The Status of Multiculturalism and the Retreat from Difference

Abstract

Any collection which aspires to sketch the state of race, as particular to the contemporary British and European conjuncture, is necessarily compelled to grapple with the term multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has come to be the site at which much of the popular discussion concerning racialised ethnic diversity, whether accommodating or hostile, is hosted. The question that multiculturalism then raises vis- a -vis race is double pronged. It is about the state of race in society (the accommodation of difference racially and ethnically manifest) and the state as always-already racialised (the exclusions rationalised by normative narratives concerning racially construed ethnic difference). Multiculturalism is of course ‘a deeply contested idea’ (Hall 2000, p. 210) and thus, predictably polysemic. It can, for instance, be read as a state doctrine (insofar as, a government policy is no longer overtly assimilationist); a mere descriptive ‘statement of fact’ (Younge 2010, p.187) concerning some shared spaces (i.e. multiculture or diversity); or, as has been recently described by Lentin and Titley (2011, p. 2), just a messy ‘patchwork of initiatives, rhetoric, and aspirations’ broadly sympathetic in tone to the presence of ethnic difference in the public sphere. In spite of this expected range, it is adequate for the purposes of this chapter to distinguish between two chief strains: one possessing an ideologically symptomatic, anti-minority resonance whilst the other fosters an understanding of diversity consistent with a broader politics of ordinary multiculture (conducive to inclusive, cross-ethnic undertakings).