| Chairman-Mao said: Yeah Canada definitely has some black marks on an otherwise pretty great history. Japanese internment camps, native residential schools and the turning away of Jews in the second world war come to mind when I think of bad things we've done. But I certainly think Canada is MILES ahead of the US in terms of equality both past and present. I'm not sure if the US was the last western country to abolish slavery but they were certainly near the back of the pack, and even after slavery there was segregation up until what the 60's or 70's? It wasn't till guys like MLK came along that they started to end segregation. Canada isn't perfect now but we live in pretty solid harmony I'd say. Like right now I go to school at the University of Waterloo and if you look up the demographics it must be half Asian, probably 1/4 middle eastern/indian and the other 1/4 a mix of white and whatever else there is but we all get along. We are a very diverse school. I just played poker Friday night with some guys from my residence (around 12 of us) and the guy hosting it was British, there were 2 french guys, a German guy, a swedish guy, a dutch guy, and more. I think Me and this other guy were the only actual Canadians but we all had a great time and got along famously. I don't see many cases of racism in my area, but of course I can't speak for all areas of Canada. |
I wasn't actually talking about Canada in comparison to the US, especially not in the past, but presenting Canada as some kind of bastion of racial and cutural equality is off-base. I would, in poin t of fact, hold that the US is currently better in termso f the state of our racism. It's something like what Malcolm X said concerning racism in the South versus racism in the North: you will know that a man in the South is racist because he will tell you, but a man in the North has his racism covered by his guilt, a culture of guilt that lets the embers of hatred burn long and hot and hidden away, never showing until they are so great and terrible that they burn everything near them (that's why in the past few decades, the greatest part of the KKK was north of the Mason-Dixon line).
One interesting thing about Canada that has to be noted is that it's a ocuntry that naturally segregates itself, just like certain parts of the US does; it's why you see such enormous neighborhoods made up of single ethnicities (I'm a white boy living in a predominantly Chinese neighborhood, myself). People can nurse their prejudices without huruting anyone, but they never grow past them either. It's why there's a smaller number of hate crimes up here, even though there's just as much racism (per capita).
And uh
I feel kind of weird pointing this out, but all the nationalities you just pointed out are predominantly honkies
