The concept of a multicultural society is more than what it was considered some decades ago. The reason is the growing trend of new approaches and theoretical debates that has not only related multicultural societies to another hybridist, political and social movements but has also given rise to new difference theories resulting in self-consciousness. Particularly in Western societies where the problems of racism and anti-racism exist, multiculturalism has emerged as a new approach that has made the people understand the difference between contemporary forms of ethnic conflict and hatred, and how they can provide tools for addressing and combating racism and chauvinism at a broader, international level.
Introduction
Before moving to a full analysis of multiculturalism, let us take a closer look at various definitions that fulfill the criteria of what is being called a multicultural society. The term ‘multiculturalism’ refers to those facts and figures of a nation that defines the cultural, racial, ethnic, and demographical characteristics concerning ethnic minorities and majorities. According to Parekh (2000 Report), Multiculturalism allow freedom for different communities to live their way of life in such a manner that promotes self-containment (Parekh Lord, BBC).
Multiculturalism however is three decades old and made its first attempt in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada during the 1970s, particularly with changes in immigration laws. In the 1980s when it appeared within United States politics, it was in the context of North American liberalism and communitarianism (Haddock & Sutch, 2003, p. 43). Many post-modern philosophers and politicians relate it to the North American concept in that it relates to a strong rights-based tradition with deep immigrant and racial divisions in society. Many believe multiculturalism to have no real connection with European politics for it emerged late in the West. It emerged as a philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century in Britain and by the twentieth century, it transformed into political and cultural pluralism along with the widespread ethnic conflict that is remembered as one of the most significant developments since the end of the 1980s about multiculturalism.
The way multiculturalism has had an impact both on ideas and practices of racism and on the flows of people fleeing violence and persecution in many parts of the world (Anthias & Lloyd, 2002, p. 2) has welcomed those criticisms’ that reify and essentialize culture under some well-set parameters. Kymlicka & Banting (2006) defines multiculturalism in the context of those public policies that although are not followed in most of the countries, still provide ease in a way they support large-scale immigration, thereby providing newcomers with the rights needed to participate in and integrate into the larger society (Kymlicka & Banting, 2006). Thus, multiculturalism helps to endorse a more sensitive notch than citizenship that seeks to accommodate rather than suppress immigrant ethnic identities.
Multiculturalism Analysis in a British Society
Followed with the ‘Difference’ theory, multiculturalism has arisen as a result of self-consciousness that after emerging in the last few decades has appeared under the rubric of social and political debate (Haddock & Sutch, 2003, p. 42). However, its relation with multiculturalism has a more immediate theoretical or philosophical sheen than multiculturalism which on the other hand, has had a more direct relation to political practice and policymaking.
When seen from the eyes of an anti-racist, multiculturalism always holds two sides of the same coin. At times, it stood for demanding the very survival of non-white communities on islands in which black communities dwell. But, as soon as the politics of black communities gained significance, survival in Britain was not enough. After all, it was not about taking birth and growing here; it was about remaking society and living with pride and individual identity (Kundnani, April 2002). The matter that bothered me was not about ‘being tolerated’ but to live while maintaining individual identity and freedom. First, along multiculturalism emerged the idea of difference with cognate links like pluralism.
For decades the UK has been considered a multicultural state, combining England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, into a multicultural society supporting diverse cultural ranges (BBC, 5 April 2004). Since the contemplation as a multicultural society, UK upholds the unique respect and tolerance that was inherited from the ancestors to the younger generation, but with time, somehow the political and socialists came to know that although the British teach to respect traditional values it is a single culture. In British society, one common way to navigate disparate categories was to limit pluralism to forms of liberalism and focus differences on radical multiculturalism. However, this missed the point that pluralism is a much richer and more varied concept in twentieth-century thought, which let the British Government ignore the ‘consequences’ of being culturally pluralist. Many British scholars still think there is no necessary conceptual link between pluralism and liberalism, any more than there are necessary conceptual ties between pluralism and relativism, or difference and multiculturalism. Pluralist arguments imply that two notions i.e., ‘being in a country and ‘knowledge of being in a country’ are irremediably fragmented in any form.
Socio-cultural pluralism which once invited black culture as an implication that humans are subject to diverse social and cultural conditions and that there are many types and forms of such conditions, today raises the specter of differentiated and fragmented human identities. Over time, political pluralism has gained significance to raise its voice over institutional recognition, accommodation, or representation of social or cultural differences. This political recognition has moved a long way from ‘political indifference’ to ‘positive representation and cultivation’. On one hand, ethical pluralism is concerned with a diversity of ethical codes, where moral values foster rules, goals, and ends while on the other multiculturalism has now reached the extent where ethnic cultures are backing off the streets to keep the task of politicizing and turn into a rebellion against the state.
Shift towards Conservatism
When in the 1990s multiculturalism transformed itself from a line of defense to a mode of control, it appeared as an ideology of conservatism that was keen on preserving the status quo intact, in the face of a real desire to move forward. The political parties had not forgotten what happened in Britain over the period 1979-81 cannot be reduced to some immutable laws of history which apply to every society at every point of time. They suggested and in the name of multiculturalism allowed the specific forms of racism in Britain which later was shaped by endogenous political-economic forces; they have also been transformed in ways that can only be understood as the result of the qualitative changes in Britain’s international position over the last three decades (Anonymous, 1992, p. 12).
Groups in Britain started with developing a notion against multiculturalism, i.e., racial consciousness arises based upon their racial similarity which is akin to a ‘herd instinct’. Moreover, the political groups make the whites forget that through the family, it is this racial consciousness that generates loyalty to the herd and distrust of and hostility towards other ‘herds’. Efforts were conducted to alleviate familiarity between groups that leads to ‘understanding’ of each other’s cultures and the peaceful coexistence of the different cultures in a multicultural society.
The rise of ‘Aliens’
The links which were created between ‘human nature, the family, culture and the nation ever since Britain formation were not been forged without a great deal of ‘ideological work’. In this respect Norman St John-Stevens argues that for a thousand-year continuous and uninterrupted development of the ‘dominant culture’, Britain used to be a society that never bothered about and erased the history of myriad peoples who have invaded or migrated to Britain at the same time as it ignores class exploitation and the subordination of women (Anonymous, 1992, p. 84).
Initially, England’s domination and suppression of neighboring peoples were not more than a family quarrel which transformed into something that maximized the quarrel and even that to an extent where the concept of ‘alienation’ emerged. The methods of struggle adopted by various nationalist parties like the Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, the IRA, or the Southern Irish, did not appear convincing to describe these struggles for a measure of independence as exercises in retaining or rejecting ‘British identity (Anonymous, 1992, p. 84).
Initially, only blacks were listed as aliens, as they possessed a different ‘national character’, however, they never were appreciated to attain the crucial element of British national consciousness. Their loyalty to Britain was suspected which made them a threat. Britain who once initiated the concepts of a multicultural, multiracial, or multiethnic society that grew from this pluralistic model assumed that equality could be achieved through cultural diversity and thus removed from the realm of politics now considered race relations to become absorbed with issues of black ethnicity at the expense of examining institutionalized racism. Even multiculturalism did not lag in the educational philosophy, which followed the sociologists of race relations in the reinterpretation of ethnic cultural forms for the classroom. In the words of the Select Committee on Race Relations, it was still like much can be done to create a better understanding of the national and cultural background of immigrants.
Alienation was the name given to immigrants, as a distinct group, to a concentration on the wider aspects of a multiracial society and was not, in fact, the significant change it appeared to be. From immigrants’ language and color to preoccupied multicultural curricular content expressed disquiet at culturally biased testing, the major concern was still the performance of the black child. The political extravaganza presented social relations of power that sustained institutionalized racism and which are reproduced in the classroom were not seen as open to investigation. Although content innovation concerned itself with ‘ethnic’ cultural forms only, or with the removal of racist stereotyping from school textbooks, but multiculturalism when reacted to racism, it limited itself to a struggle over forms of representation which later became a struggle over images, images that were Asians, South Asians, and blacks. The result of such racial chaos ended up in the diseased ‘multicultural’ concept and with ghettos of distinct groups in Britain, so-called ‘aliens’, there started a cold war.
The Death of Multiculturalism
It would be wrong to say that the pestilential attitude of aliens made them responsible for the ‘death of multiculturalism. Neither the ethnic minorities are responsible nor the aliens could be blamed, for it was the endless efforts of the political groups that waited for years to infuse the virus of hatred among the British.
The last nail was put in the coffin after the attacks of 9/11 when racial riots were initiated in the United States and 2005 when London Bombings set a noble example of multiculturalism. All these events alleviated the pluralist movements. Critics say today white supremacy is hardly dead for it has proven itself capable of absorbing and adapting much of the dream, repackaging itself as color blind, non-racialist, and meritocratic. I believe that in the context of a multicultural society, there is no question of being color blind. When Britain was supposed to be a multicultural country, it does not bother whether or not such a paradoxically version of racial inequality can live on, still battening on all sorts of stereotypes and fears, still resorting to exclusionism and scapegoating when politically necessary, still invoking the supposed superiority of mainstream values, cheerfully maintaining that equality has been largely achieved (Anthias & Lloyd, 2002, p. 101).
The increasing popularity of the narrative “Death of multiculturalism” has although reformed and officially declared a non-racial version of white supremacy a success in curtailing progress toward the dream in many dubious battles like immigration and citizenship, income redistribution and poverty, and above all in respect to the compensatory programs, but still it has remained unable to eliminate the movement for racial justice that spawned it. By making strict immigration policies and by complicating citizenship procedures, the UK Government and racial politics have been able to infuse the seeds of incorporation, racial conflict, and racial reform, however, it still needs decades to alleviate ‘multiculturalism’ at the ground root level. However one of the major factors behind such a narrative ‘multicultural death’ is the current global racial situation, which is contradictory and contentious due to the issue of illegal migration.
Migration – Legal or Illegal
The increasing fear is not actually about legal or illegal migration which many normative politicians think is the real bone of contention, but the concern behind wrecked multiculturalism is the condition of modern individuals, in that they possess limited altruism toward one another, for example, and certain facts about modern societies, such as the permanence of reasonable disagreement about religious and other fundamental questions of the good life. In Britain, on one hand, there always has been stress on the shared experiences of many non-White immigrants, who were former colonial subjects, and were coming to Britain in the post-war period to work in predominantly unskilled or semi-skilled jobs as disadvantaged minorities, while on the other hand, the British citizens complained the UK for seeking cultural uniformity precisely because it was never present.
For countless reasons migration, conquest, the constant willingness of some people to alter their cultures and identities over time, and more units of territory are culturally heterogeneous over most of the world, no matter how borders are drawn. Nationalizing states often respond either by trying to forcibly include minority groups whose identity is not that of the majority culture to assimilate them or by forcibly excluding them, by denial of citizenship, expulsion, or extermination (Levy, 2000, p. 41). In the case of the UK which is a multicultural society, the same state may alternate between one strategy and the other in its treatment of a given minority; this has certainly been true of the UK’s treatment of Indians and other minorities. At the extreme, this alternation may begin to seem like a single policy, with the directive ‘assimilate or be killed’ and we have no right to be surprised if the offer of inclusion does not seem benign to a group that has, in living memory, been forcibly excluded.
Such a situation where ethnic minorities are deprived of their basic rights in their own countries gives rise to the idea of the possibility of exit from cultural communities that looms large in moral thought about multiculturalism and cultural rights. But this is in a sense odd and at least, assessing the voluntariness of remaining in a community by the costs of exiting it seems mistaken. Everything about a culture is an exit barrier and to have a culture whose exit is entirely costless is to have no culture at all (Levy, 2000, p. 112). For all but those perfectly bilingual since birth, leaving the culture in which one’s native language is spoken for another requires some, and often very great, sacrifice. For most people that sacrifice is not only psychological since the exit or migration requires speaking, listening, reading, and writing in a language other than that in which one most comfortably thinks. Every form of communication, everything that requires information or expression, is more difficult in the non-native language while on the other end exiting or migrating to a culture whose idioms, stories, imagery, and social understandings are not those with which one was raised is always difficult, always costly.
Cultural exit or migration entails giving up the familiar for the unfamiliar, the known for the unknown, even the comprehensible for the incomprehensible. The more different the two cultures are, the costlier the transition will necessarily be and to the degree, they are not learned, life in the new culture is lived at a distance.
In these scenarios multiculturalism survives through fear and particularly when the forms of both overt and covert discrimination and prejudice are revealed to the migrant, ‘race’ continues to play a significant role in shaping his overall life chances and experiences. Britain is no longer identified as a multicultural symbol because of political constraints, but rather by a gradual modification of the social and economic parameters, dividing White and non-White peoples and by ideologies and seemingly legitimate discourses that enable dominant groups to maintain their hegemonic position over subordinate groups has been a common constraint in defying the ‘death of multiculturalism’ (Bulmer & Solomos, 2004, p. 173).
One drawback of the British multiculturalism wreak is the racial inequality among an over-arching racial hierarchy, in which groups are placed in a top-down fashion to indicate their relative degree of privilege or disadvantage, which was intellectually and politically unacceptable. Such an argument is supported by the issue of being more or less privileged according to the white ethnic minorities such as Jewish and Irish people were not necessarily more privileged or less disadvantaged than non-White ethnic minorities such as the African Caribbean and South Asian Britons.
The recent debate of cultural racism has lead the British Muslims to be recognized as the victims of the ‘death of multiculturalism in terms of negativity and alienation, drawing on notions of an emergent Pakistani and Bangladeshi underclass. Mainstream media reports have tended to whip up fears about Middle Eastern and South Asian people, depicting them as fanatical and dangerous religious zealots who have negatively portrayed the Asians been preceded by their former representation as foreign, but law-abiding and unproblematic especially in comparison with the representation of African Caribbean as muggers and Rastafarian drug dealers (Alexander, 2000).
Conclusion
A multicultural society – where every minority is free to express his way of living and experience cultural liberation where he gets the opportunity to show respect for others’ is under serious threat from multiple paradigms. Threat from the socio-politicians who want to run their slogan, threat from those ethnic minorities who themselves are subjected to further division, and the threat from racial aspect within the community. Transforming policies is not the solution but itself is a threat for those vulnerable minorities who are surviving with fear while experiencing a long distance from their homeland. However, there is a need to recognize those groups for which ‘death of multiculturalism’ is an opportunity, not a dilemma. These include terrorists, racists, and those who concern and wait to see multiculturalism dead.
Work Cited
Alexander, C. (2000) The Asian Gang: Ethnicity, Identity, Masculinity Oxford: Berg.
Anonymous, (1992) The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain: Centre For Contemporary Cultural Studies: Routledge: London: University of Birmingham.
Anthias Floya & Lloyd Cathie, (2002) Rethinking Anti-Racisms: From Theory to Practice: Routledge: London.
BBC, (5 April 2004), Web.
Bulmer Martin & Solomos John, (2004) Researching Race and Racism: Routledge: London.
Haddock Bruce & Sutch Peter, (2003) Multiculturalism, Identity and Rights: Routledge: New York.
Kymlicka Will & Banting Keith, (2006) “Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Welfare State”
In: Ethics & International Affairs. Volume: 20. Issue: 3. Kundnani Arun (2002). Web.
Levy T. Jacob, (2000) The Multiculturalism of Fear: Oxford University Press: London.
Parekh Lord, BBC, Web.