Against Multiculturalism
Sometimes i wish Peter Lamborn Wilson didn’t sound so right. But looking around at the state of many societys today this essay still rings very true.
The USA was always supposed to be a “melting pot.” Canada, by contrast, calls itself a “mosaic”, which may explain thy Canadians seem to suffer a kind of long-drawn-out and perpetual identity crisis. What does it mean to be “Canadian” as opposed to (or as well as) Quebecois, Celt, or Native?
In the 1950s the USA was supposed to be immune to such headaches. All cultures would “melt” and fuse into the American character, the main stream. In truth, however, this “consensus” culture was simply English colonial culture with amnesia, and a faded patina of frontier bluster.
Immigrant cultures which resisted meltdown were considered simply abnormal; the Irish, for example, were viewed as savage recalcitrants until quite recently. Of course it was hard to tell if certain cultures remained “outside” because they wanted to or because they were excluded. In the 1960s blacks were identified as an unfairly excluded culture, and steps were taken to absorb them into the mainstream (through school integration for example). Native Americans were still excluded by law, which defines them by blood rather than by culture, and maintains “segregation” by the reservation system. Jews, Hispanics, Asians, each followed their own trajectory toward assimilation or resistance.
By the late 1970s or early 1980s it became obvious that the Melting Pot had somehow failed. Black culture, the test case, now appeared impossible to absorb. The “consensus” was in danger. The Right, with its schizophrenic attitudes toward race and culture, had faltered. A new “liberal” consensus was proposed. It was called multiculturalism.
Link: Against Multiculturalism
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