Police Researcher: Officers Have Similar Biases Regardless Of Race

2020/06/24 Leave a comment

Interesting study. But watching the visible minority officers doing nothing during the Floyd killing …:

One common recommendation for reducing police brutality against people of color is to have police departments mirror a given area’s racial makeup.

President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended that law enforcement “reflect the demographics of the community”; the Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said diversity on police forces can help build trust with communities.

Rashawn Ray, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, studies race and policing. He says that diversity helps but that “officers, regardless of their race or gender, have similar implicit biases, particularly about Black people.” Ray says it’s not enough to have Black cops in a Black neighborhood if they don’t know the area.

Ray and his University of Maryland colleagues have amassed policing data through tests and interviews with hundreds of officers. He talked with Morning Edition‘s Noel King about this research. Here are excerpts of that interview:

What kind of biases do police officers — implicit, explicit — say that they have?

The first big thing is that when officers take the implicit association test, they exhibit bias against Black people. They are more likely to make an association between Black people with weapons than they are with white people with weapons. We also know that officers speak less respectfully to Black people during traffic stops as well as during other sorts of settings. And they are particularly less likely to respect Black women in these encounters, even if they’re more likely to slightly use more force on Black men relative to other people.

I was talking to a former police officer whose job is now to recruit more Black and brown police officers into [the Minneapolis] force. It sounds like what you’re saying is if she is recruiting Black and brown officers from Phoenix or from Houston and bringing them over to Minneapolis, that is not likely to solve the problem.

That’s exactly right. So the optics look good, but we can’t make the assumption that simply because a person is Black that they’re going to know about the neighborhood. Part of the fundamental problem when it comes to policing that I’ve noticed is that when police officers interact with a white person, there is a pause, a slight pause, a slight benefit of the doubt. The reason why that exists is because subconsciously, implicitly, when they interact with that person, they see their neighbor, a parent at their kids’ school, and when they interact with a Black person, they are less likely to have what we call in sociology those “social scripts” that allow them to view people in those multitude of ways.

And if we’re going to change this, one big recommendation I have: Police officers need housing assistance that mandates that they live in the metropolitan area where they are policing. Because community policing isn’t about getting out, playing basketball with a kid in uniform. Community policing oftentimes is what you do when you’re not on duty. The way that you’re investing in a neighborhood.

Source: Police Researcher: Officers Have Similar Biases Regardless Of Race

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Construction of Austrian Holocaust victims’ memorial begins

2020/06/24 Leave a comment

Long overdue:

Construction of Austria’s first public monument naming all the country’s Holocaust victims began on Monday, a further step by Adolf Hitler’s native land towards confronting an issue it has long struggled with.

For decades after World War Two, Austria denied responsibility for crimes committed by the Nazis, arguing that it was their first victim despite the enthusiasm with which many citizens had welcomed annexation by Hitler’s Germany in 1938.

The country now recognises that Austrians were perpetrators as well as victims of Nazi crimes but it has not confronted that chapter of its history as openly or directly as Germany.

“Berlin has one. Paris has one. Vienna had none. But the day has finally come today,” Oskar Deutsch, president of the Jewish Community (IKG), the body officially representing Austria’s Jews, said at a ceremony marking the start of construction work.

The new monument, located in a park next to Austria’s central bank, will comprise a ring of upright stone slabs around an island of trees, and will name all 64,259 Austrian victims of the Holocaust. It is due to be inaugurated in a year’s time.

“Remembering means commemorating the victims of the Shoah. This remembering and our history increase our responsibility, the responsibility daily and together to do everything to ensure that something like this never happens again,” said Deutsch.

Ironically, the project was first backed in 2018 by a previous coalition government of current Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), which was founded in the 1950s by former Nazis and whose first leader had been an SS officer.

Although the FPO says it has abandoned its anti-Semitic past and now denounces the Holocaust, it has been plagued by racism and anti-Semitism scandals, and the IKG still refuses to deal with party officials. The FPO crashed out of government last year and Kurz now governs in coalition with the Greens.

There are Holocaust memorials in Vienna but the only one naming the Jews who lived in Austria and were murdered is in the city’s main synagogue.

Source: Construction of Austrian Holocaust victims’ memorial begins

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Pauline Hanson built a political career on white victimhood and brought far-right rhetoric to the mainstream

2020/06/23 Leave a comment

Of note. Bernier tried (and continues to try) to play a similar game:

Pauline Hanson and her party have only achieved modest electoral successes. Yet, she is undoubtedly Australia’s most successful populist politician and has had a profound impact on the way the country talks about issues like multiculturalism and immigration.

Hanson’s entire political career can be seen as a denial and rejection of the realities of whiteness in Australia – that is, the unearned benefits and privileges afforded to white people in settler-colonial countries.

Hanson has benefited from – and helped to shape – the normalisation of racism and xenophobia in Australia. She has pushed the boundaries of what can be “acceptably said” in public discourse and has had a disproportionate influence on the national debate.

In doing so, she has also created the political space for other far-right figures like Fraser Anning to emerge and become more a part of the political mainstream.

The birth of One Nation

Hanson first emerged on the political landscape in 1996 when she was disendorsed as the Liberal Party candidate for Oxley following racist comments she made about Indigenous people in a letter to the Queensland Times.

She contested the election anyway, running as an independent on a self-described nationalist, populist and protectionist platform, and won the seat with a large swing against the Labor incumbent.

In her maiden speech to the House of Representatives, Hanson claimed to speak on behalf of “mainstream Australians” and promised a “common sense” approach to politics.

Most controversially, Hanson warned Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”, called for the abolition of multiculturalism and railed against Indigenous rights, so-called “political correctness” and “reverse-racism”.

The times suited Hanson. After 13 years of Labor government, John Howard and the Liberal Party looked to exploit a sense of resentment and grievance on the issues of multiculturalism and immigration, which arguably opened up the space for Hanson and helped to legitimise her views.

Indeed, in a 1996 speech delivered to the Queensland Liberal Party, Howard celebrated the idea people felt able to speak a little more freely and could do so without living in fear of being branded as a bigot or racist.

Hanson’s One Nation party was formed the following year and performed well at the 1998 Queensland state election, winning 11 seats.

Hanson’s downfall and political resurrection

One Nation’s initial success, however, was short-lived. Hanson failed to win the newly redistributed seat of Blair at the 1998 federal election. Her party then began to suffer from internal divisions, poor leadership and Hanson’s personal and financial scandals.

She was subsequently convicted of electoral fraud in 2003. (It was later overturned on appeal.)

After a number of failed federal and state campaigns (including under the rebranded Pauline’s United Australia Party), Hanson finally succeeded in being elected to the Senate in 2016, along with three other One Nation candidates.

This represented a high point for the party at the federal level and gave it considerable influence over government policy.

Hanson’s populist, nativist beliefs

Hanson can best be described as a populist radical right politician, alongside such figures as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orbán.

For populist figures, politics are seen as a struggle between everyday, ordinary people and a corrupt, illegitimate and out-of-touch elite.

But more importantly, the populist radical right also uses the language of “us-versus-them” and portrays immigrants and refugees as existential threats to the safety, security and “culture” of a particular society.

In Hanson’s view, non-natives must either assimilate and embrace “Australian culture and values” or “go back to where they came from”.

Hanson has consistently drawn on a sense of grievance and victimhood – in particular, white victimhood. She has espoused a belief in the existence of so-called “reverse-racism” or “anti-white” racism since the outset of her political career.

Hanson has even gone so far as to claim the most downtrodden person in this country is the white Anglo-Saxon male.

The mainstreaming of the far-right

Hanson’s resurgence in 2016 occurred in a very different political climate than her first stint in parliament in the late 1990s.

Political scientist Cas Mudde refers to the 21st century as the “fourth wave of the far-right”. It is a time when far-right ideas are becoming increasingly tolerated, debated and normalised in the mainstream and the boundaries of what can be said are shifting.

Emboldened by years of normalised Islamophobia in Australia and the electoral successes of far-right parties globally, Hanson’s maiden Senate speech warned Australia was now in danger of being swamped by Muslims, who bear a culture and ideology that is incompatible with our own.

She called for a “Trump style” immigration ban, a Royal Commission into Islam and the “banning of the burqa”.

Hanson’s resurgence has clearly cemented Muslims as the new “dangerous other”, though her racist attitudes towards First Nations people and Asian immigrants have also remained a constant.

Her claims of “anti-white racism” have also gained traction in the mainstream. For example, when Hanson put forth a Senate motion declaring “it’s OK to be white” in 2018, a surprising number of Coalition members voted for it and later defended it on Twitter.

It was only later, after a vocal outcry, that the Coalition backed down and claimed the votes were made in error.

The media have played a key role in the mainstreaming of Hanson and One Nation by consistently giving them a platform to voice far-right ideas.

Hanson’s legacy and impact on society

There are a couple of ways to think about Hanson’s legacy and impact on society.

The first is to gauge her direct influence on government policy through her role as a parliamentarian. There’s no doubt she has wielded considerable influence as one of a number of senators to hold the balance of power in recent years.

Yet, despite some success in influencing legislation and her recent appointment as deputy chair of the family law inquiry, Hanson has been largely unsuccessful in seeing her signature policies realised.

And while acknowledging Hanson’s role in mainstreaming far-right ideas, it’s important to note these ideas have existed before her maiden speeches and will exist well beyond her time in politics.

Exclusively focusing on Hanson’s individual acts ignores the systemic nature of racism and the role of the mainstream political class in reproducing and upholding these racist structures.

When assessing Hanson’s legacy, it may be comforting to view her as an aberration and reflection of a bygone era, but she remains very much a product of the Australian settler-colonial story.

It’s perhaps more accurate to think of Hanson as a symptom of racism and xenophobia in Australia, rather than its cause.

Source: Pauline Hanson built a political career on white victimhood and brought far-right rhetoric to the mainstream

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Anti-Chinese racism is Canada’s ‘shadow pandemic,’ say researchers

2020/06/23 Leave a comment

Disturbing that so many appear not to be able to distinguish between the Chinese regime, with all its abuses, and Chinese Canadians:

Many Chinese Canadians fear that Asian children will be bullied when they return to school due to racial tension arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

A survey of more than 500 Canadians of Chinese ethnicity by the Angus Reid Institute and the University of Alberta has found that anti-Chinese racism is rife in our society, what the researchers call a “shadow pandemic.”

That parents are afraid to send their children to school is “heartbreaking,” said ARI executive director Shachi Kurl. “Racism is the secondary virus that has had an outbreak since the pandemic was declared.

“We have this notion of Canada as an endlessly accepting, embracing country because we are multicultural,” she said. “It’s not the case and it’s never been the case.”

“The data show that these micro-aggressions are frequent and plentiful,” said Kurl. “People say they are being treated as though they are somehow carriers of COVID-19.”

More than 60 per cent of those surveyed said they have adjusted their daily routines because of the threat of racial backlash and about half fear that Asian children will be bullied if they return to school.

Vancouver-born Gloria Leung says her daughter of mixed race has been jeered by other children for her Chinese ancestry just steps from their home.

“We have informed our daughter’s teacher without naming any names and her teacher has shared that information with school staff so they can increase awareness of racism and bullying,” she said.

Her daughter’s harassers are from just two families in an otherwise diverse and welcoming neighbourhood, but the seven-year-old has felt anxious and stressed since the incident.
“We understand that everyone is struggling and hurting in this pandemic,” Leung said. “Our hope in sharing these lived and uncomfortable experiences is not to shame people, but to provide insight into systemic racism and shed light on how we can learn from these experiences.”

The survey also found that just 13 per cent of respondents feel that people in Canada view them as fully Canadian “all the time.”

“There’s a notion that because our schools are diverse and our workplaces are diverse that racism isn’t a thing anymore,” said Kurl. “It’s one thing to hear about this anecdotally, but it’s important to ask these questions to see just how widespread this is.”

About 30 per cent of the respondents say they have been exposed to anti-Chinese sentiment in the news, on social media or through graffiti.“Just this weekend (U.S. President Donald) Trump used a pejorative term for the virus, calling it the ‘kung flu,” noted Tung Chan, a former Vancouver city councillor and former chair of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.

“The parents learn from the media, the children learn from the parents and you have this fear that extends into schools,” he said.

Chan was particularly discouraged to learn that 60 per cent of people surveyed changed their daily routine to avoid negative interactions and “unpleasant encounters.”

“I have always chosen my words carefully when talking about racism, because I don’t want to make people feel insecure,” said Chan. “But looking at these numbers I think that I was too mild in my remarks. This is far worse than I thought in terms of people fearing for their personal safety.”While it is important to hold the government of China to account for its belligerence and human rights abuses, news media need to distinguish between the actions of the People’s Republic of China, the Communist party of China, and the Chinese people.

“The term Chinese is too all-encompassing and it reflects the actions of the Chinese government back on the people in our community,” said Chan.

“I am proud of my Chinese heritage and I won’t walk away from that, but if you ask me who I am I always say I am Canadian,” he said.

The survey was conducted online between June 15 and 18 among a randomized representative sample of 516 adults who identify as ethnically Chinese. The margin of error is +/- 4.3 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Source: Anti-Chinese racism is Canada’s ‘shadow pandemic,’ say researchers

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Social Media Giants Support Racial Justice. Their Products Undermine It. Shows of support from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube don’t address the way those platforms have been weaponized by racists and partisan provocateurs.

2020/06/22 Leave a comment

Of note. “Thoughts and prayers” rather than action:

Several weeks ago, as protests erupted across the nation in response to the police killing of George Floyd, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a long and heartfelt post on his Facebook page, denouncing racial bias and proclaiming that “black lives matter.” Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, also announced that the company would donate $10 million to racial justice organizations.

A similar show of support unfolded at Twitter, where the company changed its official Twitter bio to a Black Lives Matter tribute, and Jack Dorsey, the chief executive, pledged $3 million to an anti-racism organization started by Colin Kaepernick, the former N.F.L. quarterback.

YouTube joined the protests, too. Susan Wojcicki, its chief executive, wrote in a blog post that “we believe Black lives matter and we all need to do more to dismantle systemic racism.” YouTube also announced it would start a $100 million fund for black creators.

Pretty good for a bunch of supposedly heartless tech executives, right?

Well, sort of. The problem is that, while these shows of support were well intentioned, they didn’t address the way that these companies’ own products — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — have been successfully weaponized by racists and partisan provocateurs, and are being used to undermine Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements. It’s as if the heads of McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell all got together to fight obesity by donating to a vegan food co-op, rather than by lowering their calorie counts.

It’s hard to remember sometimes, but social media once functioned as a tool for the oppressed and marginalized. In Tahrir Square in Cairo, Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, activists used Twitter and Facebook to organize demonstrations and get their messages out.

But in recent years, a right-wing reactionary movement has turned the tide. Now, some of the loudest and most established voices on these platforms belong to conservative commentators and paid provocateurs whose aim is mocking and subverting social justice movements, rather than supporting them.

The result is a distorted view of the world that is at odds with actual public sentiment. A majority of Americans support Black Lives Matter, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it by scrolling through your social media feeds.

On Facebook, for example, the most popular post on the day of Mr. Zuckerberg’s Black Lives Matter pronouncement was an 18-minute video posted by the right-wing activist Candace Owens. In the video, Ms. Owens, who is black, railed against the protests, calling the idea of racially biased policing a “fake narrative” and deriding Mr. Floyd as a “horrible human being.” Her monologue, which was shared by right-wing media outlets — and which several people told me they had seen because Facebook’s algorithm recommended it to them — racked up nearly 100 million views.

Ms. Owens is a serial offender, known for spreading misinformation and stirring up partisan rancor. (Her Twitter account was suspended this year after she encouraged her followers to violate stay-at-home orders, and Facebook has applied fact-checking labels to several of her posts.) But she can still insult the victims of police killings with impunity to her nearly four million followers on Facebook. So can other high-profile conservative commentators like Terrence K. Williams, Ben Shapiro and the Hodgetwins, all of whom have had anti-Black Lives Matter posts go viral over the past several weeks.

In all, seven of the 10 most-shared Facebook posts containing the phrase “Black Lives Matter” over the past month were critical of the movement, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned data platform. (The sentiment on Instagram, which Facebook owns, has been more favorable, perhaps because its users skew younger and more liberal.)

Facebook declined to comment. On Thursday, it announced it would spend $200 million to support black-owned businesses and organizations, and add a “Lift Black Voices” section to its app to highlight stories from black people and share educational resources.

Twitter has been a supporter of Black Lives Matter for years — remember Mr. Dorsey’s trip to Ferguson? — but it, too, has a problem with racists and bigots using its platform to stir up unrest. Last month, the company discovered that a Twitter account claiming to represent a national antifa group was run by a group of white nationalists posing as left-wing radicals. (The account was suspended, but not before its tweets calling for violence were widely shared.) Twitter’s trending topics sidebar, which is often gamed by trolls looking to hijack online conversations, has filled upwith inflammatory hashtags like #whitelivesmatter and #whiteoutwednesday, often as a result of coordinated campaigns by far-right extremists.

A Twitter spokesman, Brandon Borrman, said: “We’ve taken down hundreds of groups under our violent extremist group policy and continue to enforce our policies against hateful conduct every day across the world. From #BlackLivesMatter to #MeToo and #BringBackOurGirls, our company is motivated by the power of social movements to usher in meaningful societal change.”

YouTube, too, has struggled to square its corporate values with the way its products actually operate. The company has made stridesin recent years to remove conspiracy theories and misinformation from its search results and recommendations, but it has yet to grapple fully with the way its boundary-pushing culture and laissez-faire policies contributed to racial division for years.

As of this week, for example, the most-viewed YouTube video about Black Lives Matter wasn’t footage of a protest or a police killing, but a four-year-old “social experiment” by the viral prankster and former Republican congressional candidate Joey Saladino, which has 14 million views. In the video, Mr. Saladino — whose other YouTube stunts have included drinking his own urine and wearing a Nazi costume to a Trump rally — holds up an “All Lives Matter” sign in a predominantly black neighborhood.

A YouTube spokeswoman, Andrea Faville, said that Mr. Saladino’s video had received fewer than 5 percent of its views this year, and that it was not being widely recommended by the company’s algorithms. Mr. Saladino recently reposted the video to Facebook, where it has gotten several million more views.

In some ways, social media has helped Black Lives Matter simply by making it possible for victims of police violence to be heard. Without Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, we might never have seen the video of Mr. Floyd’s killing, or known the names of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery or other victims of police brutality. Many of the protests being held around the country are being organized in Facebook groups and Twitter threads, and social media has been helpful in creating more accountability for the police.

But these platforms aren’t just megaphones. They’re also global, real-time contests for attention, and many of the experienced players have gotten good at provoking controversy by adopting exaggerated views. They understand that if the whole world is condemning Mr. Floyd’s killing, a post saying he deserved it will stand out. If the data suggests that black people are disproportionately targeted by police violence, they know that there’s likely a market for a video saying that white people are the real victims.

The point isn’t that platforms should bar people like Mr. Saladino and Ms. Owens for criticizing Black Lives Matter. But in this moment of racial reckoning, these executives owe it to their employees, their users and society at large to examine the structural forces that are empowering racists on the internet, and which features of their platforms are undermining the social justice movements they claim to support.

They don’t seem eager to do so. Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that an internal Facebook study in 2016 found that 64 percent of the people who joined extremist groups on the platform did so because Facebook’s recommendations algorithms steered them there. Facebook could have responded to those findings by shutting off groups recommendations entirely, or pausing them until it could be certain the problem had been fixed. Instead, it buried the study and kept going.

As a result, Facebook groups continue to be useful for violent extremists. This week, two members of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, which wants to destabilize society and provoke a civil war, were charged in connection with the killing of a federal officer at a protest in Oakland, Calif. According to investigators, the suspects met and discussed their plans in a Facebook group. And although Facebook has said it would exclude boogaloo groups from recommendations, they’re still appearing in plenty of people’s feeds.Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, a civil rights group that advises tech companies on racial justice issues, told me in an interview this week that tech leaders needed to apply anti-racist principles to their own product designs, rather than simply expressing their support for Black Lives Matter.

“What I see, particularly from Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, it’s kind of like ‘thoughts and prayers’ after something tragic happens with guns,” Mr. Robinson said. “It’s a lot of sympathy without having to do anything structural about it.”

There is plenty more Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Dorsey and Ms. Wojcicki could do. They could build teams of civil rights experts and empower them to root out racism on their platforms, including more subtle forms of racism that don’t involve using racial slurs or organized hate groups. They could dismantle the recommendations systems that give provocateurs and cranks free attention, or make changes to the way their platforms rank information. (Ranking it by how engaging it is, the way some platforms still do, tends to amplify misinformation and outrage-bait.) They could institute a “viral ceiling” on posts about sensitive topics, to make it harder for trolls to hijack the conversation.

I’m optimistic that some of these tech leaders will eventually be convinced — either by their employees of color or their own conscience — that truly supporting racial justice means that they need to build anti-racist products and services, and do the hard work of making sure their platforms are amplifying the right voices. But I’m worried that they will stop short of making real, structural changes, out of fear of being accused of partisan bias.

So is Mr. Robinson, the civil rights organizer. A few weeks ago, he chatted with Mr. Zuckerberg by phone about Facebook’s policies on race, elections and other topics. Afterward, he said he thought that while Mr. Zuckerberg and other tech leaders generally meant well, he didn’t think they truly understood how harmful their products could be.

“I don’t think they can truly mean ‘Black Lives Matter’ when they have systems that put black people at risk,” he said.

Source: Social Media Giants Support Racial Justice. Their Products Undermine It.

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Meera Nair: Bombing of Air India Flight 182 an attack on Canadian families but few cared then and few aware now

2020/06/22 Leave a comment

Good and needed reminder. The contrast of how the Air India bombing was not viewed as a Canadian tragedy and how the shooting down of PS752 with many Iranian Canadians aboard by Iran was perceived as a Canadian tragedy shows progress:

June 23, 2020, will mark 35 years since Air India Flight 182 was blown up off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board. It was a targeted attack on Canadian families. Among the dead were over 80 children.

Two years ago, I wrote to many MPs and asked that, before departing for their summer recess, which officially begins on June 23, they observe a moment of silence in memory of those victims. Parliamentarians who look forward to returning home, to be with family and friends, should not forget that those boarding Air India 182 had the same longing, the same expectation.

From Rae’s report, Lessons to be Learned (2005): “Let it be said clearly: the bombing of the Air India flight was the result of a conspiracy conceived, planned, and executed in Canada. Most of its victims were Canadians. This is a Canadian catastrophe, whose dimension and meaning must be understood by all Canadians.”

Exacerbating the grief experienced by families of the victims was the blatant disinterest of successive Canadian governments in their pain and plight. In Major’s final report, Air India Flight 182: A Canadian Tragedy (2010), he was blunt: “In stark contrast to the compassion shown by the Government of the United States to the families of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for all too long the Government of Canada treated the families of the victims of the terrorist attack on Flight 182 as adversaries. The nadir of this attitude was displayed when the families’ requests for financial assistance were met by the Government’s callous advice to seek help from the welfare system.”

The lack of recognition that this was a Canadian tragedy was again noted: “The fact that the plot was hatched and executed in Canada and that the majority of victims were Canadian citizens did not seem to have made a sufficient impression to weave this event into our shared national experience. The Commission is hopeful that its work will serve to correct that wrong.”

Thirty-five years on, the commission’s goal appears even more distant.

Last year, the government of Canada issued a statement on June 23 to mark the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism, and invoked the bombing of Air India 182: “This despicable act of terror left families and friends grieving the loss of loved ones, and shook our country to its core.”

Shook our country to its core. If only that were true. The reality is that few Canadians cared then, and few are aware of the bombing now. Dr. Angela Failler, a Canada Research Chair at the University of Winnipeg, has written that most of her undergraduate students have never heard of Air India 182. As to why this may be, Canadians connected to this tragedy and those who grew up in its shadow, have never been given reason to doubt that Canada’s unwillingness to weave the loss of lives into a shared national experience was, in large part, due to the colour of the victims.

That successive governments of Canada operated under the same logic as the Air India bombers, that June 23 is a good day to start a holiday, without meaningful acknowledgement of the lives lost and lives ruined, is beyond irony. A statement issued after Parliament has shuttered for the summer is not enough.

This is not a partisan issue — it is a Canadian issue. Let every summer recess be preceded with one moment of silence by parliamentarians in memory of the victims aboard Air India 182 on June 23, 1985.

Even without a full complement of MPs, those in attendance could offer comfort and acknowledge that 35 years of inattention does not diminish pain, it only compounds it.

Source: Meera Nair: Bombing of Air India Flight 182 an attack on Canadian families but few cared then and few aware now

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J.K. Rowling backlash shows how progressives are turning on their own kind

2020/06/22 Leave a comment

Good commentary on the risks of being dogmatic (although written as a critique of progressives, warning equally applies to conservatives):

When author J.K. Rowling recently voiced her concerns around transgender activism, the criticisms and pile-ons quickly reached a fever pitch. Ms. Rowling is on trial because she thinks that sex and gender ought not to be entirely decoupled. The attempt to limit debate and the vilification of the debater is yet more worrisome evidence of the problematic culture among too many on my side of the political spectrum.

I’m a boomer, and the circles I travel in lean pretty heavily social democratic. A lot of us are Canadians-for-Bernie types, readers of The Guardian and Vox, a bit ashamed about our fossil fuel consumption, enthused about long-overdue reckonings with racism, appalled by police brutality. Some of us march in Pride parades and donate to Médecins sans frontières. We are progressives, but I suspect that some would dispute that claim because our brand is insufficiently pure.

I’ve about had it with the way too many progressives go about their business. Liberal democracies are admirable precisely because they are liberal, in the classic sense. Freedom matters, especially freedom of expression. I am a John Stuart Mill liberal: the silencing of an opinion – even and especially one without much merit – robs humanity of “the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”

A sign that a movement has become sclerotic and dangerous is when it stifles debate and turns on its own. Totalitarians such as Stalin and Mao wrote the manual on silencing dissent and dissenters. The progressives have not sent Ms. Rowling to the gulag or Margaret Atwood to a re-education camp, but their hegemonic impulses flow from the same well.

Ms. Rowling’s view that sex and gender should not to be entirely decoupled is not an issue about which there is settled science (and there may never be). It is not like climate change or Confederate statues. It is emergent, fluid and intellectually contested; some impeccably credentialed feminists argue that de-linking gender from sex is dangerous ground for women. Ms. Rowling is obviously and famously progressive, and her views are informed by both her politics and her own experience.

Ms. Atwood was pilloried for daring to state the obvious: that the University of British Columbia prematurely and improperly fired Steven Galloway on the basis of sexual-assault allegations that have proved unsubstantiated, in a deeply flawed process that equated being heard with being uncritically believed. It doesn’t matter that Ms. Atwood was right; what matters is that too many progressives turned on her because she refused to overlook a travesty of procedural justice.

Not every opinion deserves a hearing and not every proponent deserves respect. Some want to limit immigration because they are racists; others want to limit immigration because they don’t want to deprive developing nations of their best and the brightest. Such differences matter, and motive and past behaviours are often critical to understanding the argument being made and its subtexts. But excommunicating or censoring thoroughly decent people for raising perfectly legitimate questions sends an ominous signal.

Truth emerges from relentless scrutiny – exactly the kind of questioning and challenges to orthodoxies that have fuelled so many progressive causes. Churches are exempt from taxation. Can I create my own church and declare my house a tax-exempt temple? Surely it’s right for someone to question the legitimacy of my claim even if it offends my sensibilities – just as it is reasonable to ask why churches are tax-exempt, period. There is nothing unfair or disrespectful about probing discussions of gender and sex, or the presumption of innocence or guilt.

One cause of much of this piling on is humourlessness. Tyrants don’t laugh, but the tyrannized use humour to sustain hope and show their contempt for their oppressors and the lies of their regimes. It is possible to be committed and serious without being dour and dogmatic. We are all inconsequential specks in an absurdly vast universe. Our very existence is cosmically laughable, and amusement is an essential coping mechanism. I am much more inclined to trust leaders and fellow adherents who laugh – especially at themselves.

When your cause becomes your dogma, you have entered dangerous psychological territory. What drives the search for truth is curiosity and doubt. Shouting down speakers, stifling classroom discussions and having a black-and-white view of the moral universe are wrong, unnecessary and fatal to the prospects for building a progressive majority.

Political correctness is a mocking term; the irony is that its substance is indeed (mostly) politically correct. It is correct to acknowledge and try to redress historical wrongs. It is important to broaden representation in the halls of political and economic power. It is just to remind all of us that life’s playing field is disturbingly uneven. The comportment of many – by no means all – progressives is a gift to opponents, who can make the politics about the behaviour rather than the substance.

I don’t want to choose between my substantive politics and my even more fundamental beliefs. If I have to, I will. And I’m not alone. Enough scolding, enough censorship, enough dogma and enough beating up on good people. Cannibalism is a lousy recruitment strategy. Progressives everywhere need a lesson in the importance of not being so angrily earnest.

Source:   Opinion J.K. Rowling backlash shows how progressives are turning on their own kind Steven Lewis    

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HASSAN: The fury over statues and symbols continues for a reason

2020/06/22 Leave a comment

Thoughtful reflections by Farzana Hassan. The one element that is missing is how should we balance the negative and possitive  aspects of historical figures. Statues commemorating Stalin and Hitler are the easy cases along with Confederate symbols.

But others, like Churchill, MacDonald, Ryerson and the like, made major positive contributions (winning WWII, creation of Canada, education respectively). In these cases, my preference is always for historical plaques that captures that mixed nature and complexities of character and the times that are important to recognize.

And there is the risk that overly focussing on the easy and symbolic may detract from the hard ongoing work to reduce barriers, discrimination and racism:

One of the several issues that have cropped up in today’s racially charged environment is the tearing down of monuments and statues.

Calls have become louder all over the Western world to destroy these and replace them with symbols that are more in line with today’s pluralistic sensibilities.

But this has also ignited a debate between those who believe even tainted history should be preserved, and those who seek racial equality with symbolism that reflects it.

Symbols are powerful; statues publicly commemorate and celebrate.The ones whose value is being questioned were erected when racial discrimination and bias were accepted in society – either openly or tacitly. Their symbolism informs North American history – the good and the bad, but mostly the ugly, especially the ones that symbolize the Confederacy’s racist past.

The question then is why celebrate and commemorate something as odious as slave-owning and its accompanying brutality?

Visual history, which these statues represent, is important. But what is more crucial in this environment is achieving racial harmony.

Heritage can be preserved in other ways. History books should record unsavoury events and document the changes of attitude that led to the anger towards these monuments.

Soviet Russia was littered with the statues of Lenin and Stalin, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of its Bolshevik symbols were gone as they failed to represent the sentiments of the majority of post-Communist Russians. It has been left to history books to acknowledge this.

The Holocaust was one of the most despicable events in human history. The landscape of Hitler’s Germany was dotted with swastikas and Nazi memorials, none of which exist today. We can still read about the despair of those terrifying years before and during the Second World War.

We must consider whether America’s slavery era can be equated with the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the brutality of Communist Soviet Union. Were its effects on human lives as far-reaching and destructive as the other two more recent examples in history? And if so, what should stop a more enlightened modern government from erasing public celebration of this brutal past, especially when that past evokes anger caused by continuing discrimination?

We should also ask why Confederate symbols have lasted this long. Their persistence may show a kind of reluctance to break away from a racist heritage that divided a country over the issue of slavery.

The statues were actually commissioned post-slavery by Confederate organizations such as the United Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. One of the strangest outcomes of the American Civil War was the construction of these monuments in the late 19th century, perhaps with the intention of reclaiming a past that was lost after the defeat of the Confederacy.

The racist connotations of these statues cannot be ignored, and the fury over their preservation continues for good reason. They also represent a secessionist era of American history.

Canada has its own monuments to consider.

The name of Ryerson University in Toronto is very much in contention, Egerton Ryerson having forged the move toward residential schools for children of native communities. Supporters of preserving the name of the university point to Ryerson’s contributions to education.

Canada has no history of slavery. Yet the fury behind the move to remove certain symbols is nonetheless understandable.

Source: HASSAN: The fury over statues and symbols continues for a reason

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Howard Ramos: #Immigration to Canada May Not Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels

2020/06/20 Leave a comment

Good analysis and commentary by my friend, Howard Ramos, that asks some needed questions rather than assuming immigration will just bounce back, particularly the impact of Canada’s mixed handling of COVID-19 compared to immigration source countries:

After almost three months of lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada and other countries around the world are working to slowly re-open. As they do, immigration will be a key component to their economic recovery.

The question Canadian policymakers should be considering: will immigrants want to move and call Canada their new home? At the moment, it’s a theoretical question. However, a closer look at a number of trends suggests that a rebound in immigration to Canada is far from a guarantee.

A recent report by RBC underscores the extent to which the pandemic could derail Canada’s immigration-driven economy. With travel restricted and the pandemic still spreading in some parts of the world, quarantines and shutdowns are going to be a key part of the ‘new normal.’ The impact of closed borders and restricted movement on migration will not only interrupt movement but it will also create backlogs and other obstacles in immigration systems that most countries will have to wrestle with.

For Canada’s immigration levels to return to pre-COVID levels, Canadian governments will have to look beyond our borders to see how it has handled the pandemic relative to other countries.

Canada does not fare well compared to global counterparts

According to Worldometer, Canada ranks 17th worldwide in the most deaths per million, at 217, as of June 15, 2020. When this is broken down by region, as done by Andrew Griffith on the Multicultural Meanderings web site, death rates in Quebec are higher than the United States or Italy – and almost as high as the United Kingdom.

By this metric, Canada also does not fare well when it compares itself to the countries that are its most prominent sources of its immigrants. In 2019, the top 10 countries of citizenship of new permanent resident admissions to Canada were: India, China, Philippines, Pakistan, United States, Syria, Eritrea, South Korea, and Iran.

Among these, all but the United States had lower death rates, per million, from COVID-19 than Canada. And it wasn’t even close. China had a low of three deaths per million, while Iran had 107 deaths per million.

Policymakers would also be wise to consider that many of Canada’s hardest hit neighbourhoods by the pandemic were ones with a high concentration of recent immigrants. That reality undercuts many of the perceived advantages Canada presents to immigrants, such as its accessible and strong health care system or its quality of life.

When Canada is compared to other immigrant receiving countries such as Australia or New Zealand it does not fare well either. Australia ranks 129th in most deaths per million and New Zealand declared victory over the pandemic. Both managed the disease more efficiently and have a head start in reopening. As the world may experience a second or future waves of the pandemic, Canada does not look as attractive compared to competing immigrant receiving countries.

Multicultural ‘veneer’ tarnished by recent events

While Canada is recognized internationally for being open and multicultural, that veneer has been tarnished slightly by many reported incidents of anti-Asian discrimination. Polling shows that the majority of Canadians believe negative attitudes towards Asian-Canadians have increased since the pandemic and the Vancouver police report that anti-Asian hate crime has gone up in the city this year. Given that the top three source countries of newcomers last year were all Asian, this too makes the country less attractive.

The good news for Canada is that people have continued to apply for immigration and the country has continued processing applications during the pandemic. However, if the country aims to re-kindle its high level of immigration intake, it will need to reopen its borders. Canada cannot sit back and assume that people will want to come. Canadians will have to do the hard work of assuring newcomers that the country is indeed safe, healthy, and a welcoming place to build a future.

Source:  Immigration to Canada May Not Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels 

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Supreme Court’s chief justice calls for more diversity in Canada’s legal system

2020/06/20 Leave a comment

Of note even if the government has made considerable efforts to increase diversity of judicial appointments. My unofficial running total compared to the 2016 baseline:

Women Visible Minorities Indigenous
2016 Baseline 35.6% 2.0% 0.8%
New Appointments 56.2% 7.2% 2.9%

The Supreme Court’s chief justice is calling for more diversity in Canada’s legal system as protests mount around the world over anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism.

During an end-of-session news conference in Ottawa today, Richard Wagner said the top court has wrestled with cases that have underscored racial bias and the use of degrading stereotypes — and that a lack of diversity in the justice system is part of the problem.

“All Canadians should be able to see themselves reflected in their justice system. Justice should not make a person feel like an outsider or an ‘other’ when they confront it,” he said.

“I also think there is a growing awareness of the need for our courts, including our highest court, to reflect the diversity of Canadians. I certainly would welcome the insights and perspectives this could bring.”

Canada’s judiciary has become more diverse, with more women, visible minorities, LBGT and Indigenous people on the bench, but the number of Indigenous judges remains low compared to other demographic groups.

No Indigenous justice has ever been appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Liberal government overhauled the judicial appointments system in October 2016 in an attempt to recruit a more diverse array of candidates and make the selection process more transparent.

Cases show discrimination, bias

Wagner today cited some recent cases the Supreme Court has dealt with involving racism, including the case of Jeffrey Ewert, a Métis inmate who was convicted of the murder and attempted murder of two young women. The top court ruled that Canada’s prison service was using security tests that discriminate against Indigenous offenders and keep them behind bars longer and in more restrictive environments.

Wagner also cited the case of Ontario trucker Bradley Barton, which unleashed public outrageover how Indigenous victim Cindy Gladue was treated by Canada’s criminal justice system. During the trial, Gladue was described repeatedly as “native” and a “prostitute.”

Justice Michael Moldaver, who wrote for the majority in that case, said judges must do more to fight stereotypes against Indigenous victims of violence.

“As an additional safeguard going forward, in sexual assault cases where the complainant is an Indigenous woman or girl, trial judges would be well advised to provide an express instruction aimed at countering prejudice against Indigenous women and girls,” he wrote.

No call on systemic racism

Asked today if there is systemic racism in Canada’s justice system, Wagner declined to make a definitive statement. He said it’s the job of judges to weigh the facts in individual cases and speak through their judgments, while it’s up to elected officials and others to make more broad statements.

“As judges, we decide where evidence is brought forward,” he said. “We don’t issue broad statements generally without having a case to be decided upon.”

Lori Thomas, president of the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers, said she was disappointed by Wagner’s comments on systemic racism.

“The resistance to acknowledge systemic racism means that it will continue to be pervasive within the justice system,” she said.

“The fact that the perception by the community is that Black and Indigenous people are underserved or may not be given full justice in the justice system gives to mind that there is obviously a concern of systemic racism, and I can say that includes those acting in the legal community.”

Thomas said there is implicit bias within the justice system, especially given the small number of Black and Indigenous judges.

Even though Wagner said judges receive training to recognize and respond to bias and systemic discrimination, Thomas said that does not make up for a lack of diversity on the bench.

Indigenous people have long been over-represented in Canada’s courts and correctional system.

In his first news conference after being appointed as chief justice two years ago, Wagner called the incarceration rate of Indigenous people “unacceptable.”

“The rate is too high. It reveals a serious problem. And so far as the judiciary is concerned, I think that the court has a role to play whenever the case is presented to the court to decide those issues,” Wagner said at the time.

Source: Supreme Court’s chief justice calls for more diversity in Canada’s legal system

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