I was listening to Sheila Rogers in the car this morning. She had a Muslim woman and a Sikh man on the show. They were talking about the recent new law in France that will ban all forms of religious gear not just headscarf's, but also yarmulkes and crucifixes from schools.
My aha about this is that societies that are still essentially tribal such as France, defined as a long established mainstream distinct racial and religious cultures, have impossible barriers to cross in the modern word. Tribal societies organized on racial and religious norms have to defend themselves from the "other" and see any overt sign of the other as a threat. They can't help themselves as we are programmed as humans to do this. Liberte Egalite and Fraternite are not universal norms - they apply only to French catholics. In tribal society the others don't count.
When I first arrived in Toronto in 1972, it was definitely a tribal society. The dominant tribal culture was White Protestant with a few Italian Catholics. Now this tribal norm has been completely broken down and there is no dominant tribe of this type anymore. In fact the whole idea of two cultures in Canada is a fiction now. While there is a distinct French Quebec culture, even that is quite different from the French Acadian culture, and the Anglo Prot culture exists distinctly only in parts of Atlantic Canada. There is no dominant racially or religiously based culture in Canada anymore. To be Canadian is now more of a values based culture which places a large emphasis on tolerance which is impossible in a traditional culture.
I wonder. Has Canada broken free of the idea of a dominant tribe based on racial and religious heritage? If we have, then this is truly a breakthrough in how humans organize society and is I think very exciting.
