http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994

Exceedingly well said.  "State multiculturalism" is nothing more than a country saying that in the end nothing really matters.  Countries exist as distinct entities... and thus should have distinct identities.  A country can be a principled melting pot without being an indifferent receptacle tolerant of any behavior whatsoever.

Couldn't agree more with him. :)
Finally more and more people are waking up and realising that multiculturalism is a failed idea.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994

Exceedingly well said.  "State multiculturalism" is nothing more than a country saying that in the end nothing really matters.  Countries exist as distinct entities... and thus should have distinct identities.  A country can be a principled melting pot without being an indifferent receptacle tolerant of any behavior whatsoever.




Couldn't agree more with him. :)
Finally more and more people are waking up and realising that multiculturalism is a failed idea.


Multiculturalism is not a failed idea except, dare I say, with racialists and anglo-cultural snobs. 

Historically, I can't think of a single example of Islamic "missionaries" attempting to proselytize among Christians, but there were, and are thousands of "Christian" missionaries trying to convert the "heathens"

Sure, if you back to the era of the Islamic expansion and the Crusades, you would have to say that it was tit for tat, but since then?  The holy rollers have come to my door trying to SELL me Jesus (for a price), but no one has come to sell me Allah. 

Seems to me that, for the most part, the Christian idea of multiculturalism goes something like this:  My my, your culture is so quaint.  Its so cute.  We adore it.  But look how much better ours is.  Don't you want all the goodies we have?  Don't you want to be "productive" and successful?  Don't you want to be JUST LIKE US? 

There is/was a tee shirt that said "Join the army, visit strange and exotic land, meet fascinating and interesting people, AND KILL THEM.

Before we say that multiculturalism is a failure, we need to try it.

Multiculturalism is not a failed idea except, dare I say, with racialists and anglo-cultural snobs. 

Historically, I can't think of a single example of Islamic "missionaries" attempting to proselytize among Christians.

Well of course, the Islamics are ever so polite on these matters.  Instead of converting kafir, they simply blow up their churches in Iraq and Egypt.  Or as in Iran, where it is a capital crime for a Muslim to convert to Christianity (ie, the crime of apostasy).

Of course you have forgotten perhaps one of the more famous converts to Islam, who was indeed evangelized - Malcom X.  Or Tamerlane's extermination of Christianity from what is largely modern-day Uzbekistan.

Or the Al Dawaa missionary movement in Israel, which seeks to convert Jews to Muslimism.

As to anglo snobbery, one misses the point.  English values are ENGLISH values.  If one wishes to maintain their well-loved Arabic or Persian or cultural practices, why do they want to come to England?  This idea that people can simply emigrate and not have to assimilate in any way is silliness, and it breeds divisiveness.  For example I love American football.  I don't really see the point of moving to Paraguay and trying to get an NFL franchise down there.  If I move to Paraguay I think I would want to move there to "live their life" and not attempt to open up a "Little Picksburgh" down there, where me and my family dress in our ceremonial Black and Gold attire and worship to recordings of Myron Cope every Sunday at 1:15pm and the occasional Monday night.  America was built on being a true melting pot... where people emigrated (legally of course) and assimilated into a collective cultural identity.  Even in my hometown which has probably a dozen key immigrant ethnicities (now 2nd and 3rd generations) people have assimilated.  Not alot of people still speaking Italian or German as their daily language in The Burgh these days.

Pay a visit to Brazil... it is a huge melting pot country.  People of all sorts of ethnicities and for the most part they are blending into a BRAZILIAN identity and it is a proud one.  Brazil has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan, but you do not see "Little Tokyos" springing up there.  And the Japanese, Irish, Italian, and Polish Brazilians that I met while I was there, interestingly, had Brazilian/Portuguese first names.  Mario seemed to be the most popular.

Pay a visit to Brazil... it is a huge melting pot country.  People of all sorts of ethnicities and for the most part they are blending into a BRAZILIAN identity and it is a proud one.  Brazil has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan, but you do not see "Little Tokyos" springing up there.  And the Japanese, Irish, Italian, and Polish Brazilians that I met while I was there, interestingly, had Brazilian/Portuguese first names.  Mario seemed to be the most popular.



All the Brazilians I have spoken to about the difference between Brazil and the United States,(and there have been many) all say they cannot believe the level of racism here in the United States.  Brazil country is a huge melting pot because there is a more live and let live attitude. You don't see "Little Tokyos" etc, springing up because people do not go to buy a house or rent an apartment and find that it is not for sale or rent all of the sudden. 

All the Brazilians I have spoken to about the difference between Brazil and the United States,(and there have been many) all say they cannot believe the level of racism here in the United States.  Brazil country is a huge melting pot because there is a more live and let live attitude. You don't see "Little Tokyos" etc, springing up because people do not go to buy a house or rent an apartment and find that it is not for sale or rent all of the sudden. 


And interestingly enough, Brazil has a longer history of slavery than the US, and it lasted longer into the 19th Century.

And I was in Brazil, briefly, many years ago

And interestingly enough, Brazil has a longer history of slavery than the US, and it lasted longer into the 19th Century.

And I was in Brazil, briefly, many years ago


Much of that can be blamed on the United States.  After the Civil War thousands of confederates went to Brazil to retain there vision of life, how they believe it should be.  They lived in enclaves and they had to have there slaves.  Some returned post-Reconstruction when they could once again retain what they believed their place in the world was, and most importantly blacks were put in the place that they, the confederates, thought they, blacks, should be.  Interestingly enough, many of the confederate descendants that remained married into the the population, unlike the USA "miscegenation" wasn't illegal, and many, if not most of the descendants would now be considered(in the USA) mixed race.

All the Brazilians I have spoken to about the difference between Brazil and the United States,(and there have been many) all say they cannot believe the level of racism here in the United States.  Brazil country is a huge melting pot because there is a more live and let live attitude. You don't see "Little Tokyos" etc, springing up because people do not go to buy a house or rent an apartment and find that it is not for sale or rent all of the sudden. 


Oh I would agree with you there.  On my trips to Brazil I did not detect much in the way of racism.  Although it is my understanding that native Brazilians do not fare very well down there (I did not make it to Amazonia). And there is a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots.  But the fairly well off people I did business with were of all sorts of nationalities.  It was interesting to see Japanese descendents named Mario, or Polish guys named Antonio.  Different original ethnicities but Brazilians all.

Oh I would agree with you there.  On my trips to Brazil I did not detect much in the way of racism.  Although it is my understanding that native Brazilians do not fare very well down there (I did not make it to Amazonia). And there is a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots.  But the fairly well off people I did business with were of all sorts of nationalities.  It was interesting to see Japanese descendents named Mario, or Polish guys named Antonio.  Different original ethnicities but Brazilians all.


Brazilians claim to be non-racist, but interestingly, they have an expression down there, "money whitens".  The implication is that white is better.  What they have is your basic racist preference for "white", whatever that is, overlaid by a much stronger class bias.  The literature  on this is very extensive, and there are multiple explanations.  Marvin Harris is my choice, in Patterns of Race in the Americas
Well of course, the Islamics are ever so polite on these matters.  Instead of converting kafir, they simply blow up their churches in Iraq and Egypt.  Or as in Iran, where it is a capital crime for a Muslim to convert to Christianity (ie, the crime of apostasy).

Of course you have forgotten perhaps one of the more famous converts to Islam, who was indeed evangelized - Malcom X.  Or Tamerlane's extermination of Christianity from what is largely modern-day Uzbekistan.

Or the Al Dawaa missionary movement in Israel, which seeks to convert Jews to Muslimism.

As to anglo snobbery, one misses the point.  English values are ENGLISH values.  If one wishes to maintain their well-loved Arabic or Persian or cultural practices, why do they want to come to England?  This idea that people can simply emigrate and not have to assimilate in any way is silliness, and it breeds divisiveness.  For example I love American football.  I don't really see the point of moving to Paraguay and trying to get an NFL franchise down there.  If I move to Paraguay I think I would want to move there to "live their life" and not attempt to open up a "Little Picksburgh" down there, where me and my family dress in our ceremonial Black and Gold attire and worship to recordings of Myron Cope every Sunday at 1:15pm and the occasional Monday night.  America was built on being a true melting pot... where people emigrated (legally of course) and assimilated into a collective cultural identity.  Even in my hometown which has probably a dozen key immigrant ethnicities (now 2nd and 3rd generations) people have assimilated.  Not alot of people still speaking Italian or German as their daily language in The Burgh these days.

Pay a visit to Brazil... it is a huge melting pot country.  People of all sorts of ethnicities and for the most part they are blending into a BRAZILIAN identity and it is a proud one.  Brazil has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan, but you do not see "Little Tokyos" springing up there.  And the Japanese, Irish, Italian, and Polish Brazilians that I met while I was there, interestingly, had Brazilian/Portuguese first names.  Mario seemed to be the most popular.


Most of your references are to the age of Islamic expansion, the same era in history when Richard Lionheart was butchering entire towns and eviscerating them looking for swallowed jewels.  As I said, that was a time of tit for tat.

Malcom wasn't trying to convert whites to Islam certainly, but was advocating just what white racists wanted, separation of the races, not integration. 

Brazilians claim to be non-racist, but interestingly, they have an expression down there, "money whitens".  The implication is that white is better.  What they have is your basic racist preference for "white", whatever that is, overlaid by a much stronger class bias.  The literature  on this is very extensive, and there are multiple explanations.  Marvin Harris is my choice, in Patterns of Race in the Americas

Well I never claimed that Brazil did not have elements of racism although in my travels there I did not see it (likely was not exposed to it).  My point was that there is a Brazilian culture... instead of all the various immigrant ethnic groups simply segregating themselves and being essentially foreign tenants in a new land, as you see vast populations of Muslims self-segregating in Europe, and any number of groups self-segregating in the USA.  The Brazilians that I met... of all sorts of ethnicities including native... were clearly representing as Brazilian, and not Japanese-Brazilian, Polish-Brazilian, Italian-Brazilian, or Irish-Brazilian.  I came back to the U S of A extremely impressed with the pride in their country that all those folks showed.  As a nation they are kicking some serious a$$ down there.

By the way Irish and Brazilian is a great combo.  A girl that I know is half Brazilian, Half irish and her and all her sisters are knock-down, drop-dead gorgeous.  :-*

As to Malcolm X, yeah I doubt he was trying to convert whites to Islam.  But he sure spent plenty of time converting Blacks.  Mind you, many of his converts ended up living better lives as a result, because his brand of evangelism appealed for people to better themselves...get off drugs...knock off the crime... Lots of things can be said about the Nation of Islam, and many of them not good.  But they have gotten quite a few young black men who were on the path to self destruction, straightened out.

If anybody was good at "state multiculturalism," it was the British.  They still play cricket and pause for elevenses in the most backassward provinces of India, fr'instance!
;D

Well I never claimed that Brazil did not have elements of racism although in my travels there I did not see it (likely was not exposed to it).  My point was that there is a Brazilian culture... instead of all the various immigrant ethnic groups simply segregating themselves and being essentially foreign tenants in a new land, as you see vast populations of Muslims self-segregating in Europe, and any number of groups self-segregating in the USA.  The Brazilians that I met... of all sorts of ethnicities including native... were clearly representing as Brazilian, and not Japanese-Brazilian, Polish-Brazilian, Italian-Brazilian, or Irish-Brazilian.  I came back to the U S of A extremely impressed with the pride in their country that all those folks showed.  As a nation they are kicking some serious a$$ down there.

By the way Irish and Brazilian is a great combo.  A girl that I know is half Brazilian, Half irish and her and all her sisters are knock-down, drop-dead gorgeous.  :-*

As to Malcolm X, yeah I doubt he was trying to convert whites to Islam.  But he sure spent plenty of time converting Blacks.  Mind you, many of his converts ended up living better lives as a result, because his brand of evangelism appealed for people to better themselves...get off drugs...knock off the crime... Lots of things can be said about the Nation of Islam, and many of them not good.  But they have gotten quite a few young black men who were on the path to self destruction, straightened out.


And you think all those hyphen - Americans don't have pride in the USA?  How about all those immigrants, and even some illegals, who join the military to defend us?

If anybody was good at "state multiculturalism," it was the British.  They still play cricket and pause for elevenses in the most backassward provinces of India, fr'instance!
;D

The problem that Cameron (& Tebbitt) have with multiculturalism as it has been practised in the UK is the number of immigrants here who will still be supporting India or Pakistan in their tests against England..

There is a lot that is absolutely right in what Cameron said: we are as a nation very quick to call "racism" in whites, but barely ever call out anyone with a coloured skin for racist views (of course, the people who get caught most by this are the Eastern European immigrants, who are white but have no real history of living in the sort of multicoloured environment we have here - some are quite unthinkingly and cringemakingly racist, without intending to be negative at all).

I'm not so sure I'd go so far as to say "multiculturalism has failed", but some of the almost ghetto-like enclaves, within which a significant proportion of people don't even speak the local language.. hell, it almost sounds like Brits living abroad.

hell, it almost sounds like Brits living abroad.



I don't know if any have watched "The Up Series" by Michael Apted, it is a documentary that has followed some children starting at age 7 up until now(they are in their 50s).  The go back every 7 years and update where they are now.  One of the guys(Tony) was decrying how his working class neighborhood has changed(mind you he moved out years ago) because of immigrants from, I think, the West Indies moving in.  Meanwhile he has a place in Spain in an English enclave and how wonderful it is that there is an English Pub and a golf course where all his English friends play. 

Haven't watched that, no - but I've heard exactly that combination of views from an expat acquaintance.. without any sense of irony whatsoever.

And you think all those hyphen - Americans don't have pride in the USA?  How about all those immigrants, and even some illegals, who join the military to defend us?


My point is an awful lot of hyphen-Americans spend an awful lot of their time being hyphen-Americans instead of plain old Americans.  When one goes out of their way to accentuate their difference, they should not be surprised to see people take notice... and act differently towards them.

Never once did I ever feel like wearing a green leprachaun outfit, speaking Gaelic as my first language, or wear a kilt to express my Scottishness and Irishness to differentiate myself from society at large.  To the contrary, the Celtics, Italians, Serbs, Germans, Slo-Cros, Ukranians, Greeks, and quite a few other ethnic groups who I grew up around, and who to one degree or another practices exclusionism, I saw as A-holes (not all of them, just the ones who were cliquish and seemed to think that their ethnicity somehow made them 'better').  So I put my money where my mouth is and see myself and conduct myself as an American first and foremost.  No hyphen needed or wanted.

When I fill out various forms and they ask my ethnicity, I check off "Native American"... because this is where I was born and it is what I am.  The rest is somebody else's history.

By the way, here is a bit of my family's history to illuminate.

My middle name is a family name and it is indisputably of Roman origin, mentioned prominently in the Latin Mass.  Let's say the name is Claudius (and that's not too far off the mark).  Anyway, sometime around 1900 or so, a member of that branch of the family, who took pride in the deep Irish heritage of the Claudius lineage, commissioned a genealogical study.  (By my match I am something like 1/16th italian, the rest is Irish and Scottish far as I can figure)

To his horror he found that his "Irish" roots were actually mostly Italian and he had the genealogy documents destroyed.  Mind you in 1900 neither Italians or Irish were exactly looked up to in America, both were oppressed minorities.  Here was a guy who fancied himself as a proud Irishman, found out he was a Dago (a group of people who presumably he looked down upon) and had a major problem with it.  Somebody had filled his head with a bunch of "ethnic pride" crap and in the end he was all the worse for it.

By the way, here is a bit of my family's history to illuminate.

My middle name is a family name and it is indisputably of Roman origin, mentioned prominently in the Latin Mass.  Let's say the name is Claudius (and that's not too far off the mark).  Anyway, sometime around 1900 or so, a member of that branch of the family, who took pride in the deep Irish heritage of the Claudius lineage, commissioned a genealogical study.  (By my match I am something like 1/16th italian, the rest is Irish and Scottish far as I can figure)

To his horror he found that his "Irish" roots were actually mostly Italian and he had the genealogy documents destroyed.  Mind you in 1900 neither Italians or Irish were exactly looked up to in America, both were oppressed minorities.  Here was a guy who fancied himself as a proud Irishman, found out he was a Dago (a group of people who presumably he looked down upon) and had a major problem with it.  Somebody had filled his head with a bunch of "ethnic pride" crap and in the end he was all the worse for it.


That's very sad, although not unusual.  In my own case, no one on my dad's side made any real reference to their German background, although my great grandfather can here prior to WWI.  On my mother's side the story is different.  while they all consider themselves as American, they still claim Puerto Rican identity as well.  But since Puerto Rico was the first territorial acquisition that was not put on the path to statheood when it was taken, one can correctly assume that you gringos never considered my relative as potential citizens (not granted until 1917, just in time for the WWI draft - call my cynical).  I remember in grade school being called spic, once or twice - a quick left hook to the jaw and shot to the solar plexus (and trips to the principal's office)  put and end to that.

But in broader terms, the "ethnic pride" and all the rest, the clannishness etc, you so rail against are typical responses from people who are or feel persecuted by the dominant groups, and those responses linger in later generations

By the way, here is a bit of my family's history to illuminate.

My middle name is a family name and it is indisputably of Roman origin, mentioned prominently in the Latin Mass. 


Kyrie Eleison and her twin sister Christie Eleison must have been the hottest chicks on the block.  Father John's still singing about 'em!

It's like with me, I'm about 75% WASP, but I've got a mick last name and a leprechaun face to match.  Your sensible man would say, "Irish, English, big diff."  That don't fly at O'Malley's Pub tho'!  Good way to get your teeth knocked out by a bruiser in a Celtics jacket and a scally cap!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/02/buck.gif

A family member delved into our family history and my DNA would probably put me at 50% Caucasian, (French, English, Norwegian), but you can be 1/2 white but you are always all black  ;)

A family member delved into our family history and my DNA would probably put me at 50% Caucasian, (French, English, Norwegian), but you can be 1/2 white but you are always all black  ;)


Only in the good old U.S.A.  (and probably the rest of Europe as well)