contemporary multiculturalism

sini's class

What is multiculturalism? What are the main three ways of understanding it?

several different cultures present within a society and are equally important and their differences are acknowledged and supported

the cultures should be able to be protected legally, to have self-governance, keep their tradition and customs and express it freely, it is not enough to “tolerate” it, they should also be allowed to get compensation for past discrimination

main three ways of understanding it are:

• protective - preserving the cultural integrity and their way of life even if theyre not in agreement with human rights

• liberal - accommodating the culture’s diversity if they promote liberal values - equality, toleration, autonomy (hijabs, abortion), wants to transform the current arrangements in politics and society

• imperial - hierarchical/radicalized, it is not protective or liberal

Explain what dominant culture means.

The strongest, most prevalent culture which usually “organizes” the state it’s in.

Explain what bicultural means.

Usually a person that has a proficiency in two cultures.

Explain the American melting pot and salad bowl metaphor in relation to assimilation and integration.

The American melting pot aims to have the potential for one culture created from all different religions, nationalities, cultures, came from 18th century, it is essentially an assimilation, an absorbtion into the dominant society, it aims to keep the national community as homogenous as possible.

The salad bowl represents integration, having a separate identity while being part of the country and its culture. Individuals are equal and characterized by mutual exchange between the migrant and the host society, they keep their customs and values as long as they follow the rules of society.

What is defined as culture?

A shared system combining knowledge, customs, values and interactions of a group of people, it is possible to acquire them through learning, they are dynamic

Explain low and high culture according to Claval.

low cultures are defined by oral tradition, customs, habits, material

high cultures are defined by the written form, religion, rules, intellectualism, imposing their values on low culture

What is the mass culture and how does it relate to high culture? (Claval)

mass culture is focused on entertainment and consumption, which high culture considers to be of great value and importance, specialized and technical cultures

What are the differences between culture and civilization?

cultures are usually within civilizations and they define them.

civilization is a broader concept than culture, “great”, can include several cultures and nations, “Western civilization” - ideas of progress

What are the recent developments of multiculti as a concept?

globalization and standardization of culture - contributed to many ideological and religious movements, Clash of Civilizations (a thesis about how people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict after the Cold War)

questioning technical progress as an ideal

emphasis on social progress

Explain the concept of “Britishness” and the impact of multiculturalism on the UK.

colonialism - The British Empire since Jamestown (1620 Pilgrims)

Britain the “centre of the universe” → imposing their values on the colonies

had a destiny as a “great imperial power”, peaked 1921, “white man’s burden” (enlightenment, christianity) Rudyard Kipling - The White Man’s Burden

→ end of the empire, decolonization post-WW2, The Commonwealth of Nations formed, big waves of immigration (esp. West Indies and South Asia), population has become ethnically far more diverse

britishness

• sense of superiority (thru the British Empire, French kinda forced this too, also from literature - Elizabethan era, Shakespeare), drinking tea, the accent, Protestantism, the royalty

• civic (citizenship, language, laws) and ethnic (born in Britain, lived in Britain, Chirstian, share customas and traditions) aspects

• most British people do not consider immigrants “true” British people

Explain the impact of multiculturalism in the US.

“The New World” - first settlements 16th/17th century, millions of Native already lived there, settled by Spanish, Dutch, French, English

slavery

• first slave ship in Jamestown 1619

• “perpetual condition" transmitted thru the mother

• huge part of the colonial society and economic life

• took away any basic humanity for enslaved people

• Lincoln “slavery expansion must stop” - president

• The Civil War ended slavery, but the stuggle for full equality would take much longer

Declaration of Independence (1776)

reconstruction era - abolition of slavery but the south was like nah. citizenship, right to vote, backlash of radicals - ku klux klan

post-reconstruction era - Jim Crow laws (character, black face theatrical entertainment), resurgence of white racism, racial segregation, separate but equal,discrimination pervaded the north aswell

The Civil rights movement - segregation slowly becomes illegal in military, schools, Rosa Parks (refused to change the seats on the bus), several improvements, including federal ban on segregation at schools and public places, 1963 - Bob Dylan performed, Martin Luther King had a speech about wanting racism and segregation to end

minorities - even tho they are a huge part of the country the ignorance against them remains

• Asian American (refugees due to Vietnam War, today one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in America)

• Irish American (involuntarily often, bc of Famine 19th cen 4 million)

• Jewish American (many fleeing from Russia, encountered Anti-Semitism)

• Mexican Americans - war against Mexico (1846), currently largest immigration group

• Muslim Americans - refugees from Afghanistan, unnoticed until 2001 terrorist attacks

• Native Americans - they were the “original” Americans, stereotyped as savages

“americaness” - “you just have to commit yourself to the political ideology on the ideals of liberty, equality, republicanism” X Toni Morrison: American has been defined as “white”, its basically hypocritical, concept of freedom

What is the correct term to use while talking about race and ethnicity?

“people of colour”, NOT coloured people(segregation)/non-white people

African American/Black - not always interchangeable, not “Blacks”

Hispanic - people from Spanish-speaking countries

Latina/o, Latinx (hated by the actual people tho lmao) - of any background or language, but of Latin American descent

Native American - NOT Indian, sometimes American Indian

Capitalization of races other than white

White does not refer to a specific ethnicity unlike Black, Hispanic, Latinx

gains a sense of respect for Black people

Should be capitalize others aswell? (White, Brown?) - Not white because white refers to the skin colour and not a shared experience (“whiteness is a thing.” white priviledge)

What is the history of the concept of race?

the word has been used since the 15th century (different meaning than today tho)

the idea of race begins to develop in 17th century as a justification for colonialism and slavery

the roots of “scientific racism” in the 18th century by scientists and philosophers - division of races into four (Linnaeus) or five varieties (Blumenbach) - also offered a personality for each

19th century: scientists challenging the prevalent Biblical belief in single creation, proposing that races are actually different species - craniometry (Samuel Morton) - based on measurements of skulls that races have different level of intelligence ; anthropometry

Charles Darwin: theory of evolution (1859)- refuted the idea of multiple origins

What are the arguments of the contemporary research about race?

there is no biological or genetic basis for race

Nina Jablonski - race is just one aspect of a human being, there are no genes unique to a particular race, the variation within the group is greater than the average difference between the racial groups

What is the racial worldview in the US?

by the early 19th century there were atleast five ideological parts in what Audrey Smedley (anthropologist on African Americans) calls “racial worldview” - an institutionalized, systemic component of American society

• people can be divided into biologically separate races based on subjective traits

• races are unequal, can be ranked

• outer physical characteristics are linked to inner realities

• all these qualities are inheritable

  • these elements are fixed

Compare the terms of race and ethnicity.

race

• not a valid biological concept

• socially constructed

• prescribed from the outside

• used to categorize people based on traits the society thinks are important

• “them”

ethnicity

• shared language, culture, history

• identifying as a member of community

• partly based on choice

• possibility of several ethnic identities

• flexible

• “us”

When did ethnicity and ethnic as a concept show up?

“ethnicity” - a new term in 1972, an aspect of a relationship, not a property of a group

“ethnic” - much older, derived from Greek, used to refer to racial features and groups seen as inferior, in everyday language refers to minorities, in anthropology refers to all people

How does nationalism relate to ethnicity?

Like ethnic ideologies, nationalism emphasizes cultural similarity and draws boundaries in relation to others, but it claims that political boundaries should be the same as cultural ones

ethnic movements are nationalistic when they demand command over a state

What is a minority?

People who are distinguished by physical or cultural difference that the society sets apart and subordinates

they have a lower status in society

it is not about size, majority-minority

What are the research principles in social sciences according to Gunnar Myrdal?

• social science always involves more than mere descriptions

• it not only describes but explains

How do we set goals for a multicultural society?

• first we need to have a clear idea about the policy goals to implement anything

• we have to define multiculti first and what its goals are (usually related to equality and individual opportunity - idealistic, it doesn’t usually happen)

• do not confuse the goal of multiculti with equality

Describe plural societies.

different from multicultural

ethnic groups exist separately, they yhave their own kinship order

would only meet in the area of market

no moral control or common rules

microsocieties only bound together by the political institution

What is the ideal model for a multicultural society?

society unitary in the public domain but encourages diversity in the private and communal matters

modern multiculti involves accepting a single culture and a single set of rights in the public domain and a variety of cultures in the private and communal domains

Describe unitary social systems.

Plural societies have several different ethnic segments with their own institutional sets. Unitary social systems have one unitary one.

public domain vs the private domain

goals of the public domain in a multiculti society is creating an environment with equal rights no matter the people’s ethnicities, it includes law, politics and economics

private domain includes moral education, primary socialization and religious belief, in minorities it includes kinship to the homeland, network of associations that give a source of identity

What are the main institutions of the public domain?

law

politics

economy

What are the boundaries of the public and private domains?

The public one is often extended to private matters thru bureaucratic state activity

state intervention: state ownership, state control, subsidies, social insurance, employment measures, social services, education

To what extent should school interfere in matters considered private?

the functions of modern educational system include selecting individuals for professional training, transmitting necessary survival skills, and moral values (which is where the clash of private and public might appear)

schools should focus on the transmission of skills and civic morality

community should control education regarding language, religion and family affairs

Describe the dynamic differences in public and private spheres when you belong to a minority. (Family)

if you’re part of the minority, family is part of another social system and another culture, whose values may even conflict with the dominant society.

“failure” of multiculti

Merkel, Cameron, Sarkozy

right-wing criticism - turning diverse groups into simple categories and questioning whether they can be intergrated

Rushdie affair

9/11

multiculti after WW2

1956 - UNESCO conference in Havana on “the cultural integration of immigrants” → signified a move away from assimilation

“human rights revolution” (due to the WW2 aftermath), trying to undo the discrimination that has already happened

decolonization

post-war developments in the UK

British nationality Act - 1948

• aimed to welcome people from all Commonhealth countries

• influx of immigrants

• “open doors” for the Commonwealth

restricted poc from arriving since 1962 (only people who were born in the UK or had their passport issued in the UK)

Immigration Act 1971 - patriality requirement (they had to have a British parent/grandparent → mainly white descendants of the colonists, no poc)

at the same time a shift from assimilation to intergration

development of the multiculti in the 1960-80 UK

1960s: first attempts to develop an explicitly multicultural approach to education

• offered religious courses, employed diverse people

→ reactions: questions about national self-conception and socialization

education wasn’t the only area in which multiculti policy became an issue in 1980s Britain

→ left-wing efforts to reform local government, demonized by media

What was the Rushdie affair?

1989

Indian author wrote a “blasphemous” book ig

→ “the muslim problem” = western countries blaming multiculti for this, 9/11 used as proof

“the muslim problem”

blaming multicultural policies for the terrorist behaviour of individuals who happened to be muslim, putting everyone who is muslim as dangerous/undemocratic/not-British.

9/11 and London bombings 2005 used as evidence that extremism is intergrated into muslim religion

What is the impact of the discourse of multiculti failure?

it denies immigrants a legitimate place in European society

it removes any debate about how to manage diversity through policy making

dismisses the idea of a more open European society

the UK and racism

Notting Hill riots of 1958

1959 Kelso Cochrane murdered

1965 Race Relations Act

Brexit - Theresa May said in 2012 that her goal was to create a very hostile environment for illegal immigration (xenophobic rhetoric) → hate crimes surged by 42% in England and Wales immediately after referendum

Suella Braverman

• the Home Secretary in 2023

• she claims that the misguided dogma of multiculti has allowed people to come to the UK to undermine its stability and security

• it is a “toxic combination”

• widely criticized for this (and Rishi Sunak parised the UK’s “fantastic” multiculti society, in contrast

Who was Edward Said?

a Palestinian-American academic and literary critic who published Orientalism

• tracks the development of orientalism

What is Orientalism by Edward Said?

a work that tracks the development of orientalism since the beginning

a few ways to understand orientalism:

1. academic discipline - it lives on academically thru its doctrines

2. commonplace meaning - a style of thought based on ontological and epistemiological distinction between the Orient and “the Occident”, refers to all writers who have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for theories about the Orient

3. discourse - he relies on Foucault’s conception of discourse - “a group of statements providing a language about a particular topic at a particular historical moment”

Orientalist discourse

since Orientalism is a discourse, the “Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action”

the world is divided into “two unequal halves, Orient and Occident” → largely imaginary tho (both are man-made)

Orient was defined as “the other” by the West, and also compared itself to it as its “contrasting image, idea, personality and experience”

Orient assigned traits such as cruelty, violence, sadism, irrationality, backwardness, unlike the Occident

9/11

a terrorist attack 11/9/2001

→ both personal (emotional reactions, trauma) and national (tightened surveillance, persecution ethnic and religious minorities, “War on Terror”) level of consequences

it was framed as an event that was caused by a minority group which hated “how good” the majority is, and hating freedom, rather than looking at the complexity of the issue, it also generalized a group based on an extreme example, made “Clash of Civilizations” relevant (claiming that it is a conflict based on the difference between Islamic and Western civilizations)

Said’s 2003 preface to Orientalism

he disagrees with the claim that Islam community as a whole is at blame for the 9/11 and that it is inevitable

claims it is a demonization of an unknown enemy by using the word “terrorist” to fuel fear and anger

these minorities are attacked because their state is not democratic but they forget that the process is not something that happens overnight/happens to be in a country

he suggests that the real reason for the war in Iraq is the fact that it is the largest exporter of oil and that threatened the US, and also we have a notion that there is “us” and “them” and specific values that are correct and the ones that are not

“War on Terror”

a “counterterrorism" response to 9/11 leading to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan

Afghanistan War (2001—2021) - aim to dismantle Al-Qaeda and to get rid of Taliban gov, the longest war for US ever, Taliban surged back to power immediately after US withdrew

War in Iraq 2003—2011 - the invasion justified by alleged connections to Al-Qaeda and its gov and owning mass-destructive weapons (no evidence)

expat

someone who moved into another country from their home country

usually applies to white people to distinguish them from “other inferior races”

unauthorized immigrant

trump - illegal alien

trump’s terms for immigrants

illegal alien, animals, drug lords, gang members, rapists

post-9/11 policies

Establishment of The Department of Homeland Security in 2002 - “see something, say something” → prejudice and discrimination with subjective perception of what is suspicious

Patriot Act: Uniting and Strenghtening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001

• unthinkable control

• surveillance measures enforced in the name of security

• spying on anyone

• “preventive” detainment of suspects

• security measures for airports, borders, public events

• searches of private property, watching electronic communication

muslims and Arabs:

→ rising xenophobia and Islamophobia

naturalized citizen

someone who has lived enough of a time in the US to be considered part of the country

“catch and release” (Trump)

DACA

Obama era policy

deferred action for childhood arrivals

The Alien Enemies Act

designed to give the president of the US more power over foreign nationals on American soil DURING TIMES OF WAR

invoked three times - 1812 war, WW1 and WW2

invoked the law in an executive order targeting the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (“its conducting irregular warfare!!”) → on March 15th the US government put hundreds of Venezuelan who “may or may not” have ties with the gang, on planes which headed to a mega-prison in El Salvador

multicultural education

different perspective and cultures

not only teaching Christian holidays and values

Banks - concept of a reform movement and an ongoing process

adjusting curriculum

all students should have equal opportunities to learn regardless of the group they belong to

Banks - dimensions of multiculti education

content integration

the knowledge construction

prejudice reduction

equity pedagogy

empowering school culture

internalized racism

systemic and structural, within the individuals

must be distinguished from personal struggles (self-hatred/low self-esteem)

affects decision-making power, controlling community resources, perception of standards of “what is normal” and where racism arises from

“playing the race card”

people trying to gain special treatment because of their race

usually said by white people in regard to things they don’t know enough about

microaggressions

casual offensive comments

often with no harm, but not non-harmful

white guilt

recognizing the white privilege and that they are unfair, acknowledging your biases

turns into defensiveness quite quickly

history of blackface

roots in the Shakespearean theatrical and medieval traditions → migrated to the US in the late 18th century

minstrel shows - popular in the US in the 19th century and had a lasting impact

should I wear blackface for Halloween?

no.

blackfishing

white people trying to appear black because of marketing opportunities

it allows white people to exploit the black culture without actually experiencing it

cultural appropriation

members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative/disrespectful way

usually reinforces stereotypes and doesn’t respect the original meaning