Canada is as Racist as the United States

Malanie Lazarow via Flickr

In a post-Trump world, it may seem like a stretch to say that Canada, your friendly neighbour to the north, is racist. Not only racist but as racist at the United States... But it's true.
We pride ourselves on our diversity and how accepting we are, we dance upon the moral high ground while our neighbours down south elected Trump. But holy I am angry with Canada and I have a platform to express that so buckle up.

One of the bigger arguments is that the USA has the KKK (along with other assorted hate groups) and Canada doesn't... but here's why that argument is wrong; the hate is there, but our racists are still too scared to poke their heads up from under the rock they're hiding under. Unfortunately, they're not too scared to distribute KKK flyers in Abbotsford. That's a stone throw from the liberal central of Canada, Vancouver. The KKK exists here and they exist in our backyard. As disgusting as that is, they aren't even Canadas' only hate group!

Hate crimes are also on a sharp rise. In 2017 Statistics Canada released an article on "Police Reported Hate Crimes" and found some borderline shocking results. Hate crimes in general, when compared to 2016, rose 47%. This report found that Jewish Canadians faced more generalized hate crimes and Muslim Canadians faced more violent hate crimes. When you look back through the last couple of years the writing is on the wall; in December of 2017, a young Muslim woman was attacked on a commuter train in Vancouver. In Quebec, in 2017 a deranged man entered a Mosque and shot and killed 6 people. These are some of the very few incidents that actually made the news.

We are fortunate that we live in a country where our black citizens don't have the burden of convincing cops not to shoot them for no reason, but that argument is invalid because the institutional racism is still there, it just dials in on First Nations people. We treat our indigenous Canadians - Canadians who have more of a right to be here than you or me, horribly. We created a system that fucks you up and then throws you in jail for it (but only if your ancestors have always been on this land, Europeans are home free.) Whether you live in the deep south or the north, if your skin is any darker than 'burns in the sun' white, I want to genuinely apologize because you deserve better than this. Indigenous Canadians account for 4 to 5% of the Canadian population, however, around 27% of inmates in Canadian prisons are aboriginal. Is it just me or is that math way off? The Canadian government and the Catholic church beat and abused aboriginal families for YEARS and when pressured into it, apologized and threw some money at them as reparations. They didn't do close to enough to help end the cycles of abuse that they are responsible for, but throwing aboriginal people in prison will fix that, right?

I love this country and all, but nothing gets fixed if we don't first acknowledge it. We can do better. Do better, Canada.



According to Google Trends, "USA" is far more popular than any other term for the States including, "The United States" "U.S.A" and "The United States of America." "Racist + America" is a lot more popular than "Racist + Canada" so I wanted to include 'Racist, USA, and Canada' to get the jist of what the article is about while also taking SEO into consideration.