‘Multiculturalism’ – What it means to me

This one has been circulating around for a while now, but I decided to try and locate the source (this is probably not the original article, anyway):
http://andjohsemail.blogspot.com/2011/02/worst-nightmare.html

Firstly, let me state that I empathise with the reasons for the angst voiced in the article. I myself am a migrant in Australia. But unlike some of the migrant communities (no names mentioned), I do not attempt to assert my language and culture here. I do not seek out a whole army of my own kind to buy out an entire block of apartments and turn it into a mini-Asian suburb to the subtle exclusion of everyone else. I do not appreciate watching a scene where a bunch of Chinks babble on in Cantonese to the total exclusion of their non-Chinese Australian friends.

That is not the intent of my post today. Today, I want to write about what this big word ‘multiculturalism’ means to me, and the stimulus was from that article.

I recently had a conversation with an Australian friend here in Sydney, and he remarked that when he once visited Malaysia, he was incredulous when people there told him that “Malaysia is a multi-cultural country (read: ‘unlike Australia’).” He could not agree with that statement, because on the sheer basis of the number of cultures, languages and cuisines represented in Australia, Malaysia was nowhere close to comparing with the former, in terms of cultural diversity.

Now, if the sole metric for quantifying degree of multiculturalism in a country is the number of distinct cultures represented, then yes, I agree. But here, I humbly submit that it is not only an inadequate metric, it can be a misleading one.

A multicultural country comes about by the inflow of migrants, where the numbers represented by any given migrant culture are substantial enough to form a distinct and visible community (and here, I stress the word ‘significant’, because if the migrant numbers are too small, dilution and eventual total assimilation is inevitable, leading to the death of that migrant culture within a generation or two). But any migrant culture that is not part of the majority, will inevitably be eroded over successive generations by virtue of dilution and/or assimilation, unless there are practical mechanisms in place for their perpetuation and renewal.

True, Malaysia and Singapore may not have as many distinct migrant communities represented as Australia. But the trade-off is a lower degree of dilution. With each distinct community forming a larger percentage of the overall population, coupled with an environment where their cultures and languages are able to be lived and perpetuated in daily life, the renewal of those cultures is more certain.

Actually, I should reverse myself out of the above statement. In my experience, the Singaporeans in my generation are pretty shit at multiculturalism. While me and my Malaysian friends have grown up enjoying lemang and chicken rendang at Hari Raya open houses and rava ladoo milk candy during Deepavali, I have Singaporean Chinese contemporaries who have literally no inkling about what those festivities are.

Multiculturalism does not stop with each community safeguarding its own cultures; otherwise, we would end up with silo, fragmented and totally disunited communities – a perfect recipe for social meltdown. Multiculturalism also means encouraging the communities to embrace each other’s cultures. To those Australians in my generation who studied French or Italian as an elective subject in high school, I humbly ask: When was the last time you actually used your language schooling to exchange a couple of words in the elevator with a fellow Australian friend whom you know to be of French or Italian origin? Or is that stooping too low?

When I buy drinks from a ‘mamak’ stall, I try to place my order using what little Tamil I know (which, at the time of writing this article, is restricted to the numbers one to ten, the word ‘drink’, and ‘thank you’), but I can tell you that it is a gesture that the stall owners appreciate, because I try to connect with them. When I greet a Malay friend, I ‘salam’ them with both hands, and return the right hand to my heart the same way they do. I eat banana leaf rice with my hands the same way my Indian friends do. Conversely, it was a Malay classmate who taught me how to use a pair of chopsticks at the school canteen, and it was an Indian classmate who taught me a plethora of colourful Cantonese swear words.

Today, when I am in Australia, I live out my multicultural principles with a great degree of trepidation, lest I am drawn and quartered by the powers that be for going against the policies of assimilation, as the afore-mentioned article has clearly voiced. I speak proper English with all my colleagues. I have imbibed more beer in the past eight months than I have in the ten years prior. But here-and-there, I try to live out my principles of multiculturalism.

Two weeks ago, I discovered that Barat, my Indian colleague who sits opposite my desk speaks Tamil. Actually, I did not ‘discover’ it – I asked him directly what dialect group (of the 200-odd in India) he belonged to, as dialects always interest me. He was initially a bit taken aback with the question, but loosened up completely when I told him the reason I asked was because where I come from, the bulk of the Indian community speaks either Tamil or Malayalam – to which he quickly responded that he was also familiar with Malayalam, given its similarities with Tamil. Since then, whenever he and I worked together on a one-on-one basis, I would always conclude our collaboration with “Nandiri Vannakkam” (which means “Thank You”). And when we bump into each other on the way to the cafeteria for Friday evening drinks, and I ask him “Thani?” (“drink”), he would grin and say, “Yeah, why not…”

Carolyn, my boss, is of Dutch origin. I do not speak Dutch, and neither have I ever heard her use it. But before I departed on my 11-day Easter break, I quickly ran the words “Happy Easter” through Google Translate, and e-mailed her the corresponding Dutch greeting “Vrolijk Pasen”, to which she happily returned the same in Dutch to me. I doubt she ever uses Dutch anywhere outside the occasional Sydney Dutch Association gatherings. And before I departed for a week’s vacation last Friday, I stuck a notice on my office flat-screen monitor with the words “On Vacation” in ten languages. Yes, that was me making a statement.

Apart from doing my part to embrace the other party’s culture, there is another reason I do all of what I did above. How many generations more do you think my Indian colleague’s family will speak Tamil? I do not know if his children speak it at home, but even if they did, best case is one more generation (i.e. theirs). Last I checked, there are no schools in greater Sydney that teach Tamil as an HSC subject. And if I knew any Italian, I would try to go beyond just “Buongiorno” when I walk past Adrian’s desk every morning. In other words, I am humbly offering myself as one of a dwindling number of individuals in Sydney who can at least exchange two words with him in his mother tongue. Considering that I speak and write English 99.9% of my physical time at the office, I do not think that is too much to oblige, in a country that ‘embraces difference’.

An Australian friend of mine (whom I will refrain from identifying here, as he has been a good colleague, and I respect his right to voice his opinions) voiced his support for the afore-mentioned article, saying, “We need to keep Australia as Australia, not a satellite country for some other culture.” I can understand the spirit behind his statement. But here, I would ask: In that case, are you against Sydney’s Chinatown on Dixon Street, the Vietnamese enclave in Hurstville, or the Italian Forum on Norton Street in the suburb of Leichhardt – the very same ‘satellite’ communities that have provided Sydney with the rich concentrations of their respective cultures and their renewal and perpetuation?

Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that migrants should not assimilate into the mainstream culture, and speak fluently the official language(s) of their country of adoption. When I am in Malaysia, I cringe when I see the younger generation unable to string a proper sentence in Malay, and I feel exactly the same way when long-staying migrants cannot speak proper English in Australia. If there are nine Chinese and one non-Chinese in a group, and the nine start going off in Chinese, I would be the first to tell them to switch to English, for the benefit of the one. I do not deliberately use a foreign language as a barrier. But what I am saying is, we must recognise the differences and, more importantly, the necessary trade-off’s between promoting assimilation and perpetuating multiculturalism. Like any running machinery, maintenance is required. And if you are not prepared to allow maintenance, then do not expect this multicultural machine to last very long.

If a country wants to claim to be ‘multicultural’, then it must recognise the balance between expecting the migrant communities to assimilate, and allowing for perpetuation and renewal of these cultures. Otherwise, it is about as superficial as eating Chinese takeaways on Friday nights and, on that basis, saying “See? I eat sweet-and-sour pork like Ricky Chan over there, so I embrace multiculturalism.” Well, let me tell you that in two generations’ time, without cultural renewal, that yellow-skinned beady-eyed chap who is selling you your chop-suey in a box may not even be able to tell you how to say ‘rice’ in his native Chinese.

Note:

The readers will, no doubt, notice the heavy reference to Asian cultures in general, and Chinese culture in particular. This is in no way meant to downplay the equal validity and significance of the points I have raised, in regards to any other migrant culture. The prominent use of Asian cultures as examples was only on the basis of the author’s relative familiarity with them, as is my bias towards the linguistic aspects of multiculturalism. And by the way, I still think Australia is a great place to live.