Multiculturalism

Lessons from Eighteenth-Century Multiculturalism
Name
Institution

Multiculturalism
The population of the world has continuously grown, and multiculturalism has proven to be an essential factor in uniting people. However, it has utterly failed in bringing people together. According to McWilliams (2018), back in the eighteenth century, the East coast of America was submerged in swamplands. The land had been recently discovered and was receiving migrants from various parts of the world. People from diverse cultural groups all came to make a home in America. They were all bought together by similar ideologies to drain the water and make land for agriculture and other uses. They all buried their diverse cultures and embarked on the back-breaking work of draining swamps as part of the redefinition of America.
Racism had not come to the minds of the people, and they all shared a similar identity of being Americans. They all shared knowledge with the aim of developing the young nation. Multiculturalism was successful back then because various cultures were treated as constituent parts of democracy rather than homogeneous wholes attached to a particular set of traits, beliefs, faiths, and values (Malik, 1968). Furthermore, beliefs, attitudes, and values were not associated with specific culture but were all looked upon as universally accepted ideologies. Beliefs and values were weighed, and the best were applied. What mattered to them was the creation of an environmentally healthy country and not fragmented societies.

If multiculturalism works, the world must look back and learn from the perfect example of multiculturalism exhibited by early Americans. The fragmented societies present today must all be dissolved and molded into one universal society. Knowledge should be shared and practiced for the betterment of the world as a whole.

References
Malik A. (1968). Promise in Indonesia. Foreign Affairs, 46(2) 292-303.
McWilliams, J. (2018, September 26). The Environmental Case for Multiculturalism: What We Can Learn From 18th-Century America. Retrieved November 18, 2018, from https://psmag.com/environment/a-case-for-literally-draining-the-swamps