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posted by n1 on Sunday May 24 2015, @04:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the RTFA dept.

When we hear the word "multiculturalism," some imagine people of all races and creeds holding hands, others imagine a clash of disparate cultures that cannot co-exist. There are many more nuanced definitions in between.

In the world of mainstream politics, there is now widespread acknowledgment that the failure of immigrants to properly integrate into the culture of their host nations is causing a lot more harm that good. The backlash against multiculturalism has begun to manifest itself as a rise of nationalist parties such as England's UKIP and France's National Front gaining more support from disillusioned countrymen.

In 2010 German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that,

" This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed," Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, west of Berlin, yesterday. "

Merkel also suggested that the onus was on immigrants to do more to integrate into German society, and late last year the European Court of Justice ruled that EU citizens who move to another member state "solely in order to obtain social assistance" may be excluded from receiving that assistance, an acknowledgement that multiculturalism's side effects are causing more harm than good.

Those interested in this topic should read Foreign Affairs' excellent article The Failure of Multiculturalism.

As a political tool, multiculturalism has functioned as not merely a response to diversity but also a means of constraining it. And that insight reveals a paradox. Multicultural policies accept as a given that societies are diverse, yet they implicitly assume that such diversity ends at the edges of minority communities. They seek to institutionalize diversity by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes—into a singular, homogeneous Muslim community, for example—and defining their needs and rights accordingly. Such policies, in other words, have helped create the very divisions they were meant to manage.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:04PM (#187225)
    No, there aren't millions of people grouped in a particular religion who want to kill you but are too lazy to do it. If you keep thinking like that, though, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @07:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @07:05PM (#187284)
    Bollocks, of course there are. In addition there are even more grouped in "a particular religion" that wouldn't be unhappy to hear about one of their co-believers martyring themselves and taking a bunch of infidels with them. Let's put a name to it. There are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. If 0.1% of them would actively choose to kill me given the chance, then there are 1.6 million that would do so. If there are 10x as many that would look on with approval, then there are 16 million that are "too lazy". What percentage of the population of people that believe in Islam worldwide would you say could be classified as "radical"? My feeling is that 1% is a low estimate.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @11:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @11:21PM (#187403)
      Yet you feel safe where you live. Must be under a force field.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:30AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:30AM (#187550)

        Yet you feel safe where you live. Must be under a force field.

        No, I am in a bunker with massive amounts of ammo and my entire porn collection! Not! Actually I am cowering in fear that someone of a religion I know next to nothing about may attack me in my living room and CUT MY F**KING HEAD OFF! That's where I am. Where are you, and how's it going?