Equality plus recognition of difference must avoid both liberal atomism and absolutist community
Evidence
The one perspective encourages fear, the other indifference. What neither begins to address is the question of engagement. Engagement requires us neither to shun certain people as the Other, with values and practices inevitably inimical to ours, nor to be indifferent to such values and practices in the name of ‘respect’, but rather to recognize that respect requires us to challenge the values and beliefs of others. It requires us to have a robust, open public debate about the values to which we aspire, accepting that such a debate will be difficult, and often confrontational, but also that such difficult, confrontational debate is a necessity in any society that seeks to be open and liberal. — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 689 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Liberal humanism retards the enlargement of meaning that true understanding requires; Organic nationalism is not yet racism because it retains equality of peoples; European continent substituted formal legal equality for real equality of condition (+4 more)
Related
- Both nativism and multiculturalism fail by avoiding genuine engagement with difference (similarity 0.92)
- Multicultural exoticism can function as a substitute for confronting racism. (similarity 0.84)
- Multicultural drift is a diagnostic, not a political program (similarity 0.79)
- The equality-difference demand exposes failures in both liberal and communitarian political vocabularies (similarity 0.79)
- Both essentialist and liberal-tolerant framings of difference reinforce Western normativity (similarity 0.79)
- Respect for others requires actively challenging their values and beliefs. (similarity 0.79)
- Acknowledging cultural difference can compound rather than resolve essentialism by implying boundedness (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Both nativism and multiculturalism fail by avoiding genuine engagement with difference
#expands(0.75) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 689