Multiculturalism | Multicultural Meanderings

Immigration, intolerance and the ‘populist paradox’: Ibbitson on Banting

2017/06/20 Leave a comment

Good summary of Keith Banting’s talk at the recent Conference Board of Canada’s Immigration Summit (and his earlier talk on the Hill), although with more of a pessimistic spin than Banting:

We may think most Canadians support the federal government’s wide-open immigration policy, which has made Canada a beacon of tolerance in this increasingly intolerant world, but the reality is more worrying.

Support for immigration in Canada is soft and vulnerable. Governments must act to strengthen it, if this country is to avoid the polarization and conflict afflicting the United States and much of Europe.

These are the findings of Keith Banting, who researches public policy at Queen’s University. Prof. Banting and I each gave a talk on immigration policy at a recent gathering sponsored by the Conference Board of Canada. This column is based on his remarks, which were much more interesting than mine.

Six out of 10 Canadians support the federal government’s target of accepting 300,000 immigrants a year, the highest intake per capita of any country in the developed world, according to a 2016 Environics poll. But four in 10 do not, and almost six in 10 believe that “too many immigrants do not adopt Canadian values.” Support for both immigration and multiculturalism – which welcomes diverse cultures within the Canadian mosaic – is far from universal.

Canadians, Prof. Banting believes, are every bit as susceptible as Americans or Britons or Poles to a lethal combination of economic insecurity and cultural anxiety. Many of us fear we may lose our job to a machine or to a foreigner in an overseas factory, even as the 1 per cent accrue more and more of the common wealth.

And some descendants of Canada’s settler culture fear that their Christian, European heritage is being overwhelmed by new arrivals from developing countries.

Meanwhile, a string of terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere contributes to the fear that some newcomers or their descendants seek to do us harm.

Drawing on attitudinal research by former graduate students and the Queen’s University Multicultural Policy Index (http://www.queensu.ca/mcp), Prof. Banting paints a much more ambiguous picture of support for multiculturalism in Canada.

“The population could roughly be divided three ways,” he argues. “One third of Canadians really don’t support multiculturalism. One third are enthusiastic multiculturalists. And one third are what you could call ‘soft multiculturalists’: They support the current policies, but with reservations. And that support could change.”

Canadians living outside Quebec roughly correspond with Americans when asked whether they support such policies as allowing religious headgear for police officers and members of the military (about six in 10 oppose), requiring employers to make a special effort to hire minorities and immigrants (about four in 10 oppose), being allowed to wear a hijab (the Muslim head scarf) while walking down the street (about two in 10 oppose) and other markers of multicultural tolerance.

In responding to many of the questions, people in Quebec showed less multicultural tolerance than either Americans or Canadians outside Quebec.

Could such ambiguous support for multiculturalism lead to the creation of a populist, nationalist, anti-immigrant political party in Canada? Not immediately, Prof. Banting believes. For one thing, most Canadians who confess to economic insecurity do not blame immigrants for that insecurity. Eight Canadians in 10 agree with the statement: “The economic impact of immigrants is positive.”

As well, Prof. Banting refers to what has been called the “populist paradox.” There are so many immigrants and children of immigrants in Canada – 20 per cent of our population was not born in this country – that no political party can win government without their support.

These two factors make the rise of someone like a Donald Trump or a Marine Le Pen – the nativist French leader who came second in that country’s recent presidential election – less likely in Canada.

But the undercurrents of dissatisfaction are real. Canadian governments must repeatedly and convincingly demonstrate the importance of immigration to economic growth in this country. And they must confront the causes of income inequality and the fears fuelled by it.

Conservatives and progressives will address those priorities in different ways. But they must always keep them front and centre. Canada’s future depends on it.

Source: Immigration, intolerance and the ‘populist paradox’ – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with John Ibbitson, Keith Banting

Politicians can’t let another year of hate crimes pass without action – Macleans.ca

2017/06/20 Leave a comment

Not really much insights in this column on the latest StatsCan hate crimes report, nor any particular startling or new recommendations. No real clarity of what government’s acting “forcefully” would entail beyond the Ontario government’s strategy and its emphasis on wider collection of race-based data to inform policy and programs.

The longer-term view shows no clear overall trend: a decline 2009-2011, an increase 2013-15. And no recognition that the recent increase may also reflect a greater willingness to report hate crimes as well as an actual increase.

While any hate crime or equivalent is an abomination, are the numbers really so high compared to the population? How do they compare to other countries?

When racial and religious groups insist discrimination is a hindrance to their success and well-being in Canada, governments must act forcefully to remove this barrier to demonstrate that mistreating someone based on their race or religion is unacceptable in contemporary Canadian society. This display of solidarity from politicians may act as a deterrent to future hate crimes and finally bring down the stubbornly high incidents of hate crimes towards Blacks and Jews, as well as the spike against Muslim Canadians.

Source: Politicians can’t let another year of hate crimes pass without action – Macleans.ca

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with Statistics Canada

What ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’ Would Be Like Today: Zarqa Nawaz

2017/06/17 Leave a comment

Interesting reflections:

In 2007, with Muslim-Canadians still coming to terms with the changing cultural landscape after 9/11, writer Zarqa Nawaz invited audiences to visit a little mosque on the prairie—and a decade later, the messages in the famed CBC show still ring true.

“The content of Little Mosque on the Prairie is just as relevant as it was 10 years ago,” says Nawaz. “It’s just if I was going to make a show today I would have to take into consideration everything that’s happened since then and I would definitely have a show with a different tone and sense of comedy.”

That change is directly connected to the shift in how Muslims are being treated in Canada. Statistics Canada recently released a study showing a dramatic rise in hate crimes, particularly those against Muslims. Between 2014 and 2015, police reported a 61-percent increase in crimes specifically targeting Muslims.

…Nawaz says that the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee and anti-Muslim sentiments were happening when Little Mosque on the Prairie was in production and became part of the show. For instance, in reaction to sports leagues banning hijabs from the soccer pitch, the show created an episode where one of the main characters is not allowed to participate in a curling match because of her headscarf.

“We were sort of mimicking what was happening around us at the time, like the fear of ‘The Other,’ and trying to break it down through story,” says Nawaz.

(PHOTO: CBC STILL PHOTO COLLECTION/WESTWIND PRODUCTIONS)

If Little Mosque aired today, she says the same approach would apply, but the overall feel would need to be different, largely because of the way social media has changed how people talk about and react to the news.

“Things are moving fast, people react faster, people get angrier faster and you would have to have sort of that pace and that tone and the energy in that show,” she says, adding that thanks to how connected the world has become, Little Mosque is still being discovered by new communities around the world and particularly by those in Muslim-majority countries.

One scene that Nawaz would’ve wanted to dig into if Little Mosque was still on the air would be, of course, the U.S. election. When Stephen Harper was campaigning for prime minister, Nawaz says she remembers seeing her community become far more politically active “because they realized that their survival was at stake and they couldn’t just sit back on the sidelines and be spectators, they had to become involved.” What that meant was engaging with other minority groups who had a stake in the election, such as First Nations communities. If she was to create an episode that dealt with the recent U.S. election of president Donald Trump, she says she would show a similar sense of different minority communities coming together. She would also add in new characters.

“I mean the show would be more about people who are politically engaged,” she says. “I think that those stories would probably dominate and the stories about the rise of these fascist, racist groups in Canada and the United States would have to be part of it, and maybe even a character who’s part of that.”

Nawaz says that she would also include scenes where in reaction to the growing Islamophobia, the mosque community would participate in more civic engagement. In her local community in Regina, Sask., she’s seen this in action and calls it the “silver lining” to a very dark cloud. For instance, in Ontario, Mississauga’s Muslim community recently invited the public to join them for Ramadan Iftar, the breaking of the sacred fast. This level of engagement in the local community and outreach is a new drive, according to Nawaz, in an effort to counter people’s misperceptions and fear of Muslims.

“I feel that there’s much more, we have to go out, we have to participate and we have to be seen as people who care,” she says.

If Little Mosque aired today, it would also require a shift from what Nawaz describes as a “gentle” comedy with no swearing or racy scenes to something a bit grittier because of the recent shooting at Centre Culturel Islamique de Quebec, a tragedy she says shows that Canada is not immune to the repercussions of President Donald Trump and anti-Islam sentiments.

“If I was to do it again, it would have to be much more cutting, much more deliberate,” she says, adding that she would create episodes that deal with the anger on both sides of the divide. “I would have to deal with overt racism in a much more direct fashion because that’s what’s happened.”

However—though times have certainly changed—at its core, Nawaz says Little Mosque would remain a show less about religion and more about people. “I remember kind of realizing that after a while because I was struggling to find Muslim-related topics and it was getting harder and harder with every season cause you kind of exhaust all that and then you realize, it’s just a story about relationships between human beings who happen to be Muslim.”

Source: What ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’ Would Be Like Today – FLARE

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with Little Mosque on the Prairie, Zarqa Nawaz

Uber: Diversity Chief Bernard Coleman Speaks in Interview | Time.com

2017/06/17 Leave a comment

Not the easiest job in the world:

Bernard Coleman jokes that his first week on the job at Uber was all he got as a “honeymoon period.”

He had logged little time as the company’s new head of diversity this January — the same job he did for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — before the hashtag #DeleteUber began trending. But while that PR firestorm (related to Trump’s controversial immigration order) was the start of months of tumult for the company, it was also proof to Coleman that he had chosen the right gig following an intense election. “The only difference between Uber and a campaign is campaigns end,” he says.

TIME spoke to Coleman in late May for a feature on diversity and inclusion in Silicon Valley, and while he declined to comment on the investigation into Uber’s workplace practices being carried out by former Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm, he did talk about his own assessments of the company. Though Uber has acknowledged, repeatedly, that parts of its culture are “broken,” Coleman says the culture isn’t as “toxic” as it often appears in the media: “I don’t think could get this big or survive if it were so toxic. It would destroy itself.”

…Do you think the amount of scrutiny that Uber has been getting for diversity issues is fair?

No. … On the campaign, we had to contend with [scrutiny]. As we’d scale, people would say, ‘Look at them, they didn’t move the needle at all.’ It’s like, if you look at how we’re scaling and how difficult it is to even maintain your diversity numbers, let alone increase them … It can be disingenuous, in terms of understanding.

So moving the percentages becomes difficult.

More and more difficult. I wish people would call that out. But I understand we should do better, and Silicon Valley has been known for not doing so well. Working here at Uber, I think we can do better.

The industry as a whole has gotten a lot of scrutiny on diversity and inclusion issues. Why do you think that is?

For one, you have these talented and smart people and they’re solving all these other things and creating these wonderful innovations, products. You would think they could solve for this, if they put some of their effort into it … And I really do think it’s about scale. You start off with a small thing where you’re working on a product and that’s where all your focus is … If we need to get this thing launched or hit this city, that’s the priority. If my thoughts are on that, those other things fall by the wayside … You think of it as — I’ll get to that, I’ll get to that. And next thing you know, it’s a much bigger thing than you could have anticipated. And I don’t think it’s unique to Uber or Silicon Valley. I think it’s a general problem.

….One thing some tech companies have struggled with is that, inadvertently or not, they’ve turned out to be places where young white males have a better chance of success. Has Uber’s culture been that way?

If it’s built that way, in the beginning, if you’re a venture capitalist, and you’re a small group, then you suffer from culture myopia. You can’t see it. [Unless] you expand your circles, you’re not going to understand or fully appreciate how that culture is impacting others … That is why Silicon Valley is structured that way, just because when it first starts, maybe that core group is not extremely diverse. So we’re all sharing the same world view, and I’m not going to see the issues a black person or a woman might encounter, because it’s just not my reality.

….In terms of Uber’s first diversity report, released in March, what did you see as the most promising numbers and the most troubling numbers?

I was surprised that our women levels were that high … It’s 36.1%. We’ve got 13.9% to get to at least parity. So obviously there’s way more to do, but that was a happy surprise. Then our diversity numbers were like 50% people of color. Even though it’s over-indexed in some areas, that still was very surprising. Another one was our African-American numbers were actually much higher than [other companies in the tech industry] … I would like to see more women and people of color in leadership. That’s one thing that’s critically important, trying to build leadership pipelines to help folks.

Based on your assessments so far, what are the biggest challenges for women working at Uber?

Just feeling safe and supported. You want to know there are opportunities. You want to know you’re going to invest in me. You want to make sure I’m advancing. It’s called promotional velocity, that I’m getting promoted at the same rate as others, so that when I look to my left and my right at my peers, we’re in the hunt. … I don’t think [it’s any different for women than for men]. I just think it’s different levels and intensity. People of color, same things. Everyone’s feeling the same things.

Source: Uber: Diversity Chief Bernard Coleman Speaks in Interview | Time.com

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with Bernard Coleman, diversity, tech, Uber

Toronto: Gender, racial diversity part of city’s tech push

2017/06/17 Leave a comment

Interesting approach that sends a message:

Mayor John Tory says he and other Toronto city officials are less likely to attend tech and innovation events if they feature all-man panels and programming with little ethnic diversity.

Tory made the pledge Thursday at the “Women founders and leaders in technology” event, part of the #MoveTheDial initiative aimed at increasing female participation and leadership in Canadian tech.

“Our city is home to a diverse array of talent that must be represented in the events and programming we put on for each other and for the world. . . ,” Tory said. “Diversity and inclusion are a huge part of our value proposition and I will be supporting and championing those events that help build that reputation at home and globally.”

In written responses to the Star after the event, Tory said he, his “advocate for the innovation economy” Councillor Michelle Holland, economic development chair Councillor Michael Thompson and others at the city will “prioritize” the many events they attend based on the gender and ethnic balance of people being presented.

He said he came up with the idea himself after observing many such events and speaking with people including Jodi Kovitz, founder of #MoveTheDial who was part of his trade delegation last fall to Israel.

“Many rooms contain almost all men in large crowds,” Tory said. “We will try to look at diversity overall in our selection of events with an emphasis on gender since that seems to be the bigger challenge.

“By doing this we are asking everyone to be intentional about the public face we put on our events and our conversations about tech. Our city is diverse and that should be reflected.”

California’s Silicon Valley in particular has been criticized for a “tech bro” culture populated by male, mostly white coders who, when they strike it rich, invest in other startups run by people who look mostly like them.

Source: Gender, racial diversity part of city’s tech push | Toronto Star

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with Mayor Tory, tech, Toronto

A whole lot of people owe Kellie Leitch an apology | Furey

2017/06/17 Leave a comment

Anthony Furey defends Kellie Leitch and wants her back in the limelight? Suspect most conservatives do not:

So keep an eye on Scheer’s secret agenda. Those are the pearls they’ve instructed us to clutch as we head out to the summer BBQ circuit. Good to know.

However, I can’t help but feel that one poor soul has been badly served by this shift in the liberal media narrative.

I mean, here’s Scheer getting front-page headlines as public enemy number one and, all of a sudden, former leadership candidate Kellie Leitch is persona non grata.

All during the leadership race, the Ontario MP and revered surgeon was getting constant attention from the media elites as a big threat to Canada, and now she’s not even worth a mention.

Last year, Leitch advocated screening prospective immigrants for “Canadian values”. She made clear from day one what she meant by this was that Canadian pluralism means respect for women’s rights, gay rights, ethnic and religious diversity and other such progressive notions.

Not a bad idea, I thought. A sizable majority of Canadians across the political spectrum liked it too, polls showed.

We welcome thousands of people to Canada every year that come from cultures that have very different social norms, such as the criminalizing of homosexuality.

It’s just common sense to tell them how things work here. Northern European countries already do this and Australia is expanding its own values test.

Yet somehow my colleagues in the liberal consensus media could see into Leitch’s soul and knew her true intentions were the exact opposite of her words.

Even though Leitch said, for example, that diversity was important, she actually meant, they assured us, the opposite.

Now I get that Leitch lost, but it’s still odd that she’s completely disappeared from the liberal media hit list and now the previously harmless Scheer has taken her spot as top ogre.

Maybe the liberal-friendly media never truly believed the, er, psychic insights they discerned about Leitch and spoon fed to their audience.

Maybe it was just because they always need to find a conservative to cast as an evil villain, regardless of the facts.

And if that’s true, a whole hell of a lot of people in the liberal media owe Kellie Leitch a very big apology for playing this dirty game on her.

Source: A whole lot of people owe Kellie Leitch an apology | FUREY | Columnists | Opinio

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with Anthony Furey, CPC, Kellie Leitch

When equality feels like discrimination: Nightingale

2017/06/16 Leave a comment

Great piece by Johnathan Nightingale on the lack of merit in merit arguments:

You can’t run a modern business with a mindset from the Dark Ages.

The idea that there is a war against merit feels like one plucked out of time, full of arguments that have been obliterated for decades. But the unfortunate truth is that many leaders in business today still cling to the same dated ideas. Are you one of them? If you find yourself agreeing that there is such a thing as “reverse discrimination,” understand that you – and your business – are at risk of becoming obsolete.

There are no meritocracies

Merit is a funny thing. We all like the sound of a meritocracy. It ought to be the case that a person succeeds based on their hard work, evaluated fairly. There was a time when I believed in it myself.

But your business is made of people, and people are never objective. We do such a bad job of judging merit that we don’t even see our own mistakes. We score the merit of a résumé differently based on how white the name sounds. We assess the merit of computer code differently when we know a woman wrote it. Professional symphony musicians can’t even hear music objectively when they know who’s playing.

Does merit explain your own company’s gender or racial distribution? Are you sure? Bias is like a leaky pipe. It’s tempting to ignore it, and scary to wonder how much damage it’s doing. But eventually you have to confront it, otherwise it can bring your whole house down. Once you start to recognize that we’re all fallible on this stuff, instead of pretending it doesn’t happen, you can start to make repairs.

The ability to see bias is a skill that you can develop. It’s an incredible tool for improving your business, and will allow you to see opportunities everywhere. Some solutions are clear, like using blind résumé screens to avoid up-front biases in hiring. Some take more work to see, and some require creative thinking to undo. But if you’re paying attention – if you get curious about where your business has bias leaks – you’ll race ahead of the people still crowing about their commitment to meritocracy.

Equality can feel like discrimination

Many business leaders also push back against equality efforts by labelling them “reverse discrimination.” It’s easy to understand why. A program that takes opportunities away from men by imposing a quota of women to be hired sure feels discriminatory.

It’s a silly argument. In science, tech, and business, men have maintained the advantaged position for generations. (White men in particular, and straight white men most particularly.) If we are all interested in building fairer and more just companies, and a better world, we’re going to need to get everyone else caught up. That’s not discrimination, that’s moving towards equality. But equality feels very different when it means giving up an unfair advantage.

In your own company, as Saadia Muzaffar says, “Ask yourself who’s not at the table.” If you can’t stomach the idea of quotas and preferential hiring, can you at least start by looking for representation? Ask yourself where you are missing perspective because of gaps in your hiring and act to fix it. And no, you don’t get to blame a lack of applicants.

Modern employees demand modern employers

Tech is a young industry, and that means we’re often the first to see new employment trends emerge. What we’re seeing right now is a generation of employees who care deeply about the values of the companies they work for. They expect transparency and accountability from their leaders in a way that feels new. They are digital natives, educated and connected. They are very able to walk away when they sense that their employer doesn’t get it.

This is a thing you can either fear or embrace. If you don’t know how to build a more equitable workplace, the onus is on you to get educated first. Once you start taking those steps, you’ll find that this is a generation that understands and respects that work. Don’t ask them to do it for you – change in the equality of your company needs to come from the top – but they will stick with you and work hard for you when they believe that your efforts are sincere.

It’s tempting, when there are so many frustrations involved in trying to build your business, to see equality work as yet another pain in the behind. I get that. It can be comfortable to roll your eyes at it as more runaway political correctness. But it’s a trap. It stops you from doing the hard work required to understand your own biases, confront them, and be better.

The next time you hear yourself saying “I support diversity, but ….” Pause for a moment. Ask why you’re taking that position, and what fear or discomfort is behind it. And then ask yourself how much better your world would be if you dropped the “but.”

Source: When equality feels like discrimination – The Globe and Mail

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with diversity, Johnathan Nightingale, merit

Tillerson retreats from pledge to fill anti-Semitism envoy post | The Times of Israel

2017/06/16 Leave a comment

While I understand Tillerson’s arguments (Canada has had similar debates over special ambassadors/envoys in the past), the politics will be interesting to watch:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson retreated from his department’s commitment to fill the post of envoy to combat anti-Semitism, saying the effort may be more effective without one.

“One of the questions I’ve asked is, if we’re really going to affect these areas, these special areas, don’t we have to affect it through the delivery on mission at every level at every country?” Tillerson said in testimony Wednesday to the foreign operations subcommittee of the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee. “And by having a special envoy, one of my experiences is, mission then says, ‘oh, we’ve got somebody else that does,’ and then they stop doing it.”

Since Congress established the position with a 2004 law, the role of the envoy has been to train career State Department officers and diplomats in identifying and combating anti-Semitism and to encourage embassies and bureaus to more closely monitor anti-Semitism. The envoy has not functioned as a stand-alone entity but rather is part of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and supervises about five career State Department staffers.

European Jewish community officials have said that having an envoy has delivered a message to their governments that the United States is focused on anti-Semitism.

At the subcommittee hearing, Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., asked Tillerson for a timeline for the hire. Earlier this year there were reports that the Trump administration, eyeing massive budget cuts to the State Department, planned to eliminate the role. National Jewish groups and Congress members expressed outrage, and in April a State Department spokesman told JTA that the department did not in fact plan to eliminate the position and was reviewing candidates to fill it.

Lawmakers have noted that because the role was created by statute, the Trump administration cannot eliminate the post. Tillerson said he would seek to persuade Congress to cut the position if he deems it necessary.

“Those that are mandated by statute, we will be back to talk with you about those as to whether we think it’s good to have it structured that way or whether we really think we can be effective on those issues in a different way,” he said at the hearing.

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the ranking Democrat on the foreign operations subcommittee, was appalled by the possibility of the position being eliminated.

“It is outrageous and offensive that Secretary Tillerson would even suggest appointing a Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism is unnecessary, particularly given that his State Department committed to filling the post back in April,” she said in an email to JTA. “As reports of hate crimes against Jews continue to rise in the United States and around the world, it is essential that Secretary Tillerson fill the Special Envoy position immediately.”

Bipartisan legislation under consideration would enhance the position to ambassador level.

Source: Tillerson retreats from pledge to fill anti-Semitism envoy post | The Times of Israel

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with envoy, Tillerson, USA

In Defense of Cultural Appropriation: Malik – The New York Times

2017/06/15 2 Comments

Good piece by Kenan Malik, particularly this point:

“The accusation of cultural appropriation is a secular version of the charge of blasphemy. It’s the insistence that certain beliefs and images are so important to particular cultures that they may not appropriated by others.”:

Critics of cultural appropriation insist that they are opposed not to cultural engagement, but to racism. They want to protect marginalized cultures and ensure that such cultures speak for themselves, not simply be seen through the eyes of more privileged groups.

Certainly, cultural engagement does not take place on a level playing field. Racism and inequality shape the ways in which people imagine others. Yet it is difficult to see how creating gated cultures helps promote social justice.

There are few figures more important to the development of rock ’n’ roll than Chuck Berry (who died in March). In the 1950s, white radio stations refused to play his songs, categorizing them as “race music.” Then came Elvis Presley. A white boy playing the same tunes was cool. Elvis was feted, Mr. Berry and other black pioneers largely ignored. Racism defined who became the cultural icon.

But imagine that Elvis had been prevented from appropriating so-called black music. Would that have challenged racism, or eradicated Jim Crow laws? Clearly not. It took a social struggle — the civil rights movement — to bring about change. That struggle was built not on cultural separation, but on the demand for equal rights and universal values.

Campaigns against cultural appropriation reveal the changing meaning of what it is to challenge racism. Once, it was a demand for equal treatment for all. Now it calls for cultures to be walled off and boundaries to be policed.

But who does the policing? Every society has its gatekeepers, whose role is to protect certain institutions, maintain the privileges of particular groups and cordon off some beliefs from challenge. Such gatekeepers protect not the marginalized but the powerful. Racism itself is a form of gatekeeping, a means of denying racialized groups equal rights, access and opportunities.

In minority communities, the gatekeepers are usually self-appointed guardians whose power rests on their ability to define what is acceptable and what is beyond the bounds. They appropriate for themselves the authority to license certain forms of cultural engagement, and in doing so, entrench their power.

The most potent form of gatekeeping is religion. When certain beliefs are deemed sacred, they are put beyond questioning. To challenge such beliefs is to commit blasphemy.

The accusation of cultural appropriation is a secular version of the charge of blasphemy. It’s the insistence that certain beliefs and images are so important to particular cultures that they may not appropriated by others. This is most clearly seen in the debate about Ms. Schutz’s painting “Open Casket.”

In 1955, Emmett Till’s mother urged the publication of photographs of her son’s mutilated body as it lay in its coffin. Till’s murder, and the photographs, played a major role in shaping the civil rights movement and have acquired an almost sacred quality. It was from those photos that Ms. Schutz began her painting.

To suggest that she, as a white painter, should not depict images of black suffering is as troubling as the demand by some Muslims that Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” should be censored because of supposed blasphemies in its depiction of Islam. In fact, it’s more troubling because, as the critic Adam Shatz has observed, the campaign against Ms. Schutz’s work contains an “implicit disavowal that acts of radical sympathy, and imaginative identification, are possible across racial lines.”

Seventy years ago, racist radio stations refused to play “race music” for a white audience. Today, antiracist activists insist that white painters should not portray black subjects. To appropriate a phrase from a culture not my own: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Filed under Aboriginal, Multiculturalism Tagged with cultural appropriation, Kenan Malik

A closer look at the rise in hate crimes in Canada

2017/06/15 Leave a comment

Good to see wide coverage of the latest hate crimes report. Of interest are the comments of NCCM on the increase in the number of hate crimes against Canadian Muslims (Muslim group urges Ottawa to speed up release of hate-crime statistics):

The National Council of Canadian Muslims connected the anti-Muslim bias to a backlash over two terror attacks in Paris in 2015. But the group also singled out Conservative Party election campaigning under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“The Canadian Muslim community bore the brunt of sinister political rhetoric surrounding the federal election, which painted Muslims as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, as well as being anti-woman,” council vice-chairman Khalid Elgazzar said at a press conference on Parliament Hill.

In an interview, Mr. Elgazzar referred to Conservative pitches in favour of “snitch lines” for so-called barbaric cultural practices, as well as a ban on face veils at citizenship ceremonies.

“Words matter and those words had an impact,” he said. “There was an immediate uptick in terms of incidents of hate being reported to us.”

The Statscan data indicate that hate crimes targeting Muslims in Canada rose to 159 incidents, a 61-per-cent spike over 2014. Jewish people remain the most targeted religious minority in Canada, though reported anti-Semitic incidents declined in 2015 over the previous year, the federal agency said.

Meanwhile, the percentage of women targeted by violent hate crimes increased because of a hike in the number of victimized women in the Jewish and Muslim communities. Over all, the sharpest rise in hate crimes was in Alberta, where officials have already noted an increase in total crime due to the province’s economic downturn.

Still, the true picture of hate in Canada is probably darker than the numbers released on Tuesday suggest. Statscan said the figures “likely undercounts” the real extent of hate crime in Canada because not all crimes are reported to police.

The two-year lag in releasing the figures is problematic at a time when Muslims feel the effects of turmoil linked to global radicalization, the presence of far-right groups in the West and the anti-Muslim rhetoric adopted by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Mr. Elgazzar’s organization has received an influx of complaints about anti-Muslim incidents this year, but they won’t be reflected by Statscan until 2019, he said. The data released on Tuesday are already two years old.

“You can’t build a case without evidence, and the evidence we have is stale,” he said. “It’s 2017 and I’ll tell you we’re having a pretty rough year. But we’re only going to hear about it in 2019.”

I suspect that international news events were a more important factor than the previous government’s playing identity politics (no excuse). Another possible factor, hard if not impossible to measure, is the degree to which Canadian Muslims are more willing to report hate crimes to the police, which has been an issue in the past. Higher numbers may reflect in part better Muslim-police relations.

In terms of timelines required to produce these reports, it would be nice, and should be possible, to have a one-year time lag rather than 18 months as at present, while ensuring the necessary data integrity and consistency.

One of the better overviews, with the relevant charts (just comparing the past two years compared to my eight year comparison The Daily — Police-reported hate crimes, 2015 (with annual 2008-15 data)):

The number of hate crimes in Canada jumped five per cent in 2015 from the year before, according to a Statistic Canada report released Tuesday.

The report looked at a variety of hate-crime statistics—from crime motivations and violations to the demographics of victims and the accused.

In total, 1,362 hate-crimes were reported across the country that year. To put that in perspective, there were nearly two million criminal incidents reported to police in the same year.

An increase in hate-crimes based on religion and race

Two major factor explain the increase—an uptick in religiously-based and race-based hate crimes. Nearly 50 per cent of all hate crimes reported in Canada in 2015 were motivated by hatred of race or ethnicity.

The largest increase in religiously-based hate crimes was against Muslims (an increase of 61 per cent to 159 incidents) and Catholics (a 57 per cent increase to 55 incidents). Jewish people faced the highest level of religiously motivated hate crimes (178 incidents) despite seeing a 16 per cent drop over the two years.

Hate crimes targeting Blacks were still the highest of all racially or ethnically motivated crimes in 2015 (224 incidents), though that was down slightly from the year before.

Hate crimes targeting sexual orientation fell by nine per cent between 2014 and 2015.

Violent hate crimes also increased

Violent hate crimes increased 15 per cent from 2014 to 2015, accounting for more than two-thirds all police-reported hate crimes. The most common types of violent hate-based crimes were assaults, which jumped13 per cent from the year before, and uttering threats, up 22 per cent.

Most victims younger than 35 years old

Nearly 60 per cent of hate crime victims in 2015 were younger than 35 years old, according to the report—a similar percentage as in 2014.

When it comes to victims of hate crimes motivated by religion, however, victims were younger than the year before—people under 35 accounted for nearly 60 per cent of victims in 2015, up from around two-thirds the year before.

People accused of religious hate crimes are most likely to be under 18 years old

In more than 22 per cent of religious hate crime incidents, young people aged 12 to 17 years old were the perpetrators. Meanwhile people under the age of 24 were responsible for slightly more than half of hate crimes that targeted sexual orientation.

In its report, StatsCan suggested that the actual number of hate crimes could be considerably higher than what it found. It estimated that in two thirds of cases of hate crime, victims don’t file complaints with police. The agency also cautioned that the reporting rates can also vary by the targeted population—for example, some demographic groups might be more willing to report than others.