The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Detached, ironic, dispassionate Generation X guy outed. I waited about fifteen years to get on Facebook. If you'll indulge me, where is most of the communication happening these days for the young kids?

Twitter -> although a lot of bots and troll accounts
Instagram -> not useful for dialogue
Reddit -> very echo-chambery depending on where you are. The main subreddits (like r/canada) are basically FB-level nauseating.

Haven't used FB since 2014. It's an absolute wasteland.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Acajack

So if someone says that Detroit has high crime, and that African-Americans are a possible source, you're cool with that?

False equivalence.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

False equivalence.

How so?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Detached, ironic, dispassionate Generation X guy outed. I waited about fifteen years to get on Facebook. If you'll indulge me, where is most of the communication happening these days for the young kids?

Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp. Facebook died for these kids the minute grandma showed up and started sending them political or religious memes.

And as a xennial all that shit is foreign to me too. I have FB on my phone. But at best it's a birthday reminder tool at this point.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I'm starting to do that.


Detached, ironic, dispassionate Generation X guy outed. I waited about fifteen years to get on Facebook. If you'll indulge me, where is most of the communication happening these days for the young kids?

Instagram, SnapChat and TikTok. Source: the people right next to me.

My kids and their friends don't use Twitter much. At least not to post stuff.

[SignalHillHiker]

Tiktok, ShapChat and WhatsApp seem to be the big ones here for young people.

Facebook is still decently popular here, though. I only have like six relatives under 20 on there, to be fair, but lots of friends and family 25+. It's also still good, for me at least, but I guess that depends on who your friends are. My feed is mostly local humour, travel/activity photos, music, and a few urbanity-related posts. Lots of BLM at the moment, but very little of it shrill. I don't even get posts with 16 baby pictures.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Acajack

How so?

Why don't you refute my original point?

Crime has a million possible causes.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by Acajack

That's good to hear. Often things will go well without any trouble, but it doesn't take much of a spark to send things in the wrong direction.

Ottawa's also really not the kind of city where you'd expect protestors to get violent. (You of all people should be well aware of this!).

[rousseau]

The most unnerving thing for me is that I was raised to have a firm belief in the ultimate power of reason and moderation, but my faith in that is being chipped away at. I came of age in the relatively detached aftermath of the 60s, where the reasonable thing to think was: of course black people in Alabama should be allowed to drink from any water fountain they want. Of course. How could it be anything other than unreasonable to prevent people from drinking water solely based on the colour of their skin?

I'd thought these things were long settled. Actually, I think I still believe that they are, fundamentally. But practically speaking things are more opaque. And I realize that being a relatively comfortable Canadian moderate type is a luxury, and that any philosophical objections I may have to what is going on now aren't going to appeal to anybody caught up in the whirlwind.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by esquire

From a historical standpoint, for sure. I was thinking more of the current situation where even the remotest parts of the continental US aren't more than a couple hours' driving from the nearest city as compared to Northern reserves that may be inaccessible by road for all but a couple months of the year, and moving to the city may mean being effectively cut off from your family, friends and support networks.

I mull on this once and awhile.

You take for granted how much one learned about how society worked just by being immersed in it. Watching your parents and peers participate in society. Figuring out a culture in another city in Canada is fairly easy for most if they've participated in Canadian society writ large.

How jarring it must be to come from a small and isolated place where you know everyone and have a clear set of expectations and be dumped into a hostile and anonymous city. Where one has to figure out the very basics without much help - how do I find a place to live? How do I navigate the bureaucracy?

It would be even more jarring for a young adult, shipped off to a high-school. Then people wonder why gangs form. It's not fair to expect someone to 'get it' with respect to societal expectations when they've minimal exposure to learn these things.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Why don't you refute my original point?

Crime has a million possible causes.

That francophones are more xenophobic than... whomever?

As I said in the other thread, that's arguably a xenophobic statement in itself.

Even if you could find statistics proving that francophones are more xenophobic, insinuating that they're all or even more inclined to be xenophobic because of their ethno-cultural origins is, yup, xenophobic.

In the same way that despite statistics clearly showing that African-Americans are more likely to be involved in crime than other groups. it's xenophobic (or even racist) to assume that a black person is more likely to be a criminal due to the colour of their skin.

I mean, isn't that precisely what this whole thing is about?

Of course, you already know all of this. You're just trying to pigeonhole me, hoping I'll slip up.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Acajack

That francophones are more xenophobic than... whomever?

What I said was Quebec tends to be a more xenophobic region in general. I can only guess that this is due to a large group residing in that province. We have a thread dedicated to Quebec's interesting stances on religion and assimilation into Quebec culture for outsiders. It's a very fair question.

Do you agree? Disagree? Enough with the whataboutisms.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by drew

Speaking of Rex Murphy - what happened to him?

He went from regular contributor on the CBC to now writing significantly right of centre (for Canada anyway) opinion pieces in the National Post.

Rexy became like Rudy (Giuliani). Formerly thoughtful, albeit with a curmudgeonly signature, and representing the 'intellectual' side of conservatism, to flirting with the farther reaches of the right wing, and being downright hectoring/grouchy, with opinions based on a gut feeling rather than in a dispassionate but disciplined synthesis of the facts on the ground.

Conrad Black was and is a bloviating crook with the most unabridged thesaurus possible.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Rexy became like Rudy (Giuliani). Formerly thoughtful, albeit with a curmudgeonly signature, and representing the 'intellectual' side of conservatism, to flirting with the farther reaches of the right wing, and being downright hectoring/grouchy, with opinions based on a gut feeling rather than in a dispassionate but disciplined synthesis of the facts on the ground.

I used to really enjoy reading Rex a decade or so ago, and even picked up one of his books which encapsulated a lot of his articles and opinions. I can't stand to read him today, though, and it's a shame he's gone down the path he has in his old age.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

What I said was Quebec tends to be a more xenophobic region in general. I can only guess that this is due to a large group residing in that province. We have a thread dedicated to Quebec's interesting stances on religion and assimilation into Quebec culture for outsiders. It's a very fair question.

Do you agree? Disagree? Enough with the whataboutisms.

Overall, it's about average for Canada.

There are different factors at play which often push certain metrics upwards or downwards, relative to specific groups.

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8134926&postcount=353

It's not in that study but I'd much rather be an indigenous person in Quebec than on the Prairies, for example. (Not that Quebec is perfect - don't get excited.)

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by JHikka

I used to really enjoy reading Rex a decade or so ago, and even picked up one of his books which encapsulated a lot of his articles and opinions. I can't stand to read him today, though, and it's a shame he's gone down the path he has in his old age.

Same here.

Die a hero or live long enough to become the villain I guess. He just gets more bitter with age.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Rexy became like Rudy (Giuliani). Formerly thoughtful, albeit with a curmudgeonly signature, and representing the 'intellectual' side of conservatism, to flirting with the farther reaches of the right wing, and being downright hectoring/grouchy, with opinions based on a gut feeling rather than in a dispassionate but disciplined synthesis of the facts on the ground.

Conrad Black was and is a bloviating crook with the most unabridged thesaurus possible.

Murphy was quite good as host on CBC's Cross Country Checkup a few years ago, but he has gone a long way to the right since he was a Liberal political candidate in the 80s.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by wave46

You take for granted how much one learned about how society worked just by being immersed in it. Watching your parents and peers participate in society. Figuring out a culture in another city in Canada is fairly easy for most if they've participated in Canadian society writ large.

Even urban Canada has comparatively low social mobility. If you are a poor kid whose parents were checked out, maybe split up, maybe substance abusers and/or in and out of prison, and you got involved in the wrong stuff early on, you are not statistically likely to end up with a middle-class lifestyle. The whole way you think about risk and reward will be different from a middle or upper class person, and your ability to recover from setbacks is almost nil. If you get a criminal record or one key family members gets sick or dies that can be it. You end up with no potential legitimate rewards in life and drug abuse or crime look much more appealing. The whole incentive structure of your life guides you down a bad path.

I believe that is really the core of most social problems in North America. A lot of statistics muddy the waters rather than bringing clarity, e.g. you look by income and find that some poor people do just fine. But those tend to be cohesive and supportive immigrant families who came here because they are driven to build a better life. Or you look at breakdowns by race and you think the race causes the bad outcome when it's largely correlation.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

Even urban Canada has comparatively low social mobility. If you are a poor kid whose parents were checked out, maybe split up, maybe substance abusers and/or in and out of prison, and you got involved in the wrong stuff early on, you are not statistically likely to end up with a middle-class lifestyle. The whole way you think about risk and reward will be different from a middle or upper class person, and your ability to recover from setbacks is almost nil. If you get a criminal record or one key family members gets sick or dies that can be it. You end up with no potential legitimate rewards in life and drug abuse or crime look much more appealing. The whole incentive structure of your life guides you down a bad path.

I believe that is really the core of most social problems in North America. A lot of statistics muddy the waters rather than bringing clarity, e.g. you look by income and find that some poor people do just fine. But those tend to be cohesive and supportive immigrant families who came here because they are driven to build a better life. Or you look at breakdowns by race and you think the race causes the bad outcome when it's largely correlation.

Yessir.

I know universities (especially certain programs) are often criticized here but they're not a bad harbinger of success. Which reminds me of many years ago when I was buying RESPs for my kids who were very young at the time. I was looking at stats and they showed that kids of two parents who were university-educated had something like a 92% chance of being university-educated themselves. If one of the parents was university-educated the figure was around 85%. And if neither of the parents was university-educated it plummetted down to the 25% range.

Also more generally, apparently somewhere between 15-20% of kids even if they have the worst parents imaginable, will make something good of themselves and their lives. And even with the best parents, a similar percentage of kids (just a tad lower IIRC) will end up being losers.

So things more or less cancel themselves out. Those social classes are pretty darn static.

Also, elementary school teachers I know tell me by Grade 1 or 2 they can tell which way things are gonna go for kids later on, with approximately 90-95% accuracy.

[JHikka]

Woman killed by Edmundston police after allegedly threatening officer during wellness check

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/edmundston-police-shooting-fatal-1.5597994

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Too early to say definitively what happened in this instance, only eyewitness report is from Edmundston Police. Officer in question is off-duty until independent investigation is concluded.