Why do you think Australia is known as a multi-cultural society?

 

multiculturalism is a harmonious metaphor for fashioning the concept of nation. In Its emphasis on equality of respect’, ‘the equivalence of cultures’, and ‘the benefits of cultural diversity’, it can be made to signal a distinct break with the classically racist policies of the period in Australian history to the end of World War II, and the assimilationist project of the post war period. Both of those ethnic management strategies had embedded Anglo versions and visions of ‘Australia’ as captured by the slogan of ‘white Australia.'(75)

On one level, multiculturalism seeks to move out of this model that expects everyone to adopt white values and culture. However, discussions about cultural pluralism and relativism or the seemingly innocent idea of ethnic difference move away from race  but still trade in images and biased ideas that are often built on Eurocentric interpretations of clear cultural difference, otherness and alienness. This tends to lock the agenda in an essentialist model of thinking that assumes that certain characteristics are essential features of a particular race while pretending to use the ideas of multicultural inclusion. Difference becomes both biased and