Australia: Will the hateful army who bullied Yassmin Abdel-Magied come after Australia’s diverse new parliamentarians?

2022/06/06 Leave a comment

Remains to be seen:

If the euphoria and back-patting over the federal election results are anything to go by, Australia is a vastly different country from the one Yassmin Abdel-Magied left five years ago.

A new cohort of confident, competent, successful and ethnically diverse parliamentarians are about to enter public life. They have been widely celebrated as a sign that the country is getting multiculturalism right.

I am sceptical of these good vibes. History teaches us to be worried about how they will be treated over the next few years.

If recent history is anything to go by, at least some of them will be in for a rough ride. The ones most likely to attract negative attention will be those who are unlucky enough to have the deadly combination of confidence and “difference” due to wearing a hijab, having dark skin or non-Anglo features.

Australia’s tall poppy syndrome goes into overdrive when it comes to people who aren’t white and have the audacity to criticise Australian racism

Australia’s tall poppy syndrome goes into overdrive when it comes to people who aren’t white and have the audacity to criticise Australian racism. Lest we forget, two years before Abdel-Magied was relentlessly abused and trolled for a six word Facebook post that sought to remind Australians of the plight of people affected by war and living in horrendous conditions at Manus and Nauru, Adam Goodes was subjected to appalling, career-ending bullying by footy fans in stadia across Australia.

Like Abdel-Magied, Goodes’ “mistake” was that he was both brilliant and uncompromising in his rejection of racism.

For both personalities, public vilification followed soaring success. Goodes had been Australian of the Year, and Abdel-Magied had a string of high-profile engagements including a television program on the ABC.

And yet, as Ketan Joshi has calculated, in the year following the Anzac Day post, over 200,000 words were written about her in the Australian media, with 97% of those words appearing in News Corp.

The pile-on included Peter Dutton who, from the lofty height of his position as immigration minister, welcomed her sacking by gloating “One down, many to go” and called for more ABC journalists to be fired.

Imagine that? How is it fair dinkum for a 26-year-old naturalised Australian citizen who posted on her personal Facebook account to be personally targeted by the minister for immigration?

The pile-on fuelled by wealthy and unhinged News Corp presenters created an environment in which Abdel-Magied endured real-life attacks. A pig’s head was dumped at the Islamic primary school she attended and posters were put up in a Sydney neighbourhood by a white nationalist group that racially stereotyped Abdel-Magied and journalist Waleed Aly – another overachieving brown migrant who has been the subject of sustained abuse.

Thankfully, the campaign to silence Abdel-Magied has not worked, just as the efforts to silence Goodes have not killed his spirit nor dimmed his capacity to be a positive influence on the lives of members of his community.

Still, their treatment creates a chilling effect. They are not alone of course. There is ongoing racial abuse hurled at other footy players, and racist commentary follows virtually every appearance of high-profile African Australian Nyadol Nyuon. Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi wrote in the Guardian last year that she has been called “a maggot, a cockroach, a whore and a cow”.

I haven’t copped it as bad, but each time I have appeared on Q+A the memory of Abdel-Magied’s treatment has loomed large. Indeed, before my first appearance I was warned they shouldn’t “Yassmin me”. Each time, I worried about appearing too strident lest I spark a frenzy based on a comment I didn’t see coming.

While nerves are part of the deal when you appear on television, being afraid to speak your mind is not. Being overly concerned about making factual observations about racism and sexism is a function of living in a society that has a track record of bullying Black people with a public profile. As Yumi Stynes found out, it can be easier to minimise and ignore racism, even when it is staring you in the face live on television. The consequences of calling it out, or even observing it, can be catastrophic.

This sort of silencing has the cumulative effect of diminishing the quality of the national conversation about racism. We should be able to have honest, mature discussions about racism. Instead, we are held hostage by the thin-skinned bullies at News Corp, the lily-livered bosses at the ABC and the worst instincts of their audiences.

To be sure, the record numbers of public representatives voted into office from non-European backgrounds is a cause for celebration. In a proud editorial, the West Australian noted that WA Labor senator Fatima Payman, who came to Australia as a refugee at the age of nine, represents “modern Australia, for now and the future”. The paper is right.

Unfortunately it is also the case that if Payman dares to point out systemic race-based obstacles that prevent the success of people from her communities, the army of hateful people who bullied Abdel-Magied will almost certainly come after her.

Diversity in parliament isn’t just about new faces, it’s also about accepting hard truths. The class of 2022 is inspiring because, against all odds, its members have made it into politics.

But if Australians want parliament itself to become a site of inspiration too, we will all need to move beyond the good stories and learn how to celebrate those who refuse to sugarcoat the truth.

If Abdel-Magied’s assured refusal to hang her head in shame for being herself teaches us anything, it is that there is no expiry date on the truth.

  • Sisonke Msimang is a Guardian Australia columnist and the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018)

Source: Will the hateful army who bullied Yassmin Abdel-Magied come after Australia’s diverse new parliamentarians?

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Tsek’ene, Farsi, Punjabi, Tagalog: The push to diversify languages in schools [Vancouver and the lower mainland]

2022/06/06 Leave a comment

Of note. Language demands change with time. When I was in high school in the 1970s, Latin was still offered and Russian was an option. Believe Latin classes ended sometime in the 1980s and of course Chinese has far eclipsed the former need for Russian (influenced by the Cold War).

Our kids went to Farsi Saturday morning classes when they were young, offered by the Ottawa Board of Education.

How this interest in “heritage” languages plays out with respect to second official language instruction remains to be seen:

Nine-year-old Armiti Atayi takes private Farsi classes, but would rather learn the language at her West Vancouver public school in a classroom with all her friends — something that may be possible one day, if the Education Ministry approves a new proposed Farsi curriculum.

“So when I go back for a vacation to Iran, I can read signs and read books and watch Persian TV, and cartoons,” said the Grade 3 Westcot Elementary student.

Her father, Omid Atayi, argued it is “long overdue” for Farsi to be offered in public schools given B.C.’s fast-growing Persian community.

“That would be a dream come true,” Atayi said. “We want our kids to be close to our culture, so establishing meaningful connection through language. … So they can read books, read poems, and write their own name. And a good example would be when they travelled back home (to Iran), they can communicate in an effective way with their relatives, or children their own age.”

If the Education Ministry accepts the new proposed Farsi curriculum developed and approved last month by the Coquitlam school board, it will become the ninth language, in addition to English and French, for which the province has official course guidelines. The others are French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Punjabi, Spanish and American Sign Language.

The province also has curriculum for 18 First Nations languages, and the Education Ministry said in an email that more are “in development.”

Three additional languages are offered in a tiny number of districts using “locally developed,” as opposed to ministry-approved, curriculum, such Russian in Prince George and the Comox Valley, Arabic in Victoria, and Croatian in Burnaby, although there is not always enough demand to run these courses every year.

Most of B.C.’s approved languages, with the exception of English, French and Spanish, are taught in only a small number of schools, where there is sufficient interest from students and enough qualified teachers.

During this 2021-22 school year, just 34,000 students took a secondary language that wasn’t English or French or who weren’t involved in an immersion programs, according to Education Ministry data provided to Postmedia. That is less than 10 per cent of B.C.’s 564,000 elementary and secondary students.

In B.C., all students must take a second language in Grades 5 to 8, unless they have so-called diverse needs, receive English-as-a-second-language services, or are in an immersion program. French is the default language if a district offers no alternatives, the ministry says. Second languages in high school are optional.

Nearly one third of B.C.’s 60 school districts didn’t offer a secondary language course beyond English or French in the 2021-22 calendar year. However, the ministry says courses run by districts fluctuate year by year based on enrolment.

The Vancouver school board, for example, ran second language instruction in French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese and Italian this year, and in past years has also offered Korean, German, Russian and Punjabi. The VSB also operates French and Mandarin immersion programs.

After French, Spanish was the most popular secondary language, with more than 20,000 students enrolled in two thirds of boards across B.C. Punjabi as a second language, by comparison, was offered in just six districts and had just 2,125 students taking it this year.

About 11 of the 18 Indigenous languages were taught this year to a total of 1,515 students in a handful of schools, the vast majority of them in the north, on Vancouver Island or in the Interior. The most common were 233 students taking Kwak’wala in the Campbell River and Vancouver Island North districts, and 219 students studying Secwepemctsin in the Cariboo-Chilcotin and Kamloops-Thompson districts.

Chilliwack appears to the closest city to Metro Vancouver to offer an Indigenous language, with 106 students studying Halq’eméylem this year. The Vancouver school board said in an email, though, that it is working with the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations with an aim to one day offer programs in the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Skwxwú7mesh languages.

Statistics Canada says B.C. has the largest number of Indigenous languages, but they are spoken by an increasingly small number of people.

“I would love to see the province provide more support towards the revitalization of Indigenous languages within British Columbia, because it is the province that has the highest number of varied Indigenous languages and they are at risk,” said Rome Lavrencic, a New Westminster French teacher who has been on a B.C. Teachers’ Federation languages committee for 16 years.

Lavrencic said he recently met with officials from various universities and colleges who indicated there is renewed interest from students to learn Indigenous languages, but the challenge at the post-secondary level is the same in high schools: The classrooms need to be full, or it is not financially feasible to run the courses.

Another challenge to offer these programs is finding enough books and other teaching resources. While the federal government provides extra resources for French courses, Lavrencic said, “the minority languages, like Japanese, German, Mandarin and Punjabi, don’t get as much in terms of recognition and funding.”

Despite those shortcomings, B.C. should offer even more languages in its schools, such as Tagalog from the Philippines, argued Lavrencic, president of the BCTF’s Association of Teachers of Modern Languages.

“There’s so many different benefits from learning a foreign language,” added Wendy Yamazaki, a Japanese teacher in Delta who is treasurer of the BCTF language committee. “It just gives you that global perspective, that understanding of cultures and understanding of other people in different areas.”

In response to questions about whether B.C. will introduce more languages in public schools, the ministry said it is up to teachers and community groups to first develop new language curriculums that they would like to see taught. It is also up to districts to recruit the required teachers, but the ministry says it does provide some assistance.

Twelve years ago, Coquitlam started a Mandarin immersion program. Abby Chow was part of that inaugural group of students, and is now in it first graduating class.

Although her parents do not speak Mandarin, the Grade 12 student at Gleneagle Secondary School leaves the public school system able to speak it fluently.

“It will open a lot of doors if I want to study an international language or travel in Asia,” said Chow, who will attend the University of B.C. next year to study science and play on the golf team. “I’m super grateful.”

Coquitlam is one of a very small number of B.C. districts that offers Mandarin immersion and the program often has a waiting list, said Sophie Bergeron, Coquitlam’s language and culture coordinator.

“Mostly due to a shortage of teachers, we cannot expand our program, even though we have more demand than we have space for students,” she said, adding the same is true for its French immersion classes.

Her district became the first in B.C. to approve the new Farsi curriculum, which was developed by teachers from Coquitlam and Surrey, with help from a Simon Fraser University professor. It is now under review by the province, which will decide later this year whether it meets all requirements to become an authorized language course, the ministry’s email said.

Bergeron said Coquitlam doesn’t plan to offer Farsi courses in the near future, mainly because of a shortage of Persian teachers and timetable challenges. However, the district sponsored the curriculum in the hope that Farsi could one day be added to the list of languages that Grade 11 and 12 students can “challenge,” meaning if they speak the language fluently, they can write an exam and earn a high school credit.

“Hopefully a challenge exam will be developed so those students will at least have one way of having their (Farsi) language recognized for credits,” Bergeron said. “Maybe another district would be willing to go” with classes.

And that’s the exact outcome hoped for by Amir Bajehkian, who founded Farsi dar B.C. five years ago to lobby for his native language to be taught in schools. While he is grateful that Coquitlam sponsored the curriculum, he hopes classes will be offered on the North Shore, where B.C.’s largest Persian community lives.

“Our main focus is on North Vancouver and West Vancouver school districts,” he said, adding one of the key reasons is the number of readily available Farsi-speaking teachers there.

Bajehkian has spoken with the districts, and has asked them to consider offering Farsi courses in Handsworth and Carson Graham in North Vancouver, and West Vancouver Secondary and Sentinel in West Vancouver.

“I think this is a great move in the right direction,” said North Vancouver’s assistant superintendent, Chris Atkinson. “I think it’s important for students to see themselves represented in the curriculum. … It helps build a diverse culture in the schools.”

While he said Handsworth and Carson both have large Persian student populations, he cautioned there is a lot that needs to happen before students will be sitting in a Farsi classroom. Assuming the ministry approves the curriculum, high school principals must then decide if they have enough teachers and students, and then must find room in their timetables.

The earliest Farsi could be offered is September 2023, Atkinson said.

The West Vancouver district said it would examine the Farsi proposal in the coming year.

Bajehkian estimates there are as many as 90,000 Iranians and up to 30,000 Afghans in the Lower Mainland, and said those numbers are growing. And he is proud that the two communities came together to create and lobby for this curriculum.

“Having the Farsi speaking community, Iranians and Afghans, in Canada, and B.C. particularly, we’re getting to a point that we’re becoming more established. And, in my opinion, now is the time to preserve and protect our language for our kids and share it with our neighbours,” he said.

Source: Tsek’ene, Farsi, Punjabi, Tagalog: The push to diversify languages in schools 

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Milloy: Where is the progressive counter-narrative to Pierre Poilievre?

2022/06/04 Leave a comment

Important question:

As a member of the lefty chattering class, I am not sure what concerns me more — the rise of Pierre Poilievre or the inability of his progressive critics to develop a positive counter-narrative to his message.

The main criticism of Poilievre from those on the left seems to be that he is an angry “nut” with bad policies.  Although he may be popular in some circles, they would argue that it tends to be with the not-too-bright and ill-informed. Clever people from downtown Toronto, Ottawa or other urban centres have no time for him.

Labelling someone early in the game can work — just ask Michael Ignatieff — and maybe Poilievre is simply a crank who is just stirring up a small fringe minority.

Perhaps there is nothing to worry about.

I am not convinced.

From where I sit, it looks like Pierre Poilievre has touched a nerve. Canadians are angry, exhausted, divided, and looking for answers. Poilievre is providing them. He has developed a narrative about how he would address Canada’s problems that has caused many to sit up and take notice.

So, how is the other side responding?

Let’s start with one of Poilievre’s most high-profile promises. If he were prime minister, he would fire the governor of the Bank of Canada for his apparent role in fuelling inflation.

“Ridiculous,” say his critics. Not only does Poilievre not understand basic economics but look at what happened when John Diefenbaker tried to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada in 1961.

I have news for my progressive friends: When gas is two bucks a litre and grown children can’t afford to move out of their parents’ basement, ordinary Canadians aren’t interested in history lessons from the 1960s.

Then there is the issue of restoring freedom — the central theme of Poilievre’s campaign. Once again, the progressive crowd dismisses Poilievre as touting crazy conspiracy theories about big government.

But hold on a minute. I don’t care where you stand on vaccines, lockdowns, and masks. The last few years has seen an unprecedented intrusion in the lives of Canadians. Governments have regulated and curtailed our activities like never before, all in the name of public health.

Where are the limits? What is the progressive narrative about the need to balance personal freedom with the common good? Where is there even an acknowledgement from those on the left that the level of government control over our lives during the pandemic has been scary for some Canadians and they understand and respect that fact?

What about natural resource development and climate change?

Like all Conservative leadership candidates, Poilievre is anxious to cancel the carbon tax and dramatically increase oil and gas production in Canada.

What is the left’s counter-narrative?

Why has it been seemingly impossible for progressives to develop an easy-to-understand story that explains how we need to balance short-term support for oil and gas through actions like the purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and approval of Bay du Nord offshore oil project with a long-term commitment to fighting climate change?

How about defunding the CBC — a proposal that always produces cheers at any Conservative gathering?

Sure, enjoying Canada’s national network over a latte or a glass of chardonnay is a favourite pastime for of every small “l” liberal.  But is it just me, or has the CBC increasingly turned into a northern version of MSNBC? Shouldn’t we be concerned that a big chunk of the population doesn’t see their views represented on our taxpayer-funded network?

Could progressives not even acknowledge the concern and outline a way forward to improve our national broadcaster?

And yes, Poilievre appears to have an unhealthy obsession with cryptocurrency and its growing presence in the global economy.

But how do progressives propose to deal with this emerging phenomenon?

What about the whole style of political discourse these days?

Poilievre claims that Canada is governed by “a small group of ruling elites who claim to possess moral superiority and the burden of instructing the rest of us how to live our lives.”

Ouch!

Be honest all you lefties. Can you see how some people (maybe many people) might view progressives that way? What are you going to do about presenting a style of leadership that is open, prepared to listen and willing to engage?

I end this column where I began. Maybe Pierre Poilievre will ultimately go nowhere.

But be careful. Although I am generally uncomfortable with comparisons between Canadian politicians and Donald Trump, there is one point worth making: Love him or hate him, Trump entered the 2016 election campaign with a whole range of easy-to-understand solutions to the apparent ills facing the United States. The counter-narrative from the other side left much to be desired.

Let’s not make the same mistake here in Canada.

Source: Where is the progressive counter-narrative to Pierre Poilievre?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with ,

Newly released federal records reveal ‘darkest days’ of Chinese exclusion era

2022/06/03 Leave a comment

Part of our history:
Standing over a table at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Chinatown, Brandt Louie slowly and methodically sifts through the documents before him — occasionally bristling at what he sees.
The scanned, century-old documents were forms filled by bureaucrats as they interrogated and kept track of all existing Chinese in Canada after Ottawa imposed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1923, which banned immigration from China for almost a quarter of a century.
The nine documents Louie showed to a reporter Wednesday record the registration of Louie’s grandparents, his father and six uncles.

They are the first to be seen in a set that includes 56,000 similar documents for other Chinese in Canada at the time.

“We were quite excited because when we started to look through them, we realized that all the things we had heard about are now true,” said Louie, the 79-year-old B.C. businessman who is president and CEO of the H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd., which distributes to IGA stores, and the chairman of London Drugs.

Some of the records have small but important details such as the exact year his grandfather arrived, or that his grandmother was exempt from the head tax because she arrived in Canada as a “merchant’s wife.”

He said confirming oral history and buttressing stories didn’t carry much relevance for him before, but anti-Asian racism during the pandemic made him reconsider the value of doing this so they can be of value to the current and next generation.

He has been writing opinion pieces, promoting the Chinatown Storytelling Centre and a new exhibit, “Seeds to Success,” at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Chinatown that traces his family’s experience.

“When we heard these stories before, we used to merely assume they were stories of previous generations, that they didn’t apply to us,” said Louie.

For decades, the 56,000 forms have been stored at Library and Archives Canada, which was reluctant to make them accessible until Randall Wong, the first Chinese-Canadian lawyer to be appointed to a federal court, joined others in calling for them to be released.

Historian Catherine Clement is currently cataloguing the forms. She estimates the process will take a year and then they will be publicly available.

“What’s fascinating is that this is a snapshot of our community just before it enters its darkest days. And I always remind people, at the time this happened no one knew if this (Exclusion Act) law would come off the books, if things would change or get better. You couldn’t foresee it would last (until 1947).”

She notes that newspapers at the time give a sense of how the mass registration drive provoked fear and anxiety as much as the closing of immigration.

“There are headlines where we the community is afraid of the registration, afraid of how they’re going to be interrogated, of what’s going to happen to people if they don’t remember exactly what boat they came in,” said Clement.

Louie’s grandfather, Hok Yat Louie, who started the family’s legacy in Canada as a wholesale grocer, would have taken his family in for the process, submitting three photographs for each person. His form states he arrived in Victoria in 1898 while his grandmother, Young Shee, arrived in Vancouver in 1911. The forms for his father and six uncles list them as being born in Vancouver with two recorded as being 10- and 11-year-old schoolboys and the youngest a three-year-old child.

Each has “facial marks and physical peculiarities” listed, including the location and size of scars and moles, whether they are raised or small, by the left jaw or over the right eyebrow.

“It was really quite a classification,” said Louie, reading through the forms. “It’s almost as if (they) had to undergo a physical examination because how would you know where all these moles are?”

Louie remembers that even after the Exclusion Act was in place, his grandfather did go to China a few times as he was still in the business of importing sesame seeds, ginger and walnuts.

“If he wasn’t in the registry, he would have been denied entry. It was used to track people,” he said.

Clement, who is gathering the beige paper identity cards known as C.I. certificates issued by the government to people after they were registered in 1923, said that while families are finding and bringing some of these in, many have also been lost or damaged.

“Even though tens of thousands were issued, there are so few left. In some families, they didn’t recognize the value and so they threw them out. It was just grandma’s stuff. Or as soon as they got their citizenship (in later years), the first thing they did was to rip them up because of the symbolism.”

And Clement was able to manually go through and find the nine documents for the Louie family members because they had one beige paper card for Quan Louie, the uncle who was three-years-old when he was registered.

Source: Newly released federal records reveal ‘darkest days’ of Chinese exclusion era

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Prison service must do more to remove barriers for Indigenous, Black offenders: AG

2022/06/02 Leave a comment

Of note. Another ongoing issue, one not easy to resolve but one would hope to see some ongoing progress:

The federal auditor general says Canada’s prison service has not given offenders timely access to programs to help ease them back into society, including courses specific to women, Indigenous people and visible minorities.

Auditor general Karen Hogan found Black and Indigenous offenders experienced poorer outcomes than any other groups in the federal correctional system and faced greater barriers to a safe and gradual return to the outside world.

Hogan pointed out her office raised similar issues in audits in 2015, 2016 and 2017, yet the correctional service has done little to change the policies, practices, tools and approaches that produce these differing outcomes.

Hogan says disparities were present from the moment offenders entered federal institutions.

The process for selecting security classifications saw Indigenous and Black offenders assigned to maximum-security institutions at twice the rate of other groups of offenders.

They also remained in federal custody longer and at higher levels of security before their release.

The audit found that timely access to correctional programs continued to decline across all groups of offenders. Access to programming, which teaches crucial skills like problem solving and goal setting, worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of men serving sentences of two to four years who were released from April to December 2021, 94 per cent had not completed the correctional programs they needed before they were first eligible to apply for day parole.

“This is a barrier to serving the remainder of their sentences under supervision in the community,” the report says.

The prison service needs to find a different way to organize programming, because “that timely access is so critical to an offender’s successful path forward,” Hogan said Tuesday at a news conference.

Correctional service efforts to support greater equity, diversity and inclusion in the workplace also fell short, leaving persistent barriers unresolved, the report says.

Close to one-quarter of management and staff had not completed mandatory diversity training a year after the deadline.

In addition, the prison service had not established a plan to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of its offender populations, which has particular relevance for institutions with high numbers of Indigenous and Black offenders, the report says.

Hogan noted the correctional service has acknowledged systemic racism in the system, initiating an anti-racism framework to identify and remove systemic barriers.

The service has agreed to act on the auditor general’s recommendations to remedy the various issues she identified.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino stressed efforts toward “rooting out racism in all of its forms” by diversifying the prison service’s workforce, improving our training and collecting data to inform policies. “And we know we’ve got a long way to go.”

Mendicino noted he recently directed the correctional service head to create a new position of deputy commissioner for Indigenous corrections, saying it will ensure the overrepresentation of Indigenous offenders in the system, especially women, is addressed.

Source: Prison service must do more to remove barriers for Indigenous, Black offenders: AG

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Dutrisac: Survivance et résignation [on the CAQ electoral strategy and immigration]

2022/06/01 Leave a comment

Of interest, particularly the contrast between the earlier inclusive vision of the first PQ government and how it has evolved to the defensive approach of the CAQ:

Il a été beaucoup question de fierté lors du congrès national de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ). François Legault a parlé des deux pôles de son gouvernement, la prospérité et la fierté. Le ministre André Lamontagne a aussi beaucoup parlé de fierté dans l’allocution finement rédigée qu’il a livrée samedi après-midi.

Ce type d’événements partisans baigne dans un enthousiasme parfois factice — il ne l’était aucunement cette fin de semaine —, qui se manifeste par les autocongratulations et le cheerleading, le simplisme des lignes de communication et un comportement moutonnier particulièrement exacerbé dans un parti composé de militants disciplinés, ou dociles, plutôt que chicaniers. À cet égard, la CAQ surpasse le Parti libéral du Québec.

Cet enthousiasme se percevait sur le plancher du centre des congrès de Drummondville : jamais depuis les libéraux de Robert Bourassa en 1985 un parti politique québécois n’a été en si bonne posture à l’orée d’élections générales, ce que la faiblesse de ses adversaires ne fait que souligner.

En campagne électorale il y a quatre ans, François Legault avait aussi parlé de fierté, en contraste avec un Philippe Couillard distant, qui semblait parfois douter du peuple québécois.

Après un premier mandat, les Québécois sont-ils plus fiers qu’en 2018, sont-ils plus prospères ? a lancé le chef caquiste, tout en donnant évidemment une réponse affirmative aux deux questions.

Sur le plan de la prospérité, son bilan est positif, surtout si on le compare à celui du gouvernement précédent, de l’austérité duquel nous nous souvenons amèrement. Malgré la pandémie, les finances publiques sont en ordre, la forte croissance économique a dépassé celle de nos voisins, le taux de chômage est au plus bas, la productivité est en hausse, l’écart de richesse avec l’Ontario s’est réduit, les salaires ont augmenté, bien que la poussée d’inflation, qu’on espère de courte durée, soit venue brouiller les cartes, et avec ça, le gouvernement caquiste a remis « de l’argent dans les poches des Québécois ».

Plus prospères et plus fiers, les Québécois devraient afficher une assurance à toute épreuve. Pas si vite : c’est compter sans le spectre de la « louisianisation » du Québec, brandi par François Legault, en lien avec une immigration qui s’intégrerait mal à notre société de langue française. Il y va de la « survie » de la nation québécoise, a fait valoir le chef caquiste.

Dès le début du prochain mandat, le gouvernement caquiste entend organiser un vaste sommet sur les perspectives démographiques du Québec et l’apport de l’immigration. L’événement permettrait d’informer la population sur cet enjeu crucial dans le but de bâtir un rapport de force face à Ottawa. Dimanche, François Legault a réitéré une demande à laquelle Justin Trudeau avait déjà répondu par un non catégorique, celle de rapatrier la responsabilité de la réunification familiale, qui compte pour près du quart des immigrants reçus, et il a ajouté la gestion des programmes visant les travailleurs temporaires et les étudiants étrangers.

Comme l’éventualité que le premier ministre du Canada acquiesce à cette revendication semble lointaine, voire utopique, un prochain gouvernement Legault devra s’atteler à reprendre concrètement la maîtrise de la situation avec les leviers dont il dispose, mais qu’il n’a pas pleinement utilisés.

Ce retour de la survivance, une posture qui fut l’apanage des Canadiens français après 1840, laisse perplexe. C’est une stratégie empreinte de résignation, un aveu d’impuissance politique. Et puis le mouvement nationaliste d’émancipation des années 1960 et suivantes, celui de René Lévesque, progressiste et tourné vers l’avenir, avait mis la hache dans cette survivance passéiste.

Il faudrait que François Legault nous dise si son nationalisme est essentiellement conservateur, essentialiste et défensif, ou s’il s’agit d’un nationalisme progressiste — existentialiste, pourrait-on dire —, qui parle d’avenir et s’appuie sur le pluralisme et le métissage qui caractérisent déjà la nation québécoise. Quand François Legault répète « c’est comme ça qu’on vit au Québec », une formule pour le moins maladroite, et qu’il en rajoute avec « c’est comme ça qu’on parle au Québec », on peut se demander où il s’en va avec ses skis. Le français est la langue commune certes, mais il se parle des centaines de langues au Québec, y compris des langues autochtones.

Le gouvernement Legault a déjà amélioré les choses en matière d’immigration, que ce soit en francisation et en soutien à l’intégration, et le chantier n’est pas terminé. Mais il devrait revenir à l’esprit de Gérald Godin : les immigrants pour la plupart veulent s’intégrer à la nation québécoise et contribuer à sa culture vivante et originale, dont nous pouvons nous enorgueillir. C’est ça aussi, être fier.

Source: Survivance et résignation

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Abbott – The truth is out: Britain’s immigration system is racist, and always has been. Now let’s fix it

2022/06/01 Leave a comment

By Labour MP Diane Abbott. Many of the historic examples cited are common to other immigration destination countries:

The unspoken rationale underlying British immigration policy since the second world war has always been about race. A new leaked Home Office document, which was never intended to be seen by the public, spells this out. The report, which was commissioned by the Home Office in the wake of the Windrush scandal, was leaked to the Guardian after repeated attempts by the government to suppress its publication. It has a stark conclusion: that the origins of the “deep-rooted racism of the Windrush scandal” lie in the fact that “during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK”.

This was true whichever political party was in power. Who can forget the red mug marketed by the Labour party in 2015 emblazoned with the words “Controls on immigration”? The problem was not the mug, but the fact that cracking down on immigration was one of our election promises at all.

It was the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act that for the first time brought restrictions on the entry of Commonwealth citizens into the UK. Before this, there had been freedom of movement for all citizens of the United Kingdom and its colonies. Postwar Britain was suffering a labour shortage and so by the late 1940s, employers were recruiting directly from the Commonwealth. For instance the London Transport executive had recruitment drives in Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica.

But there were already murmurings of disapproval even then. The day the Windrush docked in Tilbury, Essex in 1948, 11 Labour MPs sent a letter to the prime minister, Clement Attlee, asking for controls on immigration, stating that the British people “are blest with the absence of a colour racial problem. An influx of coloured people domiciled here is likely to impair the harmony, strength and cohesion of our public and social life and to cause discord and unhappiness among all concerned.”

In 1949, the Royal Commission on Population reported that “immigrants of good stock would be welcomed without reserve”. “Good stock” in this context might be assumed to mean white. In 1956, a ministerial committee was set up to investigate colonial migration – and whether it should be curbed. It argued that: “The principle that the United Kingdom should maintain an open door for British subjects grew up tacitly at a time when the coloured races of the Commonwealth were at a more primitive stage of development than now. There was no danger then of a coloured invasion of this country … In the meantime circumstances have changed …” The report continues: “We clearly cannot undertake to absorb … all the coloured immigrants who may wish to come here.”

With their fear of a “coloured invasion”, these MPs were foreshadowing what Margaret Thatcher would say more than 20 years later, when she referred to Britain being “swamped” by migrants. Pertinently, that 1956 report also said: “There is no doubt that even though a bill would in form be non-discriminatory, it would nevertheless be clear against whom the bill was really directed.”

In the decades to come, those of us campaigning against racist immigration legislation were never in any doubt against whom it was really directed. When that first Commonwealth immigrants bill made it to the House of Commons, in response to the increasing anti-immigrant clamour, the home secretary of the day, Rab Butler, nearly gave the game away in the debate on the legislation, saying in the Commons that the legislation would not be based “on colour prejudice alone”. In theory at least, it was not supposed to be based on colour prejudice at all. But that 1962 act put an end to freedom of movement, limited the immigration of Commonwealth passport holders and for the first time made the distinction between skilled and unskilled labour.

The Labour party opposed the legislation and promised to repeal it. But the small number of Labour MPs who actually voted against the bill in parliament suggested that that they were not as enthusiastically against it as they might have been. And the next Labour government did nothing to repeal it. Instead, it brought in another Commonwealth Immigration Act in 1968, rushed through parliament in just three days by the home secretary, Jim Callaghan, in response to media hysteria about the possibility of 200,000 Kenyan Asians with British passports coming to the UK as they fled Kenya’s Africanisation policy.

There must have been some concern in government that they did not want the legislation to look as crudely racist as it was. So they invented the concept of “patrials” – someone who had a parent or grandparent who was born in, or was a citizen of the UK. Nobody, however, was in any doubt that “patrial” was a euphemism for white.

By 1971, the Tories were in power and another immigration act brought in that year elaborated on the (completely bogus) legal concept of “patrials”, clamped down further on Commonwealth immigration and extended powers of deportation. It did allow Commonwealth migrants who had come to Britain before 1973 to remain in the UK indefinitely. But, crucially, it put the onus on those who had come to Britain to prove their right to stay. It was that requirement that had such catastrophic consequences for the Windrush generation whose cases were eventually brought to light in 2018.

Secret cabinet minutes of the time reveal that ministers knew that the decision to exempt “old” Commonwealth countries such as New Zealand and Australia from immigration controls would be criticised as being discriminatory in favour of the white Commonwealth. But the home secretary, Reginald Maudling, argued that it was “necessary and defensible” to curb Asian migration. The 1981 Nationality Act, the most fateful of the decade, would reverse an age-old convention that anyone born on British soil was British. Birth in Britain was no longer an automatic entitlement to citizenship.

From the 1970s onwards, Britain’s immigrant communities began to organise and campaign. One of the earliest cases was Rochdale housewife Anwar Ditta. Britain’s convoluted and increasingly draconian immigration laws meant she could not bring her three children over from Pakistan. She was not the first immigrant to suffer because of the rules, but she was the first to build a rainbow coalition of support. With no experience, she campaigned from 1976 to 1981 and won the right to bring her children to Britain.

This was one of a series of campaigns opposing Britain’s degrading practices meted out to immigrants such as “virginity tests”. Some of us would spend the coming decades writing about and marching against these rules, even when it meant campaigning against our own Labour government.

Source: The truth is out: Britain’s immigration system is racist, and always has been. Now let’s fix it

Filed under Immigration, Racism Tagged with ,

Albertans launch Dignity Forum in response to increase in racism, hatred

2022/05/30 Leave a comment

Of note. Will be interesting to see how effective its work is:
A new forum is working to give Alberta Human Rights Commission a fresh platform to stand on by elevating the importance of human rights progression through collaboration.
Officially launching May 25, the Dignity Forum was founded out of deep concern for the increase in discrimination and prejudice faced by racialized groups in Alberta.

Founded by former Alberta MLA and senator Ron Ghitter, the Dignity Forum brings together key stakeholders from human rights groups to speak with one voice to combat the systemic issues of intolerance, harassment, and discrimination in Alberta.

Ghitter has been involved with the development of human rights policies over the past 45 years, and was awarded the Alberta Human Rights Award in 1990.

The commission was once a leader in human rights protection in Canada, Ghitter said, but funding cuts, low profile and lack of political support have diminished the judicial body’s impact on legislation, community outreach and education.

The plan for the forum is to elevate human rights conversations in the province through advocacy, collaboration and education systems, he said.“The commission used to be the engine that brings the people together in the province. Instead, they operate in isolation,” Ghitter said.

“The resources that they’re given are really only enough to allow them to deal with the enforcement side. But you can’t force someone to love thy neighbour.”

In 2019, the UCP government cut the commission’s $1 million annual Human Rights and Multiculturalism Grants program, which was aimed at fighting racism and promoting human rights and equality through community projects.

The cuts came before the COVID-19 pandemic, when communities across Canada saw an increase in hate-motivated incidents, particularly against Asian communities.

Hate crimes reported to Calgary police have risen almost 60 per cent in three years, from 165 files in 2019 to 388 in 2021.

“I’ve never seen before the elements of racism and bullying, assaults on the streets and guards in mosques and synagogues. We decided we needed a different approach in dealing with the issue.”

A call to action posted to the organization’s website outlines recommendations to better equip the commission, including sustainable funding and shifting reporting responsibilities to the Alberta legislative assembly instead of Alberta’s justice minister.

The Dignity Forum is made up of a board of directors and an advisory council with expertise from a variety of different backgrounds, from legal to immigrant and Indigenous voices. Ghitter said he believes this collaborative approach will make a difference in the province.

“You get a number of groups together, and they became the one voice that is more persuasive in the community and government for change,” he said. “We need to have a stronger message to really get out and explain to Albertans just the dangers that we’re falling into.”

Source: Albertans launch Dignity Forum in response to increase in racism, hatred

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Rioux: Retour de balancier

2022/05/28 Leave a comment

Rioux rails against “les élites multiculturalistes” and celebrates counter-reactions, even if “souvent déroutantes et parfois extrêmes.”

Ceux qui se souviennent de l’extraordinaire fierté qu’avait suscitée l’adoption de la loi 101 en 1977 auront compris que nous ne sommes plus à cette époque. Difficile de trouver la même ferveur chez ceux qui ont adopté cette semaine le projet de loi 96. La loi 101 avait alors fait parler d’elle dans le monde entier. Dans l’univers anglophone, on avait évidemment dénoncé dans des mots souvent outranciers une loi brimant les droits de la « minorité ». Mais ailleurs, l’écho était différent. Le journal Le Monde avait évoqué une « revanche historique ». Lors de son adoption, le quotidien avait repris les mots de ses auteurs selon qui le but de cette loi était de « rendre la province “aussi française que le reste du Canada est anglais”. »

Lors de mes premiers reportages à l’étranger, on me parlait spontanément de la loi 101. En France, dans les milieux informés, elle jouissait d’une véritable aura. C’était aussi le cas ailleurs en Europe, comme en Catalogne, où les nationalistes au pouvoir ne cachaient pas leur admiration pour la détermination dont nous avions fait preuve. En 2012, le linguiste Claude Hagège avait même soutenu que la France devait s’inspirer du Québec afin d’imposer l’unilinguisme français dans l’affichage. À voir les Champs-Élysées aujourd’hui, on déplore qu’il n’ait pas été entendu.

« Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement », disait Boileau. Ce principe s’applique à toutes les grandes lois, qui sont généralement des lois simples qui reposent sur un principe immuable. Au lieu de se perdre dans un fouillis administratif et des contorsions juridiques (comme les complexes tests linguistiques de la défunte loi 22), elles proclament une vérité essentielle que chacun est à même de comprendre. C’est ainsi qu’elles imposent le respect.

Qu’exprimait l’esprit de la loi 101 sinon qu’au Québec, tous les nouveaux venus avaient vocation à s’intégrer à la majorité linguistique et culturelle par le truchement de son école ? Bref, à devenir des Québécois de langue et de culture française. Point à la ligne. Ce principe de l’intégration scolaire est d’une telle évidence qu’il mériterait d’être appliqué à tous les niveaux du réseau éducatif sans exception. C’est d’ailleurs ce que font depuis longtemps les Catalans en Espagne et les Wallons en Belgique, qui semblent avoir retenu mieux que nous la leçon de Camille Laurin. Nul doute qu’un jour, il faudra y revenir.

Mais nous avons changé d’époque. C’est ce qu’explique avec talent le jeune essayiste Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard dans son premier essai, Le Schisme identitaire (Boréal). L’ouvrage propose une description passionnante du cheminement idéologique du Québec depuis 1995. Beauregard décrit le passage de l’effervescence nationaliste que fit naître la Révolution tranquille à l’idéologie « post-nationale » qui domine aujourd’hui. Il raconte le ralliement de la gauche, au nom du progressisme, à l’idéologie diversitaire et sa déclaration de guerre contre ce que Fernand Dumont appelait la « culture de convergence ».

Avant 1995, écrit Beauregard, le nationalisme des historiens Lionel Groulx et Maurice Séguin exerçait une telle hégémonie intellectuelle que même le Parti libéral de Robert Bourassa fut en quelque sorte obligé de se dire autonomiste. D’où la loi 22. À l’inverse, la nouvelle hégémonie diversitaire pousse aujourd’hui les nationalistes dans leurs retranchements, les forçant à donner des gages à la gauche multiculturaliste qui exerce le magistère moral dans les médias et les grandes institutions.

Dans ces débats comme celui qui s’achève sur le projet de loi 96, il arrive que les nationalistes québécois se sentent à ce point isolés qu’ils se croient hors du monde. Il est pourtant frappant de constater combien cette nouvelle guerre culturelle que décrit Beauregard n’est pas proprement québécoise. Elle est même la réplique, à notre échelle, d’un affrontement qui se déroule partout en Occident. Partout où l’idéologie de la mondialisation heureuse, qu’est au fond ce rêve post-national et diversitaire, se bute au retour des nations.

Il y a quelques années encore, on pouvait croire que ces dernières n’étaient destinées qu’à se fondre dans des ensembles plus grands et multiethniques. Des ensembles dont le Canada se prétend depuis toujours le prototype achevé. Ce n’est plus vraiment le cas, alors qu’à la faveur des ratés d’une mondialisation aujourd’hui en déclin, on assiste au réveil du sentiment national aussi bien en France et dans les anciens pays de l’Est qu’au Royaume-Uni et ailleurs en Occident. Sans parler de l’Ukraine.

Partout, les coups de boutoir contre l’identité nationale imposés par les élites multiculturalistes font réagir les peuples qui ne sont pas prêts à troquer leur langue, leur héritage et leurs mœurs pour un grand melting-pot informe et sans substance. Comme l’écrit Beauregard, cette guerre va s’intensifier, et l’on voit déjà les forces politiques qui prétendent s’en tenir à l’écart se faire balayer. C’est un peu ce qui arrive chez nous au Parti québécois et qui, dans un autre contexte, a décimé en France le Parti socialiste et Les Républicains.

Cette reconfiguration du combat politique prend des formes diverses, souvent déroutantes et parfois extrêmes. Mais les mêmes forces sont à l’œuvre, qui mettent en scène de vieilles nations qui ne veulent pas mourir et qui n’ont pas dit leur dernier mot.

Source: Retour de balancier

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Almeida: How we keep racism alive in Canada

2022/05/28 Leave a comment

A South Asian critique of multiculturalism, the author arguing, incorrectly IMO, that it fosters separation, not integration, contrary to what most public opinion and other research shows for the vast majority of immigrants and minorities. Moreover, identities are complex, mixed and shifting:

The verbal assault on Jagmeet Singh in Peterborough is a grim reminder that racism still exists in Canada. We are told time and again that individuals acting out their hate-filled ideologies are a minority, but this is hardly reassuring to the many immigrants who feel the pressure to prove they’re Canadian on a daily basis.

The federal NDP leader is not a new immigrant with an “accent” although treated like one. He was born and raised here just like the people who attacked him verbally. But his brown skin and turban make him ‘un-Canadian’ in their eyes. This was not his first brush with racism (his youth is probably full of such experiences) and it certainly won’t be his last, even at his political level! Being elected leader of a federal political party was a huge step forward for him as well as Canada, but being accepted as prime minister is a difficult bridge to cross. The Peterborough incident highlights the underlying sentiment of more Canadians than we’d be comfortable admitting to.

Every individual who is a “visible minority” knows that no matter how long they have lived here their physical appearance will make them the target of white supremacists at some point in their lives. We expect and mentally prepare to deal with it in the best way possible. Some fight back, others endure it silently.

We know that racism is driven by ignorance, closed-mindedness and fear… but political hypocrisy and an over-played multicultural policy are equally responsible for keeping it alive.

Being Canadian doesn’t mean forgetting your roots but it should not define who we are either. Multiculturalism was meant to make Canada inclusive but seems to encourage us to cling to our origins rather than assimilate it into our new identity instead. That’s the monumental difference between being American and Canadian! Immigrants south of the border don’t wear their culture on their sleeves. They’re eager and happy to blend into the American melting pot.

It serves Canadian politicians well to keep us in our racial ghettos which can be exploited for their benefit at election time. They field candidates with the same cultural background who pledge to be the voice of “the community” but do little once elected. Either because election promises are meant to be broken, or they are more interested in protecting their position and must toe the line to do so.

The professional world is no different. Ask the doctor or engineer who is driving a taxi, or a former executive denied a front line job for lack of “Canadian” experience. Veiled systemic racism will have you believe that you’re just not there yet!

Our non-white skin colour does not fit the stereotypical image of a Canadian and so our origins continue to define our social and professional lives. Tell another South Asian you’re Canadian and they will ask you whether you’re Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, etc. It’s difficult to get past your brown skin.

One must also acknowledge that we won’t hesitate to play the racial card to our benefit. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it has opened the doors to many privileges which we are not afraid to explore. This does not encourage acceptance but only reinforces cultural stereotypes and resentment…and the cycle goes on.

Many Indians and South Asians are also racist. We’ve discriminated against dark-skinned people in our home countries for centuries. Moving to a different continent rarely erodes our colour bias. Take a look at the matrimonial ads asking for fair-skinned brides. We’re also uncomfortable with people from different cultures and will often instruct our kids to find life partners with a similar cultural background. Anyone else is simply not good enough.

So what’s the solution to our racist attitudes? Adopting a race-neutral approach to all inequalities. This can only happen if we stop laying so much emphasis on an individual’s cultural background and promoting their traditions.  Enough with this post-national state nonsense! It’s time to build a distinct and unifying Canadian identity!!!

Source: How we keep racism alive in Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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