Want Toronto to be a good city? Stop pushing too hard on cultural relative and stop being ignorance
When I ask tourists “do you like Toronto,” many of them told me that they hate Toronto and would not come back again. Lots of people used to like this city, but it was many years ago. I have seen how it’s changed from good to bad. Now this city is slightly going downhill. Let’s be honest and be upfront. Here are some of the problems that this city needs to change for being a good city again.
1. Stop pushing too hard on screaming their cultural relative
I know what you are thinking when you ask “Where are you from?” I have been asked many times when I met someone in this city. This is the first question when they ask me. Few times I replied them that “does it matter?” They were shocked and said “for many people, it matters!” Then they walked away.
I understand people want to respect others. I understand people want to impress others. But, they are doing it too hard.
I am not the only one who feel this. Qumar Barakat, who is the refugee from Syria, feel the similar way when she first ever steps in Canada. She said,
“God, could this place be trying any harder?“Y’know, most culturally relevant metropolises don’t feel the need to spend half their time screaming about how culturally relevant they are.”
When I traveled to other major cities, such as New York City, San Francisco, London, Singapore, etc, people would not ask this question at all. People would not even ask this question at first. For me, this is a cleverer way to impress people. People should understand that it should not be matter when you want to meet someone based on where that person comes from. Instead, people should respect others as a person. If someone had just met me and the first question asked me “where are you from?”, that left me a bad impression and I would think that they push too hard for culture related values.
2. Stop being ignorance based on your personal preference
We all have preference, but when people bring their preference and apply to other, that is not acceptable.
I don’t know how many times I have been ignored in Toronto. I don’t know how many times I have been pretended invisible to people. I am not only talking about white people, but I am also talking about people in general.
Once, I wanted to be polite to girls and pointed out where the toilet should be when they looked confused to find it in a building, one of them pretended I was invisible to her and she believed she could find it and kept talking to her friends. I was not shocked how her ignorance attitude because it’s not the first time but that was extremely rude to me.
Another time, I was with my buddy at Toronto City Hall taking picture of “Toronto sign” at the evening. When we set up the camera and be ready to take the sign picture, a white man jumped in front of us with his kids and sat in the sign. We asked him we were there first, and he pretended us invisible and kept talking to his kids. At the end, he talked his kids loudly “don’t talk to strangers because they are not white,” and left. What he said was totally unacceptable and I immediately yelled at him “nobody here wants to talk to you!” At worst, nobody ever came up for help while there are many people around.
Such ignorance issue could go even worse. I went to one of the well known bar located at Church and Wellesley called Woody’s because my friend worked in there. The management team were there and they were all white. All of them only greeted White tourists in town and their white friends in Toronto. I sat next to them and I had no intention for talking to them. I just wanted to talked to my friend working there. Clearly they ignored me because they had no interested in me. However, one of them was aggressive. He stood right to me after I sat there for 10 minutes. He faced other way and pretended I was not there. At worse, his back kept moving toward to and gave me pressure. While his approaching to me closer and closer, I had to push him nicely otherwise I would fall. He was shocked and mad what I did and said to me with attitude, “you had plenty of space there.” Obviously he was not happy what I did to him and embarrassed him. He contracted the security and wanted me to go because his ignorance act embarrassed himself. For the whole night, securities was around me because of what the management ignorance act and they did not work me to stay there because I was not white. My friend noticed and told me after “I wish I could do something.” (Love my friend, who understands me.)
Lots of people in the Toronto region like to ignore and pretend to be nice to certain group of people. Their snotty attitude comes from their personal preference and their belief that “it doesn’t matter to treat random people shitty because they would not say anything.” Their generalization and personal preference does not help the city. Instead, they damage the city reputation. They give people, including tourists, in this city with very bad impression.
People generalization attitude does not limit to the tourists only at all. When it comes to businesses, lots of investors have bad impression to Toronto. When I worked with few investors in Asia, few investors from the UK told me that they would have no interested in investing anything in Toronto. One of them even told me, “Toronto? I don’t give a shit. People in the city are so rude. I have no interested.”
For many people, the city is represented by the people. If the city has lots of ignorance people, it will leave them a bad impression. At worst, it will turn out badly and affects the whole city. I believe it is the time now the city of Toronto to do something (e.g. Educate people in general) on how Torontoians can leave good impression to everyone towards to the city.
