There seems to be quite the debate after Le Journal de Montréal published the results of a poll, with the astonishing conclusion that Québecois are racist. Are they? That depends on which point of view you look at it from. Immigrants may say so, Québecois may say “pas vrai !” — I’ve been living in Québec for the last 7 years, and I haven’t had to face any situation I can consider racist, except for a little misunderstanding last year when I was working and I had to hear how some of my co-workers were complaining about how permanent residents and refugees were taking money the easy way, but that’s another issue.

What is racism? According to the dictionary, racism is the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. And based on that definition, I really don’t think Québecois fall in that category. I’m not the one to judge the choice of words of a newspaper or the people who took care of the poll, but racism is just a too strong word for what they wanted to study.

Are they xenophobic, then? A xenophobic is a person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples. I could say Québecois are xenophobic, but aren’t we all a little afraid of anything that is foreign? Aren’t we afraid of the unknown sometimes? But they still don’t fall in that category.

The word that comes to my mind, that fits my experience in Québec, is Ethnocentrism, the belief in the superiority of one’s own ethnic group. Now, I’m not calling them full of themselves. But when I’ve been called on about the “inferiority” of my culture, it has been because these people think nothing is better than their own country. And that is good, to some extent. If you don’t believe in the culture you were raised in, then you’re pretty messed up. So yes, I would say SOME Québecois are ethnocentrist. And no, that ain’t racism.

This is an interesting debate. Immigrants are criticized for trying to implement their culture in the new country, and I don’t blame US for wanting to do so; after all moving to a new country doesn’t take away our roots. Some Québecois find it insulting that, let’s say, Muslim women wear the hijab. Some others find it wrong that Latinos live in their own little communities, and I’ve heard some people calling these communities ghettos (which actually made me angry, I should’ve said something). But I seriously don’t think it’s racism. They simply thing their way of living is the right way, and that’s why the word ethnocentrism comes up.

I say, if Québecois were racists, they wouldn’t be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars every year going south on vacation. I’ve been in Québec for a while, and I can say they are open to other cultures. I still find it amazing that while living in Chicoutimi, I met more people who spoke a little Spanish rather than English. Of course I’ve seen some extreme cases of “Oh, les immigrants sont de B.S. (bien-être social), blah, blah, blah!” — But like I said, that’s another issue, more social than racial.

While I know there are some extremely racist people all over the world and Québec is not the exception, I wouldn’t generalize about this issue. Acceptance of other cultures comes in different degrees. Racism for me is something that brings the world to behaviours like the one shown by Nazis. I wouldn’t be so blunt about Québec.