Paquet et Beland: Le variant Omicron et les boucs émissaires de la CAQ

2022/01/17 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

Un peu avant Noël, le ministre Jean Boulet, qui est à la fois ministre du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale, et aussi ministre de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration, a émis un gazouillis liant la montée des cas du variant Omicron au Québec aux demandeurs d’asile arrivant par le chemin Roxham, en Estrie :

« Le gouvernement fédéral doit prendre ses responsabilités. Il faut fermer le chemin #Roxham. Nous devons tous nous mobiliser devant la remontée des cas de #COVID19 #Ominicron[sic] afin de ne pas surcharger notre système de santé! 
La publication a notamment été reprise par la vice-première ministre et ministre de la Sécurité publique Geneviève Guilbault, et d’autres élus ou membres du personnel politique de la Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ).

En plus de propager une fausse inférence selon laquelle les demandeurs d’asile – et, plus largement, les immigrants – sont à la source de la nouvelle vague de COVID-19 que traverse le Québec, ces propos donnent peut-être un avant-goût des stratégies caquistes de rejet du blâme auxquelles on peut s’attendre en cette année électorale.

Bien que cette stratégie fasse partie de la boite à outils de tous les acteurs politiques, le gazouillis du ministre Boulet illustre comment, lorsque la situation se détériore sur le terrain, le gouvernement de la CAQ aime bien mettre la faute sur deux boucs émissaires : les immigrants et le gouvernement fédéral.

Les immigrants : vieux comme le monde

L’utilisation des immigrants comme boucs émissaires, de même que leur représentation comme étant à la source de crises sanitaires, sociales, économiques et linguistiques, sont des constantes de l’histoire humaine. Dès le début de la crise de la COVID-19, des chefs d’état à travers le monde ont utilisé de telles stratégies à saveur xénophobe. Ce fut le cas aux États-Unis lorsqu’on a parlé du « virus chinois », par exemple.

Au Québec, on doit reconnaître que les élus de la CAQ n’ont pas véhiculé un tel discours pendant les premières vagues de la pandémie. La déclaration du ministre Boulet est-elle donc une aberration ? Un simple égarement ? La politisation stratégique et répétée des questions migratoires par le gouvernement caquiste permet d’en douter.

Depuis son virage nationaliste, le parti a soutenu des positions plus restrictives que ses adversaires en matière d’immigration, une stratégie qui a réussi à faire des niveaux d’immigration la question de l’urne lors des élections de 2018. Après son assermentation, le gouvernement de François Legault a continué à mobiliser les enjeux migratoires et ceux liés, à tort ou à raison, aux questions identitaires et linguistiques, afin de consolider sa base électorale.

Si le geste de M. Boulet n’était pas prémédité, il s’inscrit à tout le moins dans la continuité d’une certaine rhétorique de son parti. En tous les cas, son gazouillis n’a pas été retiré à ce jour, malgré les centaines de commentaires négatifs qu’il a générés.

La faute d’Ottawa

L’autre bouc émissaire commode pour la CAQ, c’est le gouvernement fédéral. Ça n’a rien de nouveau dans le contexte du fédéralisme canadien, où les gouvernements provinciaux ont tendance à blâmer Ottawa pour leurs problèmes, même lorsque la responsabilité du fédéral est loin d’être démontrée.

Par contre, puisque l’immigration est maintenant une compétence partagée et que la vision de la CAQ et celle du Parti libéral du Canada sont aux antipodes en ce qui a trait à l’immigration et la diversité culturelle, la critique caquiste des politiques du gouvernement Trudeau est presque inévitable.

Elle l’est encore plus lorsqu’elle concerne le fameux chemin Roxham, qui est devenu le symbole d’une « menace » migratoire. Cependant, la nouvelle entente sur les tiers pays sûrs qu’Ottawa vient de signer avec son homologue américain pour « colmater cette brèche à la frontière » pourrait priver le gouvernement Legault d’une de ses sources habituelles de critique envers le fédéral.

Il y aura sans doute d’autres occasions de critiquer Ottawa, sur d’autres enjeux. Comme c’est le cas pour les immigrants, le gouvernement fédéral est en soi lui aussi considéré par de nombreux caquistes – et bien des Québécois – comme une menace potentielle envers les intérêts et les valeurs du Québec.

Un jeu dangereux pour faire oublier le manque de préparation

S’il est presque devenu une tradition pour chaque gouvernement québécois de critiquer le gouvernement fédéral, les propos du ministre Boulet en ce qui a trait à l’immigration sont particulièrement inquiétants.

Qu’elle ait été planifiée ou non, cette stratégie de rejeter de blâme sur les demandeurs d’asile reste dangereuse, puisqu’elle propage de fausses informations. Il n’y a en effet aucune preuve que les demandeurs d’asile soient responsables, même de façon partielle, de la hausse dramatique des cas de COVID-19 au Québec. En Amérique, en Europe et ailleurs, l’arrivée du variant Omicron est d’abord le fait de voyageurs détenant un passeport et arrivés de façon régulière, comme ce fut le cas pour la propagation des variants précédents ou encore d’autres virus au potentiel pandémique, comme le SRAS.

Le gouvernement Legault peut bien tenter de blâmer les migrants pour la venue d’Omicron, mais la réalité est qu’il s’y est mal préparé, malgré les nombreux signes avant-coureurs en Europe et ailleurs dans le monde.

En matière d’immigration, la stratégie récurrente de rejet du blâme de la CAQ risque aussi d’avoir des effets durables sur la teneur des débats publics. Les recherches sur la politisation de l’immigration ont documenté de façon abondante que les prises de position comme celles du ministre Boulet contribuent à polariser les discours de tous les partis politiques, ce qui peut modifier grandement l’offre politique disponible.

La réaction de Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon, chef du Parti Québécois, l’illustre bien : plutôt que de dénoncer l’inférence du ministre, M. St-Pierre Plamondon a renchéri en affirmant que seule l’indépendance permettrait au Québec de contrôler ses frontières.  Ce faisant, il se trouvait à légitimer les propos du ministre Boulet, même s’ils ne s’appuient sur aucune base factuelle.

Les travaux sur les stratégies partisanes de politisation montrent aussi comment la diffusion par les élus d’informations incorrectes sur l’immigration élargit la fenêtre des discours légitimes et peut valider des positions radicales. Cela contribue à la désinformation, et ultimement à l’érosion de la confiance des citoyens envers l’État.

À court terme, une telle stratégie, avant tout électoraliste, peut sembler une bonne façon pour la CAQ de s’assurer de remporter un nouveau mandat majoritaire en octobre 2022. Il faut pourtant s’inquiéter des conséquences à long terme sur la vie politique et la société québécoises.

Source: https://irpp.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f538f283d07ef7057a628bed8&id=9829acadf7&e=86cabdc518

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Jews Don’t Count? Helen Mirren ‘Jewface’ Row Over Golda Meir Portrayal Divides U.K. Entertainment Industry

2022/01/17 Leave a comment

Of interest but must an actor always be of the same ethnicity or race as the character?

In upcoming biopic “Golda,” Helen Mirren plays former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when Israel was invaded by a coalition of Arab states on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

While Mirren is not Jewish, “Golda” is directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guy Nattiv (“Skin”), who is both Jewish and Israeli, and written by British screenwriter Nicholas Martin (“Florence Foster Jenkins”), who has previously worked with the organization U.K. Jewish Film.

But in the U.K., where production wrapped last month, Mirren’s casting as one of history’s most heroic Jewish women has caused some disquiet. Actor Maureen Lipman (“The Pianist”) highlighted the discussion about what has been termed “Jewface” when she told a newspaper she “disagreed” with Mirren’s casting “because the Jewishness of the character is so integral. I’m sure she will be marvellous, but it would never be allowed for Ben Kingsley to play Nelson Mandela. You just couldn’t even go there.”

Asked by Variety to elaborate, Lipman said via email: “Helen will be great. Good actress, sexy and intelligent. Looks the part.”

“My opinion, and that’s what it is, a mere opinion, is that if the character’s race, creed or gender drives or defines the portrayal then the correct — for want of an umbrella [term] — ethnicity should be a priority. Which is not to say that ‘Pericles, Prince Of Tyre’ has to be [played by] a pure Tyresian thespian. It is complicated.”

(Mirren, Nattiv and Martin didn’t respond to Variety’s queries by publication time.)

Lipman is not the first to raise the issue of “Jewface.” Like blackface or yellowface, the term describes actors of non-Jewish descent playing Jewish characters. On her podcast, comedian Sarah Silverman points to a pattern of non-Jews playing characters whose Jewishness is not just incidental but “their whole being” while Variety’s own Malina Saval also touched on it in an article about Hollywood’s anti-Semitism problem.

Because, as well as Mirren playing Meir, in the last five years alone Kathryn Hahn has been cast as Joan Rivers, Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Gary Oldman as Herman J. Mankiewicz, Oscar Isaac in the recent HBO re-make “Scenes From a Marriage” (Isaac also previously played a Mossad agent in 2018 film “Operation Finale”), Rachel Brosnahan as Mrs. Maisel, Rachel McAdams in “Disobedience,” James Norton in “McMafia,” Tom Hardy in “Peaky Blinders,” Rachel Sennott in “Shiva Baby,” Tamsin Grieg in “Friday Night Dinner,” Kelly McDonald in “Giri/Haji,” Will Ferrell in “The Shrink Next Door” and, currently in production, Eddie Marsan and Emily Watson as Brian Epstein’s parents in the upcoming biopic “Midas Man.”

“As actors, we should be able to play anyone. That is our job and I’ve had a wide and varied career playing a multitude of parts,” says actor Tracy Ann Oberman, who has starred in “It’s a Sin” and “Friday Night Dinner.”

“However, we are living in a time of enormous sensitivity around the appropriation of characters played by people who aren’t from that background. I have seen little similar concern about Jewish characters where their Jewish religious and cultural identity is intrinsic to who they are being discussed with the same respect.”

Jonathan Shalit, chairman of InterTalent Rights Group, agrees. “Rightly there is uproar when white people play Black characters in a film,” he tells Variety via email. “Maureen Lipman is entirely right to say a Jewish actress should have played the role of Israel’s legendary prime minister and committed Zionist Golda Meir. It is deeply offensive and hypocritical by so many to suggest otherwise.”

Not everyone is affronted by the casting, however. Hagai Levi, the Israeli creator of “The Affair,” recently wrote and directed HBO’s adaptation of “Scenes From a Marriage,” in which Oscar Isaac plays Jonathan, a Jewish character loosely based on Levi himself, opposite Jessica Chastain. Levi tells Variety that “I would never even consider that issue [of whether an actor is Jewish or not] when I’m casting.”

“I didn’t have any doubt when casting Oscar,” he adds. “And I had other options in mind, and none of them were Jews […] If I would be limited to choose only Jewish actors, where would I end up, you know?”

Nathan Abrams, a professor in film at the University of Bangor in Wales and the author of “Hidden in Plain Sight: Jews and Jewishness in British Film, Television and Popular Culture,” also disputes the claim that only Jews should play Jewish characters. “How do we define what’s Jewish for the sake of playing a role?” Abrams asks, pointing out that one of the issues in “authentically” casting Jews is that Jewishness comes via a number of routes: religion, culture and ethnicity.

If anything, Abrams argues, portrayals such as Hardy’s Alfie Solomons in “Peaky Blinders” or Norton’s Alex Godman in “McMafia” — where the character’s ethnicity becomes almost incidental — redress what Abrams calls the usual “over-coding” of Jewishness on screen via stereotypical “shrugs and gestures and [an] old-world accent.”

But comedian and author David Baddiel, who explores “Jewface” in his book “Jews Don’t Count,” says the issue he, Silverman and Lipman are trying to highlight is not actually whether Mirren is entitled to play Meir but the lack of commotion her casting has caused compared to other “non-authentic” casting choices.

“The discrepancy is the point,” Baddiel tells Variety, citing as an example the backlash Johansson faced after it was announced she would play a trans man in the film “Rub and Tug,” which caused her to abandon the project entirely. “If these strictures apply for other minorities — [if] this is how we’re trying to make the world more right, more of a level playing field for minorities — then why are they not applied to Jews? What does that say about what people think about Jews?”

“We are really talking about lack of outcry,” Lipman explains in her email. “In a sense, I am a tiny outcry because every other creed, race or gender discussion with regard to casting [causes] tsunamis. Think Eddie Redmayne, Scarlett Johansson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Johnny Depp, Rooney Mara and, ridiculously, Javier Bardem in ‘Meet the Riccardos.’” (Bardem, who is Spanish, plays Cuban-American Desi Arnaz in the film).

Oberman recently illustrated a perceived double standard in a tweet comparing two Guardian headlines, one denouncing Middle East-born Gal Gadot’s intent to play Cleopatra as “a backwards step for Hollywood representation” and another accusing Lipman of “attacking” Mirren’s casting. Underpinning the disparity is the whisper of a suggestion that Jews don’t deserve the same compassion as other minorities because they are over-represented in entertainment.

“It is an antisemitic thing to say ‘Jews run showbiz’ or ‘Jews are everywhere in showbiz,’” Baddiel says unequivocally.

In Britain, in particular, it’s not even true: not in television (as evidenced by the Royal Television Society’s decision to hold their 2021 Cambridge convention on Yom Kippur, meaning observant Jews were unable to attend), nor in film where, as Baddiel points out, major film companies tend to be led by privately-educated “posh people.” (Generous estimates put the Jewish population of the U.K. at around 370,000, or 0.57% of the wider population, while British private schools educate around 620,000 pupils every year.)

The misconception is all the more objectionable given that Jewish actors, like those from other marginalized ethnicities, are under-represented where it counts: on screen. Film professor Abrams says “there seems to be a clear discrimination in casting Jewish people in lead roles,” regardless of what that role is, citing “unconscious bias” as the likely cause.

“I’ve had a few Jewish actresses tell me they noticed they don’t get cast generally because they’re told they’re too ‘exotic’-looking,” Baddiel concurs. “And then the same women have told me they’ve gone up for specifically Jewish heroine parts, like the central character part, and at that point suddenly [the filmmakers] want someone who’s a bit more blue-eyed or light skinned, a bit less curly-haired.”

As one source said of McAdams, who plays a Hasidic woman embarking on a lesbian affair in “Disobedience”: “[She’s] everybody’s fantasy version of a Jew.”

The fiscal reality of making movies, of course, means small, independent projects like “Disobedience” or “Golda” need someone with McAdams’ or Mirren’s box office draw to get financed. “If you’ve got a big name attached you are much more likely to get the film made,” acknowledges producer Jonathan Levi (“Broadmoor”), who says he has no issue with Mirren taking on the role of Meir. “So that makes perfect sense. An unknown actress just wouldn’t carry it.”

But the catch-22 is that if Jewish actors struggle to get cast in both Jewish and non-Jewish roles (except those actors who don’t look particularly Jewish), few will ever have the opportunity to reach the same professional heights as McAdams or Mirren.

“I would contextualize this [debate] by saying the job of an actor is to play any part that is given to them and that is the joy of acting,” says Oberman. “However, Jews have to be given the same respect, sensitivity and consideration as every other minority when it comes to casting their stories.”

Source: Jews Don’t Count? Helen Mirren ‘Jewface’ Row Over Golda Meir Portrayal Divides U.K. Entertainment Industry

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Trump officials interfered with the 2020 census beyond cutting it short, email shows

2022/01/16 Leave a comment

Former President Donald Trump’s administration alarmed career civil servants at the Census Bureau by not only ending the 2020 national head count early, but also pressuring them to alter plans for protecting people’s privacy and producing accurate data, a newly released emailshows.

Trump’s political appointees at the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau, demonstrated an “unusually” high level of “engagement in technical matters, which is unprecedented relative to the previous censuses,” according to a September 2020 email that Ron Jarmin — the bureau’s deputy director — sent to two other top civil servants.

At the time, the administration was faced with the reality that if Trump lost the November election he could also lose a chance to change the census numbers used to redistribute political representation. The window of opportunity was closing for his administration to attempt to radically reshape the futures of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Electoral College.

Despite the 14th Amendment’s requirement to include the “whole number of persons in each state,” Trump wanted to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the census counts used to reallocate each state’s share of congressional seats and electoral votes.

While the former president’s unprecedented push did not reach its ultimate goal, it wreaked havoc at the federal government’s largest statistical agency, which was also contending with the coronavirus pandemic upending most of its plans for the once-a-decade tally. The delays stemming from COVID-19 forced the bureau to conclude that it could no longer meet the legal reporting deadline for the first set of results and needed more time.

The administration’s last-minute decision to cut the counting short sparked public outcries, including a federal lawsuit that reached the U.S. Supreme Court

But its interference in other areas related to the 2020 census largely flew under most radars. The newly released email — first reported by The New York Times and obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School through an ongoing public records lawsuit — details the wide scope of its attempts to buck the bureau’s experts and tamper with the count.

According to the document, the agency’s career civil servants saw when to end counting as a “policy decision that political leadership should make.”

But the methodologies and procedures for filling in data gaps, reviewing the counts for errors and protecting the confidentiality of people’s information should strictly stay in the lane of civil servants at “an independent statistical agency,” the email says

Trump officials — including Wilbur Ross, who served as commerce secretary — however, “expressed interest” in many technical areas, including exactly how the bureau could produce a state-by-state count of unauthorized immigrants and citizenship data that could have politically benefited Republicans when voting districts are redrawn.

The email suggests that the bureau’s civil servants were planning to discuss their concerns with Ross through the end of 2020.

The bureau’s public information office did not immediately respond to NPR’s questions about whether those discussions took place.

The Census Bureau’s civil servants tried to be transparent

Other internal government documentsthe Brennan Center released Saturday show that bureau officials were wary of carrying out Trump’s July 2020 presidential memorandum.

Before President Biden reversed the directive last year, it called for information that would allow the president to leave out the numbers of immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization from the congressional apportionment count.

According to an August 2020 email by Jarmin — the bureau’s highest-ranking civil servant — the agency had received, months before the memorandum, “asks” for information related to a federal lawsuit focused on the same topic. Like Trump, the challengers in the lawsuit — the state of Alabama and Republican Rep. Mo Brooks — wanted undocumented immigrants excluded from the numbers used to reallocate House seats and electoral votes

The bureau, however, was “consistently pessimistic” on the feasibility of “removing undocs from the apportionment count,” Jarmin warned in the email to two Trump appointees – then-Director Steven Dillingham, who ultimately resigned following whistleblower complaints, and Nathaniel Cogley, who served in the newly created, controversial role of deputy director for policy.

Still, civil servants attempted to be transparent about how they tried to create the data ordered by the former administration.

“We recommend that we do a federal register notice on the methodology because transparency requires that the American public understand how we derived the counts of unauthorized immigrants and have the opportunity to comment on that methodology,” said a slide titled “Communication Strategy Decision” for an August 2020 briefing.

No such notice appeared in the federal government’s official journal of record.

There are concerns of future interference with the census

In response to the newly disclosed documents, Arturo Vargas — a longtime census advocate and CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund — said in a statement that the efforts of the bureau’s career professionals to resist Trump officials’ pressure and “protect the integrity of census operations were nothing short of heroic.”

On Tuesday, the Biden administration’s Scientific Integrity Task Force, which includes Jarmin, issued a report warning that the bureau and other federal statistical agencies “must protect against interference in their efforts to create and release data that provide a set of common facts to inform policymakers, researchers, and the public.”

The report presented the Trump administration’s decision to end 2020 census counting early as a case study, noting that the bureau’s internal watchdog, the Commerce Department inspector general’s office, concluded that the rushed schedule put the quality of the results at risk.

“To date,” the report added, “no individuals have been held accountable for these allegations

Source: Trump officials interfered with the 2020 census beyond cutting it short, email shows

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Dutch king won’t use a royal carriage that’s been criticized for a colonial image

2022/01/15 Leave a comment

Wise move:

The Dutch king ruled out Thursday using, for now at least, the royal family’s “Golden Carriage,” one side of which bears a painting that critics say glorifies the Netherlands’ colonial past, including its role in the global slave trade.

The announcement was an acknowledgement of the heated debate about the carriage as the Netherlands reckons with the grim sides of its history as a 17th-century colonial superpower, including Dutch merchants making vast fortunes from slaves.

“The Golden Carriage will only be able to drive again when the Netherlands is ready and that is not the case now,” King Willem-Alexander said in a video message.

One side of the vehicle is decorated with a painting called “Tribute from the Colonies” that shows Black and Asian people, one of them kneeling, offering goods to a seated young white woman who symbolizes the Netherlands.

The carriage is currently on display in an Amsterdam museum following a lengthy restoration. In the past it has been used to carry Dutch monarchs through the streets of The Hague to the state opening of Parliament each September.

“There is no point in condemning and disqualifying what has happened through the lens of our time,” the king said. “Simply banning historical objects and symbols is certainly not a solution either. Instead, a concerted effort is needed that goes deeper and takes longer. An effort that unites us instead of divides us.”

Anti-racism activist and co-founder of The Black Archives in Amsterdam, Mitchell Esajas, called the king’s statement “a good sign,” but also the “bare minimum” the monarch could have said.

“He says the past should not be looked at from the perspective and values of the present … and I think that’s a fallacy because also in the historical context slavery can be seen as a crime against humanity and a violent system,” he said. “I think that argument is often used as an excuse to kind of polish away the violent history of it.”

The Netherlands, along with many other nations, has been revisiting its colonial history in a process spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement that swept the world after the death of Black man George Floyd in the United States.

Last year, the country’s national museum, the Rijksmuseum, staged a major exhibition that took an unflinching look at the country’s role in the slave trade, and Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema apologized for the extensive involvement of the Dutch capital’s former governors in the trade.

Halsema said she wanted to “engrave the great injustice of colonial slavery into our city’s identity.”

Source: Dutch king won’t use a royal carriage that’s been criticized for a colonial image

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Diversity in the Bundestag

2022/01/14 Leave a comment

Dramatic change:

When it comes to diversity in the Bundestag, last year’s federal elections in Germany produced the most diverse parliament in the country’s history. The 2021-2025 Bundestag contains a record number (83) of parliamentarians from migrant communities – legislators who are not, or have at least one parent who is not, a German citizen. Moreover, over a third (35%) of legislators are now women, including the legislature’s two first openly transgender lawmakers.

Meanwhile, and for only the third time in its history, the presidency of the Bundestag is also filled by a woman – the Social Democratic Party of Germany’s (SPD) Bärbel Bas, assisted by four female Vice-Presidents from across the political spectrum. Newly inducted Chancellor Olaf Scholz will also preside over Germany’s first gender-balanced cabinet.

This increase in diversity is largely due to a jump in votes for the SPD and the Greens, two of Germany’s most diverse parliamentary parties. Both have gender quotas for candidate selection, with over half of the Greens’ parliamentary party, and over 40% of SPD legislators, being women. The SPD (9.8%) and the Greens (14.9%) also have a greater proportion of candidates from migrant backgrounds than the CDU/CSU (2.9%).

Following the successful coalition talks between the SPD, the Greens and the Liberals, it appears that a more diverse set of legislators will wield power than ever before.

Intuitively, the Bundestag’s greater diversity is to be welcomed. A parliament which better reflects the society it purports to represent fulfils the criteria of descriptive representation: the country’s population is more accurately reflected in the makeup of its legislature.

This symbolic representation can not only engender legitimacy but can also reduce feelings of alienation amongst otherwise marginalised groups.

Given increased rates of misogynist violence, crimes against LGBTQ+ people, and ethnic discrimination in Germany, the greater visibility of minorities in mainstream politics may provide reassurance to those communities that feel vulnerable.

But what about the implications of greater descriptive representation for parliament’s substantive work? Symbolic representation certainly does have its benefits but alone is insufficient.

To be well represented, marginalized and vulnerable groups need parliamentarians to advocate for their interests, transform political agendas, and influence political debate.

There is clear evidence that minority legislators feel a sense of responsibility to do so, be that by asking parliamentary questions, scrutinising legislation, or proposing bills. In Germany, there is certainly legislation which could better reflect the needs and lived experience of minority groups.

Angela Merkel’s National Action Plan, designed to facilitate the integration of refugees and asylum seekers into German society after 2015, focused heavily on language classes and employment as a means of assimilation, and has beencriticised for its failure to combat negative perceptions of, and attitudes towards, immigrant communities.

Similarly, calls for reform to the German law on Self-ID, which currently subjects individuals to large fees and invasive psychological assessment, have to date failed to catch legislators’ attention. The election of two trans representatives may, at a minimum, raise awareness of the issue, and even inform the thinking of governing parties.

Indeed, preliminary evidence seems promising. The Government’s newly minted coalition agreement proposes fundamental change to self-ID laws, and compensation for trans people forced to undergo sterilization in order to legally change their gender identity. Sven Lehmann, a Green MdB, has also been appointed as a government commissioner on gender and sexual diversity, working on LGBTQ+ issues across government departments.

The Government has also committed to introducing a comprehensive strategy (and additional funding) to combat violence against women, and to reforming the asylum process to be more simple, fair, and protective of vulnerable populations.

However, though coalition ministers are supportive, there may still be some limits to the extent to which legislators are able to amend legislation, and actively represent minority groups.

For one thing, although the diversity of the Bundestag increased in 2021, the bar was relatively low to begin with. The share of female legislators is up by just three percent from 2017, and the number of representatives who are female, LGBTQ+, or belong to migrant communities is still low in comparison to the wider population.

For example, only 11.3% of legislators hail from migrant communities, with the largest – Germany’s Turkish community – still vastly underrepresented.

Second, wider societal attitudes are not necessarily conducive to change. As in many other European countries, whilst German attitudes towards LGBTQ+ communities and gender equality are relatively liberal, debate around issues such as gender identity, race, multiculturalism and discrimination is increasingly polarised.

This had led to an increasingly hostile political environment for minority candidates, which is unlikely to encourage political engagement.

Tareq Alaows, a Syrian refugee, campaigned for the Greens in September’s elections on a platform of immigration reform in the hope of becoming the first Syrian immigrant in the Bundestag. However, he was forced to step down after facing a torrent of racial abuse.

A recent study has also found that the 2021 German election campaign was rife with disinformation and conspiracy campaigns which specifically targeted female candidates. Nine in ten female MPs have received correspondence containing misogynistic hate speech and threats.

Third is the question of party politics. Not only are the public increasingly at odds on social issues, but parties are too.

Germany’s three coalition parties may be in step on social issues, but polling ahead of the 2021 election showed a large partisan divide between CDU/CSU candidates and their colleagues from other parties on issues such as migration, or the need to take explicit action to tackle racism and discrimination.

Consequently, although the CDU’s dominance may have faltered in this election, there will still be a substantial bloc of legislators ready to block substantive action on diversity from Government or fellow legislators. In the absence of support from conservatives, parliamentarians’ ability to bring about real legislative change, or shift the attitudes of the wider electorate, may be constrained.

The 2021 session of the Bundestag will be one of its most inclusive. A change in the makeup of parliament, and a more diverse, supportive governing coalition, could mean substantive action on issues such as immigration, self-ID, and misogyny. Such action, however, may be limited.

Illiberal public attitudes, inter-party disputes, and the continued relative lack of lawmakers from minority backgrounds pose formidable hurdles to establishing a distinctive legislative agenda.

There’s a real danger, therefore, that the impact of the Bundestag’s increased diversity may end up being largely symbolic, rather than inspiring tangible change.

Source: Diversity in the Bundestag

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U.S. Charities Funneled More Than $105 Million to Anti-Muslim Groups, New Report Finds

2022/01/14 Leave a comment

The anti-immigrant, anti-multiculturalism, anti-Muslim industry:

A new report revealed that organizations deemed Islamophobic by the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group received more than $105 million in donations from U.S. charities between 2017 and 2019.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a Jan. 11 report titled “Islamophobia in the Mainstream” that it studied the tax records of 50 organizations it had previously identified as the largest funders of anti-Muslim causes, and found that 35 of them were the source of a total of $105 million directed at such groups. CAIR has researched Islamophobia in the U.S. for decades and has been at the forefront of high-profile legal battles involving violations of Muslims’ religious liberties. For the purposes of its research, CAIR identifies organizations as Islamophobic if they support policies that lead to discrimination against Muslims, demean Muslims because of their religion or allege that Islam represents an existential threat to the U.S (or partner with other organizations that do).
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“It is very important to not only track people who commit hate crimes, but the people whose money contributes to the rise in hate crimes,” says CAIR’s deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell. “If anti-Muslim hate groups are getting funding from mainstream foundations, that’s very concerning.

CAIR’s new report builds upon a longstanding body of research by the organization and other institutions that highlights how money is funneled toward anti-Muslim groups. A series of reports called Fear, Inc., published by the progressive think tank Center for American Progress in 2011 and 2015, were among the first to map out the issue in detail and found that eight charitable foundations spent $57 million between 2001 and 2012 to support the spread of anti-Muslim rhetoric. A 2019 report by CAIR found that the total revenue of anti-Muslim special interest groups surpassed $1.5 billion between 2014 and 2016. Mitchell notes that while 15 of the top 50 charities CAIR identified as giving to Islamophobic groups in 2014-2016 did not do so in 2017-2019, the current number is still “very significant and very concerning.”

“There absolutely is this sophisticated, orchestrated network of activists, politicians and media personalities that are working in coordination as this echo chamber to push out anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy,” says Yasmine Taeb, a human rights attorney who co-authored the 2015 Fear, Inc. report.

CAIR’s research found that the charity group Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism Inc. donated more to special interest groups CAIR identified as Islamophobic than other charities did by a significant margin—the donations were close to $20 million annually between 2017 and 2019. Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism did not respond to a request for comment.

Mitchell emphasizes that it’s possible that some donors do not know their money is being used to perpetuate Islamophobia. Of the 35 organizations CAIR identified as giving funds to anti-Muslim groups, a handful were donor-advised funds, meaning that donors can suggest how they want their money to be directed but the fund ultimately decides how donations are spent. Contributors to these funds are often anonymous, making it even more difficult to track donations. “That’s part of the reason why we do this report, so that there’s no excuse,” Mitchell says. CAIR hopes to create transparency so donors can take greater responsibility, he adds.

In its report, CAIR urged the philanthropic community to establish clear policies to ensure funds are not directed toward anti-Muslim groups and to educate their employees and boards about the extent of anti-Muslim bigotry. The ultimate goal, Mitchell says, is to reduce the threat of Islamophobia faced by American Muslims.

Source: U.S. Charities Funneled More Than $105 Million to Anti-Muslim Groups, New Report Finds

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COVID-19 related racism impacts sense of belonging, reporting incidents: Study

2022/01/13 Leave a comment

Of interest given lack of major difference between first and second generation:
The dramatic increase in reports to Vancouver police of hate crimes targeted at Asian-Canadians in 2020 shocked many.

Now, a new study delves into the psychological impact of experiencing COVID-19 and racism when it comes to the sense of belonging held by different generations of Chinese-Canadians. It finds these feelings could hinder the reporting of incidents just as policy-makers are grappling with how to better understand what’s happening.

Source: COVID-19 related racism impacts sense of belonging, reporting incidents: Study

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

How Australia’s handling of Djokovic exposed its flawed immigration system to the world

2022/01/13 Leave a comment

Not sure most of the world will note this aspect but of note.

However, in case of Djokovic, hope Australian govt holds firm and doesn’t issue him a visa. He has been irresponsible in his behaviour and damaging to public health overall in his behaviour:

Novak Djokovic has claimed victory in one court, and is back on one more familiar.

But as he prepares for the Australian Open at Melbourne Park, he does so with a Damoclean sword hanging above his head.

Australia’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, a close ally of the prime minister, is uniquely vested with extraordinary powers: at any time, with the stroke of the ministerial pen, he can end Djokovic’s right to stay in the country, and ban him for three years.

Within government, these are known as the “God powers”, and their use – and misuse – has been controversial for decades.

“I have formed the view that I have too much power,” a former holder of the immigration portfolio, Senator Chris Evans, said more than a decade ago.

“I am uncomfortable with that, not just because of concern about playing God, but also because of the lack of transparency and accountability for those decisions and the lack in some cases of any appeal rights against those decisions.”

Since Evans aired those concerns to the parliament, successive governments have falsely conflated migration with terrorism, or criminality, to justify more and more extreme powers.

Source: How Australia’s handling of Djokovic exposed its flawed immigration system to the world

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Who gets to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope? Astronomers work to fight bias

2022/01/12 Leave a comment

Really neat example of how to reduce bias through blind approval processes:

The scientists who eventually get to peer out at the universe with NASA’s powerful new James Webb Space Telescope will be the lucky ones whose research proposals made it through a highly competitive selection process.

But those that didn’t make the cut this time can at least know that they got a fair shot, thanks to lessons learned from another famous NASA observatory.

Webb’s selection process was carefully designed to reduce the effect of unconscious biases or prejudices, by forcing decision-makers to focus on the scientific merit of a proposal rather than who submitted it.

“They assess every one of those proposals. They read them. They don’t know who wrote them,” explains Heidi Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist with the James Webb Space Telescope. “These proposals are evaluated in a dual-anonymous way, so that all you can see is the science.”

This is a recent innovation in doling out observing time on space telescopes. And it’s a change that only came about after years of hard work done by astronomers who were concerned that not everyone who wanted to use the Hubble Space Telescope was getting equal consideration.

A bias emerges in who wins telescope time

One of their first clues came when Iain Neill Reid went looking for signs of any possible gender bias in the acceptance rate for Hubble proposals. He’s the associate director of science at the Space Telescope Science Institute, the science operations center for both Hubble and now Webb.

His results, published in 2014, were startling. Proposals that were led by women had a lower acceptance rate than proposals led by men. This discrepancy remained constant for more than a dozen years, the entire period of time he analyzed.

“I was surprised at how consistent it was,” says Reid. “There was a systematic effect.”

To try to fix this, he and his colleagues eventually developed the “blinded” proposal review process that’s now being used for Hubble, Webb, and NASA’s other major space telescopes. So far, the evidence suggests that this is working to level the playing field — even though the measure was initially opposed by a lot of the astronomy community

Since any telescope in space is a rare, precious resource, NASA wants to devote its time to the most-promising science. Anyone in the world can submit a proposal for where to point a space telescope, and there’s so much demand that the majority of ideas have to be rejected.

Even before the James Webb Space Telescope was launched, for example, the first call-out for proposals drew 1,173 ideas that would require 24,500 hours of prime observing time. But only 6,000 hours were available.

“It was a cutthroat competition. We rejected three-quarters of all the accepted proposals, and we’re taking the top ranked quarter,” says Jane Rigby, an astrophysicist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who serves as the operations project scientist for the new telescope.

And even though Hubble launched more than 30 years ago, astronomers still clamor to use it. Every year they submit 1,000 or more proposals.

“Only the top 20% of those proposals will actually make it through to the telescope to get time,” says Reid.

Focusing on the science, not the scientists

After his study showing a gender discrepancy in acceptance rates for Hubble proposals, Reid and his colleagues tried different solutions. First, instead of having the lead scientist’s name on the front page of a proposal, they tried putting it on the second page. Then, they tried just using initials. Nothing worked.

“Then we got sensible and we said, ‘Let’s actually talk to some experts in social sciences,’ because they can understand this better than we do,” says Reid.

They reached out to Stefanie Johnsonof the University of Colorado and her then-student, Jessica Kirk, now at the University of Memphis. The pair sat in on the meetings that evaluated and ranked proposals. And they noticed that a lot of the time, the discussion centered on who had submitted the proposal, rather than scientific considerations.

“There might be a question about it, like, ‘Oh, you know, this seems really good but can they actually do this?'” recalls Johnson. “A lot of times, there’s someone who will speak up in the room and say, ‘I know this person … they will figure it out, because that’s who they are.'”

“There is this evaluation not just of the science and the research, but of the researchers,” adds Kirk.

This means astronomers who were already established and well-known got an extra leg up.

“They were getting a pass,” says Reid. “They had a lower bar, in some ways, to overcome, than the scientists who were coming into the field completely fresh with no track record.”

Johnson and her colleagues recommended making the review process completely blinded and anonymous. Not only would the evaluation committees not get to see any names, all proposals would be required to be written in a way that made it totally impossible to know who the proposal was from.

Some doubted this new system would work

The institute surveyed the astronomy community to see what it thought of this potential change.

“You can imagine, the knee-jerk reaction was actually pretty polar,” says Lou Strolger, deputy head of the instruments division at the Space Telescope Science Institute and chair of its working group on anonymous proposing.

He says about half of those who responded favored the idea — and those tended to be women or people who were relatively young.

“They thought that this would be a good way to make it not only more fair but to encourage new people to participate,” he says.

But lots of astronomers had objections.

“They ranged from ‘This will totally upset how good science is done’ to ‘You’ll basically fool yourself into giving time to people who don’t know what they are doing’ — all sorts of things,” recalls Strolger.

Still, the institute’s director gave the go-ahead, and they plowed forward. In 2018, astronomers did their first truly anonymous review for Hubble proposals. Priya Natarajan, a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale University, was there and chaired the process. She says occasionally someone would try to guess who had submitted a proposal.

“But the buy-in from the community was so tremendous,” she says, “that there would be other people on the panels who would say, ‘Oh no, no, come on, let’s stick to the science.'”

“I was stunned”

And sticking to the science had a real impact. That year, for the first time ever, the acceptance rate for proposals led by women was higher than the acceptance rate for proposals led by men. The gender difference had flipped.

“I was stunned,” says Natarajan. “There was an effect right away.”

And when members of the selection committees were finally allowed to see who had submitted a proposal that they had just deemed worthy of telescope time, Strolger says that they never objected that the person wasn’t up to the job, although they were often surprised.

“There were a lot of, ‘Oh, that was not at all who I thought it was’ kind of reactions,” says Strolger.

Data from the last few years suggests that this process continues to help close the gap between men and women in acceptance rates for Hubble proposals, and it may have improved fairness in other ways, too.

There’s been a dramatic rise in approvals for astronomers who have never used Hubble before, says Strolger. “It went from something like a dozen per year, to 50 per year.”

What’s more, data from the first round of proposals for Webb shows hints of similar results, with “a much closer gap in male and female acceptance rates,” says Strolger.

“This seems to be working, and it seems to be working as we anticipated it would.”

What other biases could affect telescope users?

Still, anonymizing everything doesn’t solve all the problems in making sure everyone has equal access, says Johnson, who notes that unconscious bias can affect who in astronomy gets advantages like mentors and job opportunities.

“It’s not perfect. It doesn’t wipe out systemic bias, and I don’t know of the impact that the dual-anonymization has in terms of creating greater racial equity,” she says. “But it did seem to lift some of the gender bias.”

Trying to track equity issues is complicated by the fact that the Space Telescope Science Institute has historically not gathered demographic information about those who submit research proposals.

“Partly by policy and partly by federal law, we’re not permitted to collect that information,” explains Strolger.

That’s why, when Reid did his initial study looking at gender and Hubble, the best he could do was to make assumptions about gender based on the lead scientist’s name or his knowledge of people in the field.

The researchers are now looking for ways to learn more about submitters, perhaps by allowing people to voluntarily or anonymously submit information about themselves to a third party.

“We hope that by providing ways in which we can get access to more demographic data,” says Strolger, “we can begin to see where other biases may lie.”

Source: Who gets to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope? Astronomers work to fight bias

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Most support workplace diversity but not if it’s a job qualification: national survey

2022/01/12 Leave a comment

Not that surprising as there is often a difference between what people support in principle compared to when it has the potential to affect them:

Most people in a new Canada-wide survey say equal representation in government is important, but they don’t support employers taking demographic characteristics into account in hiring and promotion decisions. 

The survey by the Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research at the University of Saskatchewan was done by phone between Dec. 1 and Dec. 24. It asked 1,000 people about equality, diversity and inclusion in workplaces and government. 

The majority of respondents said they support various minority groups being in government, including women (89 per cent), Indigenous people (86 per cent), persons with disabilities (83 per cent), visible minorities (81 per cent) and members of the LGBTQ community (68 per cent).

The survey also asked if employers should only consider qualified candidates or if they should also take into account demographic characteristics when hiring. 

About 60 per cent of those surveyed said employers should only consider how qualified a candidate is, even if it results in less diversity. 

“It’s the inverse of what folks were saying in the previous battery of questions, saying it’s important that these groups be represented,” research director Jason Disano told The Canadian Press in a phone interview from Saskatoon. 

“Folks like the idea in theory, but when it comes to real-world implications or potential ramifications on them as an individual, that’s when they say, ‘Wait a minute, maybe let’s take a step back from this. I support the idea, but I don’t support specific actions to do it.'”

About one-quarter of those surveyed, and most between the ages of 35 and 54, also said they missed a career opportunity or they know someone who missed a career opportunity because of a decision to increase workplace diversity.

“It’s surprising but also makes a lot of sense from the perspective that (equity, diversity and inclusion) initiatives really only started coming into being in the last 10 to 20 years,” Disano said. 

“Those who are 55 years of age and up are settled in their career, and the younger individuals — especially with these COVID-19 times — may have had fewer opportunities to actually be potentially impacted by some of these initiatives.” 

Disano said the survey also indicated, across the board, that women were more likely than men to support diversity in workplaces.

Those surveyed were also asked about the importance of elected officials speaking French. 

Most respondents said politicians should be fluent in both official languages. About 83 per cent said it’s important for the prime minister to speak French, while 65 per cent said it’s important for members of provincial governments and 64 per cent said it’s important for premiers.

Those in Quebec, more than in other jurisdictions, said elected officials should be fluent in both official languages. 

Disano said it’s important to ask questions about diversity, representation and language because it shows there’s a need to have a broader conversation about workplace diversity among governments, workplaces and other organizations.

“The issue is really in terms of convincing people why it’s important and how they make an overall difference,” Disano said.

The survey was reliable to within plus or minus 3.1 per cent, with a 95 per cent confidence level. 

Source: https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2022/01/10/most-support-workplace-diversity-but-not-if-its-a-job-qualification-national-survey/#.YdwSCMnMKUl

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