Multiculturalism Tested

For John, BLUF:  Culture is important and to lose part of one's culture may mean a move in a positive direction, or in a negative direction.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Merkel says German multiculturalism has failed

From Reuters, by Reporter Sabine Siebold, 16 October 2019.

Here is the lede plus two:

Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural society has “utterly failed,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam polarizing her conservative camp.

Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.

“This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, south of Berlin.

The Germans, between 1944 and 1950, integrated millions of folks who were ethnic Germans or German Passport holders who had previously lived East of the Oder River and were expelled by Soviet (Russian) forces as the front line moved West.  But, while they have done a fair job of integrating Communist East Germany and Capitalist West Germany, but can't integrate immigrants welcomed as Guest Workers (Gastarbeiter) in the 1950s, '60s and early '70s.

This segregation problem seems to exist everywhere, from the US to China.  Professor Joshua M Epstein, when at Brookings institution, working with computer models, came to the conclusion that segregation, not integration, was typical.  That is, entities prefer to "live" close to others similar to themselves, leading to some degree of self-segregating.

The United States does a fairly good job at multiculturalism, but not perfect.  To what extent does multiculturalism mean that the native culture must give way to the newly arriving culture?  And why did the immigrants leave their homeland and what good did they see in the welcoming culture, and would they not which to preserve this culture to which they are moving?  The crude way of asking the question is if one is emigrating to find a better life in a new Homelife, to what extent do the immigrants wish to drag their old culture with them?

Do we have some way of sorting the good from the bad?  Salsa is good, as is spaghetti.  What about an Avocado Cartel?  Is folks not voting in local elections, for cultural reasons, a social good or the opposite?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff