Multiculturalism and Homonationalism

[anna_katabi]

In the reading, Thobani explores Canada’s strategy of using multiculturalism to not address questions of systemic racism. Ahmed wrote about multiculturalism as a way for a nation to reinvent itself. The Canadian government allows differences of others to exist while enhancing its own cultural superiority. Official multiculturalism helps stabilize white supremacy, transforming it to fit the new structures of the decolonizing era. The new national identity is more fluid and embraces diversity. It is the opposite of the American and European countries’s identities. Multiculturalism masks the continuity of white privilege. Pierre Trudeau’s government built Canada’s society as tolerant and respectful of difference and diversity. On the contrary, immigrants and non-white people are understood to be monocultural, and they need to be taught the virtues of tolerance and cosmopolitanism under the supervision of the white government.
Pierre Trudeau’s government allowed the inclusion of people of colour into nationhood. The same immigrants of the ‘third world’ who had fought against racism were now fully included in nationhood. Thobani argues that it was a tactic to prevent them from fighting society’s racism. They gained socio-economic mobility, having access to education and occupational opportunities not accessible to them before. Official multiculturalism in Canada is a tactic to depoliticize anti-racist groups. It emerged simultaneously when anti-colonial discourses had gained considerable ground internationally. It made me think of the concept of homonationalism. Since the 2000s, queer people have been depoliticized because of the integration of a certain category of queers into an ‘acceptable’ society. The white, passive, educated, upper-class queer is accepted into society. It is a tactic to not address society’s heteronormative and harmful structure. Both official multiculturalism and homonationalism depoliticize people and make them more passive, preventing them from wanting to destroy society’s structure.