Thomas Sowell: Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about "diversity," without a speck of eviden
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honeybee
Oct 19, 2010, 9:41:09 PM10/19/10
to Bob Brinker Moneytalk and Marketimer discussions with The Beehive Buzz
The Multicultural Cult
By Thomas Sowell
Somebody eventually had to say it -- and German chancellor Angela
Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it
out loud. Multiculturalism has "utterly failed."
Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have
different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism
became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about "diversity,"
without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.
In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, welcoming millions of
foreign workers who insist on remaining foreign has created problems
so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them. It
takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.
"We kidded ourselves for a while," Chancellor Merkel said, but now it
was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very
different languages and cultures could "live side-by-side" and "enjoy
each other" has "failed, utterly failed."
This is not a lesson for Germany alone. In countries around the world,
and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language,
cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources
of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist.
Even the tragedies and atrocities associated with racial differences
in racist countries have been exceeded by the tragedies and atrocities
among people with clashing cultures who are physically
indistinguishable from one another, as in the Balkans or Rwanda.
Among the ways that people with different cultures have managed to
minimize frictions have been (1) mutual cultural accommodations, even
while not amalgamating completely, and (2) living separately in their
own enclaves. Both of these approaches are anathema to the
multicultural cultists.
Expecting any group to adapt their lifestyles to the cultural values
of the larger society around them is "cultural imperialism" according
to the multicultural cult. And living in separate neighborhoods is
considered to be so terrible that there are government-financed
programs to take people from high-crime slums and put them in
subsidized housing in middle-class neighborhoods.
Multiculturalists condemn people's objections to transplanting
hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families into the midst of
people who may have sacrificed for years to be able to escape from
living among hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families.
The actual direct experience of the people who complain about the
consequences of these social experiments is often dismissed as mere
biased "perceptions" or "stereotypes," if not outright "racism." But
some of the strongest complaints have come from middle-class blacks
who have fled ghetto life, only to have the government transplant
ghetto life back into their midst.
The absorption of millions of immigrants from Europe into American
society may be cited as an example of the success of multiculturalism.
But, in fact, they were absorbed in ways that were the direct opposite
of what the multicultural cult is recommending today.
Before these immigrants were culturally assimilated to the norms of
American society, they were by no means scattered at random among the
population at large. On New York's lower east side, Hungarian Jews
lived clustered together in different neighborhoods from Romanian Jews
or Polish Jews -- and German Jews lived away from the lower east side.
When someone suggested relieving the overcrowding in the lower east
side schools by transferring some of the children to a school in an
Irish neighborhood that had space, both the Irish and the Jews
objected.
None of this was peculiar to America. When immigrants from southern
Italy to Australia moved into neighborhoods where people from northern
Italy lived, the northern Italians moved out. Such scenarios could be
found in countries around the world.
It was in later generations, after the children and grandchildren of
the immigrants to America were speaking English and living lives more
like the lives of other Americans, that they spread out to live and
work where other Americans lived and worked. This wasn't
multiculturalism. It was common sense.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/10/19/the_multicultural_cult_107634.html
By Thomas Sowell
Somebody eventually had to say it -- and German chancellor Angela
Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it
out loud. Multiculturalism has "utterly failed."
Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have
different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism
became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about "diversity,"
without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.
In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, welcoming millions of
foreign workers who insist on remaining foreign has created problems
so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them. It
takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.
"We kidded ourselves for a while," Chancellor Merkel said, but now it
was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very
different languages and cultures could "live side-by-side" and "enjoy
each other" has "failed, utterly failed."
This is not a lesson for Germany alone. In countries around the world,
and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language,
cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources
of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist.
Even the tragedies and atrocities associated with racial differences
in racist countries have been exceeded by the tragedies and atrocities
among people with clashing cultures who are physically
indistinguishable from one another, as in the Balkans or Rwanda.
Among the ways that people with different cultures have managed to
minimize frictions have been (1) mutual cultural accommodations, even
while not amalgamating completely, and (2) living separately in their
own enclaves. Both of these approaches are anathema to the
multicultural cultists.
Expecting any group to adapt their lifestyles to the cultural values
of the larger society around them is "cultural imperialism" according
to the multicultural cult. And living in separate neighborhoods is
considered to be so terrible that there are government-financed
programs to take people from high-crime slums and put them in
subsidized housing in middle-class neighborhoods.
Multiculturalists condemn people's objections to transplanting
hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families into the midst of
people who may have sacrificed for years to be able to escape from
living among hoodlums, criminals and dysfunctional families.
The actual direct experience of the people who complain about the
consequences of these social experiments is often dismissed as mere
biased "perceptions" or "stereotypes," if not outright "racism." But
some of the strongest complaints have come from middle-class blacks
who have fled ghetto life, only to have the government transplant
ghetto life back into their midst.
The absorption of millions of immigrants from Europe into American
society may be cited as an example of the success of multiculturalism.
But, in fact, they were absorbed in ways that were the direct opposite
of what the multicultural cult is recommending today.
Before these immigrants were culturally assimilated to the norms of
American society, they were by no means scattered at random among the
population at large. On New York's lower east side, Hungarian Jews
lived clustered together in different neighborhoods from Romanian Jews
or Polish Jews -- and German Jews lived away from the lower east side.
When someone suggested relieving the overcrowding in the lower east
side schools by transferring some of the children to a school in an
Irish neighborhood that had space, both the Irish and the Jews
objected.
None of this was peculiar to America. When immigrants from southern
Italy to Australia moved into neighborhoods where people from northern
Italy lived, the northern Italians moved out. Such scenarios could be
found in countries around the world.
It was in later generations, after the children and grandchildren of
the immigrants to America were speaking English and living lives more
like the lives of other Americans, that they spread out to live and
work where other Americans lived and worked. This wasn't
multiculturalism. It was common sense.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/10/19/the_multicultural_cult_107634.html
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