ABSTRACT
The term "multiculturalism" has become commonplace during the last decade or two, and inevitably it has taken on many shades of meaning. Whatever these many meanings may be, the common denominator is that multiculturalism is an attempt to solve the problems created by the massive migrations of the twentieth century in accordance with the principles of human rights. The term seems to have originated in Canada, and its origin there is perhaps no coincidence, considering the importance of immigration throughout Canada's history. Introduced and discussed during the 1970s under Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, multiculturalism became official government policy in 1988 when the Parliament in Ottawa passed into law the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. Since then, it is the policy of the Canadian government to:
Despite these and many more high-sounding words, and despite many honest endeavors on the part of many people to implement both the letter and the spirit of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, much skepticism conerning its feasibility, if not its desirability, exists-pm1ly because of the too high expectations many people attach to it. We cannot force multiculturalism to mean that all ethnic elements present in a given country are sttictly equal; to maintain a sense of identity, any nation must distinguish between dominant traits and marginal ones. The Canadian "mosaic" metaphor may be less radical than the old American "melting pot," but both metaphors imply that a new unity is to be formed out of dispm'ate elements. Thus both metaphors beg the questions how, and by whom, the shape ofthis unity is to be defined. As Neil Bissoondath rightly points out in Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (1994), immensely complex problems arise when people of so many different races and cultures live so closely together as they do in Canada. It may well be true that the lack of a clear definition has given rise to the illusion that multiculturalism is a magic formula capable of solving all these problems. But whatever multiculturalism may be, it is certainly not a political program governments can implement by fiat; nor is it a matter merely of folk dances, costumes, and ethnic food. It might be wise for us to regard multiculturalism as an utopian idea, at the core of which are concepts like human rights, nondiscrimination, acceptance of others, mutual respect, consideration, and so forth. Such an ideal, given human imperfection, can be realized only in a more or less imperfect way.
