Former Liberal adviser rips party over racial insensitivity in government ranks

2019/09/23 Leave a comment

In 2016, I examined staff diversity which was much less than Cabinet or MP diversity Diversity in political backrooms still lacking):

A former adviser in the Liberal government said he wasn’t surprised by photos of Justin Trudeau in blackface makeup because he encountered racially insensitive behaviour while working in the upper ranks of his government.

Omer Aziz said the photos of Trudeau are of a piece with behaviour he saw while working on Parliament Hill with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s policy team. According to his Linked In profile, Aziz held the job for seven months. He quit in 2018.

“Sometimes a slip of the tongue is not just a slip of the tongue. It’s a slip of the mask,” he said in an interview with CBC Radio’s The House airing today.

“I basically had to leave my dream job because of racist prejudices that went unacknowledged.”

Aziz said that while he worked in the department, he heard staffers referring to certain communities as “ethnic vote banks.” He said he was assigned to “brown files” in the department — files dealing with non-white-majority countries — and said he was subjected to “whitesplaining” by colleagues who assumed he wasn’t aware of certain cultural nuances because of his skin colour.

Trudeau has been forced to answer uncomfortable questions all week after three instances of him wearing brownface or blackface as part of various costumes surfaced in the media.

The images span about a decade and a variety of situations, and show Trudeau in blackface both as a teenager and as an adult.

“What I did was inexcusable and wrong and hurt a lot of people who considered me to be an ally and that was wrong. And I am deeply, deeply sorry,” Trudeau told a crowd in Saskatchewan Thursday.

Trudeau has now publicly apologized twice — but he also has repeatedly declined to state how many times he may have worn blackface. He said he was “wary of being definitive about this because of the recent pictures that came out, I had not remembered.”

Aziz said almost all of his colleagues in the federal government were white and seemed unaware of subtle racist behaviour in the workplace.

“People in power above me were blind to what I was seeing,” he said.

“I felt like (…) I was a character from the movie Get Out, where my reality was kind of warped and distorted. Obviously people are never racist to your face.”

CBC News’s requests for comment from the Prime Minister’s Office and Freeland’s office were forwarded to the Liberal Party.

“When hiring exempt staff across government, the aim is always to identify high-quality candidates that reflect the diversity of Canada and to build more inclusive work environments,” the party statement reads.

Aziz said he tried to share his concerns with Gerry Butts, then the principal secretary to the prime minister, but was ultimately unable to meet with him.

The India trip

Aziz said his decision to leave the Liberal government permitted him to dodge a bullet: he believes he would have been involved in organizing Trudeau’s early 2018 trip to India.

The trip turned into a colossal PR disaster for the prime minister after news emerged that a Sikh extremist had been invited to a reception at the Canadian High Commissioner’s residence — and after he was roundly mocked for appearing in traditional Indian dress.

“The India trip was brownface without the makeup,” Aziz said.

As for the blackface images, Aziz wondered aloud how everyone managed “to miss this for 18 years.”

Aziz said voters can still count on the Liberals to be progressive in areas like climate change and the economy — but they shouldn’t assume Trudeau “at every instance has been on the side of minorities and the powerless.”

“Don’t have any illusions and still pretend that this is a saviour … It’s not true,” he said.

Trudeau also responded to questions about how voters should analyze his actions.

“I certainly hope that they will continue to support us in the work that we’re doing, but they might not,” he said at a media event in Winnipeg Thursday. “And I know that is something that all Canadians get to decide and they get to bring in all sorts of different factors, because every Canadian has a different way of looking at what matters to them.”

If the Liberals form government again, Aziz said he wants to see changes made at the top.

“One thing I’m going to be looking forward to is if they are re-elected, do they diversify at the top, because I’m kind of tired of hearing about people talking about diversity when everyone around them looks the same.”

Source: Former Liberal adviser rips party over racial insensitivity in government ranks

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Japanese camp unearthed in North Shore mountains was likely an escape from racism, until internment intervened

2019/09/23 Leave a comment

Interesting part of our history:

Hidden away in British Columbia’s North Shore mountains are the remnants of a Japanese-Canadian logging camp, shrouded by forest and veiled from memory after it was apparently abandoned because of internment during the Second World War.

Since 2004, Vancouver archeologist Bob Muckle has been visiting and excavating the site; almost everything had been swallowed by the forest and has been gradually and carefully uncovered. There are as many questions as answers, still, but Muckle has a theory that it was an oasis of Japanese culture, on the fringe of Vancouver, decades ago, that was heretofore unknown.

Sherri Kajiwara of the Nikkei National Museum in Burnaby, B.C. says there is no record, yet, of anyone remembering living there, or remembering that their ancestors resided there, although there were plenty of Japanese-Canadians in Canada at the time.

“By the 1940s the community was very established and spread across metro Vancouver and the province,” Kajiwara said.

More than 1,000 artifacts have been collected at the site, researchers say.Bob Muckle

Her museum is putting together an exhibit about the history of Japanese-Canadian internment, and one of the main characters is Eikichi Kagetsu, a successful businessman who had logging rights in the area where Muckle found a settlement.

Muckle’s involvement with the camp began as a search for an area where he could teach his Capilano University students about proper excavation. He found one, a logging camp, by the looks of it, since there were bits of saw blades around. But, the excavation soon revealed it “was not really a typical logging camp at all.”

A typical camp, Muckle explained, would have bunk houses and a mess hall for the men working there. This one has 14 locations that were, to Muckle’s eyes, houses. There is also evidence of a shrine, a garden space and a water reservoir system.

“The most significant find is evidence of what may be a Japanese bathhouse,” Muckle noted. “Very few bathhouses have been excavated outside of Japan.”

Though he doesn’t “have the smoking gun yet,” Muckle’s hypothesis about the origin and life of the camp is that Japanese-Canadians moved to the logging camp around 1918, and remained there even after logging activity ceased. He was most recently on-site for several weeks in May and June.

“In the Vancouver area, where we are, in the 1920s and ’30s there was pretty explicit racism against both Chinese and Japanese, so this would’ve been an escape from that.”

Here they lived, with the men commuting into Vancouver for work, Muckle suspects, until February 1942, when they would have left for internment camps, a policy put in place during the Second World War that relocated families from the B.C. coast.

The evidence for the timing, and reason, for the camp’s abandonment, even in the absence of clear artifacts from the 1940s, is that the departure seems to have been reasonably orderly. Everyone there just walked away, leaving behind clocks, watches, pocketknives, dishes and stoves. There are about 1,000 artifacts in total: beer bottles and teapot pieces and evaporated milk cans, suggesting the presence of children.

“I think (internment) explains why we have so many personal items left behind,” Muckle said. “The dishes tend to be in really good condition, which you wouldn’t expect if people were normally abandoning their site.”

And, some items were hidden, such as a valuable stove secreted away off-site and parts of an early-1900s camera that were inside the walls of the bathhouse.

“I’m thinking this is probably my last season there,” he said. “I’m going through the process right now of figuring out what’s going to happen to all the artifacts.”

Certaintly, some of them are going to go to Kajiwara’s museum. For her part, she’s heard from a number of people about the settlement, as it has received more press, including someone from Japan. “It’s really been quite remarkable that the word has gone out sort of far and wide,” she said. “We’re starting to slowly collect names.”

“That whole generation really didn’t talk about the experience for decades and it’s only now, it’s only recently, that the stories have started to be revealed or shared,” she said. “It will be interesting to see if we can track down any of the descendants.”

Source: Japanese camp unearthed in North Shore mountains was likely an escape from racism, until internment intervened

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Reflections on the Trudeau brown face/black face photos

2019/09/21 Leave a comment

Observing the media frenzy over the past few days over the Trudeau photos, a number of thoughts came to mind:

  • The focus on what was viewed as hypocrisy, understandably so, given Trudeau’s inclusion and diversity mantra and the Liberal party’s war room tactics in “outing” Conservative candidates for homophobic or racist remarks;
  • The overall shallowness of the reporting, focussed almost exclusively on the possible political impact, rather than more substantive issues involving racism;
  • The contrast between media and pundit outrage and more balanced reaction by many visible minority Canadians in talk shows and other reactions; and,
  • The lack of assessment of the Trudeau government’s record where, as I have analyzed before, is strong with respect to increased diversity (Taking stock of Ottawa’s diversity promises) and its renewal of the Multiculturalism Program including additional funds for data collection and anti-Black racism initiatives.

As noted by many, Trudeau’s apology was in many ways, his first real apology. One can only wonder whether he had adapted a similar approach to the various ethnical lapses (Aga Khan Island holiday, particularly SNC Lavalin) whether the government would be facing the same electoral challenge.

And most pundits, at least at the time of writing, have not done any meaningful comparison between the Trudeau apology for these photos and Scheer’s non-apology for his 2005 speech in Parliament against same sex marriage.

My quick take:

  • Trudeau responded quickly, with a second and more comprehensive response within 24 hours;
  • Scheer waited for the better part of a week before responding;
  • Trudeau recognized what the photos communicated, recognized their impact, expressed regret and indicated his personal views and behaviour have evolved, and made a strong statement against racism;
  • Scheer spoke in impersonal and legalistic terms that a Conservative government would not reopen same sex marriage but did not indicate his personal views and behaviour had changed;
  • Both were in their mid-to-late 20s and thus were adults.

Fundamentally, Trudeau’s insensitivity and obliviousness towards these images is balanced by not by his disavowal but more important by the actions the government he leads.

In contrast, Scheer continues to give the impression that personally, he stands by his 2005 speech but accepts the reality that same sex marriage is the law of the land. His absence in Pride events tends to confirm that.

Two media articles that drew my attention:

First, Samana Siddiqui’s Responding to Justin Trudeau’s Brownface: Memories of a Brown-Skinned Canadian:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is just a few years older than I am, and he grew up in the same Montreal I did in the 1980s. Which is why I can understand the roots of his “brownface” stunt.

For the record, blackface and brownface are wrong. Dressing up and mimicking another race or culture via costume is nothing less than a modern-day minstrel show. It’s not about humor, but about power and arrogance, intentional or not. The mimicked group is rarely the one in control of the accepted narrative about themselves or others.

My elementary school in Montreal was very racially and ethnically diverse. Most of the kids were like me, second-generation Canadians, the children of immigrants to Canada from all over the world. While we had our fights and disagreements, most of the time, epithets and insults based on race, ethnicity, or religion were rarely, if ever, uttered.

That changed once I reached seventh grade in a new school, in another Montreal neighborhood. There, most of the kids were also second-generation Canadians, with one caveat – their roots hailed from a specific European country (I’ll decline to name it). I was now, literally, a brown face in a sea of white. That was the first time I was called a “Paki” in school.

My response to the insult (which had been imported from Britain to Canada to describe brown-skinned South Asian people) was fairly simple. I responded by insulting the name-caller’s ethnic group. It worked. He never insulted me again.

And life moved on.

Did it scar me? Not really. But it made me wonder what had made him call me a “Paki” when a. I was at my locker minding my own business at the time and b. I had never before insulted his ethnic group?

Part of it was because teenage boys can be exceedingly immature. The other part though reflected something deeper.

It was the understanding that such words and mockery were accepted culturally – even if they weren’t officially. Had I gone to my teacher or principal, I have no doubt that the offender would have been forced to apologize. But that didn’t take into account the fact that “Pakis” like me were unknown to my classmate. We were rarely encountered in person, or in the cultural landscape via movies or on television. And when we were, our brown faces, “smelly” food, “funny” clothes, and our parents’ “accents” were a source of derision.

It was a reminder that we can all talk about multiculturalism until we’re blue in the face in Canada – but in the end, the only acceptable setting is white.

The more interesting part of this whole fiasco though is that it was Trudeau’s father, the late Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who pushed for greater multiculturalism, opening up Canada legally and culturally to diversity when he was Prime Minister.

The elder Trudeau declared in 1971, the year of Justin Trudeau’s birth, that Canada would adopt a multicultural policy. Under his leadership, he emphasized that the Government of Canada would recognize and respect diversity in languages, customs, religions, and so on. In 1982, when he was still in power, multiculturalism was recognized by section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But laws are one thing. Cultural change takes longer. It takes generations.

I’m grateful that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologized. I have no doubt that this sudden revelation is also partly political calculation on the part of his opponents in a heated election campaign. In addition, we should keep in mind Trudeau’s overall record as a leader on issues of diversity when understanding this incident.

We can move on from here. But it has to be with the understanding that this is not about face paint or costumes. It’s about power. And if Canada, or any other country for that matter, wants to establish itself as a society committed to justice, equity, and strength through diversity, it cannot do that by creating an imbalance of cultural power – through insulting practices like brownface, blackface, or any other mockery.

Source: Responding to Justin Trudeau’s Brownface: Memories of a Brown-Skinned Canadian.

Secondly, Mark Kingwell’s Memo to Justin: Who you are today is who you were yesterday. His point on Aristotle “what you do is who you are” applies to Trudeau’s persistent instinct to defend, deny and obfuscate but not, I would argue to his political evolution.

After all, the views of most of us do evolve, both individually and collectively as we have seen with respect to gender equality, diversity, same sex marriage and the like:

So this is what we are forced to imagine. You have been invited to a party. There is a stated theme, or maybe it’s just a general fancy-dress affair. You go to the mirror, look at your handsome face and think: Hey, brown makeup! Or you look at your somewhat less handsome face and think: Hey, Nazi uniform!

Is there any species of dumb that’s dumber than donning a racist or fascist costume under cover of a party? Justin Trudeau, once our “It Boy” Prime Minister, is reeling from revelations that he dressed in brownface for an “Arabian Nights” party in 2001. Some may remember Prince Harry’s equally ill-judged decision to favour a brown shirt and swastika for a swanky birthday party back in 2005. What is it about parties? In both cases, you have to wonder: What were these guys thinking? I mean, really – brownface and brown shirt? I’m older than both of them, but even at their respective ages I think I would have known that these were bad, perhaps despicable, choices. Brownface? Brown shirt? Red flags, guys, red flags.

“I take responsibility for my decision to do that,” the PM said this week on the campaign trail. “I should have known better.” He added: “It was something that I didn’t think was racist at the time, but now I recognize it was something racist to do, and I am deeply sorry.” Things got even worse when it was revealed that, in high school, the youthful Justin performed Harry Belafonte’s hit song Day-O while wearing “makeup.”

Let’s be clear. We are not talking, here, about the nasty N-word dialogue in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) or the casual disregard shown for black people in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884). In both those cases, and many similar ones, there is an argument that the quoted characters are not identical with the author. Even T.S. Eliot’s avowed anti-Semitism or Enid Blyton’s racism might be contextualized, if never excused, based on the passage of time. But Mr. Trudeau: 2001. Prince Harry: 2005.

We are forced to recall, in the Prime Minister’s case, his justification, faced with accusations of unwanted groping, that “someone else might have experienced that differently and this is part of the reflections that we have to go through.” Memo to Justin: Some of us do our ethical reflections before the fact, not after.

The issues go beyond parties, japes and half-baked apologies. Recently, comedian Shane Gillis had his upcoming contract with Saturday Night Livecancelled because of racist and homophobic jokes he made, all captured on social media. This ignited an enraged counterattack from mostly white, mostly middle-aged comedians who saw it as an example of “cancel culture” – the new right-wing code for what used to be called political correctness.

Never mind that SNL, and especially executive producer Lorne Michaels, can boast no clean sheet when it comes to racist, homophobic and politically craven humour (the show’s kiss-ups to Donald Trump are especially egregious, though maybe balanced by some other gags). When Bill Burr, Jim Jefferies, Rob Schneider and others lamented this contractual decision as “cancelling,” they were just wrong. Wrong, period. There are consequences to actions, whether or not you consider yourself an “edgy” comedian or a handsome fellow with a fine social pedigree.

Some people, lamenting the new vigilance over what public figures say and do, wonder if there is no statute of limitations on bad behaviour. “Sheesh, guys, it was 2001! I was a kid!” In 2001, Justin Trudeau was 29 years old. Shane Gillis was 30 when he recorded the now-infamous podcast. “But I’m a comedian who takes risks.” Again, no. It’s not being overly sensitive or too social-justice warrior or “millennial” to respond: “Sorry, no free pass on that one, now or ever.”

Personally, I’m with Aristotle. The Greek philosopher taught us that your actions are your character. What you do is who you are. There is no escape hatch from that, just a deep and never-ending responsibility. Who you are today is who you were yesterday. We may forgive, but we never forget. Saying you “take responsibility” does not alter the record.

Have you done bad things in your life? Of course you have. So have I. Let’s hope we all exercised better judgment than even contemplating donning dark facial makeup or a swastika – or finessing a charge of sexual harassment. For the rest, the world must decide. Welcome to ethical life, friends.

Source: Memo to Justin: Who you are today is who you were yesterday

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

TTC commits to using race-based data to eliminate discrimination: ‘Every rider’ should feel ‘safe and respected’

2019/09/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

The TTC says it’s taking steps to combat concerns about racial bias at the agency, including making a commitment to use race-based data to identify and eliminate discrimination, and strengthening its policies for investigating complaints about its transit officers.

The measures are part of ongoing anti-bias efforts the TTC has embraced following two race-based controversies it was forced to grapple with earlier this year: a Star investigation that raised concerns transit officers were disproportionately targeting Black riders for tickets and recording their personal information when they were issued warnings; and a damning city ombudsman report that found serious flaws with the agency’s investigation of three fare inspectors who pinned a Black teen to the ground at a streetcar stop in February 2018.

In a staff report released Wednesday that provides an update on those efforts, the transit agency acknowledged “the public’s concerns regarding racial profiling and anti-Black racism in transit enforcement activities should be taken seriously,” and described taking “proactive” measures to address the issue as vital to “restor(ing) public trust.”

The TTC had already moved to take action in the wake of the Star investigation and ombudsman report, including a review of its policies around the collection of riders’ personal information and creating an agency-wide anti-racism strategy.

The new report, which will be debated at the TTC board meeting Tuesday, adds to those initiatives by making a clear commitment to start collecting and analyzing race-based data to combat discrimination.

Few details were provided about the plan, which is still in development. But it follows the Toronto Police Services Board moving toward what appears to be a similar policy that would have the force document the race of citizens its officers interact with in a broad range of circumstances.

While institutions collecting race-based data about members of the public has been controversial in the past, anti-racism groups have more recently thrown their support behind the idea. They argue that if it can be done while protecting citizens’ privacy and human rights, it can help document and fight discrimination.

Nigel Barriffe, president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, argued the TTC collecting comprehensive racial information about its riders would provide data to support the assertion common among many Black transit users that they face discrimination on the system. That in turn would help the TTC develop evidence-based policies to address the problem.

“It takes it from being just anecdotal to being, here’s the hard data that demonstrates that they’re overpoliced, that they’re unfairly targeted when they take the TTC,” he said.

The Star investigation published earlier this year found that since 2008 TTC officers had collected the personal information of more than 40,000 riders who were issued warnings for alleged offences on the transit system, and the numbers suggested a disproportionately high number of them were Black. For years, transit officers used the same forms to collect the information that Toronto police used for “carding,” a practice widely criticized as discriminatory. The TTC kept the data, which could include a rider’s name, address, driver’s licence number, physical appearance, for 20 years.

The Star also found Black riders appeared to be overrepresented in tickets issued to TTC users for fare evasion and other offences.

While acknowledging public concerns about bias, the TTC maintained the transit agency database the Star analyzed hadn’t been recorded in a reliable way and couldn’t be used to draw conclusions. It denied its officers were “carding” riders or discriminating against any group.

The agency discontinued use of police-style forms in March, and stopped collecting personal information from riders not charged with an offence pending a review.

The report says the agency is hiring an unspecified third-party expert to conduct that review, which is aimed at improving and standardizing the TTC’s collection of personal information, and ensuring its data collection policies align with privacy and human rights legislation, according to the report.

The experts will examine the TTC’s historical use of data and develop a “framework for the collection, analysis and retention of race-based data for equity purposes that will eliminate bias within the system.”

Agency staff will report back to the board in early 2020.

The report states that in addition to improving data collection policies, the TTC has taken steps to implement recommendations in the July report from Toronto Ombudsman Susan Opler into fare inspectors’ violent takedown of a Black teen named Reece Maxwell-Crawford along the St. Clair streetcar route last year.

The TTC’s original investigation, released in July 2018, all but completely exonerated the officers involved. But Opler determined the transit agency’s investigator failed to examine evidence of potential racial bias. She also found he wasn’t sufficiently independent from the officers he was tasked with scrutinizing because before taking on the investigator role he’d worked for the transit enforcement unit for more than 10 years and knew many of its members.

The TTC has now appointed an interim investigator “with no previous connection” to the unit, according to the new report. The interim investigator will handle allegations of minor misconduct against fare inspectors, while third-party investigators would be called in for more serious cases.

In the longer term, the TTC plans to establish “a new, independent, dedicated team of internal investigators” to look into allegations against members of the transit enforcement unit.

In addition to pledging to implement all the ombudsman’s recommendations, TTC CEO Rick Leary announced in July the agency would take further steps, including setting up an anti-racism task force, adopting the city’s Action Plan to Confront Anti-Black Racism, reviewing TTC policies using an anti-racism analysis, consulting with affected communities, and providing enhanced anti-bias training to all employees. Those initiatives are ongoing.

In a written statement, TTC Chair Coun. Jaye Robinson (Ward 15, Don Valley West) said that while the agency “has taken tangible steps” to improve its policies, the measures to date are “the beginning of a long and complex process.”

“It is imperative to make (sure) every rider and operator feels safe and respected across the TTC network,” she said.

Source: TTC commits to using race-based data to eliminate discrimination: ‘Every rider’ should feel ‘safe and respected’

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with

41 circonscriptions multiculturelles pourraient faire pencher la balance

2019/09/19 Leave a comment

Some interesting on the ground reporting in addition to the overall story:

Le Canada compte désormais 41 circonscriptions composées majoritairement de minorités visibles. C’est huit de plus que lors des dernières élections fédérales. Ces champs de bataille clés, souvent des comtés pivots, pourraient jouer un rôle décisif le 21 octobre. Les conservateurs qui avaient perdu la grande partie de ce bloc en 2015 sont-ils mieux placés pour regagner ces sièges?

Quelque chose d’ironique s’est produit dans la circonscription d’Ajax, en banlieue de Toronto.

Elle a connu la plus forte hausse de résidents issus des minorités visibles. Un bon de 11 % en 5 ans.

L’ironie? Ce comté était représenté par l’ancien ministre de l’Immigration, Chris Alexander, défait en 2015.

C’est lui qui avait présenté la promesse électorale conservatrice d’instaurer une ligne de dénonciation pour signaler des cas présumés de pratiques culturelles barbares. Cette annonce lui a collé à la peau et s’est ajoutée aux prises de position controversées des conservateurs, tant sur la révocation de la citoyenneté que sur le niqab.

Tout cela allait être néfaste pour Stephen Harper et son parti, qui avaient mis tant d’efforts à conquérir les communautés culturelles.

Linda et Ernest Ombrog d’origine philippine sont assis sur un banc.

Linda et Ernest Ombrog, d’origine philippine, demeurent à Ajax. En cinq ans, cette circonscription à l’est de Toronto a connu la plus forte hausse de population de minorités visibles au Canada.

PHOTO : RADIO-CANADA / MARC GODBOUT

À la gare de train de banlieue d’Ajax, un couple originaire des Philippines attend le prochain départ. Linda et Ernest Ombrog ont entendu parler de cet épisode même s’ils sont arrivés au Canada après l’élection fédérale de 2015.

Nous n’avons pas tout à fait confiance, dit Ernest Ombrog. Je ne crois pas que nous voterons pour les conservateurs, ajoute sa femme.

Quelques mètres plus loin se trouve Abdol Nadi, un chirurgien devenu chauffeur de taxi. Cet Afghan raconte que la plupart des immigrants qui se sont installés à Ajax dans les dernières années sont surtout originaires du Tadjikistan, de l’Inde, du Pakistan et de l’Afghanistan. Plusieurs sont ses clients.

Abdol Nadi, d’origine afghane, est au volant de son taxi.

Abdol Nadi d’origine afghane est au volant de son taxi à Ajax, en Ontario.

PHOTO : RADIO-CANADA / MARC GODBOUT

Je sens une méfiance chez certains, à tort ou à raison. Même si je trouve que les libéraux sont loin d’être parfaits, je préfère encore les appuyer, affirme-t-il.

Les stratégies de campagne de 2015 semblent toujours avoir laissé un goût amer, à tout le moins dans ce comté.

De 33 à 41

À l’époque, Ajax ne faisait pas encore partie des circonscriptions fédérales dont la population est majoritairement composée de minorités visibles. Elle est une des huit circonscriptions qui se sont ajoutées à la liste depuis 2015.

Andrew Griffith, expert en multiculturalisme, a décortiqué les données. Cet ancien haut fonctionnaire du ministère de l’Immigration constate que 27 de ces 41 circonscriptions sont situées en Ontario, 9 en Colombie-Britannique, l’Alberta et le Québec en ont chacune 2 tandis qu’une autre se trouve au Manitoba.

On ne peut pas gagner de gouvernement majoritaire sans gagner ces comtés-là.

Andrew Griffith, expert en multiculturalisme

Lors du scrutin de 2015, les libéraux ont décroché 85 % de ces circonscriptions, 35 sur 41. Les conservateurs et les néo-démocrates ont dû se contenter de trois sièges chacun.

La population du comté de Scarborough-Nord, en Ontario, est composée à 92 % de minorités visibles. Au Canada, 17 circonscriptions fédérales ont maintenant une population composée de plus de 70 % de minorités visibles.

Andrew Griffith explique qu’on ne peut plus parler des populations immigrantes comme d’un bloc monolithique. Les groupes qui sont arrivés il y a 20 ans ont peut-être une tendance à être plus conservateurs. Mais ceux qui ont suivi ne sont pas liés automatiquement et continuellement à un parti politique, précise le chercheur.

Les placer dans des cases précises serait une erreur, selon lui. Ils peuvent faire un virage plus à gauche comme ils peuvent faire un virage à droite.

Ce sont des circonscriptions pouvant passer d’un parti à l’autre. Bien entendu, cela a une incidence constante sur les stratégies électorales des différents partis.

Andrew Griffith, expert en multiculturalisme

Une photo d'Andrew Griffith.

Andrew Griffith, expert en multiculturalisme et ancien haut fonctionnaire au ministère de l’Immigration.

PHOTO : RADIO-CANADA / MARC GODBOUT

En 2011, les conservateurs avaient gagné la majorité de ces comtés. En 2015, ils sont passés aux mains des libéraux. Et fait à considérer, lors de l’élection provinciale ontarienne de 2018, Doug Ford et les progressistes conservateurs les avaient presque tous raflés.

Kenney, la carte maîtresse?

Les conservateurs aimeraient bien pouvoir compter sur le premier ministre albertain Jason Kenney dans cette campagne pour venir donner un coup de main à Andrew Scheer dans certaines de ces circonscriptions en Ontario. Ce scénario est toujours sur la table même si aucune stratégie n’a encore été arrêtée.

Jason Kenney, autrefois ministre de l’Immigration du gouvernement Harper, avait été l’architecte de la grande séduction du Parti conservateur à l’endroit des communautés culturelles.

Mais le simple fait de vouloir avoir recours au premier ministre albertain démontre que les efforts de rapprochement n’ont pas été suffisants depuis l’arrivée d’Andrew Scheer à la tête de son parti, estime Ghanaharan S. Pillai.

L’interaction entre les communautés et le Parti conservateur n’est plus celle qu’elle était sous les années Harper.

Ghanaharan S. Pillai

Pourtant, ils auraient une occasion à saisir.

Selon cet animateur à la radio et télévision tamoule de Toronto qui observe depuis des années le jeu politique dans les communautés culturelles, Justin Trudeau ne jouit pas nécessairement de la même popularité qu’en 2015. Si les libéraux ont maintenu leur base, ils ne l’ont pas pour autant élargieajoute-t-il.

Mais les conservateurs ne contrôlent pas tout. Au-delà du travail sur le terrain, pour Ghanaharan S. Pillai, le principal défi pour eux est de surmonter un obstacle susceptible d’avantager ses adversaires : Doug Ford.

Le premier ministre ontarien a été porté au pouvoir notamment grâce à l’appui de cet électorat composé majoritairement d’immigrants. Or, depuis, Doug Ford a particulièrement mauvaise presse dans les médias multiculturelsconstate Andrew Griffith qui analyse régulièrement leur contenu. Ils sont très sévères à son endroit.

Le facteur médiatique

C’est un facteur non négligeable.

Il existe pas moins de 600 médias multiculturels au Canada. Plus de la moitié se trouvent dans la grande région de Toronto. Leur influence est importante dans les communautés.

Un résident de Brampton, en Ontario, lit un journal en pendjabi.

Un résident de Brampton, en Ontario, lit un journal en pendjabi.

PHOTO : RADIO-CANADA / MARC GODBOUT

Dans ses émissions de radio, Ghanaharan S. Pillai est à même de constater le sérieux bris de confiance envers Doug Ford qui s’est créé après à peine 15 mois.

À quel point cette méfiance se répercutera-t-elle contre Andrew Scheer?

À quel point le chef conservateur réussira-t-il à faire oublier les stratégies de campagne de 2015?

L’enjeu est majeur. Après tout, 41 circonscriptions, c’est désormais 9 de plus que celles des quatre provinces de l’Atlantique réunies. 41, presque le même nombre de sièges qu’en Colombie-Britannique.

Source: 41 circonscriptions multiculturelles pourraient faire pencher la balance

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Facebook auto-generating pages for Islamic State, al-Qaida

2019/09/19 Leave a comment

Sigh….

In the face of criticism that Facebook is not doing enough to combat extremist messaging, the company likes to say that its automated systems remove the vast majority of prohibited content glorifying the Islamic State group and al-Qaida before it’s reported.

But a whistleblower’s complaint shows that Facebook itself has inadvertently provided the two extremist groups with a networking and recruitment tool by producing dozens of pages in their names.

The social networking company appears to have made little progress on the issue in the four months since The Associated Press detailed how pages that Facebook auto-generates for businesses are aiding Middle East extremists and white supremacists in the United States.

On Wednesday, U.S. senators on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will be questioning representatives from social media companies, including Monika Bickert, who heads Facebooks efforts to stem extremist messaging.

The new details come from an update of a complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission that the National Whistleblower Center plans to file this week. The filing obtained by the AP identifies almost 200 auto-generated pages — some for businesses, others for schools or other categories — that directly reference the Islamic State group and dozens more representing al-Qaida and other known groups. One page listed as a “political ideology” is titled “I love Islamic state.” It features an IS logo inside the outlines of Facebook’s famous thumbs-up icon.

In response to a request for comment, a Facebook spokesperson told the AP: “Our priority is detecting and removing content posted by people that violates our policy against dangerous individuals and organizations to stay ahead of bad actors. Auto-generated pages are not like normal Facebook pages as people can’t comment or post on them and we remove any that violate our policies. While we cannot catch every one, we remain vigilant in this effort.”

Facebook has a number of functions that auto-generate pages from content posted by users. The updated complaint scrutinizes one function that is meant to help business networking. It scrapes employment information from users’ pages to create pages for businesses. In this case, it may be helping the extremist groups because it allows users to like the pages, potentially providing a list of sympathizers for recruiters.

The new filing also found that users’ pages promoting extremist groups remain easy to find with simple searches using their names. They uncovered one page for “Mohammed Atta” with an iconic photo of one of the al-Qaida adherents, who was a hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. The page lists the user’s work as “Al Qaidah” and education as “University Master Bin Laden” and “School Terrorist Afghanistan.”

Facebook has been working to limit the spread of extremist material on its service, so far with mixed success. In March, it expanded its definition of prohibited content to include U.S. white nationalist and white separatist material as well as that from international extremist groups. It says it has banned 200 white supremacist organizations and 26 million pieces of content related to global extremist groups like IS and al-Qaida.

It also expanded its definition of terrorism to include not just acts of violence attended to achieve a political or ideological aim, but also attempts at violence, especially when aimed at civilians with the intent to coerce and intimidate. It’s unclear, though, how well enforcement works if the company is still having trouble ridding its platform of well-known extremist organizations’ supporters.

But as the report shows, plenty of material gets through the cracks — and gets auto-generated.

The AP story in May highlighted the auto-generation problem, but the new content identified in the report suggests that Facebook has not solved it.

The report also says that researchers found that many of the pages referenced in the AP report were removed more than six weeks later on June 25, the day before Bickert was questioned for another congressional hearing.

The issue was flagged in the initial SEC complaint filed by the center’s executive director, John Kostyack, that alleges the social media company has exaggerated its success combatting extremist messaging.

“Facebook would like us to believe that its magical algorithms are somehow scrubbing its website of extremist content,” Kostyack said. “Yet those very same algorithms are auto-generating pages with titles like ‘I Love Islamic State,’ which are ideal for terrorists to use for networking and recruiting.”

Source: Facebook auto-generating pages for Islamic State, al-Qaida

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with

Andrew Coyne: Federal leaders have capitulated on Quebec’s Bill 21, and to our shame we let them

2019/09/18 Leave a comment

Hard to disagree:

Elections are defining moments for a nation: in deciding what it stands for, it also decides who and what it is. In the present election the issue on which we are being asked, most directly, to decide where we stand is Quebec’s Bill 21: the provincial law banning public servants “in positions of authority” from wearing religious symbols on the job.

For many observant persons, particularly Muslims, Sikhs and orthodox Jews, this amounts to a religious hiring bar: the wearing of the hijab, the turban and the kippa are key requirements of their faith, and as such core elements of their identity. To demand that they work uncovered is, in effect, to post a sign saying Muslims, Sikhs and Jews need not apply.

We should be clear on this. It’s not just a dress code, or an infringement of religious freedom, or religious discrimination, or those other abstract phrases you hear tossed about. We are talking about a law barring employment in much of the public sector — not just police and judges, but government lawyers and teachers — to certain religious minorities.

Existing workers may have been grandfathered, but only so long as they remain in their current jobs. Should they ever move, or seek a promotion, they will face the same restrictions. The signal to the province’s religious and, let’s say it, racial minorities, vulnerable as they will be feeling already after the mounting public vitriol to which they have been exposed in the name of the endless “reasonable accommodation” debate, is unmistakable: you are not wanted here. Not surprisingly, many are getting out — out of the public service, out of Quebec.

That this is actually happening, in 2019, in a province of Canada — members of religious minorities being driven from their jobs, and for no reason other than their religion — is sickening, and shameful. That shame is not reserved to Premier Francois Legault or his CAQ government, the people responsible for designing and implementing this disgraceful exercise in segregation, this manifestly cruel attempt to cleanse the province’s schools and courts of religious minorities. It is no less shaming to the rest of us, everywhere across Canada, so long as we permit it to continue.

That is, so far as we are capable of feeling it. But experience has taught us to look the other way when it comes to Quebec, to tell ourselves that it is none of our affair, that we must not raise a fuss when the province explicitly elevates the interests of its ethnic and linguistic majority over those of its minorities, or threatens the country’s life for long years at a time — the beloved “knife at the throat” strategy — to back its escalating fiscal and constitutional demands. We dare not. We cannot. For then Quebec would leave.

So shame does not come easily to us as a nation. We have so hollowed out our national conscience over the years that we think nothing now of selling out a persecuted minority, rather than take a stand in their defence. And the proof of that can be seen in the positions of our national party leaders.

It is a sign of how abjectly they have all capitulated to majority opinion in Quebec that Justin Trudeau’s craven wobbling about — “I won’t do anything about it now, but I don’t entirely rule out doing something sometime” is only a slight paraphrase — looks positively Churchillian among them.

All they have been asked to do, after all, is join in support of legal challenges of the legislation’s constitutionality already filed in Quebec’s courts by private groups — actions that, owing to the Legault government’s invocation of the notwithstanding clause, must be considered long shots at best, based on novel interpretations of those sections of the Charter not covered by the clause, or the division of powers, or the clause itself.

But even that, apparently is too much. Asked at the Maclean’s debate whether he would support such a challenge as prime minister, Andrew Scheer babbled his usual babble as to how his party would “always stand up for individual liberties” as if he were not already on the record that, in the matter of Bill 21, they would never do so. Jagmeet Singh, who would be among the first victims of the bill were he to attempt to find work in the Quebec judicial system, denounced the bill as “legislated discrimination,” without committing himself to do anything about it.

And Elizabeth May? Ah, Elizabeth May. Convinced that the bill was “an infringement on individual human rights” but concerned not to “fuel” separatism, the Green Party leader proposed a “solution” where “we leave Quebec alone, but we find jobs for anyone that Quebec has taken off of their payroll for working in a government job.” Moderator Paul Wells sought to clarify: she’d find jobs “for people who have to leave”? Yes, she replied.

But our political leaders are what we make of them. If the leader of the Green Party can declare on national television that she will stand up for Quebec’s religious minorities by giving them bus tickets, and face no political consequences for it whatever, it is because our own moral and intellectual defences against such nonsense have atrophied.

Even today it is possible to read, on the CBC’s website, an explanation of Quebec’s “new” nationalism, with its familiar appeals to fears of immigration and multiculturalism, as being based not on crude prejudice or majoritarian intolerance, but “on a holistic conception of Quebec society that prioritizes the historical experience of francophones.”

It is only in this context that Legault could issue his extraordinary demand that all of the federal party leaders pledge “never” to intervene in any court case regarding Bill 21. There’s no point to this; he knows they won’t dare. He just wants to watch them grovel. But it’s not just their shame he’s rubbing their faces in. It’s ours.

Source: Andrew Coyne: Federal leaders have capitulated on Quebec’s Bill 21, and to our shame we let them

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Canadian officials honour Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, angering Jewish groups

2019/09/18 Leave a comment

Not quite as simple as portrayed: see tweet from former Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine, Andrew Robinson:

The Canadian Forces and Global Affairs Canada are facing criticism after honouring members of Ukrainian organizations that helped the Nazis in the Second World War.

Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk spoke at an Aug. 21 ceremony that unveiled a monument in Sambir to honour members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), two groups that are linked to the killing of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.

The event has been condemned by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the Ukrainian Jewish Committee who warn the memorial whitewashes the role of Ukrainian collaborators in the Holocaust.

“All Jews of Sambir were murdered by Nazis and their collaborators from OUN and UPA,” Eduard Dolinsky, director-general of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee based in Kiev, told Postmedia.

The monument, which is at the edge of a cemetery holding the remains of more than 1,200 Jews murdered by the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators, is a desecration and “double murder of the Jewish victims,” Dolinsky said. “It’s like putting a monument to killers on the top of the graves of their victims.”

Global Affairs Canada said the Sambir event was intended to assist efforts by the Jewish community in Canada and Ukraine to build public support to create an eventual memorial for the Jewish cemetery in the town. That was the reason for Waschuk’s attendance and to suggest otherwise would be false, the department said.

The memorial is to 17 members of the OUN who the Ukrainians say were killed by the Nazis. Waschuk, in his speech at the ceremony, paid tribute to the murdered Jews, Ukrainians who tried to help them and “those Ukrainians who fought against the Nazi regime as members of OUN-UPA.”

Members of the OUN-UPA supported the Nazis and helped round up and execute Jews after the Germans invaded Ukraine, according to Holocaust historians. At one point, they broke away from their support of the Nazis, but later joined forces again with Germany. In 1943 the UPA started massacring Polish civilians, killing an estimated 100,000 men, women and children, according to historians.

The Canadian Forces said in a statement that military personnel were requested by the Canadian embassy in Ukraine to attend. The attendance was “part of a whole government effort to champion tolerance in a democratic Ukraine and reiterate that totalitarian regimes (in both past and contemporary times, and under all guises) have done injustices to Ukrainians,” the statement said.

Jewish organizations have been trying for years to erect a memorial at the Jewish cemetery. But Sambir locals have resisted that, removing the Star of David at the site and instead erecting three large Christian crosses on the Jewish cemetery. A compromise was eventually reached; in exchange for removing the crosses, a memorial to the dead OUN-UPA would be erected.

Waschuk called the memorial “a monument of love to one’s motherland. And a motherland must know how to defend itself so that it does not suffer again from waves of inhuman totalitarian terror as happened during World War 2.”

It’s not the first time that Canadian actions in Ukraine have raised concerns.

In June 2018 the Canadian government and military officials in Ukraine met with members of the ultranationalist Azov Battalion, which earlier that year had been banned by the U.S. Congress from receiving American arms because of its links to Neo-Nazis

The Canadians were photographed with Azov battalion members, images which were shared on the battalion’s social media site.

In a statement to Postmedia the Canadian Forces noted the meeting was planned by Ukrainian authorities and Canadian representatives had no prior knowledge of those who would be invited. The Azov battalion has been connected to war crimes by the United Nations.

Various Jewish groups have warned about efforts to whitewash Nazi collaborators in eastern European countries, portraying them as heroes instead of those who aided in the Holocaust. Earlier this year, the Canadian government added its voice to those condemning an annual parade in Latvia’s capital honouring members of the Nazi SS, saying it opposes any such event glorifying Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Around 1,000 people marched in the parade in Riga on March 16 in honour of the Latvian SS divisions which fought for the Nazis in the Second World War. Some in the parade wore swastikas and other Nazi insignias.

Source: Canadian officials honour Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, angering Jewish groups

Filed under foreign policy, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Justin Trudeau s’explique sur le cas de Hassan Guillet

2019/09/18 Leave a comment

For the record:

Justin Trudeau admet que son équipe a tenté de trouver une solution pour maintenir la candidature de Hassan Guillet dans Saint-Léonard-Saint-Michel. Elle a finalement été révoquée après que le B’nai Brith eut révélé des déclarations passées jugées « antisémites » du candidat.

« Dans toute situation, on essaie toujours de créer des façons de rassembler les gens et non de les diviser. Mais quand il est devenu évident que les propos étaient inacceptables, il a fallu qu’on lui demande de quitter », a déclaré M. Trudeau, lundi, en marge d’une annonce à Waterloo, en Ontario.

Il y a cependant un flou quant au moment où le PLC a été mis au courant de ces déclarations. M. Trudeau, qui s’exprimait pour la première fois à ce sujet, n’a pas souhaité éclaircir le mystère.

L’organisation B’nai Brith dit avoir porté à l’attention du parti, à la fin du mois d’août, d’anciennes déclarations que M. Guillet aurait faites sur les médias sociaux. Selon le groupe, ces déclarations sont « troublantes, antisémites et anti-israéliennes ».

Dans un des commentaires, daté du 8 juillet 2017, et retransmis par le B’nai Brith, M. Guillet salue la libération, « après neuf mois dans une prison de la Palestine occupée », du militant Raed Salah qu’il qualifie de « résistant » et de « djihadiste ».

B’nai Brith pointe également du doigt une entrevue donnée par M. Guillet à Radio-Canada International, en espagnol, en décembre 2017, où il commente la décision du président américain Donald Trump de reconnaître Jérusalem comme la capitale d’Israël.

M. Guillet dit dans cette entrevue que le gendre de M. Trump, Jared Kushner, « un juif ultra-orthodoxe et un intégriste, pro-Israël », prône la politique « Israel first ».

Le 30 août, le PLC publiait un communiqué de presse pour révoquer la candidature de M. Guillet.

« Si ces déclarations pouvaient être considérées offensantes à certains de mes concitoyens de confession juive, je m’en excuse », a-t-il alors affirmé dans une déclaration qui semblait avoir été préparée pour calmer le jeu et demeurer candidat du PLC.

Lors d’une conférence de presse, quelques jours plus tard, le principal intéressé a déclaré qu’il avait été « trahi » par l’entourage de Justin Trudeau, qui était au courant de ses affirmations controversées.

M. Guillet a aussi affirmé que le parti avait commencé à travailler sur un « plan d’action », dès le début du mois d’août, pour démontrer l’appui de membres de la communauté juive à sa candidature.

En mai, M. Guillet a obtenu l’investiture libérale dans la circonscription montréalaise de Saint-Léonard-Saint-Michel, traditionnellement représentée par un candidat d’origine italienne, après une chaude lutte.

Le PLC a finalement annoncé la semaine dernière que la nouvelle candidate est la conseillère municipale Patricia Lattanzio, qui était arrivée en deuxième place à la course à l’investiture.

Cela n’a pas empêché les conservateurs — qui ont eux-mêmes eu à gérer des problèmes avec des candidats au sein de leurs propres troupes — d’attaquer les libéraux au sujet de M. Guillet dans les derniers jours.

Ils considèrent que l’ancien candidat a tenu « d’horribles propos antisémites et anti-Israël » et ont accusé le PLC de vouloir balayer les propos de M. Guillet sous le tapis avec « une stratégie de relations publiques ».

Source: Justin Trudeau s’explique sur le cas de Hassan Guillet

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

What Japanese American history can teach us about diversity and immigrants in the workplace

2019/09/17 Leave a comment

Good long interview with U.S. GuideSpark CEO Keith Kitani given how his family was affected by World War II measures against Japanese Americans:

….

VentureBeat: What’s interesting about Japanese American history is that so many more people than Japanese Americans know about it. They look at the internment and see lessons in it — the constitutional issues, the diversity issues, the human rights issues. The legal history as well. In some ways it surprises me that it’s part of a liberal education about what it means to be an American.

Kitani: It’s interesting to see and think about that. I’ve often started to think about the impact it had, and the people who had to go through it, like my dad. How did it impact me? How did it impact you? It certainly did have an impact on our lives and how things have evolved. I’ve not seen anybody who’s done a study on it, but I know it has. I think about hearing these stories and seeing how my dad acted. It made it a bit clearer. We are the result of our upbringings and our experiences.

VentureBeat: You mentioned your dad didn’t really talk about it. How did you learn about it? Was that from someone else in your family, or did you eventually have conversations with him?

Kitani: I sat down with him and said, “Hey, dad, you’re getting old. It would be great to start writing about this, documenting the things you’ve done through your life.” That’s when he started to really share about it. I don’t know how your dad was, but my dad kept a lot of that stuff to himself. He wasn’t an emotional kind of guy. He kept it all to himself. It took a while to get it out. “Okay, now I understand you better. I wish I’d had this conversation 20 or 30 years earlier.”

VentureBeat: My dad was a little more open. He’d tell me some things that he didn’t mind talking about. There were other things where I got more out of him when I was an adult as well. He would talk about playing baseball in the camp. He was 10 to 15 years old at the time. He said that for a while he hated the U.S. government because they fed him macaroni 30 days in a row. He’d talk about some of the funnier stories.

I went to the National Archives and dug some records out. I asked about some of those things as well. It was an interesting historical exercise. It’s interesting that the Japanese Americans who have dug out some of this history can relate to each other. Among our parents, they always knew each other by what camp your family was in.

Japanese Americans photographed by Paul Kitagaki.

Above: Japanese Americans photographed by Paul Kitagaki.

Image Credit: Paul Kitagaki

Kitani: It’s interesting how they — how different people handled it. For my mom it was a different experience than my dad. But it took a long time for me to get some of those things. He did talk about the sports that they played, some of those things. Only after a little while did he talk about how they weren’t living in the greatest conditions in the world, those kinds of things. That didn’t come out in the first conversation. It’s the stuff that comes out later.

VentureBeat: I don’t know about you, but for me it also helps me understand other people. If I probe a bit and I can learn something about them, I can place them, where they are in this history. If I talk to other people — say, a Vietnamese person, and they say their family came over in 1975 — if you know a bit of your history, you know that was a big year for them, that they probably came as refugees. Just a bit of someone’s history like that tells you a lot about them.

Kitani: Here, there are so many people who have come from other countries. I think everyone has — there are so many different stories that brought them here. Obviously, for us it was a bit different as far as the experiences we had here.

My dad passed away a few years ago, and that made me reflect on it a lot more. Obviously not the best time. It’s better to do it when they’re alive. But it did give me some things to think about. I don’t write a whole bunch of stuff around things like that, but I did write a post on LinkedIn that talked about it in relation to some of the immigration issues that have been happening recently.

VentureBeat: What is the lesson you draw as far as what’s relevant today about immigration?

Kitani: The way I want to think about it, I think a lot of people know about history, but how do you really think about and learn from history to apply it? It’s harder to draw straight lines from all these things, but if I think about some of the policies, it’s more a scenario of — it’s easy to go down a slippery slope of policy. Something happened 75 years ago, and it would be helpful for people to remember about that as policies are being made today. That’s more how I think about it, rather than having strong opinions about what we should do and what we shouldn’t do. It’s important for us as we look at these things to look back at some of the scenarios that happened and try to learn from them.

People learn about history, but they don’t necessarily understand the impact it has on the people that were involved. Until my dad started telling me his stories, it was just visiting Manzanar, as opposed to understanding the impact it had on his life and the carry-over to me and my family’s lives. Those are things that, as you get older and learn more — that was what caused me to think about and comment on it.

VentureBeat: It seems like basic studies can lead you to some strong opinions, strong conclusions about what’s going on today.

Kitani: Yeah. The piece that can sometimes get lost — the people who were impacted, there aren’t as many of them around. We’re the people that need to carry on and think about the actual impact. It’s harder to truly understand that until you can get a few levels below, like you did with your dad and I was able to do with my dad.

VentureBeat: There are people with strong opinions about it who don’t have a grasp of what it means for the people who are directly affected. How you change the course of families for generations. Once they hear some real stories about what happens to people — you can understand where you stand on some things. What is an American? Who deserves these rights?

Kitani: Exactly. There’s reading about it, and then there’s personally experiencing, or feeling like you personally experienced through the people that you know. That’s often the disconnect. We all read about history. But the impact on people is hard to measure on an emotional level, unless you get it from a specific point of view.

VentureBeat: As far as communicating that, I don’t know if there are things you tell your employees, or somehow you carry this on in the management of the company, or your work style?

Kitani: As I’ve thought more about my background and the impact that I had with my family, through my educational background, growing up in a very diverse environment — I only started thinking about it more recently, and I reflected about the company we’ve built. As I prepare for these things — the next thing I do is I look at a set of stats to make sure of where we’re at in terms of a lot of these things. For us, on almost every scale we’re a pretty diverse organization. Our numbers, whether it’s gender or race, match close to the U.S. workforce. Whereas, as you probably know, a lot of Silicon Valley companies and technology companies don’t match that well.

I was trying to reflect on how my upbringing and my philosophies around it — one of our things around here is a value about being yourself. It’s really about appreciating the individual and the diversity of the experience that they bring to the company. That was something we created a number of year ago, when we weren’t really thinking about diversity and inclusion, but really just about individual.

One thing that’s happened, and it’s tied to communication — our team here started to create a program called Humans of GuideSpark. There’s that blog called Humans of New York. Twice a month they come up with a little profile with a personal story of different employees. For one, her parents came over from Vietnam around 1975, like you were talking about. You heard that story about her parents.

What we realized is that with communications and stories, you can really share and appreciate the diversity. It goes deeper than just looking at numbers or a set of people. It’s not just the specific gender or race. It’s also the stories that go behind it. Maybe that’s tied to the discussion we had about the impact of the internment on Japanese Americans, but it’s more than that. It’s the stories behind that and the impact they have.

I certainly feel, as I think about the cultural values we’ve built — we’re pretty diverse. We like to share stories about individuals and where they come from. That’s just happened organically. At our size of company, we don’t have programs. We don’t have any of that stuff. But it happens organically. I think that has a lot to do with who I am, how I was brought up, and the experience I had that shaped that.

That obviously leads into what I talked about earlier. One of the core things we’re trying to do is help organizations communicate better. Whether it’s a program around performance management, or diversity and inclusion, or any number of communications that companies do, the premise is that one-size-fits-all is just not going to work. Companies need to think about how they interact and connect with their employees in a way that starts to appreciate the diversity of that work force.

Again, none of these things were thought of 10 years ago when I started the company, as far as the culture and the products, but they’ve evolved as part of who we are and what we’re trying to do as an organization. It feels a little like it’s come all together somehow, without it being intentional, from what I was thinking. That’s why I think these things have had an impact on who I am and the kind of company and solutions I’m building.

VentureBeat: I think if you understand your people and your history, you’re able to work with them better.

Kitani: Yeah. And we’re obviously — one of the things I think are really powerful as the stories. You do that every day, so you know that. For us, so much of it is business communications, and then the team — we do a lot around sharing stories and their backgrounds. We have something called Our Values, Our Voices, which is a podcast the internal team has created where they tell stories about how people interpret the values of the company. It’s a lot of interesting organic stuff, but you can really see the power of it when it comes to life.

VentureBeat: When Japanese American history comes up, do you find that there’s some division of opinion about it? Is your interpretation different from some people growing up today? Do you find that there are different kinds of opinions about it?

Kitani: I wouldn’t say there are different kinds of opinions? I think I see the differences in the same way that I saw the differences 10 or 15 years ago, when I talked to my dad. I think the difference is, when most people that I know read about it, they don’t talk about it as a positive thing that this country did. Certainly some people understand why it was, and there are slight differences of opinion.

But the difference for me is understanding what it was and how it impacted those people and their families. When my mom’s family had a grocery store and then went through their struggles and ended up moving to California, that’s a pretty big impact on a family. People don’t think about that when they just read about this.

Or my dad, who essentially had to start over, he and his guardian. It shaped how we interacted and what he valued. He would tell me stories of family and the noise of family, how that was something that he treasured in our house, because he didn’t have that. Those are the things that, for me — I wouldn’t say it’s a difference of opinion, but it’s a different perspective that even I didn’t really have.

Source: What Japanese American history can teach us about diversity and immigrants in the workplace

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →