For some unknown reason, everywhere I turn in the last few days, I bump into something about living with differences. It's like one of those tipping point moments in which people see that all of these little conversations are part of a much bigger conversation that needs to be shifted into a new light.
Underlying everything in the news, it would seem that we're in the middle of a massive struggle between accepting diferences between people (and within people, expressed as the idea of "multiple identities" or "contextualized identity") and/or beleiving that underlying it all we are the same and that there is one right way of living.
A couple of examples:
1) On CBC radio this morning ("
The Current", they were doing interviews with Indo-Canadian youth about the Air India trial verdict. They had on teenagers who identified as Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. The interviewer was trying to get them to explain how their lives and identifies had been shaped growing up after the bombing. The unspoken answer was "very little" - the young people were Canadian first and foremost. However, when the question turned to broader issues, they started to talk about subtle racism in Canadian society. One of the young women made a comment along the lines that "We are all different. We need to learn to accept and appreciate that." It constantly amazes me how different this statment (and its implications) is from what I grew up with in the US in which the standard refrain is "We are all the same." I think the "We are all different" understanding is key to building a healthy future...
2) On Friday, I stumbled across the following fascinating journal article: Emanuel De Kadt, "Abusing cultural freedom : coercion in the name of God" IN:Journal of human development 6 (1, 2005) : 55-74. Abstract: Using violence to promote one's beliefs grabs the headlines. Nevertheless, today the main threat does not come from the violent few, who do get some attention in this paper, but from the growing numbers who wish coercively to impose their views on others. Most world cultures encompass such coercive variants, and the factors that contribute to their rise are discussed. The main focus is on coercive religion and fundamentalism, but some attention is paid to factors common to all coercive ideologies, notably the rejection of multiple identities. The threat from coercive ideologies may be reduced by multiculturalism, by distinguishing desirable from misguided appeals to 'freedom of religion', and by supporting open-mindedness and religious reform movements.
Within the article is an interesting observation, "Jan Berting specifically regards it as undesirable to try and accommodate ‘self-exclusionary’ groups in a multicultural society. His position is close to that taken by the HDR 2004 and originally expressed by Amrtya Sen (2003), who recognized that conditions may have to be placed upon the acceptance of cultural diversity, if cultural liberty is the ultimate aspiration. Both Amartya Sen and Jan Berting stress the importance of cultural choice. Sen does so by
rejecting a situation in which people are compelled to retain their ancestral, inherited culture, in the context of the determination of identity."
3) This morning, Maja forwarded me a copy of the text of a speech by Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada, on the "
Civilization of Difference" from March 2003. There's a great quote in it = "President Wilson's observation that 'nothing . . . is more likely to disturb the peace of the world than the treatment which might . . . be meted out to minorities' is as true today as it was in 1920. If we are not to perpetuate the tragedies of the past we must tame the dark side of difference.... We must recognize the price the marginalization of the other in our midst exacts -- a price we pay in the coin of war, suffering and unrealized human potential. We must provide refuges for our minorities -- the physical refuge of the protective nation state and the conceptual refuge of respect and accommodation embodied in the principle that all people, regardless of the group to which they are born or assigned, are equally worthy and equally deserving of respect. Only thus can we combat the discrimination and exclusion that have marred so much of human history." =
Powerful stuff.
