Once in a while, a story hits the traditional media about some nasty hate-mongering Web site hanging out there in cyberspace where young people or other impressionable minds could find it. It's true that such things do get established, but it seems to me that they're greatly eclipsed by the number of sites that either actively promote tolerance or provide a forum where people within an ethnic group can discuss common problems (and people from outside the group can drop by and learn something). And then there are all those self-selected communities that are based on some kind of shared interest (a TV show, author, hobby, job at McDonald's, or whatever) and thus are usually colourblind.

All of these on-line venues provide opportunities for communication and challenging preju?dices, a means for people to meet mind to mind on neutral ground. It's difficult to dislike someone retroactively on some generalized, arbitrary basis when you've already considered or accepted one of their opinions. Communicating via the Internet also frees people up from their herd instinct (the tendency to follow the dominant personality in the room) because typing your thoughts focuses you down into yourself.

Sure, some people are too weak-minded to develop their own thoughts, and they simply parrot the opinions of whoever last influenced them, while others have no capacity to analyze or challenge their prejudices and have to seek out similarly close-minded people in order to reinforce their beliefs, but, in general, people who are smart enough to use the Internet have the potential to learn new things. Here, then, are a few Web sites that might prove useful for that purpose.

Let's begin with a variety of Asian North American community sites. The Web zine ModelMinority (www.modelminority.com/) calls itself “a guide for Asian American Empowerment” and features more than 1,000 archived articles divided into categories like academia, history, identity, music, politics, society, theatre, families, and law. It welcomes submissions and offers a chat room, discussion forums, a news-headline feed, and highlights from other media outlets. Azine, the Asian American Movement E-zine (www.aamovement.net/), is a little more activist in nature, as indicated by the tag line “Progressive Radical & Revolutionary Asian American Perspectives”. Then there's JADE Magazine (www.jademagazine.com/), which is from the U.S. but attempts to provide a North America–wide perspective on issues and lifestyle matters for Asian women.

Like JADE, ModelMinority and Azine are from the U.S. and are largely concerned with American events. Ricepaper, though, is a B.C.–based quarterly print magazine with a promotional Web presence that also offers news updates (www.ricepaperonline.com/). The editorial focus is artistic and cultural, although you have to track the actual magazine down on the stands to get the full content (or subscribe via the Web site). Similarly, the San Francisco–based print magazine Hyphen (www.hyphenmagazine.com/) features the arts but puts politics more prominently in the mix and also offers on-line community features such as a blog. However, the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop (www.asiancanadianwriters workshop.com/), which is involved in Ricepaper, does offer Asian Canadian (www.asiancanadian.net/), a frequently updated news and events site with considerable archives dating back to January 2004 and a list serv that members can send out announcements to.

And now here are some sites taking a bigger-picture view of the surprisingly complicated issue of getting along with each other. Tolerance.ca (www.tolerance.ca/) is a Web zine primarily created by a roster of academics from various disciplines, along with a sprinkling of authors, journalists, and students. The site proclaims it is “independent and neutral with regard to all political and religious orientations”, and “aims to promote awareness of the major democratic principles on which tolerance is based”, and offers a remarkable amount of content in French and English, including profiles of “Great Promoters of Tolerance”.

The Metropolis Project (www.metropolis.net/) is an international forum for research and policy on migrations, diversity, and changing cities that is comanaged from centres in Canada and Holland. (The large Canadian section is at can www.ada.metropolis.net/.) Developed as “a forum for bridging research, policy and practice on migration and diversity”, it promotes the use of that information by governments (and nongovernmental organizations). It also convenes international conferences that it claims are the largest annual gathering of experts on these issues.

The Canadian Council on Social Development (www.ccsd.ca/) is a nongovernmental agency founded back in 1920 with a mission to “develop and promote progressive social policies inspired by social justice, equality and the empowerment of individuals and communities”. It releases a variety of publications and is a good source of statistics, research, and media resources, and it hosts several subsites focused on issues like crime prevention through social development and social inclusion.

The Canadian Race Relations Foundation (www.crr.ca/) is a Crown corporation that receives no federal money and “is committed to building a national framework for the fight against racism in Canadian society”. The Web site is updated daily. Other noteworthy sites are the Human Rights Internet (www.hri.ca/), CulturesCanada (www.culturescanada.ca/), Canadian Heritage (www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/), and Culturescope (www.culturescope.ca/).