How Exceptional is New York Migration and Multiculturalism in the Empire City (Blackboard) - Essay Example

Against the background of a horrible disaster of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on London and Madrid and blazing French cities in autumn of 2005, an increasing number of people, some with bitterness and some with malice, says that the dialogue of cultures needs to be stopped, otherwise civilization will just die. In the prism of this model it’s interesting to watch the events happening now on the site of the destroyed World Trade Center building in Lower Manhattan, where the authorities plans to build a mosque.

America truly is a nation of immigrants. Today, manifestations of multiculturalism are often seen as indications of continuous globalization. Americans, who proclaimed themselves a nation defined by adherence to the principles of freedom and equality, feel that immigration brings cultural diversity and contributes to their progress. Thus, America rejected the European concept that any society and community has the right to determine the conditions under which they are ready to accept new immigrants and the right to give preference to their own cultural traditions, values ??and stereotypes.

The problem of immigration is so important today precisely because it concluded much more far-reaching questions of the relationship of variability and succession- the question of to what extent is it permissible to neglect one in favor of another. By the end of 2000 the population in 7 out of 12 largest agglomerations - New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, counted less than a half of Caucasians (30.8-49.6%). New challenges have appeared due to alienation of immigrants from other people: about 27% of immigrants in the U.S. do not know the English language, for example.

So, the tendency to form autonomous ethnic communities, particularly important in such cities like New York and Los Angeles, is quite understandable. The cities as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, cities proud of their multiracialism, have the greatest division across racial groups: each group lives in a “ghetto.” And as a number of Latin American and Asian immigrants in New York, California and New Jersey is growing, a growing number of Caucasians is migrating from these states in the direction of the so-called New Sun Belt - the south-western, not very densely populated, states.

Culture, in which immigrants assimilate, should have at least minimal respect among them and among all those who solve for themselves the problem of national identity. And what is the American culture today? Vulgarization. The sociologist Charles Murray in his article Prole Models: America’s elite take their cues from the underclass, uses the term, which was introduced by Arnold Toynbee for the first time, “proletarianization of the dominant minority”. Toynbee once wrote about the tendency of cultural elites in Europe to adopt and assimilate the elements of the mass, proletarian culture- trends, which leads to degradation of the whole culture.

Murray (and not only he) believes that this is what is happening now in America with a special intensity. That’s why immigrants of many nations, especially Arabs and Asians, do not even try to assimilate American culture and live unsociably. The concept and policy of the so-called Melting Pot, called to build a homogenous nation, was successful to some extend but failed in general (as immigration to America of many nations