Multiculturalism, Identity, Britishness

Multiculturalism

• Multiculturalism is a word that provokes strong feelings. It raises questions:

• about the claims of indigenous peoples who are minorities within the wider community;

• about the rights and obligations of immigrants to a host society;

• about the extent to which cultural variety should be tolerated (or promoted) within a society;

• about the importance of ideas of citizenship and national identity

• more particular questions: • about government policy dealing with issues

ranging from education to the composition of the armed services

• Some proponents of multiculturalism call not simply for toleration of difference or affirmative action to improve the lot of disadvantaged minorities, but for encouraging the development of difference .

• The liberal understanding of toleration is too weak, it is held, because it tends to assume a certain homogeneity in the population, and looks to assimilate differences

• The important thing, however, the argument goes, is to allow individuals to express and defend their identities which are rooted in their difference (Young, 1 990) .

• others see this not as a solution to the problem of coexistence among diverse ways of life but as a recipe for cultural conflict

• In multicultural societies diversity is a fact of life . The important question is: what sorts of attitudes and policies should we adopt towards such cultural diversity?

• Should we celebrate, protect, and encourage it?

• Our political morality and our conceptions of the good are connected in this way: we need resources, liberties, and opportunities to pursue our conceptions of the good. We also need to sustain and develop our capacities for recognising, choosing, and living in accordance with correct values, and our political morality has a major contribution to make in helping or hindering us in the development of these capacities

• So our political morality must include a theory of justice that dictates how social resources are to be distributed. Each person is to have a fair share of resources. Our political morality must also embody just decision-procedures for determining the policies, and shaping the institutions, that are to regulate our economic and social life. So, in broad terms, we know the scope of part of our political morality. The substance of our political morality is a matter of the most fundamental dispute in political philosophy

Cultural Assimilation

• The policy of cultural assimilation requires that minority cultural groups give up that which they regard as crucial to their sense of identity and well-being. Those who refuse to be assimilated will be marginalised and turned into second-class citizens . Many of those who accept assimilation will still be faced with the prospect of a bitter struggle as they seek to internalise the values and adopt the way of life needed for success in a homogeneous society. They will try to alienate themselves from their previous culture around which so much of their former lives revolve

• Friends and relatives, who are unable or unwilling to join the bandwagon, will be renounced: their speech, their dress, their customs and beliefs, and sometimes even shared physical attributes, will be objects of shame and scorn. The young will have to be indoctrinated into the dominant culture . But in the end there will be enough resistance and non-conformity for the process of assimilation to fail without recourse to substantial force, and perhaps even despotic measures

• There is of course a place and a need for some assimilation. There is a unitary political culture which defines the framework within which diverse ways of life may flourish. Immigrant groups will have to acknowledge the shared political morality and live in accordance with it. The liberal political morality gives them the freedom to criticise that political morality itself, and to participate in reshaping it.

• But they have to do so by conforming to the relevant decision-procedures. Many migrants come from less tolerant societies , and will no doubt welcome this new tolerance. But they too have to pay a price for it.

• Toleration does not exempt their way of life, their culture, from open criticism and repudiation by others . So there will be some unavoidable pain to them in the process of political assimilation. But political assimilation is all the assimilation to which they should be subjected. Many critics of multiculturalism in Australia attack some migrants, especially Asian migrants, for not accepting the Australian way of life, for rejecting the Australian identity. These critics assume that a policy of comprehensive assimilation is correct

Cultural Fusion

• The other route to a homogeneous society is by bringing about a new, common culture out of the diverse elements of existing cultures. It may be that over a long period of time a common culture will emerge through the blending of different cultures as they interact with one another in a free and open society. However, the more likely result is that each culture will change through interaction, but there will still be several different cultures, and not a single culture shared by all.

Which are the consequences?

• If we try to create a common culture by artificial means, we will only succeed in producing something bland and lacking vitality. An artificially created cosmopolitan culture will very likely wipe out all those differences which give strength to particular cultures, and which are the objects of deep commitments.

The British Citizenship Question

• Defining British identity has long been the subject of much debate. Questions such as what does it mean to be British? Which values does Britishness enshrine? Is the English language an integral part of our national identity? Invariably generate strong views and lengthy academic discussions; but few satisfying answers

Professor Sir Bernard Crick, former Chair of the government’s Advisory Board onNaturalisation and Integration (ABNI) and the acknowledged architect of British

nationality and citizenship policy

• Britishness is, to me, an overarching political and legal concept: it signifies allegiance to the laws, government and broad moral and political concepts – like tolerance and freedom of expression – that hold the United Kingdom together. But there is no overall British culture, only a sharing of cultures. Britishness is a strong concept, but narrower than many suppose. Do we not speak of and recognise at once English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh novels, plays and poems? And whatever Fifa [International Federation of Association Football] may think, we see nothing odd in fielding four national football teams. And we recognise an immigrant literature in English, though even the authors sometimes find it hard to name (Crick 2004)

In 2006, as part of his ‘Our Nation’s Future’ lecture series,Prime Minister Blair firmly placed the English language at the very heart of Britain’s

national identity

• We should share a common language. Equal opportunity for all groups requires that they be conversant in that common language. It is a matter both of cohesion and of justice that we should set the use of English as a condition of citizenship. In addition, for those who wish to take up residence permanently in the UK, we will include a requirement to pass an English test before such permanent residency is granted (Blair 2006)

• British citizens come in all shapes, ages, genders and colours; they belong to various social strata and economic backgrounds; speak hundreds of different languages and self-ascribe to a wide spectrum of cultural and political traditions, faiths and religious beliefs. Yet, although powerful the forces that pull these individuals apart may be, they all share an even stronger communal bond that brings them together as one British nation. British citizens, Parekh points out, are not only private individuals, but ‘members of particular religions, ethnic and cultural communities, which are comparatively stable as well as open and fluid. Britain is both a community of citizens and a community of communities’ (Runnymede Trust 2000, ix).

• Whether private or public, minority ethnic or mainstream, monolingual or multilingual, the notion of identity is essentially defined as ‘self-ascription’ to a particular group. In other words, our sense of identity ultimately depends on the meanings attached to it by us and those around us. Perceptions are indeed a fundamental factor in determining how individuals view themselves, how, in turn, they view others, and how others eventually look upon them. A second-generation English-speaking Bangladeshi child brought up in the East End of London, for example, may see themselves as being wholly British; however it is unlikely that the rest of the indigenous white British population may regard them as being ‘one of them’.

• The accelerated transformation of Britain into a multiethnic society, in the second half of the twentieth century, has seen the intensification of the trend to reassert the status quo enjoyed by the country’s dominant white citizenry.

• Mass media’s nationalistic prose accompanied derogative depictions of minority ethnic communities and faith groups. Pandering to deep-seated fears of cultural and linguistic fragmentation, unfavourable images of non-white British citizens have strengthened the already growing social divide between ‘us’ – the UK’s white indigenous population – and ‘them’ – the non-white newcomers. Negative images, stereotypical and pejorative public representations of minority ethnic groups are known to contribute to a sense of alienation and low self-esteem among members of these communities

• Unedifying treatment by the British media of some of the country’s minority ethnic communities has time and again contributed to marginalise these vulnerable groups further. During the 1980s, for example, as urban riots erupted in various towns and cities across England, the Afro-Caribbean community was singled out as the underlying source of conflict. Coverage of the so-called ‘race riots’ was characterised by sensationalist headlines such as ‘Violence on England’s Streets’, ‘Liverpool: the Threat of Disaster’ and ‘Brixton could become like a Harlem, Police Chief says’, which undoubtedly played a part in exacerbating already strained community

• Over two decades later, the public spotlight turned to the refugee and asylum-seeking community. In 2002, a well-publicised wave of asylum seekers crossing the Channel Tunnel from a French refugee camp based near Calais triggered a media frenzy with nationalistic overtones. At the time, broadcast comments by David Blunkett, Home Secretary, regarding refugee children ‘swamping’ Britain’s schools were universally criticised for stigmatising this exiled community.32 In 2006, it was the British Muslim community which came under scrutiny, after the publication of a series of controversial Dutch cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked international protests by Muslim groups

• Most recently, BBC’s Channel Four became embroiled in an extraordinary controversy over the airing of its reality television show Celebrity Big Brother’s latest series. On this occasion, the seemingly racist bullying of an Indian contestant at the hands of three white British participants was allowed to go unchecked. The broadcasting, which was overwhelmingly deemed offensive and damaging to Britain’s credentials as a tolerant, multicultural society, attracted an unprecedented over 44,500 complaints from the public and triggered an investigation from the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom

• Among members of the British nation, it is perhaps the second-generation UK-born immigrants that best exemplify the complexities of constructing a modern British identity. Tensions created by the inherently multiethnic nature of British society today pose fundamental challenges to these second generation migrant-citizens, who must affirm their unique dual identity within an English-speaking environment. For young members of minority ethnic groups, such struggles begin earlier in life

• At home, their parents will typically display a strong sense of ethnic identity, including use of mothertongue and often strict observance of their cultural traditions and religious practices – frequently advocating gender differentials. At school, minority ethnic children will instead be taught in the English language, immersed in the Anglo-Saxon culture and expected to conform to the Euro-centric, liberal values of British society. Faced with fundamental conflicts between home and school, their community’s non-western outlook and that of the wider western society, their own expectations and those of their parents; these youngsters’ attitudes towards their dual identity invariably differ from that of their forebears.

• Consider, for instance, the Chinese child who discovers that the language of their parents is neither understood nor appreciated by their fellow classmates; or the Indian youngster who is constantly bombarded by mainstream television, advertising and mass media with the message that all successful, powerful and beautiful people are white. From these children’s perspectives, becoming adults in a society that devalues their minority status increasingly makes them question who they are and who they would like to be

• The present dominance of the English language is primarily the result of two factors. On the one hand, the expansionism of the British Empire towards the end of the nineteenth century effectively put this language on the international map, bringing English into the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean, South East Asia, the South Pacific and Colonial Africa.36 On the other hand, the emergence of the United States as the leading economic and political power of the twentieth century further catapulted the English language into a global dimension. While the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism consolidated the cultural predominance of the United States; subsequent geopolitical developments, together with the unprecedented technological explosion of the Us led Internet, have ultimately cemented the now unchallenged supremacy of English as ‘the’ universal language

• The transformation of English into a global linguistic phenomenon has contributed to heighten the value attached to this tongue as a key feature of British national identity. It has also ensured that when in contact with other languages, English invariably acquires a premium value. This reality is reflected in the overwhelming emphasis on ‘English language teaching’ that the educational policies of successive UK governments have consistently advocated over time