Tensions haunt multi-ethnic societies

• Source: Global Times
• [08:22 July 27 2009]
• Comments

By Ao Lin

Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black professor at Harvard University, was arrested in his own home by the local police on July 16 for disorderly conduct, an incident many have attributed to racially-charged miscommunication. US president Barack Obama stood by Gates at first and then changed his tone to call for reflection on both sides to reach reconciliation.

The case captured widespread attention, spotlighting the racial tensions that remain resilient in the US even after Obama became the first African American elected president, which many Americans believed would usher in a “post-racial age.”

The US is acclaimed as probably the most tolerant and pluralistic society, with great achievements in ethnic and racial harmony and cultural convergence. But it still cannot solve unhealthy ethnic and racial differences, because they are one of the most inherent contradictions of any modern multi-ethnic nation-state.

The modern nation-state is founded on a fundamental principle that a state is governed by one nation with a shared culture and tradition. But people living in the same country are usually diverse, belonging to different ethnic groups. Thus the reality is that in each of many nation-states, there exists a ruling or dominant ethnic majority and minorities. And the national culture mainly overlaps with the majority culture.

This creates identity anxiety for minorities who are attached to their own cultural heritages and aspire to institutionalize them. This is one of the sources of ethnic tensions. But more serious ethnic conflicts emerge out of a combination of economic, political, as well as cultural inequality and competition among majority and minorities.

When the dominant ethnicity group is more powerful economically and politically and expresses a sense of cultural superiority, as is the case with whites in the US, cultural differences escalate into emotionally loaded ethnic hostility and even hatred; minorities naturally attribute their state of being disadvantaged to the “oppression” of the more successful majority group. This is clearly shown by some radical statements made by African American leaders.

The solution employed by the government has been to cultivate a national culture that tolerates ethnic diversity and introduce policies that mitigate ethnic differences in social stratification.

However, ethnic tensions do not go away easily. The following questions arise: What if a national culture is irreconcilable with minority cultures? Then either nation building prevails at the weakening of minority cultures, or nation building remains incomplete for the sake of preserving cultural diversity. What if affirmative policies favorable to some minorities create new injustices to the majority and other minorities, which exacerbates ethnic confrontation and also fails to solve the problems of minorities?

The Gates incident simply indicates the fact that finding how to effectively keep ethnic tensions at bay remains elusive.