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An excellant briefing paper on the "debate" over multiculturalism taking place in the UK from the IRR (Institute of Race Relations), in which author JENNY BOURNE puts the recent statements of the UK prime minister in a historical perspective, while navigating the reader through the meaning and implications of multiculturalism. Here are excerpts from the BRIEFING PAPER:
To describe society as multicultural is just a statement of fact, of what is. Compared with fifty years ago when every shop, restaurant, piece of clothing or music, sportsman, religious institution, festival etc, almost without exception, was English (Welsh or Scots), our society is indeed infinitely diverse and multicultural. It reflects on a cultural level the many different ethnic groups that have settled in the UK. And it reflects this, not just in the sense that each ethnic group can have access to its own customs and traditions, but that all members of society can partake in the cultural diversity that has been jointly created. Multiculturalism as policy emanated from both central and local government as a conscious attempt to answer racial inequality (and especially the resistances to it after the ‘riots’ of 1981 and 1985) with cultural solutions. This move towards multiculturalism did not come out of the air or from government benefice. It happened as a response to the struggles that black communities waged against decades of racial discrimination in employment, housing, social services etc. Struggles to wear the turban at work, struggles against non-nationals having to report to the police, struggles for equal pay on the shop floor, to make the police protect communities from racial attack, struggles for children not to be streamed or bussed out of schools, struggles to include other histories in educational curricula, to get the media to report on black people positively and so on. Multiculturalism, therefore, was a concomitant of community-based fights for equality and justice. But this organic development of multiculturalism was to change when, in the early 1980s, the Thatcher government decided (after it had already been introduced into educational policies by Labour) to actively promote cultural policies as a means of combating disaffection within minority ethnic communities. The thinking went that the1981 ‘riots’ on the streets of many poor, deprived inner-areas of British cities (in which buildings were burnt down and street battles were fought with the police) came out of some sort of cultural deficit on the part of minority ethnic groups. And this could be addressed by the funding of local projects which spoke to the needs of the different ethnic, cultural and religious groups. In the process, multiculturalism lost its antiracist roots and remit and became institutionalised. It ceased to be an outcome of the struggle for equality emanating from below, and became, instead, policy imposed from above. And as the anti-racist component ebbed, multiculturalism degenerated into a competitive culturalism or ethnicism which set different groups against one another as they competed for hand-outs and office. And now, suddenly, some twenty-odd years into the project, spokespeople are waking up to some of the problems that their policies have created – but usually placing the blame on the recipient communities rather than on their own misguided policies. ‘To use “integration and “assimilation” as synonyms is not just to misuse language and confuse concepts, but to dissimulate practice. The UK had rejected assimilation and adopted integration, it had passed acts against racial discrimination, it did not have a strong extreme-right, anti-immigrant political party. But Britain, once an example to mainland Europe, is now apparently hell-bent on following its European partners into the most conservative and reactionary of policies. All the suggested new policies and programmes – the emphasis on a set of core values, the insistence on English language proficiency, an oath of allegiance, introduction of ID cards, a reservation on certain religious clothing, surveillance of foreign students, control over mosques and imams, the Commission on Integration and Cohesion – have their roots in other European countries’ programmes and politics. We are importing the worst of European race relations instead of exporting the best. What is unusual and worrying about the new anti-Muslim racism is that erstwhile liberalthinking people who would normally eschew any form of personal racism, now find it possible to join in the clamour against Islam and Muslims. And they do so because the idea of a fundamental clash of civilisations – between enlightened, western Christendom on the one hand and benighted, barbaric Islam on the other – has become commonplace and accepted. Muslim people as a whole are now being stereotyped not just as terrorists but also as backward, sexist, homophobic bigots whose intolerance and values threaten all our freedoms – of artistic expression, freedom of speech etc and values of equality and fair-play. Read full paper (pdf) from source Comments (1)
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Part of the problem within the British discussion about multiculturalism is that a number of different things are being addressed under its banner. First it is important to distinguish between the description of our society as multicultural and multiculturalism as policy.
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The utter failure comes from right wing politicians like Cameron and their policies which fuel hatred and animosity between people in order to serve their agenda of divide and conquer.