Polyculturalism: One World, One People, United in Diversity

“It’s disturbing to see how neatly nationalism dovetails into fascism. While we must not allow the fascists to define what the nation is, or who it belongs to, it’s worth keeping in mind that nationalism, in all its many avatars–socialist, capitalist and fascist–has been at the root of almost all the genocides of the twentieth century. On the issue of nationalism, it’s wise to proceed with caution.” (Arundhati Roy)

“The formula of nationalism that reduces individuals to a single identity, denying the fact that we have multiple, overlapping identities and belong to multiple communities, is no longer compatible with a world more interconnected in so many ways.” (adapted from Justin Podur)

“Many families today are made by people who are from different places in the world. In one family there can be the blood of many nations and continents. In two or three hundred years it will be very difficult to point to one person and say they are from this or that part of the world, from this or that nation. Eventually all people may come to think of themselves as earth people, beings of this planet.” (John Korber)

“World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts, is a substantial book which contain over 4,000 passages gathered from 268 sacred texts and 55 oral traditions. It required the cooperation and assistance of more than forty scholars and religious leaders representing every tradition over a period of five years. Looking at the wide variety of topics in it, we can see that the various religions concur on about eighty percent of them. Our conviction is this: instead of insisting on a religion’s uniqueness on the basis of the 20 percent where it differs from the others, let’s celebrate the common ground on the basis of the 80 percent which is shared. God’s ultimate goal is one nation, one world under God. However, the experience of interfaith dialogue has taught us that to truly understand another religion, one should first be deeply committed to one’s own faith and traditions. One must go through a particular door, or none at all.” (Andrew Wilson)

“If we believe in God, not merely with our intellect but with our whole being, we will love all mankind without any distinction of race or class, nation or religion. We will work for the unity of mankind. I have known no distinction between relatives and strangers, countrymen and foreigners, white and coloured, Hindus and Indians of other faiths whether Mussulmans, Parsees, Christians or Jews. I may say that my heart has been incapable of making any such distinctions. All men are brothers and no human being should be a stranger to another. The welfare of all, sarvodaya, should be our aim. God is the common bond that unites all human beings. To break this bond even with our greatest enemy is to tear God himself to pieces. There is humanity even in the most wicked.” (Gandhi)

“Be true. Be beautiful. Be free. In the midst of segregation and racism Mamma raised us to be independent and free. We saw ourselves as citizens of the world, not of a block.” (Debbie Alle)

“Each friend represents a world to us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” (Anais Nin)

“Life exists only through the gift of other lives: all life is interdependent. Whether we are rich or poor, black or white, young or old, humans or animals, fish or fowl, trees or rocks, everything is sustained by the same air, the same sunshine, the same water, the same soil.” (Satish Kumar)

 

What Are You?

A common question I heard growing up was: What are you ? It was always a question that was asked when you met someone for the first time, following rapidly behind simple basics like name, age, religion, and favorite music.

I like to think of myself as part of the Diaspora that began 40 thousand years ago when humans first left Africa and spread into Europe, Asia, Australia, the Americas, and all points in between. My home is this earth. Though that even seems to be too narrow.

Identity is amorphous. How should I define myself? By where I have been? By what I have known? By where I am going? I am uncomfortable with any association that divides the greatest whole. I only feel comfortable with the idea that I am at once an individual, and at the same time, part of everything.

 

Where Are You From?

As of this date, the earliest evidence of human life has been found in Africa. Fossilized bones were found there in recent years that were dated as being 150,000 years old. One hundred and fifty thousand years is approximately how long human beings in their present form have existed on this planet. Any human being can trace their ancestry back to Africa. In essence, all human beings alive today come from Africa. All human beings are basically cousins.

Human beings took different paths as they gradually left Africa and spread to different parts of the world. Humans spread to parts of Asia and Europe. They moved from Asia into North America. They began to inhabit South America and Australia.

The populations that settled in the different parts of the world became mostly disconnected from each other. They were isolated from each other, and communication between people was very slow or non-existent for thousands of years. As people learned to ride horses, build boats, etc, they began discovering each other again. People started going to different parts of the world to explore and live.

Within recent history, the past 500 years, people have been meeting other people from whom their ancestors had been separated from for millennia. Many of these encounters, perhaps most, have involved hostility, war, and exploitation. All of which persists today. We hear much about the negative, and destructive things that occur between groups. Yet there are also other things happening. People also have intermixed and continue to intermix with others considered to be of another race, or ethnicity. In a very real sense they are intermixing with their long lost relatives, bringing together distant relatives into newly formed families. People, once considered separate and different are discovering that they are, in fact, the same.

This is particularly obvious in the Americas and the Caribbean where people from many parts of the world have settled. Some of these people cling to the idea that they are a part of a small isolated group. They do not recognize their long forgotten cousins and try to maintain the integrety of the subgroup they imagine themselves to be apart of. The subgroups might be African American, Irish American, Italian American, Latino, White, etc . . . But others can see that humans are fundamentally humans. They cross over artificial boundaries to join together. Cultural artifacts such as religion, music, and language, are blended, and transformed.

Many families today are made by people who are from different places in the world. In one family there can be the blood of many nations and continents. In two or three hundred years it will be very difficult to point to one person and say they are from this or that part of the world, from this or that nation. Eventually all people may come to think of themselves as earth people, beings of this planet.

Today, it is possible to travel to other parts of the world in a few hours, or to communicate with those people in a few seconds. What sense does it make to divide people into separate groups like nations when people from different nations interact with each other on daily basis?

What each person does everyday has real effects on people all over the planet. On the simplest level think about the clothes you wear, the foods you eat, and the machines you use. How many of those things originated from other parts of the world. Think about the stories of human experience that you read about or see on television. Think about the music you listen to. If none of these things are so alien that they cannot be used or understood by you, then why view the people they originate from as different?

 

The Fallacy of Race

Race is a concept that has always been used to subdivide the whole of humanity, but concept of race is not found universally in all cultures nor in all periods of history. When it has existed, it has meant different things to different people. For some it has meant family lineage, and for others it has meant nation or ethnicity. Contemporary notions of race originated in Europe a little over two hundred years ago.

Attempts to classify members of the human race into subspecies or races have always been problematic. Family lineage is obviously a narrow and meaningless classification, though it is capable of engendering tremendous loyalty. This form of classification, more accurately understood as clan, can be seen in classical Greek literature, and is still alive in some cultures in parts of the world today. Other people have equated race with national citizenship, but the use of nation as a racial divider begs the obvious objections apparent to any half rational person. National boundaries are artificially established and can easily change after a war, civil conflict, or the dissolution of governments. This type of classification was and is favored by people with a fascist mentality. The most obvious example would be Hitler’s Germany.

Linguistic distinctions also fails to explain classification by race, as more and more people master more than one language during their life time. Even cultural distinctions were assimilated into a social milieu and not everyone, as a matter of fact, is raised in an encapsulated cultural environment.

More recent attempts to scientifically subdivide the human species based on genetics have resulted in absurdity and failure. The reason is simple. Within any particular population group there is a high degree of genetic variability. Any two individuals within a race may show more genetic difference than any two categorized as being from different races. This variability makes it impossible to categorize any large group of people as a particular race. In fact, most scientists today reject the concept of race as a meaningful way to think about human beings.

In spite of the many absurdities and problems that have plagued its existence, race remains as a concept firmly implanted in the minds of many people living today. Ideas can be very powerful without needing to be correct. Just as at one time people erroneously assumed the earth to be a flat disc, many people today persist in the belief that the human species can be rationally subdivided into races. This ignorance contributes to, at the very least, a lack of empathy for other people, and at worst, racist hostility and prejudice.

 

Inheriting Culture

What is my cultural heritage? First, how does one inherit or receive culture? Culture is transmitted from person to person, passed down through generations, and, very significantly, shared across cultural barriers. Like many people born in a multicultural place such as New York City, I have lived with, worked with, and learned from a rich variety of people. It would be impossible for me to lay claim to any one culture exclusively without cutting off many important aspects of my character.

As a result of being raised in this environment, unsheltered and unrestrained, I have inherited aspects of many different cultures instead of one distinct culture (if such a thing still exists in the world). If I were to compile a list of the cultural influences in my life the list would be quite large. This situation is not unique to me, and I would like to suggest that as we all progress through time in the coming centuries, it will become the common experience of most, and perhaps all, people.

I would like to see more people develop a meta-awareness of the many cultural influences on their development, and of the multiplicity of cultures that are a part of their daily existence. We live in a world that is intricately connected. We cannot close ourselves off from the problems of this planet, nor should we close ourselves off from its richness and benefits. I invite you to recognize that you participate in a global culture. All it takes is a little openness and awareness.

 

Creators of Culture

What occurs to you when think of culture? Often it is viewed as something that is passed along, researched, or rediscovered. This is true, but it is only half of it. Culture lives. Culture changes. Culture transforms. And it is through people that culture moves, not through culture that people move. Without the living breath of humanity, culture would cease. But if you could bring a group of people into the world deprived of any culture, they would soon make one.

Much is said about preserving that which is passed down through time. Much time is given over to remembering our heritage. Some people would like to feel that all there is in life needs only to be learned. You are born a vessel which is to be filled. You are stamped at birth as such a thing, and that you should be when you die.

I prefer to think of people as cultural agents, as agents of change, rather than repositories of some dusty cultural archeology. We need to be more aware of the infinite mutability of life. We should teach our young, and teach ourselves, that we are creators. We must be artists.

Out of chaos came form, but chaos was not left behind. It is just ahead, and waiting for us! It is waiting for us give it new form, and draw again from its infinite complexity and the beauty therein.

The many cultural influences that enter us during our lives are transmuted by our consciousness with or without our awareness. What emerges is not a recapiculation of the past. It is not an identity that has been recovered, nor an affirmation of a static ideal. What emerges is something new, and entirely unique to ourselves. Awareness of this can make each of us an artist, a singer of songs. Songs that are unique , and yet representative of all humanity.

We are, and are not, the multitude of cultural influences that have passed through us. We are and are not those influences that will come. From the chaos that is life, we gather up a form. This form serves for a moment and then passes. We do not need to cling to any identity set down in writing, preached from a pulpit, determined by a few genes, or circumscribed by a political border. What we need I cannot tell you, but it is there now, and will not be the same tomorrow. Explore the other. Celebrate diversity. Foster it. Make it your own.

In light of this ideal, we turn again to the real world.

 

Racism and Failed Solutions

The roots of modern racist mythology can be found in the medieval notions of blood and purity, of infidels and outsiders, while the roots of modern institutional racism can be found in the construction of capitalism itself, in the genocide, slavery, and colonialism that were a necessary part of it’s construction.

In our discourse, racism can be defined as either a system of power that one group holds over others, or any individual or institutional behaviour or pattern that reinforces this system of power.

Some solutions to the problem of racism has been advanced but succeeded only to a limited extent leaving huge gaps to fill.

Assimilation

Assimilation gets rid of the problem of a powerful community oppressing a less powerful community by absorbing the less powerful into the more powerful. In North America, the reality is that assimilation has been a false promise. Latino immigrants are told that they are supposed to assimilate, but they are racially profiled, incarcerated disproportionately, they are denied legal status in a country that is happy to accept their labor. The indigenous are told to assimilate, but their rights have never been respected the way settlers’ rights have. Every time African-American communities have had some economic success, some way has been found–from political manipulation to outright violence–to reverse that. So, in many cases, assimilation is just an empty promise that a racist society taunts the oppressed with.

There is at least one other, serious problem with assimilation. That is: what happens if a community doesn’t want to assimilate? That is one recipe for violence, communal warfare, and nationalist reaction. So there are costs of various kinds, not the least of which is the cost of adopting the convenient assumptions of dominant, powerful groups.

Separation

Separatism solves the problem of racial, or cultural, or national oppression by separating the races (or cultures or nations) from each other–separating them physically, geographically, culturally, and presumably economically as well. But given that different races is so mixed-up, it means that separation is just not possible without massive amounts of violence and ethnic cleansing. The case of India/Pakistan has something to teach us: even after partition there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan! And now we have two nuclear-armed states facing each other, they’ve fought several wars, and each state has actually done a fair amount of suppression of national minorities within its own boundaries. So, separation is a practical nightmare.

Separation is highly impractical for another, similar reason. The world is a very interconnected, interdependent place. There is no reason why people in one community should go without the benefits of interaction, travel, communication, with people of other communities. Interaction is natural, inevitable. The question is: what are the terms of interaction?

Neither assimilation nor separation are the answer. They are just two sides of the same coin: they both want homogeneity and destroy diversity (assimilation by creating one big unit, separation by cutting every unit off from all the others).

Nationalism

Nationalism is not the answer either. It is primarily about allegiance. It is an approach to land and citizenship and politics.

National communities arose for a lot of different reasons, but the key thing to remember is that they did not emerge fully formed at the beginning of time. There are all kinds of communities. There are communities of interest or occupation (like the ’scientific community’ or the ‘journalistic community’) that have their own norms and can inspire strong loyalties and allegiances; religious communities; kinship networks and communities; linguistic communities; territorial communities of all kinds of levels (neighborhoods or cities or regions or countries); communities that come about because of some shared experience or history (like the African Americans).

What nationalism says is that one of these kinds of communities–usually linguistic or territorial–is the primary kind of community. It says this is who you are, above all. It says the nation is going to be the basis for political life. It is going to be the basis for citizenship–any political power you have, any access to the instruments of a government, comes through your membership in a nation (and specifically a nation-state). It says that the nation has claims to territory, resources, and state power. It says that each individual owes loyalty first and foremost to the national community–often to defend it unto death–before any other loyalty, even over upholding the truth.

You can see it very clearly with things like journalism. Journalists have a set of values–fairness, accuracy, objectivity–that they are all supposed to adhere to. But adhering to them in a nationalist context like the US brings conflict. Journalists, like everyone else, are expected to be nationalists first, especially when the state is at war. So you get these embedded journalists whose job is to be war propagandists, and everyone accepts it because of nationalism.

This way, although nationalism has also been one of the strongest forces against colonialism and racism, as a demand for loyalty, as a basis for claims to territory and resources, and as a basis for citizenship, it’s very destructive.

Thus, the idea that there are ‘pure’ nations or ‘pure’ cultures to which we owe our allegiance is a problem. It is not the solution to imperialism, nor is it a healthy reaction to racism. But neither is the idea, held by some, often Marxists, that all culture is ‘bourgeois’, and that after capitalism, cultural differences will disappear and we’ll have good socialist culture. That is just the flip side of national purity–this time it’s “socialist purity”, forced assimilation, which is equally a nightmare for most people.

We now turn to a proposed solution that at first seems perfect, but can actually worsen the problem at hand.

Multiculturalism

What is multiculturalism? Multiculturalism is a proposed solution to racism. The analogy people often use is that multiculturalism is a ’salad bowl’ compared to the ‘melting pot’ of assimilation. In a ’salad bowl’, vegetables retain their own characteristics, their unique identity. In a ‘melting pot’, they do not. It is an approach that says every culture has its own space and its own resources. It implies that cultures are fixed, discrete entities that exist side by side — a kind of zoological approach to culture.

What is good about multiculturalism, and useful to retain, is the recognition that cultures, modes of communication and expression and group identification other than the dominant one are worthy and deserve a certain autonomy. In a multicultural framework, all cultures are respected and indeed, all cultures are equal. Groups are free to express their cultural preferences and dominant groups are to have special respect for minority groups. It also encourages some humility in encounters with other cultures: it suggests you suspend judgment and try to understand people on their own terms, to try to understand the cultural baggage that you are bringing to the situation when you do so. Tolerance and diversity are the order of the day.

However, such a view of multiculturalism not only obscures power relations, but often reifies race and gender differences. Thus, it is not a complete solution to racism. Indeed, if a system of power is still in place, multicultural ideals of respect, tolerance, and diversity can then be used as arguments against mobilization aimed at identifying or redressing power imbalances (as divisive or intolerant). Ideas of fairness and equality developed as an antidote to bigotry become arguments against affirmative action.

Moreover, what is lacking in multiculturalism is a notion of what happens within these ‘cultures’ and between them. If we have a multicultural society where every ‘culture’ gets to ‘govern itself’, does this mean that ‘culture’ can be used to justify sexism, or homophobia, or capitalism? What rules govern the hundreds of interactions across cultures that will happen every day? How will conflicts between people of different cultures be solved? Multiculturalism doesn’t provide the right tools to understand these problems or to deal with them.

Here, we come to the limitations of the definition of racism we employed beforehand, which are related to the limitations of multiculturalism. Both are highlighted by the proposed solutions to the problem. If we are against power differentials between groups, do we eliminate the differentials but preserve the groups? Or do we eliminate the groups?

If we want to preserve the groups neatly and separately, we have a separatist solution. If we want to eliminate the groups, we are after assimilation.

Instead of the purity of separate cultures that don’t interact, or the purity of assimilating all into one culture, I would suggest polyculturalism.

 

Polyculturalism, Autonomy and Citizenship

Polyculturalism is a concept which asserts that all of the world’s cultures are inter-related. It is thus opposed to the concept of multiculturalism. A polyculturalist sees the world constituted by the interchange of cultural forms, while multiculturalism (in most incarnations) sees the world as already constituted by different (and discrete) cultures. Multiculturalism focuses too much on ‘cultures’ having autonomy, resources, and so on, while polycultural outlook puts the focus on people and on whole societies.

Polyculturalism recognizes that a single person holds multiple identities, multiple allegiances and affinities. We speak different cultural ‘languages’, and we can change. And to go from the individual to the society, polyculturalism recognizes that cultures overlap, they change, they evolve over time. They cross-fertilize, and all societies are in a permanent state of flux, with all kinds of often very creative exchanges and interactions happening. Rather than see Hong Kong business exclusively as a hybrid of an ancient Confucianism and a modern capitalism, as in the work of Tu-Wei Ming, we might take heed of the Jesuit role in the making of early modern “Confucianism”, as in the fine work of Lionel Jensen. Rather than treat Indian students at Yale as aliens, we might consider that the university received seed money from Elihu Yale, one time governor of Madras, whose wealth came from the expropriated labor of Indian peasants. History looks quite different from a polycultural lens.

So if a multiculturalist says that a society should allow all cultures to develop autonomously, a polyculturalist says fine. But the “wider society” has a culture of its own, and that culture is one that everyone would have to relate to. It is in this shared space where people of different cultures interact that the basis for solidarity can be built. So in addition to having cultural autonomy, it would be important that the shared space be representative of everyone, and be based on things that are universal (and I believe there are some universals) — a space that is open for people to bring their cultures to the mix. So there are opportunities for communication, exchange, debate, that are made to be open for people to explain and learn about differences. So, no one is going to live sealed off in a single culture. There is just no such thing–and there probably never was.

So, polyculturalism also wants to respect and protect all cultures, but without losing sight of their entwinement and mutual responsibilities. It wants autonomy, but also mutuality or even solidarity. It wants to escape the bias away from entwinement that characterizes multiculturalism so it seeks a kind of integration without assimilation and with retention of identity — actually, multiple identities — and without making land central.

Winona LaDuke said:

“On a worldwide scale, it is said there are 5,000 nations of indigenous people; 500,000,000 indigenous people in the world; 5,000 nations. These nations have existed for thousands of years as nations. We share under international law the recognition as nations in that we have common language, common territory, governing institutions, economic institutions and history, all indicators under international law of nations of people. Yet the reality is that on an international scale most decisions are not made by nations and people. Instead they are made by states. There are about 170 states that are members of the United Nations. Most of those states have existed only since World War II.”

From the polyculturalism perspective, the proposed solution of the indigenous is not to create thousands of additional states, but instead that everyone on the continent must change their conception of land, economics, culture.

Taiaiake Alfred, in his book “Peace, Power, Righteousness: an Indigenous Manifesto”, argues not for indigenous ’sovereignity’, but that the whole concept of sovereignty is flawed: not only for indigenous but for everyone. If idea of sovereignty means that one state, acting in the name of one nation, claims priority over some piece of territory, it is analogous to ideas of a “pure culture” to which a person should have primary loyalty. The antidote to sovereignty and to purity of culture is the same: to recognize multiple allegiances, overlapping uses and rights without rigid boundaries.

Likewise if a nationalist says that you should owe your primary loyalty and cultural affiliation to the nation, a polyculturalist says no, there are many loyalties and affiliations, that overlap and merge and change.

Thus we turn to the next logical step after polyculturalism.

Autonomy

In March 2001, the Zapatistas marched from Chiapas to Mexico City on what they called the “march of indigenous dignity”. One of their demands was the passage of a “law on indigenous rights and culture”. What they wanted was not the creation of a new, separate, indigenous nation state. In that sense, it was not exactly a ‘nationalist’ demand. Instead, their proposed law featured territorial autonomy within Mexico. So, in their proposal, one could be indigenous and Mexican. Or, put another way, one could be Mexican without having one’s indigenous identity erased or devalued. A Mexico where “without losing what makes each individual different, unity is maintained, and, with it, the possibility of advancing by mutual agreement. A country where difference is recognized and respected. Where being and thinking differently is no reason for going to jail, for being persecuted, or for dying.”

The proposal is to make room for an autonomous, indigenous Mexico–part of the multicultural ideal, even part of what’s best in the nationalist aspiration–but also to change the whole of Mexico, so that it includes the indigenous. It is integration without assimilation, and it is autonomy without separation. That’s a good proposal for cultural relations.

This is what polyculturalism is getting at.

What of nationalism and nation-states as a basis for government? Governments are based on territory and community, and nationalists argue that each national community has some ‘natural’ territory, some natural boundaries (unfortunately different nationalists have different boundaries in mind). Nationalist ideals and aspirations usually have a territorial component. That’s why maps are such important nationalist symbols. But in addition to being the basis for government, land is also an economic resource, and criteria of economic justice constrain nationalist ambitions for land. Why should citizens of the North American continent have vastly higher standards of living because they happen to be born on territory that is fantastically agriculturally productive? Economic justice requires that resources be apportioned equally and efficiently and with ecological rationality.

But that’s not the whole story. Because territory is the basis of government, cultural or communal autonomy will have a territorial basis. That is the basis of the Zapatista proposal, and of the Afro-Colombians and indigenous in Colombia, and indeed of the indigenist proposals in North America, of people like Winona LaDuke and Ward Churchill. Winona Laduke wants us to see the indigenous as “islands in a continent”. Ward Churchill argues for a federation of indigenous communities that will have a new relationship to the North American states–the indigenous communities will negotiate their own level of autonomy or sovereignty.

Polycultural perspective of citizenship

This gives a clue about citizenship as well. If a polyculturalist outlook recognizes that we all have multiple, overlapping identities and affiliations, it makes it possible to imagine multiple, overlapping levels of citizenship as well. If citizenship implies a set of rights and duties, you have such rights and duties at multiple levels–rights as a part of a local community, as part of a regional community, as part of a national community, and as a citizen of the world. Why couldn’t you have citizenship at every level as well?

That would mean you had the right to participate in decisions that affected your locality but not someone else’s, but in decisions that affected the whole world, you would have as much say as anyone else. At the global level, there is something like an expanded version of the universal declaration of human rights, and also decisions on action for global issues like climate change. At the local level, there are by-laws and decisions for public expenditures. Citizens have rights and obligations at every level. The change from today would be adding new levels of citizenship–not separating people, but giving people more say in decisions that affect everyone, giving people access to forums where they can talk to each other at all levels.

There are collective rights in addition to individual ones, that can and should be guaranteed by way of autonomy and representation. In this regard, George Monbiot makes a proposal that could work in a recent essay on United Nations reform. In his proposal, each country sends representatives to the UN, but larger countries send more representatives, making voting more democratic:

“No nation would possess a veto. The most consequential decisions – to go to war for example – should require an overwhelming majority of the assembly’s weighted votes. This means that powerful governments wishing to recruit reluctant nations to their cause would be forced to bribe or blackmail most of the rest of the world to obtain the results they wanted. The nations whose votes they needed most would be the ones whose votes were hardest to buy.”

“But this assembly alone would be incapable of restraining the way in which its members treat their own citizens or representing the common interests of all the people of the world. It seems to me therefore that we require another body, composed of representatives directly elected by the world’s people. Every adult on earth would possess one vote.”

“The implications for global justice are obvious. A resident of Ouagadougou would have the same potential influence over the decisions this parliament would make as a resident of Washington. The people of China would possess, between them, sixteen times as many votes as the people of Germany. It is, in other words, a revolutionary assembly.”

Monbiot’s idea is for two different institutions. One, where each nation sends representatives weighted by population, giving larger communities a larger voice, and a second that is directly elected. His proposal, doable or not, conveys an idea of marrying individual and group rights and reponsibility, polyculturalism, and global citizenship, the kind of marriage the world needs to solve its multitudes of crises.

A diversity of solutions

In a society where there is economic equality and political freedom and participation, I wonder whether ‘majority’ community means the same thing it does in our society. What kind of issue would pit a large community against a smaller one that didn’t have an economic or political component that constrained the decision according to shared norms of justice, or that couldn’t be dealt with by autonomous communities making their own decisions? If there was a decision on which people were voting, would people vote their skin color? Their language? Their religion? There would be different majorities on different issues. Indeed, even today, if there has been one thing frustrating the Hindu nationalists in India, for example, it has been this fact — that people don’t vote their religion.

Still, I wonder if the whole reason we think so much about the ‘defense’ and ‘protection’ of ‘minorities’ has to do with how disempowered we are. I think a lot of the communal problems that arise in our society have a lot to do with economic and political disenfranchisement. Capitalism means you have no control over your economic destiny, state oppression means you have no control over your political destiny–culture, or sometimes nationalism, is a kind of consolation prize. ‘Defend’ your ‘traditions’, even if they include patriarchy or homophobia; wave a flag, but do not dare ask about economic, or political, self-determination.

We now know that economic justice and democracy within a polycultural context may enable the diversity of solutions, even in the form of indigenous or other form of autonomy, that our world desperately need.

Now that we reached the territory of economic justice, two important issue that desperately need our attention arise.

 

Reparation and Solidarity

The indigenist proposals highlight the nature of a re-negotiated political relationship between peoples. But for such a relationship to begin on an equal basis, reparation has to be made to reverse the inequalities that a history of slavery, genocides, imperialism, capitalism and racism has left us with.

Our economic system is built on the labor of slaves, the stolen land of indigenous people, the plunder of colonies, and the exploitation of immigrants. The legacy of all this is a concentration of resources within and between countries. One of the effects of racism is this massive economic inequality. The inequality itself leads to restrictions of all kinds of freedom–the most fundamental being the freedom to move. The rich countries have to restrict immigration because if the borders were opened labor would be able to follow capital wherever it flew. So violence is used in order to protect (and expand) an economic system established by violence. Such disparities in wealth and power will undermine any ‘multicultural’ arrangements you could design. As I said, that’s one of the criticisms of multiculturalism, that it says we are supposed to have ‘tolerance’ for each other even as one community is plundering another.

This assessment is as valid globally, especially in the context of the demand for reparations for the third world countries, which is a demand to unmake the plunder that they have suffered over centuries of exploitation under the banner of colonial imperialism, and more recently under the banner of economic imperialism. It is not the third world that is indebted to the first world, but the first world failing to pay their debt to the third world. And in order to win reparation, it will be necessary to build solidarity across lines of nation, culture, or colour.

Having said that, I also think there is a right and a wrong way to do reparations. The wrong way would be for elites to hand out some money, that would quickly end up right back in the hands of elites. The right way would be for reparations to actually, permanently reduce inequalities, break up concentrations of power, and increase the economic independence of communities and nations. So, resources–not just money but land, for example land that military bases are on, or corporations hold–would be transferred to the control of oppressed communities (like African-Americans or indigenous) with a view to long-term establishment of agricultural, industrial, health, education, environmental infrastructure that would bring their communities and nations to equality and build a basis for autonomy and more equal relations with the wider community of the world.

In “The Debt”, Randall Robinson suggests things like establishing educational and infrastructure funds. At the international level, reparations means things like erasing debts and beginning to transfer resources and investments in the other direction00going well beyond fair trade to trade in which the poor countries capture a much greater share of the benefits. The anti-capitalist globalization movements, the movement for Black Reparations, and many indigenous movements, see reparations in this vein.

Moreover, reparations, as I understand it, has several parts.

The first is “repair,” so the damage done by these historical atrocities and injustices that is reflected in inequality today, has to be repaired. I don’t think it would be hugely controversial to say that the ‘repair’ aspect, the transfer of wealth, is based on redressing those inequalities in the present, some of which are reproduced in the present and others that are simply a legacy of the past. And yes, all inequalities have to be removed by such transfers. But that is only the first part of reparations.

The second has to do with collective memory. It has to do with making a public recognition of the atrocity that took place, of making it a part of our history. So, supposing that blacks in the US had the same average income, positions, etc., as whites but also the history of slavery, such a recognition, a reckoning, would still be in order, and would be an important part of what reparations means. Some of the most moving parts of Randall Robinson’s book have more to do with this aspect of reparations than with the redistributive aspect. Yet another aspect of reparations is the justice aspect. For atrocities that have taken place in living memory, there has to be justice. Not only truth and reconciliation, but bringing the authors of massive crimes to justice. If the atrocities occurred generations ago, that kind of justice is not possible, but reparations can still be made. So, a transfer of wealth to remove inequality (income redistribution to redress current injustices, even in the absence of grave past violations, would be adequate for this part), a historical reckoning, and justice, all are elements of reparations.

 

Strengthening Polyculturalism

First of all, I still do want to eliminate power and class differentials between groups. So reparation — programs that pay attention to history with a view to eliminating equality and fairness in the present — is important. I cannot see justifying inequalities on the basis of tolerating diversity, nor do I see any reason to view a reparations programme that decreases inequality as ’special treatment’. But there is a flip side. First, the programs have to be carefully designed so that they actually do decrease inequality. And second, wanting to eliminate inequalities between groups does not mean tolerating inequalities within groups.

This is where a possible tension emerges between cultural autonomy and solidarity. This is not a plea for cross-cultural tolerance, because we do not live in a single identity. We can have solidarity with others on the basis of shared identity, even if we have only our shared humanity as a basis for solidarity. But if we don’t want to use cultural relativism as an excuse to tolerate injustice within groups, we also don’t want to allow powerful groups to violate the autonomy of weaker or smaller groups based on their own values or norms.

But what does it mean in the real world of institutions and groups and populations to say we cannot ‘allow powerful groups’ to do something? What kind of protection is there for a minority within a country, or for a small independent national community in the family of nations? There are legal, political, and media protections that could help a society deal with this problem.

Formal, legal protections in constitutions and international law, protections that require consensus or huge majorities to change. But these can be violated by powerful groups.

Voting systems can be arranged to provide incentives to politicians and campaigners to reach out across obvious community divisions. But these, too, could be ridden with conflict.

Major media institutions could be encouraged to operate based on fairness criteria. These criteria include:

1. Representing all subgroups in the wider community
2. Presenting all different positions in the wider community
3. Being accessible to anyone
4. Facilitating communication or translation between groups
5. Developing the ‘common culture’ of the wider community

Smaller, community media institutions might have a more specialist role. These might not be held up to the same standards of fairness. Nor would they have the same levels of public support or access to public space. They would just be independent media, available to anyone and protected by free speech laws.

What I’m sketching out here, for media institutions, is an important principle for a polycultural framework. The wider society has a responsibility to make its institutions representative of the diversity of the communities within it. But it should also encourage and help the creation of autonomous institutions for those communities: institutions that are not held to the same strict criteria of fairness, because, unlike society-at-large, people are free to exit them.

Michael Rabinder James, in his “Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity”, suggests fairness criteria for judging democratic processes: aggregative equality (each person has roughly the same voting power), deliberative equality (each different position is represented regardless of its popularity), aggregative autonomy (choice between different candidates and positions), deliberative autonomy (a chance to develop positions free of coercion and with full information), aggregative reciprocity (equal coalition-building opportunities), and deliberative reciprocity (a tendency to view others as partners and understand their positions). He also suggests voting systems that would encourage people to seek votes across identity groups.

Legal, political, and media protections can all facilitate a polycultural framework. But in spite of them, powerful groups could wield control over resources to shut out or misrepresent alternative views or consign them to the margins.

I believe, however, that beyond institutionalized protections, the ultimate protection is the development of a ‘common culture’ in which people do not ‘vote’, or even think, reliably or consistently as a member of their ‘community’ only as opposed to the larger society. This is the best protection against communalism and, in the case of India, it has been the main brake on communalism. People do not vote, or live, in a single identity. A sound society would not ask them to.

What about across societies? What about if cases of oppression or violence are occurring within a community or a nation? When does the wider society ? or the family of nations, or an external agent of any kind ? have the right to intervene?

In the most extreme cases, this can be resolved with a simple rule proposed by Arthur Waskow in the 1960s in a small book called ‘Keeping the World Disarmed’. The basic rule is simply this: intervention is allowed, but more force requires more consensus. So any country could send a single unarmed observer or investigator to investigate claims that a country was arming or committing rights violations against its people. To send more would require more consensus, and full armed intervention would require some super majority rule.

 

Consequences Today

Supposing the model of polyculturalism is filled out and gains advocates as a goal regarding the relations among cultural communities, what would this mean for political activism now? Does it have implications for the kinds of demands and programs movements should have? Does it have implications for the structure and character of our movements? Are there implications, in short, for what we do now?

I think it calls attention to the need for solidarity. A powerful aspect of the anti-war movements, the movement for Palestinian rights and justice, or movements against US intervention, has been international solidarity. In Europe, North America, and Australia, there are growing movements raising the demand “No One is Illegal”. This is a really revolutionary idea that I think meets nicely with polyculturalism. The same with indigenous struggles for land rights and self-determination. These struggles compel new relationships between communities and new ways of thinking about the ways we are connected, and the ways we could be connected in a more just society.

There is a constant tension in polyculturalism, between autonomy and solidarity, between trying to ensure a shared space is really representative and realizing that the boundaries between the things that are represented are fluid and overlapping. That tension can be painful, but it also provides so many possibilities.

I believe that we can, and should, always evaluate our own institutions and processes according to the criteria of deliberative and aggregative autonomy, reciprocity, and equality. I believe that we can improve our work as antiracists by recognizing the multiple, overlapping identities and the element of choice in movements.

We can also avoid the error of asking people to live or think in a single identity. There is no such thing as a homogeneous group or movement. The idea of representativeness in common spaces and the creation of autonomous spaces can almost always be applied. A sound society would not ask them to. I should also add that a sound political movement would not ask them to. I should also add that I believe that progressives do ask people to, and that is a mistake. Antiracists do better to rely on stronger bonds of solidarity, whether based in coherent communities or in shared principles and practice.

 

Conclusion

Thus, I would say that the necessary components for a life after racism, a world without racism and exploitation, are four: polyculturalism, autonomy, restitution and solidarity.

Polyculturalism; because there is no such thing as “pure culture”. Trying to force us into some ‘pure’ notion of the nation, or of the religion, or of the race, is a fallacy we can no longer afford to believe. As Gandhi have said, “for the nonviolent person, the whole world is one family. He will fear none, nor will others fear him.”

Autonomy: because there can be no equal relationship between people or peoples that is not voluntary, and the option and the exercise of autonomy is necessary for there to be solidarity across cultures;

Restitution : in order to un-do the unequal distribution of wealth and power that is the legacy of genocide, slavery, capitalist and imperialist exploitation

Solidarity: to overcome the color, race, and culture lines that are part of that legacy and have kept people from finding one another or struggling together; to acknowledge that we are all in this together.

My idea for life after racism could be summed up as “integration without assimilation, and autonomy without separation”. Each of us is a citizen of the same world, one people united in diversity, and divided no more. To quote the Earth Charter:

“We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.”

(This article is mainly a combination of works by John Korber and Justin Pordur listed below)

 

References and further reading:

1. “Polyculturalism”, by John Korber
2. “Polyculturalism”, a Wikipedia entry
3. “Life After Racism?”, by Justin Podur at zmag.org
4. “Race, Culture, and Leftists” by Justin Podur at zmag.org, May 21, 2006
5. “Revolutionizing Culture”, Michael Albert Interviews Justin Podur at zmag.org, July 15, 2003
6. “Citizen of the World”, a compilation of quotations by Wibowo Sulistio at Nooventures
7. “Miniature Earth – If Earth Were a Village of 100 People, This is How It Would Look Like”, an entry at Nooventures
8. “The Earth Charter” and the Journey Towards It’s Declaration, at Nooventures
9. “Spiritual Imperative” by Satish Kumar
10. “World Scripture and Education for Peace” by Andrew Wilson

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