White Flight

   The term "white flight" is used to describe the phenomenon of the white population fleeing areas where they were previously the majority, when numbers of 'visible minorities' rise above a perceived threshhold. This is happening throughout North America at the same time as immigration numbers are at the point where more racially diverse neighbourhoods should be resulting. Canada prides itself on its multiculturalism. The majority of immigrants moving to Canada come to Toronto. The official policy of multiculturalism, and the immigration pattern should combine to create a city where races and ethnicities mix freely. What is actually taking place is, in fact, the opposite. Toronto is becoming a city of enclaves. In Montreal and Vancouver, as well, this pattern has been holding true. Visible-minority neighbourhoods, those with more than 30% of the population coming from the same visible-minority group, are on the rise in these three cities. A recent StatsCan report says that between 1981 and 2001, the ethnic enclaves in these cities increased from 6 to 254. The question "why?" is not an easy one to answer.
   The flight of the white population from any area is usually rapid when the transition first begins, and then slows to the point where the neighbourhood still shelters some mix of races. It is unusual for the turnover to be complete. Why does the flight occur at all? Some of the response stems from stereotypes, many of which trace back to desegregation and the civil rights movement. The beliefs were that real estate prices would plummet, schools would deteriorate, and crime would rise sharply when blacks moved into an area. These beliefs held sway across most of North America. They still persist, but now they have become a matter of "fill in the blanks" with Blacks, Tamils, Vietnamese, and any other race or ethnicity coming to North America. Does all of this come down to nothing more, and nothing less, than racism? I was speaking recently to an acquaintance who was born and raised here in Toronto. She was telling me that she and her husband have begun looking at houses in Peterborough, Ontario. When I asked her why there, she said "Because all the immigrants come to Toronto. They don't go to Peterborough. I'm going there because I'm tired of feeling like a minority in my own city."
    I was born and raised in Toronto, too, and I have it seen it change from a city where nearly every face was Caucasian, to one where the whites are now the visbile minority. As a teacher, I have found myself looking out at classes that have gradually changed over the years from ones where there was perhaps only one non-white student, to ones where I was one of the very few whites in the room. It has always been my practise to handle the question of racism in Toronto when it arose (and it always arose, among the older kids) with a question or two of my own. I would approach a student whose skin colour was different than mine, and lay my hand against theirs, for everyone else to see. Then I would say "Look how different we are, or ... wait a minute ... let me ask you something first." I would then ask the student what they did when they felt hunger. Of course, they would tell me they ate. I would ask them what they did when they were tired. Of course, they would say they slept. I would ask them if they had a family member who loved them and whom they loved in return. Invariably the answer was YES! Then I would turn to the class and say "Look, we are no different at all. Every one of their answers to those questions is the same as mine. Maybe skin colour is no more important than wrapping paper. When you unwrap a gift, you never keep the paper and throw out the present. If we could just think as ourselves as gifts to one another, then we could find the true importance inside ourselves, and not in the colour of our skin." I hope my words will stay with some of those students.