Culture Matters
Over the last few months the Brexit debate brought to a head long running arguments about immigration, racism and multiculturalism. It has not been uplifting. People accused each other of being racists, haters, ignorant and lost, as simmering discontents and prejudices all came to the boil. Is it possible to address any of the issues from a different starting place, one that might be less polarised and poisoned? Here is my attempt.
Culture Matters.
When refugees and immigrants arrive on some foreign shore they are more than just an economic burden or benefit and they come with more than the clothes they stand in. You cannot see it in the photos or videos but they bring with them their culture. It is, apart from those whose hands they are holding on to, their most precious possession. And yet this word ‘culture’ has been too often missing from our debate.
When refugees and immigrants arrive on some foreign shore they are more than just an economic burden or benefit and they come with more than the clothes they stand in. You cannot see it in the photos or videos but they bring with them their culture. It is, apart from those whose hands they are holding on to, their most precious possession. And yet this word ‘culture’ has been too often missing from our debate.
The culture that refugees and immigrants bring with them forms a significant part of who they feel themselves to be, not just individually but collectively. It binds them together and gives them a shared identity. It is the end result of the long and rich history which they all recognise as theirs. Their culture is the storehouse of their history and of their shared assumptions and values. It matters to them.
By exactly the same token, wherever immigrants arrive, they are not arriving in a blank ‘territory’, or ‘place on a map’ where there is work to be had. They are arriving in a culture. A culture which is the result of another long and rich history. A history that has made the shared assumptions and cultural values of those who already live there. And the people who live in that place hold that culture very dear. Their culture matters to them.
This is my starting place. Culture matters. It is a simple statement, but one from which, if you accept it, a great deal unfolds.
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Culture Matters – A conclusion
For a moment let’s return to that beach where we started. There are the people coming ashore, hoping for something better, for themselves and their children, than the war or poverty they left behind. They have little but what they do have, what they cling to, is the culture which connects them to their home, their past and to each other. Facing them what do they see? Another culture? Yes, but one that seems confused about itself, wracked with self doubt and attacked from without and within.
They find a culture which makes great efforts to welcome and respect other cultures but which pours scorn on expressions of its own culture. They find a culture where multiculturalism is talked about but where the engine of economic and legal change seems to be deeply antagonistic towards the indigenous culture and to culture in general.
I suggest immigrants who arrive here with a strong and energetic culture quickly see that what faces them is a culture under relentless attack from without by an economic ideology which has no place for culture, and that at the same time has been infected within, by a kind of cultural auto-immune disease of self loathing. The first comes from the politics of the Right the second from the Left.
If I am in any way right and this is the crisis we are in, then can anyone blame an immigrant for not wanting to join us? Their choice are simple, keep to the culture you brought with you, or join an infected culture which is destroying itself.
It is my belief that people have the right to say no to aspects of other cultures they do not like, but much more importantly they have the right to say no to the idea of no culture. Immigrants are already saying no to the ideology of No Culture. I believe they are right and we must join them. Only if we say no to ‘no culture’ and re-affirm our own, will immigrants be attracted by the culture they find here and tempted to it.
It is my belief that people are able to welcome strangers and other cultures when they feel confident in themselves and their own culture. I believe what has been fuelling concerns about immigration is not a rise in racism but a creeping feeling that English culture is being crushed between globalism from without and self-loathing from within. I do not loath English culture. I am proud of it. Like all cultures it has things of which it should be ashamed, but it also has things of which it can be proud.
For me multiculturalism risks becoming the cultural arm of the economic forces which make every place the same. I prefer a world of differences. A world of different languages not one vast sprawl of english. A world of different cultures, not a spreading multicultural one.
Allow people to have a strong sense of self worth and pride in their own culture. Allow them to say ‘this is my home’ and then they will be able to say ‘welcome’ to strangers at the door. Tell them they have no right to claim this place as theirs or say that ‘this is the culture of this place’, and they will become afraid and prey to the peddler’s of hate.
Celebrating your own culture is not the same as hating others nor does it lead to it. Culture Matters. History Matters. Place Matters. Deny these at your peril.
Full post here
