If Trudeau Really Wants to “Bring Canadians Along” On Big Issues, He Must Improve the Consultation Process

2021/02/09 Leave a comment

More on narratives. Not sure how realistic this is in the context of an adversial and partisan environment along with time pressures. Changing how people feel normally takes longer than one government mandate but agree on need to address perceptions and feelings as well as facts:

In an interview with The Toronto Star last week, the prime minister expressed regret that in its first term his government didn’t always do enough “to bring Canadians along” on big initiatives. Ideally, it would be “involving Canadians as active, engaged citizens on the work we’re doing,” he said.

As a team with expertise in public engagement, we thought we’d weigh in.

The Liberals’ current agenda includes some ambitious social-change initiatives, such as Reconciliation, systemic racism, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), and fighting climate change. To defeat the pandemic, they must mobilize the entire country.

All would benefit from better citizen engagement but what, exactly, does that mean? Trudeau is on the right track when he says that “to bring people along” it is not enough that they know what’s going on, they also need to feel it. We think that his government could build on this insight to make public consultations much more effective and meaningful for Canadians.

Engagement Should Challenge How We Think and Feel

One way that governments try to bring people along on initiatives is by “informing” them. Providing the right facts and information can raise awareness on issues such as Reconciliation or racism, which is helpful.

But knowing that, say, racism exists and is wrong is not enough to end it. As Trudeau suggests, attitudes like these are also anchored in our values and emotions – in how we “feel” about others. Facts and information are rarely enough to change or eliminate negative feelings.

Real change requires adjustments at an emotional as well as an intellectual level and engagement can help. The key lies in something we call public narratives.

A public narrative is a theme or motif that people use to give order and meaning to a complex set of facts, values, emotions, and more. Basically, narratives give us a viewpoint or mental map of a situation.

For example, our traditional views on treating illness are shaped by a narrative in which death is the primordial enemy and anything that postpones it is a victory. Causing death when life can be preserved is a terrible wrong.

Narratives like this are deeply embedded in our culture. We internalize them early in life and they become part of our shared identity and worldview.

But these narratives can and do evolve. Many people have watched their loved ones suffer or lose their faculties before dying. The experience can be heart wrenching and those who go through it often come out changed. The public narrative around treating illness no longer fits their experience, and they want to see it changed.

Public Consultations Tend to Divide Where they Should Unite

The lesson for governments is that successful social change often requires narrative building. As circumstances change, so do people’s experiences. Society evolves and, eventually, public narratives are called into question and need a reset, say, on treating illness, protecting the environment, or responding to systemic racism.

Let’s note, however, that turning our attention to the role of values and emotions in engagement doesn’t mean that facts no longer matter. The challenge is to find a narrative that aligns complex emotions AND informs people – to arrive at a viewpoint that resonates with Canadians’ emotions and is truthful and accurate:

Unfortunately, traditional public consultations weren’t designed for this kind of deliberation. Far from reconciling competing facts, values and emotions, they tend to pit them against one another, without doing the hard work of aligning them.

Take the Department of Justice’s consultations on MAiD. Canadians were invited to fill out a questionnaire, which allowed officials to tally up how many people feel one way vs. another. The Department also held a series of roundtables, where select experts and stakeholders were invited to discuss their views on MAiD.

Processes like this are more likely to divide than to unite people. Advocates at the table may be polite about their differences (or not), but narrative building is not part of their agenda. In their view, their job is to make the case for their views, while defending them against criticism, much like lawyers in a court case. Processes like this tend to sharpen and deepen the differences.

By comparison, narrative building discourages competition and instead promotes collaboration by setting different “rules of engagement.” In our approach, participants must agree to:

  1. Recognize the legitimacy of one another’s lived experience.
  2. Focus the dialogue on how the narrative in question can be adjusted to align people’s emotions and understanding in new and better ways.
  3. Be guided by a facilitator who will ensure the rules are respected.

These rules commit people to listening empathetically to the experiences of others and working together to find innovative ways to reconcile tensions through a better narrative. In short, they put people’s emotional intelligence to work, along with knowledge and facts.  Done well, this should lead to a win/win.

Ministers and Parliamentary Committees Should Lead Public Dialogues

Finally, regarding Trudeau’s goal of ensuring his government “brings people along,” we think ministers and/or parliamentary committees could and should do more to engage the public directly on narrative building in areas such as systemic racism, climate change, and MAiD.

This would be a departure from the usual “communications approach,” where a minister or leader uses speeches and other tools to deliver a fully formed narrative. In our approach, politicians are as much facilitators as a decision-makers. They present ideas to the public, but they also engage the public in a dialogue about them and adjust and adapt the narrative as the dialogue progresses.

The goal is to have government draw on the public’s experiences to build the narrative, while showing real give and take in its interactions with Canadians. This assures the public of a meaningful role in the process, which, in turn, builds legitimacy around the narrative. In Trudeau’s language, it “brings them along” and makes them “feel” that they are part of the change.

Unfortunately, most of the government’s public consultations barely scratch the surface of this kind of engagement. If Trudeau really wants to bring Canadians along, why not start by hauling engagement over to the other side of this competitive/collaborative divide?

Dr. Don Lenihan is Senior Associate at the Institute on Governance and an internationally recognized expert on public engagement, governance, and policy development. For more, visit his website at: www.middlegroundengagement.com

Andrew Balfour is Managing Partner at Rubicon Strategy in Ottawa.

Source: If Trudeau Really Wants to “Bring Canadians Along” On Big Issues, He Must Improve the Consultation Process

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Canada’s visa application centre in Beijing run by Chinese police

2021/02/09 2 Comments

Getting a fair amount of attention and concern. Comments by former Canadian Ambassador Guy Saint-Jacques of note:

Chinese police own a company that collects details of people applying for visas to Canada and numerous other countries, giving Beijing security services a direct stake in the processing of private information provided by people planning travel outside China.

Beijing Shuangxiong Foreign Service Company, which operates the Canadian visa-application centre in the Chinese capital, is owned by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, a Globe and Mail investigation has found. And at least some of the people working inside the centre are members of the Communist Party, recruited from a school that trains the next generation of party elite.

Beijing Shuangxiong is a subcontractor for VFS Global, a company headquartered in Zurich and Dubai that holds a wide-reaching contract to provide visa-processing services around the globe for the Canadian government. VFS offices collect personal and biometric information that is then forwarded to Canadian immigration officials for decisions on who shall be granted visas.

In China, VFS relies on subcontractors to operate its 11 Canadian visa centre locations. The company, which provides visa services for 34 countries in China, says it has strict processes in place to safeguard personal data.

However, the police ownership of the Beijing centre raises questions about the extent to which it is possible for VFS to shield people’s private and confidential information from authorities in a country such as China, which maintains a sweeping and invasive surveillance apparatus, and restricts international travel for some officials and ethnic groups.

Chinese security services “obviously have a huge interest in mining visa data,” said Robert Potter, a cybersecurity consultant in Australia who has worked as an adviser to the Canadian government.

Knowledge of what happens inside a visa centre could have high-level intelligence value. “If you can see who is getting declined and who is getting approved, it gives you a better chance of getting your agent through,” Mr. Potter said.

It could also be used to bar people from leaving China. For some people, like the country’s Muslims, “even applying for a visa to get out of China is enough to get flagged as a terrorist,” he said. “If you’re a Uyghur and you’re applying for a visa to Canada on humanitarian grounds, giving that information to the security service is really dangerous.”

Ward Elcock, a former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said the fact that companies connected to China’s security forces or its government are playing a part in the Canada visa-application process “represents a lazy abdication of our standards to those of a police state.”

VFS Global said in a statement that neither individuals nor operators of the local companies with which it partners are able to gain access to visa-application data.

Other Western countries also use Beijing Shuangxiong, including Britain, Italy, Belgium, Ireland and New Zealand.

VFS Global handles visa services for Canada in at least 83 countries.

The Globe has previously reported that China Investment Corp., one of the biggest state-run financial institutions in the world, is a backer of an investment fund that is VFS’s majority owner. VFS says investors do not have a say in how the company operates.

In Ottawa, opposition parties have urged the federal government to reconsider its contract with VFS. NDP MPs have written to Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino and Public Services Minister Anita Anand to express “serious concerns around the security of information handled by VFS Global.”

VFS, which operates in 144 countries, has said the investment fund “doesn’t have access to any data from VFS Global nor any of its other portfolio companies.”

But the company has developed much closer operational ties with Chinese state-backed companies inside China, The Globe has discovered.

The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission owns 30 per cent of the Canadian visa office in that city. China Travel Services, a large centrally owned company, owns the majority of the centre in Guangzhou. In Jinan, the 93.55-per-cent owner of the subcontracting company is Pei Zhongyi, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a key part of China’s ruling apparatus. People who answered the phone at those locations declined to answer questions.

But the Beijing centre stands out for its proximity to China’s security and political establishment.

Chinese corporate records show that Beijing Shuangxiong is wholly owned by Beijing Tongda Asset Management Group, which is a subsidiary of Beijing Sifu Enterprise Management Office. Corporate records list Beijing Sifu as an arm of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, the city’s police. A 2017 city of Beijing document describes Beijing Sifu as a work unit of the city’s police.

Asked if police or security services had access to visa-application information, a woman who answered the phone at the Canada Visa Centre in Beijing said she could only discuss visas. Beijing Shuangxiong did not respond to an e-mail request for comment. A receptionist at Beijing Sifu provided a fax number to the Beijing police, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Peter Brun, chief communications officer for VFS Global, said that like many foreign companies, VFS operates with locally owned “facility management companies” to provide visa-application services on the ground. “Individuals or local companies having a stake in the facility management companies you describe have no access to visa-application data. They cannot influence the visa-application process set by the Canadian government,” the VFS official said.

Mr. Brun said all application data are encrypted upon entry and then transferred “securely and directly to servers located in Canada only.” He said only Canadian government officials can gain access to this data.

He said no data are stored in China and the servers processing the applications are located in Canada. Mr. Brun said VFS conducts thorough “credit and criminal record checks on all employees before they are hired” and staff’s e-mail and telecommunications are monitored “for security risks.”

He said the Canadian government either installs or supervises the Immigration department data servers and biometric equipment at the visa-application centres.

Mr. Brun said it has 64 governments as clients around the world including the U.S., Britain and nearly all European Union countries.

Guy Saint-Jacques, who served as Canada’s ambassador to China between 2012 and 2016, said it’s best to assume there is no privacy for visa applications made in China.

“You can bet the Chinese government is interested in knowing who is going to study where abroad, who is going as a tourist and who wants to leave and immigrate,” he said.

Canada’s Department of Citizenship and Immigration is defending the visa-application arrangements it has made in Beijing and throughout China.

“For any foreign company to operate in China, they must be partnered with a local Chinese company, and Canadian contractors are not exempted from this,” department spokesman Rémi Larivière said in a statement. “Canadian officials closely monitor the activities of visa-application centres (VACs) around the world to ensure that our stringent privacy standards are met.”

He said applications are handled “according to Canada’s privacy laws” and the service providers have pledged not to interfere with visa applications. “As set out in the contract, VACs are expressly forbidden from providing any visa-related advice to applicants or from making any type of determination on their application.”

Beijing Shuangxiong dates back to 1993, and describes itself as among the first agencies approved by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau to provide entry and exit services.

It also has close ties with China’s ruling party.

You Xiangdong, the company’s legal representative and general manager, serves as secretary of its Communist Party branch, and the company has cultivated close ties to Beijing Youth Politics College, a school that has for decades played a foundational role in training new generations of Communist Party leadership.

The college’s English study students have become coveted workers for Beijing Shuangxiong, which has brought many in to work in its visa centres. In a report on the partnership, the company said it valued the political reliability of students from the school.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-canadas-visa-application-centre-in-beijing-run-by-chinese-police/

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Changing social norms is the key to addressing racism

2021/02/08 Leave a comment

Good piece by Michael Adams and Keith Neuman:

When the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread in North America last March, it was hard to imagine anything else capturing a large share of public attention in the ensuing months. And then, in May, video footage of the horrific killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police ignited a blaze of protest that spread across the United States and also Canada, a country with its own history of colonialism and racism. The depth of the reflection and conversation – public and private – provoked by the protests was unprecedented. For the first time, many of this country’s leaders unequivocally acknowledged the existence of systemic racism in Canada, and reflected the predominant public sentiment. Our own research shows that a significant majority of Canadians now recognize the reality of racial discrimination in this country, especially as it affects people who are Indigenous and Black.

Such recognition of racism in our society is a significant milestone, long in coming. Doing something about it becomes the next step, and represents an even greater challenge given how deeply such prejudice is embedded in Canada’s dominant culture and institutions. Evidence of its pervasiveness confronts us both in personal anecdotes and in hard data on racial disparities across many areas of society – from policing and health to education and social welfare.

It is commonly believed that the biggest obstacle to meaningful change is our inability to recognize our own racial prejudices. The prevalence of unconscious racism or “implicit bias” has been well documented by American social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt (in her seminal book, Biased) and others. Some have responded by taking steps to make the implicit explicit through education generally, and diversity and anti-racism training in particular. Governments and corporations have invested in programs to teach employees about bias and stereotypes, hoping that raising consciousness will change attitudes, assumptions and behaviour. But the evidence is emerging that this strategy is not effective in producing lasting change, as recently reported in a meta-analysis of close to 1,000 studies of anti-bias interventions.

Efforts to reduce bias through education and training may simply not work because it is impossible to change people’s ingrained mindsets and emotions, at least in the short term. A more promising avenue to consider is the social context in which people operate when they interact with others. Implicit in diversity training is the idea that racism is fuelled mainly by what people know and think, but what matters more is what people say and how they behave in the presence of others. Outward expressions of racism are governed in large part by collective social norms about acceptable behaviour. The term “norms” sometimes gets mentioned in the context of problematic content on social media, but what has yet to receive any serious attention is the concept of “social norms” as a fundamental aspect of society that contributes to the systemic nature of racism and where we might focus to address the problem.

Social norms are widely held expectations about what is, and is not, acceptable to say and do in particular situations. What is distinctive about such norms is that they are not defined by what people think is important to them personally, but by what they see as the social expectations of others whose opinions matter to them. As such, norms exert a powerful influence on how people act in public and social situations, quite apart from what they may think or feel inside.

These norms are typically well entrenched, but do change over time. The Holocaust led many people to decide it was no longer acceptable to articulate anti-Jewish stereotypes. The growing awareness of LGBTQ individuals in society and the legislative endorsement of same-sex marriage both improved attitudes and also made it no longer socially acceptable to trade in homophobic slurs. Many people may still harbour negative views about Jews and LGBTQ people, but most now understand it is no longer okay to express them.

Sometimes social norms change as a result of intentional efforts. Arguably the most striking example is the successful campaign to change norms around tobacco use in public. Just over a generation ago, smoking in public was common, even cool. Today, the behaviour has become effectively “denormalized” as inconsiderate and self-defeating, even as a significant proportion of the population continues to smoke in private. Regulatory measures that restrict smoking in public settings are also important, but it is the norms more than the laws that govern behaviour. By contrast, consider jaywalking, which is also legally forbidden but widely socially accepted.

Social norms play a key role in the dynamics of racism and prejudice because they establish the boundaries around which people act toward those they see as “other.” While internal attitudes and stereotypes are stubbornly resistant to short-term change, action and speech are more amenable to influence and normative pressures. This means that focusing on social norms can be an effective strategy for addressing racism in a meaningful way – especially if the collective norms against intolerance and discrimination are strengthening, which now appears to be happening. Evidence for this can be found in the recent public condemnation of wearing “blackface” in costume, which in a different era was considered by many to be harmless party attire.

There is nothing new about the concept of social norms, which social scientists have studied in academic settings and applied to public health challenges in developing countries. What has been missing is the practical application of this science to important societal problems such as racism, as well as other pressing challenges such as promoting physical distancing during a pandemic. The essential starting point is to first properly define and measure specific social norms about race-related actions and speech in order to determine their breadth and strength across the population (a type of research our institute now plans to undertake). Such information can then point to where interventions might be directed – to reinforce “positive norms” that are currently prevalent in society (no wearing of blackface) and de-normalizing “negative norms” (e.g., telling jokes that demean the “other”). This might take the form of public awareness campaigns (as was done to de-normalize public smoking) or employee-directed programs. Government and corporate leaders might be effective communicators of appropriate normative behaviour, to the extent they are credible and can exert influence over relevant audiences (which research might confirm).

Today in Canada, our understanding of the current reality of racial injustice is at odds with our stated aspirations of justice and inclusion. This tension provides us with a valuable opportunity to create a more just society by developing new strategies that effectively apply normative pressures on each other to do a better job of treating each other as we ourselves expect to be treated.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-changing-social-norms-is-the-key-to-addressing-racism/

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UAE’s Double-Standard on Citizenship Rights

2021/02/08 Leave a comment

Noted!

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently announced a plan to extend citizenship opportunities to highly-educated, skilled, or wealthy foreign nationals and their families. Unfortunately, the country’s citizenship law still leaves out other groups, including children born to Emirati women and foreign fathers, and stateless people.

Increasing pathways to citizenship is good investment for a country whose population consists of nearly 90 percent foreign nationals, most of whom are part of the UAE’s low-paid workforce. However, the government’s new citizenship mechanism is designed to attract an elite set of foreign nationals. It allows for UAE officials to nominate foreign nationals for citizenship using criteria mostly related to academic, entrepreneurial, or financial status.

People in the UAE have taken to social media to pointpoint out the glaring hypocrisy of the new plan and demandcitizenship for all children of Emirati mothers.

Emirati women continue to face discrimination in passing nationality to their children compared to Emirati men. The UAE’s nationality law provides that children of Emirati men are automatically entitled to UAE citizenship; however, children born to Emirati mothers and foreign fathers are not.

Emirati mothers can apply for citizenship for their children provided their child has lived in the UAE for six years. However, according to some mothers, the application process can be confusing and it can sometimes take yearsto receive a response. When the child turns 18, they can apply themselves. But even then, they can wait years with no answer.

Others on social media have raised the plight of the country’s bidun (stateless) population, who, without UAE citizenship, face serious obstacles to accessing health care, employment, and university scholarships. Children of stateless couples have no path to citizenship, regardless of how long their parents have lived in the UAE. Many bidun individuals in the UAE trace their origins to nomadic communities  or immigrants living there before the country was formed in 1971, and who failed to register for nationality at the time.

The UAE is free to attract foreign investment into the country by offering the prospect of Emirati citizenship, but it should also end gross discrimination regarding citizenship for children of Emirati women and stateless groups. It is time to recognize them as Emirati nationals on an equal basis.

Source: UAE’s Double-Standard on Citizenship Rights

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Ottawa should require banks to share race-related data on services: business groups

2021/02/08 Leave a comment

Of note (expect banks are doing some of this already internally as part of understanding their client and potential client base):

Canadian banks should have to disclose data related to race, gender, income and neighbourhoods to ensure more equitable access to credit and loans, say organizations representing racialized and Indigenous business owners who want Ottawa to step in.

Nadine Spencer, president of Black Business and Professional Association, says Black business owners grapple with microaggressions, unconscious bias and discrimination in banking, and both tracking and releasing this data would help hold banks accountable.

“In order for us to move along, we have to look at the data, look at the gaps and address the issues,” she said.

Banks in the United States have had to keep track of applicants for business loans by race, gender, income and neighbourhood for more than 40 years through their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act. Designed as a way to encourage banks to better serve lower-income neighbourhoods and racialized communities, it involves the U.S. Federal Reserve and other banking regulators evaluating their performance on this front, with ratings published in an online database.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said the federal government should require something similar of banks in Canada as a way to fight systemic racism.

“Four of our six big Canadian banks own U.S. banks and have, for decades, followed the U.S. law in the U.S. but they have not done anything up here to track and disclose discrimination,” said Conacher.

He was referring to Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce the Royal Bank, and Toronto-Dominion Bank, which all own U.S.-based operations.

Herbert Schuetze, an economics professor at the University of Victoria, said disclosing such data would encourage more researchers to look at whether businesses owned by racialized people are getting the same access to credit and other services. He said U.S. studies have shown a discrepancy, but that research cannot easily be done in Canada.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see that (here) but it’s something that, without data, we can’t identify how big of an issue it is in Canada,” he said.

The government announced up to $221 million for Black entrepreneurs in partnership with several Canadian financial institutions in September, but Conacher said this program is not enough to address the gap in funding for Black-owned businesses.

A spokeswoman for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the Liberal government is open to adopting other measures, although did not commit to this one.

“The federal government is currently undertaking pre-budget consultations. We invite all Canadians to share their ideas and priorities,” said press secretary Katherine Cuplinskas.

“We absolutely know there is much more work to be done.”

RBC spokesman André Roberts said the bank does not collect information on race or gender when clients access services, noting the bank is participating in the Black entrepreneurship program.

Bank of Montreal spokesperson Jeff Roma did not say whether BMO would support the disclosure of data but said it is also participating in the federal Black entrepreneurship program. TD Bank and did not say whether it would back sharing data and CIBC did not respond to a request for comment.

“The banks are already collecting this data on all their borrowers, and can easily add one box on the form saying: do you want to identify as a visible minority?” Conacher said.

Vivian Kaye, who owns an online business selling hair extensions to Black women, said she has faced discrimination from her bank since she started eight years ago.

She said her bank’s agents repeatedly questioned money transfers she made and never offered her a line of credit, even though they could see her business had been growing.

Caroline Shenaz Hossein, a professor of business and society at York University, said disaggregating the data would show who gets access to banking services in Canada — and who does not.

She said many Black people, including herself, have turned to online banking, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, to avoid dealing with racism at bank branches.

“I hated the humiliation of going in to a bank, and them watching me up and down like I am some sort of like terrorist’s drug mule, because I’m of Black-Caribbean descent,” she said.

“We already know about systemic racism and it does exist. We do not need data to tell us that part. We want to know who actually gets the loans.”

She said also said minority communities often create alternative sources of funding.

“Chinatown and (Gerrard India Bazaar, in Toronto) have all been built on these informal collectives or co-operative groups that are really rooted in mutual aid,” she said.

Shannin Metatawabin, the CEO of the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association, which provides alternative funding for Indigenous businesses, said publishing data from the banks would allow organizations like his to create new products or advocate for better services.

“Historically, Black, Indigenous, people of colour have always been an afterthought,” he said. “The response to the needs of our community has always been after the mainstream population.”

He said policy-makers should change that, noting that banks are federally regulated.

“It’s integral for them to get involved to make sure that everybody receives equitable service,” he said.

Jason Rasevych, president of the Anishnawbe Business Professional Association, which supports Indigenous businesses in northern Ontario, said accessing race-based data would guarantee transparency and could prompt banks to make changes.

“It also puts the financial institutions in a position to explore a potential refresh (of their policies) and strategies related to Indigenous relations, or Black or people of colour relations.”

Schuetze, the University of Victoria professor, said creating a ratings system for financial institutions to encourage them to provide loans to minority-owned businesses, like the one in the U.S., would have a positive impact.

He said other policies could also help, including tackling discrimination in the labour market, reducing barriers to operating businesses and getting experience and providing startup grants for minority-owned businesses.

“If you can reduce those barriers then, obviously, access to capital from financial institutions will increase,” Schuetze said.

Spencer said governments and financial institutions should talk to business owners and ask them what they need.

“The No. 1 thing that the financial institutions can do is to look at each customer and client as a contributor to their revenue base and respect them in a way that they should,” she said.

Source: Ottawa should require banks to share race-related data on services: business groups

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Before COVID-19, inequity in healthcare was, in effect, a pandemic for Black communities. Here are five issues that need to be addressed

2021/02/08 Leave a comment

Of note. Good list of issues:

Toronto has a new, $6.8-million plan to fight the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the Black community. But the roots of health inequity were taking hold long before the pandemic started.

“These are conversations we have been having. We’ve been advocating, we’ve been speaking about it,” said Lydia-Joi Marshall, president of the Black Health Alliance. “This is not a new crisis for the Black community …. This is just highlighting the inequities that have been happening all along.”

Marshall, who has worked in healthcare research for more than 15 years and was a speaker at this month’s TEDxToronto: Uncharted, spoke with the Star to explain five long-standing issues that have made the healthcare system unequal for the Black community. Many of these still need to be addressed.

It’s not biology, it’s racism: As a geneticist, Marshall said she does not believe in race as a biological construct. “Race is not the determinant of health. Racism is,” she said.

“We often hear all these higher rates of illness in Black people — Black people have higher hypertension and diabetes,” and we can see that and think there must be a “very specific biological reason,” Marshall said. But, really, it’s more to do with systemic barriers that make these illnesses more likely, such as disproportionate stress and lack of access to nutritious food. “What are the other social determinants?” she said.

For instance, a 2019 study by FoodShare and the University of Toronto showed that Black Canadians are twice as likely as white Canadians to be food insecure. Without access to affordable, healthy food, health problems can fester.

“This idea that it is biological, we have to come away from that, because it allows people to dismiss the systemic and institutionalized racism of why we’re seeing such different rates.”

Microaggressions take a toll on physical health: Dealing with small, daily instances of racism can overtime lead to poorer health outcomes. “It takes a toll on our health,” Marshall said.

A study conducted by Harvard University and NPR in 2017 found that people who reported high numbers of daily indignities, such as receiving poor service in a restaurant or being treated with less courtesy than others, also ranked high in developing heart disease, or, in the case of pregnant women, ranked high in giving birth to babies of a lower weight.

“This stress, whether it is daily stress or overt … can result in illness,” Marshall said.

Mental health and wellness has a ripple effect: Marshall notes that mental health can affect other branches of health, and yet have so far not received as much attention.

Much of Marshall’s research relates to other clinical and chronic illnesses, but rates of under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed mental illness in the Black community, have “shocked” her, when she has looked at them.

Black respondents ranked the lowest in a December 2020 mental health surveyconducted by Morneau Shepell.

Barriers to mental healthcare for the Black community must be reduced, and a better understanding at the point of diagnosis developed, so the rates of under- and misdiagnosis are addressed.

Bias affects quality of care: Marshall recalls a time when her aunt called Telehealth to assess her symptoms when she was feeling ill. The questions went: “Are you healthy? Does your skin look pink?” Marshall said.

“I had to explain to her that this is just the ingrained bias — that here in Canada, the normal is not us.”

Apart from small instances such as this, the phenomenon also manifests in textbooks that are used in medical schools, hospital visits and is a hardship shared by Indigenous communities.

Mistrust of the system lingers: As concerns about hesitancy around taking the vaccine get more attention in public policy, it’s worth really considering the questions Black communities have and the source of their concerns, Marshall says.

Mistreatment has been both on a large scale historically — as with the Tuskegee study in the U.S. and nutrition experiments in the Indigenous community in Canada — but also on a smaller scale in the form of personal trips to the hospital.

Many are “asking valid questions, because of a historical pattern of the system not catering to our needs,” she said.

“Why would we trust a system that has not been built for us?”

This approach can inform the way Canada addresses vaccine concerns in the Black community.

Source: Before COVID-19, inequity in healthcare was, in effect, a pandemic for Black communities. Here are five issues that need to be addressed

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Ottawa will continue online citizenship tests after success of pilot program

2021/02/08 Leave a comment

After a slow start, some encouraging news:

Ottawa’s groundbreaking virtual citizenship exam pilot program has exceeded its target intake, and more online tests will be scheduled.

Since the exam was launched virtually at the end of November, more than 6,700 applicants have taken the test, surpassing the initial target of 5,000, according to Asim Zaidan of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“Prior to the pandemic, IRCC had embarked on a citizenship modernization program to improve client service delivery. Online tests are a part of this program, and have been prioritized due to COVID-19,” Zaidan told the Star in an email.

“Moving citizenship events — ceremonies, tests and interviews — to an online format is a part of the department’s goal of bringing efficiencies to the citizenship program and simplifying the application process.”

The pandemic has slowed much of the department’s operations due to reduced processing capacity as staff moved — and continued — to work from home. The delay led to a ballooning backlog of more than 85,000 people awaiting a test and thousands of others in the queue to be officiated as new Canadians.

While citizenship exams were resumed only virtually two months ago, online citizenship ceremonies returned earlier in June. To date, almost 50,000 new Canadians have taken their oath at 8,000 virtual ceremonies.

“This has been successful thus far. At this point, the new testing platform is still being assessed,” said Zaidan.

“A further number of applicants continue to be invited to take the online test, and we continue to monitor system performance closely and make improvements if necessary.”

Acquiring citizenship is an important rite of passage for immigrants, affording permanent residents the privileges only enjoyed by citizens such as voting in elections and access to a Canadian passport.

A recent government review of the citizenship program found that half of the three million permanent residents admitted to Canada between 2005 and 2015 became citizens by the end of 2018, while another 7 per cent had already applied for citizenship.

The top five birth countries of new citizens were the Philippines, India, China, Pakistan and Iran. Those born in China, India, the Philippines, the United States and the United Kingdom accounted for more than of half of the permanent residents who did not apply for Canadian citizenship.

Fifty-one per cent of naturalized citizens had a university degree, compared to just 40 per cent among those who had not applied.

Citizenship uptake rate also varies for different populations, and has declined among more recent immigrants, suggesting newcomers are taking longer to become citizens, the evaluation report said.

The citizenship application fee for an adult includes a $530 processing fee and a $100 right to be a citizen fee. Twenty-eight per cent of the 12,718 citizens and permanent residents surveyed by the immigration department in the report said the cost had delayed or was preventing them from apply for citizenship.

The cost presented an even bigger challenge for resettled refugees and protected persons, as well as those with a personal income less than $60,000 and from families with five or more people.

In 2019, right after the Liberals won a minority government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a mandate letter tasked Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino to bring forward a plan to eliminate citizenship fees — a priority that has yet to be delivered.

When asked about the plan, the Immigration Department’s Zaidan said, “We are committed to bringing forward a plan on this and look forward to having more to say in due course.”

Former citizenship director-general Andrew Griffith was not impressed by the government’s glacial pace at getting rid of the citizenship fees.

To him, this delay, as well as the new citizenship guide that’s been promised since Mendicino’s pre-predecessor John McCallum five years ago, suggests citizenship is not a priority for the government.

“The minister doesn’t get too many complaints about citizenship. He gets more complaints about immigration-related matters. It’s a lower profile issue politically and it makes the bureaucracy pay less attention,” Griffith said.

“In the year of COVID, things slipped and the pandemic could’ve had an impact but it is not supposed to be a get-out-of-jail card.”

The Immigration Department said it is consulting a wide range of stakeholders in revising the citizenship guide, including many groups under-represented in previous editions, such as Indigenous peoples, women, minority communities, Francophones and Canadians with disabilities. A launch date has not yet been determined.

Source: Ottawa will continue online citizenship tests after success of pilot program

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Mortality Risk After Ischemic Stroke According to Immigration Status and Ethnicity

2021/02/06 Leave a comment

Ontario study, showing lower risks of transient ischemic attacks or strokes for immigrants:

Immigrants may be at a lower risk for mortality after ischemic stroke compared with long-term residents, although the risk for vascular event recurrence was similar in both groups, according to study results published in Neurology.

The objective of the current study was to determine the association between immigration status, ethnicity, and the risk for mortality or vascular event recurrence in patients with a history of ischemic stroke in Ontario, Canada.

This retrospective cohort study was based on data from the Ontario Stroke Registry, a province-wide registry with data on a random sample of patients with stroke treated in one of the medical institutions in the province. Study researchers identified patients with ischemic stroke between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2013. Patients born in Canada and those who moved to Canada before 1985 were classified as long-term residents, while those who were born outside of Canada and arrived after 1985 were classified as immigrants.  In addition, patients were categorized into 3 different ethnic groups: Chinese, South-Asian, or other.

The study sample included 31,918 adults with ischemic stroke, including 2740 (median age, 70 years; women, 48%) immigrants, and 29,178 long-term residents (median age, 76 years; women, 49.2%).

During a median follow-up of 5 years, the mortality risk was lower for immigrants, compared with long-term residents (46.1% vs 64.5%, respectively). The mortality risk decreased after adjustment for baseline characteristics and comorbid conditions (hazard ratio [HR], 0.94; 95% CI, 0.88-1.00), but persisted in those who were younger than 75 years old (HR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.74-0.91).

The mortality risk was higher among South-Asian immigrants than among South-Asian long-term residents (HR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.05-1.61), similar in Chinese immigrants and Chinese long-term residents (HR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.79-1.15), and lower in immigrants of other ethnic origin than their long-term resident counterparts (HR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.83-0.95) (P =.003 for all-cause mortality).

Compared to long-term residents, the risk for mortality among immigrants was lower in immigrants from all regions, except for immigrants from South Asia. Study researchers observed the greatest survival advantage in immigrants from East Asia (HR, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.65-0.86).

The risk for vascular event recurrence was similar in immigrants and long-term residents (adjusted HR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.92-1.11). Within ethnic groups, there was no difference in the risk for vascular event recurrence between immigrants and long-term residents.

The study had several limitations, including determining ethnicity using surname algorithms with potential misclassification, a heterogeneous study sample, and missing data on additional risk factors or secondary preventative measures.

“Long-term mortality following ischemic stroke is lower in immigrants and long-term residents, but is similar after adjustment of baseline characteristics, and it is modified by age at the time of stroke and by ethnicity,” concluded the study researchers.

Source: Mortality Risk After Ischemic Stroke According to Immigration Status and Ethnicity

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Across The South, COVID-19 Vaccine Sites Missing From Black And Hispanic Neighborhoods

2021/02/06 Leave a comment

Not surprising. Hope someone will do a similar analysis for Canada (once we have a full supply of vaccines):

Georgia Washington, 79, can’t drive. Whenever she needs to go somewhere, she asks her daughter or her friends to pick her up.

She has lived in the northern part of Baton Rouge, a predominantly Black area of Louisiana’s capital, since 1973. There aren’t many resources there, including medical facilities. So when Washington fell ill with COVID-19 last March, she had to get a ride 20 minutes south to get medical attention.

Washington doesn’t want to fall sick again, so she was eager to get vaccinated, which is in line with federal health recommendations. But she faced the same challenge she did last year: finding a local provider, this time for a vaccine. She tried for weeks, checking at pharmacies in the area. And she was put on a waiting list.

Georgia Washington has lived in Southern Heights, a predominantly Black neighborhood in the northern part of Baton Rouge, La., since 1973. After falling ill with COVID-19 last year, Washington was eager to get vaccinated, which is in line with federal health recommendations. But Washington again had difficulty finding a local provider, this time to get a vaccine.

“I’ve got lots of patience,” Washington said. “I just want to get it over with.”

Communities of color have been disproportionately harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now they’re at risk of being left behind in the vaccine rollout.

Using data from several states that have published their own maps and lists of where vaccination sites are located, NPR identified disparities in the locations of vaccination sites in major cities across the Southern U.S. — with most sites placed in whiter neighborhoods.

NPR found this disparity by looking at Census Bureau statistics of non-Hispanic white residents and mapping where the vaccine sites were. NPR identified counties where vaccine sites tended to be in census tracts — roughly equivalent to neighborhoods — that had a higher percentage of white residents, compared with the census-tract average in that county. Reporters attempted to confirm the findings with health officials in nine counties across six states where the differences were most dramatic: Travis and Bastrop counties, Texas; East Baton Rouge Parish, La.; Hinds County, Miss.; Mobile County, Ala.; Chatham County, Ga.; DeKalb County, Ga.; Fulton County, Ga.; and Richland County, South Carolina.

The reasons are both unique to each place and common across the region: The health care locations that are logical places to distribute a vaccine tend to be located in the more affluent and whiter parts of town where medical infrastructure already exists. That presents a challenge for public health officials who are relying on what’s already in place to mount a quick vaccination campaign.

It’s a problem that exists not just in the South but across the country. A team of researchers at the West Health Policy Center and the University of Pittsburgh found nearly two dozen urban counties where Black residents would need to travel farther than white residents to a potential vaccination site — unless health officials act to narrow the disparities.

“We’re hopeful there will be new facilities that are stood up,” says Dr. Utibe Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh who studies health disparities and worked on the research team. “But what we saw play out with COVID testing was there were new facilities that came up, but they relied on existing infrastructure.”

“This is structural and foundational to the racial disparities in our country.”

Troubles getting vaccinated in Black neighborhoods

In the part of Baton Rouge where Georgia Washington lives, there is just one Walgreens where COVID-19 vaccines can be found.

Ever since an interstate was built through Baton Rouge in the 1960s, the population in the northern part of the city has struggled with housing, food insecurity, poverty and crime. These inequities have always fueled disparities in health care in Baton Rouge. The vaccine rollout is just the latest example.

“When you go to north Baton Rouge, there are very few [health care] choices. And then how many of those are participating in the vaccine program?” said Tasha Clark-Amar, CEO of the East Baton Rouge Council on Aging.

Clark-Amar runs about two dozen senior centers around the city, and her organization stepped up to fill the pharmacy gap by obtaining and providing vaccines. Clark-Amar’s group organized a pop-up clinic in mid-January, giving out around 1,000 doses that it secured from the grocery chain Albertsons. But another time, a community health clinic planned to give Clark-Amar around 150 doses for seniors — except the clinic couldn’t deliver on that promise and she had to cancel the pop-up event at the last minute.

“I was livid. I was so angry and frustrated,” she said. “Thirty-five of the people we had registered are between the ages of 80 and 99. Now you tell me, how am I supposed to pick?”

Clark-Amar has been able to schedule other pop-up events. In fact, that’s how Washington was finally able to get a vaccine. She went to one of the council’s pop-up events at a local community center in late January.

Clark-Amar says this patchwork of resources is part of life in many underresourced Black communities.

In the next state over, people are facing similar challenges. In Hinds County, Miss., where the state capital of Jackson sits, there’s only one major drive-through site, which is where the state is sending the vast majority of doses. The state added the site in late January, weeks after it had already put two drive-throughs in the wealthier, whiter suburbs just outside the city.

“It took us a little bit of time to get it logistically set up to make sure we had a Hinds County site,” Mississippi’s state epidemiologist, Dr. Paul Byers, acknowledged at a recent news conference. “But we were always planning to do that. And we are glad that we have that now.”

There’s still a problem for the residents of Hinds County, nearly three-quarters of whom are Black: The vaccination site is north of downtown Jackson in a neighborhood that is 89% white and already has more medical facilities. It’s close to a 30-minute drive from the more rural parts of the county, where many Black residents live.

In Alabama, the state has consistently ranked near the bottom in vaccine distribution since the rollout began.

But in terms of where the vaccine is available, NPR’s analysis found a disparity in one of the state’s largest counties. In Mobile County, 18 vaccination sites are listed on the Alabama Department of Public Health webpage. Fourteen are located in the whiter half of neighborhoods in the county.

Rendi Murphree, director of the Bureau of Disease Surveillance and Environmental Services at the Mobile County Health Department, said it has been hard for the county to get any vaccines at all. She also said distribution is based on which sites have the capacity to store vaccines at very low temperatures.

Joe Womack, a native of a historically Black neighborhood known locally as Africatown, said Black communities in the northern part of Mobile have always dealt with poverty, pollution and health disparities.

“It’s been a struggle ever since the ’70s,” said Womack, president of the Africatown community group C.H.E.S.S.

Beyond the South

Because of the need for a quick rollout, vaccination sites are largely dependent on the health care infrastructure already in place. Places such as pharmacies, clinics and hospitals make convenient sites for vaccines to be administered.

But the locations of those facilities can be inconvenient for millions of Americans. Those are the findings from a team of researchers at the nonpartisan West Health Policy Center and the University of Pittsburgh who analyzed the distance that Americans live from these types of places.

In 23 of the nation’s urban counties, the researchers found, Black residents were less likely than white residents to be within a mile of a site that could potentially distribute vaccines. In just these counties, they estimated 2.4 million Black residents were farther than a mile.

“We worry this is going to exacerbate disparities in outcomes even more now,” says Inmaculada Hernandez, an assistant professor of pharmacy and therapeutics at the University of Pittsburgh who analyzed the data. “The limitations of existing infrastructure in counties are very different.”

And it’s not just in urban areas. In more than 250 other U.S. counties, the researchers found, Black residents were less likely than white residents to live within 10 miles driving distance of a site. Hernandez estimates the true number of places with this disparity to be higher, since the researchers only estimated based on a sample of county residents. Georgia and Virginia top the list of states with the most counties that have this disparity.

The Georgia Department of Public Health declined to comment on the University of Pittsburgh study. The Virginia Department of Health pointed to plans to deploy the National Guard to assist with vaccinations, as well as mass vaccination sites it set up at places like a convention center, a raceway complex and a vacated department store.

“A long history of racism”

The effects of this gap, coupled with historical trust issues between Black Americans and health care providers, are already reflected in the nationwide data showing who’s getting vaccinated. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis published this week — which included race data on half of those who were vaccinated in the first month of the vaccination campaign — Blacks are lagging behind in vaccination rates, even when accounting for the demographics of health care workers and others who were in top priority groups.

Thomas LaVeist, a dean and health care equity researcher at Tulane University in New Orleans, says medical deserts go back into the early evolution of health care.

“But I do think that the South is perhaps more of a problem than some other parts of the country,” says LaVeist, who is also co-chair of the Louisiana COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. “Part of that is a long history of racism, Jim Crow and, in some cases, intentional actions that were taken to ensure that some communities did not have access to health care and other resources, while others did.”

And it’s not just Black neighborhoods having trouble getting access. In Texas, with its large population of recent immigrants, the problem of location and convenience is interwoven with a lack of trust.

Texas health officials recently designated several vaccination “hubs” around the state after advocates and local officials raised concerns about the state’s initial plan to rely heavily on chain grocery stores and pharmacies to distribute the vaccine. The hubs will make their own decisions about where to distribute the vaccines they are allocated.

But as the Texas Tribune reported, when Dallas County tried to take it a step further by prioritizing ZIP codes where mostly Blacks and Hispanics live, state officials threatened to withhold doses.

The way that hubs allocate their vaccines is an especially important issue in smaller counties like Bastrop County, east of Austin.

The state’s list of providers in the county shows they are almost all clustered around State Highway 71 — mostly in the city of Bastrop — which is far from the rural county’s outskirts, where many Latinos live.

Edie Clark, a leader with a local faith-based nonprofit, said her group is worried for neighborhoods like Stony Point, which is a small immigrant community in the county.

Clark said members of the Stony Point community are still reeling from events a few years ago when the Sheriff’s Department turned over roughly a dozen residents to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. Many of those arrested were pulled over for minor traffic violations, like a broken taillight.

“They have a lot of distrust and fear of giving their information out without knowing it’s not going to be used against them,” she said.

Clark said it’s tough to imagine that a lot of people in Stony Point will drive to get vaccinated in the city of Bastrop when they won’t even drive there to get groceries. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced this week that immigration agencies will not make immigration enforcement arrests at vaccination sites.

Fast or fair

Reaching long-neglected communities takes time — and in the race to get vaccines to as many people as possible, time is in short supply.

Still, when the CDC outlined four ethical principles for the allocation of vaccines, two of them included equitable and fair distribution. CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said, “Vaccine allocation strategies should aim to both reduce existing disparities and to not create new disparities.”

But the pressure to get the vaccine out quickly means not everyone follows those principles. In South Carolina, the board of the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control shunned a proposal last week that would have factored age and “social vulnerability” metrics into its vaccine allocations. It opted instead to distribute solely by county population, citing a need for speed.

“I think when you look at speed, certainly, it’s probably a lot easier and faster and quicker to do those calculations when it’s just based on per capita,” said Nick Davidson, the South Carolina health department’s senior deputy for public health.

In Georgia, the high demand for COVID-19 vaccinations has left little opportunity for providers to build up new infrastructure to supplement what already exists or to work with members of historically marginalized communities on any hesitations they might have about getting vaccinated.

That’s why the Good Samaritan Health Center in Atlanta has been saving a handful of its vaccination appointments for people who might want to meet with a health care provider at the clinic to ask questions before rolling up their sleeves.

“And at the end of most of those conversations, the person says, ‘You know what? That was what I really needed. And now I’m ready to be vaccinated,’ ” said Breanna Lathrop, the clinic’s chief operating officer.

Even for those eager to get the vaccine, it’s hard to find in certain parts of the city. Only one of Atlanta’s five large-scale county vaccination sites falls in the Black neighborhoods south of Interstate 20 — and that outlier sits in a shopping mall directly adjacent to the interstate on the outskirts of the city. Many of the smaller vaccination sites that are in those Black neighborhoods are grocery store pharmacies, which receive a much lower number of doses than what can be found at hospitals and the county sites.

A few hours away in Savannah, Ga., NPR’s analysis shows just one of Chatham County’s half-dozen vaccination sites is located in a majority-Black neighborhood. That didn’t surprise Nichele Hoskins. She’s assistant director of a local YMCA-led coalition called Healthy Savannah and works to flatten out health disparities among people of color.

“In order to get people vaccinated, you’re going to have to have that kind of trust,” Hoskins said, noting it can seem a tedious process. “If you’ve ever done retail, it’s going to take a little bit of hand-selling.”

The Coastal Health District in Savannah, of course, can’t take each patient by the hand. The health director, Dr. Lawton Davis, says it’s tough to formalize a plan targeting Black residents, who make up about 42% of Chatham County’s population. So far, the Coastal Health District has reached out to two Black churches and a community health center in a predominantly Black neighborhood to arrange mobile vaccination clinics. It’s also using an existing hurricane evacuation registry of people with disabilities and health issues to help identify neglected neighborhoods around Savannah.

“There simply is not enough vaccine to go around,” Davis says. “I don’t have a formal document that says this is, you know, step A, B, C and D, but we have had reasonably in-depth discussions and we have, shall we say, a game plan on how we think this will go.”

There are other options in a public health game plan.

“Alternative facilities come to mind,” Jeni Hebert-Beirne, who leads the Collaboratory for Health Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health, wrote in an email to NPR. “Public libraries (an important source of free wifi), community centers/park districts, faith-based organizations, barber/beauty shops. These are places that people regularly convene/gather and places where people are more likely to feel they belong.”

Shivani Patel, a researcher tracking COVID-19 health equity issues at Emory University in Atlanta, is quick to acknowledge that the problem is too large for a state’s public health system to solve on its own. Like many across the country, Georgia’s public health system has seen funding cuts in recent years that have reduced its capacity to respond to the pandemic.

Washington is also promising new support for states: A million more doses weekly are on their way to pharmacies, and the White House’s COVID-19 czar said, “[Pharmacy] sites are selected based on their ability to reach some of the populations most at risk.” The new sites are expected to start receiving the doses next week.

“Every day is potentially more lives lost,” Patel said. “This is extremely urgent.”

WWNO’s Shalina Chatlani is a health care reporter for NPR’s Gulf States Newsroom; she reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. KUT reporter Ashley Lopez reported from Bastrop, Texas. WABE reporter Sam Whitehead reported from Atlanta.

Methodology: NPR gathered addresses of permanent vaccination sites from state websites. NPR verified these sites by contacting county and state health officials in the nine counties mentioned in this report. Officials were offered the opportunity to review the findings and point to additional testing sites. What counts as a vaccination site varies by state. NPR geocoded vaccination site locations using the Google Geocoding API joined with Census Bureau shapefiles to determine what census tracts they were within. For each county, the analysis included only census tracts within the county’s official boundaries. The Census Bureau provided demographic data per census tract. The main demographic measure referenced in this story was the percentage of the population that identifies as “white alone,” not Hispanic or Latino. For percent white, NPR calculated the number of sites for tracts above and below the median county’s percentage of white residents. Medians referenced are medians of census tracts and are not population totals, and may therefore differ slightly from population totals.

Source: Across The South, COVID-19 Vaccine Sites Missing From Black And Hispanic Neighborhoods

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Tinder has become the pointy end of multiculturalism

2021/02/06 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Like me, you were probably depressed by the sight of the president of the United States leading a rally in 2019, at which an angry mob chanted ‘send her back!’ in reference to a Somali-born US congresswoman. Even Trump’s mate Piers Morgan wrote that the rally ‘bordered on fascism’.

What can we do about the rising racism and polarisation in western societies? The internet was meant to bring us closer together, yet apps like Facebook, run by Bay Area liberals, are having the unintended consequence of segregating us into self-reinforcing bubbles.

There is one app, however, which does seem to be genuinely supporting multicultural integration….Tinder.

Yes, although dating apps are neither designed nor used with lofty motives, the unintended consequence of their popularity is a rise in inter-racial partnerships and marriages.

Most couples in western countries now meet not through family, friends or acquaintances, but online, through apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Spank, Egg Whisk and Fuckbuddy.

And that, according to sociologist Reuben Thomas, makes them more likely to settle down with someone from a different race, class, religion or educational background (though not, alas, with someone from a different political loyalty).

A similar trend was observed by this paper in 2017, by Ortega and Hergovich. They write: “We used to marry people to whom we were somehow connected. Since we were more connected to people similar to us, we were also likely to marry someone from our own race. However, online dating has changed this pattern.”

The authors go on: ‘It is intriguing that shortly after the introduction of the first dating websites in 1995, like Match.com, the percentage of new marriages created by interracial couples increased rapidly.’

The increase became steeper in the 2000s, when online dating became even more popular.  Then, in 2014, the proportion of interracial marriages jumped again, shortly after the creation of Tinder.

Tinder has been keen to promote this unexpected liberal benefit to its fetid feast of fuckbois and fappers. It did a survey in 2018 of 4,244 people (not just Tinder users) ages 24 to 25 living in the US, the UK, Australia, and France. 63% said they’ve felt more confident about dating people from different races or ethnicities when online dating. And 66% said that online dating services have made it easier to meet potential partners of a different race or ethnicity.

As for Tinder users specifically, 79% say they’ve been on a date with someone of a different race, compared to 62% of non-Tinder users. Tinder has now successfully campaigned to get 71 new inter-racial emojis introduced. Go Tinder.

Who knows whether inter-racial partnerships have risen for other reasons than Tinder – such as the rise in immigration, or the media promotion of inter-racial relationships – but I’m sure it’s had some effect.

Today, if you live in London, you see interracial couples all the time, of every possible combination. I personally find it very encouraging, and kinda sweet.

When Martin Luther King had his dream of little white children and little black children playing together, he didn’t envisage them sending each other dick pics and eggplant emojis. But, in the words of UCL geneticist Steve Jones, ‘lust is the great healer’.

I’ve been dating a Zimbabwean woman, Danai, for the last three months – we happened to match, happened to go on a date, and happened to really like each other. All pretty random, yet obviously it has an impact on one, in all sorts of ways.

I realise inter-ethnic dating is fraught with obstacles.

There’s the risk of fetishisation. People cruise the virtual pick-up bars, looking for their ‘type’ – Asian, mixed race, BBW, whatever. You’re just the latest in a long conveyer belt. ‘I only date black women’, Danai was told by a previous white date. ‘I like to swirl’ (I am new to this slightly gross phrase, for when a white man dates a black woman). Others have received online chat-up lines like ‘I want a taste of jungle fever’ or ‘I’ve always wanted to fuck an Asian’.

There’s the risk of stereotypes. Mr ‘I only date black women’ told Danai his image of black women came from hip-hop videos. She sometimes feels she has to manage her blackness, for example not get angry because it would fulfil the stereotype of Angry Black Woman.

There’s the risk of colonialism in one’s desires. There’s evidence of all sorts of racial/racist preferences in our online dating – Grindr users are so brutally candidthat Grindr launched an anti-racist initiative called Kindr Grindr.

And there’s the risk of icebergs of cultural difference which one doesn’t see in the sexed-up early days but which can wreck a relationship later on. You might fancy each other, but there are still big differences in cultural attitudes to relationships, family, money, religion, and so on.

If you get beyond all these obstacles and actually settle down with someone from a different ethnicity, of course, it changes you. Even more, if you have children with them. If you’re white, it means that racism is no longer something that happens to other people. It happens to your loved ones. You are committed, not just abstractly, but with the deep bonds of your heart, to a future which is less racist and more equitable.

That, I think, is why Charlie Brooker makes just about every romantic relationship in Black Mirror an inter-racial one. He happened to marry a British-Indian lady, and has mixed-race kids. He is committed, not abstractly but with the deep bonds of his heart, to a future that is less racist, more equitable, and more mixed-race.

As for Tinder users specifically, 79% say they’ve been on a date with someone of a different race, compared to 62% of non-Tinder users. Tinder has now successfully campaigned to get 71 new inter-racial emojis introduced. Go Tinder.

There is a big shift happening in western countries: a demographic shift, whereby white people will be a minority in most western countries by 2050. Many western cities and some states (California) are already majority non-white. This is a huge change, even if liberals don’t like to talk about it.

According to the LSE political scientist Eric Kaufmann, author of the recent book Whiteshift, white people are reacting in one of three ways.

One is ‘white flight’. They move out of big cities to the countryside or to predominantly white towns. Maybe they are not consciously doing it for racial reasons, but still, their kids grow up in mainly white schools and their friends are mainly white. They don’t complain about the new dispensation (that would be racist). They just…retreat.

The second response is ‘resist’. Around half of white Americans think that America becoming majority non-white will weaken American values and culture. That’s why they support an openly racist president who says things like ‘send them back where they came from’.

Even if you’re not a Ku Klux Klan wizard, perhaps you resent the liberal ideology that sees CIS white men as The Enemy. As whiteness becomes an ethnic minority, doesn’t it deserve similar respect, promotion and protection, like any other minority group? Shouldn’t whities resist the passing of the old culture?

I don’t quite see the long-term game plan for the resistance response…the demographics aren’t on your side. And I hope my culture – liberal democracy – will survive the decline of the white majority.

But in the short to medium term, Trump has shown you can win elections simply by appealing to white panic.

The third response is ‘integrate’. Join in with the new multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, majority-non-white culture.

I can understand all these responses.

I can understand people who move out of London because they find its multiculturalism lacking in deep community and frightening in its violent crime. I can understand white people not wanting their children to be ethnic minorities in London schools.

I can understand white people who do not cheer at the passing of the old majority-white culture. Why should they? It’s a massive shift in national culture and identity, and obviously, some people will find the change destabilising and unwelcome. I can understand why some of them end up drawn to white special interest groups like the Brexit Party or Republican Party, who call for the return of the good ol’ days. I think it’s a big mistake, but I understand the psychology behind it.

And I have sympathy with white people who embrace and celebrate the new multi-ethnic multi-cultural society as not just inevitable but exciting, creative and morally good.

It strikes me that it’s somewhat random which of these three groups one finds oneself in. One click…and you’re in a Facebook group filled with posts about the Great Replacement. One swipe…and your kids are mixed race.

The next few decades will be bumpy – climate change, mass migration, the emergence of China as the main superpower, and this massive shift in western demographics and national identities.

If we survive, the human race will be utterly changed, and I suspect we will be much less white.

Source: Tinder has become the pointy end of multiculturalism

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