Angus Reid Survey: Islamophobia in Canada-Four mindsets indicate negativity is nationwide, most intense in Quebec

2023/03/16 Leave a comment

No real surprises as similar findings in other surveys. But an evidence-based riposte to criticism of Shachi Kurl’s (ED of Angus Reid) for raising anti-muslim attitudes in Quebec during the 2021 election debate:

A new study from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds unfavourable views of Islam prevalent across the country at varying levels and highest in Quebec.

Indeed, two-in-five Canadians outside of Quebec (39%) hold an unfavourable view of Islam. In Quebec that number reaches half (52%). These views take more concrete forms, however, than just the overall sentiment that the religion receives. Its followers face the risk of being unwelcome in a number of areas of Canadian society.

To clarify the picture further, the Angus Reid Institute created the “Views of Islam Index”. Respondents were asked six questions about five religions – Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. The dimensions measured included:

  • Feeling favourable or unfavourable about the religion
  • Support or opposition to people wearing distinctive religious symbols in public
  • Levels of comfort with working in the same space where colleagues wore these symbols
  • Support or opposition to the establishment of different places of worship in their neighbourhood
  • Acceptance of a child marrying a member of one of these religions.

For the purpose of this analysis and given the ongoing discussion about the level of Islamophobia in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, responses to this national survey were analyzed according to the level of positivity or negativity towards Muslims across all six question areas. Four groups were created, those with Very Positive, Positive, Negative, and Very Negative views of Islam.

A comparison of Quebec with the rest of Canada reveals stark differences. Outside of Quebec, Very Positive and universally accepting views of Muslims and their religious symbols are evident in 37 per cent of the population. A further one-quarter (27%) hold generally positive views but not in all circumstances assessed in the study. On the other end of the spectrum 16 per cent of Canadians outside Quebec hold Very Negative views on Islam and religious practices of this faith in nearly every circumstance assessed in the survey.

In Quebec, positive views are more muted but still represent almost half the attitudinal landscape with one-in-five (20%) displaying Very Positive views and a further one-quarter (25%) on the generally positive side of the index.

That said, the largest segment of the population in Quebec (30%) displays Very Negative views toward Islam. The level is about twice that observed in the rest of the country (16%). This “Very Negative” segment in Quebec is similar to the group of the same name in the rest of Canada with one important exception: among this group in Quebec there is a distinct level of negativity towards Judaism and Christianity that is less prevalent elsewhere in the country.

Amid this, Quebec’s Bill 21 continues to be supported by more than half in that province (57%). That law, which prohibits the wearing of religious symbols for individuals in certain public positions of authority while they are on the worksite, is unpopular in the rest of the country with one-in-four (25%) supporting the concept for their own province and two-thirds (65%) opposing it.

Cliquez ici pour lire le rapport complet en français

More Key Findings:

  • Asked whether Canada has a problem with Islamophobia more broadly, Canadians are evenly divided, with 50 per cent saying it does and 50 per cent saying it does not. Those most likely to view Islam negatively, both in Quebec and in the rest of Canada alike, are also most likely to say there is no problem.
  • There is some correlation between age and education when it comes to the Views of Islam Index. Older Canadians are more likely to be in the Very Negative group than younger ones while younger Canadians are more likely to be in the Very Positive group. As well, half of the Very Negative group has a high school diploma or less, while the Very Positive group is much more likely to have graduated from university than other segments.
  • More than two-in-five (44%) Canadians believe it is unnecessary to have a special representative on combatting Islamophobia, a position recently appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. This view is the overwhelming majority one (82%) of those who have Very Negative views of Islam.
  • Seven-in-ten outside of Quebec (72%) support the wearing of the hijab in public spaces, while 28 per cent oppose it. In Quebec, slightly more than half (55%) are supportive, while 45 per cent voice opposition. In Greater Montreal support for the hijab rises to 63 per cent, while it drops to 46 per cent in the rest of Quebec.

Source: Islamophobia in Canada: Four mindsets indicate negativity is nationwide, most intense in Quebec

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Ie: Minority representation in the House won’t improve without better data

2023/03/16 Leave a comment

Interesting idea, having the Library of Parliament collect and present data on visible minorities. But having the Library use the analysis of analysts like Jerome Black, Erin Tolley, myself and others, however tempting, is unlikely to be accepted by MPs.

Self-identification in their parliamentary bios would be a better approach, but again would require MP consent

Not sure, of course, that this would result in any substantive change or more accurate numbers:

One of the fundamental purposes of the House of Commons is to represent the diversity of interests, identities, and values of Canadian society.

In 2021, Canadians elected 53 members of Parliament of racialized-minority background, 15.7 per cent of the House of Commons. These represent the highest number and share for minority representation in Canada’s history, but a significant representational deficit remains. The 2021 census indicates that 26.3 per cent of Canadians were “visible minorities,” the standard Statistics Canada term for “persons, other than Aboriginal persons, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.” About 20 per cent of Canadian citizens are of racialized background.

Racialized persons in Canada are not evenly distributed across the country, of course. Ninety-five per cent live in a “census metropolitan area,” urban centres of 100,000 people or more. Indeed, in two of Canada’s largest cities, the white population is the minority: 42 per cent in Vancouver and 41 per cent in Toronto.

Because racialized Canadians are concentrated in urban centres, we will tend to be under-represented. Scholar Jerome Black suggests that, as of 2016, 41 of 338 ridings (about 12 per cent) were “minority-majority,” in which visible minorities constituted more than half of the population. In these ridings, parties have been more and more likely to recruit racialized candidates.

However, 109 ridings are more than 95 per cent white. Thus, even though a record 18.2 per cent of 2021 candidates were visible minority, many were running in ridings where there were multiple minority candidates. In Markham-Unionville, for example, all four major party candidates were of racialized status. Many other ridings in the Toronto region, metro Vancouver, and Calgary had similar slates of all or mostly all minority candidates.

Equitable minority representation in Canada’s House of Commons is about both demonstrating a commitment to fundamental values and substantive representation of the diverse needs and interests of Canadians. However, there are no easy solutions. A truly comprehensive, systemic path to improving minority representation needs to consider the roles of electoral systems, party recruitment practices, and other processes outside the halls of the House of Commons.

For the purposes of this series on parliamentary reform, the question, then, is: can anything be done within the bounds of Parliament and its processes?

One small but important step would be to improve the collection of information about the lack of minority representation in the first place. For instance, the Library of Parliament’s database of parliamentarians, Parlinfo, provides information on all MPs and Senators since Confederation, in 1867, including gender and occupation, but not ethnicity or racialized status.

The Library of Parliament provides research and information to parliamentarians and their staffers. Thus, the absence of information on minority representation in Parlinfo suggests lack of interest on the part of parliamentarians rather than deliberate oversight. Nonetheless, given the relatively small number of visible-minority MPs elected in Canada’s history and the fact that scholars such as Jerome Black have already compiled this information, adding it to Parlinfo should be relatively straightforward. The benefit of demonstrating at least modest institutional recognition of racialized status as an important representational concern would surely outweigh the costs of such an effort.

Unfortunately, Parliament itself has shown little concrete interest in this concern. I searched for the term “minority representation” in both the House of Commons and Senate debates from the 41st Parliament (2011-2015) onwards. I found only 13 mentions of the term in the House. None of them concerned the House’s own role and what it could do better. Rather, the mentions mostly related to arguments about electoral and Senate reform – implications for minority representation of different election processes and changes to the way Senators are chosen.

The story is much the same in Senate debate, and searches of committee proceedings in both chambers produce little further evidence of interest. While not an exhaustive search, what I have seen leads me to conclude that parliamentarians have been largely averse to considering their own role in the problem of minority representation, preferring instead to focus on the possibilities, however implausible, of external systemic fixes.

Some of this lack of interest may be complacency about our incremental progress and self-congratulatory belief in Canada as a welcoming, multicultural mosaic. Another reason could be tied to the fact that the political-intellectual class in Canada – opinion-makers and shapers in academia and the media, for example – are significantly more ethnically homogenous than the Canadian population.

The most recent Canadian Newsroom Diversity Surveyconducted by the Canadian Association of Journalists, for instance, reports that “most newsrooms continue to not be representative of the communities they serve.” Minority persons are concentrated in a few large outlets and are less likely to be in full-time leadership positions.

My investigation of diversity in my own field reveals embarrassingly few racialized scholars studying Canadian politics, with less than four per cent of permanent faculty members in departments of political science across Canada. Astonishingly, some larger departments themselves have more white men than there are racialized Canadian politics scholars in the whole country!

The media and academia do not solely determine what is important to parliamentarians, of course, but they do play significant roles in shaping the agenda and the ideas underlying political debate. The lack of diversity in media and academia means that the interests and lived experiences of racialized Canadians are less visible within our political discourse than they should be. It is unsurprising, then, that Parliament and parliamentarians seem so uninterested.

In 2010, a Canadian parliamentary delegation participated in, and signed onto, an Inter-Parliamentary Union statement called the Chiapas Declaration. The declaration committed consenting parliaments to debate and adopt plans to improve minority participation, among other actions. These plans, the declaration states, should include measures such as requiring all legislation to include impact assessment on minorities, regularly discussing minority issues and mainstreaming such issues into parliamentary work, particularly within committees, and allocating resources to provide dialogue spaces for racialized persons and groups within House processes.

Our House of Commons has not followed up on these commitments in any meaningful way. It has not, for instance, created even a committee with a mandate to focus on issues of racialization and minority exclusion, when such a committee is assumed to exist in the Chiapas Declaration. There has been minimal attention to minority representation in debate or committee: what little there is has been focused on external fixes or representation in civil society or the public service rather than in the House itself.

As the Canadian delegation’s report on the declaration reflects, our position has been one of self-satisfaction that because there are no explicit discriminatory laws in Canada preventing minorities from participating in politics and because of the progress we have made, there is not much more we should be doing.

Yet, as this series on parliamentary reform shows, the representational legitimacy and democratic quality of the House of Commons should not be taken for granted. Equitable minority representation and inclusion must be accepted as a core responsibility of the House rather than being considered someone else’s problem.

Source: Minority representation in the House won’t improve without better data

Filed under Multiculturalism, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Opinion | Canada’s citizenship ceremonies aren’t bureaucratic …

2023/03/16 Leave a comment

More commentary. Haven’t seen any supporting the change apart from some tweets:

Having been born in Canada, I’ve never had to participate in a citizenship ceremony to affirm my Canadianess. I have partaken in the process in other ways. I’ve been privileged to write letters to the government on behalf of friends who were on the path to becoming Canadians. I’ve attended ceremonies both personally and professionally, and always felt proud to have been there to welcome our newest citizens.

So when I read last week that the Department of Citizenship and Immigration was considering moving away from the in-person swearing in as a way to reduce a three-month backlog for ceremonies, I was suitably aghast.

While it may be old-fashioned, there is power in ceremony and in this ceremony in particular. It’s a tangible moment that marks a transition, whether it’s a conversion of convenience or the fulfilment of a lifelong dream. It’s an experience shared with all those who’ve become citizens since 1947. It’s about becoming something new, something different. It’s about belonging, about knowing that Canada can be your home now and forever. You are now a part of Canada, and no one can take that away from you.

I get that it can be inconvenient to take time off work and drag the kids out of school to attend. I get that for some, acquiring Canadian citizenship is no more momentous than buying a new toaster. I get that swearing an oath of citizenship in your living room is no less binding than doing it in a nondescript government office. I get all that, but by ditching the in-person ceremony, something important would be lost — something that a tick box on a computer screen could never replace.

At the ceremony, you’re surrounded by strangers who’ve come to this country from all across the globe. They may be refugees fleeing war. They may be migrants seeking a better life. They may be family members of those already here. It’s entirely possible that the only connection that you have with these people is that you all happened to be in the same room on the same day.

Then something magical happens. You all recite the oath and all become fellow Canadians.

The rituals around becoming a citizen aren’t some bureaucratic nonsense like getting your driver’s licence renewed. They are something with real meaning. It’s meant to be special. It’s meant to be an occasion. It’s meant to shared with the community.

So if the government really wants to clear the backlog, it can do what’s been done in the past — deputize Order of Canada recipients to preside over these ceremonies. Who better to welcome new Canadians to the family than some of our country’s best and brightest?

Sometimes traditions need to change or evolve because they’re no longer fit for purpose. That’s not the case with the citizenship ceremony. Joining Canada is a special moment and deserves to be treated as one.

Gordon Cameron is the group managing editor for Hamilton Community News, The Sachem and The Glanbrook Gazette.

Source: Opinion | Canada’s citizenship ceremonies aren’t bureaucratic …

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Mulroney: There is nothing racist about creating a foreign-agent registry in Canada

2023/03/15 Leave a comment

Of note, agree not racist as these actions pertain to the Chinese regime:

Amid reports of Chinese foreign interference in Canadian elections, federal ministers Marco Mendicino and Mary Ng have voiced concerns that setting up a registry of foreign agents could unfairly target Canadians of Chinese origin and even prove racist.

But this argument doesn’t just prejudice people before any consultations even begin – it is also based on false assumptions about foreign agents and their victims.

Far from being racist, requiring transparency of those who speak, lobby, or disburse money for China or any other foreign state protects vulnerable members of diaspora communities, who are often the first targets of foreign interference. Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party has long prioritized the infiltration, coercion and harassment of diaspora communities worldwide as a means of advancing its power and influence. This has accelerated under Xi Jinping, whose vision of “the Great Chinese nation” uses patriotism as a cover for the extension of China’s extraterritorial reach. The party and its proxies routinely infiltrate student groups, cultural and community associations and Chinese-language media in foreign countries. In Canada, this has been enabled by the shameful failure of our own officials to protect diaspora members from the long arm of the Chinese state.

The most odious example of Beijing’s extraterritorial reach is the establishment of what have been referred to as overseas “police stations.” Human rights groups have said that Chinese officials use these places to interrogate and intimidate people of Han Chinese, Tibetan and Uyghur origin, hoping to compel their return to China to face prosecution. The RCMP is now reportedly investigating sites in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. As welcome as these efforts are, it’s hard to understand why it has taken so long. It is reasonable to worry that, until recently, at least some Canadian police may have simply assumed that whatever went on in Chinese diaspora communities was China’s business.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only indication that Canadian officials may be facilitating the steady accumulation of extraterritorial power by Chinese diplomats.

Show up at a Lunar New Year’s gala anywhere in the country and you’ll find Canadian politicians at all levels and from all parties falling over themselves to pay lavish tribute to China’s flag, anthem and diplomats. This joyous family celebration, which China’s communist rulers banned for many years, has been cynically co-opted by Beijing’s diplomats, who turn the event into a victory lap and a high-profile demonstration of their local authority. Instead of voicing a challenge at these events, Canadian politicians seem more intent on squeezing into the group photo with the presiding Chinese functionary.

Interference by the Chinese state is by no means limited to diaspora communities, something a registry of foreign agents would make clear. There is mounting evidence that China’s efforts are ambitious, sophisticated, and national in scope. Yet oddly enough, the fact that not all foreign agents are of Chinese ethnicity seems not to have occurred to Mr. Mendicino and Ms. Ng.

I have for some time advocated for an Australian-style foreign agent registry in Canada, one designed to include the names of everyone who is delivering Beijing’s talking points, disbursing its payoffs, and lobbying on its behalf. Such a list would almost certainly include more than a few residents of Canada’s capital, where many former ministers and mandarins remain after retirement to run associations, represent major firms, opine on nightly news panels, rub shoulders with serving officials and, in some cases, advance agendas on behalf of foreign paymasters. Canadians need greater transparency from this privileged and, it needs to be said, ethnically diverse community, which exercises considerable influence behind the scenes.

Former politicians and public servants should be required to report any arrangements in which they market to foreign states the knowledge, experience and contacts they gained while serving Canada, or that require them to perform any functions in Canada for such states. This would include disclosure of board memberships, consulting contracts, subsidized travel, appointments to political bodies, and other perks provided to themselves or family members, directly or indirectly by foreign states.

In addition, I’ve also recommended that work as a foreign agent render individuals ineligible for appointment to federal boards and agencies, and for membership in the Order of Canada or elevation to the Privy Council. How can we extend our continuing trust to individuals who have decided to serve a foreign state, especially one that is hostile to Canada? There is nothing “Honourable” or, indeed, “Right Honourable” about being on Beijing’s payroll.

Setting up a registry of foreign agents is in no way racist. But assuming it would contain only Chinese names is.

David Mulroney served as Canada’s ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from 2009 to 2012.

Source: There is nothing racist about creating a foreign-agent registry in Canada

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Lynn McDonald: Get the facts right before condemning the past

2023/03/15 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

The City of Toronto’s decision to rename Dundas Street probably helped the then Ryerson University administration to decide on its renaming — it was well along the way. The renaming forces at Ryerson, in turn, likely inspired a University of Toronto student to call for the renaming of Woodsworth College, founded in 1974 in honour of James Shaver Woodsworth on the centenary of his birth.

This proposed renaming, which appeared to go nowhere, appeared in a student newspaper, The Innis Herald. The 2020 opinion piece by Marloes Streppel denounced Woodsworth for his (supposed) support of residential schools and the “forced relocation of approximately 150,000 Indigenous children,” with their “severe neglect, sexual and physical abuse, and starvation.” Streppel’s op-ed, “James S. Woodsworth: A man to remember, never to glorify,” even had Woodsworth consider “cultural genocide” to be “satisfactory,” “from the white man’s standpoint.”

The trouble is that she based some of her remarks on an article by a different Woodsworth — Joseph Francis (J.F.) Woodsworth, principal of the Edmonton Residential School from 1925 to 1946. His article, “Problems of Indian Education in Canada,” appeared in a book, The North American Indian Today, 1939, which includes not a reference to J.S. Woodsworth, or Egerton Ryerson for that matter, in its 361 pages. Moreover, J.F. Woodsworth himself questioned the residential school system in his article:

“I have often been possessed of a sense of guilt in going into the Indian home or tepee and taking little children from that home, sometimes at bedtime hour, when the mother should be putting her child to rest for the night, and in rushing with my load of children into the night miles away, to put them into my school. It is true that they trusted me and were in a way willing for the children to go — but it was not essentially right. Yet the bulk of our Indian youth is at present in residential schools. These schools may be efficient, but we must not sacrifice the spirit and souls of these people, to say nothing of the joy of home and children, upon the altar of efficiency.”

Both Woodsworths were Methodist ministers, but had nothing else in common. J.S. Woodsworth was a leading advocate for welfare reform, the right of workers to unionize, and the first leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, later called the New Democratic Party. In the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, he went to jail briefly for seditious libel, notably for quoting the Book of Isaiah: “They will build houses and inhabit them.” What a subversive housing policy!

Streppel went on to describe J.S. Woodsworth as “racist” for his book “Strangers Within Our Gates: or, coming Canadians,” 1909, for classifying people according to their “race and country of origin.” Given that the book is about immigrants, that would seem to be the point. It gives a sympathetic account of the difficulties non-British immigrants experience in Canada.

It is troubling to see a university student so inept at reference checking, but the president of Victoria University (University of Toronto), Dr. William Robins, was just as inaccurate in 2021 in calling for the renaming of Victoria University’s Ryerson residence and Ryerson scholarships. Robins had Ryerson proposing “residential schools,” a term he never used, “to “train students to become agricultural labourers.” Yet Ryerson’s proposal was for “industrial schools” to teach Indigenous youth who wanted to learn farming. He looked to their becoming “overseers of some of the largest farms in Canada,” or “industrious and prosperous farmers on their own account.” He also set out an academic program far beyond what “agricultural labourers” would require: English, arithmetic, elementary geometry, geography, general history, natural history, agricultural chemistry, writing, drawing, vocal music, religion, morals and book-keeping (for farm accounts). The summer program would have more reading and vocal music, with the natural history of the plants, vegetables, trees, birds and animals of the country, with its geography and history.

The year 2024 will mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of Woodsworth College. Might we hope for a real celebration there, and the continued running of Dundas streetcars? The one Dundas name I would like to see removed — and it would not be costly — is Dundas Square. It should be renamed “Ryerson Square,” which could not happen until people realize how they were hoodwinked into blaming Ryerson for what others did in the residential school system. He supported rather the voluntary, bilingual schools Indigenous leaders and parents wanted. He was honoured by an Ojibway chief, who called him “brother” and gave him an Ojibway name. Dundas Square is close to where Canada’s first teacher training college stood, established by Ryerson, the founder also of free public education in Canada, when it was a revolutionary idea.

Source: Lynn McDonald: Get the facts right before condemning the past

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The Roxham Road dilemma: What are Canada’s options in the border controversy?

2023/03/15 Leave a comment

Good in-depth overview:

Jose Moncada Urbina gets emotional when he hears people talking about shutting down Roxham Road, the famous rural route in Quebec that opens Canada’s door to asylum seekers.

Sitting in his cosy Mississauga home, the Nicaraguan man can’t help but reflect on his own journey, fleeing police violence and political persecution — and imagining how life would have been different for his family now if they had been denied that lifeline to safety.

“To think that other people won’t have the same opportunity and chance that my family and I had,” pauses the 47-year-old man, tearing up, “makes me upset.”

A spike in irregular migration and U.S. President Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to Ottawa have put both Roxham Road and the Safe Third Country Agreement, our bilateral border pact with the U.S., in the spotlight. Critics say neither are working, but what are the alternatives and will they just create new problems?

Although irregular migrants have been crossing for decades at Roxham Road, one of many entry points along the 8,890-kilometre porous land border with the United States, it gained prominence — and notoriety — with the surge of foot traffic spurred by the anti-immigration agenda when Donald Trump became U.S. president in 2017.

Ottawa’s asylum ban against these border crossers during the pandemic halted the flow, but the influx returned as soon as the ban was lifted in November 2021. Last year, the RCMP intercepted 39,540 people who crossed between Canadian ports of entry. In January alone, already some 5,000 entered Canada in the same manner.

Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, Canada and the U.S. each recognize the other country as a safe place to seek refuge. It dictates that migrants should pursue their claims in the country where they first arrived.

But the policy does not apply to the woods and dirt roads — and waterways — between official crossings, which some say is a “loophole” that makes the measure ineffective in pushing back the border and stopping migrants from seeking asylum in Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans to raise the issue with Biden, and Canadian Immigration Minister Sean Fraser met this week with his White House counterpart.

While the Parti Québécois and the NDP have called for the agreement to be suspended, the Progressive Conservatives want to close Roxham Road as the Liberal government continues its “renegotiation” of the treaty with Washington that started in 2018.

“Canada remains firmly committed to upholding a fair and compassionate refugee protection system that respects the rights of asylum seekers and safeguards the integrity of our border,” Bahoz Dara Aziz, Fraser’s spokesperson, told the Star.

“Irregular migration demands a focus on both the root causes in a migrant’s country of origin, as well as with the promotion of regular pathways and managed borders. This requires co-operation on the international stage, including with the United States on the Safe Third Country Agreement.”

Suspending it or “closing” Roxham Road could result in migrants using other irregular crossings, some of which place them in danger and affect local communities incapable of responding to the influx, said Aziz.

While no quick changes to the border treaty are expected, critics say it’s a root cause of irregular migration that Canada is seeing and something has to be done about it.

Ottawa could expand the rules to the entire border, which, in effect, would plug the opening at Roxham Road; cancel the agreement to allow migrants to orderly seek asylum at official crossings; or tweak the terms to adjust how wide or narrow the door should be open for refugees.

Each option, experts say, could have unintended consequences.

Extending asylum ban across the entire border

Irregular migration on the northern border has been a “less salient” issue for Washington, which saw immigration arrests from the southern border with Mexico top 2 million last year, said Susan Fratzke, senior policy analyst at Migration Policy Institute, a bipartisan think tank in Washington.

That explains the cold reception from the U.S. in response to Canada’s request. In a recent interview with the CBC, American ambassador to Canada, David L. Cohen, said changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement would do little to solve irregular migration.

Even if the White House is willing to renegotiate, Fratzke said it’s hard to predict if the number of irregular migrants to Canada will go up or down with the closure of Roxham Road because desperate migrants would find more perilous and surreptitious ways to come.

But expanding the asylum ban to the entire border could have an immediate political impact.

“It’s something that has a lot of appeal in terms of the messaging of it. This would send a message to people who are trying to cross that it is something that will no longer be as easy or as possible,” said Fratzke.

“Policymakers on both side of the border still need to be prepared for other incentives and unintended consequences it creates as regards to how people will behave. It certainly won’t in itself solve the problem.”

For decades, successive Canadian governments had pushed the U.S. to sign the pact because the flow of migrants at the Canada-U.S. border disproportionately came from the south to north as it was generally easier to first enter the U.S.

According to a U.S. House of Representatives hearing, in the year prior to the treaty taking effect in 2004, about 14,000 asylum seekers came through the U.S. to Canada but only about 200 went the other way.

The September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 gave Ottawa a chance to push for the treaty, with Washington conceding to Canada’s lobby in exchange for more border security co-operation.

Fratzke said such bilateral treaties are built on signatories sharing similar asylum processes and immigration policies such as visa requirements.

The Dublin Regulation, a similar regime in Europe, was first established in 1990 but she said it is still rife with challenges with its implementation because systems and capacities of the member states are not always in sync.

“One of the reasons why you would implement something like a safe third country agreement is because the odds and conditions under which someone is being considered for asylum in one country are quite similar to those in another country,” said Fratzke.

“It’s fair to say that even within the context of the EU, where there is co-operation and alignment between countries’ asylum and migration systems, implementing an agreement based on safe third country principles has been difficult.”

And that’s a problem between Canada and the U.S., according to critics, who argue that the U.S. asylum system is cruel and inhumane, which makes it unsafe for refugees.

For it to work, both the Canadian and American governments must also do their equal part in preventing migrants from entering the other country, said University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin, who has studied the border agreement closely.

It did not help, for example, when the City of New York began providing free bus tickets to migrants heading north to claim asylum in Canada.

Before the border treaty was signed, said Macklin, experts and advocates testifying before Parliament had warned them about the anticipated disorderly irregular entries into the country, and that the rules would not deter people from coming.

Although the number of asylum claimants in Canada dropped by 23 per cent to 19,748 a year after the agreement was implemented in 2004, the decline was short-lived as migrants tried other ways to skirt the rules.

There were ebbs and flows through the years in response to global refugee crises and domestic policy changes such as visa requirements against certain refugee-producing countries. But it peaked at 64,030 in 2019 during the Trump era before the pandemic hit.

“It’s not just about extending the agreement so Canada can push people over the border. It would be asking the United States to develop an entire apparatus on its side,” said Macklin.

“How do you make people stop wanting to flee the country they’re in to get to a place that they think is better or safer? That’s the question. It’s not even in the United States’ control?”

Macklin points out that Canada could build a wall and invest billions of dollars in surveillance technology and hire border patrols but it costs far less to process asylum claims made by irregular migrants.

Scrapping Safe Third Country Agreement

When the Nicaragua government started using armed forces to crack down on protests against tax hikes and pension reductions in April 2018, it was the last straw for Moncada Urbina, a computer engineer, and his wife, Norma, a lawyer.

The couple joined peaceful demonstrations to condemn police violence and supported the young protesters trapped in university campuses by delivering them food, water and medical supplies.

As authorities began detaining and jailing dissidents and sympathizers, Moncada Urbina decided to seek refuge in Canada, where he has close relatives.

However, only he and his eldest daughter, Katherine, now 21, had a visa to Canada and they didn’t have time to apply for a travel document for his wife, Norma, 48, and their two other children, Allison, 16, and Daniel, 13.

Instead, with their American visas (except for Norma, who went into hiding), Moncada Urbina flew to Boston with the three teenagers and arrived at Roxham Road three days later, in September 2018.

“My children couldn’t cross at a port of entry without a visa. Roxham Road was our only option,” said Moncada Urbina, whose family was granted asylum in 2021, with his wife arriving this past November.

“If you shut down Roxham Road, people would pick more dangerous ways or use traffickers to come. It’s human nature for survival,” he said.

And that would be the last thing that Loly Rico would like to see happening.

The executive director of Toronto’s FCJ Refugee Centre said Canada has a more fair asylum system that processes cases faster and allows claimants to work while waiting for their hearings. With Biden’s administration continuing Trump’s policies, Rico said the push for irregular migrants to Canada won’t end anytime soon.

Scrapping the Safe Third Country Agreement would mean a return to the way things were managed before 2004, when asylum seekers could cross at any of the 100-plus land ports of entry in eight provinces.

Currently 99 per cent of irregular migrants cross through Roxham Road and in June the federal government started transferring them to Ontario and other provinces, housing them in hotels.

As of this month, 7,848 asylum claimants have been transferred to Ontario, including 702 to Ottawa, 1,028 to Windsor, 4,618 to Niagara Falls, and 1,500 to Cornwall. Since February, 113 have been transferred to Halifax, 38 to Fredericton and 25 to Moncton.

Between 2017 and 2021, Ottawa issued payments totalling $551.6M to cover housing costs of asylum seekers who arrived in the U.S. through irregular means: $374 million to Quebec, $144.1 million to Toronto, $17.1M to Ottawa, $8 million to Manitoba, $6 million to B.C., $2.2 million to Peel Region and $220,000 to Hamilton.

Abolishing the border agreement “is not going to open a flood gate but would distribute migrants more evenly across Canada,” said Rico, who with her late husband, Francisco Rico Martinez, fled El Salvador in 1990 under a program to grant asylum to those trapped in their own country that was spiked by the Harper government in 2012.

Toronto refugee lawyer Raoul Boulakia agreed.

“There’s no reason for irregular migration when you don’t have a safe third country agreement,” said Boulakia, who has seen migrants choosing to remain in the U.S. underground even if they would have met an exemption from the rules for asylum at a Canadian port of entry.

“By not having people go through irregular points of entry, we’re allowed to have a lot more flexibility to distribute where people are entering. People do have a higher likelihood of staying at where they arrive.”

In February, the Biden administration introduced new rules to deny asylum to migrants who show up at the southern border without first seeking protection in a country they passed through, said Boulakia, and that could help check the downstream of northbound migration.

Tweaking the terms of the border treaty

The Safe Third Country Agreement provides exceptions for some groups to make an asylum claim at Canada’s official crossings

  • Those with family members in the country;
  • Unaccompanied minors;
  • Someone with a valid visa and permit to enter Canada
  • People who have been charged with or convicted of an offence that could subject them to death penalty in the U.S. or in a third country.

University of British Columbia law professor Efrat Arbel said the border agreement allows either country to make exceptions unilaterally.

“We have at our fingertips the ability to create a larger scope of protections through these exceptions that will result in greater efficiency, in saving resources, and a more principled, more progressive, more rights protecting approach to managing our borders,” said Arbel, who teaches refugee and constitutional law.

Ottawa could exempt migrants fleeing gender-based persecution or those from countries where Canada has a moratorium for removals due to wars or human rights violations, she said.

But at the end of the day, it’s a zero sum game that would simply divert migrants from one way to another to reach a safe destination as the displaced population worldwide continues to grow, doubling in the last decade to more than 100 million people.

Roxham Road is a byproduct of the global response to the refugee crisis, said Arbel.

“Through the deliberate acts of the Canadian government, there is no other point of entry. And combined with the fact that Canada is so geographically removed from the world conflict zone, it becomes impossible or practically impossible for migrants who are seeking protection to access Canada any other way,” she explained.

“These are measures that prohibit refugees and asylum seekers from meaningfully accessing rights protection based on how they enter or where they enter from, and not the reason why they are seeking entry.”

Macklin said the concerns over irregular migration do appear to be more about border control and possibly racism than the actual number of arrivals. She pointed to Canadians’ response to Ottawa’s special immigration measures that, in just over a year, welcomed 178,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian war.

“Nobody is hysterical about the numbers, it seems to me,” said Macklin. “It’s not about numbers, right? It’s about whiteness. Look, we have made it our choice and therefore, it’s OK.”

Last October, the Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal by asylum seekers and rights groups to declare the Safe Third Country Agreement unconstitutional. A decision is pending.

“Oddly enough, if the federal government loses the Supreme Court appeal, it will actually solve the problem for them,” Macklin said.

Source: The Roxham Road dilemma: What are Canada’s options in the border controversy?

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To really tackle Beijing’s interference, Canada must engage with the Chinese diaspora

2023/03/15 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

What needs to happen before Canada takes action on foreign interference? Apparently something as drastic as leaks of top-secret intelligence documents to the media.

Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to recent reports of Chinese foreign interference and disinformation campaigns in Canadian federal elections by announcing that his government would appoint an independent special rapporteur to investigate, provide recommendations and decide if a public inquiry is necessary. Further steps include reviews by intelligence bodies on such foreign-interference issues and new funding for civil-society organizations to combat disinformation.

Mr. Trudeau also announced consultations on a foreign-agent registry and the appointment of a new foreign-interference co-ordinator at Public Safety Canada. (Consultations on a foreign-agent registry – a policy previously pursued by Kenny Chiu, the former Conservative member of Parliament who was reportedly targeted by a Beijing-led online disinformation campaign – were actually announced back in December.)

This is all welcome news, and it signals that Ottawa may finally be taking foreign interference seriously. But the government continues to rely on top-down methods to address the issue, despite the fact that it alone cannot adequately take on the problem – and nor should it be the sole institution to take on the challenge. While funding is coming for non-governmental organizations to tackle disinformation, what is needed is a whole-of-society approach.

This includes engagement with a broader range of traditional and non-traditional stakeholders, such as academia, the private sector, media and local communities. Crucially, it prioritizes engagement with these stakeholders and with NGOs, aims to facilitate active participation in the decision-making process and strives to rebuild trust in our public institutions. In the specific case of foreign interference, it would allow the challenge to be tackled in ways that do not demonize equity-deserving groups.

In contrast, the current and proposed actions by the Canadian government overlook the targeted individuals and affected communities at the heart of China’s foreign-interference efforts. Canada’s response continues to miss opportunities to engage with the Chinese diaspora and dissident communities who have long been sounding the alarm on the Chinese Communist Party’s meddling in our democracy.

The issue of foreign interference, after all, goes beyond electoral meddling. It also involves the covert amplification of pro-Beijing narratives and the suppression of anti-Beijing ones. This has ramifications for the Chinese diaspora, which has found itself caught in the crossfire between two worlds and the geopolitical tension between them.

The status quo represents a silencing on two fronts. While the Chinese diaspora faces increasing anti-Asian sentiment and marginalization in Canada, the baggage of another home has followed them across oceans. Those who dare to speak out against the CCP, even on Canadian soil, endanger not only themselves but their friends and loved ones back in China or other PRC-controlled territories.

This is why the whole-of-society approach should centre on the Chinese diaspora – particularly the vulnerable communities within it, such as Hong Kongers, Uyghurs and Tibetans. While the diaspora and dissident communities bear the brunt of foreign interference by the CCP, these groups are often ignored when they could be helping to combat it. Many Hong Kongers, for instance, are well versed in tactics used by the CCP to target voters, having seen them in action firsthand in their own elections.

Canada must also engage with stakeholders who can communicate in the languages spoken in the community, who understand how cultural norms intersect with broader Canadian society, and who can meet members of the community where they are at. To increase civic engagement we must be able to communicate and educate in ways that are both respectful of one’s self-determination and understanding of the geopolitical tensions vulnerable groups must contend with.

National security concerns such as foreign transnational repression must be considered, too, to ensure that targeted communities can safely and freely engage in democracy without ramifications.

Foreign interference is a challenge that is here to stay. While the federal government is taking encouraging first steps, these can only be the beginning. A whole-of-society approach is required not only to address this issue, but to give a voice to those who have been silenced for so long.

Ai-Men Lau is a research analyst at Doublethink Lab and adviser to Alliance Canada Hong Kong. She is a contributor to Alliance Canada Hong Kong’s 2021 Report “In Plain Sight: Beijing’s unrestricted network of foreign influence in Canada.”

Source: To really tackle Beijing’s interference, Canada must engage with the Chinese diaspora

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Conservatives had sudden, unusual drop in votes in ridings of concern for Chinese interference: data

2023/03/15 Leave a comment

Good analysis of election data and hard to argue that there was no effect due to Chinese government influence or interference given the scale and concentration of the drop. The pollsters consulted I think are being overly coy and neither I believe has detailed polling of Chinese Canadians or understanding of their issues (the Harper government was more harsh on China and yet did well among Chinese Canadians):
Evidence of China’s alleged influence in the 2021 federal election might be found as much in what didn’t happen as what did — namely, the significant number of previous Conservative voters who did not show up to cast a ballot in ridings in British Columbia and Ontario.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced probes into allegations of foreign interference last week after several media reports suggested Beijing had directed an interference campaign in a few ridings in the Toronto and Vancouver areas.The National Post reviewed voting tallies from ridings identified as areas of concern by various reports and by Conservative campaign officials. The ridings are all home to large populations of Chinese Canadians.

Across multiple ridings, a similar pattern emerged: Conservative candidates saw significantly fewer supporters coming to the polls, however the Liberals did not see large gains, indicating not that large numbers of voters switched allegiances, but that for some reason, large numbers of voters did not vote at all.

Markham–Unionville is one of the ridings Conservatives have pointed to as a concern. The former MP, Bob Saroya, won the suburban Toronto seat in 2015 and 2019 as a lonely blue island in a sea of Liberal red across the region.

In 2015, Saroya received 24,605 votes, about 3,000 more than his Liberal challenger, allowing him to take a seat from the Liberals even as the Trudeau government was swept to power. Saroya held the seat in 2019, receiving just over 26,000 votes, but in 2021 his vote total fell by more than 7,000 and he lost.

The victorious Liberal MP, Paul Chiang, put on a strong campaign garnering nearly 22,000 votes. It was Chiang’s first election, and on doorsteps he emphasized his strong local roots in the riding and his decades of work as a police officer. Trudeau visited the riding several times. But Chiang only received 1,500 more votes than the previous Liberal candidate did. Far more important to the election result was the steep drop in support for Saroya.

Chiang has shown no evident favouritism to China since being elected, voting for a motion condemning the Chinese government for their treatment of the Uyghur genocide just last month.

In B.C., former Conservative MP Alice Wong won the seat for Richmond Centre in 2015 with more than 17,000 votes and in 2019 with more than 19,000 votes. But in 2021, her vote count sank by almost 6,000 votes, to 13,440. She lost to a Liberal, despite the Liberal vote increasing only by about 2,000.

Several other ridings around Toronto and Vancouver with large Chinese Canadian populations saw declines in Conservative support, without the bulk of that support switching to other parties.

Former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu lost his Steveston-Richmond East riding after 4,400 fewer Conservative supporters voted for him in 2021 than in 2019. He has alleged a misinformation campaign was spread on Chinese social media apps, including WeChat, about his party and his positions, including that the Conservatives were going to ban WeChat.

However, Chiu also said many of his constituents were extremely cautious of COVID and Trudeau’s decision to run an election during a pandemic hurt his campaign.“It’s understandable right in the middle of the pandemic, that people not only would not open their door, let alone go out to the ballot and vote,” Chiu said.

Chiu’s riding has been hotly contested in the past. He won fairly narrowly in 2019 after losing in 2015. He said he is still convinced there was outside interference, because the time between the 2019 and 2021 elections had been so short, and most of the news about the Liberals during that time was negative.

“Between 2015 and 2019, there are four years. Between 2019 and 2021, there are 22 months, and all of that (time) it’s all pandemic and it’s full of government scandals,” Chiu said.

Éric Grenier, a polling analyst who runs The Writ website, said it’s clear the Conservatives lost support in a wide swath of ridings, and supporters mostly stayed home“It is pretty clear that the Conservatives were in trouble in ridings with big Chinese Canadian populations, because they did lose a lot more support in those ridings than they did in neighbouring ridings,” he said.

Grenier said many factors could explain the drop. To begin, overall voter turnout dropped by five per cent between 2019 and 2021. He also points to local candidate factors and other possibilities.

“In these ridings, it’s clear that something was happening that was motivating those voters, it’s just impossible to say what it was.”

Andrew Enns, vice president with polling firm Léger, said these ridings are an anomaly because the Conservative vote declined, even as it rose more broadly across Ontario and British Columbia. He agrees there could be many other factors at play.

“You’ve got to really look at other factors, the quality of the candidate. Did something happen to that local candidate in the campaign? And I don’t have any answers to that. But it is certainly an unusual trend.”

Enns said it is also possible Chinese Canadians soured on the Conservatives. While there was evidence of misinformation circulating about the party’s view on China, the party’s then leader, Erin O’Toole, generally favoured a more hawkish stance with the country.

Source: Conservatives had sudden, unusual drop in votes in ridings of concern for Chinese interference: data

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , ,

Who Is Afraid of Caste Equity in Canada?

2023/03/14 Leave a comment

Of note, from the more activist perspective:

On March 8, 2023, International Women’s Day, the Toronto District School Board’s trustees voted on a resolution (16 in favour and five against) recognising caste oppression and asked the Ontario Human Rights Commission to create the framework to address caste oppression in public education. The motion was spearheaded by Dalit feminist trustee Yalini Rajakulasingam and supported by Anu Sriskandarajah.

This historic initiative in Canada recognises caste oppression on par with racism and sexism. Once the Ontario Human Rights Commission develops a framework and protocols to address caste-based oppression, it will become part of the Human Rights Code. If mandated, all public and private institutions will include rules against caste discrimination in their diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Victims will have access to legal recourse.

Anyone familiar with caste stigma and the violence endured by caste-oppressed Dalits and other minorities should have welcomed this move as a progressive step. But Indian-origin privileged caste Hindus in Canada organised a protest demonstration in front of the TDSB office. In the name of the Canadian Organisation for Hindu Heritage Education, they launched a coordinated campaign against Rajakulasingam and other trustees who supported the motion. The protestors had the support of the Hindu American Foundation and other right-wing organisations in North America.

Privileged caste Hindus as cultural ambassadors

The end of colonial empires, the emergence of a new global order based on nation-states and the collapse of communist regimes led to globalisation. This globalisation relied on the movement of not only capital but also skilled and unskilled labour across Europe, Australia and North America, including to Canada. Moreover, at one level, the shared history of English colonial rule made the North American landscape familiar to the new immigrants from India, especially privileged caste Hindus with generations of English-language education.

As a result, by the 1990s, caste Hindus emerged as the most successful and visible of minorities in North America. They occupy high positions in the corporate sector, government and politics. Thus, they emerged as the cultural ambassadors of India. Notably, given their inherited caste privileges, they had easy access to elite education that enabled them to navigate and succeed in the white power ecosystem.

Moreover, the white colonial powers, such as Germany, France and England, and others like Russia, were obsessed with Sanskrit and Aryan cultures, even tracing their roots there. That is why the orientalist construction of Hinduism by the Europeans as a religion of non-violence, otherworldly yogis and vegetarianism set privileged caste Hindus as different from other racialised minorities, even though they faced racial oppression and violence periodically along with other minorities.

Moreover, historically in the construction of racialised societies in settled colonial spaces like in North America, caste became a template to order and govern by dehumanising non-white souls. In this context, one can see an invisible connection between caste and white supremacy that produced the Aryan race supremacy of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the Italian fascism of Benito Mussolini. The rise of Hindu supremacist nationalism in India in the 1990s was predicated on the theory of one nation, one religion and one language, undermining the plural and diverse cultural history of India. It targeted minorities such as Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and indigenous Adivasis who do not subscribe to the Hindu supremacist agenda.

In this context, privileged caste Hindus who have emerged as India’s cultural ambassadors and faces of the Indian diaspora are normalising a Hindu supremacist ideology. They are targeting and discrediting non-Hindu minorities as anti-nationals and ‘Hinduphobic’ for speaking about the growing violence against minorities and other oppressed sections under the current regime in India, by conflating India with Hinduism.

Why caste equity matters in Canada

This homogeneous construction of Hinduism erases the everyday killings, rapes and lynching of caste-oppressed people. Equally important is how it undermines the violence endured by non-Hindu minorities such as Muslims, Christians and Sikhs in India, Canada and the US. In recognition of this reality, the California State University system and universities across the US and Canada are outlawing caste discrimination and including caste in their diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Recently, the Seattle city council outlawed caste discrimination as the city hosts several corporate headquarters that attract migrants from South Asia.

Racial oppression is visible, and the victims can seek legal recourse. Caste oppression is invisible and has no legal recognition. Privileged caste people in positions of power, while not acknowledging their caste privilege, inflict insidious discrimination, micro-aggressions and humiliation at workplaces and social gatherings. Canada, especially the Greater Toronto Area, is home to countless oppressed caste people. They face everyday forms of aggression, exclusion and discrimination. Even the children who attend schools in the Toronto area face caste-based slurs and humiliation.

Despite Canada being a tolerant and accepting society, caste oppressed people cannot come out and report their sufferings due to the fear of caste stigma and retaliation from their dominant caste colleagues and neighbours.

Fear of equality

Given the hierarchical nature of the caste system, dominant communities have felt entitled to their inherited privileges for centuries. Caste not only accrues social status, but also comes with the material benefits of free labour and the right to violence. Thus, any recognition of caste injustice and violence makes them uncomfortable. They feel the earth under their feet is moving, like they’re losing control over systems of power, both real and imagined. That is why they do everything they can to uphold their privileges and accuse anyone who shows a mirror to their face of ulterior motives.

For example in 2019, I delivered a lecture on caste-based violence in India at the Noor Cultural Center in Toronto. Ragini Sharma, the main organiser of Hindu supremacists in Toronto, protested the event. Attempts were also made to disrupt the proceedings. Not surprisingly, most of the disruptors were older men in their 70s and 80s. I felt sorry for them, as they teach their children and grandchildren hatred instead of empathy for fellow human beings. Ironically, they use the language of multiculturalism, decolonisation, religious fear and anything that helps their agenda of holding on to their privileges.

Even after moving out of their native lands and settling in liberal countries like Canada, where there is no necessity for caste to survive, they feel their existence is under threat if someone talks about caste oppression. They not only deny the existence of caste and but use all weapons at their disposal to discredit those who raise the matter. The ludicrous denial of caste is like the white supremacist denial of racial oppression and the persecution of indigenous people in Canada.

The stories of oppressed castes in South Asia are like those of the indigenous people in Canada, as they were denied fundamental human rights and dignity as human beings. In this context, by recognising caste oppression, the Toronto District School Board has become a trailblazer in upholding people’s humanity without barriers and discrimination. No human being deserves to live under the fear of oppression and exclusion.

Chinnaiah Jangam is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Carleton University.

Source: Who Is Afraid of Caste Equity in Canada?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

McWhorter: Why Racial Discussions Should Also Focus on Progress

2023/03/14 Leave a comment

Agree:

I have argued recently that a useful and inspiring history of modern Black America need not be dominated by discussions of white racism. And having done so, it seems reasonable for me to explain, to at least a limited degree, what I would envision as a potentially better approach.

Specifically, I wrote about a draft curriculum of the College Board’s Advanced Placement course in African American studies. So what other topics might it have included, to counterbalance topics — clearly worthy, yet incomplete — such as reparations, Amiri Baraka and the Black Lives Matter movement?

Let’s try, for one, the notion of Black power. The good word would seem to be that we never really have any. But that isn’t true, and any valid chronicle of the history of what’s been happening to Black Americans since the 1960s must not pretend otherwise.

We have now had a two-term Black president, two Black secretaries of state, one Black (and South Asian) vice president and a Black secretary of defense. These were all borderline unimaginable goals a generation ago.

Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., was elevated in 2020 to become the Catholic Church’s first Black cardinal. He was the first Black president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as far back as the early 2000s — a time at which Dennis Archer was also the first Black president of the American Bar Association.

Lowe’s and Walgreens, two of the nation’s largest retailers, are run by Black chief executives. The reason you probably didn’t know that is because there are now enough Black chief executives to bypass the notion of firsts. This contrasts with 2000, when there were only two prominent Black chief executives of Fortune 500 companies — Franklin Raines at Fannie Mae and Lloyd Ward at Maytag — although that, too, was awesome progress over what had come before.

Successes of this kind should be held up front and center, not dismissed as footnotes or all but buried in equal coverage of remaining disparities — although those should of course be covered elsewhere in a curriculum. The question is how people like this achieved as much as they did despite the obstacles, largely but not exclusively racial, they all faced. We might ask why there isn’t more focus on that question.

I often sense that we are supposed to think of people like this with a certain formulaic admiration. They are what are sometimes called “Blacks in wax” (after, presumably, the museum in Baltimore): nice to know about but ultimately fluky superstars irrelevant to what some might say Blackness is really about. Is the idea that, because they have not usually dedicated themselves to political protest in deed or gesture, it somehow makes them less impressive or less important? That itself would be a radical proposition.

Something else: A modern history of Black America should include how Black English has become, to a considerable extent, a youth lingua franca since at least the 1990s. It is absolutely a fact that attitudes toward Black English can be influenced by racism. However, this is neither the most important nor even the most interesting thing about the dialect. Beyond its awesome grammatical structures, it is fascinating that such a dialect primarily confined to Black usage just 50 years ago now decorates the speech of countless Americans who are not Black at all. And that is because how Black people talk has become an integral part of how America talks.

In Black English, “I’m going to” can be rendered as the marvelously terse “Ima,” as in, “Ima go downstairs.” Thirty years ago, I overheard a white undergraduate woman use this phrase with Black male friends. Then, white people using it were generally ones especially identified with and situated within Black culture — i.e., with a substantially Black friend group. Today I hear white and Asian young people use “Ima” all the time; it is no longer interesting. A student of South Asian heritage wrote a paper for me recently chronicling how his texting with friends, most of whom are not Black, was couched considerably in Black English, as a default medium with no performance or ridicule entailed.

And dismissing this as cultural appropriation won’t do. It’d be like Jewish people complaining that non-Jewish people say “klutz,” “schmooze” and “shtick.” Black English’s transformation of mainstream English has likewise been inevitable, harmless and cool. It’s something great that has happened since the 1960s.

A true and healthy history of Black America should also cover, with the same ardor that it does the L.A. riots of 1992, the efflorescence of Black film starting in the 1980s and continuing into the 2000s. After the Blaxploitation film flame burned out rather quickly in the 1970s, Black movies came out here and there. But starting with the electrically odd, goofy, plangent and true “She’s Gotta Have It” by Spike Lee in 1986, and Lee’s titanic oeuvre of films in its wake, it started to get hard to see every Black film that was released. (I had to give up around 1999.)

The comedies were often of a kind that both taught and amused (“Barbershop”); the romances gave Black women especially equivalents to movies like “When Harry Met Sally” (“Love Jones”); the dramas gave us our forms of movies like “Terms of Endearment” (“Soul Food”); and the gangster pictures finally gave us our James Cagneys and Lee Marvins (“New Jack City”).

A line one often used to hear in response to the idea of progress in Black film was that there existed no Black producer who could greenlight a movie alone. But that’s no longer true, now that Tyler Perry rules his own filmic empire. Some think Perry does not really count because most of his films appeal more to the gut than to the intellect. But then the vast majority of films always have, and I for one have never seen a film of Perry’s without at least one immortal performance of some kind, including, frequently, his own. And they are indeed often damnably funny.

That Black movies are now ordinary is something our historiography should chart and celebrate, much as it should a two-term Black president. The prospect of a film like “Black Panther” even getting made on such a lavish budget, much less being an international sensation, would have sounded like science fiction as recently as the 1990s. The prospect of a high-budget sequel with a mostly Black cast being made even after the star of the original had died? It beggars imagination.

One last example: From the Florida A.P. draft, one might suppose that the thing most interesting about hip-hop is its usage as protest music, given that in the draft music is so dominatingly associated with social and political purposes, advocacy and empowerment. Certainly, protest is part of what the music is; its confrontational cadence is fundamental to the genre. But as to the idea of a hip-hop revolution whereby the music was always supposedly about to unite Black America into some kind of radical political consciousness: How has that panned out?

Hip-hop has been a glorious revolution, indeed — in music, period. Be it party music, protest music, political music, obscene music or Dr. Octagon, a genre that started as street fun in the Bronx has transformed the musical fabric and sensibility of America — as well as that of the whole world. (I once watched a teen rap in Indonesian in New Guinea.) No one denies this, of course. But it is this basic triumph that should center its coverage in a course and be offered as a topic of engagement to curious young people.

I suspect that the idea that a Black historiography would not just wave at but stare at positive developments will rub some the wrong way. But the idea that our history must elevate protest as the most interesting thing about us is peculiar.

It’s worth noting that not that very long ago, Black American movers and shakers were of a similar mind in celebrating the victories more than the — very real — obstacles. In 1901, an issue of the Black newspaper The Indianapolis Recorder listed all of the city’s businesses owned by Black people and crowed, “If after reading the facts and figures as succinctly presented an inspiration comes to any who may be considering embarking in some business enterprise or renews hope in those who are now struggling to attain success we shall feel gratified.”

If a Black man could write that in the era of Plessy v. Ferguson, surely today our curriculums on Black history can recognize more clearly what Black people have accomplished, continue to accomplish and accomplish more with each passing decade. Just because time moves more slowly than we wish it did doesn’t mean we should not recognize its motion. Relaxing the impulse to hold the spotlight on what white people are doing — or not doing, or should have done — can be, among other things, a way to recognize what Black people have accomplished in a nation that brought them across an ocean as slaves.

The protest-focused perspective is rooted, it seems to me, in a take on being Black that was memorably articulated by the writer Ellis Cose in the 1990s in “The Rage of a Privileged Class,” his widely discussed book about middle-class Black people’s sense of alienation: “Hurtful and seemingly trivial encounters of daily existence are in the end what most of life is,” Cose attested, in what he described as the story of what it’s like to be Black in modern America.

Cose’s Weltanschauung is one especially prevalent among academics, artists and journalists. But most people — and most Black people — are none of those three things. I have lost count of how many Black people told me back in the day that they did not share Cose’s take on what we now call “microaggressions” as the very fabric of our existence. Many do share it, to be sure, but their positions share space with those of the other millions of Black Americans who feel closer to the way I do.

The story of Black people in America is much more than the story of what’s wrong with white people. To pretend that this isn’t true, to downplay or ignore decades of progress and accomplishment and to portray political activism — however important and necessary, and it is both — as Black Americans’ main form of accomplishment, is to suggest that white people have already won.

Source: Why Racial Discussions Should Also Focus on Progress

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

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