My first encounter of the concept of homogeneity came when I read how some Italian football dignitary of sorts commented on when they beat a team that was a combination of every nation in the world (the French national football team) with just Italians at the 2006 FIFA World Cup. This Italian football boss then went on to mention the various Italian tribes (Campanians, Etruscans, Sicilians, Lombards etc.). I, in fact, kept that Kick Off magazine where it was reported he said what he said - it has Ronaldinho in a red jacket on it's cover - but seem to have misplaced it somewhere. I didn't think of it much at first because I simply thought this Italian man was just running his mouth, but I've had this concept of homogeneity at the back of my mind for a long time. After hearing this, you then compare which football teams do better, is it black teams, Arab teams, mixed-race teams... simply, football is a European sport so Europe should be better at it. So it's not an accurate measure of the successes & failures of race. Football just seems like an accurate measure of a land's success because of the sport's popularity.
Brazil is a multiracial country & they consider themselves a nation despite having indigenous tribes - who don't know Brazil exists - living in its' Amazon jungle. They are the best at football but not the best socially or economically. Crime & poverty is rampant in Brazil despite recent developments. So football is not an accurate measure of a land's success. What then determines a land's success? Financial wealth, health, food security... these are more important measures at determining a country's success. And, by chance, most lands that are most financially secure, have a low mortality rate & are healthier are usually homogenous lands [e. g. Norway, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Botswana, Morocco, Libya (under Gaddafi), Netherlands, Poland etc.] Sure, you could say that most of these are "white" countries hence their financial success. But that's only because the current global economic system favours Western countries. Countries like Zambia & Mali could argue that they are financially stable due to low debt & a certain amount of food security (i. e. citizens are not struggling to survive) but in guages used to measure countries by their success or failures, we often only see the best, worst & our own countries. Where the best are often these Western (European) homogenous countries.
We could ask "Why can't homogenous African countries emulate the same success?" Personally, I think they do but on a smaller scale due to lack of capital. This success can often look negligible compared to multiracial countries who have larger capital due to being favoured by previous colonial empires, which gives this illusion of failure among homogenous black countries.
So is homogeneity or multiculturalism better for a society? Well, in a globalised world where often the default & norm is multiculturalism because of colonisation in the 1700s & 1800s, many approve of multicultural & multiracial (heterogeneous) societies but after a while this heterogenous society descends into a self-loathing / self-destructive state if it continues it's unity. I mentioned this Babylon phenomenon in a previous blog. But in a world that loves multiculturalism, I'd like to offer another way of thought & claim there is beauty, purpose, stability & function in unicultural & homogenous lands.
P.S. Multicultural & multiracial lands still hold much value in the global landscape & should be valued.
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