Dalhousie medical school struggling to attract black and Indigenous students

2017/07/27 Leave a comment

Review of systemic barriers and ways to address them. The chart above shows the visible minority breakdown for the Atlantic provinces – for Nova Scotia, the NHS shows 50 Black Canadians out of some 3,400 working in doctors’ officers (1.5 percent):

Dalhousie University’s medical school is struggling to attract African-Canadian and Indigenous students, and its admission process is partly to blame, a review committee has found.

The committee’s 12-page report was submitted last August to the medical school’s dean, Dr. David Anderson, but it was just recently made public.

“The committee speculates that potential candidates from diverse backgrounds might not apply because of an apprehension of bias against them within the admissions process,” said the report.

Both African-Canadian and Indigenous people are under-represented in the medical profession, said the chair of the review committee, Dr. Gus Grant. He’s also the registrar and CEO of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia, the body that regulates and licenses doctors in the province.

“I think it’s important that the profession be made up of individuals who represent the communities that are being served,” said Grant.

No figures are available on the number of black and Indigenous doctors practising in Nova Scotia because the college does not ask doctors to self-identify by race.

Last year, Anderson ordered the independent external review of the admissions process in part because of the lack of diversity. The last such review was done a decade ago.

Too much weight given to admission exam

The report also found the admissions committee placed too much weight on the medical college admission test (MCAT) scores and the grade-point average of candidates.

Grant said that while cognitive ability is important for practising medicine, grade-point average and MCAT results aren’t great measures of it.

“Cognitive ability is important for physicians, but I can’t fairly say that it’s more important than empathy, reliability, consistency, earnestness and other characteristics,” said Grant.

Starting in 2018, the medical school will use an online video-based tool to assess potential students for empathy, integrity, resiliency and communication skills.

Grant said it’s been long accepted that standardized tests like MCATs put minorities and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds at a disadvantage and they score lower on these exams. One reason Grant gave is that poorer applicants might not be able to afford to take MCAT preparatory courses.

Recommendations from report

Some of the report’s recommendations were to:

  • Institute a minimum requirement for test scores.
  • Require the 22-member admission’s committee to include gender-diverse representatives of the African-Canadian and Indigenous communities, while also collaborating with these two communities to determine admission criteria.

The first requirement has not yet changed, but the second one has been implemented.

More diversity needed in health-care system

Sharon Davis-Murdoch is co-president of the Health Association of African Canadians, a group that promotes health in the black community. She said for young children of African descent to see themselves in health professions, they need to be aware a career in the field is possible.

“The representation of people of African descent at every level of the health system, including the highest levels of health administration, needs to be in place in order for the system to be improved, for the system to serve appropriately and for the system to be reflective of all of us,” said Davis-Murdoch.

Source: Dalhousie medical school struggling to attract black and Indigenous students – Nova Scotia – CBC News

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Nova Scotia tackles racial profiling in stores: ‘It’s about a societal transformation’

2017/03/29 Leave a comment

Helpful initiative:

More than a decade after racial profiling was identified as a festering problem among some police forces, it is now being addressed in another sector: retailing.

After years of complaints about retail staff who routinely follow, search, ignore, insult and provide poor service to visible
minorities, one province has decided to do something about it in a big way.

On Monday, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission launched a free, online training program aimed at preventing a problem that has sparked a growing chorus of complaints across the country.

National campaign planned

The 20-minute interactive course for front-line service staff — described as the first of its kind in Canada — has already attracted attention from businesses in other provinces and the United States, and plans are in the works to roll out a national campaign.

“As a proud African Nova Scotian and seventh-generation Canadian … I am acutely aware of the problems associated with navigating race relations in our society,” Rev. Lennett Anderson of the African United Baptist Association of Nova Scotia told a news conference at the Halifax Chamber of Commerce.

“The need for a campaign such as this is a desperate one … It is worthy of our celebration.”

Report showed poor treatment

The retail sector is Canada’s largest employer, with over two million people working in an industry that generated $59 billion in payroll in 2015.

Christine Hanson, CEO of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, said the need for such a training program was reinforced in 2013 when the commission released a groundbreaking report that concluded Aboriginal people and African Canadians more often reported being treated poorly by retail staff than did any other group.

“In fact, people from all racialized groups, including Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern people, reported being treated poorly by staff far more than did white people,” the report said.

“In the focus groups, several participants commented on being made to feel ‘lower class’ or like ‘second-class citizens’ when shopping.”

Targets of offensive language

The report went on to say that Aboriginal people, African Canadians, and Muslims were all targets of offensive language and were treated as if they were physically threatening and potential thieves.

“A person who is a member of a visible minority group is three times more likely to be followed in a store, and four times more likely to be searched,” Hanson said.

The online program, called “Serving All Customers Better,” includes a quiz about immigration and visible minorities. It also cites statistics from the 2013 report and clearly spells out what the law says.

The course also cites some examples, at one point quoting a worker who said: “I worked for a retailer who said, ‘The eagle has landed,’ when a black person walked into the store. I quit my job over it.”

A cross-country issue

Examples of consumer racial profiling continue to make headlines across the country.

In October 2015, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario agreed with a woman who said she faced discrimination as a black person when she was confronted by a Shoppers Drug Mart employee who demanded to search her backpack on suspicion of shoplifting. The tribunal ordered the store to pay Mary McCarthy $8,000.

And in February 2015, Calgary university student Jean Ventose said he was racially profiled when he was followed by a security guard inside a local Walmart, apparently for no reason. He posted a video on the encounter on Facebook, which received more than one million views and 10,000 reactions in two days.

In August 2016, one of Canada’s largest grocery chains withdrew its appeal of a human rights decision that found an employee of Sobeys had discriminated against a black customer in May 2009 after falsely accusing her of being a repeat shoplifter.

Sobeys said it reached a settlement with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and would apologize to Andrella David, pay her $21,000 in compensation, and develop a staff training program on racial profiling.

The company faced a boycott by a group of 19 churches in the province.

Repeated racial profiling

As well, Nova Scotia’s first black lieutenant-governor, Mayann Francis, came forward to reveal that she, too, had been the victim of repeated racial profiling while shopping.

At the time, Francis said Nova Scotia was in a state of denial when it came to racial profiling, saying she had often been the victim of “shopping while black” since she left her viceregal post in 2012.

“It does not matter how successful you are, it still can happen to you,” said Francis, who had previously served as CEO of the province’s human rights commission.

“It’s just so wrong and so hurtful and I know how I feel when I’m followed in the stores … They’re stalking you.”

Source: Nova Scotia tackles racial profiling in stores: ‘It’s about a societal transformation’ – Nova Scotia – CBC News

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Appointment of Mi’kmaq, black women to Nova Scotia courts ‘a huge step’

2017/01/25 Leave a comment

As the federal government increases the diversity of its judicial appointments (Justice minister announces 24 new judges in effort to end national shortage), interesting to see watch provincial announcements and the degree to which they are reported on:

Nova Scotia has appointed the first Mi’kmaq woman and the third black woman to the provincial and family courts, in what the province’s Premier calls a “huge step forward” for ethnic diversity on the bench.

Legal aid lawyer Catherine Benton becomes only the third aboriginal judge in Nova Scotia, while Ronda van der Hoek, a public prosecutor, joins two

other black women – Corinne Sparks and Jean Whalen – among the 73 full-time judges in the province.

Premier Stephen McNeil said in an interview the two new judges will provide added perspectives from the black and indigenous population in a court system that needs to reflect the makeup of the general population.

“I believe this is a huge step forward. They have had distinguished careers in making sure minority voices are being heard, that Mi’kmaq rights are being protected, and their cultures will be reflected in the decisions they make,” he said.

Justice Benton is well known within legal circles as an advocate for racial and ethnic diversity in the courts, having pushed from the earliest days of her career for a stronger role for indigenous lawyers in the court system.

She worked as a researcher with the Union of Nova Scotia Indians and the Mi’kmaq Grand Council before getting her law degree from Dalhousie in 1993.

In 1994, Justice Benton told the aboriginal publication Windspeaker she had made a series of fruitless job applications to firms around Atlantic Canada, with some partners telling her they felt her knowledge of aboriginal law wouldn’t be an asset.

“I think it’s important to establish an aboriginal justice network,” she told the publication.

Naiomi Metallic, a teacher specialized in indigenous law at Dalhousie’s Schulich law school, says the appointments are being greeted with delight among advocates for greater indigenous and black representation in the legal system.

“I’m elated … We’ve been saying in the media there needs to be more diverse appointments and it appears that hasn’t fallen on deaf ears,” she said.

Justice van der Hoek, from Windsor, has practised law for 19 years and also worked with Nova Scotia Legal Aid in Windsor and Halifax after graduating from Dalhousie Law School.

She is the third black judge in the province’s lower and superior courts.

Justice Van der Hoek and Justice Benton also bring the family and provincial courts a step closer to gender parity, with a total of 15 full-time female judges, compared to 20 full-time, male judges.

Source: Appointment of Mi’kmaq, black women to Nova Scotia courts ‘a huge step’ – The Globe and Mail

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Nova Scotia’s towns and cities elect more diverse candidates

2016/10/18 Leave a comment

Nova Scotia is the most diverse province of Atlantic Canada (9 percent visible minorities, the largest group being Black Canadians):

Lindell Smith set out to start a conversation about diversity at Halifax city hall this summer, and it seems people listened: the 26-year-old has now become the first African Nova Scotian elected to city council in 16 years.

“People from all communities went out and voted. The numbers show … something different is needed,” Smith said after Halifax’s municipal elections wrapped up over the weekend. “When someone comes in and starts asking questions, people realize, ‘We don’t know why we still do it that way.’”

Towns and cities across Nova Scotia made modest gains in diversity with the results of municipal elections on Saturday, but Smith and others note the province still has a long way to go.

Smith decisively won a seven-way race for the city’s north-end district with about 52 per cent of the vote.

 The 26-year-old will be the first black city councillor elected since 2000—when Graham Downey, the only other visible minority member to serve in Halifax regional council since its inception in 1996, lost the seat Smith now occupies.

“For the black community, it’s like we have somebody who’s at the leadership table,” Smith says. “It’s almost this sigh of relief like, ‘Wow, it took this long.’ ”

Smith’s predecessor, outgoing councillor Jennifer Watts, did not seek re-election in the north-end district. She expressed hope this election would change the composition of the then all-white, three-quarters male and “predominately older” council to better reflect the city it serves.

Despite having a more diverse roster of candidates this year—including seven visible minorities and the city’s first openly transgender candidate—Smith was the only member of a previously unrepresented group to get elected. Meanwhile, the number of female councillors in City Hall shrunk from four to two.

“It’s great that we have someone who’s not of European descent and is not over fifty, but we need to have all different voices,” Smith says.

In Kentville, about an hour’s drive west of Halifax, political newcomer Sandra Snow defeated outgoing mayor Dave Corkum with 70 per cent of the vote. The retired military aviation contractor looks forward to leading a council with four of its seven seats occupied by women.

“Women tend to lead from the heart,” Snow says. “I think when we’re discussing issues, there will be a lot more collaboration around the table.”

It’s a sight that would make former Kentville mayor Gladys Porter proud, Snow says. Porter became the first woman in the Martimes to be elected mayor 70 years ago, and after 11 years in office, went on to serve as the first female member of Nova Scotia legislature.

“We still have a long while to go,” Snow says. “A woman has a very busy life … and often we don’t prioritize ourselves first and we don’t prioritize the fact that maybe we do have political ambitions.”

Wolfville saw the gender balance in its Town Hall shift dramatically with women clinching five out of six council seats.

Source: Nova Scotia’s towns and cities elect more diverse candidates – Macleans.ca

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Descendants of black loyalists in Nova Scotia seek land titles

2016/02/24 Leave a comment

Part of Canada’s history, captured in The Book of Negroes as elsewhere:

Residents of a black community in Nova Scotia say they’re hoping for progress this week in gaining title to their land, 200 years after their ancestors were handed rocky plots without clear ownership.

The Nova Scotia government provided land to black loyalists in the 1800s, but the Crown didn’t provide land titles – though it did for white settlers.

Dwight Adams, a volunteer with a community group in the North Preston area, says that up to one-third of residents in the community of about 3,700 people still don’t have title to the land.

“We don’t want to continue paying taxes and find out down the road we don’t even have a property to pass on,” he said during an interview.

Journalism students at the Nova Scotia Community College released an online documentary Monday depicting how a government-funded process to gain title in the 1960s lapsed.

It includes interviews with current residents still struggling to gain title.

The students also cited a petition presented to the Crown in 1860 from black settlers saying their inability to confidently build upon or mortgage their lands was creating hardship.

In 1963, former premier Robert Stanfield promised to fix the problem, setting up the Land Titles Clarification Act, which laid out a process allowing the residents to gain title.

However, Adams said many families were unable to make use of the free land surveyors or legal advice, and – over the course of several governments – the funding for the program was cut.

Applications for title are currently made to the land services branch of the Department of Natural Resources, with individual residents responsible for providing the required documentation.

Angela Simmonds, a Dalhousie law student, completed a study last year that says after some titles were settled in 2009, “it has been increasingly difficult for people in the community to get a response regarding their applications.”

Source: Descendants of black loyalists in Nova Scotia seek land titles – The Globe and Mail

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Nova Scotia premier to discuss statue Mi’kmaq community says is racist

2015/12/15 Leave a comment

Another example of significant historical figures and their mixed legacy viewed through contemporary eyes (e.g., the Princeton Woodrow Wilson controversy).

In general, rather than moving the statue ‘out of sight,’ it might be better to have an interpretative plaque that provides a more complete picture of his role and actions.

A learning opportunity for all that recognizes the Mi’kmaq’s valid concerns:

Nova Scotia’s premier says he will discuss options for a statue of Halifax city founder Edward Cornwallis that the Mi’kmaq community has long argued is racist.

A spokeswoman for Stephen McNeil says the premier plans to meet with Halifax Mayor Mike Savage to discuss the statue, which has stood in a downtown park for more than 80 years.

Mi’kmaq elder Daniel Paul says although Cornwallis is the city’s founder, he also issued a scalping proclamation in 1749 that offered a cash bounty for anyone who killed Mi’kmaq men, women and children.

Paul says his goal is not to erase Cornwallis from history books, but to strike a compromise that recognizes the atrocities he committed.

He says he would like to see the statue removed from the park and placed in the depths of the Citadel Hill fortress.

About four years ago, a local junior high school stripped Cornwallis from their name amid concerns from the Mi’kmaq community.

Source: Nova Scotia premier to discuss statue Mi’kmaq community says is racist – Macleans.ca

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Home for Colored Children apology: N.S. says sorry to ex-residents – Nova Scotia – CBC News

2014/10/14 Leave a comment

Long overdue and well expressed:

“It is one of the great tragedies in our province’s history that your cries for help were greeted with silence for so long,” said McNeil. “Some of you faced horrific abuse that no child should ever experience. You deserved a better standard of care. For the trauma and neglect you endured, and their lingering effects on you and your loved ones, we are truly sorry.”

McNeil went on to thank former residents for their “courage and perseverance in telling your stories. Your strength, your resilience, and your desire for healing and reconciliation should be an inspiration to all Nova Scotians.”

Tony Smith, one of the former residents, thanked those who worked for many years to shed light on the abuses.

“There’s so much time, effort and energy by a lot of great people that got us to this point today. I’m very proud today that I am a former resident of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, that is something that I used to be ashamed of. I’m very proud that my peers and colleagues asked me to be a voice for them,” he said.

The premier called the abuses at the home “only one chapter in a history of systemic racism and inequality that has scarred our province for generations.”

Home for Colored Children apology: N.S. says sorry to ex-residents – Nova Scotia – CBC News.

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Rachel Brothers wins human rights case for wrongful firing – Nova Scotia

2014/08/08 Leave a comment

A reminder that discrimination can occur in a variety of contexts:

Donald Murray, chair of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, said Brothers was “undermined by association staff whose colourist thinking and behaviour created a toxic work environment at the head office in Halifax and the Annapolis Valley regional office in Kentville, where Ms. Brothers was employed as a regional educator.”

Jeff Overmars, a spokesman with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, said he can’t say too much about Tuesdays decision.

“We understand this is a very sensitive issue in the African Nova Scotian and other communities,” he said.

“It’s an issue we have to look into, to meet with the communities, to gain some insight and to better understand the history and complexity of the issue.”

Lawrence Hill, in his Massey Lectures Blood, covers some of the same ground as he discusses the history of colour and percentages of black blood, and argues for a universal, rather than “blood” approach.

Rachel Brothers wins human rights case for wrongful firing – Nova Scotia – CBC News.

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Nova Scotia Liberal breaks down in discussing photo of blackface character

2013/12/03 Leave a comment

Another example of a provincial politician getting into trouble over lack of sensitivity and understanding, in this case a politician of Dutch origin, Joachim Stroink, attending a Dutch Canadian christmas event.

Has been treated as a “learning opportunity” by all, it would appear, starting with awareness, in a province with a significant Black population, of the racism implicit in the development of the Zwarte Piet character.

Nova Scotia Liberal breaks down in discussing photo of blackface character.

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