Obama versus Jindal: Multiculturalism versus the Melting Pot

BART SIMPSON: Hey, immigrants! Beat It! Country's full!

BOAT CAPTAIN Okay, folks. You hear the lady. Back into the hold. We'll try Canada.

IMMIGRANTS: Oh no, not Canada.

When you ask a person what are the key differences between Canadian and American culture, you typically get one of two responses: free health care versus whatever you want to call the American system; or the second response, the meting pot versus the multi-cultural society. Well, it seems like with the election of Barack Obama, even those two little distinctions are starting to fade.

No better examples illustrate the divide between multiculturalism and the melting pot than Barack Obama, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the Republican Party's supposed answer to Barack Obama. At first glance, it's easy to see why people would make a comparison. Both are political prodigies. Both are academic overachievers, (Obama a Harvard Law graduate, Jindal a Rhodes Scholar). And both, of course, are people of colour in positions where people of their colour have never been. But while they may share similar intellectual talents and resumes, their personalities and approaches to their personal identity could not be any more different.

Jindal, a first generation American of Indian descent has seemingly gone out of his way to portray himself as un-Indian as possible. When he was a child, he changed his name from Piyush to ‘Bobby', after Bobby Brady of The Brady Bunch: the whitest, of white-bread, all-American families. A few years later he converted from being a Hindu to a Catholic. No small feat, considering he was only a teenager at the time. And while he married a fellow woman of Indian descent, she also boasts of having left her Indian cultural heritage behind long ago. The two claim to be as American as an American couple can be, possibly best illustrated through the absolutely Palin-esque choice of names for their kids, including Slade Ryan, and Selia Elizabeth. In a way, the two are the ideal model of the America melting pot. Two children of immigrants who managed to not only adapt, but thrive.



(fast forward to about 2:30 into the clip)

One can certainly understand why Jindal would want to cultivate the All-American image that he has. Americans are notoriously suspicious of electing people they conceive of as ‘the other'. This is particularly true in southern rural states like Louisiana, and especially true of Republican conservatives. So naturally, if Jindal wanted to advance himself within the Republican Party, he would have to assimilate himself as much as possible. Unfortunately, the whole image reeks of calculated insincerity. While I don't doubt Jindal's fundamental belief in the Conservative values he espouses, it's hard to believe that one could so completely disavow themselves from their ethnic heritage as much as the Jindal's claims to have, without it being a conscious decision.

Consider Jindal's speech in response to Obama's State of the Union. Demorcrats and Republicans alike slammed the speech. Watching Jindal, with his Southern drawl and forced, folksiness, you couldn't help but feel like you were watching an actor perform; someone uncomfortable in his own skin. As hard as he tries, he's just not convincing.

Contrast that with how Obama has presented himself from the beginning. Rather than try to hide his ethnic identity, he used it to define himself. At the risk of being called a closet Muslim, he revelled in the fact that he was descended from Kenyan goat herders, and insisted upon being known as Barack. He did this even though he could have easily began his political career as Barry, the name he was known as throughout his entire youth. While Jindal spent his formative years in England, the Mecca of Anglo-Saxon western thought, Obama, by choice lived in the inner-city black neighbourhoods of Chicago before travelling to Africa in search of his roots.

In other words, Jindal looked for external validation when forming his identity, while Obama chose to look within.



In a way, Obama's willingness to embrace his different identities is uniquely Canadian in philosophy. Multiculturalism was officially adopted into Canadian policy under Trudeau in the early 1970s, and sought to promote national unity and interests, by breaking down social and cultural barriers between groups. The idea is that through understanding and valuing one another's cultures, people will begin to build a larger, more welcome society. And while many have criticized Canada's multicultural approach to society as an embrace of cultural ad moral relativism, I think it's more of an acceptance of the realities in our growing, interconnected world.

To expect people, immigrants especially, to abandon their cultural and ethnic past is not only unrealistic, but somewhat insulting. Considering that someone like Jindal, raised by a set of parents who grew up in rural India, could so easily assimilate without making a conscious choice to reject his Indian heritage and become as "American" as possible, is ridiculous. It shows a lack of character, and a deep rooted insecurity; a triumph of the need for acceptance, over the need to be oneself.

In the end, the battle between multiculturalism and the melting pot is a choice between the simple answers of Conservativism, and the complexities of modern Liberal thought. Where conservatives search for absolutes (gay versus straight, immoral versus moral, American versus foreigner,) liberals are not afraid of intellectual nuance. Sometimes an identity, much like a personal philosophy, is not something that can be encapsulated in a single sentence.  As inter-racial and inter-cultural marriages increase in number, and our identities become more and more complicated, the predominance of multicultural thought can only proliferate. Obama, and people who share a history like his will be the stories of the future, while the Jindals of the world will find themselves more and more alone.