You quote me so I assume you think I see multiculturalism as "beloved". I do not. In recent years I've preferred to live in places like Wales and now Cornwall, where the local culture is and has been under pressure from English hegemony. Personally, when I go to live in a place that has a distinctive culture I try to assimilate as much as I can. In Wales I started to learn Welsh, supported Welsh rugby, learned the national anthem (sung beautifully by Aled Jones), respected the great divide between those who were 'Chapel' and those who were 'Church', and looked the other way when the locals burned down the English second homes.boisdevie wrote:"UKIP also has an agenda beyond Brexit - they want to oppose multiculturalism - so I doubt they'll feel their work is done. " I live in a town where we've had a growing muslim population for the last 50 years. Do you know how much they've integrated? Not one bit. That's just how great your beloved multiculturalism is in my neck of the woods.
Okay, I'm slightly joking. I've never liked Aled Jones.
Seriously though, multiculturalism is always a problem when you're losing a way of life that's precious to you because another culture is taking over without any sensitivity to the communities that went before or are currently still there. Where I probably differ from UKIP is that I personally prefer the Celtic, Gaelic and Breton cultures to the Anglo-Saxon, for whom the concept of cultural humility seems eternally absent :).
[ To be honest, in Cornwall where we have 1 mosque and 627 churches for half a million people, cultural Islam still really winds people up, even though we have less than 1000 Muslims in the entire count[r]y (compared to 2000+ Jedi Knights apparently) ]
The danger for liberals is the hypocrisy of wanting everyone's culture to be respected, celebrated and preserved, while also having a strong distaste for the militant Anglo-Saxon hegemony. The danger for the English culture is the hypocrisy of thinking that every other culture should always assimilate into Englishness, wherever it may be found. I also recognise that while I think everyone should assimilate if possible into the culture where they live, not everyone can choose where they live, so things are often difficult and messy, and cultural sensitivity is needed on all sides.
Anyway, 'beloved multiculturalism' doesn't reflect how I feel at all. It's much more complicated and tangled up with liberal self-loathing :/
On reflection, this probably isn't the thread for such a topic...