{"quotes":[{"text":"We need a new, deeper appreciation of the ethnic histories of the American people, not a reduction of American history to ethnic histories.","author":"Steven C. Rockefeller","tags":["demographics-of-us","ethnic-groups","history","history-of-the-united-states","multiculturalism","people-of-the-united-states","syllabi","united-states"],"id":772,"author_id":"Steven+C.+Rockefeller"},{"text":"The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European peoples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category 'humans,' can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) 'translated' into a global ('European') civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable.","author":"Talal Asad","tags":["christianity","eurabia","europe","european","islam","modernity-tags-civilization","multiculturalism","pluralism"],"id":5299,"author_id":"Talal+Asad"},{"text":"We who have the luxury of living in the West have an obligation to stand up for liberal principles. Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. And we need to say unambiguously to Muslims living in the West: if you want to live in our societies, to share in their material benefits, then you need to accept that our freedoms are not optional. They are the foundations of our way of life; of our civilization - a civilization that learned, slowly and painfully, not to burn heretics, but to honor them.","author":"Ayaan Hirsi Ali","tags":["islam","multiculturalism"],"id":5752,"author_id":"Ayaan+Hirsi+Ali"},{"text":"I like 'multi-'...Multiplicity, multicultural, multiplication etc. Any contribution to diversification and value augmentation is achievement.","author":"Rossana Condoleo","tags":["absolute-values","achievement","diversification","diversity","making-connections","multiculturalism","multiplication","multiplicity","multitasking","synergies"],"id":9228,"author_id":"Rossana+Condoleo"},{"text":"If we consider this official or elite multiculturalism as an ideological state apparatus we can see it as a device for constructing and ascribing political subjectivities and agencies for those who are seen as legitimate and full citizens and others who are peripheral to this in many senses. There is in this process an element of racialized ethnicization, which whitens North Americans of European origins and blackens or darkens their 'others' by the same stroke. This is integral to Canadian class and cultural formation and distribution of political entitlement. The old and established colonial/racist discourses of tradition and modernity, civilization and savagery, are the conceptual devices of the construction and ascription of these racialized ethnicities. It is through these 'conceptual practices of power' (Smith, 1990) that South Asians living in Canada, for example, can be reified as hindu or muslim, in short as religious identities.....We need to repeat that there is nothing natural or primordial about cultural identities - religious or otherwise - and their projection as political agencies. In this multiculturalism serves as a collection of cultural categories for ruling or administering, claiming their representational status as direct emanations of social ontologies. This allows multiculturalism to serve as an ideology, both in the sense of a body of content, claiming that 'we' or 'they' are this or that kind of cultural identities, as well as an epistemological device for occluding the organization of the social....An interpellating device which segments the nation's cultural and political space as well as its labour market into ethnic communities....Defined thus, third world or non-white peoples living in Canada become organized into competitive entities with respect to each other. They are perceived to have no commonality, except that they are seen as, or self-appellate as, being essentially religious, traditional or pre-modern, and thus civilizationally backward. This type of conceptualization of political and social subjectivity or agency allows for no cross-border affiliation or formation, as for example does the concept of class.","author":"Himani Bannerji","tags":["althusser","canada","class","identity","interpellation","multiculturalism","racialization"],"id":27512,"author_id":"Himani+Bannerji"},{"text":"The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything.","author":"Aberjhani","tags":["acknowledgement","awareness-and-attitude","being-open-minded","change","changing-the-way-you-think","changing-your-life","changing-your-mindset","coexistence","communication","consciousness","consciousness-raising","coping-with-change","diversity","eiffel-tower-art","ending-terrorism","ending-war","faith","hope-for-new-year","human-rights-day","mindsets","multiculturalism","new-year","nonviolent-conflict-resolution","open-mind","paris-at-night","paris-attacks","peacism","philosophy-for-millennials","points-of-views","possibility","psychology","shifting-perspectives","spiritual-philosophy","teaching-diversity","world-suicide-prevention-day"],"id":44029,"author_id":"Aberjhani"},{"text":"Islam influences every aspect of believers’ lives. Women are denied their social and economic rights in the name of Islam, and ignorant women bring up ignorant children. Sons brought up watching their mother being beaten will use violence. Why was it racist to ask this question? Why was it antiracist to indulge people’s attachment to their old ideas and perpetuate this misery? I read the works of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment—Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Mill, Voltaire—and the modern ones, Russell and Popper,with my full attention, not just as a class assignment. All life is problem solving, Popper says. There are no absolutes; progress comes through critical thought. Popper admired Kant and Spinoza but criticized them when he felt their arguments were weak. I wanted to be like Popper: free of constraint, recognizing greatness but unafraid to detect its flaws.Spinoza was clear-minded and fearless. He was the first modern European to state clearly that the world is not ordained by a separate God. Nature created itself, Spinoza said. Reason, not obedience, should guide our lives. Though it took centuries to crumble, the entire ossified cage of European social hierarchy—from kings to serfs, and between men and women, all of it shored up by the Catholic Church—was destroyed by this thought. Now, surely, it was Islam’s turn to be tested.","author":"Ayaan Hirsi Ali","tags":["islam","multiculturalism"],"id":52452,"author_id":"Ayaan+Hirsi+Ali"},{"text":"The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European poeples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category 'humans,' can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) 'translated' into a global ('European') civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable.","author":"Talal Asad","tags":["eurabia","europe","european-civilization","islam","multiculturalism","pluralism"],"id":67226,"author_id":"Talal+Asad"},{"text":"Lincoln bought a German language newspaper.","author":"Harold Holzer","tags":["evangelism","humility","immigration","multiculturalism","openness","vocabulary","word-choice"],"id":78617,"author_id":"Harold+Holzer"},{"text":"We are drawn to the Renaissance because of the hope for black uplift and interracial empathy that it embodied and because there is a certain element of romanticism associated with the era’s creativity, its seemingly larger than life heroes and heroines, and its most brilliantly lit terrain, Harlem, USA.","author":"Clement Alexander Price","tags":["african-americans","american-history","cultural-arts","diversity","great-migration","harlem-new-york","harlem-renaissance","jazz-age","literary-movements","multiculturalism","roaring-20s"],"id":87435,"author_id":"Clement+Alexander+Price"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":56,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}