That question was posed here. Apparently Canada’s Labour Minister has an answer: it harms the economy.
Things to note in this article:
1) the acknowledgement of systemic racism and how it is not generally acknowledged
2) the fact that the number of poc who have never encountered racial discrimination is unimportant compared to those who have and to the number of white people who have
3) how apparently, racism in Canada is different from racism in the US… ;-P (just kidding)
I prefer the “our society is ensuring that America’s next Bill Gates — the one who could develop technology that not only reverses climate change but also cures breast cancer — may never reach her potential because she just happened to grow up in a decaying urban center” approach. It’s so much more visual — and visceral — than an economic argument.
That said, I’ve noticed that white people tend to prefer abstract arguments that rely on half-assed math (i.e., economic theory).
Sorry – I’m not aware of that approach as an argument for why racism harms white people. In fact, I don’t understand it at all.
The economic argument put forward in the above-referenced article seems anything but abstract to me; everyday I see the effects of it.
However, the means of dealing with systemic/institutional racism (since they concretely refer to more institutional in the article) did not get a mention, and I wonder if anyone has any idea how they would go about it.
The article says something to the effect that since birth rates are declining and the population is aging, immigration is a good way to solve the cheap labor problem, so racism is bad for the economy. The comparison to the US is probably because some companies in the US are having problems finding cheap labor due to the intensity of anti-immigration.
I have read before that diversity in the workforce is good for business because it widens the pool of customers to the market. But diversity doesn’t cure racism or even address it.
“Cheap labour”? Interesting. It would seem that in your mind, Kathy, “immigration” = “cheap labour”. What does that say about the messages you are receiving in your society, I wonder?
The article actually says that immigration is the only way to “bolster labour force growth”, i.e Canada cannot continue to maintain itself economically without an active population, and the internally available active population is reducing due to people retiring and fewer younger people coming up to replace them.
Currently, Canada admits some 250,000 immigrants a year, carefully selected for what they can offer the country. According to a 2006 report 36% aged 25 to 54 had at least a bachelor degree, compared to 22% of the incumbent Canadian population. Unemployment, however, is more than twice as high. The same report said it was likely due to teh fact that people need time to settle in and make a new life.
In my experience, immigrants do their best to *be integrated*. It is usually the host society that has difficulty integrating them. Looks like th Canadian Labour minister is on to something…
Sinoangle, I was actually being sarcastic, but absolutely, there is a correlation between immigration and cheap labor in the news.