Minorities to be majorities in two CAD cities by 2031, Statistics Canada projects

[golodhendil]

Now you're just proving my point. There are over 50 different ethnicities in China and some closer to Korean or (as you say) Vietnamese as they are other Chinese. The earliest known Korean state was Old Choson in what is now northwestern Korea and southern Northeast China and Han Chinese ruled Korea for many centuries, so there's an big intermix there culturally as well if you read ancient Chinese and Korean history. This is not the forum to be discussing this, but you've proved my point that they should just categorize as East Asian to be consistent with the South Asian category for the purposes of this high level precision survey on visible minorities in Canada.

I am very familiar with Chinese and Korean history, thank you very much, and I am also reasonably familiar with the literature of genetic data on many Eurasian populations. Han Chinese never controlled more than 1/4 of the Korean peninsula for any significant amount of time, and even the mighty Tang dynasty was quickly beaten out by the Korean Silla. China has >50 different ethnicities, but 90-95% of the Chinese population are Han Chinese, a highly homogenous and genetically relatively isolated population despite a small amount of contribution from Austro-Asiatic genes to southern Chinese dating back from the initial southward Han migrations 1-2 millennia ago. Koreans and Japanese are even more homogenous and genetically isolated. On the other hand, ethnic groups in Pakistan (eg, Punjabis, Sindhis), Bangladesh (Bengalis) and Sri Lanka (Tamils, and the genetically related Sinhalese) are not only highly related but in fact shared with India; the only WASP thing here is the post-colonial artificial political division of South Asia that disregarded the cultural and ethnographical continuity of that subcontinent. An "East Asian' category, while might make some sense culturally or in terms of certain physical attributes, is thus highly inconsistent scientifically with a South Asian category.

Note that a relatively large proportion of the people who've emigrated from places like the Philippines, Singapore, or even Jamaica are - in part or in whole - ethnically Chinese. There's been enough diasporas over time (not just from China) to really dilute the meaning of these ethnic/national groupings and people that have migrated before are much more likely to migrate again (which is why many have made their way to Canada). That's partly why it makes no sense to lump some countries together and not others. To an extent, these cultural groupings are just the WASP/French establishment in Canada's way of sorting people out...differentiate between Korea and Japan, don't differentiate between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It's a bit old-fashioned and will change eventually, especially as the demographic numbers change. As we become more familiar with larger numbers of people from various South Asian countries, we may separate them and begin lumping together the European countries with a dwindling demographic presence.

Singapore is almost 80% Han Chinese ethnically, so that's not even a relevant comparison and I would in fact think (or at least, it would be reasonable) that Singaporean immigrants are already classified in the "Chinese" group. Without data I would also doubt how "relatively large" is the proportion especially for Philippines, though you can always play around with what you mean by "relatively large". I would, however, agree with lumping together most of the European groups because all Indo-European-speaking Europeans are in fact very closely related to each other; the current classification, though, might better reflect the history of various waves of immigration from Europe.

 

[Eug]

OK, next census, everyone has to give a blood sample and have all their DNA sequenced.

Or, we can go the other direction... Anyone who has eaten boiled pork and napa dumplings gets classified as Chinese. And if they don't look Chinese, they'll be classified as Chinese converts for the purpose of the census. If we get less bureaucratic street food, by 2031, 98% of the Canadian population could be classified as Chinese converts.

 

[golodhendil]

OK, next census, everyone has to give a blood sample and have all their DNA sequenced.

Short of doing that, a census would use categories that are (a) practical (b) relevant and (c) scientifically consistent.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Singapore is almost 80% Han Chinese ethnically, so that's not even a relevant comparison and I would in fact think (or at least, it would be reasonable) that Singaporean immigrants are already classified in the "Chinese" group. Without data I would also doubt how "relatively large" is the proportion especially for Philippines, though you can always play around with what you mean by "relatively large". I would, however, agree with lumping together most of the European groups because all Indo-European-speaking Europeans are in fact very closely related to each other; the current classification, though, might better reflect the history of various waves of immigration from Europe.

We don't classify Singaporeans, they classify themselves. That's the whole point of these census questions, or we would just use place of birth figures (though we need to ask that, too).

We can't control people and make them respond with their national origin vs some other criteria (ethnicity, culture, religion, language, whatever). All we do is set the groupings. If they respond Chinese, they're classified Chinese, but if they are Chinese and respond Singaporean, they end up as Southeast Asians. Maybe they respond Canadian because they live here now, or American because they lived there for a time and still have American citizenship. What about their children? The answer you get depends on what you're asking, how you word it, and what options you give them.

DNA does not set the groupings - South Asia and other regions are grouped but not East Asia because we're less familiar with the sub-groups in every regino other than East Asia (for several reasons, and this would have been especially true however many years ago when the groups were set) and there doesn't seem to be anyone asking for a change. If DNA set the groupings, Brazilians would have a very hard time filling out their census form.

 

[golodhendil]

We can't control people and make them respond with their national origin vs some other criteria (ethnicity, culture, religion, language, whatever). All we do is set the groupings.

Indeed, no doubts about that. I am merely pointing out the basis on which some of these categories can be justified, ones that were set in pre-genetics days but are subsequently found to be supported by new data (I would hardly even consider myself "defending" these categories).

DNA does not set the groupings - South Asia and other regions are grouped but not East Asia because we're less familiar with the sub-groups in every regino other than East Asia (for several reasons, and this would have been especially true however many years ago when the groups were set) and there doesn't seem to be anyone asking for a change. If DNA set the groupings, Brazilians would have a very hard time filling out their census form.

I would say that we are in fact less familiar with the genetic substructure of East Asians than those of many other places, partially because the political / nationalistic feelings of the three major East Asian peoples (Han, Koreans and Japanese) tend to want to consider themselves highly unitary and homogenous populations (even though they are, by are large, relatively homogenous and isolated given their geographic spread). Understanding of South Asian genetics had indeed lagged behind that of Europeans for some years, but a recent large-scale study published last year (with the principle investigator of which I have had personal communications), significant gaps in the picture were filled, but which at the same time reinforced many parts of the previous ethnographic models based on linguistics and history. It is these data on which I based my explanations; I didn't just pull them out of thin air.

And it's old news that highly admixed groups (many populations of the Americas, most notably the Mestizos and Metis, and yes the Brazilians and many other Latin Americans; and in fact the African-Americans too) are very hard to classify and sort out. For the purpose of a simple census, where as I've said cultural and historical considerations should also be made, such groupings "out of convenience" would not be completely untenable. But for other purposes (such as medical/genetic), much more precise groupings and much more mind-wringing on the parts of the self-reporters would indeed be routine.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I would say that we are in fact less familiar with the genetic substructure of East Asians than those of many other places.

That's nice, but that's not the sub-grouping that I'm talking about. Genes have nothing to do with the rationale behind the groupings (or, specifically, the lack of grouping in just East Asia). We're more familiar with Chinese vs Korean vs Japanese vs Filipino (language, culture, sheer numbers in Canada back when 'vismin' became something we kept track of, even appearances - we're talking visible minority, after all) than we are with other Asian, African, etc., sub-groups. That's basically it. We can only speculate as to how Europeans would be grouped because they're not visible minorities and are not included...in 1950 we might have separated Swedish from Norweigian but today we might group them as Scandinavian, or back then we might have had a Mediterranean or Southern Europe group that today might be listed as Greek, Italian, etc. And "we" is just the small group of people deciding what gets asked on the census, so it may not jive with the greater public opinion.

 

[golodhendil]

That's nice, but that's not the sub-grouping that I'm talking about. Genes have nothing to do with the rationale behind the groupings (or, specifically, the lack of grouping in just East Asia). We're more familiar with Chinese vs Korean vs Japanese vs Filipino (language, culture, sheer numbers in Canada back when 'vismin' became something we kept track of, even appearances - we're talking visible minority, after all) than we are with other Asian, African, etc., sub-groups. That's basically it. We can only speculate as to how Europeans would be grouped because they're not visible minorities and are not included...in 1950 we might have separated Swedish from Norweigian but today we might group them as Scandinavian, or back then we might have had a Mediterranean or Southern Europe group that today might be listed as Greek, Italian, etc. And "we" is just the small group of people deciding what gets asked on the census, so it may not jive with the greater public opinion.

Genes may not be the rationale behind the groupings, but that along with culture, history and convenience are criteria that can/should be used to evaluate current groupings / inform future groupings. How finely or coarsely we set the groupings, ultimately, depends on the purpose of the particular representation of the data; even in the report there were at least two ways the groupings were presented. My argument all along is that certain categories in the current coarse grouping scheme, including those that were brought up earlier in this thread, are defensible with available scientific / anthropological data, but I certainly don't agree with all the groupings.

 

[Eug]

To be honest, I think culture is far more interesting in this context than genetics. For the purposes of a census I would personally choose the former rather than the latter if limited resources were an issue. For a medical study of the impact of certain genes on say breast cancer, I would choose the latter over the former.

Sure, genetic classification is very important, but the everyday impact upon multiculturalism is probably more from the culture than the pure genetics. To put it another way, I don't really care that much if the Vietnamese restaurant I go to is run by Vietnamese that ethnically Han Chinese. They lived in Vietnam almost all their lives, speak Vietnamese, and make damn good pho... and don't know how to properly make pork and napa dumplings.

 

[golodhendil]

To be honest, I think culture is far more interesting in this context than genetics. For the purposes of a census I would personally choose the former rather than the latter if limited resources were an issue. For a medical study of the impact of certain genes on say breast cancer, I would choose the latter over the former.

Sure, genetic classification is very important, but the everyday impact upon multiculturalism is probably more from the culture than the pure genetics. To put it another way, I don't really care that much if the Vietnamese restaurant I go to is run by Vietnamese that ethnically Han Chinese. They lived in Vietnam almost all their lives, speak Vietnamese, and make damn good pho... and don't know how to properly make pork and napa dumplings.

I don't disagree with that, in terms of a finer ethnocultural grouping on par with dividing Europeans up the way it currently is. This way, each of "Chinese" and "South Asian" would (and probably should) be each divided into 5-10 different subgroups (with cultural and liguistic differences that have a bonus of also correlating with genetic history).

You also seem to be obsessed with pork and napa dumplings

 

[OttoSchloss]

With 2012 looming, this statistic is obviously moot.

 

[Eug]

You also seem to be obsessed with pork and napa dumplings

It's my favourite Chinese dish!

 

[Ervin]

I would cordially invite my fellow forumers to return to the topic at hand.



What are the potential consequences of this trend?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Genes may not be the rationale behind the groupings, but that along with culture, history and convenience are criteria that can/should be used to evaluate current groupings / inform future groupings. How finely or coarsely we set the groupings, ultimately, depends on the purpose of the particular representation of the data; even in the report there were at least two ways the groupings were presented. My argument all along is that certain categories in the current coarse grouping scheme, including those that were brought up earlier in this thread, are defensible with available scientific / anthropological data, but I certainly don't agree with all the groupings.

Genes are not the rationale, and it makes no sense to begin using them to set groupings when the entire point of multiculturalism and counting visible minorities and asking people what ethnicity they self-identify with or what country they are from is all based on anything and everything but genes, particularly since there's absolutely no way to acquire genetic information from anonymous census respondents, even if you ask them and they're willing to answer.

 

[Eug]

What are the potential consequences of this trend?

We've all seen the gradual improvement in the "ethnic" food, with less and less requirement for Canadianized versions of it. Hopefully that trend continues... and hopefully it makes it to the street vendors too, and not just in those ethnic food festivals a few times a year.

Maybe it will take more representation from the various cultures in city council, and hopefully that will increase with time too.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Aside from skin colour and heritage everyone could all melt someone into a new race of Canadians, perhaps even with new regional accents, it's started to happen already.