Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forumMulticulturalism is a sham, says Angela Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy has attracted praise from all over the world. Time magazine and the Financial Times newspaper recently named her Person of the Year, and delegates applauded her for so long at her party's convention on Monday that she had to stop them.
The speech that followed, however, may have surprised supporters of her policies: "Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a life lie, or a sham, she said, before adding that Germany may be reaching its limits in terms of accepting more refugees. "The challenge is immense," she said. "We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably."
Although those remarks may seem uncharacteristic of Merkel, she probably would insist that she was not contradicting herself. In fact, she was only repeating a sentiment she first voiced several years ago when she said multiculturalism in Germany had "utterly failed."
"Of course the tendency had been to say, 'Let's adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other.' But this concept has failed, and failed utterly," she said in 2010.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/12/14/angela-merkel-multiculturalism-is-a-sham/
Truprogressive85
(900 posts)Times Person of the Year !!
Backtracks on the number of refuguees
now saying Multiculturalism is sham white nationalists agree with her
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)Learn one thing from your friends in America; appealing to the rabid right does not appease them, it only makes them want more blood. Your enemies on the right will gladly lock you up with the same people you used as pawns.
earthside
(6,960 posts)Truprogressive85
(900 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)earthside
(6,960 posts)This is a longish article, but well worth the read.
One needs to understand multiculturalism in the context of Europe -- before criticizing Merkel's statement.
And ... there are lessons here for us in the U.S.
i see the same kinds of problems and difficulties arising here because of institutionalized multiculturalism.
The Failure of Multiculturalism
Community Versus Society in Europe
By Kenan Malik
Foreign Affairs - March/April 2015 Issue
Multiculturalism and assimilationism are different policy responses to the same problem: the fracturing of society. And yet both have had the effect of making things worse. Its time, then, to move beyond the increasingly sterile debate between the two approaches. And that requires making three kinds of distinctions.
First, Europe should separate diversity as a lived experience from multiculturalism as a political process. The experience of living in a society made diverse by mass immigration should be welcomed. Attempts to institutionalize such diversity through the formal recognition of cultural differences should be resisted.
Second, Europe should distinguish colorblindness from blindness to racism. The assimilationist resolve to treat everyone equally as citizens, rather than as bearers of specific racial or cultural histories, is valuable. But that does not mean that the state should ignore discrimination against particular groups. Citizenship has no meaning if different classes of citizens are treated differently, whether because of multicultural policies or because of racism.
Finally, Europe should differentiate between peoples and values. Multiculturalists argue that societal diversity erodes the possibility of common values. Similarly, assimilationists suggest that such values are possible only within a more culturallyand, for some, ethnicallyhomogeneous society. Both regard minority communities as homogeneous wholes, attached to a particular set of cultural traits, faiths, beliefs, and values, rather than as constituent parts of a modern democracy.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)I believe in Universal Human Rights, with no exceptions for cultural traditions.
mwrguy
(3,245 posts)Muslims will be the primary victims at first.