How Canadians are part of an underground network helping Hong Kong protesters in their struggle against Chinese control

2019/07/16 Leave a comment

Good long read:

Dark circles ring Abraham Wong’s eyes. The Vancouver realtor’s phone has been on 24 hours a day since early June, when a series of protests against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill intensified.

In a downtown Vancouver office Thursday, Wong’s phone continually buzzed with messages from protesters on the ground in Hong Kong. He is texting and talking to people as young as 14, answering questions about everything from how to immigrate to Canada to how overseas audiences perceive the police crackdowns on protesters.

The 32-year-old businessman, who has both Canadian and Hong Kong citizenship, said he is one of hundreds of Canadian-based supporters of the pro-democracy movement that has spilled onto the streets of the former British colony.

Protests have become part of life for Hong Kongers, ever since it was returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” agreement, which requires Beijing to respect the autonomy of its rule-of-law legal system for 50 years.

Tens of thousands of people from Hong Kong immigrated to Canada in the years surrounding what is known as the 1997 “handover,” but many remain engaged in the city’s struggles.

Wong is the public face of the Canadian supporters, who are part of an informal, international network that has expanded in recent weeks to help Hong Kongers who are protesting the extradition bill.

The unnamed network provides free legal information, public outreach to raise awareness and media relations for protesters, including some who broke into and vandalized the Hong Kong legislature on July 1 and now fear they will be arrested by police.

“If protesters seek asylum in our countries, we are prepared to do whatever we can do to help them settle safely,” says Wong, who was born in Hong Kong and participated in pro-democracy protests before he immigrated to Canada in 2003.

“We would help them find accommodation, find jobs or enrol in school. We have volunteer translators ready to help.”

One by one, organizers such as Wong introduce trusted people into the network. Members now include people from Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Germany and Tokyo. Most have Hong Kong roots, since they are motivated partly out of concern for relatives and friends living in the city.

The groups are careful not to expose the identities of the protesters they are trying to help and use encrypted apps to communicate with people in Hong Kong, Asia’s most Canadian city.

An estimated 300,000 Canadian citizens call Hong Kong home, while more than 200,000 immigrants from Hong Kong live in Canada, according to the 2016 Census. Hong Kongers have a soft spot for Canada, ever since close to 2,000 Canadians bolstered British forces to fight the Japanese at the beginning of the Second World War. Many were captured and kept as prisoners of war until they were liberated in 1945; almost a quarter did not make it home again, according to Veterans Affairs Canada.

Canadians are once again stepping into the fray, this time armed only with cellphones and apps, aiding the fight for what some describe as the soul of Hong Kong.

They include the network of supporters back home, but also Canadians on the ground in Hong Kong, a city on the southern tip of mainland China. The downtown financial district is just a one-hour train ride away from the closest mainland city of Shenzhen.

At the heart of the latest uprisings is a fear of greater Chinese government control over Hong Kong and the erosion of civil liberties, spurred by the prospect of amendments to its Fugitive Offenders Ordinance. The amendments would have made it easier to send suspected criminals to mainland China to face trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party.

“Hong Kongers have seen their rights and core values come under attack: freedom, justice and democracy,” Wong wrote in a June 13 editorial for the Star about the extradition bill.

He feared that, by speaking out publicly against the bill, he could be arrested and sent to mainland China the next time he stepped foot in Hong Kong or even had a stopover at the airport.

The protests, which started in April when Hong Kongers first heard of the amendments, continued after the city government suspended the approval process on June 15 but did not formally axe the bill.

On July 1, the 22nd anniversary of the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty from British rule, a group of young protesters broke into the legislature building and destroyed furniture, defaced portraits and sprayed protest graffiti all over the walls of the legislature that read: “Hong Kong is not China, not yet” and “The government forced us to revolt.”

In Hong Kong four days later, pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo described how she tried to stop a young man from storming the legislature, where she holds one of 70 seats as an independent with no party affiliation.

“He reminded me of my son, a rugby player,” Mo, a graduate of Ottawa’s Carleton University, said in a July 5 interview at a coffee shop while the legislature was closed for repairs. “He was vowing to storm in and I approached him, saying, ‘Hey look, think twice, the rioting charge could cost you 10 years behind bars. It’s just not worth it.’ He put his arm around my shoulders and seemed to appreciate the concern, but told me to get out of the way … they would die for this fight.”

The day before, pro-Beijing lawmaker Regina Ip, chairperson of the New People’s Party, and a backer of the extradition bill, said in an interview that she was interested in how the leaderless protesters were so well organized and noted that solidarity marches have happened around the world against the extradition bill.

She said she had no hard evidence that foreign governments had “interfered” in the Hong Kong protests, but noted interference and influence are two different things.

“Naturally, foreign influence is pervasive. Influence is not the same as direct interference,” Ip said in a July 4 interview at her office in Wanchai, in central Hong Kong.

“There are behind-the-scenes organizers no doubt, but it’s not for me to point fingers … The (Hong Kong) government should be proactive in investigating.”

Ip said politicians should focus on economic policies to fight poverty, which she said was the underlying reason for public resentment against the influence of mainland China.

Beijing’s state media has focused on the idea of foreign influence in the protests, where it’s not clear whether “foreigners” include the Hong Kong diaspora. In a June 9 editorial, the China Daily wrote that “some Hong Kong residents have been hoodwinked by the opposition camp and their foreign allies into supporting the anti-extradition campaign.”

An active Hong Kong protester, who did not give her name for fear she would be arrested, said her Canadian passport gave her the courage to engage in peaceful political resistance. She organized a volunteer first aid response team, which attends each protest to help people suffering from heatstroke, tear gas and altercations with police.

“My family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution in mainland China (from 1966-1976), so they really valued the protection of a foreign passport. My mother travelled to Montreal twice to give birth to my brother and me.”

The protester, who was interviewed in a Hong Kong church July 5, is in communication with the informal network of supporters from Canada. She is aware that people like Ip accuse protesters of actively seeking foreign support for the protests, and although they do want foreign governments to acknowledge their fight for democratic rights, she said governments have no direct role in funding or organizing the pro-democracy movement.

In addition to withdrawing the extradition bill, some protesters are also calling for the right to directly vote in elections, the release of protesters who have been arrested and an independent investigation into the police, particularly in relation to the June 12 protests where police fired rubber bullets on the crowd.

As further evidence of why Beijing can’t be trusted and the people of Hong Kong need democracy to hold their local government accountable, activists like Wong cite the cases of detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor and the internment in “re-education” camps of over a million Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Protesters have openly appealed for support from people and governments around the world. Last month, a crowdfunding campaign by the anonymous “Freedom Hongkonger” group of protesters raised more than $800,000 to take out front-page ads in prominent newspapers urging readers in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan to pressure G20 leaders, who met in Japan in late June, to act against the extradition bill and support democracy in Hong Kong. Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the meetings in Osaka, while Hong Kong finance chief Paul Chan was part of the Chinese delegation.

The Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement has organized two rallies outside the Chinese consulate on Granville St. in support of Hong Kong protests, and the group is also in touch with protesters in Hong Kong to offer its support.

“People in Canada are very connected to protesters in Hong Kong. We are having meetings to consider our next steps,” said Mabel Tung, the society’s chairperson, although she wouldn’t provide any details.

Joshua Wong, a prominent Hong Kong activist who has served time in prison for his leading role in the 2014 pro-democracy protests called the Umbrella Movement, said people around the world should care about what’s happening in Hong Kong, even if it’s out of self interest.

“The extradition bill could affect foreign citizens to be extradited to face trial. It’s not appropriate for any government to allow extradition of their people from Hong Kong to China,” Wong said in a July 5 telephone interview in Hong Kong.

“It’s a good move for Canada, and the U.S. and the U.K to speak out. I hope more countries will do the same.”

“We are asking for the government to listen to the voice of people,”

Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, speaking to reporters by teleconference Thursday from London, said the extradition bill issue is a “special concern for Canada because of the 300,000 Canadians living in Hong Kong. We have a duty of care towards them and we take that very seriously.”

Canada has issued two public statements expressing its concern that the bill could harm the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong, including one issued jointly with U.K. foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt on May 30 that highlighted possible effects “on business confidence and on Hong Kong’s international reputation.”

But whether Canada will give refugee status to pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong is unclear. Last year, Hong Kong protesters Ray Wong, 25, and Alan Li, 27, were granted refugee status in Germany.

When Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada was asked whether any Hong Kong protesters have sought asylum in Canada, a spokesperson said they could neither confirm or deny it “for reasons of privacy.”

Jean-Nicolas Beuze, the Canada representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said the UNHCR cannot play a role in advising Hong Kong protesters whether or not to seek asylum in Canada and Canadian authorities would have to assess any claims.

Back in Hong Kong, the protests continued after Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam said Monday the extradition bill was “dead” because she did not formally withdraw it. Protesters are organizing another march on Sunday in Shatin, one of Hong Kong’s 18 districts, which is north of Kowloon.

Last Sunday, protesters poured into the streets of Kowloon, a district popular with tourists who come there from mainland China to shop. Chanting “Democracy for Hong Kong,” “Carrie Lam resign,” and “Love your country, come protest,” they moved through the streets in unison, using hand signals to motion to the back of the crowd when it was time to stop for a red light and when it was OK to cross an intersection. They stopped outside malls to wave at mainland Chinese tourists inside, encouraging them to come out and join them.

A woman from China’s Guangdong province, watching the procession with a look of wonder, asked what the protests were about. When she learned that Hong Kongers were opposing the extradition bill because they don’t trust China’s legal system, she only nodded.

Wearing black and hoisting yellow umbrellas to symbolize their hope for democracy, the crowd surged down the streets, singing with deliberate irony the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China called the “March of the Volunteers.”

“Arise, we who refuse to be slaves!

With our flesh and blood,

Let us build our new Great Wall!

The peoples of China are at their most critical time,

Everyone must roar in defiance.

Arise! Arise! Arise!”

Source: How Canadians are part of an underground network helping Hong Kong protesters in their struggle against Chinese control

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Election 2019: Ridings in which visible minorities, European ethnic ancestries, non-official languages most often spoken at home and religious minorities

2019/07/15 Leave a comment

As part of my background work for diversityvotes.ca, I have prepared the following comparative tables that highlight groups that form a significant portion of the population in ridings. These capture visible minorities, European ethnic ancestries, language most often spoken at home, Indigenous peoples  and religious minorities. All data is from the 2016 census, save for religious minorities which dates from the 2011 National Household Survey.

In general, a threshold of 10 percent of the population or more has been chosen, with lower or higher percentages where appropriate.

If interested in having this data in Numbers, Excel or Filemaker, please contact me regarding the cost.

Visible minorities

VM Ridings Arab 5 percent (20 ridings)

VM Ridings Black 10 percent (21 ridings)

VM Ridings Chinese 10 percent (37 ridings)

VM Ridings Filipino 10 percent (9 ridings)

There are no ridings where Japanese form more than three percent

VM Ridings Korean 5 Percent (3 ridings)

VM Ridings Latin American 5 percent (7 ridings)

VM Ridings SE Asian 5 percent (4 ridings)

VM Ridings South Asian 10 percent (47 ridings)

VM Ridings West Asian 5 percent (8 ridings)

VM Ridings VisMin 20 percent (134 ridings)

Ethnic ancestry, largest European, non-founding (excludes Indigenous peoples, British Isles, French, Canadian and Canadian provinces), single and multiple

EO Ridings Dutch 5 percent (75 ridings)

EO Ridings Dutch 10 percent (10 ridings)

EO Ridings German 20 percent (41 ridings)

EO Ridings Italian 10 percent (26 ridings)

EO Ridings Norwegian 5 percent (18 ridings)

EO Ridings Polish 5 percent (60 ridings)

EO Ridings Portuguese 5 percent (8 ridings)

EO Ridings Russian 5 percent (17 ridings)

EO Ridings Spanish 3 percent (6 ridings)

EO Ridings Swedish 4 percent (5 ridings)

EO Ridings Ukrainian 10 percent (35 ridings)

Language most often spoken at home (single), indicator of those more likely to follow ethnic media (5 percent or more)

Language most often spoken at home: Mandarin

Language most often spoken at home: Cantonese

Language most often spoken at home: Punjabi

Language most often spoken at home: Arabic

Language most often spokenat home: German

Language most often spoken at home: Persian

Language most often spoken at home: Tamil

12 other languages are spoken at home between five to ten percent of the population : Italian, Spanish, Cree, Tagalog, Inuktitut, Portuguese, Russian, Bengali, Korean, Polish, Urdu and Vietnamese.

The following table lists the languages and ridings (less than five ridings for each language:

Other languages most often spoken at home – less than 5 ridings – None more than 10%

Indigenous

Indigenous Ridings 10 Percent

Religious minorities (2011 NHS)

RM Ridings Aboriginal 1 percent (23 ridings, only 1 greater than 5 percent)

RM Ridings Buddhist 5 percent (12 ridings)

RM Ridings Hindu 5 percent (23 ridings)

RM Ridings Jewish 5 percent (14 ridings)

RM Ridings Muslim 5 percent (69 ridings)

RM Ridings Muslim 10 percent (24 ridings)

RM Ridings Sikh 5 percent (20 ridings)

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Berlin professor: Contemporary antisemitism is not racism or xenophobia

2019/07/15 Leave a comment

While I am not convinced by the arguments to consider antisemitism as a completely distinct form of racism and discrimination, her points on its history, incidence and the distinctions between antisemitism and criticism of Israel are thoughtful:
Statistics indicate a dramatic rise in antisemitism everywhere in the world. The brutal murder of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll last year in Paris and the murder of 11 worshipers in the attack on the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh last October are only the devastating peaks of this development. Germany’s antisemitism czar recently warned that it is not safe for Jews to wear kippot in certain areas.
In February, French President Emanuel Macron said that antisemitism has reached its highest level since World War II.
“We have predicted this development for a long time, but our warnings were dismissed as alarmism,” says Monika Schwarz-Friesel, a professor of cognitive science at the Technical University of Berlin and one of the world’s leading antisemitism researchers. She blames Israel-related antisemitism and the failure of politicians, scholars, civil society and the media to address it. In an interview with The Jerusalem Report, Schwarz-Friesel also talks about the results of her recent research on online antisemitism and her new book, Jew-hatred on the Internet: Antisemitism as cultural constant and collective sentiment. (The title is translated from the German.)
Where is the current explosion of antisemitism coming from?
We are waking up to a reality that has developed over a long time. Antisemitism was never really gone. There was a period after World War II when its open communication was suppressed, but that doesn’t mean that it was erased from people’s minds. It only mutated into new forms, among which Israel-related antisemitism became the most pervasive and influential. The latter, very prominently promoted, e.g. by the BDS movement, has been instrumental in making Jew-hatred respectable again by whitewashing it as criticism of Israel. That whole process was never really challenged. On the contrary, everything has been tried to deny and marginalize it. Now we are facing the consequences.
Are you saying that the present situation was predictable?
Indeed so. I can read out for you the minutes of a symposium in which I participated 10 years ago in Jena, Germany, and you would think that they were written today. We made it very clear, back then, that Israel-related antisemitism is increasingly promoting the dissemination, radicalization and social acceptance of Jew-hatred. We explicitly warned that lest decisive counter-measures are taken, there will be an eruption and normalization of antisemitism. No one heeded our warnings. Instead, they were dismissed as alarmism. The fight against antisemitism remained focused on the activities of right-wing neo-Nazis, who in fact have very little influence on society as a whole. In contrast, Israel-related antisemitism and its massive popular impact were ignored. I clearly blame politicians, civil society and the media for ignoring, belittling and sometimes even participating in the dissemination of Israel-related Judeophobia.
Recently, however, the German parliament passed a resolution against BDS and anti-Israel antisemitism.
That resolution was a right and important decision. But I am afraid it is too little too late. It should have been passed 10 years ago.
There are many who think that measures against the BDS campaign infringe on free speech. How do you respond to people who say that charges of antisemitism are used to silence criticism of Israel?
Plainly, that they are wrong. Their accusation is void of any empirical merit. We actually did check this in various corpus-based studies. There is no noteworthy actor or discourse that has ever claimed that it is forbidden to criticize Israel, or that has used the charge of antisemitism to silence rational and fact-based criticism of the Jewish state’s policies. The opposite is true. Barely any other country is criticized as much as Israel in the European media. Those who emphatically claim that criticism of Israel must be allowed oppose a taboo that in reality does not exist. And they usually do so to whitewash Israel-related antisemitism.

So how do you distinguish between criticism of Israel and Israel-related antisemitism?
In fact, this is very simple. The line is crossed when statements about Israel reflect antisemitic stereotypes rather than the reality on the ground.
Can you give an example?
Let’s take the recent Israeli Nation-State Law. Criticizing this law as counterproductive, unnecessary or discriminatory is certainly not antisemitic. But when people, as we have seen, label it the “new Nuremberg race laws” or a “diabolic Zionist crime,” then they demonize Israel in a way that is antisemitic. Such statements are not based in reality. Instead they project stereotypical ideas of Jews as an absolute evil, by rendering the Jewish state a Nazi-like regime.

Outbursts of antisemitism often coincide with Israeli military operations, such as the 2014 Gaza War. What role does the Middle East conflict play in promoting Jew-hatred?
Crises in the Middle East often trigger antisemitic outbursts, but they are not their root cause. We can conclude that from our observation. Most antisemitic communications reproduce stereotypes that are much older than the Israeli-Arab conflict on which they are often projected. This also applies to antisemitism among Muslims. Mantras such as “child murderer Israel” target the Jewish state, but in fact replicate the classic antisemitic blood libel that has been around for centuries.

Your current book covers, among other things, the results of your much acclaimed new long-term study on antisemitism online.

What are your findings?Throughout the last decade, antisemitism on the Internet has been growing significantly. In some data sets we found an increase as high as 22 percent. In the online talkback sections of quality German newspapers, the number of antisemitic comments multiplied by four. This is accompanied by a radicalization in terms of semantics. In contrast to survey data, the Internet communications that we have reviewed are authentic, meaning they were not produced in response to the question of a researcher, but rather express the genuine impetus of their authors. So far, our study is the first of its kind in antisemitism research.

Is there any social group that stands out in particular among the producers of antisemitic speech online?
Our findings confirmed once more that antisemitism is not the exclusive problem of political extremists or of people with a low level of education. In fact, most antisemitic communications are authored by normal everyday users. That means that we encounter Jew-hatred everywhere on the web, and not only in confined spaces specifically dedicated to radical ideas.
A few weeks ago YouTube announced that it would ban videos that promote Holocaust denial. Shortly before that, Facebook said it would delete the profiles of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Islamist Louis Farrakhan. Did these measures make a difference?
According to our observations of the past five years, things only got worse. We regularly conducted spot checks to see whether certain contents have remained or disappeared. Also after Germany’s so-called Network-entrenchment law took effect in October 2017, imposing fines on social media providers who don’t comply with regulations for the restriction of hate speech, nothing substantial changed. The only thing that happens is that specific extreme cases of Holocaust denial get deleted. However, usually these contents just reappear later somewhere else. Eliminatory antisemitism expressed in mantras such as “Bomb Israel!” “Destroy Israel!” or “Jews are the biggest scum on earth” is still widespread all over cyberspace. The old anti-Jewish eliminatory hate is unbroken, as if Auschwitz never happened.
How is that possible?
There is a very simple explanation: 2,000 years of Jew-hatred are met by no more than 50 years of very ineffective education against it. In addition, large parts of society are in denial when it comes to facing the actual scope of antisemitism. Influential people, among them also scholars, continue to oppose measures against BDS. They falsely claim that criticism of BDS is an infringement of free speech and disseminate the fairytale that charges of antisemitism are used to silence criticism of Israel. Such arguments are void of any empirical corroboration. They not only sabotage the struggle against antisemitism, but actually promote the respectability of modern Jew-hatred.
So what can be done?
The political world has to face the facts and base the struggle against antisemitism on scholarly research rather than on empirically unsubstantiated fantasies. This will lead us automatically to the conclusion that Israeli-related Jew-hatred has to be targeted much more decisively.
By the same token, we have to dismiss the wrong but popular idea that contemporary antisemitism equals racism or xenophobia. Antisemitism is rooted in Christianity’s attempt to dismiss the Jewish basis it evolved from. As such, it has been an integral part of Western civilization for 2,000 years, deeply shaping the ways in which people think and feel. Comprehending this unique character of Jew-hatred as a cultural category sui generis rather than as one form of prejudice among others is a precondition to challenging it successfully.

Source: Berlin professor: Contemporary antisemitism is not racism or xenophobia

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How White Nationalists See What They Want to See in DNA Tests

2019/07/15 3 Comments

Interesting:

On the hate site Stormfront, one of the largest online discussion forums dedicated to “white pride,” sharing DNA results with fellow members has become a rite of passage for some members.

But what happens when users’ results show that they fail to meet their own genetic criteria for whiteness? Are they still willing to post them? And if so, how do other users respond?

Such questions have long intrigued the sociologists Aaron Panofsky, who studies the social implications of genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Joan Donovan, whose research at Harvard University focuses on how information is manipulated on the internet.

“We had a puzzle,” Dr. Panofsky said in an interview this week. “If Stormfront says, ‘You’ve got to be all white or we’ll kick you out,’ how do they deal with these anomalies?”

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Esi Edugyan: ‘Where are you from?’ In search of my Canadian identity

2019/07/15 Leave a comment

Great piece by Edugyan on identities:

Back in 2006, I went to live for a year at an artist colony on the outskirts of Stuttgart, Germany, a city nearly obliterated during the Second World War. I remember the blue thread of the Neckar River running along it in the fine bright air, so that from our residence overlooking the city, we could almost imagine only wilderness lay below.

It was the year Germany played host to the FIFA World Cup. Among the young artists who had arrived from all over the world, an excitement had taken hold. We were eager to be a part of things, to take in as much as we could of this moment.

There was among the German artists, especially, a kind of mild shock at their countrymen’s outpouring of emotion for their nation. For the first time since before the war – which is to say, since before their lifetimes – it had become socially acceptable to hang the national flag from windows, to fly it from cars, to drape it over shoulders in the streets. Visual symbols of patriotism were something I took for granted in Canada, so that I was surprised when, walking the Stuttgart town centre with a friend, I heard her draw a sharp breath at the sight of a child turning a tiny plastic flag in his fingers. For her, it was truly a new era.

I remember so much about those days. How a group of us would spend hours in the beer gardens dotting the city to watch on massive screens matches taking place in all parts of the country. How lightly the sun fell, cupping our foreheads in a warmth that was like the touch of a human palm. How, sometimes, the air in the gardens would reek sharply of shredded grass. And how one evening, during a match between Germany and France, the weather suddenly turned black and churning and vicious, slinging thick braids of water into our faces, so that we opened our mouths.

There was so much beauty in those hours. I recall us all walking home after that rainy match and hearing a damp susurration from beyond the path. My friend, Eugen, parted the long grasses to discover an enormous frog. We passed the frog from hand to hand, and I remember so vividly the feel of it in my careful fist – a pulsing damp shudder, like a living heart. The wonder that came over me then was like a physical shock – I felt as if anything could happen in that moment, as if the world was made of the strange and the unexpected, that it was a place of great openness and possibility.

Then, as we continued on, something happened that drew me up short. We had all been complaining about the French soccer team, but Eugen began to mock them viciously, beginning with their names. His biggest complaint was the fact that so many of them were brown or black men, children no doubt of immigrants who’d settled in France from its former colonies. “How were any of those people actually French?” he said, and then he met my eye: “And you, Esi, how are you Canadian?”

It had been a question that had defined my life, although I would not then have expressed it so. For years I had travelled in search of the place I would feel most at home – indeed, my time in Germany was part of that search – but it was slowly dawning on me that the answer had been clear from the moment I first left home, that I had been stubbornly refusing to look at it.

What became so clear to me with Eugen’s question was how much I had taken a certain kind of multiculturalism for granted, and how much, until those years of travel, I’d come to surround myself with people who also took that plurality for granted. I had always believed that there were many different pathways to citizenship and fealty and belonging beyond the single one suggested by him, which was, of course, blood. In a country in which the population of black people has never exceeded 3.5 per cent (and in British Columbia, where I’ve lived for 20 years, it is less than 1 per cent), the idea of my being able to claim anything like true Canadian-ness was, to him, ridiculous.

My parents were Ghanaian immigrants who’d met, not in Canada, but in San Francisco, as students; A mutual friend was hosting a party to watch the moon landing on his black and white television. Six months later they were married, and my brother was born a year after that. They settled eventually in Alberta, first in Edmonton, where my sister was born, then in Calgary, where I was born. They often used to joke that they stopped moving to avoid having more children.

Migration is rarely a clean narrative. Alongside the joys, stories of migration often contain the loss of treasured things, and also the gaining of things not wanted. At the centre of these stories is often risk. And indeed, when I think of my mother’s case, what I’m struck by is how much she had to risk to gain an education. She was a young woman in an African society where women did much of the work and held little of the power, and as her secondary school years were coming to an end, she was left floundering at the starkness of her choices. She chafed at the expectation that she would keep her father’s house until she found a husband. She wanted to become a nurse. In order to do so, though, she would have to leave home. And what amazes me is that she managed to do it.

I sometimes ask myself what might have happened if she had never made the choice to leave. If my father had also stayed and by some whim of chance they’d met and married in Ghana? Her near-fate as an uneducated mother and wife could well have been my own fate, too. The life given to me is lived in the shadow of that other possible life. I marvel even now at the strange combination of circumstances that had to come about for me to be here.

To be a Canadian is to accept that the story has more than one thread, more than one character, more than one point of view. It has become a near cliché to say it, but it’s true: we are a nation of many narratives and histories, and it is in the attempts to harmonize our various stories that our culture lives.

These negotiations can sometimes be fraught, but they are ours. Within my own family, there are a multitude of stories: one of my sisters-in-law immigrated to Edmonton from Hong Kong when she was eight years old, while the other is from the Coast Salish tribes of Vancouver Island, whose people have lived on the land for generations. My brother-in-law is French-Canadian. My husband’s aunt, who was born and raised in Guyana, has commented that when we sit down to holiday dinners we look like a UN summit. I think, though, that the variety that strikes her as an international feature is actually a very national one. And it is in our struggle to forever negotiate and align these stories that our identity is made and shaped and reshaped. The failure to come to a consensus on a single narrative – the hesitation and uncertainty about having one dominant story – is what the culture has become.

What do we see as features of our future stories, going forward? What is it we can be? The image returns to me of that rainy walk home in Stuttgart, the feel of that tiny life in my hands – how unexpected and full of wonder that moment was, how much it made the world feel boundless and without limits, as if the miraculous lay within reach. That feeling is what we need to harness, it is what I want my children to feel. The sense that nothing is closed to anyone, not because of race or gender or religious belief, that everything is open and full of startling possibility, regardless of who we are.

Source:     ‘Where are you from?’ In search of my Canadian identity Esi Edugyan July 11, 2019     

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Kelly Toughill: The corrosive power of “Where are you from?”

2019/07/15 Leave a comment

Part of the challenges in encouraging and retaining immigration to Atlantic Canada. Not unique to Atlantic Canada: my Russian-born mother always bristled when she was asked the question in Toronto in the 50s and 60s:
Opinion: If Atlantic Canadians are serious about boosting immigration and making newcomers feel welcome, writes Kelly Toughill, we need to find a way to have real conversations about regional culture and the come-from-away phenomenon.

“Do you feel like a Nova Scotian?” I asked the woman.

We had stumbled into the topic by mistake. It is not something we talk about here: not those of us who chose Nova Scotia nor those who are tethered to the province by ancestral DNA. We were cautious, hesitant, both aware of the danger surrounding the taboo.

She is a person of significant influence with a broad social and professional network who has lived here more than 20 years. No, she said, she does not feel like a Nova Scotian and knows she never will.

Neither do I.

“I moved to Nova Scotia 21 years ago and expect to live here until I die, but I have come to terms with the fact that I will always be treated like a guest.”

There is a stereotype about the “come from away” phenomenon in Atlantic Canada, but little deep, respectful discussion of how the tendency to divide people by origin affects the region and its future. If we hope to use immigration to bolster the flagging population, we must figure out how to have that conversation right now.

Where you are from means something very different here than in the other places I have lived. In San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Washington, D.C. or Toronto, when asked where I was from, the question really meant, “Where do you live? Where do you choose to make your home? Where can you best relax and let down your guard?”

Here, it means something else entirely. I have never seen a place so connected to its roots. That is a joyful thing. It is one reason this province has such a strong sense of identity, a distinct culture and a tradition of caring for its own. But traditions can be exclusionary.

“When I first moved to Nova Scotia, I travelled the Atlantic region extensively for work. In other regions, an opening social line might be, “What do you do?” But here it was always, “Where are you from?””

I would answer, “Halifax,” because that’s where I live or, if asked in Halifax, would say, “Here.”

And people treated me as if I were lying.

It took me a while to realize they were asking me to name a spot of earth that defines my identity. Where are my ancestors buried? Where do people remember my malevolent uncle, my grandmother’s affection for mathematics, my mother’s brilliant, eclectic career?

There is no place like that for me. There is no place like that for hundreds of millions of people around the world. And that is incomprehensible to many of my neighbours and, now, closest friends.

It was a union activist who helped me figure out how to answer that essential East Coast question. We were sitting on a wharf in Saint Anthony, Newfoundland, when he asked where I was from. I explained that I had no idea how to answer in a way that honoured the real intent of his question. After a long talk, he suggested I name the place that I was born.

Now, when people ask, I say “Washington, D.C.” My parents were newly arrived in Washington when I was born. I left when I was eight years old and I do not have a single relative or friend in that city. It feels a little bit like a lie every time I say it, but it is the closest answer to their truth that I can offer.

A recent article in the academic journal Ethnicities describes how that specific question can be part of a system of welcoming that leaves racialized newcomers as perpetual outsiders. Speaking welcome: A discursive analysis of an immigrant mentorship event in Atlantic Canada, by Kristi A. Allain, Rory Crath and Gül Çaliskan, examined an event in Fredericton designed to welcome newly arrived economic immigrants. They considered the language and structure of the event through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s theory of conditional hospitality. They found that the event designed to welcome newcomers actually reinforced their status as foreign and other. And it all started with, “Where are you from?”

This is not just a matter of manners and personal feelings. Atlantic Canada will need tens of thousands of new immigrants to maintain its population, tax base and public services over the next few decades. There is much public debate about how to structure immigration pathways, how to improve economic outcomes and how immigrants can best be supported for long term success. But there is little discussion of local culture and how that can work for – and against – the retention of newcomers.

The woman and I were hesitant because we both know that this topic relies exclusively on personal experience as evidence, and that can very easily be misunderstood as a blanket criticism of the region. It takes trust even to talk about the phenomenon.

I sent her a draft of this column and asked if she was comfortable being named. She thought about it for a day and then declined. She said was afraid of discouraging other newcomers and also afraid of hurting the feelings of her Nova Scotian colleagues.

I know what she means. My Nova Scotian friends have been hurt or angry when I tried to describe my experience, so now I just don’t. After all, the Atlantic region is known for its tremendous hospitality. There is even a hit Broadway musical about how Newfoundland welcomed strangers stranded on 9-11. But being treated well as a guest is not the same as being included, for guests are expected to leave.

I asked the woman if she feels Canadian. The answer was instant and affirmative: of course, absolutely.

Me too. I am Canadian through-and-through. My inclusion in the body Canada does not feel conditional in any way, unlike my status in Nova Scotia.

I still wince every time I hear someone ask, “Where are you from?” It reminds me that I will always be a stranger in my own home province. I’ve come to accept my outsider status as the price of living in this magnificent place, but it is sad. If we want to draw people here, not everyone will make the same choice that I have.

So, here’s a suggestion: No matter how much it might feel right, no matter whether your intention is to welcome, or simple curiosity, don’t ask a stranger, “Where are you from?” Wait until you get to know them to probe that specific identity marker. Wait until you have forged a bond. Wait until that question will not be seen as a signal that your new friend will never really belong.

Source: The corrosive power of where are you from

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Tung Chan: Dialogue with Chinese consul at reception can promote Canada’s case

2019/07/13 Leave a comment

Valid argument. The test, however, will be how many municipal politicians will raise their concerns and how forcefully or not they do so. And dialogue requires a willingness on the Chinese side, not very much in evidence these days:

I read with amazement about the debate over whether municipal politicians should attend the reception to be hosted by the Consulate of the People’s Republic of China at the 2019 Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention, to be held Sept. 23-27 at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

The central arguments against attending can be summed up in two points.

The first is that as a result of China acting in a hostile way toward our country, we should not have any contacts with its officials. The second is that if our politicians attend the reception, they will end up under the influence of the Chinese officials.

There is no doubt that China is acting in a heavy-handed way toward Canada. But this is precisely the time that more dialogue between our two countries is needed. Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to talk to Chinese President Xi Jinping at the recent G20 meeting in Japan. The reception at the upcoming UBCM will give our municipal politicians the opportunity to talk to Chinese officials.   

As to the second point about being afraid that our municipal politicians would be influenced, as a former Vancouver city councillor and former president of the Non-Partisan Association, I have full confidence that our elected mayors and councillors would not be so easily influenced by a cocktail or two. To suggest otherwise is an insult to their intelligence and integrity.

If we truly believe that our politicians can so easily become “under the general influence” of the cocktail host and then “all of a sudden, decisions aren’t taken on the basis of the public good, but on the basis of” the preoccupations of the cocktail party’s host (to paraphrase a statement by Richard Fadden, former head of CSIS), then we should, on principle, also ban commercial sponsorship at all gatherings of our politicians. Otherwise they will all be making decisions on the basis of those commercial enterprises and not on the basis of the public good. 

The fact is influence can go both ways. Why is it that those who suggest boycotting the reception have so little confidence in themselves or other politicians who want to participate of their own power of influence?  Why won’t they consider using the interaction to impress, to the extent possible, to the hosts of the reception in question that Canada is acting the way we are because we are a country that believes in the rule of law?

The points of view of the Chinese consular officials may not be changed but at least there would be constructive dialogue and our local politicians would reinforce the message of our prime minister and the foreign affairs minister. 

I believe, with the best interest of our country in heart, we need to open up more channels of dialogue between Canada and China.

Common sense tells us that problems can only be solved through dialogue, not through avoiding contact. It is time for our local politicians to join in the effort to tell China via the Chinese consuls face-to-face the feelings of the people they represent about the actions of the Chinese government. Our local politicians cannot leave that job to our prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs alone.

Tung Chan is a former Vancouver city councillor and former president of the Non-Partisan Association.

Source: Tung Chan: Dialogue with Chinese consul at reception can promote Canada’s case

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

HASSAN: UN should press Islamic nations for more inclusive societies

2019/07/13 Leave a comment

Valid critique of many members of the OIC:

Last year, the United Nations Council on Human Rights passed a resolution acknowledging defamation of religion as a human rights violation. Pakistan led the delegation representing the 56-nation Organization of Islamic Conference and proclaimed that “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” Pakistan asserted that nations must “deny impunity” to those showing intolerance and ensure respect for religion.

But which religion, how and by whom?

Last Tuesday, the editor of a moderate Islamic website criticized the UN measure, citing freedom of speech issues. More important, he accused Muslim nations of expressing most of this so-called defamation of religion. He said reports from Muslim countries, such as Pakistan, not only tell horrific tales of local misogyny and terror but also reveal ways the rights of non-Muslim minorities are constantly violated. He cited many examples of this, including the publication of jihadi literature and laws that marginalize religious minorities and discriminate against women. In Pakistan, for example, Hindu girls continue to be forcibly converted to Islam and sold into marriage. This is the worst kind of intolerance based on faith.

New Age Islam editor Sultan Shaheen has tried hard in the past decade to salvage Islam from its darker manifestations and to encourage a more humane version of the faith. Like other South Asian moderates, such as Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, he has offered newer interpretations of religious precepts in an attempt to rid Islam of bigotry, violence and fundamentalism.

In drawing attention to these heinous practices in the Muslim world, Shaheen has identified the valid reasons for the bad reputation Islamic countries have earned. In a letter to the UN, he stated that, while this resolution seeks to protect Islam from defamation through any association with terrorism, other religions are routinely defamed in Muslim countries by radical Muslims. For example, propaganda is often published justifying violence against non-Muslim civilians. He cited a long essay in the Taliban mouthpiece Nawa-e-Afghan Jihad entitled Circumstances in which the Killing of Innocent People among Infidels is Justified.

Shaheen’s novelty is to interpret intolerance by Muslim extremists as defaming not only other religions but primarily distorting the essence of Islam itself. He urges the Council to “ask the Muslim countries to treat intolerance of minorities and jihadi literature too as defaming the religion of Islam.”

Shaheen quoted some jihadi literature in his letter, such as by radical Islamic scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al Abeeri, who has openly justified destroying American cities and killing enemy civilians. Shaheen characterized such literature as a tirade against Islam. He also highlighted the anti-Semitism of many of these radical scholars.

Sultan Shaheen has rightly identified the main reason for the negative image of Islam. It is the actions of radical Muslims more than anything else, coupled with the fact that moderates do not actively challenge them or distance themselves from their parochial ideas, that defame Islam the most.

The UN Council on Human Rights must look beyond its own naive resolution and urge Islamic nations to enact laws that enable freer and more inclusive societies. Instead of Pakistan urging consequences for those who supposedly defame its state religion, it should seek real consequences for those who openly and aggressively promote violence against women and non-Muslims.

Source: HASSAN: UN should press Islamic nations for more inclusive societies

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

Is ‘Race Science’ Making A Comeback? . News

2019/07/12 Leave a comment

Interesting and relevant interview:

When Angela Saini was 10 years old, her family moved from what she called “a very multicultural area” in East London to the almost exclusively white Southeast London. Suddenly her brown skin stood out, making her a target. She couldn’t avoid the harassment coming from two boys who lived around the corner. One day, they pelted her and her sister with rocks. She remembers one hit her on the head. She remembers bleeding.

There had been racist comments before that, she says, “but that was the first time that someone around my own age had decided to physically hurt me. And it was tough.”

It was also one of the first stories she reported, writing about the incident and reading it out for class. She says that’s what made her a journalist.

Saini is now an award-winning science journalist, often reporting on the intersection of science, race and gender. Her latest book, Superior: The Return of Race Science tracks the history and ideology of race science up to its current resurgence.

We talked to her about how race isn’t real (but you know…still is), why DNA tests are misleading and how race science crept its way into the 21st century. It’s a lot to get your head around.

This is an excerpt from our interview with her. It has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Code Switch: I guess we should start with the obvious question. What is race science?

Angela Saini: Once upon a time, in the 19th and early 20th century, race science was just science. It was very widely accepted that races exist biologically, that possibly we are different species or different breeds as human beings, and that there might be a racial hierarchy between us.

After the Second World War, when we saw eugenics play out — saw the consequences of Nazi racial hygiene in the Holocaust, the world kind of took a collective intake of breath and tried to put its house in order. So scientists, policy makers, the United Nations all came together and decided, race has no place in biology anymore. It’s not scientifically accurate. Race is not how difference plays out in the real world.

But there were two problems with this. Number one was the hardcore scientific racists. This includes Nazi race scientists. So the ones who believed that whites were superior, that slavery was justified, that segregation was justified. They kept scientific racism alive within a small, but very active global network.

The other aspect is mainstream science. Did everyday scientists really abandon these ideas completely? My argument is, no. They clung on to them, partly because, of course, racism was still there in society. We still had racism all around the world, discrimination embedded in the structures of institutions. And that means even to this day, there are still scientists who, despite knowing better, and despite being mainstream, good-hearted, well-intentioned scientists, still sometimes invoke race in scientific research, particularly medical research, when it’s inappropriate.

Should we even be talking about race anymore?

I’ve read genetics textbooks on race that say race is all silly, we should all let it go and live in this kind of colorblind world. Well, no, because that’s not the world that we live in. These things matter, because that boy when I was 10 years old did not throw rocks at me because of genetics. He threw rocks at me because I looked brown, and that he took exception to that. And that’s not going to stop.

…

The thing is, race is real in society. It’s real in politics, it’s real in the ways that we treat each other. It’s visceral because we have made it visceral in our everyday lives, and it has a biological impact because of that. Racism impacts people’s bodies. It impacts people’s minds. It affects how they live and how they grow.

So I think all researchers, if they’re going to invoke race, have to be really knowledgeable about where these ideas come from, and how they are using race. Are they using it because they’re studying the effects of racism and discrimination, or are they using it as a biological entity in itself? And if they’re using it as a biological entity in itself, then they had better be sure exactly how they define it.

In the U.S., race is defined differently from South Africa, Australia, the U.K., India. We can’t biologize blanket ideas about who people are, because these are socially constructed ideas. I think it’s deeply dangerous, because it falls into the same trap that the people who invented race in the first place wanted us to fall into. The people who hardened these categories wanted us to believe that we are fundamentally different. We are not fundamentally different.

We did an episode not so long ago about how people from certain populations in North and West Africa were more likely to have a trait that makes them predisposed to sickle cell anemia. Is it possible that we risk missing out on important scientific realities if we are skittish about getting into genetics and race?

I think we need to be careful about what we mean when we say race. We know that the sickle cell trait exists in those regions of the world where cases of malaria are high, and that is because, as devastating as it is to have sickle cell anemia, having the trait provides some resistance to malaria. So in the regions where it exists, it is beneficial to the people who have it, because one risk outweighs the other. And this means it’s geographical, it’s not racial. It exists in certain parts of Africa and not all, and it exists in other parts of the world outside Africa, where people don’t have black skin.

The reason it looks racialized in the U.S. is because in the U.S., many white people are of European ancestry, and many black people, because of the history of slavery, are of West African ancestry. That means that in the U.S., you see far higher rates of sickle cell in the black population than the white population.

But globally, it doesn’t look racialized. Globally, it looks as though people in certain regions of the world have it. So in the U.S., when people talk about sickle cell being a black disease or a black illness, they’re really using race as a proxy for geography.

And that goes for many illnesses or diseases that we think about as being racialized. Black Americans are more likely to die of almost everything than white Americans. The life expectancy of a black American is lower than a white American. It is perverse to assume that this must be genetic. Are black Americans so genetically disadvantage that even infant mortality would be higher in black Americans? It just doesn’t make any sense. In the U.K., where I live, we see this life expectancy gap between the rich and the poor. It is exactly the same in America, but in America, it is treated as racial because socioeconomic circumstances run along racial lines.

The inscription in your book reads, “For my parents, the only ancestors I need to know.” What does that mean?

Well, that kind of is a joke at ancestry testing companies. When they tell us that you can find out who you are descended from, thousands of generations back, to your “actual ancestors.” One, you can’t tell me who my actual ancestors are, because DNA testing cannot tell you that.

But secondly, why does it matter? Why is it so important to us to know who our distant ancestors were when we have people alive with us right now who can give us our culture, who give us our frameworks, who give us our sense of who we are, our sense of right and wrong, our place in the world?

…

[Race scientists] play on your sense of ethnicity or sense of origin story. They build up this image of you as being a biologically essential person, and that this ties you to this identity, and it becomes embedded in who you are.

And this is what ethnic nationalists do. They play on these assumptions and stereotypes and the lack of education that we have around these issues, and they make us believe that identity is biological, when identity is cultural.

Source: Is ‘Race Science’ Making A Comeback? . News

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

UK’s Labour Party spars with BBC over charges of anti-Semitism

2019/07/12 Leave a comment

Ongoing train wreck (the Conservatives have the same problem with anti-Muslim attitudes):

British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn’s office interfered in independent party discipline processes aimed at rooting out anti-Semitism, the BBC said on Wednesday, a claim that the Labour Party sharply rejected.

A BBC investigation spoke to former Labour officials who said top party figures, including Corbyn’s communications director Seumas Milne and general secretary Jennie Formby, had minimized complaints of anti-Semitism against party members.

Labour said the accusations were “deliberate and malicious misrepresentations designed to mislead the public”.

Labour has battled accusations of anti-Semitism since 2016 and Corbyn – a veteran campaigner for Palestinian rights – as well as other senior party officials have been criticized for failing to take decisive action to deal with it.

British Jewish groups have accused Labour of becoming institutionally anti-Semitic, and the issue has played a part in Labour’s failure to take electoral advantage of the Conservative government’s turmoil over Brexit.

The BBC quoted an email from Milne telling Labour’s internal complaints team that “something’s going wrong, and we’re muddling up political disputes with racism”.

Labour said this misrepresented Milne’s email, which referred to a dispute between Jewish Labour members with Zionist and anti-Zionist views. A fuller extract of the email read: “If we’re more than very occasionally using disciplinary action against Jewish members for anti-Semitism, something’s going wrong, and we’re muddling up political disputes with racism.”

The BBC investigation also quoted former party members who felt a hostile atmosphere toward Jews within the party in recent years, who were sometimes challenged over Israeli government actions by other party members.

Nine lawmakers quit the party this year, citing the leadership’s handling of anti-Semitism as well as its stance on Brexit as reasons for leaving.

British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said the BBC investigation showed that Corbyn was either “wilfully blind to anti-Semitism or anti-Semitic himself”.

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, who is frequently critical of Corbyn, said he was “shocked, chilled and appalled” by the allegations in the BBC report.

Labour’s press office said the party was “implacably opposed to anti-Semitism,” and that some of the former officials quoted by the BBC had “personal and political axes to grind” against Corbyn.

Britain’s Conservatives face regular accusations of hostility toward Muslims. On Monday broadcaster Channel 4 published a survey of 892 Conservative Party members by pollsters YouGov which showed that 56% believed Islam was a general threat to Britain’s way of life.

Source: UK’s Labour Party spars with BBC over charges of anti-Semitism

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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