<<Is the multiculturalism effort being done wrongly somehow?>>
It's all fucked up.
I grew up as a subject of the British monarchy. My first passport said my nationality (as a native-born Canadian) was "British." The Union Jack flew over our school, and we sang "God Save the King" at the beginning of every school day. The map of the world on the schoolroom walls was mostly coloured pink, and our teachers explained that all the pink (including Canada) was the British Empire. It was the greatest empire in the history of the world and the sun never set on it.
As subjects of His Majesty and later of his daughter, we enjoyed absolute equality before the law with regard to every other subject. This was a huge difference from Europe, where my grandparents had been born, and Jews were the scum of the fucking earth. They could be murdered like dogs and nobody would pay the price for it. They were robbed, publicly insulted, forbidden to enter the universities except in accordance with strict quotas if at all, and forbidden even to live in various areas of the Russian Empire. Nobody can rob them, nobody can discriminate against them, etc. There is a rule of law that applies equally to all. Funny nobody ever told the Polacks or the Russians about that.
My parents grew up without "multiculturalism." They were expected to become as British as the next kid but they knew they had to be better. To speak English better than the English. To play football better. To work harder. To show more politeness to elders. Nobody told them that they should preserve the Yiddish language of their parents or the clothing of the Eastern European Jews with skullcaps and fringed undergarments or to let their beards and their sideburns grow uncut. There was no tolerance for the ways of their ancestors and they knew basically that there were two kinds of people in the world: the British and everyone else. There was no ambivalence as to which was better.
Fast-forward to 1965. The Union Jack and the Red Ensign (a red flag with the coat of arms of Canada on it and a Union Jack in the upper left-hand corner) are gone because suddenly we have a new Canadian flag - - three vertical panels of red and white with a red maple leaf in the centre. The Queen's face is gone from most of the postage stamps and most of the currency. The national anthem is now O, Canada. And some multicult ass-hole is teaching our kids the core lessons of multicult, that all cultures are equal and none is better than any other. That if there are two cultures, and if the greatest achievement of one of them is the equality of the subject before the law and the rule of law and presumption of innocence and trial by jury and representative democracy and the greatest achievement of the other is the painted Easter egg, why one culture is not "better" than another, they are both equally good, they are just "different" from each other. Not better. Different.
This kind of shit drove me up the wall. The greatest culture in the history of the world was being abandoned by its own people, who were pulling the plug on centuries of English cultural dominance in North America. Now the British culture and value systems we were raised on were just one of dozens or maybe hundreds of cultures all of more or less equal value. For what purpose? Now the children of immigrants wouldn't have to struggle to acquire British values and culture as my parents had had to do - - they could wallow in their own dumb fucking culture for the rest of their natural lives if that was what they wanted (OK, so WTF had they come to Canada in the first place for??) Portraits of the Queen were removed from the schools and the courtrooms, to be replaced by more abstract symbols of justice or education. You don't speak proper English? Hey, no problem - - speak whatever dumb fucking language you want to speak, we'll find you an interpreter. So now almost nobody can speak proper English and nobody gives a shit. (Well that's not quite true - - sometimes we see the children of Pakistani or Russian or Chinese immigrants speaking and writing English beautifullly, but they're really exceptional.)
Well, that's my rant. It didn't hurt my mum and dad to be forced into somebody else's mold, didn't bother them at all that there was going to be this huge split between the native culture of their grandparents and parents and the culture that they were entering into as children of a new Canada. And I don't think it would hurt any of the new immigrants if multiculturalism were scrapped tomorrow and they were told, as were my parents (although not in so many words,) "Look. We have a terrific culture here of liberty and democracy and fair courts and laws and tolerance and you know what? You better learn all about it, cuz no one is going to cut you any slack, ever, if you don't fully understand it. You better learn to speak OUR fucking language, not yours, and you better learn to dress like us and not like some fucking weirdo."
