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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:10 pm Post subject: When multi morphs into plural |
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An excellent article in the Globe.
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When multi morphs into plural
Cultures can be sorted out; the hard part is getting ahead
Canadians have successfully proselytized for multiculturalism overseas for years. Scholars trooped to European capitals to give PowerPoint presentations. Canada was the multi-culti go-to nation.
But at a major conference on social cohesion last month at a hotel in the British Midlands, the Canadians suddenly found themselves on the defensive. Canada, it seems, no longer has any lessons for Europe. Multiculturalism looks like yesterday's "ism."
Trevor Phillips, chairman of Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission, called it self-limiting. "Why should people be limited or trapped by their ethnicity?" he told the U.K.-Canada Colloquium. "In a liberal democracy, people should be free to be liberated from the accident of their birth, be it gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation." The multicultural model, he added, doesn't help with the inequities that visible-minority newcomers suffer, or promote interaction among different groups.
As Britain, France, the Netherlands and other European countries change course, Canada too has begun to re-examine the way we manage diversity.
This week, Statistics Canada, in its 2006 census snapshot, reported one in every five Canadians was born outside the country. That is the highest level since 1931 � a time when an overtly racist immigration policy excluded non-whites.
Today, 58.3 per cent of newcomers come from Asia and the Middle East, and two-thirds of the 250,000 who arrive each year settle in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. The census revealed more than 200 mother tongues. Policy-makers have to make sure the new arrivals have access to jobs, adequate language training and a chance to interact with mainstream society.
"There is a lot of evidence to suggest that newcomers aren't integrating as quickly or as easily as previous generations," he commented in an interview. "This may have something to do with urban concentration." Most immigrants want to "join the Canadian circle of prosperity," though, he said, social cohesion cannot just be taken for granted.
The U.K., after suffering major terrorist attacks and thwarting plots by homegrown jihadists, is now working on an integration model designed to promote Britishness. The government has introduced a test that requires all new citizens to embrace the country's "essential values." A public search for a national motto was recently launched � prompting joking suggestions such as "Land of yobs and morons," "Once mighty empire, slightly used" and "At least we're not French."
We also continue to support multiculturalism, which Pierre Trudeau introduced in 1971 as a way to encourage newcomers to keep their cultures while adapting to the country's norms. Still, according to an Environics poll in 2006, 65 per cent of us also feel anxiety about their cultural integration � hence the national debate about just how much accommodation is fair and pragmatic, and about how well recent newcomers are actually doing.
Mr. Kenney said that his government wants to accommodate cultural diversity, while emphasizing a strong national identity. "I do think that there is a growing concern to ensure that talk about diversity isn't cover for opting out of the basic contract of liberal-democratic values," he said. "Pluralism is a deeper concept than multiculturalism, which in many people's minds is stuck in 1970s food and folklore. Pluralism is a deeper respect for differences of belief."
Quebec's commission on reasonable accommodation has opened the floodgates for a lot of anger � and xenophobia. Quebeckers have voiced concern over everything from kosher labels on food, to Muslims washing their feet in the sinks of public washrooms.
But debate about accommodation has also gone on in British Columbia and Ontario. In 2004, some Ontario Muslims wanted to use Islamic sharia law to arbitrate family disputes; the upshot was an end to all religion-based arbitration. And John Tory, the Conservative leader who lost in Ontario's recent election, had to backtrack on his promise to extend funding to Jewish, Sikh, Muslim and other religious schools, not just Catholic ones.
Study after study shows that today's immigrants are not doing as well as those who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s. Often they cannot find jobs that match their qualifications, and are not prospering economically as much as their mostly white predecessors. Some complain of discrimination. New Canadians are three times as likely as their Canadian-born counterparts to have low incomes, according to 2004 Statistics Canada data.
Another troubling development is the increase in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal of ethnic enclaves where more than a third of residents are from one visible minority group. While some of these 254 neighbourhoods, such as Richmond, B.C., are well-heeled, others are marked by poverty.
In Scarborough, a Toronto suburb where 54 per cent of 600,000 people are foreign-born, there is violence between and within ethnic groups. Of the 52 gun deaths in Toronto in 2005, more than half involved first- or second-generation Jamaican-Canadians, mostly in their teens or 20s. Flemingdon Park, a community of 27,000 in northeast Toronto where more than 90 different languages are spoken, is home to two youth gangs. In the past two years, there have been two fatal shootings and two fatal stabbings. In an altercation that lasted for six hours in the summer of 2006, a group of teenagers beat, stripped and stabbed to death a 17-year-old, the son of Jamaican immigrants � all in broad daylight. Nobody called the police.
Another disturbing trend is that, according to recent research, second-generation visible-minority immigrants report more incidents of discrimination, and integrate more slowly than their white counterparts. (Some scholars say the explanation is the relative youth of the former, compared to the latter.) Though Canada is not the U.K., or France, with its burning suburbs of disengaged Arab and African immigrants, these issues are clouds on the horizon.
Keith Banting, a professor with Queen's University's School of Policy Studies and a speaker at the colloquium, recently replicated some landmark research by the American political scientist Robert Putnam.
Prof. Putnam had measured habits of voting, volunteering, charitable giving and community involvement, and found that interpersonal trust was low in racially and ethnically diverse American neighbourhoods, which lacked social and civic networks. Instead, people were hunkering down in front of their television sets.
Likewise, Prof. Banting found lower interpersonal trust in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in Canada. He asked people how likely it was for a lost wallet to be returned with the money in it if it was found by a neighbour, a police officer, a grocery store clerk or a stranger. The larger the presence of visible minorities, the less trusting are the white majority. Members of racial minorities, in contrast, are much less trusting in neighbourhoods with a strong white majority, and their trust rises as ethnic diversity increases.
But Prof. Banting's research did not show lower voter turnout in diverse neighbourhoods � or less support for the welfare state or community group involvement. "We do find on the interpersonal trust story similarities with the U.S," he said. "But it is a decline, not a collapse, in trust, and doesn't lead to a decline in participation in civic organizations."
Some observers wonder whether the federal government should try to articulate a set of core Canadian values. Others say we aren't united so much around shared values, as around the principles of equality and freedom, as enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies, points out that the Charter also recognizes multicultural heritage, religious freedom, aboriginal peoples and official language minorities. |
http://www.theglobeandmail.com |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 10:46 pm Post subject: ... |
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| Others say we aren't united so much around shared values, as around the principles of equality and freedom |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Look at the social problems in Britain and France and get back to me about Canada as a failed model for a society. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 12:16 am Post subject: |
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I guess you didn't read the article.
1) Where does it say Canada is "failed"?
2) The failures of the UK and France (and the USA) are referenced but as an example of what could happen in Canada if the principle of every ethnic group in their corner continues. Feel free to disagree. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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thepeel,
I read the article today too...it was interesting. I've often thought that there is such a thing as 'intelligent multiculturalism' but that Canada has a severe shortage of it. Multiculturalism is widely advocated, but the advocates don't often show a lot of deep thought as to what the advantages of multiculturalism are, and what multiculturalism means, beyond just food and dance festivals. |
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Leslie Cheswyck
Joined: 31 May 2003
Location: University of Western Chile
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| Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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I will actually read your posts when you change that goddamn avatar. How the hell am I supposed to read this without people at work thinking I'm some freak in to old lady titties? 
Yeah I read about adblock but I am not allowed to download any outside programs onto to my work pc. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
thepeel,
I read the article today too...it was interesting. I've often thought that there is such a thing as 'intelligent multiculturalism' but that Canada has a severe shortage of it. Multiculturalism is widely advocated, but the advocates don't often show a lot of deep thought as to what the advantages of multiculturalism are, and what multiculturalism means, beyond just food and dance festivals. |
Well, my two cents.
Culture is a shared perspective about the world. Morality, Truth, ethics, narratives, hero/villains etc.
Cultural-artifacts are totem poles. Food, song, wine, film, music and similar.
There are points of contact between the two.
What we should be after is multicultural-artifact-ism. I only want one dominant culture when it comes to morality, rule of law, ethics.
A culture where women/gays/races/ethnicities are treated equally under the law and by the citizens. Where freedom of speech is more important than sensitivity. Where people hold the door open for each other and generally try and act considerate. This is the kind of culture Canada should seek to be.
I don't care if you want to eat lamb or listen to strange music. Just don't do this:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2007/12/11/150296.aspx
If you want to behave like a barbaric caveman, stay in barbaric cavemanland. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:14 am Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
thepeel,
I read the article today too...it was interesting. I've often thought that there is such a thing as 'intelligent multiculturalism' but that Canada has a severe shortage of it. Multiculturalism is widely advocated, but the advocates don't often show a lot of deep thought as to what the advantages of multiculturalism are, and what multiculturalism means, beyond just food and dance festivals. |
Well, my two cents.
Culture is a shared perspective about the world. Morality, Truth, ethics, narratives, hero/villains etc.
Cultural-artifacts are totem poles. Food, song, wine, film, music and similar.
There are points of contact between the two.
What we should be after is multicultural-artifact-ism. I only want one dominant culture when it comes to morality, rule of law, ethics.
A culture where women/gays/races/ethnicities are treated equally under the law and by the citizens. Where freedom of speech is more important than sensitivity. Where people hold the door open for each other and generally try and act considerate. This is the kind of culture Canada should seek to be.
I don't care if you want to eat lamb or listen to strange music. Just don't do this:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2007/12/11/150296.aspx
If you want to behave like a barbaric caveman, stay in barbaric cavemanland. |
But this is what I mean by the difference between what I call "shallow multiculturalism" and "deep multiculturalism". I've had a lot of friends who were first generation Canadians, and even they have told me that federal policy regarding multiculturalism hasn't had a lot of depth to it. Mostly they just sponsor "multicultural" festivals where people display food, dancing and music from their home countries.
What do I mean by "deep multiculturalism"? Well, for example, asking yourself WHY women/gays/races/ethnicities should be treated equally under the law and by the citizens. I'm not saying that they shouldn't: it's just that I think a lot of "multicultural Canadians" don't take a deeper look as to why these values should be advocated. Because in some cases, if you look at those values more deeply, there are some inherent contradictions that aren't easy to resolve. If we assume, for example, that all ethnicities and cultures should be treated equally under the law, then there may be a cultural basis for granting clemency in the case you cited above.
In some cases there is a very deep contradiction between respecting the values of a given culture, and treating women as equals. With Arabic culture, for example, its not an easy contradiction to resolve. I think it requires further thought, and further exploration of the differences between those cultures.
It also seems that many Canadians "support" multiculturalism, but only as they define it. There are times when Canadians seem to have a very rigid definition of what constitutes multiculturalism, when its not clear that every culture that participates in it shares the same definition.
| Quote: |
| A culture where women/gays/races/ethnicities are treated equally under the law and by the citizens. |
I'd have to disagree with this. I think a better definition would be "a culture where men/women/gays/races/ethnicites are treated equallly under the law and by the citizens. No reason to leave men out of the definition, they have as much rights as anybody else. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:10 am Post subject: |
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| Yeah, including men in that is fine. Of course. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:26 am Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
If we assume, for example, that all ethnicities and cultures should be treated equally under the law, then there may be a cultural basis for granting clemency in the case you cited above.
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I don't think you have to treat all cultures equally. The Canadian legal system and governmental institutions must treat all individuals equally, regardless of what colour they are or language they speak.
Culture is a social construction. It has no inherent value, and does not need to be respected. The individual does have inherent value by virtue of being human, and must be respected in so far as she/he does not violate the rights of others. |
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sundubuman
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: seoul
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:36 am Post subject: |
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Interesting article. I was surprised that there was little to no bashing of the US you often find in much Canadian jounalism...until I got to the second to last paragraph
But Prof. Banting's research did not show lower voter turnout in diverse neighbourhoods � or less support for the welfare state or community group involvement. "We do find on the interpersonal trust story similarities with the U.S," he said. "But it is a decline, not a collapse, in trust, and doesn't lead to a decline in participation in civic organizations."
So he is implying that the US is experiencing a "collapse" in trust? Believe it or not, it seems like the US model of unfettered assimilation -"e pluribus unum'- with its increasing rates of intermarriage across all racial and ethnic groups should be every diverse society's model. In fact, I think the US is light years ahead most every country when it comes to tackling issues of ethnic and racial diversity....seriously. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
If we assume, for example, that all ethnicities and cultures should be treated equally under the law, then there may be a cultural basis for granting clemency in the case you cited above.
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I don't think you have to treat all cultures equally. The Canadian legal system and governmental institutions must treat all individuals equally, regardless of what colour they are or language they speak.
Culture is a social construction. It has no inherent value, and does not need to be respected. The individual does have inherent value by virtue of being human, and must be respected in so far as she/he does not violate the rights of others. |
To a large extent I agree with you, and from the perspective of Canadian law, you are correct; however, I am not sure that definition of culture - or rather, that definition of the the importance or relevance of culture - is a universally-held one. Legalistically, "culture" is an irrelevant concept in the traditional Anglo-Saxon conception of the relationship between the individual and the state. "Minority rights" are an extension of personal, individual, human rights. In Quebec and the rest of Francophone Canada, there is a concept of Quebecois "cultural rights" or "collective rights", and Quebec has formulated its language laws on the basis of the concept of collective rights, namely, the collective right of Francophones to protect their language.
Its a concept that is difficult for Anglophones to wrap their head around, the first time they encounter it, and many Anglophones are uncomfortable with it. Nevertheless, it is a valid way of approaching culture, at least as far as Quebecois are concerned. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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| sundubuman wrote: |
But Prof. Banting's research did not show lower voter turnout in diverse neighbourhoods — or less support for the welfare state or community group involvement. "We do find on the interpersonal trust story similarities with the U.S," he said. "But it is a decline, not a collapse, in trust, and doesn't lead to a decline in participation in civic organizations."
So he is implying that the US is experiencing a "collapse" in trust? Believe it or not, it seems like the US model of unfettered assimilation -"e pluribus unum'- with its increasing rates of intermarriage across all racial and ethnic groups should be every diverse society's model. In fact, I think the US is light years ahead most every country when it comes to tackling issues of ethnic and racial diversity....seriously. |
After reading that paragraph 4 or 5 times...it's hard to know if he's saying there's a "collapse in trust" in US multiethnic neighborhoods, or simply saying that the emergence of multiethnic neighborhoods in either country leads to a decline in interpersonal trust, but not a collapse in interpersonal trust. IMHO it is more likely the latter, because he goes on to say it "doesn't lead to a decline in participation in civic organizations." |
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