Intro Sentence: Multiculturalism is the acceptance of multiple ethnic beliefs in a society for various reasons, usually to diversify.
Thesis Statement: Multiculturalism is a dominating characteristic of Canada but is in its own way quite complicated and challenging
Supporting Points:
Racism
Other races not given the opportunities because of their skin despite being qualified
Discrimination
Lack of trust which causes :
“social distance”
“sense of belonging” is gone or reduced….many stereotypes involved (use examples of blacks and Indians…)
Failure to engage immigrants as full time members of society
Sticking with your own” selling illusions
Conclusion :
Topic (choose a good one at the end!)
Multiculturalism is the acceptance of multiple ethnic beliefs and cultures, there is a lot of diversification involved into this and also immigration takes a huge part. Multiculturalism is a highly dominating characteristic in Canada, majority of the people believe that Canada is one of those countries where you see a multicultural system, a mixture of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Indians, and Europeans who blend into the whole system and adapt to the Canadian culture. Some define Canada as a “cultural mosaic” which means a blend of multiple cultures in one society, organisation or nation .While those beliefs exists, there are contradictions to this where the visible minorities claim that it is not the case, which makes this issue very complicated and challenging.
Racism is one of the major issues that is stressed upon when it comes to multiculturalism in Canada, there is mostly institutional racism going on, which means that racism which takes place in organizations or universities. Statistics show that from the immigrants in Canada, from the year 1994 to 2004, African, Asian and Latin American immigrants in Canada with a bachelor’s degree increase from about 26,000 people to 65,000 in 10 years compared to European and USA immigrants who have an increase from about 10,600 people to about 19,000 people in 10 years, whilst other statistics show that the Low Income rates of African, Latin Americans and Asian Immigrants in Canada have risen from 35.5% , 34.6%, 38.2% respectively in 1992 to 37.3%, 27.5%, 44.1% in 2004 compared to the European and USA immigrants who range from 19.2% and 16.3% respectively to 19.6% to 15.8% (Canada Immigration Statistics: Charts and Tables on Immigration in Canada). Despite being on the majority of people who have the credentials, they are not given the opportunities, but the opportunities are granted to the White Europeans. This has caused a rather lack of trust between each other, the Blacks do not trust the whites and that is how it goes forward from there.
There are many stereo types involved in this issue as well. The implications that black people are thugs and that Indians are only good at driving taxi’s and also that Asians cannot drive. All these are just public beliefs of specific groups of people that are not even based on legit facts. These are mostly promoted by the media like recent movies where you see Blacks and Latin Americans (Latinos) mostly characterized as thugs and thieves, or you see Indians driving taxi cabs. You hear stand up comedians talk about how Asians cannot drive or about their way of conversing, this rather ignites a negative reaction between the visible minorities; which is a word openly used by Canadians to describe people of other ethnic backgrounds, this causes the rest of the general public to generate a prejudgement of the people generally talked about. In the book Selling Illusions by Neil Bissoondath, he shares his experience about going to your university where his friend encountered a group of people talking about their next gig in a coffee place that played reggae music and served Jamaican coffee, he mentioned that his friend noticed that from the group of three people, “there was a black man with dreadlocks and two white men with blonde hair” (Bissoondath) astonished that they speak in a Jamaican accent making a judgement black people with dreadlocks are all Jamaican. This is a perfect example of stereotypes that exist. Soon after, their sense of belonging towards the country slowly fades away and as newer generations come to be and the stereotypes develop, the following generations of the visible minorities feel like they do not belong there. On the other hand, following generations of European and USA immigrants do not feel much like that as most of the defining factors revolve around the colour of the skin. The following generations of the Europeans feel right at home as they have had the upper hand on all sides, employment is granted to them despite there being a majority of other ethnic individuals who are as equally qualified.
Works Cited
“Selling Illusions.” Bissoondath, Neil. n.d.
Canada Immigration Statistics: Charts and Tables on Immigration in Canada. n.d. 07 April 2010
CANSIM. 2006. 07 April 2010 http://lcweb.senecac.on.ca:2258/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.exe?Lang=E&EST-Fi=EStat/English/CII_1-eng.htm>.