Sarkonak: Why Canadian universities are blocking able-bodied white men from some positions

2022/08/22 Leave a comment

Affirmative action debates, Canadian version. From softer preference to hard requirement. Not a fan of hard quotas as softer approaches can be effective without raising concerns, valid or not, about qualifications and merit.

And will the government move to hard quotas in public service hiring and the employment equity act?

People should not be barred from jobs because of their skin colour, or their gender. We call that “discrimination” — and it’s generally considered a bad thing. It’s also bad that universities across Canada are refusing to hire white men for various research positions, simply because they’re white, male and don’t claim to have any disabilities.

That’s right: the federally funded Canada Research Chair program, which doles out roughly $300 million every year to 2,000 academics, adheres to an identity quota system. Universities risk losing funding for positions if they haven’t hired the designated number of research chairs by 2029 in each “identity category” (women, visible minorities, Indigenous people and people with disabilities). As a result, some resumes are going straight into the trash.

I wish I was exaggerating. Being not white, male or able-bodied was a requirement for the University of British Columbia’s 2022 research chair job postings in food science and quantum computing. A mathematics department job posting for a research chair in computational cell biology specifically says that the “selection will be restricted to members of the following designated groups: women, visible minorities (members of groups that are racially categorized), persons with disabilities and Indigenous peoples.” 

Similar requirements were listed for the University of Toronto’s positions in management, education, dentistry, engineering and medicine. Queen’s University only wants women for geotechnical engineering, nuclear waste storage and applied artificial intelligence. Western University doesn’t care about the researcher’s area of study in one opening, but requires that the candidate have a disability. A McGill posting prefers those who say they have a disability or are Indigenous. 

There are 78 schools in the Canada Research Chair program. Just Google “CRC” and any university’s name to look for more.

The Canada Research Chair program is doing this because of a Federal Court order that requires research appointments to reflect the Canadian population by 2029. It’s just following the law. Personally, I don’t think equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) should require exclusion, but alas. 

There’s a bigger picture to all this. The Canada Research Chair program is one of many under the nation’s three federal research funding agencies, which spend a combined $3 billion every year to advance our knowledge in health, science and the humanities.

They support numerous research positions, student jobs, academic awards and grants. Per their “Tri-Agency EDI Action Plan,” they’ve been tasked since 2018 with making students and researchers “representative of the Canadian population.” Universities, in their agreements to receive federal funding, must agree to promote “equitable practices.” 

At a glance, you’d think this means simply making sure that procedures are fair to everyone, regardless of background. But the Canada Research Chair program shows this can mean dismissing applicants outright if the quotas (or “equity targets”) haven’t been met. Good intentions appear to have paved the way to mandated discrimination.

Values attestations are making their way into job applications as well. A University of Ottawa job posting for a research chair in green chemistry — that is, the study of chemical reactions — requires a demonstrated history of incorporating EDI and a statement about doing so. Researchers should be free to talk about their values, including those who don’t agree with EDI. Academic freedom is supposed to allow for diverse ideas. Yet in this case, only one way of thinking is eligible. 

You might wonder if any professors oppose this kind of thing. Perhaps, but if promotions, funding and teaching positions are increasingly tied to their embrace of EDI, there’s a pretty big incentive to say nothing. Professors have families to feed, after all.

Those who have publicly dared to question these openly discriminatory practices haven’t been answered. During question period in the House of Commons on March 29, Bloc Québécois MP Martin Champoux raised concernsover the Canada Research Chair hiring exclusions at Laval University, and asked if the government agreed that exclusion is “not the way to go.” 

Reading from prepared notes, Andy Fillmore, the Liberal parliamentary secretary to the minister of democratic institutions, blamed former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government and assured the member that the current government is “committed to providing the resources and tools our scientists need to bring tangible benefits to Canadians’ health, environment, communities and economy,” which “will make Canada a leader in innovation.”

Although Fillmore refused to answer the question, it’s quite possible we’re headed for more mandatory diversity. The government used similar language in its bill to change the Broadcasting Act, Bill C-11, which would require media to “reflect” the viewpoints of the population. 

The problem isn’t that these ideas exist; the problem is that they’re being used to deny opportunities to people because of the body they were born in. When inclusion turns into active exclusion, it isn’t inclusion anymore.

Source: Sarkonak: Why Canadian universities are blocking able-bodied white men from some positions

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Almost half of Canadians report a strong sense of belonging to their local community: GSS results for visible minorities and immigrants

2022/08/20 Leave a comment

Summaries I found more interesting, with overall sense of belonging stronger than not visible minority or Indigenous for most groups, as is the case for immigrants.

Further analysis needed why some groups have a stronger sense of belonging than Korean, Chinese and Southeast Asians and look forward to future work by StatsCan and others:

Sense of belonging to a local community varies among racialized groups

The proportion of people reporting a strong sense of belonging to a local community differed across racialized groups. For example, South Asian (59%), Filipino (57%), Arab (54%), and Black (51%) Canadians were more likely to have a strong sense of belonging to their local community, compared with those who did not belong to a racialized group and were not Indigenous (46%). 

On the other hand, Korean (24%), Chinese (36%), and Southeast Asian (38%) Canadians were less likely to have a strong sense of belonging to their local community. This finding is consistent with previous research, suggesting that some racialized groups are more likely to have a strong sense of belonging to their local community. More in-depth analyses are necessary to further understand this variation.

Immigrants are more likely to have a strong sense of belonging to their local community

Compared with those born in Canada (46%), recent immigrants—i.e., immigrants who arrived in the past five years (50%)—and those who arrived in Canada more than five years ago (48%) were more likely to have a strong sense of belonging to their local community. Despite the unique economic and social challenges they experienced during the pandemic, immigrants may nonetheless settle in regions where they receive support from immigrant settlement organizations or cultural community groups. 

This report found that social, economic, and demographic factors were associated with having a strong sense of belonging to a local community. Future research using the Canadian Social Survey will track this and other indicators in the Quality of Life Framework through the pandemic recovery period and examine how these factors and others relate to each other.

Source: Almost half of Canadians report a strong sense of belonging to their local community

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Feds probe ‘disturbing’ tweets by consultant on government-funded anti-racism project

2022/08/20 Leave a comment

One of the things I learned when working under the Conservative government was to ensure we checked social media posts of those in leadership positions in groups applying for G&C funding. We learned this the hard way when political staffers would flag particularly egregious or overly ideological postings, thus removing the proposal from being considered.

And of course, this needs to be applied broadly and consistently across organizations and funding requests:

The federal diversity minister says he’s taking action over “disturbing” tweets by a senior consultant on an anti-racism project that received $133,000 from his department.

Ahmed Hussen has asked Canadian Heritage to “look closely at the situation” after what he called “unacceptable behaviour” by Laith Marouf, a senior consultant involved in the government-funded project to combat racism in broadcasting.

Marouf’s Twitter account is private but a screenshot posted online shows a number of tweets with his photo and name.

One tweet said: “You know all those loud mouthed bags of human feces, aka the Jewish White Supremacists; when we liberate Palestine and they have to go back to where they come from, they will return to being low voiced bitches of thier (sic) Christian/Secular White Supremacist Masters.”

Marouf declined requests for comment, but when asked about the tweet, a lawyer acting for Marouf asked for his client’s tweets to be quoted “verbatim” and distinguished between Marouf’s “clear reference to ‘Jewish white supremacists,’” and Jews or Jewish people in general.

Marouf does not harbour “any animus toward the Jewish faith as a collective group,” lawyer Stephen Ellis said in an email.

Last year, the Community Media Advocacy Centre received a $133,800 Heritage Department grant to build an anti-racism strategy for Canadian broadcasting.

Marouf is listed as a senior consultant on CMAC’s website and is quoted saying that CMAC is “excited to launch” the “Building an Anti-Racism Strategy for Canadian Broadcasting: Conversation & Convergence Initiative” with funding support from Heritage’s anti-racism action program.

He expressed gratitude to “Canadian Heritage for their partnership and trust imposed on us,” saying that CMAC commits to “ensuring the successful and responsible execution of the project.”

Hussen, who is based in the Heritage Department, said in a statement: “We condemn this unacceptable behaviour by an individual working in an organization dedicated to fighting racism and discrimination.”

“Our position is clear — antisemitism and any form of hate have no place in Canada. That is why I have asked Canadian Heritage to look closely at the situation involving disturbing comments made by the individual in question. We will address this with the organization accordingly, as this clearly goes against our government’s values,” Hussen added.

CMAC did not respond to a request for comment.

Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal justice minister who was appointed as Canada’s special envoy on antisemitism by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said Marouf’s tweet referring to “loud mouthed bags of human feces” was “beyond the pale.”

Cotler said he plans to speak to officials working in the Heritage department on combating racism about the issue.

Shimon Koffler Fogel, president and CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said Canadians “should be appalled” by his tweets.

“Canadian Heritage must review its oversight policies to ensure Canadian taxpayer dollars are provided to groups committed to cherished Canadian values and to combating racism, hate, and discrimination,” he said.

Source: Feds probe ‘disturbing’ tweets by consultant on government-funded anti-racism project

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

Pain in Children is Often Ignored. For Children of Color, It’s Even Worse.

2022/08/20 Leave a comment

Of note, likely similar in Canada:

Judith McClellan, a social worker who lives in Salisbury, N.C., knows what it’s like to see her child in pain. Her daughter Kyarra, 15, has sickle cell disease, an inherited red blood cell disorder that most commonly affects Black people and frequently causes pain so excruciating that emergency opioids are necessary. When she was younger, Ms. McClellan said, Kyarra would describe the pain — caused by blockages in blood vessels — as feeling “like a butcher’s knife stabbing me 1,000 times in the same spot.”

During times of distress, Ms. McClellan said, “the protocol is we go to the nearest hospital” to receive powerful pain medications that will mitigate Kyarra’s discomfort until the crisis has passed. But because the McClellans, who are Black, live an hour and a half away from Kyarra’s primary hematologist, they often find themselves at emergency departments with medical staff who don’t know them and who often doubt Kyarra’s pain.

“If she says she has a pain level of eight — because she’s not screaming and hollering — they question, ‘Are you sure it’s an eight? Or are you making it an eight to get more pain medication?,’” Ms. McClellan said. “Sometimes I think they think she’s seeking drugs.”

Dr. Andrew Campbell, director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Program at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., said that health care providers who don’t understand a condition like sickle cell disease, where pain is the hallmark feature, often mislabel Black children, particularly teenagers, as “drug seekers” or “opioid abusers.” There is also a “potential layer of racism” that can lead to that characterization, he added.

Last year, at a UNC hospital emergency department in Chapel Hill, N.C., a doctor reported Ms. McClellan to Child Protective Services because he was concerned about the fact that Kyarra had received 30 opioid prescriptions from 9 different doctors in North Carolina in the past year. That was too many, in his opinion. Ms. McClellan said that when she explained to the doctor that Kyarra’s prescriptions were necessary and in accordance with prescribing guidelines, he said, “If you’re not hiding anything, this will all work out.”

When asked about the incident, Alan Wolf, a spokesman for UNC Health, said that “hospital providers are obligated under North Carolina law to report suspected child neglect or abuse.”

In the end, the agency decided not to pursue the report, Ms. McClellan said, because “it didn’t meet the qualifications for abuse and neglect.”

Dr. Emily Hartford, an assistant professor in pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Washington who studies how differences in care can affect children, said that Kyarra’s experience is part of “a theme we’re starting to see over and over in the literature.”

In June, for instance, Dr. Hartford and her colleagues published a study in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine that analyzed the medical records of 833 12- to 16-year-olds who visited the Seattle Children’s hospital emergency department for migraine treatment between 2016 and 2020. They found that the children who were Black, Asian, Hispanic or who preferred to speak in a language other than English were less likely than white children to receive strong intravenous pain-relieving medications, despite reporting similar pain levels.

This jibes with past research, Dr. Hartford said, which has found that when children of color visit emergency departments for issues like bone fractures or appendicitis, for example, they are less likely than white children to be given appropriate pain medications, like opioids. Many studies have also found similar variations in pain treatment among adults of color.

“We would like there to be no differences by ethnicity and languages,” Dr. Hartford added. But “we have to uncover them as the first step to addressing them.”

Pain is subjective, hard to measure and often invisible. And in children — even more so than in adults — it is frequently misunderstood, undertreated and dismissed, as research has shown.

But in children of color, treatment can be worse. Dr. Ron Wyatt, a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement who is based in Madison, Ala., noted that false beliefs about biological differences between Black people and white people — dating back to slavery — have had lasting effects on how people of color are treated in medical settings.

As part of an often-cited study published in 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for instance, researchers from the University of Virginia surveyed 222 white medical residents and students and found that more than a third of them believed that Black people had physically thicker skin than white people did. And about 7 percent believed that Black people’s nerve endings were less sensitive than white people’s. The participants with such erroneous beliefs also made less accurate pain treatment recommendations, the study authors found.

Dr. Lisa Cooper, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University and director of its Center for Health Equity, has found in her own research that the more implicit (or unconscious) biaswhite physicians have, the more poorly they communicate with Black patients.

One of her studies found that white doctors dominated conversations more with Black patients than they did with white patients, making it far more likely that Black patients’ concerns would go unheard and their conditions and pain would go undertreated. “It’s definitely a safety issue,” Dr. Cooper said.

Dr. Cristina Gonzalez, a professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City who teaches physicians how to recognize and manage their implicit biases, said she remembered one instance years ago when a young Hispanic patient came into the hospital complaining of severe pain. A staff member said, “I don’t think he is really in pain.” He was eventually diagnosed with a gallbladder infection, ‌Dr. Gonzalez said, but those doubts could have delayed his treatment and caused damage‌ that could have been life-threatening.

“Delaying care has significant health downstream effects,” she said.

Experts emphasized that the onus should not be on patients to improve their own care. In recent years, there has been a push by researchers, hospitals and lawmakers to help health care providers become more aware of their biases — which everyone has — and to change their behavior accordingly. But “those are things that take time,” Dr. Wyatt said. In the meantime, these strategies may help parents at the hospital:

Keep records. Write down your child’s medications, symptoms and pediatrician’s contact information. Then, give the staff this information, which will help them assess what type of care your child needs faster. This is particularly helpful if your child has a chronic condition and is taking medication regularly.

Get to know the hospital staff. Vanessa Finch, of Fort Lauderdale, Fl., whose son Kahleeb Beckett died at age 24 during a sickle cell crisis at the hospital, said that when Kahleeb was young, she found ways to connect with the hospital workers. “I volunteered. I kicked it with the social workers. I stayed in those doctors’ faces,” she said. “That makes a difference.” She discovered that when the medical staff felt a more personal connection to her son, who was Black, they were more empathetic to his pain.

Try to alleviate your child’s anxiety. Studies show that anxiety and pain are intricately interwoven and some surprisingly simple tactics can help to reduce anxiety and lessen perceptions of pain. These may include having your child imagine a favorite place, listening to a guided imagery exercise or offering distractions, like music or a video. You can use these strategies while waiting for treatment.

Take deep breaths. “We know that parents’ distress about their child’s pain in the E.D. really impacts how their child experiences pain and how they respond to treatment,” said Emily Law, an author of the recent study on migraine treatment in adolescents and an associate professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Washington. So do what you can to stay calm, whether that involves taking deep breaths or stepping out of the exam room to call a friend for support.

If necessary, file a complaint. If you feel that your child hasn’t been treated appropriately, ask to speak with a hospital social worker or write a complaint to the hospital to hold them accountable.

Source: Pain in Children is Often Ignored. For Children of Color, It’s Even Worse.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Tremblay: Le sang de Salman Rushdie

2022/08/19 Leave a comment

From Le Devoir film critic Odile Tremblay:

« Quand la superstition entre par la porte, le bon sens se sauve par la fenêtre », écrivait Salman Rushdie dans Les versets sataniques.

Ce livre, qui lui valut en 1989 la fatwa de l’anathème en Iran par la voix de l’ayatollah Khomeini appelant à son assassinat, le déchirera jusqu’au tombeau.

Survivra ? Survivra pas ? On aura suivi en quelques jours avec horreur la nouvelle de son assaut par un jeune Américain d’origine libanaise (dix coups de couteau) lors d’une de ses conférences dans l’État de New York, puis l’hospitalisation, l’évolution de son état de santé. L’écrivain indo-britannique s’en sort, mais risque de perdre un œil. Son cou, son bras, son foie sont en piteux état. Il parle un peu, plaisante ; trait d’héroïsme. On imagine sans peine les mois, les années de physio et de thérapies qui l’attendent avant le retour à un certain équilibre physique et psychologique. Philippe Lançon, l’auteur de l’immortel Lambeau, en a su quelque chose, lui qui traversa les affres de la réadaptation après avoir été grièvement blessé lors du massacre islamiste chez Charlie Hebdo.

Espérons que l’attentat contre Rushdie ne sera pas qu’un fait divers décrié par les grands de ce monde (pas tous) puis effacé au profit d’un nouveau scandale. En Iran, des fondamentalistes se réjouissent de son sort. C’est lui qui conservera le vrai pouvoir magique des mots.

Je l’avais interviewé il y a dix ans au Festival de Toronto, quand un film avait été tiré de son roman Les enfants de minuit. Il se disait lassé de revenir sur cette fatwa, qui fit de lui longtemps un reclus, un homme traqué. Dix ans d’escorte policière. Dix ans de fuites et de repaires secrets. Des autodafés du livre, des manifestations sanglantes, le meurtre du traducteur japonais des Versets sataniques, la peur et les cris étaient les jalons de son parcours. Puis vint une accalmie. « Il n’y a que les journalistes pour me demander si ma vie est encore en danger », s’irritait-il en 2012 d’un sourcil hérissé. Salman Rushdie se déclarait heureux depuis une décennie, enfin sorti de cette galère. Pensez-vous… On lui prédit d’autres gardes du corps, de nouvelles retraites. Il était déjà un symbole. Aujourd’hui… Un mythe sanglant.

Depuis l’attentat, tout le monde s’arrache ces Versets sataniques en version numérique. Dans les librairies, c’est la rupture de stock. Les lecteurs trouveront-ils sa prose difficile d’accès ? Près de 35 ans après son lancement, dans un monde où la facilité intellectuelle domine, l’œuvre d’un auteur exigeant et complexe risque d’en égarer plusieurs. Cette dérive-là, l’attentat contre Salman Rushdie nous la rappelle tristement aussi.

Ce roman, une brique touffue de 600 pages, ne tient pourtant pas de la provocation frontale. Tissé d’intrigues multiples sur les mille fléaux du monde, il aborde entre autres l’exode et l’exil, le racisme et la violence policière. Mais en quelques pages, au cours d’un épisode rêvé, le prophète Mahomet, sous le nom de Mahound, prenait des libertés face au dogme officiel. Un imam venait dévorer son peuple. Une jeune fille invitait des pèlerins à traverser à pied la mer d’Arabie, sur la foi du miracle. Rien pour appeler à la guerre sainte. Les imams qui hurlaient le plus fort au blasphème n’avaient guère lu le livre avant de sonner l’hallali, mais le titre du roman faisait déjà scandale.

Les écrivains, les journalistes, les artistes, champions de la liberté d’expression, sont des cibles à travers le monde, en Chine comme en Russie, au Moyen-Orient et ailleurs. Mais ils ne sont pas les uniques victimes de la barbarie. Des personnes parfois sans histoire se font blesser ou tuer pour des motifs religieux, politiques, pour leur couleur, leur genre, leur orientation sexuelle, un regard de travers, un territoire à soumettre par les armes ou parce qu’elles passaient dans le coin. Quant à l’intolérance, comment la résumer aux seules dérives islamiques ? Sur les réseaux sociaux, dans les rues, dans une Amérique déchirée et armée, l’obscurantisme et la pulsion de mort ravagent de concert les esprits.

Rushdie, écrivain athée de culture musulmane, me l’affirmait en substance : la bataille pour la liberté d’attaquer la religion a d’autres moteurs que le combat touchant les crimes raciaux, puisqu’elle touche au monde des idées. Reste que l’extrémisme à pourfendre naît sur bien des terrains, enfourchant les idées et les croyances comme les pulsions discriminatoires de tous acabits, des enjeux sanitaires, des mirages trumpiens, des rêves d’appartenance. La religion fanatisée constitue un vecteur de haine rouge, mais les motifs de polarisation violente sont devenus si nombreux et parfois si futiles qu’on n’aura jamais assez d’écrivains, même incompris, même ensanglantés, pour dénoncer la bêtise humaine qui fleurit partout.

Source: Le sang de Salman Rushdie

Filed under Religion Tagged with ,

California becomes the first state to break down Black employee data by lineage

2022/08/18 Leave a comment

Of interest. Will be interesting to see the comparative outcomes:

California is the first state to require its agencies to present a separate demographic category for descendants of enslaved people when collecting state employee data.

According to a recently signed law, the State Controller’s Office and the Department of Human Resources can start collecting this information as soon as Jan. 1, 2024.

These demographic categories will include African Americans who are descendants of people who were enslaved in the United States and Black employees who are not descendants of people who were enslaved in the United States.

The data collected will be included in a public state report on or after Jan. 1, 2025.

Employees will not be required to disclose this demographic information, but advocates who have been pushing for this expansion of data collection say it is for the Black community’s benefit, according to the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California.

In recent years, the state has been working to determine whether the state will pay reparations to Black Californians, particularly those who are descendants of slaves. And this year, the California Reparations Task Force affirmed lineage-based eligibility for state reparations — meaning only people who can prove they are descendants of slaves would be eligible.

“Not only will this historic legislation provide critical and timely information to California’s Reparations Task Force, which recently affirmed lineage based eligibility for California Reparations, this legislation begins the process of recognizing the identity and peoplehood of African Americans/American
Freedmen in California whose ancestors came to America in chains, were enslaved for hundreds of years, suffered Jim Crow, and yet managed to build the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world,” the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California said in its news release.

The statement went on to say, “In addition, this legislation is a model for states and localities across the country seeking to take serious steps toward repairing the damage done to the identities and livelihoods of African Americans/American Freedmen for over 400 years.”

Chris Lodgson, the lead organizer of the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, told Axios that Black Californians who are descendants of U.S. slaves are subject to shocking economic disparities and oppression.

Lodgson told the news outlet that this mandate to collect detailed demographic information from state employees will open the door to revealing disparities in income, careers and leadership within California state agencies.

“You can’t fix a problem until you see it, until you acknowledge it,” Lodgson told Axios.

Source: California becomes the first state to break down Black employee data by lineage

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Rothman: Where Did All the [fatwa] Apologists Go?

2022/08/17 Leave a comment

Legitimate call-out:

Salman Rushdie was stabbed ten times last Friday afternoon when a 24-year-old attacker rushed the stage of the Chautauqua Institution where the author was speaking. The attack was premeditated, and Rushdie’s injuries are severe. The interruption of this placid intellectual setting with an act of murderous violence—one that the Iranian regime has long encouraged—has shocked American consciences. At least, that’s what we can infer from the silence of those who attached themselves in recent years to the voguish notion that provocative speech is tantamount to violence.

It is reasonable to assume that Rushdie’s attacker was animated by the grievances that led Tehran to order devout Muslims to kill him on sight. That 1989 fatwa, issued shortly after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, is believed to have influenced his attacker. Indeed, this may have been a more “guided” attack than that, according to the NATO officials who spoke with Vice reporter Michael Prothero. “A Middle Eastern intelligence official said it was ‘clear’ that at some point prior to the attack,” Prothero wrote, the alleged assailant “had been in contact with ‘people either directly involved with or adjacent to the Quds Force.”

Perhaps the ambiguity over whether Rushdie’s attacker was acting on Iran’s orders, actively or tacitly, has led those who have argued for years that speech can produce trauma (and can, therefore, justify meting out trauma in equal measure) to hold their tongues. Maybe their silence is indicative of the fact that the target of this assassination attempt bears too much resemblance to themselves for comfort. If there was any intellectual consistency among those who subscribe to this proposition, though, they would be holding fast to their conviction that Rushdie had it coming.

“Words can have a powerful effect on your nervous system,” Northwestern University psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote in a 2017 New York Times op-ed. “Certain types of adversity, even those involving no physical contact, can make you sick, alter your brain — even kill neurons — and shorten your life.” The professor attempted to distinguish “abusive” speech from the “merely offensive,” the former of which can, she asserted, produce negative physical consequences. “We must also halt speech that bullies and torments,” she concluded.

This is the rationale that led college newspaper editorials in the last decade to argue that offensive speech constitutes “an act of violence” and to endorse “appropriate measures” to ensure controversial speech does not fall on fragile ears. It’s this logic that led a majority of college students who responded to a 2015 survey to agree with the idea that “choosing to use or not use certain words can constitute an act of violence.” It is this framing that convinced nearly one-fifth of college students to endorse the proposition that violence may be an “acceptable” way to prevent challenging ideas from ever being expressed.

This infantilizing notion has been trotted out to justify the violence committed by Islamist fundamentalists. “Charlie Hebdo has a long record of mocking, baiting, and needling French Muslims,” wrote Tony Barber in the Financial Times, after the bloody massacre of that French publication’s cartoonists and writers. After all, that’s “what happens when you get a culture that, rather than asking to what end we defend free speech, valorizes free speech for its own sake and thus perversely values speech the more pointlessly offensive it is.” Even then-Secretary of State John Kerry lent credence to this notion when he said of the murderers that they at least had “a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘Okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.’”

Four months after the bloodshed, American blogger Pamela Geller tried to repeat the behavior that supposedly led to this attack. Geller’s “cartoon drawing contest,” an act of solidarity with a famous stunt executed by the Danish publication Jyllands-Posten, had its intended effect. Two radicalized gunmen attacked the Dallas, Texas, venue hosting Geller, where they were killed by security. For successfully duplicating the conditions that inspire violence in the violent, Geller was pilloried. MSNBC host Chris Matthews accused her of “taunting,” “daring,” and “provoking” her would-be murderers. CNN’s Erin Burnett accused her of enjoying “being a target of these attacks,” and New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi said that it was Geller’s “wish” that there be “more dead Americans at the hands of radical Muslims.”

In 2015, following the bloodshed in Paris, the annual PEN American Center Literary Gala sought to award that year’s Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie Hebdo. In response, six well-known authors disassociated themselves from the organization. One of the boycotters, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Peter Carey, complained of PEN’s “blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation.” The slaughter of innocents over little more than having the temerity to offend the easily offended was not, he said, something the West should be “self-righteous” about.

Rushdie disagreed. “If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name,” he wrote. “What I would say to both Peter [Carey] and Michael [Ondaatje] and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.” Of course, no one did. Why would they? Their actions were in line with the intellectual fad of the moment. Dissociating from an organization that celebrated speech for speech’s sake required no courage because it incurred no consequences. Rushdie, by marked contrast, has bled for his consistency.

Source: Where Did All the Apologists Go?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

One in four border officers witnessed discrimination by colleagues: internal report

2022/08/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

One-quarter of front line employees surveyed at Canada’s border agency said they had directly witnessed a colleague discriminate against a traveller in the previous two years.

Of these respondents, 71 per cent suggested the discrimination was based, in full or in part, on the travellers’ race, and just over three-quarters cited their national or ethnic origin.

The figures are drawn from a survey conducted as part of an internal Canada Border Services Agency evaluation that looked at how the agency processed travellers, using a lens of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, and mental or physical disability, and the interaction between these factors.

The agency recently posted the results of the evaluation, which focused primarily on people flying into Canada, on its website.

As part of the research, 922 border services officers and superintendents were surveyed from March 2 to 22, 2020.

Of those who said they saw a colleague engage in discrimination, just over two in five did not report what they observed. Some mentioned fear of reprisal or simply feeling uncomfortable.

Sixteen per cent of those who witnessed discrimination reported what they saw. However, some of these respondents indicated that they faced challenges in doing so or that their reports were not taken seriously or acted on, the evaluation report says.

The CBSA’s traveller processing activities do not intentionally set out to target people based on perceptions around their race or ethnicity, the report says. The agency uses a combination of information sources, such as global trends and reports, in the development of scenarios, which are systematically reviewed for human rights and other considerations.

“However, certain practices can have unintended consequences that result in the overrepresentation of racialized communities in the law enforcement context,” the report says.

For example, when targeting rates are higher for certain origin countries, there could be unintended consequences for travellers of specific racial or ethnic groups when those groups make up a larger proportion of incoming travellers from those countries, it adds.

The reviewers found the agency could conduct only “very limited analysis” based on travellers’ racial or ethnic identities when using operational data.

“If faced with public complaints or claims of racial discrimination, the agency can neither prove nor disprove with its data whether its policies or practices discriminate against travellers, due to the complexity of this issue. If the agency were to attempt this type of analysis in the future, it would have to consider and develop new approaches on data collection, storage and analysis.”

The CBSA People Processing Manual provides personnel with guidance concerning awareness of a traveller’s culture, a prohibition on racial profiling and services provided to those with disabilities.

A large majority of survey respondents said they agreed or somewhat agreed that in order to do their jobs effectively, they need to recognize their personal and implicit biases.

The evaluation makes several recommendations, including a call to develop and implement a plan to improve the awareness and reporting of mistreatment and discrimination of travellers witnessed by border agency personnel, without fear of reprisal.

In a response included with the evaluation report, the border agency agreed to devise such a plan and set out a timetable to put changes in place this year.

Source: One in four border officers witnessed discrimination by colleagues: internal report

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Trudel: Les mots et leur contexte

2022/08/17 Leave a comment

Indeed. Context and intent are essential:

Cet été, le CRTC a fait fi de la loi qu’il a pourtant mandat d’appliquer et condamné l’usage d’un mot faisant partie du titre d’un livre sans même prendre la peine de considérer le contexte. Dans le même esprit, le festival Osheaga s’est senti tenu de s’excuser parce qu’un rappeur invité portait un chandail dénonçant le fascisme, mais… qui arborait une croix gammée… Ce refus de considérer le contexte des mots ou des images est l’un des principaux verrous à la mise en place de mesures pour lutter contre les propos préjudiciables en ligne ou ailleurs.

Tenir compte du contexte est une condition de la possibilité de débattre et de discuter. Les mots peuvent blesser, humilier ou exclure. Mais le refus de considérer le contexte d’énonciation d’un mot ou de la diffusion d’une image constitue une grave menace à la liberté d’expression. Il est impossible d’appliquer quelque règle limitant des activités expressives si on postule que le contexte d’énonciation d’un mot ou de diffusion d’une image est sans pertinence.

Les normes d’usage du langage reflètent les évolutions qui se manifestent sur le plan des sensibilités. Celles-ci reflètent les changements dans la reconnaissance de certaines réalités. Par exemple, en 2022, une personne raisonnable n’utilisera pas à tort et à travers des mots portant une charge douloureuse pour des personnes appartenant à des minorités raciales. Alors qu’au début du XXe siècle, certains mots aujourd’hui jugés péjoratifs étaient consignés même dans les documents officiels, il est admis de nos jours qu’une personne raisonnable doit les utiliser avec un minimum de précautions.

Il est légitime de critiquer quelqu’un qui fait le choix de s’exprimer comme on le faisait il y a plusieurs décennies en faisant fi des significations douloureuses de certains mots ou certaines images. Chacun a la faculté de faire des reproches à une personne qui s’exprime de façon maladroite.

Par contre, les autorités publiques ne peuvent punir que les propos contrevenant à une règle de droit, c’est-à-dire une règle connue édictée par les élus. La possibilité pratique d’appliquer les lois requiert de regarder le contexte des mots et des images. Lorsque la liberté d’expression a valeur constitutionnelle, il est essentiel de convenir des raisonnements par lesquels on détermine si un propos a dépassé les limites permises par les lois. Cela est impossible si on ne prend pas la peine de considérer le contexte d’énonciation d’un propos.

De fait, toutes les lois qui punissent ou interdisent des propos prescrivent de regarder le contexte d’énonciation. Au regard de la loi, il n’y a pas de mots ou d’images qui seraient interdits en toutes circonstances. Mais selon le contexte, l’usage d’un mot peut se révéler fautif au regard de la loi. Par exemple, la loi fait une différence entre le fait d’apostropher une personne en lui lançant le mot en n précédé du mot « sale » et le fait de citer le titre d’un livre comportant le mot.

C’est pourquoi l’appel à des sanctions pour avoir prononcé un mot ou exhibé un signe sans égard au contexte est un indice affligeant de la détérioration des conditions qui permettent d’appliquer les limites aux libertés expressives. C’est une entrave à la possibilité de débattre.

Cibler les propos malveillants

En quoi le fait d’accabler ceux qui s’expriment en dehors de tout dessein malveillant permet de faire avancer la lutte contre le harcèlement, l’exclusion et les discriminations ? Il est plutôt à craindre que cela contribue à légitimer les positions de ceux qui s’opposent à la mise en place de mesures proportionnées destinées à lutter contre les propos vraiment abusifs.

Ici et dans d’autres pays, les autorités publiques s’apprêtent à mettre de l’avant des mesures législatives afin de lutter contre le harcèlement et l’intimidation raciste, homophobe ou sexiste, notamment dans les environnements en ligne, où c’est un fléau. Certains sont prompts à crier à la censure aussitôt que de telles mesures sont mises de l’avant. On brandit en exemple les sanctions imposées ou réclamées à l’encontre de ceux qui font un usage parfaitement légitime de certains mots.

Dans une société qui reconnaît la liberté d’expression, il est essentiel de distinguer l’usage malveillant et les usages légitimes des mots et des images. Les lois limitant la liberté d’expression ne peuvent s’appliquer qu’en examinant le contexte d’énonciation des mots et de diffusion des images. Faire fi de cela conduit à censurer dès lors qu’une personne se met à affirmer que certains mots lui sont choquants. C’est incompatible avec la liberté d’expression.

Il est légitime de rappeler, comme on le fait chaque fois qu’éclate une controverse, que des mots sont associés à des souffrances et sont trop souvent utilisés dans un contexte malveillant. Mais pendant que l’on s’épuise à multiplier les condamnations pour des mots et des images pris hors contexte, les propos haineux — les vrais — continuent de sévir. Confondre les propos méprisants et ceux diffusés sans malveillance contribue à délégitimer la mise en place de mesures efficaces contre les propos vraiment préjudiciables. Ce sont les victimes de harcèlement raciste, sexiste ou homophobe qui paient le prix de ce refus de considérer le contexte des mots et des images.

Source: Les mots et leur contexte

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , ,

Atwood: If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny: Salman Rushdie shows us that

2022/08/16 Leave a comment

I was in working at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran when Rushdie spoke in Toronto and appeared on stage with then premier Bob Rae. We were worried regarding potential fall-out and possible threats but fortunately none materialized. (I read The Satanic Verses in Tehran, adding another personal twist to my time there).

Usual trenchant commentary by Atwood:

A long time ago – 7 December 1992, to be exact – I was backstage at a Toronto theatre, taking off a Stetson. With two other writers, Timothy Findley and Paul Quarrington, I’d been performing a medley of 1950s country and western classics, rephrased for writers – Ghost Writers in the Sky, If I Had the Wings of an Agent, and other fatuous parodies of that nature. It was a PEN Canada benefit of that era: writers dressed up and made idiots of themselves in aid of writers persecuted by governments for things they’d written.

Just as the three of us were bemoaning how awful we’d been, there was a knock on the door. Backstage was locked down, we were told. Secret agents were talking into their sleeves. Salman Rushdie had been spirited into the country. He was about to appear on stage with Bob Rae, the premier of Ontario, the first head of government in the world to support him in public. “And you, Margaret, as past president of PEN Canada, are going to introduce him,” I was told.

Gulp. “Oh, OK,” I said. And so I did. It was a money-where-your-mouth-is moment.

And, with the recent attack on him, so is this.

Rushdie exploded on to the literary scene in 1981 with his second novel, Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker prize that year. No wonder: its inventiveness, range, historical scope and verbal dexterity were breathtaking, and it opened the door to subsequent generations of writers who might previously have felt that their identities or subject matter excluded them from the movable feast that is English-language literature. He has ticked every box except the Nobel prize: he has been knighted; he is on everyone’s list of significant British writers; he has collected an impressive bouquet of prizes and honours, but, most importantly, he has touched and inspired a great many people around the globe. A huge number of writers and readers have long owed him a major debt.

Suddenly, they owe him another one. He has long defended freedom of artistic expression against all comers; now, even should he recover from his injuries, he is a martyr to it.

In any future monument to murdered, tortured, imprisoned and persecuted writers, Rushdie will feature large. On 12 August he was stabbed on stage by an assailant at a literary event at Chautauqua, a venerable American institution in upstate New York. Yet again “that sort of thing never happens here” has been proven false: in our present world, anything can happen anywhere. American democracy is under threat as never before: the attempted assassination of a writer is just one more symptom.

Without doubt, this attack was directed at him because his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, a satiric fantasy that he himself believed was dealing with the disorientation felt by immigrants from (for instance) India to Britain, got used as a tool in a political power struggle in a distant country.

When your regime is under pressure, a little book-burning creates a popular distraction. Writers don’t have an army. They don’t have billions of dollars. They don’t have a captive voting block. They thus make cheap scapegoats. They’re so easy to blame: their medium is words, which are by nature ambiguous and subject to misinterpretation, and they themselves are often mouthy, if not downright curmudgeonly. Worse, they frequently speak truth to power. Even apart from that, their books will annoy some people. As writers themselves have frequently said, if what you’ve written is universally liked, you must be doing something wrong. But when you offend a ruler, things can get lethal, as many writers have discovered.

In Rushdie’s case, the power that used him as a pawn was the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. In 1989, he issued a fatwa – a rough equivalent to the bulls of excommunication used by medieval and renaissance Catholic popes as weapons against both secular rulers and theological challengers such as Martin Luther. Khomeini also offered a large reward to anyone who would murder Rushdie. There were numerous killings and attempted assassinations, including the stabbing of the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi in 1991. Rushdie himself spent many years in enforced hiding, but gradually he came out of his cocoon – the Toronto PEN event being the most significant first step – and, in the past two decades, he’d been leading a relatively normal life.

However, he never missed an opportunity to speak out on behalf of the principles he’d been embodying all his writing life. Freedom of expression was foremost among these. Once a yawn-making liberal platitude, this concept has now become a hot-button issue, since the extreme right has attempted to kidnap it in the service of libel, lies and hatred, and the extreme left has tried to toss it out the window in the service of its version of earthly perfection. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to foresee many panel discussions on the subject, should we reach a moment in which rational debate is possible. But whatever it is, the right to freedom of expression does not include the right to defame, to lie maliciously and damagingly about provable facts, to issue death threats, or to advocate murder. These should be punished by law.

As for those who are still saying, “yes, but …” about Rushdie – some version of “he should have known better”, as in “yes, too bad about the rape, but why was she wearing that revealing skirt” – I can only remark that there are no perfect victims. In fact, there are no perfect artists, nor is there any perfect art. Anti-censorship folks often find themselves having to defend work they would otherwise review scathingly, but such defending is necessary, unless we are all to have our vocal cords removed.

Long ago, a Canadian member of parliament described a ballet as “a bunch of fruits jumping around in long underwear”. Let them jump, say I! Living in a pluralistic democracy means being surrounded by a multiplicity of voices, some of which will be saying things you don’t like. Unless you’re prepared to uphold their right to speak, as Salman Rushdie has done so often, you’ll end up living in a tyranny.

Rushdie didn’t plan to become a free-speech hero, but he is one now. Writers everywhere – those who are not state hacks or brainwashed robots – owe him a huge vote of thanks.

Source: If we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny: Salman Rushdie shows us that

Filed under Religion Tagged with ,

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