<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/27/multiculturalism-britain-white-people>
"As the dust settled on last summer’s English riots, I found myself taking part
in a radio discussion on the question: has multiculturalism failed? It was a
depressing response to events that were themselves deeply depressing: an
all-too-vivid reminder of how acute Britain’s problems with racism and
Islamophobia continue to be. Yet the radio discussion also showed how
multiculturalism acts as a scapegoat when it comes to concerns about issues
such as immigration and community cohesion. For decades now, multiculturalism
has functioned as Britain’s bogeyman.
There was opposition to the term almost as soon as it began to gain traction in
the late 1970s and 80s. Initially, multiculturalism was associated with
policies that some local councils introduced to address inequalities in
education. What this meant in practice was things such as an expanded religious
education curriculum, the provision of halal meat options for Muslim
schoolchildren, and the distribution of information about a child’s schooling
in their parents’ first language.
The policies attracted criticism from both the left and the right. Some on the
left worried that the focus on ethnicity and religion was a tool to blunt the
radicalism of Black political activism. Conservative commentators, meanwhile,
thought that too many concessions were being made to ethnic minority groups,
which were supposedly undermining British culture and values.
These critiques were often laced with offensive stereotypes. Multiculturalism,
one commentator argued, meant enshrining “the West Indian’s right to create an
ear-splitting cacophony for most of the night”. For the former Labour MP turned
chatshow host Robert Kilroy-Silk, meanwhile, it was a process by which “British
traditions, culture and laws have had to be amended to meet the needs of those
with values and mores fashioned in less civilised times and places”.
Such was the controversy around multiculturalism by the year 2000 that it was
almost de rigueur for senior politicians to line up to denounce its failure.
High-profile variations on this argument have been made by David Blunkett,
David Cameron, Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman. The newly installed leader of
the Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch, looks set to embark on a similar course.
The political benefit of talking tough on multiculturalism is that the term has
come to mean different things to different people. When politicians confidently
pronounce multiculturalism’s failure, they know many voters will hear it
variously as a criticism of immigration levels, of Islamic “extremism”, or of
the very nature of Britain’s emergence as a multicultural society.
The net result of this is that multiculturalism has come to occupy a central
position in culture wars that, fuelled by the shouty excesses of social media,
in many ways have come to define our divided times. Thanks in part to the
irresponsible role played by mainstream politicians seeking to challenge the
likes of Ukip and Reform, an impression has been allowed to take root that
white British people are not only excluded from the making of multicultural
Britain, but are also under threat from it.
The real-life dangers of this narrative were writ large on the streets of
England during the riots last summer. To move beyond the impasse, it is vital
that we finally reckon with the fact we are already a deeply multicultural
society."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
