Communicat

Your last sad post bewailed the lack of recognition of Australians of Scots descent.

Your assumptions are wacky. "... multiculturalism...recognises some things but not others." You are reifying multiculturalism as if it is a thing independent of people. It's people who make decisions not words.

Moreover, your facts are dodgy: "We [people of Scots descent] don't count. We have no culture. We have no claim to any sort of anything apparently..."

Look around you.

I went shopping yesterday and looked at my cash. The $100, $20, $10 and $5 notes all commemorate Australians of Scots descent. In fact the $10 note celebrates the contribution to Australia of two people of Scots descent. Scots dominate our currency like no other group.

When we sing the Australian National Anthem we sing the words penned by a Scots-Australian who also wrote the words for the alternative National Anthem, Waltzing Matilda.

I googled 39 Pipe Bands in Victoria alone and the Scottish Gaelic Society of Victoria which runs Gaelic language classes. The Scottish Australian Heritage Council, which produces a glossy quarterly magazine, broke out its own Scottish-Australian flag in Sydney in 1988.

You said: "…[Multiculturalism…encourages people to be separate, to cling to the past, to build enclaves." Are pipe bands, foreign language classes and heritage flags 'enclaves'?

Are posh girls' schools in Australia that make their girls wear tartan skirts and have House names like McDonald and Fraser enclaves? What about naming one of our capital cities after a Scottish city? And our Grampians after the Scottish ones? Or Australians voting in a Scots-born Prime Minister - not once but three times?

You ask: “Why is Greek or Vietnamese culture more important than Scots culture?” Where is the Greek-Australian or the Vietnamese-Australian PM? Do Greek or Vietnamese have claim to our national dictionary, our biggest enterprise bank and two universities?

Maybe 'multiculturalism' is just a sandpit for recent arrivals to play in while the Scots-Australians get on with running the country?

My apologies, plerdsus, you're absolutely right. Non-Commonwealth EU citizens may not vote in UK Parliamentary elections.

Commonwealth citizens legally resident in the UK do have "full voting rights", as do EU citizens from Eire, Cyprus and Malta (these countries are both EU and at least "honorary" Commonwealth members).

As an Australian I merrily voted in local, Scottish and Parliamentary elections while I was a Scottish resident.

StephenLMeyer,

I do not "define away" the problem you're pointing out. I recognise it as a problem. But it is not a problem with multiculturalism, it is a problem with a particular flavour of fanatic. Illiberal fanaticism of any sort is self-evidently incompatible with a liberal polity.

You say Indian Hindu culture is compatible with Australian liberalism, but Hindus are every bit as likely to suppress their wives and daughters as are Muslims. I suppose that Australia's large German, and Eastern European minorities are likewise compatible with Australian liberalism, just as long as we ignore the fact that some of their home countries were only a few decades ago overwhelmed by anti-Semitism supported by "oft quoted" passages of Christian scripture.

Multiculturalism (as Incoherrant's link points out) destroys itself in the sense that the result tends to assimilation. The differences between the assimilationist policy of Menzies and the subsequent multicultural policy boil down to two things: we've stopped calling the new arrivals New Australians and giving them a free boot camp, and we've started taking non-Europeans. Some of those non-Europeans are Muslims, and occasionally Muslims (among other people) become or turn out to be fanatics.

The only way that I differ from Lane's "tolerant mono-culturalism" is that I think the all-subsuming "culture" should not be the host culture itself (which is perfectly entitled to the status of primus inter pares) but the liberal principle of secularism itself. What else is to preserve tolerance in the face of changing demographics and shrill scapegoating?

Wellll I see PROGRESS....

LOGIC points out and underlines the END goal of my ONE NATION, ONE RACE, ONE CULTURE mantra by showing that is EXACTLY what happened in the UK -thanx Logic :) How many of us ask if this or that particular 'brit' is in reality of
-French
-Celtic
-Viking
-Germanic

background ? NONE of us.. I'd say. Why ? because they are all blended now.. into...wait for it.. ONE..... except for the ratbag element among the migrants who wont even let women into their mosques "GO HOME.. you don't belong here.. go on- get out, MOOVVEEEE.. shoo"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb8shFIkx78

Can't see much chance of 'blending' here.

Unfortunately XODDAM goes off the rails with his call for 'secularism' to be the guiding light, rather than 'host culture'

Xoddam wishes all of us who have a sense of 'culture and identity' to be culled from reality, and to forget it all in the name of 'secularism'

TROJAN HORSE.. what 'is' "Secularism" does it tell us to shake hands or to bow or rub noses when we meet people ? Does it tell us which custom should prevail in a paricular country ? NO! it does not, but guess what..CULTURE does.
Presumably XODDAM regards 'secularism' as being a uniform culture wherever it exists. hmmmmm Xod...you might like to rethink that one mate.

CARTOON MOMENT..I can imagine a Japanese, a Maori and an Aussie.. yep..one of those jokes :) they all come together and the Maori tries to rub noses with the Japanese man who 'bows' and headbutts him, blood everywhere, The Aussie tries to shake hands with 'the sound of one hand clapping' :) but ends up smacking the Japanese bloke in the face... more blood.

SOLUTION "Host Cultures Prevail"

C J and Rainier,
"Hear, hear, lets have less fear and more mutual respect"

If you blokes can convince the Croats, Serbs, Lebanes Muslims and the Sunnis and Shia of that, we would be nearly there. Then there would be a chance for multiculturalism to work.

Logic “And when you ask for assimilation I ask you, to what. Are we all to become aborigines, or Irish, or English, what?”

Hi Logic, I would predict we would continue to become more uniquely “Australian”.

Australia would retain the highpoints of immigrant cultures whilst continuing to build on our historically British Institutions and traditions (example I doubt we would change from the English model of legal prosecution or parliament to some (say) Napoleonic system), whilst moulding them to suit our evolving national identity.

Re” multiculturalism at its best asks for tolerance and sharing.”

“Assimilation” does not inhibit tolerance or sharing. Assimilation simply recognises that the best way for a new-comer to integrate into a pre-existing society is for the new-comer to take on the “burden of change”, rather than expect the society to part ways to make a special space for him. (that was my strategy when I migrated 25 years ago and it worked for me).

As for “To stick to Anglo Australian Christian values”
In this religiously tolerant secular society, the “Christian” part is irrelevant.
As for the “Anglos”, they were assimilated as were the Saxons, Normans etc to the point where Australia was colonised by a race of “assimilants”, rather than something “ethnically pure” (which might well be the secret to the “British national strength” it avoided the risks of interbreeding, reducing the melanoma cancers plaguing the white skin, red hair and freckles of “Australian-Celts”).

As they say “there are a lot of coffee coloured people in Brazil”.

My personal view will always be to support assimilation because it is the process of most “inclusion”.

Multiculturalism or anything else, which inhibits or detracts from the process of free and natural mixing, as achieved by assimilation, is morally wrong and reprehensible because it puts up barriers to that natural, free and independent mixing of people and fosters separate development or to use another word, “segregation” (example cults like the exclusive brethren and other divisive religions or ethnically exclusive “gangs”).

"Host Cultures Prevail" – as a solution? It ‘aint’ so simple David ...

Well known is the transition from one culture into another as being a painful and disorienting process, known as ‘cultural shock’ – a concept significant for those who are involved with bicultural communities. There is significant insight here into the myriad of role conflicts among immigrants, emigrants, foreign students, foreign managers, migrant workers, and other travelers to foreign lands.

You should recognise (if you are a biblical scholar) the Greeks, who were concerned, not with separation, but totally with the process of integration (seemingly a good thing). The only cosmos was the status quo. Nothing else mattered. As a matter of fact, they were highly intolerant of anyone who did not culturally belong. Consequently, they were only interested in the essence of being (ousia) and not in the process or the transition of becoming (genesis).

In understanding the transition from one culture to another, it is a shift from one form of purity to another. The transition period from one ordered social reality to the other is one of cultural chaos. It endangers the old and threatens the new. It is a world of double alienation - it is for this reason that a person in transition is treated as a non-person. The transition from the old home culture to the new host culture is traumatic. Look no further than to our own indigenous people for an example (except, a little ironically, they were the host culture supplanted – recognised only as a part of the flora and fauna).

Remember, when cultures are historically disparate, the culture shock grows exponentially. Languages which are diachronically close to each other share greater comprehension than languages which are not.