[Mb-civic] Multiculturalism's Many Challenges - Frances Stead Sellers - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Multiculturalism's Many Challenges
Britons Rethink Their Approach to Community

By Frances Stead Sellers
Monday, August 22, 2005; Page A17

Just weeks after homegrown Muslim terrorists attacked London, the 
British people affirmed their support for multiculturalism, according to 
a MORI poll for the BBC. It was heartening evidence that Britons have 
overcome the racism of their colonial past and learned to appreciate the 
carnival of color I joined when I took the Tube across central London 
shortly after the bombings.

But multiculturalism means more than better food and brighter festivals. 
It involves the trickier challenge of building community out of 
disparate populations with disparate traditions and disparate beliefs, 
all the while preserving and celebrating those disparities. That's what 
European countries are having a hard time coming to grips with -- and 
understandably so, because multiculturalism swept into Europe before its 
member countries had developed a philosophy to accommodate it. British 
author and psychologist Kenan Malik puts it more starkly. 
"Multiculturalism as lived experience enriches our lives," he has 
written. "But multiculturalism as a political ideology has helped create 
a tribal Britain with no political or moral centre."

Unlike America, where every new immigrant can make America more American 
(as President Bush once argued), and where the founding philosophy and 
civic rituals were designed to create a citizenry out of the masses, 
European countries were established less deliberately -- largely on 
shared traditions, shared languages, shared histories and even shared genes.

Recognizing the resulting deficit in civic ritual and the potential for 
a repeat of the kind of racial unrest that shook northern England four 
years ago, Britain's Labor government has been making a belated effort 
to engender "common values and a sense of belonging." Just 18 months 
ago, Britain held its first naturalization ceremony, in the London 
borough of Brent, publicly marking the moment the foreigner crossed the 
threshold to become a Briton. There, each citizen-in-the-making 
officially pledged "loyalty to the United Kingdom" and to "respect its 
rights and freedoms" as well as to "fulfil my duties and obligations as 
a British citizen."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/21/AR2005082100971.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050822/c2cb0c06/attachment.htm