Donald Trump’s success a ‘wake-up call’ for Michigan’s Muslims

2016/03/14 Leave a comment

Does not bode well:

On Thursday, Muslim leaders in this Detroit suburb were saying that members of their community still felt safer here than they would in just about any other place in their country.

….The source of considerable angst and reflection was this past Tuesday’s Michigan presidential primary. In one of the most Muslim-heavy states in the country, Republican front-runner Donald Trump – a candidate so overtly playing to Islamophobia that he pronounced during a CNN interview this week that “Islam hates us” – cruised to victory with about 37 per cent of the Republican vote. And in Dearborn itself, where nearly half the city’s roughly 100,000 residents are Arab-American and many country- or state-wide Muslim or Arabic organizations are based, Mr. Trump’s percentage was a couple of points higher than that.

Unsurprisingly, most of his votes came from the half of Dearborn that’s not really a Muslim capital at all. While the vast majority of residents on the east side of town are of Arabic descent – with roots primarily in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the Palestinian territories – the west side is primarily white. Of the 3,153 Dearbornians who voted for Mr. Trump, only about 500 live on the east side. (Christian Arabs, a small population here, may account for a few of those.)

But until recently, Dearborn seemed to be a success story of Muslims integrating into a city with a history of segregation, and a state that has seen more than its share of racial strife. Many have opened businesses on the west side, some have even moved there, and they are increasingly engaged civically, including on the city’s council. The town has attracted its share of attention from cranks: Right-wing bloggers have long propagated various bogus conspiracy theories, including that the city is under Sharia law, and the likes of Koran-burning Florida pastor Terry Jones occasionally show up seeing attention. But even following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, there wasn’t the degree of backlash for which many of its immigrant families braced themselves.

Now, with thousands of people with whom they co-exist either embracing Mr. Trump’s Muslim-bashing or proving willing to overlook it, Muslim residents have been given a reality check about how they’re perceived – and how much Mr. Trump has helped bring to the fore something ugly that was lurking below the surface.

“I think what is most troubling about this election cycle is that in Michigan, you would assume there is a certain familiarity with Muslims,” says Rana Elmir, who grew up in Dearborn and is now deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. “And I don’t think what you’re seeing in those results reflects that familiarity and trust.”

Source: Donald Trump’s success a ‘wake-up call’ for Michigan’s Muslims – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Front commun contre les propos francophobes

2016/03/14 Leave a comment

More on the nature of on-line comments. My preference, rather than suppression, is requiring actual names and related authentication, as is done in letters to the editor:

Brodie Fenlon, le directeur des médias numériques pour le réseau CBC, a assuré au groupe par écrit vendredi que les commentaires identifiés seront supprimés. « Nous regrettons que ces commentaires se soient retrouvés sur notre site. Il s’agit d’une situation malencontreuse, mais inévitable lorsque l’on doit traiter un tel volume de commentaires. […] Dorénavant, nous nous assurerons que nos lignes directrices sont appliquées avec encore plus de rigueur et de jugement. » La politique de commentaires de CBC mentionne que les discours haineux, les attaques personnelles, les insultes ou encore les déclarations diffamatoires sont interdits.

En entrevue avec Le Devoir, l’instigateur de la lettre, Michel Doucet, n’est pas rassuré par cette réponse, tant s’en faut. Il exige que la CBC fasse preuve de vigilance en amont plutôt que de simplement retirer les commentaires litigieux après coup.

« Ils retirent les commentaires juste quand on les signale. Mais on ne va pas passer notre journée à surveiller le site de CBC ! C’est à CBC elle-même de veiller à la qualité du contenu », tonne-t-il. Selon l’avocat, il est inacceptable qu’une société d’État« permet[te] qu’on utilise son site de commentaires pour fomenter la division, l’incompréhension et l’intolérance vis-à-vis d’une communauté minoritaire ».

M. Doucet soutient que le phénomène existe « depuis que CBC a ouvert son site aux commentaires » et procède d’une tendance lourde. Chaque fois qu’il est question de sujets liés aux francophones au Nouveau-Brunswick, ces commentaires fusent. « L’autre jour, la ville de Dieppe a annoncé qu’elle aurait un anneau de glace et il y a eu des commentaires ! Un des commentaires qui revient souvent, c’est que les francophones ont tous les bénéfices alors que ce sont les anglophones qui payent tous les impôts. […] On mettrait une photo d’un beau petit chat portant un nom francophone que ces commentaires ressurgiraient », raille-t-il. Lui-même, un militant très en vue des droits linguistiques des francophones, est présenté dans certains commentaires comme un « individu radicalisé ».

Le sujet fait l’objet de conversations dans la communauté francophone néo-brunswickoise depuis très longtemps, raconte-t-il. Aussi, quand il a décidé de prendre la plume dimanche dernier, il a récolté ses 120 signatures prestigieuses en moins de 72 heures. C’est d’ailleurs un sénateur conservateur, Percy Mockler, outré et enflammé, qui a mis Le Devoir au parfum de la situation.

Les signataires demandent à ce que CBC ne permette plus les commentaires provenant de personnes anonymes, comme le font déjà plusieurs sites de médias. M. Fenlon rétorque dans sa lettre que cet anonymat est utile, quoiqu’il fasse l’objet d’un « examen ». « En autorisant l’utilisation de pseudonymes, on permet cependant à toutes les voix de participer au débat, y compris les victimes de crimes et les dénonciateurs d’abus, deux groupes qui, selon nous, ont de bonnes raisons de se cacher derrière l’anonymat. »

Filed under Other Tagged with , , , ,

Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control

2016/03/12 Leave a comment

Alex Marland’s book on branding and message control under the Harper government is now out (Marland also edited the wonderful Canadian Election Analysis 2015 – Ubcpress.ca, issued just a few weeks after the election).

Now that the ‘brand’ has changed, interesting to reflect on the Liberal government’s equally – if not stronger – branding, evident at both the PM, Ministerial and other levels:

A brand-centric approach to power involves the strategic unification of words and visuals. At the most basic level, a branding philosophy holds that communicating disjointed messages in a haphazard style is less likely to resonate with intended audiences. Conversely, core information repeatedly communicated in an uncomplicated, consistent, and efficient way to targeted subgroups is more likely to secure support for the sender’s agenda. Branding strategy positions the sender as unique, reassures audiences, and communicates aspirational, value-based, and credible messages. Repetitiveness and symmetry are crafted to pierce the clamour. A “less is more” approach to communication reinforces information and messages and does so in a resource-efficient manner that accentuates visual imagery.

Branding balances the information demands of the impassioned and the uninterested. It communicates cues and signals to distracted audiences while stoking emotional connections with those who are most loyal. It involves marketers maximizing their communications investments by promoting messages designed to differentiate the brand and to resonate on an emotional level with target audiences. It understates or ignores the brand’s flaws. It turns a humdrum interaction into a memorable experience. The resulting brand loyalty felt by the most ardent supporters is such that they can be impervious to missteps and to courting by competitors. An organization requires tenacious leadership to assert branding objectives over the demands and criticisms of other actors. The more fractured that media become, the more that party strategists and senior public servants seek to standardize and centralize their messages. The more that message cohesion, discipline, and centralization are practised, the more that society makes political choices based on images of politicians rather than on policy details. In politics, the brand unites everything.Th e rest of us need to look at political leaders, party politics, the media, and public administration through a branding lens to understand this.

…This book … is concerned with establishing that changes in communications technology are enabling the centre to enforce communications control and to implement branding strategy. This examination will provide both believers and disbelievers of the Savoie thesis with a basis for further assessment of whether the centre has too much power – and in particular a better understanding of the institutional conditions and processes related to political communications and elite behaviour. Brand Command argues that the causes of centralization are systemic, not individualistic. In this light, Trudeau’s pledge to empower cabinet and buck the forces of centralization seems idealistic. Branding strategy seeks to influence public impressions and to set and advance agendas. It is accompanied by an organizational willingness to exploit opportunities to penetrate a communications cyclone and a motivation to achieve resource efficiencies. In interviews conducted for this book, many respondents pontificated, unaided, along the following lines: “Disseminating a message in the clutter or bombardment of information that you get today is a huge challenge … One of the solutions to that is consistency of messaging, which probably explains to a large degree the centralized approach that government has taken to its communications.”

Brand Command UBC Press

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Engaging Newcomers: ‘We Haven’t Done Enough’

2016/03/12 Leave a comment

One of the strongest speakers at the recent Metropolis conference and certainly the strongest one on the ‘identities’ workshop (which most of the other panelists didn’t address):

Governments and bureaucrats need to focus less on numbers and more on starting real conversations that tackle critical problems, like race, in ways that engage immigrants rather than shaming them.

“A lot of time when it’s about race, we are afraid to talk about it,” said Yolande James, one of four speakers from the government and legal system who presented at the “Identities, Rights and Migration: A Session on the Intersection of Gender, Race, Class and Sexuality” session at the 18th National Metropolis Conferenceheld in Toronto last week.

“There is a way to have a conversation involving everybody, to be respectful and constructive. Everybody has something to give and we should have an equal life.”

James, a former provincial politician, was the first Black female cabinet minister in Quebec history, serving as Minister of Immigration and Cultural Communities & Minister of Family between 2007 and 2014.

As a former provincial government minister, and child of immigrant parents herself, James knows about how inefficient all levels of government are in engaging newcomers into their host country.

“Do we engage immigrant populations? Do we have engaged dialogue?” she asked. “We haven’t done enough.”

She said the lack of society-wide conversations that engage with immigrants sends the message that they do not matter.

“I feel the whole nation, in terms of why the issues touching immigration and diversity [are] important, is not engaged,” she said. “It’s all about being able to engage people to connect with other people’s experience.”

“There is so much emphasis on the numbers, but it’s not important. It’s about their journey.”

As an example, James pointed to the current challenge of accepting Syrian refugees to Canada. She said that the government needs to pay attention to more than just the number of refugees being accepted.

“Should it be 55,000 or 50,000?” she asked. “There is so much emphasis on the numbers, but it’s not important. It’s about their journey,” she said.

Source: Engaging Newcomers: ‘We Haven’t Done Enough’ – New Canadian Media

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Where is the postracial society? Mark Kingwell

2016/03/12 Leave a comment

On identity politics and post-racialism:

Is the solution a “postracial” society, blind to colour and bogus judgments of difference? Would that it were so. Unfortunately, too many comfortable postracialists are self-appointed allies of struggle, who should remember that they don’t get to be not-white just because they have achieved personal tolerance. Demographics alone are an uncertain vehicle of change, and rainbow populations no guarantee of harmony and justice – sometimes quite the opposite.

The presumed liberal goal for diverse societies is universal equality, but identity politics seems compelled to tout essential differences. The best response to this long-standing philosophical double-bind isn’t what Mr. Rock suggested: more opportunity, especially in Hollywood’s tiny self-regarding gene pool. Opportunity is too often a rigged game, another frat mixer where you get stuck in the corner with the other squares.

Instead, we need to challenge the very idea that random differential traits – skin colour, physical beauty, penises – should generate outcomes unrelated to them, such as wealth, power and status. Racism is stupid as well as dangerous, a conceptual error frozen into intellectual sludge. The solution is not more identity but more imagination, including for differences we haven’t yet encountered.

Without that, the postracial society will remain a sci-fi dream, like crew rosters on Star Trek or the bar scenes in Star Wars. And even there – well, we like you, C-3PO, but you’re … not an organic.

Source: Where is the postracial society? – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Artist draws moon’s craters named after women to illustrate inequality

2016/03/12 Leave a comment

web-craters09nw6Lack of historical diversity – only 27 out of 1,600 (0.02 percent):

Last year, Montreal artist Bettina Forget was looking at an atlas of the moon when something suddenly struck her as odd.

She knew the moon’s surface is pockmarked with craters of varying size. These circular depressions are the lasting record of billions of years’ worth of interplanetary bombardment dating back to the formation of the solar system. But, in a way, they also record an artifact of science and culture that hits much closer to home – because, no matter where Ms. Forget looked, the craters were named after men.

Soon, Ms. Forget found herself combing through the International Astronomical Union’s catalogue of lunar features. Of the more than 1,600 named craters on the moon, she discovered that a mere 27 honour famous women in science and space exploration.

That’s when she decided to draw all 27 by hand.

Source: Artist draws moon’s craters named after women to illustrate inequality – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Other Tagged with , ,

Citizenship: 2015 Full-Year Data – Backlog largely eliminated

2016/03/11 Leave a comment

Citizenship - Conference Board April 2016.001My quick analysis of the 2015 operational data released a few days ago.

  • The increased funding of $44 million provided in Budget 2013 to address the backlog has clearly worked: 235,000 in 2015, slightly down from 263,000 in 2014, but significantly greater than earlier years when it dropped as low as 113,000;
  • The backlog has been reduced from a high of 396,000 in 2013 to 130,000 in 2015, a major achievement;
  • In election year 2015, significantly more citizenship ceremonies were held (3,300) compared to previous years averaged around 1,900, likely reflecting a conscious decision to do more ceremonies, smaller in numbers, in more places; and,
  • While the number of applications appears less (130,000) compared to 2014 (198,000), the data is often revised as any delayed or incomplete applications originally not entered into the system are backdated to the original date of the application (the 2014 data, originally showing 130,000 was revised only in the third quarter of 2015).
  • While it would be premature to declare a trend, logic suggests that the various changes made by the previous government, including the fee increase to $630, would result in a decline of applications.

As the proposed changes to residency and testing in Bill C-6 need to go through the parliamentary process, followed by coming-into-force provisions, these unlikely to be implemented much before 2017.

Filed under C-6, Citizenship, Citizenship Act

Statistics Canada: The contribution of immigration to the size and ethnocultural diversity of future cohorts of seniors

2016/03/11 Leave a comment

Projected_distribution_of_various_cohorts_at_age_65__by_place_of_birthNot surprising but interesting:

The aging of Canada’s population is currently related to the baby-boom cohort reaching their senior years. Subsequent cohorts will continue to sustain high populations of seniors because of declining mortality rates and higher immigration levels.

According to population projections, future cohorts of older Canadians could also be more ethnoculturally diverse, as a larger portion of them could be born outside of Canada.

Source: The Daily — Study: The contribution of immigration to the size and ethnocultural diversity of future cohorts of seniors

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Liberals vow to review Canada’s poor record jailing Islamist fighters returning to country

2016/03/11 Leave a comment

Reasonable approach as part of the overall review under-way:

Canada’s poor record at jailing Islamist fighters returning from Syria and Iraq will be scrutinized as part of the government’s overhaul of the nation’s security apparatus.

The commitment Tuesday by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, responsible for Canada’s chief spy agency and the RCMP, follows news that about 60 individuals in Canada are suspected to have returned from foreign battlefields and the ranks of the Islamic State, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

None have been charged, though Parliament in 2013 created four new criminal laws against leaving the country or attempting to leave to engage in terrorist activities. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) believes about 180 others from Canada are currently fighting with, or aiding, extremist movements overseas.

The numbers were revealed Monday by CSIS Director Michel Coulombe, testifying before the Senate’s committee on national security. The principal concern is that some of those who survive and return to Canada could use their combat skills to launch attacks here or become terrorist recruiters, fund-raisers and domestic organizers.

Goodale and RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, appearing before the Commons public safety committee Tuesday, said the paucity of foreign fighter prosecutions — there has been just one — reflects the high evidentiary standards in Canada’s criminal courts. (Five other men have been charged in absentia, but two have reportedly been killed fighting in Syria.)

Gathering incriminating intelligence in a far-flung combat zone, then turning it into evidence to satisfy guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is tough. What’s more, CSIS has no law enforcement powers and terrorism-related criminal charges are up to the RCMP.

“It’s a challenge to be able to get the evidence that’s required to prove our cases to our standards here in Canada,” Paulson told reporters. “We have been improving collecting that evidence, but it is fundamentally an evidence-collection issue.”

Increasingly, police and other authorities are using heavy surveillance, immigration law, detentions, peace bonds and disruption tactics to watch, remove, control and thwart the activities of those who have returned.

Both Goodale and Paulson flatly rejected the notion of lowering criminal law thresholds.

Instead, Goodale said the issue will be included in the government’s promised review of Canada’s national security framework.

“How do you make that important transition from intelligence information to prosecutorial evidence? All of that is part of what we will be examining,” he said.

Source: Liberals vow to review Canada’s poor record jailing Islamist fighters returning to country | National Post

Filed under Radicalization Tagged with

25,000 Syrian refugees in four months: How did Canada do it?

2016/03/11 Leave a comment

Rob Vineberg’s good summary of the mechanics of the Syrian refugee intake, in The Interpreter of Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy.

His conclusion is noteworthy:

How did Canada manage to meet such an ambitious goal? Ironically, it was the ambitious goal itself that galvanised the Public Service and the Armed Forces to develop innovative approaches. A smaller goal would have resulted in ‘more of the same’ and disappointing results. As Minister McCallum said: ‘One definition of real change is you’re doing something you’ve never done before.’

Source: 25,000 Syrian refugees in four months: How did Canada do it?

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →