BACK IN THE MORAL MAZE
April 20, 2011 § 6 Comments
A new series of The Moral Maze begins tonight on BBC Radio 4 (we will be debating celebrity activism). From the last series here are audios of the programmes in which I took part:
Is multiculturalism a good? 9 February 2011
Marriage – who should it be for? 16 February 2011
Does everyone deserve a second chance? 2 March 2011
Are we medicalizing morality? 9 March 2011
I have previously written posts about the debates in two of these programmes – the ones on multiculturalism and on second chances. And if you’re masochistic enough to want to torture yourself by listening to all my Moral Maze contributions, you can find them on my archive site.
I found the multiculturalism session very interesting. I thought you kept the discussion on track. Douglas Murray’s string of ad homs made it clear you had rattled him with your inconvenient quotes! Very amusing.
Thanks, though I found it immensely frustrating not being able to get Murray to debate the real issues. But, no doubt, it made for good listening.
Oh good – MM is one of my favourite programmes and like Alex I particularly enjoyed the multiculturalism one. I haven’t heard this MM yet, but I find celebrity involvement with the ‘Yes to AV’ campaign particularly annoying at the moment.
It was a reasonable programme, though none of us really disagreed about the pitfalls of a celebrity-led politics.
I read one of your article on the EuroZine magazine and I found your critique of multiculturalism very well argued and cogent. This question of lack of full integration (assimilation) of ethnic minorities in a culturally different majority has baffled me for quite some time. Until I realized that a heterogeneous or a multicultural society is not an ideal but only a working arrangement. But this marriage of convenience is essential for people who are from a very different cultural stock. I believe that the basic fallacy of your argument is that you don’t differentiate between the Westernized immigrants (usually second generation) who are fully assimilated into their host countries and the first generation immigrants who would like some degree of integration but would also like to hold on to some of their cultural ethos and values. Multiculturalism may not be essential for those who have fully internalized the Western culture but it is a sine qua non for the semi-integrated communities. I don’t think that people like us fall in the latter category. It has to be represented by people like Lord Nazir Ahmed. Because their world-view is essentially different from ours. And we can’t truly empathize with them. Cultural relativism is important in this instance and only genuine representatives of a different culture can truly argue for or against multiculturalism. I apologize if I’ve used any harsh words but I thought that you may like to look at this issue of multiculturalism from a different angle. Peace!
I think you misunderstand both my critique of multiculturalism and the nature of a modern multicultural society.
First, I don’t argue for a homogenous society. I have always argued for what I’ve called ‘the diversity of lived experience’. What I oppose is multiculturalism as a political process, a process, as I put it in that Eurozine debate that you mention, ‘of managing that diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes. It’s a process through which cultural differences are institutionalized, publicly affirmed, recognized and institutionalized; through which political policy is predicated on the ethnic box to which one belongs.’
What multiculturalism does is to treat minority communities as if they were homogenous wholes, denying diversity within minority communities. Your own claim about some communities that ‘their world-view is essentially different from ours’ and ‘we can’t truly empathize with them’, is an echo of this. The irony, as I suggested in the Eurozine debate, is that multiculturalism as a political process undermines much of what is good about diversity as a lived experience:
Second, the distinction you draw between first and second generation immigrants is false. As I have shown again and again, historically, first generation immigrants have not demanded the right to be different. Britain, for instance, institutionalised multicultural policies not because of demand from below but because of policies instituted from above, largely in response to the anger created by racism. It is not the first generation but the second, and more definitely the third, that want to express themselves through their differences. And it is a combination of multicultural policies and identity politics that have encouraged them to do so. Such policies, as I have suggested ‘did not respond to the needs of communities, but to a large degree created those communities by imposing identities on people and by ignoring internal conflicts which arose out of class, gender and intra-religious differences. They empowered not individuals within minority communities, but so-called ‘community leaders’, who owed their position and influence largely to the relationship they possessed with the state.’