.
Whilst minority cultures are allowed to remain distinct, British culture and traditions are sometimes perceived as exclusive and adapted accordingly, often without the consent of the local population. Recent examples include the cancellation of public fires (associated with Guy Fawkes Night
), which the local council said was for environmental reasons only, but critics believed multiculturalism played a part. Also, there was the proposed "multicultural reinterpretation" of the York Mystery Plays
and the Birmingham "Winterval
" controversy.
In August 2006, the community and local government secretary Ruth Kelly
made a speech perceived as signalling the end of multiculturalism as official policy. In November 2006, Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that Britain has certain "essential values" and that these are a "duty". He did not reject multiculturalism outright, but he included British heritage
among the essential values:
, Tony Blair
and David Blunkett
— claimed that Labour ministers had a hidden agenda in allowing mass immigration into Britain, to "change the face of Britain forever".This alleged conspiracy has become known by the sobriquet "Neathergate".
According to Neather, who was present at closed meetings in 2000, a secret Government report called for mass immigration to change Britain's cultural make-up, and that “mass immigration was the way that the government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”.
Neather went on to say that “the policy was intended — even if this wasn’t its main purpose — to rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”.
This was later affirmed after a request through the freedom of information act secured access to the full version of a 2000 government report on immigration that had been heavily edited on a previous release. The Conservative party demanded an independent inquiry into the issue and alleged that the document showed that Labour had overseen a deliberate open-door policy on immigration to boost multi-culturalism for political ends.
In February 2011 Prime Minister David Cameron
stated that the "doctrine of state multiculturalism" (promoted by the previous Labour government) has failed and will be no longer be state policy. He stated that the UK needed a stronger national identity
and signalled a tougher stance on groups promoting Islamist extremism.
's multi-ethnic makeup and absolute political and demographic domination of the Serbs. The Yugoslav wars
that took place between 1991 and 2001 were characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia
, mostly between Serbs
on the one side and Croats
, Bosnians
or Albanians
on the other; but also between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia
and Macedonians
and Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia
.
The conflict had its roots in various underlying political, economic and cultural problems, as well as long-standing ethnic and religious
tensions.
, writes about what he sees as a developing distaste toward the idea and policies of multiculturalism in Europe, especially, as stated earlier, in the Netherlands
, Denmark
, United Kingdom
, Norway
, Sweden
, Austria
and Germany
. The belief behind this backlash on multiculturalism is that it creates friction within society.
Assimilation:
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
ideal of the co-existence of distinct ethnic cultures within one nation-state
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...
. Multiculturalism is a particular subject of debate in certain European nations that were once associated with a single, homogeneous, national cultural identity. Critics of multiculturalism argue for assimilation
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
of different ethnic groups to a single national identity
National identity
National identity is the person's identity and sense of belonging to one state or to one nation, a feeling one shares with a group of people, regardless of one's citizenship status....
.
United States
The Congress passed the Emergency Quota ActEmergency Quota Act
The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Per Centum Law, and the Johnson Quota Act restricted immigration into the United States...
in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act , was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already...
. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Italians and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. Most of the European refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
s fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States.
In the 1980s and 1990s many criticisms were expressed, from both the left and right. Criticisms come from a wide variety of perspectives, but predominantly from the perspective of liberal individualism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
, from American conservatives
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
concerned about shared traditional values
Culture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
, and from a national unity perspective.
The liberal-feminist
Liberal feminism
Liberal feminism asserts the equality of men and women through political and legal reform. It is an individualistic form of feminism and theory, which focuses on women’s ability to show and maintain their equality through their own actions and choices...
critique is related to the liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
critique, since it is concerned with what happens inside the cultural groups. In her 1999 essay, later expanded into an anthology, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?" the feminist and political theorist Susan Okin argues that a concern for the preservation of cultural diversity should not overshadow the discriminatory nature of gender roles in many traditional minority cultures, that, at the very least, "culture" should not be used as an excuse for rolling back the women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
movement.
A prominent criticism in the US, later echoed in Europe, Canada and Australia, was that multiculturalism undermined national unity, hindered social integration and cultural assimilation, and led to the fragmentation of society into several ethnic factions (Balkanization
Balkanization
Balkanization, or Balkanisation, is a geopolitical term, originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other, and it is considered pejorative.The term refers to the...
).
In 1991, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a former advisor to the Kennedy and other US administrations and Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winner, published a book criticial of multiculturalism with the title The Disuniting of America
The Disuniting of America
The Disuniting of America : Reflections on a Multicultural Society is a 1991 book that Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a former advisor to the Kennedy and other US administrations and Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote....
: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.
In his 1991 work, Illiberal Education, Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh D'Souza is an author and public speaker and a former Robert and Karen Rishwain Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is currently the President of The King's College in New York City. D'Souza is a noted Christian apologist and conservative writer and speaker....
argues that the entrenchment of multiculturalism in American universities undermined the universalist values that liberal education once attempted to foster. In particular, he was disturbed by the growth of ethnic studies programs (e.g., black studies
Africana studies
In United States education, Africana studies, or Africology is the study of the histories, politics and cultures of peoples of African origin both in Africa and in the African diaspora....
).
Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an influential American political scientist who wrote highly-regarded books in a half-dozen sub-fields of political science, starting in 1957...
, political scientist and author, known for his Clash of Civilizations
Clash of Civilizations
The Clash of Civilizations is a theory, proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world....
theory, has described multiculturalism as "basically an anti-Western ideology." According to Huntington, multiculturalism has "attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted racial, ethnic, and other subnational cultural identities and groupings."
Criticism of multiculturalism in the US was not always synonymous with opposition to immigration
Opposition to immigration
Opposition to immigration is present in most nation-states with immigration, and has become a significant political issue in many countries. Immigration in the modern sense refers to movement of people from one nation-state to another, where they are not citizens. It is important to distinguish...
. Some politicians did address both themes, notably Patrick Buchanan, who in 1993 described multiculturalism as "an across-the-board assault on our Anglo-American heritage." Buchanan and other paleoconservatives argue that multiculturalism is the ideology of the modern managerial state
Managerial state
Managerial state is a paleoconservative concept used in critiquing modern social democracy in Western countries. The term takes a pejorative context as a manifestation of Western decline. Theorists Samuel T. Francis and Paul Gottfried say this is an ongoing regime that remains in power,...
, an ongoing regime that remains in power, regardless of what political party holds a majority. It acts in the name of abstract goals, such as equality or positive rights, and uses its claim of moral superiority, power of taxation and wealth redistribution to keep itself in power.
Multiculturalism has also been attacked through satire, such as the following proposition by John Derbyshire
John Derbyshire
John Derbyshire is a British-American writer. His columns in National Review and cover a broad range of political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race. Derbyshire's 1996 novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the...
.
The Diversity Theorem: Groups of people from anywhere in the world, mixed together in any numbers and proportions whatsoever, will eventually settle down as a harmonious society, appreciating—nay, celebrating!—their differences... which will of course soon disappear entirely.
This theorem is held to be false by Derbyshire and other paleoconservatives.
Lawrence Auster
Lawrence Auster
Lawrence Auster is an American traditionalist conservative blogger and essayist.-Personal life:Auster grew up in New Jersey. He attended Columbia University for two years, later finishing a B.A. in English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He moved to Manhattan in 1978, and still resides...
, another conservative critic of multiculturalism, has argued that although multiculturalism is meant to promote the value of each culture, the reality is that its real tendency has been to undermine America's traditional majority culture. In Auster's view, multiculturalism has tended to "downgrade our national culture while raising the status and power of other cultures."
He writes:
The formal meaning of “diversity,” “cultural equity,” “gorgeous mosaic” and so on is a society in which many different cultures will live together in perfect equality and peace (i.e., a society that has never existed and never will exist); the real meaning of these slogans is that the power of the existing mainstream society to determine its own destiny shall be drastically reduced while the power of other groups, formerly marginal or external to that society, will be increased. In other words the U.S. must, in the name of diversity, abandon its particularity while the very groups making that demand shall hold on to theirs.
According to Auster:
Since multiculturalism claims to stand for the sanctity and worth of each culture, the discovery that its real tendency is to dismantle the existing, European-based culture of the United States should have instantly discredited it.
Another critic of multiculturalism is the political theorist Brian Barry
Brian Barry
Brian Barry FBA was a moral and political philosopher. He was educated at the Queen's College, Oxford, obtaining the degrees of B.A. and D.Phil under the direction of H. L. A. Hart....
. In his 2002 book Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism, he argues that some forms of multiculturalism can divide people, although they need to unite in order to fight for social justice.
Kevin B. MacDonald
Kevin B. MacDonald
Kevin B. MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, best known for his use of evolutionary psychology to inform his study of Judaism as being a "group evolutionary strategy."...
, a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, has argued in his trilogy of books on Judaism that Jews have been prominent as main ideologues and promoters of multiculturalism in an attempt to end anti-semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
. MacDonald considers multiculturalism to be dangerous to the West, concluding in his Jack London Literary Prize acceptance speech:
[Given] that some ethnic groups—especially ones with high levels of ethnocentrism and mobilization—will undoubtedly continue to function as groups far into the foreseeable future, unilateral renunciation of ethnic loyalties by some groups means only their surrender and defeat—the Darwinian dead end of extinction. The future, then, like the past, will inevitably be a Darwinian competition in which ethnicity plays a very large role.
The alternative faced by Europeans throughout the Western worldWestern worldThe Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
is to place themselves in a position of enormous vulnerability in which their destinies will be determined by other peoples, many of whom hold deep historically conditioned hatreds toward them. Europeans’ promotion of their own displacement is the ultimate foolishness—an historical mistake of catastrophic proportions.
Finally, multiculturalism and cultural relativism have been fiercely attacked by American social thinker Lloyd deMause
Lloyd deMause
Lloyd deMause, pronounced de-Moss , is an American social thinker known for his work in the field of psychohistory. He did graduate work in political science at Columbia University and later trained as a lay psychoanalyst...
, founder of psychohistory
Psychohistory
Psychohistory is the study of the psychological motivations of historical events. It attempts to combine the insights of psychotherapy with the research methodology of the social sciences to understand the emotional origin of the social and political behavior of groups and nations, past and present...
. DeMause's central argument is that, in the past, the astronomical infanticidal ratios among the tribes gives the lie to the claim that the diverse cultures are basically equal. DeMause wrote: "The best estimate I could make from the statistics was that in antiquity about half of all children born were killed by their caretakers, declining to about a third by later medieval times and to a very small percentage by the seventeenth century in Western Europe and America."
Diversity and Social Trust
Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study how diversity affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions," writes Putnam. In the presence of such ethnic diversity, Putnam maintains that
[W]e hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.
Ethologist Frank Salter
Frank Salter
Frank Kemp Salter is an Australian academic and researcher at the former Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, Andechs, Germany, best known for his writings on ethnicity and ethnic interests....
writes:
Relatively homogeneous societies invest more in public goods, indicating a higher level of public altruism. For example, the degree of ethnic homogeneity correlates with the government's share of gross domestic product as well as the average wealth of citizens. Case studies of the United States...find that multi-ethnic societies are less charitable and less able to cooperate to develop public infrastructure..... A recent multi-city study of municipal spending on public goods in the United States found that ethnically or racially diverse cities spend a smaller portion of their budgets and less per capita on public services than do the more homogenous cities.
Canada
Approximately 20% of today's Canadian citizens were born outside Canada, recent immigrants are largely concentrated in the cities of Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The multicultural heritage of Canadians was officially recognized in the Constitution Act, 1982Constitution Act, 1982
The Constitution Act, 1982 is a part of the Constitution of Canada. The Act was introduced as part of Canada's process of "patriating" the constitution, introducing several amendments to the British North America Act, 1867, and changing the latter's name in Canada to the Constitution Act, 1867...
by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, with the introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada. It forms the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982...
, which included section 27, stating that the "Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians."
Criticism from Quebec
To many Quebecers, despite an official national bilingualism policy, multiculturalism threatens to reduce them to just another ethnic group. Quebec has tended to promote interculturalismInterculturalism
Interculturalism is the philosophy of exchanges between cultural groups within a society, as used by nationalists of the Canadian province of Quebec. Quebeckers have historically been sensitive to any perceived degradation of their heritage...
, welcoming people of all origins while insisting that they integrate into Quebec's French-speaking majority culture. In 2008, a Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, headed by sociologist Gerard Bouchard
Gérard Bouchard
Gérard Bouchard is a historian, sociologist and writer from Quebec, Canada, affiliated with the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Born in Jonquière, Quebec, he obtained his master's degree in sociology from Université Laval in 1968 and later obtained his PhD degree in history from the University...
and philosopher Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor (philosopher)
Charles Margrave Taylor, is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions in political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and in the history of philosophy. His contributions to these fields have earned him both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the...
, recognized that Quebec is a de facto pluralist society, but that the Canadian multiculturalism model "does not appear well suited to conditions in Quebec". Four reasons were given by the commissioners against multiculturalism for Quebec society: a) anxiety over language is not an important factor in English Canada; b) minority insecurity is not found there; c) there is no longer a majority ethnic group in Canada (citizen of British origin account for 34% of the population, whereas citizen of French-Canadian origin form 79% of Quebec's population); d) less concern for the preservation of a founding cultural tradition is found in English Canada. Interculturalism, the commissioners pleaded, "seeks to reconcile ethnocultural diversity with the continuity of the French-speaking core and the preservation of the social link".
Germany
In October 2010, Angela MerkelAngela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel is the current Chancellor of Germany . Merkel, elected to the Bundestag from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has been the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union since 2000, and chairwoman of the CDU-CSU parliamentary coalition from 2002 to 2005.From 2005 to 2009 she led a...
told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union
Christian Democratic Union
Christian Democratic Union may refer to:* Christian Democratic Union * Christian Democratic Union * Christian Democratic Union * Christian Democratic Union * Christian Democratic Union...
(CDU) party at Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....
, near Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
had "utterly failed", stating: "The concept that we are now living side by side and are happy about it does not work". She continued to say that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values. This has added to a growing debate within Germany on the levels of immigration, its effect on Germany and the degree to which Muslim immigrants have integrated into German society.
Australia
The response to multiculturalism in Australia has been extremely varied, with a recent wave of criticism against it in the past decade. An anti-immigration party, the One Nation PartyOne Nation Party
One Nation is a far-right and nationalist political party in Australia. It gained 22% of the vote translating to 11 of 89 seats in Queensland's unicameral legislative assembly at the 1998 state election and made major inroads into the vote of the existing parties...
, was formed by Pauline Hanson
Pauline Hanson
Pauline Lee Hanson is an Australian politician and former leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a political party with a populist and anti-multiculturalism platform...
in the late 1990s. The party enjoyed significant electoral success for a while, most notably in its home state of Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, but is now electorally marginalized. One Nation called for the abolition of multiculturalism on the grounds that it represented "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", arguing that there was "no reason why migrant cultures should be maintained at the expense of our shared, national culture.".
A Federal Government proposal in 2006 to introduce a compulsory citizenship test, which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values, sparked renewed debate over the future of multiculturalism in Australia. Andrew Robb
Andrew Robb
Andrew John Robb AO , Australian politician and former federal Director of the Liberal Party of Australia, was elected to the House of Representatives as member for the Division of Goldstein, Victoria for the Liberal Party of Australia at the 2004 federal election.Robb, one of nine children, was...
, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration." The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60.
In January 2007 the Howard Government
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....
removed the word "multicultural" from the name of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, changing its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
Intellectual critique
The earliest academic critics of multiculturalism in Australia were the philosophers Lachlan Chipman and Frank KnopfelmacherFrank Knopfelmacher
Frank Knopfelmacher , Australian-domiciled political philosopher and psychologist, the subject of nationally famous controversies during the 1960s and 1970s....
, sociologist Tanya Birrell and the political scientist Raymond Sestito. Chipman and Knopfelmacher were concerned with threats to social cohesion, while Birrell's concern was that multiculturalism obscures the social costs associated with large scale immigration that fall most heavily on the most recently arrived and unskilled immigrants. Sestito's arguments were based on the role of political parties. He argued that political parties were instrumental in pursuing multicultural policies, and that these policies would put strain on the political system and would not promote better understanding in the Australian community.
It was the high-profile historian Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey AC , is a prominent Australian historian.Blainey was born in Melbourne and raised in a series of Victorian country towns before attending Wesley College and the University of Melbourne. While at university he was editor of Farrago, the newspaper of the University of...
, however, who first achieved mainstream recognition for the anti-multiculturalist cause when he wrote that multiculturalism threatened to transform Australia into a "cluster of tribes". In his 1984 book All for Australia
All for Australia
All for Australia is a 1984 book by Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey. It criticizes Australian immigration policy and the direction in which it is shaping the nation...
, Blainey criticized multiculturalism for tending to "emphasize the rights of ethnic minorities at the expense of the majority of Australians" and also for tending to be "anti-British", even though "people from the United Kingdom and Ireland form the dominant class of pre-war immigrants and the largest single group of post-war immigrants."
According to Blainey, such a policy, with its "emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority," was unnecessarily creating division and threatened national cohesion. He argued that "the evidence is clear that many multicultural societies have failed and that the human cost of the failure has been high", and warned that "we should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world." Blainey wrote "For the millions of Australians who have no other nation to fall back upon, multiculturalism is almost an insult. It is divisive. It threatens social cohesion. It could, in the long-term, also endanger Australia's military security because it sets up enclaves which in a crisis could appeal to their own homelands for help."
Blainey remained a persistent critic of multiculturalism into the 1990s, denouncing multiculturalism as "morally, intellectually and economically ... a sham".
Following the upsurge of support for the One Nation Party
One Nation Party
One Nation is a far-right and nationalist political party in Australia. It gained 22% of the vote translating to 11 of 89 seats in Queensland's unicameral legislative assembly at the 1998 state election and made major inroads into the vote of the existing parties...
in 1996, Lebanese
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
-born Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage
Ghassan Hage
Ghassan Hage is a Lebanese-Australian academic serving as Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne. Professor Hage has been a very high-profile contributor to debates on multiculturalism in Australia and has published widely on the topic...
published a critique in 1997 of Australian multiculturalism in the book White Nation.
Japan
Japanese societyEthnic issues in Japan
- Demographic :About 1.6% of Japan's total legal resident population are foreign nationals. Of these, according to 2008 data from the Japanese government, the principal groups are as follows....
, with its ideology of homogeneity, has traditionally rejected any need to recognize ethnic differences in Japan, even as such claims have been rejected by such ethnic minorities as the Ainu
Ainu people
The , also called Aynu, Aino , and in historical texts Ezo , are indigenous people or groups in Japan and Russia. Historically they spoke the Ainu language and related varieties and lived in Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin...
. Former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso
Taro Aso
was the 92nd Prime Minister of Japan serving from September 2008 to September 2009, and was defeated in the August 2009 election.He has served in the House of Representatives since 1979. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2005 to 2007, and was Secretary-General of the LDP briefly in 2007 and...
has called Japan a “one race” nation.
In 2005, a report by Doudou Diène
Doudou Diène
Doudou Diène of Senegal was United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in 2002—2008....
, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights, expressed concerns about racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
in Japan and stated that the government needed to recognize the depth of the problem. Diène's nine-day investigation concluded that racial discrimination and xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
in Japan primarily affects three groups: national minorities, Latin Americans of Japanese descent
Dekasegi
Dekasegi is a term used in Latin American cultures to refer to ethnic Japanese people who have migrated to Japan, having taken advantage of Japanese citizenship or nisei visa and immigration laws to escape from economic instability in South America...
, mainly Japanese Brazilians, and foreigners from other Asian countries. For example, according to the UNHCR, in 1999 Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
accepted just 16 refugees for resettlement, while the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
took in 85,010, and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, which has a much smaller population than Japan, accepted 1,140. Between 1981, when Japan ratified the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
The United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is an international convention that defines who is a refugee, and sets out the rights of individuals who are granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum. The Convention also sets out which people do not...
, and 2002, Japan recognized only 305 persons as refugees.
South Korea
South KoreaSouth Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
is among the world's most ethnically homogeneous nations. Historically, the country has tried hard to keep interaction between Koreans and non-Koreans as minimal as possible, forming a very distinct society. Koreans have traditionally valued an "unmixed blood" as the most important feature of Korean identity, often more important than their own lives. Most Koreans tend to equate nationality
Nationality
Nationality is membership of a nation or sovereign state, usually determined by their citizenship, but sometimes by ethnicity or place of residence, or based on their sense of national identity....
or citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
with membership in a single, homogeneous ethnic group
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
sharing the same "blood" and history. A common language and culture are also viewed as important elements in Korean identity.
Those who do not share such features are often rejected by the Korean society or face discrimination. This includes Koreans themselves who may not share one of the elements of Korean identity. For example, Koreans brought up overseas often face discrimination by Koreans living in South Korea upon their return who may not speak the language properly or have developed a different culture. North Koreans who immigrated to South Korea, despite sharing the same Korean blood and history, face discrimination as they do not share all of the elements of Korean identity, such as speaking the Korean language with an accent. Even South Koreans brought up in rural areas, who may speak with a distinct accent, face some form of discrimination by those in the cities of South Korea. Racial discrimination is not uncommon in South Korea and is sometimes seen as socially acceptable among South Koreans.
The idea of multiracial or multiethnic nations, like Canada or the United States, is opposed in general and strikes many Koreans as odd or even contradictory. Relationships between Koreans and non-Koreans may be viewed skeptically by some South Koreans and often condemned. In particular, marriage between Koreans and Japanese is seen as undesirable and this can be attributed to the strong anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea
Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea
The Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea is complex and multi-faceted. Anti-Japanese sentiment attitudes in the Korea can be traced back to the effects of Japanese pirate raids and the Japanese invasions of Korea , such as dismembering more than 20,000 noses and ears from Koreans and bringing them back...
. The term "Kosian", referring to someone who has a Korean father and a non-Korean mother, is considered offensive by some who prefer to identify themselves or their children as Korean. Moreover, the Korean office of Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
has claimed that the word "Kosian" represents racial discrimination. According to Pearl S. Buck International, there are approximately 30,000 Kosians in South Korea. Kosian children, like those of other mixed-race backgrounds in Korea, often face discrimination.
The Netherlands
Legal philosopher Paul Cliteur attacked multiculturalism in his book The Philosophy of Human Rights. Cliteur rejects all political correctnessPolitical correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
on the issue: Western culture, the Rechtsstaat
Rechtsstaat
Rechtsstaat is a concept in continental European legal thinking, originally borrowed from German jurisprudence, which can be translated as "legal state", "state of law", "state of justice", or "state of rights"...
(rule of law), and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
are superior to non-Western culture and values. They are the product of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. Cliteur sees non-Western cultures not as merely different but as anachronistic. He sees multiculturalism primarily as an unacceptable ideology of cultural relativism
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and...
, which would lead to acceptance of barbaric practices, including those brought to the Western World by immigrants. Cliteur lists infanticide
Infanticide
Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
, torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, oppression of women, homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, racism, anti-Semitism, gangs, female genital cutting
Female genital cutting
Female genital mutilation , also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, is defined by the World Health Organization as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons."FGM...
, discrimination by immigrants, suttee, and the death penalty. Cliteur compares multiculturalism to the moral acceptance of Auschwitz, Stalin, Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
and the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
.
United Kingdom
With considerable immigration after the Second World War making the UK an increasingly ethnically and racially diverse state, race relations policies have been developed that broadly reflect the principles of multiculturalism, although there is no official national commitment to the concept. This model has faced criticism on the grounds that it has failed to sufficiently promote social integrationSocial integration
Social integration, in sociology and other social sciences, is the movement of minority groups such as ethnic minorities, refugees and underprivileged sections of a society into the mainstream of societies...
, although some commentators have questioned the dichotomy between diversity and integration that this critique presumes. It has been argued that the UK government has since 2001, moved away from policy characterised by multiculturalism and towards the assimilation of minority communities.
Opposition has grown to state sponsored multicultural policies, with some believing that it has been a costly failure. Critics of the policy come from many parts of British society. There is now a debate in the UK over whether explicit multiculturalism and "social cohesion and inclusion" are in fact mutually exclusive. In the wake of the July 7 Bombings 2005 David Davis
David Davis (British politician)
David Michael Davis is a British Conservative Party politician who is the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Haltemprice and Howden...
, the opposition Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
shadow home secretary, called on the government to scrap its "outdated" policy of multiculturalism. The British columnist Leo Mckinstry said of multiculturalism,
"Britain is now governed by a suicide cult bent on wiping out any last vestige of nationhood" and called it a "profoundly disturbing social experiment". The head of the Commission for Racial Equality
Commission for Racial Equality
The Commission for Racial Equality was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom which aimed to tackle racial discrimination and promote racial equality. Its work has been merged into the new Equality and Human Rights Commission.-History:...
, who has called for an official end to multicultural policy and has criticised "politically correct liberals for their “misguided” pandering to the ethnic lobby".
In the May 2004 edition of Prospect Magazine, the editor David Goodhart
David Goodhart
David Goodhart was the Editor of Prospect, a British current affairs magazine. He was formerly a senior correspondent of the Financial Times...
temporarily couched the debate on multiculturalism in terms of whether a modern welfare state and a "good society" is sustainable as its citizens become increasingly diverse.
In November 2005 John Sentamu
John Sentamu
John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu is the 97th Archbishop of York, Metropolitan of the province of York, and Primate of England. He is the second most senior cleric in the Church of England, after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.-Life and career:...
, the Archbishop of York
Archbishop of York
The Archbishop of York is a high-ranking cleric in the Church of England, second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of York and metropolitan of the Province of York, which covers the northern portion of England as well as the Isle of Man...
, stated, "Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me: let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains." The Bishop of Rochester
Bishop of Rochester
The Bishop of Rochester is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Rochester in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers the west of the county of Kent and is centred in the city of Rochester where the bishop's seat is located at the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin...
Michael Nazir-Ali
Michael Nazir-Ali
Michael James Nazir-Ali was the 106th Bishop of Rochester in the Church of England: he retired in September 2009, taking up a position as director of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue...
was also critical, calling for the Church to regain a prominent position in public life and blaming the "newfangled and insecurely founded doctrine of multiculturalism" for entrenching the segregation of communities.
Whilst minority cultures are allowed to remain distinct, British culture and traditions are sometimes perceived as exclusive and adapted accordingly, often without the consent of the local population. Recent examples include the cancellation of public fires (associated with Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in England. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding...
), which the local council said was for environmental reasons only, but critics believed multiculturalism played a part. Also, there was the proposed "multicultural reinterpretation" of the York Mystery Plays
York Mystery Plays
The York Mystery Plays, more properly called the York Corpus Christi Plays, are a Middle English cycle of forty-eight mystery plays, or pageants, which cover sacred history from the creation to the Last Judgement. These were traditionally presented on the feast day of Corpus Christi...
and the Birmingham "Winterval
Winterval
Winterval was a season of public events in Birmingham, England organised by Birmingham City Council in each of two consecutive winters: first from 20 November to 31 December 1997, and then again from mid-October 1998 to mid-January 1999...
" controversy.
In August 2006, the community and local government secretary Ruth Kelly
Ruth Kelly
Ruth Maria Kelly is a British Labour Party politician of Irish descent who was the Member of Parliament for Bolton West from 1997 until she stood down in 2010...
made a speech perceived as signalling the end of multiculturalism as official policy. In November 2006, Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that Britain has certain "essential values" and that these are a "duty". He did not reject multiculturalism outright, but he included British heritage
Tradition
A tradition is a ritual, belief or object passed down within a society, still maintained in the present, with origins in the past. Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes , but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings...
among the essential values:
- "When it comes to our essential values — belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage — then that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common."
New Labour and multiculturalism
Renewed controversy on the subject came to the fore when Andrew Neather — a former adviser to Jack StrawJack Straw
Jack Straw , British politician.Jack Straw may also refer to:* Jack Straw , English* "Jack Straw" , 1971 song by the Grateful Dead* Jack Straw by W...
, Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
and David Blunkett
David Blunkett
David Blunkett is a British Labour Party politician and the Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, having represented Sheffield Brightside from 1987 to 2010...
— claimed that Labour ministers had a hidden agenda in allowing mass immigration into Britain, to "change the face of Britain forever".This alleged conspiracy has become known by the sobriquet "Neathergate".
According to Neather, who was present at closed meetings in 2000, a secret Government report called for mass immigration to change Britain's cultural make-up, and that “mass immigration was the way that the government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”.
Neather went on to say that “the policy was intended — even if this wasn’t its main purpose — to rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”.
This was later affirmed after a request through the freedom of information act secured access to the full version of a 2000 government report on immigration that had been heavily edited on a previous release. The Conservative party demanded an independent inquiry into the issue and alleged that the document showed that Labour had overseen a deliberate open-door policy on immigration to boost multi-culturalism for political ends.
In February 2011 Prime Minister David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
stated that the "doctrine of state multiculturalism" (promoted by the previous Labour government) has failed and will be no longer be state policy. He stated that the UK needed a stronger national identity
National identity
National identity is the person's identity and sense of belonging to one state or to one nation, a feeling one shares with a group of people, regardless of one's citizenship status....
and signalled a tougher stance on groups promoting Islamist extremism.
Yugoslavia
Before World War II, major tensions arose from the first, monarchist YugoslaviaKingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
's multi-ethnic makeup and absolute political and demographic domination of the Serbs. The Yugoslav wars
Yugoslav wars
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of wars, fought throughout the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. The wars were complex: characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts among the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbs on the one side and Croats and Bosniaks on the other; but also...
that took place between 1991 and 2001 were characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, mostly between Serbs
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
on the one side and Croats
Croats
Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...
, Bosnians
Bosnians
Bosnians are people who reside in, or come from, Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the modern state definition a Bosnian can be anyone who holds citizenship of the state. This includes, but is not limited to, members of the constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs and...
or Albanians
Albanians
Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...
on the other; but also between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
and Macedonians
Macedonians (ethnic group)
The Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs: "... the term Slavomacedonian was introduced and was accepted by the community itself, which at the time had a much more widespread non-Greek Macedonian ethnic consciousness...
and Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia
Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...
.
The conflict had its roots in various underlying political, economic and cultural problems, as well as long-standing ethnic and religious
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
tensions.
Multiculturalism and Islam
In an article in the Hudson Review, Bruce BawerBruce Bawer
Bruce Bawer is an American literary critic, writer and poet. His work focuses mainly on criticism and issues related to Islam.-Personal life:Bawer received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D...
, writes about what he sees as a developing distaste toward the idea and policies of multiculturalism in Europe, especially, as stated earlier, in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. The belief behind this backlash on multiculturalism is that it creates friction within society.
See also
- Ethnic nepotismEthnic nepotismEthnic nepotism describes a human tendency for in-group bias or in-group favouritism applied by nepotism for people with the same ethnicity.- The theory :...
- Immigrant criminalityImmigrant criminalityImmigration and crime refers to perceived or actual relationships between crime and immigration.-Worldwide:The Handbook of Crime Correlates , a review of studies of correlates with crime, states that most studies on immigrants have found higher rates of crime...
- Immigration reductionImmigration reductionImmigration reduction refers to a movement in the United States that advocates a reduction in the amount of immigration allowed into the country. Steps advocated for reducing the numbers of immigrants include advocating stronger action to prevent illegal entry and illegal immigration, and...
- Opposition to immigrationOpposition to immigrationOpposition to immigration is present in most nation-states with immigration, and has become a significant political issue in many countries. Immigration in the modern sense refers to movement of people from one nation-state to another, where they are not citizens. It is important to distinguish...
Assimilation:
- Criticism of IslamCriticism of IslamCriticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early written criticism came from Christians, prior to the ninth century, many of whom viewed Islam as a radical Christian heresy...
- Criticism of IslamismCriticism of IslamismCriticism of Islamism concerns critique of those beliefs or notions ascribed to Islamism or Islamist movements. Such criticisms focus on the role of Islam in legislation, the relationship between Islamism and freedom of expression and the rights of women.Among those authors and scholars who have...
- Undercover MosqueUndercover MosqueUndercover Mosque is a documentary programme produced by the independent television company hardcash productions for the Channel 4 series Dispatches which first aired on 15 January 2007 in the UK. The film caused a furore in Britain and the world press due to the content of the released footage...
- Stop Islamisation Of Europe
- English Defence LeagueEnglish Defence LeagueThe English Defence League is a far-right street protest movement which opposes what it considers to be a spread of Islamism, Sharia law and Islamic extremism in the UK. The EDL uses street marches to protest against Islamic extremism...
- Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within
- EurabiaEurabiaEurabia is a conspiracy theory about the alleged Arabization and Islamization of Europe, and the European leaders' alleged capitulation to Islamic influences.-Origin of the term:...
Further reading
- Allan, Lyle (1983), 'A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Multiculturalism', in Social Alternatives (University of Queensland), Vol.3, No.3, July, pages 65–72.
- Blainey, Geoffrey (1984), All For Australia, Methuen Haynes, North Ryde, New South Wales. ISBN 0-454-00828-7
- Clancy, Greg (2006), The Conspiracies of Multiculturalism, Sunda Publications, Gordon, New South Wales. ISBN 0-9581564-1-7
- Hirst, John (2005), Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, Black Inc. Agenda, Melbourne, Victoria. ISBN 9780977594931
- Putnam, Robert D., "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century -- The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize," Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (2), June 2007.
- Sailer, Steve, "Fragmented Future: Multiculturalism doesn’t make vibrant communities but defensive ones," American Conservative, Jan. 15, 2007.
- Salter, Frank, On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration, 2007, ISBN 1-41280-596-1.