Asymmetric Multiculturalism
= "Multiculturalism burdens the white majority with different obligations than ethnic minorities, in a dynamic that political scientist Eric Kauffman describes as “asymmetrical multiculturalism.” [1]
Discussion
Nathan Pinkoski:
"Because multiculturalism made the promotion of minority races and cultures a key goal, it required double standards in public morality, institutions, and law, and thereby undermined equal treatment. Multiculturalism therefore changed the British state and British society in ways that the myth of British exceptionalism sought to mask. Counter to the claims of this myth, multiculturalism and liberalism proved incompatible.
A national inquiry would only draw more attention to these facts, so Prime Minister Keir Starmer forced all Labour MPs to vote on Jan. 8 to reject a national inquiry into the scandal or to face expulsion from the party. He required no such conformity during the recent debate on assisted-suicide legislation. For Britain’s prime minister, preserving the multicultural regime is an existential matter in a way that debates about ending life are not.
Multiculturalism burdens the white majority with different obligations than ethnic minorities, in a dynamic that political scientist Eric Kauffman describes as “asymmetrical multiculturalism.” This is not just a set of policies or ideas: It is a regime that changes the way everyone within it thinks and acts.
In America, asymmetrical multiculturalism remained a fringe position until shortly after the civil-rights era, when laws that called for equal treatment of black Americans were interpreted as requiring preferential treatment for other minority groups. Skepticism about such racial preferences split postwar liberals, permanently reshaping American politics. In Britain, liberals couldn’t make up their mind about who the British were. They remained attached to the old vision of a multiethnic imperial polity, long after the empire that embodied it had vanished. Multiculturalists exploited liberal prevarications about British identity. They redefined the British state’s approach to immigration, race relations, and the meaning of citizenship. They developed new institutional mechanisms to advance asymmetrical multiculturalism. Faced with these challenges, British liberals blinked, time and again.
The road to multicultural Britain was paved with good liberal imperialist intentions."
(https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-undoing-of-britain/)
Policy
The History of Multiculturalist Policy
Nathan Pinkoski:
"As one critic of liberalism argued, citizenship needed to be reconceived “in terms of the entitlement to public presence and influence in shaping the terms of collective life. Such entitlement and influence is constituted and expressed through social and institutional practices, not simply in terms of the formal rights contingent upon official nationality.” The liberal definition of citizenship failed to meet the full demands of antiracist morality. Holding majorities and minorities to the same standards was not enough: Minorities should get to shape and control their own public space. State officials—including the police—had a duty to refrain from actions that might antagonize racial minorities and upset their distinct social practices. Antiracism meant teaching the police when to stand down.
The multiculturalist critique of the Thatcher era influenced British elites far more than the old-left one. When Thatcher quipped that “Tony Blair and New Labour” were “her greatest achievement,” she inadvertently provided a green light to the people who came in her wake. As long as the Blairites didn’t try something daft like nationalizing the banks or withdrawing from NATO, they could arrange Britain’s emerging multiethnic society and redefine citizenship on the terms of asymmetrical multiculturalism.
Upon taking office, Blair used “the new institutionalism”—essentially a theory of managing state-society partnerships—to push multiculturalism further. State officials would see a key part of their function as disciplining the transgressions of the British majority, thereby reducing the risk of racial conflict and cajoling the nation toward greater tolerance. These actions would ensure that minorities could shape and direct civil society, exercising their citizenship according to the terms of the expanded, post-liberal definition.
New Labour dismantled the aspects of the old liberal state that got in the way of that. After police botched the investigation into the murder of the black adolescent Stephen Lawrence, the Blair government commissioned an official inquiry. The MacPherson report was the first official document to accuse Britain of institutional racism, which it alleged was responsible for the police’s failures. In 2000, the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain published its report, putting multiculturalism at the center of British political life. New Labour followed through on many of its recommendations. In education, they introduced a new “citizenship” requirement, which emphasized tolerance and acceptance for social diversity. They extended antidiscrimination legislation to law enforcement and immigration services, while creating a “positive duty” for race equality on public authorities. Police got the multicultural message. It was around this time that for fear of being “politically incorrect,” they began looking the other way when the sexual crimes of certain “Asian” men crossed their paths.
Multiculturalists weren’t just changing the way the state worked and expanding the obligations of anti-racism. They were reconceiving the way civil-society organizations were supposed to act. In the multicultural regime, civil associations have special obligations to minorities that they don’t have to the cultural majority. They must help lift minorities up and promote their group identities. The state would reward, sponsor, and work with groups that did so. Groups that failed to do so would have their practices scrutinized by other civic associations, as well as by the state. It became taboo to speak of British identity in terms of the country’s historic majority; the only acceptable way to speak of British identity was in universalist terms, as something everyone could share in.
Ironically, as British elites became more guilty about their former empire and looked for ways to express regret, they ended up doubling down on the universalist identity that the global empire had once substantiated. If imperial universalism meant that any people anywhere in the world could be civilized where they were, post-imperial universalism meant that any people anywhere in the world could come to Britain and be civilized.
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hips end up eroding the functions of the postwar state. Over time, the state becomes more reliant and beholden to private actors; in Britain’s case, the representatives of Islam’s parallel polis. In the wake of the multicultural shift, authorities become more timid, erratic, and arbitrary in how they use their traditional powers. With neoliberalism, that applies to political economy. With multiculturalism, that applies to criminal justice.
Starting in 2013, Britain’s violent crime rate started climbing. Around the same time—as the writer Ed West has documented—Britain became particularly soft on crime. At least, certain kinds of it. While violent criminals are often let off lightly, those who break hate-speech laws are fiercely punished. This pattern of enforcement is carried out in accord with the demands of asymmetrical multiculturalism. Petty crime is rarely penalized, because it might lead to disproportionate use of force on minorities. Meanwhile, in London, there seems to be an overuse of police force used against whites as compared to blacks and Asians. Concerns about disparate impact also seem to affect immigration policy. By statute, those serving a sentence of over a year should be subject to automatic deportation, but this doesn’t happen. None of the convicted Rotherham child abusers has been deported back to Pakistan.
Some critics of British multiculturalism see it as a project of activist judges, which is rejected by the broader society. Multiculturalism, the story goes, is an elite fixation. It might have captured London, but it doesn’t interest those outside its corridors of power and halls of justice. Britain remains a liberal society."
(https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-undoing-of-britain/)
Characteristics
"we see signs that the British state and society are working entirely in the service of the multicultural vision:
Application of the multicultural neutrality standard: In Manchester, one detective described how in the early 2000s he was dissuaded from investigating grooming gangs. Because the offending group was disproportionately Asian, he said, “we were told to try and get other ethnicities.”
Liberal rights are circumscribed by the need to promote minority cultures: The 2018 All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims provided a working definition of Islamophobia that has been adopted by the Labour Party and may be codified into law. It says, “the recourse to the notion of free speech and a supposed right to criticize Islam results in nothing more than another subtle form of anti-Muslim racism … One, real life example of this concerns the issue of ‘grooming gangs.’” Referencing “Asian grooming gangs” could qualify as Islamophobic hate speech, not subject to free speech protections.
Deference to members of minority communities who hold local political office: In Rotherham Council, the expectation was that ethnic representatives were responsible for what took place in their own ethnic enclave: there was “a sense that it was the Pakistani heritage Councillors who alone ‘dealt’ with that community.”
Ethnic enclaves resist external administration of justice while governing themselves according to their own internal norms: Mohammed Shafiq, whose three cousins were jailed for the Rotherham grooming trials, described how Muslim enclaves helped cover up for the gangs: “Some British Pakistanis have deliberately buried their heads in the sand [and] see any of us who try to tackle this problem as siding with the white ‘enemy.’” Internal cultural norms encouraged the idea that British girls were there to “practice on” before a respectable marriage.
The state supports and collaborates with the cultural activities of minorities: When one child victim of grooming gangs, “Anna” from Bradford, married her abuser in a traditional Islamic ceremony, her government social worker attended.
State actors shield minority cultures from criticism: A researcher into the grooming gangs was told never to refer to “Asian men” in her reports, which were edited by police, education officials, and social workers. The Home Office’s 2020 investigation into the grooming gangs, originally withheld from publication, tried to downplay the ethnic component. The 2022 Independent Enquiry into Child Sexual Abuse does the same, containing according to one specialist “no serious analysis of the cultural factors at play and the degree to which such atrocities were racially motivated.”
State-society partnerships are oriented to attack those who draw attention to the grooming gangs and raise concerns about immigration: Recently, RICU produced a report to guide its information control efforts, warning how “grooming gangs are used as a ‘grievance narrative’ by ‘right-wing extremists’” and labelling the view that “Western culture is under threat from mass migration” as extremist.
Concerns about maintaining intra-communal peace trump questions of procedural justice: In south Manchester, police acknowledged in 2002 and 2003 that “many sensitive community issues” existed around policing. While senior officials denied that concerns about heightening tensions affected investigations, they admitted that “the impact ‘clearly had to be considered’ by senior officers.” Telford senior council staff acknowledged that child abuse had long existed, but worried that investigating grooming gangs “had the potential to start a ‘race riot.’” In Rotherham, a father of a victim was warned how the town “would erupt” if the abuse of white girls by Pakistani men became public."
(https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-undoing-of-britain/)