1 in 3 say Canada is a racist country
One in three Canadians say this is a racist country.
The mayors of Quebec City and London, Ontario – both of which have experienced murderous attacks on Muslims – have written an urgent letter to the prime minister asking for a national summit on Islamophobia. Here’s a story I happened on from Saskatoon: a Muslim man was attacked, stabbed and had his beard partly cut off while going about his business on Friday morning, and – telling detail, buried in the story – he was “hit over the head with the cane he uses for walking,” so the attackers had no compunction about assaulting a man who wasn’t entirely able‑bodied, either.
Once again, I have to comment on the use of -phobia in the description of such incidents. A phobia is an irrational fear over which the holder has no conscious control. Calling it “Islamophobia” pushes off some of the blame by likening it to a mental illness. It isn’t a phobia, it’s plain old hate, and there are people who revel in the sheer access of anger that accompanies hatred. It’s a choice. It has nothing to do with phobias.
Chris 13:15 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
Just as we’ll never get the murder rate to zero, we’ll never get these kinds of attacks to zero either alas. But they are so low here in Canada. I feel like these 1 in 3 people have no idea what other places on Earth are like. I wish the poll had asked them to name a place less racist than Canada.
The term Islamophobia is infuriating for another reason: conflating Islam and Muslims. It’s used by some to try and shut down any criticism of Islam, an ideology filled with sexism and homophobia. Opposing an ideology does not mean fearing or hating human beings. Other languages have the word Muslimhate, which is what English needs.
david299 13:39 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
^ No kidding. Canada is one of the least racist places on earth, possibly the least racist. There has always been a very strong strain of self-loathing among a minority of people in English Canada, which goes hand in hand with not really having much of a culture, and letting the American culture machine occupy so much of the most critical ‘national’ space vacuum. You can’t blame the Americans for the Canadian outrage industry – which has always been a small but loud gang – or the new prominence of this marxian racial paradigm or the wall-to-wall focus on race, which most people with any sense know doesn’t even exist, so that these racial obsessives and hustlers are actually reifying the very race-based decision-making they claim is so pernicious.
Quebec will be fine, but it’s just one more point of cultural divergence between us and Canada, which should probably just get it over with and join the US.
Uatu 14:04 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
Canada is no worse and no better than any other country, IMHO. Every place has a racist element in it. It’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed in QC for so long. It doesn’t really matter where I move, some insecure douche (the proud boys) will take it out on me because I ain’t white. And the same applies to QC (La Meute) It’s no better and no worse than anywhere else. I think what really is key is social media pushing the insecure button on the fearful resulting in attacks. Every one should just take a breath and take a step back and consider what they read online because mostly it’s just there to keep your eyeballs on the site to sell you crap from ads. Relax. Nobody wants Sharia law and nobody’s going to replace you.
Kate 14:14 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
David, Canada was founded by white people taking native land, and its marginalization of the indigenous peoples continues.
Likewise, a lot of white people resist and resent people who look or dress a little different from themselves taking up space (even though those people are usually working harder and paying more taxes than the white trash causing the problems).
It’s not self-loathing to recognize these problems, and in view of the Quebec City and London incidents and things like the story from Saskatoon, it isn’t “American” to see we have a problem. It isn’t “American” to put it to the government that we want them to do what’s possible to make sure it doesn’t get worse.
You have drunk the Koolaid that says Quebec is somehow separate and above the rest of Canada in these matters. As usual, Quebec puts its own spin on its approach, but it’s also got the racist undertow that the rest of the country has. It’s dogma to believe Quebec is special. Quebec isn’t special and its French founders were the same Europeans who decided the “New World” was terra nullius and fair game, just like the English and the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Quebec is part of Canada, deeply and fundamentally and ab initio.
mare 14:19 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
So david[n], you really think the RoC is less racist and discriminatory than Quebec? Other cultures or skin colours or out QUILTBAG are pretty rare in most of Quebec, apart from Montreal and some native Canadians reserves (those in itself are racist in my book), and the province is more homogeneous than most of Canada. Hérouxville wasn’t an outlier, but the outrage made other towns/villages wary to show their “Norte racines” thoughts in public.
And Canada is definitely not less racist than other countries, but because we screen our immigrants, we have fewer poor, under-educated immigrants, so less victims to blame. In many countries in Europe they have many of them, and they tend to be more traditional, more visibly different and less integrated, and they are “encouraged” to live in segregated neighbourhoods and even the second or third generation receive a large part of the Muslim hate and discrimination.
DavidH 14:19 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
Every country including Canada is racist, so Canada is not racist?
Of course there is racism in Canada. I actually wonder how the other two out of three manage not to see it. That other places are also racists does not make us any better and certainly should not prevent us from naming and addressing it.
My guess is the people with the more cosmopolitan roots and the more travelled were mostly part of that one out of three and those denying racism were very very white. It’s how the commentariat is usually split these days. It’s not immigrants, natives or POCs denying racism. It’s people who don’t go see the world or others and spend too much time navel-gazing to be able to take in criticism about their self-view and identity.
GC 16:22 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
I also wonder what fantasy land the other 2/3 live in. It reminds me of a news story I saw on TV many years ago. They went to a small town that was about 99% White and interviewed a couple of people who said straight-faced “We’ve never had any problems with racism in this town.”
GC 16:27 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
Kudos to CultMtl for actually linking to the study, however! So many of the major news sources don’t, as Kate has also pointed out many times…
Chris 19:07 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
>Canada is no worse and no better than any other country, IMHO
Uatu, that’s just not true. Are we putting religious minorities in camps like China is doing? Do we have worker-slaves like in Saudi? Do we have ethnic wars like Rwanda? Are we like India, which tops just about every list of most racist places?
>Relax. Nobody wants Sharia law…
Just not true. Huge numbers of Muslims want it.
>And Canada is definitely not less racist than other countries
mare, can you name some countries you think are less racist? I’m legit curious.
I think many Canadians don’t realise how good we have it here, and are unaware that’s there’s a whole other level of racism that is commonplace elsewhere. You might start with this Washington Post article.
We’re not perfect, and should work to improve, but this self-flagellating narrative that we are a racist hellhole is total BS.
Jeff Marshall 19:42 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
This comment section is a disaster.
We may be more polite about it, but Canada is a racist country, and that very much includes Montreal/QC. You can make all the excuses you want; we’re the least racist, see how you do in other countries, etc. but the fact remains that minorities are made to eat shit and that’s how a lot of Canadians like it.
MarcG 21:37 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
Since our delightful society determines the value of everything, including people, with money, I checked out the statscan employment income data, and if I’m reading these numbers right, the average in Quebec for someone who’s a visible minority is $30,998 and for white folk it’s $41,615. And for anyone who wants to make a “that’s because they’re still new immigrants trying to find their way around” argument, the number seems to actually drop to $29,509 in the “Third generation or more” column.
MarcG 21:43 on 2021-06-26 Permalink
Note that it also drops for non-vis-mins, perhaps pointing to another relevant issue: that we’re all being screwed (but unequally).
Uatu 10:06 on 2021-06-27 Permalink
@chris: I think I’m just speaking from my own experience. You r right about the classist and racist tendencies of other countries, but there seems to be a conflation between obviously racist acts that are reported like in the WaPo article and daily life of visible minorities. Sure we don’t have worker slaves, but I have relatives who were treated as such by their Quebecois employers. We don’t have internment camps, but we have indigenous communities that have 3rd world living conditions. Over my lifetime I’ve had people make fun of me to my face, imply that my parents stole jobs, read White power graffiti and hope I don’t run into these people, listen to the Premier of the province blame people who look like me for ruining their chance of an independent country. Along with other microaggressions. And I mentioned Sharia law because that’s used as an excuse to attack people even though the Charter of Rights and freedoms protects against the worst part of the laws. Canada isn’t a racist hellhole, but it needs work like you said.
CE 12:17 on 2021-06-27 Permalink
I heard people complaining today about the heat, I made sure to tell them to stop complaining because we live in one of the coldest countries on earth, if not the coldest. Can anyone name some countries you think are colder? I’m legit curious. I feel like these people have no idea what life in a hot country is like.
Kate 13:14 on 2021-06-27 Permalink
Iceland would be colder. The British Isles are further north from here too, but the Gulf Stream moderates their temperatures, which get neither as hot nor as cold as us, usually. I’ve an Irish friend who was complaining on Twitter recently because it was going up to 20°.
Ephraim 20:10 on 2021-06-27 Permalink
Have you ever seen TV ads in French? Desjardins hardly manages ANY diversity… except the ad for diversity… https://www.youtube.com/c/desjardins/videos
Mark 08:39 on 2021-06-28 Permalink
Something I have noticed in my interactions with people from MTL/QC ( full disclosure: I don’t currently live in MTL/QC) is that not many in the province have lived abroad for a significant amount of time. While some of the charm of MTL (in my opinion) comes from it having so many born-and-bred locals, I have also noticed the reverse: many QC/MTL people have never experienced truly being out-of-place, starting out, having to fit in a new culture or language (not assimilate, which is a dreadful word). I think some of the racism and xenophobia some people propagate comes from not knowing what it’s like to not be in a comfortable majority, to be ‘a local’, to know everything that is happening in your city/province, to be able to filter every cultural reference around you, etc. From there, the road splits in two: as a local, you can either support and guide newcomers on their journey in your native city/province, or you can forever cast them as inferior and nebulously dangerous.
Anecdote: My partner is from QC and (years ago) when she told her family she was dating an Eastern European man, one of her uncles instantly called me Mohammed. he kept referring to me as Mohammed for years, up until he met me in person. I am neither Middle Eastern nor Muslim, which were both assumptions he made based on my country of origin (my country has a minuscule Muslim population – 0.3% according to the latest census). I of course understand there was an element of jest to this, but still. If you look at social media amplified xenophobia, most of it started as memes/jokes, and then it turned into a political agenda.
EG 09:41 on 2021-06-28 Permalink
It does seem to me that there’s a sort of insular-ness to quite a bit of Quebecois culture. I notice it in subtle ways, such as how francophone Quebecois are more likely to make racist jokes, and be ignorant of a lot of racist or problematic things in general. I’ve had this confirmed by people who are more outside of Quebec culture/location/practices than I am. I’ve even been reluctant to speak out about this, not wanting to bash Quebecois or Quebec culture.
As a result of this insular-ness, many Quebecois seem incapable of seeing racism, so it’s easy for them to deny that there are many racist practices embedded in many systems (also known as systemic racism.) And their denial of things like racist jokes as “just a joke, I’M not racist,” is part of the problem.
And in the rest of Canada, the racism is, to some degree, more covert, as many Canadians like to paint themselves as polite, nice people, who can’t possibly be racist.