The trouble with the word "multiculturalism" is that it can mean a number of different things, depending on what you mean by "culture."

The word "culture" could refer to a monoculture, a national culture, the attiude and thinking of people belonging to a particular race or followers of a particular religion or just the outward appearance of a foreign culture in the form of food, cuisine, clothing, language and habits.

Perhaps I could start by putting my own ethnic background in context. My ancestry is Chinese. My parents came from Hong Kong, a former British colony. I was born here, however and I grew up here. I grew up in ethnically diverse schools. I've read a lot of political and military history so I have a fair idea of Australia's relationship with the rest of the world. It has given me a good idea of how the world works politically, economically, socially, legally, culturally, etc. I have come to understand how Western political systems work and I like the concepts that drive them. All this reading into history has made my thinking somewhat Western. I don't know if that makes me "Australian," however.

I think it's important to make a distinction between ethnicity, ancestry, nationality and culture. They all relate to the idea of "race" but they refer to different aspects of it. Ethnicity and ancestry are closely related, to an extent that when I use the word "ethnicity" I usually also mean "ancestry." Nationality has to do with your loyalty to a particular country. Culture is about the habits, beliefs and attitudes that a group of people have in common when they belong to or possess the same culture.

This is important because it will help me explain how I feel and think about multiculturalism. For a lot of people ethnicity, ancestry, nationality and culture are all the same thing. If you consider yourself "Chinese," for example, your ethnicity, ancestry, nationality and culture are all Chinese. So you either came from or descend from a family in China. You have loyalty to that so-called "motherland." You also try to live the same way as people do in China.

I think this is where the term "multiculturalism" gets confused. Because multiculturalism is so closely related to race and therefore ethnicity, ancestry and nationality, multiculturalism becomes a blanket term for anything foreign. Those in favour of it believe we should allow "foreign elements" into the country. Those against it don't want anything "foreign" to enter the country. But they want it for different reasons. Maybe this is why they can't agree, because they're actually talking about different things.

So what is my position? My ancestry is Chinese, but that doesn't mean everything else in my life is "Chinese." Ethnically I'm Chinese, but culturally and politically I am not. If I went over to live in China today, they'd probably think I'm an idiot. I would be regarded as an alien over there. I know very little about manners in Chinese culture so even if I could speak Mandarin fluently, I wouldn't fit in. I even struggle with Cantonese, the dialect that my parents spoke. People would be able to tell almost immediately from my accent that I am some "idiot" from a Western country.

If there is a more compelling reason to think of myself as not "Chinese," it's because I have figured out that I don't need that culture or that country to figure out what lifestyle I want. Here I am living in a country with a political system modelled after the British Westminster parliamentary system, one that is also a federation and secular democracy. So this is how I decide to live. I will choose my lifestyle based on how people are to live in a secular democracy. It is a place where people think for themselves and don't lecture others on how to live. This is how I explain away the need to devote my life to a foreign country.

But I can't deny my ancestry and this is where it gets tough when deciding what country you support. You may remember what happened two years ago during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. You may remember the scale at which overseas Chinese rallied support amongst themselves for their precious olympics games. I believe most of them were either international students or Chinese born in the mainland. But I would not be so naive to think even some locally born Chinese got involved.

The concept that I don't like is the idea that even my Chinese ancestry means that I belong to the same group and therefore the same cause as those who got involved. I can imagine Mainland Chinese putting social pressure on locally born and bred "Chinese" to participate.

I personally don't know the whole/complete philosophy of why others here opposing multiculturalism are against it, but if I had a reason it would be this. Allowing members of a foreign culture to live in Australia means that they can apply social pressure to people to support a cause on their homeland. If you promote "multiculturalism," it can mean that you either tolerate or promote a foreign national culture. A national culture is more than just a culture. It is more than just food, clothing and habits. It is devotion and loyalty to another country. This is why a lot of people in this thread are against it. Multiculturalism can mean a number of things. Loyalty to another country is one of them.

The rest of multiculturalism is fine with me, but not the foreign loyalty part.

I think multiculturalism refers to two, interdependent but still distinct, concepts within the lexicon; multiracialism, and multiculturalism. Multiracialism refers to distinct biological population groups existing within the same political territory. Multiculturalism refers to distinct cultures exisiting within the same territory. The two are easily and frequently conflated because they so frequently coincide.

Your point is a good one; that multiculturalism can (and does) result in divided allegiances between national political entities, but I think that's only a minor reason why people object to multiculturalism. The major reason people bring up here I think at its core is its putative creation of internal social division within a nation, and this does not necessarily have to be the result of a divided political allegiance. This social division, as argued entails a competition of social interests between varying cultures and peoples, which translates into conflict, estrangement, indifference, and other negative social effects (as has been demonstrated -- unintentionally, in somes cases -- by certain political scientists).

In some respects, I kind of agree with your last paragraph. Multiculturalism and "diversity as unity" doublespeak is ideologically poisonous to promote, but considering the many peoples we have here already, it may not be desirable or viable to coerce them to integrate. You could send them back to their home-countries if you wished, but I don't think that's really necessary for most. However, this does not mean that I think that a nation and a national government should not serve the majority of that nation in question. In this case, white people. The interests of the white majority, exercised within reasonable and fair limits, should come before anything else. If we are to have a multiracial, multicultural society balancing this by serving the interests of white people, primarily by elminating racial quotas, egalitarian social engineering, immigration, progressive media jibberish and anti-discrimination legislation is necessary. Australia is in a fortunate position where the pragmatic consideration of mass-deporations is not required. This cannot be said about many other white nations, which are faced with ominous shifting demographic trends and intolerably large numbers of toxic peoples. When it has come to selecting non-white people to co-exist with us, we have at least been somewhat prudent about who we have chosen. Chinese like yourself are excellent and in many respects exemplary and admirable as people. In many fundamental ways, you are superior to whites.

Quote:


"Monocultures" are hardly divisive. It is inevitable for all societies to generate a fraction of marginalized malcontents on their peripheries, but just because this is ineluctable in occurence, does not mean that the alternative is desirable, or even viable. The basis of society is exclusion, and for communities to remain properly functional and cohesive, certain customs, manners and ideals must be concordant and held in common. Societies function and define themselves by circumscribing behaviors considered collectively undesirable; even our official, multicultural society.

Quote:


I really don't get this. Are you saying that goths, 'punks' (or whatever the hell they are) aren't actually rejected by the majority of people? Those old photographs of filthy, unwashed and unkempt peaceniks being yelled at by angry observers, and in turn, them screaming into the faces of rows of police officers? Subcultures are in fact sub-cultures because they are rejected by actual cultures (and given the nature of so many of them, thankfully!) In turn, these subcultures look disdainfully on the rest of society; it seems the very purpose of so many of them is for the angsty to distinguish themselves from everybody else due to some unwarranted feeling of specialness and individualty. I don't know how anybody could subscribe to the idea that they aren't divisive; even in the teeny-bopper media you see all of those pathetic cliques depicted as warring tribes within a high-school context. I really don't know why so many of them have sprung up over the past thirty or forty years. I think a lot of it has to do with too many teenagers becoming disatisfied with being average joes and seeking some kind of vapid outlet to express their facile individuality. Too many people growing up without proper parental strictures I guess.

Or maybe what you are trying to say is that you would desire a society in which no form of personal expression is looked upon disdainfully or is rejected by any other group. A "subculture" to you becomes a monoculture only when it rejects the behavior of any other group and does not behave in a tolerant manner towards them. This requires the promulgation and elevation of the ideals of tolerance and respect, so even this state of society requires exclusion and rejection; specifically, of those that are intolerant. But in the case of a society with this inconsistency, or the case of a hypothetical society where nobody is in fact intolerant, you still only speak of desires, ideal (to some at least) states of society beyond the reach of man. Men are tribal in their nature and will always sort themselves into groups that they consider appropriate to their personal preferences. This will inevitably lead to conflict and division, as group interests inevitably disagree and identities inevitably chafe against each other. It is only the liberal who considers this state of affairs unacceptable and desires the restructuring of society for the purpose of achieving its elimination, a restructuring which will come about, in his mind, via the use of the tools that he considers to have an infinite amount of transformative power over the minds of all men; education and legislation.

aikmann4 wrote on Jun 29^th, 2010 at 3:31am:


Monocultures can alienate people by their rules and values. This could include things like eating habits, dress code, gender roles, marital customs, dating customs, socio-economic expectations and manners. Marital arrangements by parents, men being required to propose, women staying at home, the idea that "big boys don't cry" and the hijab are examples. The negative stigmas associated with not doing what the monoculture prescribes is what makes a monoculture undesirable.

My dad, example, criticises the way I eat. My dad considers eating to be a social activity. I have to be "decent" or elegant in the way I choose to eat my food. I like eating food in a particular order and I don't believe it's my dad's business to tell me how to eat my lunch or dinner. He believes that people like watching the way I eat. My argument is that nobody cares. It's just food.

aikmann4 wrote on Jun 29^th, 2010 at 3:31am:


The punk, emo, goth and hippies were just an extreme example. I used to look down on such people. I don't have tattoos and nor do I have any of their weird hairstyles, but I understand why they chose to live, dress, act, talk and think that way. Living standards had increased to a level where the customs and manners associated with traditional cultures became unnecessary to most people. People became more individualistic. Social mobility increased. Western society offered people an opportunity to get rich and free themselves from the traditions of their local culture. You were no longer defined by your heritage or local customs. It was uncool to be defined by your heritage and local customs. People rebelled against it. Everybody who conformed was an idiot.

I didn't grow up in that generation, but I live with the consequences of that generation.

aikmann4 wrote on Jun 29^th, 2010 at 3:31am:


I personally favour individual choice and that people do not accuse me of not doing X and Y. I prefer not to live in a society driven by monocultures that say that I must marry at a particular age (or marry at all), be the one to approach or propose to the opposite sex, act a certain way because I am a man, dress a certain way or eat a certain way. It's my life and I should be able to live as I please. This is the problem with monocultures: they prescribe a certain way of life for the individual and associate negative stigmas against people who do not follow it. I lot of these things don't affect other people in their community, but they make life harder for the individual person.

aikmann4 wrote on Jun 29^th, 2010 at 3:31am:


People who are intolerant aren't actually rejected. They are tolerated as much as people who are different from the norm.

aikmann4 wrote on Jun 29^th, 2010 at 3:31am:


I don't consider myself as belonging to a tribe. If I have political views and beliefs, it doesn't make me a part of a tribe. It just makes me part of another faction.

Quote:


Quote:


I did say that this was an inevitable aspect of the exclusive nature of cultures. A fraction of people who don't quite "fit in" (or make no effort to try to "fit in") are going to be alienated. I am not denying this; I am just saying that it isn't as bad as you are making it out to be, nor is it a good reason to attempt to impose some artificial system in its stead.

Quote:


If nobody cares is your argument, why does your father care? The reasons why he would prefer you to consume your dinner in a decent manner are very sensible; one, you will be a much more effective member of society and thus have a higher chance of being successful if you adhere to proper tableside protocol, and secondly, elegance is aesthetic. People prefer to see others eat their food properly with a knife and fork rather than stuff it into their mouths with the juices dripping down their chin because they cognitively associate the former behavior with cleanliness, and because it is far more pleasing to the eye.

Monocultures don't always just arbitrarily impose codes of etiquette and norms on people; there are underlying rationales for most norms. I say "I would like to be excused" when I need to go to the bathroom when I am eating with others, and not "I need to go take a big fat dump" because the latter more directly reminds others of fecal matter, which is unhygenic, unpleasant and foul smelling. Frankly, I don't know about you, but I would prefer a society in which people who announce their intentions to void their bowels with such vulgarity to not be particularly socially mobile. The solipstic behavior that you are describing is common of my generation which I assume you are a part; but just because certain elements of our generation embrace more lax or the complete abscence of previous social norms, does not mean that they themselves have not assumed certain (and in my view, awful) norms of their own, nor does it mean that the new behavior that they engage in has in any way been a positive change. Sharply dressed invididuals who take pride in their physical appearance have given way to negrified codes of dress like disgusting sagging pants where the underpants are visible and hairy armpits exposed by singlets stained with tomato sauce. Is this really a good thing? Most norms are in place because they promote overall social cohesion and are considered to be of net benefit to the society that internalizes them.

Your father is attempting to socialize you appropriately so that your chances of being accepted in society are maximised, and thus, your chance of being successful. A parent who would not do otherwise is not fit to assume the role. If only we all could be Chinese, no?

Quote:


Yes, you are describing history fairly well, I just don't see why the commonly uttered liberal argument that an increase in living standards inevitably must result in the current social milleu which we are present. I would ascribe the breakdown of society more to effectively hostile Western intellectuals intent on deconstructing, inverting and subverting Western civilization for a variety of reasons.

There's no need to discriminate against rancor, you know. That's plain rancist.

Soren wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2010 at 10:47pm:


Of course, effende. Just as, being a Christian, you like to defend unconditional love.

What exactly is that in response to?