Multiculturalism Notes
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is a debate on understanding and responding to cultural diversity based on ethnic, national, and religious differences.
It is a normative ideal in Western liberal democratic societies.
Multiculturalism rejects the "melting pot" ideal, where minority groups assimilate into the dominant culture.
It endorses an ideal where minority groups maintain their distinctive collective identities and practices.
Multiculturalism is compatible with integrating immigrants into society by providing fairer terms of integration.
Modern states are organized around the dominant groups' language and culture, creating barriers for minority cultural groups.
Some argue for tolerating minority groups through non-interference, while others like Will Kymlicka advocate for "group-differentiated rights."
Group-differentiated rights include exemptions from laws based on religious beliefs or language accommodations.
Some rights are held by the group itself, such as self-determination for indigenous groups and minority nations, aligning multiculturalism with nationalism.
Multiculturalism is part of a broader movement for inclusion of marginalized groups like African Americans, women, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities.
Contemporary multiculturalism focuses on recognizing and including minority groups defined by ethnicity, nationality, and religion.
This includes immigrants who are ethnic and religious minorities, minority nations, and indigenous peoples.
Claims of Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is associated with "identity politics," "the politics of difference," and "the politics of recognition."
These concepts aim to revalue disrespected identities and change dominant patterns of representation that marginalize certain groups.
Multiculturalism addresses economic interests and political power by remedying economic and political disadvantages resulting from marginalized group identities.
Multicultural claims involve religion, language, ethnicity, nationality, and race.
Culture is a contested concept, and these categories are often subsumed by it.
Language and religion are central to cultural accommodation claims by immigrants.
Minority nations primarily claim self-government rights.
Race plays a limited role, with antiracism focusing on "victimization and resistance" while multiculturalism highlights "cultural life" and expression.
Recognition claims in multicultural education involve acknowledging both a group's actual culture (e.g., art and literature) and the history of group subordination.
Examples of group-differentiated rights include:
Exemptions from generally applicable laws (e.g., religious exemptions).
Assistance to do things that members of the majority culture are already enabled to do (e.g., multilingual ballots, funding for minority language schools and ethnic associations, affirmative action).
Representation of minorities in government bodies (e.g., ethnic quotas for party lists or legislative seats, minority-majority Congressional districts).
Recognition of traditional legal codes by the dominant legal system (e.g., granting jurisdiction over family law to religious courts).
Limited self-government rights (e.g., qualified recognition of tribal sovereignty, federal arrangements recognizing the political autonomy of Québec).
A group-differentiated right allows a minority group member to act according to their religious or cultural commitments.
Some rights restrict the freedom of non-members to protect the minority group's culture, such as language restrictions in Québec.
When the group is the right-holder, it may protect group rules that restrict individual member freedom, such as Pueblo membership rules.
Justifications for Multiculturalism
Recognition
Multiculturalism is justified by the communitarian critique of liberalism.
Liberals prioritize individual rights and liberties over community life and collective goods.
Methodological individualists account for social actions in terms of individual properties.
Communitarians reject the individual's priority over the community and embrace ontological holism, recognizing collective goods as intrinsically valuable.
Taylor argues for a "politics of recognition" based on an ontologically holist view of collective identities and cultures.
Identities are formed dialogically, dependent on the recognition of others.
The absence of recognition can cause serious injury.
The struggle for recognition can only be resolved through "a regime of reciprocal recognition among equals."
Taylor contrasts the politics of recognition with the liberal "politics of equal respect," which insists on uniform application of rules.
The politics of recognition is grounded on judgments about what makes a good life, with the integrity of cultures playing an important role.
The French language in Quebec is an irreducibly collective good that deserves preservation.
Language policies in Québec aim to create members of the community by ensuring future generations identify as French-speakers.
Because of the role of cultures in human agency and identity, we should presume the equal worth of all cultures.
Equality
Multiculturalism is justified by a revised liberalism through critical engagement with communitarian thought.
Will Kymlicka developed a liberal theory of multiculturalism, marrying autonomy and equality with the value of cultural membership.
Kymlicka views cultures as instrumentally valuable to individuals.
Cultural membership is an important condition of personal autonomy.
Having an adequate range of options is an important condition of autonomy.
Cultures serve as "contexts of choice," providing meaningful options and scripts.
Cultural membership plays an important role in self-identity, providing an "anchor for their self-identification and the safety of effortless secure belonging."
There is a connection between self-respect and the respect accorded to one's cultural group.
One's own culture must be secured for cultural membership to serve as a context of choice and basis of self-respect.
Minority groups are disadvantaged in access to their own cultures, entitling them to special protections.
Kymlicka's argument rests on "luck egalitarianism," where individuals are responsible for inequalities from their choices, not unchosen circumstances.
Inequalities from one's social starting position are unchosen, requiring collective support.
Kymlicka adds cultural membership to the list of unchosen inequalities.
Those born into the dominant culture enjoy good luck, whereas minority cultures suffer disadvantages.
Minority groups can demand that the majority culture share the costs of accommodation to rectify unchosen inequalities.
Minority group rights are justified within a liberal egalitarian theory that emphasizes rectifying unchosen inequalities.
Antidiscrimination laws fall short of treating minority groups as equals because states cannot be neutral with respect to culture.
States establish a language for public schooling and services, providing linguistic advantage to the dominant culture, translating into economic and political advantage.
State action extends symbolic affirmation to some groups, normalizing their language and customs.
State laws may place constraints on some cultural groups over others, such as dress code regulations.
Bans on religious dress burden religious individuals.
Burdens on believers arise from the intersection of religion and state demands.
Individuals must bear intrinsic burdens, but justice requires assisting cultural minorities with extrinsic burdens.
Liberal multiculturalists distinguish among different types of groups, offering self-government rights to indigenous peoples and national minorities due to coercive incorporation.
Immigrants are viewed as voluntary migrants, with "polyethnic rights" understood as fairer integration terms, not self-determination.
Freedom from domination
Arguments for multiculturalism are based on the value of freedom from domination, drawing on the civic republican tradition.
Domination presents an obstacle to human flourishing.
Freedom as non-domination focuses on a person's capacity to interfere arbitrarily.
We can be unfree even without interference, as in the case of a slave of a benevolent master.
Domination occurs when we are dependent on another person or group who can arbitrarily exercise power.
The state should not accommodate social practices that directly involve domination and should aim to end such practices quickly.
Accommodation is permissible, but not necessarily required, for practices that do not involve domination, only when it reduces domination.
Wearing headscarves in a Muslim community should be accommodated because failure to do so might strengthen commitment to other shared practices that reinforce patriarchal domination.
Combating patriarchal practices within minority communities would be easier if burdens on benign practices, such as wearing headscarves, are lessened.
Formal restrictions on religious expression may make members of dominated groups close ranks around the denigrated practice, precipitating a defensive retreat into conservative cultural forms and identities.
Accommodation is warranted when individuals' subjective attachment to particular practices makes them vulnerable to exploitation, such as Mexican immigrant laborers with limited English.
Extending special public measures, such as exceptions to general rules, is required to reduce domination of these workers.
The basis for special accommodations is the desire to reduce domination, not to protect intrinsically valuable cultures or considerations of fairness or equality.
A non-domination approach may be more sensitive to power dynamics in both inter-group and intra-group relations.
Focuses on the "moral quality of the relationship between the central actors” and insists on continuity of treatment between and within groups.
Addressing historical injustice
Theorists emphasize grappling with historical injustice and listening to minority groups, especially from a postcolonial perspective.
In discussions of aboriginal sovereignty, focus is on reckoning with history, not the value of Native cultures.
Proponents emphasize understanding indigenous claims against the denial of equal sovereign status, dispossession of lands, and destruction of cultural practices.
This background questions the state's legitimacy over aboriginal peoples and provides a case for special rights, including self-government.
The history of state oppression should determine whether group rights should be extended and whether the state should intervene in the internal affairs of the group.
Oppressed groups that lack autonomy should be "provisionally privileged," considering some form of autonomy for the group, barring serious physical harm in the name of a group's culture.
Theorists adopt a postcolonial perspective to develop models of constitutional and political dialogue that recognize culturally distinct ways of speaking and acting.
Liberal societies must recognize that liberalism is just one of many substantive outlooks based on a specific view of man and society and expresses a distinctive culture of its own.
James Tully uncovers more inclusive bases for intercultural dialogue.
Bhikhu Parekh contends that liberal theory cannot provide an impartial framework governing relations between different cultural communities, arguing for a more open model of intercultural dialogue.
More recent work emphasizes contextual approaches that engage with actual political struggles for recognition.
Practices of recognition should respect individual and collective self-definition, respond to demands for recognition on terms that align with those being recognized, and accommodate internal contestation of group meanings.
Practices of recognition guided by these principles come closer to fostering freedom and equality of minority groups.
Critique of Multiculturalism
Cosmopolitan view of culture
Critics contend that multiculturalism is based on an essentialist view of culture.
Cultures are not distinct wholes; they have interacted through war, imperialism, trade, and migration.
People live within cosmopolitan cultures characterized by cultural hybridity.
To preserve a culture risks privileging one pure version, crippling its ability to adapt to changes.
Meaningful options may come from a variety of cultural sources.
People need cultural materials, not access to a particular cultural structure.
Multicultural theorists maintain that individuals belong to separate societal cultures, even though cultures are overlapping.
Options become meaningful if they become part of the shared vocabulary of social life.
Adopting a cosmopolitan view of cultures, special protections for minority cultural groups still hold because the aim of group-differentiated rights is not to freeze cultures in place but to empower members of minority groups to continue their distinctive cultural practives.
Toleration requires indifference, not accommodation
Criticism is aimed at liberal multicultural theories arguing for freedom of association and conscience.
There are no group rights, only individual rights.
By granting cultural groups special protections and rights, the state risks undermining individual rights of association.
States should pursue a "politics of indifference" toward minority groups.
A laissez-faire approach may allow groups that do not value toleration to practice internal discrimination.
A politics of indifference would permit the abuse of vulnerable members of groups.
Embracing such a state of affairs would be abandoning the values of autonomy and equality.