因為現在是期末考周，加上原本的翻譯工作，所以可以有一段時間不能好好娛樂大家，既然來加拿大是唸書，好歹也放一點作業才說的過去，那就請有興趣的人看一下我得過A的新聞作業(有三個喔，我一想就偷笑，黑黑...)，第一篇是上校報Projector的文化衝突，原文如下：
Before being appointed, the Governor General Michaëlle Jean once said, “the government’s policy of multiculturalism encourages people to stay in ethnic ghettos and leads to all sorts of absurdities…We are given money so that we will each stay in our own separate enclosure. There’s a kind of proposition of ghettoization that is there, and that is financed.”
Looking back to what happened last month, Jean is right.
On Oct. 10, 2004, the innocent bystander Phillipe Haiart was killed by a stray bullet.
On Oct. 13, 2004, the workers of Lakeside Packers, Canada’s largest slaughterhouse located in Alberta, went on strike.
These two seemingly unrelated events have one thing in common: African refugees. Two alleged African gang members are charged with Haiart’s slaying. In the Lakeside Packers strike, 80 per cent of the employees are refugee immigrants, paid below minimum wage and not allowed to use washroom facilities during the workday, according to the union.
“Education is everything,” says Raphael Kabango, Winnipeg Welcome Place Residence Supervisor. “If you can’t speak English, there’s no future for you in Canada.”
Kabango, a refugee immigrant from Rwanda who came to Canada 17 years ago, knows the difficulty new refugee immigrants are facing. “They have to work very hard, triple shifts, no time to see their children. This is not what they dreamed of in the refugee camps. They thought Canada is heaven, but they didn’t realize that nothing is free. You gotta work for your own bread,” says Kabango. Most refugee families have to work long hours to make ends meet, and must pay the government the settlement debt of transportation and official procedure fee as much as $ 12,000 per family, says Kanbango. This can leave children vulnerable, struggling with peer pressure.
“Kids are ‘Americanized’ in the school. They see others with fancy clothes and big cars, they think ‘why don’t I have those?’ That’s when gangs come in.” Kabango says, “The family education is missing.”
If refugee and immigrant families can’t help their own children, schools will have to. In Canada, public elementary and secondary school education is provided free to all immigrants and refugees. One of the first places where new immigrants interact with native English speakers is in the classroom. Bilal Ahmed, a Pakistani student at Red River campus and also the founder of Global Friendship Circle, says “I want to break the ice. I see so many international students on campus eating alone. I want to change that.” Ahmed came to Winnipeg as an international student several years ago. Now he calls Winnipeg “a cool city with warm people.” He doesn’t think the shooting imply that Winnipeg is a dangerous place with gang problems.
After the Haiart tragedy, police announced the formation of Operation Clean Sweep, a special police unit that will target the inner city and street crime. Robert Carver, Constable of the Winnipeg Police Service Crime Prevention Unit, still feels the Haiart shooting was “purely a very bad luck. I grew up and lived in the North End for 26 years. I still go out anytime I want. The gangs only mind their own business, as long as you are not involved with gang members, you are safe.” He emphasized that people shouldn’t be afraid because of this single incident. “It’s just the media coverage,” says Carver.
Robyn Mossman, Winnipeg Refugee Education Network (WREN) ex-coordinator says, “I don’t think that the African refugee community is very different from any other - they have just been receiving unfair coverage from the media recently…African refugees in Winnipeg experience isolation from their cultural communities for many refugee communities are relatively small.”
Native Winnipeg students can also do their part to ‘break the ice’ and make refugee immigrant students feel more at home. Just like one episode of Furturama said, “Let’s go out there and pretend we want to know those foreigners!”
The website of an American humanitarian organization called Tolerance (www.tolerance.org) provides some useful tips about how people can adjust to new faces in the classroom: “Educate yourself, ask questions, and avoid Tokenizing (stereotyping).” (674)
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