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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: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday May 24 2015, @09:33PM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday May 24 2015, @09:33PM (#187356) Journal

    It seems to me that you lost site of your point, (as did I) in your headlong rush toward spreading more heat than light.

    Regardless historical reasons for the migration to foreign places, the immigrants were expected to, and mostly did, assimilate themselves into the culture of their chosen new country.

    Sometimes this was by choice, (they did, after all, in most cases move by choice), and other times by they adopted the new culture as an economic expedient to earning a living. Only in rare instances, where no specific culture held a significant numerical advantage (abandoned colones) did separate and approximately equal cultures live side by side in cooperation.

    Multiculturalism urges the hew host country to stop expecting any trend toward assimilation, and encourages the migrants to stop doing that, leaving us in a living Tower of Babel. And this is a relatively new trend and the results a dismal failure, leaving disparate groups living at odds.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @09:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @09:54PM (#187366)

    It seems to me that you lost site of your point,

    As well as loosing sight of the point of this site! OMG, See what Multiculturalism hath wrought? Our Soylentils cannot spell! This is what comes of mixing the races.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @08:44PM (#187727)

      As well as loosing sight of the point of this site! OMG, See what Multiculturalism hath wrought? Our Soylentils cannot spell! This is what comes of mixing the races.

      Was that meant to be ironic?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:46AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:46AM (#187902)

        Was that meant to be ironic?

        Yes! Dear superior being, Yes! Glad someone (this is not frojack posting AC? Didn't think so.) got it. I find that when you assume the grammar Nazi role, it helps to make some further error yourself, so the criticism is more easily accepted. Or not, if no one notices! Of course, if they don't notice, they probably do not understand the correction in the first place. Misxpelling+ Miscegenation! Get it?

  • (Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday May 24 2015, @11:59PM

    by Jeremiah Cornelius (2785) on Sunday May 24 2015, @11:59PM (#187414) Journal

    "Multiculturalism urges the hew host country to stop expecting any trend toward assimilation"

    There is your strawman. Send for the torches!

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    You're betting on the pantomime horse...
  • (Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday May 25 2015, @12:02AM

    by Jeremiah Cornelius (2785) on Monday May 25 2015, @12:02AM (#187417) Journal

    Earlier phases of "Multiculturalism" are why you have a German Xmas tree, a "European" Xianity from near east and why you get to have Bing Crosby sing Cole Porter jazz songs about it.

    Kindly fuck yourself, and your pitiless ignorant chauvinism.

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    You're betting on the pantomime horse...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @01:50AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @01:50AM (#187455)
      You sound really angry, and it's kind of funny, but I don't see what's worth getting so worked up about. Your posts have made less and less sense as you've gone on.