Putting multiculturalism in perspective

EBrown

We are not nearly as far apart in our beliefs as you first indicated. I do think you should be ashamed of yourself for insinuating that I could suggest that in order to assimilate, one should emulate Topeka Kansans and heaven forbid making everyone play football by carrying the ball in your hands instead of trying to burst it with your foot.

The key to my point of view is that I think every immigrant to this country(not just being here temporarily on a visa but coming here to stay permanently) should WANT to learn to speak English and should WANT to become an American citizen.

If they only want the freedom and the privileges without expressing any desire to become American, then they should seek residence elsewhere because I will never welcome them to stay here and I believe a majority of Americans feel the same.

I sincerely believe that if we allow other wise, we will sign the death certificate of this country. Becoming Americans will allow immigrants to "bond" with their neighbors, thus creating cohesion instead of divisiveness which results from an insistence on remaining a separate culture.

PS: I'm glad you opened your mind slightly and retracted the word "idiocy".

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No Rayban, we are much farther apart than you think.

It is hard for me to believe the word "assimliation" only means "a desire to learn English" and "a desire for citizenship". There is lots of "divisiveness" (and even outright hatred) in this country between English-speaking citizens.

But, this thread was about mult-culturalism... which is a lot more than language or citizenship.

I strongly support multi-culturalism-- by this I mean supporting, appreciating and defending the differences between Americans of different backgrounds, beliefs and cultures. This means celebrating Hunnukah, defending mosques and Synagogues and accepting Hindu temples. This means allowing communities to speak Chinese or Yiddish or Spanish (perhaps in addition to English and ensuring that workers can get Yom Kippur off the same as Easter.

Incidently, nearly all of the immigrants (even the "illegal" ones) who are a valued part of my community are working very hard to learn English (how else will they steal your job). And, most of them would love to have citizenship.

But they also are deeply proud of their own culture and countries.

Immigrants shouldn't be forced to give up their own cultures (or languanges or religious beliefs) to become Americans.

If you are really only saying they need to want to learn English... than maybe we do agree. But I suspect there is more than that.

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ebrown_p wrote:

But, this thread was about mult-culturalism... which is a lot more than language or citizenship.

It's also a lot more than just eating tacos and hummus or getting Yom Kippur off the same as Easter. Indeed, the fact that Jewish or Muslim employees can get religious holidays off is not a sign of mulitculturalism, it's a sign of uni-culturalism. After all, respect for religious diversity is an aspect of American culture, not necessarily an aspect of either Jewish or Muslim culture. Likewise, permitting ethnic minorities to speak their own languages or enjoy their own traditions is part of a dominant American cultural trait of toleration -- a trait that is frequently not found in the lands from which many of those ethnic minorities originated.

In Chicago, there are fairly sizable communities of Serbs and Bosnians, Indians and Pakistanis, Palestinians and Jews, often living in close proximity to each other. If we were truly a multicultural society, we would expect them to live together in a mix of terror and fear. That they don't is a testimony to a single American culture, not to any sort of multiculturalism.

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Joe,

Very nice!

You shot down the core of my argument, and yet I agree with you completely.

Thanks.

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ebrown_p wrote:

Joe,

Very nice!

You shot down the core of my argument, and yet I agree with you completely.

Thanks.

Glad to oblige Laughing

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ebrown_p wrote:

No Rayban, we are much farther apart than you think.

It is hard for me to believe the word "assimliation" only means "a desire to learn English" and "a desire for citizenship". There is lots of "divisiveness" (and even outright hatred) in this country between English-speaking citizens.

But, this thread was about mult-culturalism... which is a lot more than language or citizenship.

I strongly support multi-culturalism-- by this I mean supporting, appreciating and defending the differences between Americans of different backgrounds, beliefs and cultures. This means celebrating Hunnukah, defending mosques and Synagogues and accepting Hindu temples. This means allowing communities to speak Chinese or Yiddish or Spanish (perhaps in addition to English and ensuring that workers can get Yom Kippur off the same as Easter.

Incidently, nearly all of the immigrants (even the "illegal" ones) who are a valued part of my community are working very hard to learn English (how else will they steal your job). And, most of them would love to have citizenship.

But they also are deeply proud of their own culture and countries.

Immigrants shouldn't be forced to give up their own cultures (or languanges or religious beliefs) to become Americans.

If you are really only saying they need to want to learn English... than maybe we do agree. But I suspect there is more than that.

Your answer indicates to me that you are not seeking agreement but instead just the opposite........you want to concentrate on our differences. You are not interested in common ground but seem to want to create differences that don't exist. I find no enjoyment in finding differences for the sake of argument but would rather find a way to narrow our differences and enlarge the common ground.

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I was going to mention Chicago as well. There are many ethnic neighborhoods where third and fourth generation Americans hardly, if ever, leave their neighborhood. And yet they all Chicagoans, and Americans.

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J_B wrote:

And yet they all Chicagoans, and Americans.

This is to me the crucial point. I see much criticism of immigrants as crypto-racism. I've always had the opinion that anyone who shows up here, works for a living, pays their taxes and obeys the law is just as much an American as i am, or anyone else who was born here. When people start to suggest that those who are different from them "become Americans," i smell a rat. If they're doing those things, they are already Americans.

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The definition of "multiculturalism" that was given in the original article is this:

Quote:

Multiculturalism preaches that we should allow and encourage immigrants and their children to maintain and celebrate their own culture apart from the national culture. Society should be not a melting pot but, in the phrase of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, "a gorgeous mosaic."

I believe that "multiculturalism", so defined, is a good thing-- and as Joe points out-- a part of American culture. I think this is the crux of our disagreement.

Ideally, I might change the phrase "apart from" to "as part of" but come cases certain communities (i.e. orthodox Jews) want to be widely separate from parts of American culture. Immigrants, within the law, should be "allowed" to maintain their culture any legal way they see fit.

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You kids can't have the 'mosaic'.

It's been ours for decades.

The Canadian Mosaic

No one of my generation escaped high school/college/university without studying The Canadian Mosaic and The Vertical Mosaic ... and then there was the Cultural Mosaic.

The other thing that was said in the 1960's and 1970's was that Canada was a tossed salad, rather than a melting pot like the U.S.

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yeah really Joe, very nicely put.

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joefromchicago wrote:

ebrown_p wrote:
But, this thread was about mult-culturalism... which is a lot more than language or citizenship.

It's also a lot more than just eating tacos and hummus or getting Yom Kippur off the same as Easter. Indeed, the fact that Jewish or Muslim employees can get religious holidays off is not a sign of mulitculturalism, it's a sign of uni-culturalism. After all, respect for religious diversity is an aspect of American culture, not necessarily an aspect of either Jewish or Muslim culture. Likewise, permitting ethnic minorities to speak their own languages or enjoy their own traditions is part of a dominant American cultural trait of toleration -- a trait that is frequently not found in the lands from which many of those ethnic minorities originated.

In Chicago, there are fairly sizable communities of Serbs and Bosnians, Indians and Pakistanis, Palestinians and Jews, often living in close proximity to each other. If we were truly a multicultural society, we would expect them to live together in a mix of terror and fear. That they don't is a testimony to a single American culture, not to any sort of multiculturalism.

Very nice logical, concise statement Joe....... thanks for injecting it into the discussion.

You also said this:

Joe wrote:

Likewise, permitting ethnic minorities to speak their own languages or enjoy their own traditions is part of a dominant American cultural trait of toleration -- a trait that is frequently not found in the lands from which many of those ethnic minorities originated.

Which brings up a good point that I would like to comment on.

Toleration is a dominant American Cultural trait but the fact that we tolerate the "F" word as a form of communication by Rappers, and High School students who can't put together a proper sentence.......is an indication that our tolerance is reaching the point where we should "put the brakes on". Tolerance of other religions and respect for the different aspects of other cultures has insidiously increased to the point where we are expected to tolerate every whim of every spoiled child, any form of speech even if it incites violence, and every form of trash in our news media.......when are we allowed to revolt and say enough?

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ehBeth wrote:

You kids can't have the 'mosaic'.

It's been ours for decades.

The Canadian Mosaic

No one of my generation escaped high school/college/university without studying The Canadian Mosaic and The Vertical Mosaic ... and then there was the Cultural Mosaic.

The other thing that was said in the 1960's and 1970's was that Canada was a tossed salad, rather than a melting pot like the U.S.

Please keep every kind of mosaic north of the border ehBeth. It castes a whole new meaning on my perception of what went wrong with Canada. :wink:

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Yeah rayban. I just hate how that tolerance just keeps insidiously increasing.

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rayban1 wrote:

Tolerance of other religions and respect for the different aspects of other cultures has insidiously increased to the point where we are expected to tolerate every whim of every spoiled child, any form of speech even if it incites violence, and every form of trash in our news media.......when are we allowed to revolt and say enough?

I'll bet your grandfather said the same thing and so will your grandson. I know that at least one of my grandfathers said the same thing.

The United States is not going to stay the place it was in 1950. There's no value to stagnation.

The study of history is interesting because it is about change. Socisties change.

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ehBeth wrote:

rayban1 wrote:
Tolerance of other religions and respect for the different aspects of other cultures has insidiously increased to the point where we are expected to tolerate every whim of every spoiled child, any form of speech even if it incites violence, and every form of trash in our news media.......when are we allowed to revolt and say enough?

I'll bet your grandfather said the same thing and so will your grandson. I know that at least one of my grandfathers said the same thing.

The United States is not going to stay the place it was in 1950. There's no value to stagnation.

The study of history is interesting because it is about change. Socisties change.

Yeah......I know......the pendulum swings but it never swings ALL the way back. The environment changes every second and we must adapt. I refuse to accept the fact that I'm too old to meet the challenge but it never gets any easier to observe the changes in culture which seem so decadent and destructive

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rayban - at the cooking forum I frequent, one of the posters has a tagline that says "Motherhood. It's not for sissies."

Let's extrapolate that to ...... "Life. It's not for sissies."

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ehBeth wrote:

rayban - at the cooking forum I frequent, one of the posters has a tagline that says "Motherhood. It's not for sissies."

Let's extrapolate that to ...... "Life. It's not for sissies."

Yeah.......let's drink to that.......Here's to life. It's not for sissies

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There's a charming little essay used in introductory anthropology classes. It tells of a WASP American awaking in the morning, and while he cleans up, dresses and breakfasts, in preparation for going to work, every one of the common American items of material culture he uses are shown to have come from other cultures and times. At the end, while he's reading the news of the world, in a newspaper (made of paper, ink and produced by a press all invented elsewhere) thanks a Hebrew diety in an indoeuropean language that he's "100 Percent American" (the title of the essay).
But it seems to me that Michael Barone's point is (if I read it correctly--it was just a glance) not that cultural diffusion is bad. He seems to endorese a plea for cultural homogeneity, reflecting a fear of foreigners in our midst. I, for one, consider our way of life greatly enhanced by our multiculturalism, but I do not want radical islamists living amongst us. But, then, I'm not too happy about Christian fundamentalists who seem to mirror the attitudes of all extremists, attitudes that endanger us all. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all "foreigners" (I guess that means all non-native americans) felt at home and secure both politicallly and economically? If they had extremists among them, they would be more likely to turn them in to the authorities rather than conceal and support them.

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I wouldn't know JL......I'm just a foreigner who happens to be living here for a while.

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Putting multiculturalism in perspective

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