Racism alive and well in city
But situation improving
By BROOKES MERRITT, SUN MEDIA
Burning crosses and segregated buses might be a thing of the past, but racism still quietly thrives.
Racial discrimination in Alberta is often far more subtle than that, some high profile, non-white Edmontonians said yesterday.
"When I was six or seven years old I couldn't go in the town wading pool because I was Chinese," Lt.-Gov. Norman Kwong, 77, told the crowd of around 300 at the Delta Edmonton South, who were celebrating the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Kwong's memories of such discrimination - growing up in one of two Chinese families in a small town near Calgary - are vivid, but long in the past.
"Chinese people couldn't even vote in Canada back then. That would never be allowed to happen today, but racial discrimination still exists and we still have work to do to end it."
According to Statistics Canada's 2001 census data, 11% of Albertans are non-white, with the majority being Chinese, followed by South Asians, Filipinos and blacks. The data does not include aboriginal people.
Winston Hawthorne, of the National Black Coalition of Canada's local chapter, said racism still thrives in discriminatory industry hiring practices, and in the media.
"The full spectrum of a (black) person's life is rarely represented in media reports. We fight against crime headlines and images of African-descended criminals every day," he said.
Hawthorne cited an example of how local black university commerce graduates head straight for Eastern Canada or the States.
"Look in a bank around here. You won't see many people of African origin because they just don't get the same opportunities here that they do elsewhere. Are we happy? No. But things are certainly better than they used to be and slowly improving."
Edmonton MP Rahim Jaffer - a Muslim whose family lived in India before moving to East Africa and later Vancouver and Edmonton - remembers the discrimination he faced as a younger schoolboy.
"It was nothing specific, but I always knew I was the only dark face in the crowd when I went to school. Kids would say things sometimes, but I always knew it was because their parents hadn't taught them any better."
Rather than the more overt racism his parents' generation faced, Jaffer said "what we more often experience (in Canada) is a bit of racial and cultural ignorance. It can be just as harmful but is less malicious in nature."
But even in the last 15 years, Jaffer said he's seen tremendous leaps in how kids deal with others from different cultures.
"Walk into a school class in Edmonton today and it's like everyone is colour blind. They have so much access to the world and other cultures that things like skin colour and religious beliefs seems far less foreign to them."
Al-Karim Ramji, 23, is a director of the Canadian Mutlicultural Education Foundation - the group hosting yesterday's anti-racism event.
An Ismaili Muslim, Ramji grew up in Sherwood Park and attended high school in Edmonton. In the 12 years that separate him from Jaffer, he said cultural discrimination in school has become even more unpopular, especially the kind of anti-Muslim backlash that cropped-up after 9-11.
Joined: 13 Mar 2007 {Posts: 261 } Location: Canada
Posted: Mon 26 Mar 2007 14:28 Post subject: Something to add
I have to correct something I said in another posting about census taking in Canada. When I saw the line "Statistics Canada's 2001 census data, 11% of Albertans are non-white," I had to go back and research what went on in 2001 because to be perfectly honest, I forgot that we even had a census that year. (The last census was 2006.)
The 2001 census did have racial categories including "Black" and "White."
Only the 2006 census did not include racial designations.
So now I'm asking myself does this type of questioning by government help society in any way, (as they claim it will), or does it do harm by reinforcing the same old racial constucts?
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