Seldom has there been a better time than last weekend to discuss European and American ways of dealing with multicultural society. While in Germany, and Europe as a whole, people are debating social unrest, racist attacks and honour killings, a movement of immigrants and migratory workers has formed on the streets of the major US cities, and called for a general strike to mark May 1st, International Workers' Day.

Signandsight.com, which as the English-language service of the German Internet magazine Perlentaucher presents German feuilleton debates to an international audience, hosted a public debate at the New York Public Library as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature.



Richard Rodriguez and Necla Kelek.
© Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center

Kicking off the evening, Mexican-born American essayist Richard Rodriguez praised the multicultural Utopia of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Turkish-born German sociologist Necla Kelek then explained why in her view integration has failed in Germany. The moderator, philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, surveyed the problems faced by multicultural societies in Europe and America: while Europe must cope with growing numbers of Islamic citizens, the 40 million Latinos in the USA – whether US citizens or illegal immigrants – have long since created new social realities.



Kwame Anthony Appiah.
© Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center

Germany is far removed from realities such as these, Kelek argued. The failed integration of Turkish immigrants has created a parallel world of traditional Islam, making it impossible for the 2.6 million Turks living in Germany to arrive in the modern world. In Germany, modern families have metamorphosed into archaic clan structures. And yet the Turks who travelled to Germany 40 years ago set out from a secular Turkey, Kelek pointed out. Today, however, the headscarf is the symbol of an internationally organised Islam which condemns once-emancipated women to running households. In this Islam, women have no independent right to exist, she said. And things have become worse in recent years, since many families started bringing so-called "little brides" from Turkey, 13 – 18 year-old-girls from rural areas who willingly subordinated themselves to their husbands.

But the problem lies not only in the immigrants' traditions. "Someone once asked me if Germany was my homeland," Kelek commented. "I could only say that not even Germans consider Germany their homeland. How are we supposed to integrate in a place like that?"



Pascal Bruckner.
© Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center

For French author and philosopher Pascal Bruckner, the problems European society encounters with multiculturalism are rooted in the Romantic era, which was, he pointed out, a reaction against the Enlightenment. In 1916 Thomas Mann located German culture deep in the soul, presenting an antithesis to the technocratic French civil society of the time. But this very cultural pessimism is for Bruckner the pathology of Romanticism, because an identity determined by tradition, origin and race turns culture into a prison, instead of a window opening onto the world. And yet humans may outgrow their outward determination.

Or this determination can disappear of itself, countered Richard Rodriguez. Strictly speaking, the Mexican population has embodied modernity ever since the 18th century, when a new identity manifested itself in the person of the Mestizo – an identity which many in the USA understood as a threat. Because on the one hand, Mexican culture is shot through with pessimism, originating in the Catholic idea of original sin. This scepticism allows for the fallibility of mankind, whereas American society sees itself as a culture of purity and innocence. And on the other hand, the Indian features of Mexican immigrants serve as a reminder to North Americans of the continent's true identity. Ultimately, Rodriguez believes, America must learn from the current debate on immigration that it is not only a nation, but also part of an American hemisphere.



Pascal Bruckner, Richard Rodriguez and Kwame Anthony Appiah.
© Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center

Integration is an active process, warned Necla Kelek at the end of the evening. Pascal Bruckner agreed in principle, suggesting that although America still has the ability to overcome its mistakes, Europe has long since fallen into a collective depression which is now leading to social paralysis. But precisely this is the root of modern thinking, Rodriguez threw in. "We got the pronoun 'I' from the French Enlightenment," he concluded."'It's about time we finally threw off the old 'We' culture."

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The article originally appeared in German in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on May 2, 2006.

Born in Munich in 1962, Andrian Kreye lives as an author and journalist in New York. A founder of Tempo Magazine, he was US bureau chief until 1996. His reports from the USA, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East have appeared in a wide selection of German papers.

Translation: jab.