Political Correctness & Multiculturalism: Evil's tools and the end of England

You are absolutely right Smuggler.

All these people who break laws have one thing in common: They're humans. These "humans" are an infestation to society. I suggest we make restrictions on immigration of humans and that we check every human's papers on the street to make sure they're in the country legally.

 

"I suggest we make restrictions on immigration of humans"
Um, we DO that. So, I'm not sure I follow.

 

Meaning we don't allow humans in.

 

Except that it requires "reasonable suspicion", which to some is looking Mexican. "Reasonable suspicion" leaves a lot of leeway.

That said, if they're actually breaking the law and don't have a driver's license, get them for unlicensed driving on top of the charge, then deport them after their sentence is up. Pretty simple: Do the crime, do the time.

Of course, the whole idea behind 1070 leads to a question of supremacy.

 

Ah, look, my favourite subject!

If I may raise a few points, some of which have been hinted at, seeing as I work with these issues for a living..

First: one of the classic problems in the discussion of multiculturalism, integration and reasonable accomodation is how cultures and, more precisely, ethnic groups are conceptualized - by both sides of the political fence. That is to say, cultures are often assumed to be static rather than dynamic, and ethnic groups are assumed to be clearly externally bounded and internally homogenous. While this way of viewing things makes it superficially really easy to discuss the issue in clear and distinct, even discreet categories of people, they are both incorrect.

Cultures are not static, but dynamic, and change over time. Just look at the English language - if we go by the primodialist idea (which is very common among the populist nationalist) that there is something like an original culture of X which will be threatened by the introduction of "alien" elements, then...when, exactly, did that culture exist in its "pure" and "original" form? For instance, the word "Thursday" comes from my own culture, Scandinavian, referring to the Pagan god Thor, our word for that day is Torsdag. Is the Asa faith something can be readily associated with English culture? Or is Roman culture? And so on.

This argument is often raised by friends of multiculturalism (and it's a good one). The problem is that those same friends tend to land in the conclusion that cultures or etnicities do not exist (simply because they can't be easily fit into distinct categories). That is, of course, also not true. They do. But they're never static and therefore impossible to pin down - which is why politicians who try to talk about distinct [nation] values in a democracy always end up saying very generalist things about democracy and human rights - which apply to most entrenched democracies and are not distinct at all.

Ethnic groups are also not internally homogenous or clearly externally bounded. There is a lot of people who have double heritage (or sometimes more, counting grand parents). Exactly why some people think this is a problem is strange to me - I regard my double heritage as an asset, something that enrichens me and gives me the capacity to see the human world from more than just one perspective, but maybe that's scary for some people who don't have more than one herigage, I don't know. But it is politically important, because it means the populist nationalist right end up completely wrong when they try to stereotype all immigrants according to the worst possible images they can think of (they're all terrorists etc) or believe that immigrants in general will simply live their lives like they did "over there", which is also incorrect - immigrants have to cope with the fact that they're in a new social environment (and partially I'm speaking as an immigrant myself here). That's not always an easy thing to do, but on a community level there is often recognition that such is the case.

The other side of the political spectrum often makes the same mistake, particularly in highly segregated countries, when they select their "immigrant representatives" - often according to highly visible markers of what they assume those groups should look like or vocal markers in terms of what opinions those groups are expected to hold. But these representatives might not at all be genuinely representative for what a majority of the immigrant community in question might think.

A lot the problems, in my opinion, come from the old nation-state project, which isn't as old as that. It rose during the 19th century are really built on the idea of "one nation, one people, one state". It's natural that states latched onto the idea and actively promoted it - it gave the state a new lease on legitimacy to continue to rule over its citizens in a time with often deeply flawed democracy (even deeper flawed than today). But since the notion inherently builds on a "we are different from the others" id

 

"We have now reached the point where every goon with a grievance, every bitter bigot, merely has to place the prefix, 'I know this is not politically correct, but...' in front of the usual string of insults in order to be not just safe from criticism, but actually a card, a lad, even a hero. Conversely, to talk about poverty and inequality, to draw attention to the reality that discrimination and injustice are still facts of life, is to commit the sin of political correctness. Anti-PC has become the latest cover for creeps. It is a godsend for every curmudgeon and crank, from fascists to the merely smug." ~Finian O'Toole.