Tories Push Trudeau To Keep FGM Warning In Citizenship Guide

2017/12/01 Leave a comment

Of course, the citizenship guide should maintain a reference to FGM.

But this needs to be placed in the broader context of violence against women and the history of how Canadian society has evolved in terms of women’s rights, definition of sexual assault, employment equity and the like, not just with an identity politics bumper sticker of “barbaric cultural practices”:

Federal Conservatives are pressuring the Liberal government to ensure that the final draft of the new citizenship guide includes a warning that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a crime in Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not speak to the guide when pressed about the issue in question period Wednesday, but said he is committed to ending the “barbaric practice” around the world.

Tory immigration critic Michelle Rempel noted in the House of Commons that the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women — better known as UN Women — tweeted about FGM as part of its “16 days of activism.”

The UN group called FGM — the intentional cutting of female genital organs for non-medical reasons — a human rights violation that has been perpetuated against 200 million women and girls.

“Canada’s citizenship guide informs newcomers that FGM is a crime in Canada. However Canada’s prime minister has decided to delete this information,” Rempel charged.

The MP was referencing a working copy of the new citizenship guide the government is preparing. The draft, which was obtained by The Canadian Press in the summer, reportedly omits lines stating that certain “barbaric cultural practices,” such as FGM and honour killings, are illegal in Canada. The previous Tory government included those warnings in their overhauls of the guide.

Rempel urged Trudeau in the House to stand with FGM survivors and the UN by reversing what she called his “decision.” She made similar comments on Twitter shortly after question period.

Trudeau responded that he “personally brought up this issue” during a visit to Liberia last year, “challenging local leaders and governments to step up on the fight against FGM.”

Then he said something that drew an immediate reaction from Tories.

“We will continue to lead the way pushing for an end to these barbaric practices of female genital mutilation everywhere around the world. This is something… and here in Canada… this is something we take very seriously.”

Tories bashed Trudeau over comments in 2011

The use of the word “barbaric” harkens back to a controversy in 2011, when Trudeau was serving as the immigration critic of the then-opposition Liberals. He initially took exception to the way the Tories’ revamped citizenship guide described honour killings as “barbaric.”

Trudeau said at the time that the government should have instead called all violence against women “absolutely unacceptable” and made a better “attempt at responsible neutrality.” Top Tories, including then-immigration minister Jason Kenney, relentlessly blasted Trudeau over his remarks.

Trudeau later apologized and retracted his initial take on the guide.

“I want to make it clear that I think the acts described are heinous, barbaric acts that are totally unacceptable in our society,” he said in a statement at the time, according to CBC News.

The debate over so-called “barbaric cultural practices” also factored heavily in the 2015 election, when the Tories famously pledged to create a tip line for Canadians to call if they suspected a child or woman could fall victim to forced marriage, FGM, or polygamy. Liberals said then that the Conservatives’ campaign pledge was really about stoking “fear and division.”

PM brings up lessons from 2015 election

Trudeau referenced that ill-fated Tory promise in the House Tuesday while responding to Conservative questions about how his government is handling suspected ISIS terrorists after they return to Canada. The prime minister said Tories have learned nothing from the results of the last federal vote.

“They ran an election on snitch lines against Muslims, they ran an election on Islamophobia and division, and still they play the same games, trying to scare Canadians,” Trudeau shouted.

“The fact is we always focus on the security of Canadians, and we always will. They play the politics of fear, and Canadians reject that.”

via Tories Push Trudeau To Keep FGM Warning In Citizenship Guide

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Holocaust Museum Director Faces Rising Anti-Semitism – The Forward

2017/12/01 Leave a comment

Good, thoughtful interview:

Sara Bloomfield joined the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in its early stages, years before the project turned into one of the nation’s most visited landmarks on the National Mall in Washington.

Now, after serving as director of the museum for 18 years, Bloomfield, 67, is tasked with leading the institution during a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in America, and when political forces are slow to condemn manifestations of racism.

In the past year, the Holocaust museum has found itself stepping into the debate over the response to white supremacist marches and speaking out against acts of vandalism directed at Jewish institutions. At the same time, it has entered another political minefield after issuing, and then retracting, a report critical of the Obama administration’s response to the Syrian civil war.

Bloomfield talked with the Forward’s Nathan Guttman about these developments and how the Holocaust museum has responded.

Nathan Guttman: How do you see the responsibility of the Holocaust museum in light of the wave of anti-Semitism America is experiencing?

Sara Bloomfield: There’s no doubt we’re experiencing a resurgence of anti-Semitism in the United States and in Europe and in the Middle East. The most important thing we can do right now is to get our message about Holocaust education to an even broader audience and reach people that we’ve never reached before, whether they are in the United States, Europe or the Middle East. We want people to look, not just at the fact that the Holocaust happened, but what made it possible. And obviously anti-Semitism is key to that. Another important lesson we as Holocaust educators have here is not only about what happens when anti-Semitism goes unchecked — obviously the Holocaust being the ultimate example of that — but also Holocaust history teaches that the hatred started with the Jews, but it did not end with the Jews. That’s a very important lesson for all societies in all times, but obviously we’re experiencing a unique moment in American and world history right now.

Does the fact that young Americans were marching in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Jews will not replace us” indicate a failure of the Holocaust education system?

Anti-Semitism has been appropriately called “the longest hatred.” That it never really goes away, that it will always be around, that it’s a very convenient explanation. If you look at Nazism, the Jews became the simple answer to complex questions. They were the perfect scapegoat to their problems. I think Jews will always serve that role, unfortunately. Anti-Semitism never goes away, because it serves this useful function in times of great fear and huge dislocation and change. So, I’m not optimistic that anti-Semitism will ever be eliminated; I think it’s an ineradicable disease. I don’t think the Holocaust museum alone can end this problem, but I think we’re an important institution that must contribute to the addressing of it. I think we must always be vigilant.

It’s very shocking. I don’t want to minimize what we’re seeing, but for us, Charlottesville wasn’t only shocking, it was a moment to educate the public on the historical significance of what happened in Charlottesville. They were chanting “Blood and soil”; I don’t think many well-meaning Americans understood what that meant. But if you study Holocaust history you understand exactly what that means. It was an opportunity for us — what do they call it? A teachable moment.

Has your work become more difficult, given the questions of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial that became intertwined in the political debate?

I’ve been at the museum 31 years and a lot has changed in America, and my observation is that the Holocaust transcends partisan issues. Everybody recognizes that it is a moment of utter failure in human history that we must all learn from, and I think that’s why there’s a Holocaust museum on the National Mall, because people believed that this was such an unprecedented event in Western civilization, it happened in a country that was highly educated and had a democratic constitution, and yet, look what happened there. So this is a lesson, certainly about what happened to the Jews of Europe, but this is also a lesson for humanity that is timeless. We were timeless when we opened 25 years ago, we’re very timeless today and I believe we will be timeless in 25 years, because I always say “The world always changes, but human nature never does.”

Do you feel constricted by politics when speaking out about Charlottesville, about anti-Semitism in the political campaign?

There is no place in American society for neo-Nazism, absolutely no place in this society, and we’ve said so after Charlottesville, and we also issued a second statement because within 48 hours after Charlottesville, the Holocaust memorial in Boston was vandalized. There was a trend and we were concerned about that trend. We don’t issue a lot of statements, we’re very careful and judicious because we realize we’re a memorial for the victims and we want to use that voice very, very carefully, and I’m not sure I remember a time when we issued two statements so closely, but we felt that at that moment we had to speak out twice.

We’re educators, we’re not advocates. We believe that education is the important way to get people to understand the consequences of unchecked anti-Semitism, of what Nazism really wants, what are the historical roots.

Another political issue the museum found itself involved in was the report about the Syrian civil war. What is the lesson you have drawn from this experience?

Our goal was to generate a constructive conversation on the Syrian catastrophe. It became clear to me early on that we really missed the mark on achieving this goal because our study was conceived to be politicized, it was insensitive to the victims. I deeply regret that. So the minute I saw it was clear we are not achieving our goal, I said we have to take the study down and we have to reassess it and we’re in a reassessment process. We had a miss here and we have to look at what went wrong with our process; we need to engage more stakeholders internally and externally, but I’m very committed we will learn from this experience. We are not going to be deterred from our work on Syria. We have an exhibit opening in November and we will move forward.

I think about Elie Wiesel and his vision for the museum, which was to try to do for victims today what was not done for the Jews of Europe, and we won’t be complacent in that, we will continue to work on it. I feel badly that we missed the mark on this, but we will not let it deter us, and we will learn from it.

via Holocaust Museum Director Faces Rising Anti-Semitism – The Forward

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Canada’s First Hijab-Wearing Television News Reporter Is Using Her Difference To Break Barriers: Forbes

2017/12/01 Leave a comment

Interesting profile:

Canada is a country known for it’s multiculturalism, and nowhere represents that better than Toronto. As the fourth largest city in North America and the most diverse metropolitan area in the world, Toronto is home to people of all racial, religious, and cultural backgrounds. From Greektown to Little Jamaica, from food festivals to musical showcases, from the ringing bells of churches to the prayer calls of mosques, the corners of the world convene in Toronto. But despite this rich diversity, a hijab-wearing Muslim woman had never anchored a major newscast in the city, or anywhere else in the country. Not until 2015. Not until Ginella Massa.

Massa made history two years ago when she appeared on televisions across the Greater Toronto Area on CityNews Toronto’s late night news show. While Muslim women had anchored newscasts in Canada before, none had ever done so in a hijab.

The gravity of this was not lost on Massa. “When I have young girls coming up to me saying how excited they are seeing someone like me in a mainstream medium, and that it makes them feel like it’s something they too can aspire to be, that’s what keeps me encouraged and inspired to keep doing the work I’m doing,” she explained.

“My mother was the one who suggested that I might want to pursue a career in broadcasting, given my loquaciousness, my inquisitive nature, and my ability to easily connect with all different kinds of people. When I questioned whether I could be given a chance on broadcast TV, she would tell me, ‘just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean you can’t be the first,’” Massa recalls.

Massa pursued a degree in journalism and later worked as a digital content editor for the website of a small news station. But getting an anchor role is a considerable challenge for aspiring news reporters with no on-air experience. So, Massa, decided to create an opportunity for herself. Together with her friend, Maleeha Sheikh, Massa co-produced an online web-series. Though they didn’t have a huge budget or audience, the episodes were good footage for their portfolios and demo reels and proved they had essential industry skills.

It paid off. “We only ended up doing 4 episodes because a month later [Sheikh] got offered a job reporting on a morning show, and I landed my first on-air gig about 4 months later,” Massa notes.

Ginella Massa’s first newscast

Of course, the journey to that job did not come without fears and apprehensions. Though Massa never worried about her abilities or the quality of her work, before getting hired on at CityNews, her concern was that networks would hesitate to hire her for fear of controversy or backlash in response to the outward display of her faith. But a mentor encouraged Massa to embrace her difference and position it as an asset, and that’s precisely what she did.

In interviews, Massa encouraged the directors she met with to see the importance of reflecting the diversity of their audience. In a city where more than half the population is made up of visible minorities, hiring a hijab-wearing Muslim woman was not a risk, it was a willful decision to include the voices of communities that are often left unheard.

Now, with every broadcast, Massa not only reminds Muslim girls that they could one day be anchors too, she also continues to challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions her colleagues and viewers might hold.

“I recognize that some of the people I work with would otherwise never have any interaction with a Muslim, and it’s opened their eyes and made them realize that Muslims have a vested interest in our society, that we’re intelligent and talented, and we care about the same issues as many Canadians,” Massa notes.

Massa hopes that her role will continue to inspire other Muslim women to go after roles in the public sector where they can help change the negative narratives around what women of her faith can achieve. She extends that same message to women and girls of all faiths, races, and cultural backgrounds who might feel that they don’t belong in the spaces they dream of occupying.

The advice she offers is universal: “Don’t let anyone else silence your dreams because of their perception of what you can or cannot achieve. You’re going to have to work hard to overcome those barriers that people will try to put in front of you. Be persistent, don’t give up, and work on being the best, so no one can ever have a reason to say no.”

via Canada’s First Hijab-Wearing Television News Reporter Is Using Her Difference To Break Barriers

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Sorry has been the hardest word for governments

2017/11/30 Leave a comment

Good overview by Evan Dyer.

When working on the Canadian Historical Recognition Program and some of the apologies then under consideration, all these issues came up. The article’s comment that lawyers “hate apologies” (given legal risks) brings back memories of many meetings.

And as noted, Conservative governments have been more open to apologies and recognition programs (Japanese wartime internment, Chinese head tax etc, residential school system):

Canada’s next official apology is already in the works.

The country, through its prime minister, is expected to express contrition for the historic cruelty of turning away the St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism in 1939.

The passengers had already been refused entry by Cuban and U.S. authorities. Rejected and dejected, they would return to a Europe on the brink of war. Many would die in Nazi concentration camps.

A statement of regret, 80 years after the fact, will fit firmly into the Canadian government’s record of official apology.

Until Tuesday’s LGBTQ2 apology — and leaving aside apologies to individuals such as Maher Arar — Canada had atoned for three types of wrongs: those related to the Indian Residential School system, wrongs related to immigration, such as the Chinese head tax or the Komagata Maru incident, and wrongs it perpetrated during the two world wars, such as the internment of Japanese-Canadians and the executions of Canadian soldiers during the First World War.

The St. Louis incident checks two of those three boxes.

Some in the Jewish community have fought for years to make the government acknowledge that its decision was heartless and tainted by anti-Semitism.

Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis attempt to communicate with friends and relatives in Cuba, June 3, 1939. The ship’s passengers were later refused entry to Canada and many died in the Holocaust. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/National Archives and Records)

Others are less keen. Sally Zerker, whose Polish-Jewish family members on the St. Louis were turned away, wrote in Canadian Jewish News that an apology now would be “nothing but a shallow, empty, meaningless act.”

“It will not bring back my relatives, or offer me any solace. Instead, it will whitewash a government that did nothing to help the Jews who were fleeing the Nazis and ignored the type of anti-Semitism that was endemic in Canada until the 1970s.”

But Zerker’s reaction is not typical. Though panned by some critics as “virtue-signalling” and gesture politics, apologies often mean a lot to the people to whom they’re directed.

Apologies, left and right

It was Conservative Brian Mulroney who broke the ice in 1988, when he apologized for the internment of Japanese-Canadians (Ronald Reagan the same year signed a similar apology to Japanese-Americans who were interned). Stephen Harper followed suit in 2006 with an apology for the head tax that unfairly penalized Chinese immigrants from 1885 to 1923.

Harper also made what is probably Canada’s biggest apology to date for the residential school system. Justin Trudeau’s apology last week extended that apology to residential school survivors in Newfoundland and Labrador who had been excluded.

Then prime minister Stephen Harper shakes hands with Indigenous leaders on June 11, 2008, the day he formally apologized on behalf of the Canadian government for the residential school system. The exclusion of schools in Newfoundland and Labrador led to another apology by Justin Trudeau last week. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Trudeau’s own father was no fan of saying sorry. When Mulroney first proposed an apology for Japanese-Canadians in 1984, Trudeau rebuffed him.

 “I do not think it is the purpose of a government to right the past,” Pierre Trudeau said. “It is our purpose to be just in our time.”

“My father might have a different perspective on it than I do,” Justin Trudeau said Monday, as he prepared to apologize for the persecution of LGBT Canadians.

“He came at it as an academic, as a constitutionalist. I come at it as a teacher, as someone who’s worked a lot in communities.”

Lawyers hate apologies

Trudeau could also have said his father came at it as a lawyer, which he was.

Lawyers routinely tell their clients that apologies can be construed as admissions of guilt or liability — and can carry a price tag.

Concerns about reparations long delayed an official U.S. government apology for slavery.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton condemned his country’s record on a visit to Senegal in 1998, but added the caveat: “We cannot push time backward through the door of no return. We have lived our history.”

Ten years would pass before the U.S. Congress would pass a resolution apologizing for more than 200 years of slavery and segregation of African-Americans.

But the Senate’s beautifully worded apology to African-Americans ends with this rather jarring clause: “Disclaimer: Nothing in this resolution  a) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or b) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States.”

Limited liability

Slavery began in United States during colonial times, but it persisted long after the U.S. Declaration of Independence, as the Congressional apology acknowledged.

Should Canada’s responsibility for historic wrongs extend to pre-Confederation times?

Stephen Harper thought not, which is why he excluded Newfoundland and Labrador from his residential school apology in 2008. Trudeau has decided that the province’s pre-Confederation history (N.L. joined in 1949) was Canada’s history. And it’s a history with its own set of wrongs.

Relations between Newfoundland’s original inhabitants, the Beothuks, and its settlers were so bad that encounters between the two usually left one side dead. The last confirmed member of the Beothuk people died in 1829.

And the same British Crown that pacified Quebec by extending legal tolerance and equality to its Catholic majority showed a much harsher face in its Newfoundland colony. There, it imposed the same code of discrimination and persecution it operated in Ireland: the Penal Laws.

The policies enacted in a forlorn bid to prevent Irish people from settling Newfoundland included banning the Roman Catholic religion, hunting priests and nuns, burning homes and outbuildings and refusing the right of burial.

Official government correspondence of the era typically refers to the island’s Irish people as “idle, disorderly, useless men and women” and “disaffected, disloyal, disorderly, enured to drunkenness, debauchery, vices and felonies of all kinds.”

Irish people lived under absurd restrictions — for example, no two “Papist” men could spend the winter under the same roof unless they were servants of a Protestant master — and any infraction was an excuse for exile.

Sins of the Crown

Acadian family members place flowers at the base of a monument honouring the memory of Acadians who were deported 250 years ago, on the waterfront in Halifax in 2005. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

At least one of Canada’s pre-Confederation wrongs has already been addressed in a formal apology — from the Queen.

The expulsion of the Acadians in 1755 from what is now the Maritimes and Quebec was a historic transgression whose consequences are still felt by the exiles’ descendants (some of whom live in Louisiana rather than Nova Scotia, for one thing).

Queen Elizabeth apologized to the Acadians in 2003, signing a royal “Proclamation Designating 28 July of Every Year as A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval.”

But she was careful to add a rider:

“Our present proclamation does not, under any circumstances, constitute a recognition of legal or financial responsibility by the Crown.”

 via Sorry has been the hardest word for governments | CBC News

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The Daily — Labour, Education in Canada: Key results from the 2016 Census [immigration excerpts]

2017/11/30 Leave a comment

Immigration excerpts (looking forward to exploring the various data tables):

Immigrants accounted for almost one-quarter of the labour force

From 2006 to 2016, about two-thirds of Canada’s population growth was the result of migratory increase (the difference between the number of immigrants and emigrants). Similarly, the labour force was growing in large part due to increased immigration, with immigrants accounting for 23.8% of the labour force in 2016, up from 21.2% in 2006.

In 2016, half of the workforce in the CMA of Toronto were immigrants. The CMA of Vancouver had the second-highest proportion of immigrants in its labour force at 43.2%, followed by the CMA of Calgary at 32.5%.

The contribution of immigrants to the Canadian labour market is an important component of strategies to offset the impact of population aging, which might otherwise lead to a shrinking pool of workers and labour shortages. Many immigrants are admitted into Canada based on their skills and education.

In May 2016, among recent immigrants aged 25 to 54, 68.5% were employed, compared with an employment rate of 79.5% for core-aged immigrants who landed more than five years before the census, and 82.0% for the Canadian-born population. Among recent immigrants in this age group, 79.6% of men were employed, compared with 58.6% of women.

Although the employment rate for core-aged recent immigrants was lower than that of other immigrants and the Canadian-born, it increased from 67.1% in 2006 to 68.5% in 2016. For core-aged recent immigrant women, the employment rate increased from 56.8% in 2006 to 58.6% in 2016, and for core-aged recent immigrant men, the rate increased from 78.7% to 79.6%. In contrast, employment rates for core-aged Canadian-born men, as well as for non-recent immigrant men and women, declined over this 10-year period.

via The Daily — Labour in Canada: Key results from the 2016 Census

Over half of recent immigrants have a bachelor’s degree or higher

Immigrants contribute to Canada’s economy by bringing their skills and high levels of educational attainment. Canada’s immigration system highly values education. In recent years, new programs have made it easier for international students who have completed their postsecondary education in Canada to immigrate into the country. As of the 2016 Census, 4 in 10 immigrants aged 25 to 64 had a bachelor’s degree or higher. In comparison, just under one-quarter of the Canadian-born population aged 25 to 64 had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Recent immigrants who landed in the five years prior to the 2016 Census were especially well-educated, with over half having a bachelor’s degree or higher. Recent immigrant women were more likely than recent immigrant men to have a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2016. The reverse was true in the 2006 Census.

The percentage of all immigrants with a master’s or doctorate degree is twice that of the Canadian-born population. Among immigrants aged 25 to 64, 11.3% had a master’s or doctorate degree compared with 5.0% among the Canadian-born population. Recent immigrants were even more likely to have a master’s or doctorate degree, with 16.7% of them holding these graduate degrees in 2016.

Chart 5  Chart 5: Percentage of the population aged 25 to 64 with selected degrees, by immigrant status and period of immigration, Canada, 2016
Percentage of the population aged 25 to 64 with selected degrees, by immigrant status and period of immigration, Canada, 2016

Chart 5: Percentage of the population aged 25 to 64 with selected degrees, by immigrant status and period of immigration, Canada, 2016

…Close to one-third of refugees have upgraded their educational credentials in Canada

For the first time, the census included information on the admission category under which immigrants to Canada have arrived. The Canadian immigration system has three broad goals: to attract educated and skilled immigrants, to reunify families, and to provide humanitarian and compassionate refuge. Immigrants admitted under the refugee category face particular challenges as they are not admitted based on education, language or other assets, and may not have all of the skills required to find employment in their new country.

Close to one-third of refugees (31.5%) who have received their permanent resident status, upgraded their educational credentials by completing their highest postsecondary qualification in Canada. When looking only at those who arrived as adults (aged 18 and older), about 22% upgraded their education with higher qualifications in Canada, slightly more than immigrants admitted under either the economic or family categories, both at about 20%. The majority (71.1%) of refugees who immigrated to Canada as adults and upgraded their educational qualifications in Canada completed a trades or college diploma. In comparison, among economic immigrants who upgraded their education in Canada, the majority (56.5%) completed a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Via: Education in Canada: Key results from the 2016 Census 

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Less open, less tolerant and more nervous, but Australia remains upbeat about immigration

2017/11/30 Leave a comment

Best summary of the Scanlon Foundation report, the benchmark annual report on Australian public attitudes:

Australians are less tolerant, less open and more nervous about the world than 10 years ago – but not as much as our politics might suggest. That’s the take-home message from the Scanlon Foundation’s long-running social cohesion study, which for the past decade has tracked our feelings about immigration, multiculturalism and Australian society.

Over the years, our sense of belonging, worth and social justice have all taken a hit. From a benchmark of 100 points in 2007, the social cohesion index now sits at 88 – an equal record low since the survey began. But on many measures, Australia’s commitment to multiculturalism and immigration remains upbeat against the odds.

“The simple message would be yes, we’re much worse than 2007,” says Andrew Markus, the report’s lead author and a professor at Monash University. “I think it’s the contrary message – considering what’s happened over the 10 years and so on, we’re actually surprisingly resilient in terms of our attitudes. Downward trend, but not by a huge margin.”

The decline in social cohesion was spurred largely by a growing rejection of difference and sense of pessimism about the future. In 2007, just 11 per cent of Australians felt their life would get worse over the coming few years – in 2017, that figure was 19 per cent. The number of people who strongly disagree with the idea that immigration makes Australia stronger increased from 8 per cent to 13 per cent.

In the past year alone, the number of people who say immigrants need to change their behaviour rose by five percentage points, while fewer people think Australians should do more to learn about immigrants’ customs. In 2017, 20 per cent of people said they had experienced discrimination because of their ethnicity or religion in the past 12 months, compared to 9 per cent back in 2007.

On the hot-button question of Islam, the proportion of Australians who feel negatively about Muslims is stable at 25 per cent – when asked by a telephone interviewer. But when people complete the survey online by themselves, that figure increases to 41.4 per cent. Positivity toward Muslims was highest in Melbourne (34 per cent) and lowest in Brisbane (24 per cent).

But other indicators tell a different story. The number of people who think immigration is “too high” is consistent at just over a third, while 40 per cent say it’s about right. Another 16 per cent of Australians say our current intake – 190,000 people per year – is too low. For reference, we’re significantly more enthused about immigration than Britain, where 60 per cent think it is too high, but less enamoured than Canada, where it is just 23 per cent.

A huge majority (75 per cent) still agree Australia is “a land of economic opportunity where in the long run, hard work brings a better life”. Financial satisfaction remains high, as does people’s sense of individual happiness and worth. But fewer people feel an acute sense of belonging in Australia, with those saying they belong “to a great extent” declining to 67 per cent from 77 per cent.

The figures lead Professor Markus to conclude we are “much more at risk” of a political upset along the lines of Donald Trump or Brexit. The recent resurgence of One Nation is “not a surprise”, he says, given the rising disaffection with politics. But does that mean more of us are motivated by race and immigration?

graphic

“No,” says Professor Markus. “You’ve got an element in our society, and it’s probably growing, but it’s growing at the rate of three, four, five per cent, rather than 30 or 40 per cent.”

The robustness revealed by Scanlon’s annual survey of 1500 Australians is notable given our changing canvas over the past decade. The overseas-born population has grown 37 per cent, with the number of those from China rising 109 per cent, India 176 per cent and the Philippines 74 per cent.

Overall, the percentage of the Australian population that is overseas-born crept up from 25 per cent to 28 per cent. But in the same period, the number of Sydney council areas with majority overseas-born residents rose from one in eight to one in five. In Melbourne, it went from one in 30 to one in nine.

“What that is saying to me is that there’s increasing concentration of the overseas-born population,” Professor Markus says. “You’ve got immigrant communities that are not being integrated in the way that they were in the past. We’ve got a number of risk factors there that are much more significant than they were in 2007.”

Having just smashed through the world record for uninterrupted economic growth, Australia is long overdue for a recession or the type of shock that could see hate and anti-politics boil over.

“We’ve got less money in the bank in terms of the capital we have to deal with a crisis,” says Professor Markus. “In terms of resilience and robustness, and risk factors, they’re there in neon lights. If you have a system which is rudderless, which doesn’t have strong leadership … I do believe that we’re much more at risk. Australia coped quite well with the global financial crisis – could it cope again if there were another similar event?”

via Less open, less tolerant and more nervous, but Australia remains upbeat about immigration

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The Daily — Police-reported hate crime, 2016

2017/11/29 Leave a comment

Latest numbers and analytical note:

Police reported 1,409 hate crimes in Canada in 2016, 47 more than in 2015. This represented less than 0.1% of the 1,895,546 crimes (excluding traffic violations) that were reported by police services. The 3% increase in hate crimes was a result of more incidents targeting South Asians and Arabs or West Asians, the Jewish population, and people based on their sexual orientation. In contrast, hate crimes against Muslims and Catholics declined in 2016.

Canada’s population has become more diverse as the proportion of foreign-born, non-Christian religion and people who report as being gay, lesbian, bisexual or in a same-sex relationship continues to grow. For instance, overall, one-fifth of Canada’s population was foreign-born in 2016 and this could reach from 24.5% to 30.0% by 2036.

Since comparable data became available in 2009, the number of police-reported hate crimes have ranged from 1,167 incidents in 2013 to 1,482 incidents in 2009. On average, about 1,360 hate crime incidents have been reported annually by police since 2009.

Police data on hate-motivated crimes are also dependent on the willingness of victims to bring the incident to the attention of police and on the police services’ level of expertise in identifying crimes motivated by hate. As with other crimes, self-reported data provide another way of monitoring hate-motivated crimes. According to the 2014 General Social Survey on Victimization, which measures eight types of crimes, Canadians self-reported having been the victim of over 330,000 criminal incidents that they perceived as being motivated by hate (5% of the total self-reported incidents). Two-thirds of these incidents were not reported to the police.

Police-reported hate crimes refer to criminal incidents that, upon investigation by police, are found to have been motivated by hatred toward an identifiable group, as defined in subparagraph 718.2(a)(i) of the Criminal Code of Canada. An incident may be against a person or property and may target race, colour, national or ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, language, sex, age, mental or physical disability, among other factors. In addition, there are four specific offences listed as hate propaganda offences or hate crimes in the Criminal Code of Canada: advocating genocide, public incitement of hatred, willful promotion of hatred, and mischief motivated by hate in relation to religious property. Police determine whether or not a crime was motivated by hatred and indicate the type of motivation based on information gathered during the investigation and common national guidelines for record classification.

Chart 1  Number of police-reported hate crimes, Canada, 2009 to 2016

Chart 1: Number of police-reported hate crimes, Canada, 2009 to 2016

Hate crimes targeting South Asians and Arabs or West Asians increases

In 2016, 48% of all police-reported hate crimes were motivated by hatred of a race or ethnicity. That year, police reported 666 crimes that were motivated by hatred of race or ethnicity, up 4% from the previous year. This increase was largely due to 24 more hate crimes targeting South Asians and 20 more incidents targeting Arabs or West Asians. British Columbia (+13) and Ontario (+9) accounted for most of the increase in crimes against South Asians. Quebec reported 10 more crimes against Arabs or West Asians than in 2015 (from 31 incidents in 2015 to 41 in 2016).

Crimes motivated by hatred of East or Southeast Asian populations also increased from 2015 to 2016, rising from 49 to 61 incidents. While British Columbia reported 17 more incidents than the previous year, Ontario reported 7 fewer.

Police-reported hate crime against Aboriginal peoples continued to account for a relatively small proportion of hate crimes (2%), falling from 35 to 30 incidents.

Although down 4% (from 224 incidents to 214 in 2016), crimes targeting Black populations remained the most common type of hate crime related to race or ethnicity at 15% of all hate crimes.

Police report fewer hate crimes targeting the Muslim population

Police reported 460 hate crimes targeting religious groups in 2016, 9 fewer than in the previous year. These accounted for one-third of all hate crimes in Canada.

Following a notable increase in hate crimes against the Muslim population in 2015, police reported 20 fewer in 2016 for a total of 139. The decrease in police-reported hate crimes against Muslims was the result of fewer reported incidents in Quebec (-16), Alberta (-8) and Ontario (-6).

Similarly, after an increase in 2015, hate crimes against Catholics also decreased, from 55 to 27 in 2016. Ontario reported 16 fewer incidents, and declines were also seen in Quebec (-7) and the Atlantic provinces (-5).

In contrast, hate crimes against the Jewish population grew from 178 to 221 incidents. Increases were seen in Ontario (+31), Quebec (+11) and Manitoba (+7).

Increase in hate crimes targeting sexual orientation

Hate crimes targeting sexual orientation accounted for 13% of all police-reported hate crimes in 2016, rising from 141 incidents in 2015 to 176 in 2016. A greater number of incidents over these two years were reported in Quebec (+15), British Columbia (+11), Ontario (+7) and Saskatchewan (+4).

The national trend driven by more reported offences in Quebec and British Columbia and fewer in Ontario and Alberta

Among the provinces, the greatest increase in the absolute number of police-reported hate crimes was observed in Quebec, where incidents rose from 270 in 2015 to 327 in 2016. This increase was mostly attributable to more hate crimes targeting Arabs and West Asians, the Jewish population and sexual orientation.

British Columbia also reported more hate crimes, rising from 164 to 211. The increase was attributable to crimes against the East or Southeast Asian and South Asian populations, which doubled from 2015 to 2016 (from 15 to 32 and from 11 to 24, respectively).

In contrast, the number of police-reported hate crimes in Alberta declined from 193 in 2015 to 139 in 2016 due to fewer crimes targeting religion.

Hate crimes were more violent in 2016

Based on data from police services that provided detailed information on hate crimes for both 2015 and 2016, an increased violence was observed in hate crimes. For example, violent hate-motivated crimes (for example, assault, threats, criminal harassment and other violent offences) rose from 487 in 2015 to 563 in 2016, up 16%. In 2016, 43% of hate crimes were violent, compared with 38% in 2015.

Hate crimes targeting sexual orientation continued to be the most violent hate crimes. In 2016, 71% of hate crimes motivated by hatred of the victims’ sexual orientation were violent crimes. By comparison, 27% of hate crimes targeting religion and 45% targeting ethnicity were violent.

via The Daily — Police-reported hate crime, 2016

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with

The Nazi Next Door Is Real—and Unspectacular | Noah Rothman Commentary Magazine

2017/11/29 Leave a comment

I agree with Rothman here.

Understanding the banality and normality of someone with unacceptable views does not mean accepting the views but rather helps one avoid one-dimensional caricatures, a lesson that applies to both the ‘left’ and ‘right’:

Six million Jews. Nine million Soviet civilians. Nearly 2 million Poles. Over 500,000 Roma and Yugoslavs. Approximately a half million more religious minorities, homosexuals, political criminals. Up to 10 million Chinese, Indochinese, Indonesians, Koreans, and Filipinos. Millions of soldiers. All told, the conduct of fascist regimes in the mid-20th Century resulted in between 50 and 80 million deaths. These rather elementary historical facts are, apparently, necessary preamble. If you’re going to engage in any rumination on National Socialism, neo-Nazism, or a predisposition toward racial separatism, it’s apparently necessary to tell readers exactly how they should think about those anti-social traits.

That’s the only logical conclusion available to those who have perused the cascade of criticism heaped upon the New York Timesfor publishing a profile of a self-described white nationalist who might have otherwise been unidentifiable. Indeed, that was the entire point of the piece. “A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland” explored the views and lives of Tony Hovater, the “Nazi sympathizer next door,” and the white supremacists with whom he was surrounded as they tried to integrate into an Ohio community.

The profile explored not just Hovater’s views but his tastes, which is what seems to have sent Times readers into a state of manic agitation. The piece and all who were involved in its publication were savaged for “humanizing” a neo-Nazi by noting that he, too, shops at the local supermarket and enjoys “Seinfeld” references.

“It is completely insane that big U.S. media keep printing the anti-Semitic garbage of *actual Nazis* without even bothering to correct them,” wrote Toronto Star correspondent Daniel Dale. He specifically cited Hovater’s Holocaust denialism and the Times’ dispassionate retort, which held that six million dead Jews is a “widely accepted” figure. “Why does the NY Times keep normalizing Nazis?” Arizona State University journalism professor Dan Gillmor asked. “This article does more to normalize neo-Nazism than anything I’ve read in a long time,” FiveThirtyEight analyst Nate Silver complained. He theorized that the Times’editors greenlighted this “deeply sympathetic portrait of a white supremacist” because of their collective sense of guilt over failing to appreciate the issues that animate Donald Trump’s America (a theory that both underestimates Trump’s America and likely overstates the collective self-consciousness at the Times).

The outcry grew so deafening that a Times editor felt compelled to apologize for publishing what the critics saw as a soft-focus human interest story about a man with monstrous views.  Among the criticisms of this piece offered by liberals like Quartz editor Indrani Sen and Vox.com’s Ezra Klein was that a gauzy portrayal of a neo-Nazi seemed to be the profile’s only purpose. “[I]t doesn’t add anything to our understanding of modern Nazis,” Klein offered.

But it did.

The article did not begin and end with an exploration of the items on the Hovaters’ wedding registry. It delved into both Hovater and his network’s thinking regarding how they intend to integrate into acceptable society. It was a deeply disturbing portrayal of a racist movement that is beginning to eschew shock tactics in favor of infiltration and the persuasion of what the profile’s subject called “normal people.”

It described Hovater’s social media habits, which are shared by much of the alt-right—a useful detail for those who may be interested in preventing white nationalists from blending into society without a hitch. The profile explored Hovater’s reading, music tastes, and the evolution of his political thinking. It detailed his affinity for Vladimir Putin, his hatred for the press, and his disgust with United States as it is currently constituted.  If you’re interested in identifying neo-Nazis in the wild, this is all useful information. The piece also described Hovater’s life at home, where he minced garlic, cooed over his cats, and talked about having children with his future wife. For the Times’ critics, this was unacceptable. “That evil is also banal is not new,” Klein quipped. Not so. Apparently, for those who were scandalized by this profile, it is.

Undergirding the left’s revulsion over the “normalization” of an American Nazi is the idea that some—not them, of course, but the vulgar multitudes—will be tempted to embrace white supremacy because a welder in Ohio enjoys  “Twin Peaks.” This is not prudence but pretension. These liberal critics imagine themselves enlightened enough to know evil when they see it in print, but not you.

This is a censorious impulse. It represents the left’s troubling allergy to moral complexity. A man can have cats, buy barbecue sauce, love and be loved like the rest of us, and also be a beast of unspeakable prejudice and cruelty. Likewise, just because an organization calls itself “antifascist” doesn’t render it morally righteous when bands of “antifascists” form marauding bands with the intent of putting anyone who looks like a Trump supporter in the hospital. And so on.

Increasingly and to its detriment, the left in the age of Trump has convinced itself that its adversaries are, or ought to be, one-dimensional monstrosities with a monomaniacal devotion to undermining all that they hold dear. The New York Times should not be catering to children who lash out when their adversaries are depicted as fully formed human beings. The objection here is not to reportorial standards at the Times but to a set of facts the objectors cannot stand.

via The Nazi Next Door Is Real—and Unspectacular | commentary

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York U research finds children show implicit racial bias from a young age | Science News

2017/11/29 Leave a comment

Interesting research and study:

Do children show implicit racial preferences from an early age? According to new research from York University’s Faculty of Health, they do. In three separate studies with over 350 five to twelve-year-old White children, York University researchers found that children show an implicit pro-White bias when exposed to images of both White and Black children. But the type of bias depended on what children were asked to do.

The research was conducted by Professor Jennifer Steele in the Faculty of Health and her former PhD student, Amanda Williams now at the School of Education, University of Bristol. Steele says the goal of the research was to gain a better understanding of children’s automatic racial attitudes.

In the research published in the journal Child Development, a total of 359 White 5- to 12-year-olds completed child-friendly category-based (Implicit Association Test) and exemplar (Affective Priming Task; Affect Misattribution Procedure) implicit measures of racial attitudes.

When children were asked to sort faces by race on the category-based Implicit Association Test, both younger (5- to 8-year-olds) and older (9- to 12-year-olds) showed greater automatic positivity toward White as opposed to Black children.

“When we ask children to categorize by race, both younger and older White children show a pro-White bias. They are faster to match pictures of children who are White with positive images and pictures of children who are Black with negative images, relative to the reverse pairing” said Steele.

However, when they were not categorizing these faces by race, a different pattern of implicit preferences was found. On these exemplar measures, children were asked across many trials to quickly decide whether neutral images were pleasant or unpleasant. Just before seeing each neutral image, children briefly saw a picture of a Black or White child. On these implicit measures, children showed no evidence of automatic negativity toward images of Black children, despite demonstrating consistent pro-White versus Black bias on the category-based measure.

“On these measures, only younger White children show racial preferences. This was specifically a positive attitude towards other White children, and not a negative attitude towards Black children.”

The researchers also found that older children, aged 9 to 12, weren’t automatically positive toward other White children, which Steele says is consistent with other findings suggesting that individual characteristics, such as shared interests, become more important as children get older. Together, the results suggest that positive and negative racial attitudes can follow distinct developmental trajectories.

The findings can have important implications for programs designed to prevent or decrease prejudice in childhood. Specifically, Steele believes that interventions designed to decrease negativity towards other races might not be the best approach for younger children. Instead, interventions should encourage children to see members of other groups positively as well, although she believes that more research examining interventions is needed.

“In early childhood what we know is that children tend to be egocentric and socio-centric. They think that they’re great and that other people who are like them are great too. That’s why we recommend using interventions that don’t challenge these beliefs, but instead promote the fact that people from different backgrounds or who look different than them often have a lot in common and they can be great too.

She adds that this can be very important in the classroom.

“It is important that classroom teachers promote the benefits of diversity and expose children to positive role models from all different backgrounds. We live in an increasingly multicultural society and exposure to this diversity – even through books or media – can make children more comfortable with this diversity. Children have some awareness of race from an early age, so research suggests that taking a colour-blind approach – or pretending that race doesn’t exist – is not the best approach.”

Steele adds that classroom teachers should both create and seize opportunities to celebrate diversity and promote multiculturalism for their students.

via York U research finds children show implicit racial bias from a young age | EurekAlert! Science News

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White Americans Are Still Confused About Racism – Here’s “The Talk” We Need To Have | Citizenship and Social Justice

2017/11/28 Leave a comment

This is a really well thought out and argued piece by Jon Greenberg:

Growing up and now living in the predominately white city of Seattle, I’ve known and worked with countless White Americans. I have yet to meet one White American who has given or received “The Talk.”

You know, the one that primarily Black American families have to have with their children to keep them safe from the police – because of their race: “Keep your hands open and out in front of you, shut your mouth, be respectful, say ‘sir.’” The one you can now witness through this powerful video:

White Americans have the privilege to grow up without “The Talk,” but that doesn’t mean they should grow up without a talk.

Perhaps because too many White Americans never get one, they too often get race so wrong.

For one, a recent survey reveals that a startling number of White Americans – 55% – believe that they are the targets of discrimination. Other studies (here and here) have corroborated such high percentages. Important to note about this recent survey is that “a much smaller percentage” of those White Americans say that they actually experienced the discrimination.

Before you start blaming Trump supporters for these results, a pre-election poll of 16,000 Americans revealed that Clinton supporters, too, have some serious work to do. For example, 20% of Clinton supporters described Black Americans as “less intelligent” than White Americans.

Racism is a problem all across the board for White America, even in “progressive” places like Seattle.

Maybe this deep misunderstanding of racism explains why too many White Americans don’t lift a finger to stop it. Literally. Most White Americans – 67% – refuse to even click to share articles about race on social media.

We White Americans are long past due for a “Talk” of our own. I’ve even readied some talking points for you.

Before I lay them out, I’d like to note that I’m hardly the first to compile such a list.

However, given white peoples’ attitudes and inaction on racism, another article certainly can’t hurt and could even help. Compare my list to this one, this one, or this tasty one. (It will only help me make my point.)

It’s worth adding to this wealth of existing information because many White Americans still hold on to what they think are legitimate reasons to dismiss information about systemic racism against people of Color.

You may think such reasons are valid, too. You might believe that the evidence of systemic racism is “anecdotal,” argue that sources are “out of date,” or feel skeptical about information from op-eds or radical lefty publications.

So you should know that, for this one article, I’m sticking with numbers, not stories. Also know that, for the most part, I’m citing publications only from the last few years and from mainstream news publications, government or academic studies/data, or coverage of such studies/data from mainstream news publications. As much as possible, I’m staying clear of left-leaning sources like The Huffington Post, which initially covered the Trump campaign in its Entertainment section.

While reading, keep two key numbers from the Census in your head:

  • 62: the percentage of this country that is White American (not Latinx)
  • 13: the percentage of this country that is Black American

If access to institutional power were spread proportionally, 13% of Black Americans and 62% of White Americans would make up any given institution.

Key points:

  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about education. The narrative of our educational system as leveler of the playing field doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about employment and poverty. The narrative of hard work leading to riches doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion of a system that, according to Ava DuVernay, evolved from slavery. The narrative of our system as a “justice” system doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about this country as a meritocracy. That narrative of education as a pathway to social mobility doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about housing discrimination – past and present. The narrative of housing as part of the American dream doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about health care. The narrative of doctors fulfilling their Hippocratic Oath doesn’t hold up with a racial lens.
  • “The Talk” for White Americans must include an honest discussion about the media we consume. With a racial lens, the narratives of some people barely exist.

via White Americans Are Still Confused About Racism – Here’s “The Talk” We Need To Have | Citizenship and Social Justice

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