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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: 3, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Monday May 25 2015, @03:28AM

    by K_benzoate (5036) on Monday May 25 2015, @03:28AM (#187497)

    Islam isn't a race, and I'm not a racist. To be a racist, I'd have to hate or prejudge a group of people because of their race. That is the only qualification to be a racist, and lacking that prejudice is the only thing you have to do to not be a racist. Most Muslims are SE Asian. Some Muslims are white. Some Arabs are atheists.

    You don't get to just assert that your interlocutor has certain beliefs and be taken seriously. If you want to act in that way, I'll just leave you alone to read from the dictionary some more.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @03:36AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @03:36AM (#187500)

    To be a racist, I'd have to hate or prejudge a group of people because of their race.

    Hey dude, take it up with the OED. They are just the most authoritative dictionary of the english language.

    You don't get to just assert that your interlocutor has certain beliefs and be taken seriously.

    I'm not asserting shit. You are. All you have done is rail against muslims. Own it dude. You threw in with the racists and that shit rubbed off on you too.