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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.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Sunday May 24 2015, @07:12PM
Well said, this is the as one well written black author called it, The Inconvenient Truth about Ghetto Communities’ Social Breakdown [nationalreview.com]
You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @07:36PM
Holy crap is that article myopic and worded in a way to obscure rather than reveal truth.
For example he says, "Murder rates among black males were going down — repeat, down — during the much-lamented 1950s, while it went up after the much celebrated 1960s." Yet violent crime in general among blacks has been trending downwards since at least 1973 [wikipedia.org] (as far back as I could find data). Where they no longer "exempted" from the requirements of civilization in the 70s? Or is only that murderers get a special exemption?
That guy seems like he's pushing an agenda rather than trying to inform.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Monday May 25 2015, @04:33AM
Crime has gone down for everyone in America. Naturally that includes blacks in the gangsta culture. But their crime rate is still higher than for people (of any race) afflicted with less self-destructive cultures.
But are you aware that Dr.Sowell is black?
And that he's been studying and writing about this stuff for decades?
If he has an agenda, it's getting his fellow blacks to pull their heads out of their victim-mentality asses and see what they're doing to themselves.
http://tsowell.com/ [tsowell.com]
in particular, see
http://tsowell.com/cv.html [tsowell.com]
and
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell1.asp [jewishworldreview.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @04:41AM
> But are you aware that Dr.Sowell is black?
Yes, so what. Are you implying some sort of tokenism?
> And that he's been studying and writing about this stuff for decades?
Well, all I know is he lied with statistics on the first time I ever met him. So that is a hell of a bad first impression.
> If he has an agenda, it's getting his fellow blacks to pull their heads out of their victim-mentality asses and see what they're doing to themselves.
What people say their agenda is and what they actually do aren't necessarily the same thing. I am sure he believes he's doing that. Some people think deliberately lying is a useful tool to accomplish their goals. It only works when they don't get caught...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Monday May 25 2015, @08:07AM
> But are you aware that Dr.Sowell is black?
Are you aware that he is a total Wacko Conservative Republican shill, and totally not a reliable source on anything? If I were the FBI, I would probable plant rumours that he actually plagiarized his doctorate, because, how could a Black person get a PhD without cheating? (On the racist assumptions that are rife in this thread.) Same goes for the rest of them, Clarence ("No Questions")Thomas, Ben ("Brain surgeon without a brain") Carson. Not to mention the completely insane Republican Black person, ___-_______ fill-in-the-blank. You know you can! Allen West? War criminal and crazy person. Herman Cain? Extra cheesy! Alan Keyes, totally wacko, and his daughter too! Wikipedia has a list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_Republicans [wikipedia.org] of African American Republicans, but it covers from the end of the Civil war and not just after Nixon's Southern Strategy make it so lucrative to be a Black Republican, like Condaleeza Rice!
So again, we should listen to Sowell just because of his skin color? That's racist! And a version of the Cretan Paradox: St Paul said, "All Cretans are liars, and it is true because even one of them said so!" Oh, dear, I fear that once again I need to explain this for our conservative members, so they will be able to understand. You see, if the Cretan was telling the truth, all Cretans are liars, including him. So that means that what he was saying (all Cretans being liars) is necessarily false. But that means, if it is false that all Cretans are liars, that he could be telling the truth, so that all Cretans are liars, including him, and we go round once again. Sowell is a Cretan.