Talk:Visible minority

Not all Latin Americans

Not all LAtin Americans are not visible minorities, it depend on what country they are from. White Brazilians (50% of their population), Argentines and Uruguayans (both 90% caucasians) are not visible minorities.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.126.218.25 (talk • contribs) 23:45, 25 August 2006

Regarding the above comment: In Canada, under HRDC practice, anyone of Latin American ancestry can legitimately claim to be a member of a visible minority. It is a paradox that someone can be of 100% European ancestry (a Uruguayan, for example) and yet be a visible minority, but that's the how the term is used by the agency that administers employment equity legislation in Canada. Much hinges on how the person perceives his/her own ethnicity and/or racial background. Canadian2006 (talk) 22:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Could you point to reference in HRSDC website regarding this issue? You are essentially suggesting that being a visible minority is a sobjective matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.132.118.101 (talk) 22:46, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

In response to 217.132.118.101 (above), who stated "You are essentially suggesting that being a visible minority is a subjective matter." Yes, exactly! Racial identity and ethnic identity are, at their hearts, subjective matters, especially in situations where a person straddles the customary racial/ethnic categories. If you're thinking of employment equity as it applies to visible minorities, the underlying premise of e.e. has been to assume good-faith intentions all round rather than attempt to create some sort of formal racial classification system. I'm not aware of any HRSDC website that addresses this directly, but consider some of the print references in the Wikipedia employment equity article. Canadian2006 (talk) 03:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Quasi-political rationalizations don't change the facts: invisible minorities do not have access to the same programs and prejudicial policies that visible minorities do; "good faith intentions all round rather than attempt to create some racial classification system" is not something that can be said about StatsCan's focus on visible monirites and its shuffling aside of non-visible ethnicities/origins as part of the supposed "dominant group". American policy at least calls a spade a spade, if you'lll forgive the expression, because they speifically and blatatly use "race" and do not presume to lable people visible or invisible on the basis of nationality/country of origin (as with Latin Americans). Disriminatory policies such as "this institution gives preference in hiring to persons of aboriginal origin, visible minorities and women" (from SFU's hiring policies) discriminate against various kinds of new immigrants, as well as teh children of former European immigrants of non-British origin. "You're just all white and so it's OK to discriminate against you" is the message. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck; and visible monirity poitics/definitions look and sound and are applied as methods of racial discrimination/classification and are just as evil as any other form of racial discrimination. They just have the upper hand with the politicians and academics - "white guilt" being the tool - and the inequities of teh definition, and its application, go unexamined in print because the media and academia have "bought in" to the lie either for ideological or econoimc ecpediency (same as with politicians using the concept to manipulate voting gropus based on race....). None of this can go in the article, but I would appreciate that the pretentious holier-than-thou this-is-the-way-it's=supposed-to-be tone of Visible Minority tracts are kept out of hte article as much as possibe; it's dangerously close to POV already and may in fact already warrant that template.Skookum1 (talk) 16:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

i have alot of respect for canada there leaps and bounds ahead of the u.s in many respects but when it comes to race there pretty much dumb, to say white people from latin america are not white is utter non sence or people from west asia are not white either is ridiclous the u.s has a more legitment system for race,i mean canada seems to be trying to hijack whiteness for themselves--Wikiscribe (talk) 03:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

@Wikiscribe - I know this is over a decade old but Canada is not America and race is a social construct.

West Asia IS considered to be geographically part of Asia. If anything, America's system of "race" is just as foolish. Why should America say that "Asianness" is exclusive from "whiteness" and only include Indians and Chinese but not a Lebanese, an Iranian or an Israeli? Should a British person not be considered "European" because they're not connected to France and the like? Historically, East Asians were considered "white people" per historic accounts. East Asian peoples were almost uniformly described as White, never as yellow.

Furthermore, if you're talking about "colour", why do Americans readily use words like "white" and "black" but other colour terms are no longer used. Americans no longer call East Asians yellow or Native American people "redskin". In Brazil, they still use the term "yellow" (Amarela or Amarelo) to describe East Asians. But as I already stated, everything's a social construct and perhaps removing these types of divisions would be beneficial... but that's discussion for another day. Clear Looking Glass (talk) 08:09, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I would like to add the following remark : Contrary to what the article states, "Visible Minority" is also frequently used in France ("Minorités visibles"), especially in newspaper articles, though it is not 100% politically correct.

"In March, 2007, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination described the term as racist, as it singles out a specific group." That's not being racist, that's being specific! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.86.235.225 (talk) 17:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The 2011 Census reference thingy already states that "In contrast, in accordance with employment equity definitions, persons who reported 'Latin American' and 'White,' 'Arab' and 'White,' or 'West Asian' and 'White' have been excluded from the visible minority population. Likewise, persons who reported 'Latin American,' 'Arab' or 'West Asian' and who provided a European write-in response such as 'French' have been excluded from the visible minority population as well." The 2006 one says the same thing. So this isn't even about personal concepts of race, the Canadian census classification system itself does not consider all Latin Americans, regardless of ancestry, to be visible minorities. Not sure how the person who wrote that missed it. So I'm erasing Latin American Canadians as an example for the phrase saying some groups that may be indistinguishable from the white population are still considered visible minorities--but not the phrase itself. Gymast96 (talk) 23:15, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

@Gymast96 - I know this is a decade old, but it looks like this is for employment equity definitions. The term "visible minority" is fluid, but the the definition still states that: The main groups designated as visible minorities are South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Arab, Latin American, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean and Japanese. So, Latin Americans and West Asians/Arabs are visible minorities but the confusion seems to arise from a lack of mixed ancestry recognition. If we're being meticulous, not every visible minority group denotes a place of ethnic origin either.

In a similar paradox to what @Canadian2006 stated years ago, if a Chinese immigrant of full Russian descent describes themselves as "Chinese and Russian", they would be a visible minority regardless of their European ancestry because Chinese are considered visible minority. On the other hand, if someone of multiethnic ancestry says they're of "West Asian [or] Arab and French" descent or any other European ancestry in combination with West Asian/Arab, the employment equity definitions appears to count them as not "mixed", but rather only European descent and not Arab/West Asian. Thus, they're on paper, not a "visible minority". It seems similar with the Latin American entries. For West Asians/Arabs and Latin Americans to be counted as "visible minority" per employment equity definitions they must put in entries like "West Asian and Afghan", "Arab and Lebanese" and "Latin American and Peruvian". But this again, still raises some issues.

If you read further, putting multiple ancestry entries including "English and Chinese" or "English and South Asian" will be put in the Chinese/South Asian categories respectively because "mixed" isn't counted.[1] In addition, respondents who checked “South Asian” and had a write-in response such as “Swedish” would also be included in the “South Asian” category. This also means multi-ancestry entries like "Black and French" or "Black and Malaysian" will just be counted in the "Black" section. This again, seems to state that the data is not counting people who identify as mixed ancestry as "mixed" is not one of the 13 visible minority groups. Other

So all in all, it looks like the only issue is that mixed/multiethnic heritage is a grey area but the 13 groups considered visible minority, including Latin Americans, West Asians/Arabs, Chinese and so on still stands.

Also, I have removed some info that was unsourced as well as U.S-census related terms that were not only unsourced, but also irrelevant to Canadian standards. Clear Looking Glass (talk) 07:33, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Origin

Where when why how by whom was the term coined? jnestorius^(talk) 22:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

What does "n.i.e." stand for?

As in "Visible minority, n.i.e." in the table. Its general meaning is obvious - "none of the above" - but the abbreviation is not, and I can't work out what it stands for. 86.132.139.119 (talk) 23:50, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

n.i.e. = "not indicated elsewhere" From Canadian2006 (talk) 03:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Which it should be noted does not mean "none of the above".Skookum1 (talk) 15:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Invisible minority

I don't have the time (or stomach) to write this but the absence of this much-needed article from Wikipedia is bothersome, epsecially given the high priority on visible minorities in many articles and category-definitions. Visible minority advocates also are often dismissive, i.e. discriminatory, towards invisible minorities. These range from "white minorities" of various kinds e.g. Europeans-from-Europe who have accent/language or cultural differences in North America, e.g. Polish immigrants, also peoples like the Doukhobors and Hutterites (Hutterites are actually visible because of their apparel, like Amish, but are still declared to be "part of the majority" which is defined on racial terms; even Britons still-with-an-accent are "invisible minorities" in North America and treated as such (particularly by the bigotry of post-modern historians ranting about British influence in Canada); other groups for whom the term is used are gays, Filipino-�Americans,. Hedwig Gorski, a Polish-American, defines here group as among "Invisible European minorities". Here is a prelimimary google for the term, which turns up all kinds of interesting things. I may come back and point-form a short version of such an article, but if someone would care to write up a more full exegesis on the topic in the meantime that would be great. And in a non-Wiki moment, I really believe minority politics cannot be fairly or adequately addressed until the racial biases and reverse discrimination built into the application of the concept of "visible minorities" in government and organizational policies until the invisible minorities are fairly dealt with, and not dismissed by visible-minority activists as "just another kind of white" and therefore unimportant.Skookum1 (talk) 15:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Definition of visible minority

Statistics Canada officially considers the following groups to be "visible minorities":

• South Asian
• Chinese
• Black
• Filipino
• Latin American
• Southeast Asian

This means that Japanese, Koreans, etc. are included in the "Southeast Asian" category and not classified individually. There is no "visible minority" collective category for "Asian Canadian".

See the following source for accurate definition and most recent statistics. The table in the article should be updated as per the correct table in the source. According to StatsCan, "The Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as 'persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour."

Whoever was working on this article was totally ignorant of these facts. IranianGuy (talk) 23:24, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

To IranianGuy: The StatsCan chart you cite is misleading and leaves out many of the groups that StatsCan categorizes as Visible Minorities. In short, it is a very badly designed table. If you try to add the columns horizontally, you'll see the problem -- the six columns of racial/ethnic categories do not add up to the number in the "Visible Minority" column.

As the term is used by StatsCan, "Southeast Asians" refers to Vietnamese, Cambodians, etc. On the other hand, Koreans and Japanese are treated as separate groups within the Visible Minorities category even though they were left off of this particular table.

If you want a definitive list, here is the StatsCan website that lists the constituent groups: [2] Here's a table of the Canadian population, listing all of the groups that comprise visible minorities: [3] Posted by Canadian2006 (talk) 02:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Again, Arabs and Iranians are not classified as "Asian" nor are they classified as "visible minorities", so please do not re-add them. If you want to fix the table or remove it entirely, fine by me but don't revert to a version that keeps them in there, which is what you did. IranianGuy (talk) 02:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

In addition, I think you misunderstand that list, which is not definitive and is a voluntary classification (i.e. those who identify as "West Asian" rather than "White"). The list I cited was, because "visible minority" has a specific definition: "The Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as 'persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour'." That does not include Arabs and Iranians, as well as other people from the region who are racially and ethnically diverse. IranianGuy (talk) 02:45, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

The question of who is (and isn't) a "visible minority" is not something that we can decide among ourselves by consensus or any other process. The term is defined by the Canadian government. Your disagreement is with the Canadian government, not with me or with the person who had originally inserted that table into the Wikipedia article. My aim is simply to present the definition that is used by the Canadian government.

It is true that there is an internal contradiction in how the Canadian government defines the term. On one hand, they use the "non-white" definition, and at the same time they count Turks/Arabs/Iranians as visible minorities [4]. Is it logical? No. Is it internally consistent? No.

My personal opinion is that "visible minorities" is a meaningless casserole of ethnic groups that have nothing in common with each other. But I'm trying to keep my personal opinion out of this, and have the article accurately show the Canadian government's definition. Canadian2006 (talk) 04:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I suggest this as a solution: How about we add a section to the article, "Controversies", where these concerns can be discussed? However, within the Controversies section, I'd like to have a link to this webpage [5] followed by a statement that many people regard this list of groups to be arbitrary and internally inconsistent. My reasoning is that somewhere in the article, it would be good for readers to see which groups comprise visible minorities in the eyes of the federal government. We can forget about the statistical table that was in the earlier version of the Wiki article. Canadian2006 (talk) 05:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

There haven't been any comments regarding my proposed solution, above, in the past month. Therefore, I've gone ahead and made the changes I've suggested. IranianGuy and Wikiscribe made some good points, and I've tried to write the "Controversies" section to incorporate those concerns. From Canadian2006 (talk) 02:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

You're not white, you're brown. Get over it. Sure, there is a minority of you middle-easterners, turks, north africans (like Berber-Arabs, not

like Afrikaaners or Pied Noires of France) whom "look" like white people . You are just Muslim White wannabes..... the only real white muslims are Bosnians and Albanians maybe? Then you call yourself Iranian, you must be a muslim or you must be an ex-muslim, convert to Zoroastrianism by cursing out Arabs for destroying Iranian civilization..... --65.92.108.138 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:20, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

How about People from the Mediterranean Basin?

The Government of Canada "Visible Minority" definition is either racist or born out of complete ignorance. Why are Greeks, Portuguese, and Italians not classified as visible minorities when they are clearly visible in the sense that you can easily identify them as as being of non-English and non-French background? For example the majority of Syrian Arabs have lighter complexion, hair and eye colour from your average Greek, Portuguese, or southern Italian, yet the former is defined as a visible minority while the latter is not. I think it would have made more sense to say you are either of European or non-European background for census information and employment equality purposes. The government of Canada has no right in defining which race people belong to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CommanderKnight (talk • contribs) 02:13, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

New data Oct 25 ,2017

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/ref/dict/pop127-eng.cfm

Moxy (talk) 17:59, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Mixed Heritage

One of the other things that is a struggle with this classification is the lack of clarification as to where a person who is of mixed heritage, minority (racialized) and non-minority (aka Caucasian), puts themselves. There is question as to which is the right one, or which classification would be the most advantageous to oneself, or rather which one is not going to disadvantage me? But the bottom line is that with someone that is equally mixed, they are forced to choose and that shouldn't be necessary nor required.

This is not unlike the issues that people face in the gender realm and the forced categorizations that have gone with the choice between female and male. One should not have to choose, and if they are asked it should be open to allow for variances.

Looking at what qualifies as a 'visible minority', it seems like "mixed [descent/race/etc]" is not one of the recognized visible minority groups. People who write-in multiple ethnic entries, like Latin American and a European ethnic response, or a West Asian or Arab and a European ethnic response do not count as being 'mixed' or a 'visible minority'. But someone who says they are 'South Asian and Irish' and 'Black and French' would be. Though they are still counted as just "South Asian" or "Black" irregardless of their partial European heritage.[6][7]

Confusingly, this seems to imply that someone who is half-Latin American and half-European descent or half-West Asian/Arab and half-European descent does not count as Latin American or West Asian/Arab respectively in the visible minority groups of Canada, while people can write-in multiple responses in combination with other groups like South Asian or Chinese or Filipino and still be counted as a visible minority.

I've noted in the article, with sourced quotes about the stipulations around multiethnic responses and certain visible minority groups. But at the end of the day, this is how the Canadian census is set-up and reliably sourced criticisms of it can be noted, but do not change the census. Clear Looking Glass (talk) 02:49, 19 June 2023 (UTC)