Today we have multicultural societies all over the world. Some say multiculturalism is a failure, while others think the opposite. Is multiculturalism really a failure? What are the positive aspects and what are the negative aspects of a multicultural society?
The UK is a classical example of how a multicultural society is formed. In the UK, diverse groups of immigrants have disembarked over the last 200 years. Jewish people escaped from Russian and Polish pursuit, Irish settlers attempted to flee from poverty and 500 Jamaicans were brought to the UK in 1948. In the 1950s and 1960s, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants came to the UK. When people from different cultures live together, they form a multicultural society, and as the immigration to the UK continued to develop, the UK became culturally diverse.
The UK becoming culturally diverse has both its benefits and its detriments. First of all, what is common for most multicultural societies is mutual misunderstanding, which is often caused by mutual ethnocentrism. This could also be entitled culture clash, which is a condition in which people from dissimilar cultures have fairly incorrect expectations of one another, and therefore they misconstrue the significance of the message that is being exchanged. The short story A Horse and Two Goats by R.K. Narayan is a good example of how mutual ethnocentrism causes mutual misunderstanding. In the short story we meet an old Indian man and an American man who attempt to communicate thinking they comprehend each other, but they end up having incorrect interpretations of each other’s messages.
In a multicultural society some people often stick to their own ethnic group. They do not interact with other groups. This behavior constructs the contrary of a united society. A lot of immigrants find it hard to integrate to the new society. This could be one of the reasons why immigrants choose to live where their own ethnic group has its