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What does "on this side of the border" mean in the following excerpt? What things does the border separate?

Here's what happened. The Ontario Human Rights Commission had settled on a term to use in reference to people of color — "racialized people."

The commission wrote:

"Recognizing that race is a social construct, the Commission describes people as 'racialized person' or 'racialized group' instead of the more outdated and inaccurate terms 'racial minority,' 'visible minority,' 'person of colour' or 'non-White.' "

In turn, Star reporter Natasha Grzincic created a listicle: "5 other labels for people of colour er... non-whites uh ... racialized people." It seemed to be riffing on a common idea that these designations are tortured and overly sensitive.

Some readers complained that Grzincic was making light of the agency's decision, and the story was subsequently removed from the Star's website a few hours later, with a note saying that it did not meet the paper's standards.

On this side of the border, the Army found itself in hot water after it updated its regulations to prevent discrimination, noting that some people who are "black or African-American" might also identify as "Negro." The story was widely reported as Army says 'Negro' is OK to use, and although that's not exactly what happened, the Army felt compelled to issue an apology and remove the motive. (You might recall a similar controversy over "Negro's" appearance on U.S. Census forms that prompted the bureau to announce last year that it would be removed from future questionnaires.)

(From this post)

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    Presumably, the writer lives in the US,not Canada. [I had to check the date on that report; it's so clumsy in its apologetic differentiation as to actually hurt. I fully expected it to be years old, not modern] Nov 9, 2014 at 10:43
  • What @Tetsujin says. Note that this a story from NPR, a US broadcast system. Nov 9, 2014 at 12:03

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As @Tetsujin says in the comments on your question, it's referring to the border between the US and Canada, and in this context it just refers to similar events in the two countries.

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