Saturday 13 December 2014
What is your group of friends like? Do you
share the same culture and race? Is it your own home country’s culture, more of
the Canadian culture, or a bit of both? Are they also immigrants?
The newcomer’s
dilemma is this:
Who would your first friends be for your first time in a Canadian school? Fellow immigrants, from the same origin country? Most likely.
Those who share your interests, like video games or art, but are from a different culture? Maybe, but it’s rare because of a culture/language barrier.
Or perhaps, you are a culture vulture who hangs out with different kinds of people, regardless of their backgrounds.
The actual question is: would you join a group of immigrants, or do the opposite, immerse yourself immediately with normal English speakers?
Who would your first friends be for your first time in a Canadian school? Fellow immigrants, from the same origin country? Most likely.
Those who share your interests, like video games or art, but are from a different culture? Maybe, but it’s rare because of a culture/language barrier.
Or perhaps, you are a culture vulture who hangs out with different kinds of people, regardless of their backgrounds.
The actual question is: would you join a group of immigrants, or do the opposite, immerse yourself immediately with normal English speakers?
At my
school, I usually notice new immigrant teens banding with other immigrants from
their home country, myself included, I was sent forced by the school to
befriend a group of racially-like immigrants on my first days of Canadian high
school. I disliked the school’s decision to do that, it left little room for
possibilities, but it paved the way for my adaptation to multicultural Canada.
It went like this, I was introduced to friendly newcomers, I felt safe and
comfortable, I spoke my language with them, then I slowly, but successfully,
pushed myself to adapt to Canadian culture.
Actually,
I lied to get your sympathy. That did
not happen to me (because I’m just weird) but it usually does to most newcomers
(who aren’t weird at all). The forced, and societally imposed grouping
reinforces stereotypes, usually negative ones. It’s also extremely pointless if
the goal is to achieve a multi-cultural, inclusive society in schools. Placing
immigrants to their own distinct racial groups can weaken cultural adaptation,
which even at the cost of extra convenience and comfort become
counterproductive. This is because people will want to be with other people
they can relate with, and this paired with forced grouping, is what makes
casual intercultural relationships difficult. Different groups are going to
have different expectations from other groups, because their large sizes make
stereotypes visible.
Going
back to the question, we can say that you either have friends from your home
culture, or you have friends who you share specific interests with (video
gamers, artists, academics, and all of the other cliques). If you belong to the
latter, the second answer, or even if you belong to both at the same time, then
you have successfully adapted in some way. However, if you only belong to the
first, let’s say an exclusive Asian-Korean culture group as an example, then it
means that you need to absorb various cultures around you. It’s effective since
it makes the definitions of “stereotypes”
and “racism” obsolete, they just
stopped getting used, and multiculturalism prevails if kept that way.
So to simplify this, either you belong to a group of friends who share the same ethnicity and still keeps their home culture out of the house, or you have a mixed culture group of friends who you hang out with. Anyway, even if you mostly have country-culture immigrant friends, it won’t give you disadvantages if you become bicultural, having both your home culture and Canadian culture at the same time, proving that multiculturalism is possible.
Finally, some advice I heard from a Croatian friend, “…just accept different cultures, but you also have to observe and understand the differences.”
“Keep your language. Love its sounds, its
modulation, its rhythm. But try to march together with men of different
languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human
world.”
- Hélder Câmara, author of
Spiral Of Violence
