Multiculturalism and Racism
Contrary to these observations, multicultural policies and principles should ensure that the minority groups are respected, protected and treated as equals. For along time, the policies of multiculturalism have done too little to mitigate the problem of racism. In another observation, by multiculturalism ignoring the racisms problem, the multiculturalism policies can themselves augment and worsen racism. This argument is based on how the police and judges interpret the cultural differences in the context of criminal court investigations and proceedings. At the same time, this argument shows clearly how most public inquiries are carried out. Examples that show the lost direction of multiculturalism from the purpose it was meant for the fight against racism.
Multiculturalism and racism has had a great impact in the west countries in history. For instance in the United States, President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 issued an Executive Order 11246 that required all the federal contractors to take affirmative action in ensuring that all the applicants are hired. In addition, the Order provided that all the employees to be treated equally regardless to creed, color, race or the place of origin as well as women which he added two years later. President Lyndon stressed the point of equal treatment of the minorities in employment opportunities in companies, organizations, universities, government institutions and agencies.
Through the foundation that President Lyndon created in 1965, it has now become a common axiom that the only cure for racism is the promotion of ethnic and racial diversity within all social institutions. The whole impression here is racial preference when speaking about diversity awareness, diversity hiring, diversity training and so forth.
In a critical perspective, there will be attempts to judge the integrity of diversity preference in a time when anti-racism movements have produced a myriad of racial hostility and divisions, hitherto, racial diversity awareness, hiring and training or anything as it may be called, is expected to foster a cohesion that does not discriminate against the minorities. Finally, it comes out clear that the issue of thinking in terms of racism or racism confinement actually be fostering racism and not as earlier expected to mitigate the cancer of racism. To get on with the understanding of the term, multiculturalism, it is important to take each detail in its definition. Multiculturalism is defined as the cross-disciplinary and holistic discussions meant to contrast issues of culturalism, toleration and nationalism as well as philosophical backgrounds with the current evidence in indicating the extent to which these aspects are crucial in the modern world and particularly in Britain.
Historical evidence of multiculturalism in Britain date back to 1970s when there was experienced a massive emergence of multiculturalism in not only Britain but also Germany, Australia, Canada, United States and the United Kingdom. The concept of multiculturalism that came into birth during the 1970s in these nations was neither a philosophical school of thought nor a political doctrine as it was anticipated to be.
The multiculturalism concept anticipated at a scenario at which the society is culturally embedded, where different cultures represent diverse systems of vision and meaning of life. The main question that needs answering is why multiculturalism, a tool sharpened to counter racism is proofed to be failing in the modern day, yet, in the beginning of it all, the concepts of assimilation, community cohesion, and anti-racism were highly related and connected with multiculturalism.
It still remained in the blood of the British that despite a West Indian or essentially an Asian who is born in England becoming an Englishman and by the law becoming a United Kingdom citizen by birth does not become a United Kingdom native, he is still an Asian or a West Indian.
This implies that, the person of this kind, born in the United Kingdom, would have lost the citizenship of one country and gained none. This philosophy shows how intense the problem of multiculturalism has taken deep foundation in the minds of the West communities despite the ubiquitous nature of anti-racism and multiculturalism campaigns. It is of great absurdity to take people as ciphers they are individuals and should be given individual treatment. There is no point of compensating a group of people in an effort to correct the form of imagined or real injustice hitting the society. This strategy can not avoid resentment among groups instead it is possible to confirm the real racists in their views about what they think about other groups.
By being sensitized to confirm what they think about other groups, the racists are more likely to take some sort of violent actions against the minority groups. It is essential to take a color blindness perspective and especially in the work place, the most important feature to look at is the knowledge, training, honesty, ability and the integrity that is required to perform particular tasks effectively. The criterion of skin color can not give a hint on these attributes.
Prejudices and bias display about gender, religion, place of birth, gender, skin color and nationality have been common elements in most communities in the West. However, it does not serve as an excuse for leaders and those in authority in these countries to sit back as they watch problems being solved with great bias.
Instead of focusing on a group of people, individual person should be examined for any consideration involving employment opportunities or admission to universities or other institutions. The mind of collectivism has survived racism and will still remain as long as there is collectivism. Instead, there should be a general responsibility for the respect of dignity and rights of all individual persons regardless to origin or color and to stop granting or treating certain groups as special. Britain is the leading country that has exemplified the malady of multiculturalism and this has been backed up by the valiant Tony Blair. In Britain, multiculturalism perspective is comprised of the creative interplay of these complementary and important insights cultural entrenchment of the human beings, multicultural and plural constitution for all cultures and the desirability and inescapability of cultural plurality.
The underlying problem is that attempts to unite and homogenize a culture and oblige a single identity have remained equally skeptical as they present multiculturalism to be originating within it. It should be felt that all the cultures are born out of interaction of others and also absorb others influences and shaped by broader forces.
The effort to impose the culture of multiculturalism undercuts the very foundation of Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism, Indocentrism as well as other forms of centrisms that isolate the history of the culture concerned from that of other cultures and also crediting its accomplishments to its own genius. It is a misconception that a good society treasures the diversity and fosters a creative dialogue.
In Britain, there is an established Commission of Racial Equality (CRE) that is regulated by Tony Blair and watched over by a bunch of superannuated allies of the government. This Commission administers laws related to races which the same British government enacts. It appears that in Britain, the underlying principle is to have a conception that equality among people exists only among those who have their ancestors that lived in England in the last half a century.
Presumably, CRE in the interest of equality proposes that the companies should determine their workforce racial compositions among other things. This sounds like part of the strategy to destroy individual freedoms that England and the British citizens have enjoyed over a long period and a majority of the administrators of this campaign seem to come from or their ancestors originate from countries where the practice of human rights and equality does not exists or is minimal. This kind of meritocracy is best evidenced in India where the caste system included the untouchable individuals who are no w known as the Dalits or the oppressed. This semantic change has hardly seemed to be an improvement but a negative metamorphosis.
Over the last two decades, the left had shifted from the focusing on individual racist behavior to claim that racism exists in all institutions. In the famous Macpherson report, the inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence, a Black man, revealed that he died at the hands of a group of five alleged White youths. Following the report, the new anti-discrimination legislation was passed in 2000.
The report by Macpherson also led to the introduction of the concept of institutional racism which was meant to instill fear in the minds and hearts of the police. This fear seemed to have prevented the file and rank from effectively performing their jobs from that time as evidenced from the growing incidences of crimes.
Institutional behavior concept has greatly been extended not only to clearly observable racism behavior but also the behavior which they claim is intrinsically racism. The behavior that can clearly be seen to be racist include those that specifically exclude the non-Whites from being served in various institutions while those behaviors that are inherently racist include the adoptions of polices that while not particularly directed to the non-Whites, they nevertheless lead to their exclusion from obtaining services. This implies that racism is in the mind of the racist just the same way beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Virtually, this implies that only the White people are seen to be racists meaning that in a situation where the White person protests about the actions of non-Whites, that complain is ignored to the point of failing to charge the non-White killer of his guilt.
It is a perverted climate where the Asians are on Blacks, Blacks on Asians, Blacks are on Blacks while the Blacks on White violence. This might not be said to be racism. In a couple of incidents, this concept is clearly shown and illustrated. For instance, a few years back, the United States press was filled with reports of a brutal killing of a man by the name James Byrd. Byrd was brutally murdered by a gang of three men in Texas in a place known as Jasper. It was claimed that the accused picked up Mr. Byrd, beat him up, chained and dragged him to death at the rear of their truck. What followed after was great condemnation from the president and the journalists as well as the politicians.
The politicians wringing their hypocritical hands, the media shedding their floods of ink and tears and the president issuing a statement that strongly condemned the act saw the act being amplified and highly publicized in the United States and across the borders. The press in the United States and also in other countries joined hands to give an enormous publicity to the act demanding an answer to the question on what form of horrifying act foreshadowed about the future of the United States. This again represented the best example of racism that is heavily entrenched in the culture of the United States.
In another example also in Jasper, Texas that occurred recently, a man named Ken Tillery was meant to hitch a ride with four men who holding him hostage, beating him and running over him with their vehicle resulting to the man being crushed to death. Contrary to the case of Byrd, Tillerys case was received with a deafening silent without the media covering much of the story. However, the Houston Chronicle was the only press that seemed to cover a slight part of Tillerys story. The question resulting out of this observation was how this difference in the treatment of these two cases could possibly result. The explanations and the answer to this question are simple the unfortunate Tillery was White while the equally unfortunate Byrd was Black. It is called the age of racism which has given too much weight on some groups of people. Multiculturalism is therefore seen to worsen the problem of racism.
According to some reports from the justice department of the United States, a large number of inter-racial violence in the United States is committed by the Blacks against the Whites. What is astonishing is that this is not covered in the news on televisions or the newspapers. For many years even to presently, there have not been any White civil rights movements or Black hate crimes that have ever appeared in the face of the United States despite the rise in crimes committed by the Blacks against the Whites. There has not been any form of sympathy that has been expressed towards the white victims who have been attacked by the Blacks, neither is it expected any soon to have such happen in a society full of racial hypocrisy. It may even lead to the activation of the witch-hunters into the streets the moment the rights of the whites are defended to denounce the attacks on the white people by the black people.
In a more recent scenario, another assumption was manifested that the sniper that terrorized Virginia, Washington and Maryland was a white gunman it was never thought of even to an inch that the man was a black and the question in majority of peoples mind was, how would it be that a black man attacks Washington, Maryland and Virginian
The perception led to the police puling over the white vans and leaving the blacks with salient peace It was later reported that due to the police tactic of using racial profiling, they had missed to arrest the real suspects for many times. After that, it was then when the authorities found their suspect.
The suspect went against the stereotype and he turned out to be an African American who was a Muslim convert and a member of Louis Farrakhans Nation of Islam as well as a sympathizer with the September 11th 2001 attack. However, according to the law in the United States, the suspects have to be tried and are therefore presumed innocent unless proved guilty.
In England, the promotion of multiculturalism has brought the same impact as in the United States. It is called multiculturalism or multiracialism and the broadcasting organ of the state, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has brought such publicity. Gone are days when the BBC was believed to present a truthful and a balanced truthful account of the events that happened. The BBC was never thought to hold any propaganda from the government or the leaders in the distortion of the real events in the support of political aspirations. Although this seemed to have changed and BBC is now transformed to the better, the irreverent individuals still refer BBC as the Blair Broadcasting Corporation.
On one of the BBCs websites, that was part of the months event of analyzing the Black History, there was a paean to the Multi-racial Britain presented by Diane Abbott, a Labor MP of the African origin. Ms. Abbott was educated at Newnham College in Cambridge and she has served as a civil servant, journalist and broadcaster. She presents the case that from the time when the Anglo-Saxon Britain was invaded by Norman French, there has been a culturally diverse nation in the United Kingdom, but since different nationalities had same skin color, the issue of racial diversity that existed within the British Isles was easily ignored.
In any case, Abbott mentions that even if color was equated to racial diversity, the blacks have been in the Britain for many years (centuries).it is documented that the earliest blacks in Europe were probably the black roman centurions who came hundreds of years even before Christ himself. In addition, during the queen Elizabeths time, there used to be a number of blacks in the Britain.
In general terms, the concept of multiculturalism has misled the real meaning of racial diversity. The expected action by organization, companies, universities and all authorities is the equal treatment of all the persons without adding so much undeserved weight to one group of people. Regardless to skin color, place of origin or gender and age, all people have to be treated equal and given the rights they deserve.
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