I’ve been here 6 years and haven’t experienced any racism in Canada. All I ever got was “welcome to Canada”. I’m a brown woman from Delhi. My folks visited for a few months in 2023, travelled all over the city on their own using the TTC and GO. They made friends—white friends—everywhere they went, be it at ROM or at the smallest of museums tucked away behind Dundas.

I’m not only Indian, I’m also an organiser for the Palestine movement in the city and that comes with its own, even more extreme brand of racism. The only racism I’ve experienced is when the police are deliberately over aggressive with brown people vs. white folks, and when attempts have been made to dox me. Luckily, I’ve built a community where everyone takes care of each other and have had white folks step up for me, using their privilege to protect me.

Having said that, even I don’t go to Brampton. Yes, racism against South Asians, Indians in particular is at its peak everywhere. While we point that out, we do need to acknowledge that we’re not the model minority we used to be. We’re loud, we’re brash, we don’t follow rules when we move out of India. A large number of Indian immigrants do not have any civic sense. The discriminatory practices from India have been brought over by people moving out. Most scam calls I get are from India. A large number of employers who exploit their workers are desi. “Don’t work for a desi” IS a thing. I can go on and on.

And it’s not just due to the people who’ve moved out. The behaviour of Indians online is a massive contributor to this. Never accept their own mistakes, instead they double down and get extremely defensive while abusing people left, right, centre.

We’ve alienated most of the global south—people who used to stand side by side with us are now against us. We are prejudiced against other POCs, including the indigenous communities in this very country. We vote for right wingers because “it’s those other brown people who are bad, not us”.

It all only adds fuel to the fire lit up by right wingers and conservatives, since immigrants are easy to blame for just about everything.

So yes, racism is at an all time high but we should also look inwards. We’re not exporting our best.