Does multiculturalism work?

Does multiculturalism work?
06:36 UK time, Sunday, 17 October 2010
The German chancellor says her country's attempts to build a multicutural society have "uttery failed". Do you think it's possible for different cultures to live together harmoniously?

Speaking in Potsdam Angela Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds live to side by side without integrating had not worked in Germany.

According to a recent survey, more than 30% of Germans believed that their country was "overrun by foreigners". Mrs Merkel also stressed that immigrants who lived in Germany needed to do more to integrate, including learning to speak German.

What is your reaction to the German chancellor's statement? Should minorities retain their culture? Or should they assimilate? Does multiculturalism have benefits and what are they?
06:36 UK time, Sunday, 17 October 2010
The German chancellor says her country's attempts to build a multicutural society have "uttery failed". Do you think it's possible for different cultures to live together harmoniously?

Speaking in Potsdam Angela Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds live to side by side without integrating had not worked in Germany.

According to a recent survey, more than 30% of Germans believed that their country was "overrun by foreigners". Mrs Merkel also stressed that immigrants who lived in Germany needed to do more to integrate, including learning to speak German.

What is your reaction to the German chancellor's statement? Should minorities retain their culture? Or should they assimilate? Does multiculturalism have benefits and what are they?

We had a big discussion on here when she first made those statements. In Germany, they worked with immigrants to let them basically decide what was best for their integration. Some, like the Spanish, chose to directly integrate and wanted schools that would help their children immerse into society. Others, like the Turkish, wanted separate schools so that they could maintain their religion and culture.

Guess which way worked out?

One more step towards mensa, China. Good man.

Yeah his fav color is white.

Carry on living the stereotype Germans.


Anyway, does multiculturalism work? It's indistinguishable from 'the melting pot'. I don't get what people fuss and freak out about. Look at any culture, and people will hold onto their roots. They will tell you where their families came from. First generation immigrants won't integrate well, and future generations will begin to blend in more and more. All this hand wringing about it is stupid.

Yah,buttt: People in Florida which has a huge Cuban poplulation, are not forbidden by law to put up English signs.

In order to have a melting pot, you have to let it melt. We don't. We asskiss and suck up to every lonely foreigner who thinks his/her rights are being trampled. ----- as they probably would be if they stayed from whence they came.

just sayin.

Read the tag line....

People often keep a bit of their old cultures when they come to Canada, so, there is a huge diversity of culture in this country. And, a huge tolerance.... there is racism, but, much less so than in most other countries.
The disadvantage is that there is not, as yet, as single unifying Canadian culture. We define ourselves more by what we aren't (especially Americans ( pretty soon Chinese hahaha )!), than by what we are. We are definitely different, but, in ways hard to articulate.

Multiculturalism failed in Germany because the Germans didn't really try it, they let immigrant communities like the Turks Niflmir mentioned ghettoize themselves and made no serious effort to integrate them. The Netherlands has the same issue with a community of Moroccans, according to a friend of mine there, as fundamentalist Muslims they consider themselves superior to the very liberal and irreligious Dutch and take pride in not integrating.

Multiculturalism failed everywhere DS ,you can`t plant oranges in Alaska .Well I guess you can , in a green house but then you have to take care of them , seven days a week .

Written by a Canadian ( not me (china))

I'm from Canada where multiculturalism has really been pushed for the last 40 years. It works to a great degree because you have some of the biggest enemies from different parts of the world mixing with one another and here they get along fine, most of them leaving their gripes behind. Opportunities for cuisine from all over the over the world are right in your face.

The only downside I heard mentioned by some writers is that we are indeed a cultural mosaic but we should note while the pieces of rock and glass in a mosaic are quite close and make a pretty image, they never really touch one another. In many ways we have lost the identity of what a real Canadian is other than a Frenchman spitting on a stove in his log cabin boiling maple syrup or a mountie dressed in a red tunic mainly used for parades and funerals, kissing his horse and singing, "Rose Marie".

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written by an Australian ........

Alicia - from Melbourne,

I love different cultures but I love them in their own countries, where I can go and experience them if I wish to! Australia's happy go lucky way of life will change if we continue to encourage multiculturalism! Many cultures do integrate well into mainstream Australia, but the small percentage that don't are the ones that will change our great nation for the worse! Our christian values are what make our country so great, so why introduce cultures that believe in the complete opposite? Trouble??
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Multiculturalism doesn't work, no matter what ethnic group are involved; it's not the fault of the ethnic groups but multiculturalism that multiculturalism doesn't work.

Therefore, the Nanny/Police State (1971 ( ****en Trudeau) is gonna force it on you, because many people are still resisting it, like they resist other forms of state control that are based in unrealistic suppositions

Multiculturalism, or multi-ethnic-ism, is an excuse for importing people from other nations.
Industry loves it because it gives them cheap labor and new customers to buy all the products required to start up homes. Also, these people have no cultural prohibitions on buying certain things that were previously unsalable.
Liberal politicians love it because it gives them an easy-to-pander-to, instant voting base.
Under confident, depressed, underachieving, disillusioned, self-pitying, low-self-esteem individuals love it because it gives them a way to take revenge on the demographic majority, who are perceived as thriving in a situation which these under confident people are not thriving in.
This is the intersection of groups that want multiculturalism.

To everyone else, especially those who read history, it makes sense to have a nation of people pulling in roughly the same direction:
Values systems.
Culture.
Heritage.
IQ, ability and wealth.

That's how you get a stable society. People who are upset with our current society, or upset at themselves, or simply jockeying for power, are willing to sacrifice a stable society for their own needs.

That is why multiculturalism is the new taboo, and criticism of it is "bad" in the same way Satan, Stalin and nerve gas are "bad."

Of course, history shows us that we're not the first civilization to go this way. The Greeks observed how once a nation became a trading mecca and had naval power, it inevitably began to include a motley group, and eventually collapsed.

History does repeat its self ........even in Canada.
Do `Canadians` even care ......majority too ****en shallow .

Trouble? Values? Integration??

If it didnt work Canada wouldnt exist. We were "multicultural" from the get go.

There is only one way to deal with these people. The only way to keep them in line is treat them with respect and invite them into your circle of friends and when they melt into the community then their uniqueness becomes less noticeable.
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My problem with multiculturism in Canada is it is inextricably linked to the denigration of the roots of Western Civilization... especially Christianity... but further, the entire Greco Roman European civilizing impulse.. which has now been deemed to be a despoiler of the 'pristine' primitive cultures and environments. It is further deemed 'homophobic' and 'anti-feminist'.. the great iconic idols of our age.

In Canada it means in official government policy there is NO culture worth protecting.. and in fact its origins are criminal and predatious. It means the efforts of the government and media are to extol the purity and superiority of other cultures while disparaging its own

It has created and antagonistic view of Canada's young people with its history.. and worked to subvert the integration of immigrants into the Canadian cultural mosaic.

Christianity is not among the roots of western civilization, it's been one of the greatest impediments to civilization imaginable. We'd be much further ahead now if Christianity hadn't fought the development of science at every turn.

It most certainly is Dex.

That is right. Christianity is at the heart of the industrial revolution, the destruction of the Earth through exploitation, the remaking of Earth in the image of Man.

Yep- We all should have become Muslims. No Atheists left after that.

I like the Scandinavian, British, and Germanic gods - Thor, Woden, Tyr, et alia. They don't make Western gods as they used to.
Pffft to the Greek and Roman gods!

I wonder why discussions of multiculturalism always seem to focus on the macro when discussing the benefits and drawbacks. My workplace is multi-cultural, and we deal with customers around the world, very well. In fact the multicultural environment is a huge benefit. There are 38 employees at my work site. Of those, there are 6 from the UK (4 English, 1 Welsh, 1 Scot), 3 Columbians, 2 Germans, 1 Mexican, 1 Spaniard, 1 Sri Lankan, 1 Belizian, 1 Kiwi, and 1 Kenyan. Nearly half. There is plenty of evidence in the business world that supports multi-cultural workplaces.

So then the question is, why are the policies that create highly functioning workplaces not adopted in larger societal settings? Is it possible? Is there something about democracy perhaps that makes it more difficult? What about shared accountability?

For those that say it doesn't work, I'd challenge them to give alternative theories as to why it works in workplaces like my own, but cannot outside our walls.

From the Pharaohs to the Greeks to the Romans. There hasn't been a break. Islam filled the gap. When Islam went squirrelly against science, Christianity picked up the ball and ran with it.

I've worked in multicultural and multi-ethnic environments all my life. Personally, I benefited from them all. However, I have, on occasion, found the British tiresome.

Multicultural Story #1
While sitting at an airport (aerodrome for the culturally aged), I struck up a conversation with a pleasant blue-haired lady.
When I introduced myself, she asked, "What kind of name is that?"
"Polysyllabic," I replied.
"Have you ever been back to Polysyllabia?" she enquired.
"Couldn't get a visa," I answered.
"Just like them!" she snorted.

Conjecture #1
The multicultural and multi-ethnic Pacific island nation of Palau's population is 1.9% "white". Few would argue that a full 2% would have negative consequences. However, arguing from the specific to the general is problematic. Few will forget the expulsion of ethnic Germans from the Polish province of Posen at the end of the Second World War. None would suggest that for Canada...

Poznan is a city not a province .The Germans didn't immigrate to the Polish city , the invaded it .

Poznań is a city located in the mid-west of Poland on the Warta river, 180 km from the German border, halfway between Berlin and Warsaw. It is one of the oldest and largest Polish cities, the capital of Wielkopolska Province. Poznań is the fifth most populated city in Poland (with its 600.000 residents) and seventh in terms of area.
Origins

Poznań residents are said to be frugal, hard-working and well-organized. These attributes must have manifested themselves equally strong in their ancestors as they were the ones to establish the Polish state here a millennium ago. Poznań is known as the birthplace of Poland and Wielkopolska (the Greater Poland, Polonia Major) is the area where the Polish state first emerged.

At the turn of the 8th century a fortified settlement was established in Ostrów Tumski (the Cathedral Island). By the 10th century the settlement grew to become one of the main centers of the Piast dynasty state. This is where Poland was formed by being incorporated into the Christian Europe in 966 when Bishop Jordan baptised duke Mieszko, Poland’s first ruler from the Piasts. Mieszko built a mighty stronghold on the island, the largest and most modern of the time with the first Polish cathedral within its ramparts, and founded the first bishopric in 968. Through time, the settlement has grown to be legally established as a town in 1253 when it became the residence of the king Przemysł II, granting Poznań town privileges.


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No, I don't believe so. Western civilization made very little progress until the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and much of its history over the last 400 years can be understood in terms of Christianity retreating from making claims about the nature of the world in the face of the scientific revolution. The church had to lose its secular power before real progress was possible, it has been reactionary and retrograde and convinced of its own rightness through it all, and it still is. Just consider what western civilization's core values really are, like the value of the individual, civil and human rights like freedom of speech and assembly and belief, its democratic ideals, the progress of science and technology, and so on. You will find those nowhere in any Christian doctrine, you will find instead their opposites, that you should be satisfied with not understanding the world, that faith is superior to knowledge, that there are things you must not say, or even think, on pain of eternal torment, and all the rest of that BS. Western civilization's values are not Christian values.

My dear Prussian Pole, for your study...
Province of Posen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's an even worse option, as you know perfectly well, and a false dichotomy, and I'm sure you know that too.

For my study.....? HAHAHAAH .I have bin in Poznan few times ( Stayed in a Kopernik hotel) and have studied its history very extensively in Poland .

European tribalism dies hard even among those who found refuge in multicultural Canada.

obviously you didn't retain anything. You are the epitome of the stereotypical "dumb fu cking Polack". It really is unbelievable sometimes.

Gees. That's jaded.