Critical Multiculturalism

Canada's Contribution to the "Management" of Ethno-Cultural Diversity
Frances Henry (York University, Canada)

Critical or radial multiculturalism

The race-based analysis of multiculturalism has led to a new form of discourse labelled radical or critical multiculturalism (Goldberg, 1993; Shohat & Stam, 1994; St. Lewis, 1996) or insurgent multiculturalism. Critical multiculturalism challenges the traditional political and cultural hegemony of the dominant class or group. It calls for a profound restructuring and reconceptualization of the power relations between different cultural and racial communities based on the premise that communities and societies do not exist autonomously but are deeply woven together in a web of interrelationships.

Critical multiculturalism is distinguished from liberal pluralist discourse in that it is not about “tolerance,” “sensitivity,” or “understanding” of the “others.” Critical multiculturalism refuses to see culture or the state as non-conflictual, harmonious, and consensual. Multiculturalism discourse as articulated in the Multiculturalism Act and other policies is founded on the premise of social order rather than conflict and thus “it does not recognize, or provide any way of understanding, existing structural disadvantages and the clashes which will occur as such inequalities are addressed” (Harding, 1995, cited in Henry, Tator, Mattis, & Rees, 2000, p. 338).

Critical multiculturalism moves away from a paradigm of pluralism premised on a hierarchical order of cultures that, under certain conditions, “allows” or “tolerates” non-dominant cultures’ participation in the dominant culture. The more pro-active, radical model of multiculturalism focuses on empowerment and resistance to forms of subjugation; the politicization and mobilization of marginalized groups; the transformation of social, cultural, and economic institutions; and the dismantling of dominant cultural hierarchies, structures, and systems of representation. Critical multiculturalism imagines minority communities not as “special interest groups” but as active and full participants in the state who are part of its shared history. This paradigm represents a different axis, moving away from tolerance and accommodation towards equity and justice. Critical multiculturalism rejects a unified and static concept of identities and communities as fixed sets of experiences, meanings, and practices. Instead, it focuses on identities as dynamic, fluid, multiple, and historically situated. Multiculturalism, in this context, moves beyond the narrow understanding of identity politics to make way for alliances and affiliations based on mutual needs and shared objectives.

Critical multiculturalism opens the door to the possibility of transformation: it does not posit bounded, separate ethno-cultural and ethno-racial communities but it envisions a reciprocal process between all groups that includes rather than excludes. This model of multiculturalism calls for the restructuring and reconceptualization of power relations between communities, challenging the hierarchy that currently divides people into us and — the rest — them. Critical multiculturalism provides a framework for understanding that diversity can be meaningful only within the construct of social justice.

This form of multiculturalism postulates that White mainstream culture controls the distribution of knowledge, systems of representation, cultural and institutional practices, and social relations. At the core of critical multiculturalism is the right of minorities to challenge the politics of diversity that ignore the system of power that operates without restraint in the dominant culture. Thus, there is an ideological conflict between critical multiculturalism and symbolic multiculturalism because the latter is largely centred on the maintenance of the status quo.

Photos

These are some photos that have come out of the Tuesday night workshops at PEYO. Lately, we have been discussing the Who/What/Where/When and Why of this project. We have also been using tableaux images as a way of exploring our different neighborhoods.
Last week we started a group collage on a large, photocopied map of Park-Extension. Images of dignity (or a lack of), respect(or a lack of), or any other images that spoke to the theme of Human Rights were glued onto the map.

Sorry some of these photos are sideways, i couldn't find a way of rotating them.