Maybe multiculturalism doesn't work

As least not in Britain. This past week, British cabinet minister Jack Straw appealed to Muslim women to remove their veils, calling them "a visible statement of separation and difference." Uh, duh. They're a statement of their faith, Jack, which I suppose visibily separates them.

This has reignited a debate on the value of multiculturalism. Ruth Kelly, a senior member of Tony Blair’s government, suggested that the multicultural experiment “may have resulted in a more fractured society.” Really? You mean living totally distinct from each other, as in "celebrating diversity", has the opposite effect of assimilation? What a revelation!

She calls for an “honest debate” on “integration and cohesion”: “We have moved from a period of near uniform consensus on the value of multiculturalism to one where we can encourage that debate by questioning whether it is encouraging separateness.”

Joseph Pearce comments: "Multiculturalism, the battle cry of anti-racist egalitarians, is now seen as apartheid! The comrades must be getting a little confused by the political somersaults they are being asked to perform.

Multiculturalism [was not] the only long-standing Labour Party dogma that Kelly attacked. Addressing the thorny subject of mass immigration, she argued that to discuss the subject was not being racist."