Most of the 23 million immigrants eligible to vote in 2020 election live in just five states

2020/03/05 Leave a comment

Useful perspective and comparisons:

About one-in-ten people eligible to vote in this year’s U.S. presidential election are immigrants. And most (61%) of these 23 million naturalized citizens live in just five states.

California has more immigrant eligible voters (5.5 million) than any other state, more than New York (2.5 million) and Florida (2.5 million) combined. Texas and New Jersey round out the top five, with 1.8 million and 1.2 million immigrant eligible voters, respectively.

Here is a closer look at immigrant eligible voters in these five states.

How we did this

1Asians make up 43% of immigrant eligible voters in California, the highest of any racial or ethnic group.Nationally, Latinos make up a higher share of immigrant eligible voters than Asians (34% vs. 31%), but the reverse is true in the Golden State, where many Latino immigrants are ineligible to vote because they do not hold U.S. citizenship.

California’s immigrant eligible voters come from many countries. But three origin countries account for 46% of the total: Mexico (1.5 million immigrant eligible voters), the Philippines (604,000 voters) and Vietnam (430,000 voters).

The vast majority of California’s immigrant eligible voters (75%) have lived in the United States for more than 20 years. The share is highest (82%) among California’s Latino immigrant voters. Smaller majorities of Asian (71%), white (71%) and black (59%) immigrant eligible voters in California have lived in the country for at least two decades. English proficiency varies widely among the state’s immigrant eligible voters. For example, 86% of black immigrant eligible voters in California are English proficient, a substantially higher share than among all the state’s immigrant eligible voters (55%).

2New York stands out for the racial and ethnic diversity of its immigrant eligible voters. Asians (26%), Latinos (25%) and whites (25%) make up similar shares of the state’s immigrant eligible voters, while black immigrants (21%) are a slightly lower share.

When it comes to speaking English, black immigrant eligible voters in New York are substantially more likely to be English proficient (89%) than white (66%), Asian (52%) and Latino (47%) immigrant voters.

In New York, no single birth country accounts for a large share of the state’s immigrant eligible voters; about a quarter of foreign-born voters come from the state’s three largest birth countries. Immigrants from the Dominican Republic are the largest single group, with 264,000 eligible voters, followed by China (207,000) and Jamaica (143,000).

3Latinos make up 54% of Florida’s immigrant eligible voters, far higher than the shares of white, black and Asian immigrant voters in the state (17%, 16% and 10% respectively).

Florida’s immigrant voters have varying levels of English proficiency. For example, around half (51%) of Latino immigrant eligible voters are proficient in English, a far lower share than among white (82%) or black (81%) immigrant voters.

With 606,000 voters, Cuban immigrants are the largest group in Florida’s foreign-born electorate. Colombian immigrants, at 190,000, and Haitian immigrants, at 187,000, are the second- and third-largest groups.

4Texas rivals Florida in its share of Hispanic immigrant voters. Roughly half (52%) of all immigrant eligible voters in Texas are Hispanic, a share that trails only Florida (54%) among the top states. Asian immigrants are the second-largest group in Texas at 29%.

Around seven-in-ten immigrant voters in Texas (68%) have lived in the U.S. for more than two decades, similar to the share among all U.S. immigrant voters (68%). However, the share of long-term residents is notably lower among black immigrant voters in Texas (40%).

A high share of black and white immigrant voters in Texas are English proficient (88% and 85%, respectively). Lower shares of Asian (64%) and Hispanic (47%) immigrant voters are proficient. This is similar to the pattern nationally.

By country of birth, Mexican immigrants alone account for 40% of all immigrant voters in Texas, or 736,000 people. The second-largest group, with 130,000 voters, are immigrants from Vietnam, while Indian immigrants, with 115,000 voters, make up the third-largest group in the state.

New Jersey has the highest share of Asian immigrant eligible voters with a bachelor’s degree or higher5New Jersey has a high share of Asian immigrant voters with a college degree. About two-thirds of Asian immigrant voters in New Jersey (66%) have a bachelor’s degree or higher. That’s substantially higher than the share among other immigrant voter groups in the state and the share among immigrant voters in the U.S. overall (36%), including those who are Asian.

Among New Jersey’s 1.2 million immigrant eligible voters, 32% are Latino, 30% are Asian, 25% are white and 11% are black.

Meanwhile, the top birth countries for immigrant eligible voters in New Jersey are India (122,000 voters), the Dominican Republic (103,000) and the Philippines (63,000).

See the table below (or open it as a PDF) for detailed characteristics of immigrant eligible voters in California, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey and nationally.

Demographics of naturalized citizen eligible voters in select states

Source: Most of the 23 million immigrants eligible to vote in 2020 election live in just five states

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White Supremacy Goes Green Why is the far right suddenly paying attention to climate change?

2020/03/03 Leave a comment

Of note:

As an environmental journalist, I’ve been covering the frightening acceleration of climate change for more than a decade. As a person who believes in the tenets of liberal democracy, I’ve watched the rise of white-supremacist, anti-immigrant and nationalistic ideologies with similar dread over the past few years.

But I always thought of those two trends — looming ecological dangers and the gathering strength of the far right — as unrelated, parallel crises in a turbulent time. Only recently have I begun to understand that they are deeply interconnected, an ugly pairing of forces drawing power from each other.

From France to Washington to New Zealand, angry voices on the hard right — nationalists, populists and others beyond conventional conservatism — are picking up old environmental tropes and adapting them to a moment charged with fears for the future. In doing so, they are giving potent new framing to a set of issues more typically associated with the left. Often, they emphasize what they see as the deep ties between a nation’s land and its people to exclude those they believe do not belong. Some twist scientific terms such as “invasive species” — foreign plants or animals that spread unchecked in a new ecosystem — to target immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities. And here’s what really frightens me: This dynamic is likely to intensify as climate change creates new stresses that could pit nations and groups against one another.

Although the pressures of a warming planet are new, the deployment of environmental language for racist, nativist and nationalistic ends has a long, dark history. Before environmentalism became a mainstream and progressive cause in the 1970s, many American conservationists were also white supremacists, who argued that those they saw as outsiders threatened the nation’s landscape or lacked the values to care for it properly. Such thinking was common in Europe, too. The Nazis embraced notions of a symbiotic connection between the German homeland and its people.

It is not hard to see why such ideas are making a comeback. As the relentlessness of environmental calamity — epic fires and floods, escalating extinctions, warming oceans — becomes impossible to ignore, the right needs a way to talk about it. Nationalistic framings fit comfortably with a worldview many already hold. And for the so-called alt right, they offer the bonus of a cudgel for bashing establishment conservatives as beholden to globalist, corporate interests.

Some radicals are drawn to apocalyptic climate scenarios, seeing openings for authoritarianism or a complete societal breakdown. “They want to accelerate it,” said Blair Taylor, program director at the Institute for Social Ecology, a left-wing educational center, who has studied such groups. “So after the downfall they can set up their fascist ethno-states, they can be the Übermensch.” Violent actors are grabbing hold of such ideas. The killers accused of targeting Muslims and Mexican immigrants last year in New Zealand and Texas posted online manifestoes weaving white supremacy with environmental statements.

The Australian man who allegedly murdered 51 people at two Christchurch mosques called himself an “ethnonationalist eco-fascist” and wrote that “continued immigration into Europe is environmental warfare.” The suspect in the El Paso shooting that killed 22 — modern America’s deadliest attack targeting Latinos — ranted about plastic waste and overconsumption. “If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable,” he concluded.

If there’s one thing Americans have learned in the Trump era, it is that toxic ideas can move between the fringes and the political realm with stunning speed. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Rally — now the country’s main opposition party — has incorporated worries about the natural world into the party’s anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim ideology. She espouses an ideal of the French citizen as “someone rooted, someone who wants to live on their land and to pass it on to their children.” By contrast, she says,those who are “nomadic … do not care about the environment. They have no homeland.”

“Borders are the environment’s greatest ally,” said Jordan Bardella, the party spokesman and a member of the European Parliament. In Hungary, the far-right party Our Homeland accused Ukraine of poisoning Hungarians by dumping waste in the Tisa River. Extremist Polish groups hurl similar charges at Germany.

As climate change reshapes our world, we face a future filled with new pressures and constraints on resources, including arable land, food and water. Droughts, floods and storms are likely to push millions from their homes, some toward the relative safety and security of Europe, Australia and the United States.

The upsurge of anti-Asian discrimination that has followed in the wake of fears about the coronavirus offers a glimpse of the ugly sentiments such external pressures can unleash. Without giving it much thought, I used to accept the framing of environmental problems as shared concerns we would have to work together to solve. Now I can see there is another path too, one in which dark forces wield real dangers as weapons to tear us apart, and scarcity fuels conflict, brutality and racism. Our future in a hotter world of rising seas and more powerful storms already felt terrifying. Unless we come together — and fast — behind serious action to check the existential danger of climate change, it could be darker still.

Source: White Supremacy Goes Green

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Anti-Semitism chief slams university lecture on Hitler’s lover

2020/03/03 Leave a comment

I think the title was the most objectionable aspect even if a quote:

The German government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, has dubbed a planned lecture on Adolf Hitler’s lover Eva Braun as “completely incomprehensible and ahistorical,” according to the Sunday edition of Bild newspaper.

The lecture was expected to be given at the Technical University of Braunschweig (TU) as part of a series about women in world history. TU, however, rejected the accusation that the university was advancing Nazi ideas. “In conclusion, this is a contribution against right-wing extremist legends,” it said in a statement.

The university also said it was “sincerely sorry” for the “ineptly worded” event, titled “‘… I, the mistress of the greatest man in Germany and on Earth … Comments on Eva Braun.'”

The lecture was ultimately canceled due to illness on the part of the lecturer.

The university is also considering how the researcher behind the lecture could manage to explain his role in the event, “namely to critically reflect on why a historically insignificant woman like Eva Braun still receives a lot of media attention to this day.”

Braun, who ate a cyanide pill, and Hitler, who shot himself, died by suicide just 40 hours after they were officially married. The relationship was largely unknown to the public until after their deaths.

During Hitler’s rise to power, Braunschweig — then a regional state in the-then Weimar Republic — was where Adolf Hitler received German citizenship on February 25, 1932, two weeks before running for the role of German president.

Source: Anti-Semitism chief slams university lecture on Hitler’s lover

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Far-Right Politicians Are Using Coronavirus To Push Anti-Immigration Xenophobia

2020/03/02 Leave a comment

Sigh….

The spread of the coronavirus has health officials worried about a potential global pandemic. But while governments and international organizations are rushing to stop the virus, far-right politicians in Europe have been eager to exploit it.

Radical right populists like Italy’s Matteo Salvini and France’s Marine Le Pen are using fear and uncertainty surrounding the virus, believed to have originated in China, to advocate for closed borders and anti-immigration policies ― misleading and panicked messages that health officials warn can hinder efforts to combat the virus.

In Italy, there are hundreds of cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, as well as multiple towns under quarantine and 17 people dead. Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega Party, has repeatedly attacked the government for its handling of the crisis. He has groundlessly linked Italy’s outbreak to the arrival of migrants from Africa, called for “armor plated borders” and accused Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of failing to “defend Italy.”

There is no proof for Salvini’s claims: Africa has only three confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to monitoring data from John Hopkins University. But his inflammatory statements are a prime example of the longtime far-right trope of associating migrants with disease ― derogatory rhetoric that has been a prominent feature of Europe’s migrant crisis.

These and other attacks, coming as officials struggle to contain the virus, have put additional stress on the European Union’s ideal of border-free travel. Salvini is calling for Italy to suspend the Schengen Agreement, which allows travel between EU nations without border checks, even though health experts doubt the measures would be effective.

Austria’s Freedom Party echoed Salvini’s calls for immigration controls and suggested that the government had failed to prevent the outbreak, while the Swiss People’s Party wants “strict border control immediately.” (Austria’s health minister countered with the assessment of World Health Organization and EU experts that closing borders “makes no sense.”)

In France, Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, has called for border controls and falsely accused the EU of remaining silent on COVID-19. (EU officials have repeatedly issued statements on the virus and announcedhundreds of millions of euros in health funding.) Le Pen also clashed with Italy’s Prime Minister Conte when she suggested that Italian soccer fans should be barred from entering the country. Spain’s far-right Vox party leader Santiago Abascal similarly blamed open borders for the virus.

Far-right parties tend to thrive in opposition, where their lack of governing experience and extreme policies aren’t tested, allowing them to snipe from the sidelines to gain support. They also feed on periods of unrest and uncertainty, as seen in their fearmongering around events of recent years such as the migrant crisis and ISIS-related extremist attacks. The COVID-19 outbreak gives these parties a chance to both frame governments as ineffective and advocate for the anti-immigration policies they view as a panacea to every societal problem.

Meanwhile, countries with far-right governments in power have taken a slightly different tack, largely downplaying the virus and maintaining that everything is under control.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed that although the virus has garnered the world’s attention, people should not forget that the real threat is from migration. In the United States, President Donald Trump has contradicted health officials and gave a dismissive press conference filled with false information, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday refused to say that the coronavirus wasn’t a hoax.

Source: Far-Right Politicians Are Using Coronavirus To Push Anti-Immigration Xenophobia

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New StatCan data shows how Canada is failing new generations of Black youth

2020/03/02 Leave a comment

Looking forward to seeing future StatsCan work to see if this pattern is common to both recent and long-term immigrants and region of origin, given that recent Black economic immigrants tend to be more highly skilled/educated than earlier waves. As there are few third generation immigrants for recent immigrants, will take some time to see but second generation outcomes will likely be illustrative:

If statistical data tell us stories in numerical form, new information from StatCan depicts Canada as a nation that’s continuing to fail its Black youth. It also shows that the commonly accepted narrative that immigrants fare better with successive generations simply may not hold true for all immigrant groups.

While these outcomes will not come as a surprise to those who have long observed and studied Black experiences, they make the implications of Statistics Canada’s conclusions inescapable.

“The persistent gaps between the Black population and the rest of the population suggest that other factors not measured by the data used, including discrimination, could have an effect,” concludes Martin Turcotte in the study, titled “Education and Labour Market Integration of Black Youth in Canada.” It was published this week in the journal Insights on Canadian Society and is based on information from the 2006 and 2016 censuses.

The study compares Black Canadian youth with non-Black youth as they transition from childhood or adolescence to adulthood.

StatCan also released what it called a booklet, “Canada’s Black Population: Education, Labour and Resilience.”

Two key data sets show why this latest snapshot has significant implications for the Black community, said York University professor Carl James, who, as a member of the Working Group on Black Communities, offered advice and guidance for this project.

First, the Black population is young and growing. Canada’s Black population doubled between 1996 and 2016, from 600,000 to 1.2 million. In 2016, more than a quarter of the Black population was less than 15 years of age, compared with 16.9 per cent of the total population. Its median age is about 30, while it is 40 years for the total population.

“This means you can understand how the concerns of the Black community are weighted around ‘What’s happening to our young population,’” James said.

Second, about nine per cent of Black people in Canada are at least the third generation to be born in this country — a rate that is higher, he said, than for other racialized minorities.

“There needs to be a serious concern about this generation,” James said. “We’re responsible for their welfare in the Canadian state.”

Because the modern wave of Black immigration to Canada dates back to the 1960s, the outcomes for Black people could serve as a bellwether for minorities who arrived later.

“This is what we see for Black youth now. It is possible as other groups become third-generation you’re going to see more similar patterns,” he said.

The unique experiences of Black people also mean they should be disaggregated from the more general “visible minority” category, he said.

Some of the key StatCan findings include:

  • Most Black youth aspire to a university degree but are less likely to think they will obtain it. In 2016, although 94 per cent of Black youth aged 15 to 25 said that they would like to get a bachelor’s degree or higher, only 60 per cent thought that they could.
  • There persists a gap in post-secondary graduation rates between Black youth and their counterparts who are not Black. About half (51 per cent) of Black men aged 23 to 27 in 2016 had a post-secondary qualification, compared with 62 per cent of other men.

  • There persists a gap in employment rates between Black and non-Black youth. Young Black males were nearly twice as likely as other young males not to have a job in 2016.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2020/02/29/how-canada-is-failing-new-generations-of-black-youth.html

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Collège de Maisonneuve: après les aspirants djihadistes, la bataille «pour mieux vivre ensemble»

2020/03/02 Leave a comment

Interesting doc on a deradicalisation effort:

Présentée ce dimanche en première mondiale aux Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma, Maisonneuve – À l’école du vivre-ensemble se veut un message d’espoir. Un exemple concret du fait que « le jeu en vaut la chandelle », « qu’il vaut mieux essayer de s’ouvrir aux autres que d’imposer une vision ou de se replier sur soi-même », même si c’est plus compliqué, avance le cinéaste Nicolas Wadimoff, en entrevue avec La Presse.

Petit retour en arrière avant d’aller plus loin.

En 2015, une dizaine d’élèves du cégep ont quitté ou tenté de quitter le Canada pour aller rejoindre le groupe armé État islamique en Syrie. Deux de ces jeunes, Sabrine Djermane et El Medhi Jamali, ont d’ailleurs eu un procès à Montréal, au terme duquel ils ont été acquittés des accusations de terrorisme qui pesaient sur eux.

Dans la tourmente, le collège de Maisonneuve a reçu l’année suivante une subvention de 400 000 $ pour « mettre en place des mesures d’appui à la diversité ethnoculturelle ».

C’est dans ce contexte que Nicolas Wadimoff et la journaliste Emmanuelle Walter y ont effectué leur incursion, sorte de « laboratoire in vivo », pour reprendre les mots du réalisateur. Ils ont passé deux sessions à Maisonneuve, dont ils nous présentent l’univers à travers le regard d’une dizaine de protagonistes.

Nicolas Wadimoff voit en eux des « chevaliers de la cause du vivre-ensemble ». « C’est une démarche citoyenne pour mieux vivre ensemble aujourd’hui et encore mieux demain. »

Est-ce que ça marche ? Oui… et non.

Il ne faut pas être naïf, dit le cinéaste d’origine suisse : « Le chemin est long et ce n’est pas facile tous les jours. Mais il y a des moments qui donnent de l’espoir. »

Parmi ces moments, notons ceux qui mettent en scène Mohamed Mimoun, Momo pour les intimes, un « travailleur de corridor », sorte de travailleur de rue du collège embauché dans la foulée des événements de 2015. Il joue les modérateurs, apaise les esprits et multiplie les conseils, surtout auprès de membres de l’importante communauté arabo-musulmane.

Les interventions de Momo auprès d’Idir Mazouzi, élève inscrit en comptabilité qui tente en vain de se faire élire à l’association étudiante (SOGEECOM), sont particulièrement révélatrices d’un clivage encore manifeste.

Ce clivage est ici illustré par les interactions entre deux groupes. D’un côté, des membres de l’association étudiante, blancs, ouvertement de gauche, militants antiracistes et impliqués dans la vie du cégep. De l’autre, des élèves arabes qui se sentent mis de côté et qui déplorent, parfois maladroitement, le manque de représentativité de leur association étudiante.

À la recherche de solutions

Malgré les efforts de réconciliation incontestables, le fossé persiste. Le jeune Idir, par exemple, ne comprend pas pourquoi les membres de l’assemblée lors de laquelle il présente sa candidature aiment mieux laisser un poste vacant que de l’élire trésorier, alors qu’il est pourtant inscrit en comptabilité. Les rires de quelques jeunes dans l’assistance quand sa défaite est annoncée font mal.

C’est Momo qui lui soulignera que les reproches formulés à l’endroit de l’exécutif étudiant pendant son discours devant les électeurs ont peut-être été à l’origine de sa défaite. Le travailleur de corridor fait une observation semblable à un autre jeune, Adam Belghadid, lui aussi frustré des positions de l’association. « N’oublie pas, on est dans une société comme le Québec où la confrontation n’est pas quelque chose qui fait partie de la culture. Ça, c’est très méditerranéen. »

Lorsqu’une élève, Rayene Bouzitoun, adopte la stratégie opposée et s’assoit avec la SOGEECOM pour trouver des solutions visant à une meilleure représentativité culturelle, on est surpris de la réponse. « Je suis d’accord que c’est peut-être un problème, la représentativité, mais je ne suis pas d’accord qu’il y a des choses à faire en tant [qu’association]. C’est un syndicat d’application volontaire. Essayer de force d’intégrer des gens de minorités, ça ne serait pas trop une solution. Quand des gens voudront s’impliquer, ils s’impliqueront. »

Malgré ces écueils, la volonté de favoriser l’harmonie est visible. On la sent dans le discours des membres de la direction, mais aussi dans les paroles et les gestes du corps professoral et des élèves. Il y a cette prof de sociologie qui amène ses élèves en technique policière à la mosquée. Il y a ce futur policier qui participe bravement à une discussion sur le profilage racial avec un groupe composé uniquement de membres de minorités. Il y a cet animateur socioculturel qui apprend à jouer d’un instrument de musique pour gagner la confiance des membres d’une minorité.

« Il faut travailler fort. Il faut que tout le monde accepte de sortir de sa zone de confort », conclut le réalisateur. Son film montre que beaucoup l’ont fait au collège de Maisonneuve.

Source: Collège de Maisonneuve: après les aspirants djihadistes, la bataille «pour mieux vivre ensemble»

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Multicultural Film Fund AUM Group Is Here to Empower Creatives of Color and Save Hollywood From Itself

2020/02/28 Leave a comment

Of note:

For creators of color, one of the biggest challenges is securing the funding needed to bring our dreams to life. That’s why producer Nina Yang Bongiovi (Fruitvale Station, Dope, Sorry to Bother You) has assembled a super team of film and tech heavyweights to launch the multicultural film fund AUM Group.

Comprised of Bongiovi, Gold House Chairman Bing Che, Twitch Co-Founder Kevin Lin, XRM Media’s Michael Y. Chow, MNM Creative’s Michael K. Shen, and Silicon Valley vets Jason A. Lin and Maggie Hsu, AUM Group will develop and acquire creative IP, finance multicultural motion pictures, and invest in the next generation of storytellers.

“Forest Whitaker and I have been backed by my Asian-American partners in leading the financing on every Significant Productions’ project since Fruitvale Station through Sorry to Bother You when no one else in the marketplace was willing to take the initial risk,” Bongiovi told The Root. “Partnering with an all-star team of business leaders in AUM Group is the next natural evolution in continuing to shift culture, amplify important dialogue, and elevate commercial opportunities.”

AUM Group led the financing of the upcoming suspense-thriller Passing, which stars fan-favorite Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga and Andre Holland and navigates the complicated intersection of race, class and culture. It’s an adaptation based on the Nella Larsen novel published during the Harlem Renaissance.

For an industry in dire need of more people of color in positions of power in order to exert more control over the content being created, AUM Group is a welcome breath of fresh air. Just last month I wrote about UCLA’s latest Hollywood Diversity Report and…its findings were a bit concerning, to say the least.

But with its producer-led approach and Bongivoi’s track record of launching the careers of several noteworthy filmmakers, AUM Group could create a much-needed paradigm shift in entertainment.

Creatives, get your pitches ready.

Source: Multicultural Film Fund AUM Group Is Here to Empower Creatives of Color and Save Hollywood From Itself

And a related article:

With Asian and Asian American actors and filmmakers gaining prominence in Hollywood — the latest example: Parasite and The Farewell winning top honors at the Oscars and Spirit Awards — their counterparts in the executive suites are stepping up as well.

Nina Yang Bongiovi, who runs Forest Whitaker’s Significant Productions, revealed Feb. 24 that she has teamed with a coalition of film and tech veterans including Bing Chen, chairman of the Asian American nonprofit Gold House, and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin to launch the film fund AUM Group. Although founded by Asian Americans, the fund will back an array of multicultural film projects, starting with Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut, Passing. Now shooting, the drama is an adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel about the evolving relationship between light-skinned black women (played by Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga).

AUM Group’s announcement came four days after Mary Lee, most recently head of film at Justin Lin’s Perfect Storm Entertainment, unveiled her own banner, A-Major Media, which will focus on producing Asian American film and TV content. The company is backed by a non-exclusive majority investment from The Hollywood Reporter parent Valence Media, meaning that Lee is free to shop her projects to various production partners. Financial terms for A-Major and AUM Group were not disclosed.

Yang Bongiovi will continue to run Significant (Sorry to Bother You, Dope, Fruitvale Station), whose future projects will be supported by AUM Group, as could films from other companies — such as A-Major’s. “I’m excited about the fact that Mary could have support from AUM Group,” Yang Bongiovi tells THR. “We’re here to complement each other on our growth and presence in the business.”

A-Major already has a handful of projects on its slate, including an untitled film set up at New Line produced by John Cho and a TV series produced by Gemma Chan and Franklin Leonard. The company also is developing an adaptation of the 2015 YA novel I Believe in a Thing Called Love, about a teenage girl using K-drama techniques to woo her crush; an autobiographical film from Fresh Off the Boat co-executive producer Kourtney Kang about her high school experiences; and We Stan, a comedy about K-pop fans and friends from Atypical scribe Lauren Moon.

Yang Bongiovi and Lee cited 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians as a watershed moment that sparked faith to start their ventures. There have been Asian American studio toppers (including current DC Films chief Walter Hamada) and artists with their own shingles (Daniel Dae Kim’s 3AD), but few producer-driven companies like Dan Lin’s Rideback. That’s changing, Lee says: “[The presence of Asian Americans] has been good on the talent side, but it’s very important to be on the executive side as well. There have to be people in positions of power to champion these stories.”

Source: Asian American Producers Gain New Backing In Hollywood

 

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Amazon in Holocaust Row About ‘Hunters’ Series, Anti-Semitic Books

2020/02/28 Leave a comment

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/02/23/business/23reuters-amazon-com-auschwitz.html

I am more concerned about the anti-semitic books and items that Amazon sells than the fictionalized series “Hunters” but others may disagree:

The Auschwitz Memorial criticized Amazon on Sunday for fictitious depictions of the Holocaust in its Prime series “Hunters” and for selling books of Nazi propaganda.

Seventy-five years after the liberation of the Nazi German Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops, world leaders and activists have called for action against rising anti-Semitism.

“Hunters”, released on Friday and starring Al Pacino, features a team of Nazi hunters in 1970s New York who discover that hundreds of escaped Nazis are living in the United States.

However, the series has faced accusations of bad taste, particularly for depicting fictional atrocities in Nazi death camps, such as a game of human chess in which people are killed when a piece is taken.

“Inventing a fake game of human chess for @huntersonprime is not only dangerous foolishness & caricature. It also welcomes future deniers,” the Auschwitz Memorial tweeted.

“We honor the victims by preserving factual accuracy.”

The Auschwitz Memorial is responsible for preserving the Nazi German death camp in southern Poland, where more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, perished in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease.

The Memorial also criticized Amazon for selling anti-Semitic books.

On Friday, the Memorial retweeted a letter from the Holocaust Educational Trust to Amazon asking that anti-Semitic children’s books by Nazi Julius Streicher, who was executed for crimes against humanity, be removed from sale.

“When you decide to make a profit on selling vicious antisemitic Nazi propaganda published without any critical comment or context, you need to remember that those words led not only to the #Holocaust but also many other hate crimes,” the Auschwitz Memorial tweeted on Sunday.

“As a bookseller, we are mindful of book censorship throughout history, and we do not take this lightly. We believe that providing access to written speech is important, including books that some may find objectionable,” an Amazon spokesman said in a comment emailed to Reuters. Amazon said it would comment on “Hunters” later.

In December, Amazon withdrew from sale products decorated with images of Auschwitz, including Christmas decorations, after the Memorial complained.

Separately, prosecutors launched an investigation into a primary school in the town of Labunie, which staged a reenactment of Auschwitz with children dressed as prisoners being gassed, local media reported.

The school is accused of promoting fascism in the performance in December. It could not immediately be reached for comment.

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IOM World Migration Report 2020: Lack of understanding of multiculturalism

2020/02/28 Leave a comment

Someone brought the IOM’s simplistic, almost caricaturistic, portrayal of multiculturalism to my attention as seen in this table and description of models of inclusion (or civic integration).

Likely reflects European bias and fails to recognize, as Kymlicka and Banting have noted, that EU political anti-multiculturalism discourse is distinct from much of the on-the-ground programs that are similar to Canadian multiculturalism.

And Canadian multiculturalism, from its inception, has always been about integration, with the focus of accommodation being to increase participation of minorities and their sense of belonging to Canada.

Wonder whether the Canadian representatives to the IOM noted this mischaracterization?

Assimilation considers diversity as a risk for social cohesion and requires the highest degree of adaptation by migrants and a low degree of accommodation by the receiving society. It consists of a one-way policy where migrants must fully embrace the receiving society’s national identity and values, to the detriment of their original ones. By contrast, multiculturalism values diversity and expects a low degree of adaptation by migrants – who can retain their cultural identities – and a high degree of accommodation by the receiving society.

While assimilation has been referred to as a “melting pot”, multiculturalism has often been associated with a “salad bowl”: a melting pot contains ingredients that melt together and become indistinguishable, whereas a salad bowl is made of diverse ingredients which co-exist side by side harmoniously. While assimilation was already the rule in Latin American countries, such as Argentina, during the mass migration of Europeans in the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century,26 these two models were particularly prevalent in traditional immigration countries during the twentieth century. In broad terms, the focus was placed on assimilation from the 1920s to the 1960s, and shifted to multiculturalism in the 1970s due to the inability of the assimilationist model to accommodate increasingly diverse societies. Although it is still followed by some States, including Canada,some have disavowed multiculturalism since the mid-1990s because it has been considered unable to counter migrants’ exclusion and perceived as a threat to national identity and values.

As a result, different models have been embraced to restore a balance between diversity and unity, claimed by some to have been lost because of multiculturalism. At the national level, the model predominantly relied on today is that of integration, which stands in between assimilation and multiculturalism. It expects medium degrees of adaptation by migrants and accommodation by the receiving society. Although no commonly agreed definition exists, it is generally accepted to be a two-way process of mutual adaptation between migrants and the societies in which they live. At the local level, an interculturalist approach to inclusion has developed, which emphasizes the importance of contacts and bonds between individuals of different backgrounds, both migrants and nationals. It relies on the idea that diversity is an advantage and aims to create mutual understanding and a culture of diversity to combat discrimination and inequalities. This policy narrative finds its origins in Quebec in the 1980s in response to the Canadian multicultural policy, and has since been taken up in an increasing number of cities and neighbourhoods, in countries such as Spain or Italy.

Source: https://publications.iom.int/books/world-migration-report-2020

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Diversity of the Black population in Canada: An overview Text – Selected

2020/02/27 Leave a comment

The booklet provides a good overview of the diverse demographics of Canada’s Black population. Look forward to future work looking at the socioeconomic characteristics of the different Black communities in Canada, in particular with respect to whether how well the more highly skilled recent Black immigrants and their children in relation to earlier waves of Black immigrants, as well as with respect to other immigrant and non-immigrant groups:

There were almost 1.2 million Black people living in Canada in 2016. The Black population is diverse and has a long and rich history in the country. More than 4 in 10 Black people were born in Canada.

Among the Black population born outside of Canada, the source countries of immigration have changed over time. More than half of this population who immigrated before 1981 were born in Jamaica and Haiti. Black newcomers now come from about 125 different countries, mainly from Africa.

The vast majority of the Black population live in large urban areas. In 2016, 94.3% of Black people lived in Canada’s census metropolitan areas, compared with 71.2% of the country’s total population. Toronto had the largest Black population in the country, with 442,015 people or 36.9% of Canada’s Black population. It was followed by Montréal, Ottawa–Gatineau, Edmonton and Calgary, each home to at least 50,000 Black people.

To illustrate the growth and the diversity of the Black population, a first infographic was released on February 6, 2019. A booklet is now available to provide more information about the richness of diversity among the Black population in Canada. A number of topics are covered in this booklet including population growth, age and sex structure, place of birth, generation status, immigration, ethnic and cultural origins, languages and a few geographical highlights.

Diversity of the Black population in Canada: An overview

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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