Multiculturalism has failed, says Angela Merkel. Has it failed in Britain?

[mycounty]

"The Approach to build a multicultural society and live side by side has failed, utterly failed". Says Ms. Merkel. Has it failed in Britain? Particularly when we remember that all of the 7/7 bombers were British born? It appears the bombers had no allegiance to this country.
I think it has failed, just as it has in Germany.

WilfShelf, can you link them? I have already linked Ken Livingstone's rebuttal. But Trevor Phillips clearly couldn't have acted alone in making this volte-face.

My SIL is Thai and only seems to talk to her DS in Thai. He only speaks English, but can understand her perfectly. She asks in Thai, he answers in English.

Claig I remember the TP debate and it ended up him saying that white working class males were the discriminated group and we had to work hard to stop this. I think that TP initially had a promising career within labout but I personally think that when he didn't get the mayor job he's been at a loose aend.

However, from where I'm standing would I like to now live in a country that had everyone looking like one another, no choice of food and fear of 'foreigners'. I prefer how it is now and that's what's makes the UK.

I go to many EU countries and am appalled by the insular views and lack of connection with the outside world. I don't want to live like that.

Like it or not we live in an increasingly global society and we'd be utter fools not to engage with the opportunities.

To all who ask. Of course the children are taught in English, but as said the first spoken language for 95 percent is not English.

Incidentally, for those who don't want multicultural Britain. What do you think MN is? Or do the rules not apply to a group of people coming together to chat / help / etc?

Complimentary, if the children can speak English, what's the problem?

Being bi-lingual is a great asset.

The thing is - and here's what I really think - that what Phillips was saying, along with a number of other critics, was actually quite nuanced. The multiculturalism that the Daily Mail and Telegraph was reporting he objected to was not the 'real' multiculturalism, the reasons he was objecting to it was not the over-simplified version that they reduced it to, and the alternatives are not the ones the right-wing press would have you believe either.

So, for example Malik's views end up with a critique also but the objection's conclusion is not, surprise surprise, that we should shut the doors to migrants and make all muslims take of their veils. The debate ought to move further, to explore how difference can move to engagement, but it is perpetually hampered by idiotic knee-jerk racism.

If you simplify the problem into 'get rid of the migrants' or 'make them fit in' or 'cut their benefits the lazy spongers' you don't solve anything I'm afraid.

The whole point about contrasting France with the UK is that France pursued a deliberately republicanist, universalist approach in which assimilation was intended: and the racism, violence, exclusion and antagonism is WORSE in France than the UK, by a long way.

giveitago, which European countries are you talking about?

I think that Germany, France and Austria have higher immigrant populations than we do. Also Belgium and Holland have many immigrants and foreign food etc.

The media doesn't like complex issues, though. Long, detailed discussions with no snappy headlines don't sell papers. It's easier to write a story "send 'em back" rather than a two page well thought out piece.

I often read Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, although her tone is sometimes a bit brusque.

The school I refer to in Camden is a prime example of what is happening nationwide. The school now teaches 95 percent Bengali children, because parents who surround the school have not sent children to the school because they feel their child will be held back by the children talking to each other in their own language, not being able to converse or socialise with other parents etc, so as I state those who get up on their high horse about DPs views, should get off the horses! As many people feel the same. They want their children to go to school with other children like themselves. This view is also held by Jewish,Muslim,Hindus etc.
To make out that DPs views are not part of a wider pattern is ridiculous IMO.

Tariq Modood is an academic who has engaged the Phillips/Malik position quite extensively and has provided an informed alternative interpretation based on the politics of 'respect'.

Muslim and Hindu parents wouldn't like their children at school with other children who speak another language?

Really?

complimentary, what evidence do you have, exactly, that most people want their children to go to school with people 'just like them'?

For example, I feel exactly the opposite.

DPs?...

As far as I know, France has always had the same integrationist policy, and has lots of immigrants as politicians and footballers in the National Squad etc. and they have more immigrants than us and are not talking about getting rid of their legal immigrants. I think they have a different way of integrating them into France than we have and I remember Phillips saying that they had got it wrong and we had got it right when their riots erupted, but afterwards he seemed to say the opposite and said that we had got it wrong. I don't know what happened as a result of that. Did things change to become closer to teh French model or did things remain the same?

Having lots of 'immigrants' in a footie team means very little ..

I look at my DC's schools and their school friends and they are hugely mixed and the better for it. DS's three closest chums have ethnic origins in China, Trinidad and the Bahamas. So we might all be wringing our hands here and minoritarian nutters might want to deport half the country, and racists will be racists. But the kids are getting on with things and mixing pretty well when their parents allow it. Britain is a far more multicultural and tolerant society now than it was when I was growing up.

TechlovingdDad. Most children do not speak English when they first start, thus the English children are held back, as teacher struggles to get her/his point across. Why it may well be fine and dandy to speak your mother tongue and English, it is not so fine if you are excluded from this social experiment. Why do you think the school is so one sided? Because parents do not put their children into the school.

As far as aware NO Hindus attend this school, are you aware that they don't get on?

We have issues but we do generally seem to be engaged in finding ways to eradicating fences. Got a way to go.

Many countries are happy to accept the benefits of immigration but in return say take us or leave us. But never quite sure what the 'us' is - it seems to me it's less about being 'us' (as we are never very sure what 'us' is) and more about avoiding 'them'.

I doubt racism can ever be eradicated. Along with sexism and (in this country at least) snobbery etc.

Quickly browsed the Kenan Malik link. Isn't he really against multiculturalism and what he says are the Orwellian multicultural thought police. He says at the end if the article

"Multiculturalism is an authoritarian, anti-human outlook. True political progress requires not recognition but action, not respect but questioning, not the invocation of the Thought Police but the forging of common bonds and collective struggles."

Does this mean that he agrees with Phillips? What model would he favour, if he doesn't favour multiculturalism?

Yeah, him and Phillips are broadly on the same side, but I was just pointing out that the conclusions are not necessarily the ones the Daily Mail would wish for

And that I don't think the solutions to the issue are simple. Even Phillips' own position was pretty non-Daily Mail, it was just that they jumped on it as if it proved that the racists and isolationists were right. They weren't.

..Muticulturism is the promotion and acceptance of multiple ethnic cultures...has it really failed?..my children and many others have no issues with children from different cultures,traditions...they embrace it...

I think this ia a real issue for adults...never children..