A Saudi Morals Enforcer Called for a More Liberal Islam. Then the Death Threats Began. – The New York Times

2016/07/12 Leave a comment

Good long read by Ben Hubbard on the tensions within Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment and broader society:

For most of his adult life, Ahmed Qassim al-Ghamdi worked among the bearded enforcers of Saudi Arabia. He was a dedicated employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — known abroad as the religious police — serving with the front-line troops protecting the Islamic kingdom from Westernization, secularism and anything but the most conservative Islamic practices.

Some of that resembled ordinary police work: busting drug dealers and bootleggers in a country that bans alcohol. But the men of “the Commission,” as Saudis call it, spent most of their time maintaining the puritanical public norms that set Saudi Arabia apart not only from the West, but from most of the Muslim world.

A key offense was ikhtilat, or unauthorized mixing between men and women. The kingdom’s clerics warn that it could lead to fornication, adultery, broken homes, children born of unmarried couples and full-blown societal collapse.

For years, Mr. Ghamdi stuck with the program and was eventually put in charge of the Commission for the region of Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Then he had a reckoning and began to question the rules. So he turned to the Quran and the stories of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, considered the exemplars of Islamic conduct. What he found was striking and life altering: There had been plenty of mixing among the first generation of Muslims, and no one had seemed to mind.

So he spoke out. In articles and television appearances, he argued that much of what Saudis practiced as religion was in fact Arabian cultural practices that had been mixed up with their faith.

There was no need to close shops for prayer, he said, nor to bar women from driving, as Saudi Arabia does. At the time of the Prophet, women rode around on camels, which he said was far more provocative than veiled women piloting S.U.V.s.

He even said that while women should conceal their bodies, they needed to cover their faces only if they chose to do so. And to demonstrate the depth of his own conviction, Mr. Ghamdi went on television with his wife, Jawahir, who smiled to the camera, her face bare and adorned with a dusting of makeup.

It was like a bomb inside the kingdom’s religious establishment, threatening the social order that granted prominence to the sheikhs and made them the arbiters of right and wrong in all aspects of life. He threatened their control.

Mr. Ghamdi’s colleagues at work refused to speak to him. Angry calls poured into his cellphone and anonymous death threats hit him on Twitter. Prominent sheikhs took to the airwaves to denounce him as an ignorant upstart who should be punished, tried — and even tortured.

Source: A Saudi Morals Enforcer Called for a More Liberal Islam. Then the Death Threats Began. – The New York Times

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An Atlantic immigration initiative? Lord knows we need bodies: Poschmann

2016/07/12 Leave a comment

Finn Poschmann, chief executive officer of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council on the Atlantic Canada pilot immigration program:

Last week, it was a federal-provincial initiative involving the four Atlantic-region premiers and senior federal ministers, called the “Atlantic Growth Strategy.” It contains the necessary catchphrases, like clean growth, innovation and infrastructure, but it also contains something readily tangible: an immigration pilot program.

The scheme will operate on top of the provincially driven nominee program that fast-tracks identified individuals with job offers to permanent residency. It will allow up to 2,000 additional immigrants and their families into the Atlantic region each year for three years. If successful, the program will be continued and expanded, according to federal Immigration Minister John McCallum.

The notion that this approach might “work” comes from a plan to co-ordinate the activities of multiple levels of government, schools and employers with the aim of ensuring that immigrants land and find economic success. Strangely, this is a new idea, drawing on recent experience in landing and settling Syrian refugees.

Lord knows, the Atlantic region needs bodies. Natural population growth slowed markedly here in the early 1990s, and turned negative during the course of 2012. Since 1991, the Atlantic provinces’ annual population growth rate averaged 0 per cent, and total population growth has likewise been zero over the period. Together with demographic aging, this makes sustaining public finances, or pensions, no fun at all.

Now, the natural rate of population increase depends on the lifetime fertility rate of provincial residents. Because the Atlantic provinces’ total fertility rate is less than the Canadian average – and trends in fertility do not shift easily – immigration is tremendously more important to future population growth than it is elsewhere.

Immigration, even at levels many times higher than Canada has seen in recent decades, cannot meaningfully affect the age structure of the country’s population as a whole. But in the Atlantic area, even a comparatively small number of immigrants attracted and retained can make an important difference to population growth trends.

In 2014-15, Atlantic Canada accounted for 6.6 per cent of the Canadian population, but just 3.2 per cent of new immigrants. Were the region to have matched the Canadian average for immigrant attraction and retention relative to the resident population over any sustained period in recent decades, the region’s population and population growth rate would be trending upward, rather than flat or down.

In other words, a few thousand people goes a long way ’round these parts. The pilot program is welcome.

So what’s the catch?

First, it is not news that Atlantic economic growth has been sluggish. Among Canada’s 10 provinces, for instance, guess which four have unemployment rates above 8 per cent? And which four have the lowest employment-to-population ratios?

Many Canadians and government officials might look at those statistics and wonder where is the case for more bodies. But employers see things otherwise. They search high and low for skilled employees, and they routinely find themselves looking abroad.

Before hiring from abroad, many of these employers have to complete Labour Market Impact Assessments, which require them to prove a negative – that no Canadian is available to do the job. This pedantic exercise is something federal policy could usefully shed.

For many employers and in many communities, access to fresh bodies is the top concern. That speaks to the likely success of the immigration pilot, at least from a hiring perspective.

Then there are the self-inflicted impediments to bringing in or keeping new immigrants.

Cultural insularity is one of them, and not one that governments are well placed to deal with. Yet Treasury Board president Scott Brison’s recent proclamation that the dismissive phrase “come-from-way” should be banished from Atlantic idiom resonated widely. Attitudes within communities change slowly, with exposure to people and ideas, but they change.

What provincial governments can do, even if it will take time to fix, is address the fiscal mess that immigrants meet on arrival. Quebec wins for highest overall personal income taxes, but New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have achieved 50-per-cent-plus tax rates for professional income earners. The Atlantic region has the highest consumption taxes in the country and the four highest corporate income tax rates. Provincial per capita debt in Newfoundland and Labrador and in New Brunswick is downright ugly.

This is finely targeted foot-shooting. But at least governments have become aware of it.

And at least it is becoming widely accepted that Canada needs more immigrants, that immigrants are a new positive for our economy. It is nice to see policy reflect that reality.

Source: An Atlantic immigration initiative? Lord knows we need bodies – The Globe and Mail

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Vancouver: Is racism part of the housing issue? Of course it is

2016/07/12 1 Comment

Not sure really what Pete McMartin really wants to say here beyond that yes, part of the reaction has racist overtones, but that does not diminish the underlying economic issues and concerns regarding the affordability of housing:

But what this most recent offering by the government has done, and the critics’ and public reaction to it, is bring us closer to a truth of a different kind. Finally, we’re getting to the crux of the matter. It’s about the nature of the remedy to our housing “crisis” as the critics and many members of the public see it. It’s not a vacancy tax they want, or a tax on foreign ownership, neither of which would do much to cool the market, anyway. They want to rewrite the rules of immigration and tax law, and close the door. (Or as they put it: It’s Chinese money, not Chinese immigrants, that has created this market. Which makes me wonder exactly how they would go about separating the two.)

Is that racist? 

Of course it’s racist. And if it didn’t begin as racist, as housing and real estate critics insist it did not, that it was purely an economic issue, that it’s not the colour of the homebuyers’ skin that mattered but the colour of their money, then the prolonged and lop-sided take on the matter in the media and in public opinion has made it racist.

It speaks for itself that we regard this huge infusion of capital into Metro Vancouver’s real estate market as a disaster rather than an unprecedented creation of wealth for British Columbians and the B.C. economy — which is now, not coincidentally, the best-performing in Canada. We have cultivated an Us Against Them dynamic — Them being the devious, dirty-monied, tax-avoiding, Maserati-driving, heritage-home-destroying, self-ghettoizing Chinese who steal into Canada through our immigration loopholes, outbid us for our housing, and abuse the social welfare state that we have created. We, of course, cast ourselves as innocent bystanders in all this rather than accomplices, despite the fact that not 20 or 30 years ago we were doing everything we could to attract Asian money to B.C. because of our hope to become world-class and globally competitive, and to lift us out of the cycles of boom and bust that British Columbians had suffered. How soon we conveniently forget. What did we think Expo 86 was, if not a door swung wide open?

Now? It’s no longer a matter of housing. It’s a matter of culture and race in an increasing climate of mutual resentment — or perhaps you haven’t noticed the flood of spittle-flecked comments at the end of media stories about how we’ve been selling Canada off to the Chinese. And the remedy — one that is finally beginning to coalesce and make itself clear — is one not unlike the Chinese head tax of 1885. It’s the head tax stood on its head. In 1885, we wanted to keep the Chinese out because they were too poor and too numerous and would steal our jobs. Now, we want to keep them out because they are too rich and too numerous and would steal our homes.

We should admit to that. We should own up to that racially tinged resentment. I certainly will. I’ve felt resentment when I see an 18-year-old Chinese kid driving a Ferrari down the street with an “N” on its back bumper, and I’ve felt resentment at the thought of wealthy immigrants living in Point Grey mansions who declare incomes low enough to qualify for GAIN payments. 

But then, I’ve also felt resentment at the many born-in-Canada professionals who, long before the wealthy Chinese got here, avoided paying taxes by incorporating themselves or by hiding their money offshore, while I ended up owing more taxes at the end of the year. And I’ve felt resentment, too, for an old-stock wealthy class which in the past didn’t give a damn whether or not I could afford to live in Vancouver until they saw their own neighbourhoods besieged by an even wealthier class.

Small of me? You bet. But I’m trying to honest here.

Source: Is racism part of the housing issue? Of course it is | Vancouver Sun

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Study says foreign buyers spend more on B.C. homes, but some dispute data

2016/07/12 Leave a comment

More on Vancouver housing and immigration:

Critics argue there are larger holes in the data than the small window of time it encompasses.

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer who works with wealthy clients from China, said the government should break the statistics out into postal codes so foreign ownership of high-end homes could be better tracked, and ultimately taxed. Four per cent of Vancouver sales were registered to foreigners, but Mr. Kurland said those likely occurred in a select number of tony west side neighbourhoods.

“It would be useful, because this is a problem that should not be attacked by a mallet, but a surgeon’s scalpel,” he said. “The driver is at the high end of the property market.”

Richmond and Burnaby saw the highest levels of foreign ownership in the region, at 11 per cent and 14 per cent respectively, but there is no indication of where that investment occurred, he said.

Mr. Kurland said the government’s metric is not gauging the true level of foreign participation in the local housing market because it is classifying tens of thousands of wealthy “investor immigrants” from China as permanent residents despite earning all of their income abroad and, in some cases, continuing to live abroad while owning properties in B.C.

From 2002 to 2013, about 1,000 millionaire migrants flocked to Vancouver each year under a federal government program that was ultimately shut down after Mr. Kurland raised concerns over its effectiveness at generating local economic growth.

This net migration has made a large impact because when these families bought a home in B.C. another unit of housing was not relinquished into the market.

“With domestic people it’s [often] a push: one bought, one sold,” he said. “With an immigrant investor, it’s one bought, none sold, and that’s what restricts supply.”

Tom Davidoff, a professor at the University of British Columbia and economist leading the charge for a targeted property tax, said the government should not “drag nationality” into the housing debate, but rather focus on whether people owning homes in this frothy market also earn their money in the region.

If not, then those owners should be charged a surtax for enjoying government services paid for through income tax, he said.

“When you’re using something scarce you should pay the true cost,” he said.

Source: Study says foreign buyers spend more on B.C. homes, but some dispute data – The Globe and Mail

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Diaspora Dialogues Gives Emerging Writers a Voice

2016/07/12 Leave a comment

Good initiative given the power of story telling and writing. CanLit includes a number of strong immigrant and visible minority writers (e.g., Bissoondath, Vassanji, Ondaatje, Hage, Hill):

New writers are using mentorship opportunities to create and share more diverse and inclusive stories about Toronto’s history and culture.

“What we want to do is to create a living history of Toronto through literature [and] make it as diverse as the city itself,” says Helen Walsh, the president of Diaspora Dialogues  – a charitable society made up of writers, artists and performers.

“I’m not surprised that there are at least 50 to 60 countries represented through Diaspora Dialogues – lots of voices from Asia, Africa and Northern Europe,” Walsh adds. “Often, people write about their own cultural background and we want to bring Toronto to life through literature.”

Mentoring new writers

Toronto’s iconic Old City Hall, a national historic site, was the stage for Diaspora Dialogues during Doors Open Toronto, an event that offers access to buildings with historical significance across the city.

“Often, people write about their own cultural background and we want to bring Toronto to life through literature.”

Jamaican-born and Ottawa-raised emerging writer Dianah Smith is one of 12 writers who presented their work at Old City Hall. As a teacher and arts educator, Smith joined Diaspora Dialogues in 2014 for its mentoring program, in which she paired-up with Jamaican-Canadian writer and media professional Martin Mordecai.

“For about six months, he helped me to get into [a] schedule of my draft and first novel, finalizing some of the scenes of my manuscript to get it ready for publication,” Smith says about her experience as a mentee.

“It’s a story about a seven-year-old girl, Jemela Campbell, and her experience in immigrating from Jamaica to Canada and her first year in Canada,” Smith explains.

The excerpt she reads is from the novel, with a working title The Promise of Foreign, which explores some of the challenges newcomer parents face in Canada such as finding work and keeping jobs.

Seeking recognition as writers

“As a racialized person of colour, as an immigrant, you don’t really feel represented in the publishing world,” Smith explains. “You have names like Margaret Atwood, mainly white and middle-class people.”

She says that while Diaspora Dialogues does not restrict white writers from participating, it also tries “to have alternative voices to give immigrants and indigenous people the opportunity to share their stories.”

Author Mia Herrera adds that working in the Canadian publishing and writing industry is precarious.

“A writer who publishes regularly makes a salary of about $12,000 a year. You can’t make a living on that,” she says.

Born to Filipino parents, Herrera now lives in Bradford, Ont. She works in communications and marketing and says she continues to write because it is her passion.

Smith says she is still in the process of finding an interested publisher for her novel. While her mentorship program ended last fall, she continues to participate in other programs led by Diaspora Dialogues such as Lunch and Learn events, workshops about pitching to agents, as well as mentee book readings such as the one at Old City Hall.

Source: Diaspora Dialogues Gives Emerging Writers a Voice – New Canadian Media

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Welcome to the country: Refugees are helping a prairie town grow

2016/07/11 Leave a comment

Good long read by Erin Anderssen on the welcome and support given to Syrian and other refugees in Altona, Manitoba, a community originally settled by Mennonite refugees.

Source: Welcome to the country: Refugees are helping a prairie town grow – The Globe and Mail

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Josiah Wilson, the Indian Act, hereditary governance and blood quantum

2016/07/11 Leave a comment

Fascinating account of the different aspects of identity, ranging from bloodline requirements to culture, and the challenge this poses across a number of fronts:

The story of Josiah Wilson, the Haiti-born, Heiltsuk First Nation adopted basketball player, has raised questions of Indigenous identity much bigger than whether he should be allowed to play in an All-Native Basketball Tournament in B.C.

The tournament committee’s decision to ban Wilson, 20, a status Indian, because he doesn’t have at least 1/8th First Nations ancestry or “blood quantum” is a symptom of a greater conflict.

This conflict lurks in band offices, treaty offices, on the land and on reserves across the country.

What, or who, defines someone as Indigenous — is it the hereditary system, the Indian Act, a blood test?

According to the Canadian government, Wilson is an “Indian.” According to the Heiltsuk, he is Heiltsuk. And according to the All-Native Basketball Tournament, he is an adoptee, Canadian and Haitian, but not Heiltsuk.

Heiltsuk hereditary system

In the eyes of the Heiltsuk Hemas (hereditary chiefs), Wilson is Heiltsuk. The Hemas embody the Heiltsuk Nation’s traditional social structure and hereditary system of governance, which identifies members through cultural protocol and a connection to family crests and clans.

Heiltsuk Hemas standing with Haida Hereditary Chiefs

In the eyes of the Heiltsuk Hemas (hereditary chiefs), Josiah is Heiltsuk. Here, Heiltsuk Hemas are shown with Haida hereditary chiefs. (Don Wilson/Facebook)

Heiltsuk cultural adviser Frances Brown says the hereditary system is a complex set of laws that governs not only a responsibility to the land, but also social relationships to one another, including adoption.

“If there’s a customary adoption it means that you adopt a child and you do it in a potlatch where there’s many witnesses and the chiefs are there,” said Brown.

Gary Housty was one of the Heiltsuk Hemas to witness the ceremonial adoption of Wilson by a First Nations family. He says he wrote a letter to members of the all-native committee urging them to let Wilson play, but received no response.

“I really have a problem with the way they’re setting down rules that disallow people to participate in these very important cultural events, such as the All-Native Tournament. There’s so much culture there. And we are talking about culture here.

“In my eyes Josiah is a Heiltsuk boy, a Heiltsuk person. He belongs here with us,” said Housty.

Source: Josiah Wilson, the Indian Act, hereditary governance and blood quantum – Aboriginal – CBC

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U of T gets personal with staff to track race, gender data

2016/07/11 Leave a comment

Lessons for the federal public service and other organizations?

Particularly significant is the removal of names from resumés to remove implicit (and explicit) bias.

Ontario EducationI was able to drill down to visible minority groups using NHS data for the  education sector as in the chart above for Ontario, as differences among groups are increasingly more important than between visible minorities and non-visible minorities:

Canada’s largest university is asking its employees remarkably personal questions — from what race they are and where they come from to whether they’re transgendered — in a bid to make sure certain groups aren’t being left out of jobs and promotions.

In a new survey given this week to all 10,000 employees from professors to secretaries, the University of Toronto goes beyond asking staff if they see themselves as “persons of colour” or “racialized,” to whether they are black, white, Asian, Latin/Hispanic, Middle Eastern or mixed.

And that’s just to start.

The updated Employment Equity Survey then dives to a level believed unmatched on any other Canadian campus: If you answer ‘black,’ are you African, Caribbean, European, North American or South American?

If you said Asian, do you mean East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan), Southeast Asian (Malaysian, Filipino, Vietnamese) or Asian Caribbean from, say, Trinidad? Hispanic employees are asked if their heritage is Caribbean, Central American, European or South American.

The questions also offer a sneak peek at what the university’s 85,000 students will be asked this fall on its first student demographic survey.

“Students have made it very clear they don’t see themselves reflected in faculty and staff, so collecting data is part of an overall move to get a better sense of who is under-represented so we can do better outreach and targeted recruitment,” said Angela Hildyard, vice-president of human resources and equity.

Like other organizations that do a certain amount of business with the federal government, U of T has for decades been required to track its employees by gender, disability, whether they’re aboriginal or members of a ‘visible minority.’

“But this language no longer makes sense,” said Hildyard, especially with students. “If you’ve been to one of our convocations lately, you’ll see we’re so diverse, the visible minority would likely be white.” Even changing the category last year to “person of colour or racialized person” shed little light on the true diversity of campus workers.

“If equity and diversity are linked to excellence — and we are the only university in North America to have a statement making it clear we’ll only be excellent with diversity and equity — then we need to collect more information on how different groups are represented on campus.”

Some black faculty members have been vocal about the need to increase their ranks, she said, “but we have no idea how many we have because we don’t have data. This gives us a better sense of who we have here and if they are under-represented, and target candidate pools.”

Moreover, the university will start giving the survey to job applicants as well, so it can track where the gaps begin.

“Black students feel woefully under-represented (among U of T faculty and staff), so this will allow us to actually see the numbers of black applicants in the first place, and are they being shortlisted? Is there some kind of discrimination going on?”

Too, U of T will take the unusual step of removing names from job applicants’ resumés “to see if that enhances certain groups’ possibility of being interviewed. We always want to be sure we hire the best candidate, but is there something happening (that blocks particular groups) like hiring committees having a bias against certain kinds of names?”

Anecdotally, the ranks of professors at Canadian universities “are not very representative of the wider population,” noted David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, “so gathering this kind of information is a positive thing.” It also could help reveal which university departments are less diverse than others, not only with regards to race, but also gender and abilities.

The U of T survey asks about disabilities and sexual orientation, and a new question on gender includes check-boxes for man, woman, two-spirit, “another gender identity” or “trans: a person who identifies with a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth, or differs from stereotypical masculine and feminine norms.”

Said Hildyard: “The data can help us learn who applies, who gets shortlisted, who gets interviewed for jobs, so if we find the candidate pool is not diverse, that’s where we can focus our efforts.”

Source: U of T gets personal with staff to track race, gender data | Toronto Star

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Christie Blatchford: We need light, not heat as violence by and toward police grows

2016/07/11 Leave a comment

One of her better columns:

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in the very first speech that brought him to wide American attention, “There comes a time when people get tired.”

Well then, let’s hope we are all there now — the frightened and furious young black men whose brothers are shot and killed by U.S. police in staggering numbers and in sometimes galling circumstances, the scared and beleaguered police, and yes, the mass media and social media with our giddy group embrace of violence in all its forms.

As the CNN commentator Van Jones said Friday, if you bleed for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile (the black men killed by police this week in Baton Rouge, La., and near Minneapolis, Minn.) but not for the five dead Dallas police officers murdered during a Black Lives Matter protest Thursday night, “you need a heart check.” If you bleed for the slain police but not for Sterling and Castile, Jones said, “You need a heart check.”

It is, in other words, time for empathy, that great saving human ability to feel the pain of another without having to have walked in his actual shoes.

The great American civil rights leader made his speech on Dec. 5, 1955.

It was long ago and far away.

King was in Montgomery, Ala., about 585 kilometres from Baton Rouge, where Sterling was killed, and almost twice that to Falcon Heights, Minn., where Castile was shot to death.

But what he said, in part, to a thousand black Americans crowded into the Holt Street Baptist Church that night was this: “We are here this evening to say to those who have mistreated us so long that we are tired — tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression.

“There comes a time my friends when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, when they experience the bleakness of nagging despair.”

Segregation ended, though it was another nine years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 put an official end to it, and while much has changed, does that language not sound an awful lot like the same general bone weariness heard in recent weeks from black residents in U.S. city after U.S. city and even in Toronto? It does.

This week, former Canada AM news anchor and co-host Marci Ien was a guest host on The Live Drive, a Newstalk 1010 radio show.

Conflict-of-interest declaration, I do a bit on the show, but listened afterwards as Ien spoke with tremendous eloquence of her experiences as a smart young black woman growing up in Toronto.

In her quiet voice, she said, “There isn’t a man in my life, from my father who’s in his 70s to my husband to my brothers-in-law, who hasn’t been stopped by police (in effect, for driving while black) at some point.”

Born and raised in Scarborough, Ont., and proud of it, Ien had a girl seven years before she learned her second child was a boy. “My heart skipped a beat,” she said, “when I realized I was having a son. I was worried. No mother should ever feel that.”

Now, as her little boy grows up, Ien said, she is braced for the conversation she will have to have with him — about the clothes she wonders if he can wear (“Can he wear a hoodie? Low-slung jeans?”) and how he’s to behave if he’s stopped by police. “The utmost respect should be there anyway,” she said, meaning she and her husband would teach that as a matter of course, but their son will be told to ramp it up.

“These are the conversations black families have with their sons and the young men they care about,” she said. If this great woman has to have this sort of discussion with her son, that’s something the rest of us, including the police, have to accept.

Ien was commenting on Tuesday, after Sterling’s death, but before Castile’s and before the shocking Dallas mass murder.

The officers — seven others were wounded — were slain by what the FBI says now was a lone sniper, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, a former U.S. Army reserve veteran.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown said that before he was essentially blown apart by a bomb-laden robot the police force dispatched, Johnson told hostage negotiators “he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset about white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

Armed to the teeth, better equipped than the unsuspecting police watching over the protest, Johnson did just that.

The ambush came everywhere as a terrible shock to police officers, who, as Chief Brown said drily at one point, “aren’t very accustomed to hearing thank you, sometimes from the citizens who most need our help.” That’s putting it kindly; even at peaceful protests, even in Canadian cities, police are routinely faced with people spitting at them, cursing them and trying to provoke them.

Yet few of them would have predicted what happened in Dallas.

It was Newstalk host Jay Michaels who suggested Friday that just as hateful ISIL propaganda and violent beheading videos on the web have served to radicalize unhappy young men in the West and turn them into homegrown terrorists, so perhaps the constant inflamed rhetoric about police violence in the press and the ghastly cellphone videos of police shootings may have inspired Johnson.

It feels as though we’re on a precipice. We need to be accountable for what we collectively have sown: the bad and racist police officers and the forces that employ them, the empty violent rhetoric of the mob, and the media and web airing of every grievance anywhere in the world and making it local.

What we need is light, not heat, and we need to do Van Jones’ heart check.

Source: Christie Blatchford: We need light, not heat as violence by and toward police grows | National Post

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Shootings raise unanswered life-or-death question for black men in America: Neil Macdonald

2016/07/11 Leave a comment

Good column by Macdonald:

In the racially electrified fog of fear and rage following the events in Dallas Thursday, one question remains conspicuously unanswered: If you are a black man in America, how are you supposed to cope?

President Barack Obama has no real answer, nor do the members of Congress who bowed their heads in memory of the slain Dallas police officers, nor does Dallas’s anguished police chief, a black man himself.

The deadly consequences of carrying while black
#SayHisName: Americans react to videos of police killings
The only advice black Americans seem to get is to respectfully submit when some cop calls them out on the street, or looms at the door of their car, or shows up at their home, no matter how terrified they may be.

‘Comply, comply, comply’

For heaven’s sake, don’t give the officer any lip, or try to run away, even if you aren’t guilty of anything, and no matter how abusive the cop may become.

Because if you are black, that policeman is far more likely to gun you down, or choke you to death, or Taser you, or beat you into a coma.

“Comply, comply, comply,” Philando Castile’s mother says she used to tell him. “Comply — that’s the key thing in order to try to survive being stopped by the police.”

‘When is it going to stop?’: Philando Castile’s family speaks out1:10

Perhaps Alton Sterling’s parents gave him the same counsel. It’s as common for black parents to have that talk with their kids as it is for white parents to warn about talking to strangers.

But of course supine compliance does not guarantee survival at the hands of police if you are black in America (or, to be honest, if you are Indigenous in some parts of Canada, but that’s a separate discussion).

Philando Castile was evidently complying with the Minnesota policeman who’d pulled him over for a broken tail light this week when that policeman opened fire through the driver’s window. The police force has not said otherwise.

And a day earlier, Alton Sterling was pinned down, hands free of weapons, when two Louisiana cops shot him in the back and chest.
After the Castile killing, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton stated the obvious: “Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white? I don’t think it would have …”

There is simply no question that your race can determine whether you live or die at the hands of police in America. If you are black, you are several times more likely to be killed.

Benefit of the tiniest doubt

And, chances are, your killer will walk away, unpunished, and likely consoled by his fellow officers for having had to go through such trauma.

Source: Shootings raise unanswered life-or-death question for black men in America: Neil Macdonald – Politics – CBC News

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