Continuing Perspectives on the Black Diaspora by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780761846635
Publisher: UPA
Published: 2016-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

Chapter Six

Race, Racism, and Manifestations of Inequality in Canadian Society

Frances Henry and Carol Tator

York University

“We need to address the racial divide. Otherwise there is a danger of social breakdown. The principle of multiculturalism was equal participation of minorities in mainstream institutions. That is no longer happening.”

—Reitz and Banerjee, cited in the Globe and Mail, January 11, 2007

Early in January 2007, a study appropriately entitled Racial Inequality, Social Cohesion and Policy Issues in Canada was published (Reitz and Banerjee). Its main finding was that visible minorities1 expressed a sense of exclusion from Canadian society. This finding was based not just on the fact that they earned less income than white Canadians, but rather, on their sense that their integration was impeded by the perception of discrimination and vulnerability, described as an uncomfortable feeling in social situations due to racial background and a fear of suffering a racial attack. Perhaps an even more significant finding is that the perceptions of prejudice and discrimination among children of visible minorities born in Canada was 60.9 percent for blacks as compared to 34 percent for Chinese, 43.4 percent for South Asians, and 10.9 percent for the children of immigrants of European origin. The authors suggest that the impact of discrimination on the second generation of immigrants is likely to be intensified for the children of immigrants, whose expectation of equality may be significantly greater than was the case for their parents.

This report, like the many that have preceded it, clearly demonstrates that racism and racial exclusion persist in Canadian society for blacks and other racialized minorities. This brief review of the black diaspora in Canada demonstrates that despite that country’s relatively accessible immigration policies developed over the last forty years, which have led to major demographic changes, people of African or black heritage experience racism in their interactions with virtually every institution in society.

The black population in Canada stems from three principal sources: those who came with Loyalists fleeing the Revolution in the late eighteenth century, those who settled primarily in the Maritime provinces, and those who migrated more recently from the Caribbean and Africa. The largest contingent of Caribbean peoples in Canada comes from Jamaica, followed by Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, and Barbados. The leading source countries for African immigrants to Canada include Egypt, the Republic of South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, and Ghana (Mensah, 2002).

A Brief History of Blacks in Canada

Although racism in Canada is generally considered a contemporary phenomenon linked to the recent arrival of people of color, the country’s history demonstrates otherwise. A legacy of racial prejudice, discrimination, and disadvantage has its origins in the earliest period of Canadian history. Although slavery did not reach major proportions in what was then called “Upper Canada,”primarily because the land did not lend itself to monocrop agriculture, it was nevertheless actively practiced (Walker, 1980). Thus, from the earliest period, manifestations of racism against people of African origin who came to this country through the political machinations of the British and French were practised as they were against Aboriginal peoples.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.