Friday, August 29, 2008
Puzzling Ethnicity
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As the debate over “the reasonable accommodation of
minority groups” indicates, diversity in Canada is troubled thing
by Ken Alexander
Published in the January/February 2008:
Cities Special issue. » BUY ISSUE
As previously cited in these pages (Allan Gregg, “Identity Crisis,” March 2006), a 2006 Statistics Canada report, “Visible Minority Neighbourhoods in Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver,” suggests that ethnic groups are self-segregating at an alarming rate. Writes Gregg: “In 1981, Statistics Canada identified six ‘ethnic enclaves’ across the country . . . [By 2001] that number had exploded to 254.” Following an established pattern of chain-link migration — wherein members of particular foreign communities arrive first and beckon others to follow — combined with relatively large immigrant inflows, part of this is natural and expected. But as the current debate in Quebec over “the reasonable accommodation of minority groups” indicates, diversity in Canada is a troubled thing, and this trouble is felt most profoundly within the broad borders of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, where nearly three-quarters of new arrivals land.
Standing at the corner of Sheppard Avenue and Glen Watford Drive in Toronto, having just dropped off my daughter at the nearby Agincourt Recreation Centre for her hockey practice, it is hard to imagine what kind of community this strange constellation of buildings, cars, and people might be. To my right is a four-sided strip mall framing a large parking lot. There is movement here, some pedestrian fare, but not much, and the various knick-knack stores and food emporiums, all brightly lit and welcoming enough, sit empty or near-empty. On the south side of Sheppard is another strip mall, this one featuring two massage parlours, a cheap diner, dimmer lights, and fewer people. Above this mall rises the International Waxes factory — grey, smoky, a relic of a past age. Behind me are middle-class homes and low-rent housing. A few hundred yards down Sheppard is a stately red and yellow brick Protestant church with an adjoining graveyard. It stands watch, but over what is not clear. There are signs everywhere, many of them broken, almost all of them in Chinese. The few English signs advertise For Lease. “Asiancourt,” this community is often called.
Downtown, I attend a cocktail reception for literati and cognoscenti of one description or another at a well-appointed home in Rosedale. The chatter is voluble, important, even urgent. People are finely turned out. In the corner stands a friend and long-time associate, a writer of considerable reputation. “The food and wine are always excellent here north of Bloor Street,” he says, “and I am grateful for such invitations.” He is the lone black person in the room, not an unusual situation. Indeed, this fact of his existence is sometimes cause for humour, even comedic sketches, if not derision, because, after all, the food and wine “north of Bloor” are predictably good.
In Malton, a once-distinct community of blue-collar workers and their families on Toronto’s edge, I stand on the corner of Morning Star Drive and Airport Road, right near the high school I taught at nine years ago. The place remains an oasis of colour, the passersby spanning the globe — South Asians, Caribbean blacks, Eastern Europeans, the odd “Canadian” — but they all seem to be marching off in opposite directions, clusters creating whatever homogeneity they can within this variegated palette, this “multicultural mosaic.” The term coolie is reserved here for those from Guyana or Trinidad and of East Indian or Chinese heritage, descendants, presumably, of indentured servants brought to those lands after emancipation and to replace African slaves as exploited labour. And the blacks in Malton seem to have not forgotten.
In south Mississauga, still attached to Toronto but still apart — a place where less money buys more house and the semblance of land — a firmer cluster of Polish-speaking people seems, again and more concretely so, a world unto itself. In this solidly conservative enclave, one senses that anything that smacks of state intervention, of the promise that higher taxes will result in collective communal purpose and projects to boost those on the bottom rungs, gains no traction. The Poles here remember Communist rule. In his drive to target specific ethnic groups for electoral advantage, Prime Minister Harper need not worry about this constituency: it is his already.
Back in Toronto, in a community the Harper government has specifically targeted, Jews group around Lawrence Avenue and Bathurst Street. Again, this district seems a world apart, lonely in a way, comfortable enough and less hostile than the derelict Jane-Finch corridor to the northwest or what remains of Regent Park to the southeast, but still an ethnic box settlement that conjures up images of apartheid more readily than it does ethnocultural pluralism.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way in Toronto the Good, or in Canada as a whole: we were never supposed to be a racial nation. But if Robert Putnam is right about his side of the border, his analysis is no less germane here. I suspect these mislocations have been accelerated by the central event of the new world order, September 11, 2001, and the thoughts that spill from it: how can I embrace or trust the other when he may reject what I care about and affirm — permissive liberal democracy, for instance — and just might be wearing a suicide bomber’s belt?
While long insisting that multiculturalism meant something more than lively festivals and the celebration of exotic food and dress, that it meant cultural retention, it appears that Canada has received what it demanded and proclaimed. And now we have blowback and the various challenges being waged over what constitutes reasonable accommodation for minority groups. These groups saw it coming, long ago, and began sequestering themselves in tribal communities of their own. Agincourt makes more sense now; so does Rosedale.
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Comments (4 comments)
Donnie McLeod: We talk about diversity conflicting with tribes. It seems the perspective of tribes is usually in the context of a culture defined by something like colour of skin. I think tribes can be defined from almost any way; a company that treats employees fairly often takes on the perspective of a tribe. A religious domination can take on tribal characteristics with its language and culture. But I content tribes is not granular enough, we need to focus at smaller grouping than tribes.
A tribe is too many people. We are still looking from the perspective of the state or the tribe level. And we are incredibly burdened by our religions, especially with the social conservative misleading to protect the infallibility of the Bible. The latent religious thinking burdens the discussion of being a successful species relative to other competitive approaches to success. The Bible stops us from seeing how the individual is a key part of success of the species. Why for example does a polar bear, a successful species, count a lone human individual as an easy opportunity but counts 5 as more than just 1 individual plus 4 more individuals? They see 5 in a group as more than the sum of its parts. They count 5 as a threat. What does that say about the individuals fit in our species, which was successful because we team well?
I suggest we will learn that the tribe is not as important as the small team of people we work with in a grouping of 5, 6 or 7. Each person dong what they do well while working with the others who have complimentary skills. Incentive and motivation comes from the “action of doing with others”. It does not matter the color of skin, sex, religion or political bias. What does matter is the level of trust of all the individuals in the group.
That groups need for trust excludes my brother-in law Lyle from any grouping. He has not a once of fairness in his genetic make up. Lyle and others like him, for example Judas, will do anything for a few silver shekels. Judas was 1 of 12. I take that as a good enough survey to state that 8.3% of any populations are like Lyle and Judas. They think only “what is in this for me”. And they are proof of evolution. We are descendants of single cell animals that always make one rational decision “its all about me”. Count the number of incredibly selfish people in your life? Is it closer to 3%, 10% or 30%. If they are family you have to live with it. If they are in your personal or your business life, make changes, today.
“Its all about me” is not the human character trait that made our species successful. Our competitive advantage as a species came with being fair. Fairness is way up and much later on in the evolutionary path towards success. Selfishness started way back in the primordial soup of creation, where it belongs. Fairness is easily fostered in various degrees in 91.7% of the population. But Lyle and Judas have to be excluded from the group and eliminated from any position of influence. That is why the team grouping has to be small such as 5, 6 or 7. In today’s world, 7 are too many because you can’t find a table in a restaurant that sits 7. Getting a table defines the maximum size to 6.
If every single Canadian with a bit of fairness can be helped to find their fit with 4 or 5 other people in a team the issues of tribes will solve itself. It is finding each individual’s fit in a team that society should worry about not the barriers of old tribes. It is exploiting and not ignoring what made our species successful that will provide the answers needed for today’s complex world.
December 10, 2007 09:55 EST
Anonymous: It is unfortunate that Mr. Alexander has taken Robert Putnam's work and, with only a perfunctory reflection upon its meaning and implications, has used it as the only "evidence" for his rather impressionistic article and thesis. In fact, he may not have read Putnam's entire paper, as in the later parts Putnam in fact suggests something akin to Canada's multicultural model to solve the social mistrust brought on by increasing ethnic diversity.
Putnam's well done research suggested that social trust is negatively associated with ethnic diversity. But this social mistrust extends not only to people of other races, but also to people of one's own race. So rather than diversity causing bad race relations, it, in the short and medium term, causes people to "hunker down" and retreat into their shells like turtles, as Putnam puts it. Thus diversity is associated with low levels of bridging capital (the social relations/capital between people of different races, in this case), as well as bonding capital (the social capital within people of the same race). One of his conclusions was that bridging and bonding capital were not mutually exclusive, and that bonding capital in certain cases can foster bridging capital.
Cities have always been composed of enclaves divided by some social force. Rich people tend to live with other rich people. Areas of the city that have one predominant ethnic group are nothing new. Multiculturalism in Canada has simply given an implicit blessing to people so that, for example, they can live in an area where they are close to their synagogue and the local kosher bakery, and go to those places without shame. Multiculturalism has gone further and stated that by virtue of attending your local synagogue and eating at your kosher bakery, you remain entirely Canadian, and in fact you are adding something new. This is bonding capital, and is a force against social mistrust. Multiculturalism then assists with fostering bridging capital by helping these ethnic groups become part of the national dialogue, whether it is by celebrating a cultural holiday at Nathan Phillips Square in the company of the mayor, or recruiting people of different ethnic communities to the police force. Of course, some people choose to remain within their enclave, as do some people in Rosedale chose to not venture outside their community. But when those bridging opportunties are available, there are those who will avail themselves of it. They may still live in an area where they can easily go to their local synagogue and kosher bakery, but they are equally involved in other areas of the larger community. Ultimately, our multicultural approach that encourages participation in activities of one's ethnic culture actually may, in part, reduce the social mistrust associated with diversity...these "enclaves" are a precursor to integration.
Finally, Mr. Alexander tends to exoticize "other" people's "values". By virtue of the fact that most "other" people are law abiding citizens, they without a doubt share our overarching values. Putnam's research was based on diversity in race as related to social mistrust - not diversity of values. We must always remember that the reasonable accommodation debate in Quebec emerged from a community that had very little to accommodate.
Certainly Mr. Alexander can make his point in an article like this, but to use important research in a reckless way serves to skew Robert Putnam's work and give faux scientific authority to an argument devoid of any. January 17, 2008 15:31 EST
Geoffrey Dow: Immigrants flocking together are due to 9/11?!? That is one bizarre twist of logic.
While ethnically-based neighbourhoods are far from ideal, the fact of them is as old as immigration itself. Simply put, newcomers who group together are able to build networks with each other much faster than they can with those who don't share their language and experience.
My maternal great-grandparents came (separately) to this country in the early years of the 20th century, part of the large Finnish diaspora of that era.
Like Ethiopian immigrants today, like the Greeks and the Portuguese in the 1950s, my ancestors did, in fact, create for themselves what Alexander called "a world apart". The Finns tended to settle in the same areas; Finnish immigrant married Finnish immigrant; Finnish-language newspapers and magazines were established and, for a time, flourished; even Old World political battles continued to be waged here on Canadian soil, only slowly being modified by the advance of time and a growing experience and involvement with strictly Canadian issues and disputes.
Homesteading outside of Sudbury, my great-grandparents' children were raised with Finnish as their first language, encountering English only when they were old enough to go to school. Nevertheless, among my grandmother's brothers came a master carpenter, an architect and a psychologist. My grandmother herself dabbled in writing - in English! - even if she remained fluent in Finn until the day of her death.
The same pattern is true of my father's side of the family, Slavs who settled in the Ottawa valley.
The point is simple: 'twas ever thus, and especially so during periods of high immigration.
In 1981, Canada had held open the door to non-European immigrants for not quite 15 years, and Brian Mulroney's government had not yet come to power; there were not yet the sheer number of newcomers necessary to create a significant number of new ethnic neighbourhoods. (See this Statscan chart for a useful overview of historical immigration patterns.)
Does this mean there are no problems with integrating 200,000-plus immigrants into a country of 30,000,000 people every year? Of course not. But those problems have more to do with economics (there are far fewer well-paying blue-collar jobs than there used to be) than with the natural desire of people to understand the language of their neighbours.
Nevertheless, having lived in Toronto's Kensington Market and now residing in Parkdale, I know from experience the vibrancy that can exist in heterogeneous neighbourhoods and am by no means saying ethnic neighbourhoods should be encouraged. But neither is their existence a reason for despair. You rightly note that our official multiculturalism policy not only encourages "...lively festivals and the celebration of exotic food and dress [but also] that it mean[s] cultural retention..." Wrongly, you seem to believe this state-sanctioned social-engineering policy has worked and that "...now we have blowback and the various challenges being waged over what constitutes reasonable accommodation for minority groups."
Well yes, we do. And so what?
Canadians have been arguing over reasonable accommodation between groups and, more importantly, between individuals, for 400 years or more. Where other countries have settled their differences through the barrel of a gun, Canada has opted for eternal argument, a process of evolution instead of revolution. We change our immigrants slowly, and slowly, our immigrants change Canada.
For the record, my extended family now includes (former) Belgians, English, First Nations, French, Germans, Italians, Jews, Nigerians, Norwegians, Poles, Russians, Scotts and Ukrainians - Canadians all.
Canada faces many problems, but the choice of immigrants to settle close to one another is not among the significant ones. January 26, 2008 16:03 EST
Jermaine Reyes: I admire Mr. Alexander’s observant eye, ear-to-the-ground perspective and see a man in tune to his city. I also appreciate his desire to envision something more than the empty praise heaped upon the textbook multicultural identity taught throughout my days of elementary school. But however worrisome the trends taking hold, despite his genuine interest in the debate over the reasonable accommodation of minority groups, I would like to tell Mr. Alexander that we - the subject of your investigation, the visible minority/soon to be majority, the actual inhabitants of those places you are guest and visitor to - are getting along quite well without your furrowed brow and troubled gaze upon us. We are too caught up in the business of life that already demands civility and respect and a sense of cooperation to prosper in this country that still feels it must single us out, whose government and media continues to reside in that stage of insecurity that seeks to put a label on a thing or person and classify it as ‘visible’ and ‘minority’ according to its own standard.
I would like to tell Mr. Alexander that I need not your dim outlook on my neighbourhood of Agincourt, which you find, “hard to imagine what kind of strange constellation of buildings, cars, and people might be.” Where your imagination fails, you can rest assured that ours are beginning to spark, but will heatedly refuse to apologize for not fulfilling your idea of what Canada and Canadians should be.
Prior to Mr. Alexander ever finding himself “puzzled by ethnicity,” this place already made sense to a mother escaping the Marcos regime and a father fleeing a life of peasantry. This place makes sense to peers in colleges and universities already reaping the rewards of intercultural dialogue Mr. Alexander duly notes.
Before you come to any conclusions Mr. Alexander, before you take to heart the Statistics Canada figures and pronouncements of high-minded academics, come talk to us. I promise we’ll give you something to be cheerful about. March 03, 2008 20:47 EST