Muslims In The U.S. Face Increased Discrimination, PEW Report Says : NPR

2017/07/28 Leave a comment

Interesting interview regarding some of the latest findings on American Muslims:

A newly-released poll from the Pew Research Center finds Muslims in the U.S. are facing increased discrimination but are optimistic about being both Muslim and American.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

There are an estimated 3.3 million Muslims in the United States, and that number is growing. Today the Pew Research Center released a wide-ranging poll on Muslims in America. And while almost half the Muslims surveyed reported incidents of verbal or physical abuse in the past 12 months, many still say they are optimistic about their future and about this country. To talk about this, we’re joined now by NPR’s Leila Fadel. You might remember her from her time as NPR’s Cairo correspondent. Now she has taken on a new job covering culture, race and diversity here in the U.S. She is with us from her new base in Las Vegas. Hi there.

LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Hi.

MCEVERS: So what were the most striking findings in this poll of Muslim-Americans?

FADEL: Well, this is the third Pew poll on Muslims in America in 10 years. And I think the first thing that’s so noticeable is the incredible diversity of Muslim communities in this country. Often Muslims are spoken about as a monolith when, in fact, this is a population that’s really a diverse mosaic. There’s no one ethnic group that dominates the population. It’s African-American. It’s white. It’s Asian. It’s Arab. It’s Latino. And list goes on. And it’s really young. The majority of Muslims in America are under 40.

MCEVERS: And what about that finding that I mentioned in the introduction that Muslims are feeling optimistic?

FADEL: Yeah, it’s interesting. Despite this feeling that they’re not accepted as part of the mainstream, that the president is unfriendly toward Muslims and that discrimination is going up, 7 in 10 respondents really believe in the American dream still, that if you work hard, you can get ahead. And the overwhelming majority are proud to be both American and Muslim. This is what Besheer Mohamed, lead author of the report, had to say.

BESHEER MOHAMED: There’s a thread throughout the survey of this tension that our Muslim respondents tell us about where on the one hand, they’re uncertain about their acceptance by the larger society. But on the other hand, they’re committed to an American identity. And I think this finding that 9 in 10 say they’re proud to be American is sort of a perfect example of that commitment.

MCEVERS: Who did the poll survey?

FADEL: So the poll was conducted on a sample size of about a thousand Muslim adults living in the U.S. And really there’s not that much data out there on Muslims in the U.S. Muslims are a group of people in America that are often spoken about and scrutinized, but there’s very little data, including how many there are because being Muslim is not something you check on the census form.

MCEVERS: You’ve been traveling and visiting a lot of different Muslim communities across the U.S. Does this poll reflect what you’ve been seeing?

FADEL: Well, yeah. I visited communities in Texas and California as well as cities like Chicago and New York and spoke to Muslims in all parts of the country. And it’s funny because in the poll, it seems that women are more worried about discrimination. They’re more worried about their place in society. And I really felt that same way in doing interviews across the country. And I think that’s really because when a woman decides to put a scarf on her head and cover her hair, she suddenly becomes unmistakably Muslim and de facto ambassador of the faith and a de facto target for the faith.

So, you know, I met people like a young girl in California who’s being bullied at school. And she decided to put on the scarf because her mom does, and she loves her mom and admires her mom. And she found at school that suddenly kids were whispering behind her back allahu akbar, pinning things to her backpack. And the teacher was handing out articles about stonings in Afghanistan as an example of her faith. And this is what she was having to deal with and answer for in her faith at just 14 years old while her sister, who doesn’t cover her hair, didn’t have to deal with any of that.

Source: Muslims In The U.S. Face Increased Discrimination, PEW Report Says : NPR

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People Suffer at Work When They Can’t Discuss the Racial Bias They Face Outside of It

2017/07/28 Leave a comment

Interesting HBR-published study on the racial bias link between the outside and work environments by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Melinda Marshall and Trudy Bourgeois:

Last month, in an unprecedented show of solidarity, 150 CEOs from the world’s leading companies banded together to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace and, through an online platform, shared best practices for doing so. To drive home the urgency, the coalition’s website, CEOAction.com, directs visitors to research showing that diverse teams and inclusive leaders unleash innovation, eradicate groupthink, and spur market growth. But as Tim Ryan, U.S. Chair and senior partner at PwC and one of the organizers of the coalition, explains, what galvanized the group was widespread recognition that “we are living in a world of complex divisions and tensions that can have a significant impact on our work environment” — and they need to be openly addressed.

At the Center for Talent Innovation, we wanted to look into these suspicions. Do the political, racial, and social experiences that divide us outside of work undermine our contributions on the job? Our nationwide survey of 3,570 white-collar professionals(374 black, 2,258 white, 393 Asian, and 395 Hispanic) paints an unsettling landscape: For black, Asian, and Hispanic professionals, race-based discrimination is rampant outside the workplace. Black individuals are especially struggling, as fully 78% of black professionals say they’ve experienced discrimination or fear that they or their loved ones will — nearly three times as many as white professionals.

But 38% of black professionals also feel that it is never acceptable at their companies to speak out about their experiences of bias — a silence that makes them more than twice as vulnerable to feelings of isolation and alienation in the workplace. Black employees who feel muzzled are nearly three times as likely as those who don’t to have one foot out the door, and they’re 13 times as likely to be disengaged.

W170626_HEWLETT_WHATHAPPENS

 

The response, at most organizations, is no response. Leaders don’t inquire about coworkers’ life experiences; they stay quiet when headlines blare reports of racial violence or videos capture acts of blatant discrimination. Their silence is often born of a conviction that race, like politics, is best discussed elsewhere.

But as evidenced by the formation of the coalition and the initiatives we captured in our report, that attitude is shifting. Conscious that breaking the silence begins with their own example, captains of industry are talking about race, both internally with their employees and externally with the public. After a spate of shootings of unarmed black men last summer, Ryan initiated a series of discussion days to ensure that all employees at PwC better understood the experiences of their black colleagues. Michael Roth, CEO of Interpublic Group, issued an enterprise-wide email imploring coworkers to “connect, affirm our commitment to one another, and acknowledge the pain being felt in so many of our communities.” Bernard Tyson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, published an essay in which, in a plea for empathy, he shared his own experiences of discrimination. And in an emotional recounting of his black friend’s experience outside the office that went viral on YouTube, AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson encouraged employees to get to know each other better.

Leaders who display this kind of courage don’t always see immediate rewards, but in the long term, our research suggests that the payoff could be extraordinary. Of those who are aware of companies responding to societal incidents of racial discrimination, robust majorities of black (77%), white (65%), Hispanic (67%), and Asian (83%) professionals say they view those companies in a more positive way. Interviews with employees at firms like Ernst & Young point to stronger bonds forged between team leaders and members as a result of guidelines disseminated to managers on how to have a trust-building conversation. Town halls at New York Life with members of the C-suite and black executives have likewise paved pathways for greater understanding across racial and political divides.

Source: People Suffer at Work When They Can’t Discuss the Racial Bias They Face Outside of It

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Implicit bias against black people linked to police use of lethal force, study suggests

2017/07/28 Leave a comment

Good summary of some of the latest research on implicit bias and the difficulties in reducing its impact:

New research suggests the way our brains make associations between black people and the physical threat we think they pose is the greatest predictor of police using lethal force against a black person. These biases are held not just by the officers in question, but by the wider communities in which black people are killed by police.

This correlation is reported by a team of researchers led by Eric Hehman, an assistant professor of psychology at Ryerson University, in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. Dr. Hehman’s study adds to a growing body of research on implicit bias and how it can influence how police interact with black people.

For their study, Dr. Hehman’s team looked at the results of 2,156,053 U.S. residents who completed Harvard University’s famous Implicit Association Test, an online tool that measures the strength of the associations one makes between white people, black people and good and bad traits. They geolocated the results and analyzed them alongside data on people killed by police in the U.S. during a nine-month period in 2015.

They found that in places where implicit bias against black people and an association between black people and weapons were stronger, there was a disproportionate use of lethal force by police against black residents. Canadian data on fatal police shootings of black people was not available to include in the study, but Dr. Hehman said the principles they were researching could extend to Canada, too.

“We’re measuring the lady down the street who lives on the corner, the person who’s selling you some oranges. Just regular, average community members,” Dr. Hehman said. “But we’re still predicting these extremely potent and important consequences that are by police.”

It may be even more difficult to defeat the implicit biases police officers hold because of the nature of their work. In training simulations where individuals must decide whether or not to shoot armed or unarmed individuals, police who deal with non-white individuals in routinely dangerous situations – such as those on a drug force or SWAT team – have been found to be more likely than beat cops or civilians to shoot unarmed black men.

“In a moment where they’re under extreme stress and duress, they’re not really able to think consciously about what they’re saying, what they’re doing and so on. They’re going to revert back to their instincts,” says Nicholas Rule, a Canada Research Chair in social perception and cognition.

In June, Dr. Rule, who teaches psychology at the University of Toronto, testified at the coroner’s inquest into the death of Andrew Loku. He shared results of one study he did, in which participants consistently guessed that black men, just based on photos of their faces, were larger and stronger than white men of similar build. With those misperceptions came the assumption that more force would be needed to subdue them compared with white men.

In the verdict following the Loku inquest, the jury made several recommendations, one of which Dr. Rule had pushed for: to require all new officers and those requalifying to take the Implicit Association Test – the same one that was used in Dr. Hehman’s research. The jury also suggested officers receive implicit-bias and anti-blackness training.

But there’s little evidence to support implicit-bias training across various sectors. Several analyses found that after 24 hours, the bias-reducing effects of the training had vaporized, usually as a result of the individual returning to their regular life and exposure to the very stereotypes they were trying to stamp out.

Based on decades of research, many social scientists believe the best treatment for bias is what was first described by American psychologist Gordon Allport in 1954 as the “intergroup contact hypothesis” – a theory that the more contact members of a majority group having with a minority group, the less prejudice they feel towards them. But Dr. Allport emphasized that not just any contact would work: the quality was important and required equal status between all individuals.

For this reason, Emilie Nicolas is skeptical of whether anything can change implicit bias in police because of the immutable power dynamics between officers and the people they serve. Ms. Nicolas is the president of the NGO Québec Inclusif, which has been pressing the Quebec government to launch a commission into systemic racism in the province. She says there is a hierarchy between black people and white people that is naturalized through policing. Even if a beat cop spends all his time in a black neighbourhood and hosts community events, the nature of his interactions with residents isn’t the sort of quality contact Dr. Allport’s theory requires.

“Community barbecues are based on the assumption that if you don’t do them, these people may be impolite or whatever,” Ms. Nicolas says. “You don’t have these community barbecues in [wealthy white neighbourhoods] so the very fact that they have them speaks of prejudice that exists.”

Source: Implicit bias against black people linked to police use of lethal force, study suggests – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

The Chicago Dyke March and Chicago SlutWalk aren’t anti-Zionist. They’re anti-Semitic. Slate

2017/07/27 Leave a comment

Valid points by Mark Joseph Stern:

Critics of intersectionality have jumped at the chance to cite these controversies as proof of the theory’s flaws. In a New York Times op-ed, Bari Weiss wrote that “in practice, intersectionality functions as a kind of caste system in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history.” Because of the existence of “the Jewish state,” Weiss explained, “which today’s progressives see only as a vehicle for oppression of the Palestinians,” Jews are considered the oppressors, never the oppressed.

Weiss’ critique implies that the organizers of the Dyke March and SlutWalk were lured toward anti-Semitism via intersectionality—that as they studied the Oppression Olympics, they came to view Jews at the real oppressors. I strongly suspect that this has it exactly backward because the articulation of intersectionality provided by the Dyke March and SlutWalk makes no sense. The organizers allege that, because the oppression of queer women and Palestinians is intertwined, marchers must renounce Israel and not express their Jewishness. But how does that follow? The reasoning makes sense only if expressions of Jewishness are tantamount to endorsements of the Israeli government’s policies toward Palestinians. And the belief that all proudly Jewish people support the current subjugation of Palestinians is self-evidently anti-Semitic.

On July 13, the Dyke March provided further proof that its intersectionality functioned as a flimsy pretense for anti-Semitism. A tweet from the group’s Twitter account used the term “Zio,” an anti-Jewish slur popularized by David Duke and his neo-Nazi followers. The Dyke March later sent another tweet apologizing for the insult—and adding, “We meant Zionist/white tears replenish our electrolytes.” Indeed, the group’s bizarre fixation on Jews frequently manifests itself as alt-right–style trolling. This is a mockery of intersectionality, not a defense of it.

It has long been obvious that left-wing anti-Semitism is a problem and that an overwhelming abhorrence of Israel often blurs into a generalized anger toward Jews. Organizers of both the Dyke March and the SlutWalk have not discovered the praxis of intersectionality; they have merely dressed up their bigotry in updated argot. Their anti-Semitism is not academic or novel but almost depressingly familiar, and we do not need to overhaul the progressive worldview to address it. We need only remind ourselves that anyone who would hold Jews to a different, higher standard is anti-Semitic, full stop. Whether it happens at a far-left march or an alt-right convention, the creation of special rules for Jews is irrational and wrong. By creating a stringent litmus test for openly Jewish demonstrators, the Dyke March and SlutWalk did not protect the oppressed. They became the oppressors.

Source: The Chicago Dyke March and Chicago SlutWalk aren’t anti-Zionist. They’re anti-Semitic.

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Dalhousie medical school struggling to attract black and Indigenous students

2017/07/27 Leave a comment

Review of systemic barriers and ways to address them. The chart above shows the visible minority breakdown for the Atlantic provinces – for Nova Scotia, the NHS shows 50 Black Canadians out of some 3,400 working in doctors’ officers (1.5 percent):

Dalhousie University’s medical school is struggling to attract African-Canadian and Indigenous students, and its admission process is partly to blame, a review committee has found.

The committee’s 12-page report was submitted last August to the medical school’s dean, Dr. David Anderson, but it was just recently made public.

“The committee speculates that potential candidates from diverse backgrounds might not apply because of an apprehension of bias against them within the admissions process,” said the report.

Both African-Canadian and Indigenous people are under-represented in the medical profession, said the chair of the review committee, Dr. Gus Grant. He’s also the registrar and CEO of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia, the body that regulates and licenses doctors in the province.

“I think it’s important that the profession be made up of individuals who represent the communities that are being served,” said Grant.

No figures are available on the number of black and Indigenous doctors practising in Nova Scotia because the college does not ask doctors to self-identify by race.

Last year, Anderson ordered the independent external review of the admissions process in part because of the lack of diversity. The last such review was done a decade ago.

Too much weight given to admission exam

The report also found the admissions committee placed too much weight on the medical college admission test (MCAT) scores and the grade-point average of candidates.

Grant said that while cognitive ability is important for practising medicine, grade-point average and MCAT results aren’t great measures of it.

“Cognitive ability is important for physicians, but I can’t fairly say that it’s more important than empathy, reliability, consistency, earnestness and other characteristics,” said Grant.

Starting in 2018, the medical school will use an online video-based tool to assess potential students for empathy, integrity, resiliency and communication skills.

Grant said it’s been long accepted that standardized tests like MCATs put minorities and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds at a disadvantage and they score lower on these exams. One reason Grant gave is that poorer applicants might not be able to afford to take MCAT preparatory courses.

Recommendations from report

Some of the report’s recommendations were to:

  • Institute a minimum requirement for test scores.
  • Require the 22-member admission’s committee to include gender-diverse representatives of the African-Canadian and Indigenous communities, while also collaborating with these two communities to determine admission criteria.

The first requirement has not yet changed, but the second one has been implemented.

More diversity needed in health-care system

Sharon Davis-Murdoch is co-president of the Health Association of African Canadians, a group that promotes health in the black community. She said for young children of African descent to see themselves in health professions, they need to be aware a career in the field is possible.

“The representation of people of African descent at every level of the health system, including the highest levels of health administration, needs to be in place in order for the system to be improved, for the system to serve appropriately and for the system to be reflective of all of us,” said Davis-Murdoch.

Source: Dalhousie medical school struggling to attract black and Indigenous students – Nova Scotia – CBC News

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History’s lessons on dealing with Canada’s neo-Nazi groups

2017/07/26 Leave a comment

Interesting bit of history regarding a number of anti-Nazi events: the 1965 Allen Gardens riot and the 1933 Christie Pitts clash, and less violent protests during Quebec neo-Nazi Adrien Arcand’s Toronto visit in 1938.

The recommendation not to give neo-Nazis publicity (oxygen), while sound, is unrealistic given competing passions, mainstream and social media coverage:

Beattie [leader of Allen Gardens neo-Nazis] didn’t turn out to be that person, however. Even though he continued to hold rallies in the park, his movement fizzled out, partially because he wasn’t actually all that dynamic or novel, and was—as historian Frank Bialystok points out—a terrible orator. The numbers he led were small, and the best publicity he got was the media coverage and public dismay that such horrific events could be happening in Toronto the Good. Judge Sydney Harris, notes Bialystok, said that if the Jewish community had ignored the neo-Nazis from the outset, the movement would have died.

There was some upside to the Allan Gardens riot; Bialystok argues that, even though the incident is rarely remembered as any kind of turning point, it actually marked the birth of a new collaboration between Jewish communities that were previously divided, roughly according to when they had immigrated—prior to, or after the war. But, today, whether we’re dealing with actual neo-Nazis or merely street-fighting western chauvinists, there are perhaps wiser lessons to be drawn from 100 years of dealing with extremist groups in Toronto. Four thousand people turning up at Allan Gardens in 1965 only amplified the neo-Nazis’ message; 12,000 people showing up at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1938 helped to drown out the hate being spewed at Massey Hall.

It’s not wrong to be concerned about the extremist movements cropping up. But we have to be careful not to give these attention-seekers the megaphone: they’ll only use conflict to amplify their message. The answer, instead, is to drown them out by making broad coalitions and working together towards education, truth and reconciliation, social equality and representative democracy. It worked in 1938—and it can work again.

Source: History’s lessons on dealing with Canada’s neo-Nazi groups – Macleans.ca

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From ISIS-Lands to the Netherlands: Jihadists Try to Get the Press to Help Them Come Home

2017/07/26 Leave a comment

Thoughtful discussion of some of the issues with respect to returning Daesh  and other fighters:

Now that the self-proclaimed caliphate of the so-called Islamic State is falling apart in Syria and Iraq, many European jihadists are looking for ways to come home—and some of the Dutch ones have been reaching out to the media, hoping it will save their lives.

Just last week two fighters contacted TV shows in the Netherlands to announce their return to Dutch soil, a third contacted the police.

The grim irony of such a ploy is obvious. Many would-be holy warriors from European backgrounds have been associated with organizations that took journalists hostage, ransomed some, tortured and beheaded others. When they thought their groups were on a roll, jihadists bragged to their Western enemies “we love death as you love life.” And all too many times in France, Britain, Belgium, and Germany they have slaughtered innocents by the score.

But the three from the Netherlands are part of a group of 10 presumed jihadists who have criminal court cases pending against them. Dutch public prosecutors believe most of them are still to be found in what’s left of ISIS-land. After a Rotterdam court recently decided they could be present at their hearing, their trial was postponed until January 2018, allowing them time to return.

A 22-year-old Dutch-Moroccan rapper known to the court as Marouane B. is one of the potential returnees. He says he is en route back to the Netherlands and a few days ago posted a rap about his intended return, singing, “I will come back one day, mama, don’t worry… I am fleeing.” (The video has since been taken down.)

In a phone call to Dutch News RTL, Marouane refused to say whether he is affiliated with ISIS or not. “I had expected to be a change factor in the civil war by fighting [Syrian dictator Bashar] Assad,” he said. “That didn’t succeed, because the world is siding with Assad, at least that’s what it looks like from here, and I always had the intention of returning after the war.”

In a similar interview, a Dutch postman turned Islamic convert turned Islamist, Victor Droste, spoke to the Dutch TV news program 1 Vandaag via Skype. Droste admitted he’d been at the front, but refused to say whether he had been fighting. He fervently denied being part of ISIS, but he looked the part, and had been publicly advocating his support for Sharia and Islamism in the year before he left the Netherlands in 2013.

The Dutch government made conscientious attempts to inform the alleged jihadists about the trial via social media like Facebook and through their relatives. The efforts didn’t fail, but they are just the beginning of awkward attempts to address what could be an enormous problem.

An estimated 300 Dutch men, women, and children are known to have traveled to the Middle East to join the ranks of various jihadist organizations, including ISIS.

European Union counterterrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove has warned that the EU as a whole will be hard-pressed to deal with some 1,500 to 2,000 fighters who may try to return as ISIS is driven out of its strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa (PDF).

Different countries are addressing the problem in different ways. According to French intelligence sources, Paris has deployed special operations forces on the ground in Syria to hunt down and kill French jihadists who could pose a threat if they return.

The latest figures from the National Dutch Terrorism Prevention Coordinator (NCTV) tell us that as of June this year, 190 who left the Netherlands managed to join ISIS, and 50 returned. Some, at least 45 jihadists, died. But most of the survivors find themselves now cornered in a flailing wannabe state, a far cry from the heroic caliphate they had been dreaming of, and death has proved less appealing when it becomes palpably real.

With the jihadists’ stories trickling in, the Dutch security services try to gauge the security risk involved if they return. Even if the men are found not guilty of participation in war crimes and/or membership of a terrorist organization, which is unlikely, they are still suffering from PTSD. Letting them loose on the society they rejected would be risky business, and not just for the Netherlands.

“We have a responsibility toward other countries, too,” says Daan Weggemans, a terrorism expert attached to Leiden University who also serves as an expert witness in terrorism court cases. “Our focus tends to be on Dutch returning jihadists, but security is all about the broader picture. The idea that Dutch jihadists would only return to the Netherlands is not right.”

Jihadists are rarely stopped by borders, and certainly not by the open frontiers on the European continent, where they can take advantage of lax security in one place to stage attacks in another.

Exchanging information among security services is crucial, says Weggemans, but there are holes. Libya, for instance, is a major route for people pouring into Europe, but hardly keeps track of who is who, and there is considerable traffic back and forth. The bomber who wrought such carnage at a teen concert in Manchester, U.K., earlier this year was a Briton with extensive ties to family—and to ISIS—in Libya.

Foreigners who would come to the Netherlands with a stream of refugees might be a risk, says Weggemans, but so are jihadists who are in touch with, say, the nephew of a friend, and end up virtually invisible to authorities in an apartment here. “Those are the returnees that I worry about,” he says.

Islamist men returning from war are a major security risk. But then what are we to do with returning wives and children? After a serious amount of brainwashing they are hardly reliable candidates for free-spirited, democratic society. Differently put, how is any person who has actively supported people who put severed heads on spikes in town squares or gays being thrown off tall buildings going to deal with, say, two men kissing in the street in Amsterdam? Or mini skirts, or the notion of equal rights for women, for that matter?

Making policy on returning children poses yet another challenge. An estimated 80 children with a Dutch background are in Syria and Iraq, with ISIS or other jihadist groups, according to the April report of the Dutch National Security Service. Fifty percent are 9 years old or older and half of them are boys.

“With the minors there is also a big element of concern,” Weggemans explains. “They could have seen or done terrible things and were possibly trained a certain way. We know quite a bit about it and such information is very important if you start to help these children… You know that some were too young to be involved, others were educated there, girls were veiled, boys in training camps. We have to think about what we do when kids come back.”

So far, the Netherlands has been spared terrorist attacks. That may in part be because of internal policy, our relative insignificance, or dumb luck. Nobody knows precisely why. But the quiet to date holds no promise for the future. As in every other country, an attack on Dutch soil could happen any moment.

“I know it’s been said many times before, but we have to acknowledge that we won’t be able to prevent all attacks.” Weggemans tells The Daily Beast. Even if you have very active security services, you simply can’t keep track of everyone.

But the challenge of the moment is what to do with those who identify themselves and ask to be treated with mercy in a liberal society after the failure of the fanatical caliphate they longed to establish.

Source: From ISIS-Lands to the Netherlands: Jihadists Try to Get the Press to Help Them Come Home

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Man tied to $1K reward for videos of Muslim students praying charged with hate crime

2017/07/26 Leave a comment

Valid charge:

Peel Regional Police have charged a Mississauga, Ont., man, who earlier this year posted a YouTube video offering a $1,000 reward for recordings of Muslim students during prayer, with a hate crime in connection with “numerous incidents reported to police.”

Kevin J. Johnston, 45, was arrested Monday and charged with one count of wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group under the Criminal Code Section 319 (2). The charge follows “concerns over information published on various social media sites,” police said.

The investigation took place over a five-month period, said Sgt. Josh Colley, and wasn’t tied to one specific incident but rather “multiple incidents that the investigators were looking at.”

“It’s not a private message that he was conveying, it was a public message … Anyone could hear, understand the messaging, so that’s where the communicating hateful messages comes into play,” Colley told CBC Toronto.

“The group that was targeted was the Muslim community,” he said, adding the incident “affects us all.”

Earlier this year, Johnston, who runs an online publication called Freedom Report, posted a YouTube video offering a $1,000 reward for recordings of Muslim students at Peel Region schools “spewing hate speech during Friday prayers.”

Spreading anxiety

The video sparked concern among Muslim families and led the Peel District School Board, which serves Mississauga, and the Peel Region communities of Brampton and Caledon, to issue a memo to its administrators, cautioning them to be “extra vigilant” and reminding them that personal recording devices can only be used in schools for educational purposes, as directed by staff.

Source: Man tied to $1K reward for videos of Muslim students praying charged with hate crime – Toronto – CBC News

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Put Muslim characters who don’t need to be ‘saved’ on school reading lists

2017/07/26 Leave a comment

Heba Elsherief on Muslim characters in children’s literature:

As the film industry begins to heed criticisms from places like the “Oscars So White” movement, the advocacy of groups like We Need Diverse Books, with its mission to offer children more books that reflect them and their lives, is making waves in publishing too.

Over the past year, books written by people of colour and featuring multicultural characters made the New York Times young adult best-sellers list.

My research into diversity and literature — specifically representations of Muslims therein — indicates that this isn’t a passing trend. Racialized writers are being charged with writing their own narratives and consumers are indicating their desire to read them.

In fact, education researchers have long touted the benefits of using culturally relevant materials and lesson plans in North American classrooms to reflect a real student body. Students are diverse: they come from different races and religions; their orientations and genders vary. Their reading materials should reflect such diversity.

Teachers hoping to foster inclusivity and equitable practices in their classrooms realize that when schooling speaks to all, it can lead to more democratic spaces and, by extension, a more just society.

But culturally relevant materials are hard to find — not only because culture itself is a complex and nuanced entity but also because the materials themselves don’t typically exist in white mainstream platforms.

Muslim characters often portrayed as victims

Children’s stories either written by Muslim writers or featuring Muslim main characters are typically nonexistent or problematic in their representations of Muslim experiences.

This becomes a problem when it comes to creating a school curriculum that truly reflects our society. Materials available to upper/middle grade and high school English teachers generally reinforce negative stereotypes.

Take, for instance, The Breadwinner (Ellis, 2000), about an Afghani girl under the Taliban who has to dress up as a boy to support her family. It is frequently found on book lists in Canadian classrooms in an attempt to be inclusive. Yet putting the book on such lists misses the mark.

An analysis of the novel reveals its focus as primarily on the real or imagined plight of “othered” females. That is, this novel, along with others like it, divides the world into a typical “us” and “them” model, as defined in 1978 by cultural critic Edward Said. The novel ends up reinforcing the stereotype of Muslim girls as needing to be saved. Therefore, this is not an empowering narrative for young girls.

Plight narratives, such as the one in The Breadwinner, are problematic because they enact a “care ethic” that has been central to the project and history of schooling in the West. It reinforces colonial relations between colonizer and the “inferior,” colonized “other.” In other words, novels written about a “far away victim” that Western readers need to “save” isn’t a very authentic character representation of the everyday experiences for most young North Americans.

In my research interviews, some students report enjoying such literature but feeling confused abut the terrible representations of themselves as Muslim women. These are high level and confusing problems for middle-school children who are still forming their identities. Research shows that young people need to see themselves positively reflected in the books they read.

As well, my research into the responses of young Muslim women to 1000 Splendid Suns (Hosseini, 2007) — another novel about Afghani women treated badly — reveals a troubling trend: Muslim girls reading this novel in Grade 8 classrooms were disturbed by the book.

For example, a student in a Toronto-area school told me that, as someone who wears the hijab, references to the burqa in the novel and the inhumane oppression of Muslim women had her non-Muslim classmates feeling either pity for her or ridiculing her culture. The sad part, she said, was that the book was not at all true to her own experiences as a young Muslim woman in Canada. Instead of enhancing her classmates’ understanding of her, she felt the book contributed to her feelings of alienation.

An exciting solution: Salaam Reads and Saints and Misfits

So, what’s a well-intentioned teacher looking to incorporate culturally relevant and sustaining materials in her classrooms to do? In a time when Islamophobic and racist sentiments abound, how might teachers help to counter the negative and harmful rhetoric and real-life harm that’s being done?

Simon and Shuster’s “Salaam Reads” imprint is an exciting solution. Founded in 2016, it “aims to introduce readers of all faiths and backgrounds to a wide variety of Muslim children and families and offer Muslim kids an opportunity to see themselves reflected positively in published works.”

Saints and Misfits is its first contemporary offering. Published this spring, and written by Toronto-based author S.K. Ali, it is a good fit for educators looking for recommendations on what would be a good book to put on their syllabuses.

The book features the nuanced life, struggles, and joys of a Muslim main character. The main character, Janna, is a 15 year-old who loves Flannery O’Connor, photography and her black pashmina hijabs because it’s her “feel-good colour.”

On a personal level, this book took me back to many of my own experiences as a young woman growing up in Winnipeg’s Muslim community. More importantly, my 13-year-old daughter told me she would love to share it with non-Muslim peers in her literature circles at school.

I don’t mean to imply that Saints and Misfits is the one representative work for the experiences of all young Muslim women. But the book is an excellent choice. And the “Salaam Reads” imprint plans to publish eight other books for young readers featuring Muslim characters. It is a hopeful solution for teachers who endeavour to bring culturally relevant books into their classrooms.

Source: Put Muslim characters who don’t need to be ‘saved’ on school reading lists

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Get ready — Toronto’s next wave of Black voices will be more urgent, strident and radical: James

2017/07/25 Leave a comment

More analysis of the Black Experience Project and potential implications:

Astonishingly, half of Black youths aged 16 to 24 identify racism as the greatest challenge facing the Black community. These are kids born here. In 2011, for the first time, the majority of young Black adults in the GTA were Canadian-born, outnumbering those born in the islands. But instead of building security on top of their parent’s angst, they report anxiety beyond that of their elders.

And still you wonder why Black Lives Matter has such resonance.

Hundreds filled the auditorium of the downtown Y on Wednesday night to receive the report, six years in the making. Black folk interviewed themselves, in depth, 250 questions over two or more hours, each posed to more than 1,500 respondents in the GTA, buttressed by the polling expertise of the Environics Institute.

Findings? No surprises here. The gathering had a vibe of self-prescribed group therapy where victims comfort each other with nodding heads and sighs that breathe, “the story of my life.”

Validation is good, one woman said, providing feedback. “Now I know it’s not just me; I’m not crazy,” she said.

Another summed up the daily toll of racism encountered in a society steeped in the ethos of colonized and colonizer. “It drains you,” she said.

Then she asked the tough question. “How are you getting this information in front of the people who need to hear — so it’s not just us talking to ourselves, telling us what we already know?”

Almost 40 years ago when I took pictures and wrote stories for Contrast Newspaper, the parade of headlines had a numbing sameness: Man beaten by police. Mother says school discriminates. Youth says racism kept him from job.

In the 1980s when I joined with Toronto Star colleague Leslie Papp to examine life in Metro Toronto for Black folk compared with whites, little had changed. In daily interactions large and small, Black folk endured the slings and arrows of outrageous racism.

In 2002 the Star unleashed its study on racial profiling, Black pain and suffering finally received an official stamp of institutional and scientific approval. No one who was serious could deny the reality anymore. Black people were being targeted, harassed, arrested, imprisoned and victimized at a rate three to four times their white neighbours — not because of wanton crimes but for the same misdemeanor and behavior that left white citizens free of censure.

When the Star verified in 2010 what Black youths complained about from my Contrast days — that they are systematically watched, targeted, surveilled, had their movements recorded and “carded” as a matter of police policy — one would have thought the jig was up.

But no, the racism deniers only got bolder and intransigent.

Police chiefs and mayors and citizens defended the most outrageous violation of the human and civil rights of its Black citizens — in the name of a safety no one could identify or specify.

I sat at a police services board meeting and watched my mayor support carding — immediately after Black and white citizens begged the board to please, stop, in the name of God or justice. Former metro councillor Bev Salmon was in tears. Former police board member Roy Williams was near depressed. Desmond Cole renounced his journalism credentials and attempted to shame the bastards into doing the right thing. And they sat there unmoved.

I wept that day — at police headquarters.

I wept many other nights that year as I watched the systematic de-humanization of Black people, across America and the globe.

Why do we matter so little?

Fowzia Duale Virtue, one of the presenters Wednesday night, in a moment of revelation, put her finger on the trigger:

“I’ve been Black in a lot of places in the world. I’ve lived on four continents, lived in 22 countries” and encountered racism “so overt that I didn’t want to spend another” dollar in that place. And she’s experienced the “refreshing welcome of humanity in places without the history of colonization.”

Right here, Black response evolved into Black Lives Matter (BLM) — young, accented in Canadian lilt and vocabulary. Where Dudley Laws and Charles Roach and Black Action Defence Committee (BAD-C) once roamed, BLM occupies. The youths seem more strident, more forceful, direct and impatient and radical.

And some GTA teacher posted or retweeted the sentiment that says BLM is our local terrorist group.

Dude! You should be ecstatic. The alternative will be unrecognizable — more combustible and radical and urgent and disruptive than the 2017 version of BLM.

Consider that the majority of young Black adults is now Canadian born. They have more white friends and connections than their immigrant parents. One might expect their reported experiences in Toronto society would leave them with a more hopeful, less victimized existence. Yet this latest report says:

“Young Black Canadian-born adults are more likely to identify racism as an obstacle they face; more likely to say they experience some forms of unfair treatment because they are Black; and more likely to be adversely affected by these experiences. It appears, therefore, that young Black adults are more impatient with the failure of Canadian society to deliver on the country’s promise of equality.”

That’s what should bother us. BAD-C leads to BLM. What will BLM morph into, if current conditions persist?

Carding had to go because it was just too odious. The disrespect so obvious that regular middle-class folk, Black and white, could see its devilish design. But the racism that’s part of our DNA is so much harder to erase.

Black people have shown they won’t stop pushing for equality. Toronto’s next wave of Black voices will be more urgent, strident, boisterous and radical. You can count on that.

Malcolm X talked about the ballot or the bullet, even as Martin Luther King marched in non-violent protest. One day, the idea of Black Lives Matter as an incendiary terrorist group will be as absurd as calling the Black Action Defense Committee dangerous. Current requests will pale in the face of future demands.

“We are just like everyone else,” Virtue said Wednesday, her form steady, poised, articulate and resolute. “We will fight and demand that our humanity is respected and honoured and received.”

We won’t be able to send these kids home — back to Africa or Jamaica. They are home. What too many of them are telling us — if we open our ears and hearts — is that our beloved Toronto doesn’t feel like home.

We have been warned.

Source: Get ready — Toronto’s next wave of Black voices will be more urgent, strident and radical: James | Toronto Star

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