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Damian Thompson says that young people of all races and political persuasions are lining up to give multiculturalism a good kicking
Multiculturalism is in crisis. By that I don't just mean that political correctness has 'gone mad', as the Daily Mail likes to put it: the British public worked that out long ago, and merely shrugs when it learns (for example) that the Lake District National Park is to abolish its guided walks because they attract insufficient numbers of black people. 'Political correctness' is shorthand for the etiquette and working practices of the most influential ideology of our age: multiculturalism, or 'identity polities'. And that ideology is falling apart.
This collapse is not evidence of multiculturalism's weakening hold on public life. On the contrary, it has been produced by the willingness of one institution after another - universities, schools, hospitals, the police, the Civil Service, multinational corporations, the Church, the BBC - to surrender to the demands of identity politics in a painfully self-abasing manner. Multiculturalism has captured the engine room of British society. And, having done so, it is wreaking havoc everywhere, especially in race relations.
Last week, the Guardian devoted two pages to a symposium on Islam, race and British identity under the heading 'The elephants in the room'. 'We didn't end up with a shopping list or any clear-cut answers,' reported Madeleine Bunting. 'But perhaps the event could help to kick-start a much needed debate.' In reality, the debate is already raging. And the elephant that the Guardian has only just noticed is the fact that so many natural supporters of identity politics are abandoning it. Young people, members of ethnic minorities and the radical Left are all lining up to give multiculturalism a good kicking.
The assault is coming from so many directions that it is difficult to know where to start. In America, perhaps. To be more precise, outside the Capitol building ten days ago, when John Forbes Kerry was not sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. He has identity politics to thank for that. The Democrats have fragmented into what Arthur Schlesinger, the first liberal critic of multiculturalism, called 'a quarrelsome spatter of enclaves, ghettos, tribes'. Although most of the tribes turned out for...