Tamil Canadians chant, march, and block a Toronto highway in protest.

The video below was captured by a biker who was close to the demonstration. The protesters flew large, bright-red Tamil Eelam flags with some Canadian flags interspersed. Some of the protesters marched ahead with a banner that said, “SRI LANKA, STOP THE GENOCIDE”. Police stood by, and the chanting of the protesters alternated with the sound of the police siren. Later in the video, the protesters started running and shouting down the street with flags flying.

There are more Sri Lankans in Canada than in the United States.

In 2006, about 103 625 Canadians and residents of Canada were of Sri Lankan ethnic origin. Canada has admitted far more immigrants from Sri Lanka than the United States. Below is a graph showing the total number of Sri Lankan immigrants admitted to Canada versus the United States from 1991 to 2003.

In the period of 1991 to 1995, Canada admitted 37 345 immigrants from Sri Lanka, while the United States admitted only 6 492. This means that Canada admitted about 475% more Sri Lankan immigrants than the United States during that period. While the total number of Sri Lankan immigrants in Canada is already several times greater than that of the United States, given that the total population of Canada is about one tenth the population of the United States, the number of Sri Lankan immigrants admitted to Canada per capita during that period would be about 58 times that of the United States.

Within Canada, about 138,675 people spoke Tamil, and 19,830 spoke Sinhalese in 2006. In Toronto of the same year, 110,450 people spoke Tamil, and 12,690 spoke Sinhalese.

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Related links:

• Sri Lankan Canadians at Wikipedia
• Tamils in Canada by Ravindiran Vaitheespara
• Ethnic groups of Sri Lanka (2001) pie chart at Swivel
• Tamil Canadians rally against the genocide occurring in Sri Lanka. by Restructure!
• South Asians in Canada: Ethnic Origin and Country of Birth by Restructure!

Tamil Canadians rally against the genocide occurring in Sri Lanka.

As many as 10,000 Tamil Canadians gathered in downtown Toronto on Friday to raise awareness about the genocide occurring in Sri Lanka. The protestors of colour were against the Sri Lankan government killing innocent Tamil civilians, and formed a massive human chain, creating a traffic gridlock around Union Station.

Unfortunately, CBC News incorrectly reported that they were protesting the Sri Lankan government’s offensive against the Tamil Tigers.

Here are some comments by the protestors on the misleading CBC News article:

Jago_Combo writes (emphasis mine):

This protest is not about the Tamil Tigers. This is about the Tamil Civilians in Sri Lanka who are being killed in alarming numbers everyday by the Sri Lankan government – we are talkign about ordinary civilians.

We need the support of Canada to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to adopt a ceasfire and bring humanitarian aid to the Tamil civilians which the Sri Lankan government has restricted. If we sit idly and not do anything, we are ignoring a genocide in progress that is being perpetrated by the singalese government.

If your ancestors were being innocently killed and driven out of their native country, wouldn’t you do something?? This issue is more important than the slumping economy – it is about savings lives and protecting human rights.
Please Canada, take a lead on this issue and call for a ceasefire!

White people are not discriminated against by Carleton University students.

Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) cancelled a school fundraiser for cystic fibrosis (“Shinerama”) after the student council said that the disease only affects “white people, and primarily men” (via Stuff White People Do).

A couple of days later, students signed a petition to impeach CUSA president Brittany Smyth, and science faculty representative Donnie Northrup, who drafted the motion. The impeachment petition gained over 360 signatures in under two hours.

On Monday night, the motion to cancel Shinerama was reversed by CUSA at an emergency meeting, due to student pressure.

White people are more segregated than minorities.

When most white people talk about segregated communities, they think of communities with many black people or other racial minorities. Most white people believe that minorities have mostly same-race friends and that they need to be racially integrated with the rest of society. However, this is a false assumption based white people’s tendency to notice people’s race only when the people are not white. The typical white person notices race when passing through communities of colour, but she rarely thinks about race when she is surrounded by all white people. If the typical white person is in a group setting with mostly white people but one or two token non-white people, the typical white person perceives the group as “diverse”.

If the typical white person is interested in reality instead of her personal observations (which would be prone to her subconscious racial biases), she may discover that her worldview is distorted. Yet another study, Campus Diversity Important Predictor Of Interracial Friendships, shows that of all racial groups, whites are the most segregated:

A new study in the journal Social Science Quarterly found that campus racial and ethnic diversity is important in predicting friendship heterogeneity, and that minorities have higher predicted friendship diversity than whites.

[...]

As school diversity rises, predicted friendship diversity also increases, although whites still have lower predicted levels of friendship diversity than minorities. However, this relationship shifts as schools become more diverse, with whites having nearly as diverse friendship networks as minorities on the most diverse campuses.

These studies that show that whites are the most segregated are important, because white people often criticize minorities for living in so-called “ethnic enclaves”.