Multiculturalism is Nonsense

I don't see how a manufactured definition by a single person explains how establishing a monocultural society equates to commonly accepted definition of racism.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

That definition does not even make sense. Culture is not race. Racism refers to skin color. Culture refers to ideology, attitude, and way of living. Disagreeing on a cultural basis is not in itself an act of bigotry.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

What happens when people of another culture come to this society?

Like banning churches in Saudi Arabia?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

They assimilate. If they refuse, then that's no big deal, they are only first generation immigrants. Their children will be continually exposed to nationalistic values throughout their lives, and therefore will be fully assimilated.

 

Pretty much my thoughts. Tiassa's source seems like nothing more than an individual's futile attempts to redefine words to fit their own perverted ideology.

 

What if they want to keep their own cultural identity, like the Chinese, Jews or Muslims? Build temples, synagogues and mosques, have their own festival days off and continue to learn, speak and teach their local languages? What if Christians living in Saudi Arabia want to visit Mecca or build a church there?

 

Try a real argument next time

Take a listen and a look around, Mordea. Cultural denigration is widely regarded as racism.

To the other, if we're going to look at definitions as espoused by individuals, I'm going to trust an Oxford and Cambridge educated doctor of education, who worked as a journalist in Lebanon, lectured to students in Saudi Arabia, and is bound by the demands of academic integrity over, say, Norsefire.

You're quite specific: "... a manufactured definition by a single person." You're welcome to challenge his "manufactured definition" for its rarity. You'll be laughed out of academia on that count.

 

1. No-one has spoken of denigrating a culture, but simply establishing a mono-cultural society. So you're essentially engaged in a straw-man argument.

2. Your claim that 'cultural denigration is widely regarded as racism' is supposition.

Except that definitions espoused by individuals aren't always commonly accepted definition. Language is defined by popular usage, not by one individual.

And I'd trust the commonly accepted definition found in a dictionary over that of a single individual, no matter how impressive his credentials.

What qualifies you to make the statement that I would be 'laughed out of academia'? Are you an academic? If so, by all means, please explain why your fellow scholar's definition of racism is not found in any widely used dictionary.

 

You cannot "establish" a monocultural society unless you ban and/or denigrate all others.

All monocultural societies, like all monoracial societies remain that way expressly by prohibiting all others.

 

You wouldn't necessarily have to prohibit others, but simply promote one particular culture to the nth degree. If children are raised in that particular culture, they will know nothing else.

Even if you chose to ban bastions for particular cultures (eg. Catholic schools, synagogues), I wouldn't see that as denigration of a particular culture, but of *diversity*. For example, a Catholic Nation is not inherently inferior to an Islamic Nation, it is simply up to the individual to decide where they wish to live.

 

The cheap refuge of the racist

See S.A.M. at #69 above.

Well, in addition to Halstead, there is also:

Scholars have struggled to understand the apparent stubborn persistence of racial inequality (Harrison 1995; Mullings 2005). They have tried to identify the more covert forms racism has taken since the 1970s, including its varied permutations in different historical, national, and local settings. They have also tried to explain the processes that foster racial inequality without “overtly targeting its victims” (Mullings 2005, p. 679).

There is general agreement that these new forms are both complex and subtle, and that they operate in ways that do not require the formal assistance of educational, legal, and other institutions. Several terms have emerged to characterize what is sometimes called “the new racism” (or, perhaps, racisms. These include “laissez-faire racism,” “cultural fundamentalism,” “unmarked racisms,” “neoracism,” “color-blind racism,” and “cultural racism.”

“Cultural racism” is not yet a standard label in the race and racism literature, especially in the United States. It is virtually absent in the anthropological literature and has only recently appeared in the U.S. sociological literature (Bonilla-Silva 2003). It is more common in the European literature (Modood 2005) and among U.S. scholars familiar with European debates on race (Wylie 2001). Yet even when scholars use the term “cultural racism,” they do not necessarily employ it in the same way.

Yet if one worries less about labels and focuses on recurring themes that emerge in the literature on the “new racism,” there is widespread agreement on a set of processes occurring that can be labeled “cultural racism.” At its core, cultural racism is a form of racism (that is, a structurally unequal practice) that relies on cultural differences rather than on biological markers of racial superiority or inferiority. The cultural differences can be real, imagined, or constructed. Culture, rather than biology, has become a popular, political, and scientific explanatory framework for understanding and rationalizing the unequal status and treatment of various racial groups. Racialized groups are not burdened or blessed by their genetic traits but by their cultural traits.

(Encyclopedia Britannica)​

Or, perhaps, Prof. James M. Blaut at the University of Illinois-Chicago; Clare Sheridan, Senior Administrative Analyst at the School of Social Welfare, University of California-Berkley; Prof. Ramón Grosfoguel at University of California-Berkley; Richard Thompson Ford of Stanford University Law School, writing for Slate, recalled Bill Cosby's suggestion that black people should give their children white names, as opposed to "Shaniqua, Taniqua, and Mohammed and all that crap".

Additionally, pay attention to how people at Sciforums and around the web regard racism. Interestingly, sexism, homophobia, and sectarian divisions are often regarded as racism. I would suggest that when white Catholics and Protestants are fighting about God, it's not racism. But the point is that people in general seem to have a broader definition of racism than, say, Norsefire.

Ford, in his Slate article, noted:

Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji has developed a test designed to smoke out unconscious racial bias. The test requires the subject, under intensive time pressure, to match black and white faces with value-laden terms such as good, smart, and diligent or bad, stupid, and lazy. If you find it easier to match white faces with good terms and black faces with bad terms, you have exhibited what Banaji calls an implicit association between race and merit or virtue. Although she scrupulously avoids using the term herself, almost everyone else has predictably described the results of her research in terms of unconscious racism. And the results are disquieting: Almost 90 percent of whites exhibit some unconscious racism against blacks, while around half of all blacks exhibit anti-black bias.​

So how does that happen? Unfortunately, Ford blocks from himself the most obvious explanation: Cultural association to ethnicity. That is, he notes that, "Studies have shown that employers prefer résumés with conventional names to otherwise identical résumés with stereotypically black names like DeShawn or Shaniqua," but doubts that we can call such a mentality racism because, well, then we would have to call Bill Cosby racist for suggesting people shouldn't name their child Mohammed. And, well, we all know it is a universal truth that Bill Cosby can never be wrong.

In the end, you'll find the term has been in use among social scientists for over forty years.

Unfortunately, popular definition reflects a downward trend. That is, more often than not, the "evolution" of language seems to be making it harder to communicate. I remember in the mid-90s, I knew people who were so excited about the internet and email. "It'll be a new golden age of letters!" one friend proclaimed. He couldn't imagine netspeak. And it took him a while to get used to the fact that nobody gave a damn about grammar and syntax. People started justifying their horrible spelling and punctuation by insisting on popular usage and the evolution of language. It cuts both ways.

Retreating into inflexibility suggests more about your own boundaries than anything else. To wit:

Dictionaries give concise definitions. They are not so nuanced as encyclopedias, journals, or other respectable academic sources. For instance, Merriam-Webster defines racism as:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination​

Nothing about that definition speaks to its application. If, for instance, one associates cultural aspects with race, the argument treads into racist territory. Such as the employers noted in Ford's article: I don't want to hire this person because his name sounds too black. How is that not racism? But whence comes that racism? It arises from the association of culture and ethnicity.

So as a monocultural advocate, how do you propose we raise that single cultural identity in any nation? And how, in doing so, do we not denigrate other cultural expressions?

Imagine Peter Gabriel's music without the African contributions. You know, he's English. Why should he be using African rhythms, or singing African songs (e.g., "Shaking the Tree")? It's nonsense! And he's betraying his English culture! Or the Afro-Celt Sound System. How dare they! Never mind that it's good music; it's ... gasp! ... multicultural!

I think about this whole monoculture thing in the United States and it would be a completely fucked up nation. Sitcoms, country music, born-again Christianity, and everybody is named John or William or Pete, or Sarah or Barbara or Jennifer.
____________________

Notes:

"Cultural Racism". Encyclopedia Britannica. (n.d.) Encyclopedia.jrank.com. December 15, 2009. http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6137/Cultural-Racism.html

Blaut, James M. "The Theory of Cultural Racism". Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, v. 23. 1992. MDCBowen.org. December 15, 2009. http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/theory/blaut.htm

Sheridan, Clare. "Cultural Racism and the Construction of Identity". Law & History Review, v.21, n.1. Spring, 2003. HistoryCooperative.org. December 15, 2009. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/21.1/response_sheridan.html

Grosfoguel, Ramón. "'Cultural Racism' and Colonial Caribbean Migrants in Core Zones of the Capitalist World-Economy". Review, v.XXII:4. 1999. AfricaMigration.com. December 15, 2009. http://www.africamigration.com/archive_02/r_grosfoguel.htm

Ford, Richard T. "A Primer on Racism". Slate. September 30, 2009. Slate.com. December 15, 2009. http://www.slate.com/id/2231002

"racism." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. Merriam-Webster.com. December 15, 2009. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism

 

Can we say White Power Rocks!?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

I'm white?!

 

tl;dr

 

Such as it is

Don't see how it matters; you're expressing the formula applied by the less-stupid white supremacists.

Sorry it's too complicated for you. But those are among the things you need to stop and think about before advocating stupidity.

 

Even if this was true, so what?

No, just too long winded.

 

The untouchable

It means your post at #73 is irrelevant.

Ah, yes. The classic excuse of the dishonest. Refuse the simple expression, complain about the more complex. You're untouchable, aren't you, Mordea?

Alright, you're on. Since you don't want to read my explanation of why the statement that—

"Your claim that 'cultural denigration is widely regarded as racism' is supposition."​

—is incorrect, it's now yours to demonstrate that your point is true.

 

I have to agree with sam, you couldn't make an entire nation monocultural without prohibiting others. You can teach whatever you want at school, but once the child goes home they are exposed to whatever their parents teach them, which would make the child multicultural. You would have to prevent immigration or prevent the expression of other cultures once people immigrated.

 

No, it's just a matter of educating the next generation.

Okay, that is what I propose; it's only common sense. If there is one nation, you need one culture, one set of values and beliefs among the people. How does it make sense for them to differ and thus be divided?

This isn't inaccurate, but you do miss a crucial point: in a homogeneous state, the leadership will most likely pursue policies for the indigenous or core population; the others, in any case, are 'outsiders' and thus of course they will be encouraged to leave.

'Course it works.

Assyria and Babylonia
Sparta (the first Fascist state, lasted for hundreds of years)
Rome (though Rome was diverse, it was authoritarian after Caesar)
Carthage
Hellenistic Greece (Greek culture was spread by Alexander)
the Caliphates
the Ottomans

All of those, and more, were fairly culturally homogeneous and authoritarian. They were also some of the most innovative and most powerful civilizations in history. Now, in case you say "but they're not here any more", I say nonsense. No nation is going to survive for ever, and even democracies can and do fail (as they have in history).

Furthermore, you can include Fascist Italy in that list and, though it collapsed due to defeat in a war
It was one of he more powerful European states and the Fascist policies were great successes (economic centrism, etc). Fascist Italy collapsed because the Fascists lost a war, remember, and not because of internal collapse (much like a democracy can lose a war and be overtaken, and it doesn't necessarily mean democracy is a failure).

Indeed, it seems to me that multiculturalism would be the most likely to fragment.

They don't need to be static; they can be adaptable; the point is, the entire population has to be united in beliefs, culture, custom, and nation, whatever that happens to be.

Precisely.

 

The point of the melting pot is that we blend together, not they they blend to become just like us. It's a melting pot, not a bucket of bleach.