16 February 2011

Jesus and Mo and Moses ponder multiculturalism

‘In one sense assimilation means treating individuals as citizens and not as members of a particular group. That seems to me to be a very good thing.

But that is not what assimilation has come to mean in practice somewhere like France, where policies of assimilation have resulted in the authorities treating different groups of people differently by pointing up their differences, insisting that certain groups – Muslims or the Roma, for example – cannot belong to our culture, to our society, because their culture, their values, their ways of life are so different and inimical to ours. That is the way assimilation policies have developed and I think that is very dangerous.’ [Jesus and Mo] Read more [via Butterflies and Wheels]