Multiculturalism

How it can contribute to depolarising the current political polarisation We are all aware that we live in societies with heightened diversity and that aspects of that are being used divisively. So a response is that we need to bring people together by making some kind of deal amongst ourselves, or with the state – some kind of social contract. Social contract thinking – originating in the religious divisions of the 17th century – usually emerges when trust is breaking down and society is becoming a jungle (famously for Hobbes, “nasty, brutish and short”). Yet the remedy, a contract between self-interested individuals (or between groups), may pacify but it is not enough to make people care for each other. We need something stronger than transactional thinking to deal with the stresses and strains of diversity, and to tackle the rampant polarisation we are seeing today. We need respect and belonging, a sense of the public or national good, not just contracts. I believe that multiculturalism has a contribution to make here. This may sound preposterous – for some people, multiculturalism is the problem! Well, yes, if you think that multiculturalism is all about singular identities, separatism, the privileging of minorities, racial binaries, unprovoked militancy, fundamentalism, ethnic absolutism, anti-nationalism and so on. But that is a caricature. I know of no multiculturalist theorist – as opposed to liberal globalist, aka a cosmopolitan – who has advocated any of these things. In any case, let me offer you a different vision of multiculturalism. “We need respect and belonging, a sense of the public or national good, not just contracts” The subtitle of my 2007 book, Multiculturalism, was A civic idea.1 My argument was that multiculturalism was derived from a political ethics of citizenship that includes but goes beyond rights, representation, rule of law and so on, namely not just a liberal citizenship. All modes of integration should be analysed in terms of their interpretation of the triad of liberty, equality and fraternity/solidarity. Multiculturalism is specifically concerned with the right to a subgroup identity and that subgroup identity is treated in an equal citizenship way. This means symbolic recognition but also institutional accommodation and the remaking of the whole, namely of the citizenship identity itself. This leads to a second feature, namely the recognition of the subgroup identity as part of or at least consistent with full membership, a form of inclusion that allows all citizens to have a sense of belonging to their national citizenship; sometimes expressed as fraternity or solidarity. Minorities, especially marginalised or oppressed minorities, have this right to group identity recognition because the majorities do; or, if you like, all subgroups, including the majority, have this right. If, as I believe, multiculturalism is trying to provide minorities with what majorities have or seek to have, namely their own national or cultural identities folded into their citizenship, I also have come to appreciate that parts of majorities have become identity-anxious and multiculturalists should be sensitive to this, though it complicates the multicultural framework. “Multicultural citizenship must be based on dialogical, not just unidirectional, recognition” So, while multiculturalists may need to think more about ‘the majority’, it is not the case that existing theories are negative about majority culture per se or even that multiculturalism is about protecting minorities from majority culture. No state, including liberal democracies, is culturally neutral – all states support a certain language or languages, a religious calendar in respect of national holidays, the teaching of religion in schools, the funding of faith schools, certain arts, sports and leisure activities and so on. Naturally enough, this language, religion, arts or sport will be that of the majority population. This is true even if no malign domination is at work. Hence, it is important to distinguish when the institutional domination of the majority culture is or is not present – and, moreover, when it has or may legitimately have normative value. For example, the English language has a de facto dominant position in Britain that is manifested in so many ways. Yet, one can also recognise that the position of English is of normative value, given the meaning that it has historically and today for the people of Britain. This normative primacy can be explained without having to bring in any domination concepts such as whiteness, or at the very least, without reducing it to questions of whiteness. For multiculturalism, however, it is a matter of extending this valued condition – of creating a society based on one's cultural identity – to include minorities. At a minimum, the predominance that the cultural majority enjoys in shaping the national culture, symbols and institutions should not be exercised in a non-minority accommodating way. The distinctive goal of multicultural nationalism, as I have come in recent years to call my position, is to allow people to hold, adapt, hyphenate, fuse and create identities important to them in the context of their being not just unique individuals but also members of sociocultural, ethno-racial and ethno-religious groups, as well as national co-citizens. National co-citizens care about their country, which is not just another place on the map or workplace opportunity – it is where they belong, it is their country. “National co-citizens care about their country” “Multiculturalism is about changing that – it is, among other things, about ‘rethinking the national story’” So, how can multiculturalism, as I have described it and which I advocate, respond to the polarisation which I have said we should aim to overcome? Even if multiculturalism is one of the poles and part of the dynamic resulting in the majoritarian backlash pole, it can be adapted to be part of the solution. Depolarisation involves being able to reach out toward the other pole, and multiculturalism can do this; indeed, it can do so better than most other alternatives. I suggest that multiculturalism can make three positive contributions to depolarisation. An aspect of the last of these is to check and reduce, over time, intolerances within minority groups themselves such as the racism that some people from Eastern Europe have brought to Britain. Yet, insofar as anxiety about the pace and accumulative scale of immigration is a source of majoritarian anxiety, it is something that multiculturalists can sympathetically address. They may, for example, be able to find some level of practical agreement or at least show those who tend to oppose multiculturalism that differences on immigration should not be a ground for their opposition to the concept as a whole, and that some of their concerns are shared by minority co-citizens and multiculturalists. “There has been a rise of majority anxiety in parts of the West” The point I want to make here is that multiculturalism understands identity anxiety; it is built on appreciating why minorities can experience identity anxieties and so this appreciation can be extended to majority identities. Majoritarianism that seeks to privatise or individualise minority identities while demanding public assimilation is problematic, but this does not mean that multiculturalism cannot see the narratives of the historically evolved and evolving majority as central in the national identity. Similarly, the project to multiculturalise national identities can recognise the composite nature of majorities. Given that project's sensitivity to the normative and political importance of identities and to the plural nature of identities, it is well placed to appreciate why majorities can come to feel anxious about identity change and that this anxiety has to be taken into account in working for inclusive national identities. “multiculturalism understands identity anxiety” As should be clear from the above, multiculturalism is built on national citizenship and national identity, though this has to be an inclusive national identity, which recognises minority identities and offers both institutional accommodation to minority ethno-religious needs and remakes the public space and the symbols of national identity so that all can have a sense of belonging. Such multicultural nationalism unites the concerns of some of those currently sympathetic to majoritarian nationalism and those who are pro-diversity and minority accommodationist. A brilliant recent example is the Coronation of King Charles, which combined weird and wonderful ancient rituals, an Anglican church service that for the first time included women bishops and black Christians, including a Gospel Choir, but also involved both Lords and religious leaders from the key minority faiths. Besides the traditional oath to maintain the Church of England as an established church, the Archbishop of Canterbury asked the King to “seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely”. *** If we take these three contributions together, we have a serious basis for depolarisation, for bringing together enough people from each pole to create a majority consensus on diversity. Even if a focus on identity, both in terms of recognition and in terms of fostering commonality and societal unity, is not sufficient for depolarisation, it is a necessary dimension that political theorists who frame things in terms of social-contract liberalism miss, and thereby miss both what needs to be addressed and what is needed to secure liberal among other values. Nor do socialists, human rights champions, cosmopolitans or localists give minority identities and national belonging the same centrality as is conferred by multiculturalism. Multicultural nationalism therefore may represent the political idea and tendency most likely to offer a feasible alternative rallying point to monocultural nationalism, the form that diversity scepticism will continue to take unless sympathetic bridges from the pro-diversity camp can offer an alternative to some currently inclined towards scepticism. Tariq Modood is Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy, University of Bristol and a Fellow of the British Academy. He served on the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, the National Equality Panel, and the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life. His website is tariqmodood.com