AS PLURALISM ABOUNDS CHALLENGES CONFRONT US
American society is inevitably growing more diverse. Tolerance among different groups is necessary. But how are we to relate to groups that are internally intolerant?
Dear Reader: I have returned home after spending several weeks exploring the wilds of Iceland - “awesome” truly applies. I then was away officiating at a lovely wedding in rural northern New York State. Now back, I hope to resume my usual writing schedule. My warm thanks for your continuing interest in my essays.
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In my last essay, I made the case that the future of American society needs to be a pluralistic one. The MAGA crowd and those ranting about the replacement of the white population yearn for a racially and ethnically homogeneous society. But they are chasing a chimera. At best, their social utopia is a caricature of the America of the 1950s. It was a period in which minorities were socially and politically marginalized, essentially quiescent, and women were primarily relegated to the domestic sphere and subordinated to their husbands. It was an authoritarian age in which white, Protestant sensibilities and styles were hegemonic and set the model, and proffered the values, to which Americans were intended to conform. But the potential for the emergence of a demonstrably pluralistic society was always present and became manifest in the next decade.
The social template that framed a homogeneous society broke down in the 1960s. A precipitating agent was the Black Power movement. Displeased with integration, which its leaders assessed as apiece with the melting pot ideology, the agents of the Black Power movement unmasked all forms of assimilation as a form of Anglo dominance. Their militant dismissal of the melting pot, which was a refutation of societal homogeneity, gave rise to the phenomenon of hyphenated Americans. It was a time when people discovered their ethnic roots, which in previous generations they were happy to forget. This period gave rise to recognition of the integrity of ethnic groups and their cultures. With this movement the phenomenon of multiculturalism emerged as descriptive of the American social landscape. Societal uniformity faded, and homogeneity was no longer an American demographic ideal. Social vectors ineluctably moved away from sameness and toward pluralism – and there can be no turning back.
There were international factors, as well, that ushered in multiculturalism and social pluralism. Starting in 1947 with the independence of India from Great Britain, decolonization transformed global relations, creating a new world order. The gaining of independence of the peoples of Africa and Asia was accompanied by struggles for equality and a place at the table. It also empowered expressions of cultural pride among peoples who had previously been voiceless on the international stage. Again, decolonization dismantled a homogeneous world order built upon and sustained by Western hegemony. Suppression of local cultures gave way, and vibrant pluralism made itself evident in the global sphere.
This transformation had resonance within the American domestic context. It's been argued that the Civil Rights movement, and its struggle to achieve legal enfranchisement and equality among Blacks in the South, was the American expression of the decolonization occurring globally. There is an eloquent and memorable phrase in Martin Luther King's Letter from the Birmingham Jail which alludes to the recognition of these international realities. King wrote, “The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.”
Decolonization produced a reckoning in the West as to the destruction, exploitation, misery and degradation that the era of colonialism had wrought. It has ushered in political transformations on the global scene that reflect strivings to make amends writ large.
The contribution of human rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, three years after the end of World War II and when the knell of European colonialism had already sounded. Among human rights principles was a growing protection of ethnic groups, including indigenous groups, to freely express their cultures, inclusive of their language and religion. The two human rights covenants, which are the pillars of the international law of human rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights respectively, manifest these emergent principles. Article 1 of both covenants begins with the phrases, “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” The right of self-determination is an expression of the emergence of group rights, which rests upon the need for the recognition of discrete ethnic entities that bind individuals together on the basis of a shared culture, history, language or religion. Article 27 of the political and civil covenant explicitly states, “In those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.”
Recognizing the special deprivations suffered by indigenous peoples under colonialism, including dispossession of their lands and resources, population transfers, forced assimilation, and other forms of oppression, the United Nations has put great emphasis on the protection of their fundamental rights. In 1994, the UN adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Among the rights specified in the Declaration (Article 26) is for indigenous groups to “...own, develop, control and use the lands and territories, including the total environment of the lands, air, water, coastal seas, ...which they have traditionally owned, used, or otherwise, occupied or used.”
This right is very far-reaching and has led the growing phenomenon of providing limited regional autonomy to identified groups within nation states. It has reinforced the rights of Native Americans. In Canada, for example, Quebec maintains a special status among the ten provinces with rights that privilege the French language. In the Northwest Territories, First Nation tribes were granted sweeping sovereignty over many of their economic affairs and the use of resources. In Spain, the provinces enjoy considerable independence from the central government, Catalonia and the Basque region being the most notable. In Iraq, the Kurds enjoy considerable autonomy. In addition to a democratic response to histories of domination, establishing semi-autonomous ethnic states or regions within a nation can be assessed as a strategy to mitigate internal strife or wholesale succession from the nation as a whole. The point, again, is the movement toward ethnic federalism, so-called, is an expression of pluralism that is expanding within the realm of global governance.
Within the human rights framework, this movement has witnessed the emergence of group rights. It is an outgrowth of multiculturalism and the conclusion that individual rights do not sufficiently protect members of minorities. Group rights afford the members of the group protections and special privileges not provided by general law. An early example that comes to mind is the right of Amish children not to attend school beyond the age of 14 on the grounds that such education runs against Amish religious beliefs.
Conventionally, human rights are vested in the individual person, but the question at issue is whether groups can also have rights, and can they be understood as human rights? The concept is problematic and has been subject to debate. Most consequential is the question of the relationship of group rights to individual rights and whether the former can supersede the latter. If a religious group is understood to possess the right to practice its religion, does it also, for example, have the right to suppress equality for women and women's individual expression in the practice and furtherance of that right? If the response is negative, would not the integrity of the religion and its practices erode over time as individuals dissented from normative practices? If religious practice supervened over the wishes of women who rejected the specified religious practices or norms, would their equality and autonomy not be suppressed, values that are foundational to the protection of human rights as individual rights? A cogent response to this dilemma is rendered by the historian and human rights theoretician, Michael Ignatieff. In his book, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Ignatieff writes,
“Rights are meaningful only if they confer entitlements and immunities on individuals; they are worth having only if they can be enforced against institutions like the family, the state and the church. This remains true even when the rights in question are collective or group rights. Some of these rights – like the right to speak your own language or practice your own religion – are essential preconditions for the exercise of individual rights. The right to speak a language of your choice will not mean very much if the language has died out. For this reason, group rights are needed to protect individual rights. But the ultimate purpose and justification of group rights is not the protection of the group as such but the protection of the individuals who compose it. Group rights to language, for example, must not be used to prevent an individual from learning a language beside the language of the group. Group rights to practice religion should not cancel the right of individuals to leave a religious community if they choose.”
I agree. Ignatieff's insight is also a necessary corrective to the major shortcoming in a political framework that valorizes pluralism. Pluralism's greatest pitfall is that ethnic and cultural groups, toward which a diverse society requires tolerance and permits varying degrees of autonomy, may be internally intolerant of subgroups within it. It may reinforce oppressive forms of parochialism and tribalism. How are we to look upon groups, for example, that practice forced marriages, female genital mutilation and polygamy, or discriminate against LGBT persons or other minorities? Or, as Ignatieff suggests, prohibit the practice of all but the majority religion, or forbid persons within the community from speaking languages of their choice? While a homogeneous society is clearly built upon a politics of authoritarianism, pluralistic societies can internally suffer from analogous forms of oppression – while society looks the other way.
In a compelling essay, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, feminist Susan Okin makes the point that all cultures are patriarchal. In overt and in more private ways, women are subordinated to men. Hence multiculturalism, which valorizes groups, can readily reinforce that patriarchy and undermine women's equality. The validation of group rights, which enables groups to be left alone by the majority culture intensifies this inequality. Multiculturalism, which is a salient expression of societal pluralism, at best, is a mixed blessing for women.
My conclusion is that a healthy pluralism can only exist in a national context which is grounded in liberal democracy. As such, governance of society needs to be based on periodic elections and individual rights which abide with the principles and spirit of the human rights regime. This is pluralism's precondition.
At the current political moment, civic commitment to liberal democracy has grown weak and fragile. We need to breathe new life into the idea and it needs to be done with urgency and militancy. As we inevitably move to an ethnically and racially more diverse society, we simultaneously need to reconstruct and fortify our democratic institutions and strengthen civic commitments in the large and smaller circles of life. If we fail to do so, pluralism will lead to national dissolution and increased strife, including violence, as the American experiments fades into darkness.
Interesting analysis of a complex issue.
Joe, beyond brilliant as usual. In my new book, "The Human Species Needs a Mission of Survival and Discovery," I call for a global motivation strategy to strengthen liberal democracy, and successfully defeat Trumpism and Plutonism.