Angela writes in reply to Charles Brown:
in australia (and i suspect in the US as well to some degree), multiculturalism has been proffered as the most appropriate strategy for abolishing racism. (now, maybe this is not so strong in the US, you yanks will have to correct me, but it is cast as the generalised response to the resurgence of a virulent racism here in aust.) my problem is this: that multiculturalism is simply a heightened form of white nationalism, a kind of hobbesian state practice in which the slogan 'unity in diversity' asserts unity on the basis of the more or less explicit sovereignty of a 'white subjectivity' (in australia, this is regularly described as 'western values'). this pluralism is simply the old assimilationism in a new form, which promotes tolerance - meaning it assumes either a) that the subject who is to tolerate the other is 'white'; or b) if it assumes that the 'other' is also to tolerate, it admonishes them (us) for not putting up with the horrors set upon them with the proper christian attitude of 'turning the other cheek'. the same goes for the slogan of 'reconciliation', which is now de rigeur in aust politics. all these are routinely put forth as that which will solve the problem of racism in australia! and, not just by the 'white folks' either - this seems to be a general stance.
Doyle What I raise here is incommensurate differences. How would we understand that. For instance take language. I don't understand anything but English myself. That is because of numerous factors, but the tendency in the U.S. is for racist to promote English only in some sort of assimilationist melting pot liberal theory. This sort of universalization ignores that for instance the dramatic and important differences languages make in how people cope with the world. For instance Japanese I'm told has a strategy of not revealing how one feels until the end of the sentence structure. In English how one feels is bluntly put out, without a sense of the delicacy of others feelings. At any rate since I don't understand Japanese I have an incommensurate difference with a Japanese person who does not speak English.
That is a major element of the problem of multiculturalism. It seems to me that national borders make the expression of the problem one way, because we don't really have an international system to defend these sorts of incommensurate differences from privileged groups overpowering minority interests.
Doyle A second sort of incommensurate difference is between racist and non-racist.
That is toxic relationships between groups who do not share a common value system. How do you deal with that? I think that second tangent was the drift of your comments to Charles Brown. But I wanted to clarify that incommensurate differences go way beyond toxic differences. And it is often the case I think that we look at these questions without a sense that benign differences are necessary between peoples. For instance that different language systems do not need to be unified into a single language system as many U.S. citizens believe. regards, Doyle Saylor