Beyond the Near has no time at all for the leftie concept of multiculturalism, but thinks polyculturalism is a great idea. Want an explanation? Give her post a read.
My take: The advent of a healthy right-wing parallel to multiculturalism is only a matter of time, the product of growing internal political necessity as well as larger external trends like globalization. Just one more reason to pay attention when you see posts like this one.
I like it. Polycultural can be used the same way multicultural should be used. Grab it and run with it. Make it ours, as the segregationists made 'multicultural' and 'diversity' theirs.
I spent four years in Berkeley; most of the reasonably sane people that I talked to there used "multicultural" in much the sense the "polycultural" is being used there. The question of "melting pot vs. salad bowl" (how to allow everyone to adapt stuff from many separate cultures without drowning all those separate cultures into a single global monoculture) is still the biggest theoretical problem with it, which the linked article itself notes.
I haven't heard of any really good solutions for that; but the "polyculturalists" should not be considering their concept to be in any way "right wing." The problem it attacks (a society full of people that haven't completely assimilated, and how to assimilate them while gaining from the assimilation) has been dealt with pretty continuously by America for quite a while. If a more explicit structure for discussing this phenomenon shows up, the left and center will use it too.