HBO Responds to Twitter Protest Over ‘Confederate’ Series | Time.com

2017/08/01 Leave a comment

The commentary by the producers suggests that some of the concerns may have been excessive. Alternate realities, if done with sensitivity, can help further discussion:

HBO issued a statement Sunday night in response to an organized Twitter protest against the network’s planned alternate-history slavery drama from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and writer-producers Nichelle Tramble Spellman (Justified) and Malcolm Spellman (Empire).

“We have great respect for the dialogue and concern being expressed around Confederate,” the network said in a statement. “We have faith that Nichelle, Dan, David, and Malcolm will approach the subject with care and sensitivity. The project is currently in its infancy so we hope that people will reserve judgment until there is something to see.”

As hit series Game of Thrones aired on Sunday evening, the hashtag #NoConfederate trended globally on Twitter. “We believe the time to speak up is now before the show has been written or cast. Before @hbo invests too much money into #Confederate,” activist April Reign, one of a group of women who started the campaign, wrote on Twitter last week. “This Sunday at 9 p.m. ET, during @GameOfThrones, we ask you to stand with us. We want to send a message to @hbo using hashtag #NoConfederate.” (Reign launched #OscarsSoWhite in 2015 after the Academy Awards nominated an all-white slate of acting nominees.)

“We know we have the power to make change,” she added in another tweet. “Let’s show @hbo how many people are against #Confederate. Please join us Sunday w/ #NoConfederate.”

In an email to CNN, Reign added, “We would like HBO to cancel #Confederate and instead uplift more marginalized voices with a different series.”

HBO announced Confederate earlier this month. According to a press release from the network, the show “chronicles the events leading to the Third American Civil War. The series takes place in an alternate timeline, where the southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution. The story follows a broad swath of characters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone — freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists, the executives of a slave-holding conglomerate and the families of people in their thrall.”

In the wake of the news, social media erupted in protest over the premise — a response the producers discussed in an interview with Vulture. “I do understand their concern,” Nichelle Tramble Spellman said. “I wish their concern had been reserved to the night of the premiere, on HBO, on a Sunday night, when they watched and then they made a decision after they watched an hour of television as to whether or not we succeeded in what we set out to do. The concern is real. But I think that the four of us are very thoughtful, very serious, and not flip about what we are getting into in any way. What I’ve done in the past, what Malcolm has done in the past, what the D.B.s have done in the past, proves that. So I would have loved an opportunity for the conversation to start once the show was on the air.”

Added Malcolm Spellman, “What people have to understand is, and what we are obligated to repeat in every interview is: We’ve got black aunties. We’ve got black nephews, uncles. Black parents and black grandparents. We deal with them every single day. We deal with the struggle every single day. And people don’t have to get on board with what we’re doing based on a press release. But when they’re writing about us, and commenting about us, they should be mindful of the fact that there are no sell-outs involved in this show. Me and Nichelle are not props being used to protect someone else. We are people who feel a need to address issues the same way they do, and they should at least humanize the other end of those tweets and articles.”

Last week, HBO president Casey Bloys took the blame for the way Confederate had been announced, saying it could have been handled with more grace.

“File this under hindsight is 20/20,” Bloys told reporters Wednesday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “If I could do it over again, HBO’s mistake — not the producers’ — was the idea that we would be able to announce an idea that is so sensitive that requires such care and thought on the part of the producers in a press release was misguided on our part. [We] had the benefit of sitting with these four producers, we heard why they wanted to do the show, what they were excited about, and why it was important to them, so we had that context, but I completely understand that somebody reading the press release would not have that at all. If I had to do it over again, I would’ve rolled it out with the producers on the record so people understood where they were coming from.”

Bloys added the show will not be “Gone with the Wind 2017” and that all the producers understand the “high degree of difficulty with getting this right.”

“But the thing that excites them that excited us is if you can get it right, there’s a real opportunity to advance the race discussion in America,” he added. “Again, what Malcolm said in one of his interviews was, ‘If you can draw a line between what we’re seeing in the country today with voter suppression, mass incarceration, lack of access to public education or healthcare, and draw a direct line between that and our past and our shared history, that’s an important line to draw and a conversation worth having.’ So it is very difficult, and they acknowledge there’s a high degree of difficulty, but they all feel — and we support them — that it’s a risk worth taking.”

Source: HBO Responds to Twitter Protest Over ‘Confederate’ Series | Time.com

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Canada’s real strength? It’s not diversity: Catherine Little

2017/08/01 Leave a comment

Valid point regarding diversity of choice that Canada offers regardless of origins, in terms of identities (but I wouldn’t necessity place it in opposition to the general point about diversity being a strength, just a reminder that of diversity within diversity, and the importance of choice):

Recently, I have been puzzling over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s comments during his interview with CTV’s Your Morning co-host Anne-Marie Mediwake. Ms. Mediwake described her family’s journey to Canada and the Prime Minister stated that he sometimes felt “jealous” of immigrants. His reasoning was that immigrants got to choose Canada while those born here were Canadians by default.

I don’t think there is anything to be jealous about. No matter how we came to be Canadian, our role in strengthening this country is dependent on the choices we make everyday. As an immigrant who did not personally choose Canada but has gratefully lived here for more than 90 per cent of my life, my perspective is this: I don’t believe the diversity of the population is our country’s greatest strength. Canada’s greatest strength is the diversity of the choices the population is free to make once we are here. Our future is dependent on enough people making wise ones.

Source: Canada’s real strength? It’s not diversity – The Globe and Mail

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Sunday Times accused of antisemitism over column on BBC pay | The Guardian

2017/08/01 Leave a comment

Amazing how the editors let the offending piece through in the first place:

The Sunday Times has been accused of antisemitism after it published an article in its Irish edition that suggested the BBC presenters Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz were well paid because they are Jewish.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper removed an online version of the piece by Holocaust denier Kevin Myers on Sunday morning amid a wave of outrage, but it appeared in printed editions of the newspaper across Ireland.

Under the headline “Sorry ladies, equal pay has to be earned”, Myers wrote: “I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC – Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted – are Jewish. Good for them.

“Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity. I wonder, who are their agents? If they’re the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in the marketplace.”

Myers has previously written, in the Irish Independent: “There was no holocaust (or Holocaust, as my computer software insists) and six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich. These two statements of mine are irrefutable truths.”

Winkleman is a regular Sunday Times columnist, writing weekly in the Style supplement.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism announced on Sunday it would report the paper to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. It said in a statement: “It is clear that Kevin Myers should not have been invited to write for the Sunday Times, and his editors should never have allowed the article to be published. That they removed the article within hours of publishing it is proof that the decision was irrefutably wrong.

“Rather than moving swiftly on, we now expect the Sunday Times to investigate how this happened, to hold the editor responsible and the columnist to account, and to publish a high-profile and clear apology. We have contacted the newspaper’s senior management and given them our views on what should happen next.”

Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, described the piece as “undiluted antisemitism and misogyny” while the former Europe minister Denis MacShane said the comments were “truly shameful”.

Danny Cohen, the former director of BBC television, called on the Sunday Times to prevent Myers from writing for any News UK paper ever again.

After the column was removed, the editor of the Sunday Times, Martin Ivens, issued a statement saying Myers’ comments were “unacceptable and should not have been published”.

“It has been taken down and we sincerely apologise both for the remarks and the error of judgment that led to publication,” he said.

The editor of the paper’s Irish edition, Frank Fitzgibbon, added: “I apologise unreservedly for the offence caused by comments in a column written by Kevin Myers and published today in the Ireland edition of the Sunday Times. It contained views that have caused considerable distress and upset to a number of people.

“As the editor of the Ireland edition I take full responsibility for this error of judgment. This newspaper abhors antisemitism and did not intend to cause offence to Jewish people.”

Ivens later added that Myers would not write again for the Sunday Times Ireland and said a printed apology would appear in next week’s paper. A News UK spokeswoman said he had apologised personally to Winkleman and Feltz “for these unacceptable comments both to Jewish people and to women in the workplace”.

Source: Sunday Times accused of antisemitism over column on BBC pay | Media | The Guardian

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How privileged are you? Take this test to find out – Wente misses some elements

2017/07/31 Leave a comment

An interesting privilege test by Margaret Wente, that focusses on non-ethnic origin or race factors:

  • Your family income – or your parents’ family income, if you’re young – is $120,000 a year or more. (That’s the approximate cutoff point for the upper one-fifth of earners.)
  • You grew up in a stable, two-parent household. (Children who grow up in stable families do much better than children in lone-parent or divorced families.)
  • Your mother graduated from university. (Maternal education is an important predictor of children’s educational attainment.)
  • Your folks took you to the museum/theatre when you were a kid.
  • Your family helped/will help you with a down payment on a house (or you helped your kids.)
  • You’ve been to Europe more than once.
  • You graduated from a good university. (Bonus point for each graduate degree.)
  • Most of your high-school friends went to good universities.
  • If there are two forks in a place setting, you know which one to use first.
  • You got an internship through family connections (or helped somebody else get one).
  • You can paddle a canoe.
  • You Tweet, or know people who do. (Tweeting is considered an elite activity.)

Wente scored 11 out of 13 (I got 10 out of 13).

Somewhat ironic, given Wente’s Chicago origins, that no racial factors included.

To get at ethnic origin/race factors, my suggestions would be (minus points):

  • Have you been stopped in the last year by the police for no discernible reason?
  • Has your bag/backpack been searched at a store for no apparent reason?
  • When passing airport security, are you regularly pulled aside for more detailed questioning or search?
  • Do people ask you: Where are you from?

Look forward to any other suggestions readers may have.

Source: How privileged are you? Take this test to find out – The Globe and Mail

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The barriers of nativism and fear: Let’s rethink the walls that divide us – Foran

2017/07/31 Leave a comment

Always a pleasure to read Charlie Foran’s ruminations, this time about the invisible walls that divide us.

Somewhat one-sided, as walls can and are also be built by the left, not just the right, and part of the challenge in inclusion is allowing uncomfortable but respectful conversations from a variety of perspectives:

A handful of political leaders recognize this, and are mounting counterarguments. “Diversity is our strength,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted after the Trump administration’s first attempt at a travel ban on Muslims. During his successful run for the French presidency, Emmanuel Macron thanked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for saving “our collective dignity” with her open-door refugee policy.

But the most incisive thinking about walls may be emerging from community-based activism. Movements clustering around Indigenous reconciliation and restitution, anti-racism, and LGBTQ rights – to name just the most prominent – are certainly asking tough, uncomfortable questions about the way things are.

No surprise, these groups, mostly associated with the political left, are especially cogent at pointing out the walls protecting careful constructions of dominance. They identify privilege based on race and prejudice; they query which history is being told, and who is doing the telling; they insist colonialism is alive and well in heads and hearts, along with colonial policies and practices.

For people on the outside of power, social, economic and political barriers aren’t invisible, and never have been. The walls have been right before their eyes for as long as they, or their ancestors, can remember. For those on the inside, meanwhile, such critiques can sound strident and totalizing, a threat to supposedly communal values, even to a way of life. They don’t see those structural barriers – or they just don’t care.

They also counterpunch. Proud Boys, believing their Canada to be under siege, attack an Indigenous demonstration in Halifax over the statue of Cornwallis. In a tweet, President Trump cites the “medical costs and disruption that transgender [sic] in the military would entail” as one reason to reinstitute the ban against their serving openly in the U.S. armed forces. He also mentions unspecified threats to “cohesion.”

The President is right about the disruption, if nothing else. Of late, noisy, public challenges have been garnering most of the attention. Black Lives Matter disrupts the 2016 Pride parade to address “anti-blackness” within the Pride Toronto organization. A ceremonial teepee is erected on Parliament Hill during Canada 150 celebrations as a symbol of unresolved grievances.

Such high-profile disruptions certainly garner reactions, often from those with actual power. Equally important, however, are the quieter provocations and challenges being framed by these groups about what, in effect, we need to talk about if we really want to talk about inclusion. Respect for difference, fairness, equality, restitution are all ultimately measures of how individuals negotiate each other as partners in the basic enterprise of living together. They are tools for honouring the people on either side of you – not, curiously, something humans are very good at.

The truest conversions are always the self-willed, and, thanks in part to the forceful thinking of these various groups, individuals of good will are slowly, steadily wanting to re-examine a list of assumptions and make right a list of wrongs. Our parents didn’t teach us particularly well about some things. Nor did our history books. We sure don’t always see the walls we live behind, and help reinforce.

This is a profound project, and it is unfolding in messy real time. For sure, there is a lot of new thinking for a lot of us to absorb. But I can’t imagine a more necessary or essential conversation. Necessary for its own sake, and essential for the health of liberal democracies, which count on engagement and introspection from their citizens to thrive.

The principal challenge for now may be to come up with a working definition of real inclusion, one that is widely agreed upon, and that can become shared ground worth defending. That, too, probably can’t happen easily or comfortably. We’re still identifying the correct terms and appropriate players to do the work. This conversation is just beginning.

Source: The barriers of nativism and fear: Let’s rethink the walls that divide us – The Globe and Mail

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Polygamy should never be linked with religious freedom: Dueck

2017/07/31 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Lorna Dueck and how religious freedom is balanced against other rights and harm to vulnerable groups (women, children):

This matters to far more than a hidden-away community in southern British Columbia. Polygamy is actively practised across Canada by religious minorities. It’s not a private crime, but because of its hidden nature, we have little idea of the victimization of women and girls in polygamy. The fact that it takes escape or a hearing before a judge for us to find out the realities of polygamy should have us on alert to letting this crime pass under religious freedom accommodation.

The 2011 B.C. legal challenge that upheld Canada’s polygamy law put on record a scientific study led by University of British Columbia professor Joseph Henrich that detailed how polygamy increases sexual abuse, domestic violence, crime, substance abuse, higher infant and child mortality rates and intra-household conflict. It found polygamy decreased women’s rights because, in polygynous societies, women are seen as a commodity to be attained. The heartbreaking testimony of freedom lost under the lie of religion was summed up for me in an earlier interview I did with polygamy victim Irene Spencer.

“I looked around me and I had been threatened all my life that I would go directly to hell if I didn’t live polygamy and all of a sudden I woke up and realized that I already was in hell; they couldn’t send me any place any darker or further, I was in despair and hopelessness. And around me I saw many women that had nervous breakdowns. I have nine nieces and nephews and one first cousin that have committed suicide and when you see the despair and the heartache, and I myself succumbed to a nervous breakdown and reached the lowest point in my life…” Ms. Spencer said in that interview. Ms. Spencer went on to escape being one of nine wives and wrote her story in Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife. She passed away earlier this year, but not before following Canada’s debate on whether reasonable accommodation in the Canadian Constitution should be interpreted to allow religious people to hold more than one wife.

“It’s abuse when young girls are told who they have to marry and they marry men old enough to be their fathers or their grandfathers. And it’s abuse when mothers and daughters are married to the same man. And it’s abuse when these children have no education. They run the boys out of town so the older men can marry the younger women,” Ms. Spencer said.

If polygamy is an expression allowed because of the religious freedom we cherish, one has to ask, how can the social harm of polygamy be considered reasonably justified? The short answer is: It can’t. As part of religious freedom laws in Canada there are limits based on the notion of reasonable accommodation as it relates to public interest. Doing no harm to the vulnerable should always trump religious freedom. Normally I find myself fighting for religious freedom, but when freedoms start to hurt others, that’s when we reach for the greater good of love moving through law to protect those who need it most.

Source: Polygamy should never be linked with religious freedom – The Globe and Mail

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White Economic Privilege Is Alive and Well – The New York Times

2017/07/31 Leave a comment

Good analysis:

Is the white working class losing economic ground because of policies intended to improve the lives of black people? Anxiety and resentment among some white voters about those policies certainly seemed to benefit Donald Trump’s campaign last year, with its populist, ethno-nationalist message.

The problem with this belief is that it is false. The income gap between black and white working-class Americans, like the gap between black and white Americans at every income level, remains every bit as extreme as it was five decades ago. (This is also true of the income gap between Hispanic and white Americans.)

In 2015 — the most recent year for which data are available — black households at the 20th and 40th percentiles of household income earned an average of 55 percent as much as white households at those same percentiles. This is exactly the same figure as in 1967.

Indeed, five decades of household income data reveal a yawning and uncannily consistent income gap between black and white Americans across the economic spectrum. Fifty years ago, black upper-class Americans had incomes about two-thirds those of white upper-class Americans, while the black middle class — those in the 60th percentile — earned about two-thirds as much as its white counterpart. Those ratios remain the same today.

The Income Gap That Won’t Close

These numbers should shock us. Consider that in the mid-1960s, Jim Crow practices were still being dismantled and affirmative action hardly existed. Yet a half-century of initiatives intended to combat the effects of centuries of virulent racism appear to have done nothing to ameliorate inequality between white and black America.

Conservatives like Charles Murray tend to blame either social welfare programs for sapping initiative and keeping black people poor, or black people themselves for being less intelligent than whites, or a “pathological” culture that now manifests itself in the white working class as well.

But the historical pervasiveness and contemporary persistence of racism in America offer more than adequate explanations for what should be considered a scandalous state of affairs in regard to race-based economic inequality.

Many black children, for example, attend schools that once again are as segregated as they were in the 1960s, and they are far more likely to become trapped in a prison-industrial complex that the scholar Michelle Alexander has called “the new Jim Crow.”

Research by the sociologist Devah Pager in 2009 also found that black job applicants for low-wage jobs receive callback interviews or job offers at half the rate of equally well-qualified white applicants and that black and Latino applicants with clean records “fare no better” than white applicants just released from prison.

It is important to remember the extent to which the civil rights movement led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was focused on economic injustice. Indeed, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, who planned the March on Washington that culminated with Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, organized the event primarily to highlight and protest what they called “the economic subordination of the American Negro.”

And Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign, which he was organizing at the time of his murder, was an even more explicit argument that racial and economic justice are inextricably linked.

None of this is intended to minimize the legitimate anxiety felt by white families at a time when wages for low-wage workers have declined and middle-class incomes have stagnated, even as the economy has boomed and upper-class incomes have soared. Between 1980 and 2014, the post-tax income of the bottom 50 percent of the population grew by 21 percent, while that of the top .01 percent grew by 424 percent.

But over that same time, black working- and middle-class households have seen their incomes stagnate in exactly the same fashion as those of their white neighbors — and from a base that was and thus remains little more than half as large.

A genuine populist movement would unite working- and middle-class Americans of all backgrounds, rather than dividing them by exploiting false beliefs about the supposed loss of white economic privilege.

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An Ontario court has just affirmed that cultural norms that excuse violence have no place here: Editorial | Toronto Star

2017/07/29 Leave a comment

Indeed:

The woman, a recent immigrant from Iran, suffered brutal spousal abuse but didn’t even realize it was against the law.

After moving to Canada in 2009 her husband forced the woman, whose identity is protected by the court, to have sex with him by hitting her, pulling her hair, pinching her and forcefully removing her clothes. “She cried out quietly so the children would not hear,” court was told.

He also slapped, kicked and punched their two sons and hit them with a belt. Once he locked them outside the house on a snowy winter day wearing nothing but shorts and T-shirts until their mother came home and rescued them.

When the husband was convicted of sexual assault and assault, Justice William Gorewich of Ontario court sentenced him to 18 months, citing mitigating factors that included the lack of a criminal record. The judge also noted a “significant cultural gap” between behaviour that is accepted in Canada and in Iran, and the “cultural impact” of changing countries.

That didn’t cut much muster with the Ontario Court of Appeal, nor should it have.

On appeal by the Crown, Justices Mary Lou Benotto, Alexandra Hoy and David Doherty found the 18-month sentence to be “manifestly unfit”and they imposed a far tougher, and entirely appropriate, four-year sentence.

They also went out of their way to send a powerful, timely message to the lower courts and the public in general that “cultural norms that condone or tolerate conduct contrary to Canadian criminal law” must not be a mitigating factor in sentencing. “Cultural differences do not excuse or mitigate criminal conduct,” the appeals court held.

If that were the case “some women in Canadian society would be afforded less protection than others.” In effect “it would … create a second class of person in our society — those who fall victim to offenders who import such practices.”

“All women in Canada are entitled to the same level of protection from abusers,” the court reminded us.

This principled decision is in line with the United Nations, which has held that cultural practices do not excuse human rights abuses.

Justice for every woman. That is the norm in Canada, and it is good to hear Ontario justices spell it out so bluntly, and so clearly.

Source: An Ontario court has just affirmed that cultural norms that excuse violence have no place here: Editorial | Toronto Star

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Malaysia: Group decries govt’s move to ban book promoting ‘moderate’ Islam

2017/07/29 Leave a comment

Discouraging trend, as in Indonesia:

A PRO-MODERATION group comprising eminent ethnic Malays has questioned the Malaysian government’s move to ban a book it published on “moderate” Islam amid concerns of rising Islamic fundamentalism in the country.

The Home Ministry banned the book authored by the group of predominantly former senior civil servants, who call themselves G25, for being “prejudicial to public order”, reported Malay Mail Online on Thursday.

A notice on the Federal Gazette, dated July 27, listed the prohibition of the book, titled Breaking the Silence: Voices of a Moderation Islam in a Constitutional Democracy under the Printing Presses and Publications (Control of Undesirable Publications) (No 12) Order 2017.

The group’s spokesman Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin said she was shocked by the ban, given the government’s long-standing drive to promote the wassatiyyah (moderation) concept espoused in Islam.

“This is obviously an action intended to suppress free speech. The articles in the book were written by respected academics, lawyers and social activists,” she told Asian Correspondent when contacted.

“They are intellectual articles mainly discussing the place of Islam in the Federal Constitution. None of the articles have criticised Islam or touched on matters of Aqidah ( faith ).”

G25

The G25 group says it will appeal the government’s ban on the book it published. Source: Amazon

Noor Farida, a prominent former judge and diplomat, also suggested the questionable timing of the ban as the book was released back in December 2015.

“This does not make sense as in the nearly two years that the book has been on the market, we have not heard of any of the readers causing public disorder or a public nuisance as a result of reading the book!”

The government, she said, should instead favour the book due to its “moderate” stance. Malaysia promotes an image of moderate Islam internationally, despite the increasing implementation of Syariah law across the country.

The government gazette’s notice stated the printing, importation, production, publishing, sale, issue, circulation, distribution, or possession of the publication is “likely to be prejudicial to public interest”, which led to the nationwide ban.

Noor Farida said the G25 group would seek an explanation from the ministry and appeal the ban.

“We are still discussing this among our group members, but we will appeal and ask the Home Ministry to point out to us what the offending passages prejudicial to public order are,” she was quoted by The Star as saying.

Civil society groups such as the G25 have recently expressed alarm over the northeastern state of Kelantan’s move to amend its religious Islamic laws to allow public caning against “criminals” who breach its strict Syariah code.

At the end of this month, Malaysia’s lower house of Parliament is expected to debate a Bill to amend Act 355 of the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965, also known as the controversial RUU355.

The Bill – commonly known as Hadi’s Bill after the man who proposed it – would increase the Syariah punishment caps in Malaysia to a maximum 30 years’ imprisonment, RM100,000 (US$22,400) fine and 100 lashes of the cane – far harsher sentences than those currently implemented under the civil system.

Noor Farida said the G25 promotes moderation and peace and harmony among our people of various faiths and ethnicities.

“We believe in promoting respect for the beliefs of others. And we firmly believe in upholding our secular Federal Constitution against any attempts by religious bigots to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state.”

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Australian woman’s death reveals the human toll of a police shooting: Kevin Cokley

2017/07/28 Leave a comment

Good analysis of how both sides tend to exploit the shooting to further their positions:

The shooting of Justine Damond provides low-hanging fruit for debates about racial bias in police shootings. One cynical writer observed that Ms. Damond’s death presents a dilemma among white people, in that they have to decide whether the “blue life” of black Mr. Noor matters more than the white life of Justine Damond. Intentionally polemical, this train of thought maintains that blue lives matter only when police kill unarmed black people, that white people do not get upset over the deaths of innocent black women and men, and that white people will often try to justify why a black individual was shot but never do this in the case of a white victim.

Others will argue that the fact a white woman was killed illustrates there is no systematic racial bias among police officers. They will say that the colour of Ms. Damond’s skin had no bearing on Mr. Noor’s reaction, and that police do the best job that they can given the stressful job they have. Still others will focus on the fact that Mr. Noor was black and a Muslim, and use this to perpetuate racist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Fox News has been especially interested in the nationality of Mr. Noor, with over half of their segments on the story mentioning his Somali background. Juxtapose Fox News coverage with CNN mentioning his Somali background only twice (after prompting) and MSNBC not mentioning it at all.

To be clear, the shooting death of Ms. Damond is ostensibly not about race. It appears to be a very unfortunate set of events where a skittish police officer was startled and used deadly force on an individual he did not see. Mr. Noor was, by all accounts, a soft-spoken and humble man who left a better-paying job to serve his community and bridge the divide between the police, African Americans and the immigrant community. He had taken several training courses and passed all of his gun qualifications. Justine Damond was a beloved individual who worked as a spiritual healer, led meditation workshops and was characterized as being passionate and “the most loving woman.”

Yet, unsurprisingly, in a country stained by racism and constant media coverage of excessive police force against black people, what should be the inconsequential fact of the racial and cultural backgrounds of Justine Damond and Mohamed Noor has now been made consequential by the likes of Fox News and other conservative outlets. Some of these outlets have tried to politicize the shooting by using the race of Ms. Damond and Mr. Noor to further criticize the Black Lives Matter movement, claiming that Black Lives Matter activists have not been as outspoken about the death of a white woman as they have been about the deaths of black people.

This has proven to be blatantly false, as Black Lives Matter activists were involved in organizing and protesting shortly after reporting of the shooting. One Black Lives Matter activist indicated that it was important to respond because the issue has never really been about race, but about police accountability.

Former Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann added her own racially inflammatory commentary when she talked about the growing Somali population in Minnesota and characterized Mr. Noor as an “affirmative-action hire by the hijab-wearing mayor of Minneapolis” killing a “beautiful, 40-year-old Australian woman” for potentially cultural reasons. Ms. Bachmann’s shameful response underscores the current climate in the United States, where the election of Donald Trump has resulted in the open expression of prejudice and a coarsening of public discourse.

Perhaps the saddest commentary is that instead of focusing on the shooting for what it really is – a police officer’s error that resulted in the tragic loss of life – some have chosen to instead score political points and make this about race and religion. This shooting was not about race. This shooting was not about religion. The fact that this even needs to be said says more about the climate of racial tensions and Islamophobia in the United States than it does about the tragic events involving Mr. Noor and Justine Damond.

Source: Australian woman’s death reveals the human toll of a police shooting – The Globe and Mail

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