Quote:
Originally Posted by AtLastHome
I wonder, and do not know what the break down of POC to whites is in Canada. How diverse is Canada in terms of race and ethnicity within the overall population? And how does this compare to the US? (Now I have my work cut out for me!). And if it is not as diverse as the US, this might be part of the differences in racial and ethnic tensions- and yes, black slavery as an economic and structural institution along with post US Civil War Jim Crowe laws has a role that unfortunately does give the US a differing context.
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The question of demographics in Canada is difficult to answer because for some reason the government does not consider Aboriginal people to be POC. (I bet there are no Inuit, for example, who consider themselves white, though. So the whole thing makes absolutely no sense.) So this means that whenever you look at demographics in Canada the breakdown always includes First Nations people in with the Caucasian group.
So I googled around and found that in 2006 3.8% of the population is Aboriginal (First Nations, Inuit, Metis)
16.20% of the total population (according to the 2006 census) is a "visible minority". If you include Native people in with that it's exactly 20%. Breakdown:
Whitey - 80.0%
South Asian - 4.0%
Aboriginal - 3.8%
Chinese - 3.7%
Black - 2.5%
Filipino - 1.3%
Latin American - 1.0%
Arab - 0.9%
Southeast Asian - 0.7%
West Asian - 0.5%
Korean - 0.4%
Japanese - 0.2%
Multiple visible minorities - 0.3%
Visible minority, n.i.e. - 0.2%
I have no idea what "Visible minority, n.i.e." is. No idea.
Anyway, I don't know how things spread out in the US but you'll also find that what Canada looks like is REALLY different between our large cities and small towns. I know Toronto is a solid 50/50 split (like 50 percent of Torontonians are POC 50 percent are white - roughly. But this depends on the neighborhood, Scarborough for example was 68% POC in 2006 ) but if you go to a smaller town like the one I live in now you're likely to fall down dead from shock if you see a person of colour (okay, slight exaggeration. I just googled and my town is 7.1% POC - 4.5% being Aboriginal. But I still felt culture shock and like I landed in white-land when I moved here.)
But I don't think you can say "Canada has less POC ergo less racial tension". And the reason that I say/know this is because where I grew up (Toronto) things were pretty smooth. I wasn't witness to people walking around scared, or angry. With the exception of my Aunt's crazy motorcycle club ex-boyfriend (hated him! why would she let him around her children?) I never heard any sort of racial slur or was witness to any crazy-ass racist behaviour.
But the town I live in now is not like that. White people say the craziest shit when they think nobody is listening, seriously. For white Canadians it seems like the less contact we have with POC the more xenophobic we get.
I presume that to be exactly the opposite of how it is in the US.
ETA - I have heard that things are pretty tense (batshit, actually) in the prairies, though. That's probably due to my "sparsely populated tiny white towns" theory. Mind you, I know NOTHING about the prairies other than that I had to drive through them to get to BC.)