RACE, NATIVITY, AND MULTICULTURAL EXCLUSION

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the exclusion of Afro-Mauritians (or Creoles) in Mauritian multiculturalism. Although Creoles represent nearly thirty percent of the population, they are the only major group not officially recognized in the Mauritian Constitution (unlike Hindus, Muslims, and the Chinese) and they experience uniquely high levels of socioeconomic and political marginalization despite the country’s decades-long policy of official multiculturalism. While scholarship on multiculturalism and nation-building in plural societies might explain the exclusion of Creoles as a breakdown in the forging of political community in postcolonial Mauritius, I build on these theories by focusing on the tension between diaspora and nativity evident in Mauritian public discourse. Using the politics of language policy as a case study, I examine why theKreollanguage in Mauritius—the ancestral language of Creoles and mother tongue of the majority of Mauritians—was consistently rejected for inclusion in language policy until recently (unlike Hindi, Urdu, and other ethnic languages). In my analysis of public policy discourse, I map how Creole ethnic activists negotiatedKreol’sinclusion in multiculturalism and highlight their constraints. This analysis shows that through multiculturalism, non-Creole political actors have createdethniccategories of inclusion while reciprocally denotingracially-excluded others defined by their lack of diasporic cultural value. I argue that groups claiming diasporic cultural connections are privileged as “ethnics” deemed worthy of multicultural inclusion, while those with ancestral connections more natively-bound to the local territory (such as Creoles, as a post-slavery population) are deemed problematic, culturally dis-recognized, and racialized as “the Other” because their nativity gives them a platform from which to lay territorial counter-claims to the nation.