Critiques of multiculturalism and its detrimental effects on the very people for whom it is *supposed* to be advocating are not new (see Bernstein’s “Dictatorship of Virtue”), but Dr. Mahmod’s insights go much deeper. Count me a new subscriber of hers.
Another rigorous analysis by Jowan Mahmod who dares to push for new perspectives in a field that badly needs them. What she writes is simply very rational.
Diversity isn't our strength in Canada. All that has resulted is that there is a longer list of "hate crimes" you can be censured for. It used to be there were only two or three "identifiable groups". Now there are dozens. And they are all trying to exert dominance over each other as, encouraged not to assimilate, they carry on the sectarian conflicts from their home countries into ours.
We went over a tipping point from the "sunny ways" view that Canada could cheerfully encourage immigrants not to assimilate (in order for us to enjoy their "diverse" cuisine and and colorful ethnic festivals, and to look down our noses at Americans who subscribed to the melting pot) to a darker place where the immigrants have the numbers to force us to assimilate into their cultures. The trouble is, there are so many cultures it's not clear which ones we should be good Canadians and assimilate into, since many have competing values that they would kill each other over, if they could. Somebody's gonna hate us no matter whom we capitulate to. But capitulate we must, otherwise we are racist white-supremacists.
Toronto officially still brags that it is the most diverse city in the world. And Toronto may well see that as a good thing, because it is for all intents and purposes an Asian city now. I don't think the countries that count see that as a selling point anymore, though.
The way you explain things makes me very curious where your country will go in the next few years. Canada seems like one of the only countries also doubling down on woke ideas like multiculturalism but also speech code enforcement (I think)
Yup. We old people worry too. Trans-gender ideology is another place we are doubling down as the world draws back and finds common sense. The province of Alberta passed a perfectly reasonable law -- poisoning children is not permitted under any concept of autonomy -- similar to what the US Supreme Court upheld in Skrmetti and the rest of the country has recoiled in apoplectic shock. President Trump is living rent-free in our heads and everything our political class does has to be seen as the exact opposite of "something Trump would do."
There's also a nagging worry that decolonization and reconciliation with aboriginals -- something we just decided to do out of guilt; there was no violent uprising or rebellion, our elites just decided they wanted to -- is going to go horribly wrong. It might turn out the aboriginals own all the land in Canada, even the land private owners think they own, something your courts and Congress and Second Amendment-respecting landowners would never allow to happen. Yet the political class keeps having to reassure us that, "No, nothing to worry about. The aboriginals promise us that they have no intention of dispossessing any individual landowner. They'll just be 'co-owners', like having your ex-wife's name forever on the deed to your property. Nothing to see here."
😂😂 that is so funny. If I were an aboriginal I’d for sure start asking for rental payments on my new found property. Such a funny thing to say First Nation when the idea of a nation was a foreign concept for them (I might understand this wrong but that’s what the term sounds like). Even in the US the idea that some tribes still “own” certain things feels so ridiculous. On reservation sure but Oregon State University is supposedly on Kallapuya land. No. We conquested you guys. You have a sign because you’re protesting the state of things not being yours, not the other way around. If a more than 1 billion dollar university is on your land and you wanted to “take it back”, it’s just not happening. We stole the land fair and square, as stealing was fair back then.
A Canadian prime minister with a majority government -- Mark Carny didn't win one and neither did his predecessor the last two elections before -- has more power in Canada than an American president has in the U.S. We don't have separation of powers here. The prime minister, as executive head of government, controls the legislature (Parliament) and dictates to it. Theoretically the legislature is supposed to control the executive because the executive governs with the consent of the lower house but over the decades it has worked out the other way round. The legislators elected in the prime minister's party depend on his good graces for their political careers. The most a U.S. president can do to a legislator he doesn't like is encourage the district to primary him. A Canadian PM can kick an elected legislator out of caucus and condemn him to sit as an independent where his political career is over. Unlike Bernie Sanders, independents almost never get re-elected because voters want to vote in enough members of the party they like to form a government. Voting in an independent doesn't get them there. In Canada, Bernie Sanders and the other independents would not have counted toward the Dems being the majority party.
Anyway, the PM has great power to decide what our immigration policy and almost everything else will be. The legislature has very little independence and can't make laws unless the PM adopts them as government policy. Ordinary Canadians have almost no say in the matter except as to threaten to vote the bastards out of office and vote in another set of bastards.
I’m also Canadian, and this is somewhat reductionist. Though I fully agree that Canada doesn’t operate rationally when it comes to any CSJ ideas, and we aren’t a utopia, we also aren’t a hellscape. Providing this impression to outsiders is irresponsible. There are many immigrants who come to Canada and, over time, really do assimilate culturally and adopt Western, liberal values. And there are many that live within a subcultural ideological bubble, don’t learn the language or shared Canadian values and norms. There are likely many factors that contribute to this, from the screening process for new immigrants, to the specific cultural practices and beliefs of people immigrating. I have met many Filipino people, for example, who integrate really well into Canadian culture, and contribute positively, while also retaining a connection to their own culture. Casting them as merely another cultural group trying to exert dominance would be silly, as it’s just not true.
I assume you might be referring to conflicts between groups from places like Sudan, or other countries where sectarian conflicts abound. In this, you are correct. But my point is that it’s irresponsible, and untrue, to paint all immigrant groups with the same brush. Canada is a complex country, not a monolithic woke hellscape.
Insightful and really well laid out piece. Thank you so much. If only humanity could accept this, and try a different approach from what’s bogged us all down for too many centuries of our existence. ✌️
A functioning multicultural society is not one that obsessively manages groups and their identities, but one that enables individuals to move beyond them and form connections based on shared human and civic values. Only then can we approach the kind of multicultural society we claim to aspire to, and that can be achieved only by loosening, not tightening, the hold of group identity.
Moving from the melting pot ideal to a multi-cultural identity affirming approach was a grave error by the progressives. I have always opposed multi-cultural identity affirmation. That is a tyranical approach. What I have supported all along is a multi-cultural tolerance. I don't have to like or support a culture whose members I may live among and/or work with.
It is reasonable to mandate tolerance - it is not reasonable to mandate affirmation.
It is not a problem to be multiethnic/multiracial and all that entails, but it is a huge problem to be multicultural. There really has to be one binding culture in each nation, and in America that culture is constitutional, democratic, western and enlightened.
" A Middle Eastern man may have 40 years of experience as a Middle Eastern man, but none of the lived experience of a Middle Eastern woman. Likewise, the life of a gay man or a person with a disability can differ profoundly from that of a woman of the same background. By centring identity around groups, multiculturalism obscures these differences and downplays the divergent realities that exist within those very groups."
this seems to just suggest you need another axis to consider (sex, in these)?
But the life of one gay man can differ profoundly from that of another gay man. The experience of one Middle Eastern man can be profoundly different from that of another Middle Eastern man.
Having institutions focusing less on putting people into identity boxes based on ethnicity, sex, whatever, would be a great step forward. If I am reading about bridge building, the most important thing is how well that person builds bridges, not where their family came from, how they contribute to reproduction, etc. Those can be interesting stories but if you want a community of professionals or of people sharing their civic experiences, maybe stop telling people the most important thing about them is why they aren't like anyone else, why they can't empathize with each other, etc etc..
As a retired school librarian I have observed that current school libraries are overstocked with “multicultural” titles; except for the culture of the pioneers and their progeny. Forget A.A. Milne, Laura Ingalls Wilder, John Steinbeck and a host of American tall tales and nursery rhymes. Western Civilization be gone
Diversity is not our strength. When Hitler threw out Diversity and emphasized Unity, he turned a bankrupt, starving, ruined nation into a power that came near to conquering Europe -- and would have but for the intervention of America. It is Unity makes for strength. The question of course is whether that kind of Unity can be directed towards good, not evil, and the answer isn't obvious.
Of course. A greater role, but I frame the Americans as being outside of Europe. That is, if it was Germany vs. Europe only, Germany would have won. But the Soviets carried far more of the burden.
The end conclusion of a “functioning” multiculturalism requirement proves multiculturalism will never work.
People are never going to change to align with some idealistic requirement. People are programmed to be tribal by evolution. Thats not going to change.
Any concepts that multiculturalism can create a great melting pot is not based in reality. The US experiment and also EU experiment have proven that! Time to acknowledge that multiculturalism as viewed by the idealistic melting pot perspective is dead!
Tribes living in states and communities with well defined borders is what humanity has always implemented. The states with the most might will define interstate rules. That the human condition 101.
I believe multiculturalism should be the concerted goal for modern societies, but first, glossing over the definition of abstract ideas like "culture" in discussing the pros and cons of multiculturalism is not a good idea because that leads to "talking around each other." I submit this definition for agreement before entertaining "multiculturalism":
"Culture encompasses the collective ideas, shared language, and social practices that emerge from and evolve through human social interactions within a society"(1).
Given that definition, the very idea of multiculturalism can be a shared (collective) idea (more on this below). Even individuals in a unitary culture will always have near-subconscious and conflicting ideas in a host of domains threatening group amity. So, "perfect collective ideas" is not a prerequist for the cohesive society we seek.
As to shared (first, or native) language, multilingual groups can still share a single culture as long as one language is officially accepted by the common government (an obvious prerequisite for both single or multicultural societies). That is, must a food store be forced to include English alongside its favored Mandarin? Can't that be the store's marketing choice or the buyer's choice, both being hallmarks of free market capitalism? So, "shared language" only means "official, government language." Citizens are already advantaged or disadvantaged in dealing with the government depending upon many things, such as education, so not having everyone's first language the government language is no reason to reject multiculturalism. Finally, only concerted teaching (led by the government) stands in the way of a shared practice common to all cultures being the acceptance of multiculturalism. The desired human interactions have never been "innate." They've always been a matter of concerted teaching.
That last point is key. Accepting and subconsciously embracing multiculturalism can be taught, even if we accept (as I do) that in-group favoritism is an instinctive (evolved) human predisposition. After all, "race" as an in-group marker can be erased (2). It follows , then that teaching can effectively mute or at least render meaningless out-group suspicions that are the necessary compliments to the instinctive behavior threatening multiculturalism.
That's why I conclude that an effective unitary culture can overlay a multicultural society, meaning multiculturalism is good. I further suggest it's especially so in a modern world where climate change will soon impell mass migrations. That means insular cultures will be more threatened than secure.
1. Chen Cecilia Liu, Iryna Gurevych, Anna Korhonen; Culturally Aware and Adapted NLP: A Taxonomy and a Survey of the State of the Art. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 2025; 13 652–689. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00760
2. Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387-15392.
Critiques of multiculturalism and its detrimental effects on the very people for whom it is *supposed* to be advocating are not new (see Bernstein’s “Dictatorship of Virtue”), but Dr. Mahmod’s insights go much deeper. Count me a new subscriber of hers.
Another rigorous analysis by Jowan Mahmod who dares to push for new perspectives in a field that badly needs them. What she writes is simply very rational.
You liked a comment that gushed over you?! Not a good look. Not at all.
I took their approval to mean 'thank you'.
Sounds like a lack of cynicism to me.
Uhhh...what now? You're trying really hard to make something out of nothing.
Guess you're a fan. I didn't really try that hard. Just shared my reaction. I couda gone on...
No. I'm good. Thanks.
His responses are ill-conceived not to mention ill-mannered.
He must be quite the guest at parties!
Diversity isn't our strength in Canada. All that has resulted is that there is a longer list of "hate crimes" you can be censured for. It used to be there were only two or three "identifiable groups". Now there are dozens. And they are all trying to exert dominance over each other as, encouraged not to assimilate, they carry on the sectarian conflicts from their home countries into ours.
Canada sounds gnarly these days
We went over a tipping point from the "sunny ways" view that Canada could cheerfully encourage immigrants not to assimilate (in order for us to enjoy their "diverse" cuisine and and colorful ethnic festivals, and to look down our noses at Americans who subscribed to the melting pot) to a darker place where the immigrants have the numbers to force us to assimilate into their cultures. The trouble is, there are so many cultures it's not clear which ones we should be good Canadians and assimilate into, since many have competing values that they would kill each other over, if they could. Somebody's gonna hate us no matter whom we capitulate to. But capitulate we must, otherwise we are racist white-supremacists.
Toronto officially still brags that it is the most diverse city in the world. And Toronto may well see that as a good thing, because it is for all intents and purposes an Asian city now. I don't think the countries that count see that as a selling point anymore, though.
The way you explain things makes me very curious where your country will go in the next few years. Canada seems like one of the only countries also doubling down on woke ideas like multiculturalism but also speech code enforcement (I think)
Yup. We old people worry too. Trans-gender ideology is another place we are doubling down as the world draws back and finds common sense. The province of Alberta passed a perfectly reasonable law -- poisoning children is not permitted under any concept of autonomy -- similar to what the US Supreme Court upheld in Skrmetti and the rest of the country has recoiled in apoplectic shock. President Trump is living rent-free in our heads and everything our political class does has to be seen as the exact opposite of "something Trump would do."
There's also a nagging worry that decolonization and reconciliation with aboriginals -- something we just decided to do out of guilt; there was no violent uprising or rebellion, our elites just decided they wanted to -- is going to go horribly wrong. It might turn out the aboriginals own all the land in Canada, even the land private owners think they own, something your courts and Congress and Second Amendment-respecting landowners would never allow to happen. Yet the political class keeps having to reassure us that, "No, nothing to worry about. The aboriginals promise us that they have no intention of dispossessing any individual landowner. They'll just be 'co-owners', like having your ex-wife's name forever on the deed to your property. Nothing to see here."
😂😂 that is so funny. If I were an aboriginal I’d for sure start asking for rental payments on my new found property. Such a funny thing to say First Nation when the idea of a nation was a foreign concept for them (I might understand this wrong but that’s what the term sounds like). Even in the US the idea that some tribes still “own” certain things feels so ridiculous. On reservation sure but Oregon State University is supposedly on Kallapuya land. No. We conquested you guys. You have a sign because you’re protesting the state of things not being yours, not the other way around. If a more than 1 billion dollar university is on your land and you wanted to “take it back”, it’s just not happening. We stole the land fair and square, as stealing was fair back then.
Very good. I’ve heard Vancouver is mostly Asian too. It doesn’t seem like things will be getting much better soon either with that new president
Prime Minister, but OK. :-)
A Canadian prime minister with a majority government -- Mark Carny didn't win one and neither did his predecessor the last two elections before -- has more power in Canada than an American president has in the U.S. We don't have separation of powers here. The prime minister, as executive head of government, controls the legislature (Parliament) and dictates to it. Theoretically the legislature is supposed to control the executive because the executive governs with the consent of the lower house but over the decades it has worked out the other way round. The legislators elected in the prime minister's party depend on his good graces for their political careers. The most a U.S. president can do to a legislator he doesn't like is encourage the district to primary him. A Canadian PM can kick an elected legislator out of caucus and condemn him to sit as an independent where his political career is over. Unlike Bernie Sanders, independents almost never get re-elected because voters want to vote in enough members of the party they like to form a government. Voting in an independent doesn't get them there. In Canada, Bernie Sanders and the other independents would not have counted toward the Dems being the majority party.
Anyway, the PM has great power to decide what our immigration policy and almost everything else will be. The legislature has very little independence and can't make laws unless the PM adopts them as government policy. Ordinary Canadians have almost no say in the matter except as to threaten to vote the bastards out of office and vote in another set of bastards.
I’m also Canadian, and this is somewhat reductionist. Though I fully agree that Canada doesn’t operate rationally when it comes to any CSJ ideas, and we aren’t a utopia, we also aren’t a hellscape. Providing this impression to outsiders is irresponsible. There are many immigrants who come to Canada and, over time, really do assimilate culturally and adopt Western, liberal values. And there are many that live within a subcultural ideological bubble, don’t learn the language or shared Canadian values and norms. There are likely many factors that contribute to this, from the screening process for new immigrants, to the specific cultural practices and beliefs of people immigrating. I have met many Filipino people, for example, who integrate really well into Canadian culture, and contribute positively, while also retaining a connection to their own culture. Casting them as merely another cultural group trying to exert dominance would be silly, as it’s just not true.
I assume you might be referring to conflicts between groups from places like Sudan, or other countries where sectarian conflicts abound. In this, you are correct. But my point is that it’s irresponsible, and untrue, to paint all immigrant groups with the same brush. Canada is a complex country, not a monolithic woke hellscape.
Insightful and really well laid out piece. Thank you so much. If only humanity could accept this, and try a different approach from what’s bogged us all down for too many centuries of our existence. ✌️
A functioning multicultural society is not one that obsessively manages groups and their identities, but one that enables individuals to move beyond them and form connections based on shared human and civic values. Only then can we approach the kind of multicultural society we claim to aspire to, and that can be achieved only by loosening, not tightening, the hold of group identity.
Exact.
Moving from the melting pot ideal to a multi-cultural identity affirming approach was a grave error by the progressives. I have always opposed multi-cultural identity affirmation. That is a tyranical approach. What I have supported all along is a multi-cultural tolerance. I don't have to like or support a culture whose members I may live among and/or work with.
It is reasonable to mandate tolerance - it is not reasonable to mandate affirmation.
Absolutely excellent piece. It's so quotable!
It is not a problem to be multiethnic/multiracial and all that entails, but it is a huge problem to be multicultural. There really has to be one binding culture in each nation, and in America that culture is constitutional, democratic, western and enlightened.
I think you can go further:
" A Middle Eastern man may have 40 years of experience as a Middle Eastern man, but none of the lived experience of a Middle Eastern woman. Likewise, the life of a gay man or a person with a disability can differ profoundly from that of a woman of the same background. By centring identity around groups, multiculturalism obscures these differences and downplays the divergent realities that exist within those very groups."
this seems to just suggest you need another axis to consider (sex, in these)?
But the life of one gay man can differ profoundly from that of another gay man. The experience of one Middle Eastern man can be profoundly different from that of another Middle Eastern man.
Having institutions focusing less on putting people into identity boxes based on ethnicity, sex, whatever, would be a great step forward. If I am reading about bridge building, the most important thing is how well that person builds bridges, not where their family came from, how they contribute to reproduction, etc. Those can be interesting stories but if you want a community of professionals or of people sharing their civic experiences, maybe stop telling people the most important thing about them is why they aren't like anyone else, why they can't empathize with each other, etc etc..
Totally get rid of the boxes
As a retired school librarian I have observed that current school libraries are overstocked with “multicultural” titles; except for the culture of the pioneers and their progeny. Forget A.A. Milne, Laura Ingalls Wilder, John Steinbeck and a host of American tall tales and nursery rhymes. Western Civilization be gone
😥
Nice piece. Parochial altruism (“multiculturalism” in another form) increases inter-group hostility, in all animals which have coalition formation.
It’s not a human thing it’s an animal thing. As you accurately point out, increasing parochial (“cultural”) altruism has very negative effects.
I thought Holland stopped. It has become a huge problem after the country faced several political assassinations in the 90’s/2000’s.
Diversity is not our strength. When Hitler threw out Diversity and emphasized Unity, he turned a bankrupt, starving, ruined nation into a power that came near to conquering Europe -- and would have but for the intervention of America. It is Unity makes for strength. The question of course is whether that kind of Unity can be directed towards good, not evil, and the answer isn't obvious.
The soviets had quite a role too
Of course. A greater role, but I frame the Americans as being outside of Europe. That is, if it was Germany vs. Europe only, Germany would have won. But the Soviets carried far more of the burden.
There is something to respect about their success in technology and science
Excellent piece. It spelled out many of the concerns that have been plaguing me for a long time.
Exactly!
Great discussion of multiculturalism!
The end conclusion of a “functioning” multiculturalism requirement proves multiculturalism will never work.
People are never going to change to align with some idealistic requirement. People are programmed to be tribal by evolution. Thats not going to change.
Any concepts that multiculturalism can create a great melting pot is not based in reality. The US experiment and also EU experiment have proven that! Time to acknowledge that multiculturalism as viewed by the idealistic melting pot perspective is dead!
Tribes living in states and communities with well defined borders is what humanity has always implemented. The states with the most might will define interstate rules. That the human condition 101.
I believe multiculturalism should be the concerted goal for modern societies, but first, glossing over the definition of abstract ideas like "culture" in discussing the pros and cons of multiculturalism is not a good idea because that leads to "talking around each other." I submit this definition for agreement before entertaining "multiculturalism":
"Culture encompasses the collective ideas, shared language, and social practices that emerge from and evolve through human social interactions within a society"(1).
Given that definition, the very idea of multiculturalism can be a shared (collective) idea (more on this below). Even individuals in a unitary culture will always have near-subconscious and conflicting ideas in a host of domains threatening group amity. So, "perfect collective ideas" is not a prerequist for the cohesive society we seek.
As to shared (first, or native) language, multilingual groups can still share a single culture as long as one language is officially accepted by the common government (an obvious prerequisite for both single or multicultural societies). That is, must a food store be forced to include English alongside its favored Mandarin? Can't that be the store's marketing choice or the buyer's choice, both being hallmarks of free market capitalism? So, "shared language" only means "official, government language." Citizens are already advantaged or disadvantaged in dealing with the government depending upon many things, such as education, so not having everyone's first language the government language is no reason to reject multiculturalism. Finally, only concerted teaching (led by the government) stands in the way of a shared practice common to all cultures being the acceptance of multiculturalism. The desired human interactions have never been "innate." They've always been a matter of concerted teaching.
That last point is key. Accepting and subconsciously embracing multiculturalism can be taught, even if we accept (as I do) that in-group favoritism is an instinctive (evolved) human predisposition. After all, "race" as an in-group marker can be erased (2). It follows , then that teaching can effectively mute or at least render meaningless out-group suspicions that are the necessary compliments to the instinctive behavior threatening multiculturalism.
That's why I conclude that an effective unitary culture can overlay a multicultural society, meaning multiculturalism is good. I further suggest it's especially so in a modern world where climate change will soon impell mass migrations. That means insular cultures will be more threatened than secure.
1. Chen Cecilia Liu, Iryna Gurevych, Anna Korhonen; Culturally Aware and Adapted NLP: A Taxonomy and a Survey of the State of the Art. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 2025; 13 652–689. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00760
2. Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387-15392.