Dear Editor,
Re: “Communicate to integrate,” Column, March 4.
Sabine Eiche managed to directly and concisely articulate how problematic the issues of integration, assimilation, and inter-cultural communication have become in our community.
I wholeheartedly agree with her proposition that certain initiatives, such as the library’s 50-language program, do more to facilitate continued isolation between various cultural groups rather than encourage them to learn how to effectively communicate with each other and find paths to co-operative involvement in the greater Canadian culture.
The spirit of liberalism and our declared intention to create a truly inclusive and respectful multi-cultural society are undermined by our post-modern and politically-correct inclinations to try and solve all contentious problems by trying to provide everything to all interests and wants.
Such solutions more often than not treat only the most easily understood surface issues related to problematic circumstances rather than encourage efforts to undertake the more difficult task of trying to understand and deal with their root causes.
And it could also be argued that they do nothing more than pander to our species’ most base, innate tribalistic tendencies and the inevitable distrust and disrespect of “the other” that they foster.
Different immigrant groups have always tended to congregate in particular areas of the Lower Mainland and for decades we were accustomed to going, for example, to Broadway, Commercial Drive or Chinatown for their particular Greek, Italian or Chinese shopping and culinary experiences.
But we never had any sense that these were unwelcoming, isolated or exclusive ethnic enclaves that were wholly dissociated from the general Canadian society.
English was the accepted common language and every Greek, Italian, Chinese, Russian and Japanese immigrant that I knew during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s dedicated themselves to learning English as fast and thoroughly as they could so they could quickly become a more involved part of Canadian society.
I wish I could say that the same conditions and attitudes exist in Richmond, but I agree with Eiche’s contention that we are enabling rifts to develop in our community because of a number of culture-related reasons, all of which serve to inhibit rather than enhance our efforts to create a viable model of multiculturalism that other countries would be eager to emulate.
Unfortunately in Richmond, we continue to experience situations such as Chinese-only signage, Mandarin-only strata councils, elected government representatives that support the consumption of shark-fin soup, untold numbers of immigrants who refuse to learn English, Chinese merchants and restaurants which discourage non-Chinese patronage and the wholesale deconstruction and reconstruction of our neighbourhoods by wealthy off-shore investors, all of which contradict everything that we would like to accomplish in creating a respectful, collaborative multi-cultural society.
In the end, both individually and collectively, we can choose to be either beneficiaries or prisoners of our cultural heritages and diversity, but inevitably those who choose to remain locked inside the exclusive confines of their particular ethnocentric values and beliefs end up being the true losers in a global community which is slowly, but surely, coming to realize that it is only through working together to solve our mounting social, economic and environmental problems that we will find formulas for preserving a healthy and dignified existence for all of us on this planet.
Prisoners and victims of our own limitations and prejudices or beneficiaries of the most positive aspects of our cultural diversities?
Time to choose.
Ray Arnold
Richmond
