What makes you think you're not a racist?

[MrGongGong]

I think the LSO and Brotherhood of Breath are both fine examples of successful multiculturalism

[hackneyvi]

The Bladder/Sexwhale remarks appear to indicate that a person can be presumed to be racist if they are not anti-racist 'enough'.

Forgive me for quoting myself, but reading this phrase, I was impressed again by a sense of a resemblance of anti-racism to witch-hunting. When I was originally feeling my way towards similes a couple of days ago, the most natural resemblance in expression and response seemed to be anti-communist hysteria in the States. And, as a public subject, racism seems to have had more of hysteria about it than might always have been helpful to thinking.

[Pilchardman]

Well thats one opinion
others are available
it might be currently fashionable to parrot the "multiculturalism has failed" line but if you were a musician you might say otherwise

Of course it's one opinion. It's mine. I only speak for myself.

As to the second sentence, it's important to note that the Multiculturalism I'm talking about has a capital M and isn't the same as multi-racialism. I've heard people saying "multiculturalism has failed", by which they generally mean that multi-racialism has failed. That would be daft view to hold, given these islands' history of immigration since deep into prehistory. It's also probably a racist view. I'm talking about the neoliberal policy of Multiculturalism, as described in my posts, and in the article by Kenan Malik to which I linked.

[Pilchardman]

Nonsense. There is no such thing as 'Multiculturism' as a single policy. Who was it developed by? How is it being imposed? I would be interested in the evidence you have for this supposed 'Multicultural policy'.

You're confusing multi-racialism and Multiculturalism, I think. (And not surprisingly, since that is part of its point). Multiculturalism is a project inspired by neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the economic world view which came to prominence in the 1970s with the New Right, a brand of which we knew as Thatcherism, but which has been the political orthodoxy of all governments in the UK and US since the late 70s. (If you're unfamiliar with this idea, see David Harvey's excellent short book, "A Brief History of Neoliberalism", 2005, Oxford University Press).

Multiculturalism is the bureaucratic orthodoxy which sets out to redefine racism as including culture and belief. It is what leads to people being confused about whether they are giving offence or not. Racism is straightforward. If you say "n______s go home", that is racist, and easily understood as such, and will rightly be reviled. However, Multiculturalism has muddied the waters so that now people can claim not to know whether it is racist for left handed people to give money to Asian shopkeepers, and so on. This is the result of a bureaucratic culture - and industry behind it - which seeks to divide people into races, as assign them appropriate cultures.

Please read Malik's article that I already linked to. He gives the notion more time than I could in a bb post.

[Pilchardman]

I think the LSO and Brotherhood of Breath are both fine examples of successful multiculturalism

They have people from a range of races/ethnicities; they are not examples of Multiculturalism. They are, I'll agree, both fine institutions, though.

[Pilchardman]

which would make as much sense as his argument in support of the possibility of racism being inherited.

I missed this comment. Nowhere did I suggest racism was inherited. You've just made that up. I said that your statement was a non sequitur, and provided an analogous situation to your non sequitur. Look back at the posts. :)

[handsomefortune]

from the malik link

Iris Young welcomes what she calls 'the continuing effort to politicise vast areas of institutional, social and cultural life.' Politics, she suggests, 'concerns all aspects of institutional organisation, public action, social practices and habits, and cultural meanings'. 'The process of politicising habits, feelings and expressions of fantasy and desire', can Young believes, 'foster a cultural revolution'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Marion_Young

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DIXjSPSTxo&feature=related

[Serial_Apologist]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DIXj...eature=related

Shame they're not showing in London...

I'm completely lost with this thread; seems to be bogged down in semantics.

[MrGongGong]

indeed
its an old technique indeed
to make a definition of something that others don't necessarily agree with then demolish that thing on the basis of the definition you made !

[Pilchardman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DIXj...eature=relatedInteresting video, handsomefortune. The last sentence especially is apposite.

[Pilchardman]

indeed
its an old technique indeed
to make a definition of something that others don't necessarily agree with then demolish that thing on the basis of the definition you made !

If that's at my use of Multiculturalism, then it wasn't me who coined it in that sense, and has been used in that sense at least since Malik's article, first published nearly ten years ago now, and probably before. It'd be a shame if the points raised by Malik were lost in the confusion, but I think the term is valid because it stresses "culture", which is not the same as race.

[Serial_Apologist]

If it culture we are worried about, and not race, we can talk civilly with people of other beliefs and disagree in the same way we can with people of the same race as ourselves but with different, or any, religious views. I've learned a lot from Buddhism and Taoism without even contemplating the ethnicity of these philosophies' originally practising peoples... in the same way other ethnicities from my own have learned a lot about living from Jesus, Adam Smith and Marx, for examples.

[Pilchardman]

If it culture we are worried about, and not race, we can talk civilly with people of other beliefs and disagree in the same way we can with people of the same race as ourselves but with different, or any, religious views. I've learned a lot from Buddhism and Taoism without even contemplating the ethnicity of these philosophies' originally practising peoples... in the same way other ethnicities from my own have learned a lot about living from Jesus, Adam Smith and Marx, for examples.

Indeed. It is perfectly in order to disagree with another person's philosophy. That's the point. It is even in order to say that you hold that some aspects of their beliefs are reactionary and despicable. For example homophobic views held by some religionists.

Those views are just that, views. They are not part of race. It is not racist for me to say that many religionists are homophobic (or misogynistic, or whatever reactionary aspect it is). And yet there is a tendency to lump the things together, race and culture. That tendency is what Malik and others call Multiculturalism. And it is that tendency which led us as a society into the confused state we see now where people don't know whether something is racist or not.

This is not a healthy state of affairs. We can't have the reactionary right, the racist right, say: "Look. See how easy it is to fall foul of cries of 'racism'?" We can't have them say: "It can't be so bad after all, if it is so easy to be racist that you don't even know you've done it!"

Because that's where it plays. Right into those hands.

(Quite aside from being racist in and of itself, and being imbued with that most cowardly of things: moral relativism).

[John Skelton]

Mr GG: indeed
its an old technique indeed
to make a definition of something that others don't necessarily agree with then demolish that thing on the basis of the definition you made

If that's at my use of Multiculturalism, then it wasn't me who coined it in that sense, and has been used in that sense at least since Malik's article, first published nearly ten years ago now, and probably before. It'd be a shame if the points raised by Malik were lost in the confusion, but I think the term is valid because it stresses "culture", which is not the same as race.

I haven't read the article you link to yet (bookmarked for later, thanks) but the (Left) critique of 'Multiculturalism' in the terms you describe is certainly well-established and continuing. Slavoj Žižek's is probably the best-known elaboration of the argument. Alain Badiou's is (for me) especially interesting; he certainly isn't a 'moral relativist' and turns the mirror on the limits of liberal pluralism (as soon as a practice in anything other than a decorative way challenges the assumptions / interests of liberal pluralism the liberal pluralist turns policeman). See http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ethics-Essay...2030992&sr=1-1 Badiou argues for a position from which all (capitalist) "cultures" must be criticised.

Slavoj Žižek http://libcom.org/library/multicultu...pitalism-zizek

[Pilchardman]

I haven't read the article you link to yet (bookmarked for later, thanks) but the (Left) critique of 'Multiculturalism' in the terms you describe is certainly well-established and continuing. Slavoj Žižek's is probably the best-known elaboration of the argument.

It is indeed well established, and you're right to point out that Zizek's take is a well-known one. Well done for getting the accents right! (I have several reservations about Zizek in general myself, but that's by the way).