Ismailis in the News: Mohamed Dhanani – son of immigrant parents – Ismaili Muslims of Indian descent

National

‘We looked around and we saw the ceiling’

Despite the success earned in Canada, Mohamed Dhanani still tends to feel like an outsider. Many immigrants can relate, writes ANTHONY REINHART

The Toronto area is Canada’s capital of diversity, with visible minorities expected to form more than half the population within a decade. Yet new research suggests visible minorities are feeling less connected to Canada, and the next generation seems to feel even less of a bond with the country. In a series of stories this week, The Globe explores this phenomenon and its possible solutions.

With a wide-open view 18 storeys above Toronto, Mohamed Dhanani’s condominium befits his status as an accomplished young professional.

As owner of a pharmacy that more or less runs itself in British Columbia, Mr. Dhanani, 35, can now afford to cast about for new opportunities, including a career in politics — he came a close second in a 15-candidate ward race in November’s municipal election, and is now being courted by provincial and federal parties.

Clearly, Canada has been good to the son of immigrant parents — Ismaili Muslims of Indian descent — who were forced to flee persecution in Tanzania in 1976.

Appreciative as he is of his success, Mr. Dhanani says it masks a less pleasant truth about the struggles of non-white second-generation Canadians to feel they belong in their own country.

There’s a darker reason he and his five or six closest friends, who are also children of visible-minority immigrants, have all left corporate jobs and gone into business for themselves, and why Mr. Dhanani is getting into politics:

“We looked around,” he says, “and we saw the ceiling.”

Mr. Dhanani’s observation fits with the findings of a landmark study released last week, which reveals that non-white immigrants are slower to integrate into Canadian society than their white European counterparts, and that their children often feel even less connected to Canada.

That last part might sound counterintuitive given the abundance of options available to the second generation compared with their parents. But it’s that very abundance that raises the children’s expectations above those of their elders, who are often happy just to meet their families’ basic survival needs, Mr. Dhanani says.

When those high expectations brush up against even higher barriers, the sense of alienation rises.

“There’s always this feeling of needing to continue to prove yourself,” says Mr. Dhanani, who earned a master’s degree in public health from Yale University, along with a mountain of debt in student loans, since paid. “No matter how strong your résumé, sometimes it’s hard to get beyond your name and skin colour.”

To be sure, Canada’s celebrated traditions of multiculturalism, freedom and peace have underwritten much of Mr. Dhanani’s success; they allowed him to retain ties to the 350,000-strong Muslim community in Toronto, which he drew on for encouragement to pursue higher education, while his mother — whose husband left a few years after their arrival in Canada — supported her four kids by scrubbing pots and pans in a Toronto nursing home.

Mohamed Dhanani ran for city council in Ward 26, Don Valley West, in the recent Toronto municipal election. (Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail)

Mr. Dhanani also took early advantage of chances to earn money, starting with a paper route at the age of 10, followed by stints as a DJ, high-school trip organizer and telemarketer — though he was advised to tell customers “it’s Moe calling” to ensure more sales.

His hard work at Toronto’s Ryerson University earned him an undergraduate degree in business and entry to prestigious Yale, after which he was offered one of two prized internships at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Trouble was, the four-month work term was unpaid, and he couldn’t afford to borrow thousands more for the privilege. The second student — from an established, affluent family — had no such concern, and wound up with a full-time job at the WHO after the internship.

It’s that kind of ceiling, subtle as it is, that many second-generation non-whites still hit all too frequently in business, media, government, academia and politics.

“Job opportunities come up based on who you know, based on networks,” Mr. Dhanani says. “It’s a self-reinforcing structure right now, and that’s why the visible minorities who break through are celebrated in their communities.”

The study’s revelation of second-generation alienation suggests that Canada — despite opening its front door to millions of visible-minority immigrants — has been too slow to unlock all the rooms inside.

Mr. Dhanani is convinced that the country’s prosperity and security will depend on finding a way to do that, lest it face the ethnic unrest that has beset Europe in the past few years.

“What we’re seeing in France and the U.K. is the acting out of this deep sense of disconnectedness that the second generation is feeling,” he says. “In Toronto, if we just keep going down this path, we’re going to be where France and the U.K. are, 10 years from now.”

Mr. Dhanani, who nonetheless believes Canada is in the best position to steer around those problems, says he is exploring politics for that very reason. His strong finish in the November city elections, just 214 votes behind the winner, John Parker, a former Progressive Conservative MPP, gives him hope.

“My aspiration is not to be a second-class citizen in this country; it’s to be a first-class citizen,” Mr. Dhanani says. “Access to that table is what citizenship means to me; that’s citizenship, and right now, there’s not enough access to that table.”

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