Multiculturalism | Multicultural Meanderings

Lente marche vers la mixité [corporate board diversity]

2021/02/17 Leave a comment

May have missed the english media coverage:

C’est droit devant, inexorablement. Les gains sont là, mais la marche vers la mixité des conseils d’administration et de la haute direction demeure lente. On l’imagine, la cible se veut encore plus éloignée lorsqu’on élargit le parcours de la représentativité à la diversité.

La plus récente étude sur la question de la diversité a été publiée lundi par l’Institut sur la gouvernance d’organisations privées et publiques (IGOPP). Sur la mixité, on y lit que « même si les gains réalisés au cours de la dernière décennie sont notables, il reste beaucoup à faire en matière de représentativité des femmes sur les conseils d’administration (CA) ainsi qu’au niveau de la haute direction des entreprises ».

L’IGOPP proposait, il y a 10 ans, une cible de 40 %. Une référence mondiale situe, d’ailleurs, la zone de parité hommes-femmes optimale au sein de l’équipe de gestion entre 40 et 60 %. Cette représentation féminine a, certes, presque doublé depuis 10 ans, mais, à un peu plus de 29 % au sein des conseils d’administration des grandes entreprises inscrites en Bourse et à 26 % au niveau de la haute direction, on se retrouve encore loin de la cible.

Que dire des minorités visibles, qui comptent pour 22 % de la population canadienne, mais qui occupent moins de 5 % des sièges aux conseils et moins de 9 % des postes de haute direction ?

Le regard de l’IGOPP a porté sur 76 entreprises d’incorporation fédérale pouvant représenter le tiers des sociétés composant l’indice boursier S & P / TSX. L’exercice vient mesurer un premier effet des modifications apportées par le gouvernement à la Loi canadienne sur les sociétés par actions ayant pour objectif « d’augmenter la diversité observée au sein des conseils d’administration et de la haute direction des sociétés inscrites en bourse », en vigueur depuis janvier 2020.

Outre la présence des femmes, ces modifications visaient plus large en s’étendant à la représentation des peuples autochtones, des personnes handicapées et des personnes qui font partie des minorités visibles, explique l’Institut.

Cet élargissement suit l’entrée en vigueur, au 31 décembre 2014, de la réglementation sur l’Information concernant la représentation des femmes au sein des conseils d’administration et des instances des émetteurs assujettis. Au Canada, les autorités de réglementation n’ont pas retenu la formule de quotas, préférant plutôt une approche de divulgation s’étendant à la haute direction selon la formule « se conformer ou
s’expliquer ».

L’on parle donc d’un engagement moral, mais non contraignant, qui s’insère cependant dans une mouvance plus généralisée d’adoption des critères environnementaux, sociaux et de gouvernance auprès des investisseurs reconnaissant la portée et la contribution de la diversité.

Beaucoup à faire

Certes, l’exercice de l’IGOPP comporte ses limites et l’on admet une probable surévaluation de la représentation mesurée pour les postes de haute direction, mais l’on peut se faire une idée sur le chemin restant à parcourir et sur le rythme de renouvellement des administrateurs et des hauts dirigeants, qui constitue un frein aux yeux de l’IGOPP.

Et l’on retient que seulement 47 % des entreprises observées s’étaient dotées de cible à atteindre en matière de représentativité des femmes au sein des CA. À peine 18 % se sont fixé des objectifs précis touchant la haute direction.

Ce constat vient rejoindre d’autres études sur le sujet. En décembre dernier, le cabinet KPMG indiquait que 96 % des 100 plus importantes entreprises inscrites en Bourse soumises à la loi fédérale comptaient au moins une femme dans leur conseil d’administration au 31 mai 2020, contre 67 % au 31 mai 2014.

Inversement, 4 % de ces sociétés avaient un conseil d’administration composé uniquement d’hommes et 24 % avaient une équipe de direction entièrement masculine. Ces pourcentages s’établissaient respectivement à 33 % et à 29 % au 31 mai 2014.

L’on écrivait aussi que, s’il y a amélioration, il y a toutefois disparité entre les postes de conseil d’administration et ceux de la haute direction. KPMG a mesuré que deux fois plus d’hommes que de femmes ont accédé à des fonctions d’administrateurs entre le 31 mai 2014 et le 31 mai 2020, et trois fois plus à des postes de haute direction.

À l’évidence, il reste encore beaucoup à faire. Dans une étude mondiale publiée par le cabinet Deloitte datée du 30 octobre 2019, on lisait que, globalement, les femmes occupent 16,9 % des sièges aux conseils d’administration, soit une maigre hausse de 1,9 point de pourcentage par rapport à l’édition 2017 de l’étude.

À ce rythme, il faudra plus de 30 ans pour atteindre la parité, disait Deloitte. Et l’on ne parle pas des fonctions de haute direction.

Source: Lente marche vers la mixité

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with corporate boards, Deloitte, diversity, Institut sur la gouvernance d’organisations privées et publiques (IGOPP), KPMG

China’s Crackdown on Muslims Extends to a Resort Island

2021/02/16 Leave a comment

Relentless pressures and crackdowns…

The call to prayer still echoes through the alleys of Sanya’s nearly 1,000-year-old Muslim neighborhood, where crescent-topped minarets rise above the rooftops. The government’s crackdown on the tiny, deeply pious community in this southern Chinese city has been subtle.

Signs on shops and homes that read “Allahu akbar” — “God is greatest” in Arabic — have been covered with foot-wide stickers promoting the “China Dream,” a nationalistic official slogan. The Chinese characters for halal, meaning permissible under Islam, have been removed from restaurant signs and menus. The authorities have closed two Islamic schools and have twice tried to bar female students from wearing head scarves.

The Utsuls, a community of no more than 10,000 Muslims in Sanya, are among the latest to emerge as targets of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against foreign influence and religions. Their troubles show how Beijing is working to erode the religious identity of even its smallest Muslim minorities, in a push for a unified Chinese culture with the Han ethnic majority at its core.

The new restrictions in Sanya, a city on the resort island of Hainan, mark a reversal in government policy. Until several years ago, officials supported the Utsuls’ Islamic identity and their ties with Muslim countries, according to local religious leaders and residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid government retaliation.

The party has said its restrictions on Islam and Muslim communities are aimed at curbing violent religious extremism. It has used that rationale to justify a clampdown on Muslims in China’s far western region of Xinjiang, following a series of attacksseven years ago. But Sanya has seen little unrest.

The tightening of control over the Utsuls “reveals the real face of the Chinese Communist campaign against local communities,” said Ma Haiyun, an associate professor at Frostburg State University in Maryland who studies Islam in China. “This is about trying to strengthen state control. It’s purely anti-Islam.”

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied that it opposes Islam. But under Xi Jinping, its top leader, the party has torn down mosques, ancient shrines and Islamic domes and minarets in northwestern and central China. Its crackdown has focused heavily on the Uighurs, a Central Asian Muslim minority of 11 million in Xinjiang, many of whom have been held in mass detention camps and forced to renounce Islam.

The effort to “sinicize Islam” accelerated in 2018 after the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a confidential directive ordering officials to prevent the faith from interfering with secular life and the state’s functions. The directive warned against “Arabization” and the influence of Saudi Arabia, or “Saudi-ization,” in mosques and schools.

In Sanya, the party is going after a group with a significant position in China’s relations with the Islamic world. The Utsuls have played host to Muslims from around the country seeking the balmy climes of Hainan Province, and they have served as a bridge to Muslim communities in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The Utsuls’ Islamic identity was celebrated for years by the government as China pushed for stronger links with the Arab world. Such links have been key to Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, a program to finance infrastructure projects across the world and increase Beijing’s political sway in the process.

The Utsuls have become “an important base for Muslims who have moved abroad to find their roots and investigate their ancestors,” said a government notice in 2017 hailing the role of Islam in Hainan in the Belt and Road plan. “To date, they have received thousands of scholars and friends from more than a dozen countries and regions, and are an important window for cultural exchanges among peoples around the South China Sea.”

Despite being officially labeled part of China’s largest ethnic minority, the Hui, the Utsuls see themselves as culturally distinct from other Muslim communities in the country.

They are Sunni Muslims, believed to be descended from the Cham, the long-distance fishermen and maritime traders of the Champa Kingdom, which ruled for centuries along Vietnam’s central and southern coasts. Starting as early as the 10th century, Cham refugees fled war in what is now central Vietnam and traveled to Hainan, a tropical island the size of Maryland.

Over the centuries, the Utsuls maintained strong links with Southeast Asia and continued to practice Islam largely unfettered. But during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, roving bands of Red Guards devoted to Mao Zedong destroyed mosques in Utsul villages, as they did across China.

As China opened to the world in the early 1980s, the Utsuls began reviving their Islamic traditions. Many families reconnected with long-lost relatives in Malaysia and Indonesia, including a Malaysian former prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose maternal grandfather was an Utsul who grew up in Sanya.

To this day, many Utsuls, also known as the Utsats, speak a distinct Chamic language similar to that still used in parts of Vietnam and Cambodia, in addition to Chinese. A sour tamarind fish stew infused with Southeast Asian flavors remains the local specialty, and elders pass on stories of their ancestors’ migration to Hainan. Women wear colorful head scarves, sometimes beaded or embroidered, that cover their hair, ears and neck, a style similar to head coverings worn by Muslim women in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Yusuf Liu, a Malaysian-Chinese writer who has studied the Utsuls, said that the group had been able to preserve a distinct identity because they were geographically isolated for centuries and held firm to their religious beliefs. He noted that the Utsuls were similar in many ways to the Malays.

“They share many of the same characteristics, including language, dress, history, blood ties and food,” Mr. Liu said.

As Sanya’s tourism economy boomed over the past two decades, the Utsuls’ ties with the Middle East also grew. Young men traveled to Saudi Arabia for Islamic studies. Community leaders set up schools for children and adults to study Arabic. They started building domes and minarets for their mosques, shifting away from the traditional Chinese architectural style.

Although there were some clashes between Utsuls and neighboring Han in decades past, they have mostly lived in peace, with both groups benefiting from the recent surge in tourism. In contrast, Beijing has long tried to suppress Uighur resistance to Chinese rule, which has sometimes been violent. The party has said that its policies in Xinjiang have curbed what it describes as terrorism and religious extremism.

But in the past two years, even in Sanya, the authorities have pushed to limit overt expressions of faith and links to the Arab world.

Local mosque leaders said they were told to remove loudspeakers that broadcast the call to prayer from the tops of minarets and place them on the ground — and, more recently, to turn down the volume as well. Construction of a new mosque was halted in a dispute over its imposing dimensions and supposedly “Arab” architectural elements; its concrete skeleton now gathers dust. The city has barred children under 18 from studying Arabic, residents said.

Utsul residents said they wanted to learn Arabic not only to better understand Islamic texts, but also to communicate with Arab tourists who, before the pandemic, came to their restaurants, hotels and mosques. Some residents expressed frustration with the new restrictions, saying they called into question China’s promise to respect its 56 officially recognized ethnic groups.

A local religious leader who studied for five years in Saudi Arabia said the community had been told that they were no longer allowed to build domes.

“The mosques in the Middle East are like this. We want to build ours like that so they look like mosques and not just like houses,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because some residents had recently been briefly detained for criticizing the government. (In a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, a half-dozen plainclothes police officers questioned us in Sanya about our reporting at mosques.)

The community has sometimes resisted. In September, Utsul parents and students protested outside schools and government offices after several public schools forbade girls to wear head scarves to class. Weeks later, the authorities reversed the order, a rare bow to public pressure.

Still, the government sees the assimilation of China’s various ethnic minorities as key to building a stronger nation.

“We need to use ethnic differences as a foundation on which to build a unified Chinese consciousness,” said Xiong Kunxin, a professor of ethnic studies at Minzu University in Beijing. “This is the direction of China’s future development.”

For now, the Utsuls are in an uneasy coexistence with the authorities.

At the center of the Nankai Mosque’s courtyard, a red Chinese flag flies at nearly the same height as the tops of the minarets.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with China, Hainan island, Muslims, repression

Obscure Musicology Journal Sparks Battles Over Race and Free Speech

2021/02/16 2 Comments

Of interest:

A periodical devoted to the study of a long-dead European music theorist is an unlikely suspect to spark an explosive battle over race and free speech.

But the tiny Journal of Schenkerian Studies, with a paid circulation of about 30 copies an issue per year, has ignited a fiery reckoning over race and the limits of academic free speech, along with whiffs of a generational struggle. The battle threatens to consume the career of Timothy Jackson, a 62-year-old music theory professor at the University of North Texas, and led to calls to dissolve the journal.

It also prompted Professor Jackson to file an unusual lawsuitcharging the university with violating his First Amendment rights — while accusing his critics of defamation.

This tale began in the autumn of 2019 when Philip Ewell, a Black music theory professor at Hunter College, addressed the Society for Music Theory in Columbus, Ohio. He described music theory as dominated by white males and beset by racism. He held up the theorist Heinrich Schenker, who died in Austria in 1935, as an exemplar of that flawed world, a “virulent racist” who wrote of “primitive” and “inferior” races — views, he argued, that suffused his theories of music.

“I’ve only scratched the surface in showing out how Schenker’s racism permeates his music theories,” Professor Ewell said, accusing generations of Schenker scholars of trying to “whitewash” the theorist in an act of “colorblind racism.”

The society’s members — its professoriate is 94 percent white — responded with a standing ovation. Many younger faculty members and graduate students embraced his call to dismantle “white mythologies” and study non-European music forms. The tone was of repentance.

“We humbly acknowledge that we have much work to do to dismantle the whiteness and systemic racism that deeply shape our discipline,” the society’s executive board later stated.

At the University of North Texas, however, Professor Jackson, a white musicologist, watched a video of that speech and felt a swell of anger. His fellow scholars stood accused, some by name, of constructing a white “witness protection program” and shrugging off Schenker’s racism. That struck him as unfair and inaccurate, as some had explored Schenker’s oft-hateful views on race and ethnicity.

A tenured music theory professor, Professor Jackson was the grandson of Jewish émigrés and had lost many relatives in the Holocaust. He had a singular passion: He searched out lost works by Jewish composers hounded and killed by the Nazis.

And he devoted himself to the study of Schenker, a towering Jewish intellect credited with stripping music to its essence in search of an internal language. The Journal of Schenkerian Studies, published under the aegis of the University of North Texas, was read by a small but intense coterie of scholars.

He and other North Texas professors decided to explore Professor Ewell’s claims about connections between Schenker’s racial views and music theories.

They called for essays and published every submission. Five essays stoutly defended Professor Ewell; most of the remaining 10 essays took strong issue. One was anonymous. Another was plainly querulous. (“Ewell of course would reply that I am white and by extension a purveyor of white music theory, while he is Black,” wrote David Beach, a retired dean of music at the University of Toronto. “I can’t argue with that.”).

Professor Jackson’s essay was barbed. Schenker, he wrote, was no privileged white man. Rather he was a Jew in prewar Germany, the definition of the persecuted other. The Nazis destroyed much of his work and his wife perished in a concentration camp.

Professor Jackson then took an incendiary turn. He wrote that Professor Ewell had scapegoated Schenker within “the much larger context of Black-on-Jew attacks in the United States” and that his “denunciation of Schenker and Schenkerians may be seen as part and parcel of the much broader current of Black anti-Semitism.” He wrote that such phenomena “currently manifest themselves in myriad ways, including the pattern of violence against Jews, the obnoxious lyrics of some hip-hop songs, etc.”

Noting the paucity of Black musicians in classical music, Professor Jackson wrote that “few grow up in homes where classical music is profoundly valued.” He proposed increased funding for music education and a commitment to demolishing “institutionalized racist barriers.”

And he took pointed shots at Professor Ewell.

“I understand full well,” Professor Jackson wrote, “that Ewell only attacks Schenker as a pretext to his main argument: That liberalism is a racist conspiracy to deny rights to ‘people of color.’”

His remarks lit a rhetorical match. The journal appeared in late July. Within days the executive board of the Society for Music Theory stated that several essays contained “anti-Black statements and personal ad hominem attacks” and said that its failure to invite Professor Ewell to respond was designed to “replicate a culture of whiteness.”

Soon after, 900 professors and graduate students signed a letter denouncing the journal’s editors for ignoring peer review. The essays, they stated, constituted “anti-Black racism.”

Graduate students at the University of North Texas issued an unsigned manifesto calling for the journal to be dissolved and for the “potential removal” of faculty members who used it “to promote racism.”

University of North Texas officials in December released an investigation that accused Professor Jackson of failing to hew to best practices and of having too much power over the journal’s graduate student editor. He was barred from the magazine, and money for the Schenker Center was suspended.

Jennifer Evans-Crowley, the university’s provost, did not rule out that disciplinary steps might be taken against Professor Jackson. “I can’t speak to that at this time,” she told The New York Times.

Professor Jackson stands shunned by fellow faculty. Two graduate students who support him told me their peers feared that working with him could damage their careers.

“Everything has become exceedingly polarized and the Twitter mob is like a quasi-fascist police state,” Professor Jackson said in an interview. “Any imputation of racism is anathema and therefore I must be exorcised.”

This controversy raises intertwined questions. What is the role of universities in policing intellectual debate? Academic duels can be metaphorically bloody affairs. Marxists slash and parry with monetarists; postmodernists trade punches with modernists. Tenure and tradition traditionally shield sharp-tongued academics from censure.

For a university to intrude struck others as alarming. Samantha Harris, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, a free speech advocacy group, urged the university to drop its investigation.She did not argue Professor Jackson’s every word was temperate.

“This is an academic disagreement and it should be hashed out in journals of music theory,” Ms. Harris said. “The academic debate centers on censorship and putting orthodoxy over education, and that is chilling.”

That said, race is an electric wire in American society and a traditional defense of untrammeled speech on campus competes with a newer view that speech itself can constitute violence. Professors who denounced the journal stressed that they opposed censorship but noted pointedly that cultural attitudes are shifting.

“I’m educated in the tradition that says the best response to bad speech is more speech,” said Professor Edward Klorman of McGill University. “But sometimes the traditional idea of free speech comes into conflict with safety and inclusivity.”

There is too a question with which intellectuals have long wrestled. What to make of intellectuals who voice monstrous thoughts? The renowned philosopher Martin Heidegger was a Nazi Party member and Paul de Man, a deconstructionist literary theorist, wrote for pro-Nazi publications. The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima eroticized fascism and tried to inspire a coup.

Schenker, who was born in Galicia, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was an ardent cultural Germanophile and given to dyspeptic diatribes. He spoke of the “filthy” French; English, and Italians as “inferior races”; and Slavs as “half animals.” Africans had a “cannibal spirit.”

Did his theoretical brilliance counter the weight of disreputable rages?

Professor Ewell argued that Schenker’s racism and theories are inseparable. “At a minimum,” he wrote in a paper, “we must present Schenker’s work to our students in full view of his racist beliefs.”

The dispute has played out beyond the United States. Forty-six scholars and musicians in Europe and the Middle East wrote a defense of Professor Jackson and sounded a puzzled note. Professor Ewell, they wrote, delivered a provocative polemic with accusations aimed at living scholars and Professor Jackson simply answered in kind.

Neither professor is inclined to back down. A cellist and scholar of Russian classical music, Professor Ewell, 54, describes himself asan activist for racial, gender and social justice and a critic of whiteness in music theory.

Shortly after the Journal of Schenkerian Studies appeared in July, Professor Ewell — who eight years ago published in that journal — canceled a lecture at the University of North Texas. He said he had not read the essays that criticized him.

“I won’t read them because I won’t participate in my dehumanization,” he told The Denton Record-Chronicle in Texas.“They were incensed by my Blackness challenging their whiteness.”

Professor Ewell, who also is on the faculty of the City University of New York Graduate Center, declined an interview with The Times. He is part of a generation of scholars who are undertaking critical-race examinations of their fields. In “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” the paper he presented in Columbus, he writes that he is for all intents “a practitioner of white music theory” and that “rigorous conversations about race and whiteness” are required to “make fundamental antiracist changes in our structures and institutions.”

For music programs to require mastery of German, he has said, “is racist obviously.” He has criticized the requirement that music Ph.D. students study German or a limited number of “white” languages, noting that at Yale he needed a dispensation to study Russian. He wrote that the “antiracist policy solution” would be “to require languages with one new caveat: any language — including sign language and computer languages, for instance — is acceptable with the exception of Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French or German, which will only be allowed by petition as a dispensation.”

Last April he fired a broadside at Beethoven, writing that it would be academically irresponsible to call him more than an “above average” composer. Beethoven, he wrote, “has been propped up by whiteness and maleness for 200 years.”

As for Schenker, Professor Ewell argued that his racism informed his music theories: “As with the inequality of races, Schenker believed in the inequality of tones.”

That view is contested. Professor Eric Wen arrived in the United States from Hong Kong six decades ago and amid slurs and loneliness discovered in classical music what he describes as a colorblind solace. Schenker held a key to mysteries.

“Schenker penetrated to the heart of what makes music enduring and inspiring,” said Professor Wen, who teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. “He was no angel and so what? His ideology is problematic but his insights are massive.”

How this ends is not clear. The university report portrayed Professor Jackson as hijacking the journal, ignoring a graduate student editor, making decisions on his own and tossing aside peer review.

A trove of internal emails, which were included as exhibits in the lawsuit, casts doubt on some of those claims. Far from being a captive project of Professor Jackson, the emails show that members of the journal’s editorial staff were deeply involved in the planning of the issue, and that several colleagues on the faculty at North Texas, including one seen as an ally of Professor Ewell, helped draft its call for papers.

When cries of racism arose, all but one of those colleagues denounced the journal. A graduate student editor publicly claimed to have participated because he “feared retaliation” from Professor Jackson, who was his superior, and said he had essentially agreed with Professor Ewell all along. The emails paint a contradictory picture, as he had described Professor Ewell’s paper as “naive.”

Professor Jackson hired a lawyer who specialized in such cases, Michael Allen, and the lawsuit he filed against his university charges retaliation against his free speech rights. More extraordinary, he sued fellow professors and a graduate student for defamation. That aspect of the lawsuit was a step too far for FIRE, the free speech group, which supported targeting the university but took the view that suing colleagues and students was a tit-for-tat exercise in squelching speech.

“We believe such lawsuits are generally unwise,” the group stated, “and can often chill or target core protected speech.”

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with Heinrich Schenker, Journal of Schenkerian Studies, music theory, Philip Ewell, Timothy Jackson

Numbers reveal a ‘diversity deficit’ in boardrooms of the charitable and non-profit sectors

2021/02/15 Leave a comment

Good and useful survey by Statistics Canada and ongoing work by Senator Omidvar in this area:

There’s a “diversity deficit” in the boardrooms of Canada’s charitable and not-for-profit sector, even though government funding and public donations are their main source of revenues.

A Statistics Canada survey has found 59 per cent of responding board members in the sector were women, but designated groups appeared to be under-represented in the governance of these organizations.

Of the 6,182 people who sat on these boards and responded to the survey, only 14 per cent identified themselves as immigrants; 12 per cent as belonging to a visible minority group; nine per cent as LGBTQ2+; six per cent as persons with a disability; and three per cent as First Nations, Métis or Inuit.

Only 42 per cent of the respondents reported that their organization has a written policy on board diversity, said the report released Thursday.

According to the federal agency, 22 per cent of the Canadian population are immigrants; 19 per cent belong to a visible minority group; 22 per cent of those aged 15 and above have one or more disabilities; and five per cent are First Nations, Métis or Inuit. A 2015 Canadian health report found three per cent of Canadians aged between 18 and 59 self-identified as gay or bisexual, and other estimates have been significantly higher.

Although this survey data was collected through crowdsourcing from professional networks within the sector — and not through probability-based sampling — it provides a glimpse into how well the leadership reflects and includes the voices of diverse communities.

“The numbers tell us that there is a diversity deficit in the governance of the sector. Many charities have challenges in this context,” says Sen. Ratna Omidvar of Ontario, who challenged the sector last summer to start collecting demographic data in the wake of the racial reckoning spearheaded by the Black Lives Matter Movement.

“It’s important for all of the society, particularly for charities and not-for-profit organizations because governors set their missions. They decide how dollars are spent. They make decisions on how an organization will respond to this or that. They are in control of the resources that come both from the government and donors.”

Researchers surveyed almost 9,000 people in total and 6,182 of them reported sitting on a board in the non-profit sector.

Three quarters of these board members belonged to an organization that operates locally; 13 per cent at a provincial level; eight per cent nationally; and three per cent internationally.

Their organizations engaged in a range of activities: social services (23 per cent); arts and culture (16 per cent); education and research (13 per cent); sports and recreation (12 per cent); and health (10 per cent). More than half of the respondents said their organizations served at least one of the designated minority groups.

While the local organizations were more likely to be involved in social services, their provincial and national counterparts tended to engage in education and research or in grants and fundraising, or were business or professional associations or unions. The international organizations reported global activities or arts and culture as their main focus.

Organizations engaged in sports and recreation or in religious non-profits and charities were least likely to have a written policy on board diversity. Respondents belonging to the designated groups were often involved in organizations with an official diversity mandate.

Omidvar said it’s important for the sector to look at governance through a diversity lens and follow a federal reporting system that’s already required of corporations to disclose demographic diversity in their governance.

“We ask nothing of the charitable and non-profit sector. We all think of them as angels and they are, but even angels need evidence to take further actions,” she said. “We need reliable, ongoing surveys and data that’s analyzed to move forward.”

One suggestion, she said, is for the Canada Revenue Agency to require every charitable and not-for-profit organization to submit information pertaining to their governance diversity in order to renew their registration status annually.

“Adding that one question is not going to cost anyone any money, but it will get us the evidence that we need and then we will be able to take it further,” said Omidvar.

“It requires political will. There are candidates who are qualified, willing, ready and able to sit on boards. They did not get that opportunity. It’s time that Canadians woke up to that diversity deficit in our charities and non-profit sector.”

Source: Numbers reveal a ‘diversity deficit’ in boardrooms of the charitable and non-profit sectors

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with Board diversity, charitable and not-for-profit, Senator Omidvar, StatsCan

‘I’m Speaking Out:’ Calgary Firefighters Allege Decades of Racism

2021/02/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

When Chris Coy became Calgary’s first Black firefighter 25 years ago, his heroic vision of the profession was almost immediately upended.

First, he said, during training he was hazed more than his colleagues, strapped to a stretcher against his will and repeatedly doused with a fire hose. Then there were the co-workers who ostracized him at lunch. Throughout his career, he said, fellow firefighters used a racial slur directed at Black people.

For years, Mr. Coy said he suffered in silence as he feared speaking out would mean dismissal, or, worse, other firefighters not shielding him from danger in the field.

But since retiring in December, Mr. Coy has begun speaking publicly about what he said was decades of racially motived physical and verbal abuse, joining a group of current and former firefighters who have been voicing similar grievances. The city’s mayor and fire chief have acknowledged the racism within the department and pledged to address it.

“Here in Canada we are proud and sometimes smug about our commitment to diversity,” Naheed Nenshi, Calgary’s mayor, said in an interview. “I don’t want anyone who gets a paycheck I sign to feel that they aren’t valued because of the color of their skin.”

In Canada, a country that prides itself on its liberal humanism and multiculturalism, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made reconciling with Indigenous peoples an early priority of his premiership. Now, the country has been undergoing a national reckoning about institutional racism in its city halls, law enforcement and cultural institutions, particularly since the global uprising for Black rights spurred by last year’s police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Brenda Lucki, the chief of Canada’s storied national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was recently forced to walk back her previous denials of systemic racism within the force. Mr. Trudeau was among those arguing that police forces across the country were grappling with systemic racism.

While there have been complaints of discrimination in other fire departments in Canada, Calgary has become a high-profile case. The accusations of racism at the fire department were first reported by the CBC, the national broadcaster.

Mr. Nenshi said that while Calgary had evolved into one of Canada’s most diverse cities, people of color and women were woefully underrepresented in the fire department. Of 1,400 firefighters in the department, he said, only 40 were women; the city does not track minority numbers.

The department has conducted two internal reviews of workplace culture that have not been made public; the mayor cited the need for employee confidentiality. An internal investigation into racism is also underway, Adam Noble-Johnson, a spokesman for the mayor, said Wednesday.

Calgary’s fire chief, Steve Dongworth, said in an interview that he was proud the fire department had counted Mr. Coy among its ranks and stressed that all accusations of racism, bullying and sexism were thoroughly investigated. He declined to comment on individual complaints.

“I have to acknowledge that we live in a society where ingrained racism and sexism exists and this extends to the Calgary Fire Department,” he said. “We are predominantly a Caucasian male department and we are trying to change that.”

Alberta, an oil and cattle center in the country’s west, has long been billed as “the Texas of Canada.” It is a province where socially conservative political parties dominate and where a highlight of the year is the annual Calgary Stampede, the world’s largest outdoor rodeo.

But decades of migration have transformed the social fabric and politics of Calgary, Alberta’s biggest city, which elected a Muslim mayor more than a decade ago. Today, about one-third of the city’s residents are Black, people of color, or Indigenous, according to City Hall.

Mr. Coy said tensions between the old and new Alberta had boiled over into racism at the fire department, Canada’s third-largest, where, he said, a culture of nepotism still held sway.

This summer, after thousands of antiracism protesters took to the streets of Calgary, the city held three days of public hearings on the issue of local systemic racism.

Among those testifying was Shannon Pennington, a veteran firefighter. He described an episode about a decade ago, when a large pink panther stuffed toy was smeared with black shoe polish on its face and hands, and hung with a rope around its neck from the rafters of Calgary’s Fire Station 5. The toy was wearing a uniform belonging to a Black firefighter.

“It was a mock lynching,” said Mr. Coy, who said he counseled the Black firefighter. “I was outraged but the victim didn’t want to do anything because he feared a backlash.” The alleged victim did not return phone calls.

Elder Doreen Spence, 83, an Indigenous nurse who counsels minority firefighters, also testified about the case of Barry Dawson, an Indigenous firefighter, who rose to the rank of captain and who took his own life in November 2017, at age 47. Ms. Spence, who had dinner with Mr. Dawson the night before he died, said in an interview that he had told her about being bullied repeatedly about his hair, which he wore long to honor his culture.

“He told me he had PTSD from the job, and the constant bullying and verbal abuse exacerbated it,” she said in an interview. (The fire department said Mr. Dawson had been asked to cut his hair during training, in line with regulations, but later was allowed to wear it long).

Following the hearings, a group of current and former minority firefighters, led by Mr. Coy, wrote a letter to Chief Dongworth, saying they had faced an “extremely toxic” environment at work.

“We have been ostracized, humiliated, degraded, slandered, undermined, ignored, verbally and physically assaulted,” the letter said.

They made nine demands including calling for the creation of an independent body to investigate workplace abuses.

While firefighters the world over are revered as heroes, Carrie Edwards-Clemons, President of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters, said the issues in Calgary reflected a global challenge in a profession dominated by a white old boys network.

“The difference now is that the world is paying attention and people are saying ‘enough is enough,’” said Ms. Edwards-Clemons, who is deputy chief of Flint, Michigan’s fire department.

In Canada, Chris Coy said he was determined that discrimination at fire departments come out of the shadows.

The son of Jamaican immigrants who came to Canada in the 1960s, Mr. Coy, 60, previously taught English literature to college students. As a firefighter, he went to the scene of a lethal explosion at an oil recycling plant, rescued children with their necks stuck in playground equipment and worked on a recovery team pulling dead bodies out of the river.

He said the racism at the department was never far beneath the surface. If basketball was playing on the fire station’s television, he said colleagues would say, “Why are we watching N-word ball?”

Even after training, he said, he was blocked by superiors from attending fire emergencies, with no explanation.

In 2013, he said he was promoted to captain of a station near Calgary’s airport, on the basis of seniority. His colleagues stopped using the racial slur in front of him, he said, but he would still overhear them using it.

Anwer Amery, a retired Calgary firefighter with Middle Eastern roots, said he never considered himself a visible minority member until he began to work for the department.

As a young recruit, he said, other firefighters called him the “Snake charmer,” “Turban twister” and “a sand N-word.”

“People asked if I ate sand lizards,” he recalled, saying he was singled out for menial tasks like scrubbing the walls of the station. He said physical abuse followed, including being spit on and having wet rags thrown at him. When he complained to superiors, he said they laughed.

After he was promoted to captain in 2010, he said he routinely faced insubordination from other firefighters. “I was the person in charge of emergencies so if people disobeyed or walked away, it was dangerous for the public and other responders.”

After a junior employee who had refused to obey his orders complained to the firefighter’s union about him, he said, he was suddenly suspended by the department, without cause. He said he was eventually offered a settlement of $17,500 from the city, which he refused, and lost out on at least $200,000 in wages. Distraught, he retired in 2016.

“I’m speaking out to stop this from happening again,” he said.

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with Calgary, firefighters

Senators demand race-based data on who requests, receives MAID in Canada

2021/02/13 Leave a comment

Would be good to have:

Senators want the federal government to collect race-based data on who requests and receives medical assistance in dying in Canada.

They approved Thursday an amendment to Bill C-7 requiring the government to collect such data.

The bill would expand access to assisted dying to intolerably suffering individuals who are not near the natural end of their lives.

The amendment reflects concern that Black, racialized and Indigenous people with disabilities, already marginalized and facing systemic discrimination in the health system, could be induced to end their lives prematurely due to poverty and lack of support services.

Sen. Mobina Jaffer, a member of the Independent Senators Group who proposed the amendment, noted that no race-based analysis was done when the bill was being drafted.

“One in four people have been left out of the data collection,” she told the Senate.

Her amendment was widely supported and passed on a voice vote with no objections, other than the government’s representative in the Senate, Sen. Marc Gold, saying that he wanted to abstain.

Sen. Kim Pate, another member of the Independent Senators Group, said the amendment won’t ensure that no one opts for an assisted death as a result of unequal access to health care, housing and social and income supports.

But she said it will ensure that “the government must at least provide some answers about who makes use of Bill C-7 and under what circumstances.”

Pate said the government should also be required to provide more information on who accesses assisted dying, including income, whether they are institutionalized and whether they had access to alternative means of relieving their suffering and to social and financial supports.

Such information could have been provided had a legally mandated parliamentary review of the five-year-old assisted dying law begun in June as it was supposed to. Numerous senators expressed frustration that they’re being asked to revamp the law before the promised review has even begun.

Justice Minister David Lametti has blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for disrupting plans for the review but, while he’s said he hopes it can begin soon, he’s been unable to promise a specific start time.

Senators took matters into their own hands Thursday, approving another amendment requiring that a joint parliamentary committee be struck within 30 days of the bill receiving royal assent to conduct a comprehensive review of Canada’s assisted dying regime. The committee would report back by Sept. 15 or, if Parliament is prorogued or dissolved for an election before then, within 180 days of the committee being re-established.

“Passing C-7 with a hope and a wish or even a promise that the review will happen seems to me to be a poor bet,” said Sen. Scott Tannas, leader of the Canadian Senators Group who proposed the amendment.

“We need to be clear, in writing, in the bill.”

Senators rejected Thursday, by a vote of 63-12, with three abstentions, another amendment that would have made it a criminal offence to compel anyone to provide or “facilitate” an assisted death.

Conservative Senate leader Don Plett proposed the amendment in a bid to ensure that medical practitioners who have moral objections to assisted dying are not required to refer a patient who requests an assisted death to another practitioner who will help them — as is required in some provinces.

But Gold and other senators argued that such an amendment would likely be an unconstitutional use of the federal criminal law power to invade provincial jurisdiction over the regulation of health services.

Thursday’s debate wrapped up the time allotted for amendments to be proposed. However, debate on one amendment, proposed by Sen. Marilou McPhedran of the Independent Senators Groups, was cut short after Gold asked the Speaker to rule it out of order.

Debate and vote on that amendment could still occur next week if it is ruled in order.

McPhedran proposed to delete all provisions in the bill that would allow assisted dying for people who are not nearing the natural end of life. She argued that such provisions single out people with disabilities and send the message that having a disability is “a fate worse than death.”

However, Gold argued that McPhedran’s amendment is directly contrary to the objective of Bill C-7, which is intended to bring the law into compliance with a 2019 Quebec Superior Court ruling.

That ruling struck down a provision in the law that allows assisted dying only for individuals whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable.

After the ruling on McPhedran’s amendment, the Senate will begin final debate Tuesday on the bill, as amended by senators, with a final vote to take place by the end of the day Wednesday.

The schedule is intended to give the government time to meet the thrice-extended court-imposed deadline of Feb. 26.

Earlier this week, senators approved several substantial amendments to the bill, including one that would allow people who fear losing mental capacity to make advance requests for assisted death and another that would impose an 18-month time limit on the bill’s proposed ban on assisted dying for people suffering solely from mental illnesses.

If senators approve an amended bill next week, it will have to go back to the House of Commons to decide whether to accept or reject the changes and then back to the Senate to decide whether to accept the Commons’ verdict.

Source: Senators demand race-based data on who requests, receives MAID in Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with C-7, MAID, race-based data

Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Vaccination nation – or, a word with the prime minister

2021/02/13 Leave a comment

From our family doctor:

As a family doctor, I never dreamed I’d speak to the prime minister about a life and death issue for Canadians. But this afternoon (Thursday), joined by my RN colleague Amie Varley, I am moderating a panel of health-care workers and community advocates across the country. We’ve been called “front-line heroes” throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but our voices are often excluded from decision-making tables. I put together this panel to have a national conversation about COVID-19 vaccination strategies. Many of the issues that keep me up at night are similar to the issues that keep my colleagues, patients, friends and family awake.

What it is that we are all worrying about? Geographic disparities. My friend is a doctor in Kenora. She told me that in a 700-km corridor, from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay, none of the doctors and nurses in intensive care units (ICUs) and emergency departments, staff in LTC, health workers in any setting – has received the vaccine. She told me how fragile their hospital is in a remote area, where their entire system could collapse if anyone on their team gets sick.

We’re worried about systemic inequalities in our health-care system. First Nations, Inuit and Metis patients, and racialized Canadians, occupy a disproportionate number of the beds in our ICUs, and make up a disproportionate number of deaths from COVID-19. People who live in poverty, or are homeless, are far less likely to access the vaccine than affluent people are. Registration for vaccination may be entirely online, reliant on individuals to act as if they are buying tickets to a rock concert. How will my patients who are in their 80s, or my patients who do not own computers, who have already struggled to book COVID-19 tests, ensure that they get their shots?

There are so many issues of equity and diversity. In the process of putting together our panel, I was approached by people who wanted to know if we would talk about the vulnerability of seniors who live in the community, people with disabilities, caregivers outside of institutional settings. I spoke with people who were concerned we’d forget about Canadians who live or work in shelters, in jails. I was also approached by women’s health experts, discussing the need for national standards to support pregnant and lactating women as recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine.

I couldn’t include every advocate or every subject in our conversation with the prime minister, let alone every province and territory. How does one cover issues of racism, ableism, ageism, sexism, language barriers, socioeconomic barriers, discrimination faced by LGBTQ patients, and all the ways in which our health care fundamentally disadvantages members of our society, all in a one-hour conversation about access to COVID-19 vaccine across the country?

I also wanted to address the idea that we are “in this together,” when in fact we tend to work in silos. Our panel brings us together: Nurses, doctors, midwives, pharmacists, personal support workers, health policy researchers, patient advocates, essential caregivers. We end the panel by talking about how we can collaborate to get the COVID-19 vaccine into the arms of Canadians.

While I am still pinching myself, amazed that this is possible – I’ve told my children to speak up for what matters, but who’d have thought I’d speak directly to the prime minister? – our panel is an example of the diverse voices that should be at every decision-making table. This is only the beginning of a collaborative conversation that I hope will continue.

Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, MD, CCFP, PhD, is a family doctor and anthropologist who writes about health policy and politics. She also co-hosts the podcast Rx:Advocacy.ca

Source: Nili Kaplan-Myrth: Vaccination nation – or, a word with the prime minister

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with COVID-19, healthcare, Kaplan-Myrth

Why the British empire cannot explain the politics of the present

2021/02/12 Leave a comment

Interesting reflections on the empire and the complex identities many of us have:

This review is the product of empire, and not just because the two books in question take empire as their topic. I am here today because my grandmother, the South African descendant of white British colonists – who erected a complex system of racial apartheid in order to continue minority rule – met and had a child with a descendant of the enslaved Javanese population, who were brought to South Africa by the Dutch empire. Heavily pregnant, my grandmother exercised her right as a Commonwealth citizen to come to the United Kingdom. There she met my grandfather, the descendant of eastern European Jews who fled the anti-Semitic persecution of the Russian empire to come to Britain in the 19th century. Years later, while working at the Africa Centre in London, my mother met a British Zimbabwean, himself only here because his ancestors, like many Commonwealth citizens, were encouraged to come to the UK to top up the labour force.

If any of those three empires had not existed – if just one of them had collapsed due to internal strife or external defeat a little earlier – then I would not exist and you would not be reading this sentence. (I leave the question of whether this fact goes in the “pros” or “cons” column of those empires up to you.)

The legacy of Europe’s empires is so bound into our society that trying to remove their influence upon us is as futile a task as attempting to remove the egg from a baked cake, to borrow an analogy that the author and Times writer Sathnam Sanghera uses in Empireland. As he superbly chronicles, the legacy of the British empire is everywhere you look. Perhaps most fittingly of all, the word “loot” is itself appropriated from the Hindi word “lut”: the spoils of war.

Although Empireland is the product of wide reading rather than original research, it is a fantastic introduction for anyone who wants to learn more about the British empire. Sanghera shares his knowledge without pretension or affectation.

He also has a peerless eye for a killer fact and a great story. My favourite is that of Sake Dean Mahomed, who in the course of just one life managed to become the first Indian author to be published in English, the founder in 1810 of the UK’s first curry house and the man who established the first dodgy massage parlour – though not in the same building.

My time with Sanghera’s book was so enjoyable that it feels almost churlish to admit that I found its overarching argument wholly unconvincing. Nevertheless, I am churlish, so here goes.

Sanghera suggests that greater awareness of our imperial past would reshape our understanding of our post-imperial present. He argues that Brexit is, in part, “an exercise in empire nostalgia”. There is, to my eyes, an obvious problem here: it’s hard to claim that the Netherlands has fully come to terms with the Dutch empire, which left its mark on my family history as much as the British empire did. “Blacking up”, now rightly considered to be a shameful practice in the UK, is still widely tolerated in the Netherlands. Tony Blair apologised for Britain’s role in the slave trade in 2007; the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, is still resisting making a similar apology in 2021. Yet it is unlikely that the Netherlands will follow the UK out of the European Union any time soon.

And what about France? As Robert Gildea details in his peerless 2019 book Empires of the Mind, France and Britain’s attachments to their empires were so great that, even when their struggle against Nazi Germany was at its bleakest, the French government-in-exile and the British government spent precious time squabbling over the future of their imperial possessions. France is an essential component of the modern EU, and yet like the UK struggles to confront its imperial legacy. Sanghera is right that we can no more disentangle the UK of today from the imperial power of time gone by than we can remove the egg from a cake – but if we’re comparing it to other countries we do need to be sure that they don’t have the same problem.

Sanghera puts far too much faith in the power of historical education to change minds and thus change the present. If only people were taught that so many of Britain’s “black and Asian people had been made citizens through the imperial project”, then the debate over multiculturalism would be “instantly transformed”.

This is obviously untrue. To take the system of apartheid in South Africa: it was not erected because its architects were ignorant of their imperial legacy but because they feared terrible retribution in the event of black majority rule. Nor would anyone sensible be reassured by the idea that immigration and multiculturalism are simply “colonizin’ in reverse”, as the poet Louise Bennett puts it. Colonisation was a violent, disruptive and sometimes extinction-level event for the colonised people. Anyone who thought that immigration was the same process via a different means would be mad not to resist it.

There is much to agree with in Sanghera’s book – his case for the restitution of stolen treasures is very powerful indeed – but I struggle to understand how someone who has read so much imperial history could think that a better public understanding of that past would in itself “instantly transform” our shared understanding of the world today. Even historians don’t agree on what the empire tells us about either the Britain of 1821 or the Britain of 2021.

In the UK, an improved understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust has not made our politics any more tolerant or welcoming to refugees and victims of genocide today. Since the Holocaust moved the world to recognise and define the crime of genocide, neither the United Nations nor the UK has ever managed to declare that one is taking place until after the crime has happened. Improved understanding of the past is a good thing, but it is not a substitute for winning political arguments in the present.

One person who would agree with my assessment is Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. He also agrees with Sanghera that you cannot remove the legacy of empire from the present economic and global order.

In The New Age of Empire Andrews argues that two of the Enlightenment’s greatest thinkers, Immanuel Kant and David Hume, “provided the universal and scientific framework of knowledge that maintained colonial logic”, and that their own racism and bigotry was built into their thinking. In turn, the systems of thought that we have built on their ideas also bear the indelible stain of that prejudice. As the formal structures of empire have been abandoned, new and more insidious ones, in the shape of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have taken their place. They, too, are irretrievably tainted by the imperial ambitions of their founders.

Modern ideas of racial tolerance and unity do, unquestionably, have a racist ancestor. But the germ theory of disease can also trace its development through a number of discredited ideas: the miasma theory that illnesses are spread by “bad air”; and the idea that the mere act of smelling food could eventually contribute to fattening you up. Yet our modern understanding of how disease spreads is not doomed to failure because of its ancestry in what we now know to be flawed thinking.

Andrews derides what he calls the “white left” and its narrow focus. He dismisses the “Preston model” beloved by many Corbynite thinkers. “One of the cooperatives so praised in Preston is a coffee shop,” he writes, “and while we celebrate the benefits to the worker in Britain, the shop’s success is only possible because of the racial exploitation of the poor people farming the coffee beans it uses for next to nothing.” The new British left actually wants not a social democracy, but a return to the old “imperial democracy”.

His solution is to throw the whole cake into the dustbin of history. His focus is on “uniting Africa and the African diaspora to create a true revolution, which remains the only solution to the problem of racism”, and for the African diaspora to return to a “promised land” in Africa. This seems to me to be a little more difficult than simply getting the Preston café to pay a fair and equitable price for its coffee.

But it is central to Andrews’ belief system that it is easier to persuade the African diaspora that their aspirations are best realised back in Africa – and to persuade Africans to abandon both the borders inherited from colonialism and the dream of new borders for each of the continent’s many different peoples – than it is to get a northern English café to sell lattes at a fair price. As he writes at the conclusion of the book, “if you have come this far and believe that White people offering a meaningful hand of friendship is the solution then you have missed the point”.

I have to declare an interest here: I am the product of several generations’ worth of belief that enduring relationships can be struck across racial divides: a white South African can fall in love with a Cape Malay South African. A white British woman and a Jewish man can raise a family together. And, hell, a British-African man can father a child and disappear into the sunset without causing too much undue damage to the child in question. I have skin in the game: literally, my skin, the tone of which sits somewhere between my father’s and my mother’s.

It’s never made precisely clear in The New Age of Empire what the vision for people like me is in this united diaspora: do we get to return to Africa, or not? Is there a place for my white partner in the pan-African promised land? Do I ever get to see my mother and grandmother again? Would I have to reconcile with my father in the promised land? Would I be able to visit my great-aunt and great-uncle, who are Jewish? I’m not saying that all of these questions are deal-breakers for me, but I would certainly like to know the answers.

And if we are to discredit and discard the Enlightenment thinkers, how can pan-Africanism be the answer? Pan-Africanism is itself a product of the empire. The movement wasn’t dreamed up in Africa but by its displaced descendants in the West. The most influential and successful African supporter of the movement and a key force in the creation of what is now the African Union, Kwame Nkrumah, was likewise educated in the West, and was influenced by Marxism – which is, in turn, informed by the very ideas and philosophies that Andrews regards as irreversibly contaminated by their own imperial legacy.

Sanghera and Andrews share a common blindspot: while modern Britain is shaped by the empire, the British empire should not itself be seen as the starting point for British history. The empire was shaped by its pre-imperial past, and the Britain of today is shaped by both. The transatlantic slave trade, which undoubtedly still has an influence on the world today, can trace its roots to the slave trade within Africa, as the historian Marcus Rediker describes in his 2007 book The Slave Ship.

The empire cannot plausibly be the cause of what Sanghera considers to be a unique brand of racism, not least because that would account for neither the West’s pre-imperial anti-Semitism nor its pre-imperial racism. (As Sanghera recounts, long before empire, Elizabeth I was complaining that London’s Moorish population had grown too large.)

There is a similar problem in Andrews’ approach: my African ancestors, who sold the luckless members of other tribes, were not motivated by white supremacy but by a far older and universal sin: greed, and a desire to treat the perceived “other” – whether they look like us or not – as less than themselves.

History can illuminate the present. But it is only by confronting our shared and continued capacity for brutality against those we perceive as being unlike us – for profit or convenience – that we can build a better future.

Stephen Bush is political editor of the New Statesman. His daily briefing, Morning Call, provides a quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics.

Source: Why the British empire cannot explain the politics of the present

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with British Empire, identities, Pan-Africanism, Stephen Bush

B.C. premier ‘alarmed’ by systemic racism allegations, promises anti-racism law

2021/02/12 Leave a comment

To watch and see similarities and differences with other provinces:

British Columbia’s premier says the government is working on anti-racism legislation that may be introduced this year.

John Horgan also said Wednesday he was “alarmed” to hear allegations of racism at the Royal B.C. Museum, which should be a welcome and respectful place for all Canadians.

Horgan said Melanie Mark, the minister of tourism, arts, culture and sport, is working with the Public Service Agency to ensure allegations of racism are followed up on as part of its investigation.

He said the museum’s board and senior staff have taken multiple allegations of racism by employees seriously and the findings of the investigation will be made public.

The resignation of Jack Lohman, the chief executive officer of the museum, was announced earlier this week after nine years in the position.

In a news release, the museum’s board of directors said Lohman’s departure on Friday was “mutually agreed” to be in the best interests of the organization as it “addresses current internal issues,” without elaborating.

Last month, the First Nations Leadership Council said in a statement that it was “disturbed by several recent media reports” alleging “ongoing systemic racism and toxic working conditions” at the museum.

The museum said Lohman was not available for comment this week and board chair Daniel Muzyka would not be available until Thursday.

Horgan said Mark is well placed to help the museum, which operates as a Crown corporation.

“Nobody takes this more seriously than minister Mark and I’m grateful that she is in place at this difficult time for not just the leadership, of course, at the museum but (for) all of those across British Columbia who look so fondly at the museum as a public asset, a real jewel for all British Columbians,” he said.

Horgan says a revitalization plan for the museum is underway as the province works with the federal government to understand the value of the facility’s archival materials.

“We need to have a respectful workplace, we need to make sure that it’s open for everyone to come, free of persecution or any hints of racism.”

Muzyka will serve as acting CEO until a replacement is found for Lohman, who was described by the board as “an internationally recognized expert in museums.”

It said “the board of directors acknowledges, with appreciation, his nine years of vision and service.”

Source: B.C. premier ‘alarmed’ by systemic racism allegations, promises anti-racism law

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with anti-racism legislation, British Columbia, First Nations Leadership Council, Premier Horgan

A seat at the table: inside efforts to boost diversity, Black representation in federal candidate nominations

2021/02/11 Leave a comment

We will likely see the extent to which these efforts improve representation in the expected election later this year:

Achieving a representative House of Commons requires diversity among the candidates nominated for election, and since 2019, new efforts are being made both within political parties and beyond to increase diversity, including Black representation, in federal politics.

But new rules only go as far as a party has the will to take them, and Samara Centre for Democracy research manager Adelina Petit-Vouriot notes that between 2004 and 2015, only 17 per cent of all candidates were nominated through “clear contests.”

“I’m skeptical of whatever rules and procedures parties put in place for themselves, because, at the end of the day, they’re often not followed and it’s up to parties themselves to regulate their nomination rules,” said Ms. Petit-Vouriot. “There’s often many loopholes or rationales that they can use to appoint many candidates and to reduce the competitiveness and openness of their nomination contests.”

In 2019, based on a dataset compiled by Samara, The Hill Times, and McGill University’s Jerome Black, roughly 15.7 per cent of all candidates who ran for the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Greens, the Bloc Québécois, and the People’s Party were from a visible minority group, compared to 12.9 per cent in 2015.

Looking specifically to Black representation, 49 candidates in 2019 identified as Black: 21 ran for the NDP, 11 for the Greens, seven for the Liberals, six for the People’s Party, and two each for the Conservatives and Bloc. In the end, five Black MPs were re-elected (all were incumbents), making up just 1.5 per cent of the House. (Liberal MP Marci Ien’s byelection win last year brings that to six MPs, or 1.7 per cent.) Based on the 2016 Census, Black Canadians make up 3.5 per cent of the population.

Velma Morgan, chair of Operation Black Vote (OBV), noted many Black candidates in 2019 were incumbents, meaning parties largely “didn’t bring in new people,” and the number ultimately elected dropped. Overall, she gave parties a “C” grade for their efforts.

“It’s extremely important for the government to have different people, different voices—in particular Black Canadian voices—at decision-making tables, so when policies come out, it doesn’t adversely affect Black communities,” said Ms. Morgan, and for the opposition, diverse voices are key to holding the government accountable for issues affecting the Black community.

“We could do a lot better in ensuring that we have more Black candidates. There’s a lot of Black Canadians who are willing and able to run, and they just need to feel as if they’re welcomed and will be supported when they run.”

Diversity was a key plank in Green Party Leader Annamie Paul’s recent leadership campaign. When she took her party’s helm on Oct. 3, she became the first Black woman to lead a federal party in Canada.

“It was and remains a big commitment of mine to make sure that our party is truly diverse,” she told The Hill Times. While the party’s record on diversity historically has been “not great,” she said one of the reasons she believes she was elected leader was her background in working to increase diversity in politics.

After the 2019 election, the Greens launched an internal review of all party processes, including those related to candidate recruitment—an effort Ms. Paul brought her weight of experience to last October. Ms. Paul previously founded the Canadian Centre for Political Leadership, aimed at helping equity-seeking groups pursue public office, and in 2019 became a co-architect of OBV’s 1834 Fellowship Program, aimed at preparing Black youth for civic leadership.

With its review, the party wanted to set the “gold standard in terms of best practices for diversity and inclusion,” said Ms. Paul, and that meant filtering “every single” party policy and process through a “diversity and inclusion lens,” to understand the “minutia” of the different barriers to inclusion.

“You really have to look at it holistically. How are you reaching out to potential candidates? Which communities are you reaching out to? It’s even the small things: what is the wording of your nomination package?”

The process led to the creation of a Candidate Support Form requiring riding associations to provide detailed information on available resources to nomination candidates; longer nomination periods; a riding association guide on recruiting and retaining candidates and volunteers from equity-seeking groups, which associations must confirm they have received and reviewed; and a rule that nomination contests with only one candidate can only be closed if that candidate is from an equity-seeking group or unless the riding association is determined to have made all reasonable efforts, among other things. There is no application fee to run for nomination.

“You might look at something and not see on the face of it what it has to do with that, but, for instance, having a particular spending limit for pre-campaigning, that’s something that’s going to make a difference,” said Ms. Paul.

On. Feb. 5, the Greens launched a national candidate recruitment drive, “Time to Run,” which Ms. Paul described as the “marquee element” in its attempts to ensure candidate diversity, not just along racial and ethnic lines, but “socio-economic, regional, gender identity, work—we’re looking for a new kind of person to run.”

“I’m really proud of the work that we did—I highly recommend it to every political party. We already feel the impact of that and definitely, we wanted to make sure it was reflected in our candidate recruitment for the next election,” said Ms. Paul.

Often, parties’ attempts to increase representation come in the form of diversity search committees for nomination races, said Ms. Petit-Vouriot, which “isn’t necessarily a solution in and of itself.”

“There are larger issues at play than simply inviting candidates who are from underrepresented groups to involve themselves in politics,” she said.

The probable circumstances of the next election are also likely to “reduce the possibility of newcomers getting involved,” said Ms. Petit-Vouriot, as snap elections often mean shorter nomination campaigns and more appointed candidates. COVID-19 has complicated fundraising efforts for political parties themselves and could “really hurt less established candidates, she said, “those who might not have those political connections, or the connections to finances.”

‘These things don’t happen by accident’: McGrath

The NDP—whose leader, Jagmeet Singh (Burnaby South, B.C.) became the first racialized federal leader in Canada in 2017—performed best among the federal parties in candidate diversity in 2019, with visible minority groups accounting for 22.8 per cent of its slate.

While NDP national director Anne McGrath touted the party’s record, she said as it works to nominate candidates, “we would like to do even better this time, and we’re working hard on it.”

“It’s really a matter of being kind of dogged and persevering to make sure that equity and diversity are at the top of everybody’s agenda when we’re searching for candidates and organizing nominations,” she said.

Before a riding association can request a nomination meeting, NDP rules require at least one declared nomination candidate be from an equity-seeking group, and the party has an equity policy, with the stated goal of having at least 50 per cent of all federal candidates be women, trans, or non-binary individuals. The policy also sets a goal that women, trans, or non-binary individuals be candidates in at least 60 per cent of ridings deemed reasonably winnable, and a goal to have candidates who “reflect the diversity of Canada” in at least 30 per cent of reasonably winnable ridings, with “special attention” to be given to ensure “equity-seeking candidates” are nominated in ridings where an incumbent isn’t seeking re-election.

A lot of the work to ensure diversity happens at the “grassroots level,” said Ms. McGrath, but “at the same time, we also at the leadership level do make approaches to candidates that we see kind of emerging, whether its in the African-Canadian community … in the BIPOC community.”

“These things don’t happen by accident. Unless you are really intentional and focused on making sure that you have a diverse slate that represents the makeup of the country, it’s not going to happen,” said Ms. McGrath.

A key ask in Operation Black Vote’s upcoming call to federal parties—a rehash of its 2019 asks, which Ms. Morgan noted weren’t achieved—is asking them to run Black candidates in winnable ridings.

“Just running a Black candidate isn’t enough for us, they need to run in ridings that the parties deem is winnable for them,” she said. Running Black candidates in ridings long held by another party is just “a check mark.”

Among other calls related to ensuring Black representation among senior political staff and the public service, Ms. Morgan said OBV is asking parties to ensure Black candidates get support and mentorship, and “get nominated early enough so that they can actually engage in their riding.”

Since 2019, the Liberal Party has expanded a rule in its nomination search criteria for unheld ridings that says no nomination meeting can be called until an electoral district association (EDA) demonstrates, with “documented evidence,” a “thorough search” for candidates who are underrepresented in the House, including candidates who are “women; Black, Indigenous, or people of colour; LGBTQ2; people with disabilities; and marginalized communities.” Previously, this rule only extended to women.

Braeden Caley, senior communications director for the Liberal Party, said the change is “absolutely” having an impact on current nomination efforts.

“That rule is one aspect of it, as well as a lot of work by field organizers, EDA chairs, local volunteers, to fulfill the recruitment of that search, to approach community leaders from all different backgrounds who reflect the demographics of their community, who reflect communities who are underrepresented in Parliament,” said Mr. Caley.

Of the 83 Liberal candidates nominated to run next election as of Feb. 5, Mr. Caley noted 43 are women and 22 do not identify as white; within that, three identify as Black (all incumbents) and three as Indigenous.

In 2019, racialized people made up 18.9 per cent of the Liberal slate; overall, 2.1 per cent were Black and 5.3 per cent were Indigenous. So far, 26.5 per cent of candidates nominated are not white, and Black and Indigenous candidates each make up 3.6 per cent.

“There have been some incredibly important conversations about that [how to reduce barriers to increase diversity], not just since the last election, but over the last year in particular. A lot of it has to do with meeting the standard of this rule, but it’s not only this rule that will make that possible, it’s about a concerted effort by volunteers,” including bringing more diversity to the political process overall, from campaign managers to riding association boards, said Mr. Caley.

Two years ago, he noted, the party launched a “Safe Campaigns” initiative, involving training for candidates and campaign teams “to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background … is able to participate in campaigns and the party in a way that feels safe to them and inclusive and welcoming at all times.”

Asked about efforts to run diverse candidates in winnable ridings, Mr. Caley pointed to recent federal byelections—like Liberal MP Marci Ien’s 2020 win in Toronto Centre, Ont., and Trade Minister Mary Ng’s 2017 win in Markham-Thornhill, Ont.—as evidence of such efforts.

The Conservative Party’s nomination rules make no mention of diversity or considerations for equity-seeking groups. Requirements to run for the Conservatives include a $1,000 “good conduct bond,” which is generally returned, an interview process, and 25 local signatures. (The Liberals’ application fee is a non-refundable $1,500; the NDP doesn’t have one.)

Like the Liberals, the Conservatives protect incumbent MPs by acclaiming them if they meet certain criteria.

Ms. Petit-Vouriot noted that, with incumbents often protected, it means “safer seats go to those who have already ‘made it,’ and that can help preserve inequalities in representation under gender, ethnicity, Indigeneity lines.”

As of Feb. 3, the Conservatives had 150 candidates nominated. Cory Hann, communications director for the party, said a breakdown of candidate demographics could be provided after the full list is released (as of Feb. 8, the party had announced 54), but noted “Conservative supporters and staff have been asked to work their networks and encourage people from all backgrounds to get involved in our local campaigns, whether that’s as a candidate or campaigner.”

“The candidates we’ve nominated so far all have varying backgrounds both professionally and personally, and we’re proud of that,” he said.

New Conservative groups aims to boost representation

Outside the party, new efforts are being made to bring Black Canadians into the fold with the recent launch of the Conservative Black Congress of Canada—a spin-off group from the Canada Black Congress founded by former CPC leadership contender Leslyn Lewis in 2009. (Ms. Lewis, a co-founder of the new group, has been nominated to run in the longtime Conservative riding of Haldimand-Norfolk, Ont.)

National chair Tunde Obasan said the congress aims to educate Black Canadians on Conservative values and encourage them to join “the Conservative family across the country.”

Mr. Obasan said he was involved in former leader Andrew Scheer’s (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) 2017 leadership campaign and Ms. Lewis’ 2020 bid, and “each time,” when he reached out to Black Canadians, the feedback he got was “not encouraging.” People would question why he was supporting the party, and tell him “you don’t belong there,” he said.

“I went back with those feedback and actually looked deep … ‘do I actually belong to the Conservative Party? Or [do] I belong somewhere else?’ And I found that, in reality, I actually belong to the Conservative Party, because that is the only party that supports who I am, that supports my values as a person, right. And I know that all these, my values represent, it’s very similar to most immigrants, particularly Black Canadians,” said Mr. Obasan, who immigrated to Canada from Nigeria in 2012.

Mr. Obasan said he then wondered why Black Canadians he spoke with instead turned to other parties, and to his view, “the only thing I found is this: there is not enough representation of them within the Conservative family, and based on that, they just believe that they don’t belong there.”

It’s something Mr. Obasan said his organization aims to change, by reaching out to grassroots organizations and encouraging Black Canadians to become party members and to run (though he said currently, efforts are focused on the former). From what he’s seen of nomination contests for the next election so far, he thinks representation among CPC candidates will “definitely be better than 2019,” for a number of reasons, including Ms. Lewis’ leadership run. Mr. Obasan noted he’s seeking the party’s nomination in Edmonton-Strathcona, Alta., a currently NDP-held riding where former CPC leadership candidate Rick Peterson is also running.

Asked if he’d like to see the Conservatives introduce nomination rules to try to ensure diversity, Mr. Obasan said it’s “not something we have considered at this time … we are not asking for special consideration.”

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole (Durham, Ont.) spoke at the congress’ Jan. 24 virtual launch, as did MP Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.), and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, among others. Roughly 300 people took part, said Mr. Obasan, and during the event, he raised the 2019 stats for Black candidates, and the fact the CPC only nominated two, “and I said that this is something that we want to change.”

“[Mr. O’Toole] was there from beginning to end … for him to stay the entire event, that means that he’s concerned about the community and he wants to hear our concerns,” said Mr. Obasan.

Ms. Morgan said since her organization launched in 2004, she thinks there’s “been some movement” in improving representation in federal politics, but that’s largely thanks to efforts by organizations like OBV and “a push from the community, than it is a push from political parties.”

Source: A seat at the table: inside efforts to boost diversity, Black representation in federal candidate nominations

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with candidates, Conservative Black Congress., diversity, Operation Black Vote, political parties, Samara

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