So remind me, what was the problem with multiculturalism?

I'm a month late getting to it, but am more than happy to draw attention belatedly to this tidy post about multi-culturalism by the dependable Rob Berkeley.

If like me you've been suspicious as to why people of influence have been trying to put the boot into multiculturalism, it's worth a read. Or even if you haven't. As he notes, the term simply means

'the existence and recognition of different identities in a shared political space within a framework of human rights.'

Ah, maybe that's why our leaders don't like it? Doh, it's about power, innit. Berkeley notes:

'Mr Cameron may find that policies that:

    • Remove the poor from housing in affluent areas;

    • Deter students from poorer backgrounds from entering university;

    • Create constituencies that disenfranchise the third of black and Asian people not on the electoral register;

    • Increase youth unemployment (which is already double that of white communities for Pakistani youth); or

    • Increase tension between black and Asian young people and the police

…do not help in creating meaningful or positive contact between people from different backgrounds. Similarly, a patchy commitment to human rights, whether votes for prisoners, detention of children and the suggestion last week from Policy Exchange that we withdraw from the European Convention, cannot help in establishing what core values we expect from each other and our relationship with the state.'

Comments

[Jane Doe]

A severe failure of multiculturalism is that multiculturalism doesn't protect minorities within minorities. In some Muslim communities, honor killings are acceptable responses to some behavior of family members, of which most are women. Although honor killings are incompatible with respect for human rights, the theological and social framework by which such a mode of thinking is promoted is not contrary to human rights. Multiculturalism, in this respect, allows for the promotion of ideological views which intuitively and statistically are found to be highly correlated with the practice of honor killings. An alternative approach to multiculturalism in this respect is to limit "the existence and recognition of different identities" such that socially dangerous ideological views are minimized. Obviously, the criteria by which to judge which ideologies are "socially dangerous" may be controversial or obscure, but at least there are some issues (e.g. honor killings) which can be better handled this way under a non-multiculturalist approach than with multiculturalism.