Urban Shocker
Doyenne
What do you suggest - that Toronto in 2008 should imitate Vancouver in 1969?
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Convenient metonyms aside, Canada's "multi-culturalism" is functionally identical to the USA's "melting pot". People make a big deal out of what each system encourages and discourages, but in practice there is no difference. An immigrant moving to San Fancisco or Boston will not be "assimilated" any more forcefully or thoroughly than an immigrant moving to Toronto or Vancouver. Quite frankly, i don't even understand what multi-culturalism is. I have never seen it in action.
The most common proof of multi-culturalism's impacts are the various ethnic enclaves which dot the GTA. These is nothing to suggest that these enclaves are the result of any government policy however, rather consumer choice. Outside of Signapore, no industrialized country regulates where someone can live based on racial quotas. If we abandoned the symbolic policy of multi-culturalism, there is no reason to suggest we would and hence no reason to suggest immigrants would behave any differently than current. More over, numerous cases exist of ethnic clustering in all countries. A visit to South L.A. or Atlanta will show quite clearly that, fruitcake or melting pot, the US is in many ways far more ethnicly segregated than Canada. Even more so with the predominantly Muslim Suburbs in Europe. Even in Canada, early European immigrants organized themselves based on nationality. Kitchener (aka Berlin) even retained the German continental system of roadways!
Multi-culturalism doesn't exist. It is the logical extension of individual rights and personnel freedoms that have been building over the past centuries. Immigrants don't do anything because of multi-culturalism. Sikhs choose to live in Malton because they like it, not because some government policy tells them to preserve their culture. Barring some kind of nationalistic indoctrination and mandatory patriotism camps, a disturbing throwback to the 1930s, we aren't loosing the fruit cake or salad.
Either we do a better job of integrating these newcomers into our society or make our rules far more strict. In the end, we aren't doing them or ourselves any favors with the way things are.
Stats Can's own studies show that the latest wave of new Canadians are not integrating. They are performing more poorly than previous waves. I can think of a dozen reasons why, but one of the main reasons is that they are 'ghettoizing' (if that's even a word?) themselves more than previous generations did..
I look at my grade school pictures (late '60s in Vancouver) and, to me, that is what mult-culturalism is suppsed to be, before Trudeau screwed it all up:
In a class of 30 or so, there were about 20 mostly anglos (who knows, because then nobody cared what or who you were), 2 or 3 kids of various Latin backgrounds, 5 or 6 Asians (mostly Chinese), 1 Greek kid and one black kid.
Juxtapose that with ANY photos of gradeschool kids in the GTA today. Is that multi-culturalism?
Just because Canadians are too polite to be rude, doesn't mean they aren't growing concerned.
So, basically being Canadian is just a question of geography of birth? Surely we could consider someone, from wherever they're born that embraces Canada's existing culture, history, official languages, legal and rights systems is more of a Canadian than someone who is born in Canada, never embraces or learns our language(s), culture?The kids born here are as Canadian as Canadian can be, though, regardless of the fact that Grandma can still only speak Cantonese or Urdu.
Depends what you mean by "they". Don't mistake a sentimental bond for one's youth with paranoia about the present--and as far as the paranoid is concerned, well, Darwinism will take care of that...
Funny that you would invoke the Darwin clause: doesn't it strike you that what is happening in the West right now runs contrary to natural selection? What other culture or group has ever subverted its own interests for those of others? Would one lion pride let another one simply move in and take over? Or would they put up a fight?
If we treat other cultures as immutable, but our own is evolving, it begs the question that, ultimately, who will assimilate who?
doesn't it strike you that what is happening in the West right now runs contrary to natural selection?
How does it run contrary to natural selection? That statement can be interpreted to think that the "current canadian" is a superior biological organism and if natural selection were to run it's course - would survive while those lesser organisms (from other non-western countries) would cease to exist....
What criteria are you applying? Is it monetary? (Money is not even from the "natural world")