Task force rejects calls for special employment status for Jewish, Muslim public servants

2024/02/03 Leave a comment

Of note. Curious that the report mentioned the Muslim Federal Employees Network (MFEN) but not that of the Jewish Public Service Network (JPSN). Conscious or inadvertent? I made a submission that was not listed, perhaps being deemed not a”comprehensive written submissions.” (Link: https://multiculturalmeanderings.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=56715&action=edit). 

That being said, inclusion of religious minorities would prove a challenge and require religious self-identification and analysis would require deep intersectionality to be meaningful. Census data provides some insights but haven’t had time yet to analyze 2021 data:

Months before the eruption of the Israel-Hamas war ramped up ethnic and religious tensions in many Canadian communities, a government task force rejected requests to recognize Muslim and Jewish public servants as separate groups facing systemic workplace barriers, CBC News has learned.

Muslim and Jewish public servants asked to be designated as employment equity groups under the Employment Equity Act nearly two years ago in submissions to the task force, set up by Employment and Social Development Canada.

CBC News obtained the Muslim Federal Employees Network (MFEN) submission through an access to information request, and the one from the Jewish Public Service Network (JPSN) by asking for a copy.

“The inclusion of religious minorities would provide obligations on behalf of the employer toward removing barriers to religious minorities in the public service, so that they may bring their whole selves to work, including Jews,” says the JPSN’s submission, which also asked that Jews be identified both as an ethno-cultural group and as a religious group under the law.

“Discrimination and socio-economic barriers continue to exist for Canadian Muslims. These barriers will not disappear without intervention,” said the MFEN’s submission. “We recommend that Muslims are added to the Employment Equity Act as a designated employment equity group.”

The Employment Equity Act (EEA) was introduced in 1986 to knock down employment barriers facing four marginalized groups: women, Indigenous people, people with disabilities and members of visible minorities.

The legislation requires that federally regulated employers with more than 100 employees use data collection and proactive hiring to ensure that these groups are not under-represented in their workforces. No designated employment equity groups have been added to the EEA since its creation.

The MFEN and JPSN submissions were prepared in spring 2022, long before the latest deadly conflict erupted between Israel and Hamas in October of last year.

Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan shared the task force’s findings with the media last December, after his office initially received them in April 2023.

The task force said it decided “not to recommend the creation of a separate category for some or all religious minorities at this time,” but encouraged further study.

Jewish, Muslim employees report discrimination

In its submission, the JPSN cited Statistics Canada figures showing Jews were the group most often targeted by hate crimes between 2017 and 2019.

It quoted a B’nai Brith Canada audit in 2021 that reported a “733 per cent increase of violent anti-Semitic incidents.”

In its submission, the JPSN presented anonymous testimony from Jewish public servants. One Jewish employee said they were told they “really bring new meaning to Jews having a lot of money,” after mentioning their background. Several Jewish employees also said they have been called “cheap.”

The submission cited workplace barriers too, such as important meetings being scheduled on religious holidays, excluding observant Jews, or “managers scrutinizing and questioning the validity of leave requests for Jewish holidays.”

The Muslim Federal Employees Network, meanwhile, pointed out that the EEA’s protection for visible minorities won’t protect Muslims.

“There are non-racialized Muslims such as Eastern European Bosniaks, Indigenous Muslims and white converts,” it said in its submission. “In some cases, it may not be possible to determine if someone is Muslim without them disclosing it first. For example, not all Muslim women wear a hijab.”

The MFEN said Muslim federal employees face various forms of Islamophobia. In its submission, it cited reports of Muslim women being subjected to comments “about their ability to do their federal public jobs because they wear a hijab,” and of Muslim men “who are seen to be terrorists and perpetrators of violence.”

It said Muslim federal employees have sometimes struggled to obtain security clearances “because of biases around their countries of origin or their names.”

In its report, the task force did not mention the JPSN’s request, although it cited the MFEN report and two other submissions from the Canadian Council of Muslim Women and the Sikh Public Service Network.

The task force recommended designating 2SLGBTQI+ and Black workers as employment equity groups. It said it had been told by the minister’s office to consider adding those two groups, which allowed it to obtain targeted funding for community consultations.

“In contrast, despite our extensive consultations, we did not receive representations from many of the concerned groups in the broad population beyond the federal public service who wanted us to consider adding religious minorities,” the task force said.

Final decisions on adding more groups to the legislation will be made by O’Regan.

In a statement, O’Regan’s office said it might consider further changes to the EEA.

“These initial commitments are only our first steps in our work to transform Canada’s approach to employment equity,” it said.

The statement said O’Regan “will continue to engage affected communities, including religious minority communities.”

The office said it looks forward to tabling new government legislation but did not offer a timeline.

It said it’s also working to arrange meetings between O’Regan and Amira Elghawaby, the federal government’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, and Deborah Lyons, special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism.

Source: Task force rejects calls for special employment status for Jewish, Muslim public servants

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Critics of D.E.I. Forget That It Works

2024/01/24 Leave a comment

Contrary to other studies highlighting the limited effectiveness, these HBS academics share their experience with preparing students for a more diverse workforce:

As Harvard-based educators and advisers with decades of collective experience, we have worked with organizations failing to meet this objective and taught M.B.A. students how to negotiate difference, preparing them for a work force more diverse than ever. In our experience, many organizations working on D.E.I. goals are getting stuck at the diversity stage — recruiting difference without managing it effectively — and generating frustration and cynicism about their efforts along the way. They are now at risk of stopping in the middle of a complex change journey, declaring failure prematurely.

Inclusion, as we define it, creates the conditions where everyone can thrive and where our differences as varied, multidimensional people are not only tolerated but also valued. A willingness to pursue the benefits of D.E.I. — the full participation and fair treatment of all team members — renders organizational wholes greater than the sum of their parts.

At a time when some organizations, feeling the politicized ripple effects of affirmative action’s repeal, are at risk of abandoning the objectives of D.E.I., our experiences suggest that to do so is bad for individuals, organizations and American society writ large. Persuasive scholarship has identified the ways in which we become more effective leaders when we collaborate skillfully with people who don’t already think like us — people with different perspectives, assumptions and experiences of moving through the world.

Erik Larson’s firm, Cloverpop, helps companies make and learn from decisions. When Mr. Larson and his research team compared the decision quality of individuals versus teams, they found thatall-male teams outperformed individuals nearly 60 percent of the time, but gender diverse teams outperformed individuals almost 75 percent of the time. Teams that were gender and geographically diverse, and had at least one age gap of 20 years or more, made better decisions than individuals 87 percent of the time. If you’ve ever called a grandparent for advice or tested an idea with a skeptical teenager, you get what this research was trying to quantify. We often learn the most from people who think most differently from us.

Getting people to share what they know that other people don’t know is essential to collective performance. Our Harvard Business School colleague Amy Edmondson and her research collaborator, Mike Roberto, designed a simulation where five-person teams must figure out how to climb Mount Everest. Teams reporting higher feelings of group belonging repeatedly outperform other teams because their members share more of their unique information about summiting Everest.

These findings are consistent with Ms. Edmondson’s research on the performance advantages of “psychological safety,” the cultural underpinning of inclusion. Individuals, she finds, are more likely to share their views in an environment that does not belittle, or worse, punish those who offer differing opinions, particularly to more powerful colleagues. In a recent study of 62 drug development teams, Ms. Edmondson and Henrik Bresman found that diverse teams, when assessed by senior leaders, outperform their more homogenous peers only in the presence of psychological safety. More diversity is not always better – from a performance standpoint, diversity without the inclusion can actually make things worse.

Inclusion work, done well, seeks to scale these kinds of results. Among other payoffs, organizations that get inclusion right at scale seem to be smarter, more innovative and more stable. One explanation is that they can see their competitive landscape — threats, risks, opportunities — more clearly and have greater access to the full knowledge base of their people.

But achieving gains like this can feel elusive when the will to participate in D.E.I. is waning. It can be tempting to put in place superficial fixes to achieve the optics of inclusion — a primary concern of D.E.I. critics — such as reserving roles for specific demographics. This is often illegal and rarely helpful, and it provides at least one area of broad agreement in this polarized debate: a distaste for hiring and promotion schemes based on an individual’s identity. A way to correct for these concerns is inclusive recruitment processes and rigorous, transparent selection criteria that everyone understands. It is not to scale back investments in inclusion, which would restrict our ability to build healthy, dynamic organizations.

Inclusion work is a way to create the conditions where people you don’t already know — those who are separated from you by more than one or two degrees — can succeed. For example, many U.S. tech companies have successfully created workplaces where young, straight, white men they know can thrive, but have a harder time recruiting, developing, promoting and retaining women, people of color, people from the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community, people over the age of 35 and the young, straight, white men they don’tknow. Organizations with these outcomes are typically relying too much on familiar networks — the people they know — and when they find someone good enough in those networks, they stop looking.

That is one reason we end up with all-male boards. Senior teams with no people of color. Professorial ranks with no conservatives. If the demographics of your team don’t bear much resemblance to the demographics of the broader population, then you’ve likely put artificial barriers on your talent pools and undermined your ability to reap the rewards of inclusion.

Everyone must be better off for inclusion initiatives to work. An example from Harvard Business School illustrates that point. It has always been an important part of our school’s mission to recruit military leaders and ensure that they can thrive, not in spite of their nontraditional training and experience, but precisely because of it. Over a decade ago, the school was succeeding at recruiting military veterans, but once in the classroom, they were less likely to excel academically. The military student group began providing specialized review sessions that focused on where its constituents were collectively getting stuck, making explicit the links between the M.B.A. curriculum and their military technical training.

Within a few years, gaps in performance closed. The performance of nonmilitary students did not decline because those students got extra attention. In fact, the rest of the student body benefited because military veterans became more active and confident in classroom discussions, offering unique insights into the high stakes of leadership decisions. The school’s experience with the value of customized review sessions also helped close performance gaps with other groups, including women and international students.

What does this work look like inside organizations? Sometimes it means more actively recruiting in unfamiliar places. Sometimes it means becoming more systematic about development opportunities. It can mean improving the ways you assess people for promotion, which can be riddled with bias and pitfalls, relying instead on more objective and self-evident advancement criteria. Indeed, what we hear most often from underrepresented leaders — X’s in organizations filled with Y’s — is the desire for a fair chance to compete, in workplaces where the rules of the game are clear and applied equally to all.

We know that historical change is like sleep. It happens gradually, sometimes fitfully, then all at once. We are in the fitful stage of our evolution toward truly inclusive organizations. But let us not get confused: Inclusion is an end goal that channels universal hopes for meritocracy, reflects America at its best and creates the foundation for an even more competitive future.

Caroline Elkins and Frances Frei are professors at Harvard Business School. Anne Morriss is the co-author, with Professor Frei, of “Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems.”

Source: Critics of D.E.I. Forget That It Works

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Nicolas: «Représenter»

2024/01/12 Leave a comment

Hard to disagree with overall arguments in favour of diverse representation and lived experiences. However, there is a risk in conflating the simpler diversity of appearance and identity with the more complex diversity of perspectives and thought. Governments and organizations have a tendency to choose representatives for such bodies from organizations and individuals generally in agreement with their preferred policy directions, a recent example being the federal Employment Equity Act Review Task Force:

En décembre dernier, le gouvernement du Québec a annoncé la composition de son comité de sages sur l’identité de genre, lequel n’avait jamais été réclamé ni par les regroupements ni par les experts québécois liés à l’identité de genre. Parmi les trois personnes choisies, aucune n’est trans ou non binaire. 

Dès l’annonce, des voix se sont élevées dans les communautés LGBTQ+ pour dénoncer l’initiative caquiste. Du bout des lèvres, la ministre de la Famille, Suzanne Roy, a fini par admettre qu’une personne trans ou non binaire aurait pu avoir un rôle de « représentation » sur le comité, mais que le gouvernement avait « décidé de faire autrement ». 

Je pense qu’il y a dans ce fiasco une occasion de se pencher davantage sur cette notion de « représentation », qui a pris de plus en plus de place dans notre compréhension de l’équité et de l’inclusion sociale dans la dernière décennie. 

Depuis décembre, plusieurs ont déjà fait le parallèle avec la question des femmes. Oserait-on aujourd’hui créer un comité de sages sur la condition féminine — ou même sur l’avortement, plus précisément — sans qu’il y ait de femmes autour de la table ? Bien sûr que non. Mais pourquoi ?

Non seulement parce que les femmes doivent être « représentées » lorsqu’on discute de ce qui les concerne. Mais aussi parce que les femmes disposent d’une expérience de vie qui, lorsqu’elle se conjugue à une quête de savoir et de compréhension de ce vécu, aboutit à une expertise de la condition féminine difficilement égalable. Parce que la médecine a été développée par et pour les hommes, un ensemble de savoirs sur leur propre corps dont les femmes disposaient a longtemps été dévalorisé par la science occidentale. Et encore aujourd’hui, la sous-représentation des femmes dans les sciences à l’université joue un rôle dans les priorités qui sont établies en recherche médicale. Plusieurs aspects de la santé reproductive sont sous-étudiés parce que les gens qui gèrent les fonds dans ces domaines ne sont pas à l’image de la population. 

Il ne s’agit pas ici, donc, de simple « représentation ». Mais d’une perspective intégrant un vécu, ainsi que d’une expertise développée par une soif de connaissance quasi obsessive, qu’il est rare de développer à un tel niveau à moins que ce savoir ne soit lié à notre récit de vie.

Il y a aussi un souci du détail, un perfectionnisme, voire une absence de « droit à l’erreur » qui s’installent lorsqu’on sait que presque aucune personne qui nous ressemble n’a accès au lieu de pouvoir auquel on accède. Lorsqu’on sait qu’une bourde pourrait avoir une incidence sur toute une communauté déjà marginalisée et fragilisée socialement, mais qui nous est chère et avec laquelle on partage une partie de notre quotidien et de nos relations les plus intimes, on développe un sens éthique particulier dans notre rapport au travail. 

Si le comité de sages sur l’identité de genre adopte des recommandations qui font du mal, au bout du compte, aux jeunes trans et non binaires du Québec, ses membres auront-ils, de la manière dont leurs cercles sociaux sont établis, à regarder ces jeunes dans les yeux, dans leur vie personnelle, une fois leur mandat public terminé ? Ou pourront-ils se soustraire aux conséquences de leurs actes en éteignant leur télévision et en refermant leurs journaux ?

Ce ne sont là que quelques aspects de cette notion de « représentation » rarement explicités dans nos débats sociaux sur la « diversité » dans les lieux de pouvoir. La superficialité avec laquelle la question est comprise mène à des bourdes dont les conséquences ne sont justement pas vécues par les gens qui les commettent. 

Lorsque le comité a été annoncé, la ministre de la Condition féminine, Martine Biron, a quant à elle vu dans la composition un groupe qui sera « capable de s’élever un peu ». Il y a dans cette perspective une croyance populaire à laquelle il est aussi opportun de s’attarder. 

Si les minorités d’une société (ou les personnes que l’on a minorisées dans les lieux de pouvoir, comme les femmes) sont souvent perçues comme des « représentantes » des groupes auxquels elles appartiennent, les individus issus des groupes majoritaires, eux, seraient « neutres », au-dessus de la mêlée, objectifs, mieux capables d’indépendance intellectuelle. 

Or, ce n’est pas parce qu’un individu a moins été forcé par sa société à développer une réflexion explicite sur les groupes auxquels il appartient qu’il appartient moins à ces groupes. La majorité est un groupe. Les personnes cisgenres, dans le cas qui nous occupe, aussi. 

On le voit bien dans le discours caquiste sur les inquiétudes de « la population » relatives aux questions de genre. Le sous-texte de toutes les déclarations du parti, c’est que « la population », « les parents inquiets » et « le monde ordinaire » n’incluent pas les personnes trans et non binaires. 

Peu importe ce que pensent les trois personnes qui ont été nommées au comité, il faut comprendre que la Coalition avenir Québec les y a placées dans l’espoir d’en faire des « représentants » de cette « population » comprise comme excluant les minorités de genre. Il n’y a donc pas de « représentation » pour ces minorités  et de « neutralité » pour les « sages ». Mais bien un choix politique de ne représenter que la perspective majoritaire dans un comité chargé de se pencher sur les minorités de genre. 

Car l’expérience de vie et le vécu ne font pas qu’influer sur l’expertise développée par les personnes issues de groupes minoritaires : tous les humains sont constitués à partir de leur expérience de vie et de leur capacité plus ou moins développée à éprouver de l’empathie et de la curiosité pour les gens qui ne leur ressemblent pas.

Il n’y a pas, du côté majoritaire, l’universel et la « capacité à s’élever un peu », et, de l’autre, le « particularisme ». La société est formée par nos perspectives, nos angles morts, nos réseaux et nos intérêts, pour tous, partout, en tout temps.

Source: «Représenter»

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Les femmes et minorités, encore souvent des candidatures «poteaux» au Canada

2024/01/10 Leave a comment

Of note (my previous analyses have focused on growth in minority candidates and MPs but this reinforces other studies showing similar overall pattern):

….Le parcours de Nathanielle Morin fait partie des données compilées dans un article rédigé par des chercheurs de l’Université d’Ottawa à paraître dans la prochaine édition de la revue Electoral Studies, et consulté par Le Devoir.

L’analyse du parcours de 3966 candidats qui se sont présentés lors des trois dernières élections générales montre que les lesbiennes, les gais, les bisexuels, les transgenres ou les queers (LGBTQ+) autodéclarés et les femmes sont nettement surreprésentés (de 17 et de 6 points de pourcentage respectivement) dans les défaites écrasantes — celles dans lesquelles ils sont arrivés plus de 15 points derrière. Les candidats autochtones ou issus des minorités visibles sont aussi désavantagés, quoique d’une moins grande ampleur.

À la surprise des chercheurs, le Parti libéral ne fait pas meilleure figure que le Parti conservateur à ce chapitre : les candidats issus de minorités sont plus souvent nommés là où les deux formations s’attendent à perdre.

« On n’a pas trouvé de grandes différences entre les libéraux et les conservateurs, même si les libéraux ont tendance à souligner qu’ils ont la parité et la question de diversité plus à coeur que le Parti conservateur », souligne Valérie Lapointe, chercheuse postdoctorale en études politiques à l’Université d’Édimbourg et coautrice de l’étude.

En fait, ces deux partis présentent surtout des hommes hétérosexuels dans les circonscriptions réputées « prenables », une tendance aggravée par le fait que les députés sortants conservent généralement leur place comme candidats. À l’issue des dernières élections fédérales, la Chambre des communes était constituée à 69,5 % d’hommes….

Source: Les femmes et minorités, encore souvent des candidatures «poteaux» au Canada

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Silent discrimination: the ongoing omission of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians in census data and employment equity

2024/01/06 Leave a comment

Bit overtaken by events given the EE Taskforce recommended this change and Minister O’Regan has endorsed it. But like all changes, may take some time although the Public Servant Employee Survey is already including LGBTQ in their biennial survey. Census change is likely for the 2026 census:

Back in 2011, I applied for a faculty position at a publicly funded Canadian university. I recall (and have since reconfirmed) the section in the posting declaring the employer’s commitment to equity and diversity in the workplace. The institution welcomed applications from women, visible minorities, aboriginal (now Indigenous) people, persons with disabilities, and persons of any sexual orientation or gender identity. But the employer’s employment equity process fell short of this commitment.

As I progressed through the hiring process, I could neither identify nor be considered under employment equity criteria based on my sexual orientation as a gay man. As the university explained, this was because comparator census data on sexual orientation were not available for the Canadian population or workforce population.

All universities in Canada, and in fact all organizations with more than 100 employees receiving over $1-million per year in federal funding, are required to establish and maintain employment equity practices as part of the Federal Contractors Program. However, the program, building on the Employment Equity Act, only considers four designated equity groups: women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities. The program does not extend to sexual orientation due to the absence of national census data on sexual minorities, despite the fact that sexual orientation is one of the protected grounds from discrimination under both federal and provincial human rights laws.

More than a decade later, Statistics Canada has yet to address this glaring omission in the census data, and sexual orientation remains absent from employment equity processes. This, despite the fact that changes to the census are not uncommon. The 2021 census featured a laudable update asking Canadians to distinguish between sex at birth and gender, making provisions for data on gender identity. While this change is a duty well met, it is certainly not the laurels upon which Chief Statistician of Canada Anil Arora should rest. With the recent news that the Government of Canada has endorsed recommendations in the 2023 Report of the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force Report, Statistics Canada has been formally called to develop census questions related to all 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians. But will they?

Without data on sexual orientation, we are unable to track and analyze the employment and living status of Canadians who identify as members of sexual minority communities, nor are we able to ensure our various employment sectors reflect this country’s diverse populations. Notably, sexual orientation is the only protected group not represented on the Canadian census. This omission from the census is at best neglectful, and at worst discriminatory.

Meanwhile, in 2022, the federal government launched the first Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan which seeks to improve rights and equality for 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada. Based on a crowed-sourced national survey of over 25,000 respondents, the plan shows that discrimination, harassment, and exclusion remain a prevalent issue in the workplace for 2SLGBTQI+ communities, and that discrimination experienced during the hiring process is a substantial barrier to employment. Data also show that 2SLGBTQI+ people earn significantly lower average personal income ($39,000) compared to non-2SLGBTQI+ ($54,000) people and are more likely to live in poverty (with up to 40 per cent of Canadian homeless youth identifying as 2SLGBTQI+).

The takeaway message from the Action Plan is clear: 2SLGBTQI+ people continue to face systemic discrimination based on their sexual orientation, sex characteristics, gender identity, and gender expression. Yet without systemic data, we are left unable to redress this discrimination or create equitable access pathways to employment. We are also left unable to assess the career progressions and promotion potential of 2SLGBTQI+ once hired, potentially perpetuating the proverbial glass ceiling facing 2SLGBTQI+ people.

Following the Action Plan, the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force recently recommended recognizing 2SLGBTQI+ workers as an equity group under the Employment Equity Act, and including questions about sexual orientation on the Canadian census. However, Statistics Canada has yet to respond to these recommendations. While Statistics Canada has made important strides on the census to collect data on gender identity by including questions that identify and acknowledge transgender and non-binary Canadians, others who identify as members of sexual minority communities remain invisible—both in national data efforts and in employment equity processes. As Statistics Canada is now in the process of preparing for the 2026 census, it is the time to address this flagrant omission in data. It is time to start acknowledging 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians in our census and in our employment equity processes. The time for change is now.

Christopher DeLuca is a professor at Queen’s University and lives in Kingston, Ont.

Source: Silent discrimination: the ongoing omission of 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians in census data and employment equity

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Advocates, union applaud legislative commitment for groups for Black, LGBTQ+ workers, Sarkonak: Liberals to mandate reverse discrimination with job quotas for Black, LGBT people

2023/12/14 Leave a comment

Two contrasting takes, starting with predictable support from advocates:

…

A news release by Employment and Social Development Canada said that, on top of creating the two new groups, “initial commitments to modernize the Act” included replacing the term “Aboriginal Peoples” with “Indigenous Peoples,” replacing “members of visible minorities” with “racialized people” and making the definition of “persons with disabilities” more inclusive.

Adelle Blackett, chair of the 12-member Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, said the recommendations were designed to address a lack of resources, consultation and understanding of how legislation should be applied.

Blackett noted that the report offered a framework to help workplaces identify and eradicate barriers to employment equity.

Nicolas Marcus Thompson, executive director of the Black Class Action Secretariat, a group that in 2020 filed a lawsuit against the federal government claiming systemic workplace discrimination against Black Canadians, said the commitment marked a “historic win” for workers.

He added this could not have been done without the work of the Black Class Action.

…….

Jason Bett of the Public Service Pride Network said that group “wholeheartedly” endorsed the report’s recommendation to designate Black people and 2SLGBTQIA+ people as designated groups under the Employment Equity Act.

“Our network has been actively engaged in the consultation process with the Employment Equity Review Task Force, and we are pleased to note our contribution to the report,” Bett said. “The PSPN is committed to collaborating on the effective implementation of the recommendations, contributing to a more inclusive and equitable employment landscape in the federal public service.”

Source: Advocates, union applaud legislative commitment for groups for Black, LGBTQ+ workers

Equally predictably, the National Post’s Jamie Sarkonak has criticized the analysis and recommendations (valid with respect to a separate category for Black public servants given that disaggregated data in both employment equity and public service surveys highlight that 2017-22 hiring, promotion and separation rates are stronger than many other visible minorities groups and indeed, not visible minorities: see ee-analysis-of-disaggregated-data-by-group-and-gender-2022-submission-1):

Why would the task force recommend a special category for Black people when the law already privileges visible minorities? The report writers largely cited history (slavery and segregation), as well as employment data. Drawing attention to hiring stats, it said that when comparing Black people to other visible minorities in the federal government, “representation between the period of job application, through automated screening, through organizational screening, assessment and ultimately appointment fell from 10.3 per cent down to 6.6 per cent.”

This analysis ignored the fact Black people, accounting for only four per cent of the population, apply and are hired at higher rates compared to Chinese (five per cent of the population) and Indian minorities (seven per cent). Because Black people are comparatively overrepresented in hiring, this should satisfy DEI mathematicians. The numbers also don’t explain why failed applicants were screened out: were these applicants simply unqualified?

The report also finds that Black employees from 2005 to 2018 had a negative promotion rate relative to non-Black employees — another non-proof of racism, because it’s possible those employees simply didn’t merit a promotion. Federal departments, noted the report writers, have nevertheless wanted to make up for these discrepancies by focusing their efforts on hiring Black people — but were unable to, because the diversity target law targets the broader “visible minorities” group.

The task force also pointed to Canada’s “distinct history of slavery,” abolished by the comparatively progressive British Empire in 1834 before Confederation, as another reason for special status

Slavery was objectively wrong, but it is much less clear why it should factor into special hiring considerations today. There were relatively few slaves in Canada and not all of them were Black. It would be notoriously difficult to determine who in Canada is still affected by this history — and impossible to hold others living today responsible. Additionally, the majority of Canada’s Black population is made up of immigrants who are unlikely to trace family lines back to enslaved Canadian ancestors.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Liberals to mandate reverse discrimination with job quotas for Black, LGBT people

Link to full report: A Transformative Framework to Achieve and Sustain Employment Equity – Report of the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force (on my reading list)

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Pierre Poilievre’s inner circle divided over how to tackle gender issues, sources say

2023/10/07 Leave a comment

Not surprising. Some difficult distinctions to make and hard to communicate nuanced distinctions such as counselling support vs chemical of physical treatment for minors:

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s advisers are divided on the position the party should take on issues of gender identity and diversity, multiple Conservative sources told Radio-Canada.

While some Conservatives see questions of gender and identity as matters of principle, or as opportunities to make political gains, others fear that the polarizing issue could turn some voters against them in the next election campaign and distract from the pocketbook issues that have been the focus of Poilievre’s messaging.

Radio-Canada spoke with about ten Conservatives anonymously, to allow them to express themselves freely.

“We have not yet taken a clear position on the issue,” said one Conservative source. “I expected us to go further and move more quickly.”

Other party advisers say the leader intends to remain vague on the subject for now.

“He’ll be clearer when it’s beneficial for him,” said one Conservative strategist.

Among those who have Poilievre’s ear, “there are those who think they can use this issue to make gains with the base, and those who think the bet is too dangerous because it could lose moderate voters,” said a third source.

Asked to comment on internal discussions within his party on the issue, Poilievre’s office responded by referring to his past comments in the media.

In June, Poilievre said that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had no business weighing in on New Brunswick’s policy on LGBTQ students and called on him to “butt out and let provinces run schools and let parents raise kids.”

Conservative members of Parliament steered clear of the issue when asked on Wednesday,following a directive from the party not to speak publicly about the issue.

“I stay out of it,” said Manitoba MP James Bezan.

Alberta MP Glen Motz simply said “thank you” and walked away when asked.

Provincial governments in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have moved to require parental consent before students under 16 can have schools use their preferred pronouns and names — a measure that critics say could put LGBTQ kids at risk.

Poilievre has said that parents’ rights must be respected and that it’s up to the provinces to decide how to manage the issue in the education system.

No position on gender-affirming care for minors

Last month, at a Conservative Party of Canada convention in Quebec City, party delegates voted to ban “surgical or chemical interventions” for gender transition in minors.

Poilievre still has not said whether he supports this idea.

He also has not commented on Saskatchewan’s proposed use of the notwithstanding clause to attempt to shield its pronouns policy from a legal challenge.

Some Conservative advisers argue Poilievre is missing an opportunity by not getting behind the policy approved by Conservatives at the convention.

“These stories really affect people and it’s good for us,” said one party strategist. “Our members’ vote is in sync with the silent majority of Canadians. If Pierre Poilievre openly supported it, he’d get a lot of votes quickly.”

Several sources told Radio-Canada that the issue of protecting children against “transgender ideology” is popular with women and some cultural communities, particularly in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal — demographic groups that Poilievre is actively courting ahead of the next election.

But the consensus among Conservatives is that economics must be their main focus going into the next election campaign.

“It’s our bread and butter,” said one source.

Still, the issue of gender diversity concerns Conservatives because they see it as a double-edged sword — an opportunity to make political gains that also would open them up to Liberal attacks.

Sources told Radio-Canada some of Poilievre’s advisers are warning the party against trying to make quick political gains with a volatile and polarizing issue.

“We have to be careful to avoid this issue becoming an Achilles heel,” said a source.

Recent demonstrations like the 1 Million March 4 Kids, intended to protest against sexual orientation and gender identity education in schools, attracted some protesters who held signs with homophobic and transphobic messages.

“We remember what happened with (former Conservative leader) Andrew Scheer and abortion, which undermined his campaign. We definitely don’t want to replay that film,” said another Conservative source.

During the 2019 campaign, Scheer said he was not going to reopen the issue of abortion. During the first debate in French, he repeatedly refused to say whether he was pro-choice. Soon after, his polling numbers dropped.

“If this subject turns against us, especially in big cities and more progressive regions, it risks distracting from the economic message,” said another Conservative.

The issue of transgender rights in schools “is a political sideshow,” said one party source.

“It’s a tactic of the Liberals who want to trip us up on social issues,” said another. “If we put too much emphasis on this issue, we give them a stick to beat us with.”

Despite the mounting pressure from different factions within the party, the leader has been slow to take a clear position.

“Pierre is very cerebral,” said one adviser. “He wants to take the time to form an idea and take a position without having to change his mind.”

Source: Pierre Poilievre’s inner circle divided over how to tackle gender issues, sources say

Filed under gender, LGBTQ, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Nicolas: Faux dilemmes [intersectionality, LGBTQ+, visible and religious minorities]

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

Nuanced discussion of the issues:

Depuis les manifestations anti-LGBTQ+ de la semaine dernière, on entend à plusieurs micros et sous maintes plumes que « la gauche s’entre-déchire », que les « intersectionnelles » ne savent plus où donner de la tête, et autres clichés semblables.

Pourquoi ? Parce que le mouvement pancanadien qui s’est mobilisé contre l’inclusion des réalités — et donc des enfants — trans et non binaires dans les écoles au Canada s’est coalisé autour de complotistes auxquels la pandémie nous avait habitués, de militants d’extrême droite, de chrétiens fondamentalistes et d’ultraconservateurs musulmans. Les caméras, sans surprise, ont capté avec plus d’insistance les visages des manifestants musulmans. Depuis, on se dit en se frottant les mains : entre les personnes trans et les femmes voilées, la « gauche inclusive » fait enfin face à ses contradictions !

Sauf que non, désolée pour vous. Je ne peux que parler pour moi-même, qui suis engagée contre l’islamophobie comme contre la transphobie : je ne sens pas mon univers de sens s’écrouler.

Par contre, le commentaire me fait dire que bien des gens qui lancent des pointes aux mouvements sociaux peinent encore à comprendre leur logique la plus élémentaire.

On saisit d’abord encore mal ce que ça veut dire, défendre les droits de la personne. C’est là un engagement qui dépasse largement la logique de « ma gang contre ta gang ». Ça veut dire que je crois que toutes les femmes devraient être libres de porter ou de ne pas porter ce qu’elles veulent — même les femmes qui méprisent une partie de ce que je suis, moi.

Ça veut dire défendre le droit de toutes les personnes LGBTQ+ de vivre leur orientation sexuelle et leur identité de genre — y compris celles qui reproduisent le racisme dans la culture queer. Ça veut dire que même si un homme noir a déjà fait des commentaires ou posé des gestes profondément misogynes par le passé, je ne veux pas qu’il se fasse tabasser par la police. Ça veut dire que j’utilise ma visibilité sur la scène pancanadienne pour sensibiliser mon audience au bilinguisme et au droit de tous les francophones du pays de vivre leur vie pleinement dans leur langue maternelle — y compris ceux qui contribuent au racisme. Ça veut dire, en gros, que je souhaite que tout le monde, même les gens qui me manquent de respect, ait accès au respect et à la dignité.

En théorie, tout cela est bien noble. Dans la pratique, les choses peuvent rapidement devenir complexes. Le travail d’organisation dans les mouvements sociaux, c’est faire face au quotidien à cette complexité. Dans les relations interpersonnelles et la construction des liens de confiance, comme dans la négociation des messages clés qui permettent de faire coalition. Cette complexité ne surprend donc personne ayant quelque expérience de terrain en mobilisation.

Cette même complexité donne aussi parfois du fil à retordre aux juristes qui doivent tracer la ligne lorsque les libertés des uns entrent en conflit avec les droits des autres. Quand la liberté d’expression ou d’association d’un groupe menace la sécurité — ou simplement la dignité — d’un autre, il faut qu’une ligne soit tracée. On ne s’entend pas toujours sur l’endroit où elle devrait l’être, mais la ligne témoigne au moins toujours d’une recherche plus ou moins adroite d’équilibre.

Plus on a l’habitude sociale et politique de la complexité, plus on se sentira outillés pour agir justement dans ce type de situation. On comprend que, souvent, on est face à de faux dilemmes. Plutôt qu’hésiter entre deux options qui ne conviennent pas à tous, on est tout à fait capables, avec un peu de volonté, d’en imaginer une troisième.

Il y a des personnes queers, traumatisées par la violence qu’elles ont subie au sein de leur propre communauté religieuse, qui se mettent à mépriser toutes les formes de foi et à étaler leurs préjugés contre tous les croyants du monde. Il y en a d’autres qui ont trouvé dans la spiritualité un vocabulaire pour nommer leur identité et leur rapport au monde, et une communauté pour les épauler dans leur recherche de sens. Il y a aussi des personnes très croyantes qui justifient par la foi des valeurs patriarcales, sexistes, homophobes et transphobes, qu’on peut tout aussi bien entretenir en étant athée. Il y en a d’autres qui puisent dans leur foi une compassion, une recherche de justice et un souci des plus vulnérables qui les mèneront vers une tout autre vision du monde.

C’est pourquoi ni la chrétienté, ni l’islam, ni aucune communauté de croyants ne sont des monolithes que l’on peut caricaturer aisément.

Si l’on veut bien comprendre les liens entre religion et diversité sexuelle, on a tout avantage à écouter les personnes queers qui sont elles-mêmes croyantes. Pour ce faire, il faudrait au moins arrêter de prétendre qu’elles n’existent pas. On ne peut les honorer dans tout ce qu’elles sont à moins d’imaginer une société où la liberté de conscience, l’orientation sexuelle et l’identité de genre sont toutes également respectées. Du moment qu’on est à l’aise avec la complexité, les conversations difficiles mais nécessaires, la recherche de solutions et l’écoute aussi, surtout, je ne vois pas pourquoi ce serait impossible.

Si cet optimisme me vient aussi aisément, c’est grâce aux années que j’ai passées dans les mouvements sociaux. On peut y voir comment des alliés de circonstance, à force de vivre des moments forts ensemble, finissent par bâtir des liens de confiance nécessaires aux discussions qui permettent de faire reculer les angles morts qu’on a tous — mais absolument tous — lorsqu’on décide de s’engager socialement. À force de défendre les droits des uns et des autres sans attente de réciprocité, les militants finissent par voir une compréhension mutuelle s’installer, doucement.

Si on ne reprend pas le rythme des mobilisations progressistes bientôt, d’ailleurs, c’est à la droite de la droite que cette magie des liens de solidarité et de confiance construits dans l’action politique s’opérera.

Anthropologue, Emilie Nicolas est chroniqueuse au Devoir et à Libération. Elle anime le balado Détours pour Canadaland.

Source: Faux dilemmes

Filed under LGBTQ, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Chris Selley: In Canada, even Muslims can be conservatives

2023/08/03 Leave a comment

As can any group. Ibbitson and Bricker made the point about many immigrant-origin communities being more socially conservative in their 2014 book, The Big Shift but this has not hampered the Liberal government in the three subsequent elections, suggesting less important than other issues.

But valid that all parties need to be more careful in their ethnic and religious vote targeting to avoid greater divisiveness just as they also need to ensure inclusive messaging. Not an easy balance…:

Canada’s media-political universe continues to indulge one of the more fascinatingly insulting ideas in recent memory: That some socially conservative Muslims are lining up in opposition to LGBTQ- and especially gender-related school activities — drag queen story times are a prominent example — because they’ve been duped or manipulated into it by non-Muslim conservatives, especially those awful Americans.

There’s a far simpler explanation, of course: Muslim conservatives are leery-to-outraged by such things for the same reason non-Muslim conservatives are, namely some combination of religious and cultural norms, the shock of the new, and good old-fashioned gut instinct.

In addition, many Muslim-Canadians have their roots in countries where homosexuality is forbidden, never mind celebrated at elementary schools. It would be downright shocking if they had arrived pre-installed with Trudeauvian social values.

But some Canadian liberals just can’t seem to accept this.

“To some, the recent protests have been an example of conservative Muslims pushing back against causes championed by the left — which have in the past included standing against Islamophobia — amid concerns that prevailing progressive ideals conflict with their religious teachings,” the Toronto Star reported this week. “To others, it has tones of political manipulation, with members of a minority group being used to mask a larger push toward intolerance.”

“For white supremacists, expanding their base this way, or even appearing to grow support for their ‘causes’, offers (an) advantage,” Star columnist Shree Paradkar observed. “(I)mages with visibly Muslim people in their midst make for an effective cover.”

Paradkar called the situation “heartbreaking,” which epitomizes the condescension inherent in this narrative: After all Canada has done for these people, they take up with … with … conservatives? Woe!

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ushered this idea from the country’s faculty lounges and opinion pages into the mainstream, lately lecturing real live Muslim Canadians in the flesh about the error of their ways. “Misinformation” about school curriculums and activities is “being weaponized by people who are not doing it because of their interest in supporting the Muslim community,” he recently admonished parishioners at a Calgary mosque. “These are people on the far-right who have consistently stood against Muslim rights and the Muslim community.”

There it is again — this idea that Muslims are defaulting on some kind of debt.

It’s an Upper Canadian twist on the narrative that’s taken hold in Quebec in recent years: Where Quebec nationalists and conservatives would rather Muslims abandon their hijabs and embrace French-style secularism (because it’s such a success!), liberals in the Rest of Canada are happy for Muslims to worship and dress as they please, just so long as they don’t fraternize with social conservatives or take up social-conservative causes.

This is not the multiculturalism that the Liberals market to potential immigrants — the freedom to believe and worship and influence Canadian society as they choose. It’s more akin to blackmail: “We support you. We stand with you. It’d be a shame if we stopped, wouldn’t it?”

I’m using a very loose definition of “social conservative” here, incidentally. A Léger poll for the Conservative Party of Quebec, published in May, found 38 per cent of Quebecers felt drag queen story times were inappropriate for children. Many if not most would bristle at being called socially conservative. And most would not show up outside a school to protest about it.

But there’s no good reason Muslims shouldn’t pursue so-con causes in Canada unabashedly. And if they make “unlikely allies” with their non-Muslim so-cons, as the media often put it, I submit that’s for one very bad reason: The paranoia over Islamic terrorism and mass Muslim migration that took hold in some quarters after 9/11, which thankfully in Canada has proven unfounded. If that’s now far enough behind us that conservative Muslims and non-Muslims can make common cause in pursuit of common interests, I dare say we might even be looking at a good-news story.

Surely Canada would be better off if its parties and candidates stopped courting ethnic and religious voters en bloc, as if membership in a certain community ought to determine one’s position on housing policy, or the GST, or carbon pricing, or all the other things that affect our day-to-day lives. It would be a big change for Conservative strategists as well as Liberal ones, but we would be much stronger for it as a nation.

Source: Chris Selley: In Canada, even Muslims can be conservatives

Filed under LGBTQ, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

Paradkar: Muslims who fight against LGBTQ2+ inclusion are hurting many — including themselves

2023/07/08 Leave a comment

Of note:

A viral audio clip of an Edmonton teacher admonishing a Muslim student for avoiding Pride events perfectly encapsulates a dilemma that’s worth wrestling with. How does one tolerate — or, better still, tackle — the intolerance of some members of a group that has itself faced so much intolerance.

At least part of the answer is simple: not with the very discrimination you rail against. 

Less simple, and also wrapped up in the answer, is a layered understanding of how religion, a source of support for many, can also be a basis of discrimination.

In the two-minute audio clip from last month, an unnamed Londonderry Junior High School teacher told a student his behaviour was unacceptable, and referenced Uganda, where intolerance and criminalization of homosexuality has been boosted by evangelical Christians. 

She also pointed out there were no complaints when Ramadan was acknowledged at school. 

“It goes two ways. If you want to be respected for who you are, if you don’t want to suffer prejudice for your religion, your colour of skin or whatever, then you better give it back to people who are different from you. That’s how it works,” said the teacher. 

She should have stopped there.

It’s not uncommon to see individuals from equity-seeking groups aligning with discriminatory actions; the plaintiffs in front of the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down affirmative action last week were Asian-American. 

Of course, Muslims are not a monolith. Nor are they the only faith group to denounce LGBTQ2+ teachings at school. On June 27, a group of Muslim, Jewish and Christian parents of students at a Montgomery county school demanded that their kids be able to opt-out of the sex-ed curriculum.

But Muslim opposition to Pride in Canada and the U.S. is not restricted to one Edmonton student’s choice to skip Pride-related events, or students routinely using provincial exemptions and not attending sex-ed classes, or parents leading protests against school boards for gay-inclusive teachings and other forms of gay expression.

It also affects policy. Residents of Hamtramck, Mich., who celebrated their multiculturalism when they voted in a Muslim-majority city council during Donald Trump’s Islamophobic campaign rhetoric in 2015, were dismayed to find that council passing legislation in June that banned flying the Pride flag on city properties. 

It has become a knotty issue involving religious beliefs, political expediency and flirtation with outright hate. It raises questions about whether freedom of religious expression is more important than freedom from discrimination and paves a pathway to shaking hands with the devil. 

It is notable because individual intolerance was in a way sanctified by a statement by North American Islamic scholars that declared queer life sinful. In addition, at least one senior member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an important civil rights advocacy group, supported parents seeking book bans and opt-out options.

Perhaps these examples of opposition come from a loud minority among Muslims or perhaps the sentiments are more mainstream. In any case, these actions risk being weaponized for a larger, insidious cause that could end up hurting Muslims here in the long run.

Even if sex-ed exemptions are allowed in Alberta, I’m glad the Londonderry teacher challenged the disdain toward LGBTQ2+ groups.

But she didn’t end it there. Instead, what she said next has been gleefully and understandably seized upon by conservatives as proof of hypocrisy among progressives.

She said, “We believe people can marry whoever they want. That is in the law. And if you don’t think that should be the law you can’t be Canadian. You don’t belong here.”

I think we can all agree that we can’t beat homophobia with Islamophobia or racism. What are the odds that a homophobic white child would have been told “You don’t belong in Canada”? 

The National Council for Canadian Muslims lambasted the teacher’s comments as “deeply Islamophobic, inappropriate and harassing behaviour.”

But it did not weigh in on the question of whether the student should have dodged Pride events. 

Intolerance against queer identities has surfaced over fear of a “woke gender ideology” — a fear manufactured and stoked by the white Christian far-right, expressed under the guise of protecting children. 

In this twisted thinking, children being aware that a small minority of people are not heterosexual or that an even smaller minority doesn’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, is considered indoctrination or even pornographic corruption. (But gay and trans children and adults being surrounded and ridiculed by heterosexual cis people is apparently totally safe.) A miniscule fraction of that minority who might regret transitioning or might have had bad experiences with gender-affirming medical procedures is amplified as proof positive of hell having broken loose.

And what do Islamic experts say about the issue? Some 300 Islamic scholars and preachers across North America co-signed a statementlate in May to clarify their religious position on sexual and gender ethics. It was damning: homosexuality and transgenderism are not permissible.

“By a decree from God, sexual relations are permitted within the bounds of marriage, and marriage can only occur between a man and a woman,” said the statement titled Navigating Differences: Clarifying Sexual and Gender Ethics in Islam. 

I’m not qualified to offer a theological critique of Islamic beliefs. But this is a column about justice for the most vulnerable, and I don’t believe justice can be served by relying on principles of the past to moralize today.

That sentence by the Islamic scholars echoes the beliefs of the World Congress of Families created by American conservatives back in 1997, which now exists as the International Organization for the Family.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the congress “pushed for restrictions to LGBT rights under the guise of the defense of the ‘natural family’ — defined as heterosexual married couples with their biological children.” 

The organization, which was created by the Christian right-wing, is another example of how religion is used to discriminate against others and it exists today, as the SPLC says, “as a political power broker as an anti-LGBT group in its own right.”

That group of people who blame gay lifestyles and feminist liberation for a declining white population also subscribe to the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement of white people by Black and brown people.

In this process of rejecting LGBTQ2+ rights, conservative Muslims have linked hands with the very people who demonized them for decades.

But Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a deputy director at CAIR, calls the idea of that alliance “ludicrous,” and said parents were standing up for their religious rights “without prompting from the right and without fear of backlash from the left.”

“What matters is whether the cause itself is just,” he said in a Twitter statement.

Not only does his stance risks isolating gay and trans Muslims, the scholars’ statement that they are sinners could well be psychologically crippling at a time of rising hate against people like them.

The logical extension of the Islamic scholars’ argument is also damaging for all Muslims in North America.

For instance, the statement says, “As a religious minority that frequently experiences bigotry and exclusion, we reject the notion that moral disagreement amounts to intolerance or incitement of violence.”

By that token, could a law banning head coverings — based on a moral disagreement with seeing veiled Muslim women — no longer be criticized as being intolerant?

When it says: “Peaceful coexistence does not necessitate agreement, acceptance, affirmation, promotion, or celebration,” could that not be turned around to mean religious accommodation in schools or celebrating Muslim holidays is not required to signal acceptance of Muslims? 

It says, “there is an increasing push to promote LGBTQ-centric values among children through legislation and regulations, disregarding parental consent,” as if this exact same objection could not be used by the far-right to decry depictions of Muslims in schoolbooks as a sample of wokeness.

But leaders of the white far-right, sensing weakness in the solidarity of rights groups, have switched tacks for the moment.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a far-right hero, who once said the “dual loyalties” of Muslim refugees to the Qur’an that would lead them to “to try to blow us up” is now praising Muslim parents who are opposed to their children reading books with LGBTQ2+ themes. 

For white supremacists, expanding their base this way, or even appearing to grow support for their “causes”, offers a two-pronged advantage. One, images with visibly Muslim people in their midst make for an effective cover, similar to when the Proud Boys propped up the African-Cuban Enrique Tarrio as their “chairman” as if to say: See, no white supremacy here. 

And two, it’s an effective divide-and-conquer strategy. When they need to invoke the Great Replacement fear again, the anti-racist rights-seeking groups will have already been disorganized and weakened. 

To be clear, Muslims who support ultra-conservative ideologies around sexuality are not naïve dupes. They are simply being as closed-minded as conservatives of any religion.

Where is the compassion and mercy that religions are so famous for?

I don’t much care for religion nor do I particularly want it flapping in my face. Even so, I stick my neck out to speak up for the freedom of believers.

In times of disaster and injustice, in my experience, Muslims (and Sikhs) are often the first to show up to give support. That may be why I’m doubly disappointed by this not insignificant opposition to LGBTQ2+ rights.

As the Londonderry teacher pointed out, respect is reciprocal. The right to practise religion cannot trump the human right to sexuality. Because ultimately, religion and religiosity are a choice. Sexual orientation and gender identity are not. 

Source: Paradkar: Muslims who fight against LGBTQ2+ inclusion are hurting many — including themselves

Filed under LGBTQ, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

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