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And in the creation of nation there have been some major dynamics about how you
deal with the difference that has come as a consequence of
human ability and human creativity.
One response has been to say,
well societies don't work unless we're the same.
And we need to make sure, if we're going to be a good, strong,
healthy society, that those perhaps who were there before us,
that don't fit in, that might never fit in, need to be removed.
And we need to construct a community of our own people.
In fact, if you look at the example of Australia when the first settlers came
there from Great Britain, they looked at the peoples who where there and
barely saw them as human.
In fact,
what they declared was that the land was empty, terra nullius it was declared.
And then on becoming a nation, they declared themselves white and British.
And their job they thought was to smooth the dying pillow of the indigenous people.
Because in their minds, with the ideology of racism, they
believed that the indigenous Australians, the Aboriginal people of Australia,
could never become part of the Western Civilization that they brought
with them from England and Great Britain to Australia.
But this kind of exclusion and separation was not unique to Australia.
Other nations, when they created themselves, created themselves
with a singular sense and drew borders and tried to remove people,
or had wars to kill people who they thought were not like them.
Because they believed that you couldn't live together fairly, and
because they believed in race having superior and inferior members to it.
So that's one dynamic that exists in the world and has existed, and
is still in the memory of people who are part of our planet today.
A second dynamic is something that we call recognition or integration.
And many parts of the world have finally had to realize that you
cannot do ethnic cleansing,
you cannot remove people who are not like you, even if you are dominant.
Even if you have the tools to be able to make it impossible for
people that you don't like to survive comfortably,
you do need to create the conditions of recognizing diversity and
respecting people in their differences.
Sometimes it's been called multiculturalism,
sometimes it's been called assimilation, but that has been a trend as well.
And the third one, perhaps the more recent one that we'd like to talk about,
is civic pluralism, how does any geographic space
recognize the dignity of the people who are in that space?
And how does it create institutions that are inclusive and
can deliver on people's needs, whether they're emotional, material or symbolic.
So if we just take exclusion and separation,
it is one of the most difficult and
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Examples have existed, as I've already mentioned,
in Australia or in the United States, Apartheit in South America,
the fascism of Germany that wanted to get rid of Jews and
Gypsies and people that weren't Aryan, the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union.
We have seen many periods in history where people have resorted
to that kind of dynamic for addressing diversity.
The other approach, which I mentioned earlier,
is the one about creating a nation around a single identity, and
anyone who's allowed in must assimilate.
So if you're going to be Italian, you have to be Italian in a particular kind of way.
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You have to be of the same religion or of the same habits,
or the idea of, if you are to come into the community and
want to be part of the Italian State, for example, you need to assimilate
to what that country has determined are the features of its society.
Assimilation was also a model in the American context.
The idea was that people would come from all over the world, as we've seen, but
once they came into America, they'd leave their identity behind.
And they would go into a big melting pot, and
come out with new habits, new language, new ways of behaving.
And then they would have the opportunity to share in the bounty of the land.
The assimilation policy was, when there is an assimilation policy,
the schools are part of that process.
And there's great attempts to ensure that the heritage that somebody
had when they came to the country, or in the case of Native Americans or
aboriginal people, that somehow that is put aside
in order to become part of the society that's going to succeed.
Part of the idea around assimilation was that if you wanted to get ahead in life,
you needed to be like the dominant group.
So on one side, there was an ideology that it would benefit
people to leave behind the ways that were deemed inferior or
not suitable, but it was a horrendous process for
people to have to give up so much in order to become.
And as we've seen, it's not necessary to give up everything
to become part of a decent society and to make a contribution to it.
Dr William CopeProfessor
Dr Mary KalantzisProfessor
