Presentation Research Journalling

Response

During my research for my pre-session presentation, I found myself encountering many unpleasant thoughts and feelings raised by the issue of immigration into Canada. I had never encountered this before, and the experience is an entirely new and uncomfortable one for me. I also find myself very ignorant and naive in relation to how I perceive Canada, and I am loath to admit to myself the extent of which Canada makes things purposefully difficult, immigration-wise, to come to Canada. I do not wish to believe such things are really true, despite having the evidence and accounts laid out before me. I find myself exhausted at the possibility - not the possibility, the truth - about Canadian immigration.

Indeed, such issues are raised in Bannerji's The Dark Side of the Nation, a narrative which shocked me in many ways. Her treatment upon coming into Canada, the way officials talk to her as if she stole her way "in" Canada, is insulting and dehumanizing.

Self Critique

The reason I am so uncomfortable encountering this vitriol towards Canada is due to a numbers of things. First and foremost, I consider myself a patriot of Canada, and while I certainly do not consider Canada a perfect place or utopia, I am astonished at the preconceptions about immigration that I held, when such conceptions about the ease of immigrating into Canada is so completely and wholly untrue.

I am unsure about my own shock. Am I shocked at her treatment because she is a human being, and Bannerji has the same right to treatment that I have? Or is it my white privilege, my secret belief that Canada cannot be so bad because I have never been treated as such, for I have not? Is my awareness of skin colour - my own, and others - the beginning of my othering of people?

Cultural Critique

How the culture I find myself in is obvious, and greatly influences my reactions. I am part of a culture in Canada that is largely unaware of what is happening around it. I am part of the dominant white culture, whose concerns largely do not encompass those of immigrants, and are very out of touch with the Real Canada vs. White Canada. While this concept is personally offensive to me, I realize and recognize why it is; the culture accepts and embraces the false nature of multiculturalism in Canada. In reality, Canada strives more to categorize and define people from a racialized perspective so hard that it stops multiculturalism and functions as racism.

The term racism within this culture defines itself as a person, or group of people, who practically foam at the mouth with hate, slinging racist and derogatory terms left and right like mud. Canadian racism is subtle, and digs itself into its purported "multiculturalism." This is a direct contradiction towards how Canada endeavors to present itself to the world.