57 Quotes About Multiculturalism

Where humanitysowed faith, hope, and unity, joy’s garden blossomed. Aberjhani

Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all. Aberjhani

We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war, terrorism, and political chaos that have characterized the beginning of the 21st Century. Aberjhani

The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non- European peoples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category "humans, " can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) "translated" into a global ("European") civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable. Talal Asad

The supposed “secular” values atheists hold dear are in fact borrowed Christian values. Our society is respectful of any creed, or lack thereof, not because it embraces an illusory, non-existent secular morality, but because it is rooted in Christian faith. Christopher Dawson noted that “we cannot understand the inner form of a society unless we understand its religion.” Because moral values are always a religious product, and Western moral values are a product of Christianity. Our values, what we believe has a value beyond and above our self-interest, are grounded in religious faith or are not grounded at all. . Giorgio Roversi

We need a new, deeper appreciation of the ethnic histories of the American people, not a reduction of American history to ethnic histories. Steven C. Rockefeller

Keep your language. Love its sounds, its modulation, its rhythm. But try to march together with men of different languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human world. Unknown

The moment we stop fighting for each other, that's the moment we lose our humanity. Unknown

You feel well, Ali? You have a very faraway look on your face, beta, ' my dad said. 'Like you have left your heart behind.' He fixed me with eyes as liquid black as mine and for a moment I felt exposed, like he could see right through me. That irrational childhood thought that he could read my mind maybe.' What nonsense, his heart is here with his mother and his family. Tell him, Ali, ' my mother said.' Begum, this generation of boys and girls, you know how they are.' My dad never said my mother's name; she was always Begum, the generic term for 'wife'. . Ruth Ahmed

Globalization is a form of artificial intelligence. Erol Ozan

Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings. Aberjhani

Teach your children this from a very early age: "Everybody in this world is different, you're going to meet people who don't look like you, think like you, or even feel like you. This world is filled with so many different colours and shapes, so many different thoughts and feelings. You should never expect anyone else to be the same as you and you should never expect yourself to be the same as anybody else. But everyone can have so much fun learning about each other and celebrating one another" and when you are all able to do this, the world will begin to change for the better. . C. Joybell C.

If the idea of loving those whom you have been taught to recognize as your enemies is too overwhelming, consider more deeply the observation that we are all much more alike than we are unalike. Aberjhani

The instinct to tell our children that they are better than someone else’s children, based on nothing more than the color of their skin, is now a fossilized aberration that serves no useful purpose. Aberjhani

A different Australia emerged in the 1950s. A multicultural one, and 30 years on we're still trying to fit in as ethnics and we're still trying to fit the ethnics in as Australians. Melina Marchetta

Whether we consider hip-hop as an evolved manifestation of the Harlem Renaissance or something completely new under the sun, it clearly has moved beyond the stage of just entertaining lives to that of informing and empowering lives. Aberjhani

The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything. Aberjhani

As we encounter each other, we see our diversity – of background, race, ethnicity, belief — and how we handle that diversity will have much to say about whether we will in the end be able to rise successfully to the great challenges we face today. Dan Smith

[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity Unknown

When I first went to kindergarten kids asked me what I was. I did not understand- I'm a person. They explained that I look a little different and it is not as easy to tell which color I am. -Janelle from Who I Am Not What I Am, Tara Michener Tara Michener

An outrageous instinct to love and be loved blinded your arms to lines of propriety—— Women and Men, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, white, black, red, brown. An outrageous instinct to love and be loved executed your brain every hour on the hour. Aberjhani

Evil is ancient, unchanging, and with us always. The more postmodern the West becomes – affluent, leisured, nursed on moral equivalence, utopian pacifism, and multicultural relativism – the more premodern the evil among us seems to arise in nihilistic response. Victor Davis Hanson

The fastest way to destroy a culture is to make it multicultural. Robert Black

The biblical counselor must always remember that the ROOT problem is deeper than skin; it is sin. The ultimate cure is not culture, but Christ. James MacDonald

If we consider this official or elite multiculturalism as an ideological state apparatus we can see it as a device for constructing and ascribing political subjectivities and agencies for those who are seen as legitimate and full citizens and others who are peripheral to this in many senses. There is in this process an element of racialized ethnicization, which whitens North Americans of European origins and blackens or darkens their 'others' by the same stroke. This is integral to Canadian class and cultural formation and distribution of political entitlement. The old and established colonial/racist discourses of tradition and modernity, civilization and savagery, are the conceptual devices of the construction and ascription of these racialized ethnicities. It is through these 'conceptual practices of power' (Smith, 1990) that South Asians living in Canada, for example, can be reified as hindu or muslim, in short as religious identities... We need to repeat that there is nothing natural or primordial about cultural identities - religious or otherwise - and their projection as political agencies. In this multiculturalism serves as a collection of cultural categories for ruling or administering, claiming their representational status as direct emanations of social ontologies. This allows multiculturalism to serve as an ideology, both in the sense of a body of content, claiming that 'we' or 'they' are this or that kind of cultural identities, as well as an epistemological device for occluding the organization of the social..an interpellating device which segments the nation's cultural and political space as well as its labour market into ethnic communities.. Defined thus, third world or non-white peoples living in Canada become organized into competitive entities with respect to each other. They are perceived to have no commonality, except that they are seen as, or self-appellate as, being essentially religious, traditional or pre-modern, and thus civilizationally backward. This type of conceptualization of political and social subjectivity or agency allows for no cross-border affiliation or formation, as for example does the concept of class. Himani Bannerji

The West is evidently no longer a safe place to express our opinions, unless we are prepared to meet a bloody end by doing so. The choice is ours, but we can be guaranteed that our government and law enforcement agencies will continue to support pedophilia, political correctness and multicultural genocide under the guise of religion. Unknown

Perhaps more than never, in a highly globalized world, we must recognize that multiculturalism is not simply understanding ethnic/racial histories or the mere appreciation of cultural “difference, ” but accepting that multiculturalism spreads across the very inner core of America’s institutions, and ingrained in the very essence of life, for multicultural perspectives, ideas, and ideologies empower us to elevate the multicultural discourse to a higher level of social transformation–ultimately, universal equality, justice, respect, and human dignity for all, in all facets of human existence. Martin Guevara Urbina

Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way. Aberjhani

Lincoln bought a German language newspaper. Harold Holzer

For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance. Unknown

The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non- European poeples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category "humans, " can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) "translated" into a global ("European") civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable. Talal Asad

The barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open to them. And it's your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you Christopher Hitchens

We who have the luxury of living in the West have an obligation to stand up for liberal principles. Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. And we need to say unambiguously to Muslims living in the West: if you want to live in our societies, to share in their material benefits, then you need to accept that our freedoms are not optional. They are the foundations of our way of life; of our civilization - a civilization that learned, slowly and painfully, not to burn heretics, but to honor them. Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Islam influences every aspect of believers’ lives. Women are denied their social and economic rights in the name of Islam, and ignorant women bring up ignorant children. Sons brought up watching their mother being beaten will use violence. Why was it racist to ask this question? Why was it antiracist to indulge people’s attachment to their old ideas and perpetuate this misery? I read the works of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment–Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Mill, Voltaire–and the modern ones, Russell and Popper, with my full attention, not just as a class assignment. All life is problem solving, Popper says. There are no absolutes; progress comes through critical thought. Popper admired Kant and Spinoza but criticized them when he felt their arguments were weak. I wanted to be like Popper: free of constraint, recognizing greatness but unafraid to detect its flaws. Spinoza was clear-minded and fearless. He was the first modern European to state clearly that the world is not ordained by a separate God. Nature created itself, Spinoza said. Reason, not obedience, should guide our lives. Though it took centuries to crumble, the entire ossified cage of European social hierarchy–from kings to serfs, and between men and women, all of it shored up by the Catholic Church–was destroyed by this thought. Now, surely, it was Islam’s turn to be tested. Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Scheffer said a new ethnic underclass of immigrants had formed, and it was much too insular, rejecting the values that knit together Dutch society and creating new, damaging social divisions. There wasn’t enough insistence on immigrants adapting; teachers even questioned the relevance of teaching immigrant children Dutch history, and a whole generation of these children were being written off under a pretence of tolerance. Scheffer said there was no place in Holland for a culture that rejected the separation of church and state and denied rights to women and homosexuals. He foresaw social unrest. . Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture’s intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women’s rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Sejal had not thought of her home, or of India as a whole, as cool. She was dimly aware, however, of a white Westerner habit of wearing other cultures like T-shirts–the sticker bindis on club kids, sindoor in the hair of an unmarried pop star, Hindi characters inked carelessly on tight tank tops and pale flesh. She knew Americans liked to flash a little Indian or Japanese or African. They were always looking for a little pepper to put in their dish. . Adam Rex

Equality of condition, though it is certainly a basic requirement for justice, is nevertheless among the greatest and most uncertain ventures of modern mankind. The more equal conditions are, the less explanation there is for the differences that actually exist between people; and thus all the more unequal do individuals and groups become. This perplexing consequence came fully to light as soon as equality was no longer seen in terms of an omnipotent being like God or an unavoidable common destiny like death. Whenever equality becomes a mundane fact in itself, without any gauge by which it may be measured or explained, then there is one chance in a hundred that it will be recognized simply as a working principle of a political organization in which otherwise unequal people have equal rights; there are ninety-nine chances that it will be mistaken for an innate quality of every individual, who is “normal” if he is like everybody else and “abnormal” if he happens to be different. This perversion of equality from a political into a social concept is all the more dangerous when a society leaves but little space for special groups and individuals, for then their differences become all the more conspicuous. Hannah Arendt

It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the Moon as to put a bone in your nose. Unknown

Race theorists, who are as old as imperialism itself, want to achieve racial purity in peoples whose interbreeding, as a result of the expansion of world economy, is so far advanced that racial purity can have meaning only to a numbskull. Wilhelm Reich

Progressive thought is blind when it suggests that there can be no anti-white racism or an anti-semitism among the formerly oppressed or the young people in the projects because they themselves have suffered from this evil. They are the victims; they are exempt from the prejudices that affect the majority of the population. But the reverse is true: racism is multiplying at exponential rates among groups and communities, taboos are collapsing, and everything is explained in terms of physical characteristics, identity, purity, and difference. and this is a racism that is all the more certain that it is right because it is regarded as a legitimate reaction on the part of the persecuted. now we see the obsession with the pedigree and the old distinctions derived from slavery being revived, and prejudices accumulating in the name of racism. This is the end of the concept of humanity as union in diversity and the triumph of human species incompatible with each other. Pascal Bruckner

The city of Paris, France, became a place of refuge for biracial Americans during slavery and at the time of the Harlem Renaissance for black musicians, fine artists, writers and others seeking opportunities to practice their craft free from American racism. Sandra L. West

Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mindmost of our colors are amazingly the same. Aberjhani

I like "multi-"...multiplicity, multicultural, multiplication etc. Any contribution to diversification and value augmentation is achievement. Rossana Condoleo

After centuries of marginalization and neglect, we need to cast our own movements, projects, and ideas as a battle for relevancy in the face of historical manipulation, exploitation, and oppression. We need to fight, tooth and nail, for equity in all areas of social life. One point to make clear, ethnic and racial minorities are not looking for scraps or a handout from the old paternalistic system but an equitable, stable, and leveled playing field. Martin Guevara Urbina

Canadian official multiculturalism has developed through the 1970s and '80s, and has become in the '90s a major part of Canadian political discourse in Canada rather than in the United States, which is also a multi-ethnic country, may be due to the lack of an assimilationist discourse so pervasive in the U.S. The melting pot thesis has not been popular in Canada, where the notion of a social and cultural mosaic has had a greater influence among liberal critics. This mosaic approach has not been compensated with an integrative politics of antiracism or of class struggle which is sensitive to the racialization involved in Canadian class formation. The organized labour movement in Canada has repeatedly displayed anti-immigrant sentiments. For any inspiration for an antiracist theorization and practice of class struggle Canadians have looked to the United States or the Caribbean. Himani Bannerji

I hold that it is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others'religions as we would have them to respect our own, a friendly study of theworld's religions is a sacred duty. Mahatma Gandhi

I think I was always interested in the larger world, even as a kid, and my experiences as a journalist only heightened that interest. Covering conflict, I learned that though leaders often try to create a sense of "us" and "them, " the differences are not that delineated. I often felt like it was a whole bunch of "us, " with some of "them" scattered around. That made me feel that the borders we draw around ourselves are often artificial. . Masha Hamilton

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here. Eleanor Roosevelt

The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them. Aberjhani

Nothing about multiculturalism antagonized Rachel. She liked all kinds of food, clothing, cultural customs, and music. The one thing that held her aloof was a fear of offending through ignorance. Ausma Zehanat Khan

We are drawn to the Renaissance because of the hope for black uplift and interracial empathy that it embodied and because there is a certain element of romanticism associated with the era’s creativity, its seemingly larger than life heroes and heroines, and its most brilliantly lit terrain, Harlem, USA. Clement Alexander Price