Posted by zazenducke on February 14, 2008, at 18:52:21
In reply to Re: please be civil » Dr. Bob, posted by Jay_Bravest_Face on February 14, 2008, at 1:54:17
As a philosophy, multiculturalism began as part of the pragmatism movement at the end of the nineteenth century in Britain and in the United States, then as political and cultural pluralism at the turn of the twentieth. It was partly in response to a new wave of European imperialism in sub-Saharan Africa and the massive immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans to the United States and Latin America. Philosophers, psychologists and historians and early sociologists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, George Santayana, Horace Kallen, John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke developed concepts of cultural pluralism, from which emerged what we understand today as multiculturalism. In Pluralistic Universe (1909), William James espoused the idea of a "plural society." James saw pluralism as "crucial to the formation of philosophical and social humanism to help build a better, more egalitarian society.[1]
In the Western English-speaking countries, multiculturalism as an official national policy started in Canada in 1971
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism
Jay I don't believe it is quite accurate to say Canada invented multiculturalism, at least according to the Wiki article above. But Canada is certainly to be commended for embracing the philosophy originated by the British and Americans and making it national policy :)Ideas are our best exports.
> Plus, I am Canadian. We invennted, and embrace multi-culturalism. :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Jay
>
poster:zazenducke
thread:812590
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20080204/msgs/812757.html