Re: when the US was in the state of multiculturalism roughly 50 or more years ago, what that meant was that each group had its own culture, its own icons and its own facilities, and no one ever crossed the line between cultures. Now if Europe thinks that's the ideal, then they are very much in sync with an older America........
Again, your notion of multiculturalism is tainted by the racial factor... The European multicultural (white) monolith is not a replica of lily-white "Eisenhower America". The difference is that, in 1950s America, the white middle-class itself was, broadly speaking, monolithic. Aside from a few arch-liberal enclaves (NYC, LA, SF,...), all middle-class whites were religious, anti-Communist/deeply conservative, and supportive of a racially segregated environment. Moreover, most of their cultural diet was --and still is-- exclusively (North-)American. Compare that to Europeans who, most of the time, keep listening to singers and lyrics they don't understand! Turn on any FM radio in any European city and you'll get a continuous flow of American, Italian, French, Spanish, and even Arabic, songs.... One out of two movies Europeans go to watch in a theater is subtitled --the original soundtrack being English, Japanese, Spanish, German, or French.... Then there's Europe's deep, unyielding, political polarization. For a sizable part of Europe's working class and leftist intellectuals, "class warfare" and "boss vs labor" are still meaningful, not fanciful remnants of a bygone industrial age. Over here, politics has not yet degenerated into a US-like two-party circus... Schroeder vs Merkel, Chirac vs Le Pen, Prodi vs Berlusconi, Aznar vs Zapatero, are no mere variations of Tweedledee vs Tweedledum!
But perhaps the most salient feature of European multiculturalism is that, unlike the US white middle-class, white Europeans are constantly reminded of being themselves a minority! Not racially speaking but culturally, linguistically, politically, religiously, and historically, speaking.
Re: At least the US acknowledges that it must integrate and everyone must be truly equal while Europe hides behind the mask of multiculturalism that covers a multitude of sins.
I'm afraid the opposite is true: the US hides behind the mask of an immigrant-friendly country and ethnic tokenism... or, more fairly, liberal America hides her racist, fanatical, Southern twin behind the multicultural mask. Then again, racially speaking, the US is unquestionably well ahead of Europe: you've got black generals, CEOs, scholars, justices, etc. Keep in mind, however, that, unlike Europe, most if not all black Americans are trueborn Americans for generations! Most black Americans are more American than all the white Americans whose parents or grandparents emigrated in the 1960s, 1940s, or 1920s!!! Most black Americans can trace their American roots as far back as the 1800s or 1700s! Contrariwise, Europe's black, Arab, Turkish, Chinese,... minorities are viewed as pushy newcomers still covered with the dust of their native wilderness.....
Gus |
