UPDATE: Germany has failed multiculturalism not vice versa
01 October 2010
UPDATE:
Germany has failed multiculturalism not vice versa (IRR News Service):
"Angela Merkel tells a CDU conference that multiculturalism in Germany has 'utterly failed', yet Germany has not even tried it... Germany has until recently not extended citizenship rights to its many Turkish residents, or even to the descendants of the Gastarbeiter who were born on its soil, unlike the UK which gave citizenship automatically to its black commonwealth workforce. Germany has never provided support in its education system to those who did not have German as their mother tongue, unlike here where there were classes for those with English as a second language and special funding for areas with particular needs emanating from ethnic minority pupils. Germany has been slow in implementing any national plan against racism and fast to divert part of the funds set aside to fight Neo-Nazis (a serious and increasing threat) to fight leftwing and Islamist extremism."
FROM MULTICULTURALISM TO MONOCULTURALISM:
Angela Merkel declares death of German multiculturalism - Chancellor's remarks, which claimed multiculturalism had 'failed utterly', interpreted as a shift rightwards from previous views (Guardian, link); and
Merkel stokes anti-immigrant discourse in Germany (euobserver, link):
"In the beginning of the Sixties, we called on foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country." She added: "We kidded ourselves for a while by saying they won't stay, sometime they will disappear, but this isn't reality.... [the multicultural idea]
that we can live side by side has failed."