Intractable global problem

The world is in conflict but no one seems to be articulating the precise nature of that conflict. From what I have observed around the world, the actual opposing forces are subtle and not often articulated - they are the notion of race versus culture.

If you look at countries like China and Denmark, the people in these countries see race as the defining feature of their nationality. They believe that if you are racially Chinese or Danish, no matter where you are at in the world, you will always be Chinese and Danish. On the other side is the new world notion that race has nothing to do with ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship - it is the person's culture that defines their nationality. Unsurprisingly, the latter concept is more pronounced in the new world like the USA, Canada, and Australia where the population is more diverse in racial make-up.

Personally, perhaps because I live in Australia, the latter makes more sense to me. At the end of the day, if you share a common culture (which may consist of a whole bunch of smaller sub-cultures), it is that common culture that creates ethnicity, which binds everyone in a country together. However, given that new world countries are not inhabited by different races from day one, some descendants of earlier settlers take the view that their racial ancestry should define one's ethnicity and nationality, which gives rise to extreme views like white supremacy. Ironically, these people fail to remain consistent in their views and ignore races who inhabited the country before their ancestors. In Australia, white supremicists conveniently ignore indigenous Australians who were already in the country before their ancestors arrived.

The way I see it, the two ideologies are mutually exclusive. As long as people in a country have divergent views, the tension of some people who see race as the defining feature of a nation and the majority who subscribes to the notion of culture-defining nationality would always exist and as the minority view comes under pressure, that view would become more extreme and exert greater forces to push back more frequently.

The only way this tension can be diffused is to have a truly multicultural society where different races and ethnicities are normalised on a daily basis but until we achieve that utopic society where one's nationality is defined not by race but by culture and different ethnicities are commonplace as part of everyday social interactions, the disruption of the minority view would continue to mount and become increasingly violent.

As for those countries where they define nationality by race, I think as globalisation continues to thrive and the racial make-up in those countries is further diluted, they would eventually need to grapple with the same struggles faced by the new world today. Hopefully, by then, the new world would have a ready-made solution to make the transition easier for the late-comers.