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Multiculturalism
Doctrine asserting value of different cultures coexisting within single society;
Globally, vision of cultural diversity deliberately fostered and protected
"Americans are not a narrow tribe. Our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all pouring into one" Herman Melville
Multiculturalism is: A ruling idea of American culture
Diversity is one of the highest American values
à The first principle of Multiculturalism is the equality of all cultures
Measures to deal with the increasing immigration:
until 1790 no measures
1840: Castle Garden was built as an advice center in New York
1892: Ellis Island was built as the primary processing center in New York
1917: first laws: exclusion of Asians, requirement of literacy
1921/24: limitation quotes for each country outside the western hemisphere
(300.000/165.000 immigrants a year)
1965: waiting lists after hemisphere quotes
(1978 abolished)
today: ordinary 675.000 immigrants each year
Risks of Multiculturalism: Theses for a discussion
Richard Bernstein in a recent publication \"Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America\'s Future\" advances the following picture. He charges that \'ideological multiculturalism\' has brought about \'a great inversion in American intellectual life\'. He continues: \'the threat of intellectual tyranny now comes from the left, and it now has to do with collective guilt, an overweening moralism, and multiculturalism. The danger to such things as free speech and genuine diversity of opinion is no longer due to conservatism; it is due to the triumph of a modish, leftist, moralistic liberalism.\'
In a short thesis: When a false picture of Multiculturalism gets popular, there's the risk of misunderstandings. The equality could change into a thing, that doesn't accepts questions against the minority culture.
This implies an anti-multiculturalism-wave opposite to a mainstream-multiculturalism-wave
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