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Tariq Modood, Antony Lerman and David Goodhart

Wednesday 7 Mar 2007

In February 2007 JPR held a policy seminar with Tariq Modood*, founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, and Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at the University of Bristol, a leading authority on multiculturalism, and David Goodhart*, the editor of Prospect magazine, whose essay Too Diverse? launched a heated debate on the failings of multiculturalism in the UK. The seminar belonged to a series JPR is holding in the framework of its programme ‘Living together: a new approach to building civil society’ and was chaired by JPR’s Director, Antony Lerman.

Introduction by JPR’s Director, Antony Lerman:
In recent years there has been no shortage of public and private discussions about multiculturalism—JPR held one in 2006 with Kenan Malik and Edie Friedman, Director of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality (who stepped in for Professor Lord Bhikhu Parekh)—but despite the sustained critique, no convincing alternative has yet achieved sufficient traction as a widely accepted policy direction. At the moment we’re at the mercy of the policy cacophony of government. How to achieve a shared sense of national belonging with an increasingly diverse society remains an open question—a question that we at JPR wish to help answer both for Britain and for Europe as a whole.

It may well be that at some point multiculturalism will be superseded and, as Neal Ascherson has argued, if cultures do interact with each other, some new overarching framework for the country’s assertive and not so assertive identities will emerge. But meanwhile we still have much to learn from an informed discussion of multiculturalism because so very much of what is said about it bears no relation to how it was understood, in a pretty consensual way, at the end of the 1990s. Whenever I hear someone say multiculturalism advocated cultural relativism, or denied there was any need for common values, or saw Britishness as a racist concept, I reach for my copy of the 2000 Parekh Report, the result of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain set up by the Runnymede Trust, of which I had the privilege of being a member. That report, a fairly definitive consensual argument for multiculturalism, gives the lie to such accusations. But it is either hardly referred to at all today and when it is, it’s damned for what it didn’t say rather than what it did.

It’s my sense that Britain’s emerging multicultural society in the 1990s brought great benefits to minority ethnic and religious communities. I’d argue that it certainly provided the basis for the revival of Jewish cultural and religious life and a much greater sense of comfort in displaying Jewish distinctiveness in the wider society. We’re clearly living in far more uncertain times now and it’s a huge challenge to revive a sense of optimism about how we can create a society that values difference and is comfortably cohesive.

Presentation by Professor Tariq Modood:
Multiculturalism can be many different things. It is often criticised for being a vague term which can mean anything one likes and to some extent that’s true. However, it’s important to clarify a whole set of concepts around it, not just multiculturalism itself.

1. Assimilation: This is normally seen as a one-way process in which Group A becomes more like Group B, or in which immigrants assimilate into the majority, or host country. This is the standard view of migration, and assimilation is the standard story of most migrant groups. Those who do not assimilate get marginalised. But the main objection to assimilation is that it creates second-class citizens. The idea that immigrants can only become full citizens if they become like another group is to treat the majority as the norm and the others as the ‘abnorm’.
2. Integration: Often all that is meant by integration is assimilation, but if it is different from assimilation one must recognise that integration talks about a two-way process, and sets of duties. People come together to meet in a common space and there is adaptation and negotiation on both sides. But this does not recognise group identities and it assumes that integration is about individuals. However, group membership is very important, although sometimes imagined, as with Britishness. If we are only dealing with individuals, then integration becomes just like assimilation.

Properly understood, multiculturalism is a form of integration which recognises group identities and heritage.

Multiculturalism has three central concepts:

1. Difference: It recognises that people have identities from the inside out. Alternatively, other people think they are different, or sometimes both. There are subjective or ascribed differences which are significant.
2. Equality: This is probably the single most important normative concept in multiculturalism, but it is a double concept. Everyone is entitled to the same rights in law and there is a concept of equality based on respect for other people. Others should be respected because of certain differences and needs they may have that others do not have (eg. discrimination, marginalisation, language, religion or culture).
3. Multi: Not only are there group identities, but groups are groups in different ways, some defined by faith, or by a history or by racism, and some are more cohesive than others.

Multiculturalism has to be backed by a strong sense of commonality. The fundamental thing we have in common is our citizenship, but this is not enough. It must be backed by a strong sense of national identity, where possible. But British identity is currently experiencing its own crisis.

During the 1990s we were on a good path developing multiculturalism in policy formation and practical discourse. But this process has now been derailed.

There are five problems why multiculturalism is in crisis:

1. National vision: It was not supported by a strong enough national vision, because British identity is very diffuse and understated. We need to engage imaginatively and emotionally with a political and national identity—one that is not reduced to a local community vision. We need a sense of belonging to a country. The problem lies with the majority where there is no strong sense of identity. It is not clear what one should identify with.
2. Ideological secularism: Multiculturalism has come up against the problem of ideological secularism. Many multiculturalists feel that secularism must trump other political values. There is a conflict between multiculturalism and secularism. However, institutional secularism is useful, allowing for pragmatic compromises between organised faith and the authority of the law. For example, the House of Lords, where some Bishops sit, does not have much power so it is a good compromise. Or churches which run faith schools do not have completely free rein over their syllabus.
3. British foreign policy and international politics. Terrorist networks are a problem of our foreign policy, not of multiculturalism. However, it is not unusual for certain prominent minorities to have strong policy commitments, to define themselves by a state beyond the national borders. Most Muslims want self-determination in Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East. One cannot continue to drop bombs on Muslim populations without expecting some reaction from Muslim citizens.
4. Ideology: When you have a conceptual framework which revolves around a dualism, and you see the world in terms of these two key concepts, this cuts across multiculturalism (for example, Capitalism v Communism, good v. evil, the west v. the rest, ‘good Muslims’ v. ‘bad Muslims’)
5. Racism: The biggest target group for racists is non-white Muslims, but we have a poor understanding of what that racism is. We need a conceptual framework to disentangle criticism of Muslim movement from Islamaphobia and racism. There needs to be a proper analysis of anti-Muslim racism.

Trevor Phillips’ speech that we are sleepwalking into segregation has been refuted by several leading demographers. We are not sleepwalking into segregation as a country, but three localities have been identified where Pakistanis and Bangladeshis cluster—but only in parts of Oldham, Bradford and Leicester. The country as a whole is becoming more mixed, not more segregated. But minorities are growing in size at a quicker rate than the white majority.

Social Attitudes Surveys have shown that the majority polled is happy to have minority groups maintain their own culture, but they oppose the government for doing this for them. But there is nevertheless much resentment about in the white working classes.

Response by David Goodhart:
If I was still in any doubt, then Tariq Madood’s argument would convince me that I am not a multiculturalist.

At the lowest level, multiculturalism has come to mean being tolerant, but the neatest definition of multiculturalism was made by Joseph Harker in the Guardian, who, in critiquing the Commission on Integration and Social Cohesion, argued ‘Forget rules, values, duties and obligations: it [Britain] can expect us to abide by the law and pay our taxes. And no more.’

Modern liberal societies are very bad at creating national identities, perhaps because they consist of affluent, individualistic citizens who are aware of their rights.

There has been a huge delegitimization of the idea of nationalism after the experiences of the first half of the twentieth century. But there is a problem here: we want people to give 40 per cent of their income to the state, so there should be a sense of national identity. Some feeling of shared national citizenship should be kept alive. But it’s very hard to believe in the value of reinforcing a sense of citizenship at the same time as multiculturalism. How can it help to legally entrench differences? For that is what multiculturalism is all about. Would it help to have Sharia law in Tower Hamlets? There is a lack of reality in this discussion. Dr Eric Kaufmann’s term of ‘asymmetrical multiculturalism’ is very useful here.

In modern liberal societies that believe in equal citizenship, it is very difficult to achieve, but we should not write off the majority as malevolently hegemonic. We should start with the affinities of the majority. How can they become more open and welcoming? If integration is a two-way street, as Madood suggests, then how two-way is it? 50-50? That would be disproportional.

Some of the arguments allow the idea of multiculturalism to be distorted. The host society must successfully absorb new populations, and must be open and adapt, but surely most of the adaptation has got to be made by the people who come here. They should know what the existing structures of British society are and they have a choice to come here or not, unlike American blacks. The tenor of British society is secular and individualistic and what is the problem with that? People can practise their religion.

Liberalism has to trump pluralism on certain issues such as women’s equality and free speech.

As far as the Iraq war is concerned, there is no evidence that the British government is hostile towards Muslims, as many Muslims argue. The Iraq war was not an attack on Muslims. In fact the British government intervened on behalf of Muslims. The problem is that many of the most dysfunctional societies in the world are Muslim states. The idea that the 7/7 bombers were driven by Iraq is a myth.

The happy conveyor belt that took most Jews into integration in the late nineteenth century has broken down. Jews were escaping pogroms in Poland and Russia and had no choice but to integrate and make new lives in the UK, Nowadays, Muslims have much more contact with their country of origin.

The offer of formal equal citizenship and felt equal citizenship is an incredibly ambitious one, and people are taught to expect it. When it fails to materialise, there is resentment.

How could a sense of national identity be encouraged? Britain is one of the few countries without a national day of its own. What about a ceremony when people come of age? We do not impose sufficiently on people.

 

* Professor Tariq Modood is undoubtedly one of the country’s leading thinkers, writers and researchers on multiculturalism. His most recent book: Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain was published in 2005. He is currently involved in various research projects and completing the writing and editing of various books—Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea, will be published in April, and an edited volume on multiculturalism in Europe. He defends multiculturalism both as lived reality and political project, but argues that it must evolve. In a piece he wrote for openDemocracy in 2005, he called for a renewed and reinvigorated Britishness.

* David Goodhart is the founding editor of Prospect magazine, the highly readable intellectual monthly which is 12 years old. He was formerly the Bonn correspondent of the Financial Times. Monthly intellectual magazines are not known for making news, but Prospect achieves this, not least with David’s own much-discussed 2004 essay, ‘Too diverse?’ which was seen as a strong critique of multiculturalism. He once said Prospect’s main purpose was ‘to think interesting, and occasionally dangerous, thoughts’. Progressive Nationalism, Citizenship and the Left (Demos 2006) is a development of issues he raised in his 2004 essay. He calls for an ‘inclusive, progressive, civic British nationalism’, ‘a kind of over-arching “roof” under which the other more particular identities . . . can shelter.’