When ‘harmony’ is not good enough: James Hoggan

2018/01/11 Leave a comment

James Hoggan, author of I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, on the balance between confrontation and collaboration and the need for dialogue.

The challenge is how to have vigorous yet respectful conversations:

When I was chair of the David Suzuki Foundation I asked Canadian problem solving guru Adam Kahane to speak at our board retreat when it met at the Brew Creek Centre in Whistler.

I invited him because of his work as a facilitator in hot spots around the world.  Like many of the thought leaders I interviewed for my book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, Adam encouraged me to consider the role warlike rhetoric plays in creating gridlock and inaction on environmental problems such as climate change.

I found his methodology for dialogue, called transformative scenario planning, a hopeful alternative to the growing political polarization.

During his talk to our board, Adam got into a brief but heated disagreement with David Suzuki who argued that in some cases dialogue is a waste of time. David spoke about the CEO of a consortium of companies who wanted to discuss international criticism of the Alberta oil sands regarding its environmental performance.

David said he would be willing to engage with the CEO if he would first agree to certain basic principles: that we are all animals and that we need clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity. The CEO declined. Adam challenged Suzuki on this, saying that seeking such an agreement in advance was unreasonable and unproductive.

Adam recently told me this exchange had a big impact on him. “It shook me up a lot.” Initially, he couldn’t make this new idea fit into his frame of collaboration so it stayed with him “as an unresolved tension.” He didn’t dismiss the argument because he holds David in such high esteem.

And gradually this principle seemed more important and altered Adam’s thinking about how to approach advocacy, conflict and dialogue, and this exchange became an important section of his new book, Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust.

Adam writes: “I could now see that engaging and asserting were complementary rather than opposing ways to make progress on complex challenges, and that both were legitimate and necessary.”

If we suppress assertion and advocacy in an effort to engage with an opponent, “we will suffocate the social system we are working with,” and end up with feeble collaboration. He is now convinced that healthy collaboration needs to include “vigorous fighting.”

Rather than focusing on finding harmony when dealing with people who hold radically conflicting opinions, we can embrace both conflict and connection:

“If we stretch beyond our conventional, comfortable, habitual approach to collaboration we can be more successful more often, and don’t have to default to polarization, and worsen the situation.”

He recently told me it’s wrong to think we can only collaborate successfully by first forging harmonious teams that have reached agreement on where they’re going, how to get there, or who needs to do what.

Author Adam Kahane was shaken by a conversation with David Suzuki about activism.

This discussion got me thinking about how my own attitudes have evolved while searching for better ways to deal with antagonists of all kinds, including climate science deniers. Adam’s new book reinforces my experience that changing public opinion and public policy requires both advocacy and collaboration — although I’ve learned that both have their limits.

Advocates tend to overplay their hands and may unintentionally strengthen the resistance they work so hard to overcome. Collaboration on the other hand can create a false equivalence that undermines science when opposing viewpoints are both presented as legitimate, when clearly they are not.

A perfect example of this is the decades’ old debate between genuine climate scientists and climate change deniers working for industry-funded, right-wing think tanks. Any advocacy to counteract alarming environmental problems such as climate change, ocean acidification or species extinction is by its nature difficult and adversarial.

I told Adam it’s hard to collaborate with someone who says climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, because engaging in such a specious argument only drags the conversation down to a ludicrous level. I also said when it comes to climate change, dialogue often fails, but lessons from the civil rights movement give us hope. They tell us that people who meet with resistance can eventually see results if they keep demanding it and never give up.

On the other hand, our social capacity for pluralism will either empower or prevent us from emerging from the climate crisis. Being right on the science is not enough. That’s why this book is so important. We need to develop our ability to work with the enemy, or as Thich Nhat Hanh put it, “speak the truth but not to punish.”

via When ‘harmony’ is not good enough | Vancouver Sun

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Malaise autour de la création d’une «Journée nationale contre l’islamophobie»

2018/01/11 Leave a comment

Valid debate between a commemoration versus a national day.

I prefer the existing day, International Day Against Racial Discrimination, March 21st, rather than the “boutique” approach for each community, as a means to foster understanding of the common experience many groups have faced or face (agree with Conservatives on this one even if their motives are somewhat suspect given their approach to M-103):

Le débat sur une possible « Journée nationale contre l’islamophobie » prend une tournure sémantique. Plusieurs partis politiques, tant à Québec qu’à Ottawa, jugent le mot « islamophobie » trop fort et « trop chargé » pour que le 29 janvier 2017, jour où un tireur fou a tué six musulmans, porte ce combat.

« Oui, le mot “islamophobie” est chargé. Et je trouve qu’on a assez débattu de divisions autour de la présence de la religion au Québec », a déclaré au Devoir Agnès Maltais, députée péquiste et porte-parole de l’opposition officielle en matière de laïcité. Elle souligne au passage qu’il existe un Collectif canadien anti-islamophobie dont le porte-parole est Adil Charkaoui, une personnalité controversée.

La semaine dernière, le Conseil national des musulmans canadiens (CNMC) a demandé au gouvernement Trudeau de faire du 29 janvier plus qu’une simple journée de commémoration de la tuerie à la mosquée de Québec et de lui donner le titre de « Journée nationale d’action contre l’islamophobie », un peu comme le 6 décembre, jour de la tuerie de Polytechnique, est devenu une « Journée nationale d’action contre la violence faite aux femmes ».

Le bureau de la ministre du Patrimoine, Mélanie Joly, a simplement indiqué mardi qu’il « prenait acte » de la proposition.

Québec solidaire est le seul parti qui appuie la création d’une telle journée. Mais le gouvernement libéral de Philippe Couillard ne ferme pas la porte. Quant à la Coalition avenir Québec, elle rejette l’idée d’une journée nationale d’action et estime suffisant que la tragédie soit commémorée.

« Il s’agit du geste intolérable d’une seule personne et non pas celui d’une société entière. Les Québécois sont ouverts et accueillants, ils ne sont pas islamophobes. »

Oui à une commémoration

En entrevue à Radio-Canada, Boufeldja Benabdallah, vice-président du Centre culturel islamique, s’est dit déçu des positions de la CAQ et du PQ.

« Jamais nous n’avons dit que les Québécois étaient islamophobes, jamais. C’est une mince partie et c’est sur cette mince partie qu’il faut travailler, qui fait beaucoup de bruit, beaucoup de mal, et qui a tué six personnes dans leur prière. »

Tous les partis sont toutefois d’accord pour que le 29 janvier soit réservé chaque année à la commémoration de l’attentat meurtrier de la mosquée de Québec.

« Soyons honnêtes, le meilleur outil qui va aller chercher l’appui de tous, c’est la commémoration », a affirmé Mme Maltais, du PQ. Elle souligne également que le gouvernement fédéral a attendu deux ans après la tuerie du 6 décembre 1989, soit en 1991, pour en faire une Journée nationale d’action contre la violence faite aux femmes.

L’historien de l’Université Laval Patrice Groulx soutient qu’il vaut mieux d’abord passer par l’étape de la commémoration, soit du deuil, en soulignant la mémoire d’un événement. « Il y a une forme de précipitation là-dedans qui pourrait être désagréable pour certains, a-t-il indiqué. Certains groupes veulent soulever la chose pour profiter d’un certain “momentum”, et c’est tout à fait légitime. Mais il y a la manière, les mots. Il faut être prudent. »

Une commémoration d’un événement meurtrier tragique ne se traduit pas toujours en « journée nationale d’action » — l’explosion du train à Lac-Mégantic par exemple —, mais M. Groulx reconnaît que la tuerie de la mosquée a le potentiel d’en devenir une, comme ce fut le cas pour Polytechnique sous la pression populaire.

« Avec le temps, on donne un contenu, une signification différente à un événement. C’est le dépassement social. »

Même malaise au fédéral

Demeurés silencieux jusqu’ici, les partis politiques au fédéral, sauf le Nouveau Parti démocratique, se sont finalement prononcés. Encore une fois, le mot « islamophobie » semble créer un malaise.

« Ce terme-là est loin de faire consensus », a indiqué Gérard Deltell, en refusant obstinément de prononcer ce mot tout au long de l’entrevue avec Le Devoir. Le Parti conservateur préfère parler d’une commémoration, « plus rassembleuse » et « plus inclusive », lui qui avait déposé une motion à la mi-décembre proposant de faire du 29 janvier la « Journée nationale de la solidarité avec les victimes d’actes d’intolérance et de violence antireligieuse ».

La même querelle sémantique avait divisé les partis fédéraux lorsque, dans la foulée des attentats de la mosquée de Québec, la libérale Iqra Khalid a voulu faire adopter l’an dernier une motion qui condamnait l’« islamophobie ». Les conservateurs refusaient là encore d’utiliser ce terme et voulaient plus largement que soient condamnées « toutes formes de racisme systémique », pas seulement celle à l’endroit des musulmans.

Le Bloc québécois rejette aussi l’idée d’une commémoration qui cible une religion précise. Après tout, l’État doit être laïque, a fait valoir la députée Marilène Gill.

Source: Malaise autour de la création d’une «Journée nationale contre l’islamophobie»

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Fighting Bias With Board Games : Code Switch : NPR

2018/01/10 Leave a comment

Interesting and innovative approach:

Quick, think of a physicist.

If you’re anything like me, you probably didn’t have to think very hard before the names Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton popped up.

But what if I asked you to think of a female physicist? What about a black, female physicist?

You may have to think a bit harder about that. For years, mainstream accounts of history have largely ignored or forgotten the scientific contributions of women and people of color.

This is where Buffalo — a card game designed by Dartmouth University’s Tiltfactor Lab — comes in. The rules are simple. You start with two decks of cards. One deck contains adjectives like Chinese, tall or enigmatic; the other contains nouns like wizard or dancer.

Draw one card from each deck, and place them face up. And then all the players race to shout out a real person or fictional character who fits the description.

So say you draw “dashing” and “TV show character.”

You may yell out “David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider!”

“Female” and “olympian?”

A New Card Game Asks, 'Who's Blacker?'

Gabby Douglas!

Female physicist?

Hmm. If everyone is stumped, or “buffaloed,” you draw another noun and adjective pair and try again. When the decks run out, the player who has made the most matches wins.

It’s the sort of game you’d pull out at dinner parties when the conversation lulls. But the game’s creators says it’s good for something else — reducing prejudice. By forcing players to think of people that buck stereotypes, Buffalo subliminally challenges those stereotypes.

“So it starts to work on a conscious level of reminding us that we don’t really know a lot of things we might want to know about the world around us,” explains Mary Flanagan, who leads Dartmouth University’s Tiltfactor Lab, which makes games designed for social change and studies their effects.

Buffalo might nudge us to get better acquainted with the work of female physicists, “but it also unconsciously starts to open up stereotypical patterns in the way we think,” Flanagan says.

In one of many tests she conducted, Flanagan rounded up about 200 college students and assigned half to play Buffalo. After one game, the Buffalo players were slightly more likely than their peers to strongly agree with statements like, “There is potential for good and evil in all of us,” and, “I can see myself fitting into many groups.”

Students who played Buffalo also scored better on a standard psychological test for tolerance. “After 20 minutes of gameplay, you’ve got some kind of measurable transformation with a player — I think that’s pretty incredible,” Flanagan says.

Buffalo isn’t Flanagan’s only bias-busting game. Tiltfactor makes two others called “Awkward Moment” and “Awkward Moment At Work.” They’re designed to reduce gender discrimination at school and in the workplace, respectively.

“I’m really weary of saying things like, ‘Games are going to save the world,'” Flanagan says. But she adds, “it’s a serious question to look at how a little game could try to address a massive, lived social problem that affects so many individuals.”

Buffalo.

Maanvi Singh for NPR

Scientists have tried all sorts of quick-fix tactics to train away racism, sexism and homophobia. In one small study, researchers at Oxford University even looked into whether Propranolol, a drug that’s normally used to reduce blood pressure, could ease away racist attitudes. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that there is no panacea capable of curing bigotry.

There are, however, good reasons to get behind the idea that games or any other sort of entertainment can change the way we think.

“People aren’t excited about showing up to diversity trainings or listening to people lecture them. People don’t generally want to be told what to think,” explains Betsy Levy Paluck, a professor of psychology at Princeton University who studies how media can change attitudes and behaviors. “But people like entertainment. So, just on a pragmatic basis, that’s one reason to use it to teach.”

There’s a long history of using literature, music and TV shows to encourage social change. In a 2009 study, Paluck found that radio soap opera helped bridge the divides in post-genocide Rwanda. “We know that various forms of pop-culture and entertainment help reduce prejudice,” Paluck says. “In terms of other types of entertainment — there’s less research. We’re still finding out whether and how something like a game can help.”

Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington who has dedicated his career to studying people’s deep-seated prejudices, is skeptical. Like Flanagan, he says, several well-intentioned researchers have proved a handful of interventions — including thought exercises, writing assignments and games — can indeed reduce prejudice for a short period of time. But, “these desired effects generally disappear rapidly. Very few studies have looked at the effects even as much as one day later.”

After all, how can 20 minutes of anything dislodge attitudes that society has pounded into our skulls over a lifetime?

Flanagan says her lab is still looking into that question, and hopes to conduct more studies in the future that track long-term effects. “We do know that people play games often. If it really is a good game, people will return to it. They’ll play it over and over again,” Flanagan says. Her philosophy: maybe a game a day can help us keep at least some of our prejudices away.

via Fighting Bias With Board Games : Code Switch : NPR

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ICYMI – Black job seekers have harder time finding retail and service work than their white counterparts, study suggests | Toronto Star

2018/01/10 Leave a comment

Interesting study:

Black applicants may have a harder time finding an entry level service or retail job in Toronto than white applicants with a criminal record, a new study has found.

For a city that claims to be multicultural, the results were “shocking,” said Janelle Douthwright, the study’s author, who recently graduated with a Masters of Arts in Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies from the University of Toronto.

Douthwright read a similar study from Milwaukee, Wis., during her undergraduate courses and she was “floored” by the findings.

“I thought there was no way this would be true here in Toronto,” she said.

She pursued her graduate studies to find out.

Douthwright created four fictional female applicants and submitted their resumes for entry level service and retail positions in Toronto over the summer.

She gave two of the applicants Black sounding names — Khadija Nzeogwu and Tameeka Okwabi — and gave one a criminal record. The Black applicants also listed participation in a Black or African student association on their resumes.

She gave the two other applicants white sounding names — Beth Elliot and Katie Foster — and also gave one of them a criminal record. The candidates with criminal records indicated in their cover letters that they had been convicted of summary offences, which are often less serious crimes.

 

Both Black applicants applied to the same 64 jobs and the white applicants applied to another 64 jobs.

Douthwright explained that she didn’t submit all four applications to the same jobs because the applications for the two candidates with criminal records and the two applicants without criminal records were almost identical except for the elements she used to indicate race, so they might have aroused suspicions among the employers if they were all submitted for the same jobs.

Though the resumes were nearly identical — each applicant had a high school education and experience working as a hostess and retail sales associate — the white applicant who didn’t have a criminal record received the most callbacks by far.

 

Of the 64 applications, the white applicant with no criminal record received 20 callbacks, a callback rate of 31.3 per cent. The white applicant with a criminal record received 12 callbacks, a callback rate of 18.8 per cent.

The Black applicant with no criminal record, meanwhile, received seven callbacks, a rate of 10.9 per cent. The Black applicant with a criminal record received just one callback out of 64 applications, a rate of 1.6 per cent.

Lorne Foster, a professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University said Douthwright’s study bolsters the thesis that “the workplace is discriminatory on a covert level.”

“We have a number of acts that protect us against discrimination and many people think that because of that strong infrastructure discrimination is gone,” he said.

That’s not the case. “Implicit” or unconscious bias is a persistent issue.

“All of these implicit biases are automatic, they’re ambivalent, they’re ambiguous, and they’re much more dangerous than the old-fashioned prejudices and discrimination that used to exist because they go undetected but they have an equally destructive impact on people’s lives,” Foster said.

“It’s an invisible and tasteless poison and it’s difficult to eliminate.”

Individual employers, he said, should take a proactive approach to ensure their hiring practices are inclusive or at least adhering to the human rights code by testing and challenging their processes to uncover any hidden prejudices.

He pointed to the Windsor Police Service, who shifted their hiring practices when they discovered their existing process was excluding women, as an example.

They were one of the first services to do a demographic scan of who works for them, said Foster, who worked on a human rights review of the service.

Through that process they realized there was a “dearth” of female officers. They realized that the original process, which involved a number of physical tests “where there was all this male testosterone flying around,” was inhibiting women from attending the session.

In response they organized a series of targeted recruitment sessions and were able to hire five new women at the end of that process, Foster said.

“We all need to be vigilant about our thoughts about other people, our hidden biases and images of them,” he said.

via Black job seekers have harder time finding retail and service work than their white counterparts, study suggests | Toronto Star

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ICYMI – Immigration: Gérard Bouchard plaide pour des quotas d’embauche | Réjean Bourdeau | Actualités

2018/01/10 Leave a comment

Interesting. Personally, I favour the federal approach of transparency and annual reporting for the public service and federally-regulated sectors, which has worked reasonably well over the last 25 years or so but Quebec numbers, last time I checked, are particularly low:

Que faut-il faire pour voir grandir le sentiment d’appartenance des immigrants à l’égard du Québec?

Il faut réussir leur intégration économique et sociale. Quelqu’un d’exclu et victime de discrimination ne développera jamais de sentiment d’appartenance. Pour sensibiliser quelqu’un et pour le faire vibrer à nos valeurs, il faut d’abord lui donner un travail. Et là-dessus, on a vraiment mal joué nos cartes. Le sous-emploi chez les immigrants bouge peu parce qu’on ne fait pas ce qu’il faut. Le gouvernement pourrait mettre en oeuvre des programmes. Une espèce d’affirmative action, comme ils ont fait aux États-Unis pour créer une classe moyenne afro-américaine. Ça prendrait quelque chose de massif, de déterminé. Qui serait soutenu par la population. Qui serait enveloppé dans un discours. Mais nous, on ne le fait pas.

Pourquoi on ne le fait pas?

Il n’y a pas de volonté politique pour ça. Quand il y a eu la tuerie dans la mosquée de Québec en janvier dernier, le premier ministre Couillard a dit : «Il y a eu un avant et il y aura un après.» Ça laissait entendre que cet événement avait été d’une horreur telle que plus rien n’allait se passer de la même manière. Qu’on allait changer les choses en profondeur. Mais il n’y a rien eu. Ce n’est pas la loi 62 (respect de la neutralité religieuse de l’État) qui va régler les problèmes. Et la Consultation sur la discrimination systémique et le racisme n’a pas levé. Ça s’est transformé en Forum sur la valorisation de la diversité et la lutte contre la discrimination qui a lui-même commencé à branler.

Quel type de politique d’intégration faut-il mettre en oeuvre pour offrir des emplois aux immigrants?

Il faut créer des conditions favorables pour réparer le retard social qu’ils ont accusé. Alors, ça va prendre un discours politique qui a beaucoup d’autorité pour faire accepter ça à la population. Parce que plusieurs pourraient dire : «Non, non, l’égalité, ce sont les mêmes conditions pour tout le monde.» Mais il va falloir faire plus que ça, parce que là, c’est quelque chose de structurel.

Que proposez-vous?

Il faut instituer des quotas. Un peu comme on l’a fait pour l’égalité hommes-femmes. Ça, ce sont des choses très concrètes. On fixe la barre. Par exemple, il faut qu’il y ait la moitié des femmes dans les conseils d’administration. Et il y a des organismes de surveillance pour voir comment ça se passe. Pour les travailleurs immigrants, on pourrait soumettre les entreprises à certaines règles pour l’embauche. Bref, il y a plein de mesures qui pourraient être appliquées. Mais il faudrait que ce soit enveloppé dans un discours politique qui rend la chose acceptable à l’ensemble de la population. Autrement, ça va passer pour une injustice, pour des privilèges aux immigrants. Et ce discours-là est déjà présent.

Pourquoi les travailleurs immigrants sont-ils moins recherchés?

D’abord, il y a une forme de corporatisme quand vient le temps de reconnaître les diplômes obtenus à l’étranger. De plus, il y a, étrangement, certaines résistances syndicales à l’embauche d’immigrants dans la fonction publique. Ensuite, du côté des PME, on se tourne souvent vers des connaissances, des parents (appelons ça «le facteur cousin»), quand vient le temps d’engager. Ce facteur est beaucoup moins présent dans les multinationales.

Quels sont les impacts de ce type de discrimination?

Je me suis souvent fait dire par des immigrants, ou par des membres des minorités, qui étaient sans emploi : «M. Bouchard, votre modèle d’interculturalisme, ça a du bon sens, mais pourquoi ce serait très important pour nous… on n’a pas d’emplois. Nos enfants nous regardent et nous demandent pourquoi on ne travaille pas.» Si quelqu’un n’a pas d’emploi, il ne peut pas rêver. Le sensibiliser à nos symboles, à nos valeurs, à nos combats, ça ne marche pas. Il faut d’abord qu’il retrouve un sens de la dignité. Un grand nombre d’immigrants sont humiliés de ne pas avoir d’emploi et de vivre aux crochets de la société dans laquelle ils vivent.

via Immigration: Gérard Bouchard plaide pour des quotas d’embauche | Réjean Bourdeau | Actualités

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ICYMI: What to do with the gold? Divorce cases with Islamic marriage contracts pose challenge for courts

2018/01/10 Leave a comment

Interesting. Appears the courts are handling the cases appropriately:

At first blush, the recent Ontario Superior Court case of Akkawi v Habli looked like any other run-of-the-mill divorce case — a judge resolving issues of child and spousal support and division of family property.

But one matter took a bit of extra time to untangle: what to do about the gold?

When they married in Lebanon in 1996, Nada Habli and Sean Akkawi entered into a traditional Islamic marriage contract, known as a maher. Under such an agreement, the husband agrees to pay the wife money or other gifts in the event their marriage breaks down. In this particular case, the written agreement obligated Akkawi to pay Habli one kilogram of gold.

In a decision last month, the judge determined the contract was valid and enforceable, meaning Akkawi was required to cough up an additional $56,498.62 — the value of the gold on the date of the couple’s separation in 2012.

But such decisions are not always cut and dried. Family lawyers say courts across the country have varied greatly on the question of whether such religious-based contracts can be enforced in the context of provincial family laws. Disputes can sometimes involve extravagant claims, involving large parcels of land or hundreds of gold coins.

“The numbers are astronomical these days,” said Zahra Jenab, a B.C. family lawyer. “I still scratch my head every time I see it.”

Jenab cited an example of how things can get messy: A couple marries in Iran and prior to marriage they work out an agreement wherein the wife will get a parcel of land as her maher. Let’s say the couple later moves to Vancouver and, instead of the parcel of land in Iran, they agree to add her name to the title of their new home. “Does she now get that half as her maher, plus half of his half, as required under B.C. family law,” Jenab asked.

“Alternatively, can the wife claim one half of family property in B.C. under the Family Law Act, and then demand that the husband pay her the maher out of his half, keeping in mind that the value of the maher can sometimes be significantly more than one half of the family property?”

In a recent column on the website of The Canadian Legal Information Institute, Leena Yousefi, another B.C. family lawyer, wrote that the “interplay between an Islamic marriage contract and Canadian family law is not well understood by our courts,” and that the application of both can lead to “unjustified and unfair outcomes” for the husband.

“Many of these immigrants were married in their home countries and followed marriage traditions and laws which make very little sense to our courts and our British Columbia family law. At the same time, our courts are often asked to deal with these concepts and apply them to Canadian divorces with very little guidance.”

Things can get really contentious, lawyers say, when the husband argues that there was never any expectation between families that the promises contained in the maher would actually be enforced, and that the exorbitant amounts were meant as symbolic “good faith” gestures.

In the recent Ontario case, the husband tried to argue that the maher was not enforceable in Canada. But Ontario Superior Court Judge Mark Shelston, citing a recent Ontario Court of Appeal case, said as long as the religious agreement met the basic elements of a valid civil contract, it could be enforced.

But then came another question: Whether the husband’s obligation to pay the equivalent of one kilogram of gold should be done on top of his other obligations under Canadian family law (such as spousal support and division of assets) or whether it should be rolled in to those other obligations. Again, Shelston followed the guidance of the appeal court.

Typically, Canadian divorce cases involve a division of property after both parties have calculated their total assets and liabilities. The wealthier spouse ends up paying the other spouse half the difference known as an equalization payment.

The Ontario Court of Appeal determined that where a religious contract exists, the amount owed by the husband should be factored in to the calculation of the equalization payment, unless there is specific language in the maher saying otherwise. This has the effect of lessening the burden on the husband by reducing the amount of the equalization payment. (Akkawi was eventually ordered to pay an equalization payment of $110,666.79).

While Ontario’s courts appear to be getting some clarity on how to enforce mahers, the fuzzy case law elsewhere in the country has led some lawyers to recommend their clients chase after maher obligations in their home countries where the chance of success is more likely.

In a 2016 B.C. Supreme Court case, a couple’s Iranian marriage certificate held that the husband was to give his wife a “volume of Holy Koran, a pane of mirror, a pair of candleholders … plus 700 Azadi Gold Coins,” valued at $276,000. The judge decided not to enforce the maher because it would not have been fair to the husband to be ordered to pay such a “substantial amount” given his “limited financial resources.”

Yousefi was involved in a recent case in which a couple of Iranian heritage married in Canada in a civil ceremony and another ceremony under Sharia law. According to the Islamic marriage certificate, the husband agreed to give his wife “five gold bullions of 24 karats equal to 5 kilogram (sic) of 24 karats gold.”

Upon their separation, however, they could not agree on the valuation of the gold; she demanded $270,000, while he would not go higher than $45,100. The judge told both parties they would need to present expert evidence before he could decide the matter.

Yousefi said the wife ultimately decided not to bother going through the hassle because she was satisfied with the outcome of the rest of the case, which included getting proceeds from the sale of their home.

Despite the myriad outcomes among judges weighing the enforcement of mahers, one thing is becoming clear, said Sofia Dharamshi, an Ontario family lawyer: “In the future, I think we will see more detailed Islamic marriage contracts being prepared, but that doesn’t mean that young couples shouldn’t still carefully read what they are signing,” she said. “These papers are not just declarations of love — they are potentially legally binding contracts, and that needs to be remembered.”

Source: What to do with the gold? Divorce cases with Islamic marriage contracts pose challenge for courts

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Douglas Todd: The misused concept of racism, refined

2018/01/09 Leave a comment

Doug Todd’s summary of the debates between Cornel West, Ta-Nehisis Coates and John McWhorter.

His distinction between unconscious racism (or implicit bias) vs active discrimination is overstated, as implicit bias or discrimination is not as innocuous as he presents. Just as not every action or attitude cannot be attributed to implicit bias or discrimination, neither can every case of implicit bias being dismissed.

On the other hand, looking at the issues from a narrow, one community perspective, as Holly Anderson does with the word “clan” undermines the more serious issues related to implicit bias and discrimination (much as the removal of the word ‘chief’ in Toronto District School Board job titles):

Are we starting to refine our concept of racism, arguably the most explosive word in North America today?

Three powerful African-American public intellectuals are in a high-level debate over racism. All three agree racism can be a serious problem, especially in the U.S., where black-white tensions for some still run deep.

But the eloquent authors — Cornel West, Ta-Nehisi Coates and John McWhorter — have extraordinarily different perspectives on the extent of racism. Their debate, as well as discussion in Canada, may be requiring cultural warriors on all sides to become clearer about what they mean when they use, and in many cases misuse, the term racism.

In pluralistic Canada, the anti-racism movement is not quite as aggressive as in the U.S., especially in regards to blacks, who make up only two per cent of this country’s population. Still many Canadian activists and academics try to give it top prominence.

One reason it’s important for Canadians to be clear about the meaning of racism is that cities such as Vancouver and Toronto now have among the world’s highest proportions of foreign-born residents, with ethnically hyper-diverse populations.

Discussions of housing, welfare, jobs, renting, land claims and neighbourhood enclaves sometimes touch on race and nationality. And we have to talk about these issues without fear of being silenced by trumped-up claims of racism, which has occurred over the decades.

One revealing manifestation of Canada’s anti-racism movement emerged from Simon Fraser University in 2017. Philosophy prof. Holly Andersen launched a petition to have the Scottish-rooted word “Clan” removed from the names of the university’s sports team. She argued it is potentially offensive to blacks, since they might associate it with the Ku Klux Klan.

What can a debate among America’s leading black intellectuals tell us about the value of Andersen’s petition, and, most importantly, about how to engage thorny issues that often become muddled over misunderstandings of racism?

To answer we need to know why Harvard’s Cornel West, a veteran left-wing civil rights activist, so strongly disagree with Coates, who may be the most celebrated black writer in the U.S. today.

Coates, raised in a violence-filled neighbourhood of Baltimore, is the author of many books, including last year’s We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, which celebrates Barack Obama’s era in the White House and amounts to a concerted attack on “white supremacy.”

Coates believes racism is the U.S.’s worst catastrophe and pessimistically believes it will never change. “The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs, but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs,” Coates says.

Coates, in effect, encourages activists to dramatically broaden the definition of prejudice to include what some call unconscious racism. “Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others,” he says.

On Dec. 17, however, Cornel West pushed back in an opinion piece in The Guardian. It has led to a titanic dispute, an intense debate going back to disagreements between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

“Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical and un-removable,” West says.

“Unfortunately, he hardly keeps track of our fight back, and never connects this ugly legacy to predatory capitalist practices, imperial policies (of war, occupation, detention, assassination) or the black elite’s refusal to confront poverty, patriarchy or transphobia.”

Coates’ “perception of white people is tribal and his conception of freedom is neo-liberal,” West said, defining “neo-liberal” as individualistic and embedded in Wall Street.

In response to the debate, Coates soon deleted his Twitter account, which had 1.25 million followers, saying, “I didn’t get in it for this.”

Which leads us to McWhorter, who writes about race and language as a professor at Columbia University and may be the most insightful of all three.

Antiracism “encourages an idea that racism in its various guises must be behind anything bad for black people,” says Columbia University Prof. John McWhorter.

“Coates is celebrated as the writer who most aptly expresses the scripture that America’s past was built on racism and that racism still permeates the national fabric,” says McWhorter.

While acknowledging racism against blacks is a grave issue, McWhorter worries Coates has become a high “priest” of what he calls the new “religion of Antiracism.” It’s not entirely bad that “Antiracism” has become a religion, says McWhorter. It’s been effective in reducing the prejudice of the 1960s, when some whites dismissed Martin Luther King as a “rabble-rouser.”

Yet in his essay, “Antiracism: Our Flawed New Religion,” McWhorter says the downside of Antiracism is that it has become an absolutistic orthodoxy that can’t be questioned, humiliates skeptics and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

“(Antiracism) encourages an idea that racism in its various guises must be behind anything bad for black people,” says McWhorter. “The fact is that Antiracism, as a religion, pollutes our race dialogue as much as any lack of understanding by white people of their Privilege.”

What does this grand debate in the U.S. have to do with the internationally publicized effort by SFU’s Andersen to ban the word “Clan” from sports teams?

For one, it suggests Anderson is bringing American vigilance about racism to Canada. She was raised in Montana and obtained her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, a city where one-quarter of the population is black.

Andersen’s petition was also included in Tristin Hopper’s widely read Dec. 28 piece in The National Post, “Here are all the innocuous things that suddenly became racist in 2017,”which explored the year’s more “overblown” accusations.

Philosophy professor Holly Anderson’s petition to remove the name “Clan” from SFU’s sports teams was rejected by nine out of 10 in an online poll.

Anderson did not return messages, so I didn’t get to ask her opinion of Canadian aboriginals referring to themselves as belonging to the Raven Clan, Wolf Clan, etc. And SFU media’s relation department would only say this week that her anti-Clan petition, which the public rejected in a poll, remains “under review.”

One thing we can learn from Andersen’s petition, though, is it gained attention in part because the professor, Coates and others are increasingly popularizing the concept of unconscious racism, which has little to do with the conventional definition of racism, which focuses on active discrimination based on a sense of superiority.

Even Mahzarin Banaji, the psychology professor who invented the term, cautions that “unconscious racism” should never have quasi-legal standing and has nothing to do with real discrimination. Still, the new concept, embraced by liberals, condemns all sorts of momentary feelings that were not considered racist in the past. The concept makes it appear the problem of racism has expanded, when it is more likely contracting in North America.

Overall, though, I think West might have one of the simplest arguments against exaggerating racism. West is of the “old left,” which emphasizes economics, whereas Coates is an icon of the “cultural left,” which stresses identity politics. West (and McWhorter) think racism is a big issue, but that it’s dangerous to make it the only one.

A raft of other harms needs to be confronted that are not defined by race. West’s essay starts by naming the scourge of corporate greed, government corruption and unnecessary violence. We could add unaffordable housing, unequal access to education, et cetera. The list goes on.

Source: Douglas Todd: The misused concept of racism, refined

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Germany’s ‘New’ Anti-Semitism Is Not Just About Muslim Immigrants Versus Jews

2018/01/09 Leave a comment

Long interesting read:

Rabbi Mendel Gurewitz, who was born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has been running the synagogue in Offenbach, a city outside Frankfurt, for the past 20 years. It’s not the Big Apple, but he likes it here.

Three years ago, Gurewitz went to buy diapers for his baby at the city’s faded gray shopping center, where he was confronted by a group of teenage boys who shouted racial slurs and “viva Palestine” at him while the other shoppers did nothing.

A few months later, when the boys trundled into his synagogue hoping to get the charges against them for insult and physical injury dropped, they had some questions they wanted clarified about Jews in this country.

“It was like they thought there were dollar bills in our eyes,” Gurewitz told The Daily Beast. “And they thought that Jews don’t have to pay taxes in Germany.“

Today, the 43-year-old rabbi just wants to do his job as a man of God. The shopping center was not the first or last time he has encountered the kind of ugly stereotype that, having originated in Europe, now seems to be fueling new versions of anti-Jewish sentiment across the continent as well as in the U.S., from the George Soros caricatures that permeate the advertising space in Hungary’s no longer free media to the Turkish president’s various “us against the world” conspiracies.

There are growing concerns that anti-Semitism is on the rise, and in this atmosphere of fear Gurewitz has members from his congregation coming up to him after services telling him that the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party is trying to recruit them.

This is grim, ironic opportunism. Just a year ago one of the AfD’s politicians in this same region declared that the Central Council of Jews in Germany secretly controls the entire country. Now, says Gurewitz, “I know they tried to reach out to Russian members from our community by pretending that they are pro-Israel and for the Jews.“

THE HATE SLOGANS in Germany that greeted U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision last month to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem put the spotlight on anti-Semitism in Muslim immigrant communities, which certainly exists. But they also showed that the real-life tensions between Jews and Muslims offer an opportunity to the far right to rationalize its Islamophobia and downplay its historical anti-Semitism.

Last month, some Muslim refugees in hoodies threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Gothenburg, for example. Bad enough. But a certain “Swedish journalist“ has been tweeting about supposed subsequent but in fact nonexistent bomb attacks and offering “my deepest condolences to the Jewish people.” His comments were widely retweeted—he has 82,000 followers. But, in fact, the 22-year-old previously has denied the Holocaust and said, memorably, that “Hitler had some good points.“ And he is not even Swedish, as the U.K. charity Hope Not Hate found out this summer. He is an Englishman from North Yorkshire.

“Just a year ago one of the AfD’s politicians in this same region declared that the Central Council of Jews in Germany secretly controls the entire country.”

In Germany, the footage of protests in Berlin after the Jerusalem embassy announcement was just the kind of thing AfD recruiters on the German right are likely to exploit. Calls of “Tod Israel” (Death to Israel) filled the air, and several people set fire to homemade Israeli flags 100 yards from a Holocaust memorial. Cameras captured the Middle Eastern-looking young men who were sitting on each other’s shoulders and chanting in the wind so that they appeared to be spurring the energy of the entire crowd. (Ten people were arrested, mainly for covering their faces.)

Even in a Muslim or Middle Eastern context, it is somewhat surprising that the Jerusalem issue pulled together disparate and often mutually hostile groups. Only some had Palestinian heritage, while others included Turkish nationalists and Hezbollah fans. Some people were waving Syrian flags.

There hasn’t been a lot of research on anti-Semitism among Germany’s Muslim population (or, for that matter, among the majority population). But it’s not just about hand-me-down prejudices and propaganda.

Anti-Israel sentiment shading into anti-Semitism has branched out into other parts of German culture, where there is little or no innate interest in Palestine, Jerusalem, or Islam.

One of those areas is gangsta rap, a fairly recent phenomenon in Germany.

“Palestine, the region where Muslims are being treated badly by Western forces, is like a magnifying glass,” said the music producer Marcus Staiger, who describes himself as a left-wing radical and is credited as one of the early leading lights of German street rap. For second- or third-generation immigrants who feel like outsiders in German society, he told The Daily Beast, Palestine is the underdog with which they may choose to identify.

Ben Salomo, who, at the age of 40, has gotten used to being the only Jewish rap artist at any given rap battle, said solidarity for Palestine “is mainstream, is fashion.” In one incident he recalled, a groupie tried to get a bigger star’s attention backstage by pointing at him and shouting, “Look, look. That’s the Jew.”

“He [the other rapper] came very close to me like he wanted to hit me and then he was like: ‘Joke, joke,’” Salomo told The Daily Beast. “It wasn’t a joke, but one still laughs.”

THERE IS A SENSE of anti-establishment defiance in the tracks that certain rap artists have dedicated to Palestine and in the phrases where they name-drop the region (“He is hit while he throws the stone / he screams his last words loud: freedom”). But if you really want to style yourself as a rebel with a cause, then, along with occasional allusions to violent jihad (“We don’t talk long, you will be bombed”), going to war with Israel in your songs (“c’est la vie / I will do an attack like Tel Aviv”) is an effective way to be provocative.

Some of Berlin’s esteemed newspaper columnists and a Green Party politician once chastised the so-called first German gangsta rapper, Bushido, for being a bad “role model” of integration (his father is Tunisian). He had posted a map as his Twitter profile picture that showed a blank space where Israel is supposed to be. The image is used as propaganda by Hamas and extremist Palestinian organizations who deny Israel’s right to exist. But Bushido was not about to take it down. He’s had that profile picture for five years now.

Perhaps this proved inspirational to the baby-faced dyed-blond rap artist Kollegah, who kicked off his rap career by posing as a young Hugh Hefner in a silk robe while two women draped themselves over the hood of a car (“Hey, move aside, you slut / I am the big boss in the silk robe”). His stepfather is Muslim, and Kollegah, 34, converted when he was 15. Last year he grew a beard and flew to Ramallah because he wanted to shoot a documentary there for his YouTube channel.

In the resulting video, Kollegah, whose real name is Felix Blume, appeared uncharacteristically self-conscious walking around a crisis zone in a T-shirt that read “Deus Maximus,” his eyes darting about while he handed out cash and tried to control every conversation for the camera.

It was a far cry from the song he would record back home, called “Legacy,” in which he dares his critics to “Turn me into an anti-Semite because I help Palestinians / In whose home it looks like a Vietnam War zone.”

For Kollegah, who has also rapped about his “Jewish lawyers,” the Palestine film was about establishing a new kind of street credibility, according to Staiger. And judging by the outrage in the German media, as well as some of the disturbing resonance from his fans, “He is clearly hitting a nerve with his audience.“

TRADITIONALLY—AND WHEN we aren’t talking about right-wing extremists—it’s been left-wing radicals who slander Israel as the new “Third Reich” or conflate negative stereotypes of Jews with those of capitalism per se, and who have been accused of fostering anti-Semitism.

But today in Germany, the radical left is failing to stay socially relevant and mobilize young people, who perceive them as inhibited, intellectually snobbish, and caught up in a linguistic showdown over, for instance, gender marking.

And then there is the “Youth Resistance,” a gang of bomber-jacket-wearing German men in their mid-20s. Their members sometimes prowl around Berlin looking to set fire to drinking haunts they don’t like, scrawl “armed and ready” on the walls of freshly renovated apartment buildings, and beat up other left-wing radicals who may also want to “Fuck the U.S.” but don’t hate Israel, too.

So when the Israeli flags were being burned at the Brandenburg Gate last month, the Youth Resistance was right there, shouting amid the angry crowd, and the police made sure to keep an eye on them (indeed, they are generally under police surveillance).

The Youth Resistance leader, who goes by the alter ego of Taktikka, may be the only part-time musician in Germany to describe himself as a “proletarian rapper.” Taktikka appears in his pictures with a cloth tied over his mouth; his music videos are a mash-up of riot porn and a burning American flag. He doesn’t want to give his real name, and in the typical fashion of the German far left, he will only answer questions in writing.

He told The Daily Beast that he is inspired by German street rap, by the “authentic people from the Volk,” who “give the youth of the German proletariat a voice.”

The Kurdish German rapper Haftbefehl as a teenager used to deal drugs in Offenbach, the same city where Rabbi Mendel Gurewitz lives. The rapper, whose real name is Aykut Anhan, dismisses the German street rap genre as “crap” and now lives with his mother in a calmer part of town. He once wrote the line, “I sell cocaine to the Jews from the bank,” which he says is not anti-Semitic because it is just stating the fact of what he used to do.

Rabbi Gurewitz is skeptical about the way Haftbefehl talks about Offenbach: a “terrible” place where “every second person at the train station carries a knife,” according to the rapper. “This is not really true,” said Gurewitz.

But Taktikka of Youth Resistance, for his part, is a fan of Haftbefehl’s energetic and macabre work: “I like to listen to his music when I’m doing martial arts or weight training.”

Since Taktikka and his gang moved to the capital to shed their suburban upbringing for the sake of the anti-imperialist struggle, they also have boxer haircuts and like to go to the gym.

According to another activist on the scene, they are “trying to make their politics ‘swaggy,’” by which he means edgy and avant-garde in a way that will thrill the kids who think that Marx is pretentious and gangsta rap cool. At the expense, it would appear, of Germany’s Jewish community.

via Germany’s ‘New’ Anti-Semitism Is Not Just About Muslim Immigrants Versus Jews

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Order of Canada Appointments Update

2018/01/08 Leave a comment

For those that are interested, with the December 2017 Order announcements, I was able to update a number of  the key charts from my earlier The Order of Canada and diversity.

The first charts looks at the overall diversity of 953 appointments, broken down by year, for the last five years. The most notable change is the large jump in the number of Indigenous peoples appointed to the order in 2017 (particularly the December appointments).

Source: Order of Canada announcements

The second chart shows the provincial breakdown compared to the population shares, showing the historic pattern of over-representation of Ontario.

The third chart breaks down appointments by rank and group, showing slight relative over-representation at the officer level for visible minorities and Indigenous peoples compared to the ‘feeder’ group member level.

Source: Order of Canada announcements

While as noted in the article, there are a number of factors that make Order of Canada appointments an imperfect indicator for diversity and inclusion (i.e., nomination driven process, regional balance considerations etc) it nevertheless provides a sense of how the contributions of three employment equity groups are publicly recognized.

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2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege : Max Boot – Foreign Policy

2018/01/08 Leave a comment

I regularly scan Commentary magazine writers and this article by Max Boot in Foreign Policy is one of the better ones on white privilege and how he came to understand the concept and reality. Canadians in denial should read this and reflect:

In college — this was in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the University of California, Berkeley — I used to be one of those smart-alecky young conservatives who would scoff at the notion of “white male privilege” and claim that anyone propagating such concepts was guilty of “political correctness.” As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women. I wasn’t racist or sexist. (Or so I thought.) I hadn’t discriminated against anyone. (Or so I thought.) My ancestors were not slave owners or lynchers; they were more likely victims of the pogroms.

I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism. I didn’t even think that I was a “white” person — the catchall category that has been extended to include everyone from a Mayflower descendant to a recently arrived illegal immigrant from Ireland. I was a newcomer to America who was eager to assimilate into this wondrous new society, and I saw its many merits while blinding myself to its dark side.

Well, live and learn. A quarter century is enough time to examine deeply held shibboleths and to see if they comport with reality. In my case, I have concluded that my beliefs were based more on faith than on a critical examination of the evidence. In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender — and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.

This sounds obvious, but it wasn’t clear to me until recently. I have had my consciousness raised. Seriously.

This doesn’t meant that I agree with America’s harshest critics — successors to the New Left of the 1960s who saw this country as an irredeemably fascist state that they called “AmeriKKKa.” Judging by historical standards or those of the rest of the world, America remains admirably free and enlightened. Minorities are not being subject to ethnic cleansing like the Rohingya in Burma. Women are not forced to wear all-enveloping garments as in Saudi Arabia. No one is jailed for criticizing our supreme leader as in Russia.

The country is becoming more aware of oppression and injustice, which have long permeated our society, precisely because of growing agitation to do something about it. Those are painful but necessary steps toward creating a more equal and just society. But we are not there yet, and it is wrong to pretend otherwise. It is even more pernicious to cling to the conceit, so popular among Donald Trump’s supporters, that straight white men are the “true” victims because their unquestioned position of privilege is now being challenged by uppity women, gay people, and people of color.

I used to take a reflexively pro-police view of arguments over alleged police misconduct, thinking that cops were getting a bum rap for doing a tough, dangerous job. I still have admiration for the vast majority of police officers, but there is no denying that some are guilty of mistreating the people they are supposed to serve. Not all the victims of police misconduct are minorities — witness a blonde Australian woman shot to death by a Minneapolis police officer after she called 911, or an unarmed white man shotto death by a Mesa, Arizona, officer while crawling down a hotel hallway — but a disproportionate share are.

The videos do not lie. One after another, we have seen the horrifying evidence on film of cops arresting, beating, even shooting black people who were doing absolutely nothing wrong or were stopped for trivial misconduct. For African-Americans, and in particular African-American men, infractions like jaywalking or speeding or selling cigarettes without tax stamps can incite corporal, or even capital, punishment without benefit of judge or jury. African-Americans have long talked about being stopped for “driving while black.” I am ashamed to admit I did not realize what a serious and common problem this was until the videotaped evidence emerged. The iPhone may well have done more to expose racism in modern-day America than the NAACP.

Of course, the problem is not limited to the police; they merely reflect the racism of our society, which is not as severe as it used to be but remains real enough. I realized how entrenched this problem remains when an African-American friend — a well-educated, well-paid, well-dressed woman — confessed that she did not want to walk into a department store carrying in her purse a pair of jeans that she planned to give to a friend later in the day. Why not? Because she was afraid that she would be accused of shoplifting! This is not something that would occur to me, simply because the same suspicion would not attach to a middle-aged, middle-class white man.

The larger problem of racism in our society was made evident in Donald Trump’s election, despite — or because of — his willingness to dog-whistle toward white nationalists with his pervasive bashing of Mexicans, Muslims, and other minorities. Trump even tried to delegitimize the first African-American president by claiming he wasn’t born in this country, and now he goes after African-American football players who kneel during the playing of the anthem to protest police brutality. (Far from being concerned about police misconduct, which disproportionately targets people of color, Trump actively encourages it.)

Adam Serwer argues persuasively in the Atlantic that Trump’s election could not be explained by “economic anxiety,” because the poorest voters — those making less than $50,000 a year — voted predominantly for Hillary Clinton. On the other hand, “Trump defeated Clinton among white voters in every income category,” from those making less than $30,000 to those making more than $250,000. In other words, Serwer writes, Trump does not lead a “working-class coalition; it is a nationalist one.” That doesn’t mean that every Trump supporter is a racist; it does mean that Trump’s victory has revealed that racism and xenophobia are more widespread than I had previously realized.

As for sexism, its scope has been made plain by the horrifying revelations of widespread harassment, assault, and even rape perpetrated by powerful men from Hollywood to Washington. The Harvey Weinstein scandal has opened the floodgates, leading to the naming and shaming of a growing list of rich and powerful men — including Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Roy Moore, and John Conyers — who are alleged to have abused their positions of authority to force themselves upon women or, in some cases, men.

As with the revelations of police brutality, so too with sexual harassment: I am embarrassed and ashamed that I did not understand how bad the problem is. I had certainly gotten some hints from my female friends of the kind of harassment they have endured, but I never had any idea it was this bad or this common — or this tolerated. Even now, while other men are being fired for their misconduct, Trump continues to sit in the Oval Office despite credible allegations of sexual assault from nearly 20 different women.

I now realize something I should have learned long ago: that feminist activists had a fair point when they denounced the “patriarchy” for oppressing women. Sadly, this oppression, while less severe than it used to be, remains a major problem in spite of the impressive strides the U.S. has taken toward greater gender equality.

This doesn’t mean that I am about to join the academic political correctness brigade in protesting “microaggressions” and agitating against free speech. I remain a classical liberal, and I am disturbed by attempts to infringe on freedom of speech in the name in fighting racism, sexism, or other ills. But I no longer think, as I once did, that “political correctness” is a bigger threat than the underlying racism and sexism that continue to disfigure our society decades after the civil rights and women’s rights movements. If the Trump era teaches us anything, it is how far we still have to go to realize the “unalienable Rights” of all Americans to enjoy “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, or skin color.

via 2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege – Foreign Policy

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