{"id":930,"date":"2012-04-19T15:16:21","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T15:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/?p=930"},"modified":"2012-04-19T16:04:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T16:04:23","slug":"multiculturalism-is-my-native-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/?p=930","title":{"rendered":"Multiculturalism <em>is<\/em> my Native Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There has been much poo-poohing of multiculturalism in the press and politics of the last few years. At best, these critiques argue that it is a half-arsed compromise; at worst, a threat to the existence of civilisation.<\/p>\n<p>Multiculturalism <em>is<\/em> my native culture. As such, these attacks feel as strong to me as any attack on a specific culture.<\/p>\n<p>I believe that multiculturalism&#8212;perhaps more accurately, panculturalism, the belief that through enthusiasm, tolerance and excitment about the rich variety of world cultures&#8212;we can create a society that is richer and more exciting to live in than any parochial monoculture.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve visited monocultures, both by travelling half way across the world and getting a train half-an-hour out of London. I find their constant filtering of life through a single lens tedious.<\/p>\n<p>In so many ways&#8212;from the trivial issue of being able to get food from a dozen cultures within five minutes of my flat, to interacting on a day-to-day-basis with people whose backgrounds are so different from mine, this is a key part of what makes my life interesting and meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>This ain&#8217;t your grandmother&#8217;s multiculturalism anymore. People born in major cities in many countries are increasingly growing up as pancultural natives. To them, the UKIPpy desire to create (yes, create, not return to; you cannae step in the same river twice) a new, tedious monoculture is a threat to their native culture as any external &#8220;threat&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>We need to reclaim multiculturalism from the idea that it is a compromise for everyone involved, and celebrate the idea that we can create a better society by bringing together the best that we all have to offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been much poo-poohing of multiculturalism in the press and politics of the last few years. At best, these critiques argue that it is a half-arsed compromise; at worst, a threat to the existence of civilisation. Multiculturalism is my native culture. As such, these attacks feel as strong to me as any attack on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[28,30],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}