Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 6, 2018 11:33:06 GMT
With reluctance, I'm increasingly coming to the view that salad bowl multiculturalism might be the way to go.
What I would really like is old style ethnonationalism like we had in Ireland from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. A particular people with a particular culture concentrated on a particular territory. Ethnic minorities respected but the host culture unabashedly dominant.
But is this really sustainable? There has already been so much globalization, and I can't really see it being reversed. And, without wanting to indulge in Guardianista hysteria, sometimes populism CAN take ugly forms. I have seen it recently in Ireland, though more online than in real life. A lot of Irish populists seem to have NO aspirations other than "Ireland for the Irish"-- all the aspirations towards cultural renaissance or the revival of tradition, the Irish language, etc. seem to have been jettisoned. I don't really see the point of that. Surely DNA isn't much in itself.
Maybe it's better just to think of Irishness as a tradition at this stage, one that can look to "the old country" but which isn't necessarily based here, and doesn't demand ownership of a territory. The Jews seemed to have survived in this way for many centuries and this kind of mentality seems very prevalent among the various ethnic groups in America.
If Irishness is seen as a tradition, it also has the benefit that anyone can identify with it who wants to, and nobody needs to who doesn't want to, so it can't be accused of exclusiveness.
I can't really see Irishness surviving in any other form, in the long term. If Irishness just becomes defined as "the culture of the people who happen to live on the island of Ireland at any given time", it is so diffuse as to be meaningless. I would choose salad bowl multiculturalism over civic nationalism. I would choose anything over civic nationalism.
What I would really like is old style ethnonationalism like we had in Ireland from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. A particular people with a particular culture concentrated on a particular territory. Ethnic minorities respected but the host culture unabashedly dominant.
But is this really sustainable? There has already been so much globalization, and I can't really see it being reversed. And, without wanting to indulge in Guardianista hysteria, sometimes populism CAN take ugly forms. I have seen it recently in Ireland, though more online than in real life. A lot of Irish populists seem to have NO aspirations other than "Ireland for the Irish"-- all the aspirations towards cultural renaissance or the revival of tradition, the Irish language, etc. seem to have been jettisoned. I don't really see the point of that. Surely DNA isn't much in itself.
Maybe it's better just to think of Irishness as a tradition at this stage, one that can look to "the old country" but which isn't necessarily based here, and doesn't demand ownership of a territory. The Jews seemed to have survived in this way for many centuries and this kind of mentality seems very prevalent among the various ethnic groups in America.
If Irishness is seen as a tradition, it also has the benefit that anyone can identify with it who wants to, and nobody needs to who doesn't want to, so it can't be accused of exclusiveness.
I can't really see Irishness surviving in any other form, in the long term. If Irishness just becomes defined as "the culture of the people who happen to live on the island of Ireland at any given time", it is so diffuse as to be meaningless. I would choose salad bowl multiculturalism over civic nationalism. I would choose anything over civic nationalism.
