The point I was making is that unless there is a reason NOT to assimilate, people DO assimilate--not necessarily a bad thing, but it's different in Canada maybe. As a country, existing Canadians expect people to assimilate. And people do. Much as we'd expect to do the same elsewhere.

Assimilation only works if the people who are going to be assimilated are happy about that. To be happy, they must have been sharing in the decisions of government. Look at your government--or mine for example: Ain't too much 'dark' in the bleachers. (Canada has a native North American population that is about 5% of its 33 million people. There ain't all that much 'red' in the bleachers either.) That is a strong indication that dark people are maybe not WELcome there. They have been and are left out of the process.

There are of course other layers of stuff that add to and compound the problems. Finances, degree of isolation both as a group and as individuals within the group, ease of access to the language (mostly English in Canada but with a large French population also) and it often means means that a valuable segment of the population is just not represented in government. Poor people are never represented by other poor people. Native peopl are not represented by other native people. We have a bloody glut of lawyers and rich folks represented though. So, in brief, I assert that there IS racism at work--at least in Canada, and I suspect there is in the USA, too.