Community board

[NabMaster]

Hmm I know what you mean. Racism is actually still pretty big up in Canada but interestingly it usually seems to be within their own groups - I've heard the most and the best Asian jokes from my Asian friends. Same goes for my Brown friends, and some of the funniest blond jokes I hear actually come from blondes. Of course, it's a lot friendlier and more joking around than real racism. Until you realize that by far the most discriminated group in Canada are Americans. We were actually just covering this in my psychology class earlier this week. Apparently a lot of Canadian universities get a bunch of American freshman and transfer students, but the vast majority of them leave during or shortly after their first year because a lot of Canadians really despise America and have no problem telling any Americans they find. I, of course, am not one of those people, but I do know a lot of people like that. It's kinda sad, really.

[Josiah]

See, it's not "racist" if you're making fun of your own group. You can even use derogatory terms about your own group and that's fine as well. For example, a lot of black people call each other "nigger" and they have no problem with it. But if a white person uses that term, he's labeled as a racist. Does it make sense? Kinda. Is it fair? Not really. For example, I'm Jewish so I can make all the Jewish jokes I want, but if someone else makes a Jewish joke, they're a racist. Of course, that's not actually what I believe (it all depends on the person and specific context) but that's the way it usually goes these days.

As for anti-Americanism... I didn't know it was so prevalent in Canada but it's certainly big in Europe. Depending on the country in question, I think it's probably a mix of jealousy of American's properity and influence (probably not so much in Canada, but in some countries, for sure) and disagreement with America's political stances (overall, the US tends to be fairly conservative and ready to fight for what it believes is right, it's also (overall) a very Christian country, which is directly opposed to the liberal, relgion is bad, fighting is always wrong standpoint which is extremely popular in Europe and some other parts of the world these days). In the case of Europe, I actually find their stance rather hypocritical since the US was the country that bailed them out twice after all their negotiating failed to stop the start of the World Wars. "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it", is a statement that seems to have generally held true over the centuries.

[NabMaster]

For Canadians I think it has a lot to do with making ourselves stand out from the States. Since we're so close we usually get clustered together a lot - even on some websites, Canadians will have to choose US as their country because Canada's not listed.

Plus you would be very hard pressed to find any Canadians who think Bush was anything more than a bad joke. But yeah, like with every form of racism there's always a few who take it too far. Thankfully, neither I nor any of my friends fall into that category.