Does this quote reflect the truth?

Perhaps it is for the author, but as a generalization? No

I don’t think, as @marinelife said, you can generalize it. There probably are individuals it could pertain to, unfortunately, but there are bigots everywhere.

If i consider myself a multiculturalist (and i do that) then I would say no.
Everyone in my book deserves equal respect.

That makes no sense. It’s a form of twisted up racism. I respect people who deserve respect. Period.

Whoever has that view that you stated is a prick deserving of no respect. Be a respectable person and respectable people will respect you no matter what race you are.

No.

He does claim to be a confrontational intellectual hailing from the radical left.

Unfortunately alot of people do think that way. It is ok to make fun of white people, straight people (no body makes straight jokes but no one would be made if you did lol), religious people, etc. You can’t however make fun of people who are not white because that would be racist. You can’t make fun of gay person because that would be homophobic. A brutal hypocrisy.

I don’t think so. Just look at current hiring practices.

Nope.

@atlantis He claims to be from the radical left, but this really sounds like the sort of outlandish statement someone far right would make, like Rush Limbaugh, in their attempt to delegitimize multiculturalism and make white people feel like they’re the persecuted ones. In short, claims of this sort themselves are supremely racist, in that they attempt to deny the reality of present institutionalized and systemic racism.

@incendiary_dan I agree, the quote can easily be interpreted to imply that racism does not exist where in effect it has only gotten worse because of the “patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance.” The “respect” serving as a meer veneer for the institutionalisation.

Of course, I don’t know the circumstances this person lives in, but I doubt such a reality exists anywhere on this planet.

It’s childish. Someone thinking they must be hurt by anything that benefits other people.

Unfortunately, it’s one of the defining characteristics of conservatives, and it’s widespread.

If you say something good about Europe, they say, “Why do you hate America?!”

If you say most Muslims are normal, peaceful people,they say, “Liberals are pro-terrorist Christian haters!!!”

When gay people are given rights, it’s “destroying hetereosexual marriage!!”

I guess the response should be, “Calm down, it’s not about you.”

According to wikipedia, he says that the “tolerant”, multiculturalism impulse is the dogma of today’s liberal society. Is that what the quote indicates?

As for the author’s beliefs, the context of the quote is important. Was he claiming it was true, or was he describing a fallacy? Was he describing his own view or someone else’s?

Noam Chomsky changed his name?

@Blondesjon “In the area of political decision making in a democratic context he criticizes the two-party system that is dominant in some countries as a political form of a “post-political era”, as a manifestation of a possibility of choice that in reality does not exist.”

No but you would think so!

mom?

I agree with @Mikewlf337

To say that that is the case a 100% does not seem real. But there is some thruth in it. For example, Muslims can protest in front of a Catholic church in London and call The Pope every name in the book, but God forbid that Catholics do the same in front of a Muslim mosque. In France, there were protests from Muslims on Muslim female students not being allowed to wear headscarves or full veils to school becasue that is not a western custom, but Western women that travel to Arab countries have to cover their heads…and like this 1000 examples more…so inverted racism all the way.

I agree with @incendiary_dan that it would sound like some random person whining about how white people need a parade and a tv network and don’t agree with @Mikewlf337 (who’s surprised? raise hands) that it’s okay to make fun white people or straight people. It’s not okay and we (the queer atheist left) don’t do it, just because.

“Multiculturalism” is simply a word developed in academia to give the illusion of control over something people had NO idea what to do about.

@Dutchess_III but what if you misjudge someone and he deserves respect and ou do not give it ? What then ?

Anyway it’s a lame quote .. and if that reflects the truth then… never mind what .

The quote does reflect the truth in that it points to a peculiar human trait. I see it in myself. Here’s an example from another context:

My backyard is alive with birds during the summer. About 50% of those are house sparrows, another 20% are starlings, 10% robins, 5% cardinals, 5% grackles, and the remaining 10% are random others. I very much like birds, but I especially like having a big variety of birds in my yard; it makes things much more interesting. In that sense, I’m an avian multiculturalist.

Now, as much as I value birds, I have to admit that I don’t value sparrows much. I barely even pay attention to them. But I positively swoon when a hummingbird shows up. And I’d be tempted to take off work if a scarlet tanager checked in. Part of me sees that as ridiculous. If I were a sparrow, I’d find such an attitude repugnant. Why shouldn’t a sparrow be just as welcome at the feeder as a goldfinch, just because one is brown and numerous and the other is gold and less common? But there it is, and I can’t deny that I feel this way.

Birds are birds and humans are humans, but I think the same mechanism is at work in human multiculturalism. I think we have to be wary of this tendency. That doesn’t detract from the value of multiculturalism as a principle, though. Things are indeed more interesting when many cultures are represented. But a human being has a value that is entirely independent of his or her culture. That is what we must not lose sight of.

In France, there were protests from Muslims on Muslim female students not being allowed to wear headscarves or full veils to school becasue that is not a western custom, but Western women that travel to Arab countries have to cover their heads

Nope. So called “multiculturalists” are not criticizing anybody in that example.

Religious fundamentalist Muslims are criticizing the French government. Religious fundamentalists Muslims enforce dress standards in Saudi Arabia.

James Harkin of The Guardian, October 5, 2005, interview with Slavoj Zizek:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/oct/08/internationaleducationnews.highereducation

”...‘The liberal idea of tolerance,’ he argues, ‘is more and more a kind of intolerance. What it means is leave me alone, don’t harass me, I’m intolerant towards your over-proximity.’ He sees something suspicious in the way that smokers are increasingly kept at a distance and seen as polluters who are intent on violating space. It is part of the antiseptic nature of contemporary culture, he says – coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, cakes without sugar.

“But, I protest, he has just ordered a Diet Coke to go with his chocolate fudge brownie. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I don’t have any problem violating my own insights in practice.’ Even the Iraq war, he points out, was initially conceived as a decaffeinated conflict – a war without victims, at least on our side. ‘Nowadays,’ he says, ‘you can do anything that you want – anal, oral, fisting’ – I stare down momentarily into my Yorkshire pudding – ‘but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.;

“He is struck, he says, in his debates with American advocates of multiculturalism, by how much their professed respect for other cultures is defined by their distance from the culture at hand. ‘For the multiculturalist,’ he argues, ‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance.’...”

As long as the last sentence is included, it’s a perfectly stated argument for why “multiculturalism” that denigrates “WASP” achievements is as bogus as the reverse. All cultures deserve equal consideration, if not equal “respect”.

@bkcunningham Thank you for the additional info.

You are welcome @jaytkay.

Unfortunately, I see plenty of this “multiculturalism” in California. It’s utter bullshit, hypocritical and is in no way what multiculturalism should be.

@jaytkay Probably not a good example at all. It just came to mind and, as I indicated in the last line, I was mostly referring to the idea of reverse racism.

Chris Rock has a very funny take on this!
Language Disclaimer

@atlantis Chris rock was wrong. What drugs are made by countries that have people he called brown people (Im guessing arabs)? Opium? Weed can be and is grown in the united states so that can’t be what he is talking about. The reason they wouldn’t legalized drugs that make brown people rich is because opium (used to make herion) is a deadly drug. Or was he talking about countries like columbia? A country that is known for cocain, another deadly drug. That is why they won’t legalize drugs. It isn’t because they don’t want non-whites to get wealthy. It is because they don’t want people to die of drug overdoses.

@Mikewlf337 Then why do they spend time killing and incarcerating brown and black people disproportionately rather than funding rehab and other helpful programs? What does the CIA spend so much money and effort bringing opiates into the inner-city? Why do drug laws demonstrably target and disproportionally penalize black and brown people?

@incendiary_dan The fuck if I Know. I wasn’t talking about all that. I was talking about chris rocks retarded comment about why they don’t want to legalize drugs. Of course people nod in approval of his little rant about drug legalization. I’m not one of those people who blame the white man for the plight of the black man or the brown man.

@incendiary_dan I also don’t believe everything I read. You shouldn’t either.

@Mikewlf337

You should believe a lot less of what you read. “Deadly drugs”? Give me a break. Enforcement of the laws we have and prosecution of the War on (some) Drugs is far more deadly to all of us, not just drug users and sellers.

@WasCy I know more people who died from the use of herion, cocain, crack and other hard drugs than from the war on drugs. Actually I don’t know anyone who has died from the war on drugs. So don’t say “deadly drugs” in a mocking way since they are indeed deadly drugs. This has nothing to do with what the asking person has asked so why don’t we save this for another thread.

@Mikewlf337 Does your anti-intellectualism know no bounds?

It’s Social, dude. Tangents are allowed, particularly when they seem to be approved of by the OP.

@Mikewlf337

That would be fine… except since you brought it up, you don’t also get the last word in this thread.

It is a fact that deaths from overdoses of illegal drugs are on the rise (although consider that these are already illegal drugs – the illegality hasn’t made them impossible to acquire, obviously). However, according to the CDC and other reputable organizations studying the problem (because it is a problem, certainly), the majority of deaths from drug overdose in recent years is from “legal” prescription drugs. Link Link

You probably aren’t interested in the tens of thousands of people killed in Mexico because of the ongoing turf wars there over who gets to control the illegal production and distribution of drugs to the US, but that number rivals the number of accidental drug deaths in the US.

I maintain that a lot of the problem with OD of prescription drugs comes about from the relative difficulty in obtaining “street drugs” which are (ironically) safer. A lot more drug deaths occur because of adulterated product (“stepped-on” drugs to make them cheaper), and the variations in product quality that are bound to occur from illicit (and often temporary, makeshift and backwoods) production facilities and processes.

I don’t have a count on the numbers of people killed in what we call “random” drive-by shootings and other “collateral” casualties of gang and turf wars in the US that are directly related to drug production and sales, and I also don’t have a count on the number of bogus prosecutions and “wrong house” home invasions by the police and DEA (as well as by gang members trying to take over or prevent competition. But those numbers are not insignificant, either.

@incendiary_dan Oh so I am anti-intellectual because you disagree with you? You really believe that white people want to bring down black people? I don’t believe that. I also don’t believe that black criminals get longer sentences for crimes than white criminals do. If a criminal does get a harsher sentence for a crime than another criminal who commited the same crime. It may be because of past offenses and not his/her race.

@Mikewlf337 You love straw man arguments too, eh? :P