Which Canadian visible minority group(s) are well known across, outside the country?

[Capsicum]

Which of these groups are people most aware of in terms of their presence, in Canada and outside it?

Is it South Asian Canadians, who are numerically the largest visible minority group now? There are some famous South Asian Canadians like the comedian Russell Peters and now many among the younger generation, like Lilly Singh who is the 3rd highest paid YouTube star. Canada is also the country with the highest percentage of Sikhs outside India and Abbotsford is home to the oldest Sikh temple in North America.

Is it Black Canadians, who include musicians like Drake and the Weeknd?
Many people have knowledge that Black Canadians have a long history in the country and are not just recent immigrants (eg. the Black Loyalists and the shared history of black Canadians with African Americans). And there's the strong Jamaican/Caribbean influence in places like Toronto and Francophone blacks like Haitians and West Africans in Montreal.

Is it East Asian Canadians who include famous people like David Suzuki and Patrick Chan? Many say that Vancouver is the, if not one of the most "Asian" cities in North America? Hong Kong is, after the US, said to be the place with the largest number of Canadians abroad (due to dual citizens and returnees). Many Chinese abroad are also aware of Canada's large diaspora.

Is it West Asian/Middle Eastern Canadians? Some people may think of Middle Eastern immigrants as recent (eg. on the international stage with the Syrian refugees) but there were communities in existence long before. The children's singer-songwriter Raffi, of such famed kids' songs like Baby Beluga and the Bananaphone song, is a famous (Egyptian-born) Armenian Canadian.

Or are all visible minority groups in Canada equally visible (or not) across Canada and to the outside world internationally?

[MolsonExport]

Several of Montreal's most famous foodstuffs are from the Jewish community (Bagels, smoked meat). Also hailing from this community Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Naomi Klein...and the Weider Bros of weightlifting fame.

[kwoldtimer]

Jews a vismin? Drake black? The world outside our borders thinking of Canadians in terms of visible minorities? I feel lost and confused ...

[Acajack]

The *visible* minority groups that are mentioned here aren't well known at all outside Canada.

Most people outside Canada think Canada is made up of a bunch of British people, a bunch of French people, and a bunch of indigenous people.

Yeah, the idea that some Canadians might be of African or Asian origin is not seen as an impossiblity, but to the un-knowledgeable it would likely be viewed as an outlier the same way that Peru had a president of Japanese origin named Alberto Fujimori a few years back, or that the Italian national soccer team had a black player named Mario Balotelli.

Think about it. Australia has a comparable proportion of visible minorities to Canada's. But do people often think of a Chinese origin person when they think of an Aussie? Sure, we all know that a Chinese-Australian is totally possible and that there are likely a decent number of them, but that's not the top-of-mind image of that country.

I am not sure if this imagery is cast stone or if it's just that there is a lag in people's impressions of a country.

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Jews a vismin? Drake black? The world outside our borders thinking of Canadians in terms of visible minorities? I feel lost and confused ...

Drake is black, and most countries have vismin reputations.

Examples:

USA - Blacks and Mexicans
France - Arabs and Africans
China - Turks
Pakistan - Afghans
Germany - Turks
Canada - First Nations and people from Asia

[mistercorporate]

Reputations do vary depending on whose doing the talking.

On one extreme you have people who could break down our demographics with some degree of accuracy, and on another you have people who think all Canadians are Eskimos who eat moose and live in igloos.

[saffronleaf]

Obviously there's some bias here on my part. I don't think South Asians are the dominant visible minority group, but I think the extent of South Asian immigration to Canada is slowly being noticed.

I mean in the early 90s most Indians in India would have thought Canada was a US state or Arctic territory. But now, many people know of someone who knows of someone who lives in Canada. There's a couple Bollywood actors with homes in the GTA. Hindi and Tamil films show Toronto here and there.

I think most recently, the NDP leader being Sikh is noteworthy.

But yea, I'm sure the same (or more) could be said for East Asian Canadians, I'm just not as well acquainted.

More broadly, I think Anglo Canada is known more for Asian immigration, similar to Australia.

[urbandreamer]

Are dark complexioned Irish, English and French Canadians visible minorities? We've been mixing with the natives for 400+ years, plus back in the old countries we often mixed with the Spanish, Indians and other tribes.

[Acajack]

Aboriginal Canadians are not considered to be visible minorities. At least not according to the official definition.

Visible minorities are Chinese, South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc.), Black, Philipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, Arab, West Asian, Japanese, Korean, etc.

It's a bizarre category admittedly as there are quite a few Arabs and Latin Americans who look, for lack of a better term, European.

A bit of a throwback to another era, if you ask me.

[MolsonExport]

I did not focus on visible minorities; perhaps I should have. The answer (for vizmin): probably none, other than our natives, has very broad exposure at this point as far as most outsiders are concerned. Perhaps the East-Asian/Chinese community, given their numbers and years of establishment.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The *visible* minority groups that are mentioned here aren't well known at all outside Canada.

Most people outside Canada think Canada is made up of a bunch of British people, a bunch of French people, and a bunch of indigenous people.

Yeah, the idea that some Canadians might be of African or Asian origin is not seen as an impossiblity, but to the un-knowledgeable it would likely be viewed as an outlier the same way that Peru had a president of Japanese origin named Alberto Fujimori a few years back, or that the Italian national soccer team had a black player named Mario Balotelli.

Think about it. Australia has a comparable proportion of visible minorities to Canada's. But do people often think of a Chinese origin person when they think of an Aussie? Sure, we all know that a Chinese-Australian is totally possible and that there are likely a decent number of them, but that's not the top-of-mind image of that country.

I am not sure if this imagery is cast stone or if it's just that there is a lag in people's impressions of a country.

Would you say that in many cases it's mostly countries with a diasporic connection to the minority group that know about its presence?

For example, Japanese people in Japan may know that there's a large Japanese Brazilian community, or Algerians in Algeria might know there's a large Algerian community in France.

But then perhaps it's not on the radar for other countries with no immigration/diaspora ties to that country.

[Capsicum]

Countries' own histories or experiences of ethnic groups within one's country, can bias their perceptions of ethnic groups outside of them.

For example, a while ago there was a news article about how Samuel L. Jackson and Magic Johnson were mistaken for immigrants and how local Italians made prejudiced assumptions about them when they were seen shopping.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...-a7905026.html

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

I mean in the early 90s most Indians in India would have thought Canada was a US state or Arctic territory. But now, many people know of someone who knows of someone who lives in Canada. There's a couple Bollywood actors with homes in the GTA. Hindi and Tamil films show Toronto here and there.

On the topic of film:

Looking from the diasporic point of view in addition to homeland cinema, going through a quick cursory search of the year some Indo-Canadian films were made under wikipedia's list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catego...Canadian_films, you're right that it does seem like it's mostly a post 1990s and 2000s phenomenon (though I see one listed example of a film in 1983 depicting an Indo-Canadian). Many films listed are post 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-C...subject_matter.

Deepa Mehta's film Sam & Me came out in 1991, and she has made a name for herself as an Indo-Canadian director with other movies like Bollywood/Hollywood, Midnight's Children etc.

I'm not sure if Indo-Canadians were slow or relative late to be recognized in terms of the other two big, rich, western-country Indian diasporas (British, American), since Britain's was already well represented by the 80s and the US by the 90s.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

On the topic of film:

Looking from the diasporic point of view in addition to homeland cinema, going through a quick cursory search of the year some Indo-Canadian films were made under wikipedia's list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catego...Canadian_films, you're right that it does seem like it's mostly a post 1990s and 2000s phenomenon (though I see one listed example of a film in 1983 depicting an Indo-Canadian). Many films listed are post 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-C...subject_matter.

Deepa Mehta's film Sam & Me came out in 1991, and she has made a name for herself as an Indo-Canadian director with other movies like Bollywood/Hollywood, Midnight's Children etc.

I'm not sure if Indo-Canadians were slow or relative late to be recognized in terms of the other two big, rich, western-country Indian diasporas (British, American), since Britain's was already well represented by the 80s and the US by the 90s.

From my experience living in the US, while the US has a lot of South Asians in sheer numbers, Asians in general have a much lower proportionate presence in most cities (some West Coast cities are an exception). I guess I feel like South Asians have more of a presence in Canadian urban areas. Like if you go to any US city, you can expect the two large minority groups to be African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Whereas in Anglo Canada, the two groups would probably be South Asians and East Asians.

Long-winded way of saying I think the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are more South Asian in some sense than the US, even though the US has a larger number of South Asians (and those South Asians tend to be more educated and higher earning than their counterparts in Canzuk).

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

From my experience living in the US, while the US has a lot of South Asians in sheer numbers, Asians in general have a much lower proportionate presence in most cities (some West Coast cities are an exception). I guess I feel like South Asians have more of a presence in Canadian urban areas. Like if you go to any US city, you can expect the two large minority groups to be African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Whereas in Anglo Canada, the two groups would probably be South Asians and East Asians.

Long-winded way of saying I think the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are more South Asian in some sense than the US, even though the US has a larger number of South Asians (and those South Asians tend to be more educated and higher earning than their counterparts in Canzuk).

I've brought up in my thread on why Canada has more people of Asian descent than most western nations, that Asian descent (both East and South) makes up double digits (10-15%) of Australia and Canada's demography. It's single digits in the US.

The 10-15% share of Asian Canadians and Asian Australians is as proportionately large as African Americans (13%) in the US, though of course the US is obviously larger in minority groups of any kind by sheer absolute size.

Yet this 10-15% proportion has not made Asian Canadians or Australians visible to people thinking of these countries, unlike the similar proportion of African Americans that represent the US. Of course, one could argue that Asian Canadians/Australians on average have been around fewer generations to make an impression than African Americans even if all these groups make up 10-15% of the populace.

But even in some countries where Indian diasporas have been around for a really long time (where most people trace their roots to the 1800s), they are still not well known globally. A couple of Caribbean countries, Guyana and Trinidad have about 40% of people being of Indian in origin. Indian South Africans (who've also had a presence for multiple generations) number over a million out of South Africa's population of a bit over 55 million. Yet, it seems these Indian diasporas are not widely known outside of people with connections to these countries or who have interests in these places' demographics.

So it apparently is not just numbers or percentages, or even how many generations a group has been in a country, that determine how visible a group is, to outsiders.

[urbandreamer]

Are the Anglo-Indians visible minorities in India? Are they considered fully integrated and accepted as Indians first?

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Are the Anglo-Indians visible minorities in India? Are they considered fully integrated and accepted as Indians first?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20857969

The Anglo-Indian community has gotten smaller over the generations due to both assimilation, and emigration.

"But the estimated 125,000, living mostly in Calcutta and Madras, are enacting the same assimilation - marrying Indians and adopting their culture. They are becoming indistinguishable.

"Previously, the community was too Anglicised - clinging to English traditions and customs," explains Philomena Eaton, convenor of the Calcutta Anglo-Indian Service Society. "But today it's clearly visible that they are much more integrated into society in customs, language, clothing, social interactions, etc. Many Anglos today can easily converse in Hindi and Bengali."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Indian

"The Anglo-Indian population dwindled from roughly 500,000 at the time of independence in 1947 to fewer than 150,000 by 2010. Many have adapted to local communities or emigrated to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand."

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Are the Anglo-Indians visible minorities in India? Are they considered fully integrated and accepted as Indians first?

Do you mean people of mixed ancestry (part Indian and part White British)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Indian

There's a small population, 300K maybe in a country of about 1.25B. They have a seat reserved for them in parliament. Other than that, I don't know much about them. Given the racial / ethnic / color diversity of the country and somewhat widespread use of English, I don't see why they wouldn't just blend in and do well. They wouldn't stand out in any visible sense / wouldn't be visible minorities.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

I've brought up in my thread on why Canada has more people of Asian descent than most western nations, that Asian descent (both East and South) makes up double digits (10-15%) of Australia and Canada's demography. It's single digits in the US.

The 10-15% share of Asian Canadians and Asian Australians is as proportionately large as African Americans (13%) in the US, though of course the US is obviously larger in minority groups of any kind by sheer absolute size.

Yet this 10-15% proportion has not made Asian Canadians or Australians visible to people thinking of these countries, unlike the similar proportion of African Americans that represent the US. Of course, one could argue that Asian Canadians/Australians on average have been around fewer generations to make an impression than African Americans even if all these groups make up 10-15% of the populace.

But even in some countries where Indian diasporas have been around for a really long time (where most people trace their roots to the 1800s), they are still not well known globally. A couple of Caribbean countries, Guyana and Trinidad have about 40% of people being of Indian in origin. Indian South Africans (who've also had a presence for multiple generations) number over a million out of South Africa's population of a bit over 55 million. Yet, it seems these Indian diasporas are not widely known outside of people with connections to these countries or who have interests in these places' demographics.

So it apparently is not just numbers or percentages, or even how many generations a group has been in a country, that determine how visible a group is, to outsiders.

I knew about all of those examples and considered them to be prominent / known minority communities of those countries, but perhaps I'm biased as I am of South Asian ancestry. I think the "widely known" thing is in part because everything about the US is larger than life. US-related things are studied extensively and known everywhere. Other countries' demographics aren't given as much widespread attention.

How about the following examples:

South Asians / Chinese in Singapore.
South Asians in the Arabian Peninsula countries.
Chinese in Vietnam.
Chinese in Malaysia.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

But even in some countries where Indian diasporas have been around for a really long time (where most people trace their roots to the 1800s), they are still not well known globally. A couple of Caribbean countries, Guyana and Trinidad have about 40% of people being of Indian in origin. Indian South Africans (who've also had a presence for multiple generations) number over a million out of South Africa's population of a bit over 55 million. Yet, it seems these Indian diasporas are not widely known outside of people with connections to these countries or who have interests in these places' demographics.

.

Yes these are quite interesting phenomena. I know I was surprised to learn that the population of Fiji was mostly made up of Polynesians *and* people of Indian origins.

Kenya also had a fairly large Indian population at one point - but they've mostly been gone for a couple of decades now. (A number of them actually resettled in Canada.)