The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

It's a long slow generational process, with respect to racism.

You always ask "probing questions" as in, you want everybody else to do the research for you.

No, it's because violent crimes especially shootings have shot up in Toronto and Ottawa since the Ontario government (can't remember Wynne or McGuinty) banned aggressive policing measures that had become controversial.

Violent crime during the same period has plummeted in Montreal where some of the aggressive policing measures now banned in Ontario are still permitted.

New York City also saw a similar drop when they implemented aggressive policing measures (remember the broken window theory?) under the mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani.

All of this is verifiable. Common knowledge in fact.

If we've always put underwear on before our pants, and you are telling me that it would be better to put pants on before the underwear, then yeah I am gonna be interested in your reasons for why you think that would be better.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

That makes a lot of sense but would probably be hard to fully implement.

Not hard at all. Contractual clause you agree to when you join. Leave town? Considered voluntary separation and you get your serverance and handshake.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Yet, how likely is it that this is actually the case? As far as I'm aware, no police force has a top-down data-based directive to racially profile specific groups of citizens - that's usually the result of pervasive biases amongst officers as individuals. And stereotypes of black people as criminals are pretty damn pervasive everywhere in the world (NS in particular has a pretty long history of anti-black racism) - I'd be willing to wager that those wealthy black students are still more likely to be stopped by the police, even if actually less likely to commit a crime than a local white (of course, there's no way to prove this one way or the other).

But again, even if it were the local white people who were being profiled because they have a greater likelihood of committing a crime - why should they be, in all absence of evidence of actually having had committed a crime? "Looking" like a criminal is not evidence of being a criminal, and not a valid reason on its own to stop & search or harass somebody.

We have a few posters here who are "Euro-Canadians" (I assume) living in Asia, and who say that "white" people there are often viewed with suspicion by police and people on the streets in general.

Their perspective on this would be interesting.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

I'm wondering if you know (someone123) whether it's the same in places like a typical Nova Scotia college town (Wolfville?) ... if all the blacks who are there are reasonably wealthy university students coming from outside of town and who have a 0.00% chance of being Crips or Bloods, then locally-tailored police profiling will result in cops leaving them alone all the time. Meanwhile, the local population which is basically all white is where the entirety of the "criminal element" is, so that's who gets profiled.

It's not like this at all in NS. There are lots of black people who have local ancestry going back hundreds of years (African Nova Scotian), and if there's a racial policing issue it's usually about profiling or mistreatment of that group.

Not every town is the same in terms of the % of black people but they are not rare at all in NS. Other small towns or villages may be majority black (e.g. Preston area).

In Halifax there are mostly black housing projects that are kind of rough, so it's an issue people are sensitive about. People also talk about getting pulled over for DWB ("driving while black").

The situation is made somewhat worse by national media who like to treat NS like it is Alabama North without adding any nuance to the situation. In NS most black people are descendants of slaves who were freed for fighting for Britain, Joseph Howe was campaigning to black voters in 1860, and Dalhousie granted a law degree to a black student in the 1880's. But such things don't normally make it into the conversation.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

It's not like this at all in NS. There are lots of black people who have local ancestry going back hundreds of years (African Nova Scotian), and if there's a racial policing issue it's usually about profiling or mistreatment of that group.

Not every town is the same in terms of the % of black people but they are not rare at all in NS. Other small towns or villages may be majority black (e.g. Preston area).

In Halifax there are mostly black housing projects that are kind of rough, so it's an issue people are sensitive about.

Yeah the historical presence of people descended from African-Americans in Nova Scotia changes everything.

In order to have a pure case study you'd have to go somewhere like Newfoundland.

Or maybe Moncton, which has a lot of people from Africa affiliated with the Université de Moncton, but no real historic black population in the vicinity AFAIK.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

Not every town is the same in terms of the % of black people but they are not rare at all in NS. Other small towns or villages may be majority black (e.g. Preston area).

.

One of my parents is a native of Nova Scotia, and had grown up with black people around all their childhood. That parent's family on a few occasions has even been to black churches with gospel singing and clapping that appeared to be straight out of Sister Act. And this wasn't even in the Greater Halifax area.

Another parent is a native of New Brunswick, and had never seen a black person until they were about 25 years old.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Not a race riot.

It started as an inclusive protest and became a riot shortly afterwards. Since then its devolved into a race riot in a couple cities at least. In Chicago Latino neighbourhoods are being ransacked now so you have Latin gangs taking to streets and fighting/shooting black people now.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You sound like every old person lamenting the decline of youth ever.

I am 30 years old, not a boomer or gen X, believe me the insanity you see today was in no way present in teenagers/college kids even 10-12 years ago. What you see now is what 24/7 instant stimuli does to a child all the way up to young adulthood. It is not normal and it isn't healthy.

Even 10 years ago you had social groups that encompassed just about everybody you could think of without any of this kind of division. I had friends who were gay, black, mi'kmaq, white, male, female, socially liberal, conservative, environmental types, the whole 9. No one was ever like this. Everybody got along together in spite of their differences - our commonalities are what made us all friends. That just isn't possible anymore. It's divide and conquer by the easiest means possible: race/sex/gender. Ironically enough the people who claim to be progressive are the ones who are now holding society back from progressing.

Originally Posted by Acajack

That's a false equivalency.

It stopped being about property crime vs. lives 24-48 hours after all of this began, when the body count of innocent victims of the civil unrest quickly exceeded the body count (1) of the incident people are (rightly) protesting.

Just like the Rodney King riots which claimed over 60 lives and led to 2500 people being injured.

And people don't want to hear that. There is no room for nuance anymore it's my way or the highway (or if you really don't comply to me I'll get you fired from your job and ruin your life, capish?)

Originally Posted by JHikka

You do realize that the people looting and rioting are not the same people that are protesting....right? There's plenty of evidence out there to show protestors actively trying to stop looting and rioting.

It's not difficult to see that there are protestors and then there are others taking advantage of the situation for their own personal benefit.

And yet just a few posts before this you made a facetious remark about how anyone complaining about property damage is also against protesting. You're dealing absolutes so I guess anyone who is anti-riot has no other choice than being anti-protest too.

Originally Posted by lio45

I'm wondering if you know (someone123) whether it's the same in places like a typical Nova Scotia college town (Wolfville?) ... if all the blacks who are there are reasonably wealthy university students coming from outside of town and who have a 0.00% chance of being Crips or Bloods, then locally-tailored police profiling will result in cops leaving them alone all the time. Meanwhile, the local population which is basically all white is where the entirety of the "criminal element" is, so that's who gets profiled.

Not sure what the police are like per se not being an officer, but I grew up in a college town where just about everyone who wasn't white was a foreign exchange student from Africa or Asia. The crime rate is so low that all the police do is hand out tickets to drunk college kids on the weekend. There might be 2-3 break and enters a year and 1 murder every 10-15 years if that. I'm only assuming that because there is no crime I doubt local cops are chasing and harassing the 250 black exchange students for no reason, but who knows.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

Even 10 years ago you had social groups that encompassed just about everybody you could think of without any of this kind of division. I had friends who were gay, black, mi'kmaq, white, male, female, socially liberal, conservative, environmental types, the whole 9. No one was ever like this. Everybody got along together in spite of their differences - our commonalities are what made us all friends. That just isn't possible anymore.

This is just straight up bullshit. I'm older than you and these friendships have been possible since I was young and still exist all over the place today.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by Acajack

One of my parents is a native of Nova Scotia, and had grown up with black people around all their childhood. That parent's family on a few occasions has even been to black churches with gospel singing and clapping that appeared to be straight out of Sister Act. And this wasn't even in the Greater Halifax area.

Another parent is a native of New Brunswick, and had never seen a black person until they were about 25 years old.

The urban-rural divide in the Black Nova Scotia population is really odd. In Halifax/Dartmouth there is a lot more urban issues that would be more like NYC but there are rural communities in the middle of no where with hundreds of black people from there like 8 generations. If you travel over to Guysborough you'll meet black people that fit a white hick stereotype: rural people who hunt and fish for a living, or work in the forestry industry etc. They drive pickup trucks and wear flannel and talk like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys. It's nothing like what you see in HRM.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

This is just straight up bullshit. I'm older than you and these friendships have been possible since I was young and still exist all over the place today.

I don't think it is dramatic but the overall trend is slowly moving towards more segmentation.

Larger more diverse populations also make this possible.

Gay kids in high school might hang out with mostly straight kids, but when they get to university where there is a larger population of gay people they might gravitate more to them.

Diversity in cities and which type of diversity also favours this.

When my kids were in elementary school Lebanese kids hung out mostly - though not exclusively - with each other because there we so many. Black and Asian kids weren't as numerous and they didn't really congregate together. They were more spread out across friendship groups.

Then when my kids got to high school it was even more of a hodge-podge, with less of a concentration of Lebanese (compared my neighbourhood elementary, as the HS kids came from all over the region) and so those ethnic in-groups mostly broke down.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

And yet just a few posts before this you made a facetious remark about how anyone complaining about property damage is also against protesting. You're dealing absolutes so I guess anyone who is anti-riot has no other choice than being anti-protest too.


.

There is a lot more activism than discussion on here of late. Especially since this issue in Minnesota and the U.S. has exploded.

When I think of it, it feels a lot more like an American forum.

[Acajack]

A lot of people here seem suspicious of what I am getting at, or what I am trying to prove or "win". Other are similarly targeted.

I mean, what the fuck? It's a discussion forum. I am here to exchange ideas.

And discuss.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

This is just straight up bullshit. I'm older than you and these friendships have been possible since I was young and still exist all over the place today.

Does your immediate social circles include hanging out with 18-22 year olds, though? I doubt it.

I've been fortunate to maintain many friendships over the years and like you it's fine. However, I've had the fortune (misfortune?) of going back to university again as a mature student and while any new friends or acquaintances I've met aren't like that an alarming amount of my peers both young students as well as Arts faculty were horribly regressive and confrontational about every single transgression.

I took a public policy class a few years ago and wrote a policy paper regarding TFW program abuse, absolutely nothing in the paper had anything to do with party policy, all statistics based research. The professor I had for the class was a young (mid-30s) Indo-Canadian woman who took personal offence about it because she had a relative who came to Canada through the TFW program and it was a "price worth paying"; no I am not joking, she took it personal because of a distant relative operating through the system.

The school's student association painted the sidewalk from the library to the arts building as a rainbow for LGBT+ support and after a month of thousands of people walking and biking over it the walkway got all scuffed up with skidmarks and the SA accused the school of homophobia. I'm not kidding man, it even made the local newspaper. Simple wear and tear was a perceived act of violence against sexual minorities.

I want to believe you are right, maybe where you live is still sane and I'm happy for you if it is, but the prisoners run the asylum now. I've never felt more apathetic and demoralized about the state of society than I ever thought possible. Maybe the silent majority will step up and finally put a stop to the madness but I doubt it. Shit will just accelerate beyond repair soon.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by Acajack

A lot of people here seem suspicious of what I am getting at, or what I am trying to prove or "win". Other are similarly targeted.

I mean, what the fuck? It's a discussion forum. I am here to exchange ideas.

And discuss.

You are trying to reason with people who are unreasonable. You will never convince some people otherwise.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

There is a lot more activism than discussion on here of late. Especially since this issue in Minnesota and the U.S. has exploded.

When I think of it, it feels a lot more like an American forum.

A lot of social media posting is about being see on the right side, not communicating or uncovering the truth.

I think we are seeing a "purity spiral" with the police brutality issue. There were legitimately bad events and the table stakes were to condemn them but people will keep raising the bet if there is a social payoff. It is hard to have nuanced debates in such a setting.

I have complained before but (English) Canada has little to no "defence" against American cultural spillover. We are just forced to grapple with whatever the American issue of the day is, no matter what's going on in our own country. And we do actually have some important domestic issues right now believe it or not...

I guess we are living through what the folks who came up with Canadian content rules decades ago were trying to deal with. Communicating shifted from TV and radio broadcast to the internet and now Canadians get their information mostly from American companies. The most important media companies in Canada now are Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and they are based in the US.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

This is just straight up bullshit. I'm older than you and these friendships have been possible since I was young and still exist all over the place today.

Yeah. He may not be old. But that is the cliched Boomer state of mind right there. In my two decades in the military alone, I'm amazed at how diverse the force is. And those privates and 2LTs from different backgrounds, upbringings, etc all seem to not just get along but are actually friends. See the same in elementary schools, high schools and universities all over the country. I see kids forming friendships over common interests everyday.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

The urban-rural divide in the Black Nova Scotia population is really odd. In Halifax/Dartmouth there is a lot more urban issues that would be more like NYC but there are rural communities in the middle of no where with hundreds of black people from there like 8 generations. If you travel over to Guysborough you'll meet black people that fit a white hick stereotype: rural people who hunt and fish for a living, or work in the forestry industry etc. They drive pickup trucks and wear flannel and talk like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys. It's nothing like what you see in HRM.

I remember many years ago being taken through the black neighbourhood of Bible Hill, which looked like something out of the rural U.S. South. Really dirt poor.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by someone123

A lot of social media posting is about being see on the right side, not communicating or uncovering the truth.

What is the truth?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Andy6

I remember many years ago being taken through the black neighbourhood of Bible Hill, which looked like something out of the rural U.S. South. Really dirt poor.

Africville. That history surprised me. Growing up in Ontario, the Underground Railroad is taught as this magic thing where slaves came to to Canada and lived happily ever after. And that was the sum of Black History I was taught.

[bolognium]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

I've never felt more apathetic and demoralized about the state of society than I ever thought possible.

trust me, you are not alone