Ignorance

It has taken me a few days to make this post because the circumstances that brought this post around were difficult to process.

It was bedtime for my long-term boyfriend and I. We often talk at length before actually falling asleep, and that night was no different. Somehow, I admit I cannot recall how, we came to the subject of immigration in Canada. His tone immediately changed. Although he still attempted to keep the topic light, his tone became so negative regarding immigration I found myself taken aback. He claimed immigration was easy, that integrating immigrants into the community was no challenge at all, and he felt that being white was turning into the minority in Canada.

I was so stunned I hardly knew what topic to address first! While I hardly consider myself an authority upon immigration and racism, I also felt I could not ignore the direction he had taken our conversation. My boyfriend, whom I shall refer to as S for the remainder of this post, could not understand why I reacted so negatively towards his statement. He thought that I, as a white woman, would understand his point of view, but did not want to investigate the conversation any further.

I must inject here that normally, I would not have gone further, and would have left what he had said well enough alone, although perhaps with a stern look. I now feel that such a reaction in the face of such ignorance and blatant racist misunderstanding only helps to perpetuate it, instead of helping the perpetrator understand where exactly s/he has gone wrong.

So, I talked. I asked him to cite his sources for his wildly inaccurate claims. I asked him if he knew what white privilege was, and whether or not he understood the kind of power that comes with white privilege that others cannot attain. We argued over many things, but most of all we argued about racism in Canada. He believed it did not exist. As a direct result of this 513 course, I was able to quote different anecdotes from various articles, novels and websites I've come across, and I saw surprise across his face. I talked about how racism is often defined as power plus prejudice, and how you can still be prejudiced, but have no power. It took him a while to understand that.

He asked what he was supposed to do. He said he couldn't stop it himself, so why bother? I told him that was a cop-out, and that next time someone says something racist, or derogatory, to tell them to stop, and that it's wrong. He laughed. He said he couldn't understand what good it would do.

What I said next is something I truly believe. Standing up to something like that takes courage. Racism is such a long-standing "accepted" part of white culture that just by ascertaining only white folk are around, it must be acceptable to tell a racist joke. Simply by saying, "Hey, that's racist, and that's wrong," won't change anyone's minds immediately, but it will make them uncomfortable, like they made you uncomfortable by trying to tell the joke in the first place. By doing this over a long period of time, you will eventually realize that it is wrong, no one should stand for that sort of passive racism, and that is exactly the kind of racism that the Canadian government has been turning a blind eye to for years, such as in the situation of the Japanese-Canadians in the second World War, and ultimately, passive racism hurts people.

Writing this post was hard. I'm sure I got a lot of things wrong, and I'm more than happy to have people correct me, so I can continue to learn, think and act, and help S to learn, think and act, instead of standing by, allowing passive racism to continue.