Of course all cultures aren’t equal

Once again, UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has restated her view that not all cultures are created equal. And, once again, this statement of obvious fact has been greeted with predictable outrage.

This week, Badenoch made a speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship in east London, in which she criticised cultural relativism. She warned that some migrants who come to Britain bring with them ‘behaviours, cultures and practices’ that undermine Western civilisation and ‘the values that helped make us great’.

Badenoch first made her position clear on this issue last October. Writing for the Sunday Telegraph, she said that Britain cannot ‘be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border’, and that we should be more mindful that ‘not all cultures are equally valid’. In response, she was smeared as ‘nasty’, ‘divisive’ and ‘Islamophobic’ by the likes of Labour MP Zarah Sultana.

This time, Badenoch has received a similar backlash. Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper accused the Tory leader of ‘parroting Trump’s dangerous rhetoric’. Meanwhile, Remainer campaign group Best for Britain claimed Badenoch was ‘saying the quiet part out loud’. The implication being that she was engaging in some kind of racist or far-right dogwhistling.

None of what Badenoch has said should be remotely controversial. Certain cultures are superior to others. We can easily judge this based on how they treat ethnic and religious minority groups, same-sex-attracted people, and women and girls. It is an uncomfortable truth that there are some parts of the world – largely the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa – where being gay is punishable by death. Or where young girls are forced into marriages with adult men. Or where women are not even allowed to speak in public. How can we ever consider those societies to be on an equal footing with the West?

Badenoch is right, too, that when large numbers of migrants come to the UK from such societies, they do tend to form isolated, self-segregated communities, where these norms are perpetuated. Tragically, forced marriages, honour killings and female genital mutilation are all things that happen here in the UK. Despite being illegal, these practices are routinely covered up and the perpetrators are protected by the insular communities in which they take place. It is this kind of mentality that allowed many of the grooming-gang perpetrators in Pakistani Muslim communities to evade discovery and punishment for so long.

As Badenoch rightly argues, the British state and the political class must shoulder some of the blame for this. An ideology of uncritical multiculturalism has allowed reactionary practices and values to go unchallenged and to fester. The only reason it is now ‘contentious’, Badenoch says, to argue that ‘some cultures are better than others’ is because ‘honesty has become impossible’. People are afraid to criticise anything that is done by an ethnic-minority community, in case they are branded Islamophobic, xenophobic or racist.

The UK is far from a hostile place for minorities. In fact, we have an incredibly rich tradition of providing sanctuary for persecuted groups – from the French and Wallonian Huguenots who fled the European wars of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries to tens of thousands of Jews who sought refuge from the Nazis to those using legal, managed asylum routes today.

The problem arises when newcomers do not recognise or respect liberal freedoms. Yes, we should be tolerant of other cultures and religions, but we cannot allow ethnic hostilities or backward practices to carry on unabated on our shores. Our values must not be compromised.

Badenoch should be commended for sticking her head above the parapet. She is right that we need to start talking about the social and cultural impacts of migration, not just the economic aspects. And if we do believe that certain cultures are superior to others in their attitudes towards equality and tolerance, then that must be reflected in immigration and integration policies.

It remains to be seen what Badenoch plans to do about this, if she were to ever win the keys to No10 Downing Street. But it is certainly high time that multiculturalism was rejected. We cannot afford this cultural relativism any longer.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.