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Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism refers to the position that cultures, races, and ethnicities, particularly those of minority groups, deserve special acknowledgement of their differences within the dominant political culture. This acknowledgement can take the forms of recognition of contributions to the cultural life of the political community as a whole, a demand for special protection under the law for certain cultural groups, or autonomous rights of governance for certain cultures. Multiculturalism is both a response to the fact of cultural pluralism in modern democracies and a way of compensating cultural groups for past exclusion, discrimination, and oppression. Most modern democracies comprise members with diverse cultural viewpoints, practices, and contributions. Many minority cultural groups have experienced exclusion or the denigration of their contributions and identities in the past. Multiculturalism seeks the inclusion of the views and contributions of diverse members of society, while maintaining respect for their differences and with-holding the demand for their assimilation into the dominant culture.

Multiculturalism as a Challenge to Traditional Liberalism

Multiculturalism stands as a challenge to liberal democracy. In liberal democracies, all citizens should be treated equally under the law by abstracting the common identity of “citizen” from the real social, cultural, political, and economic positions and identities of real members of society. This leads to a tendency to homogenize the collective of citizens and assume a common political culture that all participate in. However, this abstract view ignores other politically salient features of the identities of political subjects that exceed the category of citizen, such as race, religion, class, and sex. Although claiming the formal equality of citizens, the liberal democratic view tends to underemphasize ways in which citizens are not in fact equal in society. Rather than embracing the traditional liberal image of the melting pot into which people of different cultures are assimilated into a unified national culture, multiculturalism generally holds the image of a tossed salad to be more appropriate. Although being an integral and recognizable part of the whole, diverse members of society can maintain their particular identities while residing in the collective.

Some more radical multicultural theorists claim that some cultural groups need more than recognition to ensure the integrity and maintenance of their distinct identities and contributions. In addition to individual equal rights, some advocate for special group rights and autonomous governance for certain cultural groups. Because the continued existence of protected minority cultures ultimately contributes to the good of all and the enrichment of the dominant culture, these theorists argue that the preserving of cultures that cannot withstand the pressures to assimilate into a dominant culture can be given preference over the usual norm of equal rights for all.

Examples of the Impact of Multiculturalism

Some examples of how multiculturalism has affected the social and political spheres are found in revisions of curricula and the expansion of the canon. Curricula from the elementary to the university levels have been revised and expanded to include the contributions of minority and neglected cultural groups. This revision is designed to correct what is perceived to be a falsely Eurocentric perspective that overemphasizes the contributions of White European colonial powers and underemphasizes the contributions made by indigenous people and people of color. In addition to this correction, the contributions that cultural groups have made in a variety of fields have been added to the curricula to give special recognition for contributions that were previously ignored. The establishment of Black, Latino, and Asian History Months are examples of this movement. The addition of works by members of minority cultural groups to the canons of literary, historical, philosophical, and artistic works further reflects the desire to recognize and include multicultural contributions to the broader culture as a whole.

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