Multiculturalism

Pro
Multiculturalism is an ideology that promotes the institutionalisation of communities containing multiple cultures. It is generally applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g. schools, businesses, neighbourhoods, cities, or nations. In a political context the term is used for a wide variety of meanings, ranging from the advocacy of equal respect to the various cultures in a society, to a policy of promoting the maintenance of cultural diversity, to policies in which people of various ethnic and religious groups are addressed by the authorities as defined by the group they belong to. A common aspect of many such policies is that they avoid presenting any specific ethnic, religious, or cultural community values as central.[3] Multiculturalism is often contrasted with the concepts of assimilationism and has been described as a "salad bowl" or "cultural mosaic" rather than a "melting pot." Definition There is no doctrine for multiculturalism and different countries approach the issue in a variety of manners. However two main different and seemingly inconsistent strategies have developed through different Government policies and strategies. The first focuses on interaction and communication between different cultures. Interactions of cultures provide opportunities for the cultural differences to communicate and interact to create multiculturalism. The second centers on diversity and cultural uniqueness. Cultural isolation can protect the uniqueness of the local culture of a nation or area and also contribute to global cultural diversity. Andrew Heywood distinguishes between two forms of multiculturalism, "the term multiculturalism has been used in a variety of ways, both descriptive and normative. As a descriptive term, it has been taken to refer to cultural diversity As a normative term, multiculturalism implies a positive endorsement, even celebration, of communal diversity, typically based on either the right of different groups to respect and recognition, or to the alleged benefits to the larger society of moral and cultural diversity. Multiculturalism has been official policy in several Western nations since the 1970s, for reasons that varied from country to country,including the fact that many of the great cities of the Western world are increasingly made of a mosaic of cultures. The Canadian government has often been described as the instigator of multicultural ideology because of its public emphasis on the social importance of immigration. The Canadian Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism is often refereed to as the origins of modern political awareness of multiculturalism.

In the Western English-speaking countries, multiculturalism as an official national policy started in Canada in 1971, followed by Australia, where it has since been displaced by assimilation, in 1973.It was quickly adopted as official policy by most member-states of the European Union. Recently, rightof-center governments in several European statesnotably the Netherlands and Denmark have reversed the national policy and returned to an official monoculturalism. A similar reversal is the subject of debate in the United Kingdom, among others, due to evidence of incipient segregation and anxieties over "home-grown" terrorism. Several heads-of-state have expressed doubts about the success of multicultural policies: The United Kingdom's Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia's ex-prime minister John Howard, Spanish ex-president Jose Maria Aznar and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have voiced concerns about the effectiveness of their multicultural policies for integrating immigrants.

Contra
Critics of multiculturalism often debate whether the multicultural ideal of benignly co-existing cultures that interrelate and influence one another, and yet remain distinct, is sustainable, paradoxical, or even desirable. It is argued that Nation states, who would previously have been synonymous with a distinctive cultural identity of their own, lose out to enforced multiculturalism and that this ultimately erodes the host nations' distinct culture. Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study how multiculturalism affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "dont trust the local mayor, they dont trust the local paper, they dont trust other people and they dont trust institutions," writes Putnam. In the presence of such ethnic diversity, Putnam maintains that We hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And its not just that we dont trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we dont trust people who do look like us. Ethologist Frank Salter writes: Relatively homogeneous societies invest more in public goods, indicating a higher level of public altruism. For example, the degree of ethnic homogeneity correlates with the government's share of gross domestic product as well as the average wealth of citizens. Case studies of the United States, Africa and South-East Asia find that multi-ethnic societies are less charitable and less able to cooperate to develop public infrastructure. Moscow beggars receive more gifts from fellow ethnics than from other ethnies [sic]. A recent multi-city study of municipal spending on public goods in the United States found that ethnically or racially diverse cities spend a smaller portion of their budgets and less per capita on public services than do the more homogenous cities. Dick Lamm, former three-term Democratic governor of the US state of Colorado, wrote in his essay "I have a plan to destroy America": "Diverse peoples worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they are not killing each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent."