Multicultural debate rages

From page 24

deserving than others?

Since Canadians celebrate
their multicultural society
and since multiculturalism is
part of our core value sys-
tem, the debare over multi-
culturalism really turns on
whether our multicultural
reality needs to be fortified
with a public policy.

But exploring the effects
of official multiculturalism
on the Canadian psyche is
tricky, not least because of
what Robert Hughes calls
“the political correctness
fiurry.” Political correctness,
says the award-winning
author and critic, has
allowed us to replace reason
with feelings as the main
referents of argument. And
when we no longer know
how to debate, we resort to
mudslinging.

Somehow Canadian mul-
ticultural sensibilities arc
offended when the American
pottage is compared to our
own.

In reality, the calculus of
cultural politics on American
or Canadian soil is not that
different.

The same culeural-drift
that makes our “politics of
difference” so similar to the
American one is responsible
for making the language of
popular therapy a fixture in
Canadian vernacular.

The soothing no-fault
culture of pop-psyche has
fong done away with

sresponsibility and, instead,
ushered in the age of the
victim.

And victimism is the
common thread of identity
politics: “All francophones
are victims of all anglo-
phones, all natives of all
non-natives, etc.”

If we can admit to snack-
ing on the same multiculrur-
al smorgasbord with our
neighbors to the South,

22 — Sunday, May 10. 1995 —

North Shore News

then what Todd Gitlin has
to say might offer some
insight. “Respect tor difter-
ence -— the formulation of
our multicultural society,”
has turned into what Grin
calls “the obsessive elevation
and aggrandizement of «lif
ference.”

The ex-Berkeley protes-
sor and “onc of America’s
leading intellectuals,”
blames the genuflection to

“The soothing
no-fault culture
of pop-psyche has
long done away
with responsibility
and, instead, ush-
ered in the age of
the victim.”

hyphens for turning a
healthy pluralism into a
licence for each ethnic or
cultural group to pursue a
monoculture.

But it is the kind of paii-
tics that reduces the fight
for justice to the banning of
the suffix “man” from the
English language, that Gitlin

despairs of most. What

Gitlin longs for is the return
of a universal “Left” hat
stands once again for the
equality of ail persons,
rather than a Left he accuses
of promoting the rights of
particular men and women
only.

For not playing by an

ethnic script, Canadian
author Neil Bissoondath has
his detractors.

A visible minority, to use
multicultural nomenclature,
he sees the promotion of
cultural difference in public
policy as a possible threat to
social cohesion.

“The psychology and
politics of multiculturalism,”
says the writer, “have made
divisiveness, in the name of
racial and ethnic rights,
socially acceptable.”

Bissoondath emerges
from the murk of mudsling-
ing advocating that a larger
humanity prevail over the
narrowness of ethnicity. To
that end, fissures along eth-
nic fault lines do not help.
Ultimately Bissoondath
wants to see ethnicity
removed from public policy,
where the onus is on gov-
ernment to create a sense of
community, and returned to
private life, where the indi-
vidual is in charge.

Ours is neither a strong
nor weak pluralism, but a
blend.

The fallout from the ide-
ology of strong pluralism,
wich is that all and sundrv
are victims of “the pale,
patriarchal, penis people”
and their oppressive
European institutions and
mental structures, is still,
however, very much with us.

Periodic rages, against
“Eurocentrism,” however,
coincide cozily with an

expedient silence concerning
the Western origins of our
human rights tradition.

If human rights are what
baste our pluralistic society

THE SPECTATOR

Veteran sports journalist Jim Kearney:

every second Wednesday in your
North Shore News.

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together, we'd do well to
remember that they come
from the oft-maligned
European civilization.

To paraphrase Todd
Gitlin, those who speak of
multi-identities, perspectives
and world-views, the worth
of all individuals, their nght
to dignity and to a social
order thar satisties it --
would not be doing so were
it not for the enlightenment
principles.

— Hana Mercer isa

North Vancouver-based free-
lance writer
mercer@ipsy.mot.com

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