Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

H. E. Baber (San Diego, CA) is a professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego and the author of many scholarly articles.

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The MULTICULTURAL MYSTIQUE

Prometheus Books

Contents

Introduction. Is Multiculturalism Good for Anyone?....................................7Chapter 1. Do People Like Their Cultures?............................................17Chapter 2. A Philosophical Prelude: What Is Multiculturalism?........................35Chapter 3. The Costs of Multiculturalism.............................................55Chapter 4. The Diversity Trap: Why Everybody Wants to Be an X........................73Chapter 5. White Privilege and the Asymmetry of Choice...............................95Chapter 6. Communities: Respecting the Establishment of Religion.....................115Chapter 7. Multiculturalism and the Good Life........................................137Chapter 8. The Cult of Cultural Self-Affirmation.....................................157Chapter 9. Identity-Making...........................................................181Chapter 10. Identity Politics: The Making of a Mystique...............................205Chapter 11. Policy....................................................................227Index.................................................................................247

Chapter One

Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien. -Molire, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

Does multiculturalism make us more free or less free? The answer seems obvious at first: multiculturalism, which supports the coexistence and equal dignity of diverse cultures, expands the range of cultural options and therefore enhances human freedom.

But there's a logical trick here, a fallacy. Even if there is a wide range of cultural options available within a multicultural society, it does not follow that there is a wide range of cultural options open to any given individual within that society. Indeed, multiculturalism restricts freedom by locking individuals into unchosen identities, affiliations, and social arrangements, some of which are themselves highly restrictive.

Liberals value individual freedom. Multiculturalism restricts individual freedom. That is the liberal case against multiculturalism.

CHOICES

Like M. Jourdain-Molire's bourgeois gentleman who didn't realize he'd been speaking prose all his life-most people don't know that they live in "cultures." They view local social arrangements as unalterable facts of life, like death and taxes, rush hour traffic or the irritating minutiae of office politics chronicled in Dilbert.

Do people like their cultures? That is like asking whether people like their phone numbers. I don't know how my phone number was assigned and I do not think that there is any way I could get it changed. I had no choice about it, in any case. I might idly wish that my phone number were more memorable or that I could get an arrangement of alphanumeric characters that expressed something about my personal history or preoccupations-like a vanity license place. But that is not the way things work: you take what you get. This is the way most people understand their cultures, which are for them no more a matter of choice than phone numbers or, for that matter, the laws of nature, and certainly not something that they think about. People are stuck with their cultures, and, on the face of it at least, there is no reason to think that they like them.

Nevertheless, on the world stage, people strive for ethnic "self-determination." Michael Lind, speculating on "the world after Bush" in the Prospect notes:

The fact is that most of the people engaged in political violence today-from the Basque country to the Philippines-are not fighting for individual rights, nor for that matter are they fighting to establish an Islamist caliphate. Most are fighting for a national homeland for the ethnic nation to which they belong. For most human beings other than deracinated north Atlantic elites, the question of the unit of government is more important than the form of government, which can be settled later, after a stateless nation has obtained its own state.

Political revolutionaries do indeed fight to establish ethnically defined national homelands. We should ask, however, why. Arguably, it is because in most circumstances capturing tribal turf is the only way to secure individual rights. Multiethnic states in which the individual rights of all citizens are equally protected regardless of their ethnic origin or tribal affiliation are anomalous, and, in most cases, even where the official regulations guarantee equal rights to all citizens, these regulations are not taken seriously. Tribes take care of their own, and interethnic peace is always fragile: in most multiethnic nations, if you are a member of a minority tribe you are living on sufferance. "Tribal clashes" and ethnic cleansing are always a real and present danger.

We citizens of the global north, and we Americans in particular, imagine that multiethnic democracies where the rights of all individuals are secure "regardless of race, creed or color" are a norm or default to which all nations naturally will revert-if only they can be liberated from brutal dictators or corrupt regimes. Nationalist revolutionaries know better.

If you are tribal, you do not have the option of affiliating with other tribes or joining deracinated elites. You may not like your culture, but you are locked into it, and the only way to secure individual rights in the tribal system is by achieving ethnic "self-determination" and group rights-turf, power, and, if possible, statehood for your tribe. It is better to be a member of a tribe that has turf, power, and political independence under virtually any conditions than it is to be a member of a powerless, stateless minority on another tribe's turf. Consequently, if you, as a member of an ethnic minority, can choose between an ostensibly democratic multiethnic state and a national homeland-even a national homeland under the thumb of a dictator from your tribe-you will choose the latter in the interest of securing individual rights for you and your tribe mates.

We cannot therefore infer that, apart from we members of the deracinated North Atlantic elite, most people like their cultures and want to preserve them or they value cultural preservation and group rights rather than individual rights. People live tribally because they have no other viable options. They take care of their own because they know that only their own will take care of them. They fight for turf and prefer ethnic "self-determination" to incorporation in multiethnic states because they know that in most such systems, official commitments to liberty, equality, and fraternity are a sham. They follow the rules of their cultures and perpetuate them because they have no choice.

Do people like their cultures? Maybe some do and some don't. We cannot, however, assume that all or most people like their cultures. We cannot assume that most people, particularly members of non-Western societies, prefer to preserve their cultures or that immigrants and members of ethnic minorities in the West prefer not to assimilate, and we cannot assume that the interests of cultural preservationists should trump the interests of assimilationists.

Some individuals may like their cultures. Culture, as we are often reminded, is not...