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Multiculturalism Quotes

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Multiculturalism Quotes

“We are not born to accommodate tyranny over our hearts, minds, bodies, or souls. We are here to confirm an abundance of love-inspired possibilities greater than such restrictions.”

“From the perspective of inclusive fitness, unfamiliar others are potential free-riders and, out of a concern that they will be exploited by others, people reduce considerably their altruistic attitudes and behavior in a general way in more diverse communities. This loss of trust is a symptom of a breakdown in social cohesion and is surely a forerunner of the sort of ethnic conflict that is always likely to break out if allowed to do so. This is undoubtedly the reason why multicultural nation-states are forever promoting tolerance and ever more punitive sanctions for the expression of ethnic hostility, even going so far to as to discourage the expression of opinion about the reality of ethnic and racial differences. Currently these measures are directed at the host population when they express reservations about the wisdom of mass immigration, but this will surely change as it becomes ever more obvious that it is the presence of competing ethnic groups that is creating the tension and not the expressed reservations of the majority population. The real danger for modern democracies is that in their zeal to promote multicultural societies, they will be forced to resort to the means that have characterized all empires attempting to maintain their hegemony over disparate peoples.”

“Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.”

“The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything.”

“As we encounter each other, we see our diversity — of background, race, ethnicity, belief – and how we handle that diversity will have much to say about whether we will in the end be able to rise successfully to the great challenges we face today.”

“Laurie piped up again. 'At State, everybody calls diversity dispersity. What happens is, everybody has their own clubs, their own signs, their own sections where they all sit in the dining hall--all the African Americans are over there? . . . and all the Asians sit over't these other tables? -- except for the Koreans? -- because they don't get along with the Japanese so they sit way over there? Everybody's dispersed into their own little groups -- and everybody's told to distrust everybody else? Everybody's told that everybody else is trying to screw them over--oops!' -- Laurie pulled a face and put her fingertips over her lips -- 'I'm sorry!' She rolled eyes and smiled. 'Anyway, the idea is, every other group is like prejudiced against your group, and no matter what they say, they're only out to take advantage of you, and you should have nothing to do with them -- unless your white, in which case all the others are not prejudiced against you, they're like totally right, because you really are a racist and everything, even if you don't know it? Everybody ends up dispersed into their own like turtle shells, suspicious of everybody else and being careful not to fraternize with them. Is it like that at Dupont?”

“We are drawn to the Renaissance because of the hope for black uplift and interracial empathy that it embodied and because there is a certain element of romanticism associated with the era’s creativity, its seemingly larger than life heroes and heroines, and its most brilliantly lit terrain, Harlem, USA.”

“The biggest requirement of learning is to know your limits of the moment. Let me elaborate with an example. Alongside my mainstream works, I have wanted to create complete works in turkish and spanish for several years. And few years back, with my rather limited experiential understanding of both languages, I even took it upon myself to do so, but I got stuck on the very first page. Why? Because it is one thing to pen occasional gems in another language, and totally different to release an entire work in that language. I was ready at heart, but not at brain. So, instead of writing whole works in these languages, I simply made turkish and spanish a joyful addition to my mainstream work - however the original linguistic and cultural intention kept reflecting in the titles of works, such as Aşkanjali, The Gentalist, Gente Mente Adelante, Mucize Insan and so on. It was not until late 2023 that my brain finally caught up with my heart, and delivered the first complete original turkish and spanish Naskarean works to the world. Know your strongholds, they'll take you far. Know your shortfalls, they'll take you farther. Strongholds help you enhance your predominant capacities, whereas shortfalls help you unfold new possibilities - they help you unfold new vistas of human endeavor.”

“If we consider this official or elite multiculturalism as an ideological state apparatus we can see it as a device for constructing and ascribing political subjectivities and agencies for those who are seen as legitimate and full citizens and others who are peripheral to this in many senses. There is in this process an element of racialized ethnicization, which whitens North Americans of European origins and blackens or darkens their 'others' by the same stroke. This is integral to Canadian class and cultural formation and distribution of political entitlement. The old and established colonial/racist discourses of tradition and modernity, civilization and savagery, are the conceptual devices of the construction and ascription of these racialized ethnicities. It is through these 'conceptual practices of power' (Smith, 1990) that South Asians living in Canada, for example, can be reified as hindu or muslim, in short as religious identities.....We need to repeat that there is nothing natural or primordial about cultural identities - religious or otherwise - and their projection as political agencies. In this multiculturalism serves as a collection of cultural categories for ruling or administering, claiming their representational status as direct emanations of social ontologies. This allows multiculturalism to serve as an ideology, both in the sense of a body of content, claiming that 'we' or 'they' are this or that kind of cultural identities, as well as an epistemological device for occluding the organization of the social....an interpellating device which segments the nation's cultural and political space as well as its labour market into ethnic communities....Defined thus, third world or non-white peoples living in Canada become organized into competitive entities with respect to each other. They are perceived to have no commonality, except that they are seen as, or self-appellate as, being essentially religious, traditional or pre-modern, and thus civilizationally backward. This type of conceptualization of political and social subjectivity or agency allows for no cross-border affiliation or formation, as for example does the concept of class.”

“Whether we consider hip-hop as an evolved manifestation of the Harlem Renaissance or something completely new under the sun, it clearly has moved beyond the stage of just entertaining lives to that of informing and empowering lives.”

“March of Human (Trisonnet 2556-2558) When the world feels cold and hollow, and the clouds won't let you breathe, awake, arise, and walk the marrow, you are fire fated to be free. Every heartbeat, an anthem of love, every syllable breaks a chain - you're the thunder you ought to follow, rise untamed, and history's rearranged. Every silence holds a scripture, every wound is a sacred drum - every time you defy despair, you teach midnight how to hum. When the Human speaks, mountains wake, tired hearts of earth unbreak - turn the world from ash to flame, help the broken speak their name. When the Pilgrim speaks, borders fall, the migrant soul becomes the all - in the quake of your cosmic call, empires misplace their mighty gall. Write like time's a fragile toy, like galaxies sit in your palm - roar with justice, rain with joy, awaken chaos into calm! From deserts to the deltas, from river to the sky, be the ink of revolution, that refuses to comply. Grab history by the collar, take hate and make it dust - when you near, tyrants stutter; lift the planet from the jungle gutter. When the Heart speaks, the Earth rewrites, buried stories are restored with rights - paint the future with your bare hands, teach the fire how to stand. When the Human walks, the soil revives, forgotten streets all come to life - with every step, with every beat, Awake, Arise, and Breathe Complete!”

“I Exist for I Dissolve in All (Sonnet 2265) My brain is multilingual, my heart is multicultural, my life is multidimensional, I exist for I dissolve in all. You barely speak one language, ramble doctrines from one dead book, can't see beyond the customs of your tribe, yet you say, your truth is the cosmic truth! Fanaticism is compensation for insecurity, supremacy is compensation for inferiority. Over a hundred books, thousands of sonnets, half a thousand limericks, half a thousand free verse poems, yet I still say, I'm incomplete.”

“Islam may soon become the majority religion in countries whose churches have been turned more and more into tourist sites, apartment houses, theaters, and places of entertainment. The French scholar Olivier Roy is right: Islam is now a European religion. How Europeans, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, cope with this is the question that will decide our future. And what better place to watch the drama unfold than the Netherlands, where freedom came from a revolt against Catholic Spain, where ideals of tolerance and diversity became a badge of national honor, and where political Islam struck its first blow against a man whose deepest conviction was that freedom of speech included the freedom to insult.”

“The state does not oppose the freedom of people to express their particular cultural attachments, but nor does it nurture such expression—rather [...] it responds with 'benign neglect' [....] The members of ethnic and national groups are protected against discrimination and prejudice, and they are free to maintain whatever part of their ethnic heritage or identity they wish, consistent with the rights of others. But their efforts are purely private, and it is not the place of public agencies to attach legal identities or disabilities to cultural membership or ethnic identity. This separation of state and ethnicity precludes any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups, or any use of ethnic criteria in the distribution of rights, resources, and duties.”

“I'm A Mad Monk (Sonnet 2702) I'm a mad monk, I won't return to paradise - the world is a giant headache, yet my suffering is my cure. I'm exhausted, I want to sleep, but I'm afraid, if I fall asleep, I might not wake up - so I toil, till the soil is human. Soy un monje loco, no volveré al paraíso - o la tierra es de todos, o ilegales todos somos. The world ain't mine, the world ain't yours - either earth belongs to all, or we are all illegal.”

“Amor Armada (The Sonnet) I don't do drugs, languages are my LSD. Half-lovers crave escape, I crave absolute unity. Music is my MDMA, Cultures, my cocaine. Languages are my LSD, People are my heaven. Those drunk on love, language and culture, need no artificial stimulant. Only the half-lovers and the half-dead, chase booze, drugs and institutions. I'm drunk with the spirit of sacrifice, You can keep your puny bottled charisma. In a world of broken glass and cigarette buds, I am Amor Armada.”

“I don't do anything for reward, I do everything as a record, a record of conviction - a record of resilience - a record of thunder - a record of sentience. My life is a repository of what is possible if you put your petty tribalisms aside. I leave this repository in your capable hands - draw from it as you will - put it to use as you deem fit.”

“They ask me, why do you speak for so many cultures, when you are not born in those cultures? So I asked the sun, why do you share your light with earth, when you are not born of earth? The sun told me, o ye of little mind, don't you know, light is not mine to give! Light is the intrinsic right of life, I am merely accessory to the motive.”

“When Whiteness Collapses (Sonnet) When the whites benefit from privilege, it's part and parcel of colonial heritage, but when a giant rises from the marginals, it eclipses the shallow heights of whiteness. I'm colored, I'm scientist, I'm poet, I'm polyglot - coming from zero money, I won the world with words. Try and get your puny white brains around this existence enigma - compile your white canons of a century, and they turn bleak next to just one year of multicultural, multidisciplinary Naskar. I never grovelled to be included, I let my vastness out, and the world queues for my grace.”

“I don't utter a single word that I wouldn't want to become part of the canon, but person can't live on discipline alone, so, having no lover to take my armor off for, I found a different way to vent my vulnerability - in the mainstream work I'm a pillar of strength, while turkish is quite literally my love language - english is the language where my brain feels at home, turkish is the language where my heart finds rest.”

“Go Burn My Verses (Sonnet 2636) Burn the verses, I'll write fiction - burn the fiction, I'll write music - burn the music, I'll adopt a new language - burn the language, I'll pick up paintbrush - burn the paintbrush, I'll grab a soldering iron. Take away one medium, I'll adopt a new one, apes don't have the braincells to sabotage my mission. The only unstoppable organism in the universe, is the mind that embraces evolution over limitation. You keep asking, how do I write so immense - I keep asking, where's the off switch for this! Every time I decide to take a breather, ideas start pouring, so I keep typing restless. You're welcome to burn all my verses, still you cannot dampen the spark of oneness. Today I'm Naskar, tomorrow another - truth will find a postman, across time and space.”

“Only Fact is Me (Sonnet 2655) I'm the impulse before the language, I'm the reason before the science, I'm the pulse before the poetry, I'm the kernel before the divinity. I'm larger than genre, larger than grammar, I'm larger than primate dictionary. I'm the duty that precedes the path, I'm the mutation before the humanity. I switch languages like radio, I switch cultures like seasons - if you tie Naskar to a nation, you've failed the Naskar mission. Only fact in this universe - is me - and I am nothing, so nothing is fact, everything is flux - and I - am the flux of infinity.”

“Neighborhood Humanitarian (The Sonnet) They ask me, why do I never run out of ideas! It is because I never dwell in one culture. Sometimes I'm North American, sometimes Latino, Sometimes I'm South Indian, sometimes I am Turk. When I run low on charge, I listen to Español, When my sight gets foggy, I watch Cary Grant. Whenever I feel homesick, I listen to some Telugu, Whenever my heart bleeds, I run straight to Turkey. It is sort of a perpetual motion engine, I empower the cultures, the cultures empower me. If I am the world's not-so-secret hometown human, The world is my secret to my infinite electricity. How, do you think, I became the neighborhood humanitarian to every single person on earth! It's because I never glorified one culture over another.”

“Would-be writers often ask me, do I ever get writer's block! I tell them, you get writer's block when you're imprisoned in one language and culture. Like the wind, I think, feel and live in numerous languages and cultures, which keeps me ever-ripe with more ideas than I could put down on pages. Whether you are a writer or not, learn a language - it not only expands your head, it expands your heart, and makes you more humane. Porque, un idioma es una autopista a una cultura. A language is a freeway to a culture. Thus, learning a language is one of the tangible endeavors to help eliminate hate from the world.”

“Poet of A Planet (The Sonnet) I am not the poet of a nation, I am the poet of a planet. I don't do just one culture, Assimilation is the prime tenet. Hence my work repels nationalists, Like the sun repels the nightcrawlers, While it attracts expanding beings, Like the amazon attracts explorers. If you wanna hear how great your culture is, Go read some fundamentalist fiction. I don't write for prehistoric barbarians, To put it bluntly, I write for modern humans. I repeat, I'm not the poet of a single nation. I am but the living proof of amalgamation.”

“I grew up speaking two languages, mother tongue and national tongue, then in my late teens I assimilated English from pirated dvds of American movies; soon after I absorbed another language, from the South of India, again from movies. Years later when I started writing and got WiFi, that's when an entire new horizon opened up. This time I found myself drawn to Turkish and Spanish, which became second languages in the canon, after my first English. I don't describe, I embody - I don't study a culture, I disappear into the culture.”