This Harmony Day, shed a tear for the multiculturalists

Mark your calendar: March 21 is Harmony Day in Australia. You may not have known it, but Harmony Day is the day we celebrate multiculturalism.

Be sure to break out your orange ribbon. But don’t pin it on too early: it might get you in trouble with the Irish. Next Monday is St Patrick’s Day — possibly a dangerous day to get caught in a pub wearing orange. Well, it might be dangerous in certain parts of old Eire, especially in the run-up to Brexit this month. But in Australia, most people are pretty relaxed about multiculturalism.

But some of us take multiculturalism a bit too seriously. When intellectuals and bureaucrats start telling people what they can think or say about other cultures (or even their own), then it has gone too far.

Multiculturalism has become the secular religion of the Australian ruling class. And the intellectuals and bureaucrats who run Australia insist that everyone else worship at their altar. Criticise multiculturalism, and you risk being branded a racist. Challenge Australia’s Human Rights Commission and section 18C, and you risk bankruptcy — possibly worse.

Not that Australian multiculturalists actually embrace other cultures. Consider the case of a Saudi man who wants to register all three of his wives in Australia; or Chinese-Australians who have petitioned against the Safe Schools program. Don’t even mention forced marriage, spousal abuse, corporal punishment, female genital mutilation or child brides.

When push comes to shove, Australia’s multiculturalists only embrace other cultures when those cultures embrace their own particular brand of multiculturalism. They demand a multiculturalism of feminism, secularism, republicanism and homophilia. They want an Australia of many cultures that just happen to share their culture.

Australian elite multiculturalism is little more than a smokescreen for anti-English resentment turned into anti-Americanism. When Australian multiculturalists claim that Australia is an “Asian” country, they don’t really want it to be anything like China, Indonesia, or Myanmar. They just want to use non-Western Australians to justify their own prejudices.

Most of multicultural Australia doesn’t care a whit for multiculturalism. They’re too busy assimilating. Australia’s immigrants do a good job of assimilating. If they didn’t, the country would come crashing down. For multiculturalist intellectuals, assimilation is a dirty word, but for most recent immigrants, assimilation is the number one priority.

For most immigrants to Australia, assimilation isn’t very hard. Australia may be the most immigrant country the Western world has ever seen, but the top two sources of immigration to Australia are Britain and New Zealand. Throw in South Africa, Canada and the US, and about 30 per cent of Australia’s foreign-born population hails from English-speaking countries. Add the rest of Europe, and you’re at more than 50 per cent.

These Western immigrants aren’t living in segregated communities, celebrating their multiculturalism. The next biggest groups, Chinese and Indian immigrants, are also in Australia to make the most of living in the West, not to turn Australia into a little Asia. That means speaking English, succeeding in school, and embracing Western values.

The children and (especially) the grandchildren of these immigrants usually date and marry people from outside their own ethnic groups. That’s why multiculturalism is ultimately a dead end. When it comes to cultural assimilation, you can’t beat the birds and the bees. So this Harmony Day, shed a tear for the multiculturalists — and crack a smile for the future.

Salvatore Babones is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Sydney and author of The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts.