The Critical Compass Podcast - August 18, 2024


Why Does Everyone Want to Live in the Racist West？ ｜ A Critical Compass Clip

Personal Agency & ＂The Marginalized＂ ｜ A Critical Compass Clip UK Riots： Justified Response to Crime or Far-Right Extremism？ ｜ A Critical Compass Discussion

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

160.62

Word count

1,069

Sentence count

4

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I sit down with a First Generation Canadian to discuss immigration and racism in North America. We talk about racism in Canada, the challenges faced by first generation Canadians, and the process of becoming a Canadian citizen.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 specifically north america canada and the u.s you know how how responsible are we for for taking
00:00:08.200 these people from across the world we have people talking out of both sides of their mouth when they
00:00:13.060 say you know the the same people who want you to believe that canada and the u.s are these you know
00:00:20.640 irredeemable nations with histories of slavery and oppression and residential schools and and 1.00
00:00:28.780 just horrifying racism and bigotry we're that but also we're the destination of choice for every
00:00:38.620 single country in the world right now who is experiencing some sort of refugee crisis so
00:00:42.780 how do we how do you square that how do you how are you such a a horrible you know uh ethically 0.52
00:00:51.280 bankrupt nation and yet we're so desirable that we need to take in all the millions of people annually
00:00:58.180 who who would kill to be here i just i don't i don't think that that worked yeah you you wouldn't
00:01:06.200 have so many people wanting to come over if the conditions here for them were really that
00:01:14.000 were like worse than where they came from um it's also you have to acknowledge implicitly that
00:01:21.500 it's worse where they came from you have to acknowledge that if there there is a reason
00:01:25.560 why there are people uh dying in in rafts crossing the english channel to get to the uk like there
00:01:33.080 there's a reason why they're doing that so one other point on this is uh you have this this specific
00:01:39.720 idea that well racism in north america and canada and the u.s is at its highest and they think it's
00:01:47.540 just well it's a racist country and they distort the numbers and they treat it as a endemic that we need
00:01:54.440 to fix and what we don't realize is that there is plenty of racism in countries just because somebody
00:02:02.480 has somebody could be two shades of brown in the middle east and they have plenty of reason to hate 1.00
00:02:09.060 each other yeah same thing in india they have a caste system yes there's no shortage of racial hatred
00:02:16.420 for well even sometimes it's it's just tribalism focused on some quality and sometimes these qualities
00:02:25.500 matter and sometimes they don't sometimes you can't even define these qualities the caste system
00:02:30.380 is like well the same thing of like well your upper class versus lower class your well your family
00:02:37.020 bloodline is better than somebody else's therefore you should be treated a different way these things
00:02:42.420 exist in these other countries and we're opening up the gates and to think that these same problems
00:02:50.320 and these same patterns and these same systems and or racial tensions wouldn't be brought over they're
00:02:56.560 just they're not erased when they come here just because canada is a welcoming place well if it's just a
00:03:03.120 welcoming place what you're doing is you're just opening the door for new forms of tribalism to
00:03:09.580 take hold because if you impose let's say if we had immigration we had strict cultural if we say like
00:03:18.100 well you gotta adopt these cultural values and canada is super strict on it maybe you'd be filtering
00:03:25.500 out and you wouldn't have some of the good things from other cultures maybe that'd be lost but you'd also
00:03:29.660 be filtering out some of these like negative effects this tribalism that'd be brought on we're already
00:03:36.400 seeing it with like interracial group violence in canada like they're between protests between
00:03:43.840 the there there's no shortage of it and there'll be no shortage um in the future is is my my feeling
00:03:52.700 anyways yeah there there definitely used to be a um a bit of a i would say more of an emphasis even in
00:04:01.340 canada of um of we we really had a strong emphasis i would say in the and i can only use my personal
00:04:12.740 experience for this one because i'm a first generation canadian so when what my parents told
00:04:18.120 me anyway that when they when they were attempting to come when their families were trying to get
00:04:23.720 into canada it was a long process it took a long time like many years multiple years um you had to
00:04:29.980 do you had to uh you know certainly pass a very difficult citizenship uh exam you had to know a lot
00:04:37.220 about the country there there were people at the time they you know kind of was a running commentary
00:04:41.940 they said you know that um people would think that a newly a newly um made canadian citizen often knew
00:04:50.380 more about canada's history than people who were born here you know so it was it was something that
00:04:54.380 was very highly um prized was was a was the the willingness to adopt canadian values and to to
00:05:04.500 become a member of this new like the recognition that the reason why you tried so hard to get here is
00:05:10.880 because you know that you're going to have a better life here than from where you came
00:05:13.520 so there was there was a bit of a um there was more i guess it's hard to ascribe these emotions to
00:05:23.540 people you don't know but it it feels like there was maybe a little bit more gratitude from from the
00:05:28.620 people who were coming but you know in the 60s and 70s kind of the that first sort of major you know
00:05:34.440 wave of immigration to canada than there is now well it almost sounds like you're describing the
00:05:39.700 process was more difficult it took more work on the individuals and there's a sense of accomplishment
00:05:45.440 for learning and passing the test and getting through that and even i like have some friends
00:05:56.700 who recently immigrated who are upset at how easy it's getting for people to immigrate because it
00:06:04.760 almost devalues all the effort they went into and the steps they had to go through yeah if somebody
00:06:10.080 comes in illegally and is granted like a permanent residence like afterwards instead of like deporting
00:06:18.220 them they say like well you came here uh it's still not the best but we'll we'll let you stay
00:06:23.820 anyways that is insulting to people who worked hard and the many people who come to canada they love
00:06:31.720 canada they do a great job and they they fit right in and they um they help make canada a better place
00:06:37.320 you