|
|
Mauritius: Equal Opportunities - the Key to Social Harmony
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
L'Express (Port Louis)
COLUMN
8 February 2008
Posted to the web 8 February 2008
Pauline Etienne
Port Louis
The live digital video conference by Professor James Cohen, organised by the US embassy at the university of Mauritius, was a golden opportunity to discuss the specificities of multicultural societies like Mauritius.
A group of people with slavery as legacy are trying to make themselves heard by the authorities.
"Multiculturalism might be merely a word. But behind the word are hidden important problems," said Professor James Cohen, right at the beginning of his presentation. The American lecturer at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Supérieures de l'Amérique Latine in Paris was holding a live Digital Video Conference on "What can multiculturalism achieve?" In fact, it appears that achieving a harmonious multicultural society depends a lot on every citizen's sense of belonging to the country and feeling that he/she has a place in society.
The main question about multiculturalism is how to make all citizens - of different origins - feel they belong to a country? According to the American Professor, developing the sense of citizenship in everyone goes through positive actions for minorities or language used at school for instance. In fact, diversity is a "tricky word", according to him, because it includes so many differences that can be felt in the origin, culture, gender-related or socio-economic inequalities. "It appears that there is a relation between inequalities and the origin of people most of the time. On a global scale, real social decolonisation has not taken place yet," he noted.
Author Bhikhu Pareck made a checklist of issues that multicultural policies should take into account if we are to achieve equality between all cultures in a society. Rethinking national history, dealing with racism, tackling inequalities, education, arts, media and sports, politics and representation are among these areas.
One of the lecturers present and member of the panel, Ibrahim Koodoruth, then pointed at the difficulty of reconciling positive actions for minorities and the objectives of achieving equal opportunities, which the government has been talking about for months now. "It is clear that the society first has to be categorised before being able to talk about positive actions for such and such groups. In France, for instance, there has been a controversy about pinpointing specific categories of persons. One of the ways of bypassing this problem could be to implement positive action on a territory basis rather than an ethnic basis for instance," said the American Professor.
Where does Mauritius want to go? "In Mauritius, we have quite a superficial multicultural society. We all celebrate the various religious or cultural festivities but multiculturalism does in no way go beyond that," commented Corinne Saupin, another member of the panel.
No real interaction
This is also the case in Great-Britain where all communities tend to respect one another but where there is no real interaction between them. The case in France is quite different. "France has quite a unique way of dealing with problems of racism and inequalities. They hold universal republican discourses, which imply that equality is a fact because every citizen is born equal. They have a political method of fighting racism through laws but reality appears to be different ( ) This type of discourse does not really help because it does not allow to target any group of people to take action. Arab remain a taboo word in France", explained James Cohen.
|
For Vinesh Hookoomsing, professor at the UoM, Mauritius is at an auspicious moment of its history because there is a group of people with slavery as legacy who are trying to make themselves heard by the authorities. "This is the first step of a new awareness for civic rights," according to the lecturer. The setting up of the Truth and Justice Commission is one of the results of this new awareness.
However, UoM lecturer Sheila Bunwaree made it clear that it was important to reflect more about what the commission was truly expected to achieve in a society which is "still struggling to find how to tackle our multicultural society". For her, it is important to see "who needs reparation, what type of reparation it will be". Mauritius and South Africa have faced two different problems at very different periods of history and it appears that we can't just set up the same type of commission here.
To achieve a peaceful and harmonious multicultural society, it clearly appears that equality is a must. All citizens must feel they have the same opportunities to develop a sense of civic responsibilities and a sense of belonging to the country
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 L'Express. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
