h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What a nice reflective moment on your childhood.
*thinking of the neighbors in my childhood*

thanks.

Racism is not the province of one country in particular. If you look at it's roots, you find it at the very foundations of each country, tribe, province, neighborhood, absolutely regardless of which race is perpetrating it on which. What other possible reason is there for any of these societies without a basic, fundamental feeling that my familiar is better than your familiar?

Each individual in the world seeks out that which makes them comfortable. And we determine comfort by what we know. Seeking out what makes you comfortable only surrounds you with others seeking out the same thing. In the example of the US, tracing ethnic migrations we see immigrants time and again seeking the areas which most remind them of home.(please forgive broad generalization here, I am talking demographics, not individuals)

This seeking of the familiar is the root. As we look for just what we know, we refuse to grow. This is why no nation, no government, noone can legislate its end. It is an individual thing, only once each and every person has eliminated their need to be comfortable will it evaporate.

Totally off racism -- just nifty

40,000 years was a bit over the estimate. The native american tribes were asian immigrants tward the end of the last ice age about 12,500 years ago. Recent finds such as the Kenniwick man of Washington state point to and earlier culture predating the ice age. This culture seems to have flourished world wide about that time spreading a basic culture found throughout the Middle East and even South America. Graham Hancock calls them the travellers, and his books make facinating reading.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled rant.

Matt

Good explanation of the natural attraction to the familiar.

Growing up in the rather "whitebread" millieu of Ottawa, I grew up with Lebanese, Chinese, Blacks, Italian, Cuban, and various odds and ends from all over... Oh, and, of course, my brothers and sisters who were 1/2 Scots or Nova Scotian. and 1/2 Parsi from India....


A few notes...

The first Black business-men in Toronto (then York), according to Daniel G. Hill in "Polyphony Summer", were "two contractors-Jack Mosee and William Willis-who "under took [in 1799] to open a road from Yonge Street, York, westward through 'the Pinery'; and although at first the senior surveyor of the province found the road too narrow and improperly cleared, in time it was completed satisfactorily." In 1802 eighteen free Blacks were living in York, including six children. Several fought in the War of 1812, including Sam Edwards, a member of Captain Runchey's Coloured Corps, and Solomon Albert, a gardener, who served earlier as a private in the 10th Regiment."

The first Chinese to arrive in Canada: 1788 "John Meare arrives in Nootka Sound on Canada's Pacific coast, with two ships and 50 Chinese carpenters and craftsmen. They build a two-storied fort and a schooner, but are later captured by the Spanish and taken to Mexico". "1861 Won Alexander Cumyow is born in Victoria. He is the first Chinese baby to be born in Canada." "1877 Chinese-owned laundries are established in Toronto."

Unlike the other great cities of immigration, the majority of Toronto's Italian population arrived after World War Two. The numbers of Italians arriving in Toronto in any two-year period of the early 1950s exceeded the number of Italian Canadians already in the city.

Of course, the first Italian known to have come to Canada was John Cabot (Caboto) who came in 1497.... However: Italian troops served as mercenary soldiers for a number of European monarchs including the English, French and Spanish. There were Italians fighting alongside the British in the War of 1812. Italians came to Canada as individuals, artists, painters and teachers, bringing a cosmopolitan outlook to the urban centres of Montreal and Toronto.

The year 1977 marked the hundredth anniversary of the settling in Canada of the first Japanese. To commemorate this event, a mountain in British Columbia was named after the first settler, Manzo Nagano.

The first East Indian Immigrants in Canada went to Port Moody, east of Vancouver in 1904 -- And from 1905-1908, about 5000 Immigrants entered Canada. First Sikh died in Vancouver in 1907; Cremation was not allowed; Sikhs took the dead body in the middle of night to a distant forest and cremated it there.

Of course, most of these earlier immigrants faced racism, less than those from Eastern Europe.

My step-father went to MIT in the late 30s, at age 15. When WWII began, he tried to join the US Army, where he was told the "Indian contingent" was full by a recruiting officer who was less than anxious to have someone of color sign up. He came up to Canada and asked to sign up with the Canadian Army and was welcomed without question. He said he never found a single example of discrimination on the part of his fellow soldiers. His only problem was when someone thought his last name was French and sent him to the 22nd Regiment. Problem was, he didn't speak a word of French. He always claimed proudly that he learned all his French from his brief stay in the Regiment. (We never doubted him... His French was horrifyingly bad.)

When the war was over, he finished his MIT schooling and came to Canada. He found himself, as a man of color, more welocmed here than in the United States.

The only overt instance of racism he found was when he raised the most money in his area for the Red Feather Appeal (for-runner of the United Way). An acquaintance said "How Christian of you to do this."

When he said "I suppose, considering I am not a Christian", the person turned his back on him and never spoke to him again....

Anhaga - Not according to your census data in '61 and '71.
Mudhooks - Then why was it only until 1982 that Canada finally chartered a guarantee of religious freedom to the very people who were native to the lands?

"40,000 years was a bit over the estimate. The native american tribes were asian immigrants tward the end of the last ice age about 12,500 years ago".



"Three archaeological sites in Alberta support the theory of a migration route through an Alberta corridor. Stone scrapers and choppers have been discovered at sites in Grimshaw, Bow River, and in Lethbridge. These stone tools were found under glacial sand and gravel are believed to be pre-glacial and therefore indicate humans occupied the area 20,000 to 40,000 years ago. The verification of the early dates, however, is dependent upon geological interpretation."
http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/firstnations/habitation.html

"Great controversy surrounds the first settlement of the New World. While everyone agrees that the first settlers crossed the Bering land bridge, some archaeologists believe the crossing dates to at least 40,000 years ago. Others favor a much later date, at the very end of the Ice Age, or soon afterward.

Claims of very early settlement are based on a series of cave and rock shelter finds in South America. There are affirmations of humans occupying Boqueirao de Pedra Furada in northeastern Brazil at least 40,000 years ago. Only a few scholars accept this claim or other much heralded occupations said to have occurred between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago."
http://www.bartleby.com/67/28.html

The first Native People to inhabit America probably got there between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/natpeo1.htm


Although the earliest immigrants may have reached North America over 40,000 years ago, most of the present evidence dates from between 23,000 and 8,000 years ago.
http://www.crt.state.la.us/crt/ocd/arch/laprehis/lapre.htm

in 1989, University of California, Berkeley, linguist Johanna Nichols began a systematic look at Indian languages.
She traced language families, based on points such as how numbers were used, where a verb is placed in a sentence or even the "m" sound in pronouns, and decided that history was wrong. She found 150 language families in North and South America, a surprisingly high number since languages take time to develop into new tongues.
"I knew perfectly well that there's no way you could get 150 such language families in here, of such different types, in that time," Nichols says. "Whatever the age of the languages is, it's a great deal more than 11,000 years."
Using her research to analyze migration patterns, she found evidence to suggest that the Americas have been inhabited for 30,000 or 40,000 years — three times the generally accepted time frame. Moreover, there seemed to be several migratory waves.
http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news54.htm

"The two studies disagreed on when people first started domesticating dogs from wolves. The earliest remains believed to be from a dog is a jawbone from Germany that is 14,000 years old. The Swedish-Chinese research team said DNA analyses, coupled with archaeological finds, pointed to a point of origin about 15,000 years ago.

But Vila said his findings that dogs arrived with the first settlers in America indicated humans and dogs probably lived together in Asia long before, maybe as many as 40,000 years ago."
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2002/11/21/5188-ap.html
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9802/17/bering.strait.reut/

Being as most of have been here less than 400 years, I think I would be willing to say give or take 20,00 years....

That should have read "Being as most of have been here less than 400 years, I think I would be willing to say give or take 20,000 years....

Because that was when we repatriated the Canadian Constitution... that is why.

I'll answer for Mudhooks: Because our constitution was the British North America Act, a statute of the British Parliament, until 1982. As soon as we got ourselves a constitution, we gave ourselves a charter of rights and freedoms. Ask the question of the British, not of the Canadians.

As for the 61 and 71 censuses, I don't know the statistics, I know my experiences and I've been told of my mother's experiences.

This whole portion of the discussion came up because I took issue with the suggestion that "no other people anywhere" had the ethnic diversity of the U. S. I'm sorry, I still take issue with that statement and I've not seen anyone offer a cogent defense of it.

I did not say that Canada was free from discrimination nor free from racism... As I work in the resolution of Indian Residential School litigation over the terrible treatment of Native children in said schools, I am well aware of the shameful history of the treatment of our Native Peoples.

I might point out, however, that, aside from the massacre at during the Northwest Rebellion, and the elimination of the entire Beothuk people at the hands of some of Canda's earliest European settlers, our relationship with our Native peoples, while regretably paternalistic and in many cases racist, has continued without the scope of bloodshed that those Native people have encountered in the United Stated, continuing on up to the standoff at Wounded Knee.

As well, Canada also has a habit of recognising its treaties with the Native peoples, unlike our neighbours to the South, who have repeatedly over its history ignored treaties it signed.

per capita, canada takes in more immigrants than any other country in the world and has for several years. To say the United States is the only multicultural nation in the world is absolutely ridiculous. In terms of the arts, an arguement could be made that the U.S. is one of the least multicultural. When was the last time you heard something on the radio that wasn't recorded in the United States, Canada or the U.K. When was the last time a non-english speaking film hit the top ten at the box office.
I live in Japan, a remarkably homogeneous society with about 1 percent of the population being non-japanese, but the major cities here are very multiethnic in terms of food, the arts and even the support for non-japanese speakers (a lot of signs are in english and portugese and chinese and korean) While there is a strong strain of racism here, there is also a strong urge toward internationalism.

per capita, canada takes in more immigrants than any other country in the world and has for several years. To say the United States is the only multicultural nation in the world is absolutely ridiculous. In terms of the arts, an arguement could be made that the U.S. is one of the least multicultural. When was the last time you heard something on the radio that wasn't recorded in the United States, Canada or the U.K. When was the last time a non-english speaking film hit the top ten at the box office.
I live in Japan, a remarkably homogeneous society with about 1 percent of the population being non-japanese, but the major cities here are very multiethnic in terms of food, the arts and even the support for non-japanese speakers (a lot of signs are in english and portugese and chinese and korean) While there is a strong strain of racism here, there is also a strong urge toward internationalism.

Post 3042 (three days ago):


Starbirth writes:

'Take heed its a tough room for those who would even suggest that
'America is not the cause of all the worlds problems"'

Seriously, is there anyone on this thread who would disagree with the statement "America is not the cause of all the world's problems"?
Speaking as a Canadian, I would not blame the Americans for the collapse of the Newfoundland Cod Fishery. Nor would I blame them for
the separation question in Quebec. And the present legal questions surrounding taxation and the First Nations of Treaty 7 are not caused
(nor likely known about) by the Americans. I suspect that there is no one that would seriously argue that America is the cause of all the
world's problems. Why would Starbirth misrepresent us in this way?

And again, I'm more than suggesting that America is not the cause of all the world's problems; I'm offering concrete examples of problems
that do not have an American cause. And I feel quite confident that the room will not turn tough on me for it.

Why does Starbirth think it's a tough room?

(I'm Canadian, by the way. In my travels I've been more often mistaken for French or German than American. It's interesting to be seen as
American here. )



I was right. The room didn't turn tough on me for suggesting that America was not the cause of all the world's problems. It seems to have turned tough when I suggested that other countries might have a characteristic in common with the U. S.

Where are you, Starbirth?

It appears we have offended.... by way of apology, I offer this sincere apology taken from our own "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" (video version at the end...)

On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to the
United States of America. We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry.

I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron. He is a moron but, it wasn't nice of us to point it out. If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America. After all it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own.

It would be like if, well, say you had ten times the television audience we did and you flood our market with great shows, cheaper than we could produce. I know you'd never do that.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defense I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours.

As word of apology, please accept all of our NHL teams which, one by one, are going out of business and moving to your fine country.

I'm sorry for Alan Thicke, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Loverboy, that song from Seriff that ends with a really high-pitched long note.

Your beer. I know we had nothing to do with your beer, but we feel your pain.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean, when you're going up against a crazed dictator, you wanna have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons.

I'm sorry we burnt down your White House during the war of 1812. I notice you've rebuilt it! It's Very Nice.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism. I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this.

We've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.



http://www.22minutes.com/realwrapper.php?target=apology_256.rm

In spite of the risk of adding still another Canadian voice to this thread (which is increasingly skating close to the edge of the subject), I think racism can't possibly be a factor.
When I was very young in the small town in Western Canada, the balcony of the movie theatre was for *coloureds*. There was no sign. No one said it out loud. It just was. In the ten years or so between then and when I was a teenager, we generally found it was more fun up there than on the floor (for one thing you could drop popcorn on people). Thus ended the last vestiges of visible racism that I saw there.
The point is, no one legislated the segregation so no one needed to officially end it. I think that many people are racist, but only when that racism is entrenched through government is it a national problem. Individual racism is unfortunately without boundaries, and we must deal with it individually. The USA has it's share of racists, but legally it has very progressive laws on the whole. Not entirely of course, but then neither do we.