Burning crosses and segregated buses might be a thing of the past, but racism still quietly thrives.
Racial discrimination in Alberta is often far more subtle than that, some high profile, non-white Edmontonians said yesterday.
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According to Statistics Canada’s 2001 census data, 11% of Albertans are non-white, with the majority being Chinese, followed by South Asians, Filipinos and blacks. The data does not include aboriginal people.
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Edmonton MP Rahim Jaffer – a Muslim whose family lived in India before moving to East Africa and later Vancouver and Edmonton – remembers the discrimination he faced as a younger schoolboy.
“It was nothing specific, but I always knew I was the only dark face in the crowd when I went to school. Kids would say things sometimes, but I always knew it was because their parents hadn’t taught them any better.”
Rather than the more overt racism his parents’ generation faced, Jaffer said “what we more often experience (in Canada) is a bit of racial and cultural ignorance. It can be just as harmful but is less malicious in nature.”
But even in the last 15 years, Jaffer said he’s seen tremendous leaps in how kids deal with others from different cultures.
“Walk into a school class in Edmonton today and it’s like everyone is colour blind. They have so much access to the world and other cultures that things like skin colour and religious beliefs seems far less foreign to them.”
Al-Karim Ramji, 23, is a director of the Canadian Mutlicultural Education Foundation – the group hosting yesterday’s anti-racism event.
Canadian Multicultural Education Foundation board member Al-Karim Ramji, 23, holds a paper decoration representing multiculturalism during the 10th annual Harmony Brunch, celebrating the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, at the Delta Edmonton South hotel yesterday. (David Bloom, SUN)
An Ismaili Muslim, Ramji grew up in Sherwood Park and attended high school in Edmonton. In the 12 years that separate him from Jaffer, he said cultural discrimination in school has become even more unpopular, especially the kind of anti-Muslim backlash that cropped-up after 9-11.
Ismailimail 