Most Chinese and South Asians in B.C. report discrimination

2014/10/20 Leave a comment

Regional survey on discrimination in British Columbia. Consistent with other polling and equivalent:

Insights West found 28 per cent of the Chinese and South Asian British Columbians who answered the online poll said they had “frequently” or “sometimes” lost a potential employment opportunity because of their ethnicity. Another 24 per cent claim to have been treated unfairly in the workplace.

Chinese and South Asians who were older than 55 were the most likely to say theyve experienced unfairness on the job.South Asians 28 per cent were also more likely to cite workplace discrimination than Chinese 23 per cent. There was a significant gender gap when respondents were asked if their ethnicity had ever excluded them from being considered a prospect for dating.

While 37 per cent of B.C.s Chinese men in the poll believed they had experienced dating discrimination, the proportion was much lower for Chinese women, at 19 per cent.

In addition, about 25 per cent of Chinese and South Asians in B.C. said they have been verbally harassed. But only 11 per cent reported being been physically harassed because of their ethnicity, and nine per cent said they had been denied goods or services.

“I’m not saying its a cause for alarm, but it could be a cause for concern,” Mossop said of the poll findings, adding that Insights West plans to do more surveys into how different ethnic groups in Canada feel about social issues ranging from teachers strikes to the proposed Enbridge pipeline through northern B.C. Mossop said that people of any ethnic group could be discriminated against in a workplace dominated by another ethic group.

[Farid Rohani, a board member of the Laurier Institution and former vice-president of the Asian Heritage Month Society] said people of Italian or Irish backgrounds may also at times feel discriminated against or stereotyped in Metro Vancouver, where 45 per cent of the population is non-white.

“I guarantee you, if you do the same polling on discrimination with people of non-Asian background, you’ll get similar numbers,” Rohani said. “It might be less or more, but it will still be there.”

For instance, Rohani said, if the Richmond residents of European and English-speaking backgrounds who are protesting the expansionof Chinese-only signs were asked if they felt discriminated against based on their ethnicity, Rohani said, they would cite “reverse racism.”

Noting that Canadians with Asian backgrounds come from countries where its common for parents to arrange marriages with people of the same cultural and religious group, Rohani also wasnt surprised some South Asians and Chinese feel excluded from dating people of certain ethnicities.

Most Chinese and South Asians in B.C. report discrimination.

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Race and racism central issue of Toronto election

2014/10/16 Leave a comment

Margaret Hageman on racism and “white privilege:”

… We know that differences under the skin barely exist. Talking about race only becomes uncomfortable when we talk about different experiences among races in our shared society — such as why over-qualified brown people are driving Toronto’s taxis, or why so many young black men get questioned by police for no good reason, and why white men are over-represented in high-powered positions. It turns out you can’t talk about race without talking about racism.

There is a head-in-the-sand logic that needs to be called out when people deny white privilege. It denies the experiences of black people who get followed around in a store, over-scrutinized by security; or the voice of a black person driving a high-end car who has been stopped by police, over and over again. White privilege is invisible protection against all forms of racial profiling, including a pervasive form on Toronto’s streets called “carding,” where thousands of black and brown youth have been questioned and documented by police in Toronto over the past 10 years. White privilege is not having been carded, and subject to its cascading negative consequences. Investigative journalism done by Jim Rankin of the Star, reveals the numbers that tell the undeniable story about racial profiling by Toronto Police Services.

White privilege is an invisible protection in the streets and in the job market as well, where as a white person, your credentials are generally not called into question, your pay cheque is higher and your networks open doors. This is not opinion. Again, the facts and statistics in the workplace prove that unchecked systemic racism works to the advantage of white people, as shown by Grace-Edward Galabuzzi and Sheila Block’s research on the colour-coded job market in Canada. Denying this injustice will not make it go away.

I have heard people say that if we just stop talking about race, then racism will go away — like pundits who think that we must become colour-blind because the history of racism, the kind of deliberate discrimination against blacks and other non-white races has been discredited and legislated out of existence.

Race and racism central issue of election | Toronto Star.

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Appeal court overturns racial profiling case involving customs officer

2014/10/16 Leave a comment

The Government’s favourite non-Supreme Court judge (Supreme Court rejects Harper appointee Marc Nadon) delivers a ruling likely in line with the Government on racial profiling:

Writing for the panel, Justice Nadon said there was no evidence of racial profiling.

“The officer simply asserted in his statement that in his experience it was not uncommon for Chinese persons to bring agricultural products with them upon returning from China. The officer’s hunch, based on his experience and his observance of the respondent’s demeanour, was confirmed by the secondary examination.”

It was “totally devoid of merit,” he said, to find that the officer had engaged in racial profiling.

The decision represents an important development in the law that surrounds racial profiling since the Federal Court of Appeal is among the nation’s highest.

The country’s highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada, has yet to hear a case that speaks directly to the issue.In Canada, racial profiling has been defined by a number of criminal cases in which defendants have sought to exclude evidence obtained by what they contend were racially motivated pedestrian stops or car searches. The courts have defined racial profiling as “the targeting of individual members of a particular racial group on the basis of the supposed criminal propensity of the entire group.”

There’s a chicken-and-egg quality to the debate. Police officers have argued that their actions are informed by years of on-the-street experience, while minority groups maintain that experience has been built on old, discriminatory attitudes.

The issue is also alive at Canadian airports where Muslim passengers have often complained of being singled out for interviews and inspection in the years since 9/11. Last year, a fine imposed against Youssef Bougachouch for illegally importing meat was thrown out after a tribunal found that he was among a group of Arab passengers targeted based on their race at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Appeal court overturns racial profiling case involving customs officer | Ottawa Citizen.

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Are Canadians racist? Yes, let’s stop denying it | Former Senator Oliver

2014/10/07 Leave a comment

Former Senator Don Oliver on racism and equality:

Racism still exists—in a subtle, underlying current of apathy and ignorance that continues to impede the advancement of visible minorities toward equality.

That’s why we must continue to advocate for change within the federal public service—and within corporate Canada. This change is crucial. Canada’s demographic profile is becoming increasingly diverse. Its workforce is aging. Meanwhile, the competition for workers is escalating with the growing global shortage of talent.

If we want to compete effectively, Canadian organizations—both public and private—must bring and keep the best and the brightest on board—and increasingly, the best and brightest are visible minorities. We need visible, committed leadership to effect real change. Most of all, we need to put an end to racism—through proactive non-tolerance of any form of discrimination, through training, and through robust support systems for visible minorities.

Complacency and denial about the reality of racism haven’t made Canada a truly diverse and inclusive place to make a living and build a future. Let’s stop kidding ourselves now.

Are Canadians racist? Yes, let’s stop denying it | hilltimes.com.

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9 Ugly Lessons About Sex From Big Data | TIME

2014/09/11 Leave a comment

Interesting example of big data and some reminders that we are not yet living in a post-racial society:

5. According to Rudder’s research, Asian men are the least desirable racial group to women…On OkCupid, users can rate each other on a 1 to 5 scale. While Asian women are more likely to give Asian men higher ratings, women of other races—black, Latina, white—give Asian men a rating between 1 and 2 stars less than what they usually rate men. Black and Latin men face similar discrimination from women of different respective races, while white men’s ratings remain mostly high among women of all races.

6. …And black women are the least desirable racial group to men.Pretty much the same story. Asian, Latin and white men tend to give black women 1 to 1.5 stars less, while black men’s ratings of black women are more consistent with their ratings of all races of women. But women who are Asian and Latina receive higher ratings from all men—in some cases, even more so than white women.

8. Your Facebook Likes reveal can reveal your gender, race, sexuality and political views.A group of UK researchers found that based on someone’s Facebook Likes alone, they can tell if a user is gay or straight with 88% accuracy; lesbian or straight, 75%; white or black, 95%; man or woman, 93%; Democrat or Republican, 85%.

9 Ugly Lessons About Sex From Big Data | TIME.

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Watch John Oliver Deliver a Flawless Takedown of the Turmoil in Ferguson

2014/08/20 1 Comment

One of the better pieces on Ferguson (15 minutes):

Watch John Oliver Deliver a Flawless Takedown of the Turmoil in Ferguson | TIME.

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Tracked tweets reflect racist attitudes online, says of U of A researcher

2014/08/13 Leave a comment

Not sure the numbers are as bad as portrayed as they cover a three-month period, and the numbers are very low in terms of total number of tweets.

Compare this to comments in newspaper columns on immigration and multiculturalism, where my anecdotal observations indicate a fair number of offensive comments, depending on the article:

“In Canada, we’re so reluctant to talk about race and racism specifically so often times in public discourse it’s rarely ever brought up but when you shift to the online realm people are … freely being racist,” said Chaudhry, who will present his findings at the Social Media and Society International Conference in Toronto next month.

To conduct his research, Chaudhry flagged common racist terms coming out of Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal.

In Calgary, as well as Edmonton and Winnipeg, the majority of comments were directed at the aboriginal community.

About 50 per cent of all the racist tweets were real-time observations, said Chaudhry.

“I’d always notice people complaining to Calgary transit about aboriginals in public spaces,” he said.

Overall, he said the number of Calgary-based racist tweets was low. Toronto accounted for 434; Vancouver had 99; Winnipeg had 78; Edmonton had 60; and Montreal had 43. In Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, the n-word was the most common racist term.

Darren Lund, a professor at the U of C’s the Werklund School of Education who researches social justice issues, said he was disheartened but not surprised by the findings.

“It seems that most of us have been raised in a way that even if we’re really nice, well-intentioned people, we’re still taught in some ways to think of aboriginal people as less than, or as flawed,” he said.

Tracked tweets reflect racist attitudes online, says of U of A researcher.

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WWI racism: black, Asian and aboriginal volunteers faced discrimination

2014/08/12 Leave a comment

Another angle to the coverage of WWI and Canada’s role, and a reminder how Canada has changed:

Many of those remembered by the monument [honouring Japanese-Canadian soldiers] were denied the right to enlist in British Columbia at the start of the war and had to travel to Alberta, where they joined up with regiments like the Calgary Highlanders.

Dozens died while fighting in Europe, and shortly after the war ended, the limestone cenotaph was erected, etched with the names of the men who fought.

Professor Tim Cook, a historian at the Canadian War Museum and an adjunct research professor at Carleton University, said Canadians of African and Asian ancestry, as well as First Nations, all faced discrimination.

“Canada was not the multicultural country that it is today,” he said. “It was very much a prejudiced society.”

After Britain declared war on Aug. 4, 1914, most of the first recruits were Anglo-Saxon and English speaking, and those who weren’t were simply turned away, said Cook.

First Nations were treated a bit differently, he added, because they had a reputation for being snipers and scouts. Still, the government didn’t know what to do with aboriginal volunteers because it feared the Germans wouldn’t extend any mercy on the battlefield to those they captured. By the end of the war, about 4,000 First Nations served, said Cook.

About 60 per cent of Canada’s first contingent of soldiers were British-born, 30 per cent were Canadian and about 10 per cent were others, Cook said, adding that most of the recruits were former British soldiers who served in the Boer War or were members of the Canadian militia or professional army.

WWI racism: black, Asian and aboriginal volunteers faced discrimination | Toronto Star.

From the Vancouver Sun, a good profile of the Louie brothers, Chinese Canadians, who fought in WW1:

In 1917, when there were conscription riots in Canada by those not willing to fight, the brothers’ dogged insistence on joining the Canadian Army and fighting for a country that refused them full citizenship and whose racial policies deemed them inferior was nothing short of astonishing.

The brothers were among the 300 or so Chinese-Canadians believed to have volunteered to fight in the First World War but about whom very little is known.

The pair’s exploits, therefore, must stand in for all those unknown warriors who, like the Louies, didn’t seek safety behind what they might have considered a convenient aspect of racism — their exemption from conscription.

Col. Howe Lee, one of the founders of the Chinese Canadian Military Museum at 555 Columbia St., in Vancouver’s Chinatown, says the Canadian government exempted Chinese Canadians from conscription in the First World War as a means to continue denying them citizenship.

“It’s generally accepted if a foreigner fights for a country during a war, they are entitled to citizenship. The Louie brothers weren’t foreigners, they were born here, but that didn’t matter. When conscription came in, they were exempt because the government didn’t want to give citizenship to Chinese,” said Lee.

Photographs of both soldiers and some of the letters they wrote home from the Western Front on army-issue paper are now on display in a small room at the museum, as is Wee Tan’s steel helmet that he brought home from France.

Battling enemies overseas, fighting racism on home front

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We’re not a post-racial society. We’re the innocent until proven racist society | Danielle Henderson

2014/08/12 Leave a comment

Strong commentary by Danielle Henderson in The Guardian on the enduring presence of racism in the US (some of the examples apply more broadly), and the wilful or unconscious denial that occurs (with the caveat that correlation is not necessarily causation):

Racism is not just part of our shameful past as many would like to think: it’s a vicious factor in the gulf of inequality that still plagues us today.

People of color still suffer the effects of racism on a regular basis: statistics show that we incarcerate African-Americans and Latinos at disproportionate rates; white people then strongly support continuing criminal justice policies that disproportionately target Latinos and African-Americans when given information about the disproportionate rates of incarceration. Our schools still expel and suspend black students at “triple the rate of their white peers”. People of color are more likely to be arrested for drug related crimes, even though whites use and abuse drugs at similar rates, and, once arrested, get longer sentences than white people arrested for the same crimes. Unemployment is consistently twice as high among black Americans compared to white Americans, and black Americans have to search for work longer than white ones. African-Americans pay more for car insurance, for home loans and for access to credit, and they are racially profiled while shopping by store security personnel – including at Best Buy. Having tons of money is no panacea: even though they make up 65% of the NFL, black players receive 92% of the penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct, and a store clerk in Switzerland refused to show a $38,000 Tom Ford handbag to Oprah Winfrey, whose net worth is $2.9bn, because it was “too expensive”.

And yet, people still hold on to the belief that we live in a color-blind system in which nobody is a racist, despite such obvious examples of persistent racism. The “post-racial” society is an intellectual refuge for white Americans, who largely benefit from racism even when they’re unwilling or unable to admit it. We certainly shouldn’t keep denying that racism exists, but white America needs to wake up and recognize just how complicit it has become in a system constantly perpetuating false notions of equality.

Were not a post-racial society. Were the innocent until proven racist society | Danielle Henderson | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

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Jonathan Kay: Stop calling people ‘racialized minorities.’ It’s silly and cynical

2014/07/12 Leave a comment

Ethnic Community Comparisons

From Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism

Jon Kay takes the easy route out on faulting Carol Goar on her terminology, “racialized,” but ignores the broader, and more uncomfortable question she raised regarding inclusiveness and participation (Toronto is diverse but not as inclusive as it could be):

“Racialized Torontonians” as they call themselves?

Here’s a question for readers who live in Toronto: Do you know a single ordinary person — someone who is not either an activist, or enrolled in feminist film studies at Ryerson, or a “diversity consultant” hired by governments and big companies — who routinely refers to herself or anyone as a “racialized” person?

To be more specific, have these words ever escaped anyone’s lips within the 7,124 square kilometers of the Greater Toronto Area: “As a racialized Torontonian, I’m supporting Argentina over Germany in the World Cup final.” “As a racialized Torontonian, that shade of eye shadow really doesn’t go with my skin tone.” “As a racialized Torontonian, I’m having trouble finding a restaurant that serves authentic soul food.”

I suspect that most ordinary Torontonians would be utterly confused if Ms. Goar insisted on addressing them as a “racialized” person in a restaurant or store. They might assume she was taking some kind of ethnic census. If pressed to describe themselves through the lens of race-obsession, they might more simply respond: “If you really want to know, I’m half-black.” Or, “I’m Sephardic Jewish with a quarter Latino.” Or “I was both in The Philippines.” Or perhaps many might just avoid eye contact and say, “I’m a Canadian who lives in Toronto.”

Jason Kenney questioned the use of the term “racialized” along with “white power” and “oppression.” Grant and contribution proposals that included these terms, or websites of applicants with these terms, were routinely rejected.

While the underlying policy rationale was overdue – given Canada’s increased diversity, integration challenges within and among communities were equally significant – this change downplayed equity aspects of multiculturalism.

Jonathan Kay: Stop calling people ‘racialized minorities.’ It’s silly and cynical | National Post.

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