Multiculturalism is a range of ideas and practices introduced widely from the late 1970s across Western societies both at national and local level, that sought to better integrate and respect the cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds of minority immigrant groups. While its popularity as an idea has waned in recent years, its legacy is still very evident in schools and across public policy. There are signs that in some areas of education it is making a comeback.
Though it was introduced with the best of moral and ethical intentions there is now strong evidence that it has led to unforeseen negative effects such as entrenched forms of segregation based on separate identities and other unintended outcomes. Many political and social commentators from both the right and the left have been very critical in recent years. The former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for example, has written that multiculturalism has ‘turned society from a home into a hotel, in which each group has its own room but there is little sense of collective belonging.’[i]
Concrete evidence of its negative impact comes from a number of sources. First, a recent Dutch study (and the Netherlands has been one of the pioneers and most ardent advocates of the multicultural experiment) that showed a majority of Dutch respondents felt there had been a fundamental misunderstanding between the notions of ‘tolerance’ on the one hand and ‘multiculturalism’ on the other.
The views of respondents were summed up in phrases they used like: ‘tolerance means ignoring differences, multiculturalism means making an issue of them’; and ‘the benefits of tolerance are large and the costs negligible. By contrast, the material benefits of multiculturalism appear negligible and the costs high’; and finally ‘sharing a common identity builds support for inclusion, bringing differences of ethnic and religious identity to the fore evokes an exclusionary reaction it is meant to avoid.’ The critical fault line of the ‘multiculturalism experiment’ has therefore been the attempt to square a very difficult if not impossible circle, in that it asserts simultaneously: ‘You must understand me’ but ‘You cannot understand me’.[ii]
As a teacher, I was an enthusiastic standard bearer for multiculturalism in both schools and universities throughout the 1980s and 90s. Like the experiment itself, I acted with the best moral motives in mind and I saw some important areas of public life change for the better. However, I look back now and realise I was guilty of ‘a fatal deceit’[iii] – where one believes with absolute certainty that a development is safe, not realising that it may be years before the real danger emerges and then worse, not acknowledging it when it does.
Now I fear that we – both as teachers and wider society - are doing the same with the term ‘diversity’; that it is being used to uncritically endorse education and social policies that are non-integrative and disharmonising. I am increasingly dismayed and sometimes alarmed at how often I see examples in the UK (let alone other countries around the world) where suspicion of motive and an inclination to separate if not exclude has replaced a respectful tolerance for difference and the responsibility we all have to seek common ground. Such behaviour is justified on the basis of ‘protecting minority cultures’ or ‘creating safe spaces’ and where an over-zealous inclination to embrace victimhood lays claim to what the great philosopher Bertrand Russell called ‘the superior virtue of the oppressed’.
I have spent my professional life working to combat prejudice and bigotry, both that which is clearly evident and that which is covert, that which blatantly oppresses and that which furtively victimises minority groups. But victimization and victimhood is not the same thing. Victimization is an assault on the person coming from without. Victimhood is a chosen, adopted attitude; an assault on one’s psyche coming from within. In my view, one of the main legacies of multiculturalism is that we have allowed a ‘cult of victimhood’ to become established as a norm in our educational and political discourse.
There are two further dangers looming from the legacy of multiculturalism. The first is particular to schools and teachers: that we fail to recognise the mistakes that former generations of teachers (like me) made and we allow the negative aspects of multiculturalism to masquerade as ‘diversity’ and entrench.
The second factor is that as a liberal-democratic society, we fail to respond to the growing popularity of exclusionary and divisive ‘identity politics’ and the populist memes of far-right communitarianism and nationalism. A tolerant and indeed a patriotic society are about promoting the fundamental values we all subscribe to, share and love. It is about the kind of patriotism described by George Orwell: ‘as a devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one might believe to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people.’
Other evidence that multiculturalism has led to forms of segregation and separate identities comes from the writing and studies of journalists and social commentators from the political left who once, like me, wholeheartedly supported the idea. One such is David Goodhart.[iv] He has reported how contemporary senior Muslim scholars in the UK have conceded that as a result of the multicultural model, Muslim communities in towns and cities across the UK (like Bradford, Birmingham, Luton, Leicester and elsewhere) are more segregated now than their forbears were who came to Britain in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
They also acknowledge that the current, largely British born and bred generation is more religiously and socially conservative than previous generations who were the initial migrants. Even more surprising, that Muslim communities in Britain are likely to be more religiously and socially conservative than their kith and kin who reside in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
After decades of socialising, schooling and education in a society with twenty-first century liberal values, how has this happened?[v]
[i] Sacks, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times. p.140.
[ii] Ibid. p.140-141.
[iii] A term coined by the neo-liberal Austrian-British economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek.
[iv] David Goodhart is the former editor of the left-leaning though largely contrarian Prospect magazine.
[v] Analysis ‘Conservative Muslims, Liberal Britain’ (2014) [podcast] BBC Sounds
This is an extract from my book: "Becoming A Teacher - the legal, ethical and moral implications of entering society's most fundamental profession" published by Crown House Publishing and also available on Amazon and at Waterstones, Foyles and Barnes & Noble.
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