[DEBATE] : Re: Sivanandan on UK Racism

[Russell]

Sivanandan rightly explains the consequences of state-sponsored 
multi-culturalism:

"The process quickly led away from multiculturalism towards ethnicism, where 
the emphasis was not what different communities had in common as part of the 
struggle against racism, but what divided them culturally.

The policy benefited the black middle classes because it offered them jobs 
and representation in the town halls. But it did nothing for black kids on 
the street, many thousands of whom were unemployed or in dead end jobs."

...yet bizarrely goes on to call for its defence:
"Yet despite these weaknesses in what multiculturalism became, I still 
believe that it should be defended from those on the right who are eager to 
pronounce its death."

The weaknesses of the project are hardly a minor problem. Anyone who 
experienced the demise of the anti-racist movement in the UK that grew out 
of the urban resistance of the 80s should know just how corrosive its 
effects have been. Surely there's a need to criticise it from the left? 
After all it's been part of the demise of class politics over the last 25 
years and has led to  growing and dangerous parochialism and divisions.  It 
is in fact hightly questionable whether the dark "forces of globalisation" 
are in fact that opposed to it.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Waterman" <p.waterman at inter.nl.net>
To: "debate: SA discussion list" <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 3:17 PM
Subject: [DEBATE] : Sivanandan on UK Racism