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BTW the 2000 Canada census shows a 26% poverty rates among Caribbean people. Higher than the rate among US based Caribbean people. Given that Canada is way more selective about which immigrants are let in, when compared to the USA this was a shock.
It is a statistical fact that black immigrants in the US outperform their counterparts in Canada and the U.K. It is getting to the point that black immigrants are now viewed as the "model" immigrant and held to a different standard than their African American native born cousins. Personally I don't care for the separation but I would be a fool to not admit that I enjoy certain privileges once people find out I am immigrant black vs native born.
Now in Canada you are not fortunate enough to enjoy that same treatment from employers and police officers as a black person from the Caribbean. It was shocking to me how different Jamaicans are viewed in the US vs Toronto when I first moved.
I think black activism is needed but why wait for the BLM movement? Was there anything similar in Canada before this? If not, why?
Definitely not new in Toronto. The Black Action Defense Committee founded by Dudley Laws, Sherona Hall, Charles Roach and Lennox Farrell was very active in the 80's and 90's. They were fighting against the same injustices that exist now, which shows you how far we have NOT come.
This group was founded in response to the police killing of an unarmed black man. Definitely along the same wave as BLM.
Definitely not new in Toronto. The Black Action Defense Committee founded by Dudley Laws, Sherona Hall, Charles Roach and Lennox Farrell was very active in the 80's and 90's. They were fighting against the same injustices that exist now, which shows you how far we have NOT come.
This group was founded in response to the police killing of an unarmed black man. Definitely along the same wave as BLM.
I think these groups need to be more vocal. For example I had no idea, and I'm sure many Canadians didn't about the whole problem with carding by the Toronto police. There should have been outrage over this across the country.
It is a statistical fact that black immigrants in the US outperform their counterparts in Canada and the U.K. It is getting to the point that black immigrants are now viewed as the "model" immigrant and held to a different standard than their African American native born cousins. Personally I don't care for the separation but I would be a fool to not admit that I enjoy certain privileges once people find out I am immigrant black vs native born.
Now in Canada you are not fortunate enough to enjoy that same treatment from employers and police officers as a black person from the Caribbean. It was shocking to me how different Jamaicans are viewed in the US vs Toronto when I first moved.
Funny how there is no issue with certain people in some places and big issues with them in others.
No one in Canada cades about the ''Mexican issue'', for example.
.. It was shocking to me how different Jamaicans are viewed in the US vs Toronto when I first moved.
According to Malcolm Gladwell in both places known for hot tempers. In Canada known for being on welfare, but in the USA known for having 2 full time jobs.
According to Malcolm Gladwell in both places known for hot tempers. In Canada known for being on welfare, but in the USA known for having 2 full time jobs.
I am a huge fan of Gladwell's writing. I can definitely relate to his experiences. For the benefit of the audience that are not familiar with the quote you paraphrased, I will post it in full:
I grew up in Canada, in a little farming town an hour and a half outside of Toronto. My father teaches mathematics at a nearby university, and my mother is a therapist. For many years, she was the only black person in town, but I cannot remember wondering or worrying, or even thinking, about this fact. Back then, color meant only good things. It meant my cousins in Jamaica. It meant the graduate students from Africa and India my father would bring home from the university...
But things changed when I left for Toronto to attend college. This was during the early nineteen-eighties, when West Indians were immigrating to Canada in droves, and Toronto had become second only to New York as the Jamaican expatriates' capital in North America. At school, in the dining hall, I was served by Jamaicans. The infamous Jane-Finch projects, in northern Toronto, were considered the Jamaican projects. The drug trade then taking off was said to be the Jamaican drug trade. In the popular imagination, Jamaicans were--and are--welfare queens and gun-toting gangsters and dissolute youths. In Ontario, blacks accused of crimes are released by the police eighteen per cent of the time; whites are released twenty-nine per cent of the time. In drug-trafficking and importing cases, blacks are twenty-seven times as likely as whites to be jailed before their trial takes place, and twenty times as likely to be imprisoned on drug-possession charges.
After I had moved to the United States, I puzzled over this seeming contradiction--how West Indians celebrated in New York for their industry and drive could represent, just five hundred miles northwest, crime and dissipation. Didn't Torontonians see what was special and different in West Indian culture? But that was a naïve question. The West Indians were the first significant brush with blackness that white, smug, comfortable Torontonians had ever had. They had no bad blacks to contrast with the newcomers, no African-Americans to serve as a safety valve for their prejudices, no way to perform America's crude racial triage. Not long ago, I sat in a coffee shop with someone I knew vaguely from college, who, like me, had moved to New York from Toronto. He began to speak of the threat that he felt Toronto now faced. It was the Jamaicans, he said. They were a bad seed. He was, of course, oblivious of my background. I said nothing, though, and he launched into a long explanation of how, in slave times, Jamaica was the island where all the most troublesome and obstreperous slaves were sent, and how that accounted for their particularly nasty disposition today. I have told that story many times since, usually as a joke, because it was funny in an appalling way--particularly when I informed him much, much later that my mother was Jamaican. I tell the story that way because otherwise it is too painful. There must be people in Toronto just like Rosie and Noel, with the same attitudes and aspirations, who want to live in a neighborhood as nice as Argyle Avenue, who want to build a new garage and renovate their basement and set up their own business downstairs. But it is not completely up to them, is it? What has happened to Jamaicans in Toronto is proof that what has happened to Jamaicans here is not the end of racism, or even the beginning of the end of racism, but an accident of history and geography. In America, there is someone else to despise. In Canada, there is not. In the new racism, as in the old, somebody always has to be the n*gger.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Funny how there is no issue with certain people in some places and big issues with them in others.
No one in Canada cades about the ''Mexican issue'', for example.
Like Mr. Gladwell said above "somebody has to be the n*gger"
I am a huge fan of Gladwell's writing. I can definitely relate to his experiences. For the benefit of the audience that are not familiar with the quote you paraphrased, I will post it in full:
I grew up in Canada, in a little farming town an hour and a half outside of Toronto. My father teaches mathematics at a nearby university, and my mother is a therapist. For many years, she was the only black person in town, but I cannot remember wondering or worrying, or even thinking, about this fact. Back then, color meant only good things. It meant my cousins in Jamaica. It meant the graduate students from Africa and India my father would bring home from the university...
But things changed when I left for Toronto to attend college. This was during the early nineteen-eighties, when West Indians were immigrating to Canada in droves, and Toronto had become second only to New York as the Jamaican expatriates' capital in North America. At school, in the dining hall, I was served by Jamaicans. The infamous Jane-Finch projects, in northern Toronto, were considered the Jamaican projects. The drug trade then taking off was said to be the Jamaican drug trade. In the popular imagination, Jamaicans were--and are--welfare queens and gun-toting gangsters and dissolute youths. In Ontario, blacks accused of crimes are released by the police eighteen per cent of the time; whites are released twenty-nine per cent of the time. In drug-trafficking and importing cases, blacks are twenty-seven times as likely as whites to be jailed before their trial takes place, and twenty times as likely to be imprisoned on drug-possession charges.
After I had moved to the United States, I puzzled over this seeming contradiction--how West Indians celebrated in New York for their industry and drive could represent, just five hundred miles northwest, crime and dissipation. Didn't Torontonians see what was special and different in West Indian culture? But that was a naïve question. The West Indians were the first significant brush with blackness that white, smug, comfortable Torontonians had ever had. They had no bad blacks to contrast with the newcomers, no African-Americans to serve as a safety valve for their prejudices, no way to perform America's crude racial triage. Not long ago, I sat in a coffee shop with someone I knew vaguely from college, who, like me, had moved to New York from Toronto. He began to speak of the threat that he felt Toronto now faced. It was the Jamaicans, he said. They were a bad seed. He was, of course, oblivious of my background. I said nothing, though, and he launched into a long explanation of how, in slave times, Jamaica was the island where all the most troublesome and obstreperous slaves were sent, and how that accounted for their particularly nasty disposition today. I have told that story many times since, usually as a joke, because it was funny in an appalling way--particularly when I informed him much, much later that my mother was Jamaican. I tell the story that way because otherwise it is too painful. There must be people in Toronto just like Rosie and Noel, with the same attitudes and aspirations, who want to live in a neighborhood as nice as Argyle Avenue, who want to build a new garage and renovate their basement and set up their own business downstairs. But it is not completely up to them, is it? What has happened to Jamaicans in Toronto is proof that what has happened to Jamaicans here is not the end of racism, or even the beginning of the end of racism, but an accident of history and geography. In America, there is someone else to despise. In Canada, there is not. In the new racism, as in the old, somebody always has to be the n*gger.
Like Mr. Gladwell said above "somebody has to be the n*gger"
This is very interesting. I've read a few books by him. I knew he was Canadian or at least claimed by Canada as a great Canadian. I never knew he was half-Jamaican.
It's sad\funny seeing so many posts about racism being a small town and only white thing.
The FBI hate crime stats will show you that bias crimes are more urban and are more and more becoming intra-minority especially in parts of California due to ethnic gang ties.
The meme that it's rednecks in pick-ups with confederate flags is just more comfortable to face than reality.
P.S. Parts of Canada have large Asian populations. Please, please tell me what their general opinions are towards blacks and other minorities and *gasp* even whites? I've had several experiences with this and um....let's just say they haven't been good.
This is very interesting. I've read a few books by him. I knew he was Canadian or at least claimed by Canada as a great Canadian. I never knew he was half-Jamaican.
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