Multiculturalism is a body of thought in political
philosophy about the proper way to respond to cultural and religious diversity.
Mere toleration of group differences is said to fall short of treating members
of minority groups as equal citizens; recognition and positive accommodation of
group differences are required through “group-differentiated rights,” a term
coined by Will Kymlicka (1995). Some group-differentiated rights are held by
individual members of minority groups, as in the case of individuals who are
granted exemptions from generally applicable laws in virtue of their religious
beliefs or individuals who seek language accommodations in schools or in
voting. Other group-differentiated rights are held by the group qua group
rather by its members severally; such rights are properly called group rights,
as in the case of indigenous groups and minority nations, who claim the right
of self-determination. In the latter respect, multiculturalism is closely
allied with nationalism.
While multiculturalism has been used as an umbrella term to
characterize the moral and political claims of a wide range of disadvantaged
groups, including African Americans, women, gays and lesbians, and the
disabled, most theorists of multiculturalism tend to focus their arguments on
immigrants who are ethnic and religious minorities (e.g. Latinos in the U.S.,
Muslims in Western Europe), minority nations (e.g. Catalans, Basque, Welsh,
Québécois), and indigenous peoples (e.g. Native peoples in North America, Maori
in New Zealand).
The claims of
multiculturalism:
Multiculturalism is closely associated with “identity
politics,” “the politics of difference,” and “the politics of recognition,” all
of which share a commitment to revaluing disrespected identities and changing
dominant patterns of representation and communication that marginalize certain
groups (Young 1990, Taylor 1992, Gutmann 2003). Multiculturalism is also a
matter of economic interests and political power; it demands remedies to
economic and political disadvantages that people suffer as a result of their
minority status.
Multiculturalists take for granted that it is “culture” and
“cultural groups” that are to be recognized and accommodated. Yet multicultural
claims include a wide range of claims involving religion, language, ethnicity,
nationality, and race. Culture is a notoriously overbroad concept, and all of
these categories have been subsumed by or equated with the concept of culture
(Song 2008). Language and religion are at the heart of many claims for cultural
accommodation by immigrants. The key claim made by minority nations is for
self-government rights. Race has a more limited role in multicultural
discourse. Antiracism and multiculturalism are distinct but related ideas: the
former highlights “victimization and resistance” whereas the latter highlights
“cultural life, cultural expression, achievements, and the like” (Blum 1992,
14). Claims for recognition in the context of multicultural education are
demands not just for recognition of aspects of a group's actual culture (e.g.
African American art and literature) but also for the history of group
subordination and its concomitant experience (Gooding-Williams 1998).
Examples of cultural accommodations or “group-differentiated
rights” include exemptions from generally applicable law (e.g. religious
exemptions), assistance to do things that the majority can do unassisted (e.g.
multilingual ballots, funding for minority language schools and ethnic
associations, affirmative action), representation of minorities in government
bodies (e.g. ethnic quotas for party lists or legislative seats,
minority-majority Congressional districts), recognition of traditional legal
codes by the dominant legal system (e.g. granting jurisdiction over family law
to religious courts), or limited self-government rights (e.g. qualified
recognition of tribal sovereignty and federal arrangements recognizing the
political autonomy of Quebec) (for a helpful classification of cultural rights,
see Levy 1997).
Typically, a group-differentiated right is a right of a
minority group (or a member of such a group) to act or not act in a certain way
in accordance with their religious obligations and/or cultural commitments. In
some cases, it is a right that directly restricts the freedom of non-members in
order to protect the minority group's culture, as in the case of restrictions
on the use of the English language in Quebec. When the right-holder is the group,
the right may protect group rules that restrict the freedom of individual
members, as in the case of the Pueblo membership rule that excludes the
children of women who marry outside the group.
Justifications for
multiculturalism:
Communitarian
One justification for multiculturalism arises out of the
communitarian critique of liberalism. Liberals are ethical individualists; they
insist that individuals should be free to choose and pursue their own
conceptions of the good life. They give primacy to individual rights and
liberties over community life and collective goods. Some liberals are also
individualists when it comes to social ontology (what some call methodological
individualism or atomism). Atomists believe that you can and should account for
social actions and social goods in terms of properties of the constituent
individuals and individual goods. The target of the communitarian critique of
liberalism is not so much liberal ethics as liberal social ontology.
Communitarians reject the idea that the individual is prior to the community,
and that the value of social goods can be reduced to their contribution to
individual well-being. They instead embrace ontological holism, which views
social goods as “irreducibly social” (Taylor 1995). This holist view of
collective identities and cultures underlies Charles Taylor's normative case
for a multicultural “politics of recognition” (1992). Diverse cultural
identities and languages are irreducibly social goods, which should be presumed
to be of equal worth. The recognition of the equal worth of diverse cultures
requires replacing the traditional liberal regime of identical liberties and
opportunities for all citizens with a scheme of special rights for minority
cultural groups.
Liberal egalitarian
A second justification for multiculturalism comes from
within liberalism. Will Kymlicka has developed the most influential theory of
multiculturalism based on the liberal values of autonomy and equality (Kymlicka
1989, 1995, 2001). Culture is said to be instrumentally valuable to
individuals, for two reasons. First, it enables individual autonomy. One
important condition of autonomy is having an adequate range of options from
which to choose. Cultures provide contexts of choice, which provide and make
meaningful the social scripts and narratives from which people fashion their
lives (cf. Appiah 2005). Second, culture is instrumentally valuable for
individual self-respect. Drawing on theorists of communitarianism and
nationalism, Kymlicka argues that there is a deep and general connection
between a person's self-respect and the respect accorded to the cultural group
of which she is a part. It is not simply membership in any culture but one's
own culture that must be secured because of the great difficulty of giving it
up.
Kymlicka moves from these premises about the instrumental
value of cultural membership to the egalitarian claim that because members of
minority groups are disadvantaged in terms of access to their own cultures (in
contrast to members of the majority culture), they are entitled to special
protections. It is worth noting that Kymlicka's liberal egalitarian argument
for cultural accommodations reflects a central idea of a broader body of what
critics of the view have identified as “luck egalitarianism” (Anderson 1999,
Scheffler 2003). Luck egalitarians argue that individuals should be held
responsible for inequalities resulting from their own choices, but not for
inequalities deriving from unchosen circumstances. The latter inequalities are
the collective responsibility of citizens to redress. Kymlicka suggests that
the inequality stemming from membership in a minority culture is unchosen (just
as the inequality stemming from one's native talents and social starting
position in life are unchosen). Insofar as inequality in access to cultural
membership stems from luck and not from one's own choices, members of minority
groups can reasonably demand that members of the majority culture share in
bearing the costs of accommodation. Minority group rights are justified, as Kymlicka
argues, “within a liberal egalitarian theory…which emphasizes the importance of
rectifying unchosen inequalities” (Kymlicka 1995, 109).
One might question whether cultural minority groups really
are “disadvantaged” or suffer a serious inequality. Why not just enforce
antidiscrimination laws, stopping short of any positive accommodations for
minority groups? Kymlicka and other liberal theorists of multiculturalism
contend that antidiscrimination laws fall short of treating members of minority
groups as equals; this is because states cannot be neutral with respect to
culture. In culturally diverse societies, we can easily find patterns of state
support for some cultural groups over others. While states may prohibit racial
discrimination and avoid official establishment of religion, they cannot avoid
establishing one language for public schooling and other state services
(language being a paradigmatic marker of culture) (Kymlicka 1995, 111; Carens
2000, 77–78; Patten 2001, 693). Cultural or linguistic advantage can translate
into economic and political advantage since members of the dominant cultural
community have a leg up in schools, the workplace, and politics. Cultural
advantage also takes a symbolic form. When state action extends symbolic
affirmation to some groups and not others in establishing the state language
and public symbols ad holidays, it has a normalizing effect, suggesting that one
group's language and customs are more valued than those of other groups.
In addition to state support of certain cultures over
others, state laws may place constraints on some cultural groups over others.
Consider the case of dress code regulations in public schools or the workplace.
A ban on religious dress burdens religious individuals, as in the case of
Simcha Goldman, a U.S. Air Force officer, who was also an ordained rabbi and
wished to wear a yarmulke out of respect to an omnipresent God (Goldman v.
Weinberger, 475 US 503 (1986)). The case of the French state's ban on religious
dress in public schools, which burdens Muslim girls who wish to wear
headscarves to school, is another example (Bowen 2007, Laborde 2008). Religion
may command that believers dress in a certain way (what Peter Jones calls an
“intrinsic burden”), not that believers refrain from attending school or going
to work (Jones 1994). Yet, burdens on believers do not stem from the dictates
of religion alone; they also arise from the intersection of the demands of
religion and the demands of the state (“extrinsic burden”). While intrinsic
burdens are not of collective concern (bearing the burdens of the dictates of
one's faith—prayer, worship, fasting—is an obligation of faith), when it comes
to extrinsic burdens, liberal multiculturalists argue that assisting cultural
minorities through exemptions and accommodations is what egalitarian justice
requires.
While offered as a general normative argument for minority
cultural groups, liberal multiculturalists distinguish among different types of
groups. For instance, Kymlicka's theory of liberal multiculturalism offers the
strongest form of group-differentiated rights—self-government rights—to
indigenous peoples and national minorities because their minority status is
unchosen; they were coercively incorporated into the larger state. In contrast,
immigrants are viewed as voluntary economic migrants who chose to relinquish
access to their native culture by migrating. Immigrant multiculturalism (what
Kymlicka calls “polyethnic rights”) is understood as a demand for fairer terms
of integration through mostly temporary measures (e.g. exemptions, bilingual
education) and not a rejection of integration (Kymlicka 1995, 113–115).
Postcolonial
Lastly, some philosophers have looked beyond liberalism in
arguing for multiculturalism. This is especially true of theorists writing from
a postcolonial perspective. The case for tribal sovereignty rests not simply on
premises about the value of tribal culture and membership, but also on what is
owed to Native peoples for the historical injustices perpetrated against them.
Reckoning with history is crucial. Proponents of indigenous sovereignty
emphasize the importance of understanding indigenous claims against the
historical background of the denial of equal sovereign status of indigenous
groups, the dispossession of their lands, and the destruction of their cultural
practices (Ivison 2006, Ivison et al. 2000, Moore 2005, Simpson 2000). This
background calls into question the legitimacy of the state's authority over
aboriginal peoples and provides a prima facie case for special rights and
protections for indigenous groups, including the right of self-government.
A postcolonial perspective also seeks to develop models of
constitutional and political dialogue that recognize culturally distinct ways
of speaking and acting. Multicultural societies consist of diverse religious
and moral outlooks, and if liberal societies are to take such diversity
seriously, they must recognize that liberalism is just one of many substantive
outlooks based on a specific view of man and society. Liberalism is not free of
culture but expresses a distinctive culture of its own. This observation
applies not only across territorial boundaries between liberal and nonliberal
states, but also within liberal states and its relations with nonliberal
minorities. As Bhikhu Parekh argues, liberal theory cannot provide an impartial
framework governing relations between different cultural communities (2000). He
argues instead for a more open model of intercultural dialogue in which a
liberal society's constitutional and legal values serve as the initial starting
point for cross-cultural dialogue while also being open to contestation. James
Tully surveys the language of historical and contemporary constitutionalism
with a focus on Western state's relations with Native peoples to uncover more
inclusive bases for intercultural dialogue (1995).
Critique of multiculturalism:
Cosmopolitan view of
culture
Some critics contend that the multicultural argument for the
preservation of cultures is premised on a problematic view of culture and of
the individual's relationship to culture. Cultures are not distinct,
self-contained wholes; they have long interacted and influenced one another
through war, imperialism, trade, and migration. People in many parts of the
world live within cultures that are already cosmopolitan, characterized by
cultural hybridity. As Jeremy Waldron (1995, 100) argues, “We live in a world
formed by technology and trade; by economic, religious, and political
imperialism and their offspring; by mass migration and the dispersion of
cultural influences. In this context, to immerse oneself in the traditional
practices of, say, an aboriginal culture might be a fascinating anthropological
experiment, but it involves an artificial dislocation from what actually is
going on in the world.” To aim at preserving or protecting a culture runs the
risk of privileging one allegedly pure version of that culture, thereby
crippling its ability to adapt to changes in circumstances (Waldron 1995, 110;
see also Benhabib 2002 and Scheffler 2007). Waldron also rejects the premise
that the options available to an individual must come from a particular culture;
meaningful options may come from a variety of cultural sources. What people
need are cultural materials, not access to a particular cultural structure.
In response, multicultural theorists agree that cultures are
overlapping and interactive, but still maintain that individuals belong to
distinct societal cultures and wish to preserve these cultures (Kymlicka 1995,
103). The justifications for special protections for minority cultural groups
discussed above still hold, even in the face of a more cosmopolitan view of
cultures, for the aim of group-differentiated rights is to empower members of
minority groups to continue their distinctive practices if they wish to.
Toleration requires indifference, not
accommodation
A second major criticism of multiculturalism is based on the
ideas of liberal toleration and freedom of association and conscience. If we
take these ideas seriously and accept both ontological and ethical
individualism as discussed above, then we are led to defend the individual's
right to form and leave associations and not any special protections for
groups. As Chandran Kukathas (1995, 2003) argues, there are no group rights,
only individual rights. By granting cultural groups special protections and
rights, the state oversteps its role, which is to secure civility, and risks
undermining individual rights of association. States should not pursue
“cultural integration” or “cultural engineering” but rather a “politics of
indifference” toward minority groups (2003, 15). The major limitation of this
laissez-faire approach is that groups that do not themselves value toleration
and freedom of association (including the right to dissociate or exit a group)
may practice internal discrimination against group members, and the state would
have little authority to interfere in such associations. This benign neglect
approach would permit the abuse of vulnerable members of groups (the problem of
internal minorities discussed below), tolerating “communities which bring up
children unschooled and illiterate; which enforce arranged marriages; which
deny conventional medical care to their members (including children); and which
inflict cruel and ‘ununsual’ punishment” (Kukathas 2003, 134).
Diversion from a “politics of
redistribution”
A third line of critique contends that multiculturalism is a
“politics of recognition” that diverts attention from a “politics of
redistribution” (Barry 2001, Fraser and Honneth 2003). We can distinguish
analytically between these modes of politics: a politics of recognition challenges
status inequality and the remedy it seeks is cultural and symbolic change,
whereas a politics of redistribution challenges economic inequality and
exploitation and the remedy it seeks is economic restructuring. Working class
mobilization tilts toward the redistribution end of the spectrum, and the LGBT
movement toward the recognition end. Critics worry that multiculturalism's
focus on culture and identity diverts attention from or even actively
undermines the struggle for economic justice, partly because identity-based
politics may undermine potential multiracial, multiethnic class solidarity and
partly because some multiculturalists tend to focus on cultural injustice
without much attention to economic injustice.
In response, multiculturalists emphasize that both
redistribution and recognition are important dimensions in the pursuit of
equality for minority groups. In practice, both modes of politics—addressing
material disadvantages and marginalized identities and statuses—are required to
achieve greater equality across lines of race, ethnicity, nationality,
religion, sexuality, and class, not least because many individuals stand at the
intersection of these different categories and suffer multiple forms of
marginalization. Most egalitarians are focused on redistribution, but
recognition is also important not only on account of its effects on
socioeconomic status and political participation but also for fostering the
symbolic inclusion of marginalized groups.
Egalitarian objection
A fourth objection takes issue with liberal
multiculturalist's understanding of what equality requires. Brian Barry argues
that religious and cultural minorities should be held responsible for bearing
the consequences of their own beliefs and practices. He contrasts religious and
cultural affiliations with physical disabilities and argues that the former do
not constrain people in the way that physical disabilities do. A physical
disability supports a strong prima facie claim to compensation because it limits
a person's opportunities to engage in activities that others are able to engage
in. In contrast, religion and culture may shape one's willingness to seize an
opportunity, but they do not affect whether one has an opportunity. Barry
argues that justice is only concerned with ensuring a reasonable range of equal
opportunities and not with ensuring equal access to any particular choices or
outcomes (2001, 37). When it comes to cultural and religious affiliations, they
do not limit the range of opportunities one enjoys but rather the choices one
can make within the set of opportunities available to all.
In reply, one might argue that opportunities are not
objective in the strong physicalist sense suggested by Barry. The opportunity
to do X is not just having the possibility to do X without facing physical
encumbrances; it is also the possibility of doing X without incurring excessive
costs or the risk of such costs (Miller 2002, 51). State law and cultural
commitments can conflict in ways such that the costs for cultural minorities of
taking advantage of the opportunity are prohibitively high. In contrast to
Barry, liberal multiculturalists argue that many cases where a law or policy
disparately impacts a religious or cultural practice constitute injustice. For
instance, Kymlicka points to the Goldman case discussed above and other
religion cases, as well as to claims for language rights, as examples in which
group-differentiated rights are required in light of the differential impact of
state action (1995, 108–115). The argument here is that since the state cannot
achieve complete disestablishment of culture or be neutral with respect to
culture, it must somehow make it up to citizens who are bearers of minority
religious beliefs and native speakers of other languages. Where complete state
disestablishment is not possible, one way to ensure fair background conditions
is to provide roughly comparable forms of assistance or recognition to each of
the various languages and religions of citizens. To do nothing would be to
permit injustice.
Problem of vulnerable “internal minorities”
A final objection (and one that has received the most
attention in recent scholarly debates about multiculturalism) argues that
extending protections to minority groups may come at the price of reinforcing
oppression of vulnerable members of those groups—what some have called the
problem of “internal minorities” or “minorities within minorities” (Green 1994,
Eisenberg and Spinner-Halev 2005). Multicultural theorists have focused on inequalities
between groups in arguing for special protections for minority groups, but
group-based protections can exacerbate inequalities within minority groups.
This is because some ways of protecting minority groups from oppression by the
majority may make it more likely that more powerful members of those groups are
able to undermine the basic liberties and opportunities of vulnerable members.
Vulnerable subgroups within minority groups include religious dissenters,
sexual minorities, women, and children. A group's leaders may exaggerate the
degree of consensus and solidarity within their group to present a united front
to the wider society and strengthen their case for accommodation.
Some of the most oppressive group norms and practices
revolve around issues of gender and sexuality, and many feminist critics have
highlighted the tensions between multiculturalism and feminism (Okin 1999,
Shachar 2000). This is a genuine dilemma if one accepts both that
group-differentiated rights for minority cultural groups are justifiable, as
multicultural theorists do, and that gender equality is an important value, as
feminists have emphasized. Extending special protections and accommodations to
patriarchal cultural communities may help reinforce gender inequality within
these communities. Examples include conflicts over polygamy, arranged marriage,
the ban on headscarves in France, “cultural defenses” in criminal law,
accommodating religious law or customary law within the dominant legal system,
and self-government rights for indigenous communities that deny equality to
women in certain respects (Deveaux 2006, Phillips 2007, Shachar 2001, Song
2007).
The “internal minorities” objection is especially
troublesome for liberal egalitarian defenders of multiculturalism who aim to
promote inter-group equality while also challenging intra-group inequality,
including gender inequality. In response, Kymlicka (1999) emphasizes that
multiculturalism, like feminism, aims at a more inclusive conception of
justice; both challenge the traditional liberal assumption that equality
requires identical treatment. To address the concern about internal minorities,
Kymlicka distinguishes between two kinds of group rights: “external
protections” are rights that a minority group claims against non-members in
order to reduce its vulnerability to the economic and political power of the
larger society, whereas “internal restrictions” are rights that a minority
group claims against its own members. He argues that a liberal theory of
minority group rights cannot accept the latter (1995, 35–44; 1999, 31).
But granting “external protections” to minority groups may
sometimes come at the price of “internal restrictions,” as is the case when the
right of self-government is accorded to a group that violates the rights of its
members by limiting freedom of conscience or upholding sexually discriminatory
membership rules. Whether multiculturalism and feminism can be reconciled
within liberal theory depends in part on the empirical premise that cultural
groups that seek group-differentiated rights do not support patriarchal norms
and practices. If they do, liberal multiculturalists would in principle have to
argue against extending the group right or extending it with certain
qualifications, such as conditioning the extension of self-government rights to
indigenous groups on the acceptance of a constitutional bill of rights.
An alternative response to the problem of internal
minorities is a democratic rather than a liberal one. Liberal theorists tend to
start from the question of whether and how minority cultural practices should
be tolerated or accommodated in accordance with liberal principles, whereas
democratic theorists foreground the role of democratic deliberation and ask how
affected parties understand the contested practice. By drawing on the voices of
affected parties and giving special weight to the voice of women at the center
of gendered cultural conflicts, deliberation can clarify the interests at stake
and enhance the legitimacy of responses to cultural conflicts (Benhabib 2002,
Deveaux 2006). Deliberation also provides opportunities for minority group
members to expose instances of cross-cultural hypocrisy and consider whether
and how the norms and institutions of the larger society, whose own struggles
for gender equality are incomplete and ongoing, may reinforce rather than
challenge sexist practices within minority groups (Song 2007). What constitutes
gender subordination and how best to address it is not straightforwardly clear,
and intervention into minority cultural groups without drawing on the voices of
minority women themselves may not best serve their interests.
Political backlash
against multiculturalism:
The greatest challenge to multiculturalism may not be
philosophical but political. At the start of the twenty-first century, there is
talk of a retreat from multiculturalism as a normative ideal and as a set of
policies in the West. There is little retreat from recognizing the rights of
minority nations and indigenous peoples; the retreat is restricted to immigrant
multiculturalism. Part of the backlash against immigrant multiculturalism is
based on fear and anxiety about foreign “others” and nostalgia for an imagined
past when everyone shared thick bonds of identity and solidarity. Nativism is
as old as migration itself, but societies are especially vulnerable to it when
economic conditions are especially bad or security is seen to be threatened. In
the U.S. the cultural “others” are Latino immigrants, especially unauthorized
migrants. Since September 11, Muslim minorities have also come under new
scrutiny in the U.S., and concerns over security and terrorism have been
invoked to justify tougher border control. The number of Muslim immigrants in
North America remains relatively small in comparison to Western Europe, where
Muslims have become central to scholarly and popular debates about
multiculturalism. The concern is not only over security but also the failures
of multiculturalism policies to integrate and offer real economic opportunities
to foreigners and their descendants.
The political backlash against multiculturalism raises new
challenges for defenders of multiculturalism. What is the relationship between
multiculturalism and the integration of immigrants? Is liberal multiculturalism
the most desirable framework for the integration of immigrants? Is integration
governed by an ideal of multicultural citizenship the proper goal of liberal
democratic states? Why not a common citizenship based on the same set of rights
and opportunities for all individuals? Why not transnationalism, which
acknowledges people's multiple attachments, or a genuinely global moral
cosmopolitanism, which aims to transcend group attachments?
