Don't Get Me Started
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The reason as to why I was so “tolerable” of Quebec when I first moved here was because of its diversity. I had always admired the various amount of culture around me. My friends had taught me about the beauty of Morocco, the culinary genius of Haiti and the magnificent art of China. I was so happy to be in a place that allowed people to share their cultures because I simply loved learning about them. However, as I grew up and started to become more aware of my surroundings, I realized the rest of Quebec was not as appreciative.
Thobani discusses multiculturalism as a mask that has enabled the continuity of white privilege (p. 154). As I got older, I started to see this mask unravel before my eyes. It first began with how my friends were treated by “white tolerance”. My friend is Haitian, and her younger sister was unfortunately confronted by a racist comment made by her own art teacher. She had alluded to a stereotype where “Haitians are hyperactive”, claiming how surprised she was to see how calm she (the sister) was. There was no point in this comment, no point in saying it in front of a class of 30, no point in bringing up a racist remark to “compliment” a student. She could have very easily complimented her for her calmness, but, for some unknown reason, had to bring up the years of “tolerance” she had experienced. As an alumna of that school, I can assure you, hyperactivity was not based on ethnicity, culture, gender, or anything that could distinguish one student from another racially.
As I continued my education, I started to see the hypocrisy found in Canadian history. As Thobani claims, “the racial science used by the Nazis could be also found informing Canadian state policy (p. 150). The treatment of East Asian immigrants, such as the Japanese, by Canada was deplorable and a perfect example of this hypocrisy. In 1942, Japanese Canadians would be forcibly relocated to labor camps and abandoned mining towns in rural British Columbia (https://humanrights.ca/story/japanese-canadian-internment-and-struggle-redress#:~:text=Approximately 12%2C000 people were forced,of war camps in Ontario). Furthermore, the abuse the Indigenous communities faced for decades shows how guilty Canada is for the crimes they condemned other countries for. They are no better than Americans, than Nazis, or any other colonial empire. Their residential schools, their buffalo slaughters, and the genocide they carried out puts them at the same level as other Western colonial powers. And let’s not forget the history of slavery that is washed away by Canada’s “niceness”. Advertisements of runaway slaves are still preserved in archives for only a select few to see, but not in our history books where the everyday person can read.
Thobani phrases my sentiment perfectly: “Its appeals for tolerance enabled a national amnesia regarding inconvenient histories” (p. 154). This idea of multiculturalism in the West, and more specifically in Quebec, is a fraud. People have purposely forgotten their history to shape themselves into a utopian society full of diversity. It is not the white settlers that have allowed diversity to flourish in Canada, but rather the immigrants they claim to tolerate. It is the immigrants that preserve their cultures despite the obstacles they are confronted with. It is not Canada’s policies or “politeness” whatsoever.