Welcome to Gaia! ::


Also nice bait in trying to avoid the issue.
N3bu
Multiculturalism as Public Policy and as a National Social Policy means three things in my country.

1. People who immigrate to Australia shouldn't be discriminated on the basis of their culture or place of birth.

2. Migrants in Australia have a right to express their cultural identity so long as it conforms with the laws of Australia (which shouldn't be made to discriminate against any minority), so no ritual sacrifices or anything crazy.

3. At present, something like 25% of Australia's workforce is made up of immigrants and 40% had at least one parent born outside of Australia.

Hmm. I get it. But I would still definitely call that 'immigration policy' or an issue concerning diversity / equality rather than 'multiculturalism' policy.
Camera Stellata
GunsmithKitten
Camera Stellata
Needless to say, the author of this video and his views are somewhat questionable. Anyone on ED-P fancy a crack at the five benefit challenge though?

I'm always told it enriches us but I'm not sure what that means


How about it ******** humanizes people who don't happen to look like you or like the same things? That's a fairly big one right there.
It can go either way can't it? It can either contradict preconceptions or confirm them. It's not necessarily going to humanise people and nor is a diverse society essential to seeing others as human beings.

METALFumasu
Okay, I'll bite.

-To understand and learn from the cultures around us
-To learn what benefits make they can make in our society from being different...
I wasn't laying bait.

Your second point seems to beg the question you were trying to answer. What benefits can these differences make?

If you yourself live in a diverse society, what important things have you learned from it and how has it benefited society in a way a homogenous society wouldn't benefit?


Let's see: it's the reality of a globalized world. Best to learn about it.
Ban
The question presents a series of unquestioned assumptions. How do you define a benefit? The food and music thing seems to trivialize cultures to a few narrow manifestations


Food and music and religion and history sure. But denying food and music as being trivilizing will not win you any friends among many of those cultures lol. Do not underestimate how important the trivial is to ethnic identity.
Quote:

. Why some homogeneity be the default?


It's as important as the respect for differences. Something needs to bind peoples within borders together. This is basic functionality. As long as it stays on a matter of function that is fine. People who do not meld in any way are ripe for division.
Quote:

This whole melting pot malarkey is frankly fiction, and has no real historical grounding, given anti-miscegenation laws, rampant racism, placing American Indians onto reservations, and so forth.


I take it you do not nor have ever lived near any larger American (or Canadian) metro areas?
I invite you to visit Queens in particular.
Sins of the past don't negate the facts of the matter.
Though it must be added that slaves and native groups are kind of a different issue than immigration for obvious reasons.

If anything America's troubles and experiences with all this has made it actually far better and more used to the strife related to being a diverse society. When you talk about and confront problems, you make progress. Many European nations lack any of this experience with non-European groups, and it shows.
Quote:

Americanization was just something made up by people around the turn of the century who didn't like European immigrants or existing cultural groups like Cajuns or the Pennsylvania Dutch speaking foreign languages


Every culture and nation on earth has their form of that verb, Anglization, Sinization. If you are a country or ethnic group, you have a version of that word. Of course its real. It's a basic building block of geo-sociology.
Quote:

The melting pot was never about non-whites integrating into American society; it was about immigrant whites integrating into the dominant white society.


I see you buy into the lie that says the "undesirable" newer white ethnic groups were always given some light treatment. No, they were seen much like Hispanics are today, if not worse. Than that changed. As today non-white groups like Hispanics are rapidly changing this.

You fail very badly at History when you discuss it like a thing that has no time and space.

Quote:
See the point about American history being kind of racist. And, y'know, it also didn't work.


Exactly what nation on earth does not have such problems in their history? Feel free to name one.

Jeering Regular

Leek Joyowza
Food and music and religion and history sure. But denying food and music as being trivilizing will not win you any friends among many of those cultures lol. Do not underestimate how important the trivial is to ethnic identity.
You missed my point. The question reduced the two "given" benefits to food and music, and put everything else up to doubt. This is trivializing.

Leek Joyowza
It's as important as the respect for differences. Something needs to bind peoples within borders together. This is basic functionality. As long as it stays on a matter of function that is fine. People who do not meld in any way are ripe for division.
This, again, doesn't address my point. The argument was for integration and homogeneity of culture. There are plenty of things that bind people together in a diverse set of cultures. America, as it stands, is hardly homogeneous.

Leek Joyowza
I take it you do not nor have ever lived near any larger American (or Canadian) metro areas?
You'd be wrong.
Leek Joyowza
I invite you to visit Queens in particular.
Been there. It's nice. Has plenty of ethnic enclaves. Whites are actually a minority. A shining example of a culturally diverse area. But, everyone is still a New Yorker.

Well, as much as anyone not living in Manhattan is a New Yorker
Leek Joyowza
Sins of the past don't negate the facts of the matter.
What facts?
Leek Joyowza
Though it must be added that slaves and native groups are kind of a different issue than immigration for obvious reasons.
Well, lack of choice, but it just emphasizes the hypocrisy of that myth.

Leek Joyowza
If anything America's troubles and experiences with all this has made it actually far better and more used to the strife related to being a diverse society. When you talk about and confront problems, you make progress. Many European nations lack any of this experience with non-European groups, and it shows.
Well, Europe is an interesting beast because they have been together for so long. Not like the culture started out as "European." You had Vikings and Romans and pagan Gauls and invading Mongol tribes and so on and so forth. Even with 1500 years of them ******** and killing each other there's still cultural division.

Leek Joyowza
Every culture and nation on earth has their form of that verb, Anglization, Sinization. If you are a country or ethnic group, you have a version of that word. Of course its real. It's a basic building block of geo-sociology.
So it's also a co-opted concept for a useless field of academics who need to justify their grant money.

Is there a vague concept of being American? Sure. But to confuse that for some common culture is dumb. We've never had a common culture. We've been fighting each other since this country was founded. Whether Patriot or Loyalist, Federalist or Anti-Federalist, North or South, Black or White or Brown, Rich or Poor, we've been fighting each other. Maybe not always with guns and war, but with words, politics, money, power, whatever we can get our hands on. People complain about a culture war, but the fact is that cultural warfare is the only real thing Americans have in common. We pick values and we try and impose them on others.

Leek Joyowza
I see you buy into the lie that says the "undesirable" newer white ethnic groups were always given some light treatment. No, they were seen much like Hispanics are today, if not worse. Than that changed. As today non-white groups like Hispanics are rapidly changing this.

You fail very badly at History when you discuss it like a thing that has no time and space.
I never said they were given light treatment. Well, at least not southern and eastern European whites. Nativists generally preferred people of English, Scandinavian, German or French descent, and despised the numerous immigrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as Asia and Mexico, which led in turn to the quotas.

But, the Nativists hardly believed that assimilation was possible. They didn't really popularize the idea, and insofar as they co-opted it, it was mostly to argue for restricted access.

Leek Joyowza
Exactly what nation on earth does not have such problems in their history? Feel free to name one.
None to my knowledge. We just happened to let it go on for later than most. I mean, we're one of the big modern examples of institutionalized racism in modern history that, well, didn't involve apartheid or ethnic cleansing. So, y'know, good company.
Quote:
You missed my point. The question reduced the two "given" benefits to food and music, and put everything else up to doubt. This is trivializing.


Where did it put everything up to doubt? Have you been to an ethnic festival? They're usually hosted by those people themselves at religious buildings and include more than simply food and music. The idea with the food and music I think is more to invite people into their home as it were. Just give a casual sense of the culture. It's communal rather than academic. Which lets be honest, is what will really reach most people. Not to mention, rare is the ethnic song that lacks politics and history.

Quote:
This, again, doesn't address my point. The argument was for integration and homogeneity of culture. There are plenty of things that bind people together in a diverse set of cultures. America, as it stands, is hardly homogeneous.


Of course not. But there is a shared sense of nation, not to mention a lingua franca. And some generally observed holidays. As well as a VERY powerful pop culture that people even in other countries are hugely affected by let alone our own different groups. These things lead to some degree of assimilation.
Quote:

Leek Joyowza
I invite you to visit Queens in particular.
Been there. It's nice. Has plenty of ethnic enclaves. Whites are actually a minority. A shining example of a culturally diverse area. But, everyone is still a New Yorker.


Well yes, there is give, there is take. There is harmony (mostly). Something lacking in many of the European countries still trying this immigration thing out.
You can't deny that when an immigrant comes to this country they will be to some degree assimilated, and that in a careful chemical sort of balance that this is not a bad thing. Some degree is what allows the diversity to work.

Quote:
Leek Joyowza
Sins of the past don't negate the facts of the matter.
What facts?


That the US along with Canada and perhaps parts of South America are very impressive for their diaspora post-nation state status. You seemed to be saying it doesn't count because of this or that, as if it doesn't exist.

Quote:
Well, lack of choice, but it just emphasizes the hypocrisy of that myth.


Does it occur to you that the result of all the trifle and mess of our past is no less a diverse country? Do you really think people proud of our post-nation status are ignorant let alone in denial of the past mess on the way toward this?
Quote:

Well, Europe is an interesting beast because they have been together for so long. Not like the culture started out as "European." You had Vikings and Romans and pagan Gauls and invading Mongol tribes and so on and so forth. Even with 1500 years of them ******** and killing each other there's still cultural division.


I would say it's precisely because of those 1500 years that they are so rigidly defined by ethnicity and nation-state.
The New World doesn't have most of that, and what it does have is much weaker. Even now we can watch such resistance to Hispanic Americans ending up on the wrong side of history. In real time no less.
Quote:

So it's also a co-opted concept for a useless field of academics who need to justify their grant money.


Geo-political sociology is useless as a topic? I assure you that's not the case lol.
Just think about what direly dangerous real world things it applies to.
Quote:

Is there a vague concept of being American? Sure. But to confuse that for some common culture is dumb. We've never had a common culture. We've been fighting each other since this country was founded. Whether Patriot or Loyalist, Federalist or Anti-Federalist, North or South, Black or White or Brown, Rich or Poor, we've been fighting each other. Maybe not always with guns and war, but with words, politics, money, power, whatever we can get our hands on. People complain about a culture war, but the fact is that cultural warfare is the only real thing Americans have in common. We pick values and we try and impose them on others.


Welcome to human history I guess? And yet in spite of these endless patterns in their many forms always going on there are unified countries. Unities can fight eachother, what makes them work is when that doesn't destroy them (as we darn well almost did in the 1860's).
Like it or not these struggles are part of the human experience, you shouldn't be bemoaning they exist in some psuedo nihilist manner, you should already have accepted their presence as the thing all society struggles against all the time.
Quote:

I never said they were given light treatment. Well, at least not southern and eastern European whites. Nativists generally preferred people of English, Scandinavian, German or French descent,


Even Germans were seen as undesirable early on. And if those French or Germans were Catholic they were no good either until later.
Quote:

and despised the numerous immigrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as Asia and Mexico, which led in turn to the quotas.

Quote:

But, the Nativists hardly believed that assimilation was possible. They didn't really popularize the idea, and insofar as they co-opted it, it was mostly to argue for restricted access.


So now they own the concept and word and it is ruined forever and has it's meaning changed? I don't follow.

Quote:
None to my knowledge. We just happened to let it go on for later than most.


Going to have to answer that one with a resounding "NO" lol. For starters we haven't even had the time to start competing with most of the world if length is to be spoken of. We're an obscenely young country/concept.
Quote:

I mean, we're one of the big modern examples of institutionalized racism in modern history that, well, didn't involve apartheid or ethnic cleansing.


And I ask you again to name some countries for which this is not true.
Just make sure not to cling to race as your word, as that rarely has much to do with it in the old world.

Jeering Regular

Leek Joyowza
Where did it put everything up to doubt? Have you been to an ethnic festival? They're usually hosted by those people themselves at religious buildings and include more than simply food and music. The idea with the food and music I think is more to invite people into their home as it were. Just give a casual sense of the culture. It's communal rather than academic. Which lets be honest, is what will really reach most people. Not to mention, rare is the ethnic song that lacks politics and history.
Did you read the original post at all? Or any of the discussion? Because I get the feeling you aren't following the point of my comments. The original complaint by the OP included a link to a video put out by a white supremacist who decried the fact that a college student received criticism, some of which was over the top, for questioning the "benefits" of diversity by asking what benefits actually exist, beyond food and music.

This is what I was responding to.

Leek Joyowza
Of course not. But there is a shared sense of nation, not to mention a lingua franca. And some generally observed holidays. As well as a VERY powerful pop culture that people even in other countries are hugely affected by let alone our own different groups. These things lead to some degree of assimilation.
Shared experience is not necessarily assimilation. Assimilation implies that one group is subsumed into the dominant group. Two groups acting within the same system does not imply dominance of one over the other.

Leek Joyowza
That the US along with Canada and perhaps parts of South America are very impressive for their diaspora post-nation state status. You seemed to be saying it doesn't count because of this or that, as if it doesn't exist.
I can tell you're very excited by college and all, but that's no excuse for logorrhoea.

Leek Joyowza
Does it occur to you that the result of all the trifle and mess of our past is no less a diverse country? Do you really think people proud of our post-nation status are ignorant let alone in denial of the past mess on the way toward this?


Leek Joyowza
I would say it's precisely because of those 1500 years that they are so rigidly defined by ethnicity and nation-state.
The New World doesn't have most of that, and what it does have is much weaker. Even now we can watch such resistance to Hispanic Americans ending up on the wrong side of history. In real time no less.
Yes, most of our history has either been killing and ******** natives or fighting old world powers or just each other. Problems of a colonial society.

Leek Joyowza
Geo-political sociology is useless as a topic? I assure you that's not the case lol.
Just think about what direly dangerous real world things it applies to.
OMG U GAIZ
THIS STUF IS RILLY IMPORTUNT K?

Leek Joyowza
Welcome to human history I guess? And yet in spite of these endless patterns in their many forms always going on there are unified countries. Unities can fight eachother, what makes them work is when that doesn't destroy them (as we darn well almost did in the 1860's).
Like it or not these struggles are part of the human experience, you shouldn't be bemoaning they exist in some psuedo nihilist manner, you should already have accepted their presence as the thing all society struggles against all the time.
I'm not bemoaning the reality. Hence why I'm arguing for this reality against a different conception that I consider mired in a false consciousness. If anything, I'm advocating for these struggles, because I see them as more genuine.

Leek Joyowza
Even Germans were seen as undesirable early on. And if those French or Germans were Catholic they were no good either until later.
Early on as in when? Immigrants to the Americas have been a significant group since the seventeenth century, with large spates of immigration being spurred by the 1848 revolution and similar troubles in continental Europe. Anti-German sentiment didn't really set in until the early twentieth century, with the Great War, though there was some association of German immigrants with anarchism before that. Seeing as most of the crap I'm talking about is either earlier or at the same time, you'd have to point out something specific.

Are you referring to the Know Nothings? Because those guys were a drop in the bucket, really. They had hardly any influence, and what political successes they had was mostly do the collapse of the Whig party.

Leek Joyowza
So now they own the concept and word and it is ruined forever and has it's meaning changed? I don't follow.
They who? The Nativists? No, that was why I said they didn't believe in assimilation. No, my point was that the concept was developed by people who created a myth of a unified, dominant American culture. My argument is that no such culture exists.

Leek Joyowza
Going to have to answer that one with a resounding "NO" lol. For starters we haven't even had the time to start competing with most of the world if length is to be spoken of. We're an obscenely young country/concept.
That's a bullshit argument. We didn't spring from the head of Zeus, we were colonies. All of our law and ideas of governance were imported from Europe generally and Britain in particular. Much of the whole War of Independence was based on English citizens securing their liberties under the English Bill of Rights. Saying we're a young country for the fact that we engaged in pretty nasty behavior long after the rest of the Western world decided to knock that s**t off.

Leek Joyowza
And I ask you again to name some countries for which this is not true.
Just make sure not to cling to race as your word, as that rarely has much to do with it in the old world.
Examples of countries that didn't have government mandated racism at the time we ended segregation? Practically every European country? All the major participants in the Holocaust and WWII? Russia, which ******** had serfs up until the mid-nineteenth century and a history of pogroms? I mean, most countries never really had institutionalized ethnic division or suppression of the scale the United States.

Dangerous Genius

4,700 Points
  • Millionaire 200
  • Money Never Sleeps 200
  • Tycoon 200
GunsmithKitten
Camera Stellata
Needless to say, the author of this video and his views are somewhat questionable. Anyone on ED-P fancy a crack at the five benefit challenge though?

I'm always told it enriches us but I'm not sure what that means


How about it ******** humanizes people who don't happen to look like you or like the same things? That's a fairly big one right there.


That's it right there.

It's an attempt to circumvent the evil that we commit due to the principle of Dunbar's number.

Diversity is an attempt to counteract us vs them mentality and make it be just about US, because in the grand scheme that is exactly what we are, a bunch of monkeys sharing space on a giant rock. No one on this planet, no group on this planet deserves or should be entitled to life and resources above another.

The only metric should be what you can do for those around you.
Actually, I can't remember where I read it but somewhere a sociological study exists indicating that diversity is a net negative for a community.

Which obviously is not a very uplifting study.

Shadowy Powerhouse

9,125 Points
  • Invisibility 100
  • Money Never Sleeps 200
  • Super Tipsy 200
Brothern

Hmm. I get it. But I would still definitely call that 'immigration policy' or an issue concerning diversity / equality rather than 'multiculturalism' policy.
But see, "multiculturalism" really only means that more than one culture exists in a place and they are allowed to interact.

Aged Lunatic

Jessi Danger
Actually, I can't remember where I read it but somewhere a sociological study exists indicating that diversity is a net negative for a community.

Which obviously is not a very uplifting study.


So the logical solution is for everyone to just form their own isolated, clan oriented armed camps?
GunsmithKitten
Jessi Danger
Actually, I can't remember where I read it but somewhere a sociological study exists indicating that diversity is a net negative for a community.

Which obviously is not a very uplifting study.


So the logical solution is for everyone to just form their own isolated, clan oriented armed camps?


That is a solution.

Aged Lunatic

Jessi Danger
GunsmithKitten
Jessi Danger
Actually, I can't remember where I read it but somewhere a sociological study exists indicating that diversity is a net negative for a community.

Which obviously is not a very uplifting study.


So the logical solution is for everyone to just form their own isolated, clan oriented armed camps?


That is a solution.


So what's your plan for completely abolishing the current government system and maintaining what is, really, an anarchic state for enough generations to get people to establish their clan holdings?

Oh, and hope your clan has the biggest guns because you got noone else to help you once the next door clan starts expansion efforts...

Shadowy Powerhouse

9,125 Points
  • Invisibility 100
  • Money Never Sleeps 200
  • Super Tipsy 200
That is Afghanistan, is what that is.

Quick Reply

Submit
Manage Your Items
Other Stuff
Get GCash
Offers
Get Items
More Items
Where Everyone Hangs Out
Other Community Areas
Virtual Spaces
Fun Stuff
Gaia's Games
Mini-Games
Play with GCash
Play with Platinum