Articles of interest over the holidays – Multiculturalism
2020/01/06 Leave a comment
CRRF/Environics Racism Survey
When racist incidents in Canada grab public attention, they usually provoke two reactions: general condemnation, then a resolution to finally start a serious conversation about race relations in this country. Then the moment passes and our interest drifts – until the next incident repeats the cycle.
A new survey provides fresh insights on race relations in Canada that have the potential to jump-start this much-needed conversation. The findings echo what racialized Canadians have been saying for years: For many, racism is a common experience. According to the Race Relations in Canada 2019 Survey, most racialized Canadians say people in their group are either sometimes or often treated unfairly because of their race. Fewer than one in 10 say this never happens.
Racism takes many forms. Canadians are most likely to have seen overt discrimination take place on the street, but significant numbers have also seen it occur on public transit, in stores and restaurants and in the workplace. Interactions with law enforcement are a problem for some: Almost one in three Indigenous people and one in five black people in Canada say they have been unfairly stopped by police in the past year. News and cultural products can perpetuate racism: Only one in five racialized people think their own group is portrayed fairly in the media. And racism sometimes takes a subtler form in day-to-day interactions, with between a third and a half of racialized Canadians saying that in the past 12 months they’ve been treated as less intelligent, viewed with suspicion or ignored or overlooked because of their race.
Source: Are Canadians ready to confront racism? Michael Adams and Lilian Ma
Quebec Values Selection Test
The Government of Quebec has provided new details of the so-called values test that immigration candidates will have to pass in order to qualify for selection by the province.
Beginning January 1, 2020, immigration candidates looking to settle in Quebec will have to obtain what the government is calling an Attestation of learning about democratic values and the Quebec values expressed by the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
In a new, French-only Practical Guide to the test, the Government of Quebec says knowledge of the values it reflects is essential to an immigrant’s integration into the province.
“They are key to a better understanding of Quebec,” the guide says.
Reading the guide is not required in order to take the test but serves instead as an introduction to the values in question, which it divides into five key principles:
- Quebec is a French-speaking society
- Quebec is a democratic society
- Equality between women and men
- The rights and responsibilities of Quebecers
- Quebec is a secular society
Source: Quebec releases guide to prepare immigrants for new ‘values test’
Lack of Federal Challenge to Quebec Law
There are many reasons – some good ones, even – why Canadian leaders can continue to pretend that an egregious, oppressive, discriminatory law is not being enforced in our country today. That people are not being denied jobs as teachers, police officers, judges or Crown prosecutors because of who they are and what they wear out of faith.
When asked, and only when asked, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will say he does not agree with Quebec’s secularism law, which prohibits those in certain public sector jobs from wearing religious symbols. The law has already forced some young Quebeckers to leave their home province so that they may pursue their chosen careers without abandoning practices of their faith.
In a decision earlier this month, three Quebec Court of Appeal judges noted that the law is currently causing harm to Quebeckers who wear religious symbols. But with the exception of Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, who has spoken out repeatedly and unabashedly against the law known as Bill 21, most Canadian leaders, particularly at the federal level, are content to pretend that harm doesn’t exist.
Their silence is cushioned by a handful of well-worn excuses: foremost of them, the idea that it’s no one else’s business. Bill 21 is characterized as a provincial matter only, and as such, the rest of Canada should not be getting involved.
Source: Will Ottawa ever do the right thing, and call out discrimination in Quebec? Robyn Urback
Canadian Election and Multiculturalism
It looked as if it was going to be a lot worse.
In the early stages of the 2019 federal election, purveyors of racial and social division were in a giddy mood. Anti-immigration billboards popped up in cities across Canada, the fringe Canadian Nationalist Party (who advocate that Canada maintain a “European-descended majority”) got national media coverage, and swastikas were reportedly scrawled on campaign signs. A group of New Brunswick NDP operatives jumped ship to the Green party, in part because of concerns the NDP couldn’t counter a persistent belief among some voters that leader Jagmeet Singh is a Muslim, misinformation they calculated would cost the NDP votes. Meanwhile, Singh famously had to contend with being asked to take off his turbanto look more “Canadian.”
Recall the 2015 election, perhaps best remembered as a referendum on whether a few Muslim women would be allowed to wear niqabs during citizenship ceremonies, with a subplot involving a proposed “Barbaric Cultural Practices” snitch line. On the heels of that ugly campaign, the 2019 election had the potential to become a massive culture war, with an unholy alliance of racists, nationalists and Islamophobes on one side, and everyone they hate on the other.
Fortunately, that war didn’t really materialize. If the 2019 election was about anything, it was probably about climate change, or about whether Canadians had confidence in Justin Trudeau’s leadership. The closet white supremacists who paraded around as free-speech warriors representing some make-believe majority of “real” Canadians should see the results of the 2019 election as a stinging rebuke. Canadians were asked who they are, and they answered.
Source: Racists and Islamophobes wanted a Canadian culture war. It didn’t happen, but we got an ugly glimpse
Diversity Among Political Staff
The most senior and powerful political staff in Justin Trudeau’s government don’t reflect the diversity of Canada, or meet the same representation requirements that the Prime Minister set for his cabinet.
Since the Liberals formed government in 2015, Mr. Trudeau has made diversity a cornerstone of his political brand. When he unveiled his first cabinet, he declared it one that “looks like Canada.” More than four years into government, the senior staff working for those ministers are still predominantly white and male.
A Globe and Mail analysis shows that of the 37 chiefs of staff, 14 of them are women compared with 23 men, and only four of them are racial minorities.
That compares with 18 out of 37 cabinet ministers who are women and seven who are racial minorities.
Most of the research around diversity in politics focuses on elected representatives rather than their staff, but University of Calgary PhD student Meagan Cloutier collected data on the people working in MPs’ offices, which show that while there are overall more women, they tend to hold the less prestigious positions.
Accents and Integration
“Can you repeat that, please?”
It’s a question Joan Jiang gets regularly.
Jiang is from China and learned English as a second language. Though she tries not to take it to heart, she admits that after 20 years in Canada, it sometimes gets to her.
“It really shakes my confidence,” she said.Jiang sees her lingering accent as an obstacle, particularly in the workplace. She remembers one job interview in particular. Her resumé had impressed, but she could tell the interviewer was concerned by her pronunciation. She didn’t get the job.”After that, I thought I needed to improve,” she said. “I don’t want my skill to be wasted because my language [is] blocking me.”Last year, Jiang decided to enrol in accent training classes.
Also called accent reduction or modification, the programs are available across Canada, and promise to “lessen the negative effects of an accent” and help students “achieve a more neutral or ‘Canadian’ accent.”
Reviving the Islamic Spirit Speakers
A recent Islamic conference in Toronto has drawn criticism from B’nai Brith over some of its guest speakers.
In a Dec. 19 press release, B’nai Brith Canada highlighted three speakers who have made anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist comments in the past: Yasir Qadhi, Siraj Wahhaj and Omar Suleiman.
“It is troubling that a major Canadian Muslim conference continues to invite extremist preachers to Canada,” Michael Mostyn, the CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, said in the statement. “Surely there are enough qualified moderate Muslim leaders, without a history of extremist messaging, who can be chosen to speak at events such as these.”
The annual Islamic conference, called Reviving the Islamic Spirit, ran from Dec. 20-22, 2019. Started in 2001, it has grown to become one of the largest in North America, with more than 20,000 attendees each year. The conference organizers did not return The CJN’s request for comment.
Omar Suleiman, a Palestinian imam who works extensively in the humanitarian sector and with interfaith groups, has a history of making anti-Zionist social media posts, including writing on Facebook that “Zionists are the enemies of God,” and comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
Source: Controversial Islamic conference in Toronto draws concerns
HBO Multicultural Programming
Lucinda Martinez has promoted multicultural programming at HBO for years and is now at the heart of what HBO Max can do successfully.
In 2018, women and black people controlled 58% of HBO’s episodic programs, compared to 35% in 2015. Now the network wants to accelerate its diversification by focusing on artisans with HBO POV – also known as Power of Visibility.
More than eight years ago, HBO launched its award-winning department for multicultural marketing under the direction of Lucinda Martinez. In the beginning it was a subset of their work as VP Domestic Network Distribution; Today it is the Multicultural & International Marketing department that she heads as the executive vice president.
“When we started, we found that we had an impact not only on the shows themselves, but also on the talent that was there,” said Martinez. Initially, she and her team focused on promoting shows such as “Insecure”, “Ballers”, “A Black Lady Sketch Show” and “2 Dope Queens”.
Source: For HBO Max, diversity is more than a PC. It is a secret weapon
Tony Abbot’s Change of Mind
Spectator writers, past and present, were asked: ‘When have you changed your mind?’ Here is Tony Abbott’s response:
A rather important issue — this question of multiculturalism. Thirty years ago, I was anxious about the impact on Australia of people from very diverse cultures. But then when I was running the group Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, I found to my surprise, and ultimately great satisfaction, that there were many, many people, of very diverse cultural backgrounds, who supported the monarchy in Australia very strongly. It was one of the reasons why they’d come to Australia: the stability, the continuity, the settled government that the monarchy in our country symbolises. And that led me to an even stronger conclusion: that the vast majority of migrants are coming here to join us, not to change us.
Source: Tony Abbott: Why I changed my mind about multiculturalism
Japanese Canadian Redress British Columbia
The way Lorene Oikawa describes it, the goals of the spiral-bound publication she hand-delivered last month are somewhat more forward-looking and broad than the official title — “Recommendations for Redressing Historical Wrongs Against Japanese Canadians in B.C.” — might suggest.
“It’s about history, but it’s also about now. And it’s about our future,” Oikawa, president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, said in a recent interview. “And it’s about all of us.”
Oikawa presented the report last month to B.C.’s Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Lisa Beare during a ceremony in Vancouver. Beare called the event “a very symbolic milestone for both the B.C. government and the Japanese Canadian community,” and it followed several years of efforts toward redress for the state-sponsored dispossession and displacement of 22,000 Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.
Now, Oikawa and other community leaders say 2020 will be a pivotal year in the long push for redress, which could involve measures including education, recognition and commemoration, as well as reclaiming seized properties.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Oikawa said. “2020 is the time. … Everybody sees this opportunity, and we just need to grab hold of it, and we are.”
Source: Dan Fumano: ‘2020 is the time’ for Japanese Canadians to ‘grab’ redress
Antisemitism: Lipstadt and others
In a month of terrible anti-Semitic attacks, including a stabbing yesterday of multiple people at a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, the news that most depressed me did not involve violence. It was not something done to Jews but something Jews did. A synagogue in the Netherlands is no longer publicly posting the times of prayer services. If you want to join a service, you have to know someone who is a member of the community.
Do not misunderstand me. I was and am in a fury over the multiple assaults, culminating in the Monsey attack, which was the worst since the murders in Jersey City, which, some readers might not realize, was less than three weeks ago. In Europe and the United States, Jews have been repeatedly assaulted on the street. Tombstones were desecrated in Slovakia. In London, anti-Semitic graffiti was painted on synagogues and Jewish-owned stores. A Belgian daily newspaper accused a lawmaker who is Jewish of being a spy for Israel. A Polish town refused to install small brass plates that commemorate Holocaust victims. In Italy, the town of Schio did the same because, the mayor said, they would be “divisive.” (Divisive to whom?) This intolerance is coming from right-wing extremists, progressive leftists, and other minorities who, themselves, are often the object of persecution. Anti-Semites seem to think it is open season on Jews. And maybe, given the many incidents, they are right.
Source: Jews Are Going Underground: Lipstadt
… I recently spoke by phone with David Nirenberg, the dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, who has written extensively on the history of anti-Semitism. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why prejudice against Jews seems to arise in so many different eras and contexts, and the unhelpfulness of always thinking about anti-Semitism as a manifestation of politics.
…Do you think it is worth thinking of anti-Semitism today as akin to the prejudices that afflict many different religious and ethnic minorities, such as Muslims or Hispanics in the United States? Or is it distinct in important ways?
That’s a really tough question, and, in some ways, I hate to distinguish between different forms of prejudice or hate. When you think about some of the most enduring prejudices—for example, the asymmetries of power between men and women—these are structural aspects of our global society. But I do think anti-Semitism is distinctive in certain ways. One of those ways is that it really does transcend particular political contexts. There aren’t a great number of Jews in Hungary or Poland, but thinking about Jews is a crucial part of nationalism—or anti-globalization or whatever you want to call it—in Hungary and Poland today. And I think that’s different from the way most of the other groups you mentioned are used in the world’s imagination.
This is a really difficult topic to think about, and I would like to think we are each entitled to study our own hate without having to study all the others. But we can see symptoms of a distinction in our own age. I don’t think, for example, that people in many parts of the world where there aren’t Muslim immigrants are thinking really centrally about their own society in terms of Islam, and I would say the same thing might be true of some racial prejudices that are central to the United States but don’t play a very large role in other societies. But what’s curious about anti-Semitism or anti-Judaism is how it can be put to work by many societies that really have nothing to do with living Jews or Judaism.
When many of the people in these societies think about immigration, even though the problem they see isn’t Jews immigrating to these societies, they do think about Judaism in order to explain the immigration they see as threatening their society. So, in the United States, France, Hungary, and many other places, replacement-theory ideologies explain replacement in terms of the machinations of the Jews, or the Jewish global order. Anti-Judaism is actually a system of thought that people can use to explain many of the challenges they face, even when there are no Jews around. And that has a flexibility that, in the worst moments, allows many parts of society to agree that Jews are the problem in a way you don’t always see coalescing around other distinctions.
Source: How Anti-Semitism Rises on the Left and Right
…As a Canadian Muslim, I know how hurtful and unfair it can feel to be seen as “the Other.” It happens to far too many communities considered different for a variety of reasons, ranging from their faith, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. It’s up to all of us to confront any and all efforts to otherize communities because it indeed threatens the well-being of our entire society.
It has become far too easy for those who promote hate to find a platform. As comedian Sacha Baron Cohen said in a speech to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) last November, Facebook may be the greatest propaganda machine of all time. Groups boasting of tens of thousands of members share all forms of hateful, false content on a daily basis, whipping up anger towards minority communities around the globe.
These social media tools have been used against the Rohyingya minority in Burma, as a “megaphone of hate” against Bengali Muslims in India, against LGBTQ people and have facilitated the unleashing of a “hurricane of hate” against Jewish communities. All of this eventually compelled the United Nations to launch a strategy and plan of action on hate speech earlier this year….
“The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray,” Baron Cohen said in his now oft-quoted speech at the ADL’s 2019 summit.
This sounds rudimentary and yet remains painfully elusive.
Source: Opinion: As People of the Book, Muslims should stand in solidarity with Jews
Korean Adoptee Identities
In September, Seattle resident Barbara Kim celebrated Chuseok, the Korean midautumn festival, with her family members in Seoul. Chuseok is a time to give thanks for plentiful harvests, and for Kim, who was adopted by an American family in the 1960s, this was a particularly special occasion: She was able to spend the holiday with several of her birth relatives.
At the celebration, they and a group of South Korean orphans, now in their teens and 20s, dug into platters of bulgogi, kimbap, japche and other traditional Korean dishes.
Kim was among the first wave of a 200,000-strong exodus of adoptees, as South Korea became the world’s first source of international adoptions. She was born in 1955, two years after the Korean War cease-fire.
In recent decades, adoptees like Kim have been returning to South Korea to find out more about where they come from, build ties with their birth families and connect with others with similar experiences.
After being separated from her three siblings for about half a century, Kim managed to track all of them down and reunite with them. She says they have overcome an initial sense of awkwardness in knowing one another and feel proud to be part of the same family.
Source: ‘Feeling Like We Belong’: U.S. Adoptees Return To South Korea To Trace Their Roots
Chinese Immigrant Gambling
As a new weekend begins, Chinese textile manufacturing workers move from their sewing machines to the slot machines at Newcastle’s local casino, hoping to add a little bonus to their end of year income.
Chengyuan Han and his family emigrated from Qingdao in China’s eastern Shandong province to South Africa in 2015. Chengyuan, whose mother runs a Chinese restaurant inside the casino, recounts stories of his frequent encounters with other Chinese immigrants, many of whom are enthusiastic gamblers.
According to a 2010 study by universities in Hong Kong, New Zealand and the US, Chinese people living in countries with significant Chinese immigrant communities exhibit “elevated levels of problematic gambling.” The study categorized a “problematic gambler” as anyone who meets three of four of the following criteria: high rates of gambling-related fantasy, lying, using gambling to escape, and preoccupation about gambling.
The study concluded that problematic gambling rates in Chinese communities are between 1.5 and 5 times higher than those of non-Chinese people in the newly adopted countries and that Chinese immigrants may develop even higher rates of problematic gambling with increased years of residency. Some academics also argued that the gambling rates for Chinese communities are likely to be under-reported due to the importance of not “losing face” in traditional Chinese culture.
Source: Casinos target low-income Chinese immigrants
Hilal Certification of Appliances
Two of the biggest names in Japanese home appliances were awarded what must rank as one of the oddest of halal certifications: for products.
In guaranteeing that their goods have not come into contact with pork or alcohol, Panasonic Corp. and Sharp Corp. are moving to gain a foothold in the growing, more affluent Muslim market.
But obtaining the prized credential was no easy feat.
To get it, the companies must pass screenings to meet strict halal standards that even covered the materials of the gloves worn by workers.
Panasonic obtained certification for its water purifiers and water ionizers for the Malaysian market.
The company said it was the first Japanese home appliance maker to secure halal certification under the Malaysian government-affiliated system.
Sharp also gained certification for its refrigerators manufactured at plants in Indonesia and Thailand last year.
Source: Panasonic, Sharp fine-tune goods to conform to Islamic teachings：The Asahi Shimbun
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 