Austria’s Jews wary of far-right charm offensive

2019/03/05 Leave a comment

Rightfully so:

David Lasar’s family is sadly not unusual among Austria’s Jewish community in having lost several members in the Holocaust. But in one respect Lasar stands out — his membership of the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).

At its foundation, the FPOe was led by two former members of the Waffen SS, so 66-year-old Lasar’s choice of political home might well be considered surprising.

Lasar says he initially joined in the late 1990s as the FPOe was “the only party close to the people, to employees and workers who had been forgotten by the left, while the centre-right was the party of capitalism and big business”.

Now as an FPOe MP he says he has an added reason for throwing his lot in with the party.

“We are fighting tirelessly against anti-Semitism, especially anti-Semitism imported through immigration.

“We are the only party to be fighting against this, together with our partners in government,” he says, referring to the centre-right People’s Party (OeVP) of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

Since entering the coalition government at the end of 2017, the FPOe has made great play of its efforts to foster a rapprochement with the Jewish community, and to establish relations between the party and Israel.

But the Jewish community has largely kept its distance in the face of repeated scandals suggesting that anti-Semitic attitudes are still present in the party’s milieu.

As for Israel, its government has maintained an official boycott of all FPOe ministers, including Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, who while not an FPOe member herself, was nominated for the post by the party.

– ‘Political calculation’ –

Benjamin Hess, co-president of the Austrian Union of Jewish Students insists: “We see no change at all within the FPOe.”

Hess himself confronted Strache in a TV programme last year for having shared an anti-Semitic image on his Facebook page in 2012.

“It’s easy to say: ‘I’m against anti-Semitism, it’s much harder to distance yourself from it in reality,” Hess says.

He and others who are still sceptical of the FPOe point in particular to the party’s deep ties to the “Burschenschaften”, student fraternities known for their strident pan-German nationalism and whose alumni include many high-ranking FPOe politicians.

Strache, who himself flirted with neo-Nazism in his youth, has tried to clean up the party’s image, insisting that it rejects anti-Semitism and expelling some of its more embarrassing members.

He has also made trips to Israel, being welcomed on his last visit in 2016 by junior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. He also visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Lasar says he has also been to Israel on behalf of the party to foster better relations with the Israeli right, and boasts that he has made “excellent contacts”.

“The political calculation is obvious,” says Bernhard Weidinger from the DOeW institute, which researches the Austrian far-right.

When the current government came to power the European Jewish Congress (EJC) warned that “the Freedom Party can not use the Jewish community as a fig leaf and must show tolerance and acceptance towards all communities and minorities,” in an allusion to the FPOe’s anti-Muslim rhetoric.

– ‘No rapprochement’ –

The “imported anti-Semitism” that Lasar speaks of has become a favourite theme of Strache’s too, particularly as since 2015 the country has received some 150,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, many of them from Muslim countries.

In February, Strache launched his new think-tank with a podium discussion on “Islamic anti-Semitism”.

Ten days later, a prominent FPOe politician sent a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Vienna, saying that “supposed far-right extremist incidents” linked to FPOe members in recent months were down to “nothing more than agitation by the FPOe’s political opponents”.

Last year the party’s lead candidate in a regional election, Udo Landbauer, was forced to stand aside after it was revealed that the student fraternity that he belonged to had previously published virulently anti-Semitic songbooks.

He has since returned to politics for the party.

Weidinger points to the fact that the party has taken out adverts in publications that have included anti-Semitic content.

And all this against a backdrop of what Austria’s Forum Against Anti-Semitism says was a doubling of anti-Semitic incidents between 2014 and 2017.

Lasar says that “many Jews” admit to him: “I vote for the FPOe because you are the only ones who are there for us on issues around security and who speak out against radical Islamism.”

But Hess says this is still a minority view within the community.

“You find lots of different opinions among the community in Austria, but one thing unites everyone: no rapprochement with the FPOe.”

Source: Austria’s Jews wary of far-right charm offensive

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Indonesia’s largest Islamic group says non-Muslims shouldn’t be called ‘kafir’

2019/03/05 Leave a comment

Positive step:

Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, has issued a call to end the usage of the term “kafir”, or infidel, to refer to non-Muslims in state or citizenship matters, a move that may be aimed at calming religious tensions ahead of the presidential election.

Nahdlatul Ulama, with around 140 million members, said at its recent National Conference that non-Muslims shouldn’t be referred to as “kafir” as they have equal standing in state affairs.

The conference concluded non-Muslims should be referred to as “muwathin,” or citizens with the same rights and obligations as Muslim Indonesians, according to Ahmad Muntaha, secretary of Nahdlatul Ulama’s East Java Ulama Assembly.

Muntaha said in a statement published on the group’s website on Friday that a Muslim shouldn’t address non-Muslims as “kafir” in any social context.

The conference also emphasised that as a state, Indonesia wasn’t established by Muslims only, the statement said.

Nahdlatul Ulama’s recommendation comes as citizens of the world’s largest Muslim-majority country prepare for a presidential poll on Apr 17.

Religious issues have fueled divisions between supporters of incumbent President Joko Widodo and rival Prabowo Subianto.

Widodo, known as Jokowi, has faced protests from some Muslim groups that allege he has treated some Islamic clerics unfairly.

The president’s running partner for the poll, Ma’ruf Amin, is an Islamic scholar and head of a nationwide council of Muslim religious leaders, as well as chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama’s advisory council.

Jokowi has dismissed the claims against him as baseless.

Source: Indonesia’s largest Islamic group says non-Muslims shouldn’t be called ‘kafir’

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Diversity Votes — February By-elections: Matching Census Data with Ethnic Media Coverage (Final report with results 24 February to 1 March 2019)

2019/03/04 Leave a comment

For background data on the riding demographic, economic, social and political characteristics, see: February By-elections: Matching Census Data with Ethnic Media Coverage (1-18 January 2019). 

Note: While Chinese in the chart of ethnic media coverage refers to written media, Cantonese and Mandarin to broadcast oral media, I generally summarize all three as Chinese media except where indicated. 

Ethnic Media Coverage

As expected, by-election day generated the most articles since the by-election call, with a mix of pre-result (32) and post-result result (57) articles. Most articles continued to focus on Burnaby South given NDP leader Singh’s successful campaign. The chart below shows the by-election coverage by language from the start of the year (321 articles), along with the breakdown from last week. 

During the past week, while pre-result coverage was Punjabi (43.8 percent)  and Chinese (34.4 percent, almost half of the result coverage was Chinese (48.3 percent) with Punjabi at 29.2 percent. The results were also covered by more language groups, a similar pattern to that of by-election call coverage.

Pre-by-election coverage was a mix of factual stories regarding the three by-elections and articles highlighting the stakes for NDP leader Singh, particularly in Punjabi media. Other articles of note included articles on PPC leader Bernier’s visit to Burnaby South and PPC candidate Tyler Thompson (Punjabi), Chinese Canadian support for the PPC (based on the Star article How Canadian populism is playing out in the Burnaby South by-election), Conservative candidate Shin’s opposition to edible cannabis (Chinese), and NDP candidate in Outremont Sanchez’s comments on what people are talking about, the most interesting being comments regarding NDP leader Singh’s turban (Filipino).

 Commentary was largely analysis of the prospects of NDP Singh in Burnaby South and the NDP more generally, with the general tone being somewhat pessimistic while noting the SNC Lavalin scandal may increase his prospects.

Post-results coverage featured a similar mix of factual stories on the election results, again with the focus on Burnaby South, and how NDP leader Singh “tightened his shaky grip” on his leadership with his win. The anticipated Liberal win in Outremont over the NDP defeat was also covered in some depth as the counterpoint to his win. (The anticipated Conservative win in York South was merely noted.)

Post-results commentary focussed on the immediate impact for the NDP of leader Singh’s victory as well as some broader opinions and analysis on what the results may mean for the October general election. One commentary in Punjabi media noted that Singh’s victory showed he could take on “tough challenges.” Another in Chinese media considered that the Liberals should be considered the “biggest winner” as they appear to have been unaffected by the SNC Lavalin scandal in Quebec while another, also in Chinese media, quoted UBC professor Allan Tupper’s comments that not too much should be read into these results with respect to the general election, a point also covered in Hindi media.

While the strong results of the PPC in Burnaby South were not subject to analysis or commentary in Punjabi media, they did provoke a number of commentaries in Chinese media. One explained Chinese Canadian support as reflecting “church influence, different values of their native country and Canada, and their dissatisfaction with Trudeau” as the main reasons for the Chinese Canadian community to turn to the right (note: Chinese Canadians tend to support Conservatives more than other parties). Another stressed their social conservatism as a reason and a third the PPC’s highlighting the murder of Marissa Shen, allegedly by a Syrian refugee.

See the MIREMS blog for some of the stories being covered: MIREMS blog.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Punishment or Banishment?

2019/03/04 2 Comments

A rather curious article that lumps some of the Canadian worries regarding returning ISIS fighters (including wives)  with citizenship revocation.

The Liberal government reversed the Conservative government’s change to the Citizenship Act that allowed for revocation in cases of terror or treason

The statelessness provisions in most other countries require having a second nationality in order for citizenship to be revoked which makes the process more difficult to implement (as UK is finding out with respect to Begum not having Bangladeshi citizenship  and Australia with Prakash not having Fijian citizenship).

In the Canadian case, the issue is whether or not Canada should provide normal consular services (e.g., as we do to Canadians on death row in the USA) or make efforts to facilitate their return to Canada.

The former may be difficult given where they are being held and the latter, as many have noted, raises the possibility that there may not be enough evidence to prosecute successfully in Canada.

And while all have justified sympathy for their children, no sympathy for the mothers who made a conscious decision to support ISIS and its horrors and thus have to live with the consequences.

While the mothers have the right to return to Canada, no need for special government efforts to facilitate their return:

So-called jihadi brides are in the news, accused of supporting terrorism by having travelled to ISIS territory to marry ISIS fighters in support of the caliphate. Three Western states are implicated: the UK, the US, and Canada.

UK citizen Shemima Begum left the UK four years ago, when she was 15 years old, and surfaced last month at a Syrian refugee camp, heavily pregnant. US citizen Hoda Muthana, then a college student, left the US four years ago, using her tuition money to buy a ticket to Turkey, from which she was smuggled into ISIS territory. She is now detained in refugee camp in northeastern Syria. Kimberly Gwen Polman, born in Hamilton, Ontario, is a dual Canadian–US national who converted to Islam. She became persuaded by a Syrian fighter online that her incipient nursing skills would be of great value to the caliphate. She left the US in 2015 to join the caliphate, only to attempt to escape nearly a year later. But then she was jailed (and raped) and forced to sign a document acknowledging that if she were to attempt escape again, her punishment would be death. All three women have publicly announced their desire to return home this week.

The UK government reacted swiftly, announcing its intention to remove the citizenship of Begum, thereby denying her the right to return home. Recent official statements suggest UK authorities believe she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship, so revoking her British citizenship will not result in statelessness. US President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that all states should be ready to repatriate (i.e., bring home) and punish their “own” foreign fighters, but then tweeted that he had directed Mike Pompeo “not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!” Canadian officials have been relatively quiet on their intentions. A spokesperson for Public Safety Canada statedonly that “The government is aware of some Canadian citizens currently detained in Syria. There is no legal obligation to facilitate their return.”

These cases are not identical. Begum was a child when she left the UK and is now a mother to a newborn baby boy. Muthana’s choices were exacerbated by her use of social media to celebrate and encourage violence. Polman is known to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. What they share is the right to return home to face trial and punishment in their countries of citizenship.

All states have justice systems in place so that suspected wrongdoers can be tried and punished. Democratic justice systems are those that respect due process rights: the rights to a fair trial, including adequate legal representation, which permits the relevant evidence to be adjudicated by trained judges and, where relevant, juries of their peers.

It is conventional to say that citizens must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and this convention holds even where there appears to be incontrovertible evidence of guilt. Its purpose is to allow the possibility that what looks like a slam-dunk case is murkier upon examination, to ensure that in collecting evidence all of the rights of the accused were respected, and furthermore to allow for the presentation of extenuating circumstances that can complicate what seems like a simple guilty verdict.

There is more to criminal justice in democracies, moreover, than how the accused are treated during the trial phase. The punishments must also meet democratic criteria. It is a principle of punishment in democratic states that any citizen, no matter how criminal, must be treated as someone who can re-enter the community of equals from which she was temporarily excluded by punishment. This principle is why the death penalty must be rejected. It is also why denationalization must also be rejected.

Denationalization of terrorists, the process of revoking citizenship from those suspected of terrorist activities, is gaining in popularity in democratic states, who are rushing to prove they are tough on terror. Denationalizing terrorists is good politics.

Nevertheless, denationalization is unjust and undemocratic. It permits states to abandon citizens who are entitled to their protection in dangerous locations, in principle free to commit additional crimes. The Trudeau government recognized as much when it overturned the parts of the Strengthening Citizenship Act that permitted the revocation of citizenship. Weaselly words stating that Canada is not under the obligation to facilitate the return of suspected wrongdoers reveal an unwillingness to stand by the commitment implied by Mr. Trudeau’s now famous statement, “A Canadian is a Canadian.” Canadians, even criminal Canadians, are entitled to have their rights protected by Canada.

By revoking citizenship, states punish citizens suspected of criminal activities by banishing them, in advance of conviction. They treat them as unworthy of having their rights protected, as beyond the pale, rather than as individuals who in time can learn the error of their ways. These women must be returned to their states of citizenship so that we, their fellow-citizens, can judge their actions and, if appropriate, witness their just punishments.

Source: Punish homegrown terrorists. Don’t revoke their citizenship

Filed under Citizenship, Radicalization, Revocation Tagged with , ,

The enduring legacy of Canada’s racist head tax on Chinese-Canadians

2019/03/04 Leave a comment

A good mixture of the personal and general history regarding the head tax and other forms of discrimination and a reminder that the activists, so necessary for government action, remain somewhat dissatisfied with final result.

(I signed off on many of the individual head tax claims for the ex gratia payment and extensive ATIP requests, as well as being responsible for the related historical recognition programs that provided funding for community initiatives to tell these stories to Canadians):

On June 22, 2006, Stephen Harper formally apologized for the head tax of up to $500 levied on 81,000 Chinese immigrants to Canada from 1883 until it was repealed in 1923—when the Chinese Exclusion Act came into law, preventing Chinese people from moving to the country until 1947. William Ging Wee Dere, whose father and grandfather paid the tax, successfully campaigned to redress those measures: Ottawa has apologized and paid $20,000 in compensation to surviving head tax payers and the spouses of deceased ones.

Retired railroad engineer Dere, 70, was born in Taishan, China in 1948 and immigrated to Canada in 1956 with his mother, growing up in the back of his father’s hand-laundry business in Verdun, Que. He learned of his family’s struggles only after his father died in 1966 and his mother gave him a cookie tin containing his dad’s documents, including a head tax certificate. In 1993, he released the documentary Moving the Mountain to draw awareness to the head tax’s racist legacy and the campaign to redress it. In Being Chinese in Canada: The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging, Dere chronicles the hardships suffered by his grandfather and father, who worked as immigrants in Quebec in the 1920s, the head tax redress campaign and how those experiences shaped his own identity.

Q: You’ve talked about how it’s been a struggle to make people aware of the head tax and the history of Chinese-Canadians. Why do you think there isn’t more awareness around it?

A: I think that is a direct legacy of the head tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act, because our community is very disjointed. It never developed normally because of the separation of families and the exclusion of Chinese from Canada for three decades. Many don’t know the foundation of Chinese-Canadian history—how they lived, how they came and how they struggled and survived here in Canada.

Q: I’m second-generation Chinese-Canadian. My mom immigrated from Hong Kong in 1976, so she was never directly impacted by the head tax. Her group of immigrants and the waves and generations that have come after, like my own, don’t really have much understanding of, or sympathy for, this history.

A: I don’t see too much passion in the young people these days because they’re two, three generations removed from what happened. Maybe they don’t have an organic connection to the past. But I explain to them that that legacy still continues because of the lack of services and the struggle that we’re going through today in terms of getting equality in housing, in finding jobs, especially the recent immigrants who are now coming from China. They’re professionals in order for them to get through the point system to get into Canada. But once they arrive here, they can’t get jobs in their professions and they end up working in factories and sweatshops.

Q: In trying to appeal to younger generations of Chinese-Canadians, how do you make these events that happened so many years ago seem relevant today?

A: On a personal basis, it’s a question of knowing who you are. Do you have an identity awareness or an identity consciousness? If you do, then it’s the first step in standing up for what you are. It’s been a lifelong curse to feel comfortable with my identity. I think if young people come across discrimination, or somebody calls them a name on the street and they feel hurt, they have to understand why. As a person of colour, we will inevitably come across racism because we live in a dominant white society. The burden of fighting against racism is on the shoulders of racialized minorities in Canada and Quebec.

Q: What was life like for your father and grandfather working in Quebec in the 1920s?

A: The only work that they could do was laundry work. They were excluded socially and economically from the larger society. It was a hand laundry—you did everything by hand—so it was a very self-reliant economy. You work hard, you make some money and you’re able to eat and feed your family back in China. My grandfather came to Vancouver in 1909 and first started in the laundry business with a partner. And then he moved to Montreal around 1920. My father and my grandfather worked together for about 30 years. Once they saved enough money, they would take a trip back to China. And that’s when the children would be born. According to the law, they couldn’t stay more than two years in China; otherwise, they would lose their right to return to Canada. The Chinese [in Canada] were non-citizens and they didn’t have the right to vote. Essentially they didn’t have any civil rights in Canada whatsoever. It was only after the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1947 that my father got his citizenship and moved the rest of his family to Canada in 1950.

Q: Why do you think the movement and redress took so long?

A: It took 22 years—it was a generational struggle. It took so long because the Canadian government was intransigent in their attitude and approach towards redress. We started off with Pierre Trudeau. Margaret Mitchell [then minister of multiculturalism and citizenship] sent a letter asking for repayment of the head tax. [Trudeau] ignored the situation. Then we went through Brian Mulroney, who did quite well for the Japanese—he redressed the Japanese internment, but he was unable to overcome bureaucracy to redress the Chinese, Ukrainians, the Jewish and others who were affected by exclusionary practices of the government. After Mulroney, it was Chrétien, and he formed this policy of “no apology, no compensation.” For 10 years, the government refused to talk with us. Then you have [Paul] Martin, who carried on this policy of “no talk, no redress, no compensation.” It was only until Harper, who saw an advantage in redressing and apologizing for the Chinese Head Tax, that [an apology was made] in 2006. In the beginning, we were all naive. We thought that if we explained the case, they would do the right thing because it was such an obvious case of injustice and discrimination. But, of course, the government has no heart. You can’t appeal to a government’s emotions…So we started to organize a lot deeper in the community, organizing large meetings, demonstrations in Parliament and so on.

Q: You were at the redress ceremony, but you almost didn’t go. Is that right?

A: Yes, because the government never told us what they were going to do, other than saying that they would apologize. We were sending letters and submissions to the government to try and get a meeting to negotiate a settlement. So it wasn’t a redress settlement, it was a redress pronouncement on the part of the government. They controlled everything, so we had no input into what the redress should be. We didn’t want to encourage people to go because we were afraid that people would just go for photo op and give Harper all this credit for partial redress. [At the time] my mother had suffered from a stroke. So I discussed it with my siblings and we thought that we should go to represent our mother. My sister and myself, we went.

Q: I guess it was bittersweet, because there still hasn’t been any resolution for the descendants of head tax payers.

A: Yes, for instance, my sister—she was glad for redress for our mother, but her husband’s parents had passed away, so her husband’s family would get nothing. It was bittersweet in that sense.

Q: In your book you have a quote from [journalist] Ray Yao criticizing the descendants for campaigning for full redress from the perspective of less-privileged Chinese immigrants “working 10 hours a day in a noodle shop making minimum wage: you are a lawyer and driving a bloody SUV, and then you want your $20,000? You didn’t suffer, your grandparents suffered and you reap the benefit?” Do you think there’s some truth to that?

A: Many of the leadership in our movement were lawyers in Toronto. So he took a swipe at these people who were calling for full redress.

Q: There is this stereotype of Chinese-Canadians today being doctors, lawyers—an accomplished “model minority.” I wonder whether that makes it difficult to elicit the sympathy from non-Chinese Canadians for this past suffering.

A: Not all the immigrants who come here are part of the model minority. The model minority is a false concept that people like to paint—the stereotype of the Chinese being well-educated and being professionals. But like other members of Canadian society, in the Chinese community there’s a class structure. Not everybody attains that top echelon in society.

Source: The enduring legacy of Canada’s racist head tax on Chinese-Canadians

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Doctors and Racial Bias: Still a Long Way to Go

2019/02/28 Leave a comment

Of note:

The racist photo in the medical school yearbook page of Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia has probably caused many physicians to re-examine their past.

We hope we are better today, but the research is not as encouraging as you might think: There is still a long way to go in how the medical field treats minority patients, especially African-Americans.

A systematic review published in Academic Emergency Medicinegathered all the research on physicians that measured implicit bias with the Implicit Association Test and included some assessment of clinical decision making. Most of the nine studies used vignettes to test what physicians would do in certain situations.

The majority of studies found an implicit preference for white patients, especially among white physicians. Two found a relationship between this bias and clinical decision making. One found that this bias was associated with a greater chance that whites would be treated for myocardial infarction than African-Americans.

This study was published in 2017.

The Implicit Association Test has its flaws. Although its authors maintain that it measures external influences, it’s not clear how well it predicts individual behavior. Another, bigger systematic review of implicit bias in health care professionals was published in BMC Ethics, also in 2017. The researchers gathered 42 studies, only 15 of which used the Implicit Association Test, and concluded that physicians are just like everyone else. Their biases are consistent with those of the general population.

The researchers also cautioned that these biases are likely to affect diagnosis and care.

A study published three years earlier in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine surveyed 543 internal medicine and family physicians who had been presented with vignettes of patients with severe osteoarthritis. The survey asked the doctors about the medical cooperativeness of the patients, and whether they would recommend a total knee replacement.

Even though the descriptions of the cases were identical except for the race of the patients (African-Americans and whites), participants reported that they believed the white patients were being more medically cooperative than the African-American ones. These beliefs did not translate into different treatment recommendations in this study, but they were clearly there.

In 2003, the Institute of Medicine released a landmark report on disparities in health care. The evidence for their existence was enormous. The research available at that time showed that even after controlling for socioeconomic factors, disparities remained.

There’s significant literature documenting that African-American patients are treated differently than white patients when it comes to cardiovascular procedures. There were differences in whether they received optimal care with respect to a cancer diagnosis and treatment. African-Americans were less likely to receive appropriate care when they were infected with H.I.V. They were also more likely to die from these illnesses even after adjusting for age, sex, insurance, education and the severity of the disease.

Disparities existed for patients with diabetes, kidney disease, mental health problems, and for those who were pregnant or were children.

The report cited some systems-level factors that contributed to this problem. Good care may be unavailable in some poor neighborhoods, and easily obtained in others. Differences in insurance access and coverage can also vary by race.

But the report’s authors spent much more time on issues at the level of care, in which some physicians treated patients differently based on their race.

Physicians sometimes had a harder time making accurate diagnoses because they seemed to be worse at reading the signals from minority patients, perhaps because of cultural or language barriers. Then there were beliefs that physicians already held about the behavior of minorities. You could call these stereotypes, like believing that minority patients wouldn’t comply with recommended changes.

Of course, there’s the issue of mistrust on the patient side. African-American patients have good reason to mistrust the health care system; the infamous Tuskegee Study is just one example.

In its report, the Institute of Medicine recommended strengthening health plans so that minorities were not disproportionately denied access. It urged that more underrepresented minorities be trained as health care professionals, and that more resources be directed toward enforcing civil rights laws.

In practice, it endorsed more evidence-based care across the board. It noted the importance of interpreters, community health workers, patient education programs and cross-cultural education for those who care for patients.

All of this has met with limited success.

In 2017, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality issued its 15th yearly report on health care quality and disparities, as called for by the medical institute in 2002. It found that while some disparities had gotten better, many remained. The most recent data available showed that 40 percent of the quality measures were still worse for blacks than whites. Other groups fared worse as well. Measures were worse for 20 percent of Asian-Americans, 30 percent of Native Americans, and one third of Pacific Islanders and Hispanics.

Of the 21 access measures tracked from 2000 to 2016, nine were improving. Nine were unchanged. Three were worsening.

It would be easy to look at a racist photo from the 1980s and conclude that it was a different time and that things have changed. Many things have not. We know that racism, explicit and implicit, was pervasive in medical care back then. Many studies show that it’s still pervasive today. The recommendations from the medical institute in 2003 still hold. Any fair assessment of the evidence suggests much work remains to be done.

 

Source: Doctors and Racial Bias: Still a Long Way to Go

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Diversity of the Black population in Canada: An overview

2019/02/28 Leave a comment

A really good an in-depth of the diversity in the Canadian Black population. Look forward to the next in the series, contrasting socio-economic outcomes. Important work:

There were almost 1.2 million Black people living in Canada in 2016. The Black population is diverse and has a long and rich history in the country. More than 4 in 10 Black people were born in Canada.

Among the Black population born outside of Canada, the source countries of immigration have changed over time. More than half of this population who immigrated before 1981 were born in Jamaica and Haiti. Black newcomers now come from about 125 different countries, mainly from Africa.

The vast majority of the Black population live in large urban areas. In 2016, 94.3% of Black people lived in Canada’s census metropolitan areas, compared with 71.2% of the country’s total population. Toronto had the largest Black population in the country, with 442,015 people or 36.9% of Canada’s Black population. It was followed by Montréal, Ottawa–Gatineau, Edmonton and Calgary, each home to at least 50,000 Black people.

To illustrate the growth and the diversity of the Black population, a first infographic was released on February 6, 2019. A booklet is now available to provide more information about the richness of diversity among the Black population in Canada. A number of topics are covered in this booklet including population growth, age and sex structure, place of birth, generation status, immigration, ethnic and cultural origins, languages and a few geographical highlights.

….

Conclusion

This portrait of Canada’s Black population from the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics is based mainly on 2016 Census data. It provides a demographic overview of the Black population, as well as key statistics related to their ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity and a few geographical highlights. However, this portrait is not meant to be exhaustive.

Although it highlights the great diversity within the Black population, it does not present any result related to the several challenges and issues faced by many members of Black communities in Canada.

Challenges and issues such as those related to labour market integration, income inequalities, differential access to resources, health conditions, discrimination, school dropout, etc., may impact differently various groups within the Black population. Moreover, although the Black population generally has similar characteristics compared to the overall population, they often present different socio-economic outcomes. For example, the unemployment rate for the Black population is higher than for Canada’s total population.

Disaggregated 2016 Census data tables with selected demographic, cultural, labour market and income characteristics are available on Statistics Canada’s Census program website which can provide insights on similarities and differences within the Black population as well as between the Black population and other populations in Canada.

New analytical products will be released later which will describe in more detail the characteristics of Canada’s Black population, as well as their socio-economic outcomes.

Source: Diversity of the Black population in Canada: An overview 

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Switzerland: Mistrust of Islam nearly three times higher than negative views of muslims

2019/02/28 Leave a comment

Interesting trend and distinction between Islam the faith and Muslims the people:

Every two years, Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office compiles a survey of attitudes towards people of different race, religion and nationality. The survey entitled: living together in Switzerland, asks a wide range of questions covering attitudes held towards different people and experiences associated with those differences.

More than 3,000 permanent residents of Switzerland between the ages of 15 and 88, selected at random across Switzerland’s main regions, were asked a series of questions. Those questioned included Swiss citizens and foreign nationals.

One group of questions, which looks at attitudes towards muslims, shows a large difference between how the population views the faith compared to it’s followers. In 2018, 29% said they mistrusted Islam, while 11% said they held a negative view of its followers.

The survey also looked at attitudes towards the jewish community. 9% said they held a negative view of this group. There was no separate question on attitudes towards the jewish faith.

Negativity towards muslims in Switzerland has declined since 2016. In 2016, 14% said they held a negative view of them. In 2018, the figure was 11%.

On the other hand the percentage declaring negativity towards the jewish community increased from 8% in 2016 to 9% in 2018.

In line with these trends, support for negative stereotypes of jewish people rose between 2016 and 2018 while it fell for muslims. The percentage saying the negative stereotype of muslim people, defined as fanaticism, aggressivity, oppression of women and non-respect of human rights, applied strongly and systematically fell from 16.8% to 13.7%, while the percentage saying the stereotype of jewish people, defined as greed, being too exclusive, thirst for power and political radicality, applied strongly and systematically rose from 11.9% to 12.5% – the report cautions against reading too much into the stereotype figures because of the limited number of characteristics included and the high percentage of respondents not answering the question.

Religious discrimination was ranked the fifth most frequent form of discrimination in Switzerland. First was discrimination based on nationality. 58% said they’d experienced this. Next were language or accent (27%), gender (19%), professional status (18%) and religion (15%). Skin colour (15%), socio-economic group (14%), age (13%), political opinion (12%) and ethnicity (11%) completed the top ten.

Source: Mistrust of Islam nearly three times higher than negative views of muslims

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party posts mixed-bag results after its first byelection test

2019/02/27 Leave a comment

Of all the results of Monday’s by-elections, I found this to be the most interesting, given the role that Chinese Canadians appear to have played in the strong PPC result of 11 percent (39 percent of Burnaby South are Chinese origin).

If this pattern of relatively stronger support among Chinese Canadians prevails in the general election, there are six ridings with 40 percent or more Chinese origin (visible minority group) and 12 more with between 20-40 percent, all in BC’s lower mainland or the suburbs surrounding Toronto (the 905):

The fledgling People’s Party of Canada got off to an uneven start in its first electoral test Monday in a trio of federal byelections.

The party, founded last fall by former Conservative leadership contender Maxime Bernier, captured some 11 per cent of the vote in the Vancouver-area riding of Burnaby South but failed to make much of a splash among voters in the rural Ontario riding of York—Simcoe or the urban Montreal-area riding of Outremont where the party had less than 2 per cent of the final tally.

Bernier tweeted early Tuesday that the poor Ontario and Quebec numbers were “disappointing” and said he “expected more” from those ridings while praising the more favourable Burnaby result as “great.”

“Our party was born only 5 months ago!” Bernier wrote. “This is only the beginning of our journey. We are in it for the long haul … Let’s work even harder now to find the best candidates and be ready for the general election.”

Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, a former Christian talk show host who had some name recognition before launching her candidacy, was tapped by Bernier to represent the People’s Party in Burnaby South. She delivered the best result of the night for the new political outfit.

While she was a source of controversy because of some past remarks, Thompson peeled away enough votes from the more established parties to place fourth overall.

Thompson, whose slogan was of “Canada for Canadians,” ran a decidedly populist campaign for Parliament. Thompson has said her base was heavily comprised of evangelical Chinese-Canadian churchgoers in the diverse B.C. riding.

The comparatively strong showing by Thompson — in a riding ultimately won by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh — appeared to cut in to the Conservative party’s results in that riding.

Conservative Burnaby candidate, Jay Shin, captured about 23 per cent of the vote — five points less than what the previous Conservative candidate there managed to achieve in the 2015 federal election. Shin placed third behind Singh and Liberal candidate Richard T. Lee.

In central Canada, meanwhile, the People’s Party proved to be a marginal political force.

For example, in York—Simcoe, Ont., People’s Party candidate Robert Geurts, a criminal defence lawyer, placed a distant sixth out of nine candidates.

Geurts, best known for his past role as a prosecutor during the Paul Bernardo trial, was even outpaced by Dorian Baxter a candidate for the minor centre-right PC Party, an entity with a name similar to the now-defunct Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

Scot Davidson ultimately held the rural seat for the Conservative party with a 20-point margin over Liberal Shaun Tanaka.

Fewer than 20 per cent of registered voters in York—Simcoe bothered to vote in Monday’s contest.

Even before the results were finalized, Bernier tweeted Monday that volunteers should be proud of what they accomplished so soon after the party was founded.

“The hundreds of volunteers who helped our candidates in Burnaby South, York–Simcoe and Outremont can be proud of what they achieved. They blazed a trail that thousands of others will follow across the country in October,” he said.

In Outremont, People’s Party candidate James Seale, a Canadian Army veteran, also failed to post a result better than 2 per cent of the vote.

Seale was a member of the armed forces for more than 30 years, and served overseas stints in Israel, Germany, Haiti and Bosnia before later becoming a military instructor and civil servant.

He said he was attracted to the party because of Bernier’s promise to increase investment in Canada’s defence.

While Bernier’s party disappointed in the Quebec riding, Green party candidate Daniel Green placed third — among the party’s best ever showing in la belle province.

Green, the deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada, posted better numbers than Bloc Québécois candidate Michel Duchesne and Conservative candidate Jasmine Louras who placed fourth and fifth respectively in the riding that was last held by former NDP leader Tom Mulcair.

“The GPC has always been underestimated. But just watch us in October,” Green tweeted Monday in reference to the forthcoming federal election.

While Mulcair won the riding by more than 11 points in the 2015 federal election, Liberal Rachel Bendayan easily captured the seat Monday outpacing NDP candidate Julia Sánchez by more than 15 points.

Source: Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party posts mixed-bag results after its first byelection test

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Increasing Anti-Semitism: Macron Struggles to Contain Rising Hate Crimes

2019/02/27 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

He had hoped, said French President Emmanuel Macron with a heavy voice last Wednesday evening, that “this dinner would take place in a cheerful context.” Wearing a dark suit and a serious expression, he stood in front of a podium in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall near the Louvre museum.

CRIF, the umbrella association of Jewish organizations in France, had invited Macron for their annual dinner. It could have been just one event among many for the French president, whose agenda is always packed. But it didn’t turn out that way. Quite the contrary.

That has to do with a situation that is anything but cheerful. Anti-Semitic attacks increased by fully 74 percent in 2018, an unfathomable spike. Last year, 541 incidents were registered, compared to 311 the previous year.

And then there are the recent events: Only a few days before the event near the Louvre, a man shouted at philosopher Alain Finkielkraut on the street, saying that he was a “filthy Jew,” that he belonged to a “filthy race” and that he should “go back to Tel Aviv.” The man who yelled at Finkielkraut was wearing a yellow vest.

Then a Jewish cemetery in Alsace was desecrated as was, though it wasn’t yet known by the time of the dinner, another cemetery near Lyon, where someone wrote “Shoa blabla” on a memorial. Meanwhile, the portrait on the 13th Arrondissement town hall of Simone Veil, the Holocaust survivor and former European Parliament president, was daubed with black swastikas. And someone sprayed “Jews” on the window of a bagel shop.

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In his speech to the members of the Jewish organizations, Emmanuel Macron said: “For the last several years, anti-Semitism has once again been killing people in France.” Then he listed, one after the other, the names of the people who had been murdered in France in recent years because they were Jewish.

Neither anti-Semitism nor anti-Semitic violence are new phenomena in France or in the rest of Europe. Both have a long history, with a few tragic nadirs: In France, these include the Dreyfus Affair in the late 19th century, the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Carpentras in 1990, the torture-killing of Ilan Halimi in 2006 in a Parisian suburb and the murder of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, about a year ago.

The current displays of anti-Semitism, though, are the crest of an almost all-encompassing wave of hatred and violence crashing over the country. Anti-Semitic attacks can be recognized for what they are; unlike other acts of violence, they can be categorized and geographically pinpointed. As such, the hatred of Jews can be identified even against the backdrop of broadly rising violence.

And here, too, there is a problem specific to France, as the terror attacks of the past few years have shown: The failed integration of younger Muslims and their increasing radicalization.

But a debate has emerged about whether the yellow vests are per se anti-Semitic, whether they are responsible for this new wave of violence. And the likely answer to that question is: They aren’t any more responsible nor are they any more anti-Semitic than the rest of the French. Or, for that matter, than the Germans or the Austrians.

The so-called yellow vests, after all, are not a homogenous collection of people that fall into a specific sociological category. Rather, they are a disparate movement united by only one thing: indignation. And when indignation escalates, hate is ultimately the result.

Rising to the Surface

“I am shocked how much hatred there currently is in our country,” says Denis Peschanski, a historian who researches historical commemoration. In his view, French anti-Semitism is always in the background, but in pushes its way forward in times of crisis. And it thrives, he says, in an environment where conspiracy theories are plentiful.

And this is where the yellow vests play a role, because, no matter how diverse they may be, the movement’s combined force has paved the way, both verbally and physically, for these acts of violence. What is new, though, is the unrestrained nature of the hatred.

There is a hatred of taxes and of tax increases. Hatred for the president, who some would like to see guillotined in the traffic circles in rural France where the yellow vests camp.

And then there’s the lawmaker who threatened Macron by saying the president would end up like Kennedy if he didn’t change his policies. We are essentially witnessing a collective breaking of taboos. “A Clockwork Orange” in French.

These newly blurred boundaries are also palpable within the yellow vest movement. After nurse Ingrid Levavasseur, a kind of figurehead for the movement, wanted to run in the European Parliament elections with her own list of candidates, she was so harshly insulted and threatened that she withdrew her candidacy. “Dirty whore!” one person yelled at her. “Go get raped!”

All constraints seem to have disappeared. Anyone can be whatever they want to be: racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist. Freedom of speech is showing its dark side.

And it isn’t just insults and complaints. The Arc de Triomphe was graffitied. Someone peed on the barrier protecting the French National Assembly. Hatred of the bank on the corner leads to its windows being shattered, and the same happens to the shoe store across the street.

Peschanski, the historian, connects these transgressions to two things: the presidential election in 2017 — which Emmanuel Macron won against all expectations, making him quasi-illegitimate in the eyes of many — and to the populism that has become rampant across Europe.

The more powerful the populists become, the more they spread their ideas, their rhetoric, and their hate. The question is now whether the situation can be reset, and whether this spiral of physical and verbal violence can be ended.

Emmanuel Macron is trying in his own way, by travelling to remote corners of the country and talking to people, whether they are local politicians, students or retirees. He has decreed a “great debate” for the country, which sometimes seems akin to national group therapy. He listens to the complaints, takes down criticisms and then responds to them.

An Attempt at Dialogue

To those who are angry, he argues that politicians are not fundamentally corrupt. To those who are afraid, he declares that democracy can protect them. Most of the time, he cuts quite a good form at such appearances because he tends towards the pedagogical. Having spent the first year of his administration focused on establishing his authority, he is now showing his Montessori qualities.

But Macron can’t be everywhere, and he has no alternative to offer the senseless, those who believe that nothing can be accomplished without violence. Many in France, including people who don’t take part in the yellow vest protests, believe that these weaker elements of France never would have heard from him had the yellow vests not revolted.

French President Emmanuel Macron, center, visiting the Shoah Memorial in Paris.

This is partly Macron’s fault. He didn’t respond until quite late, when the violence had boiled over. Now, he is trying to calm down the situation and to pursue reconciliation.

On Wednesday evening, in his speech to CRIF, he said he wanted to punish hate more decisively. He said this push would include laws that, for example, would keep a closer eye social networks. A form of anti-hate law is to be passed banning openly racist or anti-Semitic groups like Blood & Honour Hexagone and Combat 18. Anti-Zionist views are to be considered a form of anti-Semitism, a position which Macron had resisted until recently.

In his talk at the dinner, he said that he had been “ashamed” when he visited the desecrated Jewish cemetery in Alsace. Anti-Semitism, Macron said, isn’t a problem for the Jews, but a problem for the republic.

When his speech ended, the audience applauded. The group’s chairman, Francis Kalifat, strode on stage to thank him. First, he shook the president’s hand, then suddenly took his arm, grabbed it and held it up, like a boxing champion. It was a gesture of desperation.

Source: Increasing Anti-Semitism: Macron Struggles to Contain Rising Hate Crimes

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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