Since this thread was destroyed the last time around by idiots and malcontents...
Multiculturalism: A Historical Background
American demographics are in a state of flux. For the first time since the decades surrounding the close of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, population changes seem likely to alter the very fabric of American political and social life. For better or for worse, the US is becoming an increasingly diverse and culturally fragmented land.
Responses to this sea change have been many and varied, from major corporations looking to exploit cheap immigrant labor to gun toting rednecks patrolling the Texico border to stop illegals. One such response has been the increasing influence of the so-called "multiculturalist" movement.
Multiculturalism emerged following the Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's, in part as an attempt by white liberals to reassert bourgeoisie control of the race debate following the collapse of the white liberal/black moderate coalition of the Civil Rights era in the wake of the rise of black radicalism. However, it only became a significant ideological force with the explosion of Latino immigration in the 80's and 90's. In the early 21st century, multiculturalism has emerged as perhaps the only real ideological bond holding together the fragmented remains of the center-left coalition that dominated American politics from the New Deal era to the Reagan Revolution.
What is Multiculturalism?
"Multiculturalism" is one of those words that, like "postmodern," has through faddishness come to mean all things to all people. However, broadly speaking, it is a movement that claims to embrace cultural diversity by de-centering society's focus on mainstream (read white middle class) culture and re-center it in multipolar and thus "multicultural" paradigm.
In practice, however, multiculturalism has not escaped its bourgeoisie origins. In classic Orwellian fashion, far from embracing and nurturing diversity, multiculturalism is actually an assimilationist movement intent on creating a new "inclusive" monoculture to replace the currently fragmented system of independent cultural traditions.
Rather than perpetuating real cultural diversity, the multicultural movement reduces diversity to a mass-marketable fetish for consumption by a faceless mass: kente cloth for yuppies. In essence, multiculturalism has become a corporatized sham, just another step in a long tradition of white money men plundering other cultural traditions for fun and profit.
Beyond Multiculturalism
The above criticisms are not new. They have emerged both from the post-Marxist Left (particularly scholars whose own cultural origins are outside the white/Jewish bourgeoisie tradition) and from those traditionally identified with the hard Right (for whom it is usually part of an appeal to racial seperatism).
As mentioned, hard Right critics have typically responded to multiculturalism with a call to abandon it entirely in favor of cultural and racial seperatism (usually, but not always, with an implied undercurrent of white supremacy that makes their proposals less like ethnic seperatism and more in line with an apartheid state). This is a non-starter for several reasons, not least of which that it would require massive population resettlements (presumably under force of arms) for which neither the need nor the resources are present. Seperatism as more than a personal choice is simply not a viable option in 21st century America.
Leftist criticism has typically been matched with a call to reform the multicultural movement itself, usually by further de-centering it from bourgeoisie culture. This is certainly a more promising avenue of attack than enforced seperatism, but still likely an inadequate "solution."
There are two (I think) insurmountable difficulties facing any reformist approach. The first is that it is very rare that an ideological movement can ever escape the interests and values of the culture that spawned it, in this case, liberal white/Jewish bourgeoisie culture. The reality is that the values and interests of the culture that spawned and promotes multiculturalism are not in line with real diversity, rather they are advanced by assimilating diverse cultural and ethnic groups into the dominant culture. The second is that the multicultural movement has itself largely become corporatized (companies benefit both from marketing fetishized "diversity" and from exploiting a labor pool that has been stripped of any real identity beyond that of "wage earner").
Now, I don't pretend at this point to have any overarching solutions. The first is to extend greater tolerance to those who seek to opt out of the mainstream through seperatism. These groups may make most of us uncomfortable, but they are also the groups that historically have preserved grand cultural traditions against neglect and abandonment (one thinks of the cloistered monks who saved not only Plato and Aristotle from extinction, but the entire Classical tradition that still informs life today, not to mention the vestiges of the beautiful cultures of Celtic Britain and Ireland that otherwise would have been lost forever). The recent history of violence associated with such groups is largely a product of government harassment and persecution (as can be seen in cases as diverse as that of the Black Panthers and the Ruby Ridge incident).
My second suggestion would be to work for the decommercialization of cultural expression. Much of the plasticity and assimilationist quality of cultural expression these days is a product of corporate ownership of most outlets of distribution. Encouraging signs of a de-centering of corporate influence are out there, particularly with regard to music. Cheap digital recording technology and file sharing have increasingly allowed culturally aware music to get to the public without being diluted by corporate meddling. More work needs to be done, but a revolution in how culture is mediated seems possible, and would be giant step towards promoting true cultural diversity.
Further critiques of multiculturalism:
Neo-conservative:
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/guides/How%20Multiculturalism%20Took%20Over%20America.htm
Traditional liberal:
http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/against_mc.html
Marxist:
http://www.redaction.org/race_and_c...ace_attack.html
European Nationalist:
http://www.suomensisu.fi/kukkiakriittisille/dutton.html
Multiculturalism: A Historical Background
American demographics are in a state of flux. For the first time since the decades surrounding the close of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, population changes seem likely to alter the very fabric of American political and social life. For better or for worse, the US is becoming an increasingly diverse and culturally fragmented land.
Responses to this sea change have been many and varied, from major corporations looking to exploit cheap immigrant labor to gun toting rednecks patrolling the Texico border to stop illegals. One such response has been the increasing influence of the so-called "multiculturalist" movement.
Multiculturalism emerged following the Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's, in part as an attempt by white liberals to reassert bourgeoisie control of the race debate following the collapse of the white liberal/black moderate coalition of the Civil Rights era in the wake of the rise of black radicalism. However, it only became a significant ideological force with the explosion of Latino immigration in the 80's and 90's. In the early 21st century, multiculturalism has emerged as perhaps the only real ideological bond holding together the fragmented remains of the center-left coalition that dominated American politics from the New Deal era to the Reagan Revolution.
What is Multiculturalism?
"Multiculturalism" is one of those words that, like "postmodern," has through faddishness come to mean all things to all people. However, broadly speaking, it is a movement that claims to embrace cultural diversity by de-centering society's focus on mainstream (read white middle class) culture and re-center it in multipolar and thus "multicultural" paradigm.
In practice, however, multiculturalism has not escaped its bourgeoisie origins. In classic Orwellian fashion, far from embracing and nurturing diversity, multiculturalism is actually an assimilationist movement intent on creating a new "inclusive" monoculture to replace the currently fragmented system of independent cultural traditions.
Rather than perpetuating real cultural diversity, the multicultural movement reduces diversity to a mass-marketable fetish for consumption by a faceless mass: kente cloth for yuppies. In essence, multiculturalism has become a corporatized sham, just another step in a long tradition of white money men plundering other cultural traditions for fun and profit.
Beyond Multiculturalism
The above criticisms are not new. They have emerged both from the post-Marxist Left (particularly scholars whose own cultural origins are outside the white/Jewish bourgeoisie tradition) and from those traditionally identified with the hard Right (for whom it is usually part of an appeal to racial seperatism).
As mentioned, hard Right critics have typically responded to multiculturalism with a call to abandon it entirely in favor of cultural and racial seperatism (usually, but not always, with an implied undercurrent of white supremacy that makes their proposals less like ethnic seperatism and more in line with an apartheid state). This is a non-starter for several reasons, not least of which that it would require massive population resettlements (presumably under force of arms) for which neither the need nor the resources are present. Seperatism as more than a personal choice is simply not a viable option in 21st century America.
Leftist criticism has typically been matched with a call to reform the multicultural movement itself, usually by further de-centering it from bourgeoisie culture. This is certainly a more promising avenue of attack than enforced seperatism, but still likely an inadequate "solution."
There are two (I think) insurmountable difficulties facing any reformist approach. The first is that it is very rare that an ideological movement can ever escape the interests and values of the culture that spawned it, in this case, liberal white/Jewish bourgeoisie culture. The reality is that the values and interests of the culture that spawned and promotes multiculturalism are not in line with real diversity, rather they are advanced by assimilating diverse cultural and ethnic groups into the dominant culture. The second is that the multicultural movement has itself largely become corporatized (companies benefit both from marketing fetishized "diversity" and from exploiting a labor pool that has been stripped of any real identity beyond that of "wage earner").
Now, I don't pretend at this point to have any overarching solutions. The first is to extend greater tolerance to those who seek to opt out of the mainstream through seperatism. These groups may make most of us uncomfortable, but they are also the groups that historically have preserved grand cultural traditions against neglect and abandonment (one thinks of the cloistered monks who saved not only Plato and Aristotle from extinction, but the entire Classical tradition that still informs life today, not to mention the vestiges of the beautiful cultures of Celtic Britain and Ireland that otherwise would have been lost forever). The recent history of violence associated with such groups is largely a product of government harassment and persecution (as can be seen in cases as diverse as that of the Black Panthers and the Ruby Ridge incident).
My second suggestion would be to work for the decommercialization of cultural expression. Much of the plasticity and assimilationist quality of cultural expression these days is a product of corporate ownership of most outlets of distribution. Encouraging signs of a de-centering of corporate influence are out there, particularly with regard to music. Cheap digital recording technology and file sharing have increasingly allowed culturally aware music to get to the public without being diluted by corporate meddling. More work needs to be done, but a revolution in how culture is mediated seems possible, and would be giant step towards promoting true cultural diversity.
Further critiques of multiculturalism:
Neo-conservative:
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/guides/How%20Multiculturalism%20Took%20Over%20America.htm
Traditional liberal:
http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/against_mc.html
Marxist:
http://www.redaction.org/race_and_c...ace_attack.html
European Nationalist:
http://www.suomensisu.fi/kukkiakriittisille/dutton.html
