Criticism of multiculturalism
[4] In an article in the Hudson Review, Bruce Bawer writes about what he sees as a developing distaste toward the idea and policies of multiculturalism in Europe, especially, as stated earlier, in the Netherlands, Denmark, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Austria and Germany.
[5] Rifts within Australian society, right through history, whether between the continent's Indigenous people and the European settler population or, in recent times, inter-ethnic tension manifest in the form of riots, street violence and ethnic gangs[6] pose major challenges to multiculturalism in the country.
Andrew Robb, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community".
The earliest academic critics of multiculturalism in Australia were the philosophers Lachlan Chipman[11] and Frank Knopfelmacher,[12] sociologist Tanya Birrell[13] and the political scientist Raymond Sestito.
[15][16] It was the high-profile historian Geoffrey Blainey, however, who first achieved mainstream recognition for the anti-multiculturalist cause when he wrote that multiculturalism threatened to transform Australia into a "cluster of tribes".
According to Blainey, such a policy, with its "emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority," was unnecessarily creating division and threatened national cohesion.
[28][29] According to a study conducted by The University of Victoria, many Canadians do not feel a strong sense of belonging in Canada, or cannot integrate themselves into society as a result of ethnic enclaves.
[35] He stresses that multiculturalism works better in theory than in practice and Canadians need to be far more assertive about valuing the "national identity of English-speaking Canada".
[36] The Canadian political elites have showed that overcoming hateful opposition towards immigration and multiculturalism is a possibility with consistent efforts to defend multiculturalist policies.
[36] Criticisms of parallel societies established by some immigrant communities increasingly came to the fore in the German public discourse during the 1990s, giving rise to the concept of the Leitkultur ("lead culture").
In October 2010, amid a nationwide controversy about Thilo Sarrazin's bestselling book Deutschland schafft sich ab ("Germany is abolishing Itself"), chancellor Angela Merkel of the conservative Christian Democratic Union judged attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany to have "failed, utterly failed".
[42] Thus, to reduce populist agendas, there is a growing importance for multicultural policies in addressing the needs of minority groups and immigrants in Germany to improve social cohesion and integration.
Many intellectuals have opposed multiculturalism, including Ida Magli, professor emeritus of cultural anthropology at the University of Rome.
[44] After the September 11 attacks, she returned to the spotlight after writing a series of controversial articles and books critical of Islam and immigration.
Criticisms of multiculturalism have been periodically sparked by the entrenched constitutional position the Malay ethnicity enjoys through, inter alia, the Malaysian social contract.
He sees multiculturalism primarily as an unacceptable ideology of cultural relativism, which would lead to acceptance of barbaric practices, including those brought to the Western World by immigrants.
Cliteur lists infanticide, torture, slavery, oppression of women, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, gangs, female genital cutting, discrimination by immigrants, suttee, and the death penalty.
Cliteur compares multiculturalism to the moral acceptance of Auschwitz, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and the Ku Klux Klan.
With considerable immigration after the Second World War making the UK an increasingly ethnically and racially diverse state, race relations policies have been developed that broadly reflect the principles of multiculturalism, although there is no official national commitment to the concept.
[60] In the wake of the 7 July 2005 London bombings David Davis, the opposition Conservative shadow home secretary, called on the government to scrap its "outdated" policy of multiculturalism.
[63]Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, who has called for an official end to multicultural policy, has criticised "politically correct liberals for their "misguided" pandering to the ethnic lobby".
[65]In the May 2004 edition of Prospect Magazine, the editor David Goodhart temporarily couched the debate on multiculturalism in terms of whether a modern welfare state and a "good society" is sustainable as its citizens become increasingly diverse.
"[67] The Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali was also critical, calling for the Church to regain a prominent position in public life and blaming the "newfangled and insecurely founded doctrine of multiculturalism" for entrenching the segregation of communities.
[citation needed] For instance, Birmingham City Council was heavily criticised when it was alleged to have renamed Christmas as "Winterval" in 1998, although in truth it had done no such thing.
[69][70] In August 2006, the community and local government secretary Ruth Kelly made a speech perceived as signalling the end of multiculturalism as official policy.
The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Italians and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.
A prominent criticism in the US, later echoed in Europe, Canada and Australia, was that multiculturalism undermined national unity, hindered social integration and cultural assimilation, and led to the fragmentation of society into several ethnic factions (Balkanization).
The late Samuel P. Huntington, political scientist and author, known for his Clash of Civilizations theory, described multiculturalism as "basically an anti-Western ideology."
Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study on how diversity affects social trust.
