#MemeOfTheWeek: The Racial Politics Of Nikki Haley : NPR

2016/01/18 Leave a comment

Some real ugliness here in the comments by conservative pundits and individuals, but captures the current atmosphere in the Republican party:

In some ways, Haley seems to face the same conundrum former Louisiana Gov. and failed Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal did — not seeming “brown enough” for some voters of color, while being “too brown” for others. (We won’t bore you with the details, or subject you to some of the graphic tweets, but just take a look at the #JindalSoWhite hashtag to see what we’re talking about.)

Of course, Twitter is not exactly or entirely representative of the real world, and even thousands of tweets for or against Nikki Haley might not accurately depict actual support or disapproval of her.

A September 2015 Winthrop poll found Haley’s approval rating among South Carolina voters was 55 percent. That number was similar before Haley gained praise for helping bring down the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse in the aftermath of a Charleston church shooting that killed nine black parishioners. But she did drop 10 points with Republicans. (By December, she was back up to 81 percent with Republicans.)

Giridharadas in his New York Times article wasn’t just critical of Haley; he said it was “thrilling” to see Haley attempt to “create a broader, two-party consensus on the simple, exceptional idea that an American is defined by shared hope, not shared blood.”

But wherever you stand on Haley, her story speaks to a certain truth in politics: race is tricky — and there’s always going to be someone unhappy with how you talk about it.

With Haley, we see a multi-dimensional (and, in fact, multicultural) tilt to America’s ongoing struggle with race. A dichotomy of justblack and white isn’t big enough to comprehend or explain a Sikh Indian-American daughter of immigrants, who helped bring down what is, for many, a longstanding symbol of the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in America.

Haley’s story has layers. It is nuanced. It is not simple. And maybe that’s how it should be.

Source: #MemeOfTheWeek: The Racial Politics Of Nikki Haley : NPR

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Cologne assaults revealed hazards of closed borders and vague policy: Saunders

2016/01/18 Leave a comment

Doug Saunders on the Cologne attacks and European policies that contributed:

There are two key lessons here, ones that European leaders need to learn fast.

The first is that even a large-scale, liberal-minded immigration and refugee system needs to be accompanied by a quick and decisive deportation system. This is both for the sake of the non-accepted migrants themselves, who do not deserve to linger in ambiguity, for the peace of mind of the general population, and, especially, for the genuine refugees and immigrants, who are horrified to find their families subjected to mass demonization and bigotry because a similar-looking group has become a menace.

Deportation is neither cheap nor easy, which is why so many of these guys have stuck around. The European Union’s 28 countries have repeatedly failed to develop a co-ordinated international system of registration and deportation, and existing efforts are hampered by “non-refoulement” laws that prevent many from being returned to their country of origin. But since mass immigration will be part of the continent’s future, a faster, better system is urgently needed.

The second lesson is that this is a result not of Europe’s open internal borders, but of Europe’s closed external borders. Before the late 1990s, such men entered Europe for a few months at a time, on legal short-term visas and with airplane tickets, to do casual labour such as fruit picking, and then returned home, benefiting their communities. After the EU’s Maastricht Treaty led to a closed and policed external border, suddenly these temporary, legal figures became permanent, illegal figures who paid thousands to cross the Mediterranean and did not dare move back home seasonally.

Blocking quick movement – either into the continent or out of it – has created a situation that is bad for these men and their families, bad for legitimate refugees and immigrants, and bad for the safety of European streets.

Source: Cologne assaults revealed hazards of closed borders and vague policy – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Immigration, Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

With the Rise of Justin Trudeau, Canada Is Suddenly … Hip? – The New York Times

2016/01/18 Leave a comment

While this is largely a puff-piece, it reflects some of the rebranding taking place after the election. And in terms of the 17 Canadians it profiled in entertainment and fashion, 7 were women (41 percent) and 5 were visible minority (29 percent):

As Mr. Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau (along with their three young children, Xavier, Ella-Grace and Hadrien), create a Canadian Camelot, they are casting light on a wider eruption already in progress.

An expanse once stereotyped as the home to square-jawed Mounties and beer-swilling “hosers” has quietly morphed into a multicultural breeding ground that has given us the Weeknd, who can’t feel his face; the director Sarah Polley, who makes films of subtle power; and the upstart fashion designer Tanya Taylor, whose creations have been worn by Michelle Obama.

The rapper Drake, of Toronto, comes in for a little ribbing now and then, but none other than Jay Z called him the Kobe Bryant of hip–hop. And even the latest albumfrom Justin Bieber, the pride of Stratford, Ontario (population 33,430), is — gulp! — pretty terrific.

It’s all very exciting, eh? But still … Canada? The land of hyper–politeness and constant apology? The home of maple syrup, poutine, the gentle sport of curling and 10 percent of the world’s forests? The country that Spy magazine once said had “cultural Epstein-Barrness”?

As Joe Zee, 47, the Toronto-raised editor in chief of Yahoo Style, said: “There was always the feeling of being in the shadow of the U.S. For a treat we would take family trips to Niagara Falls, and I’d always want to cross the border and go to Buffalo, to go shopping! Buffalo, N.Y., was my rainbow growing up — it’s where the pot of gold was.”

“Even our national anthem sounds like a sigh: ‘O Canada,’” said the writer and editor Sarah Nicole Prickett, who was born in London, Ontario, and has written for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. “Drake, more than anyone, is the prophet who’s changing that, because, unlike a lot of talented Canadians before him, he accepts embarrassment as a cost of making big art.”

The niceness factor is something that may distinguish Canadian cultural producers. “The first month I lived in Manhattan, in the spring of 2012, I heard that I was ‘nice’ from seven people,” Ms. Prickett said. “That’s when I realized I was Canadian.” But like her confreres Grimes, Ms. Polley and the Weeknd, Ms. Prickett does not produce work that is meant to comfort.

True, Canada has delivered sultans of cool in the past. Amid the polite folk rock of Gordon Lightfoot and Anne Murray, there was the melancholy genius of Joni Mitchell, who was hip enough to win the blessing of Charles Mingus. And we would be foolish to forget the alternately sensitive and raucous Neil Young, who never met an expectation he did not defy. (“Obviously people are delighted with the change that has taken place,” Mr. Young, a California resident, said after Mr. Trudeau’s election. “It’s very positive news.”)

And let us not ignore the coolest cat in a hat, Leonard Cohen, still capable of multiple encores at 81.

Then there are the Canadian kings and queens of comedy like David Steinberg, Lorne Michaels, Mike Myers, Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara, who started out as foils to mainstream American pop culture and ended up shaping it.

Canadians have always been funny, according to the Toronto-born editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter. “S.­J. Perelman used to think that Stephen Leacock was the funniest writer in the world,” Mr. Carter said, referring to the multifaceted author who moved to Canada from his native England at age 6. “And he was. The trouble is, the self-deprecation so regularly on display is often lost on Americans. Now Marty Short is the funniest person in the world — although he’s far too modest to admit it.”

Mr. Zee agrees that Canada has not become hip all at once, with the election of the mediagenic Mr. Trudeau. It is partly a dawning of self-recognition.

“We’ve always had Frank Gehry,” he said.

Source: With the Rise of Justin Trudeau, Canada Is Suddenly … Hip? – The New York Times

Filed under Multiculturalism, Other Tagged with , ,

Anti-Semitism review: The flaw at the heart of Frederic Raphael’s argument

2016/01/16 Leave a comment

Richard King on how Raphael’s conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism undermines his account of the history of antisemitism:

Rejecting the argument that anti-Semitism owes as much to the Enlightenment as it does to Christianity, Raphael suggests that the Jews’ original crime was the historically unique one of deicide, which is to say the murder of God Himself. It is this that led to their reputation for treachery and furnished the world with a reliable scapegoat for everything from epidemics to economic catastrophe.

From the death of Jesus to the Black Death, it is on the heads of the Jews that blame falls – a trend that reaches its apogee with the “stab in the back” myth of post-First World War Germany and the “last crusade” of Nazism (a subject so large, as Raphael notes, that its history has a history of its own).

All of this is perfectly sound. But Raphael runs into serious problems when he tries to expand the phenomenon of Jew-blaming to include criticism of modern Israel. For while it is undoubtedly true that the miasma of anti-Semitism surrounds much dark talk about the Israel “lobby”, and true too that many liberals and left-wingers are apt to downplay the anti-Semitism extant within the Muslim community for fear that they will sanction anti-Muslim prejudice, it is not true to say that Israel is “the sole licensed target for unguarded malice” in the West.

Disproportionate our emphasis on Israel may be, but this imbalance stems as much from a desire to highlight Western hypocrisy as it does from any loathing of “the Judas state”. As for Raphael’s suggestion that the images of Palestinian children injured or killed in the Gaza war were a modern version of the “blood libel” according to which Jews used the blood of Christian children to make the matzo bread eaten at Passover – such a thought is unworthy of an intelligent author.

Though Raphael is right to say that anti-Semitism and “anti-Zionism” cannot always be neatly separated and that criticism of modern Israel is not without its sinister elements, his determination to make these things identical is profoundly wrong-headed. Intended or not, its effect is to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s crimes against the Palestinians into the expression of Jewish identity. Many are the Jews (not all of them “self-hating”) who would regard that proposition as evil.

Source: Anti-Semitism review: The flaw at the heart of Frederic Raphael’s argument

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ICYMI: Michael Smolander: Canadian literature is intimately linked to multiculturalism | Ottawa Citizen

2016/01/16 Leave a comment

On how multiculturalism is reflected in, and reflects multiculturalism, and some of the limitations and mixed nature of Canadian literature and the multiculturalism narrative:

It is unsurprising that Canada’s literature reflects the practical challenges of multiculturalism. Queen’s University professor Will Kymlicka says that although multicultural policies are difficult to implement and maintain, they are necessary to sustain a well-functioning democracy.

Kymlicka argues that multicultural policies can take many forms such as re-tooling education curriculums “to include the history and culture of minority groups” and even “teaching police officers, social workers and health-care professionals to be sensitive to cultural differences in their work.”

In this way, novels expressing dissatisfaction with the level of inclusion immigrant groups experience are an important measure of democratic vitality and can act as a guide for policy reformers.

Frances Brooke, the English essayist, correctly described Canadian literature as “bilingual, multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, postcolonial, postmodern and even multinational.” The many examples of novels by Canadian writers detailing their experiences with immigration and cultural difference give weight to Brooke’s definition.

Indeed, Canada’s literary identity crisis can be relaxed given the persistence of the uniquely Canadian theme that highlights the challenges associated with the multicultural mission.

While works by Choy and Ondaatje reflect a less-than-rosy history of immigration in Canada prior to the widespread legal guarantees of free cultural expression, Hage has since advanced the idea that inclusion into Canadian society remains an elusive challenge for many immigrants.

To forge a more inclusive and democratic order, it is crucial that Canadian literary works exposing the shortcomings of the multicultural project be understood and addressed.

Source: Michael Smolander: Canadian literature is intimately linked to multiculturalism | Ottawa Citizen

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Mainstreaming Multiculturalism: Implementing Diversity and Inclusion Deck

2016/01/15 Leave a comment

For those interested, a slightly modified version of the deck I presented to the Centre on Public Management and Policy, University of Ottawa to mid-level government executives, highlighting the key findings of my book, Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote, the history and evolution of multiculturalism, and the implications and opportunities of the Government’s diversity and inclusion agenda:
Mainstreaming Multiculturalism – Implementing Diversity and Inclusion

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Advise to the Liberal government on security oversight and countering violent extremism: Gurski

2016/01/15 Leave a comment

Phil Gurski’s advice to the Liberal government on oversight and countering violent extremism:

a) whatever model is chosen it has to be a made in Canada one.  I see that the Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale, is visiting some of our Allies to see how they do things.  This is a good start, but in the end we have to come up with our own solution. We can certainly learn, both the good and the bad, from what others have done.  Yet we have this Canadian tendency to defer to others (“let’s just do what the US is doing!”).  I saw it so many times when I worked for the federal government.  Maybe it’s good ol’ Canadian deference, I don’t know.  But it has to stop.  We have good people and good ideas too.

b) we need to build on what we already have started.  Especially on the CVE front, Public Safety Canada – specifically the Citizen Engagement section – had a wonderfully successful outreach programme in place that was paying off huge dividends before some – ahem, unfortunate – government-led incidents brought it to a standstill.  I know that there are community leaders across Canada who want to restart this.  Not only was it successful here but other countries had expressed interest in learning from ushow to do CVE.  Let us use this as our new jumping off point.

c) we need to inform Canadians.  Yes there are aspects to security intelligence that cannot be disclosed, but regular messaging from the government, and preferably from the heads of CSIS and the RCMP, will serve to keep Canadians in the loop on the nature of the threat we face and avoid the vacuum that currently exists and which is filled by those with little insight or knowledge of what is happening.

d) we need to hear from Canadians at all levels: federal, provincial, territorial, first nations, municipal and average Joes and Jills.  There are some amazing efforts currently in force at the city police level with respect to early intervention – Calgary Police’s Redirect programme and Toronto Police’s Focus Rexdale are but two examples – that are working and should be picked up on.  The solutions we need often begin locally so we need to bring in local, knowledgeable partners.  Let us also ask Canadians what they think.  Perhaps another public Parliamentary set of hearings is warranted.

There.  That’s my two-cents’ worth.  Have at ‘er.  At the end of the day we can do this and do this well.  We already have world class security intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Let’s match that when we create oversight and CVE capability.

Source: Borealis Threat & Risk Consulting

Filed under Radicalization, Security Tagged with ,

Montreal Program Works To Prevent Violent Radicalization | Vermont Public Radio

2016/01/15 Leave a comment

Profile on the approach of the Montreal The Center for Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence:

The center runs a 24-hour hotline, and all calls are confidential. Social workers, psychotherapists and even a psychiatrist are available to go into the field and meet with people if “we need to go further,” Rebbani-Gosselin says, and the center offers free, unlimited follow-up counseling sessions.

“We only intervene when the person is engaged in a radical thinking process and they see violence as a way to reach their means. And what we do is to try to disengage a person from violence,” she says.

Since the hotline was launched in March of 2015, the center has received nearly 570 calls, according to Rebbani-Gosselin, and followed up on about 115.

“When we get a call about a specific individual, if through our evaluation [we] really believe that there is indeed a risk, then we automatically meet with the with the individual,” Rebbani-Gosselin says. “But … we don’t contact the individual directly.”

That’s because the goal is always to avoid confrontation, Rebbani-Gosselin says.

“Confrontation does not work. You really have to take different means to reach out to that individual to make sure that she or he is in position to listen to what you have to say.”

“Confrontation does not work. You really have to take different means to reach out to that individual to make sure that she or he is in position to listen to what you have to say,” she says. Sometimes meetings are arranged through parents, or schools, or a coach or friend of the person in question.

The center also doesn’t use the phrase “de-radicalization.”

“Because that’s not what we feel that we do,” says Rebbani-Gosselin. “Individuals are entitled to their ides, obviously, and being radical is a positive thing … Throughout history, we had radical thinkers. You know, the feminist movement, Martin Luther King or Gandhi, and these are important. You know, it’s important in democratic society that people are entitled to their ideas. So we don’t do de-radicalization. What we do is disengagement from violence.”

Sometimes, though, circumstances that appear to be immediately dangerous do warrant contacting the police and other agencies.

“We operate like a suicide hotline,” Rebbani-Gosselin says. “When you call a suicide hotline, if the person on the other end feels like you are going to commit suicide in a very imminent, very short period of time, then they will call 911. And in that sense we operate the same way. If we feel like there’s an imminent threat, then we definitely will transfer.”

Source: Montreal Program Works To Prevent Violent Radicalization | Vermont Public Radio

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with ,

On the Saudis and human rights, Canada needs to stop contradicting itself: Mendes

2016/01/15 Leave a comment

Errol Mendes’ suggestion to broaden the mandate of the Ambassador for Religious Freedom to Ambassador of Human Rights:

The Harper government earned itself a lot of criticism for creating its Office of Religious Freedom, a quasi-diplomatic operation which is supposed to promote the cause of faith rights around the world. This office, run by Christian scholar and public servant Andrew Bennett with a budget of $5 million, has a narrow mandate — and while Mr. Bennett has met with many diplomats, officials and groups from many religions in Canada and around the world, he hasn’t really achieved much.

Many want his office abolished. I have a better idea: replace it. Establish one with a wider mandate — an Office of the Ambassador for Human Rights. This office could go beyond merely shining a light on the persecution of religious minorities abroad by taking on a mandate to keep the Government of Canada itself honest. It could engage with the relevant government departments, conduct proactive analysis of Canadian interests abroad and seek ways to reconcile our vital diplomatic and economic interests with our principles.

While there are officials in Global Affairs whose job it is to focus on human rights matters as they affect our economic and diplomatic interests, an ambassador’s office could go outside the hierarchy and directly challenge individual ministerial decisions that could undermine Canada’s reputation. It could help establish a whole-of-government policy framework on human rights, and engage in outreach with civil society groups advocating a principled approach to trade and human rights. That could be useful to public servants too overburdened by management and accountability duties to see the bigger picture.

A human rights ambassador could be Canada’s eyes and ears abroad, monitoring — for example — how these Canadian-made armoured vehicles are being used in Saudi Arabia, and whether they’re being used against civilians. It could help the government frame its response to any evidence the Saudis were using these weapons against civilians.

Had such an office been in place when the previous government was negotiating the Saudi deal, it might have lobbied against it — or not; we’ll never know. But setting it up now would go a long way to ensuring the federal government is more transparent and accountable with future arms export deals.

Our economic and diplomatic interests are vitally important to us as a nation. So is our international reputation. We shouldn’t have to sully one to support the other.

And Errol Mendes says it’s time for Ottawa

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

Germany’s Post-Cologne Hysteria – The New York Times

2016/01/15 Leave a comment

Good nuanced commentary by Anna Sauerbrey, an editor on the opinion page of the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel:

… precisely when the country needs a coolheaded conversation about the impact of Germany’s new refugee population, we’re playing musical chairs: Everybody runs for a seat to the left and to the right, afraid to remain in the middle, apparently undecided.

The irony is that the Cologne attacks, by highlighting the issue of refugees and their culture, raise an incredibly important question and at the same time make it almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation about it.

This isn’t the first wave of migrants to postwar Germany, and it’s not the first time that the left and the right have played their respective roles of under- and overestimating the challenges of integration.

The left has long ignored the established correlations between crime and the poverty and poor education that plague refugee communities; the right has long overestimated the link between the refugees’ culture and criminal activity, even when studies show no such link exists (excepting so-called crimes of honor, which are extremely rare).

The real question we should be asking is not whether there is something inherently wrong with the refugees, but whether Germany is doing an effective job of integrating them — and if not, whether something can be done to change that.

None of this, however, fits into a TV sound bite or a tweet. Even if it did, it would probably fail to reach its audience in the heated atmosphere of the moment.

Assumptions have replaced observation, assertion has replaced assessment, and ideology has replaced evidence. With its vision thus distorted, Germany is speeding toward a multicultural society, chased by the mob on the Internet, without any idea of what that society should look like.

We need to regain our sense of balance — or it’s just a question of time until we hit a wall.

Source: Germany’s Post-Cologne Hysteria – The New York Times

Much more nuanced than the Globe’s Margaret Wente:

Germany’s brutal immigrant awakening

Filed under Multiculturalism, Refugees Tagged with , ,

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