Multiculturalism - Again
Written by Rev John Root, and republished from his blog 'Out of Many, One People'
Suella Braverman has put multi-culturalism back in the news. What people mean by the term can vary enormously, plus its links with the confusing issue of immigration mean that clarity on the topic is hard to come by. Here’s my attempt. Twelve years ago David Cameron told us that multi-culturalism has failed. Now the Home Secretary Suella Braverman tells us that it is not working. Given that there have been significant developments in Britain’s multi-cultural landscape over this period what is it about multi-culturalism that keeps it in the spotlight?
Multi-culturalism is a universal problem.
For a variety of reasons different cultures will overlap on the same piece of ground.
*People will trade, and so European cities had enclaves of foreign traders within them. London still has churches for the Swiss or Danish or Norwegian communities that settled in the capital.
* People of different ethnic groups start farming in adjacent areas – thus the horrific sectarian and religious violence that has broken out in Manipur, India recently, or the Hutu/Tutsi conflict in Ruanda. Whilst Britain’s island status has given some containment, yet the consequence of Protestant settlers becoming established in Ireland has left enduring and by no means fully resolved tensions.
* People migrate to get better lives. It is only by migration that people have spread across the planet. People spread from Europe to the Americas, parts of Africa, Australia, New Zealand to carve out better lives than at home Just as people are now seeking to migrate from poverty in the Global South, hoping for a better life in Europe or North America. So too people spread from China to across South-East Asia.
* People occupy land by conquest, as the Normans did in 1066, or as the Spanish did in Latin America and Britain did in India.
A variety of approaches have been taken to the problem.
a) Monocultural State (Unity).
French colonial policy asserted that the citizens of all her colonies were French citizens; they returned members to the French National Assembly. This assumption that nationality over-rules, indeed all but obliterates, ethnicity still influences French policy. Unusually amongst multi-ethnic nations the national census still takes no record of ethnicity. France has been able to insist that burquas are illegal with barely contested authority in a way that a British Government would not dare
Such a strong policy of cultural homogenisation means a down-playing of minority languages against the universality of French. It also leads to a strongly secular educational system since affirming religious faiths is a recipe for unwelcome division. So, when French urban areas erupt with youthful violence, the British tend to smugly see this as the consequence of the inflexible French refusal to acknowledge ethnicity. When British Muslims commit acts of terrorist violence the French smugly see it as the result of insufficient confidence in asserting a single national identity. French policy, to its credit, has a strong confidence in cosmopolitanism, in society’s capacity to incorporate people of diverse backgrounds without any need to affix ‘essential’ identities to them. Black American musicians, artists and intellectuals have often found it a congenial place to be. It may also be why independent Francophone colonial intellectuals such as Senghor or Fanon emerged earlier than in British colonies. It is also indicated by France continuing to have greater military and political involvement in their one-time African colonies than Britain does.
b) Multicultural state/Monocultural institutions - ‘strong’ multi-culturalism or Diversity.
By contrast in West Africa Britain governed by ‘Indirect Rule’ – the policy that gave considerable authority to conservative and traditional local rulers, behind whom lay less visible British colonial authority. As with France, the legacy of such policy persists in the imperial nation. The British response to a multi-cultural society has been described as ‘conservative pluralism’ – a policy of giving status to traditional elders in synagogues, mosques and the like and using them as the first contact in relating to minority communities, so that within a multicultural state there are clusters of monocultural institutions, which are usually left alone or even supported by the state, for example via ethnic-specific community centres and groups, even support for schools, as well as widespread provision for translation facilities. All with the intention of allowing people to sustain a separate ethnic identity. Additionally, there has been a reluctance for government to interfere with the cultural or religious practices of ethnic groups. Until very recently the British Government has tended to turn a blind eye or has been reluctant to take action over such issues as forced marriage, female genital circumcision or selective abortion of female foetuses, tacitly justified by affirming Britain as a society of diverse cultures and therefore practices.
As ‘multiculturalism’ has come under increasing criticism it is this understanding of it as involving the promotion of monocultural institutions that is in mind, particularly the fear that allowing and indeed encouraging a separate Muslim identity has created not only division but the increased likelihood of violent opposition to British society and policies – thus David Cameron’s negativity.
c) Multicultural state/Multicultural institutions – ‘weak’ multiculturalism or Unity with Diversity.
However, this is not the only understanding of multiculturalism or the policies that it can generate. Between the two above policies is a mediating policy whereby the existence of different cultures in a society is recognised, but always within a wider framework which prioritises unity and commonality. Schools or community associations are seen as places where different ethnic groups interact, share and learn and where differences are identified but not absolutised.
Such situations are inevitably fluid. As opposed to the inflexibility which sees multiculturalism as either necessarily evil or good, an approach is needed which sees the need to manage and adapt the situation. When head of the Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Philips’ landmark speech on multiculturalism – often mistakenly seen as having declared it ‘failed’ – spoke rather of the need for it to be ‘managed’, so that on the one hand the government did not ‘sleepwalk’ into unwittingly strengthening divisive and hostile identities, but rather saw the need to manage the extent to which groups were encouraged to appreciate their own uniqueness and the extent to which they needed to acknowledge loyalty and commitment to a greater whole. This approach of at some times and in some ways emphasising diversity and in other times and ways stressing unity also reflects my own experience of leading a multi-ethnic church, and that of others ministers such the American David Anderson in his excellent ‘Multicultural Ministry’.
But judgements as to what is appropriate are finely balanced. In Haringey, teachers from eight madrassahs were given a government-funded twelve-week course to improve the quality of their teaching. The madrassahs – described as ‘supplementary schools within mosques’ – have an important role in teaching children the Koran (‘Haringey People’, Feb-March 2015). By contrast, improving teaching in Sunday schools would not be seen as a legitimate government activity because there are significant distinctions to be made between the two methods of religious instruction, and their contexts. The case can be made for redressing educational disadvantage amongst Muslim children by such an initiative, but such ‘special treatment’ nonetheless raises complex questions about state-fostered division and unfairness.
The result is change – both in the majority community, which in Britain has clearly absorbed aspects of minority cultures, notably over food and music, and in minority community communities themselves as they start to meld into the wider community. This can be perceived as having costs – Jewish leaders lament the decline in Jewish identity and numbers through both out-marriage and secularisation, but for most minorities it seems that increasing integration into British culture by the next generation is seen as an acceptable cost to the benefits of living in Britain. A partial exception may be the African Caribbean community where 13% of those surveyed were ‘Not at all’ proud to be British, and 32% ‘Not really’. (This was tendentiously headlined by ‘The Voice’ newspaper as ‘Proud to be Black but not British’ when the 12% who were ‘Definitely’ proud to be British, along with the 37% ‘Somewhat’ were reduced to ‘Just 1 in 10 Black Brits ‘proud to be British’).
One strange fruit of declining ethnic identity has been the shift from the specifically ‘white against black’ riots of 1958 in Notting Hill and Nottingham to the ‘black against police’ riots of the 1980s to the ‘black and white against social order’ riots of 2011.
One way to illustrate the three different approaches to a multi-cultural society noted above could be in the different responses to Muslim women wearing a burqa. If a monocultural approach of affirming the dominance of one culture is taken then wearing a burqa is likely to be strongly opposed and possibly made illegal, as in France. Conversely if affirming multiculturalism is also seen as giving space for separate cultures to develop in their own ways, then wearing a burqa will be defended as part of people’s right to express their own cultural identity. If however multiculturalism is seen as people of different cultures relating and contributing to an emerging new culture, then burqas are likely to be disapproved of, albeit without any coercive force, as hindering – quite literally – face-to-face engagement between peoples.
So what does Suella Braverman want concerning multi-culturalism?
In one respect she has very little power, and rightly so. Government can take a firmer line against policies that are contrary to (undefined) ‘British values’ such as FGM, and accordingly be stronger against the sort of laissez faire multi-culturalism that hindered police action against the scandalous sexual abuse cases in Rotherham and elsewhere. They can and should be vigilant in rooting out racial discrimination in employment. But they can’t tell people where to live and who to socialise with. Overall in a society that strongly values individual freedom ‘weak’ multi-culturalism is inevitable, with only minor forays to limit the behaviour of cultural sub-groups.
In fact, despite Suella Braverman’s lament, multi-culturalism seems to be working quite well in Britain. As her critics have found it easy to point out, the very Cabinet of which she is a member is a fine example of multi-culturalism: people of very different origins, holding divergent religious beliefs and no doubt different cultural tastes but united in certain convictions and working for a common task.
More broadly we have increasingly become, even since David Cameron’s 2011 speech, a society that is for the most part comfortable (or even proud, if not smug) about its multi-culturalism. White English people have no issues about working with people of other ethnic backgrounds; inter-ethnic marriages are frequent and accepted. Conversely the overwhelming majority of people from minority ethnic backgrounds are at ease in affirming both their pride in their ethnic identity and a positive sense of Britishness. To quote the Report on “’Racism and Ethnic Equality in a Time of Crisis’: ‘We see that the overwhelming majority of people across (almost) all ethnic groups feel a strong sense of belonging to the national community. Furthermore, it seems that having a strong attachment to one’s ethnic identity often goes hand in hand with the strong sense of belonging to British society’ (p 52).
Braverman’s cherry-picked examples of intercultural conflict were both untypical of the majority of multi-cultural European cities where violence has not broken out; and they had disparate causes. In Paris it was a recurrence of the economic grievances of long-established minority communities against the establishment; in Leicester conflict between two South Asian groups, fuelled from South Asia; only in Malmo did its source rely on recent asylum focussed immigration. Such examples show us that very varied multi-cultural contexts need attention and care, not that they are not the products of a ‘misguided doctrine’.
But ‘for the most part comfortable’ is written above because not all of our society is that comfortable. Eric Kaufmann’s ‘Whiteshift’ (2018) identified the tendency of white people to move out of heavily mixed multi-ethnic areas to ‘whiter’ extra-suburban communities. ‘The only ethnic group to become more segregated in London in the 2000s are the white British. As others move towards ethnic strangers, the white British tend to be moving towards themselves’ p 392). My own (very limited) experience in Tottenham is of private housing areas on the one hand becoming gentrified as young middle-class whites move in, whilst on the other hand working class whites move out. At the risk of repeating a well-worn but useful distinction, the ‘Anywheres’ are very comfortable moving into an area of ethnic diversity; the ‘Somewheres’ are looking for places where they will find greater ethnic congruity. To quote Kaufmann again ‘Liberals have a difficult time understanding the moral psychology of majority group loyalty’ (p 374).
So what does Suella really want?
The answer of course is a reduction to immigration. It is a controversy I have so far avoided, simply because of the questions I am not clear about the answer to.
Is large-scale immigration just?
Yes, people are seeking asylum and fleeing desperate circumstances, so hospitality and generosity are in order. Further many are the result of our clumsy and inept military intervention in the Middle East; or increasingly the victim of western-generated global warming.
No. We aren’t able to distinguish genuine human rights applications from the potentially over-whelming number of would-be economic migrants, especially since successfully migrating to Britain brings enormous economic and social benefits, and so becomes a reward for taking the risks of migrating illegally.
Do we need more immigration?
Yes, we need the labour, notably in care homes, and we need healthy young people to pay taxes, especially to pay pensions.
No, the pressures, especially on housing, but also on schools and hospitals are too great, and they affect the poor most heavily.
Making an inappropriate attack on multi-culturalism, therefore, is a clumsy and polemical indirect argument about immigration, which in reality needs the formulation of extensively thought through policies at both multi-party and international levels. It is an issue which needs honest and realistic discussion. It is not helped by the cost-free criticisms of government policy by well-off people (like Gary Lineker) who enjoy the economic benefits of large-scale immigration without experiencing the pressures that poor people face. Similarly, it is not godly for bishops to criticise government policies without having specific and positive proposals to replace them with. The need of the hour is for wise men not prophets. Any policy on immigration will be both costly and morally compromised.
John Root is a retired Anglican clergyman, living in Tottenham. He has been vice-principal of a Cambridge theological college and was for thirty years vicar of an ethnically ’super-diverse’ church in Wembley. He has also lectured part-time in early colonial history. His wife is Indian, from Malaysia and they have an adult son. You can read more of his work here.