The antidote of multiculturalism
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 15: Divided Nation
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Geoffrey Brahm Levey
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Geoffrey Brahm Levy's biography and other articles by this writer
A cruel irony has marked recent Australian social policy. Reconciliation between indigenous and settler Australians – which involves a concept and a process that are essentially symbolic – was made "practical", limited to policies aimed at improving Aboriginal living conditions that the government should have been pursuing anyway. At the same time, multiculturalism – a set of practical policies aimed variously at improving the absorption of migrants and harmoniously integrating a culturally diverse society around liberal democratic values – has come to acquire powerful symbolic significance in debates about what it means to be Australian. Indeed, so laced with symbolism has "multiculturalism" become that the Howard government is now considering its own symbolic gesture of simply removing the word from governmental use.
Multiculturalism is the most recent of four basic models that liberal democracies have adopted in responding to cultural diversity. The first seeks to exclude cultural diversity. The "white Australia" policy is among the best examples of this approach. The second model is assimilationism. It has featured in almost every modern nation-state. Indeed, the term "nation-state" presupposes this idea. That is, not the idea that "for every nation, its own state" – which is a common formulation of self-determination – but the quite different idea that "for every state, one nation". Australia and the other Anglo-democracies fervently pursued this approach to "nation-building" until the last third of the twentieth century. The third model is liberal pluralism, although it goes by various names. On this model, people are allowed to follow their traditions under their own steam, as it were, unassisted by government. Because this model turns on the distinction between public and private spheres, all liberal democracies, to some extent, have evidenced it, even when committed to assimilation. Officially, the United States exemplifies the liberal pluralist model. An institution like SBS, for example, is unthinkable in the US. However, American public law and policy make extensive allowance for cultural diversity, which makes the US in practice more like the fourth model: multiculturalism. Here, as we know from the Australian case, government not only allows people to express their cultural attachments; it seeks to accommodate, support, and even celebrate such differences in accordance with liberal democratic values.
Multiculturalism in Australia was perhaps destined to become embroiled in issues of national identity. The adoption of the policy in the 1970s followed more or less on the heels of the demise of the "white Australia" policy. But the controversy over multiculturalism is also fuelled by a perception that it threatens social cohesion and the political integrity of the state – challenges for which a robust national identity has long been seen as the necessary answer. As the celebrated liberal John Stuart Mill put it in 1859, "Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist."
The question is this: if Australia has changed from "an outpost of the British race", as it defined itself during the heyday of "white Australia", what exactly has it changed to? In particular, what does its commitment to multiculturalism – in policy if not in word – mean for its national identity?
SCHOLARS TEND TO DEBATE THESE SORTS of questions about national identity in terms of three vying approaches: "thick" or ethnic nationalism; "thin" or liberal nationalism; and "state neutrality" or post– or civic-nationalism. The three approaches also frame the public debate on Australian national identity. All three categories are relative to the context being explored: what today is considered a "thick" identity in Australia, for example, is likely to be considered a "thin" if not anorexic identity elsewhere.
On the "thick" conception, multiculturalism is considered to be damaging to Australian national identity. Australia is said to have a distinct Anglo-Australian character and identity, which has great capacity to integrate newcomers. Advocates such as John Hirst and Keith Windschuttle point to the fact, for example, that intermarriage rates across ethnic and mainstream Australians are high, increasing with each generation. Welcoming intermarriage in a post "white Australia" era indicates how the prevailing "thick" conception of Australian identity has changed since the days of the "white Australia" policy. Today, "thickness" is claimed not so much in terms of a strict ethnic nationality or a bloodline of ancestry – the "crimson thread of kinship" in Sir Henry Parkes' immortal words of 1890 – but as a cultural heritage open
to all.
"Thick" conceptions of Australian national identity have the virtue of recognising the deep and abiding influence of Anglo-Australian culture on the institutions and patterns of life in Australia. However, the accounts are problematic in that they tend to do what they accuse Australian multicultural policy of doing – namely, essentialise ethnic group identity and membership, rather than allowing for their internal diversity and dynamism. As John Hirst, historian and chairman of the Commonwealth Government's Civics Education Group (responsible for designing the civics and citizenship program taught in schools), put the accusation in his 2001 Barton Lecture: "Multicultural policy envisaged a world of distinct ethnic groups. This was more and more make-believe." The same claim is made today by the conservative commentators Janet Albrechtsen, Piers Ackerman and Andrew Bolt – albeit, ironically, with the shrill rider that multiculturalism has succeeded in making "distinct ethnic groups" a reality.
In fact, Australian multicultural policy is highly individualistic. From the early 1980s, the policy had begun to be framed in terms of addressing "all Australians" rather than only migrants or "ethnics". This phrasing – repeatedly used throughout the national multicultural policy statements – is deliberate and clear. It is each individual Australian who enjoys the rights (such as those to cultural identity and respect, and to access and equity) and bears the responsibilities (of abiding by Australia's liberal democratic institutions) under the policy. Lest there be any ambiguity, the National Agenda goes on to state that: "Fundamentally, multiculturalism is about the rights of the individual."
In contrast, it is Hirst who ends up treating ethnic groups monolithically, yoking the fate of members of ethnic groups to the choices of their co-ethnics. He cites figures to highlight the increasing assimilation of migrants across the second and third generations and thus the supposed pointlessness of multicultural policy. For example, among Greeks: "Ninety per cent of the first generation were Orthodox, 82 per cent of the second; 45 per cent of the third." Yet these figures also show how large proportions of this community in each generation wish to observe their faith and traditions. They beg the question of why these people should not be entitled to cultural consideration where necessary and appropriate. Further, why should the cultural interests of present generations be answered on the basis of the (anticipated) cultural interests of (some among) future generations? Indeed, even for those migrants seeking to assimilate, the extensive access and equity provisions and institutions covered by multicultural policy would still seem to be warranted. Those wishing to jettison their old identities no less than those who wish to retain them are entitled to protection from discrimination on the basis of their ascribed group membership.
Why does Hirst not see this? Why is he so concerned to dismiss multicultural policy as misguided even where it might serve the interests of many members of migrant groups? Perhaps the answer is that his thinking about multiculturalism – like that of many other advocates of a "thick" conception of Australian identity – has been based on the assumption that it necessarily denies the reality or importance of Australian culture. As he puts it: "The migrants were and are in no doubt that there is an Australian way of doing things, an Australian culture. This is the second way that the multicultural label for Australia is misleading. It suggests that there is simply diversity; that there is no dominant culture. Migrants who want to get on and be accepted know better."