About a month ago, an international group contacted you about your racism experience in Montreal, Canada and that unscrewed some knots in the belly.
In the Duchess words, ” An unnamed member of the family raised the issue of how dark our unborn baby Archie’s skin would be when he was born”.
In other country,it may be tribal or caste differences that could be overwhelming and damaging.
You may not have really moved round Canada a lot but one thing you are certain was that racism was so glaring when you migrated in 2018.
Imagine getting on the STM bus, and 85 percent whites would deliberately avoid sitting or standing next to you. At other times, you will hear a senior shout loudly ‘Go back to you f… shit countries, we don’t want you’.
Yeah, they don’t want immigrants. Good try. Today, immigrants work more than the rooted.
Even some STM bus drivers were worst of it and give attitude the moment you try to board. God save you, if you cannot communicate in French and need to ask your way around.
“I don’t speak English. Parlez francais”, were the popular phase from them.”
And even when they pretend to assist you, their face would be animated and they tell you,’Sorry, I don’t understand your accent’ .
Most immigrants have had lots of issues with that and that’s why tons of Nigerians keep relocating to english speaking provinces after not able to understand Montreal and the Quebecois.
You remembered that you had visited the Quebec welfare office in 2019 to offset an outstanding and on getting there, the experience was worse.
It’s now that government institutions including hospitals would ask for your preference.
Where you were coming from, the Google map was not popular then, so it was relatively new and difficult understanding it as at then. Asking your way round was hell, most response would be ‘I don’t speak English. je ne comprends pas l’anglais'(I don’t understand English language) when in actual fact he or she just spoke an impeccable one.
If you see someone go beyond and above to assist you, that person may be liberal ,who doesn’t care if the skin colour is black or white.
Anyways, back to the present. Does racism still exist in Montreal? Yes, in a subtle way. Recently, you had to go to the SPVM headquarters in Downtown to get some information and was so very unfortunate to meet a core Québécois officer there. While in french class, you were taught the normal french and the Quebecois french but most people preferred to learn and speak the normal French.
Anyways, this female officer started the core french abd didnt even bother if you were processing anything and you explained that she needed to go slowly and her response in impeccable english was “You have no business in Quebec then”.
Like seriously? You let it slide because you were in the lion’s den.
You don’t really have an issue as long as you could still communicate with the little french that you had learnt in French class and from Duo, the learning App.
It was the other officer, a man who was liberal enough to go slowly with yours truly and boom, you got everything needed.
Ironically, most officers who had ticketed your car were blacks while the whites would just give warnings and let it slide.
Anyways, God save you if as a health care personnel who work in residences, you would hear lots of racial remarks targetted at your skin and colour. Some would not even want a touch or help.
The truth is that the small percentage of seniors and some genuine friends who are not biased ,be bothered by your skin colour and only see you as a vulnerable human being and not some sorts of ape on a tree have made Montreal, Canada a beautiful place to be.
See you next week.
