Trust, Multicultural Politics and Political Dissent

This article tests two hypotheses, using the Canadian society as the case study, both of which view multiculturalism in contradiction with social trust. Emphasizing the conflictual nature of multiculturalism, the first hypothesis regards it as a set of political strategies which fragment the society. This hypothesis ignores the fact that multicultural policies have integrated the cultural minorities into the main current of the majority culture within the Canadian society. The second hypothesis is a normative critique of multiculturalism and maintains that the radical types of such policies give rise to the spread of political dissent in the society, thus they should not be evaluated as a factor creating trust. The first part of the article is allocated to the extrapolation of the causes of the tense relationship between trust and multiculturalism. In the second part of the article, it is indicated that multicultural policies in Canada have increased the chances for mutual relations and have helped the cultures to develop common understanding and allegiance. The third part of the article points to multicultural methods and the likelihood of the threat to social cohesion arising from them which results in the dissent of cultural activists. As the author argues, none of them even in their extreme cases justifies the rejection of multiculturalism.