Chapter 4. Multiculturalism and the Liberalizing Nation (143-175)
It is notable the mandate of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1963: it is "to develop the Canadian Confederation on the basis of equal participation between the two founding races, taking into account the contribution made by other ethnic groups" (p. 144). This mandate called for official recognition of various ethnic communities, leading to the adoption of multiculturalism as official state policy in 1971, Thonabi writes.
Thobani contests that official multiculturalism contributed to stabilizing white supremacy under the guise of tolerance to difference. In particular, it is pointed out that the elimination of overt Canadian immigration policy and citizenship in the 1970s was a pragmatic response to changing global economic condition and lack of labour and had less to do with idealistic commitments to c cultural utopia.
Thobani argues that Canadian multiculturalism contribute to recasting national identity by distinguishing Canada from other nation-states such as the United State and Europe in that Canada departed from colonial and imperialist histories and it had more embracing and pluralist, more tolerant, racially innocent, thus more adaptable to changing global conditions, which led to selling diversity in the field of international business interests. Thus, Thobani writes, "[Multiculturalism's] appeal for tolerance enabled a national amnesia regarding inconvenient histories" (p. 154).
Thobani argues that multiculturalism suppressed race and racism discursively, thus disrupting the potential of greater multiracial solidarity. Looking at multiculturalism policy proclaimed by the Trudeau Liberals, Thobani states that the policy, framed within bilingualism and biculturalism, is to allocate resources to cultural groups who committed to a national unity. Thus she writes, "How the desire to contribute to national unity demanded by the policy was to be measured was left unspecified. It was clear, however, that multiculturalism was intended to further the nation's unity, not its transformation" (p. 156).
As Sheren Razack astutely describes culturalization of racism as modern racism, according to Thobani, multiculturalism deflected attention from race and racism to cultural difference. Thobani writes:
The multiculturalism policy identified the national's lack of familiarity with the cultures of racial minorities, and these minorities' lack of English- and French-language skills, as the most salient factors excluding them from 'full participation' in society. It thus placed the onus for racial inequalities experienced by people of colour onto their own (collective) cultural inadequacies (that is, their differences) and (individual) lack of linguistic skills.(p. 156)
(Federal Multicultural Policy
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Robert L. Stanfield, David Lewis, Réal Caouette
House of Commons Debates, October 8, 1971, pp. 8545-8.
http://www.abheritage.ca/albertans/speeches/trudeau.html
)http://www.abheritage.ca/albertans/speeches/trudeau.html
Thus polemics around racism disappeared in the discourse of culturalization of multiculturalism and reframed the power relations of racial hierarchies as cultural ignorance and intolerance. Thobani states, "whereas in the pre-war period, racial character and culture were treated as synonymous in state practices, these new policies emphasized distinctions of culture while suppressing those of race" (p. 158)
Thobani argues that the discursive regulation of multiculturalism encouraged immigrants to see themselves and their communities through the eyes of the state. Among the techniques used by state multiculturalism, selective state funding was crucial to conditioning community organizations, activities, etc., thus shaping particular multiculturalism. Central to this drive, according to Thobani, is the state's emphasis on traditional values in ethnic cultures. Within this aspects, cultures, static and bound to pre-modern, are to be tolerated. Thobani writes:
Ethnic groups were presented as connected to tradition, not modernity, and they embodies 'human experience in various parts of the world' associated with a different temporal plane (different periods of time) than the one inhabited by the nation...The policy advocated that their strangeness was not only to be tolerated but also was to be preserved and made cannibalistically available for the nation's sustenance and enrichment. (p. 163-164)
Opposing to the view of the multiculturalist policy that "fossilize immigrants as living remnants of the past"(p. 164), Thobani shares a perspective with post-colonialists and emphasizes new hybrid forms of subjectivities of immigrants.
The forms of identity, consciousness, and social practices developed by immigrants within Canada were likewise shaped as much by the exigencies of their insertion into the new society, by their experiences of migratory dislocation and by their interactions with nationals as they were by the 'cultural baggage' they were assumed to bring with them from their traditional homelands. (p. 164)
Here is part of the speech of Prime Minister Trudeau to the House of Commons:
The government will support and encourage the various cultures and ethnic groups that give structure and vitality to our society. They will be encouraged to share their cultural expression and values with other Canadians and so contribute to a richer life for us all. (as cited on the page 164)
[This state's emphasis on the traditional aspects of immigrant communities or minority culture seems to ground a root cause of controversies over commensurability of feminism and multiculturalism.] Observe that minority group feminists' struggle over gender oppression that is confronted not only within the same community but also the pervasive discourse of (traditional) culture, Thobani argues that the hegemony of multiculturalism, which interlocks culture with tradition, support the maintenance of internal patriarchal order within cultural practices. [This also help the academic dispute that confronts feminism and multiculturalism, as seen Okin's argument. Culture, seen as tranditional aspects and pre-modern practices, could not be commensurable with a multiculturalism discourse.]
Thobani describes how the master narrative created by multicultural discourse control individual men and women's behaviors and identities:
Multicultural discourse marks non-western cultures as more patriarchal and backward than the west, while it simultaneously pressures immigrant men to conform to significantly strenghened masculist codes of behaviour in the name of cultural authenticity. As a consequence, immigrant women, whose consciousness is also shaped in interaction with the master narrative, approach the men of their communities with complex expectations and anxieties...Both women and men come to 'see' and experience their own culture through this frame, with its particular versions of femininities and masculinities. They learn to see themselves through the nation's eyes, even when they see to contest such damaging images of themselves. (p. 166)
Thus, Thobani states, "the gendered effects of multiculturalism undermine the possibilities for solidarity between 'cultured' women and men" (p. 167). Within this frame, Thobani asserts that immigrant women's modernization is signally by the level of their assimilation into Canadian society and its values, which exalts nationhood.
Thobani argues that, as Fanon saw racialization of colored people as critical to shaping their subjectiviy, "(multi)culturalizing process in Canada profoundly influence the subjectivity of immigrants, especially their racial and cultured sensibilities" (p. 171).
While immigrants have been 'overdetermined' culturally through multicultural state policy, Thobani argues, Aboriginal peoples were contemporaneously refused by the state. She asserts that responding to Aboriginal peoples' claim for self-determination, the state discredited their claims to special status as the original inhabitants of the land, thus devaluing Aboriginality as only one of several cultures to be harnessed for the cultural enrichment and to exalt the benevolent and inclusive qualities of nationals.
Chapter 5. Consultations and Nationalizations (179-213)
In examining Canada and Immigration: Facts and Issues (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 1994), Thobani calls attention to the phrase, "In 1991, the Economic Council of Canada found that immigration had a small but positive impact on our economy" (p. 3), as the beginning point for a discussion on the immigration program. Thobani criticizes the assumptions that base this statement: (1) it erases the history of European colonial migrations, thus neutralizing the nation's existence, (2) Referring to "our" economy, it identifies immigrants as strangers who contribute to our economy not their economy, and (3) it excludes Aboriginal Peoples from the discussion of immigration program by treating them as having no stake in the subject.
Thobani also sharply points out that the Canadian state, by defining immigrants as stranger, "legitimize and normalize unequal rights and entitlements for all immigrant, so that it appeared completely normal and natural that 'they' should not have the same rights as 'us'" (p. 212). What's more, this process of legitimization is performed through numerous public consultations, which not only condition a reality to perceive but also provide an illusion of public consensus collected and approved through participatory democracy.
Such discussion of immigration is often tied with economy. Family sponsored immigration, thus, became a target to criticism because of its lack of economic contribution to the state and its facilitation of virtually limitless immigration. In this circumstance, immigrant women and their families are more vulnerable to public angst.
