On balance, does multiculturalism unite or divide a nation?

[_Jumper_]

How has it worked in Canada, the UK, and Australia? Should we adopt it in the USA?

[BurtWorm]

1. Too late. Already here.

In itself it doesn't divide. It doesn't have to divide. But some people find it unacceptable that people can be more than just Americans in America.

[philosophie_en_rose]

2. Define "multiculturalism"

I don't think that it's just a political philosophy. The United States are multicultural, whether or not "it works" in other countries.

What is the alternative? Segregation? Monoculturalism?

[_Jumper_]

4. Government encouragement and support of it

n/t

The alternative is what we have in America: a multicultural nation where everyone is eventually expected to assimilate. I believe in the melting pot but I think in the short and medium term we need to teach respect for other cultures to reduce prejudice against other ethnic groups and other racial groups.

Let me make clear that I do not believe we should all "become white." I believe in synthesizing the best from each culture into a new American culture.

[Maple]

3. On the whole

it's worked very well in Canada.

We have our problems with it, but it seems to have done a great job in many ways.

But then we started out as a French colony, had First Nations people here, the Underground Railway brought escaped slaves, and the Chinese built the railway....and that was in the old early days.

We've always been multiracial.

[_Jumper_]

5. Encouragement of cultural differences

Has the reduced prejudice in Canada or has it lead to more prejudice due to more group segregation?

[Maple]

6. Well many people thot

it was going to really raise tensions...they wanted to go the 'melting pot' route, but oddly enough it seems to have helped.

We certainly have the odd racist nutbar here, mostly confined to the one political party, but on the whole I'd say we are a tolerant people.

Actually people tend to bend over backwards to show they are NOT racist.

[_Jumper_]

9. Canadian Alliance

I assume that is the party you were referring to. Is the PC party as tolerant as the Liberals or almost as tolerant as it, or is it in between the Liberal Party and the CA on the issue of tolerance?

[Maple]

14. Yeah

the Canadian Alliance. Social conservatives.

The PC party was what you would call Rockefeller republicans, or moderate republicans I guess.

However, during their last turn in office, the PM in question was seen as being in bed with the Americans...he signed the free trade deal....and the party went down to two members in Parliament.

They've never really recovered from that, and are about to be taken over...altho the polite term is merged....with the Canadian Alliance.

Neither of them do well in the polls...between 10 and 15% usually.

Two...going nowhere parties...getting together.

The PCs were tolerant...but they are moving right in order to survive at all...even tho Canada is mostly social democrat.

Really dumb move on their part...but you can't tell em.

[ArtieBoy]

10. But then why is it...

...you have provinces that keep trying to seceed from the rest of the country?

[Maple]

15. Well we only had one

that wanted...or claimed to want...to seceed. Quebec.

Multiculturalism helped there actually.

The 'French' just became one more ethnic group, and were introduced to a wider world than what existed in their rather isolated province.

Isolated by language and culture.

Separatism is virtually dead now in Quebec, and will be for at least another generation...by which time it won't matter anymore.

There are a few separatist wannabees in Alberta and BC...home of the CA...but we're talking about 12 old guys in a coffee shop. There is no support for it otherwise.

We have nowhere near the number of secessionist movements the US has.

And the few we do have use it as blackmail, not as a real movement.

[jobycom]

7. There's no melting pot in America

Segregation and slavery forcibly kept whites and blacks not only apart, but unequal. Reservations and lack of full citizenship kept native Americans separate. Hispanics have been isolated based on language and culture. Visit any large city and you'll find regions devoted to specific ethnic groups, without a lot of intermingling.

Of course, there is mixing of people, and since most of the laws forcing segregation have been abolished, there has been a blending of cultures. There is also a lot of borrowing amongst cultures, sometimes wittingly, sometimes not. Sometimes both, as with our musical heritage, ranging from the Gaelic sounding country music to the rythymic African sounding delta music, which eventually combined to form jazz and then rock, and now rap/hiphop. Language and cuisine have similar combinations.

But the academic multicultural movement here was more a way to express individuality and pride in heritage (except southern heritage, of course) than to keep ethnic heritages separate. I think that's the best way. Allow everyone to keep what parts of their individual heritage they like, with pride, and adopt parts of other heritages that work for them. That way we get a good mixture of flavors but still get to taste the individual ingredients.

[_Jumper_]

13. The melting pot is back--and all groups are included this time

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/01/rodriguez.htm

<A study by the Population Research Center, in Portland, Oregon, projects that the black intermarriage rate will climb dramatically in this century, to a point at which 37 percent of African-Americans will claim mixed ancestry by 2100. By then more than 40 percent of Asian-Americans will be mixed. Most remarkable, however, by century's end the number of Latinos claiming mixed ancestry will be more than two times the number claiming a single background.>

<Not surprisingly, intermarriage rates for all groups are highest in the states that serve as immigration gateways. By 1990 Los Angeles County had an intermarriage rate five times the national average. Latinos and Asians, the groups that have made up three quarters of immigrants over the past forty years, have helped to create a climate in which ethnic or racial intermarriage is more accepted today than ever before. Nationally, whereas only eight percent of foreign-born Latinos marry non-Latinos, 32 percent of second-generation and 57 percent of third-generation Latinos marry outside their ethnic group. Similarly, whereas only 13 percent of foreign-born Asians marry non-Asians, 34 percent of second-generation and 54 percent of third-generation Asian-Americans do.>

[maggrwaggr]

16. Have you been to Los Angeles lately?

multiculturalism is alive and well in Los Angeles.

It's one thing that i actually like about this city.

There are 81 languages spoken in the public school system. Most of us can't even name 81 countries off the top of our heads (I know I can't).

This is probably the least racist city I know. Some comedian made a joke about it once, that you couldn't be a racist here because, well, I can't remember the punchline but basically your head would explode if you were a racist here because you'd have to hate almost everybody.

[_Jumper_]

17. Government support of multiculturalism

The U.S. government does not support it and does not encourage a celebration of differences, like the Canadian, British, and Australian governments do. If it did, do you believe those 81 groups would get along more as prejudice and fear is reduced by multiculturalism, or would they become more hostile to each other due to more segregation which some believe is engendered by multiculturalism?

[maggrwaggr]

20. there's really nobody in charge in Los Angeles

It's a big, messy experiment. If the government had anything to say about it, I really doubt it would make it down to the streets. Most people would have no idea.

All I know is that if you see people every day who aren't like you, you tend to accept that as normal, and you tend to think of those people as fellow human beings like yourself.

Which is good.

[Robin Hood]

8. It depends on the nation.

It will divide a nation filled with bigoted morons, and unite a nation filled with open minded intelligent people that understand that diversity is the backbone of strength.

[Cleita]

11. I would like to see certain things as constants, like a

common language to conduct government with and certain things we do and celebrate as a nation. But otherwise, I think you should be able to participate in the culture and languages you chose to without being looked upon as unAmerican.

[AP]

12. It unites a society over it's successes.

I have first hand experience with this one. Multiculturalism means that a lot of new ideas compete with each other, with the best ideas rising to the top, which makes the society happier, wealthier and more interesting.

Trying to shut down new ideas is a recipe for misery, and stops progress in its tracks. People who fight muliticulturalism are condemning themselves to isolation, poverty, and boredom.

A muliticultural society is a better society, and if people unite over stopping improvement to society, they're idiots. If the unite over progress, they're smart.

[Lexingtonian]

18. Historically,

multicultural stages are transient, if measured in generations. People assimilate to large degrees or migrate on- sometimes forcibly.

I'm not all enamoured of the 'benefits'. In monocultural places it's certainly good to introduce diversity, though often diversity simply means a change in the kind of provincialism. And people bring a lot of baggage along with differences in cultural things. Various kinds of abuses, their own forms of reactionary responses to modernism...the result is definitely not always mutual enlightenment.

The common thread to the story in the U.S., Canada, and Australia is that all of them are slowly becoming less 19th century West European societies and moving closer in various kinds of metrics to the cultural and social norms of their aboriginal peoples. The many groups that are third parties to this trend are treated as useful or impedimentary or extraneous.

[w4rma]

19. It depends on the prevalent attitude of folks (n/t)

[BonjourUSA]

21. No if each culture lives one beside other and not mixed.

I think a country is the result of its own history and its own culture and its own language (vector of its culture) for centuries or for millaniums. The success is the cultural enrichment by the brew not by a cultural juxtaposition which is going to transform itself in a communitarist organisation of the society with the danger of the diffenrences rejection. In this way, the aim of each community becomes the defense of its members even against the common interest.