Biden officials may change how the U.S. defines racial and ethnic groups by 2024

2022/06/17 Leave a comment

Long overdue:

The Biden administration is taking steps that could change how the U.S. census and federal surveys produce racial and ethnic data that is used for redrawing voting districts, enforcing civil rights protections, policymaking and research.

The multiyear process is likely to carry out long-awaited data policy changes that will particularly affect how Latinos and people of Middle Eastern or North African descent are counted in statistics around the country.

In a blog post released Wednesday, Karin Orvis, U.S. chief statistician within the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the federal agency is starting a new formal review of the government’s standards for statistics about race and ethnicity to help ensure they “better reflect the diversity of the American people.”

The goal, Orvis added, is “completing the revision no later than Summer 2024,” which would be months ahead of the next presidential election and in time for any changes to be incorporated into 2030 census plans.

“I understand the importance of moving quickly and with purpose. It is also important that we get this right,” Orvis said in the post, noting that the process will include gathering input from federal agencies and members of the public.

A little-known part of the federal government, OMB is in charge of determining how the Census Bureau and all other agencies can ask about a person’s racial and ethnic identities, as well as defining the checkboxes found on surveys.

First set in 1977, OMB’s standards for racial and ethnic data were last revised in 1997 and have influenced how surveys across the U.S. generate demographic statistics.

A major overhaul was expected ahead of the 2020 census. But those efforts stalled during former President Donald Trump’s administration despite years of research by the bureausuggesting that certain changes to the standards could improve the accuracy of statistics about Latinos and people with origins in the Middle East or North Africa.

Other proposals included no longer officially allowing the term “Negro” to be used to describe the “Black” category on federal surveys and taking out “Far East” from the standards as a description of a geographic region of origin for people of Asian descent.

Orvis noted that the new review will make use of past research, as well as the work of an earlier working group of career civil servants who were reviewing proposals to allow forms to ask about a person’s Hispanic origins and race in a combined question and to include a checkbox for “Middle Eastern or North African.”

Many Democrats in Congress have been calling for OMB to add a separate category for people of Middle Eastern or North African descent, whom the current standards classify as “White.”

“Federal demographic data does not reflect the realities of MENA individuals and community-based organizations, which makes it increasingly difficult for advocates, researchers, agency officials, and policymakers to communicate, understand, and address community needs,” wrote a group of Democratic members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee led by Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, the committee’s chair, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan in a letter this week to the head of OMB.

The Biden administration has previously signaled that adding such a category would be a priority. Movement at OMB, however, has been slowed by the delayed confirmation of a new agency director and the hiring of a new chief statistician.

Asked by NPR why OMB decided to start a new review of its standards on racial and ethnic data instead of continuing its earlier review, OMB’s press office did not answer directly and referred instead to Orvis’ blog post.

Source: Biden officials may change how the U.S. defines racial and ethnic groups by 2024

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

‘Conservatives are losing traction in ethnic communities:’ Will their leadership race make it even worse?

2022/06/16 Leave a comment

Likely premature call.

As we know, voters in the 905 have flipped between Conservatives and Liberals, and Doug Ford won most of these ridings in 2018 and 2022.

And during the recent leadership debates, there was remarkable consensus in favour of immigration and no opposition to the current government’s ongoing increase in immigration levels:

Cyma Musarat still remembers being accused of having lost her mind when she ran for the federal Conservatives in 2019.

As a Muslim woman, she was asked time and time again how she could cast her lot with a party that promoted policies condemned as racist.

In her riding of Pickering-Uxbridge, it was a particularly sensitive topic — during the 2015 election campaign, the Tories held an event in a pocket of the riding where they promised a so-called “barbaric cultural practices” tip line for people to report on their neighbours.

The tip line proposal and support for a ban on face coverings during citizenship ceremonies were seen as key contributors to the party’s defeat in the election.

And not just that year.

The policies effectively bombed the bridges the party had built with ethnic communities, and the issues surfaced in the 2019 and 2021 campaigns as the Tories failed to make the gains in urban centres.

What it will take for the Tories to win the next election is the question at the heart of the party’s current leadership race.

But how ethnic communities factor into the equation is a point of contention, and an issue not being debated enough, some say.

So far, the race has not seen debate over social issues like systemic racism or inequality, or even how the party can and must embrace equity and inclusion internally, said long time political activist Sukhi Sandu, who backed the Tories in the last federal campaign.

“The Conservatives are losing traction in ethnic communities, and they seem not to understand the issues that pertain to those racialized groups,” Sandu said in an interview from Boston, where he’s working towards a master’s degree in diversity, equity and inclusion.

Musarat believes the party must first acknowledge these issues exist, then move beyond a process of just checking off boxes.

For her, that’s why Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown’s leadership bid is so appealing.

“He openly says that Islamophobia exists,” she said. “That’s where the journey starts. That’s where the change will start: acknowledge the problem. Once you’ve acknowledged it, and then you find a solution to fix it.”

Brown built his leadership bid on his outspoken opposition to Quebec’s Bill 21, which bans people in positions of public authority in that province from wearing religious symbols, like turbans or hijabs, at their workplaces.

He went on to promise a multi-faith, multicultural coalition that would restore trust between the Tories and ethnic communities.

While signing up what his campaign says are 150,000 new party members, Brown has made specific promises to different ethnic groups.

In turn, he has been accused of playing diaspora politics — an accusation his backers say is proof most candidates aren’t willing to do the hard work of sitting down with voters to listen to their specific concerns and address them.

“People have this misconception that someone stands up at the front door on stage and says, ‘We’re all gonna support Patrick,’ and, you know, 50,000 people sign up for the man,” said Jaskaran Sandu, a volunteer on the Brown campaign.

“That’s not how it works. It’s painstaking, person-to-person relationship building that only works if there is sincerity and a track record.”

Brown has also been unsparing in his attacks on rival Pierre Poilievre, challenging the Conservative MP for remaining silent when the Tory government introduced the niqab ban and proposed the tip line.

Poilievre’s campaign co-chair Tim Uppal has apologized for not personally pushing back against those policies when he was an MP — and minister of state of multiculturalism.

Uppal said he had no concerns that the candidates’ positions on tackling racism aren’t getting a broad airing on the campaign trail. An issue like that only gets debated if there’s a flashpoint which prompts it, he said.

He said while Brown is recruiting in diverse communities, so too is Poilievre, citing a recent speech to a packed mosque, among others.

“What I’ve talked to people a lot about is that they’re being included because of issues that are important to them, which is taxes and other issues that affect all Canadians,” he said.

Leslyn Lewis, a Black woman making her second run for the Conservative leadership, did not respond to questions from the Star about how she views the future of the party’s relationship with ethnic communities.

Vonny Sweetland is working on Jean Charest’s leadership bid, a decision based on the depth of the former Quebec premier’s experience — and his willingness to bring people like Sweetland onto his team.

The leader sets the tone, said Sweetland, who is Black, and Charest’s is inclusive and progressive.

But both Sweetland and Sandhu said they have concerns about what will happen to the party if the populist elements that appear to be playing a major role in this race ultimately triumph.

Sandhu pointed to the tension between members recruited with a promise the Conservatives will embrace diversity and those brought in over concerns about global institutions like the World Economic Forum, around which conspiracy theories with racist undertones persist.

“Why do you expect us to be involved or continue if that’s the type of rhetoric that’s going to be included back into the party?” he said of those recruited by Brown.

“That doesn’t actually solve the issue — it goes back to the basis of the problem, which is that the Conservative party is not ready to look in the mirror and evolve and realize why it falls short in places like the 905.”

Sweetland said while he’s planning to give the new leader is some runaway, whoever it is, there is anxiety among other Black conservatives.

“I’ve seen, people, particularly people of colour, feel that this is not only a leadership race — and I’m sure you’ve heard this quote, it’s not mine, but I agree with it — that this is the battle for the soul of our party,” he said.

“And many people of colour feel that way.”

Source: ‘Conservatives are losing traction in ethnic communities:’ Will their leadership race make it even worse?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Millions believe in conspiracy theories in Canada

2022/06/14 Leave a comment

Interesting public opinion research and worrisome. The “great replacement” slide below is the one that most attracted my attention. It does track, to a certain extent, the Focus Canada question, “Too many immigrants do not adapt Canadian values,” 48 percent Fall 2021:

We recently completed nationwide surveying among 1500 Canadians.  The focus was on the levels of trust people have in institutional sources of information, and belief in conspiracy theories.  This is the second in a series called “Trust & Facts: What Canadians Believe”

• 44% (the equivalent of 13 million adults) believe “big events like wars, recessions and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people working in secret against us”. Almost as many agree “much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places

• 37% (or 11 million) think “there is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native born Canadians with immigrants who agree with their political views. This is an articulation of what is commonly referred to as replacement theory.

• 20% believe it is definitely or probably true that “the World Economic Forum is a group of global elites with a secretive strategy to impose their ideas on the world.” Another 37% think it is possibly true or aren’t sure either way.

• 13% think it is definitely or probably true that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is using microchips to track people and affect human behaviour. Another 21% say it’s possible, or aren’t really sure.

A deeper dive into demographic and other variables that correlate with these beliefs revealed:

• Belief in these theories is higher among supporters of the People’s Party, those who self-identify on the right of the spectrum, those who have not received any COVID-19 shots, and those who think media and official government accounts of events can’t be trusted. Those who feel Pierre Poilievre is the Conservative leadership candidate closest to their values and ideas are more likely to believe these theories when compared to those who feel more aligned with Jean Charest.

 

THE UPSHOT

Canadians who want to believe that Canadian society is relatively unaffected by conspiracy thinking will find little comfort in these results. Millions believe that our lives are controlled by secret plots to undermine our interests.

That such beliefs correlate strongly with the instinct to mistrust what media report and what governments say –is a challenge that threatens all institutions that depend on an informed body politic and is like a poison affecting our civil discourse. Only recently we’ve witnessed how a massive demand for the protection offered by Covid 19 vaccines fostered a strenuous effort by those who disbelieve government and media to deny the value of those same vaccines.

This question of whether people can and should trust in institutional voices and known facts is the central theme running through the current leadership dynamic within the Conservative Party leadership race. The data make it clear that to compete for votes from the People’s Party base, Conservatives could choose to embrace conspiracy thinking, but in so doing would alienate a good portion of others, and create hesitancy among half their current voter coalition.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing in these numbers is the fact that mistrust of institutional accounts isn’t simply neutral skepticism – it is often accompanied by a willingness to believe dangerous contrarian theories. This threatens to undermine the ability of political parties, businesses, civil society groups, and governments to help build consensus and make progress together.

Source: Millions believe in conspiracy theories in Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Tolley: Women and racialized political candidates are being set up to fail

2022/06/14 Leave a comment

I’m less pessimistic than Tolley given overall progress election to election, albeit slower than desired. And gender equity may be more of a factor in winnable ridings as visible minority and Indigenous candidates are largely, but not universally, as a function of riding demographics:

Recent elections have resulted in more women, racialized and Indigenous people holding political office in Canada. That’s good news, but we’ve got a long way to go. Elected institutions still do not reflect the demographics of the populations they claim to represent. These representational gaps are a clear indicator of democratic inequality.

It’s not that there is a shortage of qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds. It’s that the major parties still tend to privilege candidates who are white, male and middle-aged. Parties have many of the tools they need to address electoral under-representation, but rather than being a gateway into politics, parties are frequently the gatekeepers. It’s time this changed.

Political parties are the central pressure point in any effort to address electoral under-representation. The problem isn’t really voter bias: Canadians tend to base their voting on party and leader preference, and this inclinationtends to override all but the strongest prejudices against local candidates. There also isn’t a shortage of qualified candidates, but parties frequently underestimate the electoral potential of those who don’t fit the mould.

If all parties nominated a more diverse slate of candidates in winnable districts, elected institutions would be more representative.

In the lead-up to Ontario’s most recent election, commentators pointed to the high number of women and racialized candidates, including many with immigrant and minority backgrounds. But when the votes were counted, the legislature’s gender composition remained stalled at just 39-per-cent women.

What happened?

We need to look beyond aggregate candidate “diversity” numbers. It’s not just who gets nominated, but also where they run. Realizing it is electorally advantageous, some parties have attempted to recruit more women and racialized candidates, but women especially continue to be disproportionately nominated in ridings the party has no hope of winning. This isn’t inclusion.

And although there has been some progress in the right direction, it’s not enough – and it hasn’t been across all parties at all levels of government.

For example, prior to the Ontario election, the Liberals set aside 22 ridings and designated them women-only nomination contests. In the end, the party’s dismal electoral fortunes meant they only eked out a victory in one of those designated ridings, but polling indicates this was more a rejection of the party and its leader than the individual candidates.

If all parties committed to nominating more women in winnable ridings, the demographics of our elected institutions would shift.

International evidence confirms the key role that parties can play.

In 2005, Britain’s Labour Party introduced legislation that permits parties to use all-women short lists to achieve gender equality in Parliament. In the 2019 election, 51 per cent of the party’s elected MPs were women. There is noevidence voters punished Labour for using a positive discrimination measure, and the selected women were every bit as qualified as other candidates, often even more so.

There is a straight line between more equitable nomination practices and increased gender representation. Political parties that are serious about democratic equality should take note.

But parties need to think about diversity beyond gender.

In Canada, the primary beneficiaries of most diversification efforts are white women. Federally, my own research shows that racialized candidates come forward for party nomination in numbers that exceed their share of the population, but parties still show a preference for white candidates, even in some of the country’s most diverse ridings. And even when they nominate more diverse slates, parties nonetheless funnel more money to prototypical white, male candidates.

Without financial and organizational support, candidates are being set up to fail.

Politics is increasingly seen as inhospitable. Electoral engagement is at an all-time low. If parties wait to see which candidates knock on their door and want to run, chances are it will be one of the usual suspects. The time to think about candidate recruitment and organizing is now – not just at election time or the few frantic months that precede it.

Enough hand-wringing. Parties need to recognize their role and commit to action. To open the gates, they must pro-actively identify, recruit and support a more representative slate of candidates with money and organizational capacity in ridings where they can actually win.

Source: Women and racialized political candidates are being set up to fail

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with ,

Scofield: Canada’s worker shortage has one big upside for employers

2022/06/13 Leave a comment

And employees:

The supertight job market that is bedevilling employers and the Bank of Canada alike has an upside: it has managed to do quickly what employment equity practices and public policy have struggled with for years.

It has drawn in racialized workers, new immigrants, young people, older workers and women in astounding numbers, making history along the way.

Whether that kind of inclusion can last, however, is an open question that will depend on employers and public-policy makers alike.

For one, the current pace of hiring is not likely to last.

In May, the unemployment rate hit a record low of 5.1 per cent, Statistics Canada reported on Friday. Employers created just 39,800 new positions over the course of a month — solid although nothing to write home about.

Still, from the start of the pandemic, the job market is now 497,000 positions larger than it was back then. In other words, after all of the ups and downs, closures and reopenings, illness and fear, that’s half a million more jobs than what we used to have, and it speaks to the resilience of the Canadian labour market.

That resilience has benefited a wide array of people who used to have a hard time getting a fair shake.

Let’s look at workers between the ages of 25 and 54 years old, to start. First Nations women in that age bracket have seen their unemployment rate plunge 9.3 percentage points over the past year to 7.3 per cent. Southeast Asian women have a 4.1 per cent unemployment rate, which is 6.3 percentage points lower than a year ago. Filipino men have a 3.4 per cent unemployment rate, down 4.7 points on the year.

Participation rates — how many people are actively working or looking for work — are also proof of significant progress for some key demographics. The participation rate is at a record high for women aged 25 to 54, at 85 per cent. That’s still lower than men of the same age (91.9 per cent), but after all of the troubles women had at the beginning of the pandemic, it’s remarkable.

The experience of newcomers to Canada is also eye-opening, says Brendon Bernard, senior economist at jobs website Indeed.com. He points out that immigrants who have been in Canada for five years or less are jumping into the job market in leaps and bounds, and they’re landing pretty good jobs.

Before the pandemic, their participation rate was 76.5 per cent. Now, it’s 84.3 per cent. And wage data shows they’re being hired into higher-income areas.

“One of Canada’s longest-standing labour market challenges has been the underemployment of newcomers. And there really has been a noticeable shift,” Bernard said in an interview.

Can it all last? Or will the pending slowdown in the Canadian economy make for “last hired, first fired” and erase the gains for demographics that have been struggling to catch up?

Jean-François Perrault, chief economist at Scotiabank, suggests it can actually last. For sure, hiring is set to slow down as the economy overheats and the central bank moves to cool it off by dramatically raising interest rates. But at the same time, Perrault points out there are about one million vacancies in the job market right now, and they’re not just going to evaporate with a slowing economy.

“There’s this huge backlog of jobs to fill,” he said. For companies hoping to just get by day to day, “these vacancies are massive, and they’re critical.”

He suspects even if the pace of hiring slows down over the next few months, vacancies will remain high. So employers are deeply concerned about long-standing labour shortages and they’ll hang on to their workers for as long as they can. It’s just too hard to ramp back up.

For politicians, this means they can’t really afford to let up on their policy attempts to draw more people into the workforce, even if the job numbers soften.

Even if there’s a downturn, the long-standing trend toward an aging population means Canada will need to encourage older workers and women to join the workforce in greater numbers over the next few years.

Ottawa’s $30-billion child care strategy was supposed to dramatically increase women’s participation in the workforce, but it has been slow to fully gear up. The returns, in terms of labour participation, are likely still years away.

And the federal Liberals are unlikely to reverse their dedication to retiring at 65 to encourage older workers to stay in the workforce longer.

But if employers and policy-makers are wise, they’ll take a look at what the tight job market has accomplished for them, appreciate what the gains to inclusivity have done for their workforce, and then lock them in.

The next slowdown doesn’t have to set us back.

Source: Canada’s worker shortage has one big upside for employers

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Douglas Todd: Secularism surges in Cascadia, for good and ill

2022/06/11 Leave a comment

Interesting study cited:

It was not long ago the logo for British Columbia was “The Best Place on Earth,” emblazoned across an idyllic image of mountain peaks.

The “Best Place” slogan outdid even “Beautiful British Columbia” and “Super, Natural British Columbia” for boasting, for linking the evergreen-covered West Coast to a sense of sacred specialness.

Now a highly researched book delves into just how much residents of B.C., Washington, Oregon — a bio-region known as Cascadia — lean toward “reverential naturalism,” in large part because they live in what could also be called “the most secular place on Earth” (or at least in North America.)

Religion at the Edge: Nature, Spirituality and Secularity in the Pacific Northwest (UBC Press) explains that Cascadia is at the forefront of cultural shifts across the continent. The book details how non-religion is more embedded here than anywhere else in North America — and how that powerful secularism comes with sharp political inclinations, to the liberal-left.

The scholarly papers in Religion at the Edge probe the kind of theories that an eclectic team of Canadian and U.S. writers dug into in the book I edited in 2008, titled Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest (Ronsdale Press). The upshot is secularism has grown even more intense in Cascadia in the past decade, especially in B.C.

A public-opinion survey done for Religion at the Edge shows half of B.C. residents (49 per cent) now have no religious affiliation, while 44 per cent of the people in Washington and Oregon make the same claim. That contrasts with other polls showing, across North America, only about one in five say they have “no religion.”

Religion at the Edge is edited by professor Paul Bramadat, director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Victoria (who muses about “The Best Place on Earth” marketing); Pacific Lutheran University religion professor emerita Patricia O’Connell Killen (who contributed to Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia) and University of Waterloo sociologist Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme.

The book’s focus groups show how Cascadia’s non-religious come in many guises — from those who are increasingly hostile to church, mosque and synagogue, to those who still harbour some private spiritual sentiments toward things like yoga and nature reverence.

Religion at the Edge spells out the political implications of a population that is half secular. The non-religious, for instance, are more likely to support access to abortion, same-sex marriage and fervently protecting the natural realm.

However, there can be a darker side to intense secularism, including loneliness, excessive libertarianism and a tendency to “homophily,” which is a technical word for being attracted only to those who are similar to oneself.

Why are Cascadians so non-religious?

I was struck by the insight that the white working-classes of the Pacific Northwest have since the 19th century been passing on: a tradition of irreligiosity, as described by Tina Block of Thompson Rivers University and the University of Victoria’s Lynn Marks.

That captures my upbringing, in which my resolutely atheist Metro Vancouver family taught that religion was for kooks. I like to think I’ve outgrown that world view, with more understanding of philosophy, religion and spirituality.

Even though immigrants are generally more religious than North America’s native born, Trinity College, Hartford, professor Mark Silk (who also contributed to Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia) makes the important point the Pacific Northwest is more secular because certain ethnic subgroups have different attitudes to faith.

Black people are much more religious than the overall U.S. population. But Silk points out that, compared to the rest of the continent, there are far fewer Black people in Cascadia, especially in B.C. (only one per cent).

B.C., compared to the rest of North America, also has far more people of Asian origin (28 per cent versus 15 per cent across Canada and 2.8 per cent in the U.S.). And Pew Research polls show Asian people, particularly East Asians, are more likely to reject formal religion.

When it comes to politics, Wilkins-Laflamme’s confirms Cascadians who are non-religious are far less inclined to support the Canadian Conservative Party or the American Republican party. That helps explain why the Liberals and NDP tend to do well in B.C. and Democrats mostly hold sway in Washington and Oregon, especially in cities.

Along with a fervent libertarianism that sees little use for traditions or institutions, residents of Cascadia have been leading supporters of assisted suicide and many, because they find sacredness in the natural world, have turned into fiery activists against climate change.

Despite Cascadians’ many similarities across the Canada-U.S. border, one stark difference lies in Canadian and American attitudes to Indigenous affairs. First Nations and Metis issues have been near-ubiquitous in Canada for two decades, including in many churches, while in Washington and Oregon interest continues to be negligible.

Key findings of Religion on the Edge are summarized in five points by Bramadat and O’Connell Killen, who observe that in Cascadia:

• A “powerful story” is emerging “that frames the region not just as the best but as the most secular place on Earth”

• Certain forms of Christianity have been “relegated to the periphery”

• Some kinds of spirituality (Indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu) are romanticized

• Practitioners of yoga, evangelicalism and mindfulness are evolving creatively

• There is a “pervasive, distinctive and reverential approach to the natural world”

A lot of this may sound good to many North Americans, particularly those on the liberal-left.

But as the book points out, visitors to the “Best Place on Earth” have been known to remark, “It’s hard to see the sky in the summer because of all the smug.” And Cascadians’ openness to the spiritual, but not religious, could harden into a flat secularism “without any reference to the metaphysical.”

The contributors also found many residents of Cascadia, especially the increasingly non-religious young, feel burdened by consumer culture, high degrees of loneliness, tenuous social bonds, weak institutions, a reluctance to commit and a restless state of “searching.”

Even Cascadians’ emphasis on the sacred wonders of nature may come with ethical blind spots. As some authors ask, “Can the population care as much for people as it cares for orcas, trees and pets?”

Finally, while a highly secular, low-cohesion culture has rapidly become the status quo in the Pacific Northwest, contributors to Religion on the Edge suggest convincingly (as did the writers in Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia) that we are a bellwether for what will happen to the rest of the continent.

Source: Douglas Todd: Secularism surges in Cascadia, for good and ill

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

Dodek: Mispronouncing names isn’t okay, and it has nothing to do with being ‘woke’

2022/06/10 Leave a comment

Agreed. Wonder how the citizenship judges and staff manage to ensure this:

Trouble has hit Canada’s largest law society. Each year the Law Society of Ontario welcomes several thousand new lawyers into its ranks. The new barristers and solicitors don lawyer’s black robes for the first time in a ceremony that dates back more than 200 years. For each new lawyer and their family, the highlight is when they ascend the stage. Their name is called out and projected on the screen as they walk across the stage. Sometimes their name is mispronounced. That’s wrong and every step should be taken to make sure that doesn’t happen.

To its credit, staff at the Law Society of Ontario have recognized that they need to do better. In a report to the Law Society’s governors – still archaically called “benchers” because once upon a time they would sit on benches – Law Society staff recommended hiring a professional name reader for these “call to the bar” ceremonies.

The policy rationale is straightforward. As the legal profession has become more diverse, so too has the list of candidate names being called to the bar. A lot has changed since John White, Robert Gray, Bartholomew Beardsley, and seven other white men were called to the bar in 1797.

Each new lawyer’s name is called out by a bencher. Despite its best efforts, each year the Law Society receives complaints from disappointed candidates about their names being mispronounced. For some, having their name mispronounced is embarrassing to them and to their families who attend this momentous event. This is understandable, regrettable and completely avoidable.

Hiring a professional name reader would, well, professionalize the process. Who can be against progress and professionalization? Apparently, some of the benchers, that’s who. Last month, they brought a motion to ensure that names continue to be announced only by benchers, on the grounds of, among other reasons, opposing “whacky wokism.” The opposition and the rationale are self-centred and wrong. Fortunately, the motion was defeated.

There are few things more important than one’s name. It reflects one’s identity, individuality and human dignity. That’s why international human rights instruments have long recognized the right to a name, the right to choose one’s name and the right to retain one’s name. Enslaved people often did not have the right to choose their name. Oppressive regimes often target people because of their names. And here in Canada at residential schools, Indigenous children were stripped of their Indigenous names and given Christian names in their place.

I have a last name that is sometimes mispronounced but what sticks in my mind is something that occurred in my first year of high school in Vancouver in 1983. On the first day of school, our shop class teacher read out the roll and after each name quipped: “Canadian, Jew, Indian, Chinaman …” The message could not have been clearer to this multicultural group of 13-year-olds: for some people, there were still insiders and outsiders and your name gave you away.

In Canada, many immigrants changed their names in order to better assimilate into Canadian society. Others did not. Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker became a lifelong champion of civil rights, in part because of his childhood experience of being mocked and harassed for having a German name.

As dean of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, I had the responsibility and the honour of reading the names of each of the more than 350 graduates every year. I worked hard to practise the names. I got the phonetic pronunciations and even had a pronunciation coach. When I read out a graduate’s name and they walked across the stage and had their 10 seconds in the limelight, I envisioned all the hard work that they and their family had done to reach that day.

I will never forget some parents thanking me for pronouncing their family’s name correctly. “No one has ever pronounced our name right before.” It made me tear up and it also made me proud. For me and for them.

I was good at some types of names and not so good with others. I realized and regretted making mistakes. I know I could have done better but perhaps even more importantly, I know the university could have done better than me. I may be many things, but a professional name caller I am not.

We owe it to everyone to get their names right. It’s not about political correctness or wokeness. There are a lot of reasons why but at the end of the day, it just comes down to one: respect.

Source: Mispronouncing names isn’t okay, and it has nothing to do with being ‘woke’

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Feds talk a good game when it comes to equity, but are flailing when it comes to strong data, states Auditor General report

2022/06/10 Leave a comment

Source: Feds talk a good game when it comes to equity, but are flailing when it comes to strong data, states Auditor General report

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Racial bias in key COVID oxygen device leads to treatment delays for people of colour, study finds

2022/06/08 Leave a comment

Never thought of that. Needs to be addressed (during my chemo, often had an oxygen monitor):

An oxygen monitor considered crucial to determining treatment for COVID-19patients has failed to work properly for people of colour, causing delays in urgently needed care, a new study found.

Such faulty readings of oxygen levels may be contributing to worse health outcomes for Black and Hispanic patients, specifically those with COVID-19, according to the study published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Pulse oximeters, which clip onto a finger, are widely used to measure oxygen levels in the blood by shining a light through the fingertip, but have been found to give inaccurate readings in people of colour. Melanin, which is found in darker skin tones, may absorb more light and pulse oximeters are not designed to account for that, previous research has shown.

Because COVID-19 severity is classified around oxygen readings, “we saw that this bias translated into over a quarter of patients, most of whom self-identified as Black or Hispanic, not having timely recognition of how sick they were,” said Dr. Tianshi David Wu, co-lead author of the new study and an assistant professor at the Baylor College of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, where the study was conducted.

Previous research conducted before the pandemic also found the device, which is commonly used in Canada, provided inaccurate results for people of colour and urged that the technology be further examined.

The issue has raised the need for health technology to be assessed for its efficacy for people of colour and is a further indication that health-care remains inequitable, experts told the Star.

“The study illuminates just how systemic racism and systemic discrimination inserts itself into every aspect of health-care delivery,” said Dr. Andrew Boozary, executive director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at the University Health Network.

“There is also a gross underrepresentation of racialized individuals in the way that these technologies are being developed,” he said.

Researchers in the Johns Hopkins study found that Black and Hispanic COVID-19 patients experienced significant delays in accessing lifesaving treatment due to inaccurate readings from pulse oximeters, which showed that patients of colour were healthier than they actually were.

The results found that of 7,126 patients, Black patients were 29 per cent less likely than white patients to have their need for treatment recognized by the oxygen reader. For people the study classified as non-Black Hispanic patients, they were 23 per cent less likely than white patients to have their treatment needs identified.

And out of 451 patients who never had their need for treatment recognized, close to 55 per cent (247 people) were Black. Black patients also had a median delay in treatment of one hour.

Pulse oximeters guide health-care workers in decisions regarding COVID-19 triage and therapy, the study explains.

When applying these study results to the U.S. population at large with COVID-19, it’s likely the pulse oximeter bias has “caused a higher proportion of racial and ethnic minorities to be inadvertently undertreated or even mis-triaged,” said Wu.

Past studies have raised the alarm about the devices failing to give accurate results for racialized people. One U.S.-based study published in 2020 found that relying on pulse oximetry to triage patients could put Black patients at an increased risk for hypoxemia, which is below normal levels of oxygen in the blood.

“Studies like [ours] also remind us that future medical technologies should have intentional validation in a population as diverse as the people who would use it,” said Wu in a statement to the Star.

According to a 2021 report from the Wellesley Institute that examined data from the first year of the pandemic, Black people in Ontario were 4.6 times more likely to be infected with COVID-19. Latino and Middle Eastern people were nine and seven times more likely to be hospitalized with the disease compared to white people, and Black people were 6.3 times more likely to end up in hospital.

There are fewer racialized individuals who are part of medical studies to test devices and that creates “serious doubt” as to whether technology is effective for everyone, said Boozary.

Black communities need to be involved in the design and testing of health technology to ensure it works properly and meets their needs, said Paul Bailey, executive director of the Black Health Alliance, a Toronto-based charity.

“We have to be willing to engage a diverse cross-section of people … so the accuracy of these interventions actually work,” he said.

Notisha Massaquoi, an assistant professor in the department of health and society at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, said the issues with this device are indicative of a medical system that is not designed “to ensure the health and well-being, and the survival, of Black people.”

She questions why such devices continue to be relied upon.

“That’s where we have to say, ‘then what is the purpose of science and research? Is it not to ensure the survival of all people?’” she said.

Issues with medical technology will also increase mistrust in the health-care system for racialized communities, as it’s clear they aren’t prioritized, she said.

“We have to really sit down post-COVID to think about every aspect of our system that did not work for the people that are hardest hit,” she said.

Source: Racial bias in key COVID oxygen device leads to treatment delays for people of colour, study finds

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

National security agencies’ relationship with racialized communities marred by a ‘trust gap:’ report

2022/06/07 Leave a comment

Not surprising and not one easy to reduce. And yes, my experience while in government with respect to the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security was that the information flow tended to be more one-way than a conversation:

The relationship between “racialized” groups and Canada’s national security and intelligence institutions —  like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency  — continues to be bogged down by mistrust, says a new external report prepared for the federal government.

“We frequently heard about the trust gap between the country’s national security institutions and Canadians, and in particular with racialized Canadians,” says the report drafted by the National Security Transparency Advisory Group (NS-TAG) — an independent and external body first set up in 2019 to advise the deputy minister of Public Safety and the national security and intelligence community.

“At times, these relations have been marred by mistrust and suspicion, and by errors of judgment by these institutions, which impacted communities have perceived as discriminatory.”

The NS-TAG group, made up of 10 members from legal, civil society and national security backgrounds, warns that the emergence of artificial intelligence and data-driven intelligence poses a threat to racialized communities.

“Systemic biases in Artificial Intelligence (AI) design can have perverse impacts on vulnerable individuals or groups of individuals, notably racialized communities,” they found.

“These biases reflect not only specific flaws in AI programs and organizations using them, but also underlying societal cleavages and inequalities which are then reinforced and potentially deepened.”

CSIS responds

The report, published earlier this week, also calls on national security agencies to have better two-way conversations with communities.

“Too often engagement involves, in practice, government officials offloading a prepared message and failing to listen to the concerns of stakeholders,” says the report.

“Constructive engagement should instead be based on dialogue; government officials should be attuned to the questions and concerns of stakeholders, listen to them, and be prepared and willing to respond.”

The report also calls on agencies like CSIS to engage with communities on an ongoing basis — and not just when there’s a crisis.

The authors pointed to CSIS’s contact with the Iranian-Canadian community after the destruction of Flight PS752 in January 2020 and with the Muslim community following an attack on a mosque in Mississauga, Ont.

“Such engagement was important, but it was prompted by specific incidents. In our view, CSIS will not succeed in building long-term trust with racialized communities as long as its engagement is primarily reactive,” says the report.

CSIS responded to the report’s findings Friday by acknowledging the problem.

“We know that the voices of racialized communities and Indigenous peoples have not been heard as clearly as they should in conversations around policy, legislative and operational deliberations on national security matters,” CSIS wrote in a response published Friday.

“We are committed to changing this.”

Source: National security agencies’ relationship with racialized communities marred by a ‘trust gap:’ report

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization, Religion Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →