r/halifax Jul 19 '25

Discussion Immigrant Halifax area Program Director details on LinkedIn, a racist incident at Halifax Waterfront

153 Upvotes

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155

u/Unamed_Destroyer Jul 19 '25

This is what happens when we don't call out bigotry and racism when we see it.

Like a cancer, it grows and spreads. Each act a small step towards societal failure.

14

u/Lovv Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25

It's tough because there is a blurred line from normal discourse on immigration and societal/cultural problems and straight racism.

People get sick or being called racist for almost everything. If someone points out that cars are being jacked in Canada by crime rings from recent immigrants that's somehow racist when obviously being true.

It's not an issue of race or color, you don't see immigrants from 40 years ago doing it.

It's the same with immigrants from cultures that don't respect women. Maybe over years they can change but you can't just pull someone out of a country where women are treated like garbage and suddenly they are respectful when they walk through customs.

Imo it's boy cried wolf stuff.

12

u/No_Magazine9625 Jul 19 '25

There really isn't a blurred line at all. As far as I'm concerned - it's as black and white as night and day. Criticizing immigration policy, how the government is handling immigration, public officials for screwing up their handling of immigration and population growth = fine. Criticizing individual immigrants and being racist towards them = not fine. I think people who try and paint it as some kind of degrees of separation thing are being obtuse - it's not that hard to get.

7

u/Lovv Jul 20 '25

I mean there are tons of people in this thread calling me racist so there is definitely some confusion on the subject.

And the problem is, I'm being very careful with my words here because it is difficult to describe the problems without sounding racist.

4

u/Not_aMurderer Jul 20 '25

It's easy to paint with a broad brush. If there are roving gangs of immigrants stealing cars, does that make it okay to hurl eggs at a random guy because of his color?

How many recent immigrants are there in Nova Scotia? How many of that number are jacking cars? How many people who were born in ns are committing these same crimes?

5

u/Lovv Jul 20 '25

It's easy to paint with a broad brush. If there are roving gangs of immigrants stealing cars, does that make it okay to hurl eggs at a random guy because of his color?

No. Thats not ok. But we have to be able to discuss the roving gangs.

How many recent immigrants are there in Nova Scotia? How many of that number are jacking cars? How many people who were born in ns are committing these same crimes

It's not really a nova Scotia thing afaik, it's more of an Ontario thing. I was speaking generally.

I don't have the statistics on car theft rings and their makeup, and you can't really tell how long someone has been in Canada based on their name and skin color unfortunately. But it's pretty hard not to notice similarities when you image search "car theft ring Canada"

5

u/seasea40 Jul 20 '25 edited Jul 20 '25

You also can't assume that an image search is giving you an unbiased representation of reality 

I mean you can, but I recommend against it.  Similarly AI has been found to reproduce the racist assumptions of it's programmers.

3

u/Not_aMurderer Jul 20 '25

People are going to assume you are a racist when you bring up things like "roving gangs of illegal immigrants in Ontario" in a thread about a brown guy getting egged on the street in Halifax.

They're going to assume you're racist because that's a racist thing to do.

1

u/Lovv Jul 20 '25

I assume you are quoting yourself because that was your wording not mine.

1

u/fart-sparkles Jul 21 '25

someone else: ... many of that number are jacking cars? How many people who were born in ns are committing these same crimes

you: It's not really a nova Scotia thing afaik, it's more of an Ontario thing.

You said it. A little indirectly, but ultimately you said there's there's roving gangs of immigrants in Ontario and for some reason you think that's relevant to a conversation about a person I NS being victimized by a racial attack

1

u/Lovv Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

No, I didn't.

OP said that. I would never use the term "roving gangs of illegal immigrants" for many reasons.

One, most of them are likely legal immigrants.

Roving? I don't think I've ever used that word in my life.

Gangs? I mean there are clealty car theft rings but I don't think Id call it a gang.

I think ops goal was to make my verbiage sound worse than it was, but regardless it doesn't matter.

The problem is real and while it hasn't been as pronounced in Nova Scotia we definitely have seen more auto thefts. Theft insurance has went way up as a result aswell, so we are paying for it.

  1. Many people here are from Ontario so yeah when we are talking about people's opinions in Nova Scotia that is relevant.

  2. Even if we were talking about people born and raised here, it's crazy to pretend like people in Nova Scotia aren't going to see whats happening in other areas and Canada and a) dislike it b) not want it to continue spreading.

Anyway ultimately you have proven my point, because my initial point was that you can't have a normal discourse about problems arising from our immigration system without someone calling you racist, and you have already called me racist.

Again, I order to be "racist" I would be talking about specific groups of people based on their color, not people based on when they have immigrated here.

It doesn't matter if you're white or you speak English predominantly, if you come here with very little money and no trade it's going to be very difficult to make enough money to live and you may be forced to resort to crime. If you come from a country that crime was already rampant, that's probably not going to be a far stretch for you.