by Amitai Etzioni
I left Köln when I was five, so I can buy ice cream in German, but I cannot talk to you about communitarian philosophy in German, at least you wouldn’t want to hear me do that. I have to explain very early – I do not represent the Bush Administration. I was in the White House, but it was the Carter White House, which somehow has different feathers. And just to add one more biographical detail, I started my sociological and philosophical training in Jerusalem with Martin Buber, who was, by the way, a pacifist. But he also hammered into me the importance of dialogue. So, a part of the evening that I am very, very much looking forward to is, when we are going to talk with all of you rather than me lecturing at you. And my last confession, and then I will leave you and be on my way, I came here to recruit, not to give an academic lecture. We are looking for soulmates, we are looking for other people who want to join.
Recently I spoke with the president of Cyprus and Prof. Karl Kaiser, the former head of the German Council of Foreign Relations, who joined this effort to think in a different way about the relationship between immigrants or minorities and a host society. We should not attack people who correctly sense, that they will have to undergo significant changes in their culture, in their society and in their way of thinking, just as host societies have to come to terms with large numbers of immigrants. I don’t think it’s empirically correct, I don’t think it’s ethical, I don’t think it’s politically wise to talk to everybody who has misgivings about immigration as if their were fascist pigs. I think we have to understand their pain and help them to deal with it and move forward, rather than condemn them. That’s half of our position. The way I started to think about that, is when I kept coming to Europe and saw more and more signs of anti-immigrant feelings in surveys, in political expressions and in the streets. And I became increasingly concerned that if we just sit back with Le Pen (in France) and Haider (in Austria) and not deal with them, they’re not going to make the kind of changes we need. So, I want to talk very briefly about our position, diversity within unity. I understand there are English and German copies available of our twelve-page-statement and you can also find it on our web page. There you can also see the names of the people who created this platform.
The essence of our position is, that there are certain elementary values, which are at the quarrel of each of our societies, namely that anyone who wants to become a member of our community has to accept its basic values. And if we assure each other, then our basic values will not change. On the other hand, if people join our communities and are willing to accept our basic respect for rights of the democratic way of life, our respect for law and that the law may be changing, then we should not mind that they will eat different foods, sing different songs, pray to different gods and have an affinity to a different country of origin. That’s where this mixture comes from. There is a unity and it is essential for every community. And I think it goes without saying, I hope, Susan will support me in that, that practically everybody defines a nation as a community investing in a state; it’s not simply bureaucracy, it’s not simply government structure, it’s a certain set of values or loyalties we form, in effect a form of a very extended family. We hope to change; one day there may be an European community, I pray for a global community. But for now, part of our loyalties, involvement and identities are wrapped in our national communities.
I know we have misgivings about it, but that doesn’t make this fact go away. And therefore, when people join us, the question we have to ask them - not if they’re asylum seekers, that’s a different story - but if they come here to better their life and if we need them to become part of our economy, are they willing to accept the fact, that we expect everyone in the world to respect human rights.
Surely they have to expect human rights here. Frankly, I find it very puzzling when at least in some places, people insist on human rights in Afghanistan and in Iraq but not on the block. I think, forced marriages for instance, have no place in any of our societies. I deliberately talk that language. I deliberately want to start by talking about misgivings people have – not without reason.
We need to reassure them – and I’m not saying what I am saying in order to reassure them – that respect for human rights, the democratic way of life and the rule of law are elementary values by which everyone must abide. And if they don’t believe in these things, then they don’t have to come, wherever we are. When we have laid those foundations, then we can say to them that we will respect their particular communities.
Let me clarify my position by using an image. In all these positions we are looking for images. We contrast our position with strict assimilationism of the kind that France often speaks of, but does not always practice, where everybody is supposed to lose all their ethnic and racial identities and just blend in with the French people. We call that a melting pot and the whole image of the melting pot is that all the differences are melted down into one bland stew.
We also differentiate our position from multiculturalism, at least in an extreme expression. Sometimes people talk about it like a salad. There are different pieces of different color and they lie there together but they don’t really get mixed. They stay each in their own particularities. Our image is that of a mosaic. A mosaic has different pieces, different sizes, different colors, but also a shared framework and a globe. And very important, very important, the framework can be recast over time. It’s not there forever; under the influence of immigration, history and changes, the framework itself changes. But there is something which holds us all together to avoid civil war, to avoid strife, to rule out violence against each other. What goes exactly into the framework? What exactly is the unity part? And what do we find [in terms of] enrichment and beauty by having multicolor, multi-units? It’s debatable.
Some people place language as a very important part of the unity section, but some people do not. We could spend a whole month easily arguing about these specifics. But the essential point is, that we accept this differentiation, the two sides of the ledger.
Now, let me make this a little more specific – schools. This is a principle which leads us to some very specific policy conclusions. We don’t think it’s a good idea, but we cannot stop people from attending segregated schools their whole life, like Catholic schools, Jewish schools or Koran schools. I think it’s best, but not always doable, that all children should go to the same public schools, so that they will all meet children from other backgrounds and spend a social life with them. A large part of the curriculum will be shared, and every child will take the same civic classes and the same historical classes. And then we allow for fifteen percent or twenty percent of the curriculum to be composed of ethnic, racial and other electives.
We can argue about the details. So, if somebody wants to learn more about Turkey, they are welcome. If somebody wants to study the Koran more, they are welcome, but within these options, within a basic framework. Now, I know, that it’s not always practical. For instance, in Holland they have such a long tradition of schools separated by religion and ethnicity, that it’s very difficult for them to even think about such a shared system. The second best option will be where all the schools, whether private or public or religious or secular, will have 85% shared curriculum, where the state makes sure that they all share the basic framework and then welcome the 15% differences. We must also make some efforts to bring children from different schools together in sporting events or something. Again, we may differ enormously about the details, but I think it is as good an illustration as I can give you. What we mean is, there are some things that we all need to share and then we should welcome the differences.
Next comes the question of law. Frankly, as somebody who lives on the other side of the ocean, it stuns me how much energy can be spent on the question of whether a court clerk in Amsterdam or a teacher in Germany can or cannot wear a headscarf, or if somebody can wear a yarmulke in a school in France, or if someone can wear and a little cross but not a big cross. If you think about it a little longer, it reminds me of people who are divorce lawyers, who tell us about a couple who has had a very difficult divorce and finally it’s all settled. However, in the last minute there’s a terrible fight about a tea pot and suddenly the agreement almost falls apart, because both insist to have their teapot. The teapot is trivial. What it really stands for, of course, are some very fundamental disagreements and emotional differences. I cannot help but feel that the question of whether a court clerk wears a headscarf or not, is really not about the headscarf, but about the question of whether are we willing to accept people who have religious differences.
I think once we sort out the underlying issue, there is no reason to insist upon everybody praying to the same god or praying to anybody. These are symbolic issues which we will be able to settle more quickly. But when it comes to the law, the question becomes under what conditions do we make exemptions. And under one condition, you insist that everybody will follow the same law. I will give you an American example. We of course have laws, rightly only, against the use of what is called drugs or controlled substances. But we have a church of Native Americans, which uses peyote for their religious services. And one of our major court cases was the following: Everybody in the United States is not allowed to use drugs, so how could the Native Americans use peyote for their religious services. And the question is again – an illustration of my basic points - are we going to say here, everybody has to be the same and a unity? Does peyote belong into the unity box or does it belong in the particularism box, where you are welcomed to be different? How will you make the decision? The principle we advocate, is that you have to see this compelling public interest.
We cannot find a compelling public interest, if indeed this is used for religious purposes. And therefore, after enormous struggle, which again is symbolic of deeper issues, Native Americans were finally allowed to proceed. The tradition [is similar to that of] the Catholics [that were] allowed to use wine during the prohibition and many other such exemptions. We don’t have to insist that everybody close their shop on Sunday. Instead, we can insist that they close them one day a week. I can go on and on to illustrate one more time, this time not with reference to schools but reference to the law, how we sort out what belongs on the particularistic side and what belongs on the side of things we all need to share.
We went on to examine the question of historical responsibility and that may be of some special interest to you. Look, I came to the U.S. as an immigrant and I didn’t have a slave, my family didn’t have a slave and we never traded in slaves. Why should I be responsible for slavery? But my answer to this question is, if I join the American community, I can’t pick and choose. I can’t say I like the literature but I don’t like our historical responsibilities. I feel, if you become a member of a community, you have to take the good and the bad. And we all have dark moments in our history, although some of them are darker. But anybody who joins our community has to accept not just Goethe and Beethoven, but also the Holocaust. And that is our position. That belongs to the unity box. And in our judgement, there is no second guessing here.
Now, I can go into details, but I want to save time to talk about two different parts of this question. First of all, how did we get here, aside from our concern about the enormous increase in anti-immigrant feelings and their political expression. And I think we are going to see more of this before too long. Communitarianism
unfortunately in many minds, is associated with the idea that the community should take priority over rights. That is not my kind of communitarianism. That is the kind of communitarianism which some people call East-Asian-Communitarianism, which is practiced in Singapore and Malaysia. I would prefer to call them authoritarian. My idea of communitarianism is that a good society has a careful crafted balance between concerns for individual rights and concerns for the common good. The conversation should start by not allowing either the common good to trump rights or assume that rights always trump the common good.
We must start a conversation in which we realize that there are two essential principles which both command our attention. From this starting point we have to work out how we are going to get to square these two conflicting principles. We should not be scared that society is not organized neatly by one simple principle. The libertarians want to derive everything from liberty. We have to recognize that societies are complicated creatures, which consist of conflicting principles, and often, we need to make room for them.
Again, I could give a six-month-seminar on this little point, but I don’t want to take more time. But I just want to say, when we come and say that there is room both for unity and for diversity and the main question is a question of balance, then we might be trying to make it all unity or all diversity. This is not an accidental position which some of us dreamed up. It has a fairly profound philosophical foundation. The same holds true for our very essentialist notion that each [one] of us has rights, but each [one] of us also has responsibilities. That’s why we want to give the immigrants rights, but we also want to ask them to accept the responsibilities to the society in which they want to live in.
How did we get to this specific statement? I must admit, it was one of these accidents in life which got me started. I was growing increasingly aware of all kind of anti-immigrant expressions, some were political and some were in the streets. But then there came a turning point, and I admit it reflects my personal prejudices. I heard about a racist party in Denmark, and frankly, I had an image of Denmark where everything was wonderfully green: green meadows and cows with big bells and everybody is loving and happy. It is the same image people have of Switzerland. When they got a racist party, I said, wait a moment, we need to do something about that. And so, it was kind of an ultimate straw, which broke the back of at least of this camel. So, we got together, eighty people from different countries, in Brussels and we spent two days drafting this statement and then, you know, the usual rewrites, and faxes and e-mails.
But we finally nailed this down with many more details about citizen tests, religion and about holidays and rituals, which make this “Diversity Within Unity” platform. Then we started seeking endorsements. And we started getting endorsements from public intellectuals, from some elected officials, but far from enough. So, what I’m looking for, is people who will take this on in at least two ways. Firstly, inform yourselves, so much more than I can do tonight, about what the “Diversity Within Unity” platform stands for and help us think it through. What does it mean for all kinds of other policy areas which we have not tackled? Or how should we improve those we spelled out in a very preliminary fashion? So, there is a lot of policy and intellectual thinking that needs to be done.
And secondly, we very much hope to have this conversation introduced in the political dialogue. My good friend Lord Pratt, who headed the British Commission on Racism came out with this idea that if you abolish Britishness and from then on never use the word or identity again and talk about only various tribes, which live on this island called England, Welsh, Scots, English, West-Indies and Pakistanis and such, that that will solve the problem. I’m not sure if I would like that if it could be done but I don’t think – I don’t know if this translates well – that the notion to tell the British people that we should stop thinking about Britishness has a lot of legs. I don’t think it walks any place. And so, I don’t think that’s a starter for a productive conversation.
On the other hand, the French notion that we all have to give up all our differences to become good members of the community is also impoverishing. We benefit from different insights, tastes and interests, which people of different backgrounds bring with them. And second, we just alienate and make people hostile by insisting that we cannot respect their differences in those areas in which they are acceptable. So, I hope that at least some of you will take the trouble of either reading our document or visiting our web page.
It’s much more than I can do in half an hour about our position. Help us elaborate it and apply it and help us to join the political dialogue. And of course, all you have to do is use your mouth and join the list of endorsers. This will be on the record of people supporting our position. Thank you very much.
Amitai Etzioni: Diversity within Unity (speech & discussion) [pdf, 18 S., 50 KB]
Amitai Etzioni: Vielfalt in der Einheit (Vortrag und Diskussion) [pdf, 14 S., 57 KB]
Amitai Etzioni ist Professor für Soziologie an der George Washington University in den USA und führender Vertrerer des Kommunitarismus. Im August 2005 hielt er diesen Vortrag in der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.