Skip to content
Read • Question • ConnectAnthony’s notes & researchReturn with a new question
Anthony’s NotesA personal field guide
From the notebook

multiculturalism

Integration and evidence

Immigration Research distinguishes legal status, economic effects, and crime measures; UK Immigration - Law, Policy and Evidence is a separate national case. The historical and normative claims below should not be treated as evidence that every immigrant group or society follows one assimilation path.

Misc/Documents/multiculturalism-1747545347256.webp

United States Immigration History

The History of Multiculturalism (Pro and Against)

  • Origins:
    The modern concept of multiculturalism emerged in the late 20th century, particularly after the 1960s civil rights movements and the shift away from national “melting pot” ideals. It promoted the idea that cultural diversity should be preserved, celebrated, and protected rather than dissolved into a single national culture.
    Canada adopted multiculturalism officially in 1971, followed by Australia, and later the UK and parts of Europe. The U.S., while not officially declaring a multicultural policy, adopted many multicultural initiatives through education, immigration reform (post-1965), and civil rights law.
  • Arguments For:
    • Recognizing cultural diversity strengthens democracy and social cohesion by respecting identity.
    • Minority cultures gain protection against forced assimilation and erasure.
    • Cultural exchange enriches national life, boosting innovation and creativity.
  • Arguments Against:
    • Critics argue it can fragment national identity, erode shared values, and create cultural silos.
    • Some believe it undermines social trust by prioritizing differences over unity.
    • Opponents advocate a “melting pot” where immigrants and groups merge into a common civic culture.

How Politicians and Institutions Encouraged Assimilation

  1. Public Education:
    Schools emphasized English, American history, and civic values. “Americanization programs” (early 20th century) explicitly taught immigrants how to be “good Americans.”
  2. Civic Rituals and Patriotism:
    Flag ceremonies, the Pledge of Allegiance, and U.S. history instruction reinforced a unified identity.
  3. Labor and Military Service:
    Immigrants who served in wars (Civil War, World Wars) or joined unions often earned social legitimacy.
  4. Naturalization and Citizenship Campaigns:
    Politicians and civic groups promoted citizenship classes, ensuring immigrants learned the Constitution and U.S. laws.
  5. Political Machines:
    Organizations like New York’s Tammany Hall integrated immigrants by offering jobs and social services in exchange for political loyalty, giving them a stake in the system.

Why the Irish and Italians Assimilated Well

  1. Catholic Institutions:
    Catholic parishes and schools gave both groups a structure to maintain cultural identity while gradually integrating into wider society. The Church became a mediator, softening cultural clashes.
  2. Urban Politics:
    The Irish, in particular, gained influence by dominating political machines and city governments, giving them power and legitimacy. Italians followed in local politics later.
  3. Labor Unions and Economic Mobility:
    Both groups found upward mobility through industrial work, construction, and union membership, which connected them with other ethnic groups.
  4. Language and Generational Change:
    Within one to two generations, most Irish and Italian families shifted to English as their primary language and moved out of ethnic enclaves.
  5. Military Service and Patriotism:
    Fighting in major U.S. wars (especially WWI and WWII) solidified their standing as Americans.
  6. Shared European Heritage and Physical Appearance:
    Being European and largely white allowed for easier eventual acceptance compared to later immigrant groups from non-European backgrounds.

References

  • Figures like Randolph Bourne and John Dewey laid the intellectual groundwork for multiculturalism, arguing that national traditions should give way to cosmopolitan diversity.
Link to original

Transclude of debate--liberalism-vs-conservatism---youtube#iii-civic-peace-multiculturalism-and-identity

  • These wounds seem to open ourselves up with a liberal mindset of multiculturalism—yet bring us to Islamist ideas that are identical to the ones that caused the Western countries to have so much guilt ^h428
Link to original

  • Multiculturalism and critical diversity are critiqued as divisive, contrasting with the unifying success of American pluralism, which allows cultural retention within a shared identity.
Link to original

Political order requires cultural unity, which politics cannot provide — How to be a conservative — Roger Scruton (Annotated), p.92 (file not included in this release)

How to be a conservative - Roger Scruton → Chapter 7: The Truth in Multiculturalism

Scruton traces conservatism’s roots to the Enlightenment, recognizing its benefits—citizenship based on representation, accountability of rulers, and liberal individualism. However, he warns that the Enlightenment’s universalist vision depends on inherited cultural and national institutions. Multiculturalism, at its best, allows diverse communities to integrate around shared civic life (territory, law, neighborliness). Yet, Scruton critiques how political correctness pushes multiculturalism toward repudiating Western cultural heritage, demanding that traditions be sidelined to achieve inclusion, undermining the shared culture that makes coexistence possible.

Link to original

And this, I maintain, is the truth in multiculturalism. Thanks to the ‘civic culture’ that has grown in the post-Enlightenment West, social membership has been freed from religious affiliation, from racial, ethnic and kinship ties, and from the ‘rites of passage’ whereby communities lay claim to the souls of their members, by guarding them against the pollution of other customs and other tribes. It is why it is so easy to emigrate to Western states – nothing more is required of the immigrant than the adoption of the civic culture, and the assumption of the duties implied in it. (Page 93)

Link to original

How to be a conservative — Roger Scruton (Annotated), p.95 (file not included in this release)

Enlightenment, which seems to lead of its own accord to a culture of repudiation, thereby destroys enlightenment, by undermining the certainties on which citizenship is founded

How to be a conservative — Roger Scruton (Annotated), p.99 (file not included in this release)

By contrast, we who live in the amorphous and multicultural environment of the post-modern city must open our hearts and minds to all cultures, and be wedded to none. The inescapable result of this is relativism: the recognition that no culture has any special claim to our attention, and that no culture can be judged or dismissed from outside.

How to be a conservative — Roger Scruton (Annotated), p.99 (file not included in this release)

For those who advocate this multicultural approach are as a rule vehement in their dismissal of Western culture. While exhorting us to judge other cultures on their own terms, Saïd is also asking us to judge Western culture from an external perspective – to set it against alternatives, and to judge it adversely, as ethnocentric and even racist.

How to be a conservative — Roger Scruton (Annotated), p.102 (file not included in this release)

Unfortunately, however, there is no such thing as a community based in repudiation. The assault on the old cultural inheritance leads to no new form of membership, but only to a kind of alienation. It is for this reason, it seems to me, that we must be cultural conservatives. The alternative is the kind of nihilism that lurks just below the surface in the writings of Rorty, Saïd, Derrida and Foucault.

How to be a conservative — Roger Scruton (Annotated), p.103 (file not included in this release)

Once we distinguish race and culture, the way is open to acknowledge that not all cultures are equally admirable, and that not all cultures can exist comfortably side by side. To deny this is to forgo the very possibility of moral judgement, and therefore to deny the fundamental experience of community. It is precisely this that has caused the multiculturalists to hesitate. It is culture, not nature, that tells a family that their daughter who has fallen in love outside the permitted circle must be killed, that girls must undergo genital mutilation if they are to be respectable, that the infidel must be destroyed when Allah commands it. You can read about those things and think that they belong to the pre-history of our world. But when suddenly they are happening in your midst, you are apt to wake up to the truth about the culture that advocates them. You are apt to say, that is not our culture, and it has no business here. And you will probably be tempted to go one stage further, the stage that the Enlightenment naturally invites, and to say that it has no business anywhere.

How to be a conservative — Roger Scruton (Annotated), p.104 (file not included in this release)

So what happens when people whose identity is fixed by creed or kinship immigrate into places settled by Western culture? The activists say that we must make room for them, and that we do this by relinquishing the space in which their culture can flourish. Our political class has at last recognized that this is a recipe for disaster, and that we can welcome immigrants only if we welcome them into our culture, and not beside or against it. But that means telling them to accept rules, customs and procedures that may be alien to their old way of life. Is this an injustice? I do not think that it is. If immigrants come it is because they gain by doing so. It is therefore reasonable to remind them that there is also a cost. Only now, however, is our political class prepared to say so, and to insist that the cost be paid.

Dunbar’s number - Wikipedia