My local cafe shows the difference between being multi-ethnic and multi-cultural
The first can be fine, the latter less so.
The local cafe I go to most regularly—I like their Dirty Chai (coffee + chai)—is very Western Melbourne. It is an ordinary cafe in a local suburban mall. Its clientele represents the enormous ethnic diversity of the area. It is run by a Chinese-Australian family some of whom have very Australian accents. Its customers include East Africans, South Asians (Sikh, Hindu, Muslim), East Asians, Pacific Islanders, Central Europeans, Anglo-Celts.
So, the cafe is very multi-ethnic. It is, however, not multi-cultural. Folk may come from several continents and island chains, but they all follow Anglo-Celtic norms. They queue, they interact, they show courtesies, according to Anglo-Celtic norms. Going about their business, they do not spit on the ground. They do not litter. The place and its surrounds feels very Australian.
So, multi-ethnic but not multi-cultural. How so? Because of how Australian migration policy works.
Migrants to Australia are, on average, better educated than native-born Australians. They are split among lots of small groups.
Anglo-Celts may not be a majority in the area, or even of the customers, but they are by far the biggest group. So, the varied groups of migrants gravitate towards the norms of the Anglo-Celts because they are by far the biggest group.
Hence, the place is very obviously multi-ethnic, but feels so Australian.
It can be hard to convey to Australians—who are used to a highly functional migration policy, as part of a very high-state capacity polity—how dysfunctional UK, Western Europe, US and now Canadian, migration is, or has become.
Multiculturalism is the official rhetoric of the Australian state—though, one notices, rather less than it used to be. But it is not the practice of the society, which is distinctly more homogenising and this is a good thing. The practice of the society is much more practically functional than the official rhetoric in part because the state itself is, where it counts, practically functional.
So, my local cafe is multi-ethnic but not multi-cultural. This is a good thing. It feels so Australian, in all sorts of ways, because it is.
Wonderful piece. Sometimes I fantasize about Britain returning to the demographic make-up it had when I was a child. But then I ponder that I would regret losing Satvinder, the best and most sensible worker at our local supermarket, and Reedhee, my lovely young Indian dentist, and Dr. Patel, who all patients hope to be assigned to. They and people like them would be a huge loss.
As you say, if everyone fits themselves to the dominant host culture, almost no one cares where they originally came from or what they look like. Multiculturalism is a terrible idea and a recipe for strife while multiracialism really can work.
A number of years ago, I was on a domestic American flight that lasted 2.5 hours. Two men in the row behind me struck up a conversation that continued for the duration of the flight. It seems that despite not knowing each other, they had grown up within miles of each other in farm country in South Carolina. They were very talkative and had many common reference points from their childhoods. As one might expect, both spoke in Southern accents.
By the end of the flight, I felt like I knew quite a bit about them, despite having faced forward the entire time. As we left our seats, I determined to turn around and look at their faces for the first time.
One of them was Chinese.
Even as I looked at him, he was still speaking to his new friend in his heavy Southern accent.