Working site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.
2020/08/20 Leave a comment
2020/08/19 Leave a comment
Hard to see this ending:
The “flames of negativity” that were stirred up by Lynn Beyak’s racist statements as a senator are being “reignited” by a controversy at the University of Manitoba, according to a residential school survivor.
Garnet Angeconeb questions the suitability of the man tasked with overseeing Beyak’s second attempt at cultural awareness and sensitivity training after Jonathan Black-Branch quietly left his post as dean at the University of Manitoba.
The university is not saying why. In an email to CBC news, a spokesperson said Black-Branch is no longer employed by the University of Manitoba and that his leave began on June 5, but would not elaborate.
Black-Branch was also removed from his position on the governing body of the Law Society of Manitoba, a position reserved for the dean of the law school.
Both moves speak to the need for a wider probe into the handling of Beyak’s discipline and the qualifications of the man tasked with educating her, said Angeconeb who is from Lac Seul First Nation in northwestern Ontario.
“The issue with Lynn Beyak continues to throw flames on a fire that was under control,” Angeconeb said of the harm the on-going saga is causing. “It stirs up unresolved trauma for survivors.”
Beyak, who has publicly praised residential schools as “well-intentioned”, was first suspended from the Senate in 2019. The move came after she declined to remove letters from her website that described First Nations people as lazy and inept and refused to apologize for posting them.
She was ordered to complete education and training to improve her understanding and awareness of Indigenous issues before returning to her senate seat.
Beyak failed her first attempt, when the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres said Beyak created an “unsafe learning environment” with false claims to a Metis identity and other comments. Beyak denied making those claims.
In May, the Senate appointed Black-Branch as an “eminently qualified” person to design and deliver a new training program for Beyak.
After delivering a total of 24 hours of training, by video, Black-Branch concluded that “Senator Beyak is now better equipped ‘for approaching her professional work and her personal beliefs'”, according to the report of the Senate ethics committee, in June.
Senators are set to discuss the report on September 22.
‘Racism is a disease’
“There are a lot of questions about how this training was delivered, how meaningful it was,” said Danielle Morrison, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Remove Lynn Beyak from Senate, of which Angeconeb is also a member.
Residential school survivors should have the final say when it comes to determining whether Beyak’s training was a success, she said.
“Racism is a disease. It is one of the biggest pandemics affecting our world right now,” Morrison said. “This is a moment when people should ask themselves ‘am I on the right side of history?’
“How do you measure someone’s success in being an anti-racist? That assessment has already been made by survivors.”
‘Political fluff’
Angeconeb said Beyak could show her training was a success through her actions. For him that means another apology, beyond the carefully scripted ones she gave in the Senate.
“It needs to come from somewhere in her home-town of Dryden, in front of Anishinaabe people,” he said. “Otherwise these are just apologies of convenience to save her Senate seat. It’s just political fluff.”
After decades of anti-racism work and advocacy on behalf of survivors, Angeconeb said he is heartened that residential schools are “at the forefront of the conversation” about reconciliation in Canada.
But he said “side-bar issues” such as Beyak’s behaviour and the on-going legal wrangling over compensation for survivors of St. Anne’s residential school are “really hurtful.”
“I continue to be upset and I continue to be angered by that,” he said.
Source: New controversy flares up over Lynn Beyak’s Senate-appointed anti-racism training
2020/08/18 Leave a comment
Further to the earlier Hill Times story. Having gone through some of the recent reports (still awaiting a few), my general observation is the lower the representation numbers, the longer the reports and the more words describing the various initiatives underway). That being said, their cultures are different from elsewhere in the public service and thus the challenges greater:
A number of organizations in Canada’s security and intelligence establishment, including the Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Community, the Department of National Defence, and the Canada Border Services Agency have been conducting campaigns to encourage employees who belong to one of the four designated groups listed in the Employment Equity Act—women, Indigenous people, members of a visible minority, and people with a disability—to self-identify, as part of their efforts to improve data collection and hiring practices.
The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, composed of 11 MPs and Senators and chaired by Liberal MP David McGuinty (Ottawa South, Ont.), focused on diversity and inclusion issues in the security and intelligence community in its most recent annual report.
The report notes that one of the challenges in the security and intelligence committee surrounds voluntary self-identification.
But the report also notes that “self-identification campaigns and internal communications are [a] way organizations try to increase awareness on these issues,” and that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and the Department of National Defence (DND) have conducted campaigns to “demystify the self-identification process and encourage employees to self identify.”
The Hill Times reached out to the four organizations noted in the report for more information on how they have done that.
Communications Security Establishment
Diversity and inclusion is an important element in ensuring that the Canadian security and intelligence community can effectively protect Canada, said Ryan Foreman, a media relations representative with the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).
Mr. Foreman outlined a number of initiatives undertaken by the CSE to encourage self-identification, including a 2017 push to increase organizational awareness of the requirements of the Employment Equity Act, and to explain how a diverse workforce strengthens CSE’s ability to deliver on its mandate.
“This included providing data to managers, and developing strategies to attract job applicants from underrepresented groups,” said Mr. Foreman, who also noted that CSE launched a self-identification campaign called “Show us what CSE is made of,” which was designed to encourage employees to self-identify.
“The messaging for this campaign communicated the importance of employment equity data and its impact on other organizational initiatives, such as recruitment and training,” said Mr. Foreman. “Both the 2017 initiative and the self-identification campaign started in 2018 are on-going.”
Canadian Security and Intelligence Community
“As Canada’s security and intelligence service, it is critical that CSIS reflects the communities it protects, wrote CSIS spokesperson John Townsend in an email to The Hill Times. “To this end, CSIS has implemented an ongoing internal communications campaign to encourage employees who belong to one of the four designated groups listed in the Employment Equity Act to self-identify.”
“The campaign includes an annual Employment Equity questionnaire among other tools to advise employees on the importance of self-identification.”
Ninety per cent of CSIS employees have engaged with these tools, according to Mr. Townsend.
“The work of making CSIS more representative of Canada is never finished but our commitment is steadfast and our efforts continue,” wrote Mr. Townsend.
Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces
Staff at the Department of National Defence and members of Canadian Armed Forces have returned self-identification forms at a greater rate this year than in the past, thanks to organizational efforts to spread the word about the importance of self-identification, according to Major Smyth, spokesperson for DND.
The Employment Equity Act requires that every member be provided the opportunity to self-identify as a member of a designated group, but it remains voluntary to do so.
As such, employment equity representation rates are based on a voluntary process and may not represent the actual employment equity representation in CAF, according to Mr. Smyth.
“Overall, the CAF continues to improve upon its self-identification return rates,” said Mr. Smyth. “The first part of the self-identification form is a personal identification portion. For this portion, the regular force achieved its highest return rate yet with 97.5 per cent of [members] having had the opportunity to self-identify as a member of a designated employment equity group.”
“While the return rates are lower in the primary reserve units, the CAF saw an overall increase in self-identification as designated group members from both regular force and primary reserve members compared to 2017/18.”
“Current representation rates, as of July 2020, for the regular force and the primary reserves combined, were as follows: women, 16 per cent; visible minorities, 9.3 per cent; and Indigenous Peoples, 2.8 per cent.”
DND/CAF did not identify the representation of persons with disabilities as of July 2020 in their response to The Hill Times.
The CAF works closely with Statistics Canada to ensure that “labour market data they provide, and upon which the CAF sets its employment equity representation rate goals, is reflective of the unique occupations and employment criteria of the CAF.”
“DND/CAF is committed to reflecting the Canadian ideals of diversity, respect and inclusion. Both long and short term goals have been created, based on the labour market analysis provided by Statistics Canada. We review our progress regularly to ensure that we are always working towards increasing representation rates,” said Mr. Smyth.”
Canadian Border Services Agency
The Canada Border Services Agency’s campaign encouraging self-identification began in 2017 and was repeated in 2018, according to Jacqueline Callin, spokesperson with the agency.
“They stressed the importance of understanding our workforce composition and reinforced that employee information would be protected. Recognizing that the Agency’s manual process might be contributing to response rates of 61 per cent, an online form was piloted with success in 2019 and was set to be launched in March 2020 as part of our ‘Your Voice Matters’ campaign. It has been postponed due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and current efforts are focused on how best to virtually promote self-identification,” she said.
Employment Equity Act ‘has served Canada and the public service well,’ says expert
Andrew Griffith, who is the former director general for Citizenship and Multiculturalism and has worked for a variety of government departments in Canada and abroad, told The Hill Times that the Employment Equity Act has served Canada and the public service well, and that the diversity of virtually every group has increased since the act was introduced.
“So the basic structure of the act, I think, has worked in the reporting structure and the data collection, and the publicity that comes with the results,” said Mr. Griffith, who is a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Environics Institute.
“But if you re-open the act, I’m just not sure that it’s worth all that much effort, time, and invariable divisiveness and controversies that it will raise,” said Mr. Griffith. “I’m thinking that if you want to use government time wisely, it would be more effective, I would think, [to look] at specific anti-racism initiatives and look at some of the specific barriers rather than a wholesale of revision of the act, because I think the challenge is less with the act and more with some of the practical stuff.”
Source: Canada’s federal security and intelligence establishment encouraging employees to self-identify
2020/08/17 Leave a comment
Of note:
Hindu temples across Mississauga have begun broadcasting daily hymns outdoors for believers who are unable to gather in large groups and partake in three major Hindu festivals after the city granted them a noise bylaw exemption.
The exemption mirrors one made for Mississauga mosques in May, so they could broadcast a daily call to prayer during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. At the time, a small Hindu group was opposed to the idea, but now say if Muslims are allowed an exemption, they should be too.
In late April, some Mississaugans voiced strong opposition to the city’s exemption for calls to prayer. A Facebook group called “Mississauga Call to Prayer on LoudSpeaker Unconstitutional,” which had 10,445 members on Thursday, was fundraising to pursue legal action against the city over the decision after it was approved.
Canadians United Against Hate released a statement asking city council to uphold the decision, saying many of those who were putting pressure on city hall were “Islamophobic and racist elements in Mississauga.”
The community debate in Mississauga exposes a divide over public space and sounds during a pandemic when people are reluctant to gather indoors.
“Initially we opposed calls for prayers during the holy month of Ramadan,” said Rao Yenbamuri, president of Hindu Forum Canada (HFC) – a seven-member Mississauga-based not-for-profit formed in March. A May 2 letter on the group’s website called it “a violation of our secular values.”
“We think that such a precedent would not be practical in a multifaith community, that’s the reason we opposed it,” he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail, adding that despite multiple attempts to communicate with politicians, the decision went forward. “So given these circumstances, we would like the same privileges to be extended to us.”
Amira Elghawaby, a journalist and human-rights advocate who sits on the board of Anti-Hate Network Canada, said many Canadian Muslims face Islamophobia and discrimination under the guise of secularism.
“We see that happening very prominently in Quebec with Bill 21,” she said, referring to a law that prevents many public servants from wearing religious symbols at work, “and we saw it happening in Mississauga and other jurisdictions in the country when the call to prayer was permitted during the month of Ramadan because of the pandemic.”
Ms. Elghawaby also said there was no need “to create us versus them narratives” between both communities.
“I think it’s important to understand that Canada is a country of diversity and diverse raising and diverse backgrounds of people, and all of that is what makes our country strong and rich,” she said. “And we all actually get stronger when our communities are able to fulfill their identities in ways that [are] meaningful to them.”
Kushagr Sharma, a volunteer for Mississauga’s Hindu Heritage Centre, says broadcasting the hymns will help build a sense of connection for many who felt isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A lot of seniors want to come to the temple, just to be there physically but not come inside,” he said.
“So a lot of people would come outside, do their prayers in their cars and leave. But they weren’t able to hear the hymns and the prayers that go on.”
Playing the hymns outdoors also ensures seniors and other vulnerable community members can feel safe, Mr. Sharma said. The temple is not affiliated with HFC and had no prior knowledge of its opposition to broadcasting calls to prayers during the month of Ramadan, he added.
The bylaw exemption allows the temples to broadcast religious hymns every night at 7 p.m., for five minutes, between Aug. 11 and Sept. 1.
Varsha Naik, executive director of the Regional Diversity Roundtable of Peel, and a long-time member of the Interfaith Council of Peel, said all faith communities need places where they feel safe to practise their respective religions.
“We need to ensure that nobody in the community gets isolated,” Ms. Naik said. “And especially with COVID-19, we need to create that sense of community, that sense of celebration.”
Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-mississauga-hindu-temples-play-hymns-outdoors/
2020/08/17 Leave a comment
Good thoughtful and realistic commentary by Richard Fadden,former national security adviser to the prime minister, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, deputy minister of national defence and deputy clerk of the Privy Council:
It is now beyond reasonable debate that the issue of systemic racism in our law-enforcement institutions must be seriously addressed. This is not to suggest that every police service is equally flawed, or that every officer acts unacceptably, consciously or not; indeed, we must avoid ascribing all of society’s ills to the police who serve us, lest we throw the baby out with the bathwater, and ignore how other social institutions also contribute to systemic discrimination. But clearly, the current model of policing needs to change.
Political leaders, legislators, police board members, city councils and police chiefs in Canada and the United States have acknowledged as much, and with various degrees of specificity, have said that something must be done. What that might look like remains difficult to discern. Some have suggested the abolition of some police forces altogether; that is a non-starter, and will only divert attention away from more effective ways of dealing with the issue. Defunding is a more complicated proposal; most police forces are already underfinanced, but a careful look at how public funding is being used would be a worthwhile undertaking. Some police practices likely need to be more strictly limited or forbidden, including chokeholds and carding, while new ones should be mandated. And police-training curricula should be reformed so that they’re about more than just firearm requalification and criminal-law updates; it must be disseminated repeatedly over the course of all levels of a police career, and must send the message that the coercive power of the state should always be the last resort.
But whatever the solution is, it will be important to understand that change will be profoundly difficult – indeed, far harder than any simple message being delivered – because of the closed-personnel nature of these police services.
Closed-personnel organizations are ones in which young men and women join as recruits, plan to stay for their entire careers and work toward promotion within that force (some entry at mid-level is possible, but is relatively rare). Such systems aren’t the exclusive domain of police forces; they can also be found in intelligence agencies, foreign services, the military and in many religions.
All organizations develop a culture that determines not so much what they do but rather how they carry out their work, and police services are no exception, with the culture pervading widely across this closed loop. But while police culture varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and is a function of many factors, a crucial commonality is that officers spend the majority of their time dealing with a small part of the population that the rest of us would often rather not hear about. This gives rise to a we-versus-them mentality – one that’s amplified by the closed-personnel systems and their practical requirement that members strongly support one another, often against any outsiders. The pressures of this culture of conformity and mutual support also make it difficult to operate within the structure. Policing’s hierarchical, command-and-control approach to managing and standardizing behaviour – as is required by the considerable power held by individual police officers – should make it easier to discipline “bad apples.” Instead, police culture tends to counterbalance the ability of chiefs to act.
Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with police officers from many forces. Virtually all of them impressed me with their dedication, work ethic and belief that their role was central to peace, order and good government. But I remember that most only ever wanted to discuss their good qualities; areas where improvement might be possible were rarely ever raised. With some notable exceptions, usually at the chief level, they were professionally very conservative and resistant to any suggestions from outsiders such as myself, my colleagues, or cabinet ministers.
Without a shadow of a doubt, statements to press for change by political leaders, legislators and police chiefs are necessary, but they’re far from sufficient. Consider the challenges in dealing with sexual abuse among the Roman Catholic clergy despite the views of the Pope, or the Canadian Armed Forces’ sexual-harassment crisis despite the efforts of the Chief of the Defence Staff. Indeed, it is telling that front-line officers and their unions or associations are often missing from the list of those agitating for change.
To get officers on board, organizations that work with the police should, at minimum, transparently acknowledge their own complicity in policing’s problems. To suggest that police boards, city councils, responsible ministers, Crown counsel and criminal law courts knew nothing of these appalling practices is to suggest either gross negligence or incompetence, when neither view is warranted. This broader insensitivity to systemic racism is part and parcel of the issues in our police.
Systemic discrimination or racism anywhere is an assault on what most Canadians believe and what the Charter demands. Because of how police services are organized, however, transformation is going to be arduous and slow. Police chiefs working inside their organizations cannot do this alone: a considerable amount of political capital, structural untangling and society-wide patience is going to have to be expended if the long mission ahead has any hope of succeeding.
2020/08/15 Leave a comment
Confirming patterns elsewhere:
An official survey shows the tumult created in B.C. by the novel coronavirus has hurt racialized people the most, with more than one in five Latin American, West Asian and Black respondents reporting job losses due to the pandemic.
Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry said at Thursday’s daily COVID-19 briefing that the results of a recent online survey of 394,000 people confirmed a trend seen in many other places: The virus and the measures taken to slow its growth have disproportionately affected non-white people. The results did not touch on who has been infected, but charted how people of different ethnicities have fared with regards to unemployment, financial stress, and access to health care and food.
“The challenge has not been shared equally,” she said as she revealed the results of the survey done by the BC Centre for Disease Control, a government agency.
The information comes as British Columbia logs an additional 78 confirmed cases of the virus. The numbers have been creeping up all summer, leading to a recent spike that Dr. Henry says is driven by younger people socializing.
The provincial average for losing a job due to the pandemic was 15.5 per cent, according to the survey. Only white respondents reported recent unemployment at below that rate, 14 per cent. People of every other ethnicity reported rates above the provincial average, with the highest affecting Latin American people at 22.6 per cent, West Asian or Arabic people (21.5 per cent), and Black people (21.1 per cent).
That same inequality was seen when respondents were asked about whether they had more money troubles. The provincial average was 32 per cent of respondents saying they had increased financial problems, with 29 per cent of white people reporting these issues.
Neither Dr. Henry nor the provincial health ministry explained why Indigenous respondents were not represented in the survey results released on Thursday.
Japanese, multi-ethnic and Korean respondents were the most likely to report difficulty accessing health care. On the other hand, Latin American, Southeast Asian and Black respondents were the most likely to report feeling more connected to family since the province began its state of emergency in March.
The survey also showed people at the income level of less than $60,000 reported having a harder time meeting their financial needs and putting enough food on the table, and that they were more likely to be out of work.
Among respondents with school-aged children, lower-income households reported more stress on their kids, more barriers to learning and a decreased connection to their friends.
At Thursday’s briefing, Health Minister Adrian Dix and Dr. Henry spent most of their time addressing the increase in cases. Mr. Dix warned anyone ignoring physical distancing at parties this weekend that public-health inspectors will be out enforcing rules at bars and banquet halls.
Since early July, people in their 20s have made up the highest proportion of new cases, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. From July 29 to Aug. 4, more than 40 per cent of cases nationally for which data were available were reported in people 29 or younger.
In B.C., this group accounts for about 32 per cent of cases since July 1, while people in their 30s make up about 22 per cent. In Alberta, people in their 20s make up the largest proportion of active cases, at 22 per cent, while people in their 30s followed with 19 per cent.
2020/08/14 Leave a comment
Significant issue and more concrete action warranted:
Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Ottawa will not tolerate the intimidation of human rights activists in this country by foreign governments after a democracy activist told a parliamentary committee she and her family have faced threats from Beijing over the past year.
But Amnesty International said Wednesday that Canada’s response to rising complaints about bullying by pro-China forces has been hapless, muddled and ineffective.
Parliamentary hearings on Canada-China relations this week in Ottawa included testimony from Canadians of Hong Kong origin, who described threats they’ve received on Canadian soil during the course of their advocacy for democratic rights in the former British colony.
Cherie Wong, executive director of Alliance Canada Hong Kong, told the Commons committee on Canada-China relations that she has been the target of “death and rape threats,” as well as talk of harming her family, over the past 12 months. At rallies – even on Parliament Hill – pro-Beijing supporters have harassed and threatened those demonstrating in support of Hong Kong. Afterward, the personal information of pro-Hong Kong demonstrators – cellphone numbers, e-mail addresses, photos, class schedules – was published online.
Her experience echoes a May report by Amnesty International Canada and other groups warning that Chinese government officials and supporters of the Communist Party of China are increasingly resorting to “threats, bullying and harassment” to intimidate and silence activists in Canada, including those raising concerns about democracy and civil rights in Hong Kong, and Beijing’s mistreatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners.
This intimidation includes threats of sexual violence and other physical violence against targets in Canada, as well as their family members in Hong Kong and China.
Conservative foreign affairs critic Leona Alleslev asked Mr. Champagne on Wednesday in the House of Commons about testimony such as Ms. Wong’s, and whether the government would introduce legislation to fight foreign interference.
“Witnesses at the Canada-China committee stated the People’s Republic of China is actively threatening Canadians on Canadian soil who seek to expose China’s authoritarian agenda. These individuals have been subjected to everything from physical threats, commercial blacklisting and state-backed cyberhacking with no protection from Canada. When will this government introduce legislation to combat foreign influence and protect basic human rights in Canada from aggressive actions of the Chinese Communist Party?” Ms. Alleslev asked.
Mr. Champagne told the Commons that Canada does not allow such intimidation and said Ottawa has been swift to address it.
“Let me be very clear, the safety and protection of Canadians is paramount to this government. We will never allow any form of foreign interference in Canada by state or non-state actors,” the Foreign Affairs Minister said.
He said Canada has acted whenever complaints have arisen. “Every time there have been allegations … we have taken action with the Minister of Public Safety,” he said, and advised Canadians to contact the police if they are being threatened.
“We invite any Canadians who might be subject to any form of such actions that have been described to contact law enforcement authorities and we will always defend the freedom and liberty of Canadians in Canada from foreign interference.”
But Alex Neve, secretary-general at Amnesty International Canada, said the response from Canadian authorities to such complaints has been unco-ordinated and disappointing. He said that in 2017 and again in May this year, Amnesty and other groups in the Canadian Coalition on Human Rights in China published reports on the intimidation and threats, as well as recommendations to address it – but these have received little response.
He said targets of harassment end up discouraged. “Individuals have often found they turn to one agency only to be told to go to another, and yet another, and at the end of the day told, ‘Well, we share the concern, but there’s not really anything that can be done here because it’s not a clear criminal offence,’ or, ‘You don’t have enough evidence.’ ”
The Amnesty-led coalition has recommended establishing a point person and hotline to handle complaints, talking to China about the harassment, and the consideration of a law to counter foreign interference as other countries such as Australia have enacted.
Mr. Neve said the response from the Canadian government, from security agencies and from police “lacks coherence and at the end of the day therefore is entirely ineffective.”
“Individuals experiencing these instances of interference and of threats, including threats of sexual and other physical violence and threats against family members in Hong Kong or in China, are largely left without effective recourse, often unsure where to turn and what to expect,” he said in recommendations provided to the Canada-China committee this week.
“It may be a considerable challenge to counter China’s influence on the world stage, it may be difficult to exert pressure for human rights reform on the ground in China, but there is no excuse for a failure to take robust and decisive steps to counter human rights abuses that may be linked to or backed by Beijing – connected to what is happening in Hong Kong, but taking place here in Canada.”
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
2020/08/14 Leave a comment
While I think Harris’ biracial background has been well covered, found this commentary of interest given that the writer found it under-covered along with the implications for others with mixed identities:
On Tuesday, Joe Biden, presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States, announced he had chosen Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. The excitement was swift. The backlash was even swifter. President Trump wasted little time calling Harris “nasty” and “disrespectful”—the man is nothing if not predictable. As was the Democratic talking heads’ praise of Biden for picking Kamala as a means of “securing the Black vote,”as if Black people are a monolith and Biden didn’t tell Charlamagne tha God on The Breakfast Club, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” Many also claimed Harris’ potential vice presidency will change “the way we view and treat women in politics forever,” as if a number of Democrats didn’t consider Harris “too ambitious” to be Biden’s running mate.
But amid the sexist, racist backlash and Democratic congratulator back-slapping, history was made. Not only was Harris the first African American and first woman to serve as California’s Attorney General and the second Black woman to become a sitting U.S. senator, she is now the first Black woman to join a major party ticket (civil rights activist Charlotta Bass became the first Black woman to ever run for office as vice president in 1952, when she joined the Progressive Party ticket). If Biden is elected president, Harris will become the first African American and first woman to hold the office of the vice presidency.
She’ll also become the first South-Asian American to become vice president. Just as she is the first South-Asian American to join a major party ticket, just like she was the first South-Asian American to join the Senate. But Harris’ multiculturalism and South Asian identity is often overlooked by a society that continues to rely on a binary way of thinking. Like former President Barack Obama, Harris’ multiculturalism is, most often, only acknowledged in a racist attempt to invalidate her Blackness. Obama isn’t really Black, Rush Limbaugh argued. He is “half white.” Harris isn’t reallyAfrican American, right-wing talking heads say. She is Jamaican. She is “half” South-Asian. She is “half” Black. She is a half, they say. She is not whole.
But to acknowledge Harris’ Black and South Asian identities simultaneously is to give bi- and multiracial kids who feel like they have to be all of one thing or risk being seen as nothing at all a chance to be reminded of their inherent value—that we are not fragments of our ancestries but a dream realized by those who live in a country that didn’t legalize biracial marriage until 1967.
All of Harris’ firsts have given and continue to give us an opportunity to see ourselves not as a collection of halves or a myriad of contradictions or parts to be dissected and criticized and used against us when we ascent to positions of power but as whole people worthy of respect, a seat at the table, and if given the opportunity, a shot at the vice presidency of the United States.
Source: Why Is It Not the Least Bit Surprising That Everyone Ignores Kamala Harris’ Multiculturalism?
2020/08/13 Leave a comment
Interesting survey and differences in use:
We’ve been using the term “Latinx” on NPR’s Code Switch podcast regularly. But new research shows it hasn’t really caught on among Latino adults in the U.S.: While one in four have heard of the term, only 3% use it.
The Pew Research Center’s national survey of Latinos queried more than 3,000 respondents about the term Latinx, and I spoke with their director of global migration and demography research, Mark Hugo Lopez, about their findings. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
In Pew’s latest survey of Latinx adults living in the United States, you found that only three percent self-identify as Latinx. What’s being used instead?
What we found is that “Hispanic” is preferred by far. Then, Latino, and finally, as you noted, a very small share say that they prefer Latinx. But there’s another important finding in the report, which is about awareness of the term. Latinx is a relatively new umbrella term on the scene. It’s been around for about 20 years, but it’s only recently — in the last five or six years— really begun to be used widely in the news media, in pop culture and by corporations. Universities have been using it for a while, but only about a quarter of people in this population say they’ve actually heard the term. So the term is relatively unknown to the population it’s meant to describe.
You say it’s been around for 20 years. That’s longer than I thought. Where did it originate?
There’s actually been Google searches all the way back to 2004, the beginning of Google Trends’ search data. However, in the ’90s, there were a lot of changes at universities. For example – Chicano studies programs were renamed Chicana/o studies, to better represent the experiences of both men and women, to be gender inclusive.
As people were searching for a way to be inclusive, Latinx emerged sometime in the late’ 90s. That’s the earliest reference that I found as we were doing this study. But it did start to rise in use, especially after the Pulse nightclub shooting. Latinx is a term that is gender inclusive and inclusive of LGBT adults. That’s where you started to see it in headlines and in news coverage. And that may have led to more Google searches. There have been other events, like when Elizabeth Warren used it. But we saw the highest level of searches in June of 2020, more than we’ve ever seen relative to the past, so we’re actually at a high point right now. But just because there are more Google searches, that doesn’t mean that’s the term people want to use to describe themselves.
So, who are the 3% your survey says self-identify as Latinx?
It is young people, people ages 18 to 29 who are most likely to be aware of the term. Forty-two percent of them, for example, say that they’ve heard the term Latinx. Interestingly, only seven percent of that group actually use the term to describe themselves. Another group that uses it more than others are college-educated people. U.S.-born English speakers are also more likely to use it.
And interestingly, the one group that uses it the most is young Hispanic women ages 18 to 29. About 14 percent of Hispanic women say that they use the term to describe themselves. That’s almost one in seven people, and that’s one of the highest shares of use that we see among the data that we collected.
We’ve done stories on the Code Switch podcast about the birth of the pan-ethnic label to refer to people in the U.S. who trace their roots to Latin America. And we know how hard-won those labels were, whether it’s Hispanic or Latino. But, based on your research, people would still rather identify based on country of origin, not based on these broad umbrella terms.
That’s right. We found over the years, over 15 years of surveys, that when it comes to the labels that people want to use to describe themselves, more often than not, they prefer their country of origin. That’s true particularly of immigrants, but it’s also true even of U.S.-born Hispanics or Latinos who are the children of U.S.-born parents. Into the third generation, oftentimes the most common term used references the country of origin, like Mexican, Dominican, Cuban or Puerto Rican. And that’s something that’s been pretty strong over the years.
In your research over the last two decades, specifically on this issue, do you feel like the adoption of pan-ethnic labels is becoming more popular?
That’s a really great question, because there are a number of demographic trends underway that are impacting the way in which this population that we’re talking about sees itself. About a quarter of all newlyweds who are Latino have a spouse who’s non-Latino. And that’s been true for about 30 years. But, an inflow of new immigrants during the 1980s, ’90s and into the 2000s softened the impact of that of intermarriage in terms of identity. But now it’s US births that are the biggest source of growth of the Latino population.
What does this mean in terms of self-identification? You’ll find that, for example, among immigrants, nearly 90% will say they’re Hispanic. Among U.S.-born children of immigrant parents of this heritage, you’ll also find about 90%will self-identify as Hispanic. But by the third generation that falls to about 75%. And then by the fourth generation, only half of them self-identify as Hispanic.
So what happens to the identity and self-identifying with this group over the course of several decades with high rates of intermarriage and without a new inflow of immigrants? What would that mean for this population in terms of how they identify?
What pan-ethnic label do you use? I heard you say Hispanic and Latino a lot.
The Pew Research Center uses them interchangeably in our reports, as does the U.S. Census Bureau. For me personally, it varies depending on where I’m at, because it does matter who asks. For example, I might say I’m Hispanic in a certain part of the country. I’m here in Southern California right now, here I tend to use Chicano, because my dad had been in the Chicano movement in the ’60s and ’70s locally, and so it was important to identify as such. And when I travel abroad, for example, I might actually say that I’m American because most people in Europe, for example, may not be aware of the distinctions between Hispanic, Latino, etc. And if I am in other parts of the country, I might use Latino. It depends how I feel that day. I think that’s really important here, what people use can change depending on the circumstances, who’s asking and how and where they are.
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