The Multicultural Mindset
Linked here is a 2006 US embassy memo recently unclassified by Wikileaks, detailing the efforts of the embassy to promote tolerance and integration in Estonia. The memo was prompted by a number of anecdotal incidents experienced by the staff, or that they became aware of. It was also prompted by the decision of the Dutch Ambassador to Estonia to return home due the abuse he reported receiving when out and about with his black, Cuban partner (the ambassador is a gay man).
In America and much of western Europe, a certain perspective on the value of Multiculturalism is deeply embedded in the ruling class and their representatives in the civil service (what’s been called the “Deep State”). This is not the case in every country, and Eastern Europe ten years ago is a great example of a land that had yet to hear the Good News. So in this memo we have one group taking steps to actively plant certain values in another country, which my not bear fruit and bloom for another twenty or thirty years. The memo demonstrates how the more cosmopolitan powers can drive a country from a monoculture towards a multiculture. It highlights the underlying assumptions the ruling class in America have about the value of such change, and gives us cause to consider how those differ from the values of the average citizen of America or Europe. So many of the political shocks that have occurred in Western Europe and America over the last 5 years seem to have their origin in a values gaps between the elite and the populace about the value of multiculturalism and how we should feel about issues of cultural change. A close reading of this memo lays bare the breadth and depth of that gap.
The two most interesting solutions proposed by the embassy memo are that “Estonian authorities ought to add the teaching of the benefits of living in a multicultural society to school programs”, and that the Estonian government should be encouraged to create hate speech laws to prevent such incidents in future. What is notable about what it does not say, is that there is no suggestion that the Estonian government reflect on what other types of society it’s citizens want to live in, and what steps might be taken to bring that about.
Let’s pause for a moment and think what a reasonable person might think about these issues – someone at the mid-point between Shitlib and Shitlord. Upon hearing tales of intolerance and racism in their own country, what would the average person think we should do about those things? What should we teach our children, what laws should we make, with what mind-set should we approach these problems? Here’s a stab at some basic principles most might agree with:
People should be left alone and not interfered with by way of obnoxiousness, harassment, violence. Given the increasing interconnectedness of the world, and the fact that Estonia is part of the European Union, it’s citizens can expect to deal with more cultural difference in the future, not less – you’ll be exposed to different skin colours, different religions, different lifestyles. This might not necessarily happen by way of immigration – people will still come here as tourists, workers, students. It seems reasonable to teach people about human variety, so that when they encounter in in real life they react reasonably to it. If people can’t be left alone, they should offered protection by the law from physical harm and abuse, if such protection doesn’t exist. That might include some form of Hate Speech law.
Superficially the two stances don’t seem that different. But the underlying assumptions are poles apart.
In the eyes of the average citizen what is sacrosanct is the personal safety of an individual from harm, and everything they think is ordered around the integrity of individuals, and their protection. People should be safe and comfortable in society and we should take steps necessary to ensure that, including through law. This does not preclude the idea that there are other, rival sanctities, such as a feeling of living in coherent community. The sacredness of that idea is assumed but unspoken (and sometimes being unspoken and assumed can be forgotten).
But to the person with the cosmopolitan, internationalist outlook the highest good is Multiculturalism itself. The mindset has three essential elements. It assumes that multiculturalism is desirable, it is inevitable, and laws must be passed to ensure those first two facts are not debated. So instead teaching people about the fact of human variety, we should teach them about the benefits of diversity. If the prospect of a Multicultural society causes disquiet, we should not address it by suggesting that it’s merely one of many possibilities, or that anyone could prevent it from coming about.
In relation specifically to hate speech laws – I would contend that most people are fine with them. Laws that limits speech are an indication of a society with values, which demands that people adhere to those values. Although we associate them with modern democracies and PC culture they have existed at all times in virtually every society. Sedition and treason laws, blasphemy laws – these are often to prevent speech that is considered morally dubious within a culture. Present-day United States is very unusual in that almost no society has ever existed that allowed people to say wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted. The problem is again that the principle being protected is not personal safety or liberty but multiculturalism, which is sacred only to a few. As illustrated by recent events in Germany highlight, personal liberty and the freedom from violence, intimidation and harassment, are not the central concern of hate speech laws – or at least, increasingly, that is not how they are being used.
It’s interesting to reflect on the memo and consider that some of the people involved in writing it are probably still working for the State Department now. Donald Trump, big as he is in a personality sense, is just one man. At the moment, he’s one man who can barely get fill a post in his administration. The people who wrote this memo have an understanding of culture that is totally antithetical to his, and they are likely representative of the mindset of the Civil Service in general. In that sense, changing presidents is like taking the cherry off the top of your Ice Cream Sundae, like putting on a lettuce leaf and saying it’s a salad. The election of Trump was a great symbolic triumph for Americans who feel alienated from the values of those who administer the state on their behalf. But it feels unlikely he can bring about deep change. What could? Perhaps the first step is for voters to be more active in demanding their representatives outline their feelings and values in relating to cultural change, and what how they will put that into practice at home and abroad.
I’m writing this as an Irish person. We have a lot in common with Estonia. We’re peripheral, traditional, religious, monocultural, monochrome – who knows how many such memos have been written about Ireland, how many of the classes I received in school were compelled by such interventions? What bothers me is less the prospect of living in a multicultural society. It’s the idea that someone else decided that’s the kind of society I was going to live in without consulting me or telling me what we could be lost, because to resist the change would be like resisting the coming of Spring. The flip side of that is that Ireland has benefitted from inward migration in the past, and the times when we withdrew from the world were some of the leanest and meanest times we’ve had. And I mean, ultimately, what are we worried about here? That this is how it starts, and in twenty or thirty years’ time we’ll have our Heads of State saying to new immigrants “Welcome to our Country, it’s yours more than it is ours”? Nah, of course not. I mean, who could even imagine such a thing?
