What part of “E pluribus unum” do you not understand?
BBC World news has a short (and alas not easily downloaded) clip on the work of Argentine photographer Ariel Carlomagno, “The many faces of Mexico” which — besides in some small way making up for the caddish behavior (behaviour?) of those upper-crust twits on their second rate knockoff of Tom and Ray, The Car Guys — is a nice counterpoint to recent bashing the idea of multi-culturalism has taken, not just in Britain, but even here in Mexico.
Of course, the British attack came from a politician (well, the Prime Minister, to be exact) and was couched in the terms of a critique of how a government social policy is implemented — “state multiculturalism” as he called it. It probably is a “dog whistle” appealing to racists and xenophobes, but British “identity politics” and the long history of English racial theories is something they have to live with… I don’t.
The anti-multiculturalism rant from Mexico was harder to figure out, the author being a long-time foreign resident blogger (nothing wrong with that), who — even though he continually lets readers know he is married to a Mexican — appears to have moved to Mexico well over the weight limit of emotional baggage.
The pseudonymous author of “The Bierce Account” sets up a ridiculous “straw man” argument between “Don Trendy” and “Don Ambrose”. that frankly makes no sense at all. Either “The Bierce Account” takes his sense of “multiculturalism” from sources hostile to diversity, or his intellectual development was stunted somewhere before Franz Boas started publishing at the turn of the 20th century. There is certainly nothing “Trendy” in the idea that minority cultures exist and are valid components of a national culture… nor that the national culture is stronger and better for diversity.
The Don Ambrose character also misquotes Abraham Lincoln, totally misusing Lincoln’s “A house divided against itself cannot stand” to somehow argue that nations are like families… all alike (Which, I suppose might be true if you’re talking about incestuous families… or royalty — which amounts to the same thing). The REAL Ambrose Bierce, proud of his service in Mr. Lincoln’s Army — would have made mincemeat of this poseur. I might suggest “Don Ambrose” read Bierce’s work, starting with The Affair at Coulter’s Notch, and The Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge: both dealing with cultural identity in the multi-cultural world of 1860s United States.
But, to be honest, I’m not all that interested in the fake Ambrose Bierce, nor in his several other several pseudonymous sites, nor in the bizarre Alan Wall, whose “Letters from Mexico” are still available on vdare.com who like “Bierce” makes continual mention of being married to a Mexican, as a shield against claims of racism. I’m not going to bother with the links for Alan Wall — they’re on a white supremacist “hate site” that is blocked in some countries (and by U.S. military computers) which means a good number of my regular readers can’t access it anyway. And I don’t think racist assholes deserve any hits , except maybe the kind delivered with a baseball bat.
I am bothered that there are foreigners who just don’t “get” Mexico, but feel obligated to write about the place as if they have a cultural understanding of it. What makes this so very, very odd is that these guys seem to consciously block out the fact that they live in one of the most radically multi-cultural societies on the planet. Is it always peaceful? No, but even conflicts that involve communities of varying ethnicities are not rooted in their cultural differences, but in normal things like property disputes. One does, occasionally run across inter-cultural disputes between members of a community embracing “mainstream values” and dissidents holding “traditional values” (as in religious conflicts in Chiapas within Mayan communes), but they are NOT the result of “multi-culturalism” (trendy or otherwise), but of cultural values in transition… and even “mainstream” cultures change.
At any rate, the Bierce Account author — like Alan Wall — is what one hopes is only a handful of foreign (mostly U.S.) Mexican residents who are obsessed with their own self-proclaimed position as the arbiters of cultural propriety. That is, as representatives of “white culture” they feel obligated to pick out the flaws in Mexico, or Latin America (or elsewhere) as “proof” of the superiority of whatever it was they left behind. Which, of course, begs the question why they are here, other than they seem to expect those of us who embrace Mexico, and celebrate our differences, to shoulder their white man’s burden.
Photos all copyright © Ariel Carlomagno: Latidos de América.
Rich, if you want to post BBC videos on your blog, the easiest method is by opening a http://vodpod.com/ account, grabbing the bookmarklet and adding the Beeb video to your Vodpod collection. You can then grab WordPress shortcode to add the video into your blog.
I’ve already added to this conversation elsewhere. I’d like someone to define multiculuralism, please. In a concise, easy to digest manner that we can all agree upon. As I understand it, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but if anyone wants to have a go….
Mr ‘Bierce’, as with all the others who have come out against multiculturalism, have as yet failed to define multiculturalism, let alone proffer a genuine solution. They might as well come out against the ‘colour green’. Or any of a huge number of facts of life which they might not like but cannot do anything about.
The anti-multiculturalism rant from Mexico was harder to figure out
It’s not really. Once, if you’ll forgive my thieving of the phrase, you’ve removed the lipstick and pretty dress. For example, calls for the banning of Islamic dress might be made. But nun’s rights to don the habit will remain unmentioned…
Sorry, Gary — I probably should have mentioned your site (http://garydenness.co.uk) as the one that tipped me off to a rant I otherwise wouldn’t have seen. I don’t think “multicultural” is all that hard to figure out … perhaps defining “culture” is a problem, but all that is implied is the tolerance of the differences between subgroups of people, and the understanding that the way people do things is not necessarily right or wrong, just different.
The basics aren’t maybe too hard to figure out. It’s the plural of monoculture, perhaps. But it is a more complicated issue. There’s quite a bit out on the web to look at… http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12381027
multiculturalism = The Black Eyed Peas sing it – believe it:
One Tribe, one time, one planet, one race
It’s all one blood, don’t care about your face
The color of your eye or the tone of your skin
Don’t care where ya are
Don’t care where ya been
Cause where we gonna go
Is where we wanna be
The place where the little language is unity
And the continent is called Pangaea
And the main ideas are connected like a spear
No propaganda, They tried to upper hand us
Cause man I’m loving this peace
Man, man, I’m loving this peace
Man, man, I’m loving this peace
I don’t need no leader
That’s gonna force feed a
Concept that make me think I need to
Fear my brother and fear my sister
And shoot my neighbor or my big missile
If I had an enemy to {enemy}
If I had an enemy to {enemy}
If I had an enemy, then my enemy is gonna try to come and kill me
Cause I’m his enemy
There’s one tribe ya’ll
One tribe ya’ll
One tribe ya’ll
One tribe ya’ll
We are one people
Let’s cast amnesia, forget about all that evil
Forget about all that evil, that evil that they feed ya
Let’s cast amnesia, forget about all that evil
That evil that they feed ya
Remember that we’re one people
We are one people
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
One tribe, one tribe
One tribe, one time, one planet, one {race}
Race, one love, one people, one {and}
Too many things that’s causing one {to}
To forget about the main cause
Connecting, uniting
But the evil is seen and alive in us
So our hopes are colliding
And our peace is sinking like Poseidon
But, we know that the one {one}
The evil one is threatened by the sum {sum}
So he’ll come and try and separate the sum
But he dumb, he didn’t know we had a way to overcome
Rejuvenated by the beating of the drum
Come together by the cycle of the hum
Freedom when all become one {one}
Forever
One tribe ya’ll
One tribe ya’ll
One tribe ya’ll
We are one people
Let’s cast amnesia
Forget about all that evil {evil}
Forget about all that evil {evil}
That evil that they feed ya
Let’s cast amnesia
Forget about all that evil {evil}
That evil, that they feed ya {feed ya}
Remember that we’re one people
We are one people
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
One love, one blood, one people
One heart, one beat, we equal
Conected like the internet
United that’s how we do
Let’s break walls, so we see through
Let love and peace lead you
We could overcome the complication cause we need to
Help each other, make these changes
Brother, sister, rearrange this
The way I’m thinking that we can change this bad condition
Wait, use you mind and not your grid
Let’s connect and then proceed
This is something I believe
We are one, we’re all just people
One tribe ya’ll
One tribe ya’ll
One tribe ya’ll
We are one people
Let’s cast amnesia
Forget about all that evil
Forget about all that evil, that evil that they feed ya
Let’s cast amnesia
Let’s cast amnesia, forget about all that evil
That evil, that they feed ya
We’re one tribe ya’ll
We people, we people
One tribe ya’ll
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
One people, one people {One People}
Let’s, let’s cast amnesia
Lord help me out
Trying to figure out what it’s all about {what it’s all about}
Cause we’re one in the same {one in the same}
Same joy, same pain
And I hope that you’re there when I need ya
Cause maybe we need amnesia
And I don’t wanna sound like a preacher
But we need to be one
One world, one love, one passion
One tribe, one understanding
Cause you and me can become one
You need to be a part of a contest for one of the best blogs
on the internet. I will recommend this website!