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Not baiting, honest question: Did the American hockey team at Sochi have any Asians or Middle Easterns?
You're joking, right? The people in the igloo two ice-doors down from my igloo are Asian.
While some groups do tend to stick together in specific areas, that is not FORCED. Assimilation is encouraged. In the 1990s, I worked for a software company that employed 200+ people. It was amazing the spectrum of nationalities and cultures. We called the company "[Name] aka The United Nations." I learned about Ramadan, got hooked on Manakish Zaatar (Lebanese spiced bread), and made a wealth of friends that I would not have otherwise.
LOL this thread aint about America multiculturalism. I never make any comments about American Multiculturalism.
I simply asking what specifically you guys think about multiculturalism. It can mean many different things.
This illustrates the fundamental flaw of multiculturalism. Not every one of the multiplicity of cultures involved gives a toss about multiculturalism.
Just because white, Anglo Canadians like multiculturalism does not mean that everyone else does.
I don't know if I agree with your first point (about a fundamental flaw), but I think the rest of your post is valid. We do tend to see members of various cultures "preferring their own," if you will. We're not at the point where we have urban enclaves of Ethnic Group A, where outsiders are not welcome, but having gone to school with, and been friends with, so many non Anglo-Canadians of various cultures and religions, I can state that in some (though not all) cases, there is a great deal of pressure to keep the culture of the old country, and not to assimilate to Canadian culture, because Canada promotes "multiculturalism."
The original intent of "multiculturalism" in Canada, as I understand it, was that we could import people from all over the world, who would enrich Canada. We'd get different foods, and ethnic festivals, basically; and we'd learn more about different people and their customs. They, in return, would become Canadian. Great so far, and foods and festivals and learning we got, but the immigrants haven't always become Canadian--various cultures have taken "Canadian multiculturalism" to mean "we can do things as we did back in the old country, because Canada is multicultural, and they have to allow us to do things as we always have." As a result, we've had Muslim honour killings (the Shafia matter), we've had problems with female circumcision from African cultures, and we've had complaints about the oath of citizenship from various communities. On a smaller scale, we have families not allowing their daughters or sons to date or marry outside their ethnicity. At any rate, it is apparent that "multiculturalism," as originally conceived by Canada back in the early 1970s, is working okay, but not excellently.
I may be excoriated by my fellow Canadians for this, but I think that we need to do more to encourage "multiculturalism in a Canadian context," if that makes any sense. What I mean is, bring your foods and festivals and language, but leave all that is, in Canada, illegal or immoral, back in the old country. For we Canadians' part, we need to actively teach newcomers how to be Canadian--you can pray to whatever God you wish, but don't expect special treatment from your employer or school to do so. You can speak whatever language you wish, but we'd like you to learn English or French, because we're not going to learn your language. We don't want you to hold grudges from the old country--if Group A did Group B wrong 300 years ago in the old country, then you, as a member of Group B, may not take revenge on Buddy, who is a Canadian member of Group A. We expect you to get along, since we don't care about what happened overseas 300 years ago, and we think you shouldn't either. You cannot cry "But multiculturalism" when you beat up Buddy, and get arrested for it.
Multiculturalism is great--I have found that I love Indian and Thai cuisines--but it does need boundaries, in my opinion. It should not be an unfettered "act just like you did in the old country" philosophy.
Last edited by ChevySpoons; 08-27-2017 at 10:46 PM..
...... I may be excoriated by my fellow Canadians for this, but I think that we need to do more to encourage "multiculturalism in a Canadian context," if that makes any sense. What I mean is, bring your foods and festivals and language, but leave all that is, in Canada, illegal or immoral, back in the old country. For we Canadians' part, we need to actively teach newcomers how to be Canadian--you can pray to whatever God you wish, but don't expect special treatment from your employer or school to do so. You can speak whatever language you wish, but we'd like you to learn English or French, because we're not going to learn your language. We don't want you to hold grudges from the old country--if Group A did Group B wrong 300 years ago in the old country, then you, as a member of Group B, may not take revenge on Buddy, who is a Canadian member of Group A. We expect you to get along, since we don't care about what happened overseas 300 years ago, and we think you shouldn't either. You cannot cry "But multiculturalism" when you beat up Buddy, and get arrested for it.
Multiculturalism is great--I have found that I love Indian and Thai cuisines--but it does need boundaries, in my opinion. It should not be an unfettered "act just like you did in the old country" philosophy.
You won't get excoriated by me. I totally agree with the above.
I don't know if I agree with your first point (about a fundamental flaw), but I think the rest of your post is valid. We do tend to see members of various cultures "preferring their own," if you will. We're not at the point where we have urban enclaves of Ethnic Group A, where outsiders are not welcome, but having gone to school with, and been friends with, so many non Anglo-Canadians of various cultures and religions, I can state that in some (though not all) cases, there is a great deal of pressure to keep the culture of the old country, and not to assimilate to Canadian culture, because Canada promotes "multiculturalism."
The original intent of "multiculturalism" in Canada, as I understand it, was that we could import people from all over the world, who would enrich Canada. We'd get different foods, and ethnic festivals, basically; and we'd learn more about different people and their customs. They, in return, would become Canadian. Great so far, and foods and festivals and learning we got, but the immigrants haven't always become Canadian--various cultures have taken "Canadian multiculturalism" to mean "we can do things as we did back in the old country, because Canada is multicultural, and they have to allow us to do things as we always have." As a result, we've had Muslim honour killings (the Shafia matter), we've had problems with female circumcision from African cultures, and we've had complaints about the oath of citizenship from various communities. On a smaller scale, we have families not allowing their daughters or sons to date or marry outside their ethnicity. At any rate, it is apparent that "multiculturalism," as originally conceived by Canada back in the early 1970s, is working okay, but not excellently.
I may be excoriated by my fellow Canadians for this, but I think that we need to do more to encourage "multiculturalism in a Canadian context," if that makes any sense. What I mean is, bring your foods and festivals and language, but leave all that is, in Canada, illegal or immoral, back in the old country. For we Canadians' part, we need to actively teach newcomers how to be Canadian--you can pray to whatever God you wish, but don't expect special treatment from your employer or school to do so. You can speak whatever language you wish, but we'd like you to learn English or French, because we're not going to learn your language. We don't want you to hold grudges from the old country--if Group A did Group B wrong 300 years ago in the old country, then you, as a member of Group B, may not take revenge on Buddy, who is a Canadian member of Group A. We expect you to get along, since we don't care about what happened overseas 300 years ago, and we think you shouldn't either. You cannot cry "But multiculturalism" when you beat up Buddy, and get arrested for it.
Multiculturalism is great--I have found that I love Indian and Thai cuisines--but it does need boundaries, in my opinion. It should not be an unfettered "act just like you did in the old country" philosophy.
Well said, but it can be complicated in practice. Few people would support honor killing, but for example, in boarding schools, should they provide pork-free meals to Muslim students? It has been controversial in France. I don't think they should but some "liberals" think "we should respect other people's religion" blah blah.
Anglo-canadians need multiculturalism for their prosperity, it does not mean they like it. Otherwise they would not be so insular and aloof towards newcomers. One of the reasons why immigrants segregate so much.
That's interesting. My impression is that the economic necessity of multiculturalism is not top-of-mind for most Anglo-Canadians. And that most see it as a question of moral virtue and cosmopolitanism. Almost as an absolute good.
Another important point is that while this is rarely brought up, Canada need not be multicultural (in the way that it is) in order to have a fairly open immigration policy that supports demographically-driven economic growth.
We could have the same levels of immigration we have and be more overtly "integrationist" or even "assimilationist" and, contrary to what some might want us to believe, tons of people would still want to come to Canada.
Well said, but it can be complicated in practice. Few people would support honor killing, but for example, in boarding schools, should they provide pork-free meals to Muslim students? It has been controversial in France. I don't think they should but some "liberals" think "we should respect other people's religion" blah blah.
Jews don't eat pork either. When I was growing up, Catholics didn't eat meat on Fridays - bet there was a lot of fish served in French boarding schools then on Fridays.
Not baiting, honest question: Did the American hockey team at Sochi have any Asians or Middle Easterns?
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Or better still, what about the U.S.'s basketball Dream Team?
All of the major U.S. sports leagues like MLB, NFL, NBA have very low representation of people from communities like Chinese-Americans, Indo-Americans, Arab-Americans, etc.
One of the factors may be a simple lack of interest from these groups in these sports, but another that is probably also at play in the case of Canada's hockey stars is the length of settlement in the country.
It takes several generations for families to fully take root in the culture of the country.
That's why Canada has lots of pro hockey players of Ukrainian, German and Italian origins.
And why there are lots of MLB baseball players of Italian and German origins.
Those communities have been in the country for a very long time and have a high degree of integration. (Pretty much seamless at this point, in fact.)
This illustrates the fundamental flaw of multiculturalism. Not every one of the multiplicity of cultures involved gives a toss about multiculturalism.
Just because white, Anglo Canadians like multiculturalism does not mean that everyone else does.
This is actually an interesting point.
A lot of people don't come to Canada because it's a place where people of all cultures live together harmoniously.
They come to Canada because the multicultural branding here tells them that they can live reasonably freely in their own Culture X from the old country, while enjoying the prosperity and safety of a first world society.
They don't necessarily give a damn about other cultures and just because they happen to live in Canada doesn't mean they magically forget all of their old gripes or can't take on new ones.
Go to places like Toronto and Vancouver and you don't even have to talk about other rival immigrant groups. Just ask immigrants and their kids about aboriginal Canadians or French Canadians and you might get an earful too.
My point is that Canadian multiculturalism (which is still a global gold standard, I would agree) does lend itself to self-interested migrations as well that aren't necessarily about a desire to live in a place where all cultures are welcomed and tolerated.
It's often about one's own culture only, and what happens to the others... well, who cares?
This is not to say that Canadians of various origins are at each other's throats. By and large, they aren't.
Just that people who immigrate to Canada to take us up on our "multicultural proposition nation" aren't all automatically paragons of tolerance.
Well said, but it can be complicated in practice. Few people would support honor killing, but for example, in boarding schools, should they provide pork-free meals to Muslim students? It has been controversial in France. I don't think they should but some "liberals" think "we should respect other people's religion" blah blah.
No they shouldn't unless it's a Muslim or Jewish school. People who have special religious requirements and expectations for their children need to send their children to private religious boarding schools that are exclusively for people of their same faith so that their religious expectations can be strictly adhered to and catered to. People who are not of that same faith should be excluded from those schools.
There is a limit to respecting people's religions and their religious control issues within the general public. When their religious controls and beliefs have a negative impact on my own life and try to deny me of my pleasures and customs and make me unhappy then my respect for their religion has reached its limit.
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