Main Body
Chapter 11. Race and Ethnicity
Learning Objectives
11.1. Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups
- Understand the difference between race and ethnicity
- Define a majority group (dominant group)
- Define a minority group (subordinate group)
11.2. Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
- Explain the difference between stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and racism
- Identify different types of discrimination
11.3. Theories of Race and Ethnicity
- Describe how major sociological perspectives view race and ethnicity
- Identify examples of culture of prejudice
11.4. Intergroup Relations and the Management of Diversity
- Explain different intergroup relations in terms of their relative levels of tolerance
- Give historical and/or contemporary examples of each type of intergroup relation
11.5. Race and Ethnicity in Canada
- Compare and contrast the different experiences of various ethnic groups in Canada
- Apply theories of intergroup relations and race and ethnicity to different subordinate groups
Introduction to Race and Ethnicity
Visible minorities are defined as “persons, other than aboriginal persons, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour” (Statistics Canada 2013, p. 14). This is a contentious term, as we will see below, but it does give us a way to speak about the growing ethnic and racial diversity of Canada. The 2011 census noted that visible minorities made up 19.1 percent of the Canadian population, or almost one out of every five Canadians. This was up from 16.2 percent in the 2006 census (Statistics Canada 2013). The three largest visible minority groups were South Asians (25 percent), Chinese (21.1 percent), and blacks (15.1 percent).
Going back to the 1921 census, only 0.8 percent of population were made up of people of Asian origin, whereas 0.2 percent of the population were black. Aboriginal Canadians made up 1.3 percent of the population. The vast majority of the population were Caucasians (“whites”) of British or French ancestry. These figures did not change appreciably until after the changes to the Immigration Act in 1967, which replaced an immigration policy based on racial criteria with a point system based on educational and occupational qualifications (Li 1996). The 2011 census reported that 78 percent of the immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2006 and 2011 were visible minorities (Statistics Canada 2013).
Still, these figures do not really give a complete picture of racial and ethnic diversity in Canada. Ninety-six percent of visible minorities live in cities, mainly Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, making these cities extremely diverse and cosmopolitan. In Vancouver, almost half the population (45.2 percent) is made up of visible minorities. Within Greater Vancouver, 70.4 percent of the residents of Richmond, 59.5 percent of the residents of Burnaby, and 52.6 of the residents of Surrey are visible minorities. In the Toronto area, where visible minorities make up 47 percent of the population,