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."

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