Multiculturalism

Your idea of "the melting pot" looks a lot like an attempt to force assimilation by neglecting the needs of minority cultures within a nation - even those that have as much claim to be "native" as the majority.It's also interesting that it relies on national boundaries - if Quebec went independent (and the concessions to Quebecois culture seem to have been created to avoid that) the case for describing the situation there as "multiculturalism" collapses. And that's because it isn't really multiculturalism. Promoting a few dominant regional cultures is hardly the same as trying to minimise inadvertent discrimination against minority cultures.I think that this question is one that should be answered. How many proponents of assimilation think that the European settlers in the Americas should have assimilated to the culture of the indigenous peoples ?

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If your culture requires that you stone your daughter if she should dishonour you by being raped then you have to leave that when you flee from the shit hole that your culture has produced.

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If that's the only problem you have with multiculturalism, you don't have a problem with realistic multiculturalism.

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There is a difference between coming as an immigrant and coming as a conqueror.

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It's hardly the case that all settlers came in as conquerors. Nor do I think that conquest is an excuse.

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Your arguments are really bad.

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You'd have to understand them to be in a position to say that.

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Do you mean to say that if minority cultures could create by secession their own governments, we could get away without making concessions?

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Certainly not. I'm saying that giving privileges to one culture, in one region - especially when that culture is dominant - is not really multiculturalism.

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Are you of the belief that immigration should be viewed as an invasion?

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Again this is not a reasonable understanding of anything I said.

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For one, you say European settlers rather than European immigrants - the natives did not have a country that the Europeans could have immigrated into.

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Also, by calling the people indigenous, you imply that their rights are tied to the territory rather than a state.

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I could have said immigrants, of course, without being wrong. And I find the idea that the existence of a formal nation state is necessary rather disturbing. Isn't the fact that these people lived there and these other people moved in from elsewhere sufficient ?

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Multiculturalism, as a political policy, would require a state in which to impose the policies. So the 'European settlers in the Americas' really doesn't have anything to do with the multiculturalism that is the topic of this thread.

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I disagree. If incomers should assimilate then I don't see that the existence of a formal nation state is a necessity.

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Of course it isn't. It is the ideology that polities should be defined on terms of ethnic and cultural identity. The same ideology, I'm afraid, that has the better part of the third world in perpetual civil war.

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You seem to be saying that proper multiculturalism is the solution.

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European settlers did not assimilate with cultures in the 'host land' because they killed half its inhabitants and subdued the rest.

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I asked what they should have done. Do you approve of what they did ?

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Where are modern immigrants failing to assimilate because they are killing off the citizens of the host states?

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Are you suggesting that they should ? Because if you aren't then you are hardly interacting with my question.

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There is simply no common thread.

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Sure there is. How should incomers behave is the common thread. Should they be expected to fully assimilate with the cultures already present in the land or can they stop short of that ?

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You are confused.

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Says the guy who can't even understand the arguments he's trying to trash.

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Nothing except for two cultures is necessary for multiculturalism as simply a thing.

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But we're not talking about multiculturalism as a thing, we're talking about it as a political policy.

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Except you're missing the point. If multiculturalism is good then that is a reason for a policy of multiculturalism.

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Sufficient for what?

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Sufficient to raise the question of whether incomers should assimilate or not. Sufficient to provide some guidance to the correct policy in other situations.

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I don't see the political policy of multiculturalism as being simply stopping short of full assimilation. Isn't it actually having policies that promote maintaining sub-cultures despite the host culture's effects of dwindling them?

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Multiculturalism is not usually about fully supporting all aspects of the incomers cultures. It is more commonly about respecting different cultures and mitigating the tendency to push assimilation on to incomers. And I don't mean any intentional tendency, simply the expected outcome of not making allowances for different cultures.

Why else deny the Jewish origins of Christianity?