We need to talk about Canada/2

The history of indigenous people in Canada is not my history. Neither is the history of black people. It is there’s to tell, to argue do feel sensitive and offended about.

My history is the history of immigration. Not being a refugee. Being an immigrant from Europe, a white immigrant. My history is also the Cold War, Communism, the German reunification. My families history stretches through the two world wars, alas always on the wrong side - the German one.

I do not feel guilty for past German crimes, more than for any past crimes, including the ones committed against natives and blacks and other racial discriminated people in Canada. I feel responsible for my time. This includes, how we talk about history.

As an immigrant, I feel a special responsibility to know more about my new country. I need to understand why for some Canada is not that beacon of tolerance and multiculturalism it so nicely branded itself with.

I need to learn about Canada’s past and present crimes, injustices and prejudices. 

My home country was an unjust, non-democratic dictatorship, with a terrible secret service. But it was also a country where people tried to change the system, fought it and finally overthrew it. I can not sort myself neatly into a perpetrator or victim.

Looking at what was done, while I grew up in communist Germany, to natives and blacks here in Canada - I again feel, that there is and was some evil everywhere - no matter which ideology was used to justify it.

I guess you can still call yourself a democracy if you only discriminate against a small part of your population, the one that is non-white or western European. Residential schools, nonvoting right, special surveillance laws (how else do you enforce a non-drinking politic against status natives), severe criminal, educational and economical discrimination against people of colour as well as the use of the whole welfare bureaucracy and the health system to steal children and declare part of your population unfit.

There was a huge outcry, that the east german Stasi took away the children of political prisoners, that one's parents political opinion decided partly over one's professional future. And rightly so.

But, is it any better to use your people's race or culture to discriminate and destroy? Is that a acceptable way in a western democracy?

As an immigrant, I want to make sure, that future immigrants and refugees have a chance to fully understand this new homeland of theirs. 

This starts with the citizen and immigration course about Canada.

I grew up in a country with so many lies and censorships. Here the lies are maybe smarter, but they are there nonetheless. How long do the government and many institutions here believe they can keep up the big lies about the past.

Where is the public debate about all this?

Let's invite survivors of the residential schools to the ceremonies of getting the citizenship. Let’s put away the glorifying myth of “the underground railway” running only in one direction. Canada had slaves and discriminated throughout history against its black population, including now

How about making books like “Policing black lives” or “The inconvenient Indian” mandatory.

(and no -it would be not my place, but the place of the native and black communities to decide - but the conversation needs to start.)

When you are like me, you finally arrive in Canada, as a rather non-visible immigrant because you are white, often you have left discrimination or sometimes wars and prosecution behind. You heart the myth, of this beautiful, multicultural, friendly and tolerant country and you actually do not want to believe, that this Canada could be anything but this.

You want to believe. Sometimes you come from a country with no native population and not a lot of people of colour. And you wonder, if you ever even heart about it, why the blacks and natives are complaining. You start following discussions, listen to the media and without even knowing it, adapt easy some standard arguments. 

“There is no racism in Canada…Blacks are just often criminal, especially the young men, and unfortunately from time to time the police overreacts because they get stressed too. They just don’t want to learn, they are lazy and like to party instead of hard work. And wow, what they do to their children...and the natives - they do not even have to pay taxes. Very irresponsible people who still can not get over that they lost the wars. Well everybody had to change, they just think they are so special. They are mostly alcoholics and their administration is corrupt, no wonder that their teens kill themselves and their water is undrinkable. “

If you do not watch yourself, you soon will repeat mindlessly the same cliches. “Oh well, they deserve it.”

You might stop seeing humans, people like yourself and instead replace this with groups you can dehumanize. The same arguments said about your friends or family would sound heart-wrenching. Imagine somebody tells you - sorry your children do not deserve proper education, medical care or cleaning water, because the mayor's office of the town you live in, is corrupt. Would you not start screaming, that one can not ever punish children for this, and anyway this is not an excuse? 

Maybe in your old country, the police were not so nice, rather brutal to be true. Maybe the discriminated against your people for any kind of reason. You never trusted them, you understand how one behaves when one does not expect anything but trouble from the police. You would have understood while young men might run from them, and maybe not smile.

I never trusted the police. I still don’t. And I understand, why people, black iand indegenous communities don’t trust them. Carding - who comes up with that, and than feeds his twisted logic back to the media.

If you have more crimes for people of different colour to commit and being arrested for - then yeah, they will be like in canada overrepresented in the jails and prison.

If defence is as well a questions of color, status and money - then the poorer people have lesser chances.

It is simply not true, that everybody has the same chances. Exemptions are exemptions, not the rule.

As a white immigrant, I would like to understand, to learn.  This is my country now as well, and I am not happy or satisfied with the state it is in. I despise the lack of caring, the partly merciless, thoughtless, pitiless comments and remarks I hear.

What is the best a country could become but a community, based on mutal respect and understanding - protecting together the most vulnerable members like children. All the children.