Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T16:12:15.684Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liberalism and the Politicization of Ethnicity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Will Kymlicka
Get access

Extract

Most liberal democracies exhibit cultural pluralism, that is, citizens of the same country belong to various cultural communities, and so speak different languages, read different literatures, practice different customs. Most contemporary liberal political philosophy, on the other hand, assumes that countries are “nation-states”. Citizens of the same state are assumed to share a common nationality, speak the same language, develop the same culture. My concern in this paper is with how liberals have adapted their principles to deal with cultural pluralism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 4 , Issue 2: Collective Rights , July 1991 , pp. 239 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Burnet, J. “Multiculturalism, Immigration, and Racism: A Comment on the Canadian Immigration and Population Study” (1975) 7 Canadian Ethnic Studies 35 at 36.Google Scholar

2. For surveys of minority rights claims worldwide, see Sigler, J. Minority Rights: A Comparative Analysis (Wcstport: Greenwood Press, 1983);Google Scholar Van Dyke, V. “The Individual, the State, and Ethnic Communities in Political Theory” (1977) 29 World Politics 343;Google Scholar Capotorti, F. Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minoritie UN Doc. E/CN 4/Sub.2/384 Rev. 1 (New York: United Nation, 1979).Google Scholar

3. A comprehensive quota system is ultimately incompatible with genuine polyethnicity, for it reproduces within every group the same educational and employment patterns, whereas “historically specific cultures necessarily produce historically specific patterns of interest and work” [Walzer, M. “Pluralism in Political Perspective”, inGoogle Scholar Walzer, M. ed., The Politics of Ethnicity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) at 23–24].Google Scholar

4. Glazer, N. “Individual Rights Against Group Rights”, inGoogle Scholar Tay, A. and Kamenka, E. eds. Human Rights (London: Edward Arnold, 1978) 87 at 98.Google Scholar

5. Glazer, N. Ethnic Dilemmas: 1964–1982 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983) at 124.Google Scholar

6. Brotz, H. “Multiculturalism in Canada: A Muddle” (1980) 6 Canadian Public Policy 41 at 44.Google Scholar Cf. Glazer, supra, note S at 124.

7. Gordon, M. “Toward a General Theory of Racial and Ethnic Group Relations”, inGoogle Scholar Glazer, N. and Moynihan, D. ed., Ethnicity, Theory and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975) 84 at 105.Google Scholar See also Porter, J. “Ethnic Pluralism in Canada”, inGoogle Scholar ibid 267 at 295; van den Bcrghe, P. “Protection of Ethnic Minorities: A Critical Appraisal”, inGoogle Scholar Wirsing, R. ed., Protection of Ethnic Minorities: Comparative Perspectives (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981) 343 at 347.Google Scholar Ajzenstat, J. “Liberalism and Assimilation: Lord Durham Revisited”, inGoogle Scholar Brooks, R. ed., Political Thought in Canada: Contemporary Perspectives (Toronto: Irwin Publisher, 1984) 239 at 251–52.Google Scholar

8. Knopff, R. “Language and Culture in the Canadian Debate: The Battle of the White Papers” (1979) 6 Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 66 at 67;Google Scholar cf.Segal, D. “Nationalism, Comparatively Speaking” (1988) 1 Journal of Historical Sociology at 312.Google Scholar

9. Knopff, supra, note 8 at 67.

10. Ibid.

11. Knopff, R. “Liberal Democracy and the Challenge of Nationalism in Canadian Politics” (1982) 9 Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 23 at 29–39;Google Scholar Ajzenstat, J. The Political Thought of Lord Durham (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988) c. 8;Google Scholar Morton, F.L. “Group Rights Versus Individual Rights in the Charter: The Special Cases of Natives and the Quebecois” inGoogle Scholar Nevitte, N. Komberg, A. eds, Minorities and the Canadian State (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1985) 71 at 77–83.Google Scholar

12. Morton, supra, note 11 at 73–77; Schwartz, B. First Principles, Second Thoughts: Aboriginal Peoples, Constitutional Reform and Canadian Statecraft (Montreal: The Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1986) c. 1.Google Scholar Cf. Asch, M. Home and Native Land: Aboriginal Rights and the Canadian Constitution (Toronto: Methuen, 1984) at 75–88, 100–104;Google Scholar Weaver, S. “Federal Difficulties with Aboriginal Rights in Canada” inGoogle Scholar Boldt, M. & Long, J. eds, The Quest for Justice: Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Rights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985) at 141–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dacks, G. A Choice of Futures: Politics in the Canadian North (Toronto: Methuen, 1981) at 63–79;Google Scholar Ponting, J. & Gibbins, R. Out of Irrelevance: A Socio-political Introduction to Indian Affairs in Canada (Toronto: Butterworth, 1980) at 327–31.Google Scholar Barsh, R. & Henderson, J. “Aboriginal Rights, Treaty Rights and Human Rights: Indian Tribes and Constitutional Renewal” (1982) 17 Journal of Canadian Studies 53 at 69–70.Google Scholar

13. Brotz, supra, note 6 at 44–45; Roberts, L. & Clifton, R. “Exploring the Ideology of Multiculturalism” (1982) 8 Canadian Public Policy 88 at 90–93.Google Scholar

14. I discuss this tension in Kymlicka, W. Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) c. 7.Google Scholar

15. See, for example, Ajzenstat, supra, note 11 at 91–92.

16. Hobhouse, L.T. Social Development: Its Nature and Conditions (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966) at 297, 299.Google Scholar

17. Hobhouse, L.T. Social Evolution and Political Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928) at 146–47.Google Scholar

18. Hoernle, R.F.A. South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit (Cape Town: Lovedale Press, 1939) at 181.Google Scholar

19. Hoernle, supra, note 18 at 123–25,136–8; Hobhouse, supra, note 17 at 146.

20. Mill, R. “Considerations on Representative Government” inGoogle Scholar Acton, H. ed., Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1972) 171 at 361, 363.Google Scholar But see Lord Acton’s response that Mill’s demand for homogeneity threatens liberty [“Nationality” in Figgis, J. Nevitte, N. Laurence, R. eds, The History of Freedom and Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1922), 270 at 285–90].Google Scholar

21. Green, T.H. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (London: Longman’s, Green, & Co., 1941) at 130?–31.Google Scholar Cf.Rich, P. “T.H. Green, Lord Scarman and the Issue of Ethnic Minority Rights in English Liberal Thought” (1987) 10 Ethnic and Racial Studies 149 at 155.Google Scholar

22. Glazer, supra, note 5 at 298. The need for cultural homogeneity remains a much-debated issue. For a current representative of Mill’s school, see van den Berghe, P. The Ethnic Phenomenon (New York: Elsevier, 1981) c 2. For the opposite view that cultural pluralism and minority rights help guarantee a free society, see Sigler, supra, note 2 at 188–92.Google Scholar

23. E.g., Deganaar, J. “Nationalism, Liberalism, and Pluralism” inGoogle Scholar Butler, J. ed., Democratic Liberalism in South Africa: Its History and Pros (Middletown: wn: Wesleyan University Press, 1987) 236 at 242;Google Scholar Svensson, F. “Liberal Democracy and Group Rights: The Legacy of Individualism and its Impact on American Indian Tribes” (1979) 27 Political Studies 421 at 425;Google Scholar Adam, H. “The Failure of Political Liberalism” inGoogle Scholar Adam, H. & Giliomee, H. eds, Ethnic Power Mobilized: Can South Africa Change? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979) 258 at 265?–67;Google Scholar Dickie-Clark, H. “On the Liberal Definition of the South African Situation” inGoogle Scholar van den Berghe, P. ed., The Liberal Dilemma in South Africa (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 48 at 51–52;Google Scholar Rich, P. “Liberalism and Ethnicity in South African Politics: 1921–1948” (1976) 35 African Studies 229 at 239–40.Google Scholar

24. Maclntyre, A. After Virtu (London: Duckworth, 1981) c. 15;Google Scholar Sandel, M. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) at 150–65.Google Scholar

25. Claude, I. National Minorities: An International Problem (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955) at 57, 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. supra, note 25 at 80–81.

27. Sohn, L. “The Rights of Minorities” inGoogle Scholar Henkin, L. ed., The International Bill of Rights: The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981);Google Scholar Thornberry, P. “Is There a Pheonix in the Ashes? International Law and Minority Rights” (1980) 15 Texas International Law Journal 421.Google Scholar

28. Maybury-Lewis, D. “Living in Leviathan: Ethnic Groups and the State” inGoogle Scholar Maybury-Lewis, ed., The Prospects for Plural Societies (Washington: American Ethnological Society, 1984); at 222–27; Google Scholar Claydon, J. “Internationally Uprooted People and the Transnational Protection of Minority Cultures” (1978) 24 New York Law School Law Review 125 at 138.Google Scholar

29. “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy”, in Bowles, R. et al., eds, The Indian: Assimilation, Integration or Separation? (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1972) 201 at 204 (“separate but equal services do not provide truly equal treatment”) and at 202 (“the ultimate aim of removing the specific references to Indians from the constitution…is a goal to be kept constantly in view”).Google Scholar

30. Regina v. Drybones, [1970] S.C.R 282 at 300 (“The social situations in Brown v. Board of Education and in the instant case are, of course, very different, but the basic philosophic concept is the same.”)

31. Barsh, R. and Henderson, J. The Road: Indian Tribes and Political Liberty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) at 241–48;Google Scholar Van Dyke, V. Human Rights, Ethnicity and Discrimination (Vernon, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985) at 194.Google Scholar

32. Gross, M. “Indian Control for Quality Indian Education” (1973) 49 North Dakota Law Review 237 at 244.Google Scholar

33. Ibid. at 242.

34. Ibid. at 245,248.

35. As Thomas Berger notes, “The American media penetrates Canadian life so completely, we have a tendency sometimes to think that our own issues of race relations must be defined in the same way as they are in the United States. Thus many of our legal scholars and political scientists think only in terms of replicating American experience. In 1969, the Government of Canada adopted a policy of integration and assimilation for Canada’s Native population that was based on American policy, developed in the 1960’s, towards blacks” [“Towards the Regime of Tolerance” in Brooks, S. ed., Political Thought in Canada: Contemporary Perspectives (Toronto: Irwin Publisher, 1984) 83 at 94].Google Scholar

36. This shared commitment to anglo-conformity is obscured by the misleading contrast between the American “melting-pot” and the Canadian “ethnic mosaic”. While “ethnic mosaic” carries the ideological connotation of respect for the integrity of ethnic cultures, in practice it simply meant that immigrants to Canada had a choice of two dominant cultures to assimilate to. But while Canada is bi-national, the “uneasy tolerance which French and English were to show towards each other was not extended to foreigners who resisted assimilation or were believed to be unassimilable” [Porter, J. The Measure of Canadian Society (Toronto: Gage, 1979) at 154].Google Scholar Conversely, the “melting pot” referred primarily to the biological fusing of various ethnic groups through intermarriage, not the fusing of their cultural practices. As Theodore Roosevelt explained, “the representatives of many old-world races are being fused together into a new type”, but “the crucible in which all the new types are melted into one was shaped from 1776 to 1789, and our nationality was definitely fixed in all its essentials by the men of Washington’s day.” [Theodore Roosevelt quoted in Gordon, M. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964) at 121–22.Google Scholar

37. Supra, note 5 at 99. For an important exception to this earlier American liberal support for angloconformity, see Boume, R. “Transnational America” inGoogle Scholar Resek, C. ed., War and the Intellectuals: Essays by Randolph S: Bourne, 1915–1919 (New York: Harper and Row. 1964). See also Horace Kallen’s critique of the way his fellow American liberals supported “Americanization” policies [Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924) at 145–47].Google Scholar

38. Supra, note 5 at 276–77. References to this work are in parentheses in the text.

39. Of course, there will be some cultural groups which do not fit neatly into either the “national minority” or the “voluntary immigrant” camp. For example, the Doukhobours immigrated to Canada, not voluntarily as individuals, but en masse, precisely in order to preserve their culture, since they were being persecuted in Russia. Other groups (e.g. the Hutterites and Ukrainians) came voluntarily, but on the explicit promise from Canadian immigration officials that they would be able to retain their culture and social structures. In neither case can they be said to have freely chosen to relinquish the rights that go with membership in their cultural community. The special tax arrangements for Hutterite colonies show that our legal system recognizes that some cultural groups do not fit neatly into the categories of national minority or voluntary immigrant group, and so require some intermediate status. See Paltiel, K.Z. “Group Rights in the Canadian Constitution and Aboriginal Claims to Self-Determination” inGoogle Scholar Jackson, R.J. ed., Contemporary Canadian Politics: Readings and Notes (Scarborough: Prentice- Hall. 1987) at 28.Google Scholar

40. Evelyn Kallen, however, argues that ethnic groups in a polyethnic society have a right to public support [“Ethnicity and Collective Rights in Canada” in Driedger, L. ed., Ethnic Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1987) at 325–31.Google Scholar

41. It is also not an argument against existing “multiculturalism“ policies, so long as these are not seen as matters of national rights or collective autonomy. Glazer, however, thinks that the risks of coercion and divisiveness are so great that even modest forms of support for polyethnicity are bad policy (supra, note 5 at 124).

42. This parallels the fate of the Métis, whose national rights were recognized when Manitoba entered Confederation, then taken away when English settlers became the majority in the province. See Weinstein, J. Aboriginal Self-Determination off a Land Base (Kingston: Institute for Intergovernmental Relations, 1986) at 46–47.Google Scholar

43. American blacks do not fit either the new world ethnicity pattern or the national minority pattern. The did not choose to leave their original cultures, and they were not allowed to preserve those cultures, or create a national community, within the United States. As a result, their claims for group rights have centered more on compensatory justice than national rights.

44. Glazer. supra, note 4 at 98.

45. Ibid. at 100.

46. Glazer, N. Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1975) at 220.Google Scholar

47. Supra, note 3 at 6–7. Subsequent references to this work are in parentheses in the text. Cf. Walzer, M. “States and Minorities” inGoogle Scholar Fried, C. ed., Minorities: Community and Identity (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1983) 224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. This recalls Thurgood Marshall ’s claim that Indians want colour-blind laws but “they just have not had the judgment or the wherewithal to bring lawsuits ” [in Friedman, L. ed., Argument: The Oral Argument Before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (New York: Chelsea House, 1969) at 50].Google Scholar

49. Walzer, M. Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983) at 29.Google Scholar

50. Ibid. at 151.

51. American delegates to the U.N. manifest the same tendency to switch between emphasizing and ignoring the difference between immigrant groups and national minorities when opposing the international protection of minority rights. See Sohn, supra, note 27 at 272. 279; McKean, W. Equality and Discrimination Under International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) at 70–71, 142–43.Google Scholar

52. I provide a framework for the evaluation of minority rights claims, focusing on the rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada in supra, note 14, cc. 7–9. Robert Yalden invokes a similar perspective in developing a liberal approach to the Quebec sign-law case in “Liberalism and Language in Quebec: Bill 101, the Courts and Bill 178” (1989) 47 University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review (Supplement) 973.

53. I defend this view in Kymlicka, W. “Liberalism and Communitarianism” (1988) 18 Canadian Journal of Philosophy 181.Google Scholar