How White Liberals Became ‘Woke,’ Radically Changing Their Outlook On Race

2019/10/03 Leave a comment

Interesting history and analysis:

Jeromy Brown, a 46-year-old teacher in Iowa, considers President Trump a white supremacist.

“If the shoe fits, then say it, and the shoe fits him,” Brown said, while waiting in a photo line at an Elizabeth Warren rally in August. “Why should he be excused from that label?”

Brown, like many white liberal voters, appreciates that some Democratic presidential candidates have begun explicitly referring to Trump as a white supremacist. His top choice, Warren, told The NPR Politics Podcast in August that “when the white supremacists call Donald Trump one of their own, I tend to believe them.”

But she’s not alone in using such strong and direct language. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has repeatedly referred to Trump as a “racist” on the campaign trail. And former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke insists that tackling white supremacy should be the No. 1 law enforcement priority in the country.

Undoubtedly, race and racism have become more salient political issues because of how the president talks about immigrants and minorities.

But the shift in how white liberals think about race actually predates both the president’s victory and the response from 2020 Democratic candidates.

Beginning around 2012, polls show an increasing number of white liberals began adopting more progressive positions on a range of cultural issues. These days, white Democrats (and, in particular, white liberals) are more likely than in decades past to support more liberal immigration policies, embrace racial diversity and uphold affirmative action.

Researchers say this shift among white liberals indicates a seismic transformation in the last five to seven years and not just a blip on one or two survey questions.

“The white liberals of 2016 or even 2014 are very distinguishable from the white liberals of the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s,” said Zach Goldberg, doctoral student at Georgia State University who has been studying the change.

In poll after poll, on a range of racial issues, both Goldberg and another researcher, Andrew Engelhardt at Brown University, have independently discovered repeated evidence of a more left-leaning white Democratic electorate.

These days, a large majority of white liberals — nearly 3 in 4 — say discrimination is the main reason black people can’t get ahead.

Don’t see the graphic above? Click here.

For some context, in the early 2000s, white liberals were split on that question — about half said blacks who couldn’t get ahead were mostly responsible for their own condition.

Don’t see the graphic above? Click here.

An increasing number of white liberals now think the criminal justice is biased against black people. An increasing number of white liberals also say the police are more likely to use deadly force against black people.

And, more white Democrats say the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, rather than Southern pride. The reverse was true in 2000.

Don’t see the graphic above? Click here.

Some metrics even seem to be suggesting that white Democrats express more woke attitudes than their fellow brown and black Democrats.

Goldberg cited the 2018 American National Election Studies pilot survey, which found that 78% of white Democrats thought having more races/ethnicity in the country make it a “better” place to live. Fifty-seven percent of black Democrats, and 63% of Hispanic Democrats said the same.

Don’t see the graphic above? Click here.

About two years ago, Engelhardt said he also noticed another major shift.

“Starting about 2016 … white liberals actually rate non-white groups more positively than they do whites,” explained Engelhardt. “Usually, it’s the opposite.”

Most racial groups feel more warmly about their own race than they do about other races. That’s true for every group, except white liberals, according to the American National Election Studies.

Engelhardt says these recent flips suggests there’s something about being white in America that white liberals are trying to distance themselves from — something that could be accelerated by the rhetoric and tone of Trump and some of his supporters.

When white liberals adopt some of these progressive positions, Goldberg said, they’re “virtue signaling” — they want to prove that they’re allies of minority groups and feel they need to do that more assertively and openly in the Trump era.

Although Trump did not create the current conditions, both Goldberg and Engelhardt agree the president has accelerated the change in white voter attitudes.

Brown, from the Warren rally, derided some of his fellow white people for being “white supremacists” who think they are the only people “with the real birthright claim on this land, even though that makes no sense whatsoever.”

Engelhardt also suggests white guilt could be a motivating factor.

At an O’Rourke rally in Iowa a few weeks ago, 64-year-old Polly Antonelli teared up as the former congressman recounted a story from the El Paso, Texas, shooting. The suspected shooter in that incident had told police he was targeting Mexicans.

Antonelli said it’s “highly appropriate” to refer to Trump as a white supremacist.

“He is the one dividing people, by saying the things that he says about Muslims, about Mexicans, about s******* countries,” she said. “Calling him out on his crap might sound divisive, but it’s a reaction to his divisiveness.”

Antonelli admits that her own opinions on race have evolved as she learned more about different cultures.

“I realize how little I know and how I need to be more careful about what I say and how I pigeonhole people because of how they look,” she said, indicating a sense of cultural awareness you hear more often voiced by white liberals in recent years.

The “moral buttons” are being pushed

One possible explanation for the dramatic shift in racial attitudes in the last decade is that white Democrats who disagreed with the party’s embrace of diversity have just abandoned the party altogether. But even though the makeup of the parties has fluctuated, that’s not the only explanation; Researchers point to a genuine shift among the white liberals who have remained in the party.

“Whites’ identification as Democrats and Republicans is motivating them to hold different attitudes about people of color in the United States,” said Engelhardt.

Goldberg says he noticed an abrupt change around the time mainstream news outlets started picking up on social media accounts of fatal police shootings of black men.

“[White liberals’] exposure to injustice inequality has been heightened because of the internet,” said Goldberg. “The moral buttons of white liberals are being more frequently pressed.”

Engelhardt agrees, and pointed to one specific incident as a potential catalyst — when a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.

“This kind of renewed attention to discrimination is new and novel for white liberals,” he said, explaining why there has not been as large of a shift among people of color on these survey questions, in part because they didn’t need social media videos to know what was already happening in their communities.

Source: How White Liberals Became ‘Woke,’ Radically Changing Their Outlook On Race

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

The “Ethnic Vote” Is a Myth

2019/10/03 Leave a comment

This is really a disappointing and shallow article and doesn’t look at exit poll and other analyses that analyse ethnic voting patterns, whether by immigrant status, visible minority or religious group.

There is no monolithic ethnic vote and immigrant and visible minorities largely follow the national trend. In the 2011 election the Conservatives won the most ridings in Ontario’s 905 and British Columbia’s Lower Mainland only to lose them in 2015 to the Liberals. Moreover, most Ontario 905 ridings, held by Liberals federally, flipped to Progressive Conservatives in the 2018 provincial election.

Within this broader context, there are some notable differences. In general, earlier waves of immigrants tend to lean Conservative compared to more recent waves who tend to lean Liberal; East Asians (e.g., Chinese ancestry) tend to lean more Conservative compared to South Asians (e.g., Sikh Canadians) who lean more Liberal and NDP. Canadian Jews have shifted from being more likely to vote Liberal to more likely to vote Conservative and Canadian Muslims, feeling slighted by the Conservatives, increased their turnout in 2015 in favour of the Liberals.

So no ethnic vote but ethnic votes:

GATHER A GROUP of Canadian political observers together and sooner or later they’ll start to debate electoral math. This usually involves discussing which political party has an edge with a specific region or demographic group: who attracts more educated or young voters and so forth. In that context, saying that the Conservatives have an advantage in Alberta, for instance, isn’t exactly controversial. But start talking about the so-called ethnic vote and you’ll soon have as many analyses of which party has better chances, and why, as you have analysts.

Although it is often used by media to mean the non-white vote in general, political scientists and consultants use the term ethnic voteto refer to new or newer Canadians who are also visible minorities. The last two federal campaigns were won essentially by winning the seat-rich, and incredibly ethnically diverse, suburban Greater Toronto Area—ridings where visible minorities and immigrants make up a sizeable voting contingent. Accordingly, a clear narrative has emerged among both political commenters and the advisers who help run campaigns: winning the ethnic vote is essential.

All of which presumes that this thing that has been called “the ethnic vote” actually exists. But is it fair to label this the “ethnic vote” instead of the perhaps more accurate “suburban and exurban vote”? Are the concerns of ethnic voters in the GTA markedly different from their white counterparts? There are virtually no data to suggest so.

Political parties like to court the ethnic vote because it seems tactically efficient to do so. Canada has a higher naturalization rate than comparable Western jurisdictions, such as the US and Australia, and while other countries can afford to dial up the xenophobia come election time, Canadian political parties that want to form government do not have this option. (The two most populous and vote-rich provinces, Ontario and Quebec, have the largest proportion of immigrants who have obtained Canadian citizenship.)

In a way, this is good. It means all mainstream political parties must engage newer Canadians. But a cynic might—reasonably—say parties that reduce foreign-born visible minorities of all ages and genders and from all parts of the world to a homogeneous group, and then presume they all think and vote alike, are acting paternalistic, bordering on offensive.

The riding of York South-Weston (in that GTA suburban belt), for example, has a large visible-minority immigrant population, with roughly a quarter identifying their origins in a country in Africa or the Caribbean. Are we to assume that every single Black voter in the riding casts their ballot based on the same set of ideals and issues? Brampton East (Ontario) and Surrey-Newton (BC) both have a majority of residents identifying as having a South Asian background. Do Brampton East and Surrey-Newton have identical electoral politics, devoid of regional distinctions, and mirror each other because of population makeup? Hardly.

This isn’t just a question of being polite or politically correct. To give credence to the idea that there is a discernible ethnic vote, “ethnics” would need to demonstrably vote the same partisan way—both within their communities and across different communities—to an extent that overrides age, gender, education, and other demographic factors that we know shape voting patterns. The pundits who look at regional voting patterns and infer they can be explained because the majority of voters in the area are recently arrived from South Asia or the Caribbean or anywhere else are simply projecting a convenient simplification onto a far more complex situation.

There are, however, some data to indicate that if the members of a certain group feel that they are being negatively targeted, they will vote accordingly. In the 2015 federal election, wearing the niqab during a citizenship ceremony became a hot-button issue, as the Conservatives proposed banning the practice. The Environics Institute conducted a survey of Canadian Muslims at the time; a majority said they had voted for the Liberal Party and that they felt women should be allowed to wear the niqab during citizenship ceremonies. But there is nothing to indicate that this turn to the Liberals was due to some sort of innate political predisposition in this community. What the evidence indicates is that the Conservatives reduced these people to a bloc, and they responded accordingly.

While the electoral math may mean the path to a majority government runs through ethnically diverse suburban ridings, the issues on which the citizens in those ridings vote do not inherently diverge from general population trends. Ethnics do indeed vote, but there is no ethnic vote.

Source:  The ‘Ethnic Vote’ Is a Myth

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Opinion: True interculturalism starts with multiculturalism

2019/10/02 Leave a comment

Not quite that simple. While multiculturalism does recognize, acknowledge and accommodate different cultures and religions, this is all within a common legal and constitutional framework.

While interculturalism makes a more specific reference to integration into Quebec francophone culture and society, multiculturalism is about integration into one of the two official language groups, and thus has a similar hierarchy, but one that is more open and flexible in its implementation and evolution:

Those who say they support interculturalism but reject multiculturalism appear to misunderstand both. Interculturalism is not possible without the state’s recognition of diversity of cultures and multiculturalism.

Canada is officially multicultural within a bilingual framework, which demonstrates it is an all-inclusive country. Multiculturalism was institutionalized to recognize diversity and equalize various cultural strands so as to arrive at a more congenial and less hierarchical society, one that does not relegate any to second-class citizenship. It nurtured different cultures, while simultaneously protecting the rights and welfare of all. It provided a context in which disempowered and marginalized communities could demand equality. Multiculturalism stands a step above biculturalism because it means pluralism. While nurturing individual cultures, it ensures preservation of the common good when it comes to rights, liberties, health care, education, shared culture and artistic expression.

In increasingly distancing itself from multiculturalism, the Quebec Liberal Party allies itself with the nationalists’ view that culture, values and the very identity of the francophone majority are threatened when citizens of minority backgrounds, who are visibly and culturally different, don’t conform to the tenets of the majority. The Quebec Liberals, or at least the youth wing, seem to imagine that proposing an interculturalism law will attract the francophone vote, facilitate cultural intermingling and actualize integration without conceding the centrality of the majority culture.

The Quebec brand of interculturalism seeks to integrate minorities, through the mixing of cultures and use of a common language. However, evidence shows that such a model relies heavily on the centrality of a dominant culture, and thus is hierarchical. Equality is not inevitable. It should also be noted that integration also requires an equitable delivery of social, political and economic rights. People of colour remain overworked and underpaid, lack employment equity and professional recognition, are racially profiled and attacked, denied common services, non-represented in public offices and denied jobs due to language, culture, religion and attire.

An interculturalist model, one that is practised in Quebec, is rooted in the idea that the state protects no particular culture but ensures the welfare, rights and common good of its citizens. However, a multiculturalist model, one that recognizes specific cultures, will lead to intercultural relations without compromising the rights, welfare and common good of all, even if the achievement of a discrimination-free society remains elusive.

Quebec’s antagonism to multiculturalism is historical. Multiculturalism is seen as a ploy to defuse the separatist movement. Premier René Lévesque described multiculturalism as “folklore” — saying “the notion was devised to obscure ‘the Quebec business,’ to give an impression that we are all ethnics and do not have to worry about special status for Quebec.”

That view reduced cultures of the Other to mere exoticism, which reveals a lack of understanding of the multiculturalism Lévesque claimed was a ploy against his struggle. For his part, Premier Jacques Parizeau unmasked the hidden divisiveness with his comment about “money and ethnic votes” after the 1995 referendum.

A dozen years later, Hérouxville xenophobe André Drouin advanced a code of conduct that warned against covering faces, stoning adulterous women, committing genital mutilation and dousing women with acid. That and other controversies of the day were enough to prompt Premier Jean Charest to create the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation in 2007. That was followed by Premier Pauline Marois’s Charter of Values, and now the Coalition Avenir Québec’s passage of Bill 21.

Majoritarianism is a hierarchical concept asserting that the natural owner of the state is the dominant majority. A majoritarian democracy conveys a message to minorities that they live on tolerance, and it empowers majority to feel superior.

Interculturalism can work only if it relies on multiculturalism. If not, it will be homogenization condemning minorities as inferior.

Source: Opinion: True interculturalism starts with multiculturalism

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Why do so many Irish Americans vote against Irish immigrants?

2019/10/01 Leave a comment

Demographic and social change impacts. Not unique to those of Irish origin as we see, in some of the commentary in Italian language media in Canada, concerns over their declining influence in Canadian political parties:

This week a story was posted in The Boston Globe that explored a very pressing issue, how rapidly spiking rents – familiar to all city businesses now – has led to the closing of many signature Irish pubs in Boston.

Later in the piece, the writer mentions that the problem isn’t simply one of economics. The Irish pub “faces the added challenge of a decline in Irish-born patrons and publicans,” the author writes.

Then she sets out the sobering statistics. “The population of Irish-Americans has fallen in the past 25 years. In 1990, 38.7 million Americans claimed Irish ancestry. By 2015, that number had dropped to 32.7 million, setting course for the number of Irish-Americans to dip below 30 million by 2020, according to data from the Pew Research Center.”

We need to discuss this more. The last big wave of Irish immigrants came here in the 1980s, giving a big boost to the rapidly aging generation that had arrived in the 1950s. But that was over 30 years ago now and there has been no big Irish immigrant wave since.

The truth is young Irish people started looking elsewhere to begin their careers in the early 2000s. Our biting immigration laws led to serious restrictions in their movements as did the growing perception of America as an increasingly reactionary and counter-progressive place.

Source: Why do so many Irish Americans vote against Irish immigrants?

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Protests sow division among Vancouverites whose roots are either in Hong Kong or Mainland China

2019/10/01 Leave a comment

Good reporting on ongoing tensions:

On a scorching Saturday afternoon, Vancent Zhu stood outside a SkyTrain station in Vancouver shouting slogans that condemn violent acts by Hong Kong anti-government protesters. He was facing off against a few hundred supporters of the Hong Kong protests. Among them, a few metres away, was one of his friends.

“Sad. That was exactly how I felt,” Mr. Zhu said, saying he and his friend hold totally different perspectives on Hong Kong’s biggest political crisis in years.

He compared himself and his friend to workers who built the Tower of Babel: “We were once cheering and laughing together, but now, we seem to be strangers.”

At the August protests, Mr. Zhu was joined by hundreds of demonstrators whose roots are mostly in Mainland China. They took to Vancouver streets four times, voicing support for Hong Kong police and denouncing violence during the protests.

“Love China, love Hong Kong; no secession, no violence,” they chanted. In between the rallying calls, they sang the Chinese national anthem, and many were waving a Chinese national flag.

A few meters away stood protesters that mostly have ties to the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. They held “Free Hong Kong” signs and shouted “Hong Kongers, add oil” – an expression to show encouragement – in Cantonese.

The massive protests that have wracked Hong Kong for months were prompted by a controversial extradition bill that has now been withdrawn. But the protests have shown few signs of abating. Demonstrators have added to their lists of demands, which include political reforms and an independent investigation of the police, whose use of violence in response to the protests has angered many.

The turmoil has spilled into major cities around the world that have ex-pat communities, including Vancouver, where the crisis has revealed tensions between newer immigrants from Mainland China and the longer-established Hong Kong immigrants.

Cantonese, the mother tongue of Hong Kongers and residents of several areas of southern China, used to be the dominant language in the Chinese-Canadian community. However, census data from 2016 showed the number of residents speaking Mandarin – the official language of Mainland China – at home in Canada has surpassed the number of those who speak Cantonese.

The same data show the number of Cantonese speakers is slightly higher than the number who speak Mandarin in the Vancouver area, but the gap narrowed significantly between 2011 and 2016.

The Hong Kong protests have opened up deep divisions between the two groups, prompting some Hong Kong Canadians to reject being identified as Chinese.

Jane Li, spokesperson of Vancouver Hong Kong Political Activists, a student-formed organization, said a hidden division between those from the Mainland and Hong Kongers has “erupted.”

“I feel unfortunate, but I am not surprised.”

The 19-year-old said the difference between the two groups lies in politics, but also culture.

“Languages we speak are different. … A lot of adults were brought up while Hong Kong was under the British regime, and they still separate themselves from the Chinese identity,” she said. “Also, in the previous 10 years, the political interference from China has caused a lot of discontent.”

Ms. Li said the divisions have been brought to Vancouver.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, was handed over to Chinese rule in 1997 under the “one country, two systems” formula, which expires in 2047. The agreement guarantees Hong Kong liberties not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and a free press.

For lots of Hong Kongers, the city’s core values – respect for the rule of law and democracy – align much more closely with those of the West than the authoritarian China.

Although Hong Kong protesters considered the proposed extradition bill a further indication of Beijing’s encroachment on the city, Mr. Zhu and many in his group believe Beijing and the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region did nothing wrong.

“You have the right to hold different opinions with the government, but please [protest] within the law. You cannot use violence to beat, intimidate those who do not agree with you.”

Mr. Zhu refuses to be labeled as pro-China: He said he believes people like him who are angry about the protests were actually showing support for the Asian financial hub.

“We also support Hong Kong. … But we don’t support violence,” said Mr. Zhu, stressing that striving for freedom and democracy by using violence is unacceptable.

The anti-government protests started with peaceful marches, but violent clashes between demonstrators and police have escalated in the past few weeks. Hong Kong police have used batons, tear gas and pepper pellets to push back crowds, while protesters have set street fires and hurled bricks and petrol bombs at officers.

“Violence clearly happens. … As long as there is violence, it’s wrong,” said Leo Ji, who attended a pro-China rally on the same August weekend in Toronto.

Members of the Chinese-Canadian community who are condemning the protests are convinced some of the Hong Kong demonstrators and their supporters want independence, although that is not among the demands. But anything that would harm the country’s sovereignty hits a nerve.

At the event in Toronto, Mr. Ji said he saw supporters of the protests holding a coat of arms that was used in colonial Hong Kong.

“To my knowledge, this is a behaviour of secession,” he said.

Ashely Yu, 22, who attended three pro-China rallies in Vancouver, pointed out the “Free Hong Kong” sign, an indication, she said, of a call for independence.

“Hong Kong is part of China,” Ms. Yu said several times.

Victor Ho, former editor of Sing Tao Daily in Canada, argued violence isn’t mainstream in the protests. He added pro-China supporters in Canada and elsewhere are largely influenced by Chinese propaganda that alters information about the Hong Kong movement to discredit it.

When the first massive peaceful protest broke out on June 9, it made international headlines, but Chinese state-backed media ignored it. On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social-media platform that has about 200 million active users a day, content about the protests was censored and information on the June 9 protest didn’t appear at all.

But as clashes became more frequent, Chinese authorities described the movement as showing “signs of terrorism.” Pro-democracy leaders, including Joshua Wong and Martin Lee, a former member of the city’s legislative council, have been called the “saboteurs of Hong Kong” and “traitors.”

Fang Kecheng, assistant professor in the school of journalism and communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said Chinese propaganda is intended to tell its consumers that the protesters’ demands and the ways they deliver them are unreasonable.

“Violent acts are decontextualized [by the Chinese propaganda] and the effect is very obvious, according to opinions online, on WeChat and Weibo. It provoked many Chinese people to oppose or even resent the Hong Kong protests,” Prof. Fang said.

Ms. Yu and Mr. Li acknowledged the main sources of their information about the Hong Kong protests are media outlets or social-media platforms in China. But Mr. Zhu, who said he has examined the issue through reporting from China, Hong Kong and Western countries, concluded the Western media are biased.

Chinese officials have denounced Western journalists, saying they purposely overlooked the violence.

Prof. Fang said the strong reaction from the pro-China camp is not only derived from a potent campaign by Beijing, but also reflects the fact that many overseas Mainlanders tend to link China’s interest to their own, especially when the country is becoming more powerful and influential.

China’s economic success was followed by a heightened sense of patriotism and nationalism. Nicholas Wang, one of the co-ordinators of the pro-China rallies in Vancouver, said attendees don’t uphold China’s Communist Party, but simply have a “patriotic heart.”

“China has become powerful, so people now dare to speak up,” he said.

Mr. Zhu called for Hong Kongers to drop their entrenched prejudice against China because it has been trying to improve itself. He stressed that he hopes peace and order can be restored soon.

But for Mr. Ho and other pro-democracy supporters, this fight cannot end.

“Now, it’s a battle of guarding [the democratic] values that Hong Kongers can’t afford to lose. Once they lose, they would become slaves,” he said.

Source: Protests sow division among Vancouverites whose roots are either in Hong Kong or Mainland China

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Ethnic media election coverage 22-28 September

2019/09/30 Leave a comment

Latest weekly analysis of ethnic media coverage. For the analytical narrative, go to Ethnic media election coverage 22-28 September:

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

In court documents, Trudeau defends decision to call out Quebec heckler for ‘racism’

2019/09/30 Leave a comment

Interesting case. PM comments come across as reasonable and thoughtful:

In the wake of Justin Trudeau’s blackface scandal, his comments in a recent lawsuit give an illuminating insight into how the prime minister thinks about racism.

In August 2018, Trudeau made headlines when he called out a woman for “intolerance” and “racism” after she heckled him at a rally in Quebec and asked him about “illegal immigrants.”

That incident led to an ongoing lawsuit that has received little public attention since it was filed by the heckler last December. In July, Trudeau was questioned in Montreal as part of the lawsuit.

In the court documents, obtained by the National Post this week, Trudeau said he believed the intolerance had to be addressed clearly and also pointed to a particular brand of Quebec nationalism he found troubling.

In videos that circulated widely of the altercation — during a speech Trudeau gave to Liberal supporters at an event in Sabrevois, Que. — the prime minister can be seen telling the heckler that “this intolerance regarding immigrants does not have a place in Canada,” and later that “your racism has no place here.”

At the time, commentators and Conservative politicians were quick to accuse the prime minister of berating an elderly woman without justification, a narrative that changed somewhat after it was revealed that the woman, Diane Blain, had connections to far-right nationalist groups.

In December, Blain filed a defamation lawsuit against Trudeau, demanding $90,000 for psychological distress and damage to her reputation and her right to freedom of expression.

Trudeau’s defence argues that it was “perfectly legitimate” for the prime minister to “note the intolerance expressed by the terms used by Ms. Blain.”

During his examination, Trudeau told Blain’s lawyer the context of her comments made it clear she was intolerant. But he also said he doesn’t believe Blain was a racist, despite having accused her multiple times of racism.

At the event, Blain called out multiple times from the crowd, asking, “When will you give us back the $146 million that we paid for your illegal immigrants?” Her question was in reference to the Quebec government’s demand at the time to be reimbursed for costs incurred by the influx of asylum seekers entering Quebec at Roxham Road, between official entry points.

In examination, Trudeau said he didn’t initially understand Blain’s question, but realized what she was asking when he heard the words “your illegal immigrants.” He told Blain’s lawyer that the way she asked the question, referring to “your illegal immigrants,” proved it was not in good faith. “It was a context in which the goal was to disrupt and push an agenda that was either anti-immigrant or that simply wanted to spark fear and concern about immigrants,” he said. “So for me, it was important to respond firmly and clearly.”

He also said he felt it was necessary to speak out swiftly because the crowd was very diverse and many of his supporters at the event were immigrants.

He went on to discuss Quebecers’ concerns about asylum seekers at Roxham Road, saying there are “very reasonable people” who worry about illegal border crossings. “But there’s a point where it goes beyond concern and (becomes) a desire to preserve a historic Quebec identity against immigrants,” he said. “And unfortunately, it’s not something we hear often, but it’s common enough to be part of a pattern.”

At the August event, Blain asked Trudeau if he was tolerant of “Québécois de souche,” a term that refers to white Quebecers who are descendants of the original French colonists. He responded by saying he was tolerant of all perspectives and accused Blain of being intolerant. Later, when she confronted him again as he was moving through the crowd, he told her, “Your racism has no place here.”

Blain’s lawyer, Christian Lajoie, asked Trudeau during the examination about Quebec nationalism, after Trudeau said he didn’t like the term “Québécois de souche” because of its “connotations of intolerance.”

Trudeau referred to René Lévesque, the founder of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois, saying the former premier envisioned a “civic nationalism,” not one based on ethnicity. “I think a little bit for some people in recent years, we’ve been missing that desire to bring people together that Mr. Lévesque had,” he said.

Still, asked directly if he believes Blain is a racist, Trudeau said no. “I was speaking about her comments… that I associated with intolerance,” he said. “There’s a wave of thinking that has racist elements.”

In the days after the altercation, Trudeau stood by his response to Blain’s questions, telling reporters that “Canadians deserve to know that they have a prime minister that will always underline when these dangerous tactics are used in politics.” At the same time, media reports revealed that Blain had connections to far-right nationalist groups Storm Alliance and Front Patriotique du Québec and that she had once refused to be served by a Muslim woman at a dental clinic in Montreal.

In her lawsuit, Blain claims the event and subsequent media coverage caused “serious damage to her dignity, honour and reputation,” and that her family has been divided by the incident. She is asking for $90,000 in damages. She initially wanted an additional $5,000 for the pain caused by an RCMP officer grabbing her arm, but that has since been dropped. Blain did not respond to the Post’s request for an interview, and her lawyer declined to comment.

Trudeau’s defence claims that Blain came looking to confront him and his responses to her questions were reasonable under the circumstances. It points out that Blain identified herself as the woman in the videos after the fact, and has given several interviews about the incident. A spokesperson for Trudeau declined to comment.

During his examination, Trudeau indicated he believed his lawyer had approached Blain to try and reach a settlement. Blain recently told right-wing news site The Post Millennial, which has reported on the examination, that no settlement has been reached. According to court documents, preparation of the file will not proceed until November, after the Oct. 21 election.

Source: In court documents, Trudeau defends decision to call out Quebec heckler for ‘racism’

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Scheer says he would continue Liberals’ $45M anti-racism strategy

2019/09/27 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, behind the paywall but nevertheless interesting.

Of course, if we judge by the previous Conservative government, which drastically reduced the resources dedicated to multiculturalism and anti-racism programming (The Conservative legacy on multiculturalism: more cohesion, less inclusion):

The Liberal government’s $45-million anti-racism strategy isn’t going anywhere under a Scheer government, the Conservative leader says.

Asked by a reporter in Thorold, Ont., on Tuesday whether he supports the anti-racism plan put forward by the Trudeau government this year, and the approach it is taking, Andrew Scheer said he would continue to back such programs.

Source: Scheer says he would continue Liberals’ $45M anti-racism strategy

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

‘Afraid We Will Become The Next Xinjiang’: China’s Hui Muslims Face Crackdown

2019/09/27 Leave a comment

More on Chinese repression of religious minorities:

Gold-domed mosques and gleaming minarets once broke the monotony of the Ningxia region’s vast scrubland every few miles. This countryside here is home to some of China’s 10.5 million Hui Muslims, who have practiced Sunni or Sufi forms of Islam within tight-knit communities for centuries, mainly in the northwest and central plains. Concentrated in the Ningxia region, the Hui are China’s third-largest ethnic minority.

Now, though, virtually every mosque in Ningxia’s countryside has been denuded of its domes, part of a sweeping crackdown on China’s Muslim minorities that has reached Hui strongholds in Ningxia, in central China, and as far inland as Henan province in the east. (Up to now, Gansu province in central China has been able to keep most of its mosques intact.)

The crackdown on Muslims has been most extreme in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where scholars estimate that up to 1.5 million Muslim Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking group, and other ethnic minorities have been detained since 2016, in one of the most sophisticated surveillance states in the world.

The same restrictions that preceded the Xinjiang crackdown on Uighur Muslims are now appearing in Hui-dominated regions. NPR has learned that since April 2018, Hui mosques have been forcibly renovated or shuttered, schools demolished and religious community leaders imprisoned. Hui who have traveled internationally are increasingly detained or sent to reeducation facilities in Xinjiang.

In August 2018, in Ningxia’s Tongxin county, authorities attempted to demolish the Weizhou Grand Mosque, claiming it lacked the right building permits. Hundreds of furious residents staged a sit-in, sharing videos of their protest through popular Chinese social media platforms like WeChat and Kuaishou, a live-streaming app, faster than censors could take them down.

Taken aback, officials called off the demolition. But the victory was short-lived. In November, local government work units began visiting every household in Weizhou, pressuring residents to sign letters stating their acquiescence to “renovate” the mosque by removing its main dome and domed minarets. In some cases, Weizhou officials threatened to fire state employees if they did not sign the letter, according to multiple residents.

This month, NPR drove through Weizhou, which is now guarded by checkpoints on the only road leading in and out of town. The mosque is closed, its main dome and minarets replaced with tiled Buddhist-style pagodas, and its entrances blocked by scaffolding.

“Of course we are afraid we will become the next Xinjiang,” one Hui man told NPR. He did not provide his name for fear that authorities in Xinjiang would find him. Three years ago, he abandoned his family’s property in Xinjiang in order to transfer his residency to Tongxin county. “But what can an individual do? We can only take it year by year.”

“We say what we have to say”

Descendants of Arab traders who entered China some 1,500 years ago, the Hui pride themselves on having thoroughly assimilated into Chinese society. Unlike the Uighurs, the Hui have no distinct language, speaking Mandarin and often some Arabic. Save for the occasional white cap customarily worn by Hui men or hair coverings among women, they are often visually indistinguishable from China’s ethnic majority, the Han.

Their exemption from the harshest of religious restrictions changed in April 2018, when the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department formally took control of the State Bureau of Religious Affairs — meaning that the party now directly oversees policy for religious affairs, not the government.

“The day-to-day responsibility for managing religious activities and organizations shifted to the UFWD, and its atheist party apparatchiks, whose overarching mission is the protection of party power,” James Leibold, an associate professor at Australia’s La Trobe University and an expert on China’s ethnic minority policy, tells NPR via email.

That same April, a mass dome-removal campaign began in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province in central China, and resumed in Ningxia as part of the official effort known as chu shahua, fan ah’hua, to “combat Saudi and Arabic influence.”

All Hui-run nursery schools, child care centers and religious schools were forcibly closed in Ningxia and across Yunnan and Henan provinces, which are also home to a large number of Hui Muslims.

The United Front’s new control over Chinese ethnic and religious policy marks a substantial change, says Leibold. While the State Bureau of Religious Affairs was sometimes restrictive, it at least “saw the protection, if not promotion, of ‘normal religious activities’ as part of their mission and mandate, and many of its officials were religious practitioners themselves,” he says in his email to NPR.

Abroad, the United Front is the party body that liaises with international nonstate individuals and organizations. Domestically, the United Front has emerged as one of the most aggressive proponents of stripping away foreign influences within religious practices and bringing them under state control — making them more Chinese, a process known as “Sinification.”

“Sinification of religion in China is an important discourse of Party General Secretary Xi Jinping on the problem of religion and religious work,” Ma Jin, a United Front official, told the Islamic Association of China, a state-backed organization, in January.

“This recent crackdown on the Muslim activities is really a part of a national campaign of China today to correct what they believe are the excesses in permitting Arab-style mosques … and influence by the Middle East. The Salafi and Wahhabi groups have been pouring money in China,” says Dru Gladney, an anthropologist at Pomona College and an expert on Hui Muslims. “These restrictions through UFWD are part and parcel of government efforts to control Islamic practices, to make them more Chinese.”

In Xinjiang, Uighur-language books and films have been expunged, Uighur intellectuals imprisoned, and Uighur children sent to state-run schools to be taughtMandarin Chinese and culture.

For the Hui across China, mosques have become the major vehicle for Sinification. In April 2018, authorities began revoking the state-issued licenses given to imams who have residency outside the province in which they practice and from those who have studied abroad. In Ningxia, smaller mosques without licensed imams have been closed outright.

Ningxia sent senior leadership delegations to visit Xinjiang’s detention camps last November and signed a counterterrorism cooperation agreement with Xinjiang a month later.

Like many mosques, the Huarenjie mosque in downtown Zhengzhou, Henan, is now monitored around the clock through a network of surveillance cameras installed last year by the local public security bureau.

Emily Feng/NPR

Imams in Henan and Ningxia must now attend monthly training sessions that can last for days. There, imams told NPR, they are taught Communist ideology and state ethnic policy and discuss Xi Jinping’s speeches. Imams must then pass an exam testing their ideological knowledge in order to renew their license each year, mirroring how the government issues licenses to imams in the Xinjiang region.

“We go along with it. We say what we have to say, because it is just words, and it lets us continue to work in the mosque,” said one of the few imams still based in Henan, requesting his name be kept anonymous because of fears of political reprisal.

Fears of Saudi influence

Mosque employees say orders to demolish mosque domes and minarets are transmitted orally from local officials citing the United Front, with no written notice. The demolitions are swiftly executed at night, to avoid protests and video documentation.

“We ourselves do not even have the documents. [The United Front] takes them back at the end of each meeting,” a local Henan official says in a recording NPR listened to of a meeting between local officials and employees at a mosque whose domes were removed after the meeting.

“Party organs like the UFWD work outside the state legal system and thus have far greater power than the state bureaucracy and are not required to report back to the State Council,” the equivalent of China’s cabinet, says Leibold.

Others say officials are looking to avoid the attention that mass mosque demolitions and detentions of Muslims in Xinjiang have attracted.

“Local officials learned from Xinjiang. They know that by aggressively restricting people in obvious ways, like constructing detention centers and leaving written evidence, they might create resistance,” Tianfang, the pen name of a prominent blogger critical of China’s religious policies, told NPR.

The crackdown on China’s Hui Muslims is in part driven by the government’s fears that fundamentalist strains of Islam like Salafism and Wahhabism are filtering into China by way of Hui students who study in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and through private religious foundations on the Arabian Peninsula that have funded some Hui social enterprises and mosques.

Signs of Saudi influence, including Arabic script, are being removed across China. Hui women in Henan and Ningxia provinces say they are no longer allowed to wear the head-to-toe black abaya customary to Saudi women, and Hui shops say they no longer stock Saudi-style clothes for men or women.

Imams suspected of preaching Salafism are also promptly removed. One of them, Han Daoliang, was the imam at Huarenjie Mosque in Zhengzhou, Henan province’s capital, according to mosque attendees. Han raised his hands three times during prayer instead of just once, they said, marking him to Zhengzhou officials as a Salafi adherent.

Hui tombstones inscribed in Arabic outside Xiaomagou Mosque in Zhengzhou, Henan.

Emily Feng/NPR

Forced by local officials to resign this year, Han is now living in Malaysia, according to acquaintances. His former mosque has been given a state-appointed imam. According to a new plaque and mosque employees, the house of worship is now run by a new committee appointed by the state, with a board including two non-Muslim government officials.

“Sweep away the black and root out evil”

The crackdown on Hui Muslims is backed by a national anti-corruption effort launched by the government in 2018 to “sweep away the black and root out evil.” Posters exhorting residents to “sweep away the black” are now ubiquitous in Chinese cities and such slogans have been scrawled in graffiti on village walls.

Among the crimes the campaign targets is using “religious connections at villages and townships to form mobs,” according to implementation guidelines published late last year. State media reports say 6,885 “black and evil” criminal organizations were taken down under the campaign as of January.

The “sweep away the black” campaign has also decimated power bases outside the Communist Party structure, including among religious communities. Hui communities are now told that unauthorized religious events or proselytizing are considered gatherings of “black” forces or “underworld forces.”

Those unauthorized gatherings include Islamic schools run by Hui mosques, nearly all of which have been closed across China, particularly in Henan and Ningxia, according to residents in Henan, Ningxia, Yunnan and Gansu provinces. NPR visited multiple former Islamic schools in September, several of which looked as if they had been cleared in a hurry — with dusty bedding piled on dormitory beds and chipped dishes and other kitchenware stacked haphazardly in corners.

All taught Arabic language and some Islamic doctrine, but some are run more like vocational schools or social welfare schools for students who might be otherwise ineligible or unable to afford an education.

“We barely taught any Islamic doctrine. It was about making sure these children were educated and would not become criminals or radicalized,” said a former teacher surnamed Ma, who did not want her full name used for fear of political reprisal.

She had taught at an Islamic school in China’s southwestern Yunnan province, which closed last April. The school had stayed open despite orders in 2014 to expel all non-local students, particularly those having residency status in Xinjiang.

Ma was interrogated by police about the school’s curriculum and whether the school was distributing drugs. A common stereotype about ethnic minorities in China is that they sell drugs. One of her colleagues was held incommunicado for three days and subjected to “thought work,” or ideological training, Ma says.

Rewards for reporting suspicious behavior

In Ningxia’s Tongxin county, a rare female-only Islamic school once renowned across China’s northwest is being readied for demolition after it was shut down last April to make way for residential development.

“It is the government’s policies. Who knows if they will change and when?” one of the school employees told NPR in hushed tones. She withheld her name because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Hui residents of Tongxin say local officials are now offering rewards between $700 and $2,820 to those who report suspicious religious behavior, such as proselytizing Islam or secretly teaching Islamic texts. Some male mosque attendees have begun wearing cloth masks covering the lower half of their faces when attending daily prayers to avoid identification.

Hui who have performed the Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, fall under particular suspicion. Last year, a group of about 20 pilgrims was detained in Saudi Arabia for having the wrong visas before being sent back to China, according to two people with friends in the group. Two Hui pilgrims with residency in Xinjiang were promptly sent to low-security Xinjiang detention facilities, according to the two people with friends in the group.

“Unbearable” pressure

NPR found evidence of significant pushback from Hui seeking to delay or avoid implementing religious restrictions. Hui say they drag out orders to demolish mosque domes, and some students continue to secretly attend religious classes, despite shuttered schools.

In Henan, NPR came across one mosque in the process of “renovating” its dome by building a cover to shield it from view, a compromise between local officials who demanded its removal and nearby Hui residents who refused to do so. Mosque employees were also installing translucent plastic Arabic calligraphic inscriptions on the mosque walls – nearly invisible to all but true believers – to satisfy demands that they remove all Islamic symbols and Arabic script.

Hui Muslim men leave the Laohuasi mosque after Friday prayers in Linxia, Gansu province, in March 2018. Gansu so far has been able to keep most of its mosques intact while domes and minarets of mosques in other provinces have been altered or removed.

Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

“The Hui people have been through one storm after another, and this is a storm that will pass,” the mosque’s imam told NPR. “Who knows how the political environment may change? We do not want to spend money to tear our dome down, only to have to pay to build it up again next year.”

Fearing the worst, some younger Hui Muslims are looking to leave China and have emigrated to Malaysia and Dubai in the past few years.

“The pressure on not just one’s religious behavior, but how one lives one’s daily life, is unbearable,” said a young Hui man from Ningxia surnamed Tian, who did not want to use his full name for fear of being punished for talking to a foreign journalist. “It weighs on your chest.”

Ma Ju, a leader in a Sufi sect of Hui Muslims, left China for the United Arab Emirates in 2009 because of his outspoken criticism of religious restrictions in Xinjiang. This year, he fled to the United States, because the UAE has an extradition agreement with China.

“The oppression I saw inflicted on Tibetans 20 years ago and the Uighurs 10 years ago, has finally reached my people,” he says.

Ma Ju worries for his community back in China, especially now that technological tools like facial recognition make evading restrictions in China nearly impossible.

“You have legs, but you can’t run away,” he says. “You have money, but it’s of no use. You have a heart, but you cannot lift yourself up. This is a new kind of repression.”

Source: ‘Afraid We Will Become The Next Xinjiang’: China’s Hui Muslims Face Crackdown

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

The outliers of Canadian media

2019/09/27 Leave a comment

Similar to other commentary but would benefit from an overall discussion of the media financial situation and shrinking employment, enrolment in j-schools (appears to be about 20 percent visible minorities), and the replication of much mainstream focussing on the words, not the record.

And if one cites the percentage of the population that is visible minority, use the 2016 number, not the 2011 one:

Last week, after the trifecta of images were released of Trudeau in blackface and brownface, a group of journalists of colour—Tanya Talaga, Manisha Krishnan and Anita Li—discussed the lack of diversity in Canadian newsrooms on CBC’s The Current.

Due to the lack of visible-minority voices reporting on Trudeau’s blackface, they all agreed, the story, which was really about systemic racism in Canada, was reduced to plain outrage. Rather than giving readers the context they needed to understand the prejudices that people of colour have faced historically and continue to face now, what the public got instead, was a political spin on Trudeau’s actions.

In other words, How would Trudeau’s blackface affect him in the upcoming election? 

For Krishnan, a senior writer for Vice, the questions directed to Trudeau at the media scrum post-blackface were the most frustrating. “There was really no one asking him, ‘Okay, you didn’t think it was racist, what were you thinking? Walk us through your thought process. Why would you think this was an appropriate thing to do?’” she said.

It’s largely about how the Canadian media covers race, Li added, explaining that one of the reasons she relocated stateside was because U.S. media has more of a willingness to publish stories that unpack the nuances of race. It is part lived experience, and part education, she explained.

The stats on newsroom diversity are grossly out-dated, and uncomfortable to examine: In 2006, only 3.4 per cent of people in newsrooms were people of colour. The fact that there’s been no concerted effort to publish current statistics on diversity trends in media signals an even greater concern—while newsroom diversity is abysmal, we’re idle, and simply too embarrassed to address it.

So what does it take for a person of colour, from an under-privileged home, to make it into a national newsroom? A lot. It’s a combination of both what you did and where you were—personal motivation and external circumstances. The handful—if that—of coloured faces in each newsroom you see are outliers. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

I grew up in Thorncliffe Park, an area in Toronto’s East York, wedged between the Danforth and the more wealthy Leaside neighbourhood. Thorncliffe Park is a cul-de-sac of apartment buildings where, in the early 90s, an influx of Filipino immigrants settled. My cousins lived in the buildings across from me. Our church—St. Edith Stein—was majority Filipino. My dad and my uncles sat inside East York Town Centre on Saturday mornings, sipping coffee and telling stories in Tagalog.

The cul-de-sac was split in half: if you lived on one side, you attended school on the Danforth, if you lived on the other, you went to school in Leaside. Our building fed into Leaside. At St. Anselm, the student population was about 40 per cent Filipino, 60 per cent white.

There, I was schooled on the opportunities afforded to white people. My white classmates, most of whom had fathers who were doctors, lawyers, business owners and mothers who stayed at home, operated with a sense of unconscious certainty. Their upbringings provided them a firm sense of place in Canadian society. This even trickled into the way teachers and parents addressed the kids—you were either a “Leasider,” or not.

I’m no Malcolm Gladwell, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that—for a child who is 10 years old—having an awareness of economic opportunity by way of your parents correlates with job success later in life. And that’s the inherent advantage white people have in journalism. It’s a career that’s foreseeable in their worldview. Meanwhile, journalism for first-generation immigrant children is like one of those secrets you want to keep from your parents; it’s not part of the conversation at home, nor do you want to bring it up.

It was during my time at St. Anselm that I became acquainted with the term “white-washed”—people of colour who speak, dress and act like they’re white. I first recall my own intuitive white-washing when I spent the time in the homes of friends in Leaside. Inside their carefully decorated houses, I did everything not to highlight how I was different, and instead sought to prove that I was just like them.

The white-washing I subjected myself to as a child, is akin to the way in which I operated at the start of my career in media—showcasing my degrees rather than my personal perspective, listing off my bylines rather than the subject matter I’m passionate about (one being immigrant issues), and dumbing down the core reason why we need more people like me in journalism: If I don’t give the 850,000 Filipinos across Canada—the third-largest Asian-Canadian group in the country—a voice, who will?

In June, CBC and Radio-Canada’s broadcasting division announced a new commitment to diversity across their broadcasting arm. By 2025, they wrote in a press release, the company aims to have at least one key creative—producer, director, showrunner and lead performer—from a diverse background in all its programs. I’d argue that more must be done to radicalize diversity targets across all media.

This starts with having internship programs where at least 50 per cent of interns are people of colour. When it comes to securing a full-time gig in journalism, landing an entry-level role like an internship, is the first of many barriers to entry. By diversifying these jobs, we can ensure an ongoing funnel of young, visible-minority journalists making their way into national newsrooms.

Another idea is to have at least one key decision-making position at large news organizations be filled by a person of colour—and ideally, they’d have hiring authority. It’s one way to tackle what we know as the ‘similarity bias,’ which in the case of journalism and media, is the revolving door of white reporters hired by a majority-white management.

At Maclean’s, while our writers come from a number of backgrounds, the number of ethnic minorities on staff falls below 19.1 per cent,[note: 2016 census number is 22.3 percent] the percentage of people in Canada who identify as a member of a visible minority group, according to Statistics Canada. So instead of hiding from stats, shouldn’t we give these numbers a hard look and ask ourselves: Is Canada truly represented here?

Source: The outliers of Canadian media

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →