Did We Really Expect Anything Different From the Multicult Experiment?
January 30, 2008 · By Matthew
My colleague Shane has started the first post here on the black school that was approved by the Toronto District School Board this month, and while I still need to do an abortion post as well as a few others I’ve been planning for months, I couldn’t help but jump into the fray of this issue.
Basically, Shane is right that this is the beginning of something. We have crossed the line of officially recognizing the isolationist mentality that we have been acting upon for the past 40 years. Let’s not kid ourselves though, this school, John Tory’s ill-fated campaign promise, and everything that is yet to come should’ve been seen coming from a mile away. In fact, most of us still smugly endorse the culture that is allowing this transformation to take place. You see, unlike the Americans who now have 230 years of generally open immigration experience (and whose one exception happens to be the black slave case), Canada’s current model has only been going for a few decades and it is something that most Canadians like to think makes us superior to our souther neighbours.
Instead of a melting pot, we like to think our society is multicultural, where you can bring not only the food, dress, music, and language from back home but also the racism, ills, cultural norms and other attributes that most of us would personally find undesirable. When a family from the Middle East punishes their daughter harshly for not wearing a hijab, as a Mississauga father did in killing his daughter over the issue, we always see the culprits at the CBC, Libblogs and the general bleeding hearts quickly run in to caution us that it is we, the ones who have been assimilated into what used to be Canadian culture, who need to adopt sensitivity, not the individual(s) who came here to seek the better life/wealth that our culture had a large part in creating! By letting different ethnic groups go about their business, just not around my family though if you please, these newcomers who include many individuals who want to escape the ills they left behind and become truly Canadian, are marginalized. Unlike the Americans or Japanese (to name a couple), we don’t create a systematic incentive so strong that one cannot help but learn passable English within a year of landing here (I should know; my neighbours two doors down don’t speak enough English to understand me saying “hello”, but live off of the welfare program all day in their new dwelling). Nor do we create any other incentive that will make people stop saying that they’re Indian, African or Dutch, but rather that they’re just Canadian!
I know some of the people who are up in arms over this post already wouldn’t like me quoting from our Lord, but He had some pretty wise things to say that apply to all of society, not just Christians. The one that comes to mind is that “a house divided will surly fall.” As North York becomes the newest member state of the African Union, and Islam prepares to move Mississauga into a vassel dar al-Islam, we might want to step back for a moment and consider that for a bit, and maybe explore whether we’re paying a higher price to get sushi at the mall than we have to…or than we can afford!
The dominant culture in any country and any era holds their own supremacy to be self evident, and views any immigration that dilutes it as intolerable. The terms Matthew uses to express his contempt for immigrant communities (”…racism, ills, cultural norms and other attributes that most of us would personally find undesirable…”) are identical to the tone and language used at various points to disparage Irish immigrants, Jewish immigrants, Ukranian immigrants, Italian immigrants…virtually any group. In fact, Matthew’s final xenophobic warnings about Islam and Africa are charmingly reminiscent of the Yellow-Peril propaganda of the early twentieth century.
The dominant population inevitably fears and resists change. The newcomers are inevitably perceived as threatening, clannish, isolated, and hostile (until, of course, a couple of generations pass, and the Irish/Jews/Italians, having both entered the mainstream culture and transformed it by their entry, become part of the dominant population).
Twas ever thus, with any newcomer community. Editorialists of the day, for example, decried the Irish propensity for drinking and violence, Japanese “secretiveness”, Jewish propensity for dealing “with their own kind”. Italians and Irish, of course, were accused of transplanting old world enmities, with their legacy of violence, crime and torture.
There was a small handful of people in each of those communities who bore out those stereotypes, and who were triumphantly brandished, as Matthew does above, to “prove” how dangerous these Italians/Irish/Ukranians/Jews were. The vast majority of those populations learned French or English, got educated, got jobs, and generation by generation entered the culture, while adding elements of their own culture to the mix. The first wave struggled, often living and working primarily in their own neighbourhoods and communities. Their kids adapted. Their grandkids adapted more. The things about Canada that worked, that made sense, became part of their lives.
That’s the story of my family. And that will continue to be the story. Maybe you ought to have a little more faith in the strength and value of our country, Matthew, and a little less fear.
And before you tout the relative “success” of the American model…you might want to do a bit of reading about the state of the “melting pot” these days.
The poster above has a selective and self serving view of history… this has been done before and the results were disasterous. Look at Athens, Rome, and many other ancient capitals and see the parallel of immigration and decline of each great city state in history.
The Dutch? The Dutch? Gimme’ a break. Cut the political correctness. If only it were the Dutch. Pffffft.
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