Multiculturalism is something stronger than a mere appreciation of different cultures. ‘Isms usually mean ideologies, and multiculturalism is no exception. If you’re a multiculturalist, you think that institutions and political communities should have some sort of official sponsorship of the values and practices of other cultures, especially cultures that have minority representation or which have at some time in history been treated badly.
The problem with multiculturalism is that it’s a self-defeating ideology. Here’s why. If you take stock of the things you value, you’ll see that there are some which you consider to be universal values and some which you consider to be personal or local values. For example, you might have the belief that it’s proper to wear a tuxedo when you get married. But you’d be silly to think that any man getting married anywhere should wear a tux at his wedding. It’s a local value; you think it only applies to a certain culture, for example modern Western culture. (That’s probably too broad; I actually don’t know what’s the proper dress for grooms in Denmark or Austria. But you get the idea.) By contrast, your belief that people who are governed should have some say in how they are governed is a universal value. You think it applies everywhere there are people governed, regardless of the current authoritarian practices or beliefs of some community.
Now look at multiculturalism. We can suppose that there are local and universal varieties of multiculturalism. A local variety would hold that one’s own community should be multicultural; a universal variety would hold that all communities should be multicultural. The problem with universal multiculturalism is easier to see than the problem with local multiculturalism, so I’ll start with it. Universal multiculturalism, if implemented, would become uni-culturalism. The culture of every community would just be to affirm the culture of every other community. Soon we’d have nothing to affirm except copies of ourselves. We’d all look reverently on a past that included many cultures, maybe promote the study of culture as a historical phenomenon. But we’d no longer have a plurality of real, live cultures to affirm. So as good multiculturalists we shouldn’t want universal multiculturalism.
The problem with local multiculturalism is that it doesn’t extend to one’s own culture the same reverence it does to others’. If I’m a multiculturalist I want all those primitive tribes in Africa and South America to be able to go on doing their thing without interference from the outside world. I want all the strange, local customs to endure all over the world. I don’t want them to be obliterated by the ominous evangelism of American missionaries, American pop culture, and American foodstuffs. I want cultures to go on being cultures. But I don’t want this for my own culture. My adoption of multiculturalism has forced me to look at culture, all cultures, including my own culture, from the outside looking in. But you can’t inhabit a culture if you’re looking from the outside. And there’s no culture to inhabit if everyone’s looking from the outside. So as good multiculturalists we shouldn’t want local multiculturalism, either. But this means that multiculturalism entails anti-multiculturalism, which is a contradiction.
The motivation for multiculturalism is to avoid the sort of cruelty that is born of ignorance. “You’re not like us, so we don’t have to treat you with the same respect with which we treat ourselves.” And cruelty born of ignorance is very good to avoid. So the thought is that if we could get everyone to just play down their membership in their own cultures and be more knowledgable about and affirming of other cultures, we’d be better to one another. One way this is done in practice is to teach children about all the bad things their own culture has done, and all the good things about other cultures. So for example it’s very popular to subvert inspiring narratives about revered leaders. But this is a sort of cruelty too. A cruelty born, maybe not out of ignorance, but out of fear. It’s cruel to the culture which instilled in you the liberal values that have allowed you to appreciate other cultures, and it’s cruel to those young people who won’t have the chance to inhabit authentically any culture.
The best way to really value the wonderful diversity of cultures is to sustain your own.
I have a hard time following the line of argument in this post without some clear idea of how you’re using/defining “multiculturalism”.
That’s my criticism of this post, too. Obviously I give a sort-of definition in the first paragraph, but apparently like you I don’t find that clear enough. Multiculturalism as I’ve experienced it in several institutions (mostly universities but elsewhere too) includes a kind of negative attitude against many aspects of western culture, an emphasis on the bad things about western culture and history, and a disproportionate emphasis on the good things about other cultures. This attitude might express itself informally as a kind of assumption governing the way peers interact with one another (what is and isn’t okay to criticise or make fun of or insult), or formally in the way hiring is done, the way an institution markets itself, and (in the case of a university) the kinds of lectures and performances that are sponsored by the institution. All of this is vague, I know.
Closer to home, my students enter college thinking that European white men (especially the dead ones) have nothing worthwhile to teach them, despite not really knowing what European white men have to say. Whatever multiculturalism is, I think this attitude of my students is a product of it. They’ve been taught either that there is no wisdom to be found (because everything is subjective) or that wisdom is to be found outside of one’s own culture.
I just discovered that there’s a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for multiculturalism. I’ll read and report if I gain any clarity!