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Post by dyrland on Oct 1, 2010 10:55:51 GMT -5
People have huge issues with accepting others different from themselves. This makes no sense to me, why not celebrate differences? For example, why would the British try to assimilate the French in North America didn't they want the French to support them in fighting the thirteen colonies? This would just cause rebellion would it not? Ultimately, the British decided to compromise with the French instead of assimilate them, probably because they knew it would cause problems for themselves. Assimilation is not that different from oppression in my opinion because forcing someone to be like yourself when they are not at all similar is an opressing act. The residential schools placed throughout North America are another prime example of assimilation. The christian churches that should be helping not hurting would take native american children away from their homes, culture, and loved ones and force them to speak english and forget their native tongue. The whole purpose being to make everyone british or "canadian" when actually canada is the most diverse nation in the world presently and we are proud of it.
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Post by Mr. Delainey on Oct 1, 2010 11:03:20 GMT -5
You say a lot of different things.
The key to understanding why certain things happen at certain times is to appreciate people value and see the world differently at different times.
I.e. English speaking peoples looked at the world quite differently in the 1700s, still different in the 1800s, and different yet in the 1900s. So we should be careful not to judge the people that came before us by comparing them to ourselves.
Assimilation is definitely a form of oppression. When the residential schools were set up in Saskatchewan in the early 20th Century, these schools were attempting to transmit European culture to the First Nations. The Canadian Government did not believe in the wisdom of having a country occupied by multiple countries or ethnicities. With the passage of time we changed and came to value multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, arguably, was impossible in the 18th or 19th centuries--expressly because multiculturalism relies upon recent innovations in democracy like ethnic pluralism, tolerance of differences, a belief that a country does not have to have ONE language, ONE identity, etc. to be a country.
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