Close Reading

The contrast between immigrants, many from India, and the rhetoric of those who now feel like a new minority was striking. It should not surprise me that racism appears anywhere humans are, but what stood out was how some speakers treated all Indians as a single people, despite hundreds of cultures, and accused them of failing to assimilate to ‘their way.’ Many of those voices were themselves descendants of immigrants who were once pressured to abandon Norwegian or other identities in the name of assimilation. Yet there was little evidence they had actually spent time getting to know their Indian neighbors, their cultures, friendships, or daily realities. Instead, the focus was fear and a narrative of societal collapse, rather than honest engagement that separates real local issues from blanket blame. Of course, any local community can have problems, and some groups can be unwelcoming. But the argument presented implied there is only one way to be Canadian. That echoes xenophobic rhetoric in the US about who counts as ‘American,’ often while ignoring the reality of Indigenous peoples entirely. I do not deny the importance of shared commitments like the rule of law, freedom, and evidence based policy rooted in the Enlightenment and scientific thinking. But culture and learning can coexist with those values. What troubled me most was how poverty and discrimination were replaced with racial generalizations, and how victim language was used to deflect responsibility, something that resembles DARVO. Given the same conditions, these problems could arise in any group, regardless of race.