Racial Prejudice in Canada

Racism is a relatively modern problem, since the concept of race has only emerged in the last few centuries. But fear and suspicion of strangers, xenophobia, is instinctive; we are herd animals. It should therefore be no surprise to encounter it anywhere, including Canada.

I have certainly witnessed discrimination in Canada against East Asians; and against Jews. And I have experienced it myself—prejudice against “whites” is particularly common.

But I have also experienced prejudice on the basis of ethnicity in most other countries in which I have lived. Prejudice and discrimination against non-Chinese is quite overt, for example, in China. In the Middle East, there is a rigid racial hierarchy: Arabs at the top, Europeans (“whites”) below, but above Filipinos, who are above South Asians.

 On the whole, Canada has to be one of the least prejudiced countries in the world. The multi-ethnicity you encounter on a typical city street or in the subway suggests this. Most countries are ethnically based, and if you do not have the requisite physical characteristics and pedigree, you are forever an outsider. Not so Canada.

Friend Xerxes persists in asserting that “only the person experiencing prejudice knows it.” This is exactly wrong. Prejudice is an attitude in the mind. Unless motive is stated, only the prejudiced person can know for certain they are prejudiced. For anyone else it requires mind-reading. 

Granted that people can often not know, or not accept, that they are prejudiced. I had a discussion just yesterday with a man who insisted he was not anti-Semitic; it is just that Jews really are all like that. He had a good argument, too; he claimed that the principles of dishonest business dealing were Jewish values. I might have had to buy it, had I not read the Old Testament and much of the Talmud.

Given this uncertainty, the only sensible way to detect and root out prejudice is in laws, statutes, contracts and government policies. And, that, of course, is also the place it really matters. Rudeness you shall have always with you. 

And the statutes and laws in Canada, when they are not, as they should be, race neutral, actually always favour designated “non-white” ethnicities over “whites.”

As for social prejudice, the concept of “white privilege” is a fine example. It is impossible for anyone to know, by looking at the colour of someone’s skin, whether they have experienced a privileged or underprivileged life to that point. It is impossible to know either whether their ancestors have. The concept of “white privilege,” or any actions taken based on this assumption, is or are a classic example of prejudice. One must, as Martin Luther King said, judge not by the colour of someone’s skin, but the content of their character.