Multiculturalism

We decided to do our presentation on multiculturalism.Multiculturalism is a public policy approach for managing cultural diversity in a multiethnic society, officially stressing mutual respect and tolerance for cultural differences within a country's borders. As a policy, multiculturalism emphasizes the unique characteristics of different cultures, especially as they relate to one another in receiving nations. The word was first used in 1957 to describe Switzerland, but came into common currency in Canada in the late 1960s. It quickly spread to other English-speaking countries. There are many criticisms of multiculturalism, one of the most forceful critics of multiculturalism was Ayn Rand, who feared the world-wide ethnic revival of the late 1960s would lead to an ethnic Balkanization destructive to modern industrial societies. Her philosophy considered multiculturalism and monoculturalism to be culturally determinist collectivism (i.e., that individual human beings have no free choice in how they act and are conditioned irreversibly by society). Philosophically, Rand rejected this form of collectivism on the grounds that: 1) it undermines the concept of free will, and 2) the human mind (according to her philosophy) is a tabula rasa at birth. But it is also true that the human mind is born without any culture, and that in nearly all societies attempt to condition their citizens culturally. What is distinct about multiculturalism is the assertion of an identity, aside from the nationally imposed identity, allowing for individuals within minority cultures to exercise more free choice than they otherwise would in a universalist society.

Lovepreet Kaur
0814904