Hollywood reaps the rewards of becoming more diverse

2021/08/05 Leave a comment

Of note:

HATTIE MCDANIEL was the first black person to win an Oscar, in 1940. She received her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of “Mammy”, a house slave in “Gone With the Wind”. Although critics allege that the film romanticised slavery in the antebellum South, McDaniel thought that her Oscar represented a watershed moment for America. “My own people were especially happy. They felt that in honouring me, Hollywood had honoured the entire race,” she wrote in the Hollywood Reporter in 1947.

Racial minorities have made significant gains in Hollywood in the 80 years since. Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramón of the University of California, Los Angeles, have tracked the diversity of film roles for the top 200 films (ranked by box-office revenues and viewers’ ratings) released in cinemas and on streaming platforms since 2011. They found that 2020 was the most diverse year yet. Actors from racial minorities were cast in 40% of leading roles last year, compared with an average of 27% for 2018-19. Women’s representation in leading roles increased towards parity, too (see centre chart).

Although racial minorities as a whole and women nearly match their shares of the American population in acting roles, they remain under-represented behind the camera. They made up about one-fifth to one-quarter of the directors and writers of the top 200 films last year. And in front of the camera some races are more present than others: Latinos, who make up 19% of America’s population, were cast in 5.7% of all acting roles last year (see right-hand chart).

The report also found that films with the most diverse casts tended to do better at the box office. Among the ten most successful films released in cinemas in 2020, eight had casts of which at least 30% were non-white. By a similar measure, the dozen poorest-performing films last year also had the least diverse casts. Although the covid-19 pandemic disrupted theatrical releases last year a similar pattern emerges among movies released through streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+. Six of the top ten rated films released online had casts that were at least 40% non-white.

Although audiences appear to be favouring a handful of blockbusters with more diversity, the most diverse films tend to have smaller budgets, on average. Nearly three-quarters of films with a minority leading actor had a budget of less than $20m, compared with 58% of films with white leading actors. A similar disparity exists between female- and male-led films. This may be because these films are also more likely to be directed by minorities or women, who are given smaller budgets and, in turn, cast actors who are female or from minority races.

The study also finds that films with the best chance of winning an Oscar in recent years have had the least diverse cast of actors. Since 2016 the social-media hashtag #OscarsSoWhite has brought attention to the lack of diversity among Academy Award nominees. Efforts have since been made to grapple with the problem. At the Academy Awards in April, half of the nominees for leading roles were racial minorities. Daniel Kaluuya, a British actor born to Ugandan parents, won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in “Judas and the Black Messiah”—the first film with an all-black production team to be nominated for Best Picture. Youn Yuh-jung, of South Korea, won Best Supporting Actress, and Chloé Zhao, a film-maker born in China, won Best Director. More change is under way. From 2024 the Academy Awards will screen out films that do not meet strict diversity thresholds. What McDaniel started may at last be bearing fruit.

Source: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/30/hollywood-reaps-the-rewards-of-becoming-more-diverse?utm_campaign=data-newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2021-08-03&utm_content=data-nl-article-link-4&etear=data_nl_4

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Rise in expat voting expected to continue, creating new political footholds, say experts

2021/08/05 Leave a comment

Of note. One of the reasons that one of the former Chief Electoral Officer did not oppose expatriate voting was his expectation that most will not bother to vote which the 2019 election confirmed although that will likely increase slowly. And yes, riding breakdowns would be useful, but it is interesting to note the Conservative focus on Canadian expatriates in Hong Kong rather than the much larger living in the USA:

Expat voting tripled between the last two Canadian federal elections, and sources who recently spoke with The Hill Times say they expect numbers of those who cast ballots from abroad to continue to trend upwards, opening new opportunities for political parties.

But while a conservative group launched in January is working to boost registration of international electors, there’s no sign of a liberal equivalent.

“I think we’re the only Canadian kind of political-oriented expat group that’s trying to help Canadians get registered [to vote] abroad,” said Brett Stephenson, vice-chair and policy chair of Canadian Conservatives Abroad(CCA), which officially launched in January of this year with an aim, in part, to encourage registration of international voters, in a recent phone interview with The Hill Times from Hong Kong.

Involved in the group are a number of notable names: former Conservative foreign affairs minister John Baird, who now works for a number of international firms in Toronto; Nigel Wright, a former chief of staff to then-prime minister Stephen Harper who’s working for Onex in London, U.K.; Herman Cheung, a former manager of new media and marketing in the Harper PMO who now works for Philip Morris International in Hong Kong; Barrett Bingley, a former adviser to then-foreign affairs minister David Emerson who’s now working for The Economist Group in Hong Kong; Patrick Muttart, a former deputy chief of staff to PM Harper who’s now working for Philip Morris International in London, U.K.; Jamie Tronnes, a former Conservative staffer on the Hill who’s now working as a consultant in Oakland, Calif.; Georganne Burke, an experienced Conservative campaigner and organizer who’s based in Ottawa; and Ian Vaculik, who briefly worked as an adviser in the Harper PMO and now works for KBR Inc. in London, U.K. Mr. Stephenson is also a former Conservative staffer, including to Lisa Raitt during her time as natural resources minister. 

“I don’t think the … small ‘L’ liberals have come together to form an organization. I thought they would after we had formed in January, but there still hasn’t been any effort as far as I can see,” said Mr. Stephenson. 

Similar efforts have been underway by political parties in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia for decades, said Mr. Stephenson—for example, Democrats Abroad or Republicans Overseas—but similar outreach to Canadian expats has long been a “missing component.”

“We’re about 40 years behind our fellow English-speaking countries when it comes to having some sort of international space to engage with expats abroad,” he said. 

Citizens who had resided outside of Canada were barred from voting if they’d lived outside the country for more than five years in 1993, though it was seen as loosely enforced until 2011. In that year’s election, two Canadians who’d been outside the country for more than five years—Gillian Frank and Jamie Duong—had their ballots rejected, a decision they took to court, leading to a January 2019 Supreme Court decision that ruled expats have the right to vote in federal elections no matter how long they’ve lived outside the country. That decision came on the heels of a Trudeau Liberal bill, the Elections Modernization Act, which received royal assent in December 2018 and, among other things, amended the Canada Elections Act to scrap the requirement that only Canadians living outside the country for less than five consecutive years, and who intended to return in the future, could vote.

Subsequently, expat voting surged. In 2015, 15,603 expats were registered with Elections Canada as of that year’s election, with 10,707 valid ballots cast. In 2019, 55,512 Canadians were on the international register of electors come the October election, of which 32,720 cast valid ballots, an increase of nearly 206 per cent from the election prior. 

Even with the increase, that’s still a small fraction of the total number of Canadians living abroad. The Canadian Expat Association estimates some 2.8 million Canadians live outside the country (the number of eligible voters among that count though is unknown); registration with Global Affairs Canada is entirely voluntary, and only 352,245 Canadians are currently registered.

Graph courtesy of Infogram.

There are early signs that the number of expats registering to vote continues to rise.

On Sept. 13, 2019, two days after the writs were issued and roughly one month out from voting day (Oct. 21) in the last election, the Huffington Post reported that, at that point, 19,784 people were on the international register of electors. That number rose 180.6 per cent to 55,512 by election day. 

As of July 25, there were 29,632 Canadians on Elections Canada’s international register of electors—roughly 10,000 more than were on the list one month out from the last election. (Elections Canada does a verification process after each federal election, asking those registered to confirm their continued registration and mailing address, and removes the names of those who don’t respond or have returned to Canada.)

Though it’s still not official that a federal election will happen soon, expectation seems widespread that an election call is imminent, with the vote seen as likely to be held this fall, possibly in September.

“The opportunity is there for expats to have an impact,” said Mr. Stephenson, adding he expects the number of ballots cast by expat voters in the next election to be on par with 2019 levels or to potentially go up. “I don’t think it will dip down.”

John Delacourt, a former Liberal staffer and now a vice-president with Hill and Knowlton Strategies, said the numbers “certainly suggest” expat voting is on the rise.

“If that is indeed the case … it would be viewed as an opportunity, and as an opportunity for outreach, and virtually every party, I think, is interested in growth to connect with members, whether they be beyond our borders” or in Canada, he said. 

Semra Sevi, a PhD candidate with the University of Montreal’s department of political science who has explored the subject of expat voting (her master’s thesis looked at the impact of such voters in Canada), said the fact that expat voting appears to be on the rise is “not very surprising,” given increased attention on the matter, and she expects it “will continue to climb,” as political groups increasingly turn their sights to such voters and awareness builds. 

Mr. Delacourt said he doesn’t know of a Liberal-equivalent group to the CCA, adding the Conservative effort is “a little ironic” given the party’s past position supporting previous expat voting limits.

The Hill Times asked the federal Liberal Party directly about the existence of any such groups, and none were noted in response, though senior director of communications Braeden Caley did highlight that the party “works both with volunteers and organizers on a series of initiatives to help encourage Canadians abroad to participate in our democracy and elections,” noting “particularly strong support from Canadian students who have been living abroad in recent years.” 

Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Bingley previously formed a Canadian Conservatives in Hong Kong group in 2019, on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision, similarly aimed at encouraging expats to register to vote. Through one registration drive event held a few days before writs dropped in 2019, attended by Mr. Baird, he said the group helped get between 150 to 200 expats registered. (The total number registered overall as a result of the group’s efforts is unknown, as expats have to register themselves.)

“That’s the kind of thing we’re hoping to replicate more on a global level” now, he said, with a particular focus currently on the Asia-Pacific region (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia in particular), the European Union (France and Germany in particular), Israel, the U.K., and the U.S., with the latter two being “likely where most Canadian expats live.” 

A lot of the group’s work, said Mr. Stephenson, is about “information sharing” and helping expats understand the process of registering, a process that involves “a lot of clicking” and is “not very simplified.” For example, a question that often comes up among expats, he said, is how voting in Canada could impact their taxes (zero impact, he said, citing Canadian tax experts).

Along with expat registration, Mr. Stephenson said the CCA is working to build a conservative network across the globe and has plans to start advertising on social media “soon.” The group also has a third function: providing informal policy advice and feedback to the Conservative Party and caucus back home (as well as provincial conservative parties, “as it comes”—for example, they recently had an open forum discussion with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, he said). 

“Tapping into that network of experience and breadth of knowledge across sectors and countries can help to really inform policy issues back into Canada,” he said. “Canada sometimes gets a little bit isolated in international conversations … and sometimes we don’t read the newspapers in other countries about what’s going on, so we wanted to be able to have that policy feedback loop to improve the discussion back in Parliament a bit more.” 

To be on the international register of electors, you need to be a Canadian citizen, at least 18 years old on polling day, and have lived in the country at some point in your life. Elections Canada requires a copy of one piece of ID, either from a Canadian passport, birth certificate, or citizenship card/certificate. Expats also need to provide the last address they lived at in Canada (it can’t be a PO box). That address is used to determine the federal riding in which their vote will be counted. Registration can happen at any time, according to Elections Canada, but must happen before 6 p.m. on the Tuesday before election day (which is always a Monday) to have their vote counted in that election.

Elections Canada begins the process of mailing out special ballot kits to those on the register “immediately after the drop of writs” and it typically takes two to three days to mail all of them out, said spokesperson Matthew McKenna. 

“This time around, we have done what we can to prepare kits in advance so we are ready to go as soon as possible,” he said. 

How long it takes to reach international voters varies by country, he said, noting the agency uses DHL, a private courier service, for “many destinations.” Completed kits have to be received at Elections Canada’s Ottawa distribution centre by no later than 6 p.m. on election day.

Since 2015, Elections Canada has run a “paid advertising component” to reach out to international electors online; prior to then, it did “some smaller-scale targeted advertising” along with “non-paid outreach and organic communication,” explained Mr. McKenna. The agency also works with Global Affairs Canada to share information with Canadians living abroad about how to register and vote, and has a dedicated section on its website.

Impact of expat voters hard to gauge, says Sevi

In the 2019 federal election, 18.4 million Canadians cast valid ballots. International voters accounted for a small fraction of that, rounded to just 0.2 per cent. 

But Mr. Stephenson said he thinks there’s still potential for expats to make an impact. In his understanding, “many of the Hong Kong Canadians,” for example, are from B.C.’s Lower Mainland, the Greater Toronto Area, and Calgary and Edmonton. If “even just 10 or 20 per cent” of Canadians in Hong Kong vote, he suggested “it could tip the scales in a lot of close election races in the GTA and Lower Mainland.” Both areas are seat-rich and seen as target regions by Canada’s major political parties. 

Gauging the impact expat voters have had in federal elections is hard to do, said Ms. Sevi. The riding-by-riding vote breakdown currently provided by Elections Canada lumps together all votes by special ballot as one category; that includes international electors, but also captures votes cast by prisoners, members of the military, and people voting domestically by mail-in ballot. (Elections Canada is anticipating mail-in ballot use to rise considerably in the next federal election as a result of COVID-19.) 

“It’s hard to disentangle the patterns to say that you know expat votes would make a difference in a specific constituency historically,” said Ms. Sevi. The Conservative Party has in recent elections gotten more votes by special ballot than any other party, she said, but that’s special ballots as a combined group. A Maclean’s piece penned by Ms. Sevi and Peter H. Russell in 2015, notes that in 2008 and 2011, Ontario saw the highest share of expat voters, followed by Quebec, then B.C., then Alberta, with expat votes spread “increasingly in urban ridings.”

However, separate research she’s done into voting by Turkish expats (in Turkey’s elections)—information on which is “disentangled” as a separate category—indicates that while turnout is lower than among domestic voters in Turkey, expats “tend to vote along similar lines as domestic voters.”

Ms. Sevi said she hopes Elections Canada provides a riding-by-riding breakdown of the types of special ballot votes in the future. 

Source: Rise in expat voting expected to continue, creating new political footholds, say experts

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Khan: We all have a role to play in rooting out Islamophobia

2021/08/04 Leave a comment

While I am not a fan of one-time summits to effect change, Khan’s more positive commentary worth noting. Noteworthy that the silence of the PM and other leaders on Quebec’s discriminatory bill 21 is highlighted. Money quote:

“With a federal election on the horizon, here are a few recommendations to party leaders whose words and actions carry great responsibility: Disqualify any candidate who has expressed xenophobia or has been affiliated with extremist groups; reject dog whistles to rile up your base; and finally, sign a memorandum of understanding among all party leaders to speak in unison against Bill 21 as an affront to fundamental human rights. Stop jockeying for Quebec votes on the backs of religious minorities.”

William Wordsworth famously wrote “the child is father of the man,” implying that childhood experiences shape our development into adulthood. Trauma, if left unaddressed, often leads to devastating consequences. We see this today in the aftermath of the Canadian government’s 150-year-old policy of cultural genocide toward the Indigenous peoples of this land.

Unfortunately, we are witnessing the emergence of a traumatized generation of Canadian children due to Islamophobia, exacerbated by the targeted killings of Muslims in Quebec City, Etobicoke and London. This alarming state of affairs was described in depth by lawyer Nusaiba Al-Azem at the National Summit on Islamophobia recently, which brought together government officials and members of the Muslim community for a spirited dialogue on ways to confront the scourge of anti-Muslim sentiment.

The summit wasn’t merely a gabfest, but provided a platform for community groups and experts to submit concrete policy recommendations, such as a national support fund for survivors of hate-motivated crimes, a special envoy for Islamophobia, and amendments to municipal bylaws and the federal Criminal Code to better deal with hate crimes.

On the issue of children, many panelists emphasized the importance of raising awareness of different cultures and faiths in our schools, so as to broaden the outlook of Canada’s youth. One excellent resource is the comprehensive Islamic Heritage Month Resource Guidebook for Educators developed for the Toronto District School Board. Pleas were made to review school curriculums with an anti-Islamophobic lens.

The plethora of voices at the summit included a new generation of leaders within the Muslim community that is articulate, insightful and fully immersed in Canadian culture and politics. A number of common themes did emerge from the diversity of opinions at the event.

First and foremost, there is an expectation that there will be tangible government action on the recommendations. Further consultations without action are not acceptable.

There is a pressing need to address online hate through legislation, since social media companies have failed to rein it in – with devastating consequences. This was tied to demands that the federal government take more forceful action against white supremacist groups.

Another common theme included the need to investigate anti-Muslim bias in a number of federal agencies, such as the Canada Revenue Agency, the Canada Border Services Agency and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Gendered Islamophobia also emerged as concern, given that it is Muslim women who are bearing the brunt of hate-motivated incidents. The spate of attacks against veiled Muslim women in Edmonton, Calgary, and Hamiltonrequires immediate action. No woman should ever be assaulted – let alone for what she chooses to wear in public. On the flip side, many hate incidents go unreported because victims don’t believe the police will take any concrete action. We need to build trust between law enforcement, the justice system and communities subject to hate-motivated attacks.

And while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, cabinet ministers, elected MPs and other government officials all expressed support for many of these initiatives, their steely silence on one issue spoke volumes. Muslim panelists unanimously spoke of the harm fostered by Quebec’s Bill 21, which forbids public employees from wearing religious-based symbols in the workplace. Judge Marc-André Blanchard, ruling on Bill 21 this spring, described how it ostracizes, excludes and dehumanizes those targeted, but said it was nonetheless legal because of the notwithstanding clause. All groups at the summit called for the attorney-general to be involved in legal challenges to this discriminatory law, which targets religious minorities.

Rarely discussed at the summit was the role of the political class in fostering anti-Muslim sentiment. Erica Ifill, writing in The Hill Times, lays out the evidence of “a direct line from the political and policy responses following 9/11 to the murder of the Afzaal-Salman family.” Muslims were vilified as a result of the “barbaric practices” snitch line and the banning of the niqab at citizenship ceremonies. Less than two months after the mass shooting of Muslims at a Quebec City mosque, Conservative and Bloc MPs voted against a non-binding motion condemning Islamophobia.

With a federal election on the horizon, here are a few recommendations to party leaders whose words and actions carry great responsibility: Disqualify any candidate who has expressed xenophobia or has been affiliated with extremist groups; reject dog whistles to rile up your base; and finally, sign a memorandum of understanding among all party leaders to speak in unison against Bill 21 as an affront to fundamental human rights. Stop jockeying for Quebec votes on the backs of religious minorities.

Let’s not forget that each of us has the responsibility to work toward the kind of society we wish to foster – a place where every member feels safe, where we value the humanity of every individual, and where we respect differences – remembering that it is our common values that unite us.

Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-all-have-a-role-to-play-in-rooting-out-islamophobia/

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Crimes au nom de l’honneur?

2021/08/04 1 Comment

Of note:

Lors du quadruple crime de la famille Shafia, n’avons-nous pas entendu une psychologue nous expliquer le dilemme dans lequel se trouvait le criminel Mohamed Shafia : déchiré entre sa culture d’origine et celle du pays dans lequel il avait choisi de vivre, excusant ainsi sa culpabilité par rapport aux trois corps de ses filles et celui de sa première épouse qui venaient d’être repêchés dans le canal Rideau. C’était le 30 juin 2009.

Peut-il y avoir un quelconque honneur dans un crime froidement planifié, réfléchi et programmé par des hommes dont la victime a un lien de sang direct avec ses criminels ?

Dans ces sociétés où le patriarcat a force de loi, « crime pour l’honneur » se traduit par un crime contre les femmes. Ce crime pour l’honneur concerne uniquement la femme : c’est le fardeau lié à notre sexe.

Dans ces sociétés, la femme appartient d’abord à sa « tribu », c’est-à-dire à son père, à ses frères, à ses oncles, à ses cousins et par extension à la gent masculine que constitue la société. Son corps ne lui appartient pas, il appartient à sa famille, laquelle s’octroie le pouvoir de vie ou de mort sur cette possible « bombe à retardement » qui porte, sans aucunement l’avoir souhaité, cet honneur de la famille que les hommes par lâcheté préfèrent lui déléguer.

Le 27 juillet 2021, quand un Sherbrookois de 22 ans est attaqué par quatre individus lors d’un possible « crime d’honneur », il est rapporté dans le Journal de Montréal que la police estime que « rien ne porte à croire que la victime aurait commis une quelconque faute ; il n’y aurait eu possiblement aucune relation intime ». Cette phrase lourde de sens donne à penser qu’une relation intime aurait rendu le crime acceptable. Vraiment ?

Le 29 juillet, à Kirkland, quand La Presse rapporte le cas d’une adolescente de 16 ans violentée par son frère sur son lieu de travail, le SPVM précise que « l’affaire est fort probablement “reliée à un conflit de violence intrafamiliale”, sans toutefois s’avancer sur l’éventualité d’un crime d’honneur pour le moment ».

Pour Nour (nom fictif de l’adolescente de Kirkland), les interdits sont nombreux : contrôle de sa tenue vestimentaire, de ses fréquentations, de ses textos, de son argent et du wifi résidentiel. Pourtant, ce cas éloquent n’est pas unique.

Il est de notoriété publique que les crimes dits « d’honneur » ont cette particularité de mettre en évidence l’appui de la « tribu » qui soutient les hommes qui les commettent. N’est-il pas lâche de s’organiser à plusieurs contre une seule personne appartenant au sexe dit faible ?

Les noms des personnes inculpées ne font réagir aucun imam pour dénoncer cette barbarie à l’endroit d’adolescentes innocentes.

Indifférence

Le plus insoutenable, car offensant au plus haut point, c’est la condescendance du gouvernement du Canada qui mène avec assurance sa politique communautariste dans laquelle nous sommes enfermées, condamnant ainsi sans appel nos protestations et niant nos aspirations.

Combien d’adolescentes vivent ce calvaire dans la plus grande indifférence ?

Combien de filles, d’adolescentes et de femmes auraient aimé témoigner de leur quotidien au procès de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État ?

Combien d’entre elles auraient aimé être entendues au Sommet national sur l’islamophobie et proposer leurs recommandations ? Mais leurs voix, nos voix sont inaudibles.

Combien d’adolescentes victimes de ces crimes doivent taire les violences subies alors que le relativisme culturel sévit dans les écoles québécoises, où on banalise la présence des femmes dites musulmanes représentées toujours voilées, et cela conformément à un profilage établi selon l’origine géographique ou ethnique et souvent confondu avec la religion, comme dans le cours ECR ?

Il ne s’agit pas de stigmatiser une culture ou une religion, mais bien de dénoncer certains faits de culture ou de religion qui n’ont vraiment plus lieu d’être dans notre société d’aujourd’hui.

S’il y a déshonneur dans une relation entre une femme et un homme, demandons-nous qui porte l’honneur et qui assume le déshonneur ?

Nous, les femmes, sommes atterrées par le silence assourdissant du premier ministre du Canada et de toute la classe politique, tant au fédéral qu’au provincial.

Nous sommes consternées par le silence complaisant des organismes gouvernementaux dédiés aux droits des femmes.

Est-ce ce choix de société et de vivre-ensemble que nous voulons pour nos enfants ?

Leila Lesbet, Présidente de Pour les droits des femmes du Québec

Source: Crimes au nom de l’honneur?

Filed under Honour Killings, Multiculturalism

Stop poisonous prejudice against Canadians of Chinese descent

2021/08/03 Leave a comment

Sigh. The inability, deliberate or not, to recognize that legitimate criticism of Chinese regime policies and practices is not anti-Chinese Canadians, by people who should know better is disappointing. And rather striking that none of the authors have strongly condemned publicly Chinese government repression of Uighurs or Hong Kong (Google search):
The rising tide of hatred against Asians is a matter of urgent concern and deserves to be condemned by all Canadians. In this context, we are especially perturbed by blatant personal attacks against prominent Canadians of Chinese origin who have soberly expressed views on China and Canada-China relations, as with the case of Senator Yuen Pau Woo. As Canadian academics and China experts, we deeply value freedom of opinion. However some public commentators have gone well beyond debating the issues and descended to distorted and racially tainted xenophobic slurs that not only further poison the discourse on China and Canada-China relations, but give rise to unalloyed McCarthyism in a contemporary racialized form. News reports and commentary distorted what Senator Woo actually said. His Senate speech on the genocide resolution never whitewashed Beijing, nor did it draw equivalence between Canada’s current contrition over residential schools and the treatment of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Instead, Senator Woo rued the day when Chinese, like Canadians, may come to realize the damage caused by their own policies in Xinjiang. In his response to news reports and biased attacks, Senator Woo rightly pointed out how the public had been misled about his views. More egregiously, critics, in particular Derek Burney, Canada’s former ambassador to Washington, singled out Senator Woo’s immigrant background and lashed out at him for “living in the wrong country” simply because Senator Woo dared to express views on China different from his own. Other critics of China have darkly insinuated about ‘captured elites’ with respect to Canadians who express views on China different from their own. To these Sinophobic forces, denouncing China and its government is now a litmus test of loyalty for every bona fide Canadian. There are no second class Canadians, and those who would insinuate that have a whiff of the dark days of “Oriental Exclusion” and the Head Tax. Further, Senator Woo is an acknowledged China expert and former president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. His reasoned, balanced and moderate views on China, always with Canada’s best interests in sight, are well respected in the academic and policy community. During his many years of leadership, APF produced excellent analyses of China and the Asia Pacific region to assist decision-making by Canadian governments, corporations, and other institutions. But in those prejudiced mind, Senator Woo’s position is reduced to his Chinese ethnicity and none of these stellar professional qualifications therefore matter. The logic behind the vicious call for Senator Woo to resign from the Senate and register as a Chinese government lobbyist suggests that anyone having a different opinion on China than a particular group’s must not be allowed to hold a post in Canada, be it a Senator, or an academic, or whatever job they hold. This is more than dangerous. Our questions are: What is their agenda? What is the purpose of questioning the loyalty of Canadians? Is it to railroad Canadians of Chinese origin out of public life if they demur with the demonization of China? It is sad to see that our society is forging a toxic environment of discourse on China, with racist innuendo lurking just beneath the surface. This attack is part of a broader distortion effort. Thirty-three Senators voted against the Senate motion labelling current Chinese policy in Xinjiang as genocide. Most media reports used a particular phrase to report Senator Woo’s speech as “echoing the argument by Chinese officials,” which implies either Senator Woo was speaking for the Chinese government, or he is simply not able to form his own opinions. No such insinuation was made when Senator Peter Harder expressed similar views in his speech against the motion. No wonder anti-Asian hate crimes are rising in this country. When prominent Canadians express intolerant views, the result at the street level is to attack those who look Asian as communist China sympathizers or even agents. This is unworthy of our liberal and multicultural heritage and moreover is deeply misguided, as it both apes Stalinist tropes targeting dissent as disloyalty and seeks to discredit those who have expertise on China at a time when the challenges of dealing with a powerful China have made such expertise more important than ever. How to characterize the ongoing repressive policies in Xinjiang is beyond the point here. Senator Woo, and for that matter, any Canadian has the right to express their views about Xinjiang without being subjected to deliberate personal attack. We call on everyone, especially his Senate colleagues, who may or may not agree with his views, to support Senator Woo against such a character assassination. Jeremy Paltiel is professor of political science at Carleton University. Daniel A Bell is Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University in China. Xiaobei Chen is professor of sociology at Carleton University. Wenran Jiang is retired political science professor and founding director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta.
Source: Stop poisonous prejudice against Canadians of Chinese descent And in the China Daily:
A professor at one of Canada’s major universities has written a column for a state-run newspaper in China in which she defends Beijing’s record on ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs and argues Canadians are being thoughtless and self-righteous in accusing the Chinese government of genocide in Xinjiang. Yuezhi Zhao holds the Canada Research Chair in Political Economy of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University. Her column, titled Canada Should Reflect On Its Struggle With Racism and dated July 29, ran in China Daily. The Beijing-based English-language media outlet describes itself as a government agency on LinkedIn, and it is a central fixture of the Chinese government’s efforts to disseminate its views abroad. The Chinese government has come under intense criticism for its repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in the northwestern province of Xinjiang. It has rejected calls for an independent investigation into documented reports of abuses, including torture, forced sterilization, forced abortions and involuntary separation of children from their parents. The Canadian, British, Dutch and Lithuanian parliaments, among others, have this year passed motions declaring China’s abuse of Muslim minorities to constitute genocide. Chinese officials have acknowledged that the birth rate across Xinjiang fell by nearly a third in 2018. Prof. Zhao says in her China Daily column that people should consider how the population of Uyghurs has flourished over the long term, particularly since the Chinese Communist Party took power more than 70 years ago. “Contrary to the genocidal decline of the aboriginal population in North America over the past 500 years, minority populations such as Tibetans and Uyghurs [in China] have grown significantly, and that has especially been the case since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949,” she writes. Prof. Zhao also takes aim at what she calls the “moral high ground that Canadian politicians have assumed in critiquing the Chinese state.” The Chinese government in June locked horns with the Canadian government after Canada led more than 40 countries at the United Nations Human Rights Council in expressing “grave concerns” over China’s conduct in Xinjiang. In response, Beijing confronted Canada about its own mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and the discovery of what appeared to be the remains of more than 200 children at a former residential school in Kamloops. China countered the Canadian criticism by calling for a “thorough and impartial investigation” into crimes against Indigenous peoples, which it said were instigated by racism and xenophobia in Canada. In a similar vein, Prof. Zhao accuses Canada of genocide, saying “the genocide of the aboriginal population has been at the very core of the founding of Canada.” She argues Canadians are mistakenly assuming that Beijing is trying to assimilate the Uyghurs. “When Canadian politicians, media outlets and scholars attack China for alleged human rights abuses, especially when they accuse China of genocidal treatment of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, we are witnessing the same unreflective application to China of a home-based paradigm based on the genocidal assimilation of aboriginal people,” she writes. She contrasts the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1 with “disbelief and shock” in Canada at historical mistreatment of Indigenous children at residential schools. The Communist Party, she writes, “despite all the trials and tribulations, even grave mistakes, is in a position to tell the proud history of national liberation, a history in which the Chinese nation overthrew the ‘three mountains’ of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism.” Prof. Zhao could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokesperson for Simon Fraser University, Melissa Shaw, said “all faculty members have the right to academic freedom” when asked to comment on Prof. Zhao’s column. Mehmet Tohti, a Uyghur-Canadian and executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, said he’s shocked to hear the long-term increase in the Uyghur population since 1949 invoked as a counterargument to concern over Xinjiang. He said it’s rare to hear this kind of argument from Canada’s academic ranks, and that dismissing criticism of China’s record in Xinjiang ignores the “concentration camps and the massive internment of people and the forced labour” of recent years. Mr. Tohti said that, as a Uyghur-Canadian, he found it disappointing to hear “whataboutism” arguments that redirect debate over China’s current mistreatment of Uyghurs to past wrongs committed by Canada. He said it would make sense for China to establish an independent truth and reconciliation commission for Xinjiang. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which ran for more than six years until 2015, documented the history and effect of the residential school system on Indigenous students and their families. David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said while residential schools were part of a “cruel and deeply flawed policy,” any comparison with what China is doing in Xinjiang is “almost certainly designed to diminish awareness of Beijing’s vast, ambitious and technologically sophisticated destruction of a people and a culture.” Darren Byler, an assistant professor with the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser, and an expert in China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, said that for more than 70 years Beijing has sought to transform Xinjiang into an “internal settler colony” by transferring the Han Chinese ethnic majority into the region. “Over the past four years, this process has dramatically intensified with the implementation of a widespread residential boarding school system, where Uyghur and Kazakh children are instructed in Chinese and not permitted to practice their faith traditions,” he said. “A mass incarceration and internment system has resulted in 533,000 criminal prosecutions and the internment of hundreds of thousands more who have been deemed untrustworthy,” he added. “Because genocidal violence is just now emergent in China, it is particularly crucial that people of conscience demand that it be stopped.”
Source: https://trk.cp20.com/click/e7a4-2fd515-c1xqj1-7qf243g8/pmreg33oorqwg5boivugc43iei5cejjsijkhqolri52xqq2ghfjekvjwnnhgyzdki5fhi4cwkvdusvscgnmse7i%3D

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian: There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote

2021/08/03 Leave a comment

A rather controversial and unrealistic proposal, one that expands on arguments used in the case of municipal voting rights. As always, I prefer to address citizenship requirements and processes rather than expanding one of the most fundamental rights of citizenship to non-citizens:

Washingtonians love to complain about taxation without representation. But for me and my fellow noncitizens, it is a fact of political life that we submit to unquestioningly year after year, primary after primary, presidential election after presidential election. Nearly 15 million people living legally in the United States, most of whom contribute as much as any natural-born American to this country’s civic, cultural and economic life, don’t have a say in matters of politics and policy because we — resident foreign nationals, or “aliens” as we are sometimes called — cannot vote.

Considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision undermining voting rights, and Republicans’ efforts to suppress, redistrict and manipulate their way to electoral security, it’s time for Democrats to radically expand the electorate. Proposing federal legislation to give millions of young people and essential workers a clear road to citizenship is a good start. But there’s another measure that lawmakers both in Washington and state capitals should put in place: lifting voting restrictions on legal residents who aren’t citizens — people with green cards, people here on work visas, and those who arrived in the country as children and are still waiting for permanent papers.

Expanding the franchise in this way would give American democracy new life, restore immigrants’ trust in government and send a powerful message of inclusion to the rest of the world.

It’s easy to assume that restricting the franchise to citizens is an age-old, nonnegotiable fact. But it’s actually a relatively recent convention and a political choice. Early in the United States’ history, voting was a function not of national citizenship but of gender, race and class. As a result, white male landowners of all nationalities were encouraged to play an active role in shaping American democracy, while women and poor, Indigenous and enslaved people could not. That wholesale discrimination is unquestionably worse than excluding resident foreigners from the polls, but the point is that history shows how readily voting laws can be altered — and that restrictive ones tend not to age well.

Another misconception is that citizen voting rights have always been the prerogative of the federal government. In fact, states have largely decided who had a say in local, state and national elections. Arkansas was the last state to eliminate noncitizen voting in 1926, and it wasn’t until 1996 that Congress doubled down with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which made voting in federal elections while foreign — already not permitted because of state-level rules — a criminal, and deportable, offense. (This means that congressional Democrats working on immigration and election reform can reverse the 1996 sanctions the same way they voted them in.)

The strongest case for noncitizen voting today is representation: The more voters show up to the polls, the more accurately elections reflect peoples’ desires. The United States already has plenty of institutions that account for noncitizens: The census aims to reach all residents because it believes everyone, even aliens, matters. Corporations enjoy free speech and legal personhood — and they’re not even people. Would it be such a stretch to give a noncitizen resident a say in who gets elected to their state legislature, Congress or the White House?

What’s more, allowing noncitizens to vote in federal, state and municipal elections would help revitalize American democracy at a time when enthusiasm and trust are lacking. While 2020 was considered a “high turnout” election, only about 65 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Compare that to Germany, where turnout was 76 percent in the last general election.

Democrats are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this change — at least at first. But it could have interesting ripple effects: Elected Republicans might be induced to appeal to a more diverse constituency, or perhaps to enthuse their constituents so deeply that they too start to vote in greater numbers.

It’s also just good civics: Allowing people to vote gives them even more of a sense of investment in their towns, cities, communities and country. There’s a detachment that comes with not being able to vote in the place where you live. Concerns about mixed loyalties, meanwhile, are misplaced. The United States not only allows dual citizenship but also allows dual citizens to vote — and from abroad. Is there any reason to think resident foreigners should be less represented?

Voting is, in a sense, a reward for becoming an American. But in truth, it’s often much harder to get a visa or green card than to then become a naturalized citizen. It took me 15 years and over $10,000 in legal fees (not to mention the cost of college) to obtain permanent residency. The citizenship test and oath feel comparatively like a piece of cake.

It shouldn’t be this onerous to emigrate. But given that it is, it would make much more sense to make residents provide proof of voter registration as a requirement for naturalization, rather than the other way around. We will have more than “earned” it. And what better way to learn about American life than to play an active role in deciding its elections?

In the absence of federal- or state-level action, local lawmakers are already free let noncitizens decide on things like garbage pickup, parking rules and potholes. Some do. Since 1992, Takoma Park, Md., has allowed all residents to vote, regardless of their citizenship. Nine additional Maryland towns, as well as districts in Vermont and Massachusetts, have voted to re-enfranchise noncitizens. The cities of Chicago, Washington and Portland are also considering the idea, and a bill that would give New York City’s authorized immigrants voting rights has a new supermajority in the City Council.

I’ve lived in New York since 2004, but haven’t once had a chance to cast a ballot here. Last fall, I grew so frustrated that I started mailing ballots to my hometown in Switzerland. But voting in a place I haven’t lived in since I was a minor makes about as little sense as not voting in the city where I’ve lived my entire adult life.

I’m looking forward to City Council giving me, and the other million or so friendly aliens living here, the right to vote for New York’s officials. But we should be able to vote for our representatives in Washington, too. I hope that Democrats seize their chance, and realize the power and the enthusiasm of their potential constituents. They — and we — will not regret it.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/opinion/noncitizen-voting-us-elections.html

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A ‘safe space for racists’: antisemitism report criticises social media giants

2021/08/03 Leave a comment

Sigh….

There has been a serious and systemic failure to tackle antisemitism across the five biggest social media platforms, resulting in a “safe space for racists”, according to a new report.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok failed to act on 84% of posts spreading anti-Jewish hatred and propaganda reported via the platforms’ official complaints system.

Researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a UK/US non-profit organisation, flagged hundreds of antisemitic posts over a six-week period earlier this year. The posts, including Nazi, neo-Nazi and white supremacist content, received up to 7.3 million impressions.

Although each of the 714 posts clearly violated the platforms’ policies, fewer than one in six were removed or had the associated accounts deleted after being pointed out to moderators.

The report found that the platforms are particularly poor at acting on antisemitic conspiracy theories, including tropes about “Jewish puppeteers”, the Rothschild family and George Soros, as well as misinformation connecting Jewish people to the pandemic. Holocaust denial was also often left unchecked, with 80% of posts denying or downplaying the murder of 6 million Jews receiving no enforcement action whatsoever.

Facebook was the worst offender, acting on just 10.9% of posts, despite introducing tougher guidelines on antisemitic content last year. In November 2020, the company updated its hate speech policy to ban content that denies or distorts the Holocaust.

However, a post promoting a viral article that claimed the Holocaust was a hoax accompanied by a falsified image of the gates of Auschwitz with a white supremacist meme was not removed after researchers reported it to moderators. Instead, it was labelled as false information, which CCHD say contributed to it reaching hundreds of thousands of users. Statistics from Facebook’s own analytics tool show the article received nearly a quarter of a million likes, shares and comments across the platform.

Twitter also showed a poor rate of enforcement action, removing just 11% of posts or accounts and failing to act on hashtags such as #holohoax (often used by Holocaust deniers) or #JewWorldOrder (used to promote anti-Jewish global conspiracies). Instagram also failed to act on antisemitic hashtags, as well as videos inciting violence towards Jewish people.

YouTube acted on 21% of reported posts, while Instagram and TikTok on around 18%. On TikTok, an app popular with teenagers, antisemitism frequently takes the form of racist abuse sent directly to Jewish users as comments on their videos.

The report, entitled Failure to Protect, found that the platform did not act in three out of four cases of antisemitic comments sent to Jewish users. When TikTok did act, it more frequently removed individual comments instead of banning the users who sent them, barring accounts that sent direct antisemitic abuse in just 5% of cases.

Forty-one videos identified by researchers as containing hateful content, which have racked up a total of 3.5m views over an average of six years, remain on YouTube.

The report recommends financial penalties to incentivise better moderation, with improved training and support. Platforms should also remove groups dedicated to antisemitism and ban accounts that send racist abuse directly to users.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, said the research showed that online abuse is not about algorithms or automation, as the tech companies allowed “bigots to keep their accounts open and their hate to remain online”, even after alerting human moderators.

He said that media, which he described as “how we connect as a society”, has become a “safe space for racists” to normalise “hateful rhetoric without fear of consequences”. “This is why social media is increasingly unsafe for Jewish people, just as it is becoming for women, Black people, Muslims, LGBT people and many other groups,” he added.

Ahmed said the test of the government’s online safety bill, first drafted in 2019 and introduced to parliament in May, is whether platforms can be made to enforce their own rules or face consequences themselves.

“While we have made progress in fighting antisemitism on Facebook, our work is never done,” said Dani Lever, a Facebook spokesperson. Lever told the New York Times that the prevalence of hate speech on the platform was decreasing, and she said that “given the alarming rise in antisemitism around the world, we have and will continue to take significant action through our policies”.

A Twitter spokesperson said the company condemned antisemitism and was working to make the platform a safer place for online engagement. “We recognise that there’s more to do, and we’ll continue to listen and integrate stakeholders’ feedback in these ongoing efforts,” the spokesperson said.

TikTok said in a statement that it condemns antisemitism and does not tolerate hate speech, and proactively removes accounts and content that violate its policies. “We are adamant about continually improving how we protect our community,” the company said.

YouTube said in a statement that it had “made significant progress” in removing hate speech over the last few years. “This work is ongoing and we appreciate this feedback,” said a YouTube spokesperson.

Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

Source: A ‘safe space for racists’: antisemitism report criticises social media giants

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism, Social Media Tagged with ,

Hate Crimes Breakdown 2008-20

2021/08/03 Leave a comment

The latest breakdowns, including 2020, with almost a doubling of race and ethnicity-related hate crimes, particularly for East Asians, quadrupling and Blacks, almost doubling from 2019 to 2020.

Religiously-related hate crimes continue downward trend for all groups save Jews.

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Blogging break

2021/07/26 Leave a comment

Will restart in August.

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Douglas Todd: Not much difference between Islamophobia and Christophobia

2021/07/24 1 Comment

Or any other religious phobia.
In terms of hate crimes, official and unofficial statistics show a difference, as church burnings and attacks were virtually unheard of until the “discovery” of unmarked graves at former residential schools.
The extent of discrimination, bias and prejudice against Muslims and the Muslim faith is, as numerous surveys have indicated, is of course much higher than with Christians.
“Islamophobia: Dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.”
“Christophobia: Intense dislike or fear of Christianity; hostility or prejudice towards Christians.”                                                    – Oxford Lexico

Is there a difference between Islamophobia and Christophobia?

The Oxford Lexico suggests subtle differentiations. But the similarities are more important: Both terms describe prejudice toward a religious group. And, tragically, in Canada there is now no shortage of shocking displays of both Islamophobia and Christophobia.

There have been assaults on Muslims, some deadly. There has been arson attack after attack on churches. Vandalism against sacred symbols is becoming the norm. Social media pours forth hate speech toward people of faith. Twitter doesn’t seem to care.

And this rising vitriol is not a result of animosity between Muslims or Christians. Something stranger is going on.Most Westerners are familiar with the term Islamophobia: Canadian politicians and others cite it often. As they do the scourge of anti-Semitism. Christophobia (which is also known as Christianophobia or anti-Christianity) is much less invoked: It’s virtually never named by Canada’s elected officials or commentators.

The extended definitions of Islamophobia and Christophobia, however, often refer to how the fear and dislike of these religions is “irrational.” That’s a crucial distinction, because there is little wrong with rational criticism of Christianity or Islam or any other world view, including atheism.

Any wisdom traditions that have been around for more than a millennia and which have so many followers (Islam 1.8 billion, Christianity 2.3 billion) are bound to have produced great things, but also deformities. Free expression includes the right to disapprove of a religion.But what we have been witnessing across Canada in recent months is something else: It’s violent bigotry.

A Muslim family was mowed down last month in a planned truck attack in London, Ont. Last week in Hamilton a Muslim woman and her daughter were openly threatened. These Islamophobic outrages come four years after a gunman killed six people attending a mosque in Quebec City.

And in the past month Christophobia has led to 25 Canadian churches across the country being burned to the ground, defaced or vandalized. In Surrey this week a Coptic Orthodox Church, frequented mostly by immigrants from Egypt, was destroyed by fire.

Journalists can’t keep up with the mayhem. And neither can the police, who are making precious few arrests. They’re silent about these being hate crimes.While brutal religious persecution has been common in many countries for centuries, the wave of attacks, arsons and vandalism in supposedly tolerant Canada is new.

Even though the arsonists aren’t revealing their motives, the church attacks appear to be a reaction to reports of hundreds of unmarked graves being found near government-funded residential schools, which began operating in the late 1800s.

There is now no shortage of rhetoric inciting the loathing of churches Ottawa hired to run many of the schools. But most of the online animosity is not coming from Indigenous people.

While many Indigenous leaders are angry at the legacy of the defunct school system, dozens of chiefs have decried the destruction of churches, including those on First Nations territory — given that a majority of Indigenous people are Christian.

Many “allies” of Indigenous people, however, are too ignorant and arrogant to listen to the chiefs’ messages.

Try inserting the term “Catholic church” into Twitter and see the casual contempt from non-Indigenous people. You’ll quickly find young influencers like @buggirl, who says, “if i don’t get to see the catholic church crash and burn to the ground within my lifetime i swear to f—ing god….”

Tragically, some so-called mainstream figures have fired off similar inflammatory comments. Harsha Walia, executive director of the once-venerable B.C. Civil Liberties Association, reacted to a tweet about the arson of two Catholic churches by remarking, “Burn it all down.” Which, her defenders say, is also a call for decolonization. At least she “resigned.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, despite diverting attention from Ottawa’s control of the schools by calling on the pope to apologize, has cautiously called the arson attacks “unacceptable and wrong.” But Trudeau’s long-time friend and former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, remarked on Twitter they are “understandable.”Meanwhile, Surrey’s Coptic Church leaders on Monday prodded B.C. Premier John Horgan to do more than blandly say earlier that burning down churches “is not the way forward.” Despite his meek statement on Twitter, many non-Indigenous activists mocked the premier for suggesting Christians deserve respect.

For some twisted reasons the burning of churches does not horrify a certain cohort.

It’s a cohort that would presumably be the first to say, rightly, it’s never “understandable” to attack a mosque — or a gurdwara, synagogue or Buddhist or Hindu temple.Do those who “understand” the torching of church sanctuaries forget Ottawa established residential schools in the first place? Would they support burning the Parliament Buildings? (I’m afraid to hear the answer.)

Maybe the rationale for believing it’s fine to hate Christianity and Christians is they represent the “dominant” religion of white Canada. The trouble with that is church attenders are a minority in the 21st century in Canada – and secular places like B.C. have never have been “Christian” provinces.

That’s not to mention two out of five immigrants to Canada are Christians. And a large proportion of Canadian Christians are people of colour: More than 120 Chinese churches, for instance, are peppered throughout Metro Vancouver, serving roughly 100,000 ethnic Chinese people. There are now 600 million Christians in Africa and 400 million in Asia.

The new Canadian brand of Christophobia seems most linked to those who trumpet decolonialization. The term originally meant “the process of a state withdrawing from a former colony.” But with almost no one leaving Canada, it’s now a fraught vision for the “removal or undoing of colonial elements” from throughout the land.

What that exactly means is hard to figure. But we are seeing signs of how this once-academic term is being understood by a dangerous fringe who would presumably condemn an Islamophobic attack but adopt a double standard on Christophobic arsons.

“All outbursts of anti-religious violence have at least one thing in common: They convey an ugly intolerance of difference and a refusal to recognize the humanity of an individual or a community,” says Ray Pennings, of Cardus, a Canadian think tank. “I fear church burnings could be an indication that Canadians are losing the ability to discuss faith publicly, using the vocabulary of civility and respect.”

We might never find out what’s going on in the fevered minds of the arsonists. But it’s clear there is tension between Canada’s decolonization movement and the ideals of truth and reconciliation.

For instance, when vandals on the weekend used a metal saw to cut down a decades-old cross overlooking the Cowichan Valley, Vancouver Island’s Indigenous leaders again expressed their distress.

Some of the social-media crowd, however, urged replacing the eradicated Christian cross with a totem pole. Which sounds more like rewarding vandals’ criminal behaviour than reconciliation.

Canada is becoming increasingly filled with division and distrust. It’s hard to think it’s going to get better.

Source: Douglas Todd: Not much difference between Islamophobia and Christophobia

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

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