Le PQ, la diversité et le nationalisme civique

2017/05/06 Leave a comment

Good overview by Robert Dutrisac of the ongoing challenge facing the PQ (and fussing on words doesn’t solve their existential question of who is “nous”):

On connaît la suite : Pauline Marois a amorcé un virage identitaire qui culminait dans la maladroite charte sur les valeurs dites « québécoises » — des valeurs, en réalité, occidentales, voire universelles. Le PQ réaffirmait tout de même le caractère pluraliste de la nation québécoise.

Avec cette concordance culturelle, Jean-François Lisée délaisse l’interculturalisme cher à Gérard Bouchard. Il juge que la notion officielle de l’interculturalisme, telle que définie par le gouvernement libéral, est trop molle puisqu’elle ne fait pas référence à un tronc commun bâti au Québec au fil de l’histoire. Pour certains d’ailleurs, dont Charles Taylor et Daniel Marc Weinstock, l’interculturalisme n’est qu’une version du multiculturalisme canadien.

Ce concept ressemble beaucoup à la « convergence culturelle » de Fernand Dumont qu’a reprise le PQ de René Lévesque en 1981. Cette politique, intitulée « Autant de façons d’être Québécois », avait pour objectif de rassembler les cultures ethniques sous l’égide de la majorité, ce qui peut se résumer par leur assimilation.

Selon Jean-François Lisée, la concordance culturelle n’a pas de visées assimilatrices, mais préconise plutôt « la formation d’une collectivité inclusive » dans laquelle « chaque citoyen et chaque génération effectue son parcours identitaire comme il ou elle l’entend ». Mais les Québécois de toutes origines sont appelés à partager « une différence vitale » caractérisée par la langue française et un récit historique singulier. À cela s’ajoutent des éléments civiques comme l’égalité entre les hommes et les femmes, la démocratie, la solidarité et un « cheminement vers un État laïque ».

Ce concept de concordance sera difficile à expliciter en campagne électorale ; il est heureusement associé à des mesures concrètes pour favoriser la réussite des immigrants en luttant, notamment, contre la discrimination à l’embauche et le racisme.

Ce n’est pas d’hier que le PQ a des relations ardues avec les communautés culturelles. Lors de la campagne référendaire de 1980, René Lévesque avait vexé des Italo-Québécois indépendantistes — c’est l’écrivain Marco Micone qui raconte l’anecdote — en déclarant : « La majorité francophone décidera elle-même de son avenir. »Évidemment, il y a eu par la suite « les votes ethniques » de Jacques Parizeau et ce « nous » qui avait voté à 60 % pour le Oui.

Le projet de nationalisme civique, qu’ont porté Gilles Duceppe au Bloc québécois et Gérald Larose, visait à éviter ces écueils. Mais le problème, c’est que le nationalisme civique au Québec ne veut pas dire grand-chose. La nation québécoise, au sein de l’ensemble canadien, n’a pas le monopole des principes démocratiques et des droits de la personne. Sans l’existence de cette majorité francophone au parcours historique singulier, le projet souverainiste perdrait toute pertinence.

Avec cette approche, le PQ a le mérite de la franchise. Pour rejoindre les communautés culturelles — et il doit s’y consacrer activement —, le mouvement souverainiste n’a d’autre choix que de se présenter tel qu’il est : un mouvement qui promeut un projet d’émancipation d’une nation pluraliste, auquel sont conviés tous les Québécois.

Source: Le PQ, la diversité et le nationalisme civique | Le Devoir

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Hate Speech And The Misnomer Of ‘The Marketplace Of Ideas’ : NPR

2017/05/05 Leave a comment

Good long read by David Shih on some of the weaknesses in the free speech arguments:

Critical race theorists Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic addressed this possibility in a 1992 Cornell Law Review article entitled “Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture: Can Free Expression Remedy Systemic Social Ills.” They coin a term for the erroneous belief that “good” antiracist speech is the best remedy for “bad” racist speech: the “empathic fallacy.” The empathic fallacy is the conviction “that we can somehow control our consciousness despite limitations of time and positionality … and that we can enlarge our sympathies through linguistic means alone.”

In other words, the empathic fallacy leads us to believe that “good” speech begets racial justice and that we will be able to tell the difference between it and racist hate speech because we are distanced, objective arbiters…

In the meantime, racist hate speech flows unabated because of our faith in a flawed metaphor.

The marketplace is further gamed by “dog whistles” — code word replacements for overtly racist speech that still aim to stoke white resentment over the social mobility of people of color. When the sitting attorney general dismisses the ruling of a court because it resides on “an island in the Pacific,” he invents yet another way to signal which groups count in America and which ones don’t. And if a racist idea like this one ever flops in the marketplace, its author simply recalls it by saying he was joking.

Beyond the fact that there is little agreement over what is racist, the potential of speech to ennoble is undermined by the marketplace as postmodern spectacle. In a recent article, author Rich Benjamin recounts his experiences as the quasi-resident “left-wing pundit” on Fox’s now-cancelled O’Reilly Factor. Benjamin explains that he took this role for the chance of convincing just a fraction of O’Reilly’s immense audience of the worthiness of his ideas. However, he reveals just how strategic he needed to be to avoid being bullied and misrepresented by O’Reilly. “In the thin-skinned ethos of O’Reilly’s right-wing universe,” Benjamin writes, “the more you battered its poster boy with dead-on punches, the more ferocious the vitriol directed at you.” In the marketplace of cable news and social media, torrents of racist emails and tweets reward you for your bright ideas.

A quarter-century ago when Delgado and Stefancic published their theory of the empathic fallacy, they speculated that the infamous Willie Horton ad tipped a presidential election because voters could not view the ad objectively. We now know that racism was the primary motivation for voters who put Donald Trump in the White House. We know that the best ideas of Gold Star father Khizr Khan at the Democratic National Convention were no match for fearmongering rumors about refugees from Syria and immigrants from Mexico. We know that after almost 100 days of Trump’s presidency, only two percent of those who voted for him regret it. This might mean they don’t see his speech as racist or don’t care if it is.

If we argue that racist hate speech must be protected, we have to account for the empathic fallacy.

We can start by admitting that this position is based on the troubling belief that it is one’s right to be hateful — and not on the comforting belief that hate is a catalyst for racial justice in a “marketplace of ideas.” Better than ever, we know how specious that logic is. We can understand that student protesters may not, in fact, long for their First Amendment rights should the tables turn on them. Law professor Charles Lawrence has argued that civil rights activists in the sixties achieved substantive gains only when they exceeded the acceptable bounds of the First Amendment, only when they disrupted “business as usual.”

Racist hate speech has come to emblemize free speech protections because the parties it injures lack social power. Students of color are expected to endure insults to their identities at the same time that celebrities win multi-million dollar defamation settlements and media companies scrupulously guard their intellectual property against plagiarism.

The belief that more speech is the remedy for “bad” speech can be a principled stance. But for the stance to be principled, it must account for why the target of racist hate speech is less deserving of exemption than, say, the millionaire with a reputation to protect from libel, or the community flooded with sexually-explicit material, or the deep state with a dark secret. Some exemptions make good sense. But does an obscene photograph of an adult that “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” (as defined in Miller v. California, the current law of the land regarding obscenity) really do more harm than a lecture promoting white supremacy?

American society fixates on antiracist protest when debating the First Amendment for the same reason it fixates on race when debating affirmative action: because of the perception that people of color are somehow undeserving of special privileges.

Yet it was supporting the rights of people of color that got Desiree Fairooz arrested in January for laughing during the Senate confirmation hearingof then-attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions. This week, the Department of Justice moved forward with her prosecution, along with those of two men who had mocked Sessions with fake Ku Klux Klan robes. In March, the Human Rights Council of the UN published a letter expressing alarm at the number of legislative efforts criminalizing peaceful assembly and expression in the US.

Powerful interests will find their way around the First Amendment to protect the status quo against antiracist protest. Asking student protesters to tolerate racist hate speech is to ask them to trust in free speech laws that have historically exempted the powerful and punished the vulnerable. When it comes to racism, the “marketplace of ideas” is not laissez-faire and never was.

Source: Hate Speech And The Misnomer Of ‘The Marketplace Of Ideas’ : Code Switch : NPR

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Why Pope Francis’ approach to Islam breaks the mold of Benedict and previous popes | America Magazine

2017/05/05 Leave a comment

Interesting long read by Christopher Lamb on the contrast between Pope Francis and his predecessor in their efforts to engage Islam:

The global growth of Islam and in particular the rise of Islamic extremism have forced recent popes to set out, with increasing urgency, a strategy for engaging the religion.

As Pope Francis’ brief trip to Egypt over the weekend demonstrated, the most recent pontiffs have come up with starkly different approaches—though it’s not yet clear if one is better than the other, or if either will be effective.

When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI addressed the question of Islamic extremism he did so during a speech at a university in his Bavarian homeland where, as a priest and professor, Joseph Ratzinger had worked decades earlier.

That 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, was a theological master class on the relationship between faith and reason. But it also angered Muslims who object to Benedict citing a 14th-century Christian emperor who claimed that the Prophet Muhammad had only brought the world things that were “evil and inhuman.”

Moreover, Benedict also delivered his message to Islam from afar.

Francis, on the other hand, has made it his business to try to build bridges with the Muslim world with the energy of a missionary.

That approach was on display during his 27-hour trip to Egypt, viewed as the leader in the majority Sunni Islamic world, and a nation that is making a serious—though controversial—effort to crack down on extremist-inspired violence.

So important to Francis, in fact, is the “personal encounter” with Muslims that the pontiff put his own safety at risk by going to Cairo, a trip that took place less than three weeks after 45 worshippers were killed in bomb attacks on two Egyptian churches.

The pope even shunned a bulletproof vehicle and when he arrived at a sports stadium for an open-air Mass he greeted the crowds from an open-topped golf buggy.

“Whereas previous popes — even in more secure places — have ridden in bulletproof vehicles, Francis showed his courage in Egypt, and his will to be close to the people, by this simple gesture,” explained Gabriel Said Reynolds, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Reynolds took part in a recent Vatican-Muslim forum at Cairo’s Al-Azhar university, a major center of Sunni-Islamic learning with global influence and expertise in interpreting the Quran. The dialogue that Reynolds is part of only restarted under Francis—who was elected in 2013—after relations had soured under Benedict.

Yet even as the current pope pushes for a personal encounter with Islam, his predecessor’s legacy of engaging Islam via a theological challenge to extremist elements among Muslims continues to hold some sway.

Indeed, just as Francis was heading to Egypt a letter appeared from the retired pope to the president of Poland in which Benedict accused “radical Islam” of creating an “explosive situation in Europe.”

Catholic defenders of Benedict’s Regensburg address insist that he correctly addressed some uncomfortable truths within Islam and they point out that the speech led 138 Islamic scholars to write to Benedict in 2007, a letter that paved the way for a new Catholic-Muslim dialogue initiative.

Yet while it was Muslims who approached Benedict a decade ago, under Francis things are the other way round.

Francis’ approach to Islam is characterized by a willingness to “cross over to the other side” — Egypt is the seventh Muslim majority country he has visited in his four years as pope. And a papal visit to Bangladesh, where almost 90 percent of the population are followers of Islam, is planned for later this year.

Francis’ approach to Islam is characterized by a willingness to “cross over to the other side”

In Egypt, this was symbolized by his embrace of Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar mosque, following the pope’s address to their peace conference.

It was a powerful image of Muslim and Christian fraternity that had echoes of St. Francis of Assisi’s mission to Islamic leader Sultan Al-Kamil 800 years ago.

This personal approach has been bolstered by Francis’ consistent refusal to link the Islamic faith per se to terrorism, and has made the Islamic world take notice.

It also meant that when Francis issued one of his strongest and most detailed condemnations of religious violence during his Al-Azhar address, his speech was welcomed and frequently interrupted with applause.

“He knows that the only effective way for his message of peace to touch the hearts of the larger global community is to speak together with leaders of other religious communities,” Reynolds explained.

“He is counting on the prestige of Al-Azhar and its grand imam in particular, to join with him in broadcasting this message.”

Source: Why Pope Francis’ approach to Islam breaks the mold of Benedict and previous popes | America Magazine

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Des radicaux aussi chez les catholiques | Le Devoir

2017/05/05 Leave a comment

Indeed. Extremism and fundamentalism is not unique to any one religion:

« En ce qui concerne les morts, c’est 6 à 2 pour les intégristes catholiques », lance le sociologue Martin Geoffroy. C’est un drôle de décompte, convient ce professeur au cégep Édouard-Montpetit et directeur du Centre d’expertise et de formation sur les intégrismes religieux et la radicalisation (CEFIR). Mais il illustre bien que, malgré le fait que l’attentat de la mosquée de Québec a fait six morts, ceux reliés à l’islam radical jouissent encore d’une attention disproportionnée dans les médias et l’esprit des Québécois. « On n’hésite pas à associer les attentats terroristes au groupe État islamique et à l’intégrisme religieux, mais quand ça émane de notre propre culture, c’est plus difficile à reconnaître. »

Il rappelle que seulement deux attentats djihadistes, celui de Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu et celui au parlement d’Ottawa, qui ont fait en tout deux morts, ont été perpétrés chez nous. Le fameux complot des Toronto 18 planifié en 2006 a quant à lui été déjoué, et les liens de ces terroristes avec al-Qaïda ne seraient pas prouvés.

Fort de 20 ans de recherche sur l’extrême droite, son postulat se confirme. « C’est toujours plus facile de blâmer la culture de l’autre plutôt que de regarder notre propre culture. Mais l’intégrisme catholique, tout comme l’intégrisme islamique, a aussi un rôle à jouer dans le terrorisme », dit M. Geoffroy, reconnaissant qu’il y a d’autres facteurs, notamment psychologiques, pour expliquer cette violence extrême.

Dans une conférence qu’il donnera dans le cadre du colloque international du Centre de recherche Société, Droit et Religions de l’Université de Sherbrooke (SoDRUS) sur le thème « Les racines religieuses de la radicalisation : fait ou fiction » (les 4, 5 et 6 mai), il défendra la thèse voulant qu’au Québec, les deux formes les plus habituelles d’intransigeance religieuse sont l’intégrisme catholique et le fondamentalisme protestant. Mieux ancrés dans notre société, ces intégrismes bien de chez nous passent sous le radar des médias alors qu’ils vont pourtant à l’encontre des valeurs de la société moderne. « La radicalisation des jeunes et le djihadisme sont dangereux, je ne veux pas le minimiser. Mais cela étant dit, il faut se préoccuper de nos propres affaires. Et il semble plus difficile de regarder le côté sombre de la force de notre propre culture. »

Intégrisme catholique

Martin Geoffroy se heurte d’ailleurs souvent à des regards surpris lorsqu’il rappelle qu’il existe encore plusieurs sectes catholiques, antisémites, anti-islam, anti-immigration. Ses plus récentes recherches l’amènent à conclure que ces groupes sont « complotistes, à base d’intégrisme religieux ou les deux », soutient le chercheur, qui rappelle que des députés conservateurs avaient des liens avec l’Opus dei et la Fraternité sacerdotale Saint-Pie-X. Cette société controversée de prêtres catholiques traditionalistes fondée en Europe, qui a des ramifications au Québec, avait été vue comme trop d’extrême droite par l’Église, qui avait notamment excommunié son fondateur, Mgr Marcel Lefebvre, en 1988.

La fraternité Saint-Pie-X est aussi dans la mire d’Atalante, a-t-il remarqué grâce à une veille de ces groupes sur Internet et les réseaux sociaux, où des vidéos ont clairement établi ces liens. La dimension religieuse, à tout le moins sacrée, est également présente chez les Soldats d’Odin, un groupe d’extrême droite d’origine finlandaise qui a rapidement pris de l’ampleur au Canada. « Dans les groupes suprémacistes blancs, il y a une adoration des dieux vikings, car ils sont blonds, etc. Et Odin, c’est le dieu principal de la mythologie nordique », rappelle le chercheur, qui entamera sous peu une collaboration avec le sociologue français Gérald Bronner, pour comparer les initiatives contre la radicalisation.

Le colloque du SoDRUS fera la part belle aux présentations sur la radicalisation au sein d’autres groupes religieux (bouddhistes, sikhs, anabaptistes, etc.). Martin Geoffroy s’étonne que certains doutent encore du lien entre la religion et l’extrême droite. La radicalisation et les actes terroristes des djihadistes sont automatiquement associés à la religion, alors que la majorité des djihadistes ne sont pas pratiquants mais plutôt convertis « à la version intégriste de l’islam, un islam pour les nuls », dit-il, pointant la thèse du politologue français Olivier Roi sur la déculturation du religieux. « Mais quand on parle de l’extrême droite chez nous, on ne parle pas nécessairement de la religion catholique. On dit que ça n’a pas de rapport, comme si on voulait déconnecter l’extrême droite de notre culture », dit-il. Or ce n’est pas parce que les gens ne sont pas pratiquants qu’ils ne sont pas croyants, rappelle-t-il, précisant que le taux de catholiques pratiquants (15-17 %) est presque aussi élevé que pour les musulmans (20 %).

Source: Des radicaux aussi chez les catholiques | Le Devoir

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What an all-white roster of astronaut hopefuls says about our schools: Andray Domise

2017/05/04 Leave a comment

In Domise’s efforts to make valid points regarding Black Canadians and the school system, he misses the bigger picture: no visible minority candidates made it to the final 17, even from groups that whose university graduation numbers are better than non-visible minorities.

That being said, I would hesitate to compare astronaut selection to other selection processes given the nature of the requirements.

In the earlier stages of the selection process, there were five visible minorities out of 72 according to my rough count (no Black Canadians among them):

While parents do bear responsibility in raising bright, ambitious youth, their work can easily be undone by teachers and school administrators who hang their preconceptions around those children’s shoulders. Rachel Décoste, a software engineer and public speaker, told me a story about her sister, who sought the help of a high school guidance counsellor in planning a career as a doctor. “The guidance counsellor said, ‘Your grades are not good enough for even considering medical school. You should look at becoming a personal support worker, through community college.’ ” Décoste’s parents, furious at the counsellor’s obstruction, contacted the school principal and demanded another counsellor provide the information that was asked for. Décoste’s sister is now an anaesthesiologist.

For youth of colour—especially Black and Indigenous youth who are stigmatized by tropes on their intelligence and ambition—the soft bigotry of low expectations can have devastating effects on those young minds. A similar sentiment came up when I spoke with Kike Ojo, an organizational change consultant whose work includes addressing the alarming rates at which the Children’s Aid Society takes custody of Black and Indigenous youth. We discussed the matter of TDSB streaming, and the tendency of guidance counsellors to push certain students towards applied courses, even though a transcript filled with applied courses could disqualify those students from university acceptance. “It really is no wonder that we see this outcome over and over,” Ojo says. “[Parents] actually have to be aggressively involved. We want to believe that success is directly linked to effort and merit, but where race is a factor, it can override even class differences.”

On the bright side, there are examples where institutions have not only acknowledged, but undertaken the work to resolve this problem. Shareef Jackson, a data analyst in the U.S. and founder of the MathLooksGood tutoring program, explained that where public schools fall short, some outside help may be needed. “A lot of students don’t have the motivation to enter the programs, or even stay in the programs, because it doesn’t seem like a realistic goal.”

Jackson attributes his own educational success to an organization called New Jersey SEEDS, a nonprofit which works with bright students from low-income neighbourhoods in order to provide access to private schools and colleges where their aptitudes may be better encouraged. Jackson also mentioned the importance of NASA’s strategic diversity and inclusion plan, which received widespread exposure last year with the release of the film Hidden Figures.

According to Jackson, positive representation and teaching the history of people of colour in the STEM fields can create a positive feedback loop, one where careers in science, medicine, and even space travel occurs to young people of colour as not only a daydream, but a real, possible outcome of hard work. The logic makes sense; if Mae Jemison, the first Black woman astronaut, was inspired to her field by Nichelle Nichols’s portrayal of Lt. Uhura in the original Star Trek, then who knows how many future Katherine Johnsons might be made by NASA’s joint marketing efforts with Hidden Figures?

North of the border, the message seems to be getting through at the university level. Encouraging diversity in STEM fields has recently become a higher priority for institutions like Waterloo, Ryerson, and the University of British Columbia. At the University of Toronto, where Black enrolment in the medical program has historically been thin or nonexistent, only one Black student exists among the current first year medical cohort. In response, U of T launched the Black Student Application program, which aims to promote medicine as a career option among Black students, as well as increase the pool of candidates by boosting applications. All of this is encouraging, but the difference still needs to be made within the seedlot for future prodigies: our public schools.

With the first pair of Canadian astronauts set to be announced later this year, making it the first cohort since 2009, there is much to be excited about. After Cmdr. Chris Hadfield’s stellar performance and social media popularity, sending more Canadians into space will be an awesome feat, no matter their background. And while the Canadian Space Agency continues the winnowing process, hopefully our educators and counsellors across the country will take heed to the fact that science is not only cool again—it’s in drastic need of new faces.

Time to start looking for those future astronauts in your classrooms.

Source: What an all-white roster of astronaut hopefuls says about our schools – Macleans.ca

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The Collapse of American Identity – The New York Times

2017/05/04 Leave a comment

Good summary of the increased divide in America and the ongoing political implications:

But recent survey data provides troubling evidence that a shared sense of national identity is unraveling, with two mutually exclusive narratives emerging along party lines. At the heart of this divide are opposing reactions to changing demographics and culture. The shock waves from these transformations — harnessed effectively by Donald Trump’s campaign — are reorienting the political parties from the more familiar liberal-versus-conservative alignment to new poles of cultural pluralism and monism.

An Associated Press-NORC poll found nearly mirror-opposite partisan reactions to the question of what kind of culture is important for American identity. Sixty-six percent of Democrats, compared with only 35 percent of Republicans, said the mixing of cultures and values from around the world was extremely or very important to American identity. Similarly, 64 percent of Republicans, compared with 32 percent of Democrats, saw a culture grounded in Christian religious beliefs as extremely or very important.

These divergent orientations can also be seen in a recent poll by P.R.R.I. that explored partisan perceptions of which groups are facing discrimination in the country. Like Americans overall, large majorities of Democrats believe minority groups such as African-Americans, immigrants, Muslims and gay and transgender people face a lot of discrimination in the country. Only about one in five Democrats say that majority groups such as Christians or whites face a lot of discrimination.

Republicans, on the other hand, are much less likely than Democrats to believe any minority group faces a lot of discrimination, and they believe Christians and whites face roughly as much discrimination as immigrants, Muslims and gay and transgender people. Moreover, only 27 percent of Republicans say blacks experience a lot of discrimination, while 43 percent say whites do and 48 percent say the same of Christians.

Taken as a whole, these partisan portraits highlight contrasting responses to the country’s changing demographics and culture, especially over the past decade as the country has ceased to be a majority white Christian nation — from 54 percent in 2008 to 43 percent today. Democrats — only 29 percent of whom are white and Christian — are embracing these changes as central to their vision of an evolving American identity that is strengthened and renewed by diversity. By contrast, Republicans — nearly three-quarters of whom identify as white and Christian — see these changes eroding a core white Christian American identity and perceive themselves to be under siege as the country changes around them.

These responses are shifting the political magnetic field that defines the parties. Republican leaders are finding strong support among their base for the Trump administration’s executive order barring travel to the United States from particular Muslim-majority countries. But their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was dramatically derailed by factions within their own party.

Democrats, on the other hand, are enjoying energetic backing from their base for pro-immigration and pro-L.G.B.T. stances, but they are experiencing increasing opposition to their support for free trade.

There have been other times in our history when the fabric of American identity was stretched in similar ways — the Civil War, heightened levels of immigration at the turn of the 20th century and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s.

But during these eras, white Christians were still secure as a demographic and cultural majority in the nation. The question at stake was whether they were going to make room for new groups at a table they still owned. Typically, a group would gain its seat in exchange for assimilation to the majority culture. But as white Christians have slipped from the majority over the past decade, this familiar strategy is no longer viable.

White Christians are today struggling to face a new reality: the inevitable surrender of table ownership in exchange for an equal seat. And it’s this new higher-stakes challenge that is fueling the great partisan reorientation we are witnessing today.

The temptation for the Republican Party, especially with Donald Trump in the White House, is to double down on a form of white Christian nationalism, which treats racial and religious identity as tribal markers and defends a shrinking demographic with increasingly autocratic assertions of power.

For its part, the Democratic Party is contending with the difficulties of organizing its more diverse coalition while facing its own tribal temptations to embrace an identity politics that has room to celebrate every group except whites who strongly identify as Christian. If this realignment continues, left out of this opposition will be a significant number of whites who are both wary of white Christian nationalism and weary of feeling discounted in the context of identity politics.

This end is not inevitable, but if we are to continue to make one out of many, leaders of both parties will have to step back from the reactivity of the present and take up the more arduous task of weaving a new national narrative in which all Americans can see themselves.

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Tenants’ religious rights violated by Brampton landlord who refused to remove shoes

2017/05/04 Leave a comment

Common courtesy should have avoided this having to go to the Human Rights Tribunal:

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has awarded $12,000 to a Muslim couple, who claimed their landlord failed to accommodate their prayer times and notify the wife when she was home alone before bringing in prospective new tenants for apartment viewings.

“The respondent discriminated against the applicants by failing to accommodate their religious practices relating to prayer times by providing advance notice shortly before showing the apartment,” tribunal panel vice-chair Jo-Anne Pickel wrote in a recent 38-page decision.

“He also failed to accommodate their religious practices by refusing to remove his shoes when entering their apartment and especially their prayer space. Finally, he also harassed them, at least in part, because of their religiously-based accommodation requests.”

The decision is believed to be the first of its kind from the tribunal with respect to discrimination based on creed and housing.

The overall intake of human rights cases based on creed has been on the rise, up by 13 per cent to 837 last year compared to 741 in 2015. During the same period the number of inquiries specifically about Muslim identity went up by 39 per cent to 196 cases from 141, said the Human Rights Legal Support Centre.

Pickel rejected the landlord’s argument that the tenants were attempting to “impose their way of life” on others, ruling that there’s no evidence to support the claim.

“This claim by the respondent echoes arguments that have become common within public discourse. Unfortunately, attempts by Muslims to practice their faith have increasingly been interpreted as an attempt to impose their way of life on others,” wrote Pickel.

“Far from seeking to impose their way of life on anyone, the applicants were merely making simple requests for the accommodation of their religious practices.”

According to the tribunal, Walid Madkour and Heba Ismail, who immigrated to Canada from Egypt, moved into their Brampton apartment in December 2014 and agreed a month later to move out of the unit by Feb. 28, 2015 due to issues with the temperature of the apartment, the use of the internet and the request for a quiet environment at night.

The human rights complaint was based on the events and correspondence between the couple and the landlord when the landlord started planning viewings of the apartment to prospective tenants in late February 2015.

Despite repeated requests by Madkour for an additional five-minute warning so his wife had time to put on modest attire before the viewings, the landlord John Alabi — a Christian, according to the ruling — would only provide blocks of time that prospective tenants would be coming, with 24 hours’ notice.

The tribunal found Alabi discriminated against the couple when he failed to comply with their request that he remove his shoes when he entered their apartment and especially when he entered the prayer space in the bedroom, which must be kept “free of any contamination, including any discharge from humans or animals.”

Source: Tenants’ religious rights violated by Brampton landlord who refused to remove shoes | Toronto Star

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B.C. was home to First World War internment camp for Europeans

2017/05/04 Leave a comment

One of the projects funded by the Canadian Historical Recognition Program endowment to the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund – money well used:

Bill Doskoch was looking for work in Vancouver when he was arrested, for being Ukrainian.

At the dawn of the First World War, the Canadian government rounded up more than 8,000 mostly single men of German, Austrian and Ukrainian ancestry, sending them to 24 concentration camps scattered across the country. One such camp was at Morrissey, not far from Fernie.

As a civilian prisoner of war, Doskoch was moved frequently, eventually incarcerated in five camps between 1914 and 1920 and only released after most others prisoners were long gone.

“He was quite a rabble-rouser apparently and refused to take internment lying down,” said Sarah Beaulieu, an archeology PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University. “He was very angry about being interned.”

Beaulieu is pursuing an excavation at the site of the Morrissey camp this summer. She has already detected an escape tunnel and recovered artifacts, including a barbed-wire crucifix.

Morrissey was regarded as a particularly barbaric experience, with abusive guards, solitary confinement and hard labour.

Bill Doskoch is one of the few prisoners from the Morrissey Internment Camp who talked about his experiences. Here, in 1918, Doskoch is in the back row, fourth from the left, with his collar turned up. FERNIE HISTORICAL SOCIETY / PNG

A report by Consul of Switzerland Samuel Gintzburger, from 1917, notes that prisoners were “absolutely destitute” and were subject to “physical coercion” at the hands of guards. Protests were frequent.

“It was notorious for mistreatment of prisoners,” Beaulieu said. “At the time it received several note verbales (diplomatic protests) from Germany threatening retaliation on Canadian and British prisoners of war should the conditions at Morrissey not improve.”

Beaulieu learned of Bill’s wartime adventures from his daughter, Anne Sadelein, who resides in Edmonton where Doskoch settled in the 1920s. He remained a union activist throughout his life.

“My father spent a lot of time in black holes for writing letters and inciting stop workages or being political,” said Sadelein.

Doskoch was often at the centre of disputes over prisoner labour in the camps.

The Canadian government misinterpreted a clause from the 1907 Hague Convention on the rules of war so that the civilian PoWs could be used as labourers building roads and parks.

Some archival records note that prisoners were paid 55 cents a day for voluntary labour, but that 30 cents a day was deducted to pay for their room and board in the camp.

When civilian internees became aware that the clause in The Hague Convention only applied to military PoWs, Doskoch copied out the entire convention by hand as a reminder of their rights, according to Sadelein.

“He knew that they had been illegally arrested and wanted to do something about it,” said Beaulieu. “Most of the prisoners were civilians with no military connections who had come to Canada to settle the Prairies.”

Morrissey had been a coal-mining camp between 1902 and 1904, but was a ghost town when the federal government converted it into a concentration camp on Sept. 28, 1915. The Canadian government would later use the term internment to avoid the association with German concentration camps after the Second World War.

“They were very badly fed: fat and potatoes,” said a female descendant of a Ukrainian Morrissey internee interviewed by Beaulieu. “No vegetables, fruit or milk and these were young men — a lot of them in their early 20s. They had to work very hard. Ten hours a day sometimes. I can’t say that it was a nice, kind camp.”

Beaulieu has the names and faces of a few prisoners. Unfortunately, in 1954, a lot of the archival material was destroyed by the Canadian government because they had no place to store it. So very little is known about the operations of these camps today.

“When I first came to do interviews people weren’t really aware of the camp at Morrissey and the few that did were under the impression that it had been a sanctuary for destitute foreigners during the First World War,” she said.

A guard watches the fence in winter at the Morrissey Internment Camp. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA / PNG

The internees have largely stayed in the shadows, even after the government offered to pay them for their labours. Though prisoners were supposed to be paid for their labour on release, those monies were never given to them. Most were too afraid to fight at the time and were loathe to apply for it when it was available in 1929 because it would have revealed to their families that they had been prisoners.

Interviews and documents being collected by academics such as Beaulieu are being gathered and organized by the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund, which is also funding her work in Morrissey.

Source: B.C. was home to First World War internment camp for Europeans | Vancouver Sun

Filed under Historical Recognition, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

The Modern Newsroom Is Stuck Behind The Gender And Color Line : NPR

2017/05/03 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, we do not appear to have comparable data regarding diversity in Canadian newsrooms, where likely many of the same concerns would apply:

In many of today’s newsrooms, women and journalists of color remain a sliver of those producing and reporting stories. According to studies from the American Society of News Editors, the Women’s Media Center and the advocacy group VIDA, gender and ethnic diversity in newsrooms have hardly improved in the last decade despite increasing demand for more inclusive journalism in the current round-the-clock news cycle.

Nationally, Hispanic, black and Asian women make up less than 5 percent of newsroom personnel at traditional print and online news publications, according to 2016 data from the American Society of News Editors. The organization stopped requiring that news outlets reveal their identities in an attempt to increase participation in the yearly census. Numbers from 433 news organizations that participated in 2015 and 2016 show a 5.6 percent increase in the minority workforce, now at 17 percent at print and online news sites. But the numbers lag far behind demographic shifts in a country where nearly 40 percent of Americans are part of a minority group. Around the country, local newsrooms remain largely white by most measures. (In the spirit of full disclosure, NPR’s latest diversity figures can be found here.)

In March, the Women’s Media Center released its annual report on gender representation in the media (print bylines, internet, broadcast and other outlets). The latest numbers show a tiny change — 37.7 percent of the news was credited to female journalists, according to an analysis of over 24,000 pieces of news content. Major national outlets continue to be dominated by men, and women actually lost representation in broadcast news television.

'Diversity' Is Rightly Criticized As An Empty Buzzword. So How Can We Make It Work?

In a 2015 survey by the group VIDA: Women of the Literary Arts, magazines with a focus on news and culture, such as The New Yorker, The New Republic and Harper’s, don’t fare any better. VIDA’s numbers show that women of color (and minorities in general) are virtually absent from the political commentary and investigative journalism these magazines provide. Though nearly 20 percent of the country’s population is Hispanic, very few of these publications had a single VIDA respondent self-report as Hispanic.

The implications of this generalized absence are manifold, and begin at the storytelling level.

A September 2016 piece by Lonnae O’Neal in The Undefeated, a site that covers how sports, race and culture intersect, described how NFL Network reporter Steve Wyche — one of the country’s leading African American national sports reporters — covered the story of Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem as an act of protest. His refusal, Wyche learned, formed part of a larger outcry over police violence against black men and women. Initial reports by other outlets focused on Kaepernick as divisive and a potential distraction in the locker room. For O’Neal, who analyzed the coverage with a racial lens, the Kaepernick story raised questions “about why the country is more brown than ever but mainstream journalism is so white.”

O’Neal herself rose through the ranks as a Washington Post reporter and columnist for 24 years before joining The Undefeated. She sees her race as providing an added edge in stadiums filled with mostly black players. “Because I’m experienced, because I’m a woman, and because I’m African American, I can go right up to people and find an entry, a portal, a way to talk without layers and layers of translation,” she said. Her common background with her sources, the “cultural resonance” between them, won’t always carry the day, “but it goes a long way.”

Is There A #PubRadioVoice That Sounds Like America?

For O’Neal, hiring women, minorities and generally journalists of diverse backgrounds is not a luxury or a matter of “different optics,” or political expedience, as recruiters typically approach the matter, but essential to the profession’s mission and longevity. A typical white, male-centric newsroom, means critical stories will continue to go unreported and news analysis will remain unbalanced.

“We need new and different lenses, people of different backgrounds thinking at the table. We’ll only be richer for having that. Why is it so hard to set as an intention? Because many folks are going to be uncomfortable with what that looks like,” O’Neal said.

In the meantime, old narratives about race and identity don’t change. Latinos are mostly U.S.-born and consist of dozens of sub-groups. But, says Dana Mastro, a professor in the department of communication at the University of California in Santa Barbara, they’re seen only in one frame — immigration.

“The idea that there are other narratives just doesn’t pan out,” said Mastro, who researches racial and ethnic stereotyping in the media with a particular interest in Latinos. “It’s immigration and almost entirely threat-driven,” she said. “You just don’t see other themes emerge, and Latinos are almost exclusively portrayed as undocumented Mexicans,” she added.

Source: The Modern Newsroom Is Stuck Behind The Gender And Color Line : Code Switch : NPR

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Indonesians Seek to Export a Modernized Vision of Islam – The New York Times

2017/05/03 Leave a comment

I think the notes of caution by the experts cited are valid.

That being said, this initiative will likely be useful in broadening the discussions and debates regarding religion and minority rights, and understanding of Islam.

But I am always cautious about “exporting” models. Each country’s geography, history, demographics is different, and thus policies and programs need to take these differences into account, but within an overall human rights perspective:

Leaders of Nahdlatul Ulama’s youth wing, known as Ansor, say that elements of Shariah, which Muslims consider divine law, are being manipulated by groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda to justify terrorist attacks around the world, invoked to rally fighters to battle in the Middle East and elsewhere, and distorted by movements that seek to turn Islam into a political weapon.

“The classical Islamic perspective is dominated by views that position non-Muslims as enemies or, at best, as suspicious figures not worthy of trust,” H. Yaqut Qoumas, Ansor’s chairman, said in an interview.

“Fiqh,” or the body of jurisprudence that applies Shariah to everyday life, “explicitly rejects the possibility of non-Muslims enjoying equal rights with Muslims in the public sphere, including the right to occupy certain positions,” he said. “This classical Islamic perspective continues to possess an extraordinarily powerful authority in the eyes of most Muslims, and is regarded as standard, orthodox Islam.”

Some interpretations of classical Islamic law teach that Muslims have a duty to seek out and fight Christians, Jews and followers of Zoroastrianism until they either convert to Islam or submit to its rule and pay a head tax.

These interpretations have been enthusiastically adopted by the Islamic State.

Also, some interpretations of classical Islamic law, and of certain passages in the Quran, forbid Muslims from having non-Muslim political leaders. Medieval Islamic jurisprudence, still regarded as valid by some, is used to justify slavery and the execution of prisoners.

A 2006 painting by the Dutch artist John van der Sterren depicts Indonesia’s founding leader, Sukarno, cradling an independence fighter in the 1940s. The rebel’s Christian cross has made the image a symbol of the drive to reinterpret Islamic law.Nahdlatul Ulama

Some predominantly Muslim countries have been moving to reinterpret Islamic law within their borders, with some sending delegations to a 2016 international conference of scholars, religious leaders and clergy members in Morocco on protecting the legal rights of religious minorities living among them.

The Indonesian initiative, however, aims to directly approach governments around the world, both Muslim-majority and otherwise, as well as at the United Nations, to achieve a global consensus on reforming what it views as archaic interpretations of Islam.

“The challenge we face is not confined to religious views that emerged through an intellectual process conducted a thousand years ago. We are also confronted by religious and political authorities whose institutions are deeply intertwined with these views, and thus continue to inculcate such teachings among each new generation of Muslims,” Mr. Yaqut said.

“There’s a whole library of interpretations of jihad — Muslims must fight non-Muslim states to expand territory, for example,” said Ruud Peters, an emeritus professor of Islamic law at the University of Amsterdam. “But since the 19th century, there have been interpretations followed by many Muslim states to only defend against attack from non-Muslim states.”

Another problem, scholars and experts said, is the cultural differences among predominantly Muslim countries in interpreting Islamic law. Indonesia, in Southeast Asia, for example, practices one of the most liberal forms of Islam in the world, while simultaneously having a secular government and Constitution, with full rights for Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and other religious minorities.

Saudi Arabia, in the Middle East, however, practices the conservative Wahhabi Islam, and its government does not officially recognize any of its citizens as being Christian.

“If you want to have only one universal interpretation, you have to deal with the cultural differences and also find an international central authority. This is impossible,” said Abdel Rahman El Haj, a professor at Ankara Social Sciences University in Turkey.

He added that while Indonesian Islamic leaders had good intentions, substantive changes would be successful only if support for them emerged within the Arab world.

The Ansor initiative is seen as another move by young Muslims in Indonesia, as well as Islamic clerics and other Muslim organizations in Europe and the Middle East, to push back against extreme, conservative interpretations of Islam.

“The general impression we sometimes get in the West about Islam is one of radicalization,” said Raphaël Lefèvre, a nonresident political Islam scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, “while an equally if not more important trend is the ongoing struggle by Muslim clerics to redefine what Islamic law has to say about society and politics in ways deemed more compatible with modern life.”

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with

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