In the wake of the recent UKIP success at the polls, I have been considering if the UK is and if any country could ever be a truly multicultural. There also seems to be a much worse far right backlash on the continent.

From wiki, 1 definition is “multiculturalism is a society at ease with the rich tapestry of human life and the desire amongst people to express their own identity in the manner they see fit.”

What happens when a belief system is in direct opposition to what is considered only reasonable in a modern, liberal society?

e.g. Slovak parents object to gay adoption

There must be hundreds of other examples.

Can a truly multicultural society ever exist?
Is trying to create one only helping the far right gain support?

Think about your day to day life, you probably interact with Muslims, Hindus, Seikhs, Christians. All colours, countries and creeds. Totally multicultural and totally fine 99.9999% of the time.

There are a few fanatics out there whos opinions seem to be getting a surprisingly large amount of media time, ask yourself who might have a vested interest in causing division in the general populace.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boO4RowROiw&feature=kp[/video]

If the UK is not multicultural, then is it monocultural? Which is that culture?

UKIP has done well in places that are predominantly white and have little or no immigration. The people who are scared of ‘the other’ are generally the people who’ve never met them.

There’s a good Matthew Parris piece in the times today

Link to tweet/scan

The UK tries to be multicultural, sometimes too hard.

Read some of Brian Barry’s stuff on multiculturalism, very interesting. He often likes to point out the hypocrisy of some ethnic/religious minorities around the world, but it is surprising how firm some Nordic countries have been when “foreign/religious” beliefs contradict existing national law. They expect the “incomers” to adapt their faith/customs to meet the host countries legal requirements.

simons_nicolai-uk – Member

UKIP has done well in places that are predominantly white and have little or no immigration. The people who are scared of ‘the other’ are generally the people who’ve never met them.

Spot on, the level of insidious racism I encounter when we visit my wife’s parents in Gloucestershire comes as quite a shock when you work in a city, yet 20 miles down the road in Bristol it’s very relaxed & on the whole nobody cares where you are from, just what sort of human you are.

Well, there’s always this thing about respecting a group’s beliefs vs. obeying the laws of a civil society. It’s just as much an issue for white, middle-class church-goers who dislike homosexuality, for example.

We have laws, in theory at least they are agreed on by everyone in the country. So everyone should obey those laws – apart from that anything goes. that’s what multiculturalism should mean.

With regards to fear of the “other”, Matthew Parris has it spot on. People are afraid of what they don’t understand.

gobuchul – Member
Can a truly multicultural society ever exist?

Dunno, that depends on how tolerance your belief is towards others but my understanding is that the world is already multicultural anyway so why keep pushing on this multicultural thing?

There is no way this multicultural thing can be prevented or push back anymore unless you want some sort of zombie maggot wars.

Is trying to create one only helping the far right gain support?

IMO, No. They are born with the attitude of fearing others invading their space so whether there is an idea of creating a multicultural society or not they will find something to fight for. It’s in the gene. You find this in every society regardless of the skin colour.

🙄

Can a truly multicultural society ever exist?

Yes but even then there will still be racists

I’m a moral absolutist:

Universal suffrage, sexual, gender and racial equality, freedom from poverty and the right to work, the right to education, clean water, decent housing, control over contraception and abortion, freedom of association etc are all values that post war western democracies have strived to achieve.

They make life better for the majority of people – they give people the chance to participate fairly and equally in our society – we accept that they are ‘good things’.

If people disagree with any of these things for whatever religious or cultural reasons, then I don’t believe we should alter our aims and aspirations to accommodate them.

Rusty Spanner – Member
If people disagree with any of these things for whatever religious or cultural reasons, then I don’t believe we should alter our aims and aspirations to accommodate them.

Nor do they towards yours hence the inevitable zombie maggot wars. 🙄

I’m a moral absolutist:

That is the problem => absolutism.

Nor do they towards yours hence the inevitable zombie maggot wars.

But I don’t want us to go to war with other countries just because they have different aims and aspirations than I do.

That is the problem => absolutism.

We’re all absolutists to some degree.
It’s imposing those beliefs on countries who don’t share them that creates the issues.

Rusty Spanner – Member

Nor do they towards yours hence the inevitable zombie maggot wars.

But I don’t want to go to war with other countries just because they have different aims and aspirations than I do. [/quote]

Like you they might be absolutists but with opposing views/beliefs to yours so the only way to prevent zombie maggot wars is to tolerate each other beliefs by “give and take” or compromising own beliefs.

The question is who should compromise first? You or them?

You already have a door step example in NI (might not be a good example).

🙄

Rusty Spanner – Member
We’re all absolutists to some degree.

I am not. My belief does not instruct me to be an absolutist. Never will and never can.

It’s imposing those beliefs on countries who don’t share them that creates the issues.

I think it’s okay to say that, say, persecuting homosexuals is wrong – no matter where it happens.

The question is who should compromise first? You or them?

Well, that depends what the consequences of compromise are, doesn’t it?

I’d personally be happy to fight for our democracy, if it was genuinely threatened.
But if, say, Sweden planned an invasion, I’d probably give them a hand. 🙂

I am not. My belief does not instruct me to be an absolutist. Never will and never can.

Then you Sir are the zombiest and most maggoty of all maggots. 😀
You don’t believe any moral principles are worth defending?

bencooper – Member

I think it’s okay to say that, say, persecuting homosexuals is wrong – no matter where it happens.

Damn right.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to kill everyone who doesn’t share my belief though.

Its pointless as at some point we all need to pick a side / be absolutist

the right to religious freedom [ to be rude to gays and ban then from your B & B] or the right to be free from persecution- pick one we cannot have both
the right to life or the right to determine what happens to your body – abortion – gain pick one we cannot have both

We cannot just go yeah whatever as rights and beliefs are often in conflict

Sometime you have to pick sides

Good point Junky but the right to religious freedom has absolutely cock all to do with the right to ban gay people from guesthouses. 🙂

Which is where the problem arises with religious fundamentalism of any stripe:
If you place the word of god above all else you replace your own reason with that of those who currently claim to espouse the beliefs of your particular deity or deities.

he right to religious freedom has absolutely cock all to do with the right to ban gay people from guesthouses

the christians taken to court for this disagree with you

You said cock and gay…runs of sniggering reports to PC thought police for minor transgression

the christians taken to court for this disagree with you

They are entitled to their opinion. 🙂
Which is all religious belief is – opinion.

Oh, and

Doesn’t mean I don’t want to kill everyone who doesn’t share my belief though.

had an extra ‘don’t’ in by mistake.
Sorry.

Just killing everyone is probably the safest move all round.

bencooper – Member

Just killing everyone is probably the safest move all round.

Not everyone please just the zombie maggots. 😆

According to the well adjusted, saint of a man that is Jim Davidson, Wolverhampton is where its at.
http://nativemonster.com/music/nightlife/comedy/interview-jim-davidson

When I’m running the planet (not long now comrades) the lot of you can forget your absolutist cultural and religious freedoms, and all do as you’re bloody well told!

There… You’ve had fair warning!

Drive through Bradford and you will see it is in fact not multicultural, but multi segregated. Sadly its as clear as day where one culture starts and ends..

Not just Bradford. Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley, Rochdale, etc, etc…

All about as racially and culturally integrated as apartheid era Johannesburg. Separate communities where, despite being many generations in, virtually no integration whatsoever has taken place. Separate communities leading parallel lives.

I heard that story about the Roma parents who lodged some kind of case against their child being adopted by a gay couple. I wonder if Nigel Farrage had some kind of boiling pressure building up in his head as he tried to comprehend it and ended up exploding like a volcano!

It took well over a hundred years for the Irish immigrants that came over in the wake of the industrial revolution to be fully accepted and to integrate.
Sadly, anti Catholic prejudice is still rife amongst older people.

Eventually, people from different cultures and religions marry and have kids and things get better – that’s how it’s historically worked, even when religion and cultural prejudice have tried to stop it.

However, the bigger the cultural differences, the longer integration seems to take – let’s hope the gap we have now isn’t too great to overcome:
I got in a taxi driven by a young Asian lad in Burnley a few weeks ago – he said he didn’t have any white friends and would be shunned by his peer group if he was to do so.
Coming from a racially and culturally mixed bit Manchester, I nearly wept. 😐

There has to be an effort on all sides – some cultures have chosen not to integrate – the Orthodox Jewish community in North Manchester springs to mind.
I don’t know of any specific issues caused by lack of integration there, but it’s a very small community in the grand scale of things.

Not just Bradford. Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley, Rochdale, etc, etc…

All about as racially and culturally integrated as apartheid era Johannesburg. Separate communities where, despite being many generations in, virtually no integration whatsoever has taken place. Separate communities leading parallel lives.

…..you haven’t mentioned Batley and Dewsbury, and we haven’t even started on the Midlands. Good post, Binners, I really wonder which perfect world some of the contributors on here actually inhabit.

I live in Cambridge, which is very multi-cultural and pretty harmonious. On my walk into town I pass a Mosque, a turkish coffer shop (full off Turks), a Chinese supermarket (serving the Chinese community), a Korean super market (serving the Korean community) etc. Everyone seems to get on fine, but then it’s a prosperous town..

footflaps – Member

I live in Cambridge, which is very multi-cultural and pretty harmonious. On my walk into town I pass a Mosque, a turkish coffer shop (full off Turks), a Chinese supermarket (serving the Chinese community), a Korean super market (serving the Korean community) etc. Everyone seems to get on fine, but then it’s a prosperous town..

Ya, but they don’t like each other … 😆

I live in Cambridge, which is very multi-cultural and pretty harmonious. On my walk into town I pass a Mosque, a turkish coffer shop (full off Turks), a Chinese supermarket (serving the Chinese community), a Korean super market (serving the Korean community) etc. Everyone seems to get on fine, but then it’s a prosperous town..

I’m sure Cambridge is a lovely place to live, but if you walked around any of the above towns (especially after dark) I doubt you would have the same point of view about multiculturalism.

I agree the places are full of drunken white british yobs fulled by alcohol behaving terribly and its shames us all

I would happily walk any of them at night tbh but the only shit i would get would be from the locals as you would like to call them oldboy

Binners behave when did you last go to Blackburn ?
Seriously I bet you have not been since set end rave days and it wont be double figures this century
It has its issue but it is not as you describe

we haven’t even started on the Midlands. Good post, Binners, I really wonder which perfect world some of the contributors on here actually inhabit.

I live in a ‘multicultural’ city in the Midlands. No, it’s not necessarily a perfect world where every ethnic group is equally represented in every street, but so what? Not every street has the same mix of age groups, that doesn’t mean there’s a generational apartheid.

I work with a diverse group of people, there are no ‘cultural’ problems, just the couple of usual personality clashes. And if I go to one of the Asian supermarkets then, again, it’s fine. If walked round some of the predominately non-white areas at night then there could be trouble, but that’s because it’s a sh*thole. There are other ‘white’ areas that are also sh*tholes, where I might also experience some trouble. But they’re all sh*tholes because sh*ts are there, not because the sh*ts are one colour/culture or another.

if you walked around any of the above towns (especially after dark) I doubt you would have the same point of view about multiculturalism

There are arseholes everywhere. If you’re trying to say that arsholery is related in some way to ethnic background, then surely that’s racist?

If you wander around a rough white neighbourhood, and see bad behaviour, do you feel the same as if you do the same in an asian one?

Anyway to the OP – Britain is multicultural, of course. It’s not 100% harmonious, but that’s a different matter. Multicultural means that there are lots of cultures present. I ride around Cardiff and I see mosques, temples, churches, synagogues and various new agey type places of worship; I hear a variety of languages; and my close neighbours include Greek, Croatian, Chinese, Indian and Zimbabe. All getting on with life just the same as everyone else.

simons_nicolai-uk – Member
UKIP has done well in places that are predominantly white and have little or no immigration. The people who are scared of ‘the other’ are generally the people who’ve never met them.

Oh yes, such places with little or no immigration as such as Basildon, Southend and Harlow 😆

MrOvershoot – Member

Spot on, the level of insidious racism I encounter when we visit my wife’s parents in Gloucestershire comes as quite a shock when you work in a city, yet 20 miles down the road in Bristol it’s very relaxed & on the whole nobody cares where you are from, just what sort of human you are.

I don’t think you can generalise a place like that. It just depends on the luck of where exactly you’ve been/who you’ve met in those places.

For example I lived in Bristol for 5 years and could give countless examples of open racism. In Easton a black man got on a bus started arguing with the (Sikh) driver, calling him something like a ‘**** gay ****’ then tried to punch him in the face. My father (white) also got racially abused by some asian lads after he refused to buy them cigarettes in Cotham. Never experienced anything like that anywhere else in the UK, and that includes the charming city of Basra Basildon.

I’m sure Cambridge is a lovely place to live, but if you walked around any of the above towns (especially after dark) I doubt you would have the same point of view about multiculturalism.

I doubt it has anything to do with multiculturalism though. Thugs are still thugs, no matter what race / ethnicity….

I’ve worked in and around Burnley and Blackburn for years, mostly in rough-ish areas, and often in Asian areas. There are things that worry me but it’s nowhere near as bad as some make out.

But if, say, Sweden planned an invasion, I’d probably give them a hand.

They tried it once*, King Alfred kicked their asses at Eddington, so they came back in 1066 and won. Been here ever since.
*Vikings, Sweden didn’t actually exist back then.