Being An Indo Canadian for a Day...

Since creating my March 3 column entitled Being an Indo-Canadian for a day, I received many interesting responses.Some people wanted more clarification on what I was focusing on.For that piece, I transformed someone into an Indo-Canadian for a day.To his surprise he encountered stereotyping, racial slurs and a Caucasian person expressing an interest in learning Punjabi.It was a day of suspense and drama, and offered readers insight or a front-row seat if you will into what we call human ignorance.At the end of the day when I transformed him back to himself, he is shocked to learn that racism still exists. There is no room for racism in a multicultural community.When I wrote this column, I wanted to present the concept of stereotyping that exists in our society. What I came to realize is that stereotyping and racism are closely related. When people stereotype, in my opinion, they can be racist. When I listen to people generalize about wife beaters, drug dealers and murderes, I know it is hurtful.How can an entire community be labelled based on incidents reported in the media that they have nothing to do with? This clearly expresses a lack of understanding of the diversity we live in. I believe no mother or father raises their child to be a racist, but some do get lost Second and third generation Canadians still face racism due to their skin color. When people generalize and make careless statements, it hurts everyone. I will be the first to admit I have made a few remarks in my life I wish I didn'’t.I grew to realize that we all share similar hopes and dreams.My March 3 column was designed to show that racism hasn’t gone away. People must do more to prevent it from happening. Racism is like fire. It can spread quickly and destroy a community. We need to create a more inclusive society through dialogue and everyone has a role in making this happen.Many people are doing great things on racial issues. Indo-Canadians have an important card to play on this topic and, yes, some Indo-Canadians do discriminate. A better effort is needed from everyone in building a cultural mosaic that is not exclusive. The Chinese and Korean communities are among the fastest-growing ethnic communities in the Fraser Valley. I think this is great since they are adding to the local diversity. What I have learned in sharing this story is that we are so similar in many ways yet so different. I encourage people to reach out to members in the community and be cross-cultural. KenHerar@gmail.com