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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: 2) by BK on Sunday May 24 2015, @05:42PM
OK. I see that some of us are just too floored at the audacity of this post to contribute coherent replies. But when you're ready, reply here with them.
Proposed: Multiculturalism, Cultural Relativism, and Open Borders have been successful and beneficial national policies. Is there any evidence to support this?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:02PM
The American technology industry, especially Silicon Valley, is a fantastically diverse place in terms of the cultural backgrounds of the people who work there. Same with Hollywood and the New York fashion industry.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Apple's Steve Jobs, and Oracle's Larry Page were all adopted kids who had no contact with their biological parents until well after they had become famous in business. Jobs' biological father was a Syrian-American Muslim! Now the company his son created has a market cap almost 20x the GDP of Syria.
The willingness to accept immigrants from all over the world has always been one of the USA's biggest economic strengths. So Germany might do better than the USA when it comes to building reliable autos, for example, but they can't keep up with the USA in industries such as IT, which are driven by fashion as well as by engineering. And many if not most industries are becoming increasingly driven by software these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:13PM
sorry, s/Larry Page/Larry Ellison/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:54PM
The American technology industry, especially Silicon Valley, is a fantastically diverse place in terms of the cultural backgrounds of the people who work there.
No, it's not. There's a bunch of people complaining that it's NOT diverse enough, because there's so few black or hispanic people there. Apparently, all the Asians and Indians don't count.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:06PM
Proposed: Multiculturalism, Cultural Relativism, and Open Borders have been successful and beneficial national policies. Is there any evidence to support this?
The economics literature generally finds a positive, but small, gain in income to native-born populations from immigrants and potentially large gains in world incomes. But immigrants can also impact a recipient nation’s institutions. A growing empirical literature supports the importance of strong private property rights, a rule of law, and an environment of economic freedom for promoting long-run prosperity. But little is known about how immigration impacts these institutions. This paper empirically examines how immigration impacts a nation’s policies and institutions. We find no evidence of negative and some evidence of positive impacts in institutional quality as a result of immigration.
-- Does immigration impact institutions? [cato.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @06:20PM
You might have heard of my my wife's friend Anousheh Ansari, [wikipedia.org] founder of the Ansari X-Prize. [wikipedia.org]