Multiculturalism in the West

[lazuli]

Do you believe in multiculturalism? Racial diversity? Egalitarianism? Identity politics and gender theory? Where does it end? Do Western nations need to be demographically fractured and have their homogeneity destroyed? Do Western nations not deserve to keep their cultures and their traditions and their ethnic peoples?

radixjournal.com/altright-archive/altright-archive/main/blogs/untimely-observations/inclusiveness-and-catholicism?rq=catholic

Do you not think that perhaps this has all gone too far? Why does the Church not speak out against the erosion of the West through demographic and social engineering?

 

[Nelka]

Multiculturalism is destroying England.

Different races and nationalities that want to be a part of our nation is different, bringing their own cultures whilst ignoring ours is bad.

 

[lazuli]

Multiculturalism is destroying England.

Different races and nationalities that want to be a part of our nation is different, bringing their own cultures whilst ignoring ours is bad.

I completely agree, but when people come from other countries constantly and in such huge numbers there is no time or any real incentive for integration. Some people now even consider terms like integration or assimilation racist whilst our country automatically and naturally segregates itself along racial and cultural lines. It’s absurd.

I recently heard some UK bishops condemned calls for ends to mass immigration (an attack on UKIP). It blows my mind how they could support this idea.

I’m reminded of this quotation from Charles de Gaulle

“It’s a very good thing that there are yellow French people, black French people and brown French people. It’s a sign that France is open to all races and that it has a universal vocation. But on condition they stay a minority. If not, France wouldn’t be France anymore. After all, we are an European people from white race, Greek and Latin culture, and Christian religion. Try to mix oil and vinegar together. Shake the bottle. After a while, they get separated again. The Arabs are the Arabs, the French are the French. Do you believe that the French nation is able to integrate ten million Muslims who shall be twenty million tomorrow and forty million the day after? If we integrated them, if all the Arabs and Berbers were considered French, how could we prevent them from moving to our home country where the standard of living is so much higher? My village wouldn’t be named Colombey-les-Deux-Églises (Colombey of the Two Churches) anymore, but Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées (Colombey of the Two Mosques)!”

 

[decatholic]

Do you believe in multiculturalism? Racial diversity? Egalitarianism? Identity politics and gender theory? Where does it end? Do Western nations need to be demographically fractured and have their homogeneity destroyed? Do Western nations not deserve to keep their cultures and their traditions and their ethnic peoples?

radixjournal.com/altright-archive/altright-archive/main/blogs/untimely-observations/inclusiveness-and-catholicism?rq=catholic

Do you not think that perhaps this has all gone too far? Why does the Church not speak out against the erosion of the West through demographic and social engineering?

My mind is spinning. Too much for me to comment on. One question at a time please.

 

[ServusHumilis]

I have nothing against other cultures though I’d prefer we didn’t dump our own culture to accommodate them. I can also add that in my lifetime I’ve seen how the city I grew up in has changed. It’s become a playground for the world’s rich and those who have lived here for generations have been sold out by the government and left behind. I hate to say it but I imagine properties, taxes, gas, food and everything else will be even more astronomically unaffordable in another 10 or 20 years time.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think we need to recognize that there are many on this planet who hate the west and everything it stands for. And that includes a significant number of westerners on the left.

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

So blood ties, including extended blood ties and communal ties generally, are entirely legitimate. It’s wrong to ignore them. Saint Thomas also notes that after duties toward God, we owe most to those to whom we are most closely connected, notably including parents and other blood relatives. See Summa Theologica, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 26, Articles 6-8.

So the Church recognizes that it’s right to have a preferential option for your own people. In other words, it accepts that some degree of discrimination based on ties like blood and culture is normal and good.

Therefore, white nationalism? Let’s put all of our cards on the table here.

So the kind of discrimination the Church opposes is very different from the kind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids.

So the Church supports segregation, then? Or just turns a blind eye? The Church opposes equal pay for equal work? Or simply doesn’t care? Maybe you’re all just reading a different Civil Rights Act of 1964, because that’s what my version happens to cover.

 

[lazuli]

Therefore, white nationalism? Let’s put all of our cards on the table here.

That’s probably going to be one of the ideologies that gains prominence in the current climate, yes, as people aren’t represented by any current parties they will only find representation at the fringe. It’s one of the many unfortunate consequences of mass immigration and multiculturalism. I don’t subscribe to those ideas myself, although no doubt many would still consider my views extreme, but we live in a very strange age. It’s a shame that when a white man speaks of feeling kinship with his own people and culture that things such as white nationalism are immediately brought to mind, amongst other things.

 

[lazuli]

So the kind of discrimination the Church opposes is very different from the kind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids.

So the Church supports segregation, then? Or just turns a blind eye? The Church opposes equal pay for equal work? Or simply doesn’t care? Maybe you’re all just reading a different Civil Rights Act of 1964, because that’s what my version happens to cover.

The quote you pulled about the Church and discrimination points out that the Church acknowledges the differences between people and cultures. It contrasts this with the Civil Rights acts which forbids anyone to act on these distinctions. And not everyone would agree with you that it is right that someone should not be able to discriminate. If I were an employer, for instance, I’d certainly be taking into account what a woman might be capable of if the work was extremely physical, or if she might leave the company for maternity leave and then send the bill to my business. As for equal pay for equal work, I’m pretty sure there has been legislation in place to enforce that for a long time in many countries, and in any case, if the work is truly equal then yes, the pay should reflect that.

This whole thing encompasses so many other things, it’s not really a simple debate and could go on off on many tangents. As another commenter said I asked many questions in the OP, I guess that just reflects how tied together all of these things are, and trying to separate what is reasonable from what is not is probably not an easy task, especially on such a heated topic.

Here are some Catholic source on multi-culturalism, specifically, because I recognise that a magazine like Radix can be polarising.

thecatholicthing.org/columns/2014/on-multiculturalism.html

crisismagazine.com/2011/is-multiculturalism-evil

 

[Hobbes42]

That’s probably going to be one of the ideologies that gains prominence in the current climate, yes, as people aren’t represented by any current parties they will only find representation at the fringe. It’s one of the many unfortunate consequences of mass immigration and multiculturalism. I don’t subscribe to those ideas myself, although no doubt many would still consider my views extreme, but we live in a very strange age. It’s a shame that when a white man speaks of feeling kinship with his own people and culture that things such as white nationalism are immediately brought to mind, amongst other things.

It might be because of the prevalence of Svoboda, Golden Dawn, National Front and Marie LaPen, UKIP.

There is a massive difference between loving one’s own culture and being flat out xenophobic.

And as to the Church, guess what? the Church teaches that man has the right to migrate. Christ tells us that we are to serve Him in the stranger.

Our age isn’t any more strange than the last one (just different). Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

 

[Ridgerunner]

That’s probably going to be one of the ideologies that gains prominence in the current climate, yes, as people aren’t represented by any current parties they will only find representation at the fringe. It’s one of the many unfortunate consequences of mass immigration and multiculturalism. I don’t subscribe to those ideas myself, although no doubt many would still consider my views extreme, but we live in a very strange age. It’s a shame that when a white man speaks of feeling kinship with his own people and culture that things such as white nationalism are immediately brought to mind, amongst other things.

But not only white people respect western values and culture, and some white people don’t. I don’t know every Filipino on earth, but that is an Asian people who, as near as I can tell, reveres western culture and learning. I know some Vietnamese “boat people” who definitely revere western culture. On the other hand, Bill Ayers is very much a white man. Lenin and Stalin were both white men.

 

[otjm]

I suspect that Charles is spinning in his grave. I have never been to France, but I certainly have read enough and talked to enough people to know that at least some Frenchmen are, for lack of a better term, tending toward xenophobic. Talk with any French speaking Canadian who has been to France and ask them how they were treated. From what I have been told, rude doesn’t begin to describe the treatment.

That, and the very significant population of Muslims and the problems France has had with that area must be adding fuel to his spinning.

I find anyone who thinks that white Americans are homogenous to be so naïve as to almost preclude any intelligent conversation. It belies current actions and attitudes, and shows an abysmal ignorance of the history of the US.

As each wave of immigrants came in, those who were here tended to treat the new arrivals with, at a minimum, distrust. It was not for no reason that enclaves were formed. Italians stayed in Italian areas, Irish in Irish areas, Germans, Poles, & etc. & etc. Much, but certainly not all of that has dissipated. Out here in the Portland area I can tell you where you may find a significant number, for example, of Russians. Part of that is language, but only a part of that.

And the discrimination is not specifically all Italians, as opposed to all Germans; the Church particularly on the East Coast has had parishes which were almost entirely ethnically based. Urban changes to Portland have pretty much dissolved at least one ethnically Italian parish; but we certainly have an ethnically Polish parish (and great pirogues during the Polish festival).

 

[lazuli]

It might be because of the prevalence of Svoboda, Golden Dawn, National Front and Marie LaPen, UKIP.

There is a massive difference between loving one’s own culture and being flat out xenophobic.

And as to the Church, guess what? the Church teaches that man has the right to migrate…

I do not think many people advocate an absolute ban on immigration. Migration benefits countries, and migrants of course, greatly when it is not out of proportion. The opposition is quite obviously to mass immigration.

 

[lazuli]

But not only white people respect western values and culture, and some white people don’t. I don’t know every Filipino on earth, but that is an Asian people who, as near as I can tell, reveres western culture and learning. I know some Vietnamese “boat people” who definitely revere western culture. On the other hand, Bill Ayers is very much a white man. Lenin and Stalin were both white men.

That’s true, of course, but are they to be the torch bearers for our civilisations? As for Lenin and Stalin, they were Russian. They may be white, but white isn’t exactly a technical term is it. A Russian is not a Pole, a Frenchman not an Englishman etc we may look more similar to each other than say a European to a Sub Saharan African, but there are still differences, differences that can be celebrated, or denounced, differences that can mesh with other ethnicities, and differences that can divide us. As another commenter noted, America has never been homogenous, made up largely of people from European countries, and has had its own share of ethnic clashes from the start, and from people who outwardly look quite similar too.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Do you believe in multiculturalism? Racial diversity? Egalitarianism? Identity politics and gender theory? Where does it end? Do Western nations need to be demographically fractured and have their homogeneity destroyed? Do Western nations not deserve to keep their cultures and their traditions and their ethnic peoples?

radixjournal.com/altright-archive/altright-archive/main/blogs/untimely-observations/inclusiveness-and-catholicism?rq=catholic

Do you not think that perhaps this has all gone too far? Why does the Church not speak out against the erosion of the West through demographic and social engineering?

This is only my opinion, but I would offer the idea that identifying with any culture significantly restricts our potential for self-definition. Why for instance, would I care to identify with a particular nationality, sports team or brand name, all of which have been socially engineered by other people, when I am capable of being a unique expression of the human experience? I think that culture diminishes the felt experience of the individual, fetishizes what it likes, denigrates what it doesn’t approve of, humiliates those who don’t fit a particular template, and in many cases provides a venue for the least among us to rise to the top of the social structure and define for us what our lives should be. Anyone who has a reasonably sufficient level of intelligence should be able to define who they are without the aid of ideas fabricated by others - ideas that for the most part serve the purposes of institutions, churches, corporations and industries and have little to do with the best interests of the individual. These ideas pit people against each other, and have nothing to do with the reality of the lives we actually live.

Personally, I don’t spend much time worrying about the cultures of the people I meet. If they interact with me, they have to do so on terms created between us an individuals.

 

[lazuli]

identifying with any culture significantly restricts our potential for self-definition

Human life is restriction, there is no such thing as absolute freedom. This reminds me of those poets who completely reject the history of poetic form and think they can write a beautiful poem immediately with no knowledge of poetry. Freedom is found within forms. Surely you must have some appreciation for collectivism, authority and tradition also, considering you are a Catholic. It’s also funny, because there is no such thing as true individualism anyway, everything works within a form, even your own views happens to be so commonplace as to be able to attribute your own individualism to collectivism itself. And I can’t help but see in your post the very ideas that have brought about the current situations in regards to multiculturalism and mass immigration, the idea that if we get rid of race and true diversity by interbreeding that suddenly all wars will go away and we’ll live in an age of peace. The tower of babel will always fall.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

From lazuli;

Human life is restriction, there is no such thing as absolute freedom.

I don’t recall having said that there was. Like most things, it’s largely a matter of degree.

This reminds me of those poets who completely reject the history of poetic form and think they can write a beautiful poem immediately with no knowledge of poetry. Freedom is found within forms.

A poem doesn’t have to be beautiful to be a poem. In regards to form, following one or creating your own is a matter of individual ability. The form of three quatrains and a couplet wasn’t handed to Shakespeare. It was created by him.

Surely you must have some appreciation for collectivism, authority and tradition also, considering you are a Catholic.

I have learned from it by being a Catholic, and appreciation can be either negative or positive.

It’s also funny, because there is no such thing as true individualism anyway, everything works within a form, even your own views happens to be so commonplace as to be able to attribute your own individualism to collectivism itself.

Everything is fractal in nature, which means that from form comes new form. This can be seen at the atomic as well as celestial worlds. The idea is to create new form and new experience.

And I can’t help but see in your post the very ideas that have brought about the current situations in regards to multiculturalism and mass immigration, the idea that if we get rid of race and true diversity by interbreeding that suddenly all wars will go away and we’ll live in an age of peace. The tower of babel will always fall.

When does immigration become a problem? Does it become a problem when all people of European descent who immigrated to America decided it should be over? Whose ideas of deed and property should be foremost in consideration - indigenous peoples who were in a land first, or more powerful people who came later. And for the powerful, what is the measure by which we know when it’s time to stop, and what colors, religions and nationalities should restrictions apply to? Moreover, our culture in the United States is a confluence of cultures, and is an ongoing process.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

From lazuli;

Do you believe in multiculturalism? Racial diversity? Egalitarianism? Identity politics and gender theory? Where does it end? Do Western nations need to be demographically fractured and have their homogeneity destroyed? Do Western nations not deserve to keep their cultures and their traditions and their ethnic peoples?

By the way, this sounds a lot like the works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

 

[Francis1636]

I really am skeptical of multiculturalism. I don’t believe in American exceptionalism. I believe America is a good country simply because i was born there, but it is no different than other nations in that it has been shaped by geographic, historical, religious, ethnic, and economic factors. America is not “for everyone” and the neoconservative notion of the world gathering together around American democracy is so naive. Unfortunately, stating the fact that people of similar cultural understandings get along better makes me a bigot to many, when i myself would even concede that my Catholicism makes me somewhat of an outcast in a country with virtually solely Protestant roots.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

I really am skeptical of multiculturalism. I don’t believe in American exceptionalism. I believe America is a good country simply because i was born there, but it is no different than other nations in that it has been shaped by geographic, historical, religious, ethnic, and economic factors. America is not “for everyone” and the neoconservative notion of the world gathering together around American democracy is so naive. Unfortunately, stating the fact that people of similar cultural understandings get along better makes me a bigot to many, when i myself would even concede that my Catholicism makes me somewhat of an outcast in a country with virtually solely Protestant roots.

On an historical timeline, the amount of time that there has been a United States is the blink of an eye. This land belonged to indigenous peoples such as the Sioux and the Hopi and the Navajo and so on. You remember these people - they’re he ones we took it from. Then came English people, African people, French people, German, Irish, Italian, Nordic, Asian and other people as well as others and they threaded together the makings of a culture, but this is not a finished process. America has never been a place for one sort of people. To say that America is not for everyone is a rather short sighted view. What color, and religion is an American?