Seems to basically align with where people live, no?
Like anywhere, St. John's has racism. It's not an accepted or publicly visible aspect of daily life, but I'm sure it exists. I've personally witnessed one Facebook post (from an ex's mother's new boyfriend) lamenting "multiculturalism", and I've overheard one relative express relief at the fact her new neighbour was Sikh and not Muslim. But that's it - and they were such abnormal experiences that they stuck in my memory.
In Newfoundland, we pride ourselves on being accepting. That's meaningless, really, except in that it indicates just how unacceptable public displays of racism or prejudice can be. We have some stories that are well-known locally, such as the story of American serviceman Lanier Phillips. He was on one of the two American ships sunk off the coast of Newfoundland during WWII. Local residents of the nearby town of St. Lawrence rescued them - and he was so shocked by how the local people treated him as an equal that it forever changed his sense of self worth and his desire to improve the situation of African Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanier_W._Phillips
Today, St. John's is quickly and visibly becoming more multicultural. The main street in my neighbourhood has as many people who are visible minorities as white. However, even today's increasing rate of immigration is still minuscule compared to what larger Canadian and American cities receive. This has provided two great benefits:
1. There is no sense of feeling threatened by immigration among those born/raised here.
2. No sudden rush of immigration, and relatively low numbers, has ensured no ethnic enclaves have developed and newcomers, especially any children born here, tend to join the wider community completely. That's not to imply they lose their culture. Many of them keep it almost entirely. It just means they're regular Newfoundlanders, plus more.
We're getting many of the benefits of a more diverse population - better restaurants, better cultural festivals, more diverse forms of community engagement, more things to do, more life to be lived... - without any of the most common growing pains.
*****
As for homophobia... not at all. St. John's excels in that regard. We were one of the first cities in North America to have an official gay bar. It's just a non-issue for the vast majority of the population, and has been for decades.
In the early 1980s, when police were raiding gay clubs in major cities in Canada and the United States, here they were producing pop songs encouraging gay and lesbian people in rural Newfoundland (communities there are called outports) to move to St. John's and live the good life, openly.
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