On Multiculturalism

I came home to a large pile of newspaper clippings on my desk. It seems that my grandma cut out every article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the past few months that had anything to do with Germany or Austria. While skimming through them, I found this op-ed from Leonard Pitts, Jr., comparing the German debate about multiculturalism to the American one. It really crystallizes a lot of the thoughts I've been having about attitudes toward migration in Austria and about my feelings toward American immigration.

Of course, America isn't Germany. America's mainstream culture is already made, and has always been made, of many cultures. So that if apple pie is quintessentially American, well, so are burritos, borscht, sauerkraut, paella and sweet potato pie. 

That said, proponents of multiculturalism should concede this much: It is not easy being diverse. Diversity raises thorny questions. From the Muslim women whose religious sensibilities required her employer, Disneyland, to design a uniform with a head covering, to arguments over a schoolbook some Cuban Americans thought painted too rosy a picture of their homeland, from debate over whether and how to dismantle the "don't ask, don't tell policy" restricting gay service in the military, to arguments over how and when Espanol es hablado in public, managing diversity often means managing a delicate balance between accomodation and coercion, between expectation and fear, between reverence for what was, then, and sensitivity to what is, now. 

The only thing worse than living in a nation that seeks to achieve that balance is living in one that does not. 

I don't think the situation in Austria is as dire as some would claim. But it does make me scream every time "Integration" is discussed as the sole mode of living in Austria as an immigrant. I want to ask, "Why do you care if the person in front of you in line at the supermarket speaks German? Should someone really have to pay a fine, if they can't speak good enough German after five years, just so you can talk to your neighbors? Is a parallel society really bothering you? Why can't you just live and let live?"

Then I realize that this is the other side of the Austrian Gemütlichkeit I so dearly love. In a more collective society, just ignoring your fellow residents (like we so often do here) isn't an option. Austrian society places more emphasis on the formation of real communities, which is wonderful -- for those who meet the entrance requirements. America, on the other hand, has never been an integrated society -- we're a loose collection of essentially free individuals orbiting around an ideal, of which we can't even agree on a unified definition.