The Analytical Destruction of Demographic Profiles. With Experiential evidence
If you are a person of color, in the western world the first question a white person asks is
“where are you from”
the fundamental implication being
“you dont look from around these parts”
I have had this question asked alot. two kinds of people ask this question and it is asked in two ways only.
- You seem cool, but you dont look like me, im curious but i dont have the knowledge. No offense- wanting to get to know you.
- Your not canadian.
it is very important to highlight that the people who ask this question, the people who force contractors for the government to answer it, the people who put it in the census, the people who then use it to divide us are all in the GOVERNMENT.
Statistics Canada and my 21 year question:
it is not because i am a anti racism advocate, it is because when you get asked this by statistics canada, as a DYSLEXIC person i get confused.
Am i:
- indian
- hindi
- punjabi
- sikh
who knows.
this is how statistics Canada chooses to see me. and they use this information in two ways.
- liberal party- look we have a non white voting base. we can tap into that
- conservative party- look these immigrants are taking our jobs
The NDP and Green Party dont care.
I dont care about politics. I hate ALL POLITICIANS. from india to myanmar. If you are a politician i, and everyone else who is disenfranchised have heard only this for our whole lives:
we want the money at the government level so we can give it to our friends and get rich. we are happy to buy votes if that was legal. sorry you need help? talk to my assistant.
everyone who moved west moved to become western. is the western people would stop letting us know we can never belong then maybe we could?
Now since i am more analytical than most, ill also disclose that i am not against WHITE SUPREMACY as a concept. if Canada wants to be a white supremacist country, hire me to design the architecture to LIMIT HARM. LIKE Saudi Arabia. Just tell us. So we can make an INFORMED decision.
for example: if someone is a refugee in Gaza right now, and their multiple degrees are not as valuable as the “canadian” ones, they would jump at the chance to drive an uber in any city in edmonton as long as they dont get bombed.
I hope they never get the racist slurs my family and community did, however since its not a bomb killing their kids they would consider it to be a gift also.
How Identity is Formed and the case for Standardizing Demographic Profiles:
Malcolm Gladwell is obsessed with identity. Most of his work is about identity. I can confirm his finding analytically as i needed to run a reserch project when i worked for bell canada, it was to determine who i got a very odd and unexpected population effect.
so i did break it down by demographics. it had ZERO effect. lending to the most wonderful thing that everyone else knows:
PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE
language differences, religious differences these things are the clothing of an identity. they are the inception of behaviors only not “values”.
for example, we all wake up in the morning and have a routine. most of us need a jolt of caffeine because its hard to wake up and be alert without one. so every culture on earth has something like this. my family originates from india. the drink originates from china. but i always prefer a cup of chai. that oddly does not make me a terrorist either.
when i am in Europe, i EXCLUSIVELY prefer cappuccino. in india i get masala chai. In China i drink green tea. In South America i drink coffee con leeche. I have not caught the terrorist bug yet.
I have also gone to a mosque in new delhi, churches including the Vatican across the world, gurudwaras all across india, mandirs in india, ashrams as well. Still didnt make me a terrorist.
when i was young and it was obvious that climate change would the defining issue of our time while i worked in CALGARY i also had a choice. my choice was to write letters to MPs while working with Engineers Without Borders NOT the terrorist organization Greenpeace. there was nothing peaceful about them. my Masters research paper is available for anyone who wants to read it. Greenpeace has done more to destroy the gains made by the climate advocates than OIL AND GAS.
people usually have the same behavior as who they grow up around. geo-locationally. In Edmonton, we are nice but we are a bit of a crass bunch. took us a while to stop saying “gay” like it was a bad thing. we LOVE our LGBTQ+ community because we are actually a big city with a small town heart.
it is only politicians who use the demographics they force us to define who then use those demographics to assign us personalities and then use those personalities to divide us. we seem to be quite happy without the political reminders of who we are and what we want and which of us are morally bankrupt.
“culture” is the combination of geolocationally shared behaviour. everyone in edmonton talks about the weather. it might kill us if we are caught unaware. we also 100% drive very slowly but do drive behind kids we dont know if its below -35 to make sure those kids get to school or home without incident. that is why the neighborhood watch system was most effective in edmonton.
“identity” is the deviations people make from the norm. it is not typical for a normal red deer farm boy to be found in vietnam. so if one finds one, they person is building a globalized identity. they will go back home and share that knowledge. which is likey why Edmonton has the best vietnemese food. in canada. Calgary has the best Chinese with Richmond and Missauga as a close second.
Standardize Demographics for Dyslexic ppl and “non canadians”:
Statistics canada has only one thing they need to do since they insist after all the data suggests that showing demographic profiles divides a population. Standardize it.
the reason is in the act of standardization statistics canada will be forced to analyze its own unseen biases. A definition will have to be created. They will have to allow, for once, Muslims to self identify as “not terrorist”. by default.
perhaps they might then learn what the music of the silk road, as played at the NAC during the Canada 150 celebrations is not merely the equivalent of the Bhagvat Gita being stolen and placed behind a glass wall in London, rather it is a monument to sufis. The only priests who do not need to be ordained because anyone who lives in love and loves to live is a sufi.
the value of a hijab on the streets of montreal is not in the cloth worn, it is in the piety of the woman who knows she will be assaulted, for wearing it, but she still wants to because it makes her feel close to her own nature.
not all women follow what they are forced to by men to express our identities. this is a very canadian phenomenon. that can get you hurt in “our” parts. we have tiger moms on our side. brown and asian. notice one is a color and one is a continent. brown ppl are also from asia.
Canadians can educate themselves or not. but i can guarantee you that telling the corporate heads of a trillion dollar indian companies that their people will love it here because we can buy all the speices at the store, will not get you that investment. it will make u look like the village idiot talking to the graduates of Harvard, MIT, Booth, Ivey, Queens and Oxford about shit we dont think about.
grow up or get out of our way.
2009 Written to try and not fill out the mandated Contractor survey DND forced us to and it resulted in a very awkward incident that eventually leads me to quit.
