APRIL 26th found the Oxford Union debating the motion that “This House regrets the founding of the United States of America”. A silly motion supported by unrepresentative people: the proponents were to include a member of the Communist Party and a member of the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir. But anti-Americans do not possess a monopoly on idiocy. You don't have to spend much time with American conservatives to find them discussing the coming collapse of Europe, sometimes with glee. One of the opponents of the Oxford motion, Jonah Goldberg, did much to popularise “The Simpsons'” labelling of the French as “cheese-eating surrender-monkeys” in the run-up to the Iraq war.
America's anti-Europeans have three big complaints about the Old Continent. The first is that Europe is committing demographic and economic suicide: the European birth rate is well below replacement level, and the economy is hog-tied by regulations and overburdened by welfare commitments. The second is that, unlike America, Europe is a post-Christian society. George Weigel, a Catholic conservative and loving biographer of Pope John Paul II, deftly links Europe's “demographic suicide” with its collapse of faith in his “The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics without God”, a theo-conservative bible on what has gone wrong with Europe.
The third complaint is that Muslims are filling Europe's demographic and spiritual void. Bernard Lewis, the White House's favourite Islamic scholar, thinks that Europe will turn Muslim by the end of the century, becoming part of the Arab West. Bruce Bawer, a gay American who fled his country to escape from “the foolishness of fundamentalism”, found Islamists far more frightening than Christian conservatives.
Anti-Europeans think these kinds of arguments have big implications for American diplomacy. They suggest, at the very least, that Europe will never be a vigorous ally against Islamic extremism. It is too diffident about its own traditions, too over-burdened by welfare commitments, too frightened of its Muslim populations. And it might even suggest something more than that. Tony Blankley, a journalist who once worked for Newt Gingrich, has decided that “the threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s.”
How much does this matter, though? It is tempting to dismiss it as nothing more than a mirror image of anti-Americanism—advanced by malcontents, fuelled by anger and based on prejudice. Europe-bashing is a passion of the right and the right is hardly in the political ascendant these days. The argument is based on a familiar sleight of hand: the bunching of worst-case scenarios. Do Europe's empty churches really mean that Europeans have abandoned their faith? Three-quarters of Europeans still claim to be Christians, and European sociologists talk of “believing without belonging”. Are European Muslims really poised to take over Europe? They constitute only 4% of the population and come from very diverse backgrounds. Have European countries really lost the will to assimilate newcomers? Several countries have introduced citizenship tests and ceremonies that are modelled on the American variety.
But anti-Europeanism is influential nonetheless. The end of the cold war has removed the glue that held the Western alliance together. The Iraq war has left a legacy of bitterness that extends beyond the Bushies. And the anti-Europeans have an important resource on their side: their disproportionate interest in matters European and their disproportionate willingness to publish books on them. American anti-Europeans have produced a steady stream of books with titles like “America Alone”, “Our Oldest Enemy”, “While Europe Slept”, “The West's Last Chance”. The foreign-policy specialists to whom one might look for a corrective are much more involved with other challenges, like the Middle East and Asia.
Let's stick together
Yet the case for learning to live with each other again is overwhelming. America and the European Union are still the world's two biggest trading entities. The Atlantic relationship has been the foundation stone of world peace from 1945 onwards. The EU, for its part, has at least as much interest in defusing Muslim terrorism as the United States, because of its large Muslim populations and proximity to Turkey and the Middle East.
And the current French election gives the lie to anti-Europeanism. France is the great Satan for American anti-Europeans—remember “freedom fries”? Yet the first round of the French presidential election went to a man who boasts of his admiration for American dynamism and popular culture. Nicolas Sarkozy is a frequent visitor to the United States and hob-nobber with American journalists and policymakers. He propounds American-sounding solutions to France's economic problems, such as tax cuts and ending the 35-hour week. His critics have dubbed him a “neoconservative with a French passport”.
The rise of Mr Sarkozy coincides with a growing determination in America to defuse global anti-Americanism. Even George Bush has tried to do this a little in his second term. But post-Bush politicians—particularly Democratic ones—will put this at the top of their priorities. Hillary Clinton has promised to make her husband an “ambassador to the world, because we have a lot of work to do to get our country back in the standing it should be”. Barack Obama, the other Democratic front-runner, stresses his ability to rebrand America, as a son of Kansas and Kenya whose father was born a Muslim. Curing global anti-Americanism primarily means repairing America's relations with the rest of the world; but it also means uprooting the anti-European weeds that have flourished in America in the past few years.
Against anti-Europeanism
Friday, April 27, 2007
Anti-Europeanism is a bad response to anti-Americanism
posted by LeBlues
9:04 AM
0 comments
The Strange Death of Multiculturalism
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
An ideology which holds that people from different cultures must live in separate communities within a country, should not take an interest in each other and must not criticise each other is both wrong and unworkable. Of course, multiculturalism’s more thoughtful advocates never imagined that a cultural community could or should substitute for a political community. They believed that so long as everyone abided by the law, it was not necessary for citizens to have a single hierarchy of values.
The ideal of multiculturalism at home was echoed with an ideology of cultural relativism abroad, especially in the 1970’s and 1980’s. This evolved stealthily into a form of moral racism which held that white Europeans deserved liberal democracy but that people of different cultures had to wait for it. African dictators might do dreadful things but somehow they did not meet with condemnation from many European intellectuals, for criticism implied cultural arrogance.
The Netherlands, where I was born, has perhaps been divided by the debate over multiculturalism more than any other country. The murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh two and a half years ago by an Islamist assassin has incited a wrenching debate about the country’s entrenched culture of tolerance and easy access for asylum-seekers.
Long before the arrival of Muslim guest workers in the 1960’s and 1970’s Dutch society was in a sense ‘multicultural’ in that it was already organised into Protestant, Catholic, liberal and socialist “pillars,” each with its own schools, hospitals, TV stations, papers and political parties. When guest workers from Morocco and Turkey became de facto immigrants, some began to champion the creation of an additional Muslim pillar.
But at the moment that multiculturalism’s advocates were making this suggestion, Dutch society was undergoing a dramatic transition. With secularization taking hold, the traditional pillars began to break down.
Moreover, fierce attacks on Muslims started to come from people who, raised in deeply religious families, had turned into radical leftists in the 1960’s and 1970’s. From defining themselves as anti-colonialists and anti-racists – champions of multiculturalism -- they have become fervent defenders of so-called Enlightenment values against Muslim orthodoxy. These people feared the comeback of religion; that the Protestant or Catholic oppressiveness they knew first-hand might be replaced by equally oppressive Muslim codes of conduct.
But their turn away from multiculturalism is not what prevented the emergence of a “Islamic” pillar in Dutch society. The main problem with this idea was that people from Turkey, Morocco, and the Arab countries, some deeply religious and some quite secular, and all with perceptible animosities towards each other, would never have agreed on what should constitute such a pillar.
In any case, it is now too late to create such a pillar. With the earlier pillars having collapsed, the emergence of a new one would bring about a situation where an increasingly integrated majority would be negotiating with a minority, thus perpetuating its isolation in the process.
Whether Europeans like it or not, Muslims are part of Europe. Many will not abandon their religion, so Europeans must learn to live with them and with Islam. Of course, this will be easier if Muslims come to believe that the system also works to their benefit. Liberal democracy and Islam are reconcilable. Indonesia’s current political transition from dictatorship to democracy, although no unqualified success, shows that this is achievable.
Even if all of Europe’s Muslims were Islamists – which is a far cry from reality – they could not threaten the Continent’s sovereignty and, by the same token, its laws and Enlightenment values. Of course, there are groups to which Islamism appeals. The children of immigrants, born in Europe, sense they are not fully accepted in the country where they grew up, but neither do they feel a special bond with their parent’s native country. Islamism, besides offering them an answer to the question why they do not feel happy with the way they live, gives them a sense of their self-worth and a great cause to die for.
In the end, the only thing that can truly damage European values is Europe’s response to its non-Muslim majority. Fear of Islam and of immigrants could lead to the adoption of non-liberal laws. By defending Enlightenment values in a dogmatic way Europeans will be the ones who undermine them.
Our laws prohibiting incitement to violence and insulting people for reasons of their religion are sufficient. Further constraints on freedom of speech – such as anti-blasphemy laws or, indeed, those laws that make Holocaust denial punishable – go too far.
But this doesn’t mean that we should not weigh our words with care. We should distinguish carefully between different kinds of Islam, and not confuse violent revolutionary movements with mere religious orthodoxy. Insulting Muslims simply on the basis of their faith is foolish and counterproductive, as is the increasingly popular notion that we must make sweeping pronouncements as to the superiority of “our culture.” For such dogmatism undermines scepticism, the questioning of all views, including one’s own, which was and is the fundamental feature of the Enlightenment.
The trouble today is that Enlightenment values are sometimes used in a very dogmatic way against Muslims. They have become in fact a form of nationalism – “our values” have been set against “their values.” The reason for defending Enlightenment values is that they are based on good ideas, and not because they are “our culture.” To confuse culture and politics in this way is to fall into the same trap as the multiculturalists.
And it has serious consequences. If we antagonize Europe’s Muslims enough we will push more people into joining the Islamist revolution. We must do everything to encourage Europe’s Muslim to become assimilated in European societies. It is our only hope.
The ideal of multiculturalism at home was echoed with an ideology of cultural relativism abroad, especially in the 1970’s and 1980’s. This evolved stealthily into a form of moral racism which held that white Europeans deserved liberal democracy but that people of different cultures had to wait for it. African dictators might do dreadful things but somehow they did not meet with condemnation from many European intellectuals, for criticism implied cultural arrogance.
The Netherlands, where I was born, has perhaps been divided by the debate over multiculturalism more than any other country. The murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh two and a half years ago by an Islamist assassin has incited a wrenching debate about the country’s entrenched culture of tolerance and easy access for asylum-seekers.
Long before the arrival of Muslim guest workers in the 1960’s and 1970’s Dutch society was in a sense ‘multicultural’ in that it was already organised into Protestant, Catholic, liberal and socialist “pillars,” each with its own schools, hospitals, TV stations, papers and political parties. When guest workers from Morocco and Turkey became de facto immigrants, some began to champion the creation of an additional Muslim pillar.
But at the moment that multiculturalism’s advocates were making this suggestion, Dutch society was undergoing a dramatic transition. With secularization taking hold, the traditional pillars began to break down.
Moreover, fierce attacks on Muslims started to come from people who, raised in deeply religious families, had turned into radical leftists in the 1960’s and 1970’s. From defining themselves as anti-colonialists and anti-racists – champions of multiculturalism -- they have become fervent defenders of so-called Enlightenment values against Muslim orthodoxy. These people feared the comeback of religion; that the Protestant or Catholic oppressiveness they knew first-hand might be replaced by equally oppressive Muslim codes of conduct.
But their turn away from multiculturalism is not what prevented the emergence of a “Islamic” pillar in Dutch society. The main problem with this idea was that people from Turkey, Morocco, and the Arab countries, some deeply religious and some quite secular, and all with perceptible animosities towards each other, would never have agreed on what should constitute such a pillar.
In any case, it is now too late to create such a pillar. With the earlier pillars having collapsed, the emergence of a new one would bring about a situation where an increasingly integrated majority would be negotiating with a minority, thus perpetuating its isolation in the process.
Whether Europeans like it or not, Muslims are part of Europe. Many will not abandon their religion, so Europeans must learn to live with them and with Islam. Of course, this will be easier if Muslims come to believe that the system also works to their benefit. Liberal democracy and Islam are reconcilable. Indonesia’s current political transition from dictatorship to democracy, although no unqualified success, shows that this is achievable.
Even if all of Europe’s Muslims were Islamists – which is a far cry from reality – they could not threaten the Continent’s sovereignty and, by the same token, its laws and Enlightenment values. Of course, there are groups to which Islamism appeals. The children of immigrants, born in Europe, sense they are not fully accepted in the country where they grew up, but neither do they feel a special bond with their parent’s native country. Islamism, besides offering them an answer to the question why they do not feel happy with the way they live, gives them a sense of their self-worth and a great cause to die for.
In the end, the only thing that can truly damage European values is Europe’s response to its non-Muslim majority. Fear of Islam and of immigrants could lead to the adoption of non-liberal laws. By defending Enlightenment values in a dogmatic way Europeans will be the ones who undermine them.
Our laws prohibiting incitement to violence and insulting people for reasons of their religion are sufficient. Further constraints on freedom of speech – such as anti-blasphemy laws or, indeed, those laws that make Holocaust denial punishable – go too far.
But this doesn’t mean that we should not weigh our words with care. We should distinguish carefully between different kinds of Islam, and not confuse violent revolutionary movements with mere religious orthodoxy. Insulting Muslims simply on the basis of their faith is foolish and counterproductive, as is the increasingly popular notion that we must make sweeping pronouncements as to the superiority of “our culture.” For such dogmatism undermines scepticism, the questioning of all views, including one’s own, which was and is the fundamental feature of the Enlightenment.
The trouble today is that Enlightenment values are sometimes used in a very dogmatic way against Muslims. They have become in fact a form of nationalism – “our values” have been set against “their values.” The reason for defending Enlightenment values is that they are based on good ideas, and not because they are “our culture.” To confuse culture and politics in this way is to fall into the same trap as the multiculturalists.
And it has serious consequences. If we antagonize Europe’s Muslims enough we will push more people into joining the Islamist revolution. We must do everything to encourage Europe’s Muslim to become assimilated in European societies. It is our only hope.
posted by LeBlues
9:07 AM
0 comments
How I Learned to Treat My Bias
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
At our hospital in San Francisco not long ago, I saw my picture on the hallway message board alongside those of other doctors in a display thanking us for our service. My Asian-Indian complexion set me apart -- it's something that I am rarely conscious about in everyday life. It got me thinking: When I walk into the room, do my patients see me as a foreigner?
Then I wondered: When I walk into a room, how do I see my patients?
For the next few days I observed myself whenever I entered a hospital room to see a new patient. To my surprise, I realized that in the initial glance I viewed patients as an "elderly black man" or a "Hispanic worker" -- and all the baggage that comes with their race, gender and ethnicity. My prejudices had kicked in.
Unfortunately, the entire health system sees patients by race, gender and ethnicity, and it has a profound effect on how care is delivered.
The Institute of Medicine in its 2002 report "Unequal Treatment" cited some provocative statistics. Black patients, for example, tend to receive lower-quality care for cancer, heart disease, HIV, diabetes and other illnesses. Black men are 40 percent more likely to die of cancer than white men. These differences often persist even after accounting for age, severity of illness and delays in seeking treatment among different groups.
How can this happen in America in 2007? It's simple. Social psychology shows that stereotyping is a universal human mental function. We use social groups (race, sex and ethnicity) to understand people -- to gather or recall information about people from our minds.
The mental processing goes something like this:
When I enter the room in which a patient is waiting for me, I do four things.
First, in the seconds before our initial greeting, I automatically and often unconsciously activate my stereotype. Thus, I assume a young Hispanic man is likely to be an uninsured construction worker.
Second, even though I believe that I do not judge people based on stereotypes, the data show it is very likely that I do. When I see an elderly black woman I am more likely to ask her about church as a support structure than I am to ask a white man the same question because I assume she is church-going.
Third, after the encounter, my stereotyping affects how I recall and process information. A white man complaining of pain receives more attention than a Hispanic woman with the same complaint because I stereotype white men as being more stoic.
(Remember that stereotyping is different from medical profiling based on disease epidemiology. A young black woman with anemia is more likely to have sickle cell disease than an elderly white man is, based on biology and racial background.)
Fourth, my stereotypes probably guide my expectations and handling of the patient, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy. An elderly black man is unlikely to understand the details of a diagnosis, I assume, so I spend less time explaining his disease and its consequences. Ultimately, such a patient is less informed about his illness.
The most glaring result of black-white inequality in health care was found in a 2005 study issued by former surgeon general David Satcher. He estimated that closing the black-white mortality gap would eliminate more than 83,000 deaths per year among African Americans.
It is painful to write these things. As health-care workers we try to be unbiased in our delivery of care.
Once I became aware of how I thought when I encountered patients, I was able to start changing. Though I initially saw a patient as an elderly black woman, my forced reflection helped reduce the stereotype. As our conversation developed, the stereotype melted away. I began to see my patient rather than his or her social group.
I hope that patients have done the same for me. I hope that they did not see me only as a brown foreigner but recognized me as a doctor keen to be a partner in their health care.
As a society we can overcome prejudices in health care by facing our tendency to stereotype. Medicare and its contractors -- quality improvement organizations -- are training doctors in a "cultural competency" program in which they receive free educational credits and become aware of biases in care delivery and cultural perception of illness. (I am taking the course.)
As for patients, I have another suggestion. The next time you see a worker at a fast-food restaurant, ask yourself: What stereotypes did your mind automatically activate?
Awareness is the first step to change.
Then I wondered: When I walk into a room, how do I see my patients?
For the next few days I observed myself whenever I entered a hospital room to see a new patient. To my surprise, I realized that in the initial glance I viewed patients as an "elderly black man" or a "Hispanic worker" -- and all the baggage that comes with their race, gender and ethnicity. My prejudices had kicked in.
Unfortunately, the entire health system sees patients by race, gender and ethnicity, and it has a profound effect on how care is delivered.
The Institute of Medicine in its 2002 report "Unequal Treatment" cited some provocative statistics. Black patients, for example, tend to receive lower-quality care for cancer, heart disease, HIV, diabetes and other illnesses. Black men are 40 percent more likely to die of cancer than white men. These differences often persist even after accounting for age, severity of illness and delays in seeking treatment among different groups.
How can this happen in America in 2007? It's simple. Social psychology shows that stereotyping is a universal human mental function. We use social groups (race, sex and ethnicity) to understand people -- to gather or recall information about people from our minds.
The mental processing goes something like this:
When I enter the room in which a patient is waiting for me, I do four things.
First, in the seconds before our initial greeting, I automatically and often unconsciously activate my stereotype. Thus, I assume a young Hispanic man is likely to be an uninsured construction worker.
Second, even though I believe that I do not judge people based on stereotypes, the data show it is very likely that I do. When I see an elderly black woman I am more likely to ask her about church as a support structure than I am to ask a white man the same question because I assume she is church-going.
Third, after the encounter, my stereotyping affects how I recall and process information. A white man complaining of pain receives more attention than a Hispanic woman with the same complaint because I stereotype white men as being more stoic.
(Remember that stereotyping is different from medical profiling based on disease epidemiology. A young black woman with anemia is more likely to have sickle cell disease than an elderly white man is, based on biology and racial background.)
Fourth, my stereotypes probably guide my expectations and handling of the patient, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy. An elderly black man is unlikely to understand the details of a diagnosis, I assume, so I spend less time explaining his disease and its consequences. Ultimately, such a patient is less informed about his illness.
The most glaring result of black-white inequality in health care was found in a 2005 study issued by former surgeon general David Satcher. He estimated that closing the black-white mortality gap would eliminate more than 83,000 deaths per year among African Americans.
It is painful to write these things. As health-care workers we try to be unbiased in our delivery of care.
Once I became aware of how I thought when I encountered patients, I was able to start changing. Though I initially saw a patient as an elderly black woman, my forced reflection helped reduce the stereotype. As our conversation developed, the stereotype melted away. I began to see my patient rather than his or her social group.
I hope that patients have done the same for me. I hope that they did not see me only as a brown foreigner but recognized me as a doctor keen to be a partner in their health care.
As a society we can overcome prejudices in health care by facing our tendency to stereotype. Medicare and its contractors -- quality improvement organizations -- are training doctors in a "cultural competency" program in which they receive free educational credits and become aware of biases in care delivery and cultural perception of illness. (I am taking the course.)
As for patients, I have another suggestion. The next time you see a worker at a fast-food restaurant, ask yourself: What stereotypes did your mind automatically activate?
Awareness is the first step to change.
posted by LeBlues
1:41 PM
0 comments