A rchive Date
[ 01-10-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/adler.html
I am neither liberal nor colour-blind
By CHARLES ADLER -- Winnipeg Sun
October 1, 2002
What do you see, when you see me?" he asked.
"I see a singer," I said. And he challenged me, and I knew where he was coming from, and so there was no point in avoiding the subject.
I said, "I see a black man who has a hell of a lot of talent."
And then Sammy Davis Jr. said, "Thank you for not insulting me, pal."
Blacks and browns, and all those other folks the politically correct crowd calls "people of colour," know that the first thing our eyeballs catch is the colour of their skin.
Whites, however, continue to fertilize public dialogue with manure such as, "When it comes to people, I'm colour-blind. I always have been. And I have taught my kids to be the same."
I have never once heard a black guy say to me, "Chuck, when I am in a room full of white folk, I don't even notice it, unless someone else brings it up. I am colour-blind."
There has been a lot of stuff written lately about how we are not really a nation of immigrants. It is always done under the banner of economics. Prepare yourself for an onslaught of data trying to make two points: 1) Immigrants aren't needed in Canada; 2) They are a burden to the social welfare system.
The population of Canada has surpassed 30 million. Stats Canada has now made it official. When I was old enough to remember facts but too young to understand why John Diefenbaker was visiting our elementary school, Canada had a population of 18 million.
And so if I live long enough to be a senior (Why can't we boomers change that by the way? Can't we pass a law that says you're not a senior until the cake your grandchild baked has 80 candles on it?"), Canada's population will be twice as large as what it was when I was watching Razzle Dazzle and Huckleberry Hound and my grandma was bringing me milk and cookies, ticking off my mother who figured I would not have an appetite at the dinner table.
At today's Canadian dinner table, we have millions of immigrants, many of whom don't have that white European complexion that everyone at the Adler dinner table had and it is my strong hunch that if there is an anti-immigration sentiment sweeping parts of this country, it has nothing to do with the contribution of the average immigrant to the economy. It's the colour of the new faces that make white folks go for strange places in their thinking.
I am not a bleeding heart liberal or a politically correct poltroon. But I am not colour-blind and I am not blind to the drop-dead obvious reality of multiculturalism. The majority of people in this country are white. And the majority of them socialize with their own, marry their own, are most open to their own.
The debate will continue about how big we need this country to be. Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier (the man Jean Chretien would love to be), who was born in the 1800s, thought we could hit 100 million by the year 2000. It was a national dream for some, just an arbitrary number for many others.
Do we need to bring new people into this country? I don't know. But I don't know what moral right I have to be on the anti-immigration side of the argument. This country allowed me to enter in the winter of 1957. It was the greatest gift this nation could give a two-year-old boy and his two young parents.
Have I given back to Canada what she gave me? In a word, No. I can never repay the debt I owe to this country I love and I can never see myself slamming the door on the fingers of another two-year-old crying to get in.
And may God punish me to the max if I join the doorslammers because I don't have the gift of colour-blindness.
Charles Adler can be reached by e-mail at cadler@cjob.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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