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Multi-Culti
In Europe there is a lively political discussion about models of a multi-cultural-society versus a dominant-culture-society. Different cultures with different rules living in parallel in one state versus states where the majorities culture sets the rules and laws and the minority cultures have to adopt.
In this context Helmut Schmidt, social-democratic Chancellor of West-Germany 1974-1982, talks about integration of Muslims into European societies:
"There was no success so far, in mixing European and non-European cultures. The reason is the adverseness against other religions, taught by all Christian churches to the Europeans, especially against Judaism and Islamism. Against Judaism for nearly 2000 years and against Islamism for over 1000 years. We have developed a tenor of defense against these religions and when now some idealist calls for tolerance, that plea comes hundreds of years late."
Schmidt thinks a multi-cultural society is only possible within a quite authoritarian state like Singapur. An open democracy can not, for now, support multiple cultural models. "Maybe in the long run," he says.
(Today’s Schmidt interview in German Wieviel Anatolien verträgt Europa?)
The United States has for 200 years integrated immigrants, but those people adopted essentially voluntarily to the language and to the rules and laws. With the growth of Hispanic sub-societies that model may start to unravel.
Where are the limits of not-integration? Are separate language, separate schooling, separate application of law, i.e. multi-culti societies, functional and acceptable?
I’ve been reading an article, “Taking the Veil,” in the New Yorker about the scarf issue in France. (I looked for it online but can only find the newest issue). It’s interesting in its discussion of the state as “in loco parentis” in schools, and the view that schools are secular/Francophile in that role.
To me, a big part of the debate, both in the United States right now with its fundamentalist Christians, and in other places dealing with sharia, it seems to me, is not “multi-culturalism,” per se.
But I don’t exactly know how to describe the issue. A problem, it seems to me, arises when a religion (like certain sectors of fundamentalist Christianity here, or certain sectors of fundamentalist Islam elsewhere) tries to force its way into established precedent in government and then expects everyone else to accept it as no problem…especially when that way includes the idea of violence as part of a religious culture.
I’m thinking in terms of physical violence, but I wonder if psychic violence counts as well? (especially in relation to women in religious cultures…in most all of them, it seems to me…)
In contrast, Amish people have a unique and separated religious culture, have a presence where I live, and, while I don’t want to be Amish, I also feel that they aren’t trying to impose their beliefs by threat of violence… Or feel they believe/act as if they have to respond to rejections of their faith with violence.
Also, there’s a significant Tibetan buddhist community here. No one expects them to give up their robes or hairstyles…and no one associates them with attempts to impose their beliefs on others around here either.
I lived in Miami, Fl. and frankly I don’t see any big problem with assimilation of Hispanics in the U.S. in the future. The biggest problem will be issues of poverty as a “group,” but that same issue of poverty extends to most others here too…scapegoating Hispanics for the behavior of CEOs is just one more abuse in a long line to the same. But I don’t have a problem with other languages floating around in my country, either.
Religions which promote intolerance, maybe, are the problem for me. It’s false to say you are intolerant to oppose intolerance.
But when a majority of a population, say, in Alabama, is fundamentalist Christian, part of the culture is that fundamentalism. I don’t like it, but it’s fairly unrealistic to think you are going to go there and find a population that wouldn’t be hostile to assertions of the metaphorical nature of the Bible, versus their literal interpretation. I mean, you couldn’t expect to win political office with that stance, if you stated it…and, with the way Americans politics are organized, you couldn’t easily do it nationally, either.
In the case of Alalbama, the minority needs to have its religious rights protected, but that certainly doesn’t mean the minority is going to get to decide the “flavor” of the culture, either..but then state vs. Federal issues also come in…
There is a really perplexing issue, isn’t it?
America and Europe have some of the same issues. I guess the closest thing we have to the “guestworker” issue is illegal immigration from Mexico.
On the other hand, if I were to move to Saudi Arabia, I would adopt the veil…and would have to respect the law of the land concerning females in public, driving, that sort of thing…I think it would be wrong to insist on being “my” cultural self in a population whose majority and laws do not validate that cultural self, especially when I am not born into that culture.
A couple of provacative articles on this subject have appeared in Salon recently and earlier.
Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 24 2004 22:26 utc | 5
Interesting conversation, to return to(as usual).As a microcosm to the issue I would relate: In the early 80s I developed an interest in Jamaican culture, via reggae music, as a somewhat intact example of African culture developing in the west, if in an isolated context, that was having some influence on the culture of the west. My interest here was to verify, on a small level, some understanding I had developed about the influence of African art in particular and aboriginal art in general, on the history of western art. Without further digression into art, my little investigation did reveal a certain proclivity of culture itself to develope mores, that by their nature, always seek deeper rooting — as a more inclusive reflection of their source within the identity of the people, and necessarily will come to include the social, the religious, the political, and the historical(mythic) — that in the “aboriginal sense” will evidense itself as a synchronic whole i.e.a timeless and “pure” unity.
While it would be my contention that culture aspires in this direction naturally, recent history would also indicate, because of population growth, scientific revolution, development of nation states, and all the subjugation that follows in its path, that the diachronic cultural impulse, that of change itself, also needs accounting for, even if it is seen as a kind of anthesis of the origial cultural impulse. Karl Marx and capital notwithstanding, there is some level of failure characterized in the attempts to replace or to moderate this original cultural impulse, on the part of nationalities, government, and civil law — in its comparitive density — pertaining to an individuals identity. I would think, herein lies the friction within any nations cultural identity, be it recent import or indegenious but submerged voices seeking a fuller expression that may run contrary to that prevailing modality grounded in change (diachronic), and or competeing cultural legacies. Religion, as a primary indice of cultural identity most explicitly is the greatest offender in that it also demands social and political action on its behalf and in itself often renders cultural multiplicity along with the notion of change alien. Government policy that ignores this impetus, aiming at the advantage of cheap labor, population expansion to occupy territory, or other short term excuses or also geo-political political divisions that encourage migration or seperates cultural affinities should expect the resulting cultural re-entrenchment in tandem with the desired effect, especially if their numbers become democratically potent. Modernity as a cultural model so far, often fails in the task of assimilation, while also failing to engender itself as a culturally compelling alternative — capital and its allurment, aside. For modernity to escape this captivity (to capital) and endless challenge, it must offer an analogous mode of identity, synonymous to the static cultural mode, only in the sense of shared enlightenment.
I guess I find it odd, that in the west a life so permeated and, in all manner of evidence, repleate with the artifacts born of progressive reason, would still fall victim to an ancient appeal of static faith. Unless of course, all that manner of
of evidence, is built upon the back of that static faith, intentionally. Oh my.
Posted by: anna missed | Nov 27 2004 11:10 utc | 45
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