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Im NOT RACIST but…..
NEIL BI S S O O N D A T H M M /om eone recently said that racism is as Canadian as maple symp. I have no argument with that. History W provides us with ample proof. But, for proper 9 W perspective, let us remem her that it is also as American as apple pie, as French as croissants, as Jamaican as ackee, as Indian as aloo, as Chinese as chow mein, as . . . . Well, there’s an entire menu to be written. This is not by way of excusing it. Murder and rape, too, are international, multicultural, as innate to the darker side of the human experience. But we must be careful that the inevitable rage evoked does not blind us to the larger context. The word “racism” is a discomforting one: It is so vulnerable to manipulation. We can, if we so wish, apply it to any incident involving people of different colour. And therein lies the danger. During the heat of altercation, we seize, as terms of abuse, on whatever is most obvious about the other person. It is, often, a question of unfortunate convenience. A woman, because of her sex, easily becomes a female dog Neil Bissoondath is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. Bom in Trinidad in 1955, he moved to Toronto at the age o f eighteen to degree in French at York University in Toronto. He has published a collection o f short stories, Digging Up The Mountains, and a novel, A Casual Brutality. ▼TTTTTTTTT or an intimate part of her anatomy. A large person might be dubbed “a stupid ox,” a small person “a little” whatever. And so a black might become “a nigger,” a white “a honky,” an Asian “a paki,” a Chinese “a chink,” an Italian “a wop,” a French-Canadian “a frog.” There is nothing pleasant about these terms; they assault every decent sensibility. Even so, I once met someone who, in a stunning surge of naivete, used them as simple descriptives and not as terms of racial abuse. She was horrified to learn the truth. While this may have been an extreme case, the point is that the use of such patently abusive words may not always indicate racial or cultural distaste. They may indicate ignorance or stupidity or insensitivity, but pure racial hatred – such as the Nazis held for Jews, or the Ku Klux Klan for blacks – is a thankfully rare commodity. Ignorance, not the willful land but that which comes from lack of experience, is often indicated by that wonderful phrase, “I ‘m not racist but….” I think of the mover, a friendly man, who said, “I ‘m not racist, but the Chinese are the worst drivers on the road.” He was convinced this was so because the shape of their eyes, as far as he could surmise, denied them peripheral vision. Or the oil company executive, an equally warm and friendly man, who, looking for an apartment in Toronto, rejected buildings with East Indian tenants not because of their race – he was telling me this, after all – but because he was given to understand that cockroaches were symbols of good luck in their culture and that, when they moved into a new home, friends came by with gift-wrapped roaches. Neither of these men thought of himself as racist, and I believe they were not, deep down. (The oil company executive made it clear he would not hesitate to have me as a neighbour; my East Indian descent was of no consequence to him, my horror of cockroaches was.) Yet their comments, so innocently delivered, would open them to the accusation, justifiably so if this were all one knew about them. But it is a charge which would undoubtedly be wounding to them. It is difficult to recognize one’s own misconceptions. True racism is based, more often than not, on willful ignorance, and an acceptance of – and comfort with – stereotype. We like to think, in this country, that our multicultural mosaic will help nudge us into a Page 63 greater openness. But multiculturalism as we know it indulges in stereotype, depends on it for a dash of colour and the flash of dance. It fails to address the most basic questions people have about each other: Do those men doing the Dragon Dance really all belong to secret criminal societies? Do those women dressed in saris really coddle cockroaches for luck? Do those people in dreadlocks all smoke marijuana and live on welfare? Such questions do not seem to be the concern of the government’s multicultural programs, superficial and exhibitionistic as they have become. So the struggle against stereotype, the basis of all racism, becomes a purely personal one. We must beware of the impressions we create. A friend of mine once commented that, from talking to West Indians, she has the impression that their one great cultural contribution to the world is in the oft-repeated boast that “We (unlike everyone else) know how to party.” There are dangers, too, in community response. We must be wary of the self-appointed activists who seem to pop up in the media at every given opportunity spouting the rhetoric of retribution, mining distress for personal, political and professional gain. We must be skeptical about those who depend on conflict for their sense of self, the non-whites who need to feel themselves victims of racism, the whites who need to feel themselves purveyors of it. And we must be sure that, in addressing the problem, we do not end up creating it. Does the Miss Black Canada, Beauty Contest still exist? I hope not. N ot only do I find beauty contests offensive, but a racially segregated one even more so. What would the public reaction be, I wonder, if every year CTV broadcast the Miss White Canada Beauty Pageant? We give community-service awards only to blacks: Would we be comfortable with such awards only for whites? In Quebec, there are The Association of Black Nurses, The Association of Black Artists, The Congress of Black Jurists. Play tit for tat: The Associations of White Nurses, White Artists, White Jurists: visions of apartheid. Let us be frank, racism for one is racism for others. Finally, and perhaps most important, let us beware of abusing the word itself. ▼TTTTTTTTT
question 1. what is the main idea, 2. body paragrpah and 3.conclusion 4. purpose of the article
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