Before we hurl insults around about ‘transphobes’ let’s be clear about what we mean

2020/02/17 Leave a comment

Definitions can be helpful but can also be divisive as we have seen the shift from the IHRA antisemitism working definition to one that has been adopted by governments and institutions:

When anti-semitism still appeared to be the Labour membership’s most glaring problem with intra-party prejudice and related mudslinging, great importance attached to definitions. What might seem to some members a perfectly allowable comment on the Israeli state might to others, using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, be manifestly hateful and targeted.

The party’s adoption of that definition was itself disputed. Labour took on the IHRA definition in 2016, then argued about adopting its examples of antisemitic behaviour. As ugly as this difficulty with internationally agreed terminology might look from outside, the interest in precise wording represented some common ground. On the definition of antisemitism, Labour’s factions were at least able to communicate.

More recently, the party has adopted a working definition of Islamophobia advanced by the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims (after consultation with more than 750 British Muslim organisations, 80 academics and 50 MPs). The group’s co-chair Wes Streeting dismissed objections that free speech would suffer. “While our definition cannot prevent false-flag accusations of Islamophobia to shut down reasonable debate and discussion, it does not enable such accusations. In fact, it makes it easier to deal with such behaviour,” he said. “Our definition provides a framework for helping organisations to assess, understand and tackle real hatred, prejudice and discrimination.”

There could hardly be a better case for another considered definition – after a week in which its meaning has been both stretched and contested – of what should be understood by transphobia. Unless we want to leave that job to the courts. Is it allowed, for instance, to satirise self-ID, as in the case of Harry Miller? Yes, says Mr Justice Knowles. And in a passage that might have been inspired by Labour’s pledges: “Some… are readily willing to label those with different viewpoints as ‘transphobic’ or as displaying ‘hatred’ when they are not.”

There are obvious implications for the unprecedented debates prompted by a proposed reform to the Gender Recognition Act, facilitating gender self-identification (ID). Can it be damagingly transphobic – if Miller is not – for people to meet and discuss the possible implications for women-only spaces and safeguarding? Should people be able to meet, without fear of abusive crowds, to share concerns about early gender dysphoria diagnosis/affirmation? Is it actionably bigoted – unlike Miller – to question the fairness of male-bodied athletes competing in women’s elite sport?

Filed under Antisemitism, gender, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Why Canada needs a national policy for Black arts, culture and heritage

2020/02/17 Leave a comment

Not convinced by the rationale for a separate strategy for Black arts, culture and heritage rather than the current strategy of increasing diversity in existing arts and culture programming in institutions like Canada Council for the Arts, Telefilm Canada and others.

The return of the Multiculturalism Program to Canadian Heritage reflected the intent to ensure the program, both directly and through the Canadian Heritage portfolio agencies, recognized the importance of arts and culture.

The commentary would benefit from an analysis of the effectiveness of existing government and agency programs in advancing diversity for the Black and other communities.

And if the government does for the Black community, one can expect pressures from other communities to do the same (as we have seen with history and heritage months:

Like the ones before it, this Black History Month is blessed with a cascade of creative programming that will uncover and convey Black Canada’s complex and compelling stories through an array of artistic mediums. This includes varied and powerful artistic performances of theatre, music and dance; photography and other visual arts exhibitions; book talks; community tours; film screenings, and so much more.

However, the troubling truth is that, outside of February, consistent and prominent displays of Black creative talent and artistic direction are exceedingly rare in Canada. Beyond Black History Month, Canada’s Black creatives and creative industry professionals experience what one of Canada’s leading Black professors, Katherine McKittrick, might refer to as an “absented presence.” This absenting of Canada’s Black creatives is especially revealed in the leadership and programming of Canada’s dominant cultural institutions, including major galleries, museums, art, film and performance spaces. This is why Canada needs a national policy on Black arts, culture and heritage.

Towards a national arts policy for Black Canadians

A national arts policy for Black Canadians would enable Canadian governments to fulfill the legislated promise of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. This Act recognizes multiculturalism as a “fundamental characteristic of Canadian society.” A proposed Black national arts policy, then, would leverage the diverse and dynamic profiles of Canada’s Black communities to support our country’s commitment to “a policy of multiculturalism designed to preserve and enhance the multicultural heritage of Canadians while working to achieve the equality of all Canadians in the economic, social, cultural and political life of Canada.”

A Black Canadian national arts policy would also substantially enhance the principle of multiculturalism as a human rights instrument enshrined in Canada’s Constitution in section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Given the typical absence and erasure of Black arts, culture and heritage in Canada, protecting the “preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians” of African descent, through a national Black arts, culture and heritage policy is prudent policy intervention with significant value that transcends party lines.

Because of the aforementioned legal and constitutional provisions, Canadians and parties of all political stripes have a vested national interest in ensuring due respect and presence is afforded to Canada’s Black communities through arts, culture and heritage place-making. More specifically, the current government also has an interest in adopting a national Black arts policy because it would markedly enhance Canada’s commitment to implement the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent.

Black Canada’s got tremendous talent

For decades, and particularly in the last year couple of years, the artistic excellence of Canada’s Black creative talents has abundantly demonstrated that now is the time for Canada’s adoption of a national policy for Black arts, culture and heritage.

Consider, for instance, some of the most recent Black Canadian successes in the literary arts alone:

  1. The 2019 winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama: “Other Side of the Game” by Amanda Parris;
  2. The 2019 winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize for debut novel, Reproduction by Ian Williams;
  3. A 2019 winner of the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Fiction, Brother, by David Chariandy

This is to say nothing of Canada’s longtime literary treasures Dionne Brand, Andre Alexis, Esi Edugyan, Lawrence Hill, Dany Laferrière, M. NourbeSe Phillip, George Elliott Clarke, the late Austin Clarke, and many more. There’s also a coming tide of gifted breakout writers who are poised to soon follow in these writers’ footsteps, including Eternity Martis, Zalika Reid-Benta, Kagiso Lesego Molope, Chelene Knight, Desmond Cole, Téa Mutonji, Rebecca Fisseha, Nadia Hohn, Evan Winter, Whitney French, Djamila Ibrahim and Canisia Lubrin.

In music, Black Canada’s creative genius is also gaining increasing traction beyond the superstars Drake (including his OVO Sound mega artists and producers) and The Weeknd. For instance, in 2019, the Polaris Music Prize went to rapper Haviah Mighty for her album 13th Floor. Karena Evans is also making her mark as one of the hottest new award-winning video directors. There’s also the increasing embrace by the global hip-hop community of Juno award-winning artist Shad as a trusted and true hip-hop historian thanks to the ballooning success of the Canadian music documentary series Hip-Hop Evolution on Netflix.

In Hollywood, actor Stephan James and his brother, Shamier Anderson, are doing bigger and bigger things in front of the camera while breakout film director and screenwriter Stella Meghie’s filmmaking career has taken off in the US and Canada; her highly anticipated film The Photograph arrives in theatres this month. Also, actress Vinessa Antoine recently came to national attention as the lead character in Diggstown, the first Canadian drama series to feature a Black Canadian woman as its lead, also produced by fellow Black Canadian Floyd Kane. Finally, there is the growing fame of Winnie Harlow, who continues to change the game as a global fashion model and a public spokesperson with lived experience having the skin condition vitiligo.

These are some of the most prominent Black Canadian creatives recently achieving great successes. They’re doing so in a way that is defining and refining what it means to be not just be Black, but Black and Canadian.

Valuing Black arts is valuing Black people

Without a national policy or infrastructure and a strategy to support, sustain and/or nurture the creative and professional growth of the hundreds of thousands of young Black Canadians inspired by the above-mentioned successes, they are left without much needed support to pursue their own creative dreams. This policy gap contributes to the erasure of Black people from Canada’s collective consciousness.

This experience of Black Canadian erasure is captured by Black Canadian historian Cecil Foster, who has said: “In Canada, the norm has always been to either place blackness on the periphery of society by strategically and selectively celebrating Blacks only as a sign of how tolerant and non-racist white Canadians are (as is seen in the recurrence of the Underground Railroad as a positive achievement in a Canadian mythology of racial tolerance) or to erase blackness as an enduring way of life from the national imaginary.”

Canadian policymakers must realize that how Canada treats its Black creatives is an extension of how Canada’s Black communities are treated by Canadian society writ large. This connection is captured by a poignant comment made by Toronto hip-hop intellectual Ian Kamau, who has said, “Black music and Black art, like Black people, are undervalued in Canada”

This undervaluing of Black Canadian voices brings a sense of perpetual social and civic disposability to the Black experience in Canada that can feel suffocating. This undervaluing tends to make being Black in Canada feel like Blackness is only something to be put on display for temporary and specific purposes. It’s important that Canada boldly demonstrate that our country finds worth, value and meaning in Black Canadian life well beyond the short and cold days of February. We need to build on the good that comes out of Black History Month.

Black arts, well-being and belonging

Without a long-term, robustly resourced, multi-sectoral and intergovernmental national policy for Black arts, culture and heritage, Canada risks turning celebration into exploitation of Canada’s Black creative class (and by extension, of Canada’s Black communities). Not having a national framework for birthing, incubating and nurturing Canada’s Black talents is a lost opportunity for all Canadians. This is because such a policy would only advance the currency of Canada’s global cultural capital.

Finally, while many Black communities love Black History Month, it is also true that for many Black Canadians, it perpetuates a sense of Black disposability. It is a stark contrast to the almost complete loss of positive time and attention that Canada’s Black communities are given by governments and mainstream institutions the rest of the year.

A national Black arts, culture and heritage policy would help Black History Month to enhance its commemoration of Canada’s Black histories while also serving as a vehicle for an annual launch and exhibition of a year-long display of Black Canada’s diverse established and emerging talents. This would go a long way to not only fostering a deeper sense of belonging for Black Canadians (new and old) but also materially advancing the economic well-being of the Black creatives and administrators who too often struggle to support themselves and their art the rest of the year.

The Swahili word for creativity is kuumba, which has become a principle of Kwanzaa, the African diaspora’s cultural celebration. It’s time for an African Canadian Arts Council, and we could call it Kuumba Canada. Because our #BlackArtsMatter.

Source: Why Canada needs a national policy for Black arts, culture and heritage

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

ICYMI: Modi Lost in Delhi. It Doesn’t Matter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party have ensured that no political parties speak about equal citizenship and political rights of the country’s Muslims.

2020/02/14 Leave a comment

One take on the Delhi election results:

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party suffered a major defeat in elections for the Delhi state legislature. Amit Shah, the prime minister’s confidante and the country’s home minister, led a highly divisive and sectarian campaign foregrounding Hindu nationalism and demonizing the city’s Muslims, and tried to paint the opposition Aam Aadmi Party and its leaders as treasonous.

Yet out of Delhi’s 70 seats, Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah’s B.J.P. won a mere eight seats, and the A.A.P., led by Arvind Kejriwal, who has been the chief minister of Delhi since 2015, won 62.

Mr. Kejriwal, an anti-graft activist turned politician, focused the electoral campaign of his party on his record of governance — the significant improvement he made to the delivery of services in public hospitals, the quality of education and infrastructure in schools, and the cost of electricity in Delhi.

Delhi chose Mr. Kejriwal for his performance as chief minister. While the B.J.P. plastered Mr. Modi’s face across the city, it did not offer any candidates for the Delhi state government who were more impressive or convincing than Mr. Kejriwal and his team.

Mr. Modi and his party might have lost an election but they won the ideological battle by setting the terms of electoral politics: For electoral success in India, it is no longer acceptable to speak about equal citizenship and political rights of India’s Muslims or speak out against the violence and hostility they encounter.

The election in Delhi was held while India has been witnessing continuous protests against a citizenship law passed by Mr. Modi’s government in December that makes religion the basis for citizenship. The new law discriminates against Muslims and advances the Hindu nationalist agenda of reshaping India into a majoritarian Hindu nation.

Mr. Shah, the home minister, had insisted the citizenship law would be followed by a National Register of Citizens, or N.R.C., which would require citizens to submit a set of documents to prove they are Indians. India’s Muslims and liberals worried that the citizenship register would become a tool to exclude or threaten to exclude Indian Muslims from citizenship.

Over the past two months, protests against the citizenship law and the impending N.R.C. spread across the country, from university campuses to poor Muslim neighborhoods, from distant border states to starry avenues of Bollywood.

On Dec. 15, the police in Delhi, which reports to Mr. Modi’s government, violently attacked students at Jamia Millia Islamia, a university with a large number of Muslim students. After the police assault, women from Shaheen Bagh, a working-class, mostly Muslim neighborhood adjacent to university, gathered in protest against the citizenship law and blocked a major road passing through the area. A tent was set up on the road and the protest quickly took on the air of a defiant carnival.

The numbers swelled and every kind of Indian opposed to the citizenship law gathered at Shaheen Bagh in solidarity. Two bitter winter months have passed; the women continue their protest despite the cold and the attacks by Hindu nationalist activists.

Throughout the Delhi election campaign, Mr. Modi’s party targeted Shaheen Bagh and sought to frighten the city’s Hindus by emphasizing the Muslim-ness of the protesters. Islamophobic rhetoric has been normalized in Mr. Modi’s India, but the Delhi campaign intensified it. Mr. Shah, who is also the president of the B.J.P., set the tone when he asked his supporters to push the button against the B.J.P. electoral symbol on the electronic voting machines so hard that the (mostly Muslim) protesters in Shaheen Bagh would “feel the current.”

At a Delhi election rally, Anurag Thakur, Mr. Shah’s colleague and India’s minister of state for finance, raised a sinister slogan: “These traitors of the nation! Shoot them!” A few days later, two Hindu nationalist activists opened fire on students and protesters at Jamia Millia Islamia and in Shaheen Bagh.

Parvesh Varma, a member of the Parliament from Mr. Modi’s party, sought to whip up Hindu fears by describing the Shaheen Bagh protesters as murderers and rapists: “They will enter your houses, rape your sisters and daughters, and kill them. There is time today. Modi Ji and Amit Shah won’t come to save you tomorrow.” Other leaders from the party likened Shaheen Bagh to Pakistan and framed the Delhi election as a contest between India and Pakistan.

Mr. Kejriwal spoke against the citizenship law, calling it a distraction from Mr. Modi’s failure on the economy, but assiduously avoided confronting the Hindu nationalist rhetoric during the elections and ignored the attacks on Muslims.

When the police entered Jamia Milia Islamia and attacked the students, Mr. Kejriwal stayed silent for several days. When asked about the protests in Delhi, he declared that he would have cleared the road through Shaheen Bagh in two hours if the police in Delhi, which reports to the federal government, were under his control.

To emphasize his being a Hindu, Mr. Kejriwal publicly sang Hindu religious prayers and visited a temple soon after his victory speech. Essentially, he worked around the boundaries set by the Hindu nationalists and embraced a softer version of their politics.

The Delhi election suggests that India has entered an era where the ideological terms and the language of politics are set by the Hindu nationalists. To be electorally competitive, political parties will need to adhere to some variant of the Hindu nationalism and jingoism exemplified by Mr. Modi.

The “Modi consensus” has ensured that India’s Muslims are not only politically powerless but also politically invisible. Seventy-three years after independence, India’s Muslims are still fighting for equal citizenship. We are now putting our lives on the line, not to gain parity in jobs and education but to hold on to legal equality.

The protests against the new citizenship law have the air of a final cry to salvage our dignity before we are made second-class citizens, or worse, noncitizens.

In an election, while most citizens vote for material benefits and aspirations, India’s Muslims are reduced to voting for their security. Despite Mr. Kejriwal and his A.A.P.’s sidestepping the issues concerning Muslims, Delhi’s Muslims overwhelminglybacked his party because it is not actively hostile to them.

To interpret defeat of Mr. Modi’s party in Delhi with his project of Hindu majoritarianism would be a grave misreading of the verdict. In a recent survey, four-fifths of Delhi’s voters favored Mr. Modi and three-fourths of Delhi’s voters expressed satisfaction with his federal government.

It is unclear whether Mr. Kejriwal’s model of good governance and service delivery while ignoring the contentious sectarian and militant nationalist positions of the Hindu nationalists can be replicated outside the relatively small, urban state of Delhi.

Since its inception, the Hindu nationalist movement, of which the B.J.P. is the electoral branch, had a single goal: Hindu supremacy. There are no politicians who have the gumption to challenge Mr. Modi and his B.J.P. on that central vision. Mr. Modi and his party might lose the occasional election but they have won the ideological war.

Source: Modi Lost the Delhi Election. It Doesn’t Matter.

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

ICYMI: Trump Got His Wish. Mexico Is Now the Wall.

2020/02/14 Leave a comment

Just like the STCA between Canada and the USA largely made the US the Canadian wall at official border crossings (with the irregular arrivals elsewhere being the loophole:

Mexico is now the wall. President Trump got his wish.

The heart-wrenching images documenting a recent confrontation in the state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, are evidence of this. Dozens of Mexican National Guard troops equipped with helmets, batons and transparent shields coalesced on the highway connecting the Mexican cities of Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula to stop a caravan of migrants heading to the United States from Central America.

The guardsmen used pepper spray on the caravan, which as of mid-January included about 4,000 people, many of them women and children. In the end, hundreds were detained, sent back to Guatemala or deported to Honduras. A spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the actions of the National Guard, saying that the use of force to stop and disperse immigrants should be avoided.

Mexico has effectively turned into an extension of Mr. Trump’s immigration police beyond American territory. And this is the case on multiple fronts: On the southern border with Guatemala, they prevent Central American migrants from coming into Mexico; on the northern one, they block those seeking entry to the United States from leaving. The decision of Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as AMLO, to follow this approach is misguided. He should let migrants continue their journey north.

Under the Migrant Protection Protocols program, which the Trump administration introduced in January 2019, asylum seekers who attempt to enter the United States at the U.S.-Mexico border may be required to stay in Mexico while the authorities make a decision regarding their case. As of November 2019, over 56,000 people had been sent back to Mexico to wait for the outcome of their applications, according to Human Rights Watch.

This is a radical change in immigration policy for the United States. In the past, Central American asylum seekers were allowed to remain on American soil while waiting for their cases to be processed.

Central American immigration has always been a source of frustration for the United States. But the most powerful country in the world holds a certain degree of responsibility for what goes on in its hemisphere, and it is perfectly capable of accepting the most vulnerable people on the continent. It has done it before, and can still do it.

So when did the United States’ problem become Mexico’s problem? Everything changed because of Donald Trump. By mid-2019, a number of Central American caravans were traveling across Mexico. The president, comparing them to an invasion, warned Mexico that they should do something to stop them, and that he would slap tariffs on all Mexican imports if it didn’t.

“Their right to make a living, to not be abused, to be protected, helped, and supported should be safeguarded,” Mr. López Obrador, then president-elect, said in October 2018 of the Central American migrants heading north. Unfortunately, he has since backtracked, pulling back on his promises to the migrants.

When a journalist asked him during one of his daily news conferences about the harassment and intimidation of Central American migrants in southern Mexico, AMLO refused to take the victims’ side. And Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, said that the Trump administration had seen more cooperation from Mexico “than anyone thought was possible.”

Mr. Cuccinelli is right. Over a year ago, few would have thought that a leftist president like AMLO (author of a critical book titled “Oye, Trump” and defender of Central Americans crossing Mexico) would suddenly become Mr. Trump’s main ally in immigration matters.

Mr. López Obrador has said that he favors a “peace and love” policy toward the United States and will avoid confrontation with Mr. Trump. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a good relationship with a powerful neighbor who also happens to be your main trade partner. But we should also remember that Mexico has been exporting immigrants to the United States for decades. Millions of us live on American soil.

That’s why I am surprised by the indifference shown by so many Mexicans over the abuses of the National Guard and the vicious attacks on social media aimed at Central Americans. Those xenophobic comments remind me of those I have been hearing for decades here in the United States, and of the appalling mistreatment of Mexican immigrants in recent years. Such abuses should not be forgotten or used to justify a similar treatment of migrants in Mexico.

Northward migration is hardly a new phenomenon. For decades it has provided the United States with a much-needed labor force, and the migrants and refugees who put everything on the line to make the journey with an opportunity to improve their lives. I am fully aware that the American immigration system is far from perfect. It is in dire need of a complete makeover. But Mexico shouldn’t be an extension of the Border Patrol. That makes things worse for everybody.

What should Mexico be doing with migrants from Central America? Just let them go through and protect them as they do so, instead of repressing them. They are fleeing extreme poverty and gang violence. Their only hope is to get to the United States. The Trump administration, not the López Obrador administration, should be receiving them and deciding whether they should be granted political asylum.

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

ICYMI – UK: Anti-Semitic abuse at record high, says charity

2020/02/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

The number of anti-Semitic incidents logged in Britain last year hit record levels yet again amid accusations the opposition Labour Party had failed to tackle the issue within its ranks, a Jewish advisory body said on Thursday.

The Community Security Trust (CST), which advises Britain’s estimated 280,000 Jews on security matters, said there had been 1,805 incidents in 2019, a rise of 7% and the fourth consecutive year the figure had reached a new high.

CST chief executive David Delew said the record came as no surprise and the organization believed the real number was likely to be far higher.

“It is clear that both social media and mainstream politics are places where anti-Semitism and racism need to be driven out, if things are to improve in the future,” he said.

World leaders warned last month of a growing tide of anti-Jewish sentiment, driven both by far-right white supremacists and those from the far-left, as they commemorated victims of the Holocaust in World War Two.

In Britain, the CST said there was an increase in incidents in months when Labour’s problems with anti-Semitism were in the news.

Ever since veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn, an ardent supporter of Palestinian rights, became leader in 2015, the party has faced accusations that it has failed to stem anti-Semitism among some members.

Corbyn, who is stepping down as leader in April, has said anti-Semitism is “vile and wrong” but the party is now under investigation by Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Last February, a number of Labour lawmakers left the party citing the issue as a reason, while ahead of December’s national election, Britain’s chief rabbi said Corbyn was unfit to be prime minister.

Of the total number of incidents, 224 were connected to Labour, said the CST, which has collated such data since 1984.

“It is hard to precisely disaggregate the impact of the continuing Labour anti-Semitism controversy upon CST’s statistics, but it clearly has an important bearing,” the report said.

The charity said the main reason for the overall increase in incidents was a sharp rise in online anti-Semitism.

But there were also 157 assaults – a 27% increase on 2018 – with almost 50% of these occurring in just three areas of the country – Barnet and Hackney in London and Salford in northern England which are home to some of the largest Jewish communities.

A rise of intolerance after Britons voted in the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union and the Brexit discourse since, which brought nationalism and immigration to the fore, had also led an atmosphere where people might have felt able to express their “hatred of otherness”, the report said.

Source: Anti-Semitic abuse at record high, says charity

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

How a simple computer game simulated the dizzying U.S. immigration process

2020/02/14 Leave a comment

Neat experiment:

People fear and mistrust what they don’t know—including people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. That lack of trust causes social and political divisions in the US and around the world, especially when it comes to immigrants.

Inspired by research in Hungary that found computer games could help players reduce their prejudice toward immigrants, my colleague Patrick Stewart devised a role-playing game as part of an American national government course at the University of Arkansas. I helped to develop survey measures for tracking changes in trust during the game.

Our hope was that by playing the game over the course of a semester, students would come to understand a bit more about what immigrants go through in the US, and as a result, perhaps trust could develop.

We found that it was possible for a role-playing game to help simulate shared experiences with immigrants, even in a group of mostly white, conservative students. This helped trust in immigrants to grow.

Creating an identity

The game, called “Citizenship Quest,” was played in an online learning platform for the fall 2018 and spring 2019 semesters. Most of the students were freshmen and sophomores.

At the beginning of each semester, the students completed a survey about their interest in politics, while also answering questions about how much they trusted immigrants. They completed the same survey at the end of the semester, after the game was over, which allowed us to track changes in immigrant trust over time.

Once we had their initial results, we assigned each student to role-play as a character from Mexico, India or China, origins of the three largest immigrant groups in America. The students got to pick their character’s gender, and a gender-appropriate name was assigned to them on the basis of the most popular names in their character’s country.

Next, the students created fuller back stories for their characters, fleshing out their work history, past residences and even physical characteristics such as hair and eye color.

Learning about paperwork

For the next phase of the game, each student applied for permission to live and work in US on behalf of their character. We had them complete the proper paperwork, including the 18-page I-485 form “Application to Register for Permanent Residence or Adjust Status” and the seven-page I-765 form “Application for Employment Authorization.” They signed their character’s name to the forms as well.

We also asked them to submit a photograph of their hands, to imitate the fingerprinting process.

Finally, we had them simulate applying for U.S. citizenship. This meant filling out the 20-page N-400 form “Application for Naturalization” and submitting another photograph of their hands.

All paperwork was uploaded to us through the course website—not to actual immigration authorities. And of course, we didn’t ask them to pay the $2,445 in federal fees associated with filing those forms.

Economic progress

The game used a scoring system that functioned sort of like a currency, so we called it “coin.” All the players started with a modest sum, and they could earn more coin by completing weekly assignments such as chapter quizzes on time. The game included random positive events as well, like having their character receive a new letter of reference or being profiled in the local newspaper as a volunteer. These added to the player’s coin.

Players could also earn coin by either buying or preparing food from their character’s country and writing 150 words about their experience with the food and what they thought of it. They took a picture of the food as well, with at least one of their hands being clearly visible in the shot—as a means of reinforcing their personal connections to characters.

The students could elect to spend some of their coin on in-game advantages like an immigration attorney to help speed their applications along. Attorneys could also help to defend against the random negative events, such as application files getting lost in the mail or finding out a character’s name was on a list of people judged to be security threats. If students didn’t spend coin to defend against these possibilities, they ran the risk of losing some of their coin to the perils of the system.

At the end of the game, students took the U.S. citizenship exam, before retaking the survey about trust in immigrants. Their ability to complete the paperwork, do well on the citizenship exam, and accumulate coin became part of their overall grade in the course.

Trusting over time

We found that students came to trust more in immigrants in general, and in immigrant groups they role-played as more specifically, by playing the game.

Student comments further suggest they came to grasp the frustrating nature of the citizenship process, even if unwillingly. One white male wrote, “Just because you want to show us how in real life there are unexpected factors that occur and cause setbacks doesn’t mean you should take away class points.” Another white male wrote that we should delete the game, because “it has nothing to do with U.S. Government. Role-playing is disgusting and busywork.” He reported that playing the game did not change his view of U.S. immigration policies either.

On the other hand, a Latina student mentioned that she had obtained citizenship herself in the past year, and said she “loved the thought process” at work behind the game. She pointed out that the game was still “much easier” than the real thing, but we were heartened to hear her recognize and appreciate its value.

In the end, we find evidence that role-playing as immigrants applying for citizenship is related to trusting them. Games can be used to acquaint citizens with the trials and tribulations immigrants go through, as a set of shared experiences upon which to build connections and trust in the future.

Source: How a simple computer game simulated the dizzying U.S. immigration process

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

FATAH: Anti-Chinese racism during Black History Month

2020/02/14 Leave a comment

While I agree with Tarek on most of the points in his article, I would have thought, given his bout with cancer, he would be less embracing about embracing or handshakes given the risks of physical contact in spreading colds and flus.

My bout taught me to be much more cautious and I generally try to avoid handshakes during the flu season and reduce my participation in group events.

But no need to be paranoid and leave the elevator. And if paranoid, all hospitals have stations with face masks and Purell:

There were six or seven of us inside the hospital elevator when a woman tried to make a last-second dash to enter the car. Under normal circumstances the passenger nearest to the door stops the closing door to let in the fellow passenger. But not in this case.

Instead, the gentleman closest to the coveted space where the elevator buttons are installed started fumbling for the ‘close’ button, trying to shut the cabin before the woman could get inside. He failed and she got through uttering a heavily accented “thank You” to the rest of us.

What followed was a scene fit for Alabama in 1920, not Toronto in 2020.

The men and women in the car covered their faces and turned away from the woman. She appeared to be of Chinese ancestry and that made her a default carrier of the coronavirus.

As the car stopped on the second floor, all the other passengers left the elevator even though the buttons to the 4th and 6th floors were lit indicating the good people in the lift had jettisoned to save themselves from the ‘cursed’ virus carrier who stood staring at the ceiling.

Chatting with her, I learned that she was a third-generation Canadian of Chinese ancestry who had never been to China. I had arrived a day earlier after a two-month stay in India and statistically had a greater chance of being a virus carrier than her, but she was judged by her facial features, and race, by a group of people none of whom were white.

Were the people who ran away from this Chinese woman racist? Damn right they were, but the academics teaching racism insist that people of colour (folks like me and my fellow elevator mates) do not possess ‘white privilege’ and therefore can never be accused of practising racism.

To give credit where it is due, on Tuesday Mayor John Tory, along with the Liberal federal health minister and her Conservative provincial counterpart, came together and visited Toronto’s Chinatown to address the discrimination some in the Chinese-Canadian community have felt.

Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott stressed that the virus is an international situation and is not related to any one group of people. “There’s still a lot of discrimination out there,” she said. “We want to make sure that people know it’s safe to go out. It’s safe to come to your favourite restaurants … it’s safe to go shopping.”

In Europe, the situation is far worse than here. According to the German news agency Deutsche Welle, anti-Chinese racism is “spreading across the globe in countries as far apart as Australia and Canada and others in between such as Malaysia and Indonesia. France has recorded just six cases of the coronavirus. But Chinese people and others in the East Asian community there say they are becoming targets for discrimination.”

Racism is ubiquitous across the globe and one reason is that racism, if not committed by whites, is not even reported. The dead in the genocide of Black Darfuris by Sudan’s Arab Janjaweed are only now getting justice by the arrest of the country’s former dictator Omar al-Bashir.

And five years ago, when Black Darfuri refugees in Jordan were being attacked by Arab mobs, it was only a report by Vice News that broke the story.

The Chinese may be victims of racism today, but they need to recognize that their community too is not free of contempt for others. Whether it is at Chinese restaurants in Toronto or in China itself, anti-Black racism occurs.

In 2018, Chinese network CCTV staged a segment that featured a Chinese actress playing an African woman in blackface followed by a monkey portrayed by a black actor. It was subsequently removed from the network’s YouTube content.

But first we take Manhattan. So, the next time you run into a Canadian of Chinese descent, shake their hand and give them a hug. Then we take Berlin.

Source: FATAH: Anti-Chinese racism during Black History Month

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John Oliver on “Petrifying” Process of Becoming a U.S. Citizen

2020/02/13 Leave a comment

One of the great levellers that brings different people together.

Even celebrities have to go through the standard process (when I was posted to LA, the consular staff regularly had to help the Canadian Hollywood crowd with their passport renewals):

John Oliver opened up about becoming a U.S. citizen when he stopped by CBS’ The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Monday.

The Last Week Tonight host made a grand entrance and was carried onto the stage by four shirtless men dressed as Uncle Sam. “Yankee Doodle” played as Oliver shot a shirt out of a cannon. The theatrical entrance follows Jim Carrey’s appearance last week, in which Carrey parade onto the stage with a New Orleans-style second line band in tow and a purple umbrella in hand.

While talking to host Stephen Colbert, Oliver admitted that his journey to becoming a U.S. citizen has been a long time coming. “I came here in 2006, and so I’ve kind of been wanting this to happen pretty soon after that, so it’s been over a decade,” he said.

Oliver recapped the process, which included having to “go through a number of visas. I had to go through a green card, then I started applying for citizenship and now it takes longer because there’s sand in the gears of the system.” After his first green card expired, he had to apply for a second one.

Oliver said that the process was “unbelievably tense,” but added that he’s “incredible relieved” to now be a legal U.S. citizen.

He later explained the testing process, which includes “a hundred different questions and they kind of select 10 of them to fire at you.” Some examples of the questions Oliver could have been asked included naming state capitals and identifying the president.

“It’s incredibly nerve-wracking and the first question they asked me was, ‘What is your phone number?’ And I was so scared, I forgot,” he said. “She said, ‘Okay, let me just check your Social Security number,’ and I went, ‘I don’t know what that is, either. Oh, this isn’t going at all well.’ It was utterly petrifying.”

Oliver admitted to being “anxious” about becoming a citizen for over a decade. “Even the day of the ceremony, I kind of thought it was going to be a trap. There was part of me that literally thought they would open the door and there’d just be plastic sheeting on the ground like in Goodfellas and just Jared Kushner sitting in a swivel chair stroking a hairless cat,” he said. “That would’ve made more sense to me than the thing I wanted happening.”

When asked if he had to renounce the queen, Oliver responded, “I did that years ago, anyway.”

He then spoke about the “incredibly moving” experience of seeing other people become U.S. citizens during the ceremony. “It was 150 people from 49 different countries. All of us had been waiting a long time for this,” said Oliver. “There’s something very inspiring about the idea of these people choosing America — not just choosing America, but choosing America now when the country’s not at its best.

“Choosing America now is like falling in love with someone who’s vomiting all over themselves,” he continued. “‘I’m taking a flier. There’s a great human being under here.'”

The HBO host added, “It was very inspiring to watch people buy into the idea of America, which obviously outlasts any president. The idea is still sound.”

Oliver previously spoke about becoming a U.S. citizen in a recent Hollywood Reporter cover story. “The feeling you get at the end of that process is overwhelming relief,” he said during the interview. “And that it’s nothing to do with the current president.”

Source: John Oliver on “Petrifying” Process of Becoming a U.S. Citizen

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Betraying their heritage: Trump’s immigration functionaries fail to understand the lessons of the Italian-Amer

2020/02/13 Leave a comment

Not the only group to have forgotten their roots:

The men behind the draconian immigration policies of the Trump administration skillfully mimic the president’s invective and ahistorical logic. Matthew Albence, the acting director of ICE, once compared the crowded and filthy family detention centers to “summer camp.” Ken Cuccinelli, second in command at the Department of Homeland Security, sarcastically reworded Emma Lazarus’s famous poem in an attempt to justify Trump’s harsh new public-charge rule: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet.”

Along with the engineer of Trump’s foreign policy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, these men share something else: They are the grandsons and great-grandsons of Italian immigrants who arrived here around the turn of the century. Indeed, hearing the surnames of these architects of indifference is like listening to a night at the opera: Pompeo, Cuccinelli, and Albence (who replaced the not-tough-enough Ron Vitiello).

What an extraordinary irony. The men implementing one of the cruelest immigration policies of the last 100 years are just two generations removed from men who were similarly victimized by the Anglo-Saxon elite.

A 1903 political cartoon from Judge, a Republican magazine, sums up yesterday’s nativism in a way that looks remarkably familiar. The cartoon, titled “The Unrestricted Dumping Ground,” pictures poor Uncle Sam standing on a dock, his arms wrapped around an American flag, while the “rats” of Europe swim to the shore. They have giant rat bodies with faces of swarthy, dark-haired men who could be confused today for Mexican and Central Americans.

The rats wear headbands marked “Mafia,” “Anarchist,” “Socialist” — all labels associated with the millions of Italian migrants. A ghostly image of the late President William McKinley, assassinated by the son of an immigrant, haunts Uncle Sam. The message is clear: Immigrants from the slums of Europe are dangerous and must be stopped from entering our borders.
The Unrestricted Dumping Ground

The cartoon played into another nativist prejudice, that the blood of Italian Americans was “polluting” the finer American stock. People wanted the immigrants out, and the Anglo-Saxon elite worked hard to deliver that goal. A group of Harvard sociologists pressed for a literacy test closing the doors to any immigrant who couldn’t read or write.

Southern Italians — who made up about 85% of the Italian-American immigrant population — were by many formal standards severely ill-prepared for life in the United States. Coming from an impoverished land, they were mostly illiterate, and Italy’s illiteracy rate was higher than elsewhere in Europe. Yet America’s public schools educated these children — and some of their progeny even grew up to be secretary of state.

Today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric asserts that the early immigrants came here “legally.” But with the exception of the Chinese Exclusion Act, there were no immigration laws then. The cross-Atlantic journey was harrowing, but if you arrived on America’s shores and weren’t sick, you were let in. Not exactly warmly embraced, but given the chance to establish a life in the United States.

The Anglo-Saxon elite, however, were determined to put an end to this dangerous influx of people, who were crowding America’s schools and streets, and unable to stand on their own two feet. In 1924, when the immigrant population was nearly 15% of the American population, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act. The law imposed large-scale quotas that effectively ended Italian immigration. An expert Congressional witness, and the man largely responsible for getting the legislation passed, was Harry Laughlin, an avowed proponent of eugenic sterilization.

Today, the immigrant population hovers around this same percentage. Enter the grandson of Bernardino Albence Sr., Matthew, who ordered immigration officers to act every time they encounter an immigrant in the country illegally.

Enter the great-grandson of the illiterate Domenick Luigi Cuccinelli, Ken, who expects his plan to fast-track the deportation of asylum-seekers — denying victims of horrendous violence essential access to counsel — to reach full gear this month.

Is this the tragic ending to the American immigrant success story — the grandchildren of determined peasants turning their backs on another generation of masses yearning to breathe free?

Source: Betraying their heritage: Trump’s immigration functionaries fail to understand the lessons of the Italian-Amer

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White supremacist propaganda spreading, anti-bias group says [ADL]

2020/02/13 Leave a comment

The latest from ADL. Correlates with the Trump presidency and the license it provides:

Incidents of white supremacist propaganda distributed across the nation jumped by more than 120% between 2018 and last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League, making 2019 the second straight year that the circulation of propaganda material has more than doubled.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism reported 2,713 cases of circulated propaganda by white supremacist groups, including fliers, posters and banners, compared with 1,214 cases in 2018. The printed propaganda distributed by white supremacist organizations includes material that directly spreads messages of discrimination against Jews, LGBTQ people and other minority communities — but also items with their prejudice obscured by a focus on gauzier pro-America imagery.

The sharp rise in cases of white supremacist propaganda distribution last year follows a jump of more than 180% between 2017, the first year that the Anti-Defamation League tracked material distribution, and 2018. While 2019 saw cases of propaganda circulated on college campuses nearly double, encompassing 433 separate campuses in all but seven states, researchers who compiled the data found that 90% of campuses only saw one or two rounds of distribution.

Oren Segal, director of the League’s Center on Extremism, pointed to the prominence of more subtly biased rhetoric in some of the white supremacist material, emphasizing “patriotism,” as a sign that the groups are attempting “to make their hate more palatable for a 2020 audience.”

By emphasizing language “about empowerment, without some of the blatant racism and hatred,” Segal said, white supremacists are employing “a tactic to try to get eyes onto their ideas in a way that’s cheap, and that brings it to a new generation of people who are learning how to even make sense out of these messages.”’

The propaganda incidents tracked for the Anti-Defamation League’s report, set for release on Wednesday, encompass 49 states and occurred most often in 10 states: California, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, Washington and Florida.

Last year’s soaring cases of distributed propaganda also came as the Anti-Defamation League found white supremacist groups holding 20% fewer events than in 2018, “preferring not to risk the exposure of pre-publicized events,” according to its report. That marks a shift from the notably visible public presence that white supremacist organizations mounted in 2017, culminating in that summer’s Charlottesville, Va., rally where a self-described white supremacist drove into a crowd of counterprotesters.

About two-thirds of the total propaganda incidents in the new report were traced back to a single white supremacist group, Patriot Front, which the Anti-Defamation League describes as “formed by disaffected members” of the white supremacist organization Vanguard America after the Charlottesville rally.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913 to combat anti-Semitism as well as other biases, has tracked Patriot Front propaganda using messages such as “One nation against invasion” and “America First.” The report to be released Wednesday found that Patriot Front played a major role last year in boosting circulation of white supremacist propaganda on campuses through a push that targeted colleges in the fall.

Segal said that his group’s research can equip community leaders with education that helps them push back against white supremacist groups’ messaging efforts, including distribution aimed at students.

University administrators, Segal said, should speak out against white supremacist messaging drives, taking the opportunity “to demonstrate their values and to reject messages of hate that may be appearing on their campus.”

Several educational institutions where reports of white supremacist propaganda were reported in recent months did just that. After white supremacist material was reported on campus at Brigham Young University in November, the school tweeted that it “stands firmly against racism in any form and is committed to promoting a culture of safety, kindness, respect and love.”

The school went on to tweet a specific rejection of white supremacist sentiment as “sinful” by its owner, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, without naming the identity of the group behind the propaganda.

While some of the propaganda cataloged in the Anti-Defamation League’s report uses indirect messaging in service of a bigoted agenda, other groups’ activity is more openly threatening toward Jews and minority groups. The New Jersey European Heritage Association, a smaller white supremacist group founded in 2018, “contains numerous anti-Semitic tropes and refers to Jews as ‘destroyers’” in its most recent distributed flier, according to the report.

The Anti-Defamation League’s online monitoring of propaganda distribution is distinct from its tracking of white supremacist events and attacks, and that tracking does not include undistributed material such as graffiti, Segal explained.

Source: White supremacist propaganda spreading, anti-bias group says

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