on race relations
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For Canadians smug in their mythology of inhabiting the planet's most successful multicultural society, the riots of France have been cause for national tsk-tsking and self-satisfaction. At least, goes the script, we've got social inclusiveness right. At least — maybe more by luck than by design — we've avoided the creation of racial underclasses: no endless ugly suburbs of brown and black people imprisoned in poverty from which scant hope of escape exists. At least we've embraced into our national culture the notion of postethnic identity, woven the values of anti-discrimination and equality into not only our laws but into our hearts and national idiom.
Well, hold the complacency, eh?
To be sure, a Canadian mirror held up to the car-BQs of France shows no violent mass unrest brewing in, say, Toronto's Jane-Finch or Jamestown neighbourhoods, Montreal's quartier St-Michel or patches of Greater Vancouver's Surrey and the Downtown Eastside. But what recent research reveals is an alarming and disquieting analogue to the demographic portrait of the French suburban cités. It shows an emerging population of Canadian-raised daughters and sons of visible-minority immigrants à la France whose accents and cultural reference points are as Canadian as maple syrup, but who in many respects feel less welcome in the country than their parents.
The data show, in fact, a generation raised in the milieu of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and multiculturalism's rhetoric, who expect to be treated as equals in Canadian society and who angrily are discovering that they are not. Their disaffection has gone largely unnoticed until now in polls and academic research because, unlike in France, the numbers of the visible-minority second generation are statistically small.
The data show that on virtually all indicators used by sociologists and governments to measure integration into Canadian life, visible minorities rate themselves as less integrated than whites. Add their perceptions of non-belonging to their socioeconomic rankings — among all ethnocultural groups in Canada, racial minorities clearly have the lowest relative household income and the highest poverty rates — and the outlines of underclass loom menacingly from the mist.
"I don't feel accepted," says, Rahel Appiagyei, a third-year student in international relations attending Toronto's elite bilingual Glendon College at York University. "The one thing I don't understand — me, personally, and for blacks in general — is why we're still seen as immigrants." In the Canada of her experience, she says, "the word 'immigrant' is used to mean coloured and the word 'Canadian' is a code word for Caucasian." She tells the story of living one summer in Quebec with a family to learn French. The father made clear that he associated blacks with poverty and one day commented that he had never thought blacks attractive until he met her. "It was a compliment and insult at the same time." She tells of being often asked: "'You're from Africa, how come you know English so well?' I feel I'm always being assessed with lions and tigers, with remoteness. Why is it we're not allowed to feel we belong here?"
University of Toronto sociologist Jeffrey Reitz's findings from the data carries special weight: "Although most Canadians deny harbouring racist views," he says, "they express 'social distance' from minorities — that is, preferences not to act with members of other racial groups." And so, Prof. Reitz says, the alienation of today's visible-minority second generation is a harbinger of the future. What the data also show is that white Canadians tend to discount the claims of discrimination reported by their non-white fellow countrymen and countrywomen. It's not the mythology of multicultural inclusiveness. And yet discounting those claims, Prof. Reitz warns, may make matters worse. "Lack of [racial] conflict in the present may not be a good predictor of the future."
For Canadians smug in their mythology of inhabiting the planet's most successful multicultural society, the riots of France have been cause for national tsk-tsking and self-satisfaction. At least, goes the script, we've got social inclusiveness right. At least — maybe more by luck than by design — we've avoided the creation of racial underclasses: no endless ugly suburbs of brown and black people imprisoned in poverty from which scant hope of escape exists. At least we've embraced into our national culture the notion of postethnic identity, woven the values of anti-discrimination and equality into not only our laws but into our hearts and national idiom.
Well, hold the complacency, eh?
To be sure, a Canadian mirror held up to the car-BQs of France shows no violent mass unrest brewing in, say, Toronto's Jane-Finch or Jamestown neighbourhoods, Montreal's quartier St-Michel or patches of Greater Vancouver's Surrey and the Downtown Eastside. But what recent research reveals is an alarming and disquieting analogue to the demographic portrait of the French suburban cités. It shows an emerging population of Canadian-raised daughters and sons of visible-minority immigrants à la France whose accents and cultural reference points are as Canadian as maple syrup, but who in many respects feel less welcome in the country than their parents.
The data show, in fact, a generation raised in the milieu of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and multiculturalism's rhetoric, who expect to be treated as equals in Canadian society and who angrily are discovering that they are not. Their disaffection has gone largely unnoticed until now in polls and academic research because, unlike in France, the numbers of the visible-minority second generation are statistically small.
The data show that on virtually all indicators used by sociologists and governments to measure integration into Canadian life, visible minorities rate themselves as less integrated than whites. Add their perceptions of non-belonging to their socioeconomic rankings — among all ethnocultural groups in Canada, racial minorities clearly have the lowest relative household income and the highest poverty rates — and the outlines of underclass loom menacingly from the mist.
"I don't feel accepted," says, Rahel Appiagyei, a third-year student in international relations attending Toronto's elite bilingual Glendon College at York University. "The one thing I don't understand — me, personally, and for blacks in general — is why we're still seen as immigrants." In the Canada of her experience, she says, "the word 'immigrant' is used to mean coloured and the word 'Canadian' is a code word for Caucasian." She tells the story of living one summer in Quebec with a family to learn French. The father made clear that he associated blacks with poverty and one day commented that he had never thought blacks attractive until he met her. "It was a compliment and insult at the same time." She tells of being often asked: "'You're from Africa, how come you know English so well?' I feel I'm always being assessed with lions and tigers, with remoteness. Why is it we're not allowed to feel we belong here?"
University of Toronto sociologist Jeffrey Reitz's findings from the data carries special weight: "Although most Canadians deny harbouring racist views," he says, "they express 'social distance' from minorities — that is, preferences not to act with members of other racial groups." And so, Prof. Reitz says, the alienation of today's visible-minority second generation is a harbinger of the future. What the data also show is that white Canadians tend to discount the claims of discrimination reported by their non-white fellow countrymen and countrywomen. It's not the mythology of multicultural inclusiveness. And yet discounting those claims, Prof. Reitz warns, may make matters worse. "Lack of [racial] conflict in the present may not be a good predictor of the future."
— Michael Valpy, Globe and Mail (11/12/2005)
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posted by þΛųL jØŋαŦhΛŋ @ 01:45
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