MY PERSONAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT MULTICULTURALISM

I see multiculturalism primarily as an unacceptable ideology of cultural relativism, which would lead to acceptance of barbaric practices, including those brought to the Western World by immigrants. I remember infanticide, torture, slavery, oppression of women, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, gangs, female circumcision, discrimination by immigrants, suttee, and the death penalty. Cliteur compares multiculturalism to the moral acceptance of Auschwitz, Stalin, Pol Pot and the Ku Klux Klan.
The intellectual rejection of multiculturalism was accompanied by a political transformation, which led to the abandonment of official multiculturalism.
The historical event of multiculturalism brings with it many complicated conceptual problems, causing a rich debate over what multiculturalism is or should mean.
Most controversial in this regard is the movement known as "Afrocentrism," which in various versions seeks to document the centrality of African cultural traditions to the foundation of American and Western history, and to celebrate that African tradition so as to increase the self-esteem and educational success of African-American students. Critics of Afrocentrism dispute both its intellectual claims the scholarship and historical conclusions it advances and its educational claims specially regarding the effect of an ethnically-centered curriculum on the academic achievement of students.

TWO OPINIONS I ESPECIALLY LIKED ABOUT MULTICULTURALISM

PROFESSOR SIR BERNARD CRICK
“I see no incompatibility between multiculturalism and Britishness. Britishness must be part of multiculturalism.
In the report I chaired advocating language and citizenship education for immigrants, The New and the Old (2003), we said:
"Who are we British? For a long time the UK has been a multicultural state composed of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and also a multicultural society... made up of a diverse range of cultures and identities, and one that emphasises the need for a continuous process of mutual engagement and learning about each other with respect, understanding and tolerance."
In other words, dual identities have been common, even before large scale immigration.
We further wrote: "To be British means that we respect the laws, the parliamentary and democratic political structures, traditional values of mutual tolerance, respect for equal rights..."
But Britishness does not mean a single culture. Integration is the co-existence of communities and unimpeded movement between them, it is not assimilation. Britishness is a strong concept but not all embracing.”


RUTH LEA
Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a centre-right think tank


“There are two ways in which people interpret multiculturalism.
The first one is the more common way and that is every culture has the right to exist and there is no over-arching thread that holds them together.
That is the multiculturalism we think is so destructive because there's no thread to hold society together. It is that multiculturalism that Trevor Phillips has condemned and, of course, we are totally supportive.
There is another way to define multiculturalism which I would call diversity where people have their own cultural beliefs and they happily coexist - but there is a common thread of Britishness or whatever you want to call it to hold society together.
And that is clearly what I would support because you do accept that people have different cultures and you accept them. It a positive acceptance not a negative tolerance.”

MERCEDES C 63 AMG

A car that I absolutely love is Mercedes C 63 AMG (limousine). Mercedes-Benz has a small size sedan, the class C limousine and the AMG enterprises, which is a subsidiary of the Mercedes-Benz, have their own version, a much more powerful version.
The C 63 AMG is reportedly the first AMG Mercedes designed from the ground up for performance, as compared to previous AMG cars which essentially featured "bolt on" performance modifications. The C 63 has a revised front end architecture that is taken from the CLK 63 AMG Black series. The revised 7-speed automatic transmission now has three shift modes - Comfort, Sport and Manual - with the last one running with the converter locked allowing the driver to hold the engine at the rev limit. The ESP can now be completely turned off, interfering only under heavy braking. The car also has the quickest, most responsive steering of any Mercedes to date. Car and Driver tested the car in their December 2007 issue and got a 0-60 mph time of 3.9 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 12.3 seconds at 116 mph (187 km/h).[15] This made the C 63 the fastest 4-door production sedan in the world at its debut.