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.
Better be careful. If you make it sound too attractive, then everyone will want to migrate there. :-)
I suspect there are a lot of folks in the US north of Florida that may be thinking about moving to Florida to enjoy our "balmy" 40 to 50F temperature this particular week. But they better reflect on July and August, too.
I have never understood the logic behind presuming that all cultures are equally good or valid. It would seem pretty obvious that throughout human history (at least prior to say 1968?) people from different cultures have interacted and extracted from those they met of other cultures the aspects that they found most useful or appealing, and firmly or gently rejected the rest.
I suppose both volume to be assimilated and rate of assimilation both come into play. And as a result, surprise!, some cultures are better at making those assessments than are others.
If the indigenous American Indians had realized just how many millions of Europeans were primed and incentivized to go to America, they either would have all slunk off as far West as they could go, or killed every member of any European landing party that they could find.
There is this thing called evolution. It sorts things because they don’t work equally well and work differently well in different circumstances. When saying the bleeding obvious is a thought crime, you have a problem. So, quite.
Just had a thought about cultural evolution. It is probably not a new one.
The evolutionary process is related to the survival of the better/best adapted solution for a given environment (time and place). But while biological evolution is generally considered as due to random genetic* changes, we ought not always treat cultural changes as random, but specifically directed to some end or goal, namely explicitly for that particular meme continuing to survive and propagate. This nonrandom aspect might enhance survival and propagation, but also can push it too far too fast and make the intended change more fragile than its activist [or activist network?] proponents would desire. Perhaps woke/DEI is fitting this situation and experiencing that result? I would have said the same about Marxism given your post on that, but somehow it seems to keep having new lives?? The imaginary future, I suppose?
Your characterisation of colonising the New World uses modern and historically erroneous paradigms. The whole concept of white supremacy & colonialism as an intentionalist genocide is an ahistorical "Black Legend".
Pilgrims actually saw themselves as persecuted folk running away, not trying to conquer America for "white people" - they were simply seeking open spaces not yet enclosed. Native Americans saw them as just another tribe to fight against or ally with.
I did say "If the ... Indians ..." as a hypothetical, not reality. But the intentionalist aspect depends on time and place and prior experience* with the "other", in this case as both different cultures and different ethnicities. The Pilgrims were persecuted for their cultural differences vs. others in England/Holland, but when they had the chance (for a short time) to exercise control over the religious and social behavior of any fellow Europeans, they exercised it. When those groups got too large to knuckle under, they separated into additional settlements, etc. Humans --- can't live with them and can't live without them.
*I won't bother presenting the good or bad on both sides, as you may know (or remember) the various details even better than I do.
This is the recapitulation of a conversation I've had with fellow immigrants. Speaking with a Malaysian Chinese colleague we agreed that Australia's (and others') secret was having many small groups of immigrants whose numbers don't allow accretion of "critical mass" sufficient to create a counter-cultural identity in counterstand to the mainstream - and does not challenge the majority's "ownership of the cultural space" for lack of better terminology.
That's why Anglo/Celtic Aussies have basically gone along with it despite the govt having never actually consulted the population whether they consent to massive demographic change. The problem arises whenever there is a large singular minority group, particularly with a historical grievance contra mainstream.
On this topic, in the US, Trump (and Project 2025) counterintuitively oppose "having many small groups of immigrants whose numbers don't allow accretion of 'critical mass' sufficient to create a counter-cultural identity in counterstand to the mainstream - and does not challenge the majority's 'ownership of the cultural space.'"
The US actually has a special quota reserved for immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. It's called the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. About 4.6% of legal immigrants to the US obtain visas through this program.
Trump wants to stop this program, preferring more merit-based immigration regardless of culture/country of origin.
What I been pondering lately is how to maintain good culture. There must be some explicit mechanism to attract right people and expel wrong ones.
The "natural" way if balancing things is not working anymore for many localities. As external forces are too strong and movement too dynamic to rely on slow natural community formation
It's always been that way in Australia, and seems to have stayed that way, which is possibly a bit surprising.
I don't remember our assimilationist melting pot philosophy was ever named, it just was. If my history is remembered correctly, the word "multiculturalism" began in Australia with Whitlam and Al Grassby.
They, and the activists and academics, of course had an expansive definition and an intent to change immigration to support that definition. And they did, because the entire government apparatus was eventually converted to that intent.
But, but...the Australian people never knew it, never wanted it, and it made no impression. They adopted the word, but if you asked ANYONE outside the immigration establishment to define it, they would describe an assimilationist melting pot with Chinese restaurants. And they all reviled ethnic separatism - which was the actual intended outcome of the "multiculturalist" theorists.
It was, to me, one of the first attempts at "the language game" you've described elsewhere - and it failed, because folk just adopted the word as a useful shorthand for what they wanted, completely ignoring all the elite intent. And I think that still largely holds, 50 years later - even though the ethnic separatism is more common, it is still hated and despised by the public, who still want what they insist on still calling multiculturalism.
Another insightful (and uncharacteristically upbeat) piece, Lorenzo. Strangely enough, the 'Aussie cafe', much like the 'Irish Pub' can now be found in many of the world's major cities – and not only the ones located in the Anglosphere.
Great piece celebrating multi-ethnic Melbourne. It's similar to the southeast with Vietnamese-Australian cafe owners. It's been interesting to observe the assimilation of Afghan and Sudanese migrants in the area over the years.
Thank you for the note of optimism, Lorenzo. You evoke contemporary Australia at its delightful, noble best. Overlain with some gently ironic but above all nostalgic 1980s Australian music - 'Original Sin by INXS perhaps (anything by Midnight Oil would be far too jarring) - I can picture the scene in the next Qantas or Telstra ad campaign. Out here in the provincial Victoria, however, they haven't quite got from Anglo to Anglo-Celtic just yet.
Australia seems to have gotten a lot of things right in regards to immigration and integration, and its sad that the rest of Anglosphere and Europe did not learn much from that (Boris Johnson in the UK promised "Australian style" points system, not a lot came of it). Perhaps after decades of issues we have now experienced, some learning will occur? America is now on a path of change, it remains to be seen if it takes root elsewhere.
Thinking about cultural differences as a result of this post, I wonder if you or others here can clarify a gap in my knowledge of English "culture". Specifically, my understanding of the relationship between the Anglican Church and "Protestants" during or after Henry VIII.
Presumably as a tyrant Henry simply thought of himself as both temporal king and religious "Pope" over "his own" church, and was also very happy to acquire the Catholic Church's domestic wealth for his own purposes.
As a boy not well educated about religious distinctions, I just thought "Oh, the Anglicans are not (or no longer) Catholic* so they must sympathize with the Protestant views."
But did the English inclined to Protestantism view Anglicans as "papist equivalents" or just converts to a slightly different version of Protestantism? [i.e., my baseline thought.]
*From somewhere I have a factoid (true or not) that there were about 20,000 (residual, still die hard) Catholics at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, but maybe only 2,000 by the time James I came to the throne?? [or James II?] Thus a lot of the animostity towards Catholics (and James II) was really misplaced or over done when directed at such a small group?? Also, by then I think a fair number of persecuted Catholics had immigrated to the mid Atlantic colonies in America?
Henry VIII was always theologically Catholic, his argument was over Church government. The Anglican split could have ended up being like Catholics and Orthodox, who have very few theological differences, their argument was over the role of the Papacy. (Some Orthodox like to say “the Pope was the first Protestant”.)
Over time, the Anglican Church became more Protestant, though it was contested back and forth. That is how you get “low church” (very Protestant) and “high church” (very Catholic, with lots of “bells and smells” ritual) within Anglicanism.
The argument wavered back and forth, but was mostly settled by the Glorious Revolution, with the Anglican Church being middle of the road “Broad Church” incorporating both streams. Anti-Papal (and so anti-Catholic) feeling became entrenched and associated with English patriotism. Anti-Catholic sentiment could erupt in violence even late in the C18th. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Riots
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.
Better be careful. If you make it sound too attractive, then everyone will want to migrate there. :-)
I suspect there are a lot of folks in the US north of Florida that may be thinking about moving to Florida to enjoy our "balmy" 40 to 50F temperature this particular week. But they better reflect on July and August, too.
I have never understood the logic behind presuming that all cultures are equally good or valid. It would seem pretty obvious that throughout human history (at least prior to say 1968?) people from different cultures have interacted and extracted from those they met of other cultures the aspects that they found most useful or appealing, and firmly or gently rejected the rest.
I suppose both volume to be assimilated and rate of assimilation both come into play. And as a result, surprise!, some cultures are better at making those assessments than are others.
If the indigenous American Indians had realized just how many millions of Europeans were primed and incentivized to go to America, they either would have all slunk off as far West as they could go, or killed every member of any European landing party that they could find.
There is this thing called evolution. It sorts things because they don’t work equally well and work differently well in different circumstances. When saying the bleeding obvious is a thought crime, you have a problem. So, quite.
Just had a thought about cultural evolution. It is probably not a new one.
The evolutionary process is related to the survival of the better/best adapted solution for a given environment (time and place). But while biological evolution is generally considered as due to random genetic* changes, we ought not always treat cultural changes as random, but specifically directed to some end or goal, namely explicitly for that particular meme continuing to survive and propagate. This nonrandom aspect might enhance survival and propagation, but also can push it too far too fast and make the intended change more fragile than its activist [or activist network?] proponents would desire. Perhaps woke/DEI is fitting this situation and experiencing that result? I would have said the same about Marxism given your post on that, but somehow it seems to keep having new lives?? The imaginary future, I suppose?
Your characterisation of colonising the New World uses modern and historically erroneous paradigms. The whole concept of white supremacy & colonialism as an intentionalist genocide is an ahistorical "Black Legend".
Pilgrims actually saw themselves as persecuted folk running away, not trying to conquer America for "white people" - they were simply seeking open spaces not yet enclosed. Native Americans saw them as just another tribe to fight against or ally with.
I did say "If the ... Indians ..." as a hypothetical, not reality. But the intentionalist aspect depends on time and place and prior experience* with the "other", in this case as both different cultures and different ethnicities. The Pilgrims were persecuted for their cultural differences vs. others in England/Holland, but when they had the chance (for a short time) to exercise control over the religious and social behavior of any fellow Europeans, they exercised it. When those groups got too large to knuckle under, they separated into additional settlements, etc. Humans --- can't live with them and can't live without them.
*I won't bother presenting the good or bad on both sides, as you may know (or remember) the various details even better than I do.
This is the recapitulation of a conversation I've had with fellow immigrants. Speaking with a Malaysian Chinese colleague we agreed that Australia's (and others') secret was having many small groups of immigrants whose numbers don't allow accretion of "critical mass" sufficient to create a counter-cultural identity in counterstand to the mainstream - and does not challenge the majority's "ownership of the cultural space" for lack of better terminology.
That's why Anglo/Celtic Aussies have basically gone along with it despite the govt having never actually consulted the population whether they consent to massive demographic change. The problem arises whenever there is a large singular minority group, particularly with a historical grievance contra mainstream.
On this topic, in the US, Trump (and Project 2025) counterintuitively oppose "having many small groups of immigrants whose numbers don't allow accretion of 'critical mass' sufficient to create a counter-cultural identity in counterstand to the mainstream - and does not challenge the majority's 'ownership of the cultural space.'"
The US actually has a special quota reserved for immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. It's called the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. About 4.6% of legal immigrants to the US obtain visas through this program.
Trump wants to stop this program, preferring more merit-based immigration regardless of culture/country of origin.
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/12/trumps-baseless-immigration-claim/
What I been pondering lately is how to maintain good culture. There must be some explicit mechanism to attract right people and expel wrong ones.
The "natural" way if balancing things is not working anymore for many localities. As external forces are too strong and movement too dynamic to rely on slow natural community formation
Forced association is a real problem.
It's always been that way in Australia, and seems to have stayed that way, which is possibly a bit surprising.
I don't remember our assimilationist melting pot philosophy was ever named, it just was. If my history is remembered correctly, the word "multiculturalism" began in Australia with Whitlam and Al Grassby.
They, and the activists and academics, of course had an expansive definition and an intent to change immigration to support that definition. And they did, because the entire government apparatus was eventually converted to that intent.
But, but...the Australian people never knew it, never wanted it, and it made no impression. They adopted the word, but if you asked ANYONE outside the immigration establishment to define it, they would describe an assimilationist melting pot with Chinese restaurants. And they all reviled ethnic separatism - which was the actual intended outcome of the "multiculturalist" theorists.
It was, to me, one of the first attempts at "the language game" you've described elsewhere - and it failed, because folk just adopted the word as a useful shorthand for what they wanted, completely ignoring all the elite intent. And I think that still largely holds, 50 years later - even though the ethnic separatism is more common, it is still hated and despised by the public, who still want what they insist on still calling multiculturalism.
Nicely put. When the ethnic soccer clubs got out of hand, the Soccer authorities simply banned soccer teams having ethnic names.
Multiethnic vs multicultural vs multiracial. A vitally important distinction, sadly far too nuanced for the left.
Another insightful (and uncharacteristically upbeat) piece, Lorenzo. Strangely enough, the 'Aussie cafe', much like the 'Irish Pub' can now be found in many of the world's major cities – and not only the ones located in the Anglosphere.
I found one in Budapest!
Great piece celebrating multi-ethnic Melbourne. It's similar to the southeast with Vietnamese-Australian cafe owners. It's been interesting to observe the assimilation of Afghan and Sudanese migrants in the area over the years.
Thank you for the note of optimism, Lorenzo. You evoke contemporary Australia at its delightful, noble best. Overlain with some gently ironic but above all nostalgic 1980s Australian music - 'Original Sin by INXS perhaps (anything by Midnight Oil would be far too jarring) - I can picture the scene in the next Qantas or Telstra ad campaign. Out here in the provincial Victoria, however, they haven't quite got from Anglo to Anglo-Celtic just yet.
True. As a teacher I usually worked with multi-ethnic classes. I cannot abide the accusations that Australia is racist.
Very good point. I am not sure ethic nationalism is viable in most countries any more, but I think cultural nationalism is both viable and necessary.
Each nation has a culture worth nurturing and protecting even if few nations are defined by a single ethnic group.
Americans used to understand that, but now for some reason, it is controversial.
Yes! This is such an important distinction. I don’t think anyone else has made this point. Ever.
Australia seems to have gotten a lot of things right in regards to immigration and integration, and its sad that the rest of Anglosphere and Europe did not learn much from that (Boris Johnson in the UK promised "Australian style" points system, not a lot came of it). Perhaps after decades of issues we have now experienced, some learning will occur? America is now on a path of change, it remains to be seen if it takes root elsewhere.
Thinking about cultural differences as a result of this post, I wonder if you or others here can clarify a gap in my knowledge of English "culture". Specifically, my understanding of the relationship between the Anglican Church and "Protestants" during or after Henry VIII.
Presumably as a tyrant Henry simply thought of himself as both temporal king and religious "Pope" over "his own" church, and was also very happy to acquire the Catholic Church's domestic wealth for his own purposes.
As a boy not well educated about religious distinctions, I just thought "Oh, the Anglicans are not (or no longer) Catholic* so they must sympathize with the Protestant views."
But did the English inclined to Protestantism view Anglicans as "papist equivalents" or just converts to a slightly different version of Protestantism? [i.e., my baseline thought.]
*From somewhere I have a factoid (true or not) that there were about 20,000 (residual, still die hard) Catholics at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, but maybe only 2,000 by the time James I came to the throne?? [or James II?] Thus a lot of the animostity towards Catholics (and James II) was really misplaced or over done when directed at such a small group?? Also, by then I think a fair number of persecuted Catholics had immigrated to the mid Atlantic colonies in America?
Appreciate any feedback.
Henry VIII was always theologically Catholic, his argument was over Church government. The Anglican split could have ended up being like Catholics and Orthodox, who have very few theological differences, their argument was over the role of the Papacy. (Some Orthodox like to say “the Pope was the first Protestant”.)
Over time, the Anglican Church became more Protestant, though it was contested back and forth. That is how you get “low church” (very Protestant) and “high church” (very Catholic, with lots of “bells and smells” ritual) within Anglicanism.
The argument wavered back and forth, but was mostly settled by the Glorious Revolution, with the Anglican Church being middle of the road “Broad Church” incorporating both streams. Anti-Papal (and so anti-Catholic) feeling became entrenched and associated with English patriotism. Anti-Catholic sentiment could erupt in violence even late in the C18th. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Riots
Multiculturalism was never more than a costume fetish.