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Multiculturalism: how fashions and political orthodoxies change
On State Multiculturalism.
I wonder how the Australians will react to the Prime Minister's speech today?
Multiculturalism was government policy there.
Update 11 February 2011:
Bagehot on Cameron's controversial speech
Update on 3rd March
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With many others swimming in the spicy soup of inner city Birmingham I moved away from official multiculturalism in the 90s, avoiding the ethnic checklists on many forms, especially grant applications, because the given lists couldn't encompass our multiplying hybridity - direct or indirect within our own family. The most signal failure of bureaucratised multiculturalism -e.g, as a formal policy of government - is that that laudable paragraph defining promises of equal opportunity in every sphere of national life could not include class. The granting policies of M/C were intended to aid assimilation into the larger population and wean vulnerable newcomers from seeking protective solidarity among 'their own'. This well intentioned antidote to tribalism was gradually hi-jacked by grant wallahs and self appointed carpet baggers with a vested interest in defining themselves by their 'race' or post-colonial identity. Cameron's speech comes a long time after that trend has become widely recognised. It's quite refreshing to have a final clear-out of M/C's remaining vested interests. We seek other ways of defining 'us'. That said there are countries where multicultural policies of the kind that we began introducing into the UK soon after the Notting Hill Race Riots of the late 1950s, have hardly got off the ground. There is a great need for them as a preliminary phase as we move towards a richly connected polyglot world. I so want the idea of the village community to work - in England and in Greece. Multiculturalism as it's been implemented has protected 'us' from facing change together.
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