April 24, 2025 • 48 mins
Why Immigrants?
You'd think we'd learn from history that blaming Immigrants for society's problems is never warranted and never solves any problems - just makes them worse. Yet too many haven't learned...but why? Liana lays it out in simple terms and why and how we can question our illogical urges.
You'd think we'd learn from history that blaming Immigrants for society's problems is never warranted and never solves any problems - just makes them worse. Yet too many haven't learned...but why? Liana lays it out in simple terms and why and how we can question our illogical urges.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty AM or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. Hello listeners
around the world on radio, streaming and podcast services. This
is this not therapy. I'm Leanna Kersner, and I am
(00:29):
not a therapist, but I am your source for navigating
the madness of mental health using my top ten sayings
for going good crazy. This week, I'm going to talk
about something that's been affecting me a lot personally, and
it's it's been doing a bit of a number on
my mood, and it may upset some other people to
(00:50):
talk about it, and I assure you my intent isn't
to upset anyone. It's to make people take a moment
to consider what's really driving their own decision making in
the hopes of people making better, fairer choices. Because everybody's
mental health has been taken a knock lately, I think,
(01:12):
right we're all under additional stress. So why put more
out there and bad choices lead to regret. Regret doesn't
lead to happiness unless you do something about it to
get closure on the regret. So I'm going to talk
about a difficult topic, anti immigrant bias. What does this
have to do with mental health? Like I said, it
(01:34):
says deeper things about the way we make decisions, and
that's why I think it's useful. There's some concepts we
can talk about to understand better. I've been hearing quite
a few anti immigrant comments of late, usually in the
context of the upcoming Canadian election, the cost of housing,
and various comments about society suffering because something something immigrants.
(01:58):
And it can be a big thing, like violent crime,
it can be a small thing like just petty annoyances.
But I've noticed an uptick, and the statistics on things
like Islamophobia bear me out. The thing that struck me
is these comments, these anti immigrant comments aren't coming from
(02:22):
the usual suspects. They aren't coming from people you think
of as nationalists or supremacists, right, They're coming from people
whose loved ones are immigrants. So the comments jump from
immigrants in general to a certain kind of immigrant, usually
with brown skin, and you know, some connection to Islam.
Occasionally it's Muslim people complaining about you know, Siks or Hindus.
(02:46):
But this has been something I've observed my entire life.
Though there's documented evidence of the bias against immigrants going
back to at least eighteen ninety six, along with attempts
at disproving the nega of opinions of immigrants with facts. Yeah,
we've been trying to solve this problem with facts since
eighteen ninety six at least, We've been probably trying to
(03:10):
solve this since fourteen ninety two or sooner. You know,
the bearing straight immigrant attitudes, Right, it's this thing. It's
a tale as old as time, and I think we
can say since it's been going on that long, the
facts don't really sway people. The challenge about talking about
(03:31):
anti immigrant sentiment is that it's rooted in a combination
of factors. So you address one, and you can only
address one thing at a time, the person's opinion slides
to another component. You know, people don't like the idea
that they hold xenophobic, even racist views. You're gonna have
a hard time persuading someone that a very strong, emotionally
(03:55):
driven viewpoint doesn't fit the facts, because in a battle
of emotion and facts, emotions win every time, no matter
how strong the facts are. Now, what's going on with
these emotions? The three main psychological concepts of I've noticed
(04:15):
and the data is really murky because you look up
papers on this and it's things like okay, here are
the facts. Like I said, the facts don't work. What's
driving it? The three main psychological concepts underlying negative attitudes
towards immigrants are something called in group bias, something called
confirmation bias that you're probably more familiar with, and of
(04:38):
course resistance to change the good news. When it comes
to persuading people, is it that racism and xenophobia these
are likely byproducts of these three types of bias, in
group bias, confirmation bias. I'm resistant to change, not the cost.
Now the reason I say that's good yay. Racism is
(04:58):
a symptom, not the cause. Well have you ever tried
to tell someone, hey, that thing you just said that's racist?
How many times did they just go, you're right, thank
you for telling me right? They usually freak out. They
usually it becomes very confrontational because, and this is documented,
(05:21):
people think, well, racism is bad and I'm a good person,
so I can't be racist. You must be wrong, and
why are you being mean to me with this wrong statement.
It's completely counter to logic, and a lot of people
are probably nodding their heads because yep, yep, that's exactly
(05:41):
the reaction they got. Now, this is an example that
you know, hypothetical series of thoughts. This is an example
of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out,
give more weight to, and re member information in a
(06:02):
way that confirms or supports our prior beliefs or values. Basically,
that's a long way of saying people look for stuff
that agrees with them and downplace stuff that doesn't. So
if you just go and suggest your friend's attitudes towards
immigration or racist, they're gonna instantly recall examples of when
(06:23):
they weren't racist, they were the opposite of racist. And
so that's proof you're wrong. Maybe you're the real racist, buddy, right.
Confirmation biases at play when someone uses a single news
story or a handful of news stories to prove immigrants
or trans people or white boys are dangerous. And I
(06:46):
throw in white boys because have you heard about this Netflix?
Show Adolescence, because I've heard a lot about it, to
the point that I started watching it essence as a
four part standalone drama produced in the United Kingdom, and
I was asked for my opinions by people online, so
(07:08):
I gave them, and I immediately got comments insisting that
the show was whitewashing immigrant crimes. Some very loud voices
on the Internet seemed to think that this show Adolescence
was inspired by the stabbing in Southport, UK of girls
at a Taylor Swift inspired dance party. They they think
(07:29):
that this show Adolescence was inspired by this real life,
horrible act of violence. Here's the problem. Adolescence went into
pre production in February of twenty twenty four, meaning at
that point they already had the concept and the script
was already written. The Southport stabbings took place in July
(07:54):
of twenty twenty four, which means it's not possible that
it was inspired by that stabbing unless UK screenwriters can
time travel like Doctor Who Now. Probably not. It's probably
it had nothing to do with that. It doesn't matter
to most people that the Southport stabber wasn't an immigrant.
(08:16):
He was born in Cardiff, which is part of the UK.
But his parents, well they were from Rwanda and the
killer was black. That's enough for some people to go immigrant,
and no amount of pointing out that he was not
an immigrant will satisfy them. First they saw that he
(08:38):
was an immigrant online. Then his parents were immigrants, and
he's evil, so it must be the immigration, right. That
is a combination of prejudice, But also once people get
convinced of something and they've changed their minds, like, oh,
it's so horrible, getting them to change it back a space,
(09:00):
specially when it, you know, makes them look kind of
sort of racist. That's very, very hard to do. But
it gets worse. It gets worse because the reason that
this show Adolescence has tongues wagon everywhere is that it
centers on a white thirteen year old boy from a
(09:22):
white middle class family who stabbed a white female classmate.
Because the white character bears some similar biographical information to
you know, real life criminals, people fallaciously argue that it's
based on a specific event, right, instead of the show
(09:46):
just leaning on common conceptions of what leads a nice
white boy from a nice white family to commit murder.
And some of these conceptions are wrong. For instance, the
show suggests that bullying was part of this thirteen year
(10:07):
old's motive. There's no really good evidence that being bullied
makes a teenager more likely to kill anybody. In fact,
the people who show more of a propensity to violence
are well shouldn't be surprising the bullies. In fact, adults
(10:27):
who were bullied as youths show greater reactivity to witnessing
violence than those who were not bullied. That means they
like violence less than the average person. Right, the greatest
predictor of homicide is growing up around violence, prior criminal
activity and a personal history of violence, and even those
(10:48):
are modest predictors because well, homicides are relatively rare. But
if you follow a lot of these what we call
juvenile cases but they involved teens, there there were warning signs.
It didn't just come out of nowhere. But this show
(11:08):
has taken the UK by storm. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer,
he said this show should be shown in schools. It's
supposed to be targeted at reducing violent misogyny. But of course,
in the second episode of the show, the show still
has a scene where a black female student snaps and
beats up a white male schoolmate with the police standing
(11:32):
right there. I had my head in my hands at
the time. It's like really really. Of course, the usual
suspects object to these screening in schools. You know Boris Johnson,
remember him, Elon Musk Yep, him too. My concern with
(11:54):
the show being shown in schools and being this thing
pushed on parents is that it makes these things sound
certain and universal when they're not parents listening. There's no
standardization regarding the meanings of colored heart emojis. Don't look
(12:15):
up what different colors of hearts mean in emojis. Don't
look them up online. There will be different meanings on
different lists. They're probably wrong, and if they weren't wrong
before this, they're wrong now because the whole point of
teenagers speaking to each other in code is that their
parents don't know what they're saying. This has been a
(12:38):
thing about teenagers for a while now. But this idea
that oh I can watch a show and know what
these things that could harm my child art no no, no, no, no,
there's no shortcut, right you have to they say, talk
to your team, talk to your teen. But talking to
(12:58):
your teen these days, a lot of us like, what's
your it's cool, I don't know stuff. Well, what was
the highlight of your day? Oh? No, something right. Teens
are not exactly forthcoming with information. You have to take
opportunities to listen. But people don't want the uncertainty of
(13:20):
spend your more time with your kid and they might
open up to you. No. No, people like certainty, not
the uncertainty of maybe definitely, because definitely makes life easy.
And people don't really care that data has shown for
decades that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than
(13:43):
people born in the US or Canada, because well, if
that's not the source of crime, then the source of
crime is a lot more difficult. Hey, well, okay, maybe
it's not the only source of crime, but it's an
easy part to deal with, right, And even if you
can talk them down from that bit of doublethink, at
(14:08):
this point in the conversation, the anti immigrant person likely
pivots to another thing they don't like about immigrants without
conceding that they were wrong about the accusation of criminality. Why.
I'll get to that after the break. Do you have
a story you think would be good for the show?
Are you interested in sponsoring the show? Leanna at Nottherapyshow
(14:29):
dot com. Not therapyshow dot com is my website that first.
Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com was my email at
not Therapy Show on social media. We'll be back after
this talking why people don't like immigrants and they don't
like you try to change their minds.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
After this, No Radio, No Problem stream is live on
SAGA ninety six am dot C.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and to not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two one one or
go to two one one dot CA. We're back in
us a therapy. I'm still in a cursoner. I'm still
not a therapist. We're still talking about immigrants, why people
(15:18):
hate on them so hard, and the psychological concepts underpinning that.
Before the break, I talked about the fact that anti
immigrants sentiment any bigotry. Quite frankly, it's an emotional reaction,
not a logical one. But there are trends that we
can look at and we can appeal to. Right. It's
a combination of in group bias, confirmation bias, and resistance
(15:42):
to change. Now, we talked about how people use high
profile crimes to confirm their anti immigrant bias, even though
the statistic is that immigrants are far less likely to
commit crimes. Some statistics I've seen are sixty percent less
likely to commit any crimes. Granted that's going to be
(16:04):
different region to region, right. Not only that, we talked
about how recent sensational homicides were claimed to be the
work of immigrants even though they weren't. I always struggle
with that part, Right, why do people care more if
(16:25):
it's an immigrant that harmed somebody? I don't get why
murder is more bad or less bad based on a
person's place of birth. Murder's bad no matter who does it.
And putting blame in the wrong place because oh, if
it's an immigrant, Oh they're different from us, we don't
(16:47):
have to take a look at what we're doing. Right.
That doesn't solve the problem because it's wrong. But confirmation
bias is powerful, really power. So people tend to remember
that violent anecdote about immigrants, that single piece of evidence
(17:08):
that doesn't fit the trend. They're less persuaded by how
much immigrants fuel are social services are tax based. There's
been a few articles lately about how some doctors in
the US are thinking about moving to Canada. And guess
what those doctors will be immigrants? Oh, but not those
(17:29):
kinds of immigrants, right, And that's when this whole discussion
gets icky. When we dig into the good kinds of
immigrants versus bad kinds of immigrants, it really does seem
like an issue not of country of origin, but different races, religions,
cultures and languages, right, not migration per se. Now, I'm
(17:51):
going to give you some facts about immigrants, true facts,
a triple check these, and I suspect it won't sway
some people at all. Right, Refugees who arrived in Canada
as children have a higher completion rate of high school, college,
university and graduate degrees compared to children born in Canada.
(18:14):
That's a statistic shown refugees are good. See, but somebody
with confirmation bias is going to see you see they're
keeping our kids out of the best schools. Here's another one.
As of twenty twenty one, immigrants accounted for one out
of every four healthcare sector workers in Canada seventy excuse me,
(18:35):
thirty seven percent of pharmacists, thirty six percent of physicians,
thirty nine percent of dentists, twenty three percent of registered
nurses and thirty five percent of nursing aids and personal
support workers related occupations. Now, even though we still have
a healthcare worker shortage, despite all that, you'll hear some
(18:57):
people complaining about the declining quality of healthcare workers because
of immigration. Right, you can twist the fact to fit
the pre existing framing. Right. Another one, immigrants make up
thirty four percent of people working in scientific research and
(19:19):
development across Canada. When I bring up that one, people
point to the handful of these workers who tuned out
to be spice. If you want any sort of public
pension when you retire, the argument goes, we need immigrants.
The statistic is in nineteen seventy one, Canada's worker to
retire e ratio was seven to one, meaning seven working
(19:42):
people for everyone retiree in nineteen seventy one. By twenty
thirty five, when five million Canadians are going to retire,
the ratio of worker to retirees is two to one.
So for everyone retiree. If we don't keep our population up,
(20:05):
our social programs become insolvent. That doesn't just mean the
Canada Pension Plan. That means health care, but you hear
more about the drain people perceive that immigrants have on
the system, not what they put into the system. A
big thing that comes up a lot is housing. Immigrants
(20:27):
are driving up the cost of housing. Even the federal
government said so, and that's true. The federal government did
say that things like foreign students, international students were spiking
the price of rental properties. The cost of housing right
now is not high just because of immigration. High interest
(20:48):
rates on mortgages are a big thing. Inflation is driving
up the cost of building materials, their continued supply chain
disruptions which are affecting new housing starts in building. Then
there's zoning laws, but we don't have time to get
into that. And people don't tend to think of international
(21:08):
university students when they think about dangerous, terrible immigrants. Right
Maybe now they're like, oh, they're driving up the price
of housing, but that's not normally the stereotype that people
have in their head. They also don't think of all
those downtowners who panic during COVID and overpaid for houses
(21:29):
outside the city. Yeah, we don't think of those people
as immigrants, and yet they flooded the suburbs in rural
areas with their downtown money, rudeness and pretentiousness. They were
clearly not from around here, but not that kind of immigrant. Right.
None of these fact based art arguments work on someone
(21:52):
with a xenophobic bias because they don't appeal to the
root of where the opinion comes from. It's just so
simple to cling, too easy and wrong the idea if
we just kicked out all the foreigners, things would be better.
(22:12):
This is in group bias at work. In group bias
is powerful, meaning you feel warmly towards people you see
as like you. You feel negatively or less warmly to
people who you see is not like you. In experiments
(22:32):
where people were placed into groups randomly in group bias,
still showed up, and that suggests it's purely emotional. It's
not based on anything really rational. You have the emotional
drive and then you find reasons to back up the
pre existing feeling. Now, March Madness just ended in NAA basketball,
(22:57):
and I had to confront my long standing against Duke University. Yep.
Cooper Flag undoubtedly a great player. The Duke defense was
on godly good, same for its offense. I really thought
they were gonna take it this year. They just seemed unstoppable,
and I was glad when they got eliminated by the
(23:19):
University of Houston in a come from behind. Did anybody
watch that or WHOA? I missed it. I was following
the score on my phone and even then, like I
was happy Houston Houston people beat Duke. The fact that
(23:39):
it was Houston just made it so much more poetic.
And if you don't know why, that's okay, because the
point behind this is I was being pretty prejudiced. It
really should just be about the team who plays best,
they win. They're college students, right. But it's kind of
like the New England Patriots in the NFL. Sports just
(24:00):
has this undeniable undercurrent of class and racial politics woven
through who we emotionally root for. It affects us, and
denying this in group bias, this outgroup intolerance isn't gonna
make us more resistant to these effects. We've got to
be aware of it so that we're not controlled by it.
(24:24):
In short, it's that they not like us. Factor. Now,
people who listen to the show, No, I love that song,
but let's talk. It's not just the apparent privilege, right,
the frustration of teams like you know, the Dude Blue
Devils or the New England Patriots always being in championship contention.
(24:45):
There's this perceived moral judgment, like there's something inherently wrong
about those people that are kind just doesn't get on
with Kendrick. Lamar went there when he referred to Drake
as a colonizer. And even if the metaphor isn't like
technically literally true or kind of even possible for one person,
(25:06):
the emotional weight was there. We got the metaphor. Of course.
Kendrick's more recent music, notably the latest banger, Squabble Up.
I love Squabble Up, but it talks about him not
being the talented upstart anymore. Kendrick's at the top of
his game. Now he played the freakin' super Bowl. There's
(25:27):
nowhere to look up, no one to look up to.
Now what well? Now he samples that remember that song
from nineteen eighty two? When I hear music, he makes
me nat He samples that white, white white music. It
is tracks. I thought that was very interesting and this
is why people respect Kendrick Lamar. He makes points, the
(25:51):
points don't make him. There's a fine line between trusting
your gut validating your feelings. These are good things. Fine
line between that and being prejudiced, which is obviously not
a good thing. Being discriminating in your thinking is not
the same as discriminating in your actions. And I want
(26:12):
to be clear, I'm not arguing some sort of moral
be kind to others riff here. I'm acknowledging that decisions
made from prejudice are bad decisions. They don't end well
for the people making these decisions in certainly not in
the long run, but often not in the short run. Either.
In group by us makes us selfishly stupid, as opposed
(26:35):
to engaging in rational self interest. Saying we value diversity
of opinion, Saying it is far easier than actually doing it,
because welcoming competing views is tiring, and we only have
so much emotional and mental energy, especially when the people
around us are having strong emotions too. But if you
(26:58):
don't want to be that person I've observed lately I've
listened to who's dating or married to an immigrant? Well,
you're ranting about immigrants wrecking stuff. It's important to keep
an eye on your in group bias, and for those
of you also dealing with these conversations, you may want
to use the term in group bias when talking to
(27:19):
people about their negative attitudes because it's less charged than
dropping the term racism. Again, you won't win an emotional
argument with someone on facts. You certainly won't win an
emotional argument by adding more negative emotion to the argument
In order to get through to someone regarding their anti
immigrant bias or anything like it, anti trans bias, anti
(27:43):
gay bias, anti duke bias. Right, you have to find
a way to make those immigrants move from the not
like us category into the like us category. Points of
commonality lead to integration, A focus on what you think
someone is getting wrong, doesn't I told myself, you know
(28:04):
Cooper Flag, Yeah, he's a he looks like he's like
a basketball nerd. You know, he's basketball autism. I'm not
saying his autism. I'm just saying that that dude he's
like a machine. I'm okay, he's kind of nerdy. And
now he's like me, Okay, now I can be cool
with the guy. It's so stupid and it's so selfish,
(28:25):
but hey, it works, right. This is a he's eighteen,
nineteen years old. Why am I hating on this guy?
He's a kid. Well, legally an adult, you know what
I mean. Now, I'm fortunate because I grew up in
a neighborhood with a large immigrant population. Shout out to
Jane Finch. So immigrants for me are in the like
(28:47):
me category. Now, that's not me trying to claim I'm
better than anyone else. That's an accident to birth. My
upbringing was just different. I had more experience with peers
who had different cultural backgrounds, so it's less of a
change for me when I interact with people from different cultures.
So what are some more tips with dealing with people
(29:08):
who voice anti immigrant views? How can you deal with
anti immigrant fears in yourself? I'll talk more about that
if I can speak after the break. Blah blah Anyway, Questions, comments, concerns.
Leanna at not therapyshow dot com is my email. Not
therapyshow dot com is my website. At not Therapy Show
is my socials would love to hear from me when
we come back. More on anti immigrant bias, what to
(29:29):
do about it and others. End yourself and It's not therapy.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot Ca. We're back in.
It's not therapy. I'm still Leana Kerzner. I'm still not
a therapist. We're still talking about what going on from
(30:01):
a mental health perspective, from a feelings perspective, with anti
immigrant views, what to do if you spot them in
your friends or yourself. Now spring tends to be peak
religious plurality season here in Canada. Ramadan just finished, Passover
starts this weekend Easters on the twentieth, and we're in
(30:23):
an election period, which means the meaning of being a
Canadian is being actively debated. Foreign interference and foreign bullying
are constantly in the news lately, and that's in the
backdrop of the fact that times are just tougher for
many of us, especially financially, than they've ever been. Now,
(30:44):
this is all a perfect combination to produce xenophobia. And
I use the term xenophobia before, but I didn't define it.
Xenophobia is a dislike of anything strange or foreign. Now,
I personal believe that Canada's multiculturalism is a beautiful thing,
and I believe that inclusion is part of the Canadian identity.
(31:08):
But with inclusion comes constant change, and change is hard.
And openness to new experiences is a personality trait that
some people are higher in than others. And I was
not able to confirm that connects to anti immigrant views,
(31:28):
but I think that part of the reason I'm, you know,
okay with this stuff, or maybe I have an openness
to new experience because I grew up around a lot
of immigrants. Chicken egg. I don't know. Right, it's easy
to write off anti immigrant sentiment as some sort of
white nationalism, right, or white supremacy, but every people has
(31:51):
their bigotries. Within a span of a couple of days,
last week, a friend of mine, their partner had just
gotten their po their permanent residency. Right, So this romantic
partner of an immigrant complained rather vehemently about South Asian immigrants. Now,
they're not Arab immigrants, he's they're Arab immigrants, not South Asian.
(32:16):
He's an uber driver. That will be important because the
next day. The next day, someone also married to somebody
who's not white, complained that immigrant uber drivers are menaces
on the road. Yes, the Asian driver's stereotype is back
(32:37):
before that it was women drivers. Right. The complaints don't
seem to change the people they're directed at just seem
to cycle. And there is a cycle. Right. One person
complains about one type of immigrant, and then the type
of immigrant their partner is gets complained about by somebody
else at upsit here going what this is all just emotion?
(32:59):
It's all just emotion because complaining about the other, the
out group, the foreigner, is a hard thing to change.
We know that it's especially hard to change, to stop
doing for people who feel on the margins of the
in group in question. People who are marginalized in a
(33:22):
group are more likely to defend that group, even things
that seem negative. They'll they'll identify with negative stereotypes about
that group to feel more centered in the group because
inherently they're not. Now, I talk about this because of
(33:43):
the marginalizing effect of economic insecurity. When economic times are good,
people are more welcoming and tolerant. When times are tough
and people get scared, while having a live and let
live attitude is a much greater challenge, to say the
leafs and right now, there's a lot of us wondering
(34:05):
can things get any worse? Right? Things are so expensive.
Everyone seems angry. Too many people are directing that anger
at easy targets, and immigrants are a perennial favorite for
easy targets, precisely because they're vulnerable. Right. If you drive
by and y'all go back to where you came from
(34:26):
for somebody, you think you're never gonna see them again.
You're in a car, they're walking. They can't do anything
about it. Right, But they're not the only vulnerable people
in our society. There's the bullied kid in school. They're
very vulnerable. That kid who's okay to pick on. And
now we've added another excuse to be cruel, going back
(34:48):
to the adolescent saying, oh he's an inceel. Yeah, twelve
year olds are getting a hit with the involuntarily celibate insult.
Oh no, it's not about them now, it's they're predicting
the future. They're saying, this boy is not gonna get
laid ever, like what is going on? It's easy to
(35:11):
pick on them because you can. It's a permission structure, right.
It's so easy to bully people online, especially because you
can't see the immediate pain on their faces. But sometimes
the pain is the point. There are some people who
are really lacking in empathy. The pain makes it fun
(35:31):
for them, and one ringleader with these sorts of antisocial
tendencies can skew an entire peer group. The cruelty becomes
the point, because when someone is being cruel, they feel
stronger and less vulnerable. Now here's another personal example, and
(35:51):
this is very petty, and that's why I'm bringing this up.
When I worked in TV, I knew that every time
I showed up to one of the special events, there
was a fifty to fifty chance I'd be left off
the staff list, and it's probably higher than that. More
times than not, I was not on that list, even
though I was working the event. Why because the people
(36:13):
whose job it was to put me on the list
could humiliate me that way. I don't even think it
was because they personally disliked me. Back then, back in
the day, I thought, Wow, these people hate me. But
in hindsight, I don't think they thought much about me
at all. I think I just didn't have any strong
(36:33):
supporters within that company, and it was a toxic company,
so there was this instinct about who is easy prey.
It was that kind of place. I think most of
us have some kind of memory like that. Now. Personally,
my entire life has been like that, going right back
to you know, elementary school grade one, I started well
(36:55):
by kindergarten for junior closed, I went to senior kindergarten.
When senior kindergarten, grade one went to the gifted, skip
grade two right two years in, the gifted came back
because it was too far away. I had to take
the bus at nine years old, not the school bus,
the TTC. So okay, parents didn't want me to do that.
Came back, bounced around, they cut junior high school. It
(37:17):
was just a series of interesting events. I didn't stay
in a school for more than two years at a time,
so I was always the new kid, always the new kid,
every two years, the new kid. Oh. We all have
a choice with what we do with those vulnerable, lonely,
(37:38):
painful memories. We can pay forward the pain and grow
the cruelty economy, or we can say to ourselves, you know,
I didn't like being treated that way, so I'm going
to treat other people better than that. That's the way
I relate to people like immigrants, I know, what it's
like to be new to a place and be vulnerable.
(38:02):
For me, it was just that I didn't speak the slang,
never mind the entire language, you know, But even that
made me easy to pick on. You don't have the
right clothes, you don't have the right hair, you don't
fit in. So I avoid treating people who are like
me that way, in the cruel way that I was
(38:22):
treated way back in high school. I always befriended the
ESL student. Why because I would have liked somebody to
do it for me. Now, I'm sure that the people
I know who express anti immigrant views, they would never
say that to a person's face. Right, there is a
(38:45):
part of us that does grow out of high school.
But I still think it's a good habit to get
out of saying at all. And I'll tell you why.
After the break. I know changes heart, So there has
to be something in it for right, you know, resistance
to change is the reason that this thing just keeps
(39:05):
coming back. So beds after the break in our final segment,
Questions comments concerns Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com. Not
therapyshow dot com is the website at not Therapy Show
on socials. Please please any comments at all, suggestions for shows.
We'll be back after this talking about anti immigrants sentiment
on It's not therapy.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
No Radio, no problem. Stream is live on SAGA ninety
six am dot C.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. We're back
in as the therapy. I'm still the innaccurson, I'm still
not a therapist. And for a change, this week, I
actually balanced the segments fairly decently. Hey go me when
(39:59):
it went long, bit off the top, but here we
are a nice, meaty last segment. And you know I
talked before the break about why, even if you're not
saying anti immigrant things to someone's face who is an immigrant,
why maybe it's a habit you should break because it
(40:20):
comes out of these cognitive distortions, these in group biases.
It's fueled by confirmation bias. All of these things not
only make you a you know, a less proficient critical thinker,
but they also probably leave you unhappy because fear of
(40:42):
the other is just that fear, And if you're going
around living a frightened existence instead of, you know, something
where you make rational risk reward calculations and sort of
act affirmatively and confidently, you're you're gonna be less happy. Right.
(41:04):
The idea of my top ten phrase don't let problems
that aren't your fault lead to mistakes that are. This
really comes up when we talk about our opinions and
treatment of immigrants, because you can't help feeling vulnerable. You
can't help that bad experience you may have had with
a group. You know, if you just feel overwhelmed or
(41:28):
out of place. When you're in a place, you know
that everybody speak in a different language that you don't understand.
I was in a mall a couple of weeks back,
and they were literally speaking Swahili and I didn't understand
a word, but I sat there and I kind of
listened to it, going, Okay, can I pick out anything?
(41:49):
Can I get any sense of inflection or rhythms of
the conversation or anything like that. All I know is
the hot sauce and the mall food court was really
really good, And that was my takeaway. Right, But I
deliberately play games in foreign languages with subtitles, no English
dub And part of it is just keeping up that openness,
(42:12):
openness to new experiences is something tied to a certain
amount of success and a certain amount of a happier outlook,
better mental health. So it's a muscle worth stretching. But
also this is about how that person you're telling these opinions.
(42:40):
You think it's okay because this person isn't an immigrant,
right or certainly not the bad immigrants that we're talking
about here, so it's safe. But you don't know what
that person's background is. And it seems more and more
(43:01):
we have this growing list of reasons to dismiss and
fear and abuse each other, and a dwindling list of
reasons to be decent and kind to each other. We
live in a world of fundamental attribution error. Is this
(43:22):
idea that people do things like they're late for work,
or they make a bad turn in traffic, or you know,
speed or break too fast or whatever because of some
moral or skill issue, not circumstances beyond their control, like
in the case of an uber driver, somebody yelling at
(43:44):
them in the backseat or damaging their car or something
like that. If you've ever talked to an uber driver.
That is not an easy gig, and they make less
and less money at it. But that's a tangent. Anything
that weakens your decision making, moral or otherwise, and leads
(44:06):
you towards the negative is going to get you one
way or another, because our brains seek out what we
feed it. If we're constantly feeding our brain negativity, that's
(44:28):
like junk food, your brain will start to crave it.
It won't feel right unless you're criticizing somebody, unless you're
looking down on someone, and then you get tired, and
then it comes to the end of the day and
you start being hard on yourself, or you may wake
up hard on yourself. And your anti immigrant sentiment is
just deflection and projection of your own bad thoughts about
(44:53):
you onto another person or group. And I personally think
that's why anti immigrant sentiment goes up in tough times.
But we have a choice of how we tackle that problem.
Do we blame the international students and do we focus
a lot of energy and negativity on go back to
(45:15):
where you came from, or do we go, Okay, we've
got a problem, now let's solve it. Let's focus on
solutions instead of blame, and yes, getting viable solutions to
something is a big part, you know. Is the first
(45:36):
step is correctly identifying the problem, like the problem with
me forming my thoughts right there. But if we don't
correctly form the problem and immigrants are not the problem,
immigrants are a solution, albeit imperfect, to the fact that
without them, Canada's population is going to dwindle and they'll
(45:58):
be no one to pay our pensions. And people don't
find that compelling right now, and I understand why they're
trying to make their rent this month, never mind in
forty years when they retire, right, Yes, I've pegged this
person at well, I guess now it'll be like twenty
nine because the retirement age is going to be higher
by the time they hit that age. But you know,
(46:20):
this stuff about pensions and GDP and all this stuff
inflation that can seem overwhelming in itself. That's where the
petty comments about, oh, everybody you know who runs a
restaurant now is a particular ethnic group, even if it's
not their kind of food. And that was when I
(46:42):
heard recently, And I'm like, but isn't that kind of cool,
Like when there's a South Asian person run a Mexican
restaurant or a Chinese restaurant or something like that. I
think that's pretty cool. That's Canada, right, that's awesome. Also,
if I'm really the food for Mexican and Chinese, I
don't care who's working there. Why do we care? Because
(47:07):
it's almost like that is the tangible detail of the
chaos that we're all dealing with lately. And so instead
of outwardly going, oh, you are to blame for the
chaos in my life, instead of that, just go Okay,
I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling like my life is chaotic.
(47:29):
I'm gonna take a minute and validate that. And I'm
going to focus on myself here and validate myself and
soothe myself and take a couple of deep breaths and
tell myself, you know, you're doing the best you can
and it's gonna be enough. Instead of externalizing, deflecting, and
projecting onto other people questions, comments, concerns, Leanna atnthapyshow dot com.
(47:52):
Not therapyshow dot com is the website, but at not
therapy Show is our social media. Again, this apply to
any outgroup. That's why the INN group outgroup is better
than a particular issue. To think about it. How can
you see someone as like you instead of not like you.
(48:12):
That's the game you can play with yourself and it's
kind of fun. It's challenge before you make a judgment.
All right, we'll see how this is. It might sound
a bit crazy, but you know what I'm gonna say,
You're crazy is only a problem if it's hurting you.
Talk next time.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Stream us live at SAGA nine am dot CA.
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty AM or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. Hello listeners
around the world on radio, streaming and podcast services. This
is this not therapy. I'm Leanna Kersner, and I am
(00:29):
not a therapist, but I am your source for navigating
the madness of mental health using my top ten sayings
for going good crazy. This week, I'm going to talk
about something that's been affecting me a lot personally, and
it's it's been doing a bit of a number on
my mood, and it may upset some other people to
(00:50):
talk about it, and I assure you my intent isn't
to upset anyone. It's to make people take a moment
to consider what's really driving their own decision making in
the hopes of people making better, fairer choices. Because everybody's
mental health has been taken a knock lately, I think,
(01:12):
right we're all under additional stress. So why put more
out there and bad choices lead to regret. Regret doesn't
lead to happiness unless you do something about it to
get closure on the regret. So I'm going to talk
about a difficult topic, anti immigrant bias. What does this
have to do with mental health? Like I said, it
(01:34):
says deeper things about the way we make decisions, and
that's why I think it's useful. There's some concepts we
can talk about to understand better. I've been hearing quite
a few anti immigrant comments of late, usually in the
context of the upcoming Canadian election, the cost of housing,
and various comments about society suffering because something something immigrants.
(01:58):
And it can be a big thing, like violent crime,
it can be a small thing like just petty annoyances.
But I've noticed an uptick, and the statistics on things
like Islamophobia bear me out. The thing that struck me
is these comments, these anti immigrant comments aren't coming from
(02:22):
the usual suspects. They aren't coming from people you think
of as nationalists or supremacists, right, They're coming from people
whose loved ones are immigrants. So the comments jump from
immigrants in general to a certain kind of immigrant, usually
with brown skin, and you know, some connection to Islam.
Occasionally it's Muslim people complaining about you know, Siks or Hindus.
(02:46):
But this has been something I've observed my entire life.
Though there's documented evidence of the bias against immigrants going
back to at least eighteen ninety six, along with attempts
at disproving the nega of opinions of immigrants with facts. Yeah,
we've been trying to solve this problem with facts since
eighteen ninety six at least, We've been probably trying to
(03:10):
solve this since fourteen ninety two or sooner. You know,
the bearing straight immigrant attitudes, Right, it's this thing. It's
a tale as old as time, and I think we
can say since it's been going on that long, the
facts don't really sway people. The challenge about talking about
(03:31):
anti immigrant sentiment is that it's rooted in a combination
of factors. So you address one, and you can only
address one thing at a time, the person's opinion slides
to another component. You know, people don't like the idea
that they hold xenophobic, even racist views. You're gonna have
a hard time persuading someone that a very strong, emotionally
(03:55):
driven viewpoint doesn't fit the facts, because in a battle
of emotion and facts, emotions win every time, no matter
how strong the facts are. Now, what's going on with
these emotions? The three main psychological concepts of I've noticed
(04:15):
and the data is really murky because you look up
papers on this and it's things like okay, here are
the facts. Like I said, the facts don't work. What's
driving it? The three main psychological concepts underlying negative attitudes
towards immigrants are something called in group bias, something called
confirmation bias that you're probably more familiar with, and of
(04:38):
course resistance to change the good news. When it comes
to persuading people, is it that racism and xenophobia these
are likely byproducts of these three types of bias, in
group bias, confirmation bias. I'm resistant to change, not the cost.
Now the reason I say that's good yay. Racism is
(04:58):
a symptom, not the cause. Well have you ever tried
to tell someone, hey, that thing you just said that's racist?
How many times did they just go, you're right, thank
you for telling me right? They usually freak out. They
usually it becomes very confrontational because, and this is documented,
(05:21):
people think, well, racism is bad and I'm a good person,
so I can't be racist. You must be wrong, and
why are you being mean to me with this wrong statement.
It's completely counter to logic, and a lot of people
are probably nodding their heads because yep, yep, that's exactly
(05:41):
the reaction they got. Now, this is an example that
you know, hypothetical series of thoughts. This is an example
of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out,
give more weight to, and re member information in a
(06:02):
way that confirms or supports our prior beliefs or values. Basically,
that's a long way of saying people look for stuff
that agrees with them and downplace stuff that doesn't. So
if you just go and suggest your friend's attitudes towards
immigration or racist, they're gonna instantly recall examples of when
(06:23):
they weren't racist, they were the opposite of racist. And
so that's proof you're wrong. Maybe you're the real racist, buddy, right.
Confirmation biases at play when someone uses a single news
story or a handful of news stories to prove immigrants
or trans people or white boys are dangerous. And I
(06:46):
throw in white boys because have you heard about this Netflix?
Show Adolescence, because I've heard a lot about it, to
the point that I started watching it essence as a
four part standalone drama produced in the United Kingdom, and
I was asked for my opinions by people online, so
(07:08):
I gave them, and I immediately got comments insisting that
the show was whitewashing immigrant crimes. Some very loud voices
on the Internet seemed to think that this show Adolescence
was inspired by the stabbing in Southport, UK of girls
at a Taylor Swift inspired dance party. They they think
(07:29):
that this show Adolescence was inspired by this real life,
horrible act of violence. Here's the problem. Adolescence went into
pre production in February of twenty twenty four, meaning at
that point they already had the concept and the script
was already written. The Southport stabbings took place in July
(07:54):
of twenty twenty four, which means it's not possible that
it was inspired by that stabbing unless UK screenwriters can
time travel like Doctor Who Now. Probably not. It's probably
it had nothing to do with that. It doesn't matter
to most people that the Southport stabber wasn't an immigrant.
(08:16):
He was born in Cardiff, which is part of the UK.
But his parents, well they were from Rwanda and the
killer was black. That's enough for some people to go immigrant,
and no amount of pointing out that he was not
an immigrant will satisfy them. First they saw that he
(08:38):
was an immigrant online. Then his parents were immigrants, and
he's evil, so it must be the immigration, right. That
is a combination of prejudice, But also once people get
convinced of something and they've changed their minds, like, oh,
it's so horrible, getting them to change it back a space,
(09:00):
specially when it, you know, makes them look kind of
sort of racist. That's very, very hard to do. But
it gets worse. It gets worse because the reason that
this show Adolescence has tongues wagon everywhere is that it
centers on a white thirteen year old boy from a
(09:22):
white middle class family who stabbed a white female classmate.
Because the white character bears some similar biographical information to
you know, real life criminals, people fallaciously argue that it's
based on a specific event, right, instead of the show
(09:46):
just leaning on common conceptions of what leads a nice
white boy from a nice white family to commit murder.
And some of these conceptions are wrong. For instance, the
show suggests that bullying was part of this thirteen year
(10:07):
old's motive. There's no really good evidence that being bullied
makes a teenager more likely to kill anybody. In fact,
the people who show more of a propensity to violence
are well shouldn't be surprising the bullies. In fact, adults
(10:27):
who were bullied as youths show greater reactivity to witnessing
violence than those who were not bullied. That means they
like violence less than the average person. Right, the greatest
predictor of homicide is growing up around violence, prior criminal
activity and a personal history of violence, and even those
(10:48):
are modest predictors because well, homicides are relatively rare. But
if you follow a lot of these what we call
juvenile cases but they involved teens, there there were warning signs.
It didn't just come out of nowhere. But this show
(11:08):
has taken the UK by storm. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer,
he said this show should be shown in schools. It's
supposed to be targeted at reducing violent misogyny. But of course,
in the second episode of the show, the show still
has a scene where a black female student snaps and
beats up a white male schoolmate with the police standing
(11:32):
right there. I had my head in my hands at
the time. It's like really really. Of course, the usual
suspects object to these screening in schools. You know Boris Johnson,
remember him, Elon Musk Yep, him too. My concern with
(11:54):
the show being shown in schools and being this thing
pushed on parents is that it makes these things sound
certain and universal when they're not parents listening. There's no
standardization regarding the meanings of colored heart emojis. Don't look
(12:15):
up what different colors of hearts mean in emojis. Don't
look them up online. There will be different meanings on
different lists. They're probably wrong, and if they weren't wrong
before this, they're wrong now because the whole point of
teenagers speaking to each other in code is that their
parents don't know what they're saying. This has been a
(12:38):
thing about teenagers for a while now. But this idea
that oh I can watch a show and know what
these things that could harm my child art no no, no, no, no,
there's no shortcut, right you have to they say, talk
to your team, talk to your teen. But talking to
(12:58):
your teen these days, a lot of us like, what's
your it's cool, I don't know stuff. Well, what was
the highlight of your day? Oh? No, something right. Teens
are not exactly forthcoming with information. You have to take
opportunities to listen. But people don't want the uncertainty of
(13:20):
spend your more time with your kid and they might
open up to you. No. No, people like certainty, not
the uncertainty of maybe definitely, because definitely makes life easy.
And people don't really care that data has shown for
decades that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than
(13:43):
people born in the US or Canada, because well, if
that's not the source of crime, then the source of
crime is a lot more difficult. Hey, well, okay, maybe
it's not the only source of crime, but it's an
easy part to deal with, right, And even if you
can talk them down from that bit of doublethink, at
(14:08):
this point in the conversation, the anti immigrant person likely
pivots to another thing they don't like about immigrants without
conceding that they were wrong about the accusation of criminality. Why.
I'll get to that after the break. Do you have
a story you think would be good for the show?
Are you interested in sponsoring the show? Leanna at Nottherapyshow
(14:29):
dot com. Not therapyshow dot com is my website that first.
Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com was my email at
not Therapy Show on social media. We'll be back after
this talking why people don't like immigrants and they don't
like you try to change their minds.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
After this, No Radio, No Problem stream is live on
SAGA ninety six am dot C.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and to not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two one one or
go to two one one dot CA. We're back in
us a therapy. I'm still in a cursoner. I'm still
not a therapist. We're still talking about immigrants, why people
(15:18):
hate on them so hard, and the psychological concepts underpinning that.
Before the break, I talked about the fact that anti
immigrants sentiment any bigotry. Quite frankly, it's an emotional reaction,
not a logical one. But there are trends that we
can look at and we can appeal to. Right. It's
a combination of in group bias, confirmation bias, and resistance
(15:42):
to change. Now, we talked about how people use high
profile crimes to confirm their anti immigrant bias, even though
the statistic is that immigrants are far less likely to
commit crimes. Some statistics I've seen are sixty percent less
likely to commit any crimes. Granted that's going to be
(16:04):
different region to region, right. Not only that, we talked
about how recent sensational homicides were claimed to be the
work of immigrants even though they weren't. I always struggle
with that part, Right, why do people care more if
(16:25):
it's an immigrant that harmed somebody? I don't get why
murder is more bad or less bad based on a
person's place of birth. Murder's bad no matter who does it.
And putting blame in the wrong place because oh, if
it's an immigrant, Oh they're different from us, we don't
(16:47):
have to take a look at what we're doing. Right.
That doesn't solve the problem because it's wrong. But confirmation
bias is powerful, really power. So people tend to remember
that violent anecdote about immigrants, that single piece of evidence
(17:08):
that doesn't fit the trend. They're less persuaded by how
much immigrants fuel are social services are tax based. There's
been a few articles lately about how some doctors in
the US are thinking about moving to Canada. And guess
what those doctors will be immigrants? Oh, but not those
(17:29):
kinds of immigrants, right, And that's when this whole discussion
gets icky. When we dig into the good kinds of
immigrants versus bad kinds of immigrants, it really does seem
like an issue not of country of origin, but different races, religions,
cultures and languages, right, not migration per se. Now, I'm
(17:51):
going to give you some facts about immigrants, true facts,
a triple check these, and I suspect it won't sway
some people at all. Right, Refugees who arrived in Canada
as children have a higher completion rate of high school, college,
university and graduate degrees compared to children born in Canada.
(18:14):
That's a statistic shown refugees are good. See, but somebody
with confirmation bias is going to see you see they're
keeping our kids out of the best schools. Here's another one.
As of twenty twenty one, immigrants accounted for one out
of every four healthcare sector workers in Canada seventy excuse me,
(18:35):
thirty seven percent of pharmacists, thirty six percent of physicians,
thirty nine percent of dentists, twenty three percent of registered
nurses and thirty five percent of nursing aids and personal
support workers related occupations. Now, even though we still have
a healthcare worker shortage, despite all that, you'll hear some
(18:57):
people complaining about the declining quality of healthcare workers because
of immigration. Right, you can twist the fact to fit
the pre existing framing. Right. Another one, immigrants make up
thirty four percent of people working in scientific research and
(19:19):
development across Canada. When I bring up that one, people
point to the handful of these workers who tuned out
to be spice. If you want any sort of public
pension when you retire, the argument goes, we need immigrants.
The statistic is in nineteen seventy one, Canada's worker to
retire e ratio was seven to one, meaning seven working
(19:42):
people for everyone retiree in nineteen seventy one. By twenty
thirty five, when five million Canadians are going to retire,
the ratio of worker to retirees is two to one.
So for everyone retiree. If we don't keep our population up,
(20:05):
our social programs become insolvent. That doesn't just mean the
Canada Pension Plan. That means health care, but you hear
more about the drain people perceive that immigrants have on
the system, not what they put into the system. A
big thing that comes up a lot is housing. Immigrants
(20:27):
are driving up the cost of housing. Even the federal
government said so, and that's true. The federal government did
say that things like foreign students, international students were spiking
the price of rental properties. The cost of housing right
now is not high just because of immigration. High interest
(20:48):
rates on mortgages are a big thing. Inflation is driving
up the cost of building materials, their continued supply chain
disruptions which are affecting new housing starts in building. Then
there's zoning laws, but we don't have time to get
into that. And people don't tend to think of international
(21:08):
university students when they think about dangerous, terrible immigrants. Right
Maybe now they're like, oh, they're driving up the price
of housing, but that's not normally the stereotype that people
have in their head. They also don't think of all
those downtowners who panic during COVID and overpaid for houses
(21:29):
outside the city. Yeah, we don't think of those people
as immigrants, and yet they flooded the suburbs in rural
areas with their downtown money, rudeness and pretentiousness. They were
clearly not from around here, but not that kind of immigrant. Right.
None of these fact based art arguments work on someone
(21:52):
with a xenophobic bias because they don't appeal to the
root of where the opinion comes from. It's just so
simple to cling, too easy and wrong the idea if
we just kicked out all the foreigners, things would be better.
(22:12):
This is in group bias at work. In group bias
is powerful, meaning you feel warmly towards people you see
as like you. You feel negatively or less warmly to
people who you see is not like you. In experiments
(22:32):
where people were placed into groups randomly in group bias,
still showed up, and that suggests it's purely emotional. It's
not based on anything really rational. You have the emotional
drive and then you find reasons to back up the
pre existing feeling. Now, March Madness just ended in NAA basketball,
(22:57):
and I had to confront my long standing against Duke University. Yep.
Cooper Flag undoubtedly a great player. The Duke defense was
on godly good, same for its offense. I really thought
they were gonna take it this year. They just seemed unstoppable,
and I was glad when they got eliminated by the
(23:19):
University of Houston in a come from behind. Did anybody
watch that or WHOA? I missed it. I was following
the score on my phone and even then, like I
was happy Houston Houston people beat Duke. The fact that
(23:39):
it was Houston just made it so much more poetic.
And if you don't know why, that's okay, because the
point behind this is I was being pretty prejudiced. It
really should just be about the team who plays best,
they win. They're college students, right. But it's kind of
like the New England Patriots in the NFL. Sports just
(24:00):
has this undeniable undercurrent of class and racial politics woven
through who we emotionally root for. It affects us, and
denying this in group bias, this outgroup intolerance isn't gonna
make us more resistant to these effects. We've got to
be aware of it so that we're not controlled by it.
(24:24):
In short, it's that they not like us. Factor. Now,
people who listen to the show, No, I love that song,
but let's talk. It's not just the apparent privilege, right,
the frustration of teams like you know, the Dude Blue
Devils or the New England Patriots always being in championship contention.
(24:45):
There's this perceived moral judgment, like there's something inherently wrong
about those people that are kind just doesn't get on
with Kendrick. Lamar went there when he referred to Drake
as a colonizer. And even if the metaphor isn't like
technically literally true or kind of even possible for one person,
(25:06):
the emotional weight was there. We got the metaphor. Of course.
Kendrick's more recent music, notably the latest banger, Squabble Up.
I love Squabble Up, but it talks about him not
being the talented upstart anymore. Kendrick's at the top of
his game. Now he played the freakin' super Bowl. There's
(25:27):
nowhere to look up, no one to look up to.
Now what well? Now he samples that remember that song
from nineteen eighty two? When I hear music, he makes
me nat He samples that white, white white music. It
is tracks. I thought that was very interesting and this
is why people respect Kendrick Lamar. He makes points, the
(25:51):
points don't make him. There's a fine line between trusting
your gut validating your feelings. These are good things. Fine
line between that and being prejudiced, which is obviously not
a good thing. Being discriminating in your thinking is not
the same as discriminating in your actions. And I want
(26:12):
to be clear, I'm not arguing some sort of moral
be kind to others riff here. I'm acknowledging that decisions
made from prejudice are bad decisions. They don't end well
for the people making these decisions in certainly not in
the long run, but often not in the short run. Either.
In group by us makes us selfishly stupid, as opposed
(26:35):
to engaging in rational self interest. Saying we value diversity
of opinion, Saying it is far easier than actually doing it,
because welcoming competing views is tiring, and we only have
so much emotional and mental energy, especially when the people
around us are having strong emotions too. But if you
(26:58):
don't want to be that person I've observed lately I've
listened to who's dating or married to an immigrant? Well,
you're ranting about immigrants wrecking stuff. It's important to keep
an eye on your in group bias, and for those
of you also dealing with these conversations, you may want
to use the term in group bias when talking to
(27:19):
people about their negative attitudes because it's less charged than
dropping the term racism. Again, you won't win an emotional
argument with someone on facts. You certainly won't win an
emotional argument by adding more negative emotion to the argument
In order to get through to someone regarding their anti
immigrant bias or anything like it, anti trans bias, anti
(27:43):
gay bias, anti duke bias. Right, you have to find
a way to make those immigrants move from the not
like us category into the like us category. Points of
commonality lead to integration, A focus on what you think
someone is getting wrong, doesn't I told myself, you know
(28:04):
Cooper Flag, Yeah, he's a he looks like he's like
a basketball nerd. You know, he's basketball autism. I'm not
saying his autism. I'm just saying that that dude he's
like a machine. I'm okay, he's kind of nerdy. And
now he's like me, Okay, now I can be cool
with the guy. It's so stupid and it's so selfish,
(28:25):
but hey, it works, right. This is a he's eighteen,
nineteen years old. Why am I hating on this guy?
He's a kid. Well, legally an adult, you know what
I mean. Now, I'm fortunate because I grew up in
a neighborhood with a large immigrant population. Shout out to
Jane Finch. So immigrants for me are in the like
(28:47):
me category. Now, that's not me trying to claim I'm
better than anyone else. That's an accident to birth. My
upbringing was just different. I had more experience with peers
who had different cultural backgrounds, so it's less of a
change for me when I interact with people from different cultures.
So what are some more tips with dealing with people
(29:08):
who voice anti immigrant views? How can you deal with
anti immigrant fears in yourself? I'll talk more about that
if I can speak after the break. Blah blah Anyway, Questions, comments, concerns.
Leanna at not therapyshow dot com is my email. Not
therapyshow dot com is my website. At not Therapy Show
is my socials would love to hear from me when
we come back. More on anti immigrant bias, what to
(29:29):
do about it and others. End yourself and It's not therapy.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Stream us live at SAGA nine six am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot Ca. We're back in.
It's not therapy. I'm still Leana Kerzner. I'm still not
a therapist. We're still talking about what going on from
(30:01):
a mental health perspective, from a feelings perspective, with anti
immigrant views, what to do if you spot them in
your friends or yourself. Now spring tends to be peak
religious plurality season here in Canada. Ramadan just finished, Passover
starts this weekend Easters on the twentieth, and we're in
(30:23):
an election period, which means the meaning of being a
Canadian is being actively debated. Foreign interference and foreign bullying
are constantly in the news lately, and that's in the
backdrop of the fact that times are just tougher for
many of us, especially financially, than they've ever been. Now,
(30:44):
this is all a perfect combination to produce xenophobia. And
I use the term xenophobia before, but I didn't define it.
Xenophobia is a dislike of anything strange or foreign. Now,
I personal believe that Canada's multiculturalism is a beautiful thing,
and I believe that inclusion is part of the Canadian identity.
(31:08):
But with inclusion comes constant change, and change is hard.
And openness to new experiences is a personality trait that
some people are higher in than others. And I was
not able to confirm that connects to anti immigrant views,
(31:28):
but I think that part of the reason I'm, you know,
okay with this stuff, or maybe I have an openness
to new experience because I grew up around a lot
of immigrants. Chicken egg. I don't know. Right, it's easy
to write off anti immigrant sentiment as some sort of
white nationalism, right, or white supremacy, but every people has
(31:51):
their bigotries. Within a span of a couple of days,
last week, a friend of mine, their partner had just
gotten their po their permanent residency. Right, So this romantic
partner of an immigrant complained rather vehemently about South Asian immigrants. Now,
they're not Arab immigrants, he's they're Arab immigrants, not South Asian.
(32:16):
He's an uber driver. That will be important because the
next day. The next day, someone also married to somebody
who's not white, complained that immigrant uber drivers are menaces
on the road. Yes, the Asian driver's stereotype is back
(32:37):
before that it was women drivers. Right. The complaints don't
seem to change the people they're directed at just seem
to cycle. And there is a cycle. Right. One person
complains about one type of immigrant, and then the type
of immigrant their partner is gets complained about by somebody
else at upsit here going what this is all just emotion?
(32:59):
It's all just emotion because complaining about the other, the
out group, the foreigner, is a hard thing to change.
We know that it's especially hard to change, to stop
doing for people who feel on the margins of the
in group in question. People who are marginalized in a
(33:22):
group are more likely to defend that group, even things
that seem negative. They'll they'll identify with negative stereotypes about
that group to feel more centered in the group because
inherently they're not. Now, I talk about this because of
(33:43):
the marginalizing effect of economic insecurity. When economic times are good,
people are more welcoming and tolerant. When times are tough
and people get scared, while having a live and let
live attitude is a much greater challenge, to say the
leafs and right now, there's a lot of us wondering
(34:05):
can things get any worse? Right? Things are so expensive.
Everyone seems angry. Too many people are directing that anger
at easy targets, and immigrants are a perennial favorite for
easy targets, precisely because they're vulnerable. Right. If you drive
by and y'all go back to where you came from
(34:26):
for somebody, you think you're never gonna see them again.
You're in a car, they're walking. They can't do anything
about it. Right, But they're not the only vulnerable people
in our society. There's the bullied kid in school. They're
very vulnerable. That kid who's okay to pick on. And
now we've added another excuse to be cruel, going back
(34:48):
to the adolescent saying, oh he's an inceel. Yeah, twelve
year olds are getting a hit with the involuntarily celibate insult.
Oh no, it's not about them now, it's they're predicting
the future. They're saying, this boy is not gonna get
laid ever, like what is going on? It's easy to
(35:11):
pick on them because you can. It's a permission structure, right.
It's so easy to bully people online, especially because you
can't see the immediate pain on their faces. But sometimes
the pain is the point. There are some people who
are really lacking in empathy. The pain makes it fun
(35:31):
for them, and one ringleader with these sorts of antisocial
tendencies can skew an entire peer group. The cruelty becomes
the point, because when someone is being cruel, they feel
stronger and less vulnerable. Now here's another personal example, and
(35:51):
this is very petty, and that's why I'm bringing this up.
When I worked in TV, I knew that every time
I showed up to one of the special events, there
was a fifty to fifty chance I'd be left off
the staff list, and it's probably higher than that. More
times than not, I was not on that list, even
though I was working the event. Why because the people
(36:13):
whose job it was to put me on the list
could humiliate me that way. I don't even think it
was because they personally disliked me. Back then, back in
the day, I thought, Wow, these people hate me. But
in hindsight, I don't think they thought much about me
at all. I think I just didn't have any strong
(36:33):
supporters within that company, and it was a toxic company,
so there was this instinct about who is easy prey.
It was that kind of place. I think most of
us have some kind of memory like that. Now. Personally,
my entire life has been like that, going right back
to you know, elementary school grade one, I started well
(36:55):
by kindergarten for junior closed, I went to senior kindergarten.
When senior kindergarten, grade one went to the gifted, skip
grade two right two years in, the gifted came back
because it was too far away. I had to take
the bus at nine years old, not the school bus,
the TTC. So okay, parents didn't want me to do that.
Came back, bounced around, they cut junior high school. It
(37:17):
was just a series of interesting events. I didn't stay
in a school for more than two years at a time,
so I was always the new kid, always the new kid,
every two years, the new kid. Oh. We all have
a choice with what we do with those vulnerable, lonely,
(37:38):
painful memories. We can pay forward the pain and grow
the cruelty economy, or we can say to ourselves, you know,
I didn't like being treated that way, so I'm going
to treat other people better than that. That's the way
I relate to people like immigrants, I know, what it's
like to be new to a place and be vulnerable.
(38:02):
For me, it was just that I didn't speak the slang,
never mind the entire language, you know, But even that
made me easy to pick on. You don't have the
right clothes, you don't have the right hair, you don't
fit in. So I avoid treating people who are like
me that way, in the cruel way that I was
(38:22):
treated way back in high school. I always befriended the
ESL student. Why because I would have liked somebody to
do it for me. Now, I'm sure that the people
I know who express anti immigrant views, they would never
say that to a person's face. Right, there is a
(38:45):
part of us that does grow out of high school.
But I still think it's a good habit to get
out of saying at all. And I'll tell you why.
After the break. I know changes heart, So there has
to be something in it for right, you know, resistance
to change is the reason that this thing just keeps
(39:05):
coming back. So beds after the break in our final segment,
Questions comments concerns Leanna at not Therapyshow dot com. Not
therapyshow dot com is the website at not Therapy Show
on socials. Please please any comments at all, suggestions for shows.
We'll be back after this talking about anti immigrants sentiment
on It's not therapy.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
No Radio, no problem. Stream is live on SAGA ninety
six am dot C.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
The following program is a peer to peer advice show
and does not diagnose mental health conditions. If you're seeking
social services, please call or text two to one one
or go to two one one dot CA. We're back
in as the therapy. I'm still the innaccurson, I'm still
not a therapist. And for a change, this week, I
actually balanced the segments fairly decently. Hey go me when
(39:59):
it went long, bit off the top, but here we
are a nice, meaty last segment. And you know I
talked before the break about why, even if you're not
saying anti immigrant things to someone's face who is an immigrant,
why maybe it's a habit you should break because it
(40:20):
comes out of these cognitive distortions, these in group biases.
It's fueled by confirmation bias. All of these things not
only make you a you know, a less proficient critical thinker,
but they also probably leave you unhappy because fear of
(40:42):
the other is just that fear, And if you're going
around living a frightened existence instead of, you know, something
where you make rational risk reward calculations and sort of
act affirmatively and confidently, you're you're gonna be less happy. Right.
(41:04):
The idea of my top ten phrase don't let problems
that aren't your fault lead to mistakes that are. This
really comes up when we talk about our opinions and
treatment of immigrants, because you can't help feeling vulnerable. You
can't help that bad experience you may have had with
a group. You know, if you just feel overwhelmed or
(41:28):
out of place. When you're in a place, you know
that everybody speak in a different language that you don't understand.
I was in a mall a couple of weeks back,
and they were literally speaking Swahili and I didn't understand
a word, but I sat there and I kind of
listened to it, going, Okay, can I pick out anything?
(41:49):
Can I get any sense of inflection or rhythms of
the conversation or anything like that. All I know is
the hot sauce and the mall food court was really
really good, And that was my takeaway. Right, But I
deliberately play games in foreign languages with subtitles, no English
dub And part of it is just keeping up that openness,
(42:12):
openness to new experiences is something tied to a certain
amount of success and a certain amount of a happier outlook,
better mental health. So it's a muscle worth stretching. But
also this is about how that person you're telling these opinions.
(42:40):
You think it's okay because this person isn't an immigrant,
right or certainly not the bad immigrants that we're talking
about here, so it's safe. But you don't know what
that person's background is. And it seems more and more
(43:01):
we have this growing list of reasons to dismiss and
fear and abuse each other, and a dwindling list of
reasons to be decent and kind to each other. We
live in a world of fundamental attribution error. Is this
(43:22):
idea that people do things like they're late for work,
or they make a bad turn in traffic, or you know,
speed or break too fast or whatever because of some
moral or skill issue, not circumstances beyond their control, like
in the case of an uber driver, somebody yelling at
(43:44):
them in the backseat or damaging their car or something
like that. If you've ever talked to an uber driver.
That is not an easy gig, and they make less
and less money at it. But that's a tangent. Anything
that weakens your decision making, moral or otherwise, and leads
(44:06):
you towards the negative is going to get you one
way or another, because our brains seek out what we
feed it. If we're constantly feeding our brain negativity, that's
(44:28):
like junk food, your brain will start to crave it.
It won't feel right unless you're criticizing somebody, unless you're
looking down on someone, and then you get tired, and
then it comes to the end of the day and
you start being hard on yourself, or you may wake
up hard on yourself. And your anti immigrant sentiment is
just deflection and projection of your own bad thoughts about
(44:53):
you onto another person or group. And I personally think
that's why anti immigrant sentiment goes up in tough times.
But we have a choice of how we tackle that problem.
Do we blame the international students and do we focus
a lot of energy and negativity on go back to
(45:15):
where you came from, or do we go, Okay, we've
got a problem, now let's solve it. Let's focus on
solutions instead of blame, and yes, getting viable solutions to
something is a big part, you know. Is the first
(45:36):
step is correctly identifying the problem, like the problem with
me forming my thoughts right there. But if we don't
correctly form the problem and immigrants are not the problem,
immigrants are a solution, albeit imperfect, to the fact that
without them, Canada's population is going to dwindle and they'll
(45:58):
be no one to pay our pensions. And people don't
find that compelling right now, and I understand why they're
trying to make their rent this month, never mind in
forty years when they retire, right, Yes, I've pegged this
person at well, I guess now it'll be like twenty
nine because the retirement age is going to be higher
by the time they hit that age. But you know,
(46:20):
this stuff about pensions and GDP and all this stuff
inflation that can seem overwhelming in itself. That's where the
petty comments about, oh, everybody you know who runs a
restaurant now is a particular ethnic group, even if it's
not their kind of food. And that was when I
(46:42):
heard recently, And I'm like, but isn't that kind of cool,
Like when there's a South Asian person run a Mexican
restaurant or a Chinese restaurant or something like that. I
think that's pretty cool. That's Canada, right, that's awesome. Also,
if I'm really the food for Mexican and Chinese, I
don't care who's working there. Why do we care? Because
(47:07):
it's almost like that is the tangible detail of the
chaos that we're all dealing with lately. And so instead
of outwardly going, oh, you are to blame for the
chaos in my life, instead of that, just go Okay,
I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling like my life is chaotic.
(47:29):
I'm gonna take a minute and validate that. And I'm
going to focus on myself here and validate myself and
soothe myself and take a couple of deep breaths and
tell myself, you know, you're doing the best you can
and it's gonna be enough. Instead of externalizing, deflecting, and
projecting onto other people questions, comments, concerns, Leanna atnthapyshow dot com.
(47:52):
Not therapyshow dot com is the website, but at not
therapy Show is our social media. Again, this apply to
any outgroup. That's why the INN group outgroup is better
than a particular issue. To think about it. How can
you see someone as like you instead of not like you.
(48:12):
That's the game you can play with yourself and it's
kind of fun. It's challenge before you make a judgment.
All right, we'll see how this is. It might sound
a bit crazy, but you know what I'm gonna say,
You're crazy is only a problem if it's hurting you.
Talk next time.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Stream us live at SAGA nine am dot CA.
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