Just Looking ...

I am not familiar with the book Kalmar mentioned at the conclusion of his lecture today, Epic Encounters by Melani McAristen, but I find the premise of the book, according to Kalmar, both intriguing and questionable. As an American, I think her propositions, that the multi-culturalism of the American army is a model for the rest of the world, a vehicle for cultivating American values, like, liberty, democracy, freedom, and justice abroad, and , allowing America to do all these things while not looking like a European occupation force, are interesting and quite thought provoking. However (again, I am not familiar with her work myself), I feel she fails to address the more pernicious reasons as to why the American army is as diverse as it appears. I would argue that these reasons actually point to failures in American multi-culturalism, in paticular , institutional and systematic discrimination that prevents the full economic integration of recent immigrants and other ethnic/racial minorities. Unfortunately, for many black and Hispanic, two of the largest ethnic minority groups in the States, youths, who have grown up in impoverished urban environments with poor public education and few opportunities for job training, joining the military is one of the only options available to them " to get out." I guarantee that the U.S. military does more far recruiting in the strip malls of Detroit than it does on the campuses of Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Michael Moore addresses this issue quite poignantly at end of his film, Fahrenheit 9-11, when he says, and I am paraphrasing, the real war is not the war that U.S. wages in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the war that the power block wages against its own people. While the American military may not look like a European occupation force, once young men and women, who have experienced little power in their own society, have the opportunity to walk the streets of Baghdad with a semi-automatic weapon, they often perpetrate violence against the Iraqi people similar to the violence perpetrated against them by the American state. The mechanisms through which state power is distributed are brutal and injust. Although the American military, superficially, may not look like a typical European occupier, the behavior of the young men and women once they arrive in Iraq or Afghanistan is not very different from the behavior of, say, French troops in Syria or Algeria circa 1925. This is all to say I think McAristen is off when she says the U.S. military does not look like a traditional European occupation force, sure it may not look like one, but I don't think anyone is really fooled. Alas, I have digressed. What I am really trying to hit on here is that even though Canada may have an official policy of multi-culturalism and the United States anti-discrimination laws, for instance, the degree to which ethnic minorities and recent immigrants are economically integrated, meaning they experience the same opportunities for economic advancement as their WASP peers, leaves much to be desired. In the case of the United States, I cited the example of military service above. In the case of Canada, I have heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that would seem to suggest recent immigrants, especially, are not economically well integrated. For example, I know a man who recently immigrated to Canada from Malaysia where he was a leading civil engineer with a P.h.d. from that country's top university and cannot find work in Canada as a civil engineer because his credentials are not recognized here. He is now thinking of moving to the U.S. where his credentials are recognized. Other instances of this type of discrimination include: the Iranian doctor, the Russian physicist, the Tunisian lawyer, the Indian financial analysis all under employed because their credentials are not recognized in the multi-cultural mecca called Canada.

Next Thought: In the introduction to her book, Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference, Deborah Roots argues that multi-culturalism in Canada, as in the United States, is the consequence of a colonial history many people would rather not discuss, yet continues to play out. She states, "If culture remains the site of contestation, then the colonial histories that have informed the way cultural difference was taken up in the West will continue to be an issue. People sometimes speak of "postcolonial" as if something has been decided, as if the mixing and fragmentation of culture and history such as occur in the Dufferin Mall are neutral and not themselves a function of imperial agendas put into play long ago." Root proceeds to contend some of the issues multi-culturalism and diversity raise are issues of colonialism that 'we' have not yet thought through and until we can address the violence and brutality of the power that created these conditions there is little we can do to address the issues raised. I wonder in Canada to what extent the official emphasis on multi-culturalism is a way rewriting an otherwise pretty grim national history, as I think was mentioned both in the reading and in class. What I am attempting to address here are possible connections between power, multi-culturalism, and alternative post-colonial, although maybe not really post after all, discourses. I would refer back to what I said earlier about America's multi-cultural military. We think that multi-culturalism is a good thing, I generally agree, but at the same time, what nasty histories and realities does the guise of multi-culturalism mask?

Finally: Before I moved to Toronto from Denver, I had heard a lot about what a diverse city Toronto is. When I started at U of T I expected, rather mistakenly, that I would quickly make a fantastically diverse and multi-cultural circle of friends. Sadly, that was not the case and for the most part the only other students that have even been willing to talk with me have been other American students. Toronto is a very multi-cultural place, in the sense that there are people from all over the world who now call this city home, but at the same time it is very ghettoized and it is my observation that people from different backgrounds do not interact much with each other. I agree with Harles that instead of encouraging exchange and interaction, official policies of multi-culturalism can be self-defeating and ultimately lead to segregation. The other topic of discussion in today's class was Canadian national identity , of which multi-culturalism is one component . As an American who came to Canada for university, I found the discussion interesting in terms of what I have experience as the discrepancy between what a country projects as its national identity and what the reality of that national identity actual is.

Thank-you for taking the time to read my entry. I welcome any comments, questions, or discussion you might have on the material I have posted.