A dubious honor that Australia always likes to bestow itself with. The nation always claims to have "multiculturalism", which is supposed to mean a wide diversity of ethnicities and nationalities. Even though I lived in Australia for a good five years, I can still never understand what the word is supposed to actually mean.

Just a while back (oh, about twenty years ago), Australia was a bastion of white supremacy. The White Australia Policy ruled supreme, and immigration of races other than Northern and Western European was severly restricted by law. After the massive influx right after World War II, where the government allowed token numbers in, the gates were shut again. It was not until the 1970's that this nasty policy was disbanded.

Not to mention Australia's track record with minorities was probably even more atrocious than America's. Remember the mass-slaughter of the Aborigines? Today, small pockets of them are left, mostly in Northern Australia, where they live on government land and spend government money, not giving a care in the world. A tragedy.

Now, Australia has transformed into liberalism central. Other than Queensland and other rural areas, everyone is for big government. Political correctness, served up American style, is often quoted and used. Pretty disgusting. "Multiculturalism" probably originated in the 1980's in an attempt to show the world how diverse they are, ignoring their past. "Look at us, we have a huge collection of minorities!" Makes me sick how 50 years ago, a PM was given a standing ovation when he declared "Two Wongs don't make a Wright", in regard to Chinese immigration.

The "I have lots of gay friends" mentality is probably the driving force behind this ridiculous notion of multiculturalism. "Look at us, we have lots of minorities, we can't be bad! We abide by PC!" If anything, America is probably more diverse than Australia. At yet, Australians proudly speak of their multiculturalism, most of them not knowing of their country's own skeletons in the closet, hastily locked away only a few decades ago. Screw political correctness.

Appendage to above hysterical reactionary gibberish with added note that we all feel sorry that DMan has to attend an Ivy League college...

Multiculturalism is more a philosophy than anything else. It isn't a plot to flood the world with swarthy foreigner types or whatever. It's a very simple concept - maybe we should intellectually acknowledge the other 75% of the world that isn't Europe or the United States from a perspective that isn't condescending.

Given the fact that the United States is becoming more diverse in all areas of difference maybe it really is time to try looking at things outside of your immediate experience and outside of the academic canon. You will die bitter trying to fight change. There are different cultures in the world and you're going to have to deal with it.

Advocates of "diversity" claim that because the real world is diverse, the campus should reflect that fact. But why should a campus population "reflect" the general population? No answer. In fact, the purpose of a university is to impart knowledge and develop reasoning, not to be a demographic mirror of society.

Racism, not any meaningful sense of diversity, guides today's intellectuals. The educationally significant diversity that exists in "the real world" is intellectual diversity. But such a diversity -far from being sought after- is virtually forbidden on campus. The existence of "political correctness" blasts the academics' pretense at valuing real diversity. What they want is abject conformity.

The only way to erradicate racism on campus is to scrap racist programs and the philosophic ideas that feed racism. Racism will become an ugly memory only when universities teach a valid concept of human nature: one based on the tenets that the individual's mind is competent, that the human intellect is efficacious, that we possess free will, that individuals are to be judged as individuals, and that deriving one's identity from one's race is a corruption - a corruption appropriate to Nazi Germany, not to a nation based on freedom and independence.

References:

Berliner MS, Hull G: University and multiculturalism: the new racism.

There are several problems with the way most of the free developed nations practice multiculturalism. While the idea of equality for all people is a worthy ideal, liberal reactions to diversity-based issues often make such problems worse. This generally happens in one of several ways:

1. Law enforcement refuses to accept that, in certain cases, crimes are motivated by minority ethno/racial/cultural grievances. They do this by failing to identify involved parties as members of a particular group (when that group's ideology is the motivating factor of the crime) or by absolving those involved of responsibility because they are a minority.

An example would be the riots in Evreux, France in August 2005. Somwhere between 100-200 French "youths" toting baseball bats rampaged through the streets, torching cars, chanting "allahu akhbar," and disrupting the annual fete de pomme, du cidre et du fromage (that's 'festival of apples, cider and cheese', folks). Take a minute to glance back at that last sentence. Anything jump out at you? "Allahu akhbar." The rioters were Muslim, and apparently pretty darn proud of it. But you couldn't tell this by listening to the French media cover the story. No mention of the religion of the rioters was mentioned, despite the fact that their identity as Muslims was obviously a major motivating factor of the riots.

Why is this a problem? Two reasons: the minority group is not taken seriously, and the government can't respond to the incident in a meaningful way. In the example above, the major, Jean-Louis Debré, issued the following statement: "To those responsible for the violence, I want to say: Be serious! If you want to live in a fairer, more fraternal society, this is not how to go about it." Now, I personally don't think it likely that those crazy kids were just rioting because they wanted to live in a more fraternal state. It seems to me like the Muslim rioters identified so strongly with their religion that they rejected French culture altogether, and thus had no regard for the laws of their country or the safety of countrymen who were not Muslim. If I was a "youth" coming home from a tiring evening of rampaging and torching cars, and I switched on France Info radio and heard the major say the above statement, I would think one of two things: 1) The French government refuses to accept us as a group acting for a common goal. We need to continue rioting until they agree to acknowledge Islam as a force in France. or 2) Hey, check it out. We can set cars on fire and run around with baseball bats and the government won't do a thing about it.

By refusing to accept the religious motivation for these riots, the French government could do nothing meaningful to prevent them. This is true in almost all cases: by refusing to accept that there is a ethno/racial/cultural aspect to some crimes, governments fail their citizens by not doing anything meaningful to stop the incidents.

2. Officials mandate that members of certain minorities should be compensated for past wrongs, often by offering jobs, university spots, or grants to individuals that may not have qualified otherwise. Affirmative action is an example. This creates several problems. First, it undermines any confidence society as a whole will have in the credentials of underrepresented minorities. The thinking often goes, "well, he has a degree in law from Yale, but he's black, so he probably only got in because the school needed to meet a quota." While this is flawed thinking and most likely untrue, affirmative action and similar policies encourage this kind of thinking. Also, these sort of policies are by definition a violation of the principles they claim to uphold. Any institution that chooses to admit some and deny others using race, sex, national origin, etc. as a criteria is practicing discriminatory behavior. The best way to help underrepresented minorities is by offering equal (read: not quota-based) opportunities to everyone and by stopping real cases of discrimination when they occur.

3. Government leaders react to minority cultural unrest and violence by appeasement instead of exerting their (completely legitimate) authority. This is justified with the argument 'but exerting authority against a particular group would be racist/discriminatory.' But, in a similar manner to the example above in #1, this keeps the government from being able to put a stop to the behavior and makes it look weak and indecisive, the last image you want when people are rioting in the streets. A perfect, if overpublicized, example is the Danish cartoon riots. How did the governments of Europe react to these illegal displays? They rolled over and played dead. EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini revealed that the EU would draw up a new media code of conduct to prevent further incidents. Direct quote: "the press will give the Muslim world the message: we are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression, we can and we are ready to self-regulate that right." Far from interpreting this as a sign of fairness, those who rioted will read this decision a message that goes a little more like this: "you win, stop kicking me." Does it really make sense that a culture whose first reaction to a percieved insult is to initiate global riots is going to be pacified by appeasement? Apologism is a form of defeatism. By sending these messages, European governments encourage violent behavior and put all of their citizens, Muslim or otherwise, in danger.

Another consideration: Exerting authority in this manner is, in fact, not discriminatory. Discrimination is using unrelated attributes (race, sex, etc.) to make a decision or judgement about a person or a group of people. Note the word "unrelated" in that definition. When your religion is your motivating factor for commiting a crime, it is no longer unrelated to the judgement of how the government will respond to that crime.

I stress my original point: while equality for all is a noble and worthwhile goal, many of the policies of modern governments are making things worse rather than helping. Multicultural apologism needs to give way to true multiculturalism, where the host nation sets the following guidelines for minority cultures:

- Immigrants are expected to assimilate into the host country's culture, not the other way around. Those choosing to live in a country should see themselves and act primarily as members of that country, and not self-segregate themselves based on belief, race, or culture. Therefore, minorities should not expect the government to offer them amenities for these. Honoring customs and personal moral codes is your responsibility, not the government's.

- While citizens are encouraged to practice individual cultural traditions, illegal acts motivated by heritage will be subject to the same prevention and prosecution as other criminal acts.

- While the government will protect minority citizens from outright discrimination from others, it will also protect others from outright discrimination from minority citizens.

Modern multiculturalism helps no one in the long run. Nations need to wake up and realize that such policies will not help solve diversity-related problems.

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