Black Canadians’ economic disadvantage is worsening – here’s how to fix it

2024/04/13 Leave a comment

Not convinced by the recommendations of the EE Task Force with respect to the public service given the overall representation is largely comparable and in some cases, better than other equity groups as recent disaggregated data indicates (How well is the government meeting its diversity targets? An intersectionality analysis), private sector case may be stronger:

….The roots of Black inequality may be different in Canada than those seen elsewhere. Nonetheless, no country escapes the legacy of centuries of slavery endured by Africans. Slavery existed in colonial Canada, and after it was abolished in 1834, Black people who fled American slavery by seeking freedom in Canada experienced racism here, such that the majority of them returned after the Civil War. Historical policies and practices actively put Black communities in Canada at a disadvantage.

After Caribbean immigration to Canada increased throughout the 1960s, governments refocused immigrant recruitment on Asia. This had the effect of slowing growth in the Black community. Excessive and discriminatory policing practices in the Black community produced alienation and demoralization. Recent historical research reveals that government security agencies made covert efforts to discredit Black activism, further destabilizing community life. Black men were subjected to heightened scrutiny and exclusion. This environment exacerbated Black Canadians’ employment problems.

The worsening trend of Black disadvantage must be addressed. Reversing it will require new thinking and action at all levels of government and society. The federal government only recently started to move beyond traditional approaches of addressing the challenges faced by racialized minorities to recognize the extraordinary disadvantage facing Black Canadians.

Recently, the federal government promised to include Black workers as a distinct employment equity group. This is a positive step, but it is only a step, and so far, only a promise. In 2020, a Black class-action lawsuit against the federal government alleging systemic employment discrimination in the Public Service of Canada not only proposed the creation of a separate Black employment equity category, it also recommended establishing a Black Equity Commission to develop measures and co-ordinate efforts, and setting up an external reporting mechanism for discrimination complaints. These and many other sensible measures were contained in the report of the federal Employment Equity Act Review Task Force released in December. They are needed to counter Black employment exclusion, and the government should not resist the changes that the report recommends.

Provincial authorities must also act. In Ontario, employment equity was scrapped amid concerns of “race quotas,” but federal experience shows this fear is baseless. Meanwhile, opportunities have been lost.

Support for Black communities must extend beyond tokenism to include meaningful investments in education, job skills training, and community development. By acknowledging and rectifying historical injustices, we can uphold the ideals of multiculturalism and ensure the Canadian dream is achievable for all.

Rupa Banerjee is Canada Research Chair and associate professor of human resource management and organizational behaviour at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey is William Dawson Chair and assistant professor of post-Reconstruction U.S. and African Diaspora history at McGill University.

Jeffrey G. Reitz is professor emeritus of sociology, and R.F. Harney Professor Emeritus of Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies, at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

Source: Black Canadians’ economic disadvantage is worsening – here’s how to fix it

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Five Key Facts About Black Immigrants’ Experiences in the United States

2024/04/13 Leave a comment

Interesting analysis. Would be interesting to compare Black immigrants with native African Americans (others may have done):

Black immigrants are a growing share of the country’s population and make up 8% of all immigrants. Nearly half (47%) of Black immigrants in the U.S. are from the Caribbean, while about four in ten (43%) are from sub-Saharan Africa, with smaller shares coming from South America and Europe (3% from both regions). Most Black immigrants are U.S. citizens (68%), while one in five (21%) has a valid visa or green card and about one in ten (8%) is likely undocumented. Like immigrants overall, Black immigrants come to the U.S. seeking more opportunities for themselves and their children, and most report improved educational opportunities, employment, and financial situations as a result of moving to the U.S. However, Black immigrants report disproportionate levels of unfair treatment and discrimination in their workplaces, communities, and when seeking health care, reflecting the intersectional impacts of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. Below are five key facts about their experiences, drawing on the 2023 KFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants, with its sample size of 3,358 immigrant adults (18 and older), including 274 Black immigrant adults.

Three in four (76%) Black immigrants are working, and most say their situations are improved as a result of coming to the U.S.

Like immigrants overall, the primary reasons Black immigrants say they came to the U.S. are for better economic and job opportunities (87%), better educational opportunities (81%), and a better future for their children (80%), and most say that moving to the U.S. has made them better off in terms of educational opportunities for themselves and their children (85%), their financial situation (74%), and their employment situation (74%). About two thirds (65%) also say they are better off in terms of their safety (Figure 1).

Black immigrants face disproportionate financial challenges, including in paying for health care.

About four in ten (44%) Black immigrants have lower incomes (household income less than $40,000 per year), reflecting that most employed Black immigrants are working for hourly pay (69%). Reflecting these lower incomes, half (50%) of Black immigrants say they or someone in their household had trouble paying for at least one basic necessity in the past 12 months, including rent/mortgage, food, health, health care, or utilities or other bills, about twice the share of White (27%) and Asian immigrants (20%) who say the same (Figure 2). Specifically, three in ten (30%) Black immigrants report that their household had problems paying for health care in the past 12 months compared to about one in six White immigrants (17%) and about one in eight Asian immigrants (12%).

Most (56%) employed Black immigrants say they have faced at least one form of discrimination or unfair treatment at work asked about in the survey.

A majority of employed Black immigrants (56%) report experiencing at least one type of discrimination or form of unfair treatment at work, similar to the share of employed Hispanic immigrants who report this (55%), and higher than the shares of employed Asian (44%) and White immigrants (31%) who report the same. Among employed Black immigrants, about half (47%) say they were given fewer opportunities for promotions or raises than people born in the U.S., three in ten (31%) say they were paid less than people born in the U.S. for doing the same job, a quarter (25%) say that they had worse shifts or less control over their work hours or than people born in the U.S., and about one in five say they were not paid for all of the hours that they worked or not given overtime pay (22%) or were harassed or threatened by someone at their place of work because they were an immigrant (22%) (Figure 3). Beyond experiences with mistreatment, about one in three (34%) Black immigrants with less than a college education say they are overqualified for their job, saying that they have more skills and education than the job requires, with this share rising to about half (53%) of those with a college degree or higher.

Black immigrants report disproportionate levels of unfair treatment in social and police interactions.

Most (55%) Black immigrants say they have experienced worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in at least one of the following places: a store or restaurant, in interactions with the police, or when buying or renting a home, higher than the shares who report this among Hispanic (42%), Asian (36%), or White immigrants (22%). Specifically, about four in ten (38%) Black immigrants report experiencing worse treatment in police interactions, about a third (35%) report this in a store or restaurant, and about a quarter (26%) report worse treatment when buying or renting a home (Figure 4). Moreover, roughly one in three (34%) Black immigrants say they have been criticized for speaking a language other than English, and about four in ten (45%) say they have been told they should “go back to where you came from,” higher than the share of Hispanic (34%), Asian (32%), or White (25%) immigrants who report this experience.

Among those who have received health care in the U.S., Black immigrants are more likely than other immigrant groups to report being treated unfairly by a health care provider.

About four in ten (38%) Black immigrants who have received or tried to receive health care in the U.S. report being treated differently or unfairly by a health care provider, higher than the shares of Hispanic (28%), Asian (21%), and White immigrants (18%) who say this. The share of Black immigrants who report unfair treatment by a health care provider includes about a quarter (25%) who say they were treated unfairly because of their race, ethnic background, or skin color, 23% who say they were mistreated because of their health insurance or ability to pay, and about one in six (16%) who say that they were treated differently due to their accent or ability to speak English (Figure 5).

Source: Five Key Facts About Black Immigrants’ Experiences in the United States

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Armstrong: A Likely Story: The “Diversity” Myth Consumes the Canadian Literary Scene

2024/04/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

….I am not calling for contracts, publicity and awards to be given out on a demographically proportional basis. Women buy more books than men, so it’s no surprise if more women want to write and there’s no injustice in the industry catering to women’s interests when it comes to signing and promoting authors. The experience of being in a racial or cultural minority might be more likely to inspire people to become writers – witness the flowering of American Jewish literature in the 20th century. The desire to write and the talent to do it very well make for a rare combination and we can’t expect that combination to show up by quota. Maybe the “disproportionate” results I see are purely innocent, based on the merit of authors and the demands of the marketplace.

Except that they are accompanied by countless indicators of a literary culture that is working to create much more disproportionate results in the future, once all those current beneficiaries of race-based emerging writer awards and mentorships are ready to move into positions of literary leadership. If literary gatekeepers – the publishers, editors, conference organizers and the like behind those exclusionary measures I referred to above – are going to use race-based criteria to bar the majority of the nation’s population from many of their programs and publications, there had better be compelling evidence to justify those measures.

But the success of BIPOC writers over the last two or three decades, and especially in the last five years, suggests that these extraordinary measures are not justified. Remember, books promoted between 2018 and 2020 were written and landed publishing deals before the affirmative action initiatives I listed above, and yet BIPOC writers already managed to be moderately over-represented in Canadian literary circles. (And that some of these measures target women generally because they’ve been excluded from Canadian literature is so preposterous as to be laughable.)

If you look up Canadian writers online, increasingly you find that they define themselves immediately in racial terms, whether they are black or white, Asian or Indigenous or any combination. Often, the writer will include a health diagnosis of some sort, especially in cases where there’s no other potential affirmative action hook.

But far from easing off the affirmative action, the people piloting the good ship CanLit are pushing the throttle harder. Jesse Wente, “chairperson” of the Canada Council, in an interview with the Toronto Star called the institution he headed a “colonial” organization and described his mission as reducing the harm it causes to Indigenous, black and other communities. Given that this is the man who campaigned to destroy the career of author Hal Niedzviecki over an awkwardly worded call for writers to bridge cultures (the so-called Appropriation Prize kerfuffle of 2017), we can guess what this might mean.

In my own province of Manitoba, the government-funded arts council recently announced a new set of “strategic priorities” focused on equity, diversity, reconciliation and projects that “build communities.” The money quote in this document: “Refine program assessment criteria that favour a Eurocentric concept of excellence to instead focus on impact.”

What could possibly be done when so many publishers, agents, editors, academics, prominent authors and funding bodies are pushing harder than ever for identity-based affirmative action? A change in the federal government, which seems likely, might bring in new leadership at Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council that is less sympathetic to race-based program criteria. So the next federal election may put the brakes on some of these measures.

Perhaps more significantly, though, we may be able to count on boredom and frustration among readers and writers who are tiring of literature becoming a mere subsidiary branch of the greater social justice movement. How many Canadian Percival Everetts are there who are just as tired of trauma narratives as the protagonist of American Fiction? And how many book buyers have grown tired of being told again and again that equity and diversity are good and racism is bad?

It will be, admittedly, a steep and long mountain to climb. If you look up Canadian writers online, increasingly you find that they define themselves immediately in racial terms, whether they are black or white, Asian or Indigenous or any combination. Often, the writer will include a health diagnosis of some sort, especially in cases where there’s no other potential affirmative action hook: “Jane Smith is a settler of mixed Finnish and Irish ancestry living with long Covid and bipolar disorder on the unceded lands of the Anishinaabe.” Perhaps a culture that encourages writers to view themselves as individuals first and group members second would be more likely to produce the kind of exciting, unpredictable literature that encourages readers to shell out cash and turn the page.

Bob Armstrong is a Winnipeg-based novelist. His last novel, Prodigies, was published in the United States by Five Star/Gale after Canadian publishers and agents turned it down, going on to win the 2021 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. Armstrong previously wrote a weekly book news column for the Winnipeg Free Press for 12 years.

Source: A Likely Story: The “Diversity” Myth Consumes the Canadian Literary Scene

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What Researchers Discovered When They Sent 80,000 Fake Résumés to U.S. Jobs

2024/04/10 Leave a comment

Not that surprising and mirrors earlier Canadian studies (Can we avoid bias in hiring practices?):

A group of economists recently performed an experiment on around 100 of the largest companies in the country, applying for jobs using made-up résumés with equivalent qualifications but different personal characteristics. They changed applicants’ names to suggest that they were white or Black, and male or female — Latisha or Amy, Lamar or Adam.

On Monday, they released the names of the companies. On average, they found, employers contacted the presumed white applicants 9.5 percent more often than the presumed Black applicants.

Yet this practice varied significantly by firm and industry. One-fifth of the companies — many of them retailers or car dealers — were responsible for nearly half of the gap in callbacks to white and Black applicants.

Two companies favored white applicants over Black applicants significantly more than others. They were AutoNation, a used car retailer, which contacted presumed white applicants 43 percent more often, and Genuine Parts Company, which sells auto parts including under the NAPA brand, and called presumed white candidates 33 percent more often.

In a statement, Heather Ross, a spokeswoman for Genuine Parts, said, “We are always evaluating our practices to ensure inclusivity and break down barriers, and we will continue to do so.” AutoNation did not respond to a request for comment.

Known as an audit study, the experiment was the largest of its kind in the United States: The researchers sent 80,000 résumés to 10,000 jobs from 2019 to 2021. The results demonstrate how entrenched employment discrimination is in parts of the U.S. labor market — and the extent to which Black workers start behind in certain industries.

“I am not in the least bit surprised,” said Daiquiri Steele, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama School of Law who previously worked for the Department of Labor on employment discrimination. “If you’re having trouble breaking in, the biggest issue is the ripple effect it has. It affects your wages and the economy of your community going forward.”

Some companies showed no difference in how they treated applications from people assumed to be white or Black. Their human resources practices — and one policy in particular (more on that later) — offer guidance for how companies can avoid biased decisions in the hiring process.

A lack of racial bias was more common in certain industries: food stores, including Kroger; food products, including Mondelez; freight and transport, including FedEx and Ryder; and wholesale, including Sysco and McLane Company.

“We want to bring people’s attention not only to the fact that racism is real, sexism is real, some are discriminating, but also that it’s possible to do better, and there’s something to be learned from those that have been doing a good job,” said Patrick Kline, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted the study with Evan K. Rose at the University of Chicago and Christopher R. Walters at Berkeley.

The researchers first published details of their experiment in 2021, but without naming the companies. The new paper, which is set to run in the American Economic Review, names the companies and explains the methodology developed to group them by their performance, while accounting for statistical noise.

Source: What Researchers Discovered When They Sent 80,000 Fake Résumés to U.S. Jobs

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Wells: Immigration Minister Marc Miller

2024/04/05 Leave a comment

Well worth listening to the intv:

All the time I’ve been covering politics I’ve had a category in my mind for politicians who just sound like people when they talk to me. I don’t put all that much stock in it. There are lots of ways to be good at your work, or less good, and talking’s only part of it. But just on a human level, it’s hard not to like people who don’t robot up as soon as I walk into a room.

Marc Miller is one such. He’s in a tough portfolio these days, not for the first time. Thirteen months ago he was on the pod as minister of Crown-Indigenous Affairs. Now of course he’s at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. He’s a careful talker, and like a lot of people who mistrust communications advice, he’s low on pat slogans, so at no point in our interview did he sound like he had a bunch of ready answers. But I’ve always had the impression I’m basically talking to Marc Miller, not to some homunculus version of him that he’s interposed between me and the real item. 

His job since last June is to introduce a note of caution, or a symphony, into what had been the most pro-immigration government in generations. Symphonies of caution are all the rage these days; even the prime minister has started to notice there’s something amiss. (I don’t think the text of the linked tweet quite summarizes what Justin Trudeau said, but the clip is worth hearing.)

Since the flow of new Canadians has implications for housing, federalism, and the fortunes of the official opposition, just for starters, it’s become clear that Miller has a mandate to change some policies. Which he’s done, capping international student permits and planning for a gradual cut in temporary residents. We talked about both in our interview.

We also caught up on the ambitious reform to the department’s organization that his former deputy minister, Christiane Fox, undertook last year — before she was shuffled yet again in January. (She’s now Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council.) 

And I took the opportunity to run a peculiar theory past Miller: that the recent substantial increase in immigration rates was essentially orchestrated by the McKinsey consulting firm and its former top executive, Dominic Barton. I don’t put much stock in the notion, and Miller gives it even less credence, but it led the nightly French-language national news at Radio-Canada for days on end last year, beginning with this story (the linked version of the story is in English). In the first years of this government, Barton led an advisory council on economic growththat recommended much higher immigration. Later he helped found the Century Initiative, an NGO that advocates for much higher immigration. (Barton’s name has disappeared from the group’s website since Radio-Canada started reporting.) And McKinsey has been getting far more contracts from the Liberal government than its Conservative predecessor. My Rad-Can colleagues suggested all these things are connected. I’ve now spent more time explaining the hypothesis to you than I wanted, but at least now you’ll know what I’m on about when I ask Miller about it.

I don’t endorse everything Miller says here. He’s got this thing where he pre-emptively blames Pierre Poilievre for stuff he thinks Poilievre mightsay eventually, which strikes me as a stretch. But I know few effective politicians who aren’t also ardent partisans. Anyway, give it all a listen. 

Source: Immigration Minister Marc Miller

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How caste discrimination impacts communities in Canada

2024/04/05 Leave a comment

Of interest albeit small scale study based on 19 interviews:

Many perceive caste to be a phenomenon that only exists in India. Yet, it is a part of Canadian society, and an issue that many in South Asian diasporas are contending with. 

The late British Columbia-based poet and activist Mohan Lal Karimpuri described caste as a system of high and low, a form of “social, economic, political, religious inequality” that takes away the power of the many and puts it in the hands of the few. It is the hierarchical ranking of people in accordance with an ascriptive identity, associated with family, lineage and hereditary occupation. 

Those who are Dalit, like Karimpuri, are among the most marginalized by dominant castes, and historically systematically excluded in social, economic and cultural terms. Dalits are most vulnerable in India where violence and exclusion remain pervasive. In 2022, Amnesty International stated that “hate crimes including violence against Dalits and Adivasis [Indigenous Peoples] were committed with impunity.” 

But caste does not only exist in South Asia. In recent years, it has been formally recognized as a potential grounds for discrimination in the United States and Canada in diverse contexts in places like Seattle, Wash. and Burnaby, B.C.. 

The Toronto District School Board, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Harvard University and the University of California, Davis have recognized casteism as a form of discrimination. 

In 2023, California lawmakers passed a bill that would explicitly ban caste discrimination in the state. However, it was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom who said it was “unnecessary,” arguing that caste discrimination was already banned under existing laws.

To truly understand what caste means and its impact, the stories of those who experience caste discrimination must be heard. All too often, the experiences of those marginalized within the caste system are treated as an addendum or aside to dominant caste narratives, and casteist perspectives persist in the public domain and remain unquestioned. 

Lack of visibility

In 2020, we initiated the Caste in Canada project in partnership with Dalit civil society leaders in B.C. The project documented the lives of Canadians of Dalit ancestry through in-depth oral history interviews. We interviewed 19 people from an array of backgrounds impacted by caste. Fourteen of these interviews are now available on the project website.

One recurrent theme in the interviews was the issue of visibility. University student Vipasna Nangal, for example, expressed concern about how many Dalits mask their caste identity in Canada as a way of avoiding stigma. 

As she notes, “in order to resist something you have to acknowledge it… and so you can’t have resistance without having visibility.” Caste, therefore, is something that needs to be talked about and not hidden. The limitations of masking caste identity are eloquently addressed in the interview with journalist Meera Estrada. She poignantly describes the pain involved in pretending not to be Dalit and her own personal journey towards publicly acknowledging her identity. 

Participants in the project voiced this as a common concern: that only by making the stories of Dalits more visible and accessible can we create domains for the recognition, and then obliteration, of caste and casteism, and the possibility of moving past caste divisions, for all. 

Challenging the social acceptability of casteism

Another important theme was the need to challenge the social acceptability of casteist discourse. Several participants emphasized the pervasiveness of casteist discourses in popular contexts, such as in music, where dominant caste perspectives are celebrated. 

Participant Rashpal Singh Bhardwaj, founder of the Ambedkar International Social Reform Organization (AISRO), described the organization’s work with local radio stations to discourage playing music that celebrates dominant caste identities on the radio. 

Caste discrimination is a part of the life experiences of many in Canada, both as a result of experiences in India, but also here in Canada. Participants Gurpreet Singh and Kamaljit described how people of South Asian heritage in Canada try to discover each other’s caste backgrounds — and the exclusion this entails.

It is, in short, a part of Canadian society, working on multiple levels and complicating our understanding of diversity in the Canadian context. 

Tackling caste

Given that caste is a continuing problem both in India and abroad, it is no surprise that Dalit Canadians have organized extensively to address discrimination. In B.C. there are several organizations, such as our project partner, the Chetna (“Awareness”) Association of Canada, represented in our interviews by its executive director, Jai Birdi — who played a key role in the project, and speaks in his interview about how to respond to caste discrimination with power and resilience — and Manjit and Surjit Bains, Ambedkarite Buddhist activists.

Other important organizations include AISRO and its members Rashpal Singh Bhardwaj, Jogender Banger, and Kamlesh Ahirwhom we interviewed for the project. There is also the Ambedkarite International Co-ordination Society, represented in the project by Param Kainth, who also speaks eloquently about the importance of the teachings of the Buddha for Dalits. 

As the titles of these organizations make clear, they are inspired by India’s towering leader and architect of the Indian constitution, B.R. Ambedkar, who campaigned for the rights of South Asia’s diverse Dalit communities. His life and activism provide the model for millions of Dalits around the world as they seek to remake the world without caste. With the Caste in Canada project, we work with our Dalit colleagues to do the same in Canada.

Source: How caste discrimination impacts communities in Canada

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Contrast: Anti-Muslim bias reports skyrocket after Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Stephens: The Appalling Tactics of the ‘Free Palestine’ Movement

2024/04/04 Leave a comment

Starting with anti-Muslim bias complaints:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released its annual Civil Rights Report today. The organization says that last year it received the highest number anti-Muslim bias complaints ever.

CAIR says it took in 8,061 bias reports in 2023 and that nearly half of them came in the final three months of the year, following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

“I was stunned by the sheer volume of complaints we got,” says Corey Saylor, CAIR’S Director of Research and Advocacy.

“In 2022, our numbers showed the first ever drop since we started tracking incidents,” he says. “And then to see all of that erased, it’s real insight in to how easy it is for someone to just flip the Islamophobia switch back to on.”

The report, titled “Fatal: The Resurgence of Anti-Muslim Hate,” says 15% of complaints the group received involved employment bias. 8.5% of bias reports involved schools — including colleges and universities. And 7.5% of complaints involved allegations of hate crimes, including the case of 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadea Al-Fayoume who was allegedly stabbed to death by his family’s landlord near Chicago.

“I just don’t know how much hate it takes to drive an adult to target a child,” says Saylor. “And I think it’s also fair to say that hate did not originate last October.”

Prosecutors in that case have charged suspect Joseph Czuba with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder for allegedly stabbing the child’s mother during the attack as well. Authorities have also charged Czuba with two counts of hate crimes.

Additionally, the CAIR report highlights a controversy highlights a controversy in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools. The district allows parents to opt out of a Family Life and Human Sexuality unit, but it does not allow parents to opt out of books assigned for English classes that portray LGBTQ+ characters. A number of Muslim parents protested, saying the books were not in line with their religion’s teachings.

“The sincerely held religious beliefs of parents were completely ignored, disregarded, and even in a couple of instances criticized,” says Saylor.

The report also relays the story of how a regional airline accidentally posted to the internet part of the U.S. Government’s so-called No Fly List. CAIR’s analysis of a downloaded version of the list found that nearly all the names on it – 98.3% — were what the organization calls “identifiably Muslim.”

CAIR’s report also included mention of some bright spots. In 2023, New York City and Minneapolis permitted the call to prayer to be broadcast over loudspeakers. New Jersey and Georgia began recognizing Muslim Heritage Month. And school districts in at least 6 states added at least one Muslim holiday to academic calendars so students will have the day off from class.

Source: Anti-Muslim bias reports skyrocket after Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel

Brett Stephens in the NYT how many pro-Palestinian protesters have crossed the line into anti-semitism and being anti-Jewish (American examples but comparable ones in Canada):

Last week, Susanne DeWitt, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who later became a molecular biologist, spoke before the Berkeley, Calif., City Council to request a Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation. After taking note of a “horrendous surge in antisemitism,” she was then heckled and shouted down by protesters at the meeting when she mentioned the massacre and rapes in Israel of Oct. 7.

At the same meeting, a woman testified that her 7-year-old Jewish son heard “a group of kids at his school say, ‘Jews are stupid.’” She, too, was heckled: “Zionists are stupider,” a protester said. At the same meeting, others yelled, “cowards, go chase the money, you money suckers” and “you are traitors to this country, you are spies for Israel.”

Protest movements have an honorable place in American history. But not all of them. Not the neo-Nazis who marched in Chicago in 1978. Not the white supremacists who chanted “Jews will not replace us” at their Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

And not too much of what passes for a pro-Palestinian movement but is really pro-Hamas, with its calls to get rid of the Jewish state in its entirety (“from the river to the sea …”), its open celebration of the murder of its people (“resistance is justified …”) and its efforts to mock, minimize or deny the suffering of Israelis, which so quickly descend into the antisemitism on naked display in Berkeley.

How did this happen?

It wasn’t a response to the human suffering in Gaza in recent months. A coalition of Harvard student groups issued a statementon Oct. 7 holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Pro-Hamas demonstrations broke out worldwide on Oct. 8. A Black Lives Matter chapter posted a graphic on Instagram of the Hamas paragliders who murdered hundreds of young Israelis at the Nova music festival. A Cornell professor said he found the massacre “exhilarating,” and demonstrators rallied in his support.

This is only a partial list. But it reveals the bullying mentality at the heart of the pro-Hamas movement. It isn’t enough for them to speak out; they must shut other voices down. It isn’t enough for them to make a strong or clear argument; they also aim to instill a palpable sense of fear in their opponents. American civil libertarians of the past once understood that inherent in the right to protest was the obligation to respect the right of people with differing views to protest as well. That understanding seems to be wholly absent from the people who think that, say, heckling Raskin into silence is also a form of democracy.

In this sense, critics of Israel who claim that American Jews must choose between Zionism and liberalism have it backward. The illiberals aren’t the people defending the right of an imperfect but embattled democracy to defend its territory and save its hostages. They are the people who, like the former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, want Israel wiped off the map and aren’t ashamed to say so. Not surprisingly, they also seem to share Ahmadinejad’s attitudes toward dealing with dissent.

It’s true that in nearly every political cause, including the most justified, there are ugly elements — the Meir Kahanes or the Louis Farrakhans of the world. But the mark of a morally serious movement lies in its determination to weed out its worst members and stamp out its worst ideas. What we’ve too often seen from the “Free Palestine” crowd is precisely the opposite.

Source: The Appalling Tactics of the ‘Free Palestine’ Movement

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Why a Montreal video game consulting studio is at the centre of an online anti-diversity storm

2024/04/04 Leave a comment

Of note:

Kim Belair says she wasn’t surprised at the harassing and threatening messages that she and her team have been receiving since last fall. Still, their details have been enough to shake them.

That included threats of violence, suggesting they should kill themselves or each other, and even graphic photos, said Belair, CEO and co-founder of Montreal-based Sweet Baby Inc., a video game consulting company.

“It’s not something that’s entirely new to us, especially to our marginalized team members who have existed in this industry … for quite some time.”

Belair’s 16-person team has become the centre of a new storm of online arguments, conspiracy theories and harassment, as self-described gamers accuse them of pushing a “radical leftist” agenda into games they claim players — and even developers themselves — want no part of.

“They said they want to take over the games industry. They hate white, straight, male gamers,” said commentator Ryan Kinel, in a video on YouTube, where he has over 300,000 followers.

Some have likened the backlash to Gamergate, a harassment campaign mostly targeting women in the video game industry that began in 2014.

The online storm even caught the attention of X owner Elon Musk.

“Sweet Baby Inc is an evil blight on the gaming industry. All they do is make games terrible and try to cancel people,” Musk posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on March 16. “They cannot go broke soon enough!”

The past several months have seen a rise in “organized harassment against anyone who has been associated with the company,” Alyssa Mercante, senior editor at the video games site Kotaku, told The Current‘s Matt Galloway.

The Sweet Baby ‘detected’ group

Sweet Baby was founded in 2018 and works with video game companies on projects ranging from small independent titles to AAA blockbusters like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

Belair says its services include writing feedback, narrative direction and helping “punch up” scripts — but also “consultations around perspective and identity.”

That last element started to gain attention in October 2023, after users on message boards noticed the studio was credited on two big-budget newly released games: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Alan Wake 2.

Though both games were critically acclaimed, some said Sweet Baby made unwanted changes during development, including changing Alan Wake 2 protagonist Saga Anderson from a white woman to a Black woman, which the game’s director has denied.

Others blamed the studio’s work on Suicide Squad for that game’s middling reviews and lagging sales. Warner Bros. Discovery said the game fell short of expectations, but did not give specifics.

The discourse intensified in January, when a user created a tracking page on the online games store Steam called “Sweet Baby Inc detected.”

The page, which currently has over 355,000 followers, tracks games with which Sweet Baby has been involved — and marks them all as “not recommended.” The label does not affect any games’ visibility on the store.

Its creator, who uses the online name Kabrutus, said Sweet Baby “forces political agendas and DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] into their games,” in an interview with the site Geeks + Gamers on March 7.

“I started noticing patterns in some games, like ugly women, and male characters being weakened to make female ones look stronger.”

Kabrutus declined to comment to CBC News for this story.

Several Sweet Baby staff members posted on X about their displeasure with the tracker; one staff member called for users to report the Steam page and its creator. Some have argued that only gave the detractors more attention.

Kabrutus and his supporters accused Sweet Baby of censorship.

Belair denied that claim, saying the studio chose not to reach out Steam’s parent company, Valve….

Source: Why a Montreal video game consulting studio is at the centre of an online anti-diversity storm

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Regg Cohn: India’s anti-Muslim citizenship law is discriminatory and disappointing — but not surprising

2024/04/04 Leave a comment

One of the better articles on the law:

…Modi’s BJP followers (and their historical antecedents) argue they are not merely throwing off the yoke of British colonial rule, which retreated in 1947. No, his supporters insist they are uprooting — decolonizing — a more enduring form of historical domination by India’s Moghul conquerors who imported Islam centuries ago, long before the British era.

That is one of the complications of the decolonization paradigm — the push for purification can easily go further back in time. People can keep peeling back layers of colonization and conquest until they reach their target, which is why Modi’s Hinduization movement is less concerned with the idea of white supremacy than Islamic hegemony.

There’s yet another conceptual challenge for Hindutva’s critics (of which I am one). India is far from alone in embracing religiosity or ethnicity as the measure of who shall qualify for citizenship or be disqualified, who will be welcomed with open arms or herded into closed camps.

Israel is increasingly criticized for religious discrimination for granting automatic sanctuary to Jewish immigrants under its Law of Return, enacted after its founding in 1948 (in the post-Holocaust era when Jews still faced pogroms in parts of Eastern Europe and persecution much of the Middle East). That Israel, as a Jewish state, privileges Jews is one of the reasons many critics claim “Zionism is racism.”

Yet it is a curious double standard. For India is only the latest in a long line of countries that prioritize religion in a way that Canadians — who welcome people of all faiths — perhaps cannot fathom.

Religion has been the raison d’être of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Lebanon has kept its Palestinian refugees in camps since they fled their homes in 1948, long restricting their permitted occupations lest an influx of Sunni Muslims alter the country’s delicate religious balance — or compete for coveted jobs (after protests, those restrictions were partly eased in recent years).

Bhutan, a little-known kingdom nestled in the Himalayas along India’s northern border, has long been seen as a Buddhist paradise despite its mistreatment of Hindu refugees fleeing strife in neighbouring Nepal (shunting them into camps for years without letting them settle, for fear of changing the kingdom’s ethnic makeup). Germany has long recognized ethnicity for citizenship, regardless of place of birth — granting automatic status to those with German blood who “resettle” in Deutschland.

Against that backdrop, India’s new discriminatory citizenship law is surely disappointing, but hardly surprising — and assuredly not unique. It merely reminds us of the complexity of ethnic identity and religious rivalry around the world — and how historical grievances are so easily transformed into political grudges and legal cudgels.

Source: India’s anti-Muslim citizenship law is discriminatory and disappointing — but not surprising

Filed under Citizenship, Religion Tagged with ,

Open letter to Canada’s political leaders calls for greater civility in public discourse

2024/04/03 Leave a comment

Worthy initiative but will any currently serving politicians follow their advice?

Dozens of former politicians, academics, artists, religious leaders and human-rights advocates are calling on Canada’s political leaders to improve civility in public discourse and mend divisions that they say are undermining peace and security in this country.

They argue in an open letter published Tuesday that many Canadians are afraid because of their identities or beliefs, as public aggression and overt hatred have increased alongside geopolitical events, such as the Israel-Hamas war, and domestic issues that include the trucker convoy protests that erupted in response to pandemic-related health restrictions. The letter argues the phenomenon is part of a worrisome trend in which Canadians are “unwilling, unable or ill-equipped” to interact with people who have divergent views.

The letter has 51 signatories – a list that includes former Quebec premier Jean Charest, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, film director Deepa Mehta, former federal finance minister Bill Morneau and screenwriter Karen Walton, as well as groups such as the Ghanaian Canadian Association of Ontario. The letter urges political leaders to put aside their differences to research the cause, scale and impact of various tensions across Canada and take action through law enforcement, education and personal accountability to foster a safer country.

They propose a number of recommendations, from better enforcing existing laws around hate crimes to updating school curricula and postsecondary programs. They want more research into the root causes of such disunity. And they say politicians need to lead by example by changing their own behaviour.

“Perhaps a growing number of us no longer consider it part of a common Canadian value system to put aside our differences and work alongside those with whom we disagree in the broader interests of Canada. Or perhaps such negative tendencies were always present in Canada and it has taken the increasing ubiquity of social media to reveal them fully,” the letter reads.

“Whatever the reasons for the increasingly belligerent nature of many of the current interactions between Canadians with different perspectives on hostilities in the Middle East or other divisive issues, we believe that no Canadian should ever be fearful because of their identities or their beliefs.”

Many Jewish and Muslim Canadians have expressed heightened fear since the Oct. 7 surprise attack by Hamas that left about 1,200 Israelis dead and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Police agencies in Canada have reported a steep increase in hate crimes, while the war and questions about how this country should respond have fuelled heated debates in Parliament and revealed divisions within political parties.

The letter also acknowledges divisions whose origins are rooted in Canada, such as the violent dispossession of Indigenous people or racism targeting Black communities.

Barry Campbell, a former Liberal MP, said he began brainstorming ideas for the letter last summer after violent clashes between Eritrean groups at community festivalsand the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia that heightened India-Canada tensions. He said the group is not suggesting that people can’t disagree vehemently but rather that citizens should be able to engage in complex and difficult conversations without intimidation, violence or expressions of hatred.

“I think political leaders have to take responsibility for where we find ourselves now as a nation and if, in that examination, they consider that they’ve contributed in some fashion, either knowingly or unknowingly, then it’s time to take stock,” he said.

The open letter makes eight recommendations, principal among them that politicians do everything they can to “address hate at its origins” and speak out about the “values that bind us together as a country.” It implores political leaders to partner with academic and civil society to research the root causes of issue-driven tensions and conflict in Canada, support national and local initiatives to confront hate, and strengthen awareness of what constitutes hate speech under the law.

The group also wants politicians to fund the development of curricula in primary, secondary and postsecondary institutions to “foster greater intercultural competency” and “increase community-level empathy.” They are urging politicians to review whether laws that penalize hate-motivated harassment, threats or intimidation are sufficient, while also ensuring that such laws are consistently enforced and do not obstruct the right to freedom of expression.

Lori Lukinuk, an expert in parliamentary procedure, said decorum in the House of Commons and provincial legislatures has been deteriorating for some time. Elected officials, she said, are more concerned with finger pointing across the aisle and reciting partisan speaking notes than engaging in healthy debates on issues affecting the citizenry.

While federal politicians are supposed to be setting an example, she said, their bad behaviour is filtering into other levels of government and society at large. Ms. Lukinuk said there appears to be an unwillingness, generally, for people to follow proper and respectful avenues to push for change. Instead, people are “yelling and screaming” and picking fights in person and online, even on issues as mundane as the weather.

“We’re always looking for the arguments that support the way we presently think. We’re not looking for those arguments that might be as strong or stronger that might persuade us otherwise,” she said. “That’s a cardinal rule, to have a willingness to be persuaded, and you don’t see that because in politics – those political realms – it’s often toe the party line.”

Art Eggleton, who previously served as a senator, federal cabinet minister and Toronto mayor and is a signatory of the open letter, said the anger, aggression and toxic politics currently on display in Canada are threatening democracy. He said American politics have played a role in Canada’s undoing and hatred is on display in the House of Commons.

“Throughout [my] lengthy career, I have taken considerable pride in Canada being a beacon of civility in the world – a place where people of different origins, faiths, beliefs could come together and live in peace and harmony. I see that as is being threatened,” he said. “We need a call to action.”

Source: Open letter to Canada’s political leaders calls for greater civility in public discourse

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with ,

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