Multiculturalism – Examining the Politics of Recognition pdf

Multiculturalism – Examining the Politics of Recognition by Susan Wolf

MULTICULTURALISM

This volume focuses on the challenge of multiculturalism and the politics of recognition as it faces democratic societies today, particularly the United States and Canada, although the basic moral issues are similar in many other democracies.

 The challenge is endemic to liberal democracies because they are committed in principle to equal representation of all.

Is a democracy letting citizens down, excluding or discriminating against us in some morally troubling way, when major institutions fail to take account of our particular identities?

Can citizens with diverse identities be represented as equals if public institutions do not recognize our particular identities, but only our more universally shared interests in civil and political liberties, income, health care, and education?

 Apart from ceding each of us the same rights as all other citizens, what does respecting people as equals entail?

 In what sense should our identities as men or women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, or Native Americans, Christians, Jews, or Muslims, English or French Canadians publicly matter?