With many of the different hues of the human rainbow represented here I thought it would be cool to create a thread to celebrate diversity. This is something I've prided myself on all my life, having freinds, family members, and associates of all different colors. It's kinda cool to go to family functions and have an array of people from different cultural backgrounds come together for the love of being w/ family. It's truly beautiful, and I consider my freinds to be very much apart of my family. Everyones got something to offer w/ their own twist which is what makes diversity so great.

Usually I am quite cynical about "celebrating diversity" - it just seems like something politicians say ....so they will appeal to minorities.

However, in this instance I know you are genuine Deutsch, so great. To be honest, I'm not 100% convinced that multiculturalism really works - people of different races most certainly can live together in harmony - but "culture" is an entirely different matter altogether. We need only look at the conflict happening all over Western Europe at present, where second or third generation young Muslims feel that they are isolated from the mainstream and discriminated against. Then you have those people who consider themselves to be really fashionably "culturally aware" because they dine at a Turkish or Indonesian restaurant once a month - give me a break.

I think, in spite of the sometimes snide remarks by Europeans, the US actually does "celebrate diversity" better than just about anybody else - America is very accommodating to different cultures - in spite of the unfair myth that Americans try to impose their cultural values onto other nations - in truth however, the US doesn't actually have many specific cultural values - that is why it is called the land of the free - people are free to live with their own cultural values. The US is such a huge country, with many, many, different cultural and social values - what unites Americans is their flag, anthem, and a sense of being part of a union where freedom is the principle value.

Multi-racial society - this is the catchphrase synonymous with Singapore for decades since independence.

It's what keeps us together and to forge progress. Without government intervention however, we wouldn't be such an integrated society as we are today. We are taught in schools to accept all religions and races, and also in housing board flats (a term for apartment blocks), there must be a certain quota set about the number of Malay, Indian and Chinese families staying in each block, so there would be no racial segregation of any kind. I found this highly insightful.

I doubt we would ever progress without multiculturalism - I feel that it is essential.

Interesting Mirage77 ...but I can't help being bugged by the fact that Singapore is regarded as being a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and it's sympathizers. I know that Singapore runs like clockwork ...much to the admiration of many other countries, but like everything else in Singapore (being a very controlled society), as you pointed out yourself, multiculturalism is more a matter of government policy than any kind of genuine, unsanctioned goodwill between different social groups.

That is particularly insightful James ...I think you are right about that - it surely is no coincidence that the most stable and peaceful countries in the world are the ones with the greatest personal freedoms and largest numbers of people in the middle and upper socio-economic income groups.

Great post James.

Through work and school I've come acorss all kinds of different people, and it just so happend that I really never had the chance or oppurtunity to congregate w/ people "like me", which I'm glad I didn't, I probably wouldn't have ever thought to come up w/ this thread had that been the case. I think there's still a lot of work to be done in the breaking down of cultural sterotypes(that will take quite a bit of time and probably won't be difused in our lifetime) so that we can start to identify w/ indivdiuals instead of whole groups of people based off of one superfical factor or another. True, culture is a very engrained part of many, but at the same time culture can be shared, taught, and learned - if we don't do the latter then we really can't expect things to change and progress in a more positive direction. Change is hard, but the benefits of it have the potential to be beyond great.

The government is trying hard to clamp down on terrorism activities. To date, no attacks have been successful though several have been plotted. But you're right, we were equally terrified when we found out that terrorists could actually plan such a comprehensive attack at our airport and rail systems.

The government intervenes because it didn't work when they didn't. Racial riots occured very often before this 'multi-culturalism' mantra of the government came about. I believe it is very hard for a society to integrate together without any external assistance.

I think that is probably true too - although James' observation is very interesting - what do you think Mirage77, does income/wealth play a part in helping cultural harmony.

I'm not Mirage but I think it does. It helps prevent people feeling alienated and discriminated against because they can all be materialistic together! Poor people and unemployed people feel dissatisfied, and if there is any sort of a cultural trend in it, then it just becomes worse as people groups band together and dis-integrate from society.

Plus, having jobs keeps people down, they're too tired to create trouble.

As for Singapore, IMHO, if it wasn't for the government and a good measure of economic stability, they would have racial tensions and troubles somewhat like Malaysia and Indonesia.