Multiculturalism in the UK: A Contested Discourse

Abstract

The standard, descriptive, definition of ‘multicultural’ is that it refers to a society characterised by the presence of many different cultures, where ‘culture’ stands for ethnicity or ‘race’. But the term ‘multiculturalism’ has been associated with a positive value position in relation to the presence in a society of those diverse cultures. Bhikhu Parekh argues that the ‘celebration of diversity’ theme at the heart of contemporary multiculturalist discourse dates back to early Christian theologians (Augustine, in the fourth century, Aquinas, in thirteenth century CE), and that it was promoted by Montesquieu, John Stuart Mill and others in the Enlightenment tradition (Parekh 2000). Multiculturalist discourse emerged in the 1960s in Britain in the context of the introduction of practical policies for the elimination of racial discrimination couched in terms of a philosophy of the social integration of ethnic minorities. ‘Multiculturalism’ as an aspirational concept became commonplace in the 1980s. Multiculturalism, as a political ethos, has come to be seen as, for example, the advocacy of sympathetic recognition by members of the majority ethnic group of the various ‘other’ cultures that compose the society; the promotion of dialogue between these various cultural groups; the implementation of equal rights for minority groups and the outlawing of discrimination against those groups; and some have further argued that there should be active celebration of the differences that emerge as each of the cultures promotes their specific features. But it has always been the subject of intense controversy.