Discrimination and Visible Minorities in Canada Relations

Many citizens can not distinguish prejudice from visible minority associations. While some believe that all of these are linked, others feel that there is no connection between them. As discrimination is a sin to be discouraged by our society today and Canada, it is important to divide the boundaries between them so that discrimination from among us can be removed more easily. Consequently, the need for this study arose and a real correlation between prejudice and visible minorities has been identified. Various studies have been undertaken to understand the many different forms of discriminations as advanced in many sectors among the Canadian population. The findings on various studies show that different forms of discrimination are prevalent on almost all the social institutions of Canada. Discrimination is evident in institutions like health, work environment, wage or occupation levels, and culturally (Myer, 2014: 3). Some studies have been undertaken but have been described as having mismeasured the discrimination on the visible minority. Therefore more research is highly required in the study of the different forms of discrimination that has been advanced on the minorities and the effect the discrimination may have contributed to the existed of the minorities group.

Study shows that racism in general has been associated with health inequalities among the population of Canada as advance among the health institutions. In a study conducted by CMAJ in 2014, the minorities have been found to have higher rates of diseases, being more prevalent to getting sick at young age, subject to suffering from more severe sicknesses, and reportedly dying sooner compared to the whites (Siddiqi et al, 2017: 135). In the race conscious societies like Canada evidence show that the socially discriminated and inferior in the society who constantly receive as less intelligent have experienced negative health impacts.

The discriminated are associated with frequent occurrences of coronary calcification, blood pressure and inflammation of the breathing system (Siddiqi et al, 2017: 141). The care at the health institutions has been found to be offered in such a way as only to give the discriminated few procedures and poor quality services as compared to the whites in the US. The study further shows that having negative thoughts about the minorities like the gays, fat people, the black or the old undermines the quality of service a medical practitioner can offer on them.

It is has been found that the use of census data to study levels of discrimination is not sufficient since the data lacks the factor of experience on the level of discrimination. This has led to false findings which misdirect the on the reality of the level of discrimination at the work place. Attempts to include work experience in some of the studies have been proved to overestimate the experience while others going beyond inadequacies of the approximations.

Findings that rely on very large sample sizes of up to 350,000 cases overestimate the findings of studies of discrimination in the work sector. With the reliance on the WES, makes the data lack a representative of the required 10,000 cases (Yoshida and Smith, 2008: 313). The information on experience presents much superior information on work experience and characteristics making the study to have even more factors to consider more. Generally, the use of WES is more advantaged as compared to use of SLID (Yoshida and Smith, 2008: 318). Since the WES presents more superior information on the experience of work among the minority and has a better way of measuring work experiences and the reliability on training information makes the review of work experience better.

WES has arguably been preferred as a better choice compared to SLID. Reliability on WES analysis therefore show that men who are visibly minor receive less pay compared to their white counter parts regardless of the nature they became citizens. The reliability on the Mincer proxy however is not very reliable since it overestimates the experience of work among minority immigrants as compared to amount of overestimation witnessed on the immigrant and the native whites. Further, reliability on Mincer proxy to estimate the negative effect increases on the on the earnings while the same is lower when WES measure is used (Yoshida and Smith, 2008: 321).

While measuring work experience, the training on classroom and the number of courses undertaken has been found to attract higher payments. Factors like capital that contribute to better working environments and training have been controlled for in studies but still the visible minority have still been found to disadvantaged. New study needs to focus on controlling for such factors as the industry type, the nature of occupation and the job type to eliminate the issue of disadvantage that come with earnings when studying discrimination among the visible minority (Yoshida and Smith, 2008: 332). Additionally, the research needs to factor in various forms of experience like adding up the experience as received over the years, the amount of time spent in same employment, and the time taken at same job to successfully report on discrimination of the visible minority in their work and wages.

Wage and occupational segregation studies show that men receive different pay amounts and are allowed to take specific jobs different form men of different colour. The earning gaps are shocking with black men having a gap of 21% from their white counterparts and the south Asian men with a gap of 2% form that of their whites origin (Howland and Sakallariou, 1993: 1413). Among the women, the difference through much smaller for the black women compared to black males is significant and stands at 5% and 4% for women with South East and South Asian origins (Howland and Sakallariou, 1993: 1417). Therefore it can be seen that different racial discriminations are applied to offer different racially originating people different pay even when they occupy the same jobs.

Different ethnic origins offered different pay amounts among men show the highest amount of pay difference as well as job difference disparities. Women differences contribute to show the depth of the gap experienced in the intra-occupational sector where difference in wage earnings depict the level of discrimination as experienced among the South and South East women (Narain, 2014: 117). Men are more segregated occupationally as compared to women counterparts though.  

Cultural and structural inequalities are evident among the Islamic population as anticipated with more focus targeted to the cultural issues to more discriminate certain groups of the population. Structural inequalities entail discrimination from the participation of social and public places mostly for women. Cultural discrimination on the other hand cultural discrimination is seen in the event a certain group is expected to bear costly losses that another group in order to benefit from a certain lifestyle among the population.

Ethnicity and religious groupings have taken the centre stage where certain groups like the Islam are seen to be purposed to discriminate against women where they are expected to wear certain types of clothes (Narain, 2014: 119). Further, they are only limited to specific cultural and structural occupations, and expected to adhere to some general mandatory restrictions imposed on them by their culture. Again, women in the Islam religion are supposed to always appear on specific attire that befits a true woman. All the same this is a religious norm and it appears the group is well versed with this norm of lifestyle. The wider society has been proved to have taken the advantage of the way of lifestyle and religion of some of these groups as to shift social justice and right to institutions and discriminate against them (Narain, 2014: 131). Though these groups may advance norms among themselves that may require little of the intervention of the outside society but to which some restrictions and interventions are required so as to guarantee equality and justice among the groups, discrimination instead is what they receive.

The wider society seem to hide under the blames they impose on these groups to discriminate them. They deny them basic rights on the excuse that they advance molesting culture among their own like women and many have even been sectioned from enjoying many social and institutional privileges (Narain, 2014: 143). This is not enough an excuse since these ethnicities have the right to lead their preferred lifestyles as provided by their culture and should not be an excuse to deny them basic social and institutional privileges.    

Methods

To satisfactorily report on discrimination in Canada and effect on the visible minorities, a sample data was collected among the selected localities including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Other CMAs and Non-CMAs. These selected areas of data collection were taken to represent the whole of the Canadian population. Data on visible minority was coded where;

1: represented the group “not in the visible minority”, 2: “Chinese”, 3: “South Asia”, 4: “Black”, 5: “Filipino”, 6: “Latin America”, 7: “Southeast Asian”, 8: “Arab”, 9: “Japanese”, 10: “other visibility minority”, 11: “Multiple visible minority”, 96: represented those “not asked” the question on visible minority, 98 the group which “refused to answer” and 99 the group that did “not know what to say”. Given that the data had a likert scale of more than four categories; it was valid for analysis using quantitative statistics.   

The value of the valid percentages was chosen as the best in terms of describing the amounts of discrimination as among the representative data. The percentage of the percentage of the visible minority was calculated the use of a statistical package SPSS which was convenient enough to allow for data coding and analysis of quantitative data of this nature.    

Results

Table 1 shown below indicates the valid total of the data collected where for the “Visible Minority groups” the total amount of responses collected was 1752. The data collected on Discrimination in Canada was a total of 1769 respondents.  

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of Discrimination in Canada

On table two below, the values of the valid percentages of the data on visible minority groups can be seen. On the likert 1 “Not in a visible minority” the valid percentage is shown as 81.8%.  On “Chinese” the value is 4.9%, South Asia 4.0%, Black 2.3%, Filipino 1.6%, Latin American 1.1%, Arab 0.6%, Southeast Asian 0.5%, Japanese 1%, Other visible minority 1.7%, Multiple visible minority 0.5%.

Table 2: Visible Minorities Groups

The data on visible minority was cross tabulated with data on discrimination to  see whether there was any correlation between the two parameters.  

Table 3: Crosstabulation of minority Groups Data and Discrimination

Discussion

As can be seen from the results on table 1 above, the respondents chosen responded to the question on visible minority and discrimination in Canada. Table 2 shows that though at most of the respondents did not agree to visible minority, some others actually are victims of it. The leading Chinese at 4.9%, South Asian at 4.0% and among the blacks. The natives of South East Asia had the least of visible discrimination at 0.5% followed by Arab at 0.6% ,  then the Japanese and Latin America.     

The correlation findings show that a greater percentage of the group “Not in a visible minority” show that there is a correlation between discrimination and visible minority (59.3%). The blacks also agree to this since their percentage is at 11.1% compared to the percentage of the same group (1.4%) that gave a negative view. This means that there is a possibility for one to undergo discrimination in Canada if they belong to the visible minority group.

Conclusion

The study shows strong indications of social discrimination being correlated with visible minority. There was however contradicting results on the correlations since the inclusion of the non among minority group had results that could e described as contradictory to these found among the other groups. Future study may consider eliminating these group since it seems their response are centered only on their interests which in one way or another may have made the study redundant.

Nevertheless, the weakness provided a good insight into the study as it added to the power of the findings, analyses and conclusions. The findings however may have shown smaller percentages of visible minority, these is a vice that need to be handled in Canada along with Discrimination since they are correlated.

Bibliography

CMAJ, January 7, 2014, 186 (1), Discrimination “toxic” to minorities, says public health expert. 2014 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors  

Yoko Yoshida and Michael R. Smith. Measuring and Mismeasuring Discrimination against Visible Minority Immigrants: The Role of Work Experience. Canadian Studies in Population, Vol. 35.2, 2008, pp. 311–338

Siemiatycki, Myer.  Canadian Issues; Spring 2005; Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database pg. 3

Juliet Howland and Christos Sakallariou. Wage discrimination, occupational segregation and visible minorities in Canada. Applies Economics, 1993, 25, 1413-1422

Vrinda Narain. Taking “Culture” out of Multiculturalism. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, Volume 26, Number 1, 2014, pp. 116-152 (Article) Published by University of Toronto Press

Arjumand Siddiqi, Faraz Vahid Shahidi, Chantel Ramraj, David R. Williams. Associations between race, discrimination and risk for chronic disease in a population-based sample from Canada. Social Science & Medicine 194 (2017) 135–141.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of Discrimination in Canada

Appendix 2

Table 2: Visible Minorities Groups

Appendix 3

Table 3: Crosstabulation of minority Groups Data and Discrimination