Canada's Multiculturalism

I would say that Moghaddam is pessimistic about the long-term social benefits of Canada's multiculturalism policy. He believes that multicultural policy works under the assumption that minorities are positively motivated toward retaining their ancestral culture and language. However, he mentions that are are reasons why some minorities may not want to retain them. For example, the ancestral culture may have sexist values that women would want to abandon. Also, some immigrants may face discrimination in Canada because of prejudices against their culture, so they may rather blend in with the mainstream crowd and as a result, abandon their ancestral culture. Moghaddam also claims that the multiculturalism hypothesis plays a part in Canada's multicultural policy. The multiculturalism hypothesis states that when group members feel pride and confidence in their own culture, they will be more open and accepting toward out-groups. But empirical studies show that this may not be the case and the multiculturalism hypothesis seems to target the wrong groups: usually, it is the more powerful majority group in society that shows discrimination toward the minority groups since the minority groups lack power and don't have as much of an effect. Cultural relativism is also an issue with Canada's multiculturalism policy according to Moghaddam because multiculturalism requires that the different cultures must be supported within their own contexts and this would undermine the Universal Declaration of Human Rights if put into practice.