No Multiculturalism Please, We're British

by Farzana Versey
Countercurrents.org
February 10, 2011

It’s failed and all because of Islamic terrorism. Soon after British Prime Minister David Cameron pronounced the defeat of multiculturalism, it was but a matter of time before commentators would go on their ‘let’s separate the wheat from the chaff’ binge.

Douglas Murray is director of the Center for Social Cohesion in London. In his opinion piece in Wall Street Journal he expresses views that are antithetical to the idea of cohesiveness. Drawing thin lines, he is in fact creating walls. He does make a distinction between multiculturalism and pluralism and multiracialism. It is curious, though, that he imagines the hotchpotch idea of one cannot subsume the other. Racists are agitating against another culture as much as they are against a race, for a race brings with it specific cultural values and history.

He states rather audaciously, “State-sponsored multiculturalism treated European countries like hostelries. It judged that the state should not ‘impose’ rules and values on newcomers. Rather, it should bend over backwards to accommodate the demands of immigrants. The resultant policy was that states treated and judged people by the criteria of whatever ‘community’ they found themselves born into.”

This is a complete whitewash job. No state ever sponsors multiculturalism; even sanctified universities like Oxford and Cambridge have their pecking orders and their syllabi that demarcate South Asian and African studies. One might consider this as intellectual ghettoisation. The state may not impose values on ‘newcomers’ simply because it is ignorant about them. What values are inculcated in the indigenous population across the board? Are not criminal laws applicable to everyone, and quite often more stringently against the outsiders? If bending over backwards means that the state permits certain dress codes or social habits, then this is a pluralistic idea. It can be evident even among Britons themselves who are not a uniform herd relishing shepherd’s pie.

Read the rest here.

See also Farzana Versey's compelling blog: Cross Connections

Comment: My friend Patty sent me a link to an article about Cameron's diatribe on the failure of multiculturalism.  (Has multiculturalism succeeded anywhere in the West I wonder?)

I wrote the following to Patty (hope she won't mind me reproducing it here):

I am amazed by this nonsense ...  Multiculturalism has always been a load of bull.  A politicized agenda where whiteness acts as if everything around them must be made to fit ... particularly into categories and roles white people construct and approve.

The hole in this round of delusion is that whiteness is not at fault but that Muslims have not been whitened enough to be characters in a Rudyard Kipling novel ... subservient and the lesser, always.

Liberal whites are just as delusional as the more conservative set.  They see multiculturalism like a buffet at a Chinese joint (constructed/projected culture).  Nicely arranged foods ... that can be eaten on the same plate (so now they know Chinese culture).

Life (the Other) is more complex than that and white folks (like Cameron) are finding out that their delusions are just that ... delusions.

Onward!