Racism in the Region

[danbrotherston]

Has racism increased in the region in the past few years? I definitely feel like it has, just perusing the Waterloo subreddit. More complaints about "foreign students", foreign drivers, people not speaking English.

I don't think people's internal views regarding race/ethnicity shift at nearly the speed that you're observing in public discourse. The other option is that the increase in racism is stemming from the newcomers themselves, which while I think is probably true outside of this discussion, is definitely not what you're referring to and is not who is leaving the comments you're reading online.

Rather, I think what you're observing is a shift in the environment causing greater contact between diverse cultures and thus more opportunity for conflict. In my own opinion, what you're observing is multiculturalism as it has functioned throughout basically the entirety of human history up to and including today.

I think it's also important for this discussion to not conflate critique of culture and cultural issues with racism.

Leaving aside the question of what the level of immigration should be (I mean, I'm of the opinion that more open borders are a good thing--but I also live in the EU)...

You also, perhaps not consciously, moved to a less diverse place (especially compared to SW Ontario) and one that has more or less rejected multiculturalism.

Two things I wanted to touch on here:

I don't think culture is different from race. Race is a social construct. While there are some genetic markers that allow us to guestimate someone's lineage which is roughly correlated with race, the concept of race is something that is deeply social. I'd have trouble defining race differently from culture. 

I see it "culture" often used as a defense against racism. "No, I'm not racist, I just think the CULTURE that Indian people grow up with encourages being rude and shoving on the bus"...because teenagers (or entitled adults) who grew up in Canadian culture never push to try to get to the front of the line. To me, I really don't think they are different.

Even things which you would think are "cultural" or framed in a cultural way...like "honor killings". We call them that, but we don't call them that when white people do the same thing in Western countries for the same reasons. We just call it murder.

I know there are cultural differences, but I think it is very dangerous to ascribe specific internal traits to a group of any kind. To me, culture is more visible and communal. The CULTURE of Canada involves things like Canada day...a holiday where lots of celebrations happen, and people have different personal interpretations of and feelings about those communal events.

The second one, my experiences...

I wouldn't be so bold as to try and state what Dutch people in general feel or do, or how they interpret multi-culturalism (although the sample inburgering (citizenship) tests are...almost comically racist in their framing so that does give some clue...OTOH here is one Dutch person's interpretation of them--there are English subtitles for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j44IVZ5TAWQ&ab_channel=Dutchiestobe-LearnDutchwithKim).

As for myself, I had heard that we were moving to a more mono-cultural place, and I knew that...it certainly wasn't the motivation (not even subconsciously, and I do know). Upon arriving...we've found it to be...significantly more mult-cultural than I expected. Of the 10 neighbours in our block that I know well enough to chat with, only four of them are Dutch. I'm told we've moved to a relatively multi-cultural place in our city, but we are in a small city outside the randstad with no University. Now...we aren't in the north of the country, or really far away from the big cities. But certainly it was surprising to us just how multicultural it was, given what we had expected. And frankly, it is a pleasant surprise, and frankly, living in Kitchener didn't actually seem all that multicultural. While I know more of my neighbours now, in Canada, none of my neighbours that I knew were not Canadian.

So who knows...like all things, I think there is more variation locally than people expect.