A pretty strong statement.

[mcrit]

Merkel says Germany's multicultural society failed.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20 ... re-101017/

[Siddley Hawker]

Trudeaupia is doomed?? Say it ain't so!!!

[mcrit]

Trudeaupia is doomed?? Say it ain't so!!!

It sure is in Germany.

[. ._]

Seems to me there was some other German leader that thought the same thing.

[KAG]

as with most things in life, some people just don't play well with others.

[Nark]

In the spirit of this article:

Define a Canadian.

[Rowdy]

In the spirit of this article:

Define a Canadian.

Polite, politically correct, push over.

Hey lookie.. alliteration!

[JakeYYZ]

Seems to me there was some other German leader that thought the same thing.

Comrade ISTP!...I gotta call bullshit...
and btw you win the Godwin's law prize for today.
I don't think it's the French, the Spanish, the Finns, that are in their "non traditional areas" nor the Poles or Latvians ect... there's a real big elephant in the room that some will go the distance to avoid mentioning his name, or offending him, or especially drawing his picture.
Merkel and Sarkozy have finally figured this out. 'Too bad it took so long. The lesson to take away from this is not the one the British editors put on the Merkel story. It is not 'German Multiculturalism Has Failed,' it is that Multiculturalism as a concept has failed, and not just in Germany, but everywhere.

[KAG]

I don't even think it's multi culturalism that's failed, I think it's Islam in general in it's radical form that is preventing us getting along. Actually I'll call out any religion in it's strictest form as well. Believe what you want, worship what you want, convert or die is what I have a problem with.

[North Shore]

So where is it written that multiculturalism = Islam? I'll agree that, at present, radical Islam seems to be having some difficulties with integrating their religion with the 21st Century. But to extend from there to the position that multicult is a failure is a bit of a leap, IMHO - especially in a country like Canada, which was built upon immigration...

[moocow]

Islam get blame for a lot of things because it's sticking out like a sore thumb. Her base argument is lack of integration, which is prevalent in many Western societies. Immigrants tend to cluster together for mutual support in a new country. However, this cause people not to socialize or integrate since the cluster can now provide jobs dealing in their own culture and language. The older immigrants would tend to have a harder time integrating due to language and ingrained believes. That being said, I have personally experienced such resistant while growing up. On top of that you get people that immigrate but absolutely despise the country they are moving to. They solely believe they should stick together due to perceived and actual discrimination.

So what's the solution? No idea. While kids tend to integrate easier, I knew a girl since Grade 4 and by Grade 8 she's still in ESL while I was out already. All her friends are Chinese while I have a good mix of White, Yellow, and Brown. I personally made the decision to learn the language and interact because even at age 10, I knew I have to live in Canada and you can't really survive just by sticking to your own ethnic group.

*EDIT: for those think that learning a language is easy, please learn a not Latin derived language and see how hard it is. Also, according to linguistic theory, learning a language gets more difficult with age because to brain has already set all the switches.

[bmc]

I am an imigrant. I am a white, anglo saxon Canadian of Irish background. My great great grandfather came to Canada from Ireland via England. I am an immigrant in Europe. I live there now, and here the same issues about failure to integrate. My local friends say that integration is the big issue. So when I point out that I too am an immigrant, I ask what concrete steps I have to take to integrate. I shop at the local merchants. I speak the local language. I attend local cultural events. Should I knock on my neighbors door, introduce myself and tell them I want to integrate?

I then ask, what efforts are being made to help immigrants like me to integrate. There are none. It is all up to me to do this, against a quiet atmosphere of not liking foreigners. Sound familiar?

[GoinNowhereFast]

I don't even think it's multi culturalism that's failed, I think it's Islam in general in it's radical form that is preventing us getting along. Actually I'll call out any religion in it's strictest form as well. Believe what you want, worship what you want, convert or die is what I have a problem with.

Well said.
In general, society will accept a different culture, but that culture has to accept society. Any form of extremism will not accept anything different than their own views and that causes the rift.

I have no problems with Islam, Islam extremists have a problem with me. I have a problem with you if you are going to kill me because I don't face west and pray five times a day.

[North Shore]

Just to spook the mods (who, we all know, are watching this with fingers hovering 2/1000ths above the delete key...)

Q: People who annoy you?
A: N-ggers

(if you don't get the joke, watch this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J5UXwHD ... re=related)

[2R]

How ironic: the intolerant extremists are now no longer to be tolerated by one of the most liberal tolerant governments in Europe.

[Sasquash]

Society will accept a different culture, but that culture has to accept society

Here's my 2 cents. GoingNowhereFast has got it pretty well bang on. In my travel across this great country of ours, Newfoundland to British Columbia, the one that seems constant when you really listen to people talking about immigrant if just that quote. You are an immigrant, willingly coming to Canada and you should be prepared to accept our society. That means you learn one of our languages and become a productive member of society. If you feel that you don’t have to change one iota, but rather Canada has to change to fully accommodate you, then you’re in the wrong country. Go back where you came from, you’ll be much happier.

I believe the Prime Minister of New Zealand gave a speech not to long ago about that very topic.

[bmc]

What percentage of immigrants want to assimilate? How willing are Canadians to see them assimilate? What will be the defining moment when Canadians will consider them equal Canadians?

[Moose47]

The social engineering experiment known as Multiculturalism has been a dismal failure. All it has done is create a series of ethnic ghettos across this country. Thanks to Comrade Trudeau too before I forget for his dreadful legacy known as the Charter of Silly Arguments
And let's do away with this hyphenated Canadian bullshit too. Why should Canada be preceded by the country of your origin? What is wrong with just being a Canadian?

[bmc]

Canada has always been a nation of immigrants. When did multiculturalism fail? In the late 40's after the war when waves of Europeans came? In the late 1800's when my great great showed up?

What's you ancestry? It came from somewhere, right?

When did it fail?

And what constitutes failure?

[JakeYYZ]

A full 75 percent of those surveyed believe that Canada is currently accepting too many immigrants, and 40 percent think that immigrants from some countries “make a bigger and better contribution to Canada than others.” The breakdown is disturbing: almost 80 percent claim that European immigrants make a positive contribution, the number falling to 59 percent for Asians, 45 percent for East Indians, and plummeting to 33 percent for those hailing from the Caribbean.
In his landmark investigation “The Politics of Recognition” philosopher Charles Taylor points out that equal treatment often requires treating people with a “different blindness;” that is, “the other” must be respected in his or her historical and cultural fullness. But, when asked what the focus of multicultural policy should be, by a ratio of 3.5:1 Canadians say immigrants should “integrate and become part of the Canadian culture,” rather than “maintain their [own] identity.” To some extent, it seems that Canadians, like their brethren in Europe, Australia, and elsewhere, have had their fill of multiculturalism, hyphenated citizenship, and the like.
While visitors often marvel at the multicultural mix evident on our city streets, there is also growing evidence that Canada’s fabled mosaic is actually fracturing into community self-segregation by ethnic group. In 1981, Statistics Canada identified three “ethnic enclaves” where more than 30 percent of a particular community consisted of a single visible minority group. According to “Visible Minority Neighbourhoods in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal,” a 2001 StatsCan report, that number had exploded to 254 ethnic enclaves. To be sure, not all of these communities are poor – Richmond, British Columbia and Markham, Ontario, whose Asian populations top 50 percent, are middle to upper-middle class areas – but an alarming number of them consist of people whose incomes fall far below the Canadian average. Despite good efforts and well-intentioned policies, poverty and disenfranchisement in Canada is increasingly taking on racial overtones.

Link: http://allangregg.com/?p=43
People preferring their own kind and disliking outsiders? The horrors!

I mean, gee, I don't know, hasn't this been going on since the BEGINNING of the human history? We're a tribal species.

-What's unhealthy is to force people of radically different backgrounds together.
-What's unhealthy is to deny people their natural preferences for their own kind and make them labor under the illusion that we're all the same.

Wasn't there that one study that revealed that homogenous white cities were the least stressful, while diverse cities such as L.A. were the most stressful?

(of course, the study didn't put it in racial terms, but I could easily draw that conclusion)

Prejudice and tribalism aren't problems.

Diversity is.
We can correct this be revamping the immigration system. The first step is to decrease immigration targets to what Canada really needs and not the needs of the immigration industry. While doing this Canada needs to give special consideration to those who best fit into Canadian society and yes, this does mean favouring European immigration.

[GoinNowhereFast]

How willing are Canadians to see them assimilate? What will be the defining moment when Canadians will consider them equal Canadians?

I want everybody who immigrates to Canada to become a functioning member of society. I consider somebody a Canadian when they get their citizenship, can speak English and/or French fluently, are a functioning member of society, and are tolerant of the other cultures.

[mcrit]

BMC, in the 40s and 50s immigration policy was much different. New immigrants were told where they would live and there was a great deal of pressure to assimilate (learn the language and accept the cultural norms). That changed with multi-culturalism. The idea behind MC is that everyone keeps the culture of their ancestory. It encourages clannishness. It leads to immigrants thinking of themselves as 'just living' in Canada as opposed to thinking of themselves as Canadians. This works as long as everybody is fed and happy, but the instant you put the society under stress it will fracture right along ethnic lines. Rawanda and the former Yugoslavia are good examples.

[bmc]

MCRIT....fully agree with you. The issue I struggle with when I come back to visit Canada (as in last week), is the number of visible minorities I saw in Mointreal and Ottawa. It bothered me because it made me feel uncomfortable seeing so many non-white Canadian's. The part part that bothered me was not them, but that I had noticed. The whole time I was growing up in Montreal, the place was swimmming with European immigrants and I never took notice. We all looked the same. It is the "visible" part of immigration that stands out and I often question if this isn't driving the sentiment of failed MC. If immigrants all looked like they did way back when, would we be uncomfortable with it?

The "visible" issue works on both sides. My daughter lived in Uganda for a while. It took her a while to get used to everyone looking at her because she was white.

I have lived in a couple of countries and each one blames immigrants for their problems. "Low school ratings are because immigrants drive scores down". "Immigrants come here to go on welfare and take advantage of the social safety net." "They don't integrate". You can here this the world over. It's human nature.

The downside in all of this is a growing tension towards immigrants. We see it here in Switzerland. Certainly know it's a burning issue in France and Germany. And of course, it's simmering in Canada and the USA.

I hate saying this, but opening your doors to outsiders, allows people to bring what they consider acceptable behaviour into your society. I think Canada has been too lenient on immigration and it is causing problems. Even if it's simply by virutue of mistrust and resentment felt by other Canadians, whether based on facts or otherwise.

As for immigrants hanging out with their kind, I am guilty as charged. All of our closest friends are Canadians and Americans. We all tend to be drawn to people that understand us and share our common values.

[North Shore]

BMC, in the 40s and 50s immigration policy was much different. New immigrants were told where they would live and there was a great deal of pressure to assimilate (learn the language and accept the cultural norms). That changed with multi-culturalism. The idea behind MC is that everyone keeps the culture of their ancestory. It encourages clannishness. It leads to immigrants thinking of themselves as 'just living' in Canada as opposed to thinking of themselves as Canadians. This works as long as everybody is fed and happy, but the instant you put the society under stress it will fracture right along ethnic lines. Rawanda and the former Yugoslavia are good examples.

A slight correction, Mcrit: Rwanda split along ethnic lines due (in part) to colonial legacies; Yugoslavia split along religious lines...

[canwhitewolf]

multiculturalism as a policy for any country isnt a good thing
it doesnt work well