Congress envisioned a white, Protestant and culturally homogeneous America when it declared in 1790 that only “free white persons, who have, or shall migrate into the United States” were eligible to become naturalized citizens. The calculus of racism underwent swift revision when waves of culturally diverse immigrants from the far corners of Europe changed the face of the country.
As the historian Matthew Frye Jacobson shows in his immigrant history “Whiteness of a Different Color,” the surge of newcomers engendered a national panic and led Americans to adopt a more restrictive, politicized view of how whiteness was to be allocated. Journalists, politicians, social scientists and immigration officials embraced the habit, separating ostensibly white Europeans into “races.” Some were designated “whiter” — and more worthy of citizenship — than others, while some were ranked as too close to blackness to be socially redeemable. The story of how Italian immigrants went from racialized pariah status in the 19th century to white Americans in good standing in the 20th offers a window onto the alchemy through which race is constructed in the United States, and how racial hierarchies can sometimes change.
Darker skinned southern Italians endured the penalties of blackness on both sides of the Atlantic. In Italy, Northerners had long held that Southerners — particularly Sicilians — were an “uncivilized” and racially inferior people, too obviously African to be part of Europe.
Racist dogma about Southern Italians found fertile soil in the United States. As the historian Jennifer Guglielmo writes, the newcomers encountered waves of books, magazines and newspapers that “bombarded Americans with images of Italians as racially suspect.” They were sometimes shut out of schools, movie houses and labor unions, or consigned to church pews set aside for black people. They were described in the press as “swarthy,” “kinky haired” members of a criminal race and derided in the streets with epithets like “dago,” “guinea” — a term of derision applied to enslaved Africans and their descendants — and more familiarly racist insults like “white nigger” and “nigger wop.”
Italian-Americans were often used as cheap labor on
the docks of New Orleans at the turn of the last century.Library of Congress
Mulberry Street in the Little Italy
section of New York around 1900.Library of Congress
The penalties of blackness went well beyond name-calling in the apartheid South. Italians who had come to the country as “free white persons” were often marked as black because they accepted “black” jobs in the Louisiana sugar fields or because they chose to live among African-Americans. This left them vulnerable to marauding mobs like the ones that hanged, shot, dismembered or burned alive thousands of black men, women and children across the South.
The federal holiday honoring the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus — celebrated on Monday — was central to the process through which Italian-Americans were fully ratified as white during the 20th century. The rationale for the holiday was steeped in myth, and allowed Italian-Americans to write a laudatory portrait of themselves into the civic record.
Few who march in Columbus Day parades or recount the tale of Columbus’s voyage from Europe to the New World are aware of how the holiday came about or that President Benjamin Harrisonproclaimed it as a one-time national celebration in 1892 — in the wake of a bloody New Orleans lynching that took the lives of 11 Italian immigrants. The proclamation was part of a broader attempt to quiet outrage among Italian-Americans, and a diplomatic blowup over the murders that brought Italy and the United States to the brink of war.
Historians have recently showed that America’s dishonorable response to this barbaric event was partly conditioned by racist stereotypes about Italians promulgated in Northern newspapers like The Times. A striking analysis by Charles Seguin, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, and Sabrina Nardin, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, shows that the protests lodged by the Italian government inspired something that had failed to coalesce around the brave African-American newspaper editor and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells — a broad anti-lynching effort.
A Black ‘Brute’ Lynched
The lynchings of Italians came at a time when newspapers in the South had established the gory convention of advertising the far more numerous public murders of African-Americans in advance — to attract large crowds — and justifying the killings by labeling the victims “brutes,” “fiends,” “ravishers,” “born criminals” or “troublesome Negroes.” Even high-minded news organizations that claimed to abhor the practice legitimized lynching by trafficking in racist stereotypes about its victims.
As Mr. Seguin recently showed, many Northern newspapers were “just as complicit” in justifying mob violence as their Southern counterparts. For its part, The Times made repeated use of the headline “A Brutal Negro Lynched,” presuming the victims’ guilt and branding them as congenital criminals. Lynchings of black men in the South were often based on fabricated accusations of sexual assault. As the Equal Justice Initiative explained in its 2015 report on lynching in America, a rape charge could occur in the absence of an actual victim and might arise from minor violations of the social code — like complimenting a white woman on her appearance or even bumping into her on the street.
The Times was not owned by the family that controls it today when it dismissed Ida B. Wells as a “slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress” for rightly describing rape allegations as “a thread bare lie” that Southerners used against black men who had consensual sexual relationships with white women. Nevertheless, as a Times editorialist of nearly 30 years standing — and a student of the institution’s history — I am outraged and appalled by the nakedly racist treatment my 19th-century predecessors displayed in writing about African-Americans and Italian immigrants.
When Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to England in the 1890s, Times editors rebuked her for representing “black brutes” abroad in an editorial that joked about what they described as “the practice of roasting Negro ravishers alive and boring out their eyes with red-hot pokers.” The editorial slandered African-Americans generally, referring to rape as “a crime to which Negroes are particularly prone.” The Times editors may have lodged objections to lynching — but they did so in a rhetoric firmly rooted in white supremacy.
‘Assassins by Nature’
Italian immigrants were welcomed into Louisiana after the Civil War, when the planter class was in desperate need of cheap labor to replace newly emancipated black people, who were leaving backbreaking jobs in the fields for more gainful employment.
These Italians seemed at first to be the answer to both the labor shortage and the increasingly pressing quest for settlers who would support white domination in the emerging Jim Crow state. Louisiana’s romance with Italian labor began to sour when the new immigrants balked at low wages and dismal working conditions.
The newcomers also chose to live together in Italian neighborhoods, where they spoke their native tongue, preserved Italian customs and developed successful businesses that catered to African-Americans, with whom they fraternized and intermarried. In time, this proximity to blackness would lead white Southerners to view Sicilians, in particular, as not fully white and to see them as eligible for persecution — including lynching — that had customarily been imposed on African-Americans.
Clams being sold from a cart in Little Italy.Library of Congress
Many Italian-Americans lived in a section of New
Orleans that became known as Little Palermo.Library of Congress
Nevertheless, as the historian Jessica Barbata Jackson showed recently in the journal Louisiana History, Italian newcomers were still well thought of in New Orleans in the 1870s when negative stereotypes were being established in the Northern press.
The Times, for instance, described them as bandits and members of the criminal classes who were “wretchedly poor and unskilled,” “starving and wholly destitute.” The stereotype about inborn criminality is plainly evident in an 1874 story about Italian immigrants seeking vaccinations that refers to one immigrant as a “burly fellow, whose appearance was like that of the traditional brigand of the Abruzzi.”
A Times story in 1880 described immigrants, including Italians, as “links in a descending chain of evolution.” These characterizations reached a defamatory crescendo in an 1882 editorial that appeared under the headline “Our Future Citizens.” The editors wrote:
“There has never been since New York was founded so low and ignorant a class among the immigrants who poured in here as the Southern Italians who have been crowding our docks during the past year.”
The editors reserved their worst invective for Italian immigrant children, whom they described as “utterly unfit — ragged, filthy, and verminous as they were — to be placed in the public primary schools among the decent children of American mechanics.”
The racist myth that African-Americans and Sicilians were both innately criminal drove an 1887 Times story about a lynching victim in Mississippi whose name was given as “Dago Joe” — “dago” being a slur directed at Italian and Spanish-speaking immigrants. The victim was described as a “half breed” who “was the son of a Sicilian father and a mulatto mother, and had the worst characteristics of both races in his makeup. He was cunning, treacherous and cruel, and was regarded in the community where he lived as an assassin by nature.”
Sicilians as ‘Rattlesnakes’
The carnage in New Orleans was set in motion in the fall of 1890, when the city’s popular police chief, David Hennessy, was assassinated on his way home one evening. Hennessy had no shortage of enemies. The historian John V. Baiamonte Jr. writes that he had once been tried for murder in connection with the killing of a professional rival. He is also said to have been involved in a feud between two Italian businessmen. On the strength of a clearly suspect witness who claimed to hear Mr. Hennessy say that “dagoes” had shot him, the city charged 19 Italians with complicity in the chief’s murder.
The monument to David Hennessy rises above nearly all
the other tombs in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.William Widmer for The New York Times
That the evidence was distressingly weak was evident from the verdicts that were swiftly handed down: Of the first nine to be tried, six were acquitted; three others were granted mistrials. The leaders of the mob that then went after them advertised their plans in advance, knowing full well that the city’s elites — who coveted the businesses the Italians had built or hated the Italians for fraternizing with African-Americans — would never seek justice for the dead. After the lynching, a grand jury investigation pronounced the killings praiseworthy, turning that inquiry into what the historian Barbara Botein describes as “possibly one of the greatest whitewashes in American history.”
The blood of the New Orleans victims was scarcely dry when The Times published a cheerleading news story — “Chief Hennessy Avenged: Eleven of his Italian Assassins Lynched by a Mob” — that reveled in the bloody details. It reported that the mob had consisted “mostly of the best element” of New Orleans society. The following day, a scabrous Times editorial justified the lynching — and dehumanized the dead, with by-now-familiar racist stereotypes.
“These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians,” the editors wrote, “the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cutthroat practices … are to us a pest without mitigations. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they. Our own murderers are men of feeling and nobility compared to them.” The editors concluded of the lynching that it would be difficult to find “one individual who would confess that privately he deplores it very much.”
Lynchers in 1891 storming the New Orleans city jail, where they killed 11 Italian-Americans accused in the fatal shooting of Chief Hennessy.Italian Tribune
President Harrison would have ignored the New Orleans carnage had the victims been black. But the Italian government made that impossible. It broke off diplomatic relations and demanded an indemnity that the Harrison administration paid. Harrison even called on Congress in his 1891 State of the Union to protect foreign nationals — though not black Americans — from mob violence.
Harrison’s Columbus Day proclamation in 1892 opened the door for Italian-Americans to write themselves into the American origin story, in a fashion that piled myth upon myth. As the historian Danielle Battisti shows in “Whom We Shall Welcome,” they rewrote history by casting Columbus as “the first immigrant” — even though he never set foot in North America and never immigrated anywhere (except possibly to Spain), and even though the United States did not exist as a nation during his 15th-century voyage. The mythologizing, carried out over many decades, granted Italian-Americans “a formative role in the nation-building narrative.” It also tied Italian-Americans closely to the paternalistic assertion, still heard today, that Columbus “discovered” a continent that was already inhabited by Native Americans.
The “Monument to the Immigrant,” commissioned by the Italian American Marching Club of New Orleans, stands along the Mississippi River in Woldenberg Park.William Widmer for The New York Times
But in the late 19th century, the full-blown Columbus myth was yet to come. The New Orleans lynching solidified a defamatory view of Italians generally, and Sicilians in particular, as irredeemable criminals who represented a danger to the nation. The influential anti-immigrant racist Representative Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, soon to join the United States Senate, quickly appropriated the event. He argued that a lack of confidence in juries, not mob violence, had been the real problem in New Orleans. “Lawlessness and lynching are evil things,” he wrote, “but a popular belief that juries cannot be trusted is even worse.”
Facts aside, Lodge argued, beliefs about immigrants were in themselves sufficient to warrant higher barriers to immigration. Congress ratified that notion during the 1920s, curtailing Italian immigration on racial grounds, even though Italians were legally white, with all of the rights whiteness entailed.
The Italian-Americans who labored in the campaign that overturned racist immigration restrictions in 1965 used the romantic fictions built up around Columbus to political advantage. This shows yet again how racial categories that people mistakenly view as matters of biology grow out of highly politicized myth making.
Quite striking that none of the people cited make any reference to the party platforms (Election 2019: Party Platform Immigration Comparison), where there are differences with respect to multiculturalism and anti-racism issues:
Although racism has been a prominent and recurring theme in this federal campaign, there’s little evidence that the real issues facing racial minorities in Canada are on the election agenda.
It’s a paradox, given key elements of this campaign. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was exposed for wearing blackface or brownface three times in his adult life. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is the first person of colour in Canadian history to run for prime minister.
A new Quebec law bans people from wearing a hijab, turban or any other religious symbol while working in the province’s public sector. People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier is campaigning on an end to what he calls “mass immigration.” And some of the most hotly-contested ridings in this election are among the most ethnically diverse in the country.
Yet to people who work on improving the lives of Canadians in racialized communities, the debate remains superficial. They’re calling for a much deeper look at what needs to be done to tackle the effects of racism on poverty, employment and the justice system.”When I’m looking at the campaign and across the parties’ platforms, I have to say I’m very disappointed the issues around racial justice [and] racial equity have not been addressed by any party in any substantive way,” said Avvy Go, director of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic in Toronto.Even after Trudeau’s repeated use of blackface exploded into the spotlight early in the campaign, little changed, said Go.
“The focus with respect to that incident was whether Trudeau apologized for his racist act, as opposed to looking at the day-to-day systemic challenges and systemic racism faced by communities of colour and Indigenous people,” Go said in an interview.
She wants political parties to move on from the blackface incidents — “however repugnant and appalling” — to focus on policy discussions and concrete actions to deal with discrimination and its impacts.
So why didn’t that happen?
“Conversation about race is often difficult in Canada,” said Go. “A lot of Canadians still are not able to come to grips with the idea that there’s a lot of racism in our country.”Debbie Douglas, director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, agrees that the campaign has failed to address issues of racism. Her theory is it’s rooted in what she describes as a “polite Canadian” tendency to pretend that racism doesn’t exist, and a misguided belief that talking about it would conjure racism into being.Anti-racism groups have been trying to get the issues on the campaign agenda.
The Toronto-based Colour of Poverty Campaign issued a “racial justice report card” last week. The report card examined the Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic and Green parties’ platforms and rated their positions on such issues as criminal justice, employment, immigration and poverty reduction.
It declared that the leading federal political parties are not addressing the concern that “racial inequities are growing and deepening in Canada.”
In a pre-election nationwide survey of Muslims, a group called The Canadian Muslim Vote found that 79 per cent named Islamophobia as an important issue.
“This election was an opportunity for our party leaders and all parties to address this and I don’t think that it’s been done in a way that’s been satisfactory,” said Ali Manek, the group’s executive director. “Overall, I’ve been disappointed.”
He’s also critical that no leader has taken a strong stance against Quebec’s religious symbols law, Bill 21.
“I think all parties have let down the Muslim community and ethnic communities tremendously by not addressing it more head on,” said Manek.
He said he believes minority communities must get out and vote next Monday at a better-than-average turnout rate to put pressure on the parties for change.
“I think that’s a real message that we would be sending to the future prime minister of this country that we want a seat at the table and we want our issues to be addressed,” he said.
So how have race and racism been addressed in the campaign? “Laughably bad, just an all-around disaster from my point of view,” said Andray Domise, a contributing editor for Macleans’ magazine and a black community activist in the Toronto area.
Domise says the parties and most media coverage have been too focused what he calls “spectacle” over substance.
“The purpose of the campaign has been defeated because we’re not talking about people’s lives, we’re talking about how much we like or dislike certain candidates,” said Domise. “I’m a lot more interested in structural matters, what is it that policy can affect, that can improve people’s material lives.”
There’s a palpable sense of frustration and missed opportunity coming from everyone interviewed here. There’s also a clear call for the parties to propose ideas to tackle the disproportionate rates of unemployment, poverty and incarceration on people of colour. But with just a week left in the campaign, there’s little optimism that’s going to happen.
With all party platforms out, it is now possible to compare the written policy commitments of each party.
While each party leader has made additional commitments on the campaign trail (e.g., Conservative Party of Canada leader Scheer on maintaining current Liberal immigration levels, New Democratic Party leader Singh pledging additional funding for Quebec integration and settlement services), this analysis looks only at the official party platforms, as these will form the basis of any future government “report card.”
In general, differences among the four main parties are a matter of nuance as all accept ongoing large numbers of immigrants, programs to facilitate integration, straight forwardpathways to citizenshipand the multicultural reality of Canada.
The only major dissent from that overall consensus is from the People’s’ Party of Canada. The Bloc québecois’ narrow focus on Quebec issues is reflected in virtue signalling its intent to table private members’ bills that assert or seek to expand Quebec’s jurisdiction in immigration.
Party platforms reflect commitments, which are both concrete and “virtue signalling” to their respective bases and voters that they wish to attract.
The Conservative platform on immigration is sparse, with commitments that reflect their main focus on management of immigration, particularly the irregular arrivals at Roxham Road. This is balanced by their commitment to remove the cap on privately sponsored refugees while clarifying priorities for refugee selection (implicitly downplaying the UN Refugee Agency role). Commitments that reflect more strongly concerns of their base include banning values tests for Grant and Contribution programs (Canada Summer Jobs program) and re-opening the Office for Religious Freedom.
The platform is silent on high profile issues previously raised in opposition such as M-103 on Islamophobia and other forms of racism and discrimination and their opposition to the UN’s Global Compact for Migration.
The lack of meaningful commitments on immigration levels and mix, citizenship and multiculturalism would provide a Conservative government considerable policy and program latitude should it form the government. The PPC picks up on some of issues the Conservatives dropped, along with prohibiting birth tourism and an overall hard-tone on immigration.
The Liberal platform is stay the course on immigration levels and most other policy areas. Apart from the major announcement of eliminating citizenship application fees, the platform places greatest emphasis on multiculturalism-related issues, whether it be with respect to diversity of appointments, anti-racism and anti-hate strategies, and resources to counter international far-right networks, including additional funding. The platform is silent on family reunification, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, refugees, and integration.
The NDP and Green platforms are to the left of the Conservative and Liberal platforms. Of the two, the NDP platform is the more coherent. In the event of a minority government, the almost “laundry list” approach in both platforms would provide some areas of agreement, but not their call to abolish the Safe Third Country Agreement with the USA.
Neither major party has chosen to make immigration the big issue that was predicted at the start of the campaign, reflecting that both parties need to win a substantial part of the immigrant and visible minority vote to win the election. So while there are differences in tone and substance,these have been relatively downplayed in their respective platforms, campaign language notwithstanding.
This table (Election Platforms 2019 Comparison) highlights party positions on immigration (levels, mix, Temporary Foreign Workers, refugees, irregular asylum seekers), integration, citizenship and multiculturalism.
Immigration levels: The Conservative platform is silent on immigration levels. The Liberal platform continues the current trajectory of “modest and reasonable” annual increases along with making the Atlantic Immigration Pilot permanent and establishing a Municipal Immigration Pilot. The NDP platform states that levels should reflect labour market needs.
The Green platform commits to regularize the status of illegal (non-regularized status immigrants) and improve the pathway to permanent residency for international students and Temporary Foreign Workers.
The PPC platform proposes a cut of between 50 and 70 percent of current immigration levels, along with the addition of in person interviews to assess the “extent to which they align with Canadian values and societal norms.” The PPC also proposes increased resources to Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for the interviews and more thorough background checks.
Immigration mix:While the Conservative, NDP and Green platforms all promise to speed up family reunification, particularly for parents and grand-parents for the Conservatives and NDP and children for the Greens, the PPC platform calls for abolishing family reunification for parents and grand-parents. The Liberal and Bloc platforms are silent.
The NDP platform calls for faster reunification of caregivers with their families. The Green platform calls for a “robust system” to assess the education and training credentials against Canadian standards prior to arrival along with clear explanations for professionals and an improved pathway to permanent residency for international students and Temporary Foreign Workers.
The PPC proposes to adjust the point system to increase the percentage of economic class immigrants.
Temporary Foreign Workers:While the Conservative platform commits to match employment backgrounds to employment needs of companies that rely on TFWP, the Green platform calls for the replacement of Temporary Foreign Workers by increased immigration. The PPC platform calls for limiting numbers and ensuring they are only temporary. Both the NDP and Green platforms call for increased regulation of immigration consultants.
The Liberal and Bloc platforms are silent.
Refugees: While the Conservative platform commits to the elimination of the cap for privately sponsored refugees, the PPC calls for relying solely on private sponsorship, accepting fewer refugees, no longer “relying” on the UN for refugee selection, and taking Canada out of the UN Global Compact for Migration.
The Conservative platform places priority on genocide survivors, LGBTQ+ refugees, and internally-displaced persons while the PPC platform places priority on persecuted religious minorities (e.g.,Christians, Yazidis) in majority Muslim countries.
The NDP program calls for increased support for refugee integration. The Bloc calls for a moratorium on deportations to countries in conflict or where the life of a refugee would be in danger. The Liberal platform is silent.
Asylum seekers (Safe Third Country Agreement): While the Conservative platform calls for closing the loophole in the STCA that allows irregular arrivals between official border crossings, the Liberal platform states that it will work with the USA to “modernize” the Agreement. The NDP, Greens and Bloc call for its termination.
The PPC would declare the whole border an official port of entry , deport irregular arrivals,and fence frequently used border crossings like Roxham Road.
The Conservative platform commits to speed up refugee processing by deploying Immigration and Refugee Board judges to common arrival points and speed up deportations by hiring an addition 250 CBSA agents. The Green platform calls for the establishment of a Civilian Complaints and Review Commission for CBSA. The Bloc platform calls for the hiring of additional IRB members in Quebec to adjudicate claims.
Integration (settlement services): The Conservative platform commits to continue supporting settlement services while the Green platform calls for increased funding for language training through earmarked transfers to the provinces. The platform also calls for increased funding to multicultural organizations to provide language and other services. No other party makes integration commitments.
Citizenship: The Liberal platform commits to eliminate citizenship fees (currently $630 for adult applications). The Green platform commits to address the remaining cases of “lost Canadians” while the PPC platform commits to change the Citizenship Act to make birth tourism illegal.
Multiculturalism: The Conservative platform commits to end values tests for government G&C programs (e.g., the Summer Jobs program) and to reopen the Office of Religious Freedom.
The Liberal platform promises to continue improving the diversity of GiC appointments and senior levels of the public service. The Anti-Racism Strategy will be strengthened through doubling funding, along with increased G&C funding. The platform commits to improve the quality and amount of data collection regarding hate crimes. An additional $6 million over three years will be provided to the Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence along with resources to counter the rise of international far-right networks and terrorist organizations.
Both the Liberal and NDP platforms commit to hold social media companies accountable for hate speech.
The NDP platform has the longest list of commitments including: ensuring all major cities have dedicated hate crime units; the convening of a national working group to counter online hate; funding for anti-gang projects to deter at-risk youth from joining gangs or becoming radicalized; a ban on carding by federal law enforcement and working to end carding in all jurisdictions; and a national task force to develop a roadmap to end over-representation of Indigenous and visible minorities in prison populations, along with an African Canadian Justice Strategy.
The Green platform commits to improving the integration into the multicultural fabric, assisting cultural organizations to obtain charitable status, amending the Anti-Terrorism Act and Public Safety Act to require that formal charges be brought against all those detained and lastly, investigating allegations that Canadian officials cooperated with foreign agencies known to use torture.
The PPC platform commits to repealing the Multiculturalism Act and eliminating funding that promotes multiculturalism.
The Bloc platform focusses exclusively on Quebec jurisdiction questions: opposing any federal intervention in Bill 21 and laïcité; strengthening relations with immigrant communities;private member bill “virtue signalling” with respect to exempting Quebec from the Multiculturalism Act; banning offering or receiving public services with face covered; having citizenship applicants living in Quebec demonstrate knowledge of French; and making federally regulated sectors (banks, transport, communications) located in Quebec subject to Bill 101.
More good in-depth reporting regarding Chinese repression of Muslims:
This August, Aibota Zhanibek received a surprising call in Kazakhstan from a relative through Chinese chat app WeChat. It was about her sister, Kunekai Zhanibek.
Aibota, 35, a Kazakh citizen born in China, knew that Kunekai, 33, had been held for about seven months in a detention camp in China’s Shawan county, in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. For six of those months, Kunekai was forced to make towels and carpets for no pay, Aibota says. On the call, Aibota was told that Kunekai had been released and assigned a job in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
That was the good news. But the relative also told Aibota Zhanibek that her 65-year-old mother, Nurzhada Zhumakhan, had been sentenced in June to 20 years in Urumqi’s No. 2 Women’s Prison. According to a verdict sent to Zhanibek ‘s relatives, Zhumakhan was guilty of “illegally using superstition to break the rule of law” and “gathering chaos to disrupt social order.”
As Muslim Kazakhs, Zhanibek’s mother and sister are among the targets of a sprawling security operation by Chinese authorities. Human rights experts estimate that 1.5 million Uighur Muslims and members of other ethnic minority groups, including Chinese-born Kazakhs, have been detained in Xinjiang since 2016. Former detainees say that while in detention they were forced to memorize Chinese communist propaganda and learn Mandarin and were occasionally violently interrogated orbeaten..
The government has said the operations are part of a reeducation campaign and defends its detentions and sophisticated surveillance system across Xinjiang as necessary counterterrorism measures. Senior Xinjiang officials have said that most of those brought to the centers have been returned to society. But reporting suggests that these are not mere vocational training centers and that detentions, surveillance — and worse — continue.
Last month in Kazakhstan, NPR interviewed 26 relatives of ethnic Kazakhs and Uighurs currently detained or imprisoned in Xinjiang and five former detainees. They said that rather than setting free reeducated citizens, the authorities have been transferring many detainees to formal prisons. Those who have been released remain under strict surveillance.
“I miss my mother,” Zhanibek says in her home in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Since this summer, twice a month, her relatives have been able to go to an Urumqi police station and have video calls with her mother. Zhumakhan is nearly blind, hairless and extremely thin since being detained on June 8, 2018, her relatives said.
Zhanibek still also worries about her sister, despite her release: “Nobody is in a good situation. My sister has been released and has a job, but she still has no freedom. She cannot go where she wants. How can you say things are getting better?” she says.
“Targeting people somehow related to religion”
Xinjiang courts have been sentencing detainees to lengthy prison terms — sometimes up to 20 years — in hasty trials where little but a verdict is presented, according to relatives and an ex-detainee. The sentences overwhelmingly target citizens with religious Muslim backgrounds; 23 of the 32 people sentenced in Xinjiang recently were religious students, imams or people who prayed regularly, according to their family members.
“It was a closed court trial. … They just read the verdict to him, according to his parents,” Shakhidyam Memanova says of proceedings in May in which her husband, Nuermaimaiti Maimaitiyiming, a Chinese-born Uighur, was sentenced to 17 years. He is now in prison in Xinyuan county.
One night in May 2018, her husband, a carpet seller, was taken out in handcuffs and a hood in front of their two young children. Memanova suspects it was because he took Quranic classes when he was 14. But in the absence of any trial documentation, neither she nor her husband’s parents can be sure. Her in-laws can video call with their son once a month at a police station, and what they have described to her is not reassuring. “[Maimaitiyiming] looks very bad. He has lost a lot of weight,” Memanova says.
Bahedati Aken, 27, is also being held in a Xinyuan county prison, sentenced last June to 15 years in prison for studying the Quran with an also-imprisoned imam named Muhtourhan Kanodil, according to Aken’s aunt, Gulbaran Omirali.
“[Aken] was 13 when he attended two months of religious courses,” Omirali says. “I do not understand why something so long ago and which was legal at the time is now a crime.”
Kassym Tursynkan’s two younger brothers were given lengthy prison sentences this summer, he says, for being religious Muslims.
“They are targeting people somehow related to religion,” concludes Kassym Tursynkan. His two younger brothers — Kasyem, an imam, and Karkyn, who prayed regularly — were sentenced to 20 and 10 years, respectively, this summer and are now being held in the northern Xinjiang city of Wusu.
Tursynkan believes his brothers were betrayed, particularly Kasyem the imam, who he says was regularly praised by local religious authorities for upholding ethnic harmony: “They were not extremists. They did what they were allowed to do within the state limits.”
Some detention centers have been outfitted with makeshift courts, according to former detainees. Ergali Ermekuly was tried on April 7, 2018, in a detention center court in Xinjiang’s Huocheng county. He received a three–year sentence based on evidence allegedly taken from his cellphone showing he had visited Kazakhstan, downloaded WhatsApp and listened to audio describing China’s mosque-destruction campaign in Xinjiang. He was not allowed to see the evidence itself.
“They did tell me I could hire a lawyer, but based on cases of other people in the detention camp, those who hired lawyers were given longer sentences because it was seen as a sign of opposition to the state,” says Ermekuly, now living in Kazakhstan.
Ermekuly was freed during an agreement between Kazakhstan and China to release 2,000 Chinese-born ethnic Kazakhs at the end of 2018. But he says his life has already been destroyed. “I do not have a family, and I do not have my home,” Ermekuly, whose wife divorced him this year, says. “I came back [to Kazakhstan], but I have nothing.”
“They threatened my father”
While relatives describe being able to contact their loved ones through video monitors at local police stations, they say they have not been able to visit them in prison. What little information they can glean from infrequent contact suggests that those sent to Xinjiang’s prisons are held in poor conditions.
Almakhan Myrzan says her brother Bakytzhan, a former imam at a mosque in Xinjiang, was sentenced in May to 14 years in prison in a closed trial with no relatives present. The verdict was delivered by mail to his family.
Myrzan says her brother was allowed one phone call from prison in Urumqi. “When he finally called his wife, he sounded really faint. He could not even remember his own name at first,” Myrzan says.
The family members of another prisoner in Wusu, Berzat Bolatkhan, have phoned police repeatedly to find out why he was sentenced to 17 years in August.
“They threatened my father, saying, ‘If you keep asking about your son, you will end up the same way,’ ” Bolatkhan’s brother Yerzat recalls.
Construction tenders for Wusu prison show it underwent an expansion beginning in August 2016.
“Suitable jobs”
Xinjiang officials, however, say they are winding down the sprawling network of detention centers.
“Most people who received educational training returned to society and returned home,” Alken Tuniaz, the Xinjiang government’s vice chairman, said at a news briefing in July.
The government’s chairman, Shohrat Zakir, said about 90% of those released have found “suitable jobs.”
Some younger, well-educated detainees have been released and assigned to jobs, say relatives. But once they leave detention, they remain closely monitored through heavy state surveillance set up in the region.
University-educated Razila Nural, an ethnic Kazakh woman, was forced to work in a textile factory in Xinjiang after authorities deemed her fit for release from a detention facility in August 2018. Since being released from the factory late last December, Nural has effectively disappeared, says her mother.
“I last spoke to Razila this January and have not had contact since,” says her mother, Aiytkali Ganiguli. “She said, ‘I am healthy. I am working now. Do not believe fake media reports about my working in a black factory.’ ”
A graduate student forced to work in a textile plant located within another detention facility was allowed to resume his graduate studies this year — under strict monitoring. “He is not permitted to travel anywhere except the route from his home to his classes and back,” says a relative in China who did not provide a name for fear of retaliation from the authorities.
Aydarhan Salamat’s aunt Meniarbek Mariya has been imprisoned, and her mother and cousin are under constant surveillance.
Relatives of Xinjiang residents describe how they are effectively under house arrest; they must get permission to leave the township where their residency is registered.
The rules are enforced by a network of closed-circuit TV cameras, some equipped with facial recognition. Relatives say the cameras can spot whether someone in a household receives undeclared visitors, takes an unauthorized trip or turns on the lights suspiciously early or late.
“Once, my mother left to attend a relative’s funeral without public security permission, and the public security bureau called my nephew within an hour to have her come back. At checkpoints, her identification card sets off alarms. She is 80 years old,” says Aydarhan Salamat. She thinks her mother is monitored because Salamat’s aunt, Meniarbek Mariya, 46, is being held in a prison in the Xinjiang county of Yining for an unknown length of time.
Even nondetained Xinjiang residents who have relatives in detention or who have been previously detained have to check in with local administrative offices to report their movements.
“Every day, my brother still has to go to ideology classes at the local government office to rid him of religious thoughts,” says the brother of a Muslim former detainee living in the city of Hami, Xinjiang. He withheld both their names because he still lives in China and risks detention for speaking to a foreign journalist.
Gulserik Kazykhan is struggling to get more information about her detained brother-in-law from visiting relatives. “If you don’t return, the guarantors will suffer.”
Chinese state control covers all spheres of life in Xinjiang. Kunekai Zhanibek, the woman released in August and assigned a job in Urumqi, “got married recently but had to ask for state permission beforehand,” says her sister Aibota. “Can you imagine having to ask for permission about such a personal decision?”
Passports in exchange for good PR
Relatives in Kazakhstan desperate to learn more about loved ones in China are turning to a new potential source of information: the slow trickle of ethnic Kazakhs born in Xinjiang who can now get Chinese passports to travel to Kazakhstan.
Once forbidden from traveling abroad, some of Xinjiang’s ethnic Kazakh residents have even been able to procure Chinese passports this year to visit relatives in Kazakhstan for one month at a time. As a condition for the passports, the residents are told by local authorities to share only positive news about the region. Travelers must name guarantors in China, such as friends or relatives, who are punished if the travelers don’t return or if they meet people they aren’t supposed to.
“If you don’t return, the guarantors will suffer,” says Gulserik Kazykhan. Her brother-in-law Raman uly Zahrkyn was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in February for praying and for donating to his local mosque. He is being held in Wusu’s prison. She finally learned of uly Zahrkyn’s fate this May from relatives living in China who visited her in Kazakhstan. They stayed for a month before they were forced to return to Xinjiang.
Access to passports still appears strictly controlled. “There are three people from the village who can go abroad for a month, and they take turns,” says Aitalim, who goes by one name. From his fellow village residents, Aitalim learned that his cousin Aiturgan Turlan, a former religious affairs state employee, remains detained in Xinjiang’s Zhaosu county for allowing a local mosque to be built too large.
Gunikai Naruzibieke’s cousin Bayimulati Naruzibieke will spend the next decade in a Xinjiang prison.
Gunikai Naruzibieke is seeking information about the condition of her cousin Bayimulati Naruzibieke, sentenced to a decade in prison this summer and now held in the military garrison city of Shihezi.
Gunikai Naruzibieke has had a hard time persuading relatives from Xinjiang to talk to her. “My relatives are terrified to talk because there was an imam in my family who is now in Kazakhstan — he didn’t come back from a trip [there],” she says. As punishment, the imam’s guarantor, his daughter Saule, was briefly placed in a detention camp last year.
State control over Xinjiang residents extends internationally, says Ainur Turlyqozha, who lives in a village outside Almaty. Her younger brother Baiasyl disappeared into the detention system in October 2018. Turlyqozha heard he had been sentenced to prison, but she could not get confirmation from relatives who recently visited Almaty.
“One relative even came just five days ago,” says Turlyqozha. “But when they come, they will not answer my questions about my brother. They just say vaguely, ‘We have heard of something like this.’ “
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet apologized Thursday after media outlets uncovered a number of Islamophobic and racist social media posts by candidates running for the sovereigntist party.
“They all regret having shared in the past videos or messages containing inappropriate comments,” Blanchet said in an emailed statement.
“They apologized. As leader of the Bloc Québécois, I add my apologies on their behalf to the entire population of Quebec.”
Blanchet’s statement does not name any of the candidates, though it indicates he has spoken to five individuals — four women and one man.
The apology is almost certainly in response to articles published Wednesday in the Globe and Mail and Thursday in the Journal de Montréal that documented numerous posts, tweets and shared links on Facebook and Twitter by: Caroline Desbiens, a candidate in the Beauport riding; Lizabel Nitoi, running in Marc-Aurèle-Fortin; Valérie Tremblay in Chicoutimi–Le Fjord; and Claude Forgues in Sherbrooke.
The four candidates named in the Globe and Mail and Journal de Montreal articles. (Radio-Canada)
The fifth candidate is likely Nicole Morin, a Bloc candidate in Saint-Maurice–Champlain who was found to have shared a video by the far-right group La Meute.
The four Bloc candidates cited in the Journal article issued identical statements of apology on social media Thursday. The apologies note that Le Journal “considers” the messages Islamophobic, but the authors don’t state whether they agree with the assessment.
Desbiens’ remarks were in a publication promoting a law on secularism in 2013. She said she worried that women would soon be forced to either wear a veil to go grocery shopping or be thrown in jail. She also praised France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Nitoi shared a groundless article about the intelligence of Muslims. Tremblay has shared several anti-Islam messages and conspiracy theories on Twitter since 2016, the Journal de Montreal reported.
Forgues shared a video on Facebook that states “Islam is a disease” and contained other intolerant remarks about Muslims, according to the Journal.
The boilerplate apologies, written in the first person, all say that the candidates did not mean to offend.
The four candidates go on to affirm in their statements their “total and complete support for the values and program of the Bloc Québécois … which in no way advocates measures that go against some communities, whether cultural or religious.”
The controversy lands ahead of the second French-language debate, set for Thursday.
The Bloc Québécois has been building momentum ever since the first French-language debate last week. Polls suggest Blanchet was the big winner of that contest and that the Bloc’s support levels have increased as a result.
Rima Elkhouri argues that while Bill 21 is discriminatory, it is not racist and that all who support it are not racist or xenophobes. However, in its effects, it primarily targets Muslims and Sikhs, and thus has racist and xenophobic effects:
À entendre les hauts cris suscités par la question de la journaliste Althia Raj lors du débat des chefs diffusé par la CBC, il semblerait que oui. Certains réclament des excuses publiques et dénoncent ce qu’ils perçoivent comme du « militantisme » de la part de la cheffe du bureau parlementaire d’Ottawa pour le HuffPost Canada. Comme s’il fallait désormais s’excuser de mettre les politiciens devant leurs contradictions en posant des questions qui s’appuient sur des faits.
Rappelons d’abord quelques-uns de ces faits… Dans un segment du débat en anglais portant sur la polarisation, les droits de la personne et l’immigration, Althia Raj, qui était l’une des modératrices, a posé une question sur la loi 21 au chef du Nouveau Parti démocratique, Jagmeet Singh.
« Votre campagne est axée sur le courage, mais vous n’avez pas eu le courage de combattre la loi discriminatoire du Québec. [Cette loi] interdit aux personnes qui, comme vous, portent des symboles religieux d’occuper certains emplois dans la province. Si vous étiez premier ministre, resteriez-vous en retrait et laisseriez-vous une autre province pratiquer la discrimination à l’endroit de ses citoyens ? Ne faites-vous pas passer les intérêts de votre parti au Québec avant vos principes et les droits à l’égalité de tous les citoyens – vous et, franchement, tous les autres chefs sur la scène ? »
La question a suscité une levée de boucliers au Québec. On a accusé la journaliste d’avoir fait preuve de mépris et de laisser entendre que la majorité des Québécois qui appuient la Loi sur la laïcité sont « racistes » – alors qu’elle n’a jamais dit une telle chose. On l’a accusée d’être une vilaine anglo qui ne comprend pas le français et ne connaît rien à l’histoire du Québec – alors que le français est la langue maternelle d’Althia Raj et que sa mère est originaire de Victoriaville… (Ça peut encore paraître déroutant pour certains, mais ce n’est pas parce qu’on s’appelle Althia et qu’on a la peau foncée qu’on est nécessairement une étrangère allophone fraîchement débarquée du bateau.)
En qualifiant la Loi sur la laïcité de « discriminatoire », Althia Raj, qui a répondu à ses détracteurs sur Twitter, n’a pas tordu les faits. Elle énonce une évidence qui fait consensus dans la communauté juridique.
Que ceux qui en doutent ouvrent d’abord leur dictionnaire. Est discriminatoire ce qui « tend à opérer une discrimination entre des personnes, des groupes humains », nous dit le Larousse. Quant au mot « discrimination », c’est le « fait de distinguer et de traiter différemment (le plus souvent mal) quelqu’un ou un groupe par rapport au reste de la collectivité ou par rapport à une autre personne ».
La Loi sur la laïcité de l’État, qui interdit le port de signes religieux au travail à des employés de l’État en situation d’autorité, est discriminatoire dès lors qu’elle distingue et traite différemment des croyants qui portent un signe religieux et ceux qui n’en portent pas. La démonstration n’est pas très difficile à faire. Un Jagmeet Singh qui tient à garder son turban ne pourrait pas décrocher un emploi d’enseignant au Québec en vertu de cette loi, même s’il réussit brillamment son baccalauréat en éducation. Même chose pour une femme musulmane qui tient à porter le voile.
Par contre, le mari de cette enseignante, qui partage les mêmes convictions religieuses mais ne porte aucun signe religieux, peut enseigner sans problème. Tout comme l’enseignant ultra-catholique qui, sans porter une grande croix sur son torse, ne fait pas toujours preuve de neutralité dans son enseignement.
On peut considérer que la laïcité de l’État rend tout à fait justifiable cette discrimination pour les fonctionnaires en situation d’autorité. Mais on ne peut nier que la loi a des effets discriminatoires. Si ce n’était pas le cas, on n’aurait pas eu besoin de faire appel à la clause de dérogation, qui permet de la soustraire à l’application des chartes canadienne et québécoise des droits de la personne.
Autre précision importante : dire que la loi 21 est discriminatoire, ce n’est pas la même chose que de dire qu’elle est raciste ou que tous ceux qui l’appuient sont racistes. Je l’ai déjà dit et je le répète. Contrairement à certains commentateurs anglo-canadiens, je ne crois pas qu’il soit juste de dire que la Loi sur la laïcité est raciste ou xénophobe ou que ceux qui l’appuient le sont.
Et contrairement à certains défenseurs de la loi 21 au Québec, je ne crois pas qu’il soit juste non plus de dire que les opposants à cette loi sont contre la laïcité. En fait, c’est aussi injuste que de dire que la loi est raciste… La CAQ n’a pas le brevet de « LA » laïcité. D’autres conceptions existent. Et en passant, le Québec était déjà laïque avant l’adoption du projet de loi 21.
Bien sûr qu’il se trouve des xénophobes pour applaudir cette loi. Tout comme il se trouve des extrémistes religieux pour la décrier. Mais réduire le débat à une opposition entre racistes et non-racistes ou entre vertueux défenseurs de « LA » laïcité et vilains pourfendeurs des Lumières complices des extrémistes, c’est en faire une lecture pour le moins simpliste.
The resurgent Bloc Quebecois is poised to perform well in the election under its articulate and pragmatic leader, Yves-Francois Blanchet. It has successfully pitched itself to younger voters by turning away from ageing entrenched separatists. Recent polls in Quebec put it behind only the Liberals, and first among Francophones.
Its broad mix of conservative and progressive policies makes it hard to pin down with standard left/right labels – which may be a virtue on polling day. Supporting climate change reform is very global and twenty-first century, but its demand for Quebec to have more say on immigration may be seen as traditional and isolationist. The same can be said for its support for the contentious Bill 21, the secularist ban on religious symbols for people in public office.
This bill is anathema to Liberals in Ottawa, but it is popular in Quebec. This is unsurprising, because France has a long history of encouraging private piety but public secularism. Provincial premier Francois Legault’s warning for outsiders not to tamper with the provincial bill is having some effect. Justin Trudeau is treading lightly in his opposition for fear of alienating voters there, though he has admitted the federal government “is not going to close the door on intervening at a later date.”
Of course, that means after the election, assuming a Liberal victory. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has also been delicately non-committal, expressing support for provinces to have the right to determine some of their own policies.
Bill 21 would prevent public employees from wearing any religious regalia such as yarmulkas, hijabs or turbans during working hours. It is likely to apply to public servants such as police officers, prison guards and public school teachers. It has taken plenty of criticism. For example, Calgary’s mayor Naheed Nenshi – who is Muslim – made no attempt to conceal his outrage. He said, “It’s terrifying. It is flagrantly unconstitutional. It’s violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in a really, really transparent way.” His city council concurred: it voted unanimously to back a motion condemning Quebec’s law.
Mayor Nenshi is partly right. I have expressed my abhorrence for certain kinds of religious garb in these pages many times. However, the only religious garments that should be banned are specifically those covering the face. In effect, these are just the niqab and burka, primarily for security reasons.
I am no fan of other religious regalia, because I would rather we proclaim ourselves simply to be human beings rather than Muslims or Jews or Sikhs, but this is surely a matter for individual preference rather than government interference – either from Ottawa or Montreal.
This bill could never be implemented in any equitable way, partly because of perceptions and definitions. Imagine that two government workers wear identical pendants. The first says she wears it because she likes the design, but the second wears it because it confirms her identity as a follower of the obscure faith the design symbolizes. Will only the second face a ban?
In any case, the bill’s future looks less than rosy. It is likely to be legal rather than legislative snags that prevent it from gaining traction any time soon. Quebec’s Court of Appeal is already hearing a challenge which claims the bill is unconstitutional, and others have been lodged. It seems nothing will come of Bill 21.
Facing backlash in February over a sweater that looked like blackface, Gucci followed a now predictable course. Company officials apologized for appearing to mine demeaning imagery from the past; hired a global diversity czar, who is African American; and vowed to create multicultural scholarships and a more diverse workforce. Burberry announced similar efforts after it showed a hoodie that looked like a noose the same month, and Prada did the same in 2018 after it had unveiled a line of figurines that also resembled blackface.
This is not just the playbook of the fashion industry. Dozens of companies and institutions have sought to deflect controversy over embarrassing missteps or revelations of homogeneous boards and workplaces by launching high-profile initiatives or enlisting a person of color for a prominent post.
In 2003, MIT professor Thomas Kochan noted that companies were spending an estimated $8 billion a year on diversity efforts. But since Trump’s election, and with the emergence of movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, the industry has exploded. A 2019 survey of 234 companies in the S&P 500 found that 63% of the diversity professionals had been appointed or promoted to their roles during the past three years. In March 2018, the job site Indeed reported that postings for diversity and inclusion professionals had risen 35% in the previous two years.
The lucrative industry shows few signs of waning–from the spike in well-compensated diversity consultants and czars; to online courses and degree programs at prestigious schools; to professional organizations and conferences; to the commissioning of ever more studies, task forces and climate surveys. The buzzword is emblazoned on blogs and books and boot camps, and Thomson Reuters, a multinational mass-media and information firm, even created a Diversity and Inclusion Index to assess the practices of more than 5,000 publicly traded companies globally.
But while business targeting diversity is flourishing, diversity is not.
People of color–who make up nearly 40% of the U.S. population–remain acutely underrepresented in most influential fields. From 2009 to 2018 the percentage of black law partners inched up from 1.7% to 1.8%. From 1985 to 2016, the proportion of black men in management at U.S. companies with 100 or more employees barely budged–from 3% to 3.2%. People of color held about 16% of Fortune 500 board seats in 2018. A 2018 survey of the 15 largest public fashion and apparel companies found that nonwhites held only 11% of board seats and that nearly three-quarters of company CEOs were white men. And in the top 200 film releases of 2017, minorities accounted for 7.8% of writers, 12.6% of directors and 19.8% of lead roles.
A look at higher education–where, in fall 2017, 81% of full-time professors at degree-granting postsecondary schools were white while just 3% were Hispanic and 4% were black–is helpful in understanding the forces that allow these disparities to persist. Though the 1960s saw the introduction of affirmative-action policies intended to address the history of slavery followed by centuries of discrimination against people of color, decades of legal challenges have undermined these measures. Since 1978, for example, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke has prohibited institutions from using racial quotas or other remedies to address past discrimination.
Because of this decision, says Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, who as president of the University of Michigan was named in two lawsuits in which white students who’d been denied admission claimed reverse discrimination, “we’re deprived of the context that gave it a sense of mission. Every college leader is told, ‘Do not refer to history.’”
In recent years, “diversity” has been touted as a feel-good exercise that includes everything from gender to sexual orientation to body size. But while we should be concerned about discrimination against any group, the term has become such a catchall that we’ve lost focus on the original intent of antidiscrimination efforts. “There hasn’t been enough pushback on the abstraction of diversity,” Bollinger says.
What’s more, many whites now claim they are being disenfranchised as others are afforded undue advantage. A 2017 NPR poll found that 55% of white Americans believe that white people are discriminated against, while, tellingly, a lower percentage said they had actually experienced discrimination. Moreover, renewed calls for diversity are playing out against resurgent white nationalism; a rise in bias crimes; and a President who has denigrated Mexicans, Muslims and blacks, among other groups.
Although the worsening racial climate appears to power the diversity industry, a number of studies suggest that these initiatives can actually make matters worse by triggering racial resentment. Think of the Google engineer who was fired for writing a memo deriding the company’s diversity efforts. He went on to file a class action claiming Google discriminates against conservative white men before ultimately moving to arbitration.
For diversity to become a reality in the nation’s workplaces, companies and institutions need to do more than recycle costly and ineffectual initiatives. Cyrus Mehri, a civil rights lawyer who successfully litigated discrimination lawsuits against major corporations including Coca-Cola and Texaco, says companies need to analyze metrics related to hiring, pay, promotions and bonuses along racial and gender lines to detect and disrupt patterns of bias.
“Everybody is quick to do unconscious-bias training and not interventions,” says Mehri, who, with the late civil rights lawyer Johnnie Cochran, is credited with devising the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which requires a diverse slate of candidates for coaching and front-office jobs. “When you keep choosing the options on the menu that don’t create change, you’re purposely not creating change,” he says.
To wit, A Leader’s Guide: Finding and Keeping Your Next Chief Diversity Officer, a report published this year by the consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates, stated that more than half of diversity professionals do not have the resources or support needed to execute programs and strategies. Only 35% had access to company demographic metrics, and a survey of 1,800-plus company executives found that diversity ranked last on a list of eight potential business priorities.
But persistent failure appears not to have prompted many institutions to change course. Although Google reportedly spent $114 million on its diversity program in 2014, its diversity report this year showed that blacks made up just 3.3% of the workforce and held 2.1% of tech and 2.6% of leadership roles.
Why do companies spend so much to achieve so little? Lauren B. Edelman, a professor of law and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Working Law: Courts, Corporations and Symbolic Civil Rights, found that courts tend to look for symbolic structures of diversity rather than their efficacy. In other words, the diversity apparatus doesn’t have to work–it just has to exist–and it can help shield a company against successful bias lawsuits, which are already difficult to win.
Misan Sagay, a black filmmaker and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, says more attention also must be paid to what happens once people of color are hired. “A lot of the times they want our physical presence but not our voice,” she says, explaining that real change begins with the composition of the studio executives who greenlight projects. “There should be some brown faces when I’m pitching,” she says. “Until there’s diversity at every level, I doubt filmmakers of color will be on a level playing field.”
True progress won’t come without discomfort, says Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, which allocates hundreds of millions of dollars annually to efforts promoting equality. “It requires incumbent leaders and managers to change their behavior and practices,” he says. “It means that institutions have to change incentive structures and to fundamentally interrogate their own behavior.” Walker adds that this is not just a conservative problem, as many purportedly progressive fields, like fashion and entertainment, also lack diversity.
In the end, racial diversity will not be ushered in by pledges, slogans or czars. It will be achieved only once white America is weaned off a prevailing narrative of racial pre-eminence, which can still be glimpsed in historical narratives, film and literature, and in racially offensive iconography like blackface. The seeds of this corrosive ideology are planted early, and a paradigm shift will require courageous leadership. Yes, change will require resources and resolve, but no amount of money will succeed alongside a willful negation of our shared humanity.
Chinese Canadians were among the most opposed to cannabis legalization which continues to be covered in Chinese language media. This fake news exploits this opposition:
The close-up image of lines of white powder, a razor blade and thick, white fingers is startling enough for most Facebook users. But it’s the words in the Conservative Party of Canada’s Facebook ad — in Chinese characters — that are more attention grabbing.
“(Liberal Leader Justin) Trudeau has already legalized marijuana, he now plans to legalize hard drugs! If you want to get the latest in Chinese, please press Like in our Facebook page.”
Alarming? Yes, it is. It’s also not true.
The message is repeated in a bilingual (Chinese/English) post dated Oct. 5 on the Conservative Party’s Chinese-language Facebook page. “Do you want Justin Trudeau to legalize hard drugs in your community?” reads the headline. “Justin Trudeau has a plan to legalize hard drugs!”
No similar posting was made on the party’s main English-language Facebook page.
The Conservatives base the fake claim on an exchange between Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and Trudeau during a recent leaders’ debate. In French, Scheer accuses the Liberals of having a “secret agenda to legalize or decriminalize hard drugs.”
But Liberal spokesman Guy Gallant said Wednesday, “That (legalization) is not in our plans.”
What the Liberals’ platform says is that the “default option for first-time, non-violent offenders” would require going to drug court where they would get “quick access to treatment,” which in turn would “prevent more serious crimes.”
To make it work, the Liberals promise more community-based services, more residential treatment beds as well as a scaling up of the most effective harm-reduction services such as supervised consumption sites.
Although it lacks many details, it sounds similar to what Portugal did in 2001 in response to its opioid addiction crisis.
There, all street drugs (including marijuana) are illegal. But anyone found with drugs within the set limits for personal use is sent to the Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction, where counsellors and therapists come up with a plan to direct the user to whatever services are needed to help them quit taking drugs.
Anyone found with larger amounts is charged with trafficking, goes through the criminal justice system, and can be sent to jail for up to 12 years.
Drug use in Portugal, once the highest in Europe, is now amongst the lowest, especially among youth, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction’s 2019 report.
While Portugal had only 30 overdose deaths in 2016, the year quoted in the report, 4,588 Canadians died from overdoses in 2018, and another 1,082 died in the first three months this year.
“If Justin Trudeau tells us precisely when he is going to legalize dangerous drugs, we will amend our ads to reflect the new information,” Conservative spokesman Simon Jefferies said Wednesday in an email.
All but one of the links provided by Conservatives to “prove” that Liberals would legalize illicit drugs — the French-language debate clip, a Trudeau interview with Global TV, news stories about individual Liberal candidates, and a YouTube videofrom the 2018 Liberal convention — all refer not to legalization, but to decriminalization. Some even include specific references to the Portuguese model.
The exception was a 2014 tweet from Michael Den Tandt, the Liberal candidate in the Ontario riding of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound. At the time, he was a National Post reporter and his tweet urged legalization and control of recreational drugs and prostitution, along with an end to supply management and lower taxes. None of those are Liberal party policies.
Conservatives deny a deliberate attempt to confuse voters by using “decriminalization” and “legalization” interchangeably.
The Conservatives have yet to release their full platform, but last week Scheer promised to “tackle drug addiction” in an announcement that focused on guns, gangs and sentencing.
A background paper released at the same time said Conservatives would invest in treatment and recovery centres, including recovery high schools, have a national campaign warning children and youth about the dangers of drug use, and partner with municipalities and schools to clean up used needles.
Illicit drugs are anathema for many new Canadians from Asia and for those who recall China’s opium wars. In Hong Kong, for example, penalties for possession of illicit drugs can be up to seven years in jail and a fine of C$170,000. In China, drug trafficking can bring the death penalty, as two Canadians found out earlier this year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand also have a death penalty for trafficking.
As was apparent when Trudeau’s government legalized marijuana, changing drug laws is much less acceptable to many Asian voters than to other Canadians. And it just so happens that Chinese-speaking voters account for a significant percentage in some of the most heavily contested ridings — including Richmond Centre, Steveston-Richmond East, and Vancouver Kingsway.
Deliberately creating confusion and misunderstanding has, unfortunately, proven to be a far too effective strategy south of the border, and it seems to have made its way north.
Bad at any time, it’s worse when it targets voters whose first language isn’t English, and especially confuses an issue that affects thousands of Canadians with addictions whose lives are at stake every day.
Yet, that’s what Conservatives are willing to risk in this ugly, too-close-to-call election.
Italian-Americans were often used as cheap labor on
Mulberry Street in the Little Italy
Clams being sold from a cart in Little Italy.Library of Congress
Many Italian-Americans lived in a section of New
Multicultural Meanderings 