'Multiculturalism and its discontents: Discuss'.

Multiculturalism and its discontents: integrationism and intolerance in the 21st century













Introduction
To maintain a tolerant, multicultural society has been one of the most difficult aspects of governance throughout the entirety of human history. Whether the differences between people are simply superficial, such as skin color, or are more substantial and cultural, such as ideas of religion and morality, it is incredibly hard for many cultures to peacefully coexist in close geographic proximity. Despite a hard push towards tolerance and multiculturalism in the latter half of the 20th century, there is still tension, violence, and distrust between many cultures in the world today.
This paper will use Islamophobia in post-9/11 and post-7/7 British society as a case study to explore the differences between race, ethnicity, culture, and faith; to examine various competing attitudes towards multiculturalism; and to look at what effects today’s policies and practices regarding tolerance and multiculturalism have on those most affected by them.
The situation in a sentence
An increasing number of British politicians on both ends of the political spectrum are advocating the pursuit of cultural homogeneity by way of integrationist policies because they perceive cultural diversity in Britain--the presence of practicing Muslims in particular--as a threat to both national security and the very idea of British culture, or, as they call it, “Britishness”.
Defining culture, race, and ethnicity
Before turning our eye to contemporary society, it is instructive to begin with a primer on what exactly is meant by multiculturalism and the terms it relies on, such as race, ethnicity, culture, and faith. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd. ed. 1989)1 defines multiculturalism as “the policy or process whereby the distinctive identities of the cultural groups within such a society are maintained or supported.” Even here at the beginning of our exploration, we find indications of the challenges posed by multiculturalism embedded right in the OED’s example sentences for this definition: a certain Professor Blainey writes in 1988, for instance, that “multi-culturalism is another name for ethnic discrimination.” It is interesting to note that the example sentences from before 1988 speak of multiculturalism with optimism and hope; as late as 1973 the OED has a quote lauding a particular nation’s being able to meet “the new and promising challenge of Multiculturalism” (with a capital M, no less!).
A few more definitions will be instructive in understanding exactly what is under discussion. The OED defines culture as “the distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviour, products, or way of life of a particular society, people, or period. Hence: a society or group characterized by such customs, etc.” This definition not only tells us that a culture is defined by the shared attitudes and ideas of a group of people, but that in turn those people can be defined – or more accurately, identified -- by their culture. Which culture (or cultures) a person identifies with can be influenced by any number of things, including personal ideological choices as simple as what music they listen to or what activities they like to do. There are also more ingrained cultures as well; cultures that people are born into – things like which country a person calls home, what religious beliefs they have, and what sort of ethnic traditions they inherited from their family. Culture is innate and integral to every human being: it helps tell us who we are and how we are expected to behave. Every culture dictates to its members a set of morals and values that they must ascribe to if they are to remain members of that culture. Thus, every culture is a sort of “in-group”, and those who are not members of that culture can sometimes be seen as outsiders, as somehow fundamentally different.
The OED describes an ethnic group as one that shares “common racial, cultural, religious, or linguistic characteristics”. A key term in that definition is the slippery word “racial”, which can refer to various things including national identity (“A tribe, nation, or people, regarded as of common stock. In early use freq. with modifying adjective, as British race, Roman race, etc.”); for the purposes of this discussion, however, race is defined as “any of the major groupings of mankind, having in common distinct physical features or having a similar ethnic background.” There seems to be little to distinguish this definition of race from the definition of ethnicity; it might be more appropriate if the definition used “or” instead of “and”; i.e., people “having in common distinct physical features and having a similar ethnic background”. This distinction, though distressingly superficial, comes closest to the current meaning of the word “race” as it most frequently used today. In fact, many people’s definition of race doesn’t even include the idea of having a similar ethnic or cultural background – often times the word is simply used to refer to the outward appearance of an individual, just as it has for decades (Johnson v. California, 2004). Someone who is not attuned to the subtle differences in these terms might refer to any black person in America, for instance, as belonging to “the African-American race”, even if that person is in fact a foreign national whose roots lie far from the African continent.
Cultural confusion in contemporary Britain
In defining the key terms above, it begins to become apparent that the language we use to describe multiculturalism is anything but precise. Kundnani (2007) insightfully points out that the distinction between personal, cultural, and ethnic values can often conveniently be confused and conflated, allowing those who oppose multiculutralism to use whichever group they wish as a scapegoat. After informing the reader that several of the most notorious terrorists in the past decade were once regular, upstanding members of British society such as shopkeepers and students, Kundnani writes that:
the most plausible explanation for these individuals’ actions is a sense of injustice that morphed into an apocalyptic and pathological form through the ideology of global jihad. […] However, those whose lives are rigidly divided on racial or religious lines do not seem to be any more or less susceptible to it than those whose lives are more mixed. There is no reason to believe that the reach of this ideology is somehow linked to ethnic segregation. (Kundnani, 2007, pp. 27-28)
In other words, although a cultural2 shift did have to take place inside the hearts of these men for them to turn into murderers, it is simple-minded and simply incorrect to say that the reason these men went down the dark path of jihad was a direct result of their religion or the communities they lived in. This latter notion, the supposed danger caused by the existence of ethnic or religious communities, has been brought up often in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, with one newspaper article describing those who live in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods as living “in a state of alienation from the rest of society.” (Miles, 2005) It becomes clear, reading a sentence like that, that the ultimate goal of those who oppose multiculturalism is to promote a homogenous society. It also indicates that a substantial portion of the population is distrusting of ethnic enclaves, and feels that they are a real and immediate threat to their safety and way of life (Wynne-Jones, 2008).
The vast majority of Muslims (just like the vast majority of nearly any religious, cultural or ethnic group) are non-violent and have no desire to see or participate in a holy war. In fact, a great many Muslims (and Christians, and Jews, etc.) lead purely secular lives (Ahmad, 2009). The transformation of a few mild-mannered individuals into mass murderers should not be interpreted as evidence that the religion of Islam poses any sort of threat to Britain or the world at large; rather, it should be recognized as a reaction to an aspect of society or social policy; a red flag indicating that something is very wrong in the way we treat each other. The question regarding these terrorists, then, is not “how do we keep people like that out of our country?” -- it is, rather, “what injustices in our country led these men to do such terrible things?” That is not to say, of course, that Britain or America deserved to be attacked; rather, it is suggesting that there is some major fault with the way society is structured that allows people to feel so beleaguered and violent that terrorism seems an appropriate course of action.
In order to address the question of what is wrong with society with regards to diversity and tolerance, it will be necessary to look closely at several factors.
Scapegoats and reactionaries, part 1
As part of the official reaction to the 7/7 attacks, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a speech ostensibly promoting tolerance (“We should assert that the Union flag by definition is a flag for tolerance and inclusion” [Brown Speech Promotes Britishness, 2006]). In it he called for a national holiday to celebrate Britishness, to promote “who we are and what we stand for” (Brown Speech, 2006).
Two years later, Brown’s government released a report that advocated not only creating a day to celebrate Britishness, but also holding “citizenship ceremonies” and encouraging schoolchildren to take oaths of allegiance to “Queen and country” (Pupils, 2008). None of these sound like intolerant ideas per se, but they do raise the question of why they are being proposed now. What is the perceived threat against Britishness? But first, what exactly is Britishness?
The paradox of British xenophobia
It is probably safe to say that every schoolchild in the Western world is familiar with the phrase “the sun never sets on the British empire”. As historian Stephen Luscombe (1996) describes, “at its peak, the British Empire was the largest formal empire that the world had ever known. As such, its power and influence stretched all over the globe; shaping it in all manner of ways.” At various times since the 17th century, Britain has maintained colonies or territories in every continent on the globe. According to Luscombe, at the peak of the Empire’s sprawl, it controlled enough land “to cover between a quarter and a third of the globe”.
Thus, for most of its history, there was no such thing as “Britishness”. Things were certainly a certain way back home, but the combined territories of the Empire represented an area “one hundred and fifty times the size of Great Britain itself” (Luscombe, 1996). For a person to say she was a subject of the British Empire gave absolutely no indication of where she lived, what color her skin was, what her religious beliefs were, or anything at all beyond the fact that, well, she was on the planet Earth. So when modern politicians in Great Britain look back with nostalgia at the halcyon days of the Empire, reminding citizens of the pride they should feel at their “Britishness”, they are evoking an era where the idea of “Britishness” was even less defined than it is today, an era when being British had nothing to do with you looked like, what you believed in, nor, to a large extent, where you lived. With that in mind, it could probably said that at its peak the British Empire was the most multicultural nation ever to exist on this planet. But this is the 21st century, and those glory days of Imperialism have long since past.
Scapegoats and reactionaries, part two
It has always been difficult to immigrate to Britain and achieve full citizenship (Joppke, 1999), but until the recent push towards celebrating “Britishness” it was possible for an immigrant already living in Britain to comfortably co-exist with the “natives” and be active members of society. The government’s position towards such individuals was one that promoted peaceful integration, even if they kept the country’s doors closed as tightly as they could against any new immigrants—particularly non-white ones. (Tabili, 1994)
Speaking about this period in British immigration history, Kundnani (2007) explains that “with a degree of separation introduced between race and immigration, an important concept of being black British or British Asian could emerge. In the normal course of events, race policy was discussed as a separate area from immigration policy.” This made for a society, Kundnani continues, “in which it was unlawful to exclude Asians and blacks from pubs but essential to exclude them from the country.” While the restrictions on new immigrants weren’t exactly progressive, the ‘live and let live’ attitude regarding already-resident immigrants fostered a multicultural society; one in which a person could feel free to practice their chosen religion, for instance, while still feeling patriotism toward the crown.
The recent emphasis on “Britishness”, however, has fractured this foundation of multiculturalism. The changes began largely in 2002, when a White Paper entitled Secure borders, Safe Haven: integration with diversity in modern Britain was published and swiftly rewrote decades of social policy. As Kundnani (2007) summarizes, this White Paper:
blurred the separation between race and immigration policies, and with it the distinction between unwanted immigrants and tolerated ‘ethnic minorities’. Thereafter, immigrants were themselves to be divided into categories of wanted and unwanted […] while ‘ethnic minorities’ were to be ranked – and expelled – according to their perceived assimilation to British values.
This policy is called ‘integrationism’. That name does not make very much sense when the realities of its measures are considered, but it does make sense if you simply listen to the Prime Minister and do not do much thinking. That’s because even though in effect this policy treats non-whites as non-humans, it has been spun by the political establishment as a way to ensure that Britain maintains a cohesive national identity. Kundnani (2007) cites the 2001 Asian youth riots in the north of England as an impetus for these new policies:
The response to the rioting of young British-born Asians in northern towns […] was to be found in immigration and nationality policies, such as ‘citizenship tests’, oaths of allegiance and English language tests, that were normally directed at integrating new settlers, as if a lack of controls on who could become a British citizen was responsible for the violence [that summer]. Young people, who had been born and bred in Britain and spoke English with broad Yorkshire and Lancashire accents, were implicitly addressed as ‘aliens’ in need of assimilation. [… Furthermore,] what was being implied now was that not just new settlers but also British Muslims would be scrutinized for their allegiance to a set of ‘core values’ and their acceptance as fellow citizens was conditional on their satisfying a ‘British values’ test. A fragile sense of belonging to Britain, that had been built up in previous years, was unseated.
Recall Prime Minster Brown’s language that was quoted earlier in this paper: “We should assert that the Union flag by definition is a flag for tolerance and inclusion.” That sounds progressive and tolerant, and it sounds as if it is promoting multiculturalism – but now that we have examined the cause of those policies, and have deduced the reasons for those policies, it has become clear that the Prime Minister is only interested in tolerating and including white people who were born in England. What remains now is to look at the effects of these policies on non-whites, particularly British Muslims.
The afflicted and the persecuted
Implicit it in targeting Muslims and other non-white Britons is the idea that these people are not truly British, regardless of their citizenship, personal beliefs, or social standing. Following that logic, the only way for a group of people to have lived in a country for so long without becoming “true” members of that country, or of that country’s culture, is that they aren’t trying. This then becomes the official explanation for why ethnic enclaves exist: Muslims, Blacks, Asians, and others are described as wanting to live in isolation, and to be willfully resisting any attempt at integrating with the dominant culture. It became “the inherent separatism of Islamic culture that was to blame - these people did not want to integrate; they were 'self-segregating'. A people that had been systematically cut off, shunned, dispossessed and left to rot, was now blamed for refusing to mix” (Kundnani, 2007). The current integrationist policy, which one would assume aims to integrate disparate groups in the population, is in effect a policy of unofficial –yet government sanctioned—segregation.
Understanding all of this, one can’t help but ache for these marginalized groups, and in particular for their children. To be born in England, schooled in England, have English friends growing up; to speak English as your first language, with a legitimate, innate English accent, and to consider yourself English as you grow up; only to have your government tell you one day that you don’t look English, and so you’re going to have to prove your loyalty; or maybe they don’t even demand you do that, maybe they just deport you and your family because the people in your neighborhood also look like you and obviously that means you aren’t really English and probably secretly hate England… well, I cannot imagine coping with the identity crisis that would no doubt accompany such an experience. It is easy to imagine all of the government rhetoric really getting to you eventually, to the point where you decide, “Whether the state says I am or I am not British, maybe I don’t want to be British.”—at which point the government’s party line would become reality; a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Why can’t we all just get along?
The last people whose responsibility it should be to try and correct this social and legislative mess are the people who comprise the cultural, ethnic, and religious groups who are so hindered by the contemporary attitude of intolerance. Yet it does not appear that anyone else is stepping in to help. Politicians on the left and the right stand together under the banner of the “War on Terror” to support these policies of intolerance, all the while making speeches about how proud Britons should be of their “Britishness”.
One must look back to the old days of the Empire, the one on which the sun would never set, to find true “Britishness”. The glory of that empire was based upon innumerable cultures, beliefs, and skin colors. It will only be when we realize that in order to foster a society of tolerance and respect and progress we must be tolerant and respectful and progressive that we will start to see positive changes. That sentence was self-evident, but this whole issue is self-evident. What needs to be done is for every human to treat every other human with decency and respect. End of story. Somehow, I suspect that the next great civil rights leader will once again be one of the downtrodden; one of the few who not only sees that love is answer but is brave enough to say it to the world. I just hope he or she speaks up soon.





















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All of the quoted definitions and example sentences in this section come from the online version of the second edition of the OED. A full list of the entries used, as well as their corresponding URLs, is included on the works cited page.