When Has Multiculturalism Worked?

The immigrants keep coming. They come from Africa, from former Communist block countries, or from overcrowded intolerant cultures that will not tolerate equality between men and women or Western ideals, and so they arrive on boats, trains, buses and planes into Italy, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Spain, and other countries. And no one likes it much.

These countries then end up paying most of the bills either to keep them or to deport them back to their native lands. Nearly all immigrants are leaving their countries because multiculturalism doesn´t work there and so Europe lets them in while apologists for multiculturalism claim immigration "enriches" Western Civilization. Beyond using them as workhorses, there is nothing to this. Unfortunately, sometimes included in this bag of "enrichment" are jihadists bearing plans for bombs instead of culture. Think Madrid train bombings, 11 March 2004.

While in America, George W. Bush has encouraged, at least politically, the non-assimilation of foreign languages and cultures which is in keeping with the first principle of multiculturalism where all cultures are equal and no culture claims a privileged position. I´m not sure if the meaning of the word culture in this principle is misunderstood or ignored but, well, all cultures, are not equal. That is, if culture is defined as a totality of social behavioral patterns, transmitted through the arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought (American Heritage dictionary definition).

If so, then what about those minority cultures like the Christian Reconstructionists of Westboro Baptist Church in Arkansas, which presidential aspirant Michael Huckabee by the way, happens to have an affinity with, or the National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, the Klu Klux Clan, the Aryan Nations, the Nation of Islam, the Nation of Yahweh, the Jewish Task Force, and the White Order of Thule, to name a few? Are these cultures equal to the culture of Western Civilization? I would find it absurd if this were true. Only individuals are equal to one another in this world, regardless of social status or skin color.

The "M" word as a term for "cultural enrichment" and "diversity" is not only ambiguous but also code for multi-racism and has always fared better in theory than in practice. Its political correctness is a smokescreen that hides an ideology of cultural relativism which would eventually under a growing electorate of a Muslim population lead a Western nation to accept sharia and other barbaric practices such as infanticide, torture, slavery, oppression of women, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, gangs, female circumcision, discrimination by immigrants, suttee, and the death penalty. This would only highlight the differences between Western and Eastern culture instead of creating a tolerant and peaceful coexistence. In effect, racism would flourish.

In practice multiculturalism doesn´t work and is irrelevant. Here are a few absurdities central to this argument that help support this claim.

During the last two to three hundred years technology has improved global access to native and foreign cultures. Today we have instant access to hundreds of thousands of books and pamphlets through tens of thousands of web sites. Internet and television access to hundreds of documentaries on nearly every subject imaginable on any given day. We can become even more intimate with other lands with video sites like YouTube where we can view an insightful amateur video on someone taking his daily walk in the middle of a Turkish culture or watch someone demonstrate hot to make a spicy rice dish on the island of Vanuatu. We can have instant access to the music of the world´s top musicians and as well as the ability to rip their songs with a few mouse-clicks. Millions of pieces of data if not actual books from the local library are at our fingertips. Taking this into consideration, multiculturalism becomes irrelevant.

In The Netherlands ethnic cuisine is fairly popular among the general population. I´m not sure if this has ever been quantified but if you were to compare the purely economic benefits of ethnic cuisine over the adoption of Western technology by China and India, the value of technology transfer by China would win out. This is has occurred largely without multiculturalism, without migrations of the two cultures. And it also lays waste to the claim that a merging of cultures makes a country dynamic and vibrant. Neither physical proximity or racially mixed countries are more successful than purer populations thus China coming to mind as a prime example of a vibrantly growing and dynamic country.

It seems when two cultures merge, only a temporary enrichment takes places because the number of words that an average person uses range around a few thousand (the number a person might actively use in a week). Of course, some one above average could use tens of thousands (the number an educated person might understand) or more. Nevertheless, the average human memory is limited. The merging of two languages ultimately lead to a hybrid language which in the end can have no more words than the two originals; a few thousand. Hybrid cultures are not necessarily an improvement either. New does not always equal better. And even if the hybrid adopts the better of the two originals, it doesn´t necessarily mean the world has been culturally enriched.

The misapplication of the word ´diversity´ keeps reappearing in the language of the multiculturalists. There has always been more than enough diversity in Western Civilization to keep the most ardent scholar busy for a lifetime. "Diversity" has become a technical sounding word used to impress. What Europe has gained from politically correct policies begun over thirty years ago are diverse problems.

Finally, America has not has been the kind of melting pot we are led to believe. Thirty years after the civil rights era, inequality and segregation remain a problem in the land of the free with massive differences in wealth between whites and blacks. Although segregation has declined, the changes for the individual have been small. If Barack Obama were to get elected president maybe a man of mixed race with a white mother and a black father could further eliminate the core of biological racial doctrines still lingering beneath the surface of American society. Maybe the world would finally get it about race and cultures, that these things are irrelevant and we´d finally see what we should have seen all along, that we are all just people. Individuals.