Our Reaction to Anti-Semitism Is Both Overblown and Underdeveloped

2020/01/07 Leave a comment

A different perspective than that of Deborah Lipstadt (Jews Are Going Underground: Lipstadt) and the contrast between the USA and Europe, along with the need for all sides of the political spectrum to take antisemitism seriously.

Canada more like the USA but welcome comments and view:

We American Jews enter a new decade that feels like a much older one. Fresh off murderous and violent attacks on Jews in Jersey City, Monsey, and across Brooklyn, resurgent anti-Semitism and the resulting fear for our physical safety is for many American Jews a new phenomenon and one we never thought we would experience. Uncertainty is gripping the Jewish community and the new decade feels as if it will be a pivotal one for the quality and sustainability of American Jewish life as we know it. It strikes me that we are both overreacting and underreacting at the same time and need to recalibrate our approach.

What we have seen on the streets of the New York metropolitan area, and the fear that it has engendered, seems out of place here. It is reminiscent of scenes from European cities, where Jews are attacked for displaying outward signs of Judaism, or attacked for the offense of speaking Hebrew in public, or attacked in their homes for nothing beyond the crime of being Jewish. Orthodox residents of Crown Heights and Williamsburg are afraid to walk the streets or send their children to school. None of this is normal, none of this is acceptable, and it should not be treated as either. And it is not incumbent upon American Jews to find a solution; it is incumbent upon our elected political leaders and American society writ large to find a solution. When Jews are afraid to be Jewish, it says absolutely nothing about the victims and everything about the perpetrators and anyone or anything that abets them.

Yet while making sure that this problem is dealt with swiftly and comprehensively, it is also important to diagnose the breadth of the problem accurately. Deborah Lipstadt has forgotten more about anti-Semitism than I will ever know, but her speculation that American Jews may end up imitating medieval Spanish Marranos – hidden Jews who privately maintained their Judaism while outwardly appearing as Christian converts – by going underground strikes me as inapt. Spain’s Jews faced a choice at the end of the fifteenth century of expulsion, conversion, or death. The entire force of the Spanish state, intertwined as it was with the Catholic church, was brought to bear against the country’s Jews. Hiding one’s Judaism was not about avoiding potential danger, but in response to a fatal decree from absolutist monarchs. While a step down from the Inquisition and Torquemada, the environments created by the ruling class of Tsarist Russia that fomented pogroms or by Soviet leaders that sanctioned anti-Jewish discrimination were also the result of official state policies, of governments giving the green light to or directly leading anti-Semitic mobs.

Contrast that to the reaction of federal, state, and municipal governments to the anti-Semitic incidents in New York and New Jersey. They have been denounced by the president, governors, mayors, and members of Congress. Elected leaders have promised to devote resources toward combatting anti-Semitic attitudes and protecting Jewish institutions and have rushed to demonstrate solidarity with the Jewish community. Until words are turned into actions, we should withhold judgment on the seriousness and efficacy of these promises. But that the wall to wall reaction is to condemn anti-Semitism and evince a desire to remove its scourge demonstrates why the situation in the U.S. is a universe away from the ones that previous generations of Jews fled from in Europe.

As for Jews going underground in Europe today, it is indeed frightening and saddening. But it is unfortunately not a recent occurrence. It is the norm in Europe, whereas in the U.S. it remains the exception. I do not dismiss or make light of college students who feel compelled to downplay their Judaism or their Zionism. If it happens to even one person, that is one person too many. But we are not at the point in the U.S. where we have blast walls and machine gun-toting guards outside of our synagogues, where we have to ask a local for the address of a kosher restaurant that has no visible markings or identification as such, or where government officials issue warnings against wearing kippot in public, nor do I think we ever will be. Not for nothing is anti-Semitism described as the world’s oldest and most persistent hatred, and it should be clear to all American Jews that we will never be free of it entirely. Jews will be killed for being Jews, and it is small comfort to point out that such incidents remain exceptional. But it is premature to declare that it is open season on American Jews, that American Jewish life is fated to retreat behind high walls and closed doors, and that past is prologue.

All that said, there have been too many recent instances of American Jews not taking the current moment seriously enough, and nearly all of them revolve around some form of excusing inconvenient anti-Semitism away. We have all seen this in doses over the past few years, with a camp that kicks into high gear over right-wing white nationalist anti-Semitism but is blind and deaf to the far left variety that inherently views Jews as oppressors, and a camp that has a hair trigger for the anti-Semitism of progressive intersectionality but is blinded to right-wing classically anti-Semitic stereotypes by the glow of the Jerusalem embassy. On both sides, this has to end. It cannot be that the far right and the far left, despite the chasm that separates their worldviews, can manage to be united in their sneering hatred of Jews while we Jews ourselves cannot manage to be united in combatting that hatred.

If your response to the Jersey City or Monsey attacks was that it is a complicated situation, you are not serious about anti-Semitism. If your response to any display of anti-Semitism is some form of whataboutism in insisting that the other side’s is worse or more dangerous, you are not serious about anti-Semitism. If you think that it is okay to rail about globalist Jews as long as you support Iron Dome or West Bank settlements, or that it is okay to rail against evil Zionists so long as you display phantom nuance by separating them from good non-Zionist Jews, you are not serious about anti-Semitism. And if your reaction to a politician who proudly stands next to Robert “Judaism leads people to an eternity of separation from God in Hell” Jeffress differs at all from your reaction to a politician who proudly stands next to Louis “Jews are the mother and father of apartheid” Farrakhan, you should think about whether you are more interested in combatting anti-Semitism or more interested in weaponizing it. If we want to make sure that anti-Semitism remains unacceptable, then we have to treat it as such no matter the source, the target, or the ostensible motivation.

Source: Our Reaction to Anti-Semitism Is Both Overblown and Underdeveloped

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Plain Japanese key to inclusive, multicultural Japan

2020/01/07 Leave a comment

Interesting:

With Japan hosting increasing numbers of foreign visitors and residents, plain Japanese is spreading as a means of more inclusive communication in various situations, from disasters to tourism.

“Every language must be respected, and when we communicate with people who don’t speak Japanese, responding in their native language should be a priority,” said Akira Yoshikai, head of Yasashii Nihongo Tourism Kenkyukai, a group which promotes plain Japanese and its potential in tourism.

“But when it’s not practical to do so at an individual level, plain Japanese could be another option,” he said.

Plain Japanese targets those who can use the language to navigate things like shopping and making plans with their friends, according to a plain Japanese research group at Hirosaki University in northeastern Japan’s Aomori Prefecture.

It uses all three components of the Japan writing system — hiragana, katakana and kanji Chinese characters — but at a level of second- or third-grade elementary school students.

Also, for ease of understanding, sentences can be written completely in hiragana. Hiragana can also appear above Chinese characters, called furigana, to indicate its pronunciation.

Difficult terms are often rephrased. For example, evacuation shelter would be stated as ‘a place where everyone can stay for safety.’

In Yanagawa in southwestern Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture, the city government created in 2016 badges indicating tourists and locals who prefer to speak in plain Japanese.

The badges carry messages written in Japanese — “Plain Japanese please” for tourists and “Hosting in plain Japanese” for locals.

Yoshikai, who was involved in making the badges in Yanagawa, his hometown, said he first got the idea of utilizing plain Japanese in tourism from a conversation with his mother.

“She said she wasn’t able to talk to foreign tourists because she can’t speak English. But many of the tourists to Yanagawa were from Asia, including Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea,” Yoshikai said.

Ad agency Dentsu Inc. estimated in 2016 a total of 8 million people from the three Asian neighbors were learning Japanese, either at school or as a hobby, and over 60 percent of Japanese learners in those areas wanted to speak the language when they visit the country.

“Not many people are aware that there are so many tourists who want to speak Japanese,” he said.

Municipalities including Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture, Kagoshima Prefecture and Tokyo’s Kodaira city and Setagaya Ward have held lectures for citizens to learn about plain Japanese and how to use it in tourism.

In 2018, the number of foreign tourists to Japan surpassed 30 million for the first time, with the government aiming to welcome 40 million in 2020 when Tokyo hosts the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In the first 11 months of 2019, about 29 million tourists visited Japan, according to the Japan National Tourism Agency. The top three places tourists came from were China, South Korea and Taiwan.

As a reference for municipalities, the Olympic and Paralympic Games preparation bureau has set up a portal site that offers information and case studies of how to provide multilingual assistance, including plain Japanese.

But many Japanese people still have a stereotype that foreigners speak English, Yoshikai said.

“The problem is not that Japanese people are not good at speaking English,” he said. “Rather, it’s that daily Japanese used by native speakers is difficult for beginners to understand.”

Some of the factors making Japanese difficult are its honorific expressions as well as its importance of context, often abbreviating constituents of sentences, according to Yoshikai, who has a teaching license for Japanese as a second language.

“Daily Japanese is difficult to deal with just by learning from textbooks,” he said. “While the government is beefing up Japanese language education, shouldn’t we, the hosting side, be doing something too?”

The number of foreign residents in Japan reached 2.73 million in 2018, up 6.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Justice Ministry. Chinese accounted for 28.0 percent of the total, followed by South Korean at 16.5 percent and Vietnamese at 12.1 percent.

According to a survey by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, 62.6 percent of the foreign residents in Japan said they understand Japanese, while 44 percent said they understand English.

With the government introducing a new skilled worker visa in April 2019 to bring in more foreign labor, “Japanese society will be more multicultural at a pace we have never experienced,” Yoshikai said. “Being able to use plain Japanese will be a must for native Japanese speakers.”

Plain Japanese was originally developed to provide emergency information in case of disasters, after many foreigners were troubled by a lack of information during the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake that devastated Kobe and its vicinity, killing more than 6,400.

Among foreigners in the area, for every 100 people, 2.12 were injured, while the ratio for Japanese was 0.89, according to a survey by the Urban Disaster Research Institute in Tokyo. The data suggested a lack of information increased risks for foreigners.

Usage of plain Japanese has been evolving in this area as well with the help of new technologies such as social media.

In October 2019, when Typhoon Hagibis made landfall on Japan’s main island of Honshu, a plain Japanese tweet written all in hiragana by the Nagano prefectural government went viral. The powerful typhoon left more than 90 people dead and flooded tens of thousands of homes.

The tweet, which carried the official phone number offering disaster information in 15 languages, were not only retweeted more than 40,000 times but received a number of thank-you comments, with some Twitter users even voluntarily translating the post in various languages.

“We didn’t expect this much impact,” said an official in charge of disaster response at Nagano Prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the typhoon. “We didn’t think it would be translated into multiple languages and we can’t be more grateful for the support.”

He said tweeting in plain Japanese was decided amid the disaster, responding to requests from followers of the prefecture’s twitter account to offer information in plain Japanese as well.

“With more people using different languages in Japan, it’s definitely necessary to give consideration to them when offering disaster information,” the official said.

Plain Japanese is not only helpful for foreigners, their children raised in Japan or Japanese returnees who spent years overseas, but also for Japanese who have a hearing disability, Yoshikai said.

Those who grew up using sign language as a major communication tool could face challenges similar to foreigners in trying to understand Japanese, whose grammar is different from that for signing, Yoshikai said.

“(Using plain Japanese) will be an opportunity for the majority of Japanese people to rethink what their language and society is like,” he said.

“When you become aware of one minority group, it makes you realize other minority groups around you,” Yoshikai said. “I hope the idea of plain Japanese leads to a society where a diverse group of people can live as they are.”

Source: Plain Japanese key to inclusive, multicultural Japan

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What policy issues will define our next 40 years of publishing? Policy Options at 40

2020/01/07 Leave a comment

Good and useful contrast by Jennifer Ditchburn between what has changed and what has remained the same:

Flipping through back copies of Policy Options from 1980, the year the magazine was founded, there’s a distinct feeling of déjà vu.

There are headlines such as,

“How Best to Live with the United States;”

“The Liberal Vacuum in the West;”

“Canada Needs to be Self-sufficient in Oil.”

“The State of the Legislative Process in Canada”

“Since the election there has been more bemoaning than ever of the structural malformation of the Canadian body politics, with one main party rootless in Quebec and the other almost alien to Western Canada,” wrote founding editor-in-chief Tom Kent, the legendary public policy thinker and journalist, of the two main parties.

“What is worrisome is the strengthened fear that the fundamental reason why it seems unchangeable is that people in both those regions increasingly doubt whether federal politics matter much anyway.”

In 1980, as in 2020, the country was in a period of intergovernmental malaise and coming out of an election. The first referendum on Quebec sovereignty was held in May 1980. The notorious National Energy Program was inaugurated that year, and Pierre Trudeau, prime minister at the time, opened the 32nd Parliament with not a single Liberal MP from BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan, and only two in Manitoba.

By the fall of 1980, Trudeau had announced his intention to approach the United Kingdom unilaterally to seek the patriation of the Constitution – sparking more than a year of constitutional negotiations with premiers, and mobilizing Indigenous leaders to make sure their treaty and inherent rights were respected.

There is always something bizarrely comforting about spotting familiar patterns in Canada’s past: How many times do we hear the phrase “plus ça change, plus c’est pareil” in reference to our political history? Meanwhile, people who weren’t yet born during the years of the National Energy Program or The Night of Long Knives can reference those grievances and find the echoes in our contemporary frictions. Yes, old policy and political mistakes can cast long shadows.

But here’s the thing: Canada in 2020 is nothing like the Canada of 1980, and we should be careful not to use old maps to orient ourselves as we move into the next decade. Our country is more urban and suburban, more ethnoculturally diverse, and also getting proportionately older.

Susan Gibson, then with Ontario’s Status of Women Council, wrote in 1980 about the hiring and promotion of women in the public service that, “it is clear that substantive improvement in the status of women Crown employees still lies in the future.” At the time, Gibson said there were no women deputy ministers in Ontario, and only 1.38 percent in senior positions. By 2017, women accounted for 30.4 percent of Ontario deputy ministers and about half of other executive levels, according to an employee survey from that year.

Reading through those issues of Policy Options from 1980, a few things were notably absent.

John F. Graham, the late Dalhousie University professor and economist, was the only person that year to discuss environmental concerns.

“We now…face the prospect in the not very distance future of very low, zero, or negative economic growth resulting from a combination of exhaustion of natural resources and suicidal environmental damage,” he wrote.

The impact of technology is referenced, but in the “boob tube” style of the 1980s – which was to bemoan the impact of television on Canadian public discourse. Who could have envisioned the way our lives and our economy would change with the advent of the smartphone, social media platforms and advancing artificial intelligence?

Indigenous rights and the Crown’s treaty obligations do not figure in the numerous articles about federalism and intergovernmental affairs. Although a vast amount of work remains to be done to fulfil the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and to restore a true nation-to-nation relationship, decolonization was simply not a topic of policy conversation in non-Indigenous circles 40 years ago.

Plus ça change, well, ça change.

Yes, we are in another phase of discontent within the Canadian federation, but it is impossible to consider this time in Canadian history without also looking outside of our borders. Where the issues eloquently explored in this magazine in 1980 dealt principally with federal-provincial, industrial and Canada-US policy, almost all the challenges before us today have a global dimension.

While the federal government and the premiers tussle over carbon pricing and support for the energy sector, the overarching question is whether the world’s nations collectively will act quickly enough to curb the catastrophic rise in global temperatures. (The results of the COP 25 conference in Madrid last month bode poorly.)

The suitability of the equalization program and stabilization fund are on the First Ministers’ agenda, but the bigger picture about the Canadian economy hinges on the disruptive forces of automation, artificial intelligence and the impact of climate change down the road. As the federal government’s foresight agency Policy Horizons pointed out in a recent report, it’s unclear what skills workers will need in the future, and also how taxes will be collected as jobs becoming increasingly virtual.

Yes, Canada’s relationship with the United States remains a perpetual policy preoccupation, but now it is overlaid with concerns over how to fill the vacuum Washington has left in international multilateral institutions and counterbalance the growing influence of China.

Even when we talk about the health of our democracy, the future leadership of the Conservative Party, and other Canadian political issues, we have to consider the wider context of disinformation and borderless social media platforms, populist trends worldwide, and the microtargeting of voters through the use of their own data.

Over the next year, we will be re-publishing some of the articles that appeared in 1980, along with responses to the material from 2020. As the current editor-in-chief, I can’t help but wonder which issues just barely appearing on our radar now will be fundamentally shaping Canada in the years to come.

Source: What policy issues will define our next 40 years of publishing?Policy Options at 40

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Articles of interest over the holidays – India’s Citizenship Act

2020/01/06 Leave a comment

Northern India’s Uttar Pradesh has been the worst affected in the ongoing protests against a controversial new citizenship law. At least 19 people have died in the state since protests began on 20 December. The BBC’s Vikas Pandey travels to the region to find out why it has witnessed such large-scale and violent protests.

The extremely narrow lanes of Babupurwa in Kanpur city lead me to Mohammed Shareef’s home.

He is sitting outside the small tin-roof house. It has just one room which doubles as a kitchen during the day and bedroom at night. He gets up, hugs me and breaks down. Several minutes pass in silence.

“I have lost everything. I have no will to live. What was my son’s fault? Why did the police shoot him?” he says trying to hold back tears.

Source: Citizenship Act protests: Why fear has gripped Muslims in this Indian state

Protests against a new citizenship law in India risk making investors wary of doing business in Asia’s third-largest economy.

At least 25 people have been killed in nationwide demonstrations against the new rules enacted into law earlier this month. The law bars undocumented Muslims from three neighboring nations seeking Indian citizenship, while allowing people of other faiths to do so.

Source: Protests Against India’s Citizenship Law Risk Spooking Investors Away

As India’s new citizenship law seeks to create a stratified citizenship based on religion, a large number of Indians opposing it are emerging as a people of one book, the country’s Constitution, which came into force on Jan. 26, 1950.

In the past two weeks, diverse crowds across the country have responded to the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, referred to as the C.A.A., passed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government by chanting the preamble to the Constitution of India, with its promises of social, political and economic justice, freedom of thought, expression and belief, equality and fraternity.

Student protesters being herded into police vans, opposition leaders standing outside the Indian Parliament and ebullient crowds of tens of thousands in Hyderabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai have read aloud the preamble and held aloft copies of the Constitution and portraits of B.R. Ambedkar, its chief draftsman.

The C.A.A. offers an accelerated pathway to citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Christian migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan but excludes Muslims. It effectively creates a hierarchical system of citizenship determined by an individual’s religion, reminiscent of Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, which privileged citizenship for “indigenous races,” excluded the Rohingya and paved the ground for the genocidal violence against them.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/india-constitution-protests.html

The recently enacted Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, carves out a special pathway to citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants from some countries. This sort of discrimination against Muslims is popularly thought of as being a relatively recent phenomenon. However, at the founding of India’s republic, the citizenship provisions of the Constitution also discriminated against Muslim immigrants and ma

The Permit System

After the partition of the country, two waves of immigration occurred from West Pakistan to India. In the first wave, which started from March 1, 1947, large numbers of Hindus and Sikhs arrived here. In the second wave in 1948, many Indian Muslims who had migrated to West Pakistan sought to return to India because of poor conditions there, especially in Karachi. This second wave

In April 1948, Nehru acknowledged that the “influx … of Muslims to Delhi and other parts of India from Pakistan has raised certain difficulties”. The following month, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel wrote to Nehru that there was “considerable discontent” among the public in general and refugees in particular about the Indian government’s “failure to prevent the inflow of Muslims from Pakistan.” The return of “these Muslims”, he explained, “while we are not yet able to rehabilitate Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan… would again be the breeding ground of communal poison, on which activities of organisation[s] like the RSS thrive.” He believed that returning Indian Muslims were “a great source of danger to the peace and security of Delhi”. Nehru replied and said that this was an “undoubtedly serious” matter.

It was against this backdrop that the Indian government introduced a system on July 19, 1948, under which no person could move from West Pakistan into India without a permit issued by the Indian high commission in Karachi or Lahore.

Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/opinion/citizenship-amendment-act-the-unsecular-origins-of-indian-citizenship-by-abhinav-chandrachud

At 24, Indian transgender Ray has already had to fight many battles for recognition and now faces a new threat – losing her citizenship because of controversial new legislation.

The Delhi-based law student – whose official documents identify her as male – is among tens of thousands of people protesting against the legislation and a mooted nationwide citizens’ register, worried that it will render transgender Indians like herself stateless.

Her fears are not unfounded. In September this year, a petition was filed in India’s Supreme Court after around 2,000 transgenders were left off a citizens’ register in the northeastern state of Assam, throwing their future into doubt.

Despite being legally recognised as a third gender in a historic 2014 Supreme Court ruling, they often live on the extreme fringes of Indian society, with many forced into prostitution, begging or menial jobs.

For a community that already faces severe discrimination in conservative India – much of it from their own families – transgenders feel they are at extra risk from legislation pushed by Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi aimed ostensibly at tackling illegal immigration.

Source: India’s transgenders face losing citizenship with new law

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Articles of interest over the holidays – USA

2020/01/06 Leave a comment

Source: Is America About to Suffer Its Weimar Moment?

Political impact

Of all the concerns about immigration, perhaps none is more important to politicians than how immigration affects political control. In particular, many Republicans believe that immigration has clearly boosted the Democratic Party and that higher immigration will obviously doom the GOP. But historically (and recently), congressional Republicans have performed much better during periods when the immigrant share of the population is high. By contrast, Democrats dominated the low immigration periods.

GOP Almost Always Controls a House of Congress During High Immigration Periods, Rarely Controls Either House During Low Immigration Periods

The Republican Party came into existence in 1854, and while it quickly dominated, the Civil War and Reconstruction make its early history anomalous. Looking solely at the period since Reconstruction, Republicans have controlled at least one House of Congress 85 percent of years when the immigrant share of the population was greater than 10 percent, while not controlling either House 83 percent of all other years (Fig. 1). Moreover, they have controlled both houses 59 percent of the high immigration years, compared to just 7 percent of the low immigration years.

Source: Congressional Republicans Dominate High Immigration Periods | Cato @ Liberty

Citizenship

The citizenship question the Trump administration wanted to add to the 2020 census would have likely been especially sensitive in areas with higher shares of Latinx residents and noncitizens. That’s among the Census Bureau’s final conclusions from its recent experiment testing public reaction to the question.

If courts had not blocked the question from appearing on census forms, it would have also likely lowered self-response rates in parts of the U.S. where Asian residents make up between 5% and 20% of the population, according to the Census Bureau’s final report on the national experiment conducted earlier this year.

The findings released on Monday flesh out preliminary analysis the bureau put out in October when officials announced the question likely would not have had a significant effect on overall self-response rates.

Digging deeper into specific groups, however, the bureau did find statistically significant differences between certain households asked to fill out a test census form with a citizenship question and those presented with forms without one.

“These differences were small,” wrote Victoria Velkoff, the bureau’s associate director for demographic programs, in a blog post about the bureau’s early findings.

Source: Census Bureau Releases Final Report On 2019 Test Of Citizenship Question

Evangelicals

At the time of year when Christians around the world are supposed to unite in celebration of their savior’s birth, this Christmas has been a particularly fractious time for white evangelicals in America. Last week, Christianity Today, a leading evangelical magazine, published an editorial condemning Trump’s “immoral character” and calling for his removal from office. “That he should be removed,” the editorial, written by outgoing editor-in-chief Mark Galli, contended, “we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”

It was a stance that nearly broke the internet — the publication’s website temporarily went down as millions tried to read the piece — and revealed the fault lines in a religious movement that is often viewed as a monolithic political force. No sooner had Christianity Today published its words than the piece drew heavy and vitriolic pushback from other conservative Christian voices. Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, scoffed on Fox News that the publication ought to be renamed “Christianity Yesterday” for being “out of step with the faith community” when it came to Trump. Shortly after, nearly two hundred evangelical leaders signed a letterexpressing their “dissatisfaction” with the editorial for supporting what it called the “entirely-partisan, legally-dubious, and politically-motivated impeachment.”

Secular media pounced on the controversy, seemingly surprised that an evangelical outlet had taken such a stand while also deeming the fracas as part of what The Daily Beast called the “spiraling evangelical Christian civil war.” That’s an overstated assessment of a rather imbalanced divide, but the Christianity Today editorial does point to a committed and principled NeverTrump evangelical movement that has held steadfast since 2015 and which draws a sharp contrast with the spineless Congressional Republicans who, in toto, have folded in complete submission to Trump.

Source: The evangelical resistance?

Ever since the 1970s and the birth of the Religious Right, white evangelicals have been closely associated with the Republican Party. Generally speaking, this has meant white evangelicals tend to lean conservative on most social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

But recent political events show that what began as a rightward lean has, on at least one issue, become an area of genuine extremism. Inspired by the Christmastime dustup between Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and blogger Matt Walsh, Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan P. Burge did some data analysis on just how white evangelicals feel about immigration in 2019, and what he found was startling.

Using data from the Cooperate Congressional Election Study, Burge found that on the five immigration questions asked by the survey, white evangelicals had a rightward gap from the mainstream Burge characterized as “humungous” — at least 20 percentage points on four of the five questions.

Source: Study: The Average White Evangelical Is Further Right on Immigration Than Abortion

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Articles of interest over the holidays – China

2020/01/06 Leave a comment

The order from Chinese officials was blunt and urgent. Villagers from Muslim minorities should be pushed into jobs, willing or not. Quotas would be set and families penalized if they refused to go along.

“Make people who are hard to employ renounce their selfish ideas,” the labor bureau of Qapqal, a county in the western region of Xinjiang, said in the directive last year.

Such orders are part of an aggressive campaign to remold Xinjiang’s Muslim minorities — mostly Uighurs and Kazakhs — into an army of workers for factories and other big employers. Under pressure from the authorities, poor farmers, small traders and idle villagers of working age attend training and indoctrination courses for weeks or months, and are then assigned to stitch clothes, make shoes, sweep streets or fill other jobs.

These labor programs represent an expanding front in a major effort by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to entrench control over this region, where these minorities make up about half the population. They are crucial to the government’s strategy of social re-engineering alongside the indoctrination camps, which have held one million or more Uighurs and Kazakhs.

Source: Inside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of WorkersInside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of WorkersThe Communist Party wants to remold Xinjiang’s minorities into loyal blue-collar workers to supply Chinese factories with cheap labor.

The first grader was a good student and beloved by her classmates, but she was inconsolable, and it was no mystery to her teacher why.

“The most heartbreaking thing is that the girl is often slumped over on the table alone and crying,” he wrote on his blog. “When I asked around, I learned that it was because she missed her mother.”

The mother, he noted, had been sent to a detention camp for Muslim ethnic minorities. The girl’s father had passed away, he added. But instead of letting other relatives raise her, the authorities put her in a state-run boarding school — one of hundreds of such facilities that have opened in China’s far western Xinjiang region.

As many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others have been sent to internment camps and prisons in Xinjiang over the past three years, an indiscriminate clampdown aimed at weakening the population’s devotion to Islam. Even as these mass detentions have provoked global outrage, though, the Chinese government is pressing ahead with a parallel effort targeting the region’s children.

Source: In China’s Crackdown on Muslims, Children Have Not Been Spared

 

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Articles of interest over the holidays – Multiculturalism

2020/01/06 Leave a comment

CRRF/Environics Racism Survey

When racist incidents in Canada grab public attention, they usually provoke two reactions: general condemnation, then a resolution to finally start a serious conversation about race relations in this country. Then the moment passes and our interest drifts – until the next incident repeats the cycle.

A new survey provides fresh insights on race relations in Canada that have the potential to jump-start this much-needed conversation. The findings echo what racialized Canadians have been saying for years: For many, racism is a common experience. According to the Race Relations in Canada 2019 Survey, most racialized Canadians say people in their group are either sometimes or often treated unfairly because of their race. Fewer than one in 10 say this never happens.

Racism takes many forms. Canadians are most likely to have seen overt discrimination take place on the street, but significant numbers have also seen it occur on public transit, in stores and restaurants and in the workplace. Interactions with law enforcement are a problem for some: Almost one in three Indigenous people and one in five black people in Canada say they have been unfairly stopped by police in the past year. News and cultural products can perpetuate racism: Only one in five racialized people think their own group is portrayed fairly in the media. And racism sometimes takes a subtler form in day-to-day interactions, with between a third and a half of racialized Canadians saying that in the past 12 months they’ve been treated as less intelligent, viewed with suspicion or ignored or overlooked because of their race.

Source: Are Canadians ready to confront racism? Michael Adams and Lilian Ma

Quebec Values Selection Test

The Government of Quebec has provided new details of the so-called values test that immigration candidates will have to pass in order to qualify for selection by the province.

Beginning January 1, 2020, immigration candidates looking to settle in Quebec will have to obtain what the government is calling an Attestation of learning about democratic values and the Quebec values expressed by the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

In a new, French-only Practical Guide to the test, the Government of Quebec says knowledge of the values it reflects is essential to an immigrant’s integration into the province.

“They are key to a better understanding of Quebec,” the guide says.

Reading the guide is not required in order to take the test but serves instead as an introduction to the values in question, which it divides into five key principles:

  • Quebec is a French-speaking society
  • Quebec is a democratic society
  • Equality between women and men
  • The rights and responsibilities of Quebecers
  • Quebec is a secular society

Source: Quebec releases guide to prepare immigrants for new ‘values test’

Lack of Federal Challenge to Quebec Law

There are many reasons – some good ones, even – why Canadian leaders can continue to pretend that an egregious, oppressive, discriminatory law is not being enforced in our country today. That people are not being denied jobs as teachers, police officers, judges or Crown prosecutors because of who they are and what they wear out of faith.

When asked, and only when asked, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will say he does not agree with Quebec’s secularism law, which prohibits those in certain public sector jobs from wearing religious symbols. The law has already forced some young Quebeckers to leave their home province so that they may pursue their chosen careers without abandoning practices of their faith.

In a decision earlier this month, three Quebec Court of Appeal judges noted that the law is currently causing harm to Quebeckers who wear religious symbols. But with the exception of Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, who has spoken out repeatedly and unabashedly against the law known as Bill 21, most Canadian leaders, particularly at the federal level, are content to pretend that harm doesn’t exist.

Their silence is cushioned by a handful of well-worn excuses: foremost of them, the idea that it’s no one else’s business. Bill 21 is characterized as a provincial matter only, and as such, the rest of Canada should not be getting involved.

Source: Will Ottawa ever do the right thing, and call out discrimination in Quebec? Robyn Urback

Canadian Election and Multiculturalism

It looked as if it was going to be a lot worse.

In the early stages of the 2019 federal election, purveyors of racial and social division were in a giddy mood. Anti-immigration billboards popped up in cities across Canada, the fringe Canadian Nationalist Party (who advocate that Canada maintain a “European-descended majority”) got national media coverage, and swastikas were reportedly scrawled on campaign signs. A group of New Brunswick NDP operatives jumped ship to the Green party, in part because of concerns the NDP couldn’t counter a persistent belief among some voters that leader Jagmeet Singh is a Muslim, misinformation they calculated would cost the NDP votes. Meanwhile, Singh famously had to contend with being asked to take off his turbanto look more “Canadian.”

Recall the 2015 election, perhaps best remembered as a referendum on whether a few Muslim women would be allowed to wear niqabs during citizenship ceremonies, with a subplot involving a proposed “Barbaric Cultural Practices” snitch line. On the heels of that ugly campaign, the 2019 election had the potential to become a massive culture war, with an unholy alliance of racists, nationalists and Islamophobes on one side, and everyone they hate on the other.

Fortunately, that war didn’t really materialize. If the 2019 election was about anything, it was probably about climate change, or about whether Canadians had confidence in Justin Trudeau’s leadership. The closet white supremacists who paraded around as free-speech warriors representing some make-believe majority of “real” Canadians should see the results of the 2019 election as a stinging rebuke. Canadians were asked who they are, and they answered.

Source: Racists and Islamophobes wanted a Canadian culture war. It didn’t happen, but we got an ugly glimpse

Diversity Among Political Staff

The most senior and powerful political staff in Justin Trudeau’s government don’t reflect the diversity of Canada, or meet the same representation requirements that the Prime Minister set for his cabinet.

Since the Liberals formed government in 2015, Mr. Trudeau has made diversity a cornerstone of his political brand. When he unveiled his first cabinet, he declared it one that “looks like Canada.” More than four years into government, the senior staff working for those ministers are still predominantly white and male.

A Globe and Mail analysis shows that of the 37 chiefs of staff, 14 of them are women compared with 23 men, and only four of them are racial minorities.

That compares with 18 out of 37 cabinet ministers who are women and seven who are racial minorities.

Most of the research around diversity in politics focuses on elected representatives rather than their staff, but University of Calgary PhD student Meagan Cloutier collected data on the people working in MPs’ offices, which show that while there are overall more women, they tend to hold the less prestigious positions.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeaus-gender-parity-diversity-requirements-stop-at-cabinet-door/ 

Accents and Integration

“Can you repeat that, please?”

It’s a question Joan Jiang gets regularly.

Jiang is from China and learned English as a second language. Though she tries not to take it to heart, she admits that after 20 years in Canada, it sometimes gets to her.

“It really shakes my confidence,” she said.Jiang sees her lingering accent as an obstacle, particularly in the workplace. She remembers one job interview in particular. Her resumé had impressed, but she could tell the interviewer was concerned by her pronunciation. She didn’t get the job.”After that, I thought I needed to improve,” she said. “I don’t want my skill to be wasted because my language [is] blocking me.”Last year, Jiang decided to enrol in accent training classes.

Also called accent reduction or modification, the programs are available across Canada, and promise to “lessen the negative effects of an accent” and help students “achieve a more neutral or ‘Canadian’ accent.”

Source: cbc.ca/news/canada/ot…

Reviving the Islamic Spirit Speakers

A recent Islamic conference in Toronto has drawn criticism from B’nai Brith over some of its guest speakers.

In a Dec. 19 press release, B’nai Brith Canada highlighted three speakers who have made anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist comments in the past: Yasir Qadhi, Siraj Wahhaj and Omar Suleiman.

“It is troubling that a major Canadian Muslim conference continues to invite extremist preachers to Canada,” Michael Mostyn, the CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, said in the statement. “Surely there are enough qualified moderate Muslim leaders, without a history of extremist messaging, who can be chosen to speak at events such as these.”

The annual Islamic conference, called Reviving the Islamic Spirit, ran from Dec. 20-22, 2019. Started in 2001, it has grown to become one of the largest in North America, with more than 20,000 attendees each year. The conference organizers did not return The CJN’s request for comment.

Omar Suleiman, a Palestinian imam who works extensively in the humanitarian sector and with interfaith groups, has a history of making anti-Zionist social media posts, including writing on Facebook that “Zionists are the enemies of God,” and comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.

Source: Controversial Islamic conference in Toronto draws concerns

HBO Multicultural Programming

Lucinda Martinez has promoted multicultural programming at HBO for years and is now at the heart of what HBO Max can do successfully.

In 2018, women and black people controlled 58% of HBO’s episodic programs, compared to 35% in 2015. Now the network wants to accelerate its diversification by focusing on artisans with HBO POV – also known as Power of Visibility.

More than eight years ago, HBO launched its award-winning department for multicultural marketing under the direction of Lucinda Martinez. In the beginning it was a subset of their work as VP Domestic Network Distribution; Today it is the Multicultural & International Marketing department that she heads as the executive vice president.

“When we started, we found that we had an impact not only on the shows themselves, but also on the talent that was there,” said Martinez. Initially, she and her team focused on promoting shows such as “Insecure”, “Ballers”, “A Black Lady Sketch Show” and “2 Dope Queens”.

Source: For HBO Max, diversity is more than a PC. It is a secret weapon

Tony Abbot’s Change of Mind

Spectator writers, past and present, were asked: ‘When have you changed your mind?’ Here is Tony Abbott’s response:

A rather important issue — this question of multiculturalism. Thirty years ago, I was anxious about the impact on Australia of people from very diverse cultures. But then when I was running the group Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, I found to my surprise, and ultimately great satisfaction, that there were many, many people, of very diverse cultural backgrounds, who supported the monarchy in Australia very strongly. It was one of the reasons why they’d come to Australia: the stability, the continuity, the settled government that the monarchy in our country symbolises. And that led me to an even stronger conclusion: that the vast majority of migrants are coming here to join us, not to change us.

Source: Tony Abbott: Why I changed my mind about multiculturalism

Japanese Canadian Redress British Columbia

The way Lorene Oikawa describes it, the goals of the spiral-bound publication she hand-delivered last month are somewhat more forward-looking and broad than the official title — “Recommendations for Redressing Historical Wrongs Against Japanese Canadians in B.C.” — might suggest.

“It’s about history, but it’s also about now. And it’s about our future,” Oikawa, president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, said in a recent interview. “And it’s about all of us.”

Oikawa presented the report last month to B.C.’s Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Lisa Beare during a ceremony in Vancouver. Beare called the event “a very symbolic milestone for both the B.C. government and the Japanese Canadian community,” and it followed several years of efforts toward redress for the state-sponsored dispossession and displacement of 22,000 Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.

Now, Oikawa and other community leaders say 2020 will be a pivotal year in the long push for redress, which could involve measures including education, recognition and commemoration, as well as reclaiming seized properties.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Oikawa said. “2020 is the time. … Everybody sees this opportunity, and we just need to grab hold of it, and we are.”

Source: Dan Fumano: ‘2020 is the time’ for Japanese Canadians to ‘grab’ redress

Antisemitism: Lipstadt and others

In a month of terrible anti-Semitic attacks, including a stabbing yesterday of multiple people at a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, the news that most depressed me did not involve violence. It was not something done to Jews but something Jews did. A synagogue in the Netherlands is no longer publicly posting the times of prayer services. If you want to join a service, you have to know someone who is a member of the community.

Do not misunderstand me. I was and am in a fury over the multiple assaults, culminating in the Monsey attack, which was the worst since the murders in Jersey City, which, some readers might not realize, was less than three weeks ago.
In Europe and the United States, Jews have been repeatedly assaulted on the street. Tombstones were desecrated in Slovakia. In London, anti-Semitic graffiti was painted on synagogues and Jewish-owned stores. A Belgian daily newspaper accused a lawmaker who is Jewish of being a spy for Israel. A Polish town refused to install small brass plates that commemorate Holocaust victims. In Italy, the town of Schio did the same because, the mayor said, they would be “divisive.” (Divisive to whom?)
This intolerance is coming from right-wing extremists, progressive leftists, and other minorities who, themselves, are often the object of persecution. Anti-Semites seem to think it is open season on Jews. And maybe, given the many incidents, they are right.

Source: Jews Are Going Underground: Lipstadt

… I recently spoke by phone with David Nirenberg, the dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, who has written extensively on the history of anti-Semitism. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why prejudice against Jews seems to arise in so many different eras and contexts, and the unhelpfulness of always thinking about anti-Semitism as a manifestation of politics.

…Do you think it is worth thinking of anti-Semitism today as akin to the prejudices that afflict many different religious and ethnic minorities, such as Muslims or Hispanics in the United States? Or is it distinct in important ways?

That’s a really tough question, and, in some ways, I hate to distinguish between different forms of prejudice or hate. When you think about some of the most enduring prejudices—for example, the asymmetries of power between men and women—these are structural aspects of our global society. But I do think anti-Semitism is distinctive in certain ways. One of those ways is that it really does transcend particular political contexts. There aren’t a great number of Jews in Hungary or Poland, but thinking about Jews is a crucial part of nationalism—or anti-globalization or whatever you want to call it—in Hungary and Poland today. And I think that’s different from the way most of the other groups you mentioned are used in the world’s imagination.

This is a really difficult topic to think about, and I would like to think we are each entitled to study our own hate without having to study all the others. But we can see symptoms of a distinction in our own age. I don’t think, for example, that people in many parts of the world where there aren’t Muslim immigrants are thinking really centrally about their own society in terms of Islam, and I would say the same thing might be true of some racial prejudices that are central to the United States but don’t play a very large role in other societies. But what’s curious about anti-Semitism or anti-Judaism is how it can be put to work by many societies that really have nothing to do with living Jews or Judaism.

When many of the people in these societies think about immigration, even though the problem they see isn’t Jews immigrating to these societies, they do think about Judaism in order to explain the immigration they see as threatening their society. So, in the United States, France, Hungary, and many other places, replacement-theory ideologies explain replacement in terms of the machinations of the Jews, or the Jewish global order. Anti-Judaism is actually a system of thought that people can use to explain many of the challenges they face, even when there are no Jews around. And that has a flexibility that, in the worst moments, allows many parts of society to agree that Jews are the problem in a way you don’t always see coalescing around other distinctions.

Source: How Anti-Semitism Rises on the Left and Right

…As a Canadian Muslim, I know how hurtful and unfair it can feel to be seen as “the Other.” It happens to far too many communities considered different for a variety of reasons, ranging from their faith, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. It’s up to all of us to confront any and all efforts to otherize communities because it indeed threatens the well-being of our entire society.

It has become far too easy for those who promote hate to find a platform. As comedian Sacha Baron Cohen said in a speech to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) last November, Facebook may be the greatest propaganda machine of all time. Groups boasting of tens of thousands of members share all forms of hateful, false content on a daily basis, whipping up anger towards minority communities around the globe.

These social media tools have been used against the Rohyingya minority in Burma, as a “megaphone of hate” against Bengali Muslims in India, against LGBTQ people and have facilitated the unleashing of a “hurricane of hate” against Jewish communities. All of this eventually compelled the United Nations to launch a strategy and plan of action on hate speech earlier this year….

“The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray,” Baron Cohen said in his now oft-quoted speech at the ADL’s 2019 summit.

This sounds rudimentary and yet remains painfully elusive.

Source: Opinion: As People of the Book, Muslims should stand in solidarity with Jews

Korean Adoptee Identities

In September, Seattle resident Barbara Kim celebrated Chuseok, the Korean midautumn festival, with her family members in Seoul. Chuseok is a time to give thanks for plentiful harvests, and for Kim, who was adopted by an American family in the 1960s, this was a particularly special occasion: She was able to spend the holiday with several of her birth relatives.

At the celebration, they and a group of South Korean orphans, now in their teens and 20s, dug into platters of bulgogi, kimbap, japche and other traditional Korean dishes.

Kim was among the first wave of a 200,000-strong exodus of adoptees, as South Korea became the world’s first source of international adoptions. She was born in 1955, two years after the Korean War cease-fire.

In recent decades, adoptees like Kim have been returning to South Korea to find out more about where they come from, build ties with their birth families and connect with others with similar experiences.

After being separated from her three siblings for about half a century, Kim managed to track all of them down and reunite with them. She says they have overcome an initial sense of awkwardness in knowing one another and feel proud to be part of the same family.

Source: ‘Feeling Like We Belong’: U.S. Adoptees Return To South Korea To Trace Their Roots

Chinese Immigrant Gambling

As a new weekend begins, Chinese textile manufacturing workers move from their sewing machines to the slot machines at Newcastle’s local casino, hoping to add a little bonus to their end of year income.

Chengyuan Han and his family emigrated from Qingdao in China’s eastern Shandong province to South Africa in 2015. Chengyuan, whose mother runs a Chinese restaurant inside the casino, recounts stories of his frequent encounters with other Chinese immigrants, many of whom are enthusiastic gamblers.

According to a 2010 study by universities in Hong Kong, New Zealand and the US, Chinese people living in countries with significant Chinese immigrant communities exhibit “elevated levels of problematic gambling.” The study categorized a “problematic gambler” as anyone who meets three of four of the following criteria: high rates of gambling-related fantasy, lying, using gambling to escape, and preoccupation about gambling.

The study concluded that problematic gambling rates in Chinese communities are between 1.5 and 5 times higher than those of non-Chinese people in the newly adopted countries and that Chinese immigrants may develop even higher rates of problematic gambling with increased years of residency. Some academics also argued that the gambling rates for Chinese communities are likely to be under-reported due to the importance of not “losing face” in traditional Chinese culture.

Source: Casinos target low-income Chinese immigrants

Hilal Certification of Appliances

Two of the biggest names in Japanese home appliances were awarded what must rank as one of the oddest of halal certifications: for products.

In guaranteeing that their goods have not come into contact with pork or alcohol, Panasonic Corp. and Sharp Corp. are moving to gain a foothold in the growing, more affluent Muslim market.

But obtaining the prized credential was no easy feat.

To get it, the companies must pass screenings to meet strict halal standards that even covered the materials of the gloves worn by workers.

Panasonic obtained certification for its water purifiers and water ionizers for the Malaysian market.

The company said it was the first Japanese home appliance maker to secure halal certification under the Malaysian government-affiliated system.

Sharp also gained certification for its refrigerators manufactured at plants in Indonesia and Thailand last year.

Source: Panasonic, Sharp fine-tune goods to conform to Islamic teachings：The Asahi Shimbun

 

Filed under Multiculturalism

Clerk of the Privy Council End-of-Year Message: Increased Religiosity

2019/12/22 Leave a comment

A friend of mine passed on this Christmas and Hanukah message of the Clerk, Ian Shugart (most senior federal public servant).
It is unusual compared to previous clerk messages in how explicit the religious references are (the previous Clerk Michael Wernick’s message, below, is much more neutral and secular).
To my ears, overly so for a senior public servant and one that could be read by non-Christians and non-Jews as exclusionary, or at least less inclusive, in a way that the more banal holiday or seasons’ greetings of his predecessor are not.
On the other hand, Shugart’s message is more personal and was likely written by him, in contrast to the “safer” version likely prepared by PCO Communications.
While politicians regularly issue statements or press releases for religious festivals and occasions (when I was in government working on multiculturalism, we were assiduous in ensuring all groups were included).
Curious to know how others in the public service and beyond react to this kind of end-of-year message (without situating this in a “war on Christmas” context):

“Nous sommes dans cette période de l’année où les jours sont les plus sombres – littéralement. À l’approche du solstice d’hiver, je songe à l’importance que revêt la lumière et à l’ampleur de ce que souvent les gens vont ressentir en raison de l’obscurité hivernale. La lumière est un symbole d’espoir.

La lumière est aussi au cœur même des fêtes que sont Hanoukka et Noël. Qu’elle rappelle le miracle de la fiole d’huile dans le temple nouvellement consacré ou l’étoile annonçant la naissance de Jésus, c’est un symbole d’espoir pour les fidèles de confession juive ou chrétienne.
Que vous célébriez Hanoukka, Noël ou ni l’une ni l’autre, je vous suis reconnaissant de votre dévouement et des excellents services rendus au public tout au long de cette année mouvementée qui tire à sa fin. Si vous devez travailler pendant cette période, je vous dis merci. Si vous êtes en congé, profitez du répit.
Joyeuse Hanoukka! Joyeux Noël!
Ian Shugart
Greffier du Conseil privé et secrétaire du Cabinet
 
These are the darkest days of the year – literally. As the winter solstice approaches, I have been reflecting on how important light is, and how people often really feel the dark days of winter. Light is a symbol of hope. 
 
Light is also a central theme of the festivals of Hanukkah and of Christmas. Whether remembering the oil that miraculously burned in the newly dedicated Temple, or the star announcing Jesus’ birth, light is a symbol of the hope that both faiths celebrate. 
 
As the year comes to an end, and whether you will be celebrating Hanukkah or Christmas or neither, I want you to know that I am grateful for your dedication and capable service to the people of Canada throughout this eventful year.  If you remain on duty during this period, thank you. If you are taking some leave, enjoy the break.
 
Happy Hanukkah!  Merry Christmas!
 
Ian Shugart
Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet”

For comparison, the previous clerk’s message:

“The holiday season is here, and so is the end of a very successful year.

I would like to thank you for all the work you do to serve Canadians and to help make Canada such an extraordinary country. Your extraordinary service is unparallelled; and you should be proud to be a part of the most effective public service in the world.

Each of you helps us, as a Public Service, to achieve our common goals – whether it is ensuring the health and safety of Canadians, improving services and operations, or advancing the priorities of our democratically elected government.

I hope that many of you are able to take some time during the holidays to rest and celebrate with your loved ones. If you have to hold down the fort at work for your team, please know that your dedication is noticed and appreciated.

At the close of this busy and productive year, I look ahead to 2019, which will bring new opportunities to achieve great things together.

I wish you, your friends and your families a safe and peaceful holiday season, as well as happiness and health in the New Year.

Michael Wernick
Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet”

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Ethnic media’s coverage of Canada’s federal election closely mirrors mainstream press

2019/12/20 Leave a comment

Coverage of my analysis:

An analysis of how ethnic media covered the federal election suggests their approach mirrored that of the mainstream press, findings the study’s author says highlight a key point about the so-called “ethnic vote” in Canada.

“One can’t assume nor should one assume that the ethnic vote in Canada is separate than the mainstream vote,” said Andrew Griffith, a former director of multiculturalism policy for the federal government.

Griffith undertook the analysis as part of an election effort called Diversity Votes, a project aimed at providing a deeper understanding of the ethnocultural makeup of the electoral map, and its implications.

The growing diversity of the Canadian electorate has seen the federal parties finding more ways to woo voters in specific ethnic groups, especially in ridings where single communities have enough voters to swing a race.

In the 2019 campaign, that took the form of everything from promises targeted directly to certain communities, ads in a variety of languages and, in a first, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh answering questions in Punjabi, which he speaks fluently.

But Griffith said that despite what the campaigns may have been trying to do, his findings show the ethnic press were covering the same issues as the mainstream media.

Ethics, relations with China and climate change were widely covered, as were the parties’ strategies and tactics, which he said was partially a reflection of the use of translated stories from the English or French press.

The Liberals and the Conservatives received equal coverage throughout the campaign. Before the race began in earnest in September, the People’s Party of Canada, along with its controversial positions on multiculturalism and immigration, received more coverage than the Greens or the NDP.

The NDP finally got a boost after the first English-language debate, where Singh was praised for his performance.

Singh’s candidacy marked a milestone in Canadian politics, as he is the first visible minority leader of a major political party. Still, Griffith said that Punjabi-language outlets, as well as those serving the Punjabi community in places like Singh’s home base of Brampton, Ont., focused far more on the local campaigns overall.

The 2019 election saw an increase of visible-minority candidates, with the biggest rise coming from the NDP.

In 2015, according to Griffith, 13 per cent of their candidates were visible minorities, and that rose to 22.9 per cent in 2019.

The number of ridings where visible minorities represented 50 per cent or more of the population rose from 33 per cent in 2015 to 41 per cent in 2019, according to census data he analysed. [Note: 33 ridings to 41 ridings, not percent.]

Griffith’s review of media coverage examined 2,500 stories in outlets representing a variety of different language groups, as well as publications in English that cater nearly exclusively to specific communities.

The goal was to assess whether someone relying exclusively on the ethnic media would have a comparable understanding of the issues to those who rely on mainstream news outlets, and the research suggested they would.

“In other words, rather than ethnic media providing a parallel and separate space and reinforcing silos, ethnic media for the most part serves an important role in political integration through its coverage of the main political issues common to all Canadians,” the analysis concluded.

Source: Ethnic media’s coverage of Canada’s federal election closely mirrors mainstream press

My report: Ethnic media 2019 Election Coverage: Commonalities and Differences

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Bard’s Kenneth Stern: “I drafted the definition of anti-Semitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it.”

2019/12/20 Leave a comment

More good commentary from someone involved in the drafting:

Fifteen years ago, as the American Jewish Committee’s antisemitism expert, I was the lead drafter of what was then called the “working definition of antisemitism”. It was created primarily so that European data collectors could know what to include and exclude. That way antisemitism could be monitored better over time and across borders.

It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but that’s what Donald Trump’s executive order accomplished this week. This order is an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself.

The problem isn’t that the executive order affords protection to Jewish students under title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Department of Education made clear in 2010 that Jews, Sikhs and Muslims (as ethnicities) could complain about intimidation, harassment and discrimination under this provision. I supported this clarification and filed a successful complaint for Jewish high school students when they were bullied, even kicked (there was a “Kick a Jew Day”).

Source: Bard’s Kenneth Stern: “I drafted the definition of anti-Semitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it.”

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , , ,

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