I apologize if I came across condescendingly. I will try to amend my tone.

I say take a class or read a book exactly because I don't have the perspective to lay out an appropriately-lengthed diatribe about racism and its current and past states in Canada.

Canada was no better to its aboriginals than Jackson was, and that form of oppression (and cultural annihilation) persisted into the 20's, with aboriginal children being relocated away form their families specifically to receive a white education and be ingrained in white culture.

Racism exists now just as badly as it does in the States, but it's often in comparatively insidious ways. A general lack of racial and cultural integration (in comparison to the states) has resulted in the nursing of racial hatreds without the expanded perspective that is the eventual consequence of integration.

Canada is just as much a country of immigrants as the US is (I am one of them) but it lacks the cultural structure that the US has; hatreds are more easily hidden and ignored because this is a generally segregated society, but the racism is there, and it's real, and it's seething.

Yes I would love to be educated. I got straight A's in social studies. Also didn't you say you recently got residence in Canada? Are you saying you learnt more about Canadian history in America then I did in Canada? I've read US corriculum it doesn't teach you much about Canada. I however had to memorize most of the presidents and founding fathers. I had to know all the bordering states and what their imports and exports to Canada were. Etc...etc...

Also the 1800's were the years of the underground Railroad. At its peak in 1850. If Canada was so bad in the 1800's why did all the slaves and people of other colours want to come to Canada so badly. Slavery was official abolished in the 1830's. As a country Canada respected and treated blacks as equals the government recognized their rights and enforced them.

Also for Black history month we had a women come from Toronto and talk about how American slaves fled to Canada. She also talked about how today blacks are treated in Ontario. She did say that african Canadian's still felt animosity towards white people. But she talked about how in Canada laws protect african americans and that they contribute to sociaty in every way like every other Canadian.

So Mr.American who's smarter and knows more then me? What exactly do I not know about my country?

Only in Canada. What an incredible waste of tax dollars it's going to be to house these stupid jokers for 12 years when there are much, much more dangerous criminals out there on the streets. There are rapists and possibly murderers over here who get way less than 12 years. The Canadian justice system doesn't have it's priorities in order. Harrassment (whether it towards racial minorities, LGBTs, people with mental or physical disabilities or anyone really) is way, way below rape and murder in the "menace to society" scale in my opinion. The punishment for petty crimes like these should be light.

Even if they get reduced down to 4-5 years for good behaviour, that is an insanely huge waste of taxpayer money. Even assault is worse than harrassment and I doubt I'd be in jail very long if I punched out some person that got on my nerves.

And don't get me started on drug laws. Those are a fucking joke. Illicit drugs should be legalized. Throwing junkies in jail isn't going to turn them into productive model citizens. In Canada, they really over-do it with hate crimes whereas in America, they really over-do it with drug crimes.

See the above post.

The course in Canada's cultural history that I took was at the History department of Queen's University; it's not exactly all-encompassing, but it opened my eyes to a side of this country that I never knew existed.

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.

Apology accepted and sorry for my harsh tone in my reply. I just hate when American's tell me they know more about my country then I do. Its really arrogant.

As for how Canada treated its aborigionals. Canada as a nation was founded on July 1, 1867. As a country Canada has always treated its aborigionals and the blacks with respect and dignity. All races have since Canada's founding been welcomed and treated fairly well. Now yes during WWII we treated the Japanese Canadians terribly and in some cases have treated officially different races differently. However for the most part as a country we have treated all races as equally as possible.

Now when we go back to upper and lower Canada as colonies of the British empire it is a bit different. Also if we go further back before any form of unified Government existed it was terrible. But keep in mind this was the exact same as the US, why you ask? Because we were all under British rule.

Now history lesson Brigadier General Custer worked for who exactly? The US Government in the mid 1800's. The US Government as an entity supported massive slaughter of native Americans. 1876 the battle of little big horn occured in which the american government tried to pretty much ethnically cleanse the natives from the area.

Now yes Canada has existed since well dawn of man. Under the name Canada since around 1523 named by the french. However what the french and the english did to the natives up until Canada's formation can't really be held against Canada as a soveirgn state and country.

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

LMAO at the bolded part. Yeah I guess that's true but the point is we all got along. I could have started shit with the German guy by telling him his people are Nazis and are responsible for 2 world wars, and I could have made fun of the french guy calling him a frog and a cheese eating surrender monkey, etc, etc. But yeah I guess we were mostly white (I think 2 or 3 coloured people) but whatever.

And yeah I guess there are different racial neighbourhoods in Canada but isn't that the case everywhere? Like in the US you've got Compton and Harlem, 2 neighbourhoods I wouldn't be caught dead in (or else I'd become dead) and then of course there's cuban neighbourhoods in Miami, Mexican neighbourhoods in the southern states, etc. Point is I think neighbourhoods being separated by race naturally kind of happens everywhere in North America (if not the whole world)

Newfoundland, for example, where I live, had seen the extinction of a particular tribe of people in the 1800's - the Beothuk.

It wasn't the direct result of warfare or anything, but it had been caused mostly by the settling of the most fertile/productive lands, unfair trade, refusal of medicines, provacation.

Also in Newfoundland, the French population had been segregated to a particularly low-yielding fishing area - the Port-aux-Port Peninsula. To this day it remains among the poorest ridings in all of Canada and its people still face much prejudice. For my great-grandparents neighbours, who were french, it was blasphemous to speak french and hence, for many families, the language had become a relic of thier heritage.

Pre-1800's the French populations in Nova Scotia, a group known as the Acadians had been expulsed from their homes - many moving back to France, some moving to Louisiana, creating the cajun populations.

Hell, there are plenty of examples in Atalntic Canada alone. In most of British North America and in the early days of Canada, many people faced racism. It certainly isn't the rosy picture Joelcool presents.

Edit: Holy Hell... I was awfully slow with the response. Feel free to ignore.

Edit 2: Granted all of this happened in BNA ( British North America), but it fit in with the early 1800 suggestion.

1. I'm Canadian, now.

2. This is not true. One book you can read up on the subject is Conrad and Finkel's Canada - A National History. Refer specifically to Chapter 16, Entering the Twentieth Century, and you can read quite a lot about the plights of aboriginal Canadians during the early 20th century. No, they were no treated with respect. The major federal policy in regards to the aboriginal peoples in Canada wa sone of forced removal in a way that would not provoke violent responses. Learning about the obstacles aboriginals faced in the 20th century will break your heart.

3. Similarly not true; the Chinese in particular had a lot of probems in the 19th and 20th centuries, and you might want to read up on the kind of things you guys did in WW2 (here's a hint: it was like the US, more or less, only even more reactionary and intense).

4. Not relevant when talking about the current state of things.

5. A great number of Canadians don't know as much as they should about the history of their own country. More books I recommend on the subject:

Haig-Brown and Nock's With Good Intentions: Euro-canadian And Aboriginal Relations in Colonial Canada

Long and Dickaon's Visions of the Heart: Canadian Aboriginal Issues

Kuichyski's Unjust Relations: Aboriginal Rights in Canadian Courts

And those are just about aboriginal Canadians. The issue goes a lot deeper and a lot broader than that. It's why taking a class on the subject can be so edifying.