Comments on: Multiple identities, one community

By: Guessedworker

Guessedworker — Fri, 28 May 2004 21:11:43 +0000

Well, I can’t speak of America, a truly immigrant AND recently immigrant nation. But I can of Britain (well, England really, since relatively few post-1948 immigrants settled elsewhere in the British Isles). The first point to clarify is that my friend Bob’s comment about English “mongelism” is, though oft-heard, less true than many might wish. We’ve just been all over this at Matty’s blog so I won’t repeat it again now. Suffice to say that the two UK genetic studies of reliable scope, both carried out by UCL (2001 and 2003), reveal an unsurprising historic England of north-European peoples, remarkably similar in genotype. The later study even supports the notion of ethnic cleansing by the invading Anglo-Saxons, forcing the real Britons across Offa’s Dyke in the west. I realise the utility of the notion of mongrelism as a justification of sorts. But it is not sound and if one is seeking to explain to one’s own people the necessity of far-reaching policies that they do not like one must treat with them with scrupulous honesty. I hold not a single left of centre political conviction. I am an English Nationalist. I do not, however, wish that fact to put my next observation beyond the liberal pale. It is not meant in any “acid” way. The liberal-left has, over the last thirty years, garnered all power on the cultural dispensation in these islands. You have not used it tenderly, my friends. You have sought to impose upon us an equality which you yearned for, perhaps, but which was utterly foreign and unwanted by us. It is an extraordinary role to have so willingly taken upon yourselves, no less fundamental and far-reaching than the early Christians who came to baptise the pagan English. They, one presumes, walked willingly into the water. So my urging would be to listen harder and to talk little. Be more humble before your own people. They are not “white” cadavers for hegemonic experimentation in a cultural marxist laboratory. They are the most adventurous, creative and courageous people the world has ever seen. They need their freedom, not your equality.

By: h. e. baber

h. e. baber — Thu, 27 May 2004 19:14:12 +0000

pepi – I didn’t suggest this false dichotomy. (1) Whatever the benefits of an authentically multicultural society I don’t see how you’re going to sustain it without laws against miscegenation (on the books in many states until quite recently) or a variety of informal pressures to maintain the “ethnic character” of neighborhoods and other mechanisms to restrict social mixing. Where are the Jutes, Danes and Normans these days? (2) Imagining a situation where recent immigrants and their children speak the ancestral language and keep the traditions at home and form cohesive ethnic communities, saying that members of these communities shouldn’t be penalized for their cultural distinctiveness, that they shouldn’t have to assimilate culturally to get full civil rights and integration into the larger society. Absolutely legit. But you overlook the fact that the children of many of these immigrants want out—intergenerational conflict between immigrant parents and their “Americanized” children is an old story in the US—and the fact that their grandchildren don’t speak the language or have a clue about the culture or belong to cohesive ethnic communities. There is no free ride. You cannot opt out of ethnicity, particularly if you’re a member of a visible minority. Multiculturalism benefits individuals who want to identify with their ethnic group and maintain the culture but it imposes burdens on those who don’t.

By: pepi

pepi — Thu, 27 May 2004 17:23:16 +0000

h.e.baber – ethnic restaurants and St Patrick’s parades seem like a very cheap idea of the benefits of having more than one culture in the same country. If that’s the “nice side”, I prefer the “dark” one. (Not in the terms you describe it though). We dealt with this historically by promoting integration, “Americanization” and assimilation, Err, that would be historically in terms of recent history only, surely? Besides, the possibilities are not only total assimilation or segregation. It’s a false dichotomy.

By: h. e. baber

h. e. baber — Thu, 27 May 2004 16:58:26 +0000

When “multiculturalism” becomes an entrenched ideology you cannot opt out of ethnic identity short of having a Michael Jackson makeover. If you are a member of any visible minority group you will face the same pressures to conform, the same expectations, the same stereotypes whether you are an ethnic identity booster who marches in ethnic pride parades or not. Mass immigration is a relative novelty in the UK and Europe. It’s been a reality in the US since the Irish potato famine and there have been nativist movements in the US in response since the 19th century. Blacks have been here since the continent was settled by Europeans and Indians have been here forever. There is no ethnic majority. We dealt with this historically by promoting integration, “Americanization” and assimilation, and by drilling immigrants and their children with the idea that American history from the Jamestown settlement on was their history. It worked remarkably well. On the sunny side multiculturalism is ethnic restaurants, St. Patrick’s Day parades and the romantic quest of Americans who are one eighth German, one quarter Irish and one sixteenth American Indian to discover their “roots.” On the dark side it is a “nice” way of discouraging the full integration of black and brown people who many white Americans don’t want to assimilate and an attempt to keep them occupied so that they don’t cause trouble.

By: pepi

pepi — Thu, 27 May 2004 08:45:28 +0000

There are certainly members of minority groups that want to preserve some attachment to their ethnic heritage but there are others who don’t. And what’s the problem? everyone chooses for themselves. The same applies for “majorities”. There may be people in non-minority groups who do not want to preserve attachment to their heritage either. Why aren’t they oppressed? Not because they don’t get pressures to conform (or, what can individually be perceived as pressures to conform) to whatever group they belong to. But because they’re not a minority subject to racist attacks. They don’t have the tabloids and a whole party campaining against them like the BNP. That’s the difference. Sticking them with an “identity” to which they feel no attachment or suggesting that they ought to feel an attachment to their “heritage,” learn their ancestral languages and exhibit ethnic pride is oppressive and just plain racist. To who? And who is forcing anyone in Britain to march in an ethnic pride parade every week? I don’t see attachment to one’s culture, language, religion, etc. as a problem in itself. The problem is not even the forming of different communities – that’s a natural phenomenon. It happens all the time along other lines less evident than nationaliry, origins, language, etc. The problem is when there is hostility and violence and racism. Single identities and multiple communities or multiple identities, one community – it’s all the same, it doesn’t change a thing as long as tangible manifestations of violence and intolerance persist in a vicious circle. Maybe that should be addressed rather than concepts. Debates on definitions of multiculturalism alone do not alter what happens in everyday life. Theories are derived from reality, not the other way round. I see no chance of influencing a change in mentalities and actions by simply changing theories about what the ideal kind of multicultural integration should be.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 27 May 2004 07:15:28 +0000

I think I’d want to push Chris’ clarification one step further. (Particular kinds of) multicultural policy may not make us think about ourselves in terms of single identities, but it encourages us to organise our political activity in these terms. Of course, this is not unique to multiculturalism, as witness the lengthy/interminable debates about Marxism and feminism that used to go on and perhaps still do somewhere. But at least in this case, Marxism and feminism were about specific grievances of workers and women. There’s a sense in at least some multiculturalist policy approaches that community organisation is an end in itself.

By: drapeto

drapeto — Wed, 26 May 2004 23:49:47 +0000

just to clarify, i don’t think multiculturalist policies make people with lived experience of multiplicity think in “singular identities”. this fact—that lived experience of multiplicity makes multiculturalist policies not have the effect of making “us” think in terms of single identities—has been theorized etc.

By: drapeto

drapeto — Wed, 26 May 2004 23:24:35 +0000

I’d wager a substantial amount of money that Alan’s bookshelves are among the most unsegregated of “highly educated, liberal-to-left white people”, but, anyway, his campaign statement didn’t say come on. i was hasty so i paraphrased but i knew perfectly well what he meant and my point stands. i do not think multiculturalism—yes, yes, the govt policy, in the uk, in bradford—makes “us” think in “single identities”. and as for his bookshelves—that you think the standard of comparison is other white left intellectuals rather proves the point and the acid.

By: h. e. baber

h. e. baber — Wed, 26 May 2004 23:02:51 +0000

Just ask, for instance, a Korean American how “saddled” they feel by their Korean heritage…It’s homogenizing whitened hegemony that’s oppressive, especially when it insists on assimilating ethnic/racial otherness in its own terms. Yes, indeed, a little empirical data might be helpful because there is no a priori reason to believe that assimilation is imposed by the majority on unwilling ethnic minorities. There are certainly members of minority groups that want to preserve some attachment to their ethnic heritage but there are others who don’t. Sticking them with an “identity” to which they feel no attachment or suggesting that they ought to feel an attachment to their “heritage,” learn their ancestral languages and exhibit ethnic pride is oppressive and just plain racist. Historically it’s been the indigenous white majority that resisted the attempts of immigrants and members of minority groups to assimilate. Now with multiculturalism the new presbyter is the old priest writ large. It reminds me of how Americans feigned horror when Spiro Agnew pledged to help retain the “ethnic purity of neighborhoods” but were convinced that it was ok when he said that what he meant was the “ethnic character of neighborhoods.”

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Wed, 26 May 2004 17:10:45 +0000

I’d wager a substantial amount of money that Alan’s bookshelves are among the most unsegregated of “highly educated, liberal-to-left white people”, but, anyway, his campaign statement didn’t say “multiculturalism is about single identities” but rather “Multiculturalism makes us think in terms of single identities”, where it is clear from context (the immediately preceding sentence) that that referent of “multiculturalism” is not the theories of this or that theorist but rather the policies followed in Bradford (and elswhere in the UK) under that label. He obviously isn’t rejecting the legitimacy of a plurality of conflicting identities, nor is he seeking to impose one identity on everyone. That much is obvious from the full statement.

By: drapeto

drapeto — Wed, 26 May 2004 16:41:46 +0000

ethnic diversity is more than a cute myth it is opressive to people who are stuck with it. indeed. bring on the inquisition. Drapeto, it would be enlightening to read your own views in extenso some time. You rather leave us guessing what they might be from the fragments of acid disapproval you occasionally direct at others in the comments here. i find unimaginable but... multiplicity as the lived experience of multiculturalism has been theorized by numerous critics for decades -- no one who has read bridge called my back or kim crenshaw thinks "multiculturalism is about single identities". my acid disapproval is that even highly educated, liberal-to-left white people seem to have highly segregated bookshelves. i'd unacidly suggest that no one with any steepedness in the literature would find my views unguessable.

By: Willie Mink

Willie Mink — Wed, 26 May 2004 16:32:02 +0000

“saddles them”?! Oh dear, I can see there’s no more point in trying to talk to you. Just ask, for instance, a Korean American how “saddled” they feel by their Korean heritage, by Korean food and its availability, by solid connections with Korea and Korean people. “Saddled”. . . what an ignorant insult. As for ethnic divesity being oppressive, what a reversal of reality that is. It’s homogenizing whitened hegemony that’s oppressive, especially when it insists on assimilating ethnic/racial otherness in its own terms.

By: h. e. baber

h. e. baber — Wed, 26 May 2004 01:07:33 +0000

Agreed—the promotion of cultural identity is a response to the reluctance of the larger society to integrate and assimilate immigrants and members of minority groups. But it also makes integration and assimilation more difficult and saddles members of these groups with identitities and cultural affiliations that they may not want unto the ninth and tenth generation. Mercifully in the US for all the multiculturalist rhetoric and fakery de facto after a generation or two immigrants assimilate and intermarry. But where ethnic diversity is more than a cute myth it is opressive to people who are stuck with it. Consider for example well-meaning attempts in some European nations to accommodate the cultural norms of immigrant groups that force young teenaged girls into arranged marriages, etc.

By: harry

harry — Wed, 26 May 2004 00:39:20 +0000

Though he is, indeed (in case Chris’s point misleads) caring. Its just not his name.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Tue, 25 May 2004 22:25:18 +0000

Willie Mink: A more careful reader would have noticed that his name is Carling, not Caring. As for his “last point”, it wasn’t, of course. It was the second of two paragraphs that I excerpted from a much longer statement.