Multiculturalism builds knowledge

The argument

Different cultures have developed their own library of tips, tricks, and traditions. There are traditional recipes, helping to make a great meal. There are child-bearing tips, to ensure pregnancies go smoothly. There are holidays and festivals that other cultures may be ignorant of. Each of those bodies of knowledge was accumulated by people solving ordinary problems over a long period, and where a culture sits on its own, what it has worked out stays where it was made. Multiculturalism changes that circulation. When cultures come into contact with one another and interconnect within a society, the plethoras of resources and knowledge held by each are shared with the rest. These shared "libraries" of knowledge become invaluable to society, as they offer more assistance and intelligence than ever before — more than any single tradition could have assembled alone. While not every tip or trick is scientific, and this argument does not claim otherwise, the cultures offer "at-home" recipes and remedies that may not have been previously known to their neighbours, and the range of available answers to a given problem widens simply by being pooled. The second effect is on how people regard one another. Multiculturalism in societies brings importance and prominence to their respective traditions, inspiring others to take note of the historical and social importances as well, rather than treating them as curiosities. Acknowledging the heritage of other cultures dampens potential biases: it is harder to hold a flattened view of a group whose festivals, foods and practices you have seen valued in public. What replaces the bias is contact of a productive kind — the acknowledgement begins powerful dialogues between communities, therefore motivating a well-educated and accepting society. On this account a melting pot of cultures helps a society precisely because it is also a pooling of what each of them knows.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There are other ways to access the knowledge of other cultures then by inserting the other cultures into a society--there is the internet, encyclopedias, and more.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Recipes, remedies and festivals are a thin account of what a culture knows, and the argument's own hedge — that not every tip is scientific — concedes that some of what is transmitted is of little value, or actively harmful in the case of unproven remedies. [Rejecting P2] Contact does not guarantee exchange. Communities can share a society while living largely in parallel, and the kind of sharing described is available through books, travel and the internet without any change in the composition of a population. [Rejecting P3] The claim that exposure reduces bias is contested. Contact reduces prejudice under particular conditions — equal status, shared goals, institutional backing — and can harden it where those are absent, which is the case the opposing position makes.

Framing

Every culture has something unique to bring to the table, and all other cultures should be receptive towards their respective knowledge contributions.

Further reading

https://education.uw.edu/cme/view https://www.edglossary.org/multicultural-education/