I’d like to ask what is clearly a sensitive question. Do the French in France and the Germans in Germany have a right to their cultures? And to what lengths may they justifiably go to preserve them?
Even as staunch a defender of immigration and refugees as Francis has recently made statements implying that they do, warning that countries should accept no more immigrants or refugees than they can assimilate into their societies successfully. And that immigrants have a responsibility to adopt the languages, laws, and customs of their new countries. I think that Francis is probably on shaky ground with respect to populations that don’t distinguish between their religions and their languages, laws, and customs.
If they do, how large an immigrant population is the limit before there is social upheaval? I think that the evidence suggests around 15%.
Now an even more sensitive question. Do the people of the United States have such a right? While I think from a practical standpoint we should limit immigration to just about our present level, I think it’s at least arguable that we do not. Our society is significantly more syncretistic than that of France or Germany.
When I say “it’s at least arguable” I mean that I think there are legitimate arguments on both sides and I haven’t completely made up my mind. As suggested above I think we have reached our practical limit. As evidence I’d produce the Somalis who, a quarter century after their immigration here still have 25% unemployment. There are costs of assimilation both to host countries and immigrants that rise depending upon the degree of similarity between the new immigrants and the pre-existing populations of the host countries.
So, for example, Germany could probably accept all of the Austrian immigrants who cared to move there without grave difficulty.
Do the Germans have a right to their culture? Seriously? Can’t have Jews mucking up good, proud German culture, can we?
You do understand that traditional German culture can coexist with other cultures, and did for centuries? Indeed, German culture, French culture, American culture, are the end-products of cultural mingling.
Your answer then is an angry “No”. As I said in my post, I think that’s a reasonable position. I’m not sure that your implication that you can’t maintain your culture without racialist genocide is less defensible.
Dave Schuler: I’m not sure that your implication that you can’t maintain your culture without racialist genocide is less defensible.
That’s precisely contrary to our position. German culture can coexist with other cultures, and did for centuries.
Is this assimilation?
http://www.vosizneias.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/wilkj1.jpg
Or this?
http://amishbuggyrides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/big-amish-family.jpg
Are people required to dress and act a certain way to be considered American? Or does American culture embrace diversity? And this is as much true of French and German culture as American culture. The French aren’t actually a uniform ethnicity. Never have been.
Comment stuck in moderation (two link max?).
Godwin’s law broken with the first comment; pretty rare around here.
PD Shaw: Godwin’s law broken with the first comment; pretty rare around here.
Godwin’s Law does not apply when the topic is the purity of German culture, as in “Do the … Germans in Germany have a right to their culture?” The question then is what is German culture if not the sum total of all the disparate cultures of which it is comprised.
Dave Schuler: immigrants have a responsibility to adopt the languages, laws, and customs of their new countries
http://www.vosizneias.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/wilkj1.jpg
More particularly, as in “Do the … Germans in Germany have a right to their culture? And to what lengths may they justifiably go to preserve them?”
Both of your examples illustrate my skepticism that the notion of a right to one’s culture extending to the United States. I think the Hasidic Jews in New York are a somewhat better example than the Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch.
Almost all of the Hasidic Jews in the United States speak English as their primary language, acknowledge the primacy of the common legal system, and don’t demand their own legal system. That’s even been true when they’ve established their own geographically distinct communities.
Dave’s last comment seems the crux of it to me. Assimilation seems less important than an ability to practice different cultural mores without asking for special treatment under the law.
I would add though, and i think Dave has stated a similar opinion previously (correct me if wrong) that there is value in the host country promoting some social cohesion, for example public education emphasizing some shared national values.
Dave Schuler: Both of your examples illustrate my skepticism that the notion of a right to one’s culture extending to the United States.
Are you saying you reject the right of Hasidic Jews and the Pennsylvania Amish from living their lives as they see fit (within the confines of secular U.S. law)?
Dave Schuler: Almost all of the Hasidic Jews in the United States speak English as their primary language
Many Hasidic Jews still speak Yiddish as their primary language. Their command of English came, of course, a generation or so after immigration.
No, I’m saying that the United States is different from ethnic states like Germany or France (real or imagined) and that we can tolerate considerable diversity.
BTW, there are about 100,000-150,000 Hasidic Jews in the United States and about a quarter million Amish. Most of today’s Hasidim are American-born and Yiddish is dying out among them as is German among the Amish.
Dave Schuler: I’m saying that the United States is different from ethnic states like Germany or France (real or imagined) and that we can tolerate considerable diversity.
Do you mean intolerance among some people becomes untenable, Ã la
Neo-Nazismright-wing reaction? France, by the way, has a long history as a refuge for immigrants, one of the strengths of their culture.Dave Schuler: BTW, there are about 100,000-150,000 Hasidic Jews in the United States … Most of today’s Hasidim are American-born and Yiddish is dying out
There are about 150,000 speakers of Yiddish in the U.S. Guess whom they are? The point about assimilation is more than about language, though.
150,000 speakers of Yiddish in the U.S. (as the primary at-home language)
It also has a long history of repressing minority languages and cultures and supporting an official unified French culture. France is presently having a serious problem in assimilating the North Africans that have moved to France. You only need to pass through the banlieues that surround its large cities to see the problem.
Most of France’s “immigrants” are actually people from the DOM-TOM—départements et territoires d’outre-mer or formerly so. They aren’t immigrants any more than Puerto Ricans who move to the mainland U. S. are.
I wonder what your authority is for such broad pronouncements? Are you German or French? Have you ever lived in Germany or France? Visited there?
I’m more familiar with France, which has long tried to use state power to protect what it sees as its culture. This is only a few years old, but the French fight to keep its culture intact goes back to at least the first time I visited there in the mid-1980’s. On that first visit I stayed with an Algerian family in the outskirts of Paris who had a peculiar view of Americans – they offered to take us down to the Bois de Boulogne so we could have sex with a transvestite “both ways.” I guess they were trying to be good hosts and assumed decadent Americans were into such things.
Anyway, nations are political communities and all political communities will exclude outsiders to some extent. Complaining about it is kind of pointless. All countries have norms which outsiders must adhere to if they want to live peaceably within a society and all have other requirements for full membership. The communities call “France” and “Germany” are no different but they are still two of the most liberal countries on the planet when it comes to coexistence. German notions of cultural superiority are nothing compared what is common in Asia.
Dave Schuler: France is presently having a serious problem in assimilating the North Africans that have moved to France. You only need to pass through the banlieues that surround its large cities to see the problem.
The U.S. is presently having a serious problem assimilating
GermansSouthern EuropeansJewsIrishChineseEastern Europeanssouthern BlacksJapanesePuerto RicansMuslims. You have only to pass throughChinatownHarlemSpanish HarlemLittle Italy to see the problem.https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/39/34/e9/3934e93632f01001e5ea7480d7c7e637.jpg
More particularly, strong cultures assimilate other cultures whether they want to or not, whether they are wanted or not. That’s why a Chinese kid in Beijing is seen wearing a Iâ¤NY baseball cap, why a Maasai herder uses his smart phone to check commodity prices in Nairobi, and why KFC is the #1 Christmas poultry in Japan.
I think the French are at an interesting crossroads. I recently finished Robert and Isabella Tombs’ book, That Sweet Enemy: Britain and France: The History of a Love-Hate Relationship. Robert is British and Isabella French, and they provide a 400 year tour of how these countries see themselves through the other’s eyes. These are observations largely from that book:
French self-identity is rooted in the Enlightenment, and the sense that its prominent role therein gives France its meaning and a leadership role to play internationally. This places religion in an awkward space, and to some extent the Catholic Church at times simply benefited from the view that Protestantism was worse. More broadly, some philosophers placed Catholicism within the framework of the Classical (Latin) world that formed an important part of the Enlightenment. There is a seat at the table for Augustine, but not someone wearing a burka. What is the reason for the burka? What does it mean? Why don’t your mean wear one?
The French do not claim exclusive rights to the Enlightenment, but just first position and leadership within its legacy, and it sees itself as sharing common cultural assumptions with other Western European countries, but not so much Northern or Eastern Europe. Keeping the UK out of the European project was important to France and its goals of furthering cultural and economic protectionism within the European project. If the UK joined, then free trade would erode French institutions and the UK would encourage more countries to join at which point the European members would lack cultural cohesion for federation.
This all came to a head with the 2005 Referendum where France, having been unable to keep the UK out, and seeing many of its predictions come to pass, voted against the EU Constitution. The center of the opposition was on the left and based on economic insecurity symbolized by the emergence of the Polish plumber, and the fear that the EU had adopted a too-foreign Anglo-Saxon model.
What the French public would prefer is a more democratic EU, along social-welfare lines common in Western Europe. The 2005 referendum jeopardized France’s “natural” position as leader of the European project, to which French elites responded by seeking to strengthen the Union incrementally through bureaucracy. But its still left with the mess Britain left it, and the EU is no more popular in France any more.
Also, the French are not hostile to immigration from the “French abroad,” Francophiles from countries which France has engaged in its civilizing mission (a mission that can be traced back at least to the Napoleonic Code) to spread the benefits of the Enlightenment. But more and more, there are not French people arriving, i.e. people who spoke French and enjoyed some form of French education in a Francophone country, but regular people who happened to live in a country where the elites spoke and engaged with French language and culture.
There are now more British living in France than at any time, attracted to rural areas with low housing costs that resemble old England. The French complain that they don’t learn the language and don’t join the local community organizations. They note that the British used to integrate and show a desire to belong, and now they just work on their houses and drive up property prices until only the British can afford to buy. One quipped that when Dordogne becomes 80% British, it won’t quite be Dordogne any more.
As you say, France is at an interesting crossroads. Algerians or people from French Saharan Africa are citizens from birth; Moroccans are not. They may become citizens easily enough with the relatively recent reforms. Many aren’t aware that they should or don’t bother.
If you read the French newspapers, there are plenty of complaints from both sides about assimilation.