Quote:
Originally Posted by Firebot
My wife who has dealt with racism all her life describes Canada as worse than the US, in that Canadians practice passive aggressive embedded racism and claim to be virtuous while doing it versus direct racism, and it's engrained in the psyche (people don't even realize it). Worse is how Canadians pat themselves on the back, heck we even re-elected a PM who thought that doing blackface on multiple occasions for kicks is ok, because he apologized when caught (truly Canadian).
Not a team player
Not a fit with the team or culture
Not up to the tasks
These are all words that I am sure we have seen, or even said ourselves before, but what makes a person not a team player? Sometimes that answer is racist in itself.
She has been flown in to interviews across the country at times, she gets seen for the first time in person in a 'family oriented' city (she uses her married Canadian sounding last name), and the person interviewing her looks her up and down, they do a quick 15 minute interview, and tell her the next day they are not proceeding as they feel she would not be able to fit in with the culture (actual reason).
Seriously. How are you supposed to take that in and tell her that things are good here?
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That's a great description, and I will confess to having been guilty of it myself. Growing up I was quite conscious of the racism towards first nations people, but otherwise I was pretty accepting of the story of Canada as a diverse and welcoming country where racism wasn't tolerated.
That story shaped my view of Canada that I carried with me over many years abroad and I was a proponent of that view of Canada, sharing that idea with others around the world.
It wasn't really until I came back to Canada a little over a year ago and looked at Canadian society with fresh eyes that I came to recognize how prevalent racism is in Canada. I feel a bit like a fool when I think back now on conversations had with other Canadians abroad who I disagreed with when they described the racism in Canada. I realize now that I was just blind to it growing up. It's woven tightly into the fabric of Canada, but it's hard to see when you've grown up steeped in the virtuous story of Canadian multiculturalism.