'Everybody Fits In': Inside The Canadian Cities Where Minorities Are The Majority

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

That quote does not seem to describe the current version of multiculturalism at all. The (obviously dated) quote mentions integration; conversely, ghettoization is a core element of the current version of the idea.

Nowadays, "newcomers willing to integrate into the mainstream culture" is the definition of "melting pot", not of "multiculturalism".

It is also worth mentioning that Canada is rapidly moving to a place where "expecting immigrants to integrate" = "racism".

Americans are probably not aware but the recent brouhaha sparked by Maxime Bernier was pretty much all about placing immigration, diversity and integration expectation into a stark dichotomy been good vs. evil.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by tablemtn

"Integration" seems like kind of a bizarre and unrealistic thing to hope for. You're generally talking about population groups with histories reaching back into antiquity. Why would they abandon all of that just because they now live in Canada? They already have a culture.

As has mentioned, "integration" and even "assimilation" is what foreign people moving to new countries have always done.

Now, we may be in for a paradigm shift (or maybe it's already happened) but let's not pretend that things have always happened this way. They haven't, and this "new way" represents a change that is largely untested (at a societal level anyway).

[Doady]

Cultures are not static, discrete, monolithic entities. They constantly evolve. Culture overlap. Cultures share things with one another. Cultures are combinations of other cultures. People each contribute to a culture and define it in different way. Any sort of integration or assimilation policy needs to recognize these basics. For someone to truly become part of a culture, that person also has to be given the opportunity to contribute to that culture, just like everyone else does. Culture is not just about taking, it is also about giving. Integration and assimilation is a two-way street.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Doady

Cultures are not static, discrete, monolithic entities. They constantly evolve. Culture overlap. Cultures share things with one another. Cultures are combinations of other cultures. People each contribute to a culture and define it in different way. Any sort of integration or assimilation policy needs to recognize these basics. For someone to truly become part of a culture, that person also has to be given the opportunity to contribute to that culture, just like everyone else does. Culture is not just about taking, it is also about giving. Integration and assimilation is a two-way street.

Sure, but in order for this to happen there needs to be a bare minimum of interaction between groups. I don't live in Markham ON or Richmond BC but from what I hear from people who do, it seems like the level of interaction might not be optimal.

[Doady]

More residents in Markham and Richmond speak English at home than Chinese. For language spoken at work, English is the winner by far, Chinese languages don't even come close (e.g. 9% of Markham residents speak Chinese at work vs. 86% who speak English at work). Neither city has a mayor of Chinese descent either.

Markham and Richmond are small parts of much larger metropolitan areas. They are suburbs. I don't think they can isolate themselves from the rest of Toronto and Vancouver and the rest of Canada even if they tried to, and I don't think they are trying. They can only become isolated if we isolate them. Politicians like Maxime Bernier probably don't help.

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by Doady

More residents in Markham and Richmond speak English at home than Chinese. For language spoken at work, English is the winner by far, Chinese languages don't even come close (e.g. 9% of Markham residents speak Chinese at work vs. 86% who speak English at work).

How absurd. It should be illegal to speak any language but English at work, the fact 9% do is an atrocity, not something to be downplaying. People who refuse to integrate should be deported.

Originally Posted by lio45

(i) is one of the stupidest things I've ever read! This seriously emanates from the Government of Canada?!? Hard to believe.

You can't "strengthen" a language while also "strengthening" another language in the same public sphere, which is finite.

If you "strengthen" Mandarin in someone123's neighborhood, then you're doing it at the expense of English. If you "strengthen" Spanish in Texas, then you're doing it at the expense of English.

The creators of that document being oblivious to such a basic fact is mind-blowing.

Modern liberalism as all about feelings, not facts. It's not that they don't understand the facts, it's that they don't care about facts to begin with. It FEELS better to say everyone can get what they want and the statistical impossibility of that doesn't even enter into their thought processes.

[Jonesy55]

It should be illegal to speak languages other than English in the workplace? Really?

[dave8721]

9% seems pretty low to me, here it would be well over 50%.

[The Chemist]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

How absurd. It should be illegal to speak any language but English at work, the fact 9% do is an atrocity, not something to be downplaying. People who refuse to integrate should be deported.

So speaking a language at work other than an official language means one is refusing to integrate? Seriously? That's biggest load of bullshit I've heard in a long time.

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by The Chemist

So speaking a language at work other than an official language means one is refusing to integrate? Seriously? That's biggest load of bullshit I've heard in a long time.

What the hell is the point of having an official language if not everyone uses it?

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

How absurd. It should be illegal to speak any language but English at work, the fact 9% do is an atrocity, not something to be downplaying. People who refuse to integrate should be deported.

Yeah, we should especially round up all those Frenchies and throw them in jail.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

What the hell is the point of having an official language if not everyone uses it?

It usually means that is the language used for official documents, public services etc. It doesn't mean that anybody speaking another language gets arrested!

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

It usually means that is the language used for official documents, public services etc. It doesn't mean that anybody speaking another language gets arrested!

You do know there's more types of law than just criminal law right? Im saying your buisness permit should be revoked, not that you should be sent to prison. But generally speaking immigrants who refuse to integrate within a certain timeframe should be deported. Being allowed to immigrate is a privilege, not a right and peopke who abuse that privilege should have it revoked. A country which is divided into several different cultural groups is much weaker than one which is united and it will shatter much more readily under pressure.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

You do know there's more types of law than just criminal law right? Im saying your buisness permit should be revoked, not that you should be sent to prison. But generally speaking immigrants who refuse to integrate within a certain timeframe should be deported. Being allowed to immigrate is a privilege, not a right and peopke who abuse that privilege should have it revoked. A country which is divided into several different cultural groups is much weaker than one which is united and it will shatter much more readily under pressure.

Wow. Where in the US do you live, that you feel this way?

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

It usually means that is the language used for official documents, public services etc. It doesn't mean that anybody speaking another language gets arrested!

And it shouldn't mean that you get fired from your job.

Some time ago, it was either in the 1980s or 1990s, I don't know where in the US it happened, but it was in the news that a Filipina nurse was fired from her job at a hospital for speaking Tagalog on the phone. The hospital she worked at had a stupid "English-only" policy. The thing was, though, she was on her break, in the break room, using the phone in the break room, and talking to her husband. Another nurse reported her. She wasn't speaking to staff, or to any patients, yet she lost her job. She sued the hospital. I don't remember how the case ended.

And here's the thing; what if a patient preferred being spoken to in Tagalog? Would she have had to speak to that patient in English? I don't know about you guys, but I think language is a skill, and the more languages you know, the better. In fact, when applying for jobs here in the LA area, often you'll see for the requirements that you "must be bilingual English/Mandarin," or "English/Armenian," or "English/Spanish."

The United States does NOT have an official language; it's only English "by custom." But, some states do have English as an official language.

I don't know if many Californians know this, but English has been the official language of California since 1986. BUT, the law was written so that, for example, if X% of a given population speaks a certain language, then they must be accommodated for stuff like DMV written tests and voter ballots.

In Los Angeles County, for example, you can ask for a voter ballot in the following languages:

Armenian
Chinese
Cambodian/Khmer
Farsi
Korean
Spanish
Tagalog/Filipino
Vietnamese
Hindi
Japanese
Thai
Russian

And you could probably ask for a DMV written test in those languages too, I don't doubt. And I think that's great.

Though many immigrants can speak English fine, I'm sure there are some that feel more comfortable speaking in their first language, and I think it's great that California can accommodate that.

And I don't doubt that for this reason, and the fact that many immigrants here (especially in Los Angeles County) don't "assimilate," is why many whites leave California and say that it is becoming "a dump."

My partner and I recently went to a restaurant that serves Yucatan cuisine. Many of the customers were Latino. I heard the server welcome a group at the counter in Spanish. When we got to the counter, the same server welcomed us in perfect English. I was actually hoping she would talk to us in Spanish (so I could practice my very bad Spanish), which has happened to us at other places in LA---and I don't have a problem with that, because usually when we answer back in English, then they'll start talking to us in English.

I really don't see why some Americans have a problem when they hear other languages, especially if they aren't even included in the conversation. It was in the local news last year, that a young man and his mother were speaking Spanish to each other at a McDonald's or something, and an old lady came up to them and started berating them for speaking in Spanish, and the guy told her to mind her own business, and that they can speak English too. He recorded this on his phone because the old lady kept going on and on about how "this is America, you should speak English." If it were me, I would've told her to mind her own business, and that this is southern California, do you speak Tongva?? And what if those people were Spanish-speaking tourists?

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

Wow. Where in the US do you live, that you feel this way?

See, this is the absurdity of this discussion. Do you really think you could go to some Asisn country and refuse to speak their language or follow their customs and they'd embrace you with open arms? Why is it only white majority countries that are expected to be multicultural? You see how China treats people who aren't of Han descent? They've got the Uyghurs in fucking "re-education" camps and they're native born Chinesse. But yeah, WE'RE the racist ones here.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

See, this is the absurdity of this discussion. Do you really think you could go to some Asisn country and refuse to speak their language or follow their customs and they'd embrace you with open arms? Why is it only white majority countries that are expected to be multicultural? You see how China treats people who aren't of Han descent? They've got the Uyghurs in fucking "re-education" camps and their native born Chinesse. But yeah, WE'RE the racist ones here.

But if the US is supposedly a "nation of immigrants," then what's the problem?

Apparently,some feel the US is a place where you are also expected to assimilate into the culture of the descendants of the dominant colonizer?

I really think this is why you see Chinese Evangelical Christian churches popping up in the San Gabriel Valley; I'm thinking some of the Chinese immigrants feel it's somehow a form of assimilation and that they'll be "more accepted" into "mainstream American society"? Possibly too, these Chinese immigrants abandoned their own traditional belief system because of those zealous Christian missionaries that go to China and try to convert everyone into their belief system, and then they moved here.

Why do people need to assimilate? What's wrong with being bi-cultural? If you can speak the language of the country you're in, and if you're not doing anything illegal, and you know the cultural mores/dos and don'ts of the society you live in, what's wrong with also identifying and keeping alive another culture of your heritage? Should most Americans desire a nation carpeted with Methodist churches and Applebee's and Americanized ethnic food, with no knowledge of other cultures?

And are you actually saying that the US should be like China and force everyone into re-education camps and be like the "native-born American," whatever that even means, so that Americans won't be considered racist, because that's what they do in China?

Huh??!?

My guess is that you didn't grow up around other cultures, and continue to live in a place that's not so culturally diverse?

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

Why is it only white majority countries that are expected to be multicultural?

I once heard a French center-right politician to explain it this way.

Because the European culture and civilization has conquered and dominated the world for the past 4 centuries, most often at the expense of people from other continents who were even humiliated to some serious extent. Weren't they?

The term of European usually refers to White-skinned/ethnically Caucasian people, although that commonly accepted defintion will soon be questionable in most advanced places like mine, namely Greater Paris.

Anyway, it is natural for a place like this to be more open-minded and socially advanced than say Asia or Africa, since we've been spoiled for centuries and enforced some unfair colonial system upon them for a pretty darn time in the past.

So at some point, you have to pay the debt you owe other people. That's a fair deal; all the more so since most immigrants have been actually serving our economy.
There's basically no reason to complain at all.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

See, this is the absurdity of this discussion. Do you really think you could go to some Asisn country and refuse to speak their language or follow their customs and they'd embrace you with open arms? Why is it only white majority countries that are expected to be multicultural? You see how China treats people who aren't of Han descent? They've got the Uyghurs in fucking "re-education" camps and they're native born Chinesse. But yeah, WE'RE the racist ones here.

I don't think see anyone claiming that China's policies against Uyghurs (and Muslims in general) aren't bigoted. Nobody is forcing you to speak Chinese, so chill the fuck out. You think all first-generation white immigrants spoke English in the US?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

Why is it only white majority countries that are expected to be multicultural? Y

No, it's multicultural societies that are expected to be multicultural.

"White countries" have no such expectations and the U.S. and Canada aren't "white countries". They were both diverse from the onset, and never ethnic-specific nation-states.

No one cares if Iceland or Moldova choose a different path. There are plenty of homogeneous nations of every hue that don't have an explicitly multicultural outlook.