The tropes around Jews and ‘Jewish money’

2019/04/01 Leave a comment

Of note:

The charcoal illustration on the front of the London Saturday Journal, a popular Victorian magazine, published in late March 1841, pictured a rather sinister looking man, with a cap in hand and a sack on his back looking slyly at the reader. Entitled “The Jew Old Clothes Man”, an article inside the magazine goes on to describe Jewish second-hand clothes sellers in London in particularly prejudiced terms.

The cover is one of the many chilling images and texts on display at a new exhibition at London’s Jewish Museum. Entitled “Jews, Money, Myth,” the exhibition, on till July 7, examines both the role that money has played in Jewish life as well as the ways in which the associations — mostly negative — between Jews and money and profit have developed over the centuries.

The exhibition is particularly timely. Concerns around anti-Semitism have risen in the U.K. as they have across much of the rest of the world. While the Labour Party has faced allegations that it has not been tough enough on anti-Semitism within its ranks, the Jewish charity Community Security Trust reported a record number of anti-Semitic incidents last year. It is striking that even in Camden, a diverse London neighbourhood, entry into the museum is subject to security checks.

Even as major political parties have attempted to crack down on anti-Semitic rhetoric, others have got away with sharply divisive language. In 2017, the former head of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage faced considerable criticism over remarks on LBC radio about how a “Jewish lobby” in the U.S. was “very powerful”. He is yet to apologise.

In this context, the exhibition is particularly striking and powerful, drawing both on objects involved in Jewish rituals, art, literature, and other objects of life such as board games. It also has some newly created videos to explore and build up an understanding of how the tropes around Jews and money have come to be built up — as well as the reality. “Throughout history, there have been both rich and poor Jews. The exhibition shows how Jewish wealth and poverty have been created by circumstances as well as the activity and acumen of Jews themselves — rather than ‘Jewishness’ itself,” says a note on the exhibition.

Objects, ancient and modern

There are ancient Judean coins, ceremonial objects involved in charitable giving and, in more modern times, the paperwork of efforts made by Jewish communities in the U.K., during and before the Second World War to bring Jewish refugees to Britain. Chillingly — particularly in the context of the heated discussion on immigration and refugees under way across much of the West — there is a reminder of the difficulties that Jewish refugees faced coming to the U.K. even at that time: to seek refuge, they needed to prove they were able to finance themselves privately.

There are literary explorations of the stereotypes built up around Jews and money — from Shakespearean characters such as Shylock and Charles Dickens’s Fagin, to literature such as the Nazi propaganda book The Poisonous Mushroom.

There are also exhibits such as Rembrandt’s “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,” rather sympathetically picturing the biblical figure down on his knees begging for forgiveness from a group of priests as he attempts to return the thirty pieces of silver he was said to have betrayed Christ for. That story, the exhibition notes, has been key to propelling anti-Jewish stereotypes till this day.

Given the weight of the matter, it is perhaps unsurprising that some of the material resorts to black humour and satire, such as a video by U.S.-based artist Doug Fishbone. At one point, he notes the extent to which Indians in the West are now out-earning Jews there, leading British politician and author Lord Archer to declare, back in 2008, that Indians were the new Jews. “Maybe they will be accused of being the puppet masters behind the throne too?” asks Mr. Fishbone in his video.

Source: The tropes around Jews and ‘Jewish money’

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Signes religieux: volte-face à Québec solidaire

2019/04/01 Leave a comment

Interesting:

Les militants de Québec solidaire ont rejeté par une écrasante majorité la position traditionnelle de leur parti sur le port de signes religieux, la recommandation du rapport Bouchard-Taylor. Ils ont voté pour s’opposer à toute interdiction, la même position que le Parti libéral du Québec.

À l’occasion du conseil national de leur parti, les quelque 300 délégués étaient appelés à reconsidérer la position sur les signes religieux. La direction de QS a donné le feu vert à la réouverture de ce débat après les élections du 1er octobre, à la suite de pressions exercées par des associations de circonscription.

Deux choix étaient offerts aux délégués : « l’option A » en faveur de la recommandation Bouchard-Taylor, celle de proscrire les signes religieux pour les agents de l’État ayant un pouvoir de coercition (policiers, gardiens de prison, procureurs de la Couronne et juges). QS défendait cette position depuis longtemps : Françoise David avait déposé un projet de loi en ce sens en 2013.

Mais une tendance claire se dessinait avant même l’assemblée plénière de samedi en faveur de « l’option B », selon laquelle « aucune règle particulière sur les signes religieux ne devrait s’appliquer à certaines professions plutôt qu’à d’autres, incluant celles qui exercent un pouvoir de coercition ».

Les délégués ont voté massivement en faveur de l’option B ce qui a déclenché un tonnerre d’applaudissements. L’assemblée plénière a été ouverte aux médias, contrairement au huis clos qui avait été voté lors du conseil national de décembre où le même sujet était sur le tapis.

Il y avait des militants en faveur d’une « option C » : interdire le port de signes religieux à tout employé de l’État en contact avec les citoyens. Ils ont accusé le parti de les avoir marginalisés, d’avoir orienté les discussions en refusant de soumettre leur option au conseil national.

La direction du parti a jugé que leur demande n’était pas recevable, en contradiction avec le programme. « On nous a nui, on ne nous a pas laissé parler trop librement », a soutenu Richard Aubert, du « collectif laïcité ». Que le parti ait accepté de présenter une candidate voilée, Eve Torres, aux élections du 1er octobre, une première au Québec, « ça me pose problème », a-t-il affirmé. « Ça me dérange qu’au niveau du Canada  un parti pour lequel je voterais au niveau du fédéral c’est un sikh qui le dirige, le NPD », a-t-il ajouté.

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Is there an Austrian link to New Zealand mosque attacks?

2019/04/01 Leave a comment

More on the possible Austrian link:

The Austrian authorities are investigating possible connections after it emerged that the main suspect in the Christchurch mosque attacks made a donation of €1,500 (£1,293) to the far-right Identitarian Movement in Austria (IBÖ).

The suspect visited Austria from 27 November to 4 December last year, according to Austria’s Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, who said that potential links to Austrian extremists were being looked into.

Police have searched the house of the charismatic, social media-savvy IBÖ leader, Martin Sellner, who has done much to raise the profile of the Identitarians throughout Europe.

The group is hostile to multiculturalism, and claims to defend Europe against migrants, especially Muslims.

Mr Sellner has firmly denied any involvement with the 15 March attacks, which killed 50 people, but admits he received the donation and wrote an email of thanks.

In a video posted online, he said: “I am not a member of a terrorist organisation. I have nothing to do with this man, other than that I passively received a donation from him.”

Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has said the group will be dissolved if it is deemed to be a terrorist organisation.

“There must be no tolerance for dangerous ideologies in our country – no matter if it’s radical Islam or right-wing fanaticism,” he said.

The main suspect in the Christchurch mosque attacks, Australian Brenton Tarrant, also seems to have had a preoccupation with Austrian history – something the interior minister said was being investigated.

Austrian landmark

The suspect’s clothes and weapons were covered with writing and symbols.

One of the words daubed in white on a gun magazine was “Vienna”.

There was also a string of names of historical figures, including that of Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, the military commander of Vienna during the Ottoman siege of 1683.

Starhemberg and his company of 20,000 men defended the city against the 120,000-strong Ottoman army, which was eventually defeated by the combined forces of Poles, Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire.

The Battle of Vienna in 1683 is often cited by historians as the point where the Ottoman advance on Western Europe was stopped; the turning of the tide in the Muslim/Christian struggle for the control of Europe.

As such, it is a date celebrated by the far right, including, it seems, the Christchurch suspect, who is a self-confessed anti-Muslim white supremacist.

‘The Great Replacement’

The Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DOEW), which researches extreme-right activity, says there are “many rhetorical and ideological overlaps” between groups like the Identitarians and the suspected Christchurch attacker.

“The title of the attacker’s manifesto, The Great Replacement (which sees immigrants as a threat to “white” Western culture) was a slogan popularised by the Identitarians,” DOEW said on its website.

“Regardless of the outcome of the investigation,” DOEW says, the Identitarians seem to be sticking to their narrative “for the time being”. It points to an IBÖ statement from last week, which speaks of the “Great Replacement” and calls for “De-Islamification”.

The whole affair is uncomfortable not just for the Identitarians, but for Austria’s government as well.

Mr Kurz’s own conservative Austrian People’s Party is in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), making Austria the only country in Western Europe with a far-right presence in government.

FPÖ leader and Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said on Wednesday that his party had “nothing to do with the Identitarians”.

However, Austrian media published photos of FPÖ politicians with members of the group, and Bernhard Weidinger from DOEW told the BBC that there were many links between FPÖ politicians and members of the IBÖ, who often attended each other’s events.

In 2016, before he became interior minister, Herbert Kickl gave a speech to a far-right conference in Linz, called Defenders of Europe. The FPÖ politician addressed his audience, which included Identitarians, as “like-minded people”, according to Austrian media reports.

The FPÖ has also long celebrated the Battle of Vienna victory of 1683. In 2010 it even published a comic, set during the siege, featuring Mr Strache as a knight saving Vienna’s cathedral from an Ottoman minaret.

And when Mr Strache and Mr Kurz presented their government programme back in 2017, shortly before the coalition was sworn in, they broke with tradition, and held the event on Vienna’s Kahlenberg mountain, where the Battle of Vienna took place.

Asked if there was any historical significance to the choice of venue, Mr Kurz said no.

But in a video blog, Mr Sellner hailed it as “a good omen”.

Source: Is there an Austrian link to New Zealand mosque attacks?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , ,

Fourth time’s the charm for secularism in Quebec? Not likely

2019/03/30 Leave a comment

Expect that there will continue to be extensive media coverage and commentary over the coming months:

For the better part of two decades, an emotional debate has raged in Quebec about the compatibility of religious symbols with the province’s modern secular identity.

Premier François Legault seems to think his government can settle the matter in the next few months.

On Thursday, his became the fourth consecutive government to draft comprehensive legislation attempting to regulate what accommodations should be made for religious minorities.

Of the three previous attempts, two died on the order sheet and the third was gutted by an injunction that questioned its constitutionality.

Each seemed to be accompanied by arguments more rancorous than the last. Will this time be different?

Bill 21 sets narrow limits on when accommodations can be considered (as did attempt No. 1). It bars a host of authority figures, including public school teachers, from wearing religious symbols, which had been a feature of the Parti Québécois’s Charter of Values (attempt No. 2).

And it takes up the most controversial provision of attempt No. 3, insisting that government services be given and received without one’s face being covered.

By mixing and matching these elements, Legault is wagering enough Quebecers will be satisfied and move onto bigger and better things.

“I would like that we turn the page and talk about health care, education, economy. I would like that it be settled for the summer,” Legault said after the bill was tabled.

While he may get his wish of seeing it pass before the summer recess — his party has a sizeable majority — there are a number of reasons to think we haven’t yet heard the last of the debate over reasonable accommodation of religious and cultural beliefs.

Overcoming suspicions

The first of these reasons may be the least apparent.

Bill 21 invokes the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If passed, the bill would be effectively safeguarded from court challenges that claim it violates basic rights, such as freedom of religion, contained elsewhere in the charter.

The government wants to be able to pass the law, and not worry about it being overturned for at least five years, when the invocation of the notwithstanding clause would have to be renewed.

But foreclosing the option of a legal challenge isn’t likely to quell the widespread concern the bill has already raised. It might, in fact, do the contrary, channeling concern and anger into more public forums: op-eds, TV panels, call-in shows and the street.

There is, moreover, deep-seated suspicion among many groups about whether the government is sincerely weighing competing interests, or simply sacrificing minority rights for the sake of the majority.

The bill’s stated aim is to enshrine the principles of secularism in Quebec law, and in doing so, protect the fabric of a francophone society in a globalizing and largely anglophone world.

But just like past attempts at legislating religious accommodations, this one deals extensively with what people wear, and the clothing of one group in particular is singled out: Muslim women.

It is Muslim women who wear face coverings for religious reasons, and so it is they who will have to unveil when accessing basic public services, such as taking out a library book.

“It’s a discriminatory law,” Gabrielle Bouchard, president of Quebec Women’s Federation said Thursday. “We’re doing that on the back of minority women, basically telling them ‘stay home, we don’t want to see you.'”

Bouchard, in other words, is giving voice to the concern that the government isn’t sensitive to the anxieties of minority groups in the province.

This is a government, after all, whose minister of women, Isabelle Charest, has now twice said she believes the hijab is a symbol of “oppression,” never mind why Muslim women say they wear the headscarf.

And this is a government led by a man who says Islamophobia isn’t a systemic problem in Quebec, again despite what Muslim groups and anti-racism activists have tried to demonstrate.

Balancing the equation

When Gerard Bouchard, a sociologist, and Charles Taylor, a philosopher, teamed up in 2007 to investigate Quebec’s reasonable accommodation crisis, they came to two broad conclusions.

The first: that the crisis was largely a product of widespread misperceptions about how institutions and religious minorities actually adapt to each other.

Unlike what is portrayed in the media, solutions are usually found easily enough, and don’t require litigation, or arbitration, just a bit of informal dialogue.

The second conclusion suggested the sense of an impasse was driven by parallel sets of anxieties: Francophones, on the one hand, worried about the future of their language, and cultural minorities on the other hand, wondered constantly about their own place in Quebecois society.

“The conjunction of these two anxieties is obviously not likely to foster integration in a spirit of equality and reciprocity,” their report reads.

Bill 21, like its predecessors, addresses the first problem, but has nothing to say about the second.

The (still) untested hypothesis of the Bouchard-Taylor report is that until the Quebec government is willing to balance that equation, we’ll be debating reasonable accommodation for some time to come.

Source: Fourth time’s the charm for secularism in Quebec? Not likely

How it will play out in Montreal, where most immigrants and visible minorities live, will be important:

« Très préoccupée » par le projet de Loi sur la laïcité, la mairesse Valérie Plante estime que le gouvernement du Québec « s’engage sur une pente glissante en contournant les Chartes des droits et libertés ». Saluant certains assouplissements introduits, elle demande à Québec de laisser au Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) de décider lui-même du port des signes religieux chez ses agents.

La mairesse de Montréal a réagi cet après-midi au dépôt du projet de Loi sur la laïcité. Elle a émis plusieurs réserves, estimant qu’il nuirait à l’intégration des immigrants en limitant leur capacité à décrocher certains emplois. « Pour moi, l’intégration des nouveaux arrivants passe d’abord et avant par l’accès à un emploi. Avoir un emploi, c’est plus qu’avoir un salaire, c’est une façon de se connecter aux valeurs et à la langue de la communauté d’accueil », a-t-elle dit.

Dans son allocution, elle s’est dite « très préoccupée par le fait que le gouvernement s’engage sur cette pente glissante et contourne certains principes fondamentaux des Chartes québécoise et canadienne des droits et libertés ». La mairesse estime que le port des signes religieux par certains employés ne remet pas en question la laïcité des institutions publiques.

Valérie Plante s’est dite déçue de voir Québec passer outre l’autonomie des Villes avec son projet de Loi. Elle s’est toutefois réjouie que les assouplissements introduits limitent l’impact sur les 28  000 employés de la Ville. « Le projet de Loi actuel offre plus de latitude, est plus connecté sur nos orientations, à savoir que les Montréalais peuvent recevoir les services peu importe ce qu’ils portent. De la même manière, des employés pourront continuer à travailler, peu importe ce qu’ils portent. »

La mairesse déplore toutefois que les règles affectent le SPVM. Elle aurait préféré que celui-ci puisse décider lui-même du port des signes religieux chez ses agents. Pour elle, il importe qu’un corps policier soit « représentatif de sa population. Plusieurs corps ont intégré les signes religieux à leur uniforme et cela n’atteint en rien les services rendus ou la sécurité des policiers et des gens qu’ils servent », a-t-elle plaidé.

Malgré ses réserves, Valérie Plante a salué certains assouplissements, notamment sur la question de l’offre de services à visage découvert. Elle a par ailleurs salué la décision de retirer le crucifix du Salon bleu à l’Assemblée nationale, à l’instar de l’hôtel de ville.

Surtout, la mairesse espère que le débat sur la laïcité sera posé. « Je lance un appel au calme. Ce n’est pas par des insultes sur les réseaux sociaux que nous ferons avancer ce débat. »

Source: Laïcité: Québec s’engage sur une pente glissante, déplore Plante

 

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Les Noirs du Canada : éradiquer le racisme structurel

2019/03/30 Leave a comment

It will be interesting to see the results and evaluations of the initiatives announced in Budget 2019 in about five years). The funding and programming appears more substantive than that of the Canadian Action Plan Against Racism following the 2001 Durban Conference:

Ce texte s’inscrit dans le contexte de la Décennie internationale des personnes d’ascendance africaine (2015-2024) décrétée par l’ONU. Au cours des 20 dernières années, la taille des communautés noires au Canada a doublé, passant de 573 860 membres en 1996 à 1 198 540 en 2016.

Les communautés noires représentent aujourd’hui plus de 3,5 % de la population totale du Canada et 15,6 % de la population définie comme faisant partie d’une minorité visible ou racisée. Selon les projections démographiques de Statistique Canada, la population noire poursuivra sa croissance et pourrait représenter entre 5,0 % et 5,6 % de la population canadienne d’ici 2036. Une des particularités des communautés noires du Québec et du Canada est la jeunesse de leurs membres. En effet, en 2016, l’âge médian de la population noire était de 29,6 ans, alors qu’il était de 40,7 ans pour la population totale.

La population noire du Canada et du Québec est fortement concentrée dans les grands centres urbains tels que Toronto, Montréal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Edmonton et Calgary.

Les communautés noires, incluant les jeunes, connaissent généralement un taux de chômage supérieur à la moyenne. Le taux de chômage des communautés noires est autour de 12 %, alors que la moyenne générale est de 5 % chez les non-Noirs. Chez les jeunes issus des communautés noires âgés de 15 à 24 ans, le taux de chômage est deux fois plus élevé que la moyenne chez les jeunes Québécois et Canadiens dans leur ensemble. Nés au pays ou ayant immigrés en bas âge, ces jeunes possèdent une formation équivalente aux autres jeunes Québécois et Canadiens d’origine française ou britannique. Pourtant, leurs chances d’accès à un emploi sont moindres. En plus des désavantages relatifs à la jeunesse, tels que le manque d’expérience et le manque de formation, les jeunes provenant des minorités racisées doivent composer également avec leur différence. L’incorporation des minorités ethniques, et plus particulièrement des « minorités racisées », sur le marché de l’emploi et dans d’autres sphères de la société demeure problématique.

La notion de « groupe racisé » ou de « minorité racisée » (qui nous paraît plus appropriée), ici, réfère à un processus de racisation et indique l’extension d’une signification raciale à des relations non classifiées ou caractérisées en termes raciaux dans une phase antérieure. Ainsi le groupe racisé renvoie aux groupes porteurs d’identité citoyenne et nationale précise, mais cibles du racisme. Il est à noter que la Loi sur l’équité en matière d’emploi réfère à la notion de minorité visible, qui désigne « les personnes, autres que les Autochtones, qui ne sont pas de race blanche ou qui n’ont pas la peau blanche ».

Rappelons que la perpétuation des discriminations systémiques et leur reproduction représentent un obstacle important pour les groupes qui en sont victimes. Ces problèmes ont également des répercussions néfastes sur l’ensemble de la société et engendrent des coûts sociaux et humains.

Pour évoquer à quel point la situation est préoccupante, le Groupe de travail d’experts sur les personnes d’ascendance africaine de l’ONU relatait dans un rapport sur la situation des Noirs au Canada en 2017 que le racisme anti-Noirs découle de « l’histoire d’esclavage, de ségrégation raciale et de marginalisation ».

Des organisations à l’avant-garde des enjeux et défis relatifs aux communautés noires

Le Sommet pancanadien des communautés noires, porté par la Fondation Michaëlle Jean, la Fédération des Canadiens noirs et le Centre somalien de services à la famille, en partenariat avec une panoplie d’organismes communautaires, a réclamé des mesures urgentes face à des problèmes auxquels se heurtent les personnes d’ascendance africaine partout au Canada. Une des principales initiatives émanant du Sommet consiste en l’élaboration d’un plan stratégique pancanadien en vue d’offrir une véritable feuille de route permettant aux communautés de collaborer avec les instances publiques et le secteur privé afin de résoudre ces problèmes. Ce plan d’action stratégique s’inscrit explicitement dans le cadre de la Décennie internationale des personnes d’ascendance africaine. Il constitue la version canadienne du Programme d’activités de l’ONU pour la Décennie (ce programme demande que chaque État membre de l’ONU se dote d’un plan d’action pour la Décennie). La mobilisation stratégique générée par le Sommet a su faire en sorte que le premier ministre canadien reconnaisse officiellement la Décennie internationale. Pour la première fois dans l’histoire du Canada, le budget fédéral de 2018 a alloué explicitement des sommes destinées aux communautés noires (renforts aux jeunes Noirs, appuis à la recherche sur la santé au sein des communautés noires, collaboration avec Statistique Canada pour obtenir des données ventilées sur les communautés noires du Canada, etc.). Soutenue par le plan stratégique canadien pour la Décennie internationale, la mobilisation des communautés noires en provenance des quatre coins du pays lors du Sommet de 2019 a débouché sur des rencontres avec des ministres fédéraux. Ces rencontres ciblées et stratégiques auraient contribué à générer une augmentation des sommes allouées spécifiquement aux communautés noires dans le budget fédéral de 2019. En reconnaissance de la Décennie internationale des personnes d’ascendance africaine de l’ONU, le budget fédéral de 2019 propose en effet une somme de 25 millions de dollars sur cinq ans, à compter de 2019-2020, ce qui constitue un pas dans la bonne direction.

Au Québec, le Sommet socioéconomique pour le développement des jeunes des communautés noires (SdesJ) ainsi que le Forum économique international des Noirs (FEIN) proposent également des orientations et des initiatives stratégiques pour contribuer au développement socioéconomique et à la création d’emplois valorisants au sein des communautés noires.

Le SdesJ entend miser sur la cohérence d’une stratégie gouvernementale pour la jeunesse québécoise et favoriser des synergies dans les communautés de pratique en préconisant notamment une approche structurante et holistique. Il souhaite encourager le financement conjoint de projets et de différentes initiatives (par les gouvernements, les communautés et la société civile). Le FEIN, quant à lui, promeut l’entrepreneuriat et l’investissement comme des moteurs essentiels de la création de la richesse au sein des communautés noires. L’entrepreneuriat est au cœur de sa stratégie, puisque le FEIN mise sur l’autonomisation économique des populations noires. Il propose notamment « des solutions pragmatiques aux enjeux économiques que vivent les populations noires » en mobilisant les différents acteurs concernés par ces problématiques et enjeux pour catalyser le progrès économique des Noirs.

Ces organisations réclament un travail concerté et continu avec les différents ordres de gouvernements —municipaux, provinciaux et territoriaux, fédéral — afin d’évaluer plus précisément la situation des communautés noires à travers le Canada, en vue de définir des politiques publiques et des programmes gouvernementaux qui contribueront à produire des résultats tangibles et mesurables pour les communautés noires.

La pleine participation des communautés noires : un enjeu majeur pour le Québec et le Canada

Les membres des communautés noires continuent d’être sérieusement désavantagés. En outre, les Noirs sont moins susceptibles d’avoir accès à des emplois gratifiants dans les postes stratégiques de direction. Plus souvent qu’autrement, les Noirs sont relégués dans des positions hiérarchiques moins favorables au sein des organisations publiques comme dans le secteur privé. Ces lieux où se concentre le pouvoir décisionnel demeurent-ils « la prérogative d’un segment relativement homogène de la population ? La composition de ces lieux stratégiques de pouvoir est-elle représentative de la population québécoise et canadienne, caractérisée par une grande diversification des origines ethnoculturelles ? » Les difficultés liées au fait d’être Noir et d’être confronté de manière récurrente à la discrimination et au racisme structurels, en milieu de travail et dans d’autres sphères d’activités, créent un profond malaise démocratique et une injustice sociale qu’il faut nommer afin d’apporter des correctifs sur une base pérenne et structurelle.

En effet, une démocratie véritable requiert des institutions et des modes de fonctionnement offrant des voies d’accès ouvertes à la participation de tous les individus aux différentes sphères d’activités (sociales, politiques, économiques ou culturelles) de la vie commune.

C’est pourquoi promouvoir la pleine participation des communautés noires aux différentes instances du pouvoir administratif, par exemple, c’est œuvrer à moderniser, sinon à légitimer notre démocratie en examinant à nouveau ce qui constitue les fondements d’une société juste et équitable. Il est fondamental, en ce sens, de porter une attention particulière aux normes et pratiques en cours qui obstruent l’atteinte de cette équité souhaitable.

Source: Les Noirs du Canada : éradiquer le racisme structurel

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After Christchurch, Commentators Are Imitating Sebastian Gorka

2019/03/30 Leave a comment

Interesting and sophisticated take, and good call for greater understanding of the differences within and between ideologies and perspectives:
After the 2015 Paris attacks by ISIS commandos, Donald Trump’s counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka wrote these notorious lines, blaming the ideology of “radical Islam” for the atrocity:

These attacks are the latest manifestation of a growing and globalized ideology of radical Islam that must be addressed at its source—which includes the mainstream imams and media personalities who nurture, promote and excuse it … They were inspired by a thriving online ideological structure that recruits and radicalizes mostly men to save “the caliphate” from “the kuffar [infidels]” … The threat we’re facing isn’t just individual terrorists. It’s the global ideology of radical Islam. We have to take it seriously, and call out imams, academics, and media personalities who give it a platform under the guise of exploring both sides, fostering debate or avoiding political correctness.

Except these words weren’t by Sebastian Gorka at all. They were written in The New York Times by Wajahat Ali, hours after the massacre of 50 Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15. I swapped white nationalism for radical Islam, politicians for imams, and Western civilization for the caliphate.

A funny thing happened after the tragedy of Christchurch: Everyone discovered, all at once, that ideology matters. Four years ago, commentators were contorting themselves to attribute jihadism to politics, social conditions, abnormal psychology—anything but the spread of wicked beliefs that lead, more or less directly, to violence. Ideology for thee but not for me. Imagine the contempt any thinking person would feel for someone whose reaction to Christchurch was to wonder whether a few Muslim street hoods had once roughed up the shooter, or if during his trip to Pakistan the authorities had given him a hard time at the airport. Did he have trouble getting a job? Feel unsettled by modernity?

In dismissing these tendentious explanations so breezily—so breezily that they receive not even a mention—Wajahat Ali is absolutely right. So are the countless other commentators, Muslim and not, who have belatedly come to the conviction that if bad ideas permeate communities (virtual and real), their effect is not incidental but decisive. Ali has, in fact, been direct in his acknowledgment of the role of belief in some contexts. Others have treated it as an embarrassment, especially in their own communities. In the neighborhoods that were targets of recruitment by ISIS, community leaders emphasized nonideological causes publicly. But they all knew, on some level, that ideas mattered, and any parents who detected a whisper of ISIS ideology in their household understood that it was as deadly as bubonic plague.

Almost two years ago, I opined, meekly, that Sebastian Gorka was not wrong about everything. I complimented him for noting the role of jihadist ideology, and then roasted him for botching the particulars of that ideology. Gorka’s view of jihad is monolithic; he believes, erroneously, that “radical Islam” is a vast and united front against which the next patriotic generation should prepare to fight. In fact, jihadism is a complicated network, with mutually antagonistic elements (Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, say) and even some elements that aren’t violent at all.

I regret that the commentators post-Christchurch are imitating Gorka’s main virtue as well as his signature flaw. The transposition is astonishing. Gorka treats Hezbollah like al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood like Hizb al-Tahrir—all different Islamist groups, with salient resemblances; his post-Christchurch doppelgängers seem ready to treat Tarrant like Trump, and Trump like Tarrant. In The New York Times, Omer Aziz accused the neuroscientist and atheist Sam Harris, as well as the Canadian psychologist and lobster enthusiast Jordan Peterson, of complicity in mass murder for objecting to what they argued are overbroad applications of the word Islamophobia. C. J. Werleman, a columnist for Middle East Eye, tweeted last weekend that “ISIS appeals to roughly 0.0000001% of Muslims,” whereas “right-wing extremism represents the views and attitudes of roughly 30-40% of white people.”

If we cannot distinguish Harris and Peterson from Richard Spencer, let alone Brenton Tarrant, then our problems are bad indeed. (Among those problems is arithmetic: 0.0000001 percent of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims is 1.8 Muslims, a substantial undercount of ISIS’s adherents, even when you round up to a whole number.) Harris and Peterson seem to think America under Barack Obama was a good place and getting better; this view is not compatible with fascism. To support Donald Trump (which Harris and Peterson in any case do not) is not to support the slaughter of Muslims in New Zealand. Just as there are many, many steps between believing in Sharia law and following ISIS, there are countless shades of difference between, say, supporting a border wall and wanting to snipe at Mexicans along the Rio Grande. If sharing a cause with ISIS or Tarrant makes you uncomfortable, perhaps it should. But it does not make you guilty of every crime they committed.

To differentiate on an ideological spectrum is hard. But to fail to differentiate leads to catastrophic blunders. If you blindly swat at enemies, and blindly extend courtesies to friends, the predictable result is that your friends get swatted and your enemies indulged. They may not send thank-you notes, but I promise they are grateful.

Source: After Christchurch, Commentators Are Imitating Sebastian Gorka

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Black people in Halifax 6 times more likely to be street checked than whites

2019/03/29 Leave a comment

Not unique to Halifax:

A new report released Wednesday on racial profiling by Halifax-area police found black people were street checked at a rate six times higher than white people in Halifax.

The independent report found that in Halifax, the odds of being stopped for a street check were highest for black men, followed by Arab males and black females.

The number is about double the CBC News estimate that triggered this review. The new report comes more than two years after data showed black people were three times more likely than whites to be subjected to the controversial practice in the municipality.

The report by Scot Wortley, a University of Toronto criminology professor, also found that police in the Halifax region do more street checks than police in Montreal, Vancouver or Ottawa. There were comparable rates in Edmonton and Calgary.

Street checks allow police officers to document information about a person they believe could be of significance to a future investigation, and record details such as their ethnicity, gender, age and location.

In Halifax, the odds of being stopped for a street check were highest for black people, followed by Arab and west Asian people. (CBC )

The 180-page report also found the practice of street checks has a disproportionate and negative impact on the African Nova Scotia community, contributing to the criminalization of black youth.

Wortley reported that black community members interviewed for the study said they are afraid of police, they feel targeted by police, and they are treated rudely and aggressively. They also said police treatment of black people has not improved significantly in the past 20 years.

Blacks more likely to be charged

Wortley was hired by the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission in 2017 after a report from Halifax RCMP in January of that year found that in the first 10 months of 2016, 41 per cent of 1,246 street checks involved black Nova Scotians.

Halifax Regional Police figures showed that of the roughly 37,000 people checked between 2005 and 2016, almost 4,100 were black — about 11 per cent of checks — despite making up only 3.59 per cent of the city’s population, according to the 2011 census.

In what Wortley described as a “difficult statistic,” the report showed that 30 per cent of Halifax’s black male population had been charged with a crime, as opposed with 6.8 per cent of the white male population, over that period.

Wortley said this likely means black people are more likely to be charged for the same behaviour than white people. The charge rate for black males with cannabis offences was four times higher than for white males, even though there’s no evidence that black people use more cannabis than white people.

He said police street checks have contributed to an erosion of trust in law enforcement and undermined the perceived legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system.

Wortley presented several recommendations including that street checks must be banned or at least regulated.

He said it’s clear that street checks have a disproportionate effect on the black Nova Scotia community and consequences of current street check use “clearly outweigh and crime prevention benefits.”

Nova Scotia Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard said she supports stopping the practice of street checks.

“The rest of Canada will be watching what happens here,” she told an audience gathered at the Halifax Central Library, where the report was unveiled.

‘Anti-black bias’

Lindell Smith, the first black city councillor elected in Halifax in 16 years, said in a statement on his website that he hopes this is an opportunity to “repair the broken relationship with the black community and our police force.”

“As a member of the African Nova Scotian community, I certainly do not need Dr. Wortley’s report to tell me that for decades the community has felt that there is anti-black bias, and racial profiling when policing black communities. I hope that with the release of this report that we as the black community don’t see this as a ‘I told you so’ moment,” he said.

Smith said he’s been stopped many times by police, both while driving and walking in the Halifax area. He said in those instances he had the felling of “humiliation and being racially profiled.”

Across Canada, the report found the average annual street check rate was highest in Toronto, with Halifax in second place. Despite an overall reduction in street checks in Halifax in recent years, Wortley says the over-representation of minorities has remained constant.

Ontario banned police carding in specific situations in 2017 — a controversial practice that is similar to street checks.

However, Halifax Regional Police Chief Jean-Michel Blais has argued in the past that the valid street checks performed by police officers in Halifax differ from the random stops or carding practices that are now restricted in Ontario.

Source: Black people in Halifax 6 times more likely to be street checked than whites

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Kenney’s misdirection on candidate woes would make David Copperfield proud

2019/03/29 Leave a comment

Would have expected more from him given his past federal experience in community outreach and understanding of these kinds of sensitivities. Noteworthy change to the pre-election period:

I don’t know if United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney has ever thought of a job as a magician.

This week he displayed the kind of misdirection that would make David Copperfield proud.

When asked about the Islamophobic and homophobic posts from one of his candidates in Calgary, Kenney didn’t address the controversial posts. Instead, he praised the candidate, Eva Kiryakos in Calgary-South East, as “selfless” for voluntarily stepping done to avoid becoming a “distraction” for the party during the election campaign.

And he didn’t stop there. He tried to describe her as a victim: “Eva’s also from a minority community herself. She is from a Middle Eastern refugee family, from a community that has faced a history of genocide.” She can’t possibly be guilty of intolerance, he seemed to be saying, because she’s from a community that has been the victim of intolerance.

Kenney wasn’t the only one trying to make Kiryakos into the injured party. She was vigorously doing that herself when explaining why she resigned for the campaign.

“Someone outside of our party has been threatening to smear me, and I have had enough of the bullies and the threats,” she said in a statement. That’s why she quit.

She’s the victim of bullying and a smear campaign. Except that it might be more accurate to say she’s the victim of her own intolerant postings on social media that include, but are not limited to, this example: “Muslim forces continue to use murder, rape, kidnapping, terror and forced breeding in pursuit of Christian Genocide in the Middle East while the world turns a blind eye.”

And this post about gay-straight alliances in schools: “You’re not interested in protecting children with GSAs, you’re interested in converting them.” When Kiryakos stepped down she was angry, she was defiant and she painted herself as a defender of free speech: “I voiced my honest opinion.” But she was not repentant.

Welcome to the new normal in Alberta politics. Well, in UCP politics. It would appear that when UCP members find themselves brought down by their own controversial histories, they no longer apologize or explain. They defiantly point fingers at anonymous others, claim victimhood and try to change the channel.Probably because this is becoming such a familiar narrative from the UCP.

On the eve of the election last week, another candidate, Caylan Ford in Calgary-Mountain View quit because of her own witless postings about how she was “somewhat saddened by the demographic replacement of white peoples in their homelands.” She never apologized but Kenney did at least address the comments as “completely inexplicable” and said she made the right decision by resigning.“Let me be clear, I condemn the remarks included in the texts that she had sent,” said Kenney.

By the time Kiryakos’ comments came to light, though, Kenney apparently didn’t want to repeat the slander, so to speak, by directly addressing the postings. This is a different tack to what Kenney and the UCP have done the past year when faced with members who have a history of hateful or ridiculous postings on social media.

Last July, the UCP disqualified Todd Beasley, who was vying for the party’s nomination in Brooks-Medicine Hat, for Islamophobic tweets.

Later that month, Sandra Kim found herself in trouble in the nomination race in Maskwacis-Wetaskiwin for social media posts critical of same-sex marriage. Then there were the three UCP nomination candidates for Edmonton-West Henday who found themselves in trouble in October for posing for photos with members of the anti-immigrant organization, Soldiers of Odin.

In several of these cases, the UCP issued condemnations.

In August, for example, the party denounced the social media postings of businessman Jerry Molnar who was contesting the nomination race in the riding of Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland. He had, among other things, called the now-former premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynn, who is openly gay, a “tranny.”

The party’s executive director, Janice Harrington, wrote Molnar a letter bluntly saying his posts would be used by the NDP to cause “serious reputational harm” to the UCP and its members.

“We would not let a candidate for the NDP off the hook for an offensive comment simply because it was said on his or her personal Facebook,” added Harrington.

Harrington, of course, was correct.

The NDP these days is happy to use the posts of Ford and Kiryakos to help cause serious reputational harm to the UCP.As a defence strategy the UCP is no longer condemning the posts or vilifying those doing the posting.

That’s because we’re in the middle of an election campaign where the NDP is trying to focus people’s attention on the social conservative background of UCP leader Kenney.

Last week, NDP leader Rachel Notley said, “I personally do not believe that Jason Kenney is racist, but I believe that the UCP as a party has a problem with racism.”

And this ongoing question from the NDP: why does the UCP seem to attract an inordinate number of people with extreme or bigoted views? And pointing out that even though Ford and Kiryakos are no longer candidates, they are still UCP members.

This is a deliberate strategy by the NDP to help recreate the conditions that led to the meltdown of the right-wing Wildrose party (one of the legacy parties of the UCP) in the final days of the 2012 campaign over racist and homophobic utterances from several candidates. The Wildrose committed political suicide by defending the culprits.

The big difference for Kenney this time around is that he has the miscreants tossed overboard quickly. But he’s doing it more and more gently, praising the latest as “selfless.” He doesn’t want to make a fuss and he’s hoping when they hit the water they won’t even make a ripple, never mind a splash.

Source: Kenney’s misdirection on candidate woes would make David Copperfield proud

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As Quebec tables religious symbol ban, the rest of Canada should stay zen

2019/03/29 Leave a comment

Bit of an odd piece by Konrad Yakabuski. Yes, all debates have nuances, yes, historical contexts are important, but Bill 62 is problematic on so many counts.

The other aspect I have always found interesting is just how much of a colony Canada appears to be when it imports these debates from Europe, whether critiques of multiculturalism without acknowledging Canada’s aims at integration and participation of much of the language around laicité from France:

The most popular movie in France this year is a comedy about a Roman Catholic couple with four daughters, each of whom marries a member of a religious or racial minority. When the daughters announce they and their husbands are leaving France – for Algeria, Israel, China and India – their parents wonder if they are being punished by God.

The film’s French title, Qu’est-ce qu’on a encore fait au Bon Dieu?, roughly means: What did we do to deserve this? It is the top-grossing film of 2019 in France, drawing twice as many moviegoers as any Hollywood movie. It has also been doing a brisk box office in Quebec, and sparking plenty of discussion about the state of la mère patrie, as France is known.

The film’s success may lie in the fact that it allows members of the white Catholic French majority to laugh at the prejudices they hold toward newcomers, rather than feeling ashamed of them. The French aren’t racist. They’re just nostalgic for a simpler time when they didn’t have to deal with interracial marriage, Muslim rites or Afghan refugees. But once they get used to them, they’ll come around and everyone will get along famously. Cue the happy ending.

Of course, that day hasn’t yet arrived in France. The country remains deeply divided over how to integrate its fast-growing Muslim population, which continues to feel excluded from mainstream French society. Anti-Semitism has been rising again, prompting thousands of French Jews to leave their country, mostly for Israel, the United States and Canada.

To an outsider, it may seem obvious that the French approach to solving the challenges raised by multiculturalism has been a failure. Instead of fostering integration or promoting what the French call le vivre ensemble (“living together”), bans on the Islamic headscarf in public schools and the burka in public spaces have only served to further stigmatize Muslims.

Yet, I have spent enough time in France to know that plenty of its leading thinkers, few of whom could be accused of racism, support such bans in the name of state secularism. No one, much less any foreigner, is going to persuade them otherwise. Even French President Emmanuel Macron, who is undeniably progressive on most issues involving immigration and multiculturalism, would not dream of repealing these measures.

For better or worse, the French approach to secularism has coloured the political debate over religious accommodation in Quebec. As in France, many Quebec intellectuals believe that any society that declares secularism to be a fundamental value must prohibit religious symbols in public institutions. For many, freedom from religion is as important as freedom of religion.

So, while many commentators in English Canada depict Quebec’s seemingly endless debate over religious accommodation as the work of opportunistic politicians seeking to exploit the cultural insecurities of some francophone Quebeckers, such characterizations fail to capture the complexity of the debate and only contribute to a polarization of opinions on the matter.

Make no mistake, as Premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government prepares to table legislation to ban state employees in a position of authority (including teachers) from wearing ostentatious religious symbols, politics is its principal motivation. The CAQ’s conservative and nationalist base is not concerned so much about secularism – it supports maintaining the crucifix in the legislature – as it is with the impact Muslim newcomers are having on the face and customs of their province. Mr. Legault campaigned on a promise to do something about it, even if it means going down the dangerous path of trampling on individual rights in the name of a white francophone majority that seeks to assert its supposed collective right to live in a secularist society.

The CAQ government may be making a fateful mistake by proceeding with a discriminatory and patently unconstitutional legislation. At the very least, it is displaying crass insensitivity in tabling its religious-symbol ban in the wake of the massacre of 50 Muslims at mosques in New Zealand, which revived the pain of the 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting.

Yet, those outside the province should refrain from making blanket statements or condemnations. The debate within Quebec is far more nuanced than the rest of Canada seems to understand. Charging racism is the lazy way to go. It perpetuates a situation that only serves the interests of those who like to stir up polemics, rather than foster reconciliation.

As jurist Rim Gtari and sociology professor Rachad Antonius wrote this week in Le Devoir, invoking the recent conviction of an Iranian lawyer who defended women who went veil-less in public: “One cannot reduce the hijab to a simple piece of cloth, the wearing of which is a sign of piety and its interdiction a sign of racism. The historical context removes this restriction from the domain of the violation of rights or from the logic of stereotypes tied to racism.”

Source: As Quebec tables religious symbol ban, the rest of Canada should stay zen

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Laïcité: des organisations juives sonnent l’alarme

2019/03/29 Leave a comment

A reminder that it is not just Muslims that will be affected by Bill 62:

Interdire à certains fonctionnaires de porter la kippa ou d’exhiber une étoile de David représenterait une grave atteinte aux droits garantis par les chartes et serait contesté devant les tribunaux, préviennent d’importantes organisations juives.

B’nai Brith et le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CCJI) s’inquiètent du dépôt imminent par le gouvernement Legault du projet de loi sur la laïcité.

Selon La Presse et Radio-Canada, Québec va interdire le port de signes religieux aux fonctionnaires en position d’autorité, y compris les enseignants, les directions d’école et ceux qui portent une arme.

« Ce qu’on entend du projet de loi est contraire aux valeurs canadiennes et québécoises. La CAQ doit éviter la pente glissante qui consiste à réduire les droits fondamentaux », prévient Harvey Levine, directeur du bureau québécois de B’nai Brith.

Le débat public sur les signes religieux au travail s’est surtout centré sur le hidjab. Mais les organismes juifs canadiens rappellent que la kippa serait aussi visée, tout comme le turban sikh ou la croix chrétienne.

« Il s’agit selon nous d’une menace pour les libertés religieuses des juifs, des musulmans, des sikhs, et tous les autres groupes religieux visibles dans cette province », indique M. Levine.

La laïcité de l’État peut être atteinte sans que l’on s’attaque aux droits religieux, estime le Centre consultatif des relations juives et israéliennes (CIJA).

« Bien qu’il existe un fort sentiment en faveur de la réaffirmation de la laïcité au Québec, notre communauté estime que la laïcité de l’État est un devoir institutionnel et non personnel. L’attachement à la laïcité ne repose pas sur l’apparence des individus », indique Reuben Poupko, coprésident du CIJA-Québec.

Pour le chef de l’opposition à l’hôtel de ville de Montréal, qui porte la kippa, l’idée d’interdire les signes religieux à certains fonctionnaires est basée sur une mauvaise prémisse : celle selon laquelle un employé de l’État qui porte un signe religieux ne peut être neutre.

« Il est difficile pour moi de croire qu’en 2019, on remette en question les motivations des gens selon leur manière de s’habiller, a récemment écrit Lionel Perez dans Montreal Gazette. Retirer les signes religieux n’éradique en rien les préjugés. »

Jusque devant l’ONU

Le B’nai Brith et le CIJA craignent que le projet de loi sur la laïcité n’enfreigne des droits garantis par les chartes. La Charte canadienne des droits et libertés protège certaines libertés fondamentales, parmi lesquelles les libertés de religion et d’expression.

Le premier ministre François Legault se dit prêt à utiliser la disposition de dérogation (communément appelée clause nonobstant) pour soustraire sa future loi aux tribunaux. Pour lui, il s’agit de « protéger notre identité ».

Selon l’avocat montréalais Julius Grey, la disposition de dérogation ne peut toutefois protéger le Québec et le Canada contre un camouflet devant le Comité des droits de l’homme de l’Organisation des Nations unies (ONU).

« Si le gouvernement espère éviter le débat judiciaire en invoquant la clause nonobstant, il doit se rappeler qu’il existe un forum international où ce genre de chose peut être débattu », souligne Me Grey.

« Il est téméraire de préjuger de ce qui sera dans le projet de loi, dit-il. Mais il me semble que la confrontation judiciaire est plus ou moins inévitable. »

Ce comité de l’ONU a par exemple épinglé la France à au moins deux reprises sur la question des signes religieux. Dans un cas, l’ONU a donné raison à une employée d’une garderie congédiée car elle portait le voile islamique. Les décisions de ce comité ne sont toutefois pas contraignantes.

« Bien sûr, la décision du Comité des droits de l’homme des Nations unies n’est pas contraignante comme le jugement d’une cour québécoise ou de la Cour suprême », explique Julius Grey.

« Mais je vois mal comment le Québec, malgré un jugement de cette nature, justifierait de maintenir sa position. »

Source: Laïcité: des organisations juives sonnent l’alarme

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