I came across a post in the "No Need to Start a New Thread" thread and felt that it was deserving of its own thread. I hope this doesn't devolve into another hard-to-navigate discussion riddled with tangents and laced with pointless personal attacks... but hey, this is Revscene. Who am I kidding?
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Originally Posted by ICE BOY
Immigrants failing to assimilate means more racism: Oppal | News1130
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“By failing to assimilate and by living in ethnic ghettos and ethnic enclaves, immigrants do a disservice to themselves and that is often a cause of racism,” says Wally Oppal. “It becomes offensive to other people, moreover, if you don’t assimilate people don’t get to know you. It’s ignorance and the lack of knowledge in particular communities that breeds racism.”
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One could easily argue that the existence of ethnic enclaves in Vancouver has lent to the development of Vancouver into one grand multiethnic community. Having created lively hubs of international culture, the enclaves are assets for the region. Their collective richness and diversity contribute to the uniqueness of the Greater Vancouver area on indeed a global scale. That granted, Wally Oppal highlights that those very same enclaves contribute to a host of concerns including racism. It's no stretch to say that, driven by segregation, these ethnic enclaves are not only enriching our community, but simultaneously damaging it.
We often think of residential segregation -- the obvious examples being Chinese in Richmond and Burnaby and South-Asians in Surrey -- but the dynamics in our region sees the segregation of different ethnic groups not just spatially. High levels of cross-cultural interactions in social, employment, and education settings certainly develop diversity and awareness between cultural groups, but this notion, however true, is incessantly haunted by segregation manifest in common discourse. Anyone can recall with ease the issue of Chinese signage in Richmond earlier this year.
The residential segregation extant in Vancouver is often touted as being voluntary, but is it? I would go as far to say that it is rooted in discrimination.