In the US, we're struggling — as we have always struggled — with immigrant populations. We value diversity, but we expect a degree of assimilation. We like the food that gets cooked, the holidays that are celebrated, the cultural bits and bobs — but we also expect that XYZ-Americans will be Americans first, not forgetting their XYZness, but also not forgetting that they chose to be Americans.
Again, that's been a struggle over the centuries of our nation. Inscrutible Orientals. Swarthy Mediterranean Papists. Violent, drunken Irish (who were also Papists). Weird Slavs. Lazy Mexicans (who were there before the Anglo Americans took over, but, still …). And, always, the Jews.
We've always accused them of being clannish. Of being weird. Of having different, strange, disturbing traditions. Of not learning the language. Of having strange religious practices. Of including violent socialists, communists, anarchists. Of not being like Us.
And in recent years that's continued. Vietnamese refugees. Ethiopian refugees. And, today, refugees from Muslim countries. And it remains a struggle. Something here — the appeal of the American dream, or just a fundamental welcoming behind whatever veneer of xenophobia we seem to wear, puts an expiry date on those lack of welcomes. People do assimilate. They — or their kids — learn English. Heck, by the time the grandkids roll around, they only speak English. They move out the neighborhoods / enclaves / ghettos. They bring their family, cultural, religious traditions with them, but put up Costco Christmas Trees and do barbecues with the neighbors. And once they stop looking or sounding or smelling or behaving funny — we tend to welcome them. (Even, sometimes, the Jews.) Because we are diverse enough, as a nation of immigrant, that once the sharp corners have been smoothed down, we tend to accept the no-longer-quite-so-different folk.
But we, at least, have a tradition around that struggle. Europe — much more ethnically / culturally singular and separate. France is full of French people, with French culture. England is full of English (and Scots and Welsh), with their own traditions. Germans, Dutch, Italians, Swiss — just like we in the US have our stereotypes of what those folk are like, the folk who live there, in families that have lived there for centuries, have their own internal stereotypes of what it means to be "German" or "Dutch" or "French" or "Swiss."
So what happens when people come into those countries who don't fit the internal cultural norms? It doesn't look pretty. My sense is that a lot of the conflict and segregation that lead to highly ghettoized immigrant — especially Muslim immigrant — populations in much of Europe today, whether "guest workers" or legit immigrants or refugees, is not just a matter of populations that decline to assimilate, but local populations that don't want them to assimilate. Who consider centuries of (relative) cultural and ethnic purity to be of profound value, vs the relatively mongrel population of the US.
They teach us a lesson that if you treat people as being forever the Other, eventually they will, willingly or unwillingly, take up that role.
And here's a small but meaningful story of that:
1. Muslim kids comes from an upbringing where, for religious / tradition reason, physical contact between men and women is (outside of certainly family norms) not allowed.
2. Swiss schools always start with kids shaking the hands of the teacher.
Hilarity and court cases ensue.
From an American perspective, there's some head 'splodin' here. On the one hand, some Americans would be, "Well, heck, if that's the local tradition, then they should go ahead and do it." But a lot of Americans (even some of that same group) would be, "Hey, personal religious / philosophical beliefs should be respected."
Americans have a weird combination of respect for societal conformity and respect for personal / philosophical / religious independence. That flares up into conflict frequently, but we never settle down wholly on one side or the other. And that tension is probably a good thing — societies, by definition, imply a certain degree of cultural conformity, but individual liberty makes for happier individuals (and a degree of cultural "hybrid vigor").
In the US, the closest analogy I can think of here is the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag at the start of the school day. It's expected, it is culturally normative, but we provide for folk to dissent from it for personal, religious reasons, but we also tend to socially look down on them for doing so, while also admiring their personal devotion to a cause, whether we agree with it or not. See also the current Sport / National Anthem kerfuffle, and the schizophrenic reaction to that.
The Swiss argument that "the integration of foreigners significantly outweighs the freedom of conscience of the students" would (with much wider bounds) be objected to in the US. Probably. The ginned-up fear about Muslims might weigh against this, but by and large we treat "freedom of conscience" as more important as a principle, even if we militate toward integration / assimilation as also important as a principle. We value freedom of conscience more, perhaps, among the assimilated, but only the most hypocritical / xenophobic / unconsidering value freedom of conscience as something only the assimilated can claim.
It's hard to let monocultural traditions go. It's not just hard, it's scary in its implications. What alternate traditions might replace them? What new traditions might be imposed upon me? Why do things have to change? But change is a constant, and the entrenched cultures of Europe need to figure out how to welcome and integrate with the populations moving into them. The alternative — keeping those new populations separate forever — clearly doesn't work, and trying to shut the door and pretend that the old ways are the forever ways is wishful thinking at its worst.
Swiss Muslim Boy Must Shake Female Teacher’s Hand – The Atlantic
A local school council in Switzerland said a Muslim boy must shake his female teacher’s hand, regardless of his religious objection.
