Us and them
When the word ‘multiculturalism’ began echoing in the West after the collapse of communism in the late 1980s, many on the left sides of the ideological divide suspected it to be yet another expression of ‘post-modern capitalism.’
However, in 1991, when the new Soviet regime crushed an attempted coup by the defeated forces of Cold War communists, and broke the Soviet Union into pieces, many young people in developing nations did manage to find certain aspects of multiculturalism to their liking.
To them, it meant that now the West was opening up to allowing immigrants to live (in Europe and the US), according to their (the immigrants’) cultural mores, without having to entirely integrate to the mores of Western societies.
Multiculturalism peaked in the mid-2000s when it became institutionalised in various Western countries.
The idea was to demonstrate and welcome cultural diversity and draw from various cultures their finest economic, sporting and artistic attributes, and to respect (rather than suspect) their distinctiveness.
This was to be done for the benefit of the countries in which the men and women of different nations had come to settle and work.
However, some two decades after the arrival of the idea of multiculturalism in the West, it has started to be questioned, and even scoffed at for creating political and social turmoil in Western societies. So what happened?
http://www.dawn.com/news/1201462/multiculturalism-an-idea-gone-sour