Discriminating Differences

Yes, there's only one human race. We are differentiated by surface appearance, purely facade variations in skin colour, facial features, traditions and customs. Human beings are curious creatures; we enjoy noting differences between ourselves, like criticizing one another because we always come away feeling somewhat superior, that nature has bestowed her best upon us in particular, as opposed to the unfortunately deleterious endowments given others.

We like to feel superior, to feel above and beyond. To feel that somehow, someone is less well off than we are. We're socially and emotionally infantile, to say the least. But most of us are coming around to the realization that there is nothing very much that separates us from one another. We're emotionally similar. Our physical needs and psychological gratifications are all the same. And so are our resentments of one another. We could do with a little more 'civilization'.

And we're getting there, slowly but surely. Take the Province of Ontario, for example. Fifty years ago there were scant few dark faces in a sea of white, olive and pale yellow. And the white and the olive and the pale yellow lived separately from one another, in their own enclaves. The white in the majority and preferentially; the others minorities and less materially endowed, but struggling to advance.

We've been monumentally transformed. Where once emigration was largely comprised of those from the British Isles, then Europe and the Commonwealth countries, we've gradually opened our borders to every country of the world, taking in political refugees and economic migrants and family-class immigrants to enrich the social structure of the province. Walk down any city in Canada and you see a kaleidoscope of colours in comfortable ease.

It feels good, and it works very well. And, as though to consolidate and mark official that observation, the province of Ontario through its premier charged the province's first black cabinet minister and its former Supreme Court chief justice with an official investigation into the state of the province's acceptance of the reality of a multifaceted communion of visible minorities absorbed by the larger majority.

They met with visible minority groups, community leaders, criminologists and any interested parties invested in making their voices and their opinions heard on the state of society in Ontario. The reason for the initiative was to try to understand why there was a proliferation of youth gangs and youth crimes, including shooting and knifing deaths among youth from disadvantaged minority groups.

Many Ontarians felt they knew why street culture took the place of stable family relations. Absent male figures in one-parent families where mothers were out working and no one around to monitor, care for, enthuse, value-infuse, direct and discipline children. And then there is also the ever present claims of latent prejudice at work, lack of job opportunities.

But if parents don't teach their children the value of self-discipline, school attendance, achieving, respect for others, steady work and opportunity advancement through a dedication to ongoing learning opportunities, then employment does become scarce. Lack of qualifications, of adequate education, or an inability to adequately present as a potential employee are reasonable culprits.

Still, the brace of investigators into cause and effect came to the conclusion that "Racism is worse than it was a generation ago, while there are fewer resources and structures to counter this great evil than existed in years past". According to Alvin Curling and Roy McMurtry,"Racism is alive and well and wreaking its deeply harmful effects on Ontarians."

Dreadful news. If it is in fact true. But thus spoke the judgement from those two highly respected individuals in the release of their "Review of the Roots of Youth Violence". Yes, there is evidence of racism in public places, expressed through bullying, graffiti, comments and racist jokes and profiling. Such attitudes cannot ever be completely extirpated from public spaces.

Society will never be completely cleansed of superiority expressed by some over the perceived inferiority of others; scorn heaped on minorities because of their visible or cultural differences. In societies that were uniformly white or black there has historically, traditionally, been the separation of class and culture, of tribes and clans; the exalted and prized status and the repressed and degraded ones.

This is an expression of base, and basic human nature. Everyone, no matter who they are, where they live, how they react, is exposed throughout life to adversity of one kind or another. Some people are inherently open and accepting of others, finding them no different than they themselves are. Others instinctively seem to gravitate to adversarial positions with respect to those different than themselves.

But to claim that Ontario has regressed as an accepting, open and equal society is quite simply inaccurate and untrue. Rather, prejudice is a shifting occurrence; as one tidal wave of immigrants came into the country, then another, each experienced its own drawn-out incidence of degraded incivility from those who had come before. The Chinese, the Jewish, the Indian, the Caribbean and the Muslim waves all engendered a social backlash.

When their residence and commonality became commonplace over time, resistance waned and acceptance resulted. Antagonism of people toward one another has an ancient heritage of territorial dominance and survival. We've come a long way, and still have a long journey to travel before we become fully emotionally integrated as a single race.