Essay On Multiculturalism Without Culture

We all have a sense of what injustice looks like in our society and it is sometimes easier to define what injustice is rather than defining what justice is and looks like. However, we also know that an unequal society can never be just. In Equality in a Multicultural Society by Bhikhu Parekh, Contesting Cultures by Uma Narayan and Multiculturalism without Culture by Anne Phillips, all theorists believe that in order to achieve a multicultural society that effectively treats all people as each other’s moral equals; we must create equal opportunity using a culturally sensitive lens, challenge Western perspectives of Third World Feminists and stop allowing patriarchal norms to characterize minority cultures. In Parekh’s piece, he discusses minority …show more content…
Phillips argues that our society has fallen into a system of complacency regarding how we view multiculturalism. She explicitly states that is has “promoted a cultural relativism that can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. Culture is operating as a reason for public inaction and an excuse for immoral behavior” (72). Because Western practices have been perpetuated for numerous years now, society seems to have just thrown their hands in the air and regarded this issue of multicultural inequality as something that cannot be reversed. Phillips also makes a point to state that she does not think it’s the evidence of cultural inequality that generates problems of this unequal treatment, but rather when this evidence is matched with mainstream Western conventions. In order reconcile our duty to achieve gender equality, as well as respecting minority cultures in our society, we need to stop viewing culture as something that requires individuals to do certain things which they cannot do, and instead view culture in ways more equivalent to the power of gender or