Multiculturalism in canada

Topic : Multiculturalism in Canada ( change topic later!)

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.