In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

--------------Life at the Margins In the Thick of Multiplicity M. G. Vassanji Global Tribalism: Small Is Hateful The condition of the world today brings home to us-those of us who had forgotten-the pervasiveness of smaller ethnic, communal, or sectarian identities and the tenacity with which they survive. We have seen pluralismbased national identities-built on the idea that human equality and fraternity should ultimately override ethnic or other communal differences-disintegrate and these smaller components reasserting themselves, shaking off the old idealism and taking up apparently where they last left off. Neighbors tum against neighbors, communities that once joined forces to fight colonial domination and conquest take up arms against each other to settle scores and gain points in a new struggle for power, definition, and survival. Bosnia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka are examples of the savagery that this sort offracture leads to; there is also the communal tension in India with memories of the partition of the subcontinent still firmly etched in the minds of the communities most affected. And we have the reemergence of overt racism in Western Europe, of (ethnic) nationalism in parts of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and of tribal chauvinism in parts of Africa. Each of these cases, we are told, is unique, complex in its own way, with its own political and economic history and its more immediate causes for instability or breakup.,Whatever those may be, ethnicity and communalism seem to have been the weakest fault lines, prOvided the easiest scapegoats and enemies, and stirred up the most deep-seated anger, suspicion, and insecurity. In today's world one is left wondering pessimistically whether we are not Simply just members of tribes after all. (I use the term "tribe" in a loose sense, 112 M. G. Vassanji of course. From the "South Asian"-a term I return to later-perspective, "community" is the more pervasive identity. For the most part I avoid the word "nation" in its European connotation and complexity, using it only in the sense in which it had meaning for us when I was growing up, to denote an independent country or state as in "United Nations.") A View from the Margins Those of us living in the relative security and comfort of North America are not immune to easy definitions ofselfand other, to the stereotypes and caricatures that go with them and the tensions and insecurities they evoke. The special case I want to consider is the marginal status of nonwhite immigrants in Canadian (and, with qualifications, American) society, which is primarily a development of European society, part of the present-day Western world. Here too there is struggle for space and definition; ideas of the purity of nationhood, though not encouraged, keep cropping up; and some of the phobias regarding "others" are deep-rooted and related to, if not the same as, those elsewhere in the world. We can take comfort in the absence of savagery and utter breakdown, but the 1992 outbreak of riots in Los Angeles, followed by disturbances the next evening in Toronto's Yonge Street, suggest~ grimmer possibilities for the future. To be told that the most recent immigrants are always picked upon and discriminated against is clearly not a sufficient justification, and to be told that we are all immigrants is no c·omfort either; it is actually misleading, because the racism against Asians, Arabs, and Africans is part ofa continuum that goes back to European and British racism and is related to the colonialism from which we have emerged. To be told that Canada (why not the United States too?) was also once a colony is fraudulent, in that it glosses over histories and memorieshowever painful and shameful-and shears one's language of its political and historical charge. The marginalization of the non-European immigrant is concomitant to the marginalization of the world he or she comes from-a country and culture viewed as alien, backward, poor, and unhappy. Isolated incidents of racial violence or the activities ofthe neo-Nazis tell us one thing. It is, instructive, however , to observe the activities of the media, which reflect and sometimes even propagate the marginalization of the immigrant. The media achieve this under cover of respectability, responsibility, and objectivity, and because they are everywhere all the time, their influence is immense. My examples here are picked from the Canadian media, from coverage (during fall 1993 and spring 1994) that I happen to have watched on television or read in...

Share