Why Worry About Multiculturalism?

...sometimes they stress class to unify across trade or country of origin...

...Socialists look to the solidarities that unify across difference as the main avenue for social change, and they have always worried about the divisive effects of cultural identity...

...In his book Strange Multiplicity, James Tully calls for "an endless dialogue of humankind" that will correct his own tendency "to write as if all the world is America, and the analogous tendencies of the other participants...

...The first tries to dragoon us all into conformity with some majoritarian ideal, but the second can look just as conformist...

...When it comes to matters of moral or political judgment, acknowledging one's own, almost inevitable, partiality does not prevent action on what, at present, there is good reason to believe...

...The importance people attach to uniformity is best understood as a displacement from its sister concept, consistency...

...There is a danger here, and it parallels that which bedevils so much contemporary discussion of the family, where people move too rapidly from describing something as a good to describing it as vital, and then to disparaging any alternatives...

...When this is posed as a worry about fragmentation, it sounds rather disingenuous, for all solidarities are forged by highlighting one part of our existence over others...

...Consider the parallel issues that arise when universities schedule classes at the times least convenient to students (usu60 • DISSENT Multiculturalism ally women) who have to collect children from school...

...In the British context, for example, where schools are required to provide some kind of religious education and assembly, parents from non-Christian faiths often become frustrated with what they see as their children's induction into a mishmash of world religions...

...Many of the demands associated with multiculturalism call for flexibility in the interpretation of laws and regulations so as to make them more sensitive to the conventions of different cultures: one obvious example from Britain is that a perfectly sensible law requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets nonetheless exempts Sikh men...

...it also seriously underestimates the human capacity for negotiation and compromise...

...Why should it be so difficult to act on what one conceives to be right, even while acknowledging the revisability of one's most cherished ideals...

...they like to send their children to schools where they will make friends from a variety of cultural and national traditions...

...The underlying issue is whether some of these identities are "better," "more progressive" than others...

...Should we not say, in all fairness, that they should also avoid scheduling exams to coincide with the key festivals of other religions...

...No one who raises this as an objection believes that universities could rearrange all their classes at times convenient to such students, but knowing this does not make it absurd to raise the issue...

...In my view, consistency (not to mention justice) does require us to address the additional underrepresentation of ethnic minorities,' but then how is one to develop a strategy that achieves the "fair representation" of all ethnic groups, when these subdivide into ever finer discriminations between different countries of origin and a wide diversity of different cultures or religions...

...Capitalism used to be thought of as the great simplifier: in those famous WINTER • 1997 • 61 Multiculturalism phrases from The Communist Manifesto, it dissolves national one-sidedness and narrowmindedness, sweeps away ancient and venerable prejudices, obliterates distinctions of labor, splits society more and more into two great hostile camps...

...Can we accept the beginning without moving inexorably on to the end...

...This, in my view, is the really substantive problem posed by multiculturalism...

...Nor, given the requirements of equity, are they avoidable...

...2 James Tully, Strange Multiplicity (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 182...

...These are facts of life in contemporary societies, but there is still a question about whether one should boost this process by giving added legitimacy to cultural difference...

...Does multiculturalism mean that societies must condone what many will view as illiberal or undemocratic practice...

...4 In a recent example from a primary school in Birmingham where Muslim children make up 70 percent of the school population, parents have withdrawn their children from the mainstream—multifaith---religious education, and won the right for one hour each week of segregated religious education, to be taught by a trained teacher who is also a Muslim scholar (The Observer, Feb...

...8 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 90...

...Or if those who have the opportunity choose to send their children to private or selective schools, this leaves the other parents choosing among schools that draw their pupils from a more limited range of educational achievement and occupational background...

...If this is what multiculturalism means, you can see why left-liberals get edgy...

...This strikes me as a perfectly reasonable question, but the greater the diversity of religions, the less possible it becomes to arrange things to meet every such demand...

...But if socialists know anything, it is that formal freedoms of choice can coexist with, and often intensify, material inequalities of condition...

...None of us sprang up overnight like Hobbes's famous mushrooms, and all of us are simultaneously empowered and constrained by the cultural assumptions through which we have come to view the world...

...Inconsistency would indeed compromise equality of citizenship, but consistency does not translate into uniformity, and often requires distinct differences in treatment...

...If we regard our judgments as justified only by a process of absolute certification, then we may have cause to fear this, but how many of us today still believe in transcultural absolutes...

...In their pronouncements on the family, politicians and journalists often start from the truism that it is good for children to have two parents who love and care for them...

...Relativism Does multiculturalism imply relativism...

...The third concern is the more specifically socialist one: that giving "undue" credibility to the many cultures that make up contemporary societies threatens the solidarities on which we base our hopes for social change...

...This all-or-nothing argument strikes me as logic gone mad...

...Moving toward a more self-consciously multicultural citizenship certainly extends the range of what is open for negotiation, but the problems associated with multiculturalism are not unique...

...Notes 1 John Dunn, "Identity, modernity, and the claim to know better" in Rethinking Modern Political Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 143...

...and where religion overlaps with cultural and ethnic difference, this can produce an unintended degree of segregation...

...The equal respect we owe to people from other cultures is best expressed in assuming that they were similarly formed...

...The problem is that culture means far more than this...

...It includes different ways of thinking about morality and religion, different traditions of resolving political conflict, different assumptions about the roles of women and men...

...There is no contradiction, as Will 62 • DISSENT Multiculturalism Kymlicka notes, between saying that most people have a deep bond to their own culture, and yet that some people seem most at home leading a cosmopolitan life—and that others have difficulty making sense of the cultural meanings within their own culture.' Nor is there any necessary contradiction— though there may certainly be conflicts— between providing public resources to sustain particular cultures and supporting individual members who decide to opt out...

...it would be inconsistent to prevent the girls from wearing jeans while allowing this to the boys...

...So while many socialists will go along with the vision of contemporary societies as multi- rather than monocultural, they often have difficulty with the rights of minority cultures to sustain their unique traditions...

...Nothing much hangs on a benign acknowledgment that all cuisines have something to offer...

...Many of the anxieties about multiculturalism, however, stem from the very same quarter...

...Yet where conflicts do arise (and I do not mean to suggest that they won't), they are much like other conflicts that we have accepted as a necessary part of contemporary political life...

...For some people, the main complaint is that too many people from minority cultures have been allowed into the country, and that their unfamiliar customs are threatening the integrity of the majority culture...

...I have to say that I find it deeply puzzling when skeptical self-reflection is said to condemn one to political paralysis...

...and that none of us has a monopoly on wisdom or truth...

...25, 1996...

...Those who have resisted the coercive pretensions of a unified national culture may find themselves equally resistant to a defense of minorities that defines individuals through their communities and cultures...

...How are we even to arrive at any notions of right and wrong if different traditions are treated as of equal value...

...If schools draw up dress codes for their pupils (to take an obvious if banal example), these should surely be consistent between boys and girls: it would be inconsistent to insist on the boys wearing ties, while allowing the girls to dress as informally as they want...

...Multiculturalism does not require an a priori commitment to the equal value of different cultures...

...Multiculturalism sometimes appears as the obvious extension of a leftliberal politics, but sometimes as diametrically opposed, and I have been struck on many occasions by the way people who otherwise find themselves in broad political agreement diverge sharply when the claims of minority cultures come under discussion...

...The second approach is more problematic, for in elevating cultural membership to the status of a primary good (something vital to any human existence), it potentially trumps all other considerations...

...The importance of a particular practice to the group in question is one possible criterion...

...6 I take this phrase from Jeremy Waldron, "Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative," reprinted in Will Kymlicka (ed...

...The more serious question is whether societies can ever allow themselves to modify the principle of uniform treatment...

...Who could seriously disagree with this...

...This part of the argument also strikes me as logic gone mad, for while consistency certainly requires societies to consider whether an exception on behalf of one group implies an exception on behalf of some other, there are many criteria that would enter into this calculation, and the outcome is not decided in advance...

...In the more obviously multicultural dilemma, if parents with strong religious beliefs choose to send their children to denominational schools, this makes it difficult for parents who value a diversity of religions to find a suitably "mixed" school...

...But most people consider their own culture superior to that of others (why else would they retain it...

...The newer left is less disposed to privilege one identity as more fundamental (it can see how the privileging of class, for example, operated to make gender invisible), but it still fears that stressing culture as the unifying element will prove more conservative in its effects...

...As one of the parent-governors explained, "Multifaith education nurtures a spectator approach to all religion . . . . If you believe in all religions, you end up believing in none...

...once we give up on the extravagant expectation of final proof, then accepting the provisional nature of all existing hypotheses just looks like a sensible approach...

...It is consistency that is the important principle, with uniformity as one possible means to this end...

...Coming to recognize, for example, the occidental arrogance of American modernization theory does not condemn one to what John Dunn describes as its crude antithesis: "the idiot relativism of presuming the cultures of all national units (and thus presumably of no subnational units) to deserve an equal and untrammeled degree of credal respect...

...It employs a measure of logical consistency against which all existing political arrangements would fail, and then appeals to this as a basis for refusing to consider any new proposals...

...Today's socialists would certainly not want to be accused of subordinating freedom to equality, nor would they want to align themselves with a statist uniformity that tramples on minority concerns...

...When we disaggregate what is at stake in accusations of fragmentation, we find at least three different concerns...

...Sometimes people stress gender to unify across class or religious or ethnic divisions...

...sometimes they stress race to unify across class and gender...

...III do not propose to resolve this dilemma here, but it helps moderate some of the worries about multiculturalism if we see them as part of this bigger picture...

...That said, equal respect must surely entail attending to what people do and argue, and we cannot do this if we suspend our critical faculties...

...ethnic pluralism is the second...

...The most cursory acquaintance with intellectual history demonstrates that ideas have been shaped by historical conditions, and it would take the arrogance of a Hegel or a Marx to say we have now arrived at the final stage...

...It is not the partiality that is the problem in any of these...

...The standard alternative is more open: thus schools will often ban certain styles of dress or ornament, and will then have to work out some rule of thumb that makes this consistent between boys and girls...

...The importance this attaches to cultural membership may, however, privilege the need for a distinct culture over the need for "a kaleidoscope of cultures...

...Anyone with a history of challenging dominant power structures is likely to be well attuned to a critique of a dominant culture, and will warm to the suggestion that nations are not as homogeneous as their mythologies suggest...

...The solipsism that says, "This is right for me, but I can't comment on what is right for you" is a poor guide to political action...

...To bring Karl Popper to my aid at this point, it is only when scientists hope to prove their hypotheses beyond any doubt that describing a hypothesis as so-far-unfalsified looks so feeble...

...Knowing this—and knowing at the same time that there are many cultures—we cannot but see ourselves as partial, with our most certain convictions always open to subsequent revision...

...But it is not only multiculturalism that poses these questions...

...Socialists regard shared cultural traditions as less formative or less significant than shared class locations, and they are rarely at ease with assertions of ethnic identity...

...The key point of contact between socialism and multiculturalism is that both question the mythologies of "the nation" or "the common good...

...that all of us have learned particular ways of seeing the world...

...and second, because the choices people make in education have a particularly stark and selfevident effect on the choices left available for others...

...There are three interrelated worries...

...The idea that we treat people equally by treating them exactly the same seems distinctly weird to me, and if we know it to be a nonsense across extraordinary disparities of wealth, it doesn't seem difficult to extend this across differences in cultural practice and conventions...

...5 For a fuller discussion of this, see Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford University Press, 1995...

...it loosens the hold of a single culture only to tighten the chains of culture per se...

...In a similar vein, I would say that no society could organize its political affairs, or sustain any semblance of national unity, if it fragmented the citizens into a thousand subgroups, each with its own claims to representation...

...It might cause concern to people whose habits had been frozen for generations, or to those who muddle up their preferences with their moral prescriptions, but outside such circles, it is not a particularly threatening noWINTER • 1997 • 57 Multiculturalism tion...

...But we do not have to choose between an unstoppable logic of further fragmentation and naive assertions of indivisible unity...

...saying this does not commit me to changing my own eating habits...

...It is also important not to read off minority cultures from what turn out to be minorities within them: to assume that all Muslims, for example, want sex-segregated education or oppose equal opportunities for boys and girls (and that no Christian would ever share such a preference...

...3 Michael Walzer, "Pluralism: A Political Perspective," reprinted in Will Kymlicka (ed...

...Those of us who have advocated quota systems to achieve greater parity of representation between women and men often find ourselves presented with the notorious "slippery slope": if women, why not people from ethnic minorities...

...and in treating culture as a primary good, it may end up trumping other kinds of rights...

...Now, if cultures were simply a matter of style and taste (different ways of preparing food, different traditions of music or art) this would hardly present problems to our left-liberal...

...Fragmentation The second worry is that multiculturalism fragments people in ways that dissolve the potential for shared action, and this worry arises with particular intensity for those formed through socialist politics...

...Multiculturalism does not imply relativism...

...Does multiculturalism fragment people in ways that dissolve any semblance of shared citizenship and block alliances for future social change...

...From a relatively uncontroversial beginning, we end up with an attack on single-parent families, and a celebration of any and all two-parent families as providing the best kind of care...

...All too often, however, the truism is equated with a far more contentious assertion: that the two-parent family is vital to each child's well-being...

...The key question, in my view, is whether we conceive of multiculturalism as required by considerations of equity or as derived from a thesis about culture as a primary good...

...This is not a matter of abstract logic, but of negotiation among a range of significant concerns...

...The anxieties such adjustments arouse reflect the fear, already noted, of what is seen as an unstoppable momentum: once societies allow for one exception, we are told, they will be drawn into a second and a third, and there will be no logical stopping place short of total diversity of treatment...

...The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 145...

...There is a theoretical problem— who is the "we" that makes these judgments, and what is the basis for defining what is liberal or democratic?—and in the spirit of my comments on relativism, I would caution against the majoritarian arrogance that assumes "we" have reached a final definition...

...As long as we follow the first, however, there is no inherent contradiction between supporting policies that recognize and help sustain minority cultures and opposing practices within minority cultures that we consider illiberal or undemocratic...

...7 Steven Lukes, The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat (Verso, 1995...

...It clearly throws into question the dominance of one particular culture...

...But multiculturalism typically generates rather stronger demands...

...Much of this anxiety is, I believe, misplaced...

...The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford University Press, 1995...

...A similar pattern of argument often develops in the face of claims for the political representation of underrepresented groups...

...in the face of a potentially unending plethora of demands, the temptation is simply to deny them their initial legitimacy...

...it mistakes what is implied in multiculturalism, and it overstates the degree of certainty that is required for political action...

...whether the proposed concession conflicts with core beliefs of the society is another...

...Does multiculturalism imply relativism...

...I believe we can...

...People who find themselves in a cultural minority will sometimes settle for a patronizing acceptance, regarding this as a minor advance over being told to abandon their backward ways...

...9 Kymlicka, p. 171...

...they may want a multiplicity of distinct cultures rather than an amalgam that takes bits from each...

...For some others, the main complaint is that multiculturalism encourages a hybrid eclecticism that undermines the integrity of the minority cultures...

...58 • DISSENT Multiculturalism The point about cultures is that they structure the way we experience and the way we think...

...Human beings are usually rather good at finding middle positions between formal extremes, and there is no reason why this should be the one exception...

...This undoubtedly constrains the certainty with which we affirm our positions, but it does not prevent us from formulating (revisable) principles that we regard as applying to all people everywhere...

...or that their self-respect is bound up with the esteem in which their culture is held...

...How are we to articulate notions of right or wrong if multiculturalism imposes a polite silence in relation to the practices of others...

...If we go down that road, we might say, there is no knowing where it will end...

...WINTER • 1997 • 63...

...We cannot participate in this dialogue if we start from a position of knowing it all, or if we end up in a state of unshakable conviction about whatever has emerged as our latest conclusion...

...The second concern that surfaces under the heading of fragmentation is that recognizing the legitimacy of cultural claims threatens uniformity of treatment...

...Schooling is a notoriously difficult example: first, because it deals with the rights or freedoms of parents, when in fact it is the children who carry the consequences of parental choice...

...What interests me here is a subset of worries that preoccupies people with left-liberal inclinations: those whose political identifications have always linked them to groups "outside" an established mainstream...

...and it suggests that we should regard each culture as entitled to equal respect...

...In a recent novel, Steven Lukes conjures up a nightmarish land called Communitaria, where everyone must belong to one of thirtyfour ethnic communities and one of seventeen religions, and where political representation is organized exclusively through these memberships.') The question this poses is whether we can say that cultural membership is good without claiming that it is vital...

...The impetus toward multiculturalism comes primarily from members of minority cultures, but much of its initial support derives from the liberal left—and for obvious reasons...

...Far better to stumble on with the pretense of a unified citizenry...

...If all these are to be deemed worthy of equal respect, this looks like a suspension of critical judgment...

...It may end up privileging those who wish to sustain unique cultures over those who value a more cosmopolitan life...

...One conventional way of achieving the desired consistency is to require all children to wear a school uniform— though typically, the boys then wear trousers and the girls wear skirts, so this is hardly uniformity of treatment...

...Countries with a predominantly Christian tradition, for example, do not schedule public examinations to coincide with Christian festivals...

...But the political problems are much exaggerated, for minorities living within the framework of what are broadly (if always incompletely) liberal democracies have accommodated themselves without objection to most of what are considered core equalities or freedoms...

...It does, however, require us to view our own culture as one among many, and this certainly means rethinking what we might have considered transcultural absolutes as more parochial expressions of a particular culture...

...if either of these, why not homosexuals, pensioners, the unemployed, the disabled, why not people with blue eyes and red hair...

...One is that recognizing the legitimacy of cultural claims means giving weight to demands that could never be met in their entirety...

...The old left, of course, had what it saw as analytical reasons for its primary emphasis on class: it saw this as more fundamental, a more "real" source of commonality than nationality or religion or sex...

...The parallel sleight of hand in relation to culture would start from the relatively uncontroversial observation that cultures are important to people's freedom and self-esteem and end up prescribing membership in a particular culture as a necessity of human life...

...If we take our culture seriously (and this applies equally whether we are in a majority or a minority), then we almost certainly think it has something to offer to people outside...

...Something that is good is turned into something that is vital, and in the process, the component that makes it good (that both parents love and care for the child) is often transmuted into a mere necessity for both parents to be there...

...Why do "we" (in this sense) worry so much about multiculturalism...

...We may not want others to adopt it wholesale: orthodox Judaism, for example, discourages the missionary spirit, regarding Jewishness as a matter of inheritance more than conversion...

...The first two examples help put the third into better perspective, for many of the problems we address under the heading of multiculturalism relate to more general issues about the way the rights or choices of one group constrain the rights or choices of another...

...and since moving to accommodate only one extra religion merely highlights the inequity toward everyone else (including those who can't see why religion should be given such prominence), one is tempted to rule the question out of court...

...Illiberal or Undemocratic Practices Arguments for a more multicultural understanding of citizenship often start from the value of cultural membership: the notion that people can only make meaningful choices when they have a relatively secure home within a recognized culture...

...The primacy attached to culture may then lend itself to less democratic or more illiberal practice...

...and even those who are more proselytizing about their cultural/religious/political framework often exhibit a snobbish suspiciousness toward those who want to join them...

...they like the idea of a multicultural curriculum that exposes the absurd pretensions of a single national identity and promotes sympathies across nations...

...as Michael Walzer has noted, "Marxism was the first challenge to the traditional argument for national homogeneity...

...The debate on multiculturalism is still inhibited by a tendency to exaggerate the differences among cultures, and exaggerate the logical implications of recognizing any cultural claims...

...The first approach— which is the one I favor—allows us and indeed requires us to consider the equitable treatment of minority and majority cultures alongside other considerations of equity—say, between women and men...

...This is what underlies many of the worries about fragmentation, and it arises with particular intensity in a period that has witnessed the weakening of older solidarities forged around class, and has not yet produced a definitive alternative...

...It is frequently suggested, for example, that recognizing the rights of cultural minorities will strengthen the powers of men over women, or the old over the young, within the minority culture...

...Faced with a possible fragmentation into ever more minute distinctions, the temptation, once again, is not to begin the process...

...Part of the difficulty socialists then have with multiculturalism is that it highlights as yet unresolved questions about how far socialism can go in accommodating freedom of choice...

...I take these in turn (though they are not as distinct as this suggests), and argue that much of the anxiety, particularly around the first two questions, is misplaced...

...It is important, as Kymlicka notes, not to prejudge the illiberal nature of a particular minority culture, for "all cultures have repressive strands, just as few cultures are entirely repressive of individual liberty...

...it requires us to reconsider the arrogance that simply presumes one of these to be superior to all the others...

...Equal respect does not mean suspending critical judgment: on the contrary, we do not take other cultures seriously when we don't consider them worthy of our critique...

...The reality has been infinitely more complicated, and people continue to derive their political identities from a diverse combination that includes class, sex, race, ethnicity, language, religion, region, country of origin...

...The notion that we may better approximate equality through differential rather than identical treatment has gained strength in feminist circles—and has, indeed, a prehistory in the writings of Marx...

...Thus, if parents choose single-sex schools for their girls (which looks like a sensible choice, on both scholastic and social WINTER • 1997 • 59 Multiculturalism grounds), this makes it impossible for parents to choose mixed-sex schools for their boys (which also looks like a sensible choice, on both scholastic and social grounds...

...It constrains in advance what even gets on the agenda...

...when their own children make up a majority within a school, they may call for more sustained emphasis on teaching their own religion.' Many, indeed, prefer the option of separate schools: instead of the multiculturalism that spreads a thin veneer of diversity over a predominantly Christian or European culture, they may look to the kind of multiculturalism that promotes schools organized around each of the different religions...

...It draws our attention to the existence of many cultures...

...and there is nothing inconsistent in saying that kangaroo steaks are fine, but I couldn't bear to eat them...

...and what they look for is a more sustained engagement among competing cultures...

...Again, it is helpful to see this as part of a broader picture...

...3 But the socialist critique of national culture has usually been taken to include criticism of subnational cultures as well...

...This begs questions about vegetarianism, but I'll leave them to one side...

...Socialists find multiculturalism most congenial when they see it as pluralizing a hegemonic establishment culture: they like to live in areas that are ethnically and culturally diverse...

...If we acted only on what was certain, only dogmatists would ever bother to stir...