‘Melting Pot’ or ‘Salad Bowl’?

May 12, 2013 Editorial

One of the problems of governance in our country has been the heavy-handed way in which the present administration has approached issues emanating from our ethnic diversity. The siting of the proposed monument to the 1823 Rebellion is a good example.
On one hand the administration’s recognition that the event ought to be given concrete shape is commendable but the refusal to integrate the concerns raised by representatives of African-Guyanese has left more than a bitter taste in the mouths of that community. The people feel marginalised and insulted.
Another example has been the arbitrary designation of “Indian Arrival Day” as “Arrival Day” to include all Guyanese who “arrived”. As we pointed out in our editorial of May 5, there were expressions of disagreement from Portuguese (Arrival May 3rd) and Chinese (Arrival Jan 12) when they were instructed to accept the date of Indian arrival as their “Arrival Day”. In a recent letter to the press, Mr. Hydar Ally, who appears to be in charge of disseminating the PPP’s ideological position of various issues, went even further with this line of common “arrival”, defined as those who were brought to labour on the plantations.
He declared: “All our ancestors regardless of race, religion or creed were forced by circumstances to endure the horrors and tyranny of plantation life.”This statement does a great disservice to the history of our Indigenous Peoples. In addition to never “arriving” in the sense the word is being used, Indigenous Peoples bravely resisted being shanghaied as labourers for the plantation project and retreated into their native forest habitat. But Mr. Ally’s letter offers a window into the PPP’s thinking on the governance of a culturally plural society and explains why their policies in this area are so high handed and obtuse.
On one hand, Mr. Ally declared that we are a “plural society” – “culturally pluralistic” with “different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities.” He engaged wantonly in tautology to presumably emphasise our “pluralism” in matters cultural. But on the other hand Mr. Ally commends the “process of cultural assimilation” that is creating a “uniquely Guyanese society.”
To ensure we understand his party’s position, he declares conclusively, “Sociologists refer to societies such as ours as the ‘melting pot society”.
Now Mr. Ally is either very confused about the terms he is bandying around or he is engaged in a cynical exercise of subterfuge that pays just lip service to the notion of “cultural pluralism” as it is now accepted in the modern world. The notion of the “melting pot” as an analogy for the model of social integration represents the very essence of what Mr. Ally announces to be the anti-thesis of a just society – “ethnic or cultural superiority”.
This assimilationist early American model presumed that all immigrants would jettison their culture into “American culture”.
The problem, as African-Americans and other ethnic groups pointed out, was that the so-called neutral “American culture” was in fact anything but neutral: it was based on a Eurocentric notion that other cultures were inferior and it was for that reason they should be jettisoned.
And this is why after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 60’s, the “melting pot” analogy was abandoned in favour to that of the “salad bowl” to signify the new cultural ideal.
In this model, which heralded “multiculturalism”, all cultural strains in a culturally plural society were to co-exist with each other as the components of a “salad”. The sum of the parts would be greater that the components through the diversity that would ensue. Diversity became a value in and of itself.
Thus Mr. Ally would do well to disentangle the sociological concepts he has mashed together to justify his party’s refusal to accept that different cultural groups will pose a threat to a political order only when they are denied participation in decision-making on matters that affect them.
“Greater inclusivity”, which Mr. Ally supports, must include real consultation in the cultural field just as elections do for “political participation”.

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