Blanchet vows to press PM on prof’s use of slur, drawing sharp rebukes from Black MPs

2020/10/27 Leave a comment

While IMO, the professor in question, Verushka Lieutenant-Duval, used the word legitimately to demonstrate reappropriation, rather telling for Bloc and CAQ leaders to spring to her defence given their overall lack of sensitivity to racism and systemic racism:

A controversy over a suspended professor who used a notoriously derogatory word for Black people in class has stirred strong emotions on Parliament Hill, over whether, if ever, the term should be used.

The heated responses came amid a push by the Bloc Québécois to have the government say unequivocally whether the Liberals, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in particular, supported the professor at the heart of the controversy.

Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet said he was unimpressed with Trudeau’s response Wednesday to a question in the House of Commons, and planned to press Trudeau anew on Thursday.

Blanchet said those subjected to hateful words deserve compassion and support, but using the term in an educational context isn’t prejudicial.

Asked what he would say to those who believe otherwise, Blanchet said: “I have to say that you have very rightfully expressed your sensibility and opinion, which I respect absolutely, but which I do not share.”

The issue has been of particular interest in Quebec, where provincial politicians have come to the defence of University of Ottawa professor Verushka Lieutenant-Duval. So have Bloc Québécois MPs on Parliament Hill.

New Democrat Matthew Green blasted the Bloc, saying that defending use of the offensive word under the banner of free speech opens a path for continued racist attacks on Canada’s Black communities.

“For somebody who has had that word hurled against them from the time I was nine years old … that is a dehumanizing word, it is a form of racial violence,” said Green, who was wearing a Black Lives Matter button on his mask.

“Those that would choose to defend it, what they’re really defending is the prerogative to uphold white supremacy.”

Green party Leader Annamie Paul tweeted that she, not Blanchet, has been targeted with use of the slur “and it stung each time.”

“Before making statements about an issue he clearly doesn’t understand, I invite Mr. Blanchet to contact me so I can explain why the N word remains painful for many,” she wrote on Twitter.

Lieutenant-Duval was suspended after using the term during a classroom discussion last month. She has since apologized.

On Wednesday, University of Ottawa president Jacques Frémont issued an appeal for campus calm, saying inflamed rhetoric wouldn’t lead to a resolution.

The decision to remove Lieutenant-Duval from the classroom was not taken arbitrarily, nor was her academic freedom threatened at any point, he wrote.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said healthy and open on-campus debate needed to carried out with respect for professors and students. There must be a similar context of respect if ever the offensive word is to be used under the umbrella of academic freedom, he said.

“The discussions about racism lately have been good in raising awareness of inequalities and unacceptable outcomes,” O’Toole said Thursday.

“So how do you find that balance? I think universities are trying to look at that and there should be respect as part of that process.”

Trudeau wasn’t in question period Thursday, but on Wednesday had told the House of Commons that “we all need to be conscious of the power of our words.”

On Thursday, Bloc MP Kristina Michaud asked Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland if the government would defend academic freedom at the University of Ottawa.

“Obviously, our government and I think every member in this House will defend academic freedom,” Freeland said in French.

“At the same time … and this is a difficult thing, we must be aware of the reality and that we have systemic racism in our country and we must also act on that.”

Source: Blanchet vows to press PM on prof’s use of slur, drawing sharp rebukes from Black MPs

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Fact Checkers Say Trump Built A Wall Of False Claims On Immigration

2020/10/27 Leave a comment

Good summary:

Washington Post fact checkers Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly write in their book that Donald Trump has made more false or misleading statements about immigration than any other issue. According to the authors, that is saying something. The book, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President’s Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies, contains numerous examples of Donald Trump’s statements on immigration and represents a valuable resource.

Immigration Tops in Washington Post Database: “Immigration is the top category of false and misleading claims in our Trump database, accounting for 15% of the total 16,241 statements we fact checked in the first three years of Trump’s presidency,” according to the authors.

That comes to an incredible 2,400 or more false and misleading claims by Donald Trump on immigration, with more than 200 additional such statements since the book was published. Trump has repeated many of the false claims on immigration dozens of times, the authors conclude. Below is a sample of Trump’s statements.

Mexico Will (Not) Pay For the Wall: Kessler, Rizzo and Kelly list Trump’s claim that Mexico is paying for the border wall first in the book. During the 2016 presidential campaign and later, Trump asserted Mexico would pay for the wall. “Mexico’s paying for the wall. You know that. You’ll see that. It’s all worked out. Mexico’s paying,” Trump said at a rally on January 14, 2020.

“Spoiler alert: Mexico has not paid for the wall. Nor is there any suggestion that it will,” the authors note. “The current barrier construction is being paid for with billions of dollars appropriated by Congress for the defense budget and raided by Trump over congressional opposition.” (Emphasis added.)

Family Separation: Trump blamed the separation of children from their parents at the border on the Democrats. “I hate children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law,” said Trump on June 15, 2018.

“Trump’s family separations in 2018 caused a national uproar,” according  to Kessler, Rizzo and Kelly. “U.S. immigration officials separated thousands of Central American migrant children from their parents, sending the kids off to shelters or relatives while their parents were prosecuted and put on track to be deported. The Trump administration’s messaging seemed at times Orwellian. Top government officials claimed there was no family-separation policy. The president falsely asserted that existing laws were forcing his hand. But the real reason for the separations was Trump’s own zero-tolerance policy.”

At the presidential debate on October 22, 2020, Donald Trump tried to blame the Obama administration for the family separation policies that Trump advocated for and encouraged. “Mr. Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy was a deliberate act of family separation, meant to deter migrants from trying to enter the United States,” reported Zolan Kanno-Youngs in the New York Times after the debate. “It directed prosecutors to file criminal charges against everyone who crossed the border without authorization, including parents, who were then separated from their children when they were taken into custody.”

Immigrants and Crime: “The Democrats are really looking at something that is very dangerous for our country. . . .They want to have illegal immigrants pouring into our country, bringing with them crime, tremendous amounts of crime,” said Trump on December 6, 2017.

In the book, Kessler, Rizzo and Kelly cite academic research that shows immigrants do not increase the crime rate: “‘Far from immigration increasing crime rates, studies demonstrate that immigrants and immigration are associated inversely with crime,’ the National Academy of Sciences study concluded. ‘Immigrants are less likely than the native-born to commit crimes, and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have much lower rates of crime and violence than comparable non-immigrant neighborhoods.’”

False Claims About Refugees: “Every Democrat running for president wants to open the floodgates to unlimited refugees from all around the world, overwhelming your communities and putting our national security at grave risk,” said Trump.

The authors labeled this claim by Trump as false. “Refugees do not overwhelm communities because U.S. officials usually place them in different parts of the country,” they note. “There is no evidence that refugees, many of them women and children, endanger national security. Trump often makes false claims associating immigrants with crime. No leading Democrat running for president voiced support for unlimited refugee admissions, though Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren favored raising the annual cap from 18,000, where Trump said it after a clampdown in 2019, to more than 100,000.”

Trump Fabrications About the Diversity Visa Lottery: “Trump consistently mischaracterizes the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, claiming absurdly that foreign countries raffle off green cards granting legal residence in the United States,” the authors write. “In fact, a computer program managed by a State Department office in Williamsburg, Ky., randomly selects up to 50,000 immigrant visa applications per year – out of nearly 15 million in 2017 from countries with low rates of immigration.”

Trump stopped all Diversity Visa applicants from entering the United States in FY 2020 by including them in an April 2020 proclamation.

Trump Attacks on Family Immigration: “The president also invents faux facts,” according to Kessler, Rizzo and Kelly. “Over and over, Trump claimed that the Uzbekistan-born man who in 2017 was accused of killing 8 people with a pickup truck in New York had brought two dozen relatives to the United States through so-called chain migration. The actual number is zero.”

The book raises an important question: If Donald Trump’s immigration policies were actually popular and good for the country, why have journalists found he has lied or misstated facts about immigration and his policies thousands of times?

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

‘Dramatic’ decline in Canadians who say discrimination against Black and Chinese communities is not a problem here

2020/10/26 Leave a comment

Yet another interesting survey from Environics with this encouraging trend:

There has been a “dramatic” decline in the proportion of Canadians who say that discrimination against Black and Chinese communities is no longer a problem in Canada, a new study has found.

The study, conducted by the Environics Institute alongside Vancity, Century Initiative and the University of Ottawa, is based on research conducted over the course of two public opinion surveys, which were completed in August and September. The first survey was conducted online, and gauged the opinions of 3,008 Canadians. The second survey was based on telephone interviews with 2,000 Canadians, and is accurate within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

The surveys have found that there is little divide on the issue of racism in Canada: the views of those that identify as white and those who are racialized have both shifted in the same direction.

The proportion of Canadians who said that discrimination against Chinese-Canadians is no longer an issue has fallen by just over half. In 2019, 63 per cent of Canadians said it was no longer a problem. In 2020, only 31 per cent agreed that discrimination against Chinese-Canadians was no longer a problem.

Similar trends emerged for how Canadians perceive racism against Black communities: Fewer than half as many — 20 per cent — say it is no longer an issue in Canada than in 2019, when 47 per cent said racism against Black Canadians was no longer an issue.

While many Canadians disagreed discrimination against Indigenous communities was no longer a problem last year, the proportion of people that strongly disagreed grew from 29 per cent in 2019 to 43 per cent this year.

The proportion of Canadians that “agree that it is more difficult for non-white people to be successful in Canadian society” has also grown from 2019, the study found.

There has been a decline over the last decade in confidence in local police and the RCMP, the study survey showed, with 73 per cent of Canadians saying they have a lot or some confidence in police. Meanwhile, 64 say the same about the RCMP. In 2010, 88 per cent expressed confidence in local police, and 84 per cent expressed confidence in the RCMP.

Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute, told the Star that typically, opinions change gradually. This year, though, there are clear, sharp changes in the way Canadians view race and policing.

“In the report, we call (the shift) dramatic — and I don’t think we’re exaggerating,” Parkin said. “That’s a dramatic change in a short period of time.”

The major changes in public perception suggest “that something grabbed the public’s attention and led them to think about these issues in a different way from which they’ve been thinking about them before,” he said.

The report cites the wide public discussion around police brutality, anti-Black racism protests and the publicity of racist behaviour towards Chinese-Canadians in the wake of COVID-19 as the likely trigger for the shift.

The report “certainly shows a more openness to the idea of systemic racism,” Parkin said.

The shift in thinking shows “we’re moving forward,” said Marva Wisdom, a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. “I think that is a good thing. So I am very, very hopeful.”

The survey matches up with what those on the ground doing anti-racism work are experiencing and hearing, she said. However, Wisdom said she’s feeling cautious about the results.

There is “vigilance that has to go along with this,” she said. “It’s critical, and it’s important and while I’m hopeful, I also recognize that we have to build in sustainability in the work that we’re doing.”

Public perception “has never been like this before, the response has never been this consistently positive,” Wisdom said.

“People are working to read books and finding out how they can learn about systemic racism. And, I cannot understate how important that is for our country, our communities, and for especially Black and Indigenous populations going forward.”

Source: ‘Dramatic’ decline in Canadians who say discrimination against Black and Chinese communities is not a problem here

For the survey:  Final Report,  Detailed Data Tables

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

@DouglasTodd Nine million people have scooped up Canada’s 10-year visas. Some abuse them

2020/10/26 Leave a comment

More anecdotal than evidence-based regarding the extent of the abuse. It would be relatively straightforward to request a dataset from IRCC that would provide the basis for answering the issues raised in the article:

  • people relinquishing permanent residency by country and immigration category;
  • those being sponsored for permanent residency; and,
  • those requesting asylum status.

Canada has given out more than nine million 10-year visitor visas since the program began, with by far the largest bulk of recipients coming from China and India, followed by people from Brazil and Mexico.

The super-popular multiple-entry visas are generally a benefit to Canada’s economy, say immigration lawyers. But they caution the 10-year, multiple-entry visas can be abused by “shadow investors” to avoid paying property and income taxes in Canada — and as a dubious means by which to claim asylum.

Source: Douglas Todd: Nine million people have scooped up Canada’s 10-year visas. Some abuse them

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Australia: Governments must stop the patronising attitude to multicultural media

2020/10/26 Leave a comment

Similar situation in Canada, unfortunately (see the Canadian Ethnic Media Association’s The Need for adequate and equitable recognition of Canada’s Ethnic media):

Since the beginning of the COVID crisis not a single multicultural media outlet has been invited or been granted access into the daily media briefings from the Victorian Premier or the Australian Prime Minister.

Earlier this year as the reality of the pandemic hit our shores and federal and state governments imposed the first lockdown we saw fear enter into the psyche of the entire community. Supermarket shelves were emptied as a collective primal instinct set in. People envisaged the worst, and it was the government and the media’s role to allay those fears.

At Neos Kosmos we immediately assured our staff and our readers that it was ‘business as usual’, in fact our commitment to report the news was heightened, not only for accuracy but with ongoing rolling coverage as developments unfolded. Our community needed us more than ever.

It has been very difficult to produce the essential service we provide to the community. As with most publishers, we had to cut back our freelance contributors and slash costs wherever we could as advertising revenue plummeted.

Meanwhile our ongoing coverage, in Greek and English, was being distilled from the established mainstream news sources (ABC, News Corporation and Nine outlets). This is not uncommon for any small publisher who needs to cover national or state news, with limited resources.

As the devastating aged care crisis in Victoria emerged in July we decided to ask the Victorian government questions directly on behalf of our readers and the community. Our most respected community members, our parents and grandparents, the pioneers of our community, who sacrificed so much, had been compromised by endemic failures, at both state and federal level. Many began to die.

We made our first request to attend the Victorian Premier’s daily media conference on August 3, as the crisis of the second wave in Victoria was unfolding. As a respected publisher with 63 years of journalism experience behind us, it was a no brainer, we needed to ask questions directly to our Premier. To our surprise we were denied access… and have been denied access ever since.

Earlier in the year, the federal government had set up weekly multicultural media briefings by Minister Alan Tudge, the Acting Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. This was welcome, however, these conferences are more government public relations than the opportunity for media to scrutinise and ask unvetted questions. Media must either submit questions or ask them via chat, leaving it up to the Minister’s advisors as to which get answered and when.

Multicultural media is treated as a second-class citizen, and in the words of a current Victorian Minister, who’s name we shall not reveal, it is being treated in a very ‘paternalistic’ manner. Over the past three and half months we have lobbied our leaders, whilst continuing to request access to the Premier’s briefings. We are continuously denied, being given excuses and that our request will be ‘put forward’.

Well over 150 Greek Australian Victorians have died over the past few months from COVID, an unproportionally high number of the 800 plus that have lost their lives in this state. Our government will not let the community’s represented media ask unvetted questions. Why?

We are told that due to COVID there are limited media placings in the auditorium due to social distancing requirements. We don’t make the cut. We rely on the likes of the ABC, The Australian, The Age and Sky News. When suggesting that we do not need to be physically present, but to be able to ask questions via Zoom, or the like, we were told this suggestion would be ‘put forward’. That was in July. We are still waiting.

That fact of the matter is that no government has wanted to deal with the ‘headache’ of having to manage tens, if not hundreds, of requests from multicultural media outlets to attend conferences. It has even been suggested that it would be easier to consider if we (multicultural media) had a representative group.

Such a suggestion is valid and overdue, and is currently in discussion, however no broad industry group could speak on behalf of vastly different communities and media outlets, each with unique circumstances, needs and even politics.

There is no excuse, governments of all persuasions need to be able to assess a media outlets credibility and public interest, and we need to ask direct questions at briefings. Something must change and government needs to act. Governments must stop the paternalistic behaviour and engage with our journalists. Journalists who understand their communities and who can not only ask the right questions but to make government and mainstream media aware of the nuances of any particular community.

In Melbourne’s most recent outbreak at East Preston Islamic College a mainstream journalist asked the Victorian Premier at his media conference last Friday ‘what improvements had been made in communications with non-English speaking communities’.

The Premier replied “I think that every day we look for different ways, enhanced ways to get to some communities that are pretty hard to get to, they’re hard to sometimes connect with. And that can be language issues, cultural issues, all sorts of things.”

He then went on to say, “we engage with community leaders, we use multicultural media, we use mainstream media, all manner of social media platforms..” and also said “there’s a constant search for ways in which we can better link with the diverse communities that make up our city and state.”

Not a single multicultural media journalist was present at that conference.

Source: Governments must stop the patronising attitude to multicultural media

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

As France mourns slain teacher Samuel Paty, some question secular values

2020/10/26 Leave a comment

Needed discussion:

In January 2015, millions of people flooded the streets of Paris and other French cities to denounce the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. An angry nation brandished brightly colored pencils and banners, defending free expression and France’s staunchly secular ideology.

Five years later, and after another terrorist attack, there’s a sense of deja vu. Today’s protests are smaller. But the horror is the same, following the brutal decapitation of Samuel Paty, a middle school history teacher, after he displayed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on free speech.

The same mocking cartoons which inspired the Charlie Hebdo attacks — and last month’s stabbing of two people in Paris — are again testing the limits of France’s vaunted secularism, or laïcité. Clashing views of faith and free speech are on the line. Feeding the tensions, some experts say, is a broader sense of stigmatization and disenfranchisement felt by many French Muslims, who represent Western Europe’s largest Islamic community.

Now, as President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist government have vowed an all-out war against radical Islam, critics have said the strong defense of secularism is only exacerbating the problem. Instead of providing a neutral space for the country’s melting pot of beliefs, as it’s intended, secularism— enshrined in a 1905 law separating church and state — has become a flashpoint.

“There’s a political culture that has problems with Islam,” said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a prominent sociologist and expert on radical Islam. “And this political culture, laïcité, is a problem.”

Paty was posthumously awarded with France’s highest civilian award, the Legion d’Honneur

Secularism has become ‘a civil religion’

Authorities insist there is no disharmony between moderate Islam and French values. They instead fault communitarianism, a term used in France to suggest an inward-looking view of society that is often, although not exclusively, linked to conservative Islam. More recently, Macron has replaced communitarianism with separatism in his lexicon.

Some observers have said that same inward view helped fuel Paty’s murder, with authorities citing an online hate campaign launched by a disgruntled parent of a student in Paty’s class. That campaign, they say, motivated 18-year-old Chechen refugee Abdoullakh Anzorov to kill Paty.

In its fight against communitarianism over the years, the French government has introduced bans on religious symbols in public schools and offices and outlawed full-body Islamic swimsuits, or burkinis, in public swimming pools and beaches, the latter cast as a hygienic measure.

In September some lawmakers, including from Macron’s own party, recently walked out of a session of the National Assembly during a speech by a veiled student leader — although she had broken no laws with her hijab.

“Laïcité was once a way to manage the relationship between government and society,” said Khosrokhavar. “But it has become a kind of civil religion, with its codes, its prescriptions.”

As he paid homage to Paty at a national memorial in Paris on Wednesday, Macron offered up an emotional defense of France’s secular values. He said they provided the space for free and critical thinking, and even the right to mock a religion — although not a person.

“We will not give up cartoons,” the president vowed at the ceremony in the courtyard of the Sorbonne University.

Macron’s government has responded to Paty’s murder with muscular action, carrying out dozens of raids against suspected Islamist networks early this week, temporarily shutting down a mosque in a Paris suburb for relaying a denunciation against the teacher and vowing to expel radicalized foreigners and dissolve organizations with extremist ties. It also plans to unveil legislation in early December to fight separatism, with Islamist extremism in its crosshairs.

Government ‘needs a scapegoat’

But France’s largest opposition party, the far-right National Rally, believes Macron’s government hasn’t gone far enough.

Calling radical Islam a “warlike ideology,” National Rally leader Marine Le Pen — considered for now as the president’s top opponent in the April 2022 presidential election — has called for “war legislation” to match it, including an immediate halt to immigration.

Others, however, fear the authorities have gone too far. Among the most prominent groups targeted for dissolution is the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF). Hard-line Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has described the NGO that offers legal aid for Muslims as a “threat to the Republic.”

Darmanin has linked the CCIF to Paty’s killing, ostensibly because the disgruntled father behind the hate campaign against the teacher sought the group’s help. CCIF head Jawad Bachare has rejected such accusations, and several rights groups have protested the group’s possible dissolution.

“The government was unable to protect its citizens and it needs a scapegoat,” Bachare said in an interview earlier this week. “And that’s the CCIF.”

Stirring up the debate is a government plan to “renew” the Secularism Observatory, a government advisory body, to reportedly bring it more “in line” with the fight against separatism. The body has sometimes gone against state and local authorities on matters like the burkini ban on beaches, which it said was illegal.

Remarks made Tuesday by Darmanin during a TV interview also haven’t helped matters. Speaking with broadcaster BFM TV, he suggested “separatism” extended even to supermarkets.

“I do not criticize the consumers but those who sell them something. I understand very well that halal meat is sold in a supermarket, what I regret is the aisles,” he said. “So you have the aisle for Muslims, the kosher aisle and then all the others … why specific aisles?”

French worry secular values are in danger

Such moves may resonate with French voters, shaken by a string of Islamic terror attacks in recent years that have left more than 250 dead. But some may question their timing, coming 18 months ahead of the presidential election.

A survey this week by the Ifop polling firm found an overwhelming majority of respondents considered France’s secular values were in danger, and that radical Islam was at war with the country.

“Laïcité is not against religion but allows everyone to live his religion or be atheist,” said Elisabeth Gandin, who joined thousands at Paris’ Place de la Republique to protest the attack against Paty. “I don’t agree with the Charlie cartoons, but I’m on the streets to defend the right to say things some may not like.”

Bolstering those views may be another recent Ifop survey suggesting that 40% of Muslims, including more than three-quarters of those under 25, put their religious convictions ahead of the country. Those figures were far higher than for non-Muslims, although skeptics have questioned how the survey’s questions were framed.

Muslims feel targeted by secularism

Mainstream Muslim leaders have expressed outrage at Paty’s killing, echoing arguments about the dangers of radical Islam while also warning against stigmatizing the Muslim community as a whole.

“We cannot allow on French territory words, activities, actions, calls for hate without punishing them,” Tareq Oubrou, the imam of Bordeaux mosque, told France Info radio. Still, he said, ordinary Muslims are doubly hit, “as both French citizens and Muslims.”

Analyst Khosrokhavar believes France’s fierce interpretation of secularism has paradoxically helped fuel radicalization. He notes the country became Western Europe’s biggest exporter of jihadi fighters to Syria, even though others, like Germany and Britain, also have large Muslim populations. Intolerant views about headscarves, he claims, have helped push some conservative Muslim women toward fundamentalism.

“The majority feel they are targeted by this laïcité, which becomes a kind of symbol of neo-colonial rule and for them, a denial of their dignity,” Khosrokhavar said, referring also to his interviews with multiple middle-class Muslim men, many not particularly religious, for an upcoming book.

Teaching tolerance, secularism demands patience

Teachers, especially in France’s immigrant-heavy suburbs, say they must also tread carefully in dealing with secularism as they are on the front lines of explaining its principles.

“There is a penetration of a religiosity that increasingly structures students and feeds a radical vision,” said Iannis Roder, a history teacher in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris, which is home to one of the country’s largest populations of North African and Black immigrants. “It manifests itself in really basic things, like some students refusing to listen to music during Ramadan,” he told French radio.

Teaching tolerance and secularism to her class, another Paris-area high school teacher said, demands patience.

“Tackling free expression by showing caricatures of the Prophet [Muhammad] — you have to weigh the consequences,” she said, declining to be identified as she had not received her school’s authorization to speak to the media.

The teacher has spent years on projects to explain the Holocaust and other sensitive events, taking her often skeptical students on field trips to see history up close.

“You have to fight,” she said, “but it’s a long fight.”

Source: As France mourns slain teacher Samuel Paty, some question secular values

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

A shot in the dark and 185 megabytes of data: How I investigated a system of bias in Canada’s prison system

2020/10/26 Leave a comment

Good account of Tom Cardoso’s data journalism and the processes involved in the Globe’s excellent analysis of racial disparities in incarceration (Bias behind bars: A Globe investigation finds a prison system stacked against Black and Indigenous inmates). Puts my small efforts in perspective:

A little over two years ago, I dropped a letter in the mail.

I had begun to wonder, after a series of high-profile criminal cases had ended in acquittals earlier that year – Gerald Stanley and Raymond Cormier’s trials, specifically – if I could collect any data on the racial composition of juries. I shot off a few e-mails to lawyers and activists, and quickly learned this data likely didn’t exist.

But, as part of my poking around, I realized I might be able to look at something else: sentencing. I figured sentences must be tracked in a structured way by correctional authorities; if not, they wouldn’t know when to release inmates. Given the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the correctional system, it’d be worthwhile to examine sentencing data by race – so I pivoted, from jury composition to sentencing.

Though freedom of information requests are often a shot in the dark, I typed up a letter asking for 20 years of records from the Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) database, which I’d learned about by e-mailing yet another set of people. On Aug. 30, 2018, I mailed them my request, and then almost immediately forgot about it.

Weeks later, I heard back from the CSC’s freedom of information officers, and began a months-long negotiation for release of the data I’d requested. In April, 2019, I finally received a CD in the mail, and went to open the spreadsheet it contained.

Microsoft Excel booted up, and then immediately crashed. The spreadsheet the CSC had disclosed was 185 megabytes. In my hands, I realized, was an enormous data set unlike any I’d ever worked with, recording the lives of nearly 50,000 people in the CSC’s custody between 2012 and 2018. I used a statistical programming language called R to open the file, and began digging around.

It often takes me a while to become “comfortable” with new data, and it was especially true now given this file’s size. I had no idea what kinds of patterns it contained, or how best to summarize it. In my mind, I often picture this phase in any analysis as the point at which I “crawl inside” a data set.

To start, I blindly summarized it, curious to see what it’d tell me. I figured I needed a second opinion, so I sat down with Patrick White, a colleague who’d extensively covered the federal prison system, and showed him some of the charts I’d cooked up. “There’s almost too much interesting stuff in here,” I told him, “and I’m not sure where to start.”

After spending some time with the materials I’d pulled together, he asked simply: “What about these risk assessments?”

From there, exploring the data became easier, and I quickly uncovered some disturbing patterns. Indigenous and Black people seemed to be receiving worse scores across a range of assessments much more frequently than other groups. Two scores in particular, the “offender security level” and “reintegration potential” score, sounded especially important. But I had no idea what these scores were supposed to represent, how they were calculated or what impact they had on an inmate’s time in prison.

By now, it was December, 2019, and I began reaching out to anyone I knew who could tell me whether – and how – these scores mattered. At the end of each call, I’d ask them if there was anyone else they’d recommend I speak with. Over a period of 10 months, my network grew from a small handful to nearly 70 people.

With each conversation, I tightened my methodology and honed my analysis. Eventually, after being inspired by a U.S. news outlet’s investigation on risk assessments, I realized I needed to disambiguate the impact of race from everything else using statistical modelling. So once again I went back to my Rolodex, e-mailing academics, statisticians and data scientists who could help me. Over the winter, spring and summer, guided by their advice, I built the kinds of statistical models I’d need for the analysis.

As I was doing that, I also began looking for inmates who could tell me about their experiences. Finding people who’d speak with me wasn’t easy, given I was looking at something as arcane and specific as risk assessments. I met Nick Nootchtai, for instance, after e-mailing a contact. They put me in touch with someone, who led me to someone else, who finally told me they knew of a person I might want to speak with. The first time I met Nick, at a Tim Horton’s in downtown Toronto, he handed me a plastic bag full of his correctional records, which shed light on the process and made it clear how critical these scores were.

My model’s findings were damning – so much so that I spent months trying to find an error in my code that could account for the discrepancies. When dealing with data-driven stories of this size, The Globe has a process for independently verifying findings. This meant handing over my entire analysis to a fellow data journalist, Chen Wang, and a Globe data scientist, Jeremy Gray. Our head of visuals, Matt Frehner, served as a sounding board for the investigation’s major findings.

I began to report the story in earnest in the spring, but the COVID-19 pandemic quickly became a priority. Months later, I was able to return to it, interviewing dozens of academics and experts in the field. Occasionally, I’d get a phone call from an unknown number – an inmate calling me from behind bars.

According to the CSC’s data, in 2018 an average of two inmates each day started serving a two-year sentence. That’s the threshold for sending them to federal prison, where risk assessments undoubtedly left their mark. The odds are good, then, that someone went to prison the same day I dropped my letter in the mail. Today, they are walking free.

Their experiences, along with those of so many others, are what you see today.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-risk-backstory/

Filed under Aboriginal, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Citizenship Oath Bill reintroduced: Addition of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples recognition

2020/10/24 2 Comments

The official release:

Ottawa, October 22, 2020—The Honourable Marco E. L. Mendicino, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, issued the following statement:

“Today, the Government of Canada introduced a Bill to amend the Citizenship Act to change Canada’s Oath of Citizenship. This Bill proposes to insert text into the Oath that refers to the rights of Indigenous Peoples. It continues to fulfill our government’s commitment to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, specifically Call to Action number 94.

“The Government of Canada remains committed to walking the shared path of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. The proposed amendment to the Citizenship Act is one more vital step towards reconciliation, and demonstrates the Government’s commitment to the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“The new proposed language adds references to the Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples:

“I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, including the Constitution, which recognizes and affirms the Aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples, and fulfill my duties as a Canadian citizen.”

“The Oath is a solemn declaration that all newcomers recite during the citizenship ceremony. With this amendment, we are changing the Oath of Citizenship to be more inclusive, and taking steps to fundamentally transform the nature of our relationship with Indigenous Peoples by encouraging new Canadians to fully appreciate and respect the significant role of Indigenous Peoples in forming Canada’s fabric and identity.”

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2020/10/oath-of-citizenship-bill-introduced-in-parliament.html

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with

Canadian academics may fear reprisal for criticizing China – but they must not self-censor

2020/10/24 Leave a comment

Worth noting:

In the past few decades, the Communist Party of China has worked, wherever possible, to limit criticism of its country by foreign voices. Now, the Chinese government has a new weapon for suppressing critical voices that it deems harmful to its national image.

This summer, China passed its draconian national-security law for Hong Kong – aimed at bringing pro-democracy protests to heel – which features harsh punishments for an overly broad array of acts of protest and allows Beijing to pursue offenders regardless of their citizenship and the places where they committed the alleged crimes. This effectively gives the government the ability to place anyone, anywhere in the world, on a fugitive list. Numerous people in Hong Kong and in the West have already been arrested or are wanted by the government under this law.

This has had a real-world chilling effect on the discourse in Western democratic nations, and especially in their academic institutions, where free speech is a matter of paramount importance. In response to China’s proclaimed extra-territorial power, several prestigious British and American universities have implemented measures aimed at shielding students and faculty, regardless of their national origins, from prosecution by Chinese authorities. At Oxford University, students were asked to submit some papers anonymously; at Princeton University, students of Chinese politics will put codes down to identify their work instead of their names. Anonymous online chats and declining to penalize students who don’t want to participate in politically sensitive topics have also been considered.

But these actions are ultimately concessions to an authoritarian regime and prevent genuine debate about the Chinese government. This has no place in democratic institutions, which can, should and must be unreservedly critical about all issues, including China. Such policies risk handing the Chinese government a victory in its efforts to control the discourse in the West – and by making a threat that, for many, is an empty one.

In his book On Tyranny, historian Timothy Snyder cites examples such as Nazi Germany to show how most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given by individuals who “obey in advance” and adapt by “anticipatory obedience” – that is, by conceding to the tyrant without even being asked. This only teaches tyrants that their actions do not have consequences and that they can go further. Today, China is the new global tyrant, but Canadians cannot just roll over in advance. The Chinese government simply cannot pursue or jail all its critics from all over the world. Canadians without ties to China can criticize this government all they want and simply avoid travelling there.

The situation is far trickier for Chinese and Hong Kong international students, who likely have to go back home in the future. They must be protected if discussing politically sensitive topics would put their safety or their families’ safety at risk. But such protective policies can still enable these at-risk students to participate and be assessed. They could be encouraged, for instance, to email their views to their teachers, who could then communicate their views to the class. However, because freedom of expression is so pivotal, students should be allowed to attach their names if they wish. There may be no perfect policy.

But without freedom of speech, a university cannot be said to exist. Sadly, genuine debate about the Chinese government has been intimidated into self-censored silence. According to the Vancouver Sun, some China scholars have decided to “keep their mouths more or less entirely shut,” and there is concern that worried academics would offer up “timid” analysis. Many professors and researchers also referred to this fear in an open letter published in the The Globe and Mail last year, which asked China to release detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. “We who share Mr. Kovrig’s and Mr. Spavor’s enthusiasm for building genuine, productive and lasting relationships must now be more cautious about travelling and working in China and engaging our Chinese counterparts,” they said. “That will lead to less dialogue and greater distrust, and undermine efforts to manage disagreements and identify common ground.”

The new law represents a wake-up call to Canadian universities, which now confront the stark reality that if we give the Chinese government a foot, it’ll take a mile. But it is not too late for them to say no to the tyrant, to affirm their autonomy, and to safeguard our sovereignty and dignity.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canadian-academics-may-fear-reprisal-for-criticizing-china-but-they/

Filed under foreign policy Tagged with , , ,

Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and YouTube all found recently hosting racist music

2020/10/24 Leave a comment

Of note:

Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music have now removed racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic content from their services, following a BBC investigation.

Deezer was also made aware of similar songs, mostly linked to white supremacy, on its platforms.

It comes three years after Spotify tried to crackdown on a similar issue and updated its hate content policy.

Spotify said the content flagged by the BBC clearly violated that policy. YouTube said there was no place for hate on its platform while Apple Music has now hidden the majority of the tracks.

The evidence

It’s difficult to quantify the scale of the problem. However, the BBC investigation easily found at least 20 songs with disturbing content:

  • Songs glorifying ‘Aryan nations’ (The Nazis’ racial philosophy taught that Aryans were the master race)
  • Bands repeatedly using anti-Semitic stereotypes and language, even celebrating the Holocaust
  • Publicly curated playlists on Spotify under the title NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal), a genre linked to Nazism
  • More than 30 groups associated with organisations classified as hate groups by civil rights groups

Searching out the music required no specialist skills or effort.

In some cases, racist titles of albums and songs had been changed to remove words such as ‘Aryan’ and ‘white’ but the lyrics remained the same.

Most examples were found on Spotify and in one case, a song on its platform contained these lyrics:

Presentational grey line

So wake from your bed, and raise your head

Aryan child, listen to what is said

So rise your hand and learn to love your land

For the white revolution needs your uncorrupted hand.

Presentational grey line

The BBC has decided not to name the bands or the songs in an effort not to assist people searching for hateful content.

Eric Ward, a civil rights strategist at the Western States Center, said people “trust streaming services” and didn’t use them “to be presented with hate music and hate lyrics”.

“The onus is on streaming platforms to do a better job at monitoring and searching for this music. They simply need to invest more.

“This is about the credibility of a company and a brand. Brands are important and white power music will damage your streaming brand.”

‘More accessible’

Eric Ward says streaming has made hate music “more accessible” with “algorithms suggesting this music to those who may not actually be searching for it”.

On Spotify, public playlists and “suggested artists” did make it easier for the BBC to find extreme content.

In some cases, users created playlists that collated songs and bands associated with the National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) movement.

The metal sub-genre largely comes from Eastern Europe and Russia. Anti-Semitism and glorification of the Holocaust is common in its lyrics, according to Nick Spooner, from anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate.

He said the metal community has been waking up to the presence of the NSBM and how the scene “has been allowed to fester within the wider metal scene”.

“The growth of the white power music scene in the 70s and 80s ran in parallel with a growth of fascist parties in the UK so there’s a big worry that could happen again.”

Presentational grey line

‘We understand that things will inevitably slip through the cracks.

But with great power comes great responsibility.

And streaming services have set themselves up to be the primary source of music.’

– Eric K Ward, civil rights strategist.

Presentational grey line

White Power music

Music has been an integral part of neo-Nazi and white power movements since the 1980s.

The British-based Blood and Honour movement was spearheaded by a neo-nazi called Ian Stuart Donaldson, the lead singer of a band called Skrewdriver. He died in 1993.

The group didn’t start out with a racist agenda but Donaldson took them in that direction.

Many of the groups we found on streaming services idolise Skrewdriver and Donaldson in their songs.

Some of the bands – from the UK, US and Europe – have long been on the radar of civil rights and anti-hate campaign groups, and venues have been criticised in the past for allowing such groups to play gigs.

What else have the platforms said?

The streaming platforms can use a combination of technology and people to actively search for content – but also rely on customers reporting offensive material.

There are currently more than 65 million songs and over 1.5 million podcasts on Spotify.

In a statement, Spotofy said it “prohibits content which expressly and principally advocates or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics (race, religion etc).”

It said it was “continuously developing, improving, and implementing monitoring technology that identifies content in our service that violates our policy, including but not limited to, content flagged as hate content.”

Apple Music said the company had hidden the majority of the tracks highlighted by the BBC, while the rest are still under investigation.

It also highlighted that it has “strong editorial guidelines that prohibit distributors and rights owners submitting content like this”.

In a statement, YouTube Music said: “We’ve worked hard to develop responsible guidelines to define and make clear what content is unacceptable or when artistic expression crosses the lines of safety.

“When content is flagged to us, we work quickly to remove videos that violate our policies.

“We’re committed to continuing our work on this issue to ensure YouTube is not a place for those who seek to do harm.”

Youtube adverts

Content on YouTube is less regulated than music platforms. But for videos to have adverts, it has to comply with terms and conditions.

Despite this, many of the bands and songs found on the music platforms are preceded by adverts for household brands including Cadbury’s and Uber.

Users must apply to be able to ‘monetise’ their videos, which allows them to earn money from advertisers – the more views, the more income.

According to YouTube’s rules, users can only earn money from adverts if they follow guidelines, including a ban on “hateful content”.

This is defined as anything that “incites hatred against, promotes discrimination, disparages or humiliates an individual or group of people” based on a list of characteristics that includes race, ethnicity and religion.

YouTube reviewers “regularly check to see if monetising channels follow these policies”.

Deezer has not commented at this stage but is looking into the issue.

Source: Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and YouTube all found recently hosting racist music

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →