A Quote by Ntozake Shange
Multiculturalism isn't about culture, it's about power.
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The first rule of multiculturalism is that you can't talk about multiculturalism.
It's not about supplication, it's about power. It's not about asking, it's about demanding. It's not about convincing those who are currently in power, it's about changing the very face of power itself.
If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture - not only national culture but global culture.
My audience here in America is so eclectic. It's a real mix of people, which is great. Like what I was doing with Culture Club - world music, multiculturalism - not defining everything in terms of sexuality or color. It was about everyone coming together and being part of something.
It is easy to see why a diversity of cultures should confront power with a problem. If culture is about plurality, power is about unity. How can it sell itself simultaneously to a whole range of life forms without being fatally diluted?
For my parents' generation, the idea was not that marriage was about some kind of idealized, romantic love; it was a partnership. It's about creating family; it's about creating offspring. Indian culture is essentially much more of a 'we' culture. It's a communal culture where you do what's best for the community - you procreate.
Wealth is power, and power is the only thing about which contemporary culture cares.
Culture is important. Wars are fought over culture. It's not just about folks showing up and being hoity-toity. Culture is about definition.
Multiculturalism asserts that all cultures are equal and therefore none may criticize another; intellectuals and politicians are therefore reluctant to declare the obvious superiority of Western culture to Islamic culture.
What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.
At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture.
The idea of multiculturalism, that every culture is equal - that's not objectively true.
The theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualising an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture's hybridity. It is the inbetween space that carries the burden of the meaning of culture, and by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves.
Europe's experiment with multiculturalism, or the side-by-side existence of different cultures, has failed throughout the continent. Integration requires a minimum basis of shared values, that is, a culture of mutual tolerance and respect - in other words, what constitutes the heart of European culture.
I just want to say that the multiculturalism - and especially the cultural relativism which is even worse than multiculturalism, the concept that all cultures are equal - is the worst recipe for any society.
The conversation people need to have is no longer about women assuming positions of leadership within the existing power structure, it's about the power structures themselves, it's about how to go about assuming power, how to change the structures.
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