Claiming Space: Racialization in Canadian Cities.

Nanette Morton teaches English at McMaster University in Hamilton.

American geographer Edward Soja has written that physical space is both “a medium and an outcome of social life.” Drawing on theories of human geography and racialization, the authors examine the ways in which Canada’s racial diversity is spatially managed and controlled. As Cheryl Teelucksingh notes in her introduction, space can be either a concrete example of a racial “problem” or a way in which racialized groups assert their identities. One example of the way space is used as a social control is Dundas Square in Toronto. The public space has been privatized and placed under surveillance in order to exclude black youths, who have been stereotyped as criminals. At the same time, however, Dundas Square has been used for Caribana, an officially sanctioned multicultural event. The city thus marginalizes racialized populations even as it celebrates its diversity. Indeed, Teelucksingh writes, the multiculturalism so celebrated by Canadians has a repressive side, since it enables the country to deny the presence of prejudice as it apparently tolerates minorities.

Racialized people are not a fixed group: white ethnic groups have a history of being constructed as “the other” as well. This is acknowledged in two essays, one about Sephardic Jews in Toronto, the other about Calgary’s Greektown. In the former essay, the Sephardim use a Toronto community centre as a space to assert their Jewish identities in a community that is not only overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, but also equates Ashkenazi culture with “authentic” Jewishness. Conflict emerges even within claimed spaces. In “Mapping Greektown,” the author argues that “Greek-Canadian social spaces are contested sites whose meanings shift as the demographics of the community change.” Here, the power of aging patriarchs is being eroded by the younger generation, which is deciding for itself what “Greekness” is.

The study of how race is constructed is still an expanding field, as is the study of socially constructed space. This book is an excellent contribution to both.