They're my (former) neighbors, they speak like me, eat like me, listen to the same music, laugh to the same jokes... they're part of my culture. And that's how they see it too; if asked to what culture they belong to I bet a billion bucks virtually 100% would answer something like "carioca" or "Brazilian". Nobody would answer "Afro-Brazilian", because such category only exists in the twisted minds of some academics and their pet NGOs. It's absurd to assume they have more in common with some dude who lived 2,000 KM away just because of a shared darker skin!
What is Multiculturalism and why it's bad
- Thread starter luiz
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They're my (former) neighbors, they speak like me, eat like me, listen to the same music, laugh to the same jokes... they're part of my culture. And that's how they see it too; if asked to what culture they belong to I bet a billion bucks virtually 100% would answer something like "carioca" or "Brazilian". Nobody would answer "Afro-Brazilian", because such category only exists in the twisted minds of some academics and their pet NGOs. It's absurd to assume they have more in common with some dude who lived 2,000 KM away just because of a shared darker skin!
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
You're projecting how you think they view themselves into how they view themselves, though.
Besides which, the fact that they identify as Brazilian doesn't mean they don't identify as Afro-Brazilian too. I'm sure if we were to ask Warpus he'd tell us he identifies as Canadian. Also as Polish-Canadian. And I certainly would tell you these days that I identify as Canadian (younger, I wouldn't have said so), and also French-Canadian, and also Québécois. One group is part of the other is part of a third, and I identify in different ways and to different degrees with all three.
Identity is, by necessity, a multi-layered thing, and one can identify as part of multiple groups.
Besides which, the fact that they identify as Brazilian doesn't mean they don't identify as Afro-Brazilian too. I'm sure if we were to ask Warpus he'd tell us he identifies as Canadian. Also as Polish-Canadian. And I certainly would tell you these days that I identify as Canadian (younger, I wouldn't have said so), and also French-Canadian, and also Québécois. One group is part of the other is part of a third, and I identify in different ways and to different degrees with all three.
Identity is, by necessity, a multi-layered thing, and one can identify as part of multiple groups.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Is it just me or does the OP only refer to problems in Brazil? Because I find the notion that there is no black community to be ridiculous when applied to, for instance, the United States.
There are a lot of sororities in the U.S. that can be lumped into the full Brazilian culture.
Indeed, we can all have multiple identities, and that's part of the reason why it's absurd assuming that someone who has dark skin must belong to the "Black Culture" and have shared interests with others who have nothing but dark skin in common!
We are complex beings, individuals, citizens. I can only understand my country as a collection of such complex beings, individuals, citizens. Not as a collection of "communities". At any rate the public sphere should be the place where we all come together as citizens of a country, not as part of imaginary communities fighting each other for space. There is no limit for this "communitization" of the country; at this rate in 20 years everyone will be competing for the 0.5% quota allocated to their specific community, be it on Universities, the Civil Service or even Congress (yes, the Multiculturalists want quotas for Congress as well, and it will probably pass).
Granted things are different in other countries. I recognize that in some places actual cultural communities may overlap with ethnic divides. But even then, Multiculturalists always push for further artificial divisions, imagining new communities or distorting the boundaries of existing ones.
Look at the "Black American Community". Who exactly is a part of it? Is Obama part of it? Because note that he was raised by white people, and none of his ancestors were slaves, so he essentially does not share the culture and drama of the larger black american population. Is his skin color enough to make him part of said community?
So because Obama may or may noy qualify, such a community does not exist?
It may exist. I recognize that in some places actual cultural communities may overlap with ethnic divides. But I was arguing that even in such cases, Multiculturalists push for distorted boundaries. Their agenda, among other things, is that race = culture (which they share with more traditional racists, BTW). So because Obama is black (or rather half-black and half-white, but Multiculturalists don't acknowledge the white part of Mulattoes) they automatically lump him within the broader "Black American Community", even though his actual belonging to it is highly questionable at best.
Are you sure that all multiculturalists do that? And how do you determine whether someone is a multiculturalist?
In any event, just because there is a problem in defining membership in a group at the margins does not mean that community leaders should shut their pieholes and give elected officials a monopoly of influence.
In any event, just because there is a problem in defining membership in a group at the margins does not mean that community leaders should shut their pieholes and give elected officials a monopoly of influence.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
There's a lot of perfectly reasonable criticisms that can be made of the logic underlying multicultural as a political project. Some of them even resemble the criticisms Luiz is making. But all the rhetoric about rootless cosmopolitan academics and uppity Negro carpet-baggers, that's all just a bit icky, especially when that the guy saying it is whiter than a Klansman drinking vanilla milkshake in an igloo.
edit: For the like -3 people who actually care, I'm going to link to libcom's autonomist critique of multiculturalism, which makes a lot of the same points about how fictive "communities"* are constructed by states and local elites, but attempts to locate it within the context of real struggles around race and class, rather than waving the whole thing away as Boss Tweed getting up to his usual hijinks.
*note fictive, not fictitious
edit: For the like -3 people who actually care, I'm going to link to libcom's autonomist critique of multiculturalism, which makes a lot of the same points about how fictive "communities"* are constructed by states and local elites, but attempts to locate it within the context of real struggles around race and class, rather than waving the whole thing away as Boss Tweed getting up to his usual hijinks.
*note fictive, not fictitious
Well I am addressing a particular ideology, which I call Multiculturalism. For some people Multiculturalism is merely tolerating different cultures and ways of life. I have no problem with that; under that definition I'm a Multiculturalist myself! But I find that definition quite useless.
For me Multiculturalism is the divisive ideology described on the OP. And I don't want anyone to shut up, merely to not claim a mandate which was never given.
Indeed!
Edit: Ha, too bad you had to edit your post.
It'd be nice if you pointed where you agree with my criticism, and gave more insight on where you disagree.Traitorfish said:
My criticism of the academics is not about rootless cosmopolitanism (nobody is more of a rootless cosmopolitan than me! I'm essentially a nomad, and I love it), it's about they making communities up as an exercise in mental onanism.
As for uppity negro carpet-baggers... really? Was there even a hint of racism in my post? Or in any post I ever made?
And it's sad but your remark about my skin color is actually meaningful. I am pretty much banned from opening such a discussion in public in Brazil. The very first thing the "community leaders" would do is scream about my color and demand my head. They've done it to people opposed to racial quotas during public debates, literally screaming and drumming to prevent them from speaking. It's the death of the Brazilian Republic as it was once understood.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Also since when is multiculturalism primarily built on racial divides? oO I've mostly ever seen it on the line of ethno-cultural divides, not racial.
It's just *some* of those cultural lines happens to largely fit racial ones.
It's just *some* of those cultural lines happens to largely fit racial ones.
Can you give a quote from one of these community leaders where they claim such a mandate? Even if they do, if they are wrong about claiming such a mandate, wouldn't you think that someone within the represented community would criticize such a claim? Your community leaser rant seems fairly remote from your hard-to-define-the-scope-of-the community issue.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I agree that a lot of the "communities" which figure in multicultural projects are constructed by elite or technocratic observers, and bare only so much resemblance to actual concrete communities. As you say, this tendency to imagine "communities" spanning hundreds or even thousands of miles, simply people on either end of the line share some ethnic identity stretches credibility. I also agree that there's a basically anti-democratic thrust to a lot of this politics, which prefers an alliance of technocrats and "community leaders" to mass political participation. (What can we expect, I suppose, from a logic which was basically lifted wholesale from the British Raj.)
Where I disagree is the framing of this as nothing but a big scam carried out by out-of-touch academics and corrupt local bosses. These programs work because they address, however ineptly, real concerns surrounding race and class. People go along with this for a reason, because it meets some real need for which there doesn't appear to be any alternative. It's not enough to simply say "this is bad; enough of it", because the underling tensions are still going to exist.
Plus, there's a certain absurdity to disparaging identities such as "Afro-Brazillian" as pure invention, and then advocating instead an equally invented "Brazilian" identity. So there's a few point lost for lacking a sense of irony.
I'm not saying that you're a racist. But you skirt bloody close to a set of tropes well-loved by racists. And I don't think that's just a problem with rhetoric, I think it's where your entire critique goes off the rails, because its conclusion is that multiculturalism is a foreign disease (literally foreign, given your repeated references to American influence) introduced by foolish or malevolent agitators, which can be expunged without negative consequence, allowing the national body to return to its natural state of harmony. That's an objectively reactionary program, whatever good will you yourself might possess.
Gori the Grey
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I think the quota systems you lament will eventually collapse under their own weight into the atomistic democracy you desire. The more multiply people identify, the more nearly they will approximate individuals. Once there's a category for "Transgendered-cocaine-addicted-anarchist-Brazilian-lawyers" we'll get round to where species and specimen are coextensive.
ywhtptgtfo
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The Anglo-saxons are slowly losing their grip anyway. It's still a white man's world in the top of the hierarchy but minorities are creeping in. If luck would have it, we'd get the first Chinese mayor of Toronto soon.
Yes, there's a plethora of quotes in which unelected "leaders" claim a mandate, by pretending to be speaking for a whole community. Here's one I found particularly interesting, by Frei David (a "leader" of the "Black Movement" who is also a Catholic friar (frei) - I'll explain the context afterwards:
The context: the stylist Ronaldo Fraga, himself a mulatto, decided to to use a fashion parade to protest against the prevalence of white models in the fashion industry. So he had his models parade with wigs made of steel wool, in an "Afro" style. This "protest" may or may not be in poor taste, and perhaps the whole purpose was to be in poor taste in order to make people think. But my point is that:
-Frei David claims to speak for the "black community" when criticizing the stylist;
-He thinks his own NGO is the appropriate tribunal to to decide whether or not this was offensive and to grant forgiveness. So the stylist should attend a meeting with his NGO to make amends, as it is supposed to be the representative of black people.
Granted, this is a very innocuous case that only highlights the arrogance of a particular man. But the problem is the government is forced to negotiate and appease this very man all the time, and he receives a fortune of public funds for his NGO, which is openly racialist.
Well said.
And you're right on the technocratic part. A lot of people may think this is another attack by a right-winger against lefties, but fact is, even though the Multicultural project is a darling of large segments of the left, it's by no means an exclusive thing. The project in Brazil was initiated by the FHC government, which even though social-democratic, in Brazil is considered neoliberal and right-wing. A lot of the technocrats that endorsed or were even part of that government are enthusiastic supporters of racial quotas, vast expansion in indian reservations and the likes.
Both are fair points. But note that:
a) while the Multicultural project is indeed taking advantage of real tensions, it is very much also creating problems where they needn't exist by exploiting basic human instincts such as greed and tribal mentality. The best example would be in their crusade for ever expanding indian reservations. A lot of the ethnic indians, probably a majority (hard to say because nobody polls the subject), have no interest in living in reservations. The poor farmers who are being expelled in the Northern regions are by and large ethnic indians as well, physically indistinguishable from the "indians" they're making way to. But when a bunch of anthropologists tell a particular group of people that they're special, that their ancestors owned vast swaths of land which was unjustly stolen by the "white man", and that they can get it all back (plus a lot of government money) and should fight for it, what do you think they do? They're poor people being told they're special and deserving of a gigantic extension of land for free, for their eternal and tax-free use, plus federal dole. Of course some will get very excited about it. What is remarkable is that a lot of them actually tell the anthropologists to go sod off, which is why there are cases of "indians" being imported from Paraguay to claim reservations in Brazil!
b) While the "Brazilian" identity was also obviously a cultural construct, and it is a very fluid and diverse one, fact is today it exists. It was forged over 500 years, and today there is an undeniable culture, a mindset even, that is common to all that vast land. With a lot of regional variety, obviously. The same is not true for "Afro-Brazilian", "Guarani-Kaiowa" or whatever else.
I would say that in maintaining that phenotype has nothing to do with culture I'm actually taking an anti-racist position. The opposite of Multiculturalists.
As for the foreign influence... well, undeniably this ideology was not born in Brazil. It's entirely alien to Brazilian social and "racial" realities. But that doesn't mean I believe in a "natural state of harmony" or whatever. It's not like Brazil was paradise before the obsessive pursue of Multiculturalism, no, it was still pretty bad. But this project introduced new problems, or made old ones worse, without any benefit.
And yes, in this regard I'm reactionary! If Multiculturalism is the "new" way to deal with the public sphere, I say revert back to the old one! Let's again be Brazilian citizens, all of us, and not "Afro-Brazilians", "Gay Brazilians", "Guarani-Kaiowas" and so on and so forth. Let the public sphere go back to the principles of impersonality and meritocracy, one of the few good things that remained constant in Brazil since the early Republic, even during the authoritarian regimes, only to be destroyed by Multiculturalists. In other causes I'm a staunch progressive, but being a reactionary is not always bad!
Pretty good summary of the thread.
TheLastOne36
Deity
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Speaking from my personal experience in both Venezuela and Canada, this is exactly the case.
When I was in Venezuela, there was no such thing as "negro(black)" or "moreno(brown)" community. Everyone was Venezuelan, everyone had more in common with their immediate cultural sub-region than they did with their skin color. Of course immigrant groups like Italian-Venezuelans, German-Venezuelans, Lebanese-Venezuelans and Chinese-Venezuelans have their own immigrant culture much the same as North America.
But when it comes to actual race, where in America there is an identifiable African American culture, in Venezuela at least, there really isn't such a thing. Skin color is treated no different than the color of your hair, your height or weight.
To avoid confusion, racist undertones do exist but depend on context, not on the mere fact. It is quite regular to call people "negro", "negrito" or whatever on the street and for it to have the same meaning as calling someone "blondie" or "red-head". It becomes racist only if you use skin color in a degrading or derogatory context.
Anyway, seeing as what Luiz is saying conforms to my experience in Venezuela, I would say this is how race relations/culture in Latin America differentiates from North America.
Also as a final point, I think it is important to point out that the multiculturalism Luiz speaks of in his OP and throughout this thread is very different from the multiculturalism as understood by many of us in Canada or Western Europe. I and I think much of CFC-OT usually think of multiculturalism as the existence of a melting pots of culture that exists in the international cities we live in.
@TLO: Yep.
Anyway, this is how these "democrats" view a debate. A "black rights group" marched into a debate (on a topic that had nothing to do with blacks) and screamed and shouted and climbed to the stage,where they dropped a severed pig's head (not sure what that represents in Multicultural demonology) until they had to cancel the participation of one of the debaters, who was speaking, and they got to read their "manifesto" instead (which was of course ******** Multicultural garbage)! Why? Because the debater in question published a book criticizing the racial quotas in Brazil. So even though he has always had anti-racist positions and his book is clearly anti-racism, he is called a racist and a fascist (and an "enemy of the people" yes!!!) by a screaming mob of Multicultural thugs (the fascist accusation is particularly ironic given their tactics. Well, so is the racist one I guess). Oh, and before anyone asks: he is a prominent left-wing college professor, not some neocon intellectual.
Link to video.
I want my country back
Down with Multiculturalism.
Anyway, this is how these "democrats" view a debate. A "black rights group" marched into a debate (on a topic that had nothing to do with blacks) and screamed and shouted and climbed to the stage,where they dropped a severed pig's head (not sure what that represents in Multicultural demonology) until they had to cancel the participation of one of the debaters, who was speaking, and they got to read their "manifesto" instead (which was of course ******** Multicultural garbage)! Why? Because the debater in question published a book criticizing the racial quotas in Brazil. So even though he has always had anti-racist positions and his book is clearly anti-racism, he is called a racist and a fascist (and an "enemy of the people" yes!!!) by a screaming mob of Multicultural thugs (the fascist accusation is particularly ironic given their tactics. Well, so is the racist one I guess). Oh, and before anyone asks: he is a prominent left-wing college professor, not some neocon intellectual.
Link to video.
I want my country back
Down with Multiculturalism.
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