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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: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @08:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @08:01PM (#187322)

    > We've been pretending the culture isn't an issue for damned near 40 years...has things gotten any better? Has the violence gone down?

    Yes. Dramatically. A nearly two-thirds reduction. [wikipedia.org] Today's black violent crime rate is even one third less than the white violent crime rate of the 70s.

    Will that change your mind about anything? I'm guessing, no it won't. I bet you just keep right on believing that black people are just as violent as ever. You'll ignore this inconvenient fact and stick to your imaginary world. That is the definition of bigotry, after all -- an obstinate or intolerant devotion to his or her own opinions and prejudices; [merriam-webster.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday May 25 2015, @12:41AM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Monday May 25 2015, @12:41AM (#187430)

    You may want to take unleaded fuel into that equation as well though.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @03:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @03:42AM (#187503)

    I bet you just keep right on believing that black people are just as violent as ever

    It's kind of beside the point, isn't it? So long as they remain several times more likely to be violent criminals than anyone else you should happen to run into, keeping them away from your home and family makes sense.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @09:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @09:12AM (#187560)

      So long as they remain several times more likely to be violent criminals than anyone else you should happen to run into, keeping them away from your home and family makes sense.

      You're talking about Texans, here?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:47PM (#188225)

        unfortunately, Texans aren't as easily ferreted out with a quick glance. if we could just cure the white skin pigment disease then the world would be nothing but kittens, puppies, and daffodils.