>http://www.newint.org/issue145/mask.htm
>
>Second, black activists have argued that multiculturalism is being
>used by the State against the united resistance of black people.
>Ethnicity has divided ‘black’ into Asian, Afro-Caribbean and
>African, and has slotted these into cultural containers which have
>nothing to do with the long and rich history of resistance made by
>black people in their mutual struggles against colonialism and
>racism in Britain. The ‘culture’ of multiculturalism has all the
>dynamism of a museum piece, to be preserved and wondered at, no
>matter how out of kilter with current social and economic reality.
>The customs and folkways which pass here for ‘culture’ are frozen
>out of time and place, stereotyped for white comprehension, and thus
>rendered harmless.
Wait a minute. Where'd the category "black" come from, and why does it tak priority over all the individual subcultures it comprises? And what about the "Asian" category - does it include Japanese as well as Indians and Sri Lankans? I thought the New Internationalist was against homogenization, but this sounds pretty homogenizing to me.
Doug