Last month, political scientist Jeff Sahadeo of Carleton University gave a lecture at the Munk Centre for International Studies on the Soviet legacy and contemporary racism in Russia. Addressing the anxieties caused by multiculturalism and ethnic integration in Russia’s large cities, Sahadeo spoke of a tide of Russian nationalism on the rise since 2000, coinciding with a growing animosity towards immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia.
In 2005, the political party Rodina (Motherland) was banned from running in the 2008 election after airing a television ad inciting ethnic hatred. The ad, which can be viewed on YouTube, depicts white actors playing black immigrants eating watermelons and throwing the rinds in front of a blonde woman. The ad ends with the slogan, “Let’s clear our city of garbage.” Fears by nationalists of a “Mongolization” of Russia, propelled by a far-right-wing media cultivating the idea that ethnic minorities will dilute Russia’s superpower status, have created an atmosphere of racial tension in that country. Central Asian immigrants struggling to survive in large cities like Moscow and Leningrad are seen by many as “muddying the waters” of racial purity.
As extreme as these examples are, the ugly reality of ethnic hatred is not exclusive to Russia. Although it is hard to imagine a political party in Canada running such a blatantly racist campaign ad, the image of Canada as a multicultural society has taken a beating as of late. In a recent opinion poll, 45 per cent of Canadians said they were ambivalent about ethnic immigration, and a whopping 57 per cent say the government should place more stringent measures on obtaining Canadian citizenship. These are significant numbers. Sure, polls are flawed and highly subjective, but taken at face value, what do those percentages say about us, our values, and our views on racial integration? And more broadly, what do they say about a nation that is supposed to be a bastion of racial harmony, a shining example of a thriving multicultural society?
Perhaps these numbers reflect Canadians’ growing awareness of new immigrants as they proliferate in large urban centres. Statistics Canada reported that in 2001, 58 per cent of new arrivals lived in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. By 2004, that number had increased to 73 per cent. In 1981, 12.4 per cent of South Asian, Chinese, and black immigrants in Toronto lived in neighbourhoods in which whites outnumbered visible minorities. By 2001, that number more than doubled, to 28.1 per cent.
These numbers indicate the increasing contact between Canadian-born citizens and ethnic minorities in Canada’s largest cities. Unlike the earlier European immigrant groups who helped create “Little Italy,” “Little Portugal,” and “Greektown,” immigrants who hail from outside Europe are more culturally distinct than their European predecessors. Like Ukrainians in Russia, European immigrants to North America do not suffer the same racial prejudices that other ethnic minorities do.
To make matters more difficult, the post-9/11 atmosphere has heightened our awareness-and racial prejudices-of Muslims and Arabs. When the U.S. wrongly accused Canada of being a safe haven for terrorists, how many of us turned inwards and began to inspect and be suspicious of our fellow citizens? It seems that our cultural mosaic is being threatened for the sake of appeasing that powerful, assimilated melting pot to the south, and Canadians like Maher Arar are paying for it. Multiculturalism is a work in progress and we have always had to deal with issues of racial prejudice, but 9/11 provided an all-too-convenient negative filter through which to view Muslims and Arabs. Basically, 9/11 inflamed latent feelings of mistrust and created a schism between Muslims and non-Muslims in North America.
Canada, at its best, is a ringing endorsement of the successful multicultural experiment. We should do our part to ensure that multiculturalism is not just a theoretical construct, but a living, breathing validation. Racial hatred will always exist, sometimes permeating the fabric of seemingly benign societies. Europe has to live with the spectre of the Holocaust during the Second World War. The ghost of slavery in America remains a scar on the nation’s psyche. But Canada’s conscience is largely free by comparison.
Let’s keep it that way.
