Jason Kenney ought to love Charlie Sheen. Kenney and his office pulled a boner of a move with their fundraising letter targeting “very ethnic” communities, but it’s getting buffered a bit by Charlie’s shtick.

I should probably be outraged, but I’m not. I should be shocked, but again I’m not. I just hope that Minister Kenney notes the irony of his own statement: “Canadians value their citizenship. It is not something to be bought and sold with the help of crooked consultants.”

Kenney and his office are under fire this week for using government letterhead to fundraise to place ads in so-called “ethnic” ridings, mostly South Asian communities in the super city and Burnaby-Douglas on the coast. Like something out of the BBC TV show “Yes, Minister,” in addition to being delivered to Conservative MPs, the letter was dropped off at the office of the NDP’s Linda Duncan.

Is being targeted – even ostensibly in a somewhat favorable way – insulting? Of course it is. I can only imagine what my own “very ethnic” people are wondering: are we only “kinda ethnic” since we live in Nanaimo?

Is it racist? Yes it is, but that doesn’t mean I think Kenney and the staff in his office are racist. Below, my man Jay Smooth breaks down how to identify what people say as racist versus calling people racist.

What we’re seeing is a form of institutionalized racism. Identifying the “other” (or if you prefer, the “very ethnic”) and politically mobile ridings as a method for political gain. But let’s not just bash the Conservatives for this – the Liberals and the NDP do it all the time too. Both parties rely heavily on their minority supporters, not to mention the fact that the Conservatives can’t shake the racist tag from their brand. (I’m not sure where the Bloc fits in since I never see their ads.)

Fact is that in this country there will always be “very ethnic” communities, not just because of the insular nature of new immigrants, but also because there tends to be a political and financial stake in identifying people as such. It’s not shocking, it’s just cynical.

Very.

I see the Parti Quebecois are once again hammering BC for our perceived lack of French inclusiveness at last year’s Winter Olympics. Boy, are they going to be mad when they hear about our new language curriculum.

If proposed changes go through, French is about to become just one among a number of language options for elementary and high school students in the province. School districts will be permitted to offer additional languages, such as Mandarin or Punjabi, as well as more immersion programs in languages other than French.

Predictably, this has lovers of la belle langue upset. The Greater Vancouver Language Educators’ Consortium, SFU’s office of francophone and francophiles affairs, and La Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique have all expressed their concern that French will no longer have pride of place. But as The Vancouver Sun‘s Pete McMartin points out, maybe it’s time we dealt with a few glaring facts — such as the fact that, while only 9300 people in Vancouver have French as their mother tongue, fully 19 schools here offer French Immersion. Or the fact that 51 per cent of Vancouver residents identify as a visible minority, largely from East and South Asia.

We run into this contradiction all the time out here, between Canada’s official reality and our real reality. News from BC RCMP detachments slowed to a trickle recently, after provincial headquarters announced that all media releases had to be provided in both English and French. This may have had something to do with the force’s failed experiment in using Google Translate on its website, but the fact is the local Mounties have only one full-time French translator, who’s swamped. And given that the 2006 census shows that 165,975 British Columbians speak Punjabi as their first language, 134,015 speak Cantonese, 89,885 German, 73,325 Mandarin, and 63,000 French, shouldn’t we be attempting to provide translation to the larger language groups anyway?

Which is more important: demonstrating in as many areas of our lives as possible that we are indeed a bilingual nation, or embracing the full range of languages spoken in our communities? I honestly don’t know the answer.

When my children were younger, we lived in North Surrey, BC, a centre of South Asian-Canadian life. My children spoke English to the neighbourhood kids and the neighbourhood kids answered in Punjabi. It became plain that my children needed to learn Punjabi in order to converse with their classmates, so I searched for a program they could enter, but only French Immersion was available in the neighbourhood schools. So we moved.

Now my grade eight daughter and her friends want to study Japanese in the biggest school of the biggest district in BC, and they can’t. Only French and Spanish are offered, and no online option is provided. My son and his best friend would like to study Spanish, but French is mandatory in grades five through seven. French is the language I studied in both elementary and high school, and later couldn’t speak, other than to say “bonjour” as I traveled through France. I can’t even read a cereal box. And I had good marks in French.

However, I also recall trekking through Europe and Africa in pre-baby days, proudly displaying my Canadian flag on my backpack, and having many a conversation with international admirers who expressed how wonderful it is that Canada is a bilingual country. So I’m proud that we’re multicultural and I’m proud that we’re bilingual. I want to continue to live in a bilingual country, but I also want our kids to have access to other languages in our public schools, and I want the government to spend our money to translate information into languages that are useful to those living in each part of Canada.

I want it all. How do you say that in French?

Enforced by the South African government, inhabitants were classified into racial groups, with black South Africans being disenfranchised, forced onto “homeland” territory (similar to First Nations reserves in Canada), and stripped of their citizenship. Under apartheid, black South Africans were considered inferior to whites, and even though apartheid was abolished in the 1990s, it still influences South African society and politics today.

In 1966, recognizing the great injustices, conflicts, and inequalities that stem from racism, the United Nations declared March 21st to be the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

This year, March 21st is also Good Friday, a holiday which, in the western world at least, will likely overshadow this parallel event. Nevertheless, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is one that every person of every ethnicity should observe in some way.

Racists in particular (and yes, there are still plenty of them out there) might use it to look into exactly how and why classification on the basis of skin colour evolved.

Anthropology, the study of human culture, examines virtually every aspect of a people: Religion, division of labour, gender roles, food preparation and diet, and of course, physical characteristics. Examining these components of culture, identifying how they differ from others, and participating in them, anthropologists not only strive to understand difference, but also appreciate it.

This is in part what Carleton Coon had in mind when he came up with a classification system for physical characteristics. Coon, a well-travelled anthropologist, noticed variation of physical features from one country to the next, and, after much research and observation, came up with a very broad system of classification based on skin colour. Within the categories of “race” (mongoloid, negroid, caucasoid, etc.), he also
examined finer features such as eye shape, nose shape and size, hair form, height and weight, and so on. Coon did not intend to classify people by worth, or to suggest that one “race” was superior to another; he was simply trying to understand the physical differences between people and how they evolved.

From an anthropological standpoint, even the slightest physical difference can be important. For example, nose size and shape can indicate the type of climate and level of humidity one either lives in now, or in which one’s ancestors lived. All of our physical characteristics evolved over time, and they evolved so that our bodies were best equipped to survive in the environment.

In the same way, and to be overly simplistic, darker skin tones evolved in warmer climates with greater sun exposure — the dark pigment of the skin blocks the absorption of too much Vitamin D. In climates with less sun, skin is paler to allow adequate absorption of Vitamin D. That’s why when northerners travel to exotic, sunny locations and luxuriate on the beaches, they tan. They’re not just toasting: their skin is responding to the sun by darkening to prevent Vitamin D poisoning.

Of course, the evolution of skin colour, and of race itself, is far more complex and involved than just that, but the point is, environmental and evolutionary factors play a large role in our physical characteristics.

Unfortunately, Coon’s classification system has tended to be used much differently than he had in mind, to segregate and discriminate rather than to understand and appreciate. Still, his work serves to illuminate just how unfair, not to mention illogical, racism is.

So please mark March 21st on your calendar for next year. Any colour of marker will do.

The first incident involved a woman who is clearly not well. She might be mentally ill, or mentally disordered, or she might just be extraordinarily stupid. Anyway, I sat on the bench in Churchill Station in Edmonton waiting for the train when this woman sat down next to me. She had just suffered an indignity she told me (not in those words) at the hands of a non-English speaking service person in a fast food restaurant. She had asked for some honey sauce with her chicken fingers and she got some other type of sauce instead. She explained again to the person what she wanted and was tragically misunderstood. She was frustrated, time was wasted, it was terrible. I sympathized.

They ought to learn to speak English if they come here, she said. I did not sympathize with this comment, although I hadn’t really thought about why.

She pressed the point. If they come here and expect to live here, they ought to speak the language.

I don’t agree with you, I said. Still, she continued to press her point, more aggressively. She started using terms like “those people.”

I don’t agree with you, I repeated. Stop talking to me.

She didn’t stop talking and said the word “Paki” so I said, loudly, go sit somewhere else. Seriously. Shut up. And, while her face reddened, she did shut up.

I thought about this a little more. I personally don’t care if people don’t want to learn English. If they can get along without it, why bother? I think the concept of two official Canadian languages is retarded, particularly as Native Canadian languages are not among them. Official languages are just a bone to Quebec and a way to keep westerners out of the top seats in the federal government.

Anyway, if Euro-Canadians did not undertake to learn Cree, Blackfoot, and Dene in order to assimilate a hundred or so years ago, how can we refuse new Canadians the same right to retain their culture? It makes no sense. Also, how can we demand that Native Canadians change their lifestyle drastically for us while refusing to change to accommodate new Canadians? That is crazy.

How far should we go to accommodate other languages? Should we pay for new Canadians to have access to schools teaching in their mother tongue? Why not? English-speakers get to, so why not new Canadians? Should we pay for Native Canadians to be educated in their own languages? Absolutely. We should pay for that even before we pay to support new cultures coming in. Considering how Native Canadians have suffered as a result of the European invasion, it is only right.

Any argument against supporting multiple languages is bogus. All that is, seriously, is a ploy to maintain the current power structure so that white people will always hold the political cards and can maintain their unearned privilege. That’s all the current language and assimilation policies are about.

So. The second encounter was on a bus with a guy from the Maritimes who was down in Edmonton from the oil sands north of Fort McMurray. We chatted about this and that, mostly about how he has personally seen the pools of contaminants sitting in the sand, leeching into the Athabasca river system. Then he said: “You know, this is the first time I have had a casual conversation with anybody in Edmonton.” And I got to thinking: perhaps the expectation to learn English has something to do with our isolation from one another. Maybe if we weren’t so busy chasing a certain type of lifestyle, we’d have more time to hang out together. More time to consider public issues more closely. Maybe we could take long lunches with people who don’t speak English, and pick up a few new ideas. Maybe we would be impressed by these ideas and decide that an investment in supporting non-English languages in our society might enrich our culture. Wouldn’t we like our kids to speak more than one language? Wouldn’t we welcome the opportunity to think and feel in a global perspective rather than a Eurocentric one? Would we not be proud to be a test case to prove that a nation does not have to be of one mind, or one language, in order to govern itself?

I got off the bus and walked into The Bay in downtown Edmonton past a sign telling me that I can be served in at least a dozen languages. The people working behind the counter are probably learning English and are no doubt making an enormous effort to incorporate themselves into Canadian culture. I have made no such effort. No accommodation whatsoever to new Canadians and none to Native Canadians. I don’t even know Native Canadian history pre-invasion.

And here’s the thing: if I cannot understand people who speak other languages, it is not because they do not speak English, it is because I cannot speak their language. The failing is mine. The ignorance is mine. I am embarrassed.

Also on Topaz, about halfway up the hill, is a Gurdwara (Sikh Temple) that has, on many occasions, captured my eye. Weddings are my favourite: the temple comes alive with colour and sound – beautifully dressed and decorated women float around the grounds; men with turbans of all shapes and colours gather in groups of two or three, talking; and the singing gives me goosebumps.

I have stopped many times, to witness, just for a moment, weddings and religious ceremonies, but it is my first encounter with the steep walk up Topaz Avenue that remains at the forefront of my memory.

I had just moved to Victoria, didn’t have a job yet, and so my days were devoted to exploring my new city. It was a weekday and I was out for exercise, keeping my eyes peeled for any street with a challenging incline. I took one look at Topaz, and up I went.

As I approached the Gurdwara I noticed a white sign hanging from the fence that read, “Recognize the entire human race as one,” and, as a student of anthropology, I felt comforted by the words. To me, that’s how the world should operate, how humans should treat other humans. Just past the temple, a man was walking down the hill on the opposite side of the street from me. He wore traditional Sikh attire, complete with a turban and a long, grey and white beard. His hands were behind his back and he walked in polite, gentle strides.

It was a beautiful day in May and we were the only two people on the entire street. As we were about to pass, I said hello, just loud enough for it to carry across the street. He stopped for a brief moment, as if surprised, then continued walking. “Thank you,” he said. “Beautiful day.” I agreed, told him to enjoy his walk, and made my way to the top of the hill. Then it occurred to me, what had just happened.

A few months ago, a co-worker of mine, in a conversation about the struggles of marriage, said that interracial marriage was a good thing. Sounds like an innocent comment? Not when it’s followed up by the suggestion that interracial marriage would eventually erase genetic and cultural diversity. And that that would be just fine with her. Her wording, you see, was not that benign; rather it was overtly racist and left me speechless and dumbfounded. I tried to appeal to her, that interracial marriage (and childbearing) was not going to lead to “one race,” and that humans are already one race. She didn’t agree. Clearly, she said, we are not all one race — if we were, we would all be the same.

A man thanked me for saying hello to him. For acknowledging his existence. What a shame. It offends me to live in a world where he would be so taken aback by my simple greeting that he would thank me, where we think washing away cultural and genetic diversity to be desirable. We want vivid reds and golds from Autumn and demand lush greens and blues on our 60-inch, high definition plasma screen TVs, but we don’t appreciate the vast variety of colours and shades that exist in the cultures and people around us. You want to see real colour? Open your eyes, look around, and open your mind.