Multiculturalism

11 Pages 2755 Words

Human beings live in what for them is a Multicultural world, in which they are aware of different sets of others to whom different cultural attributions must be made, and of different cultures of which they are aware and expected to operate. W.H. Woodenough.

The term Multiculturalism has recently come into usage to describe a society characterized by a diversity of cultures. Religion, language, customs, traditions, and values are some of the components of a culture, but more importantly culture is the lens through which one perceives and interprets the world. When shared culture forms the basis for a "sense of peoplehood", based on consciousness of a common past, we can speak of a group possessing an Ethnicity. Ethnicity is not transmitted genetically from generation to generation; nor is it unchanging over time. Rather ethnicity is invented or constructed in response to particular historical circumstances and changes as circumstances change. In this essay, ethnicity will be used to identify groups or communities that are differentiated by religious, racial, or cultural characteristics and that possess a sense of people-hood. The "Multicultural America" is the product of the mingling of many different peoples over the hundred years in what is now the United States. Cultural diversity was characteristic of this continent prior to the coming of European colonists and African slaves. The indigenous inhabitants of North America who numbered an estimated 4.5 million in 1500 were divided into hundreds of tribes with distinctive cultures, Languages, and religions. Although the numbers of "Indians" as they were named by Europeans, declined precipitously through the nineteenth century, their population has rebounded in the twentieth century. Both as members of their particular tribes (a form of ethnicity), Navajo, Ojibwa, Choctaw, etc., and as American Indians (a form of panethnicity), they are very much a part of today's cultural and ethnic...