More Canadian racism

Shipyard workers in the Vancouver area are taking legal action for unfair dismissal on the grounds of racism.

Didn’t we have a ‘noose’ category?

Expert?

“No country in the world has made more progress toward combating overt racism than [the United States],” says David Schneider, a Rice University psychologist and the author of “The Psychology of Stereotyping.” “But the most popular stereotype of black people is still that they’re violent. And for a lot of people, not even racist people, the sight of a white child with a black parent just sets off alarm signals.”

This quote comes from a Newsweek article about an African-American family who have adopted a little white girl. (But don’t read the comments unless you want to puke.)

What do you all think? Because it strikes me that the first statement is not true. My post from last year refutes it, in fact. And as for the statement that people whose alarm bells are set off by the sight of a white child with a black parent are “not even racist”, well! Doesn’t sound like much of an expert to me.

Will French POCs finally be seen?

Let me be clear about this: I am not a fan of Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s “playboy” president. I would not have voted for him and I don’t normally agree with much he says.

But I have to agree with the statement he issued regarding his plan to collect voluntary data on race:

He said the lack of data on ethnic minorities was hampering the ability to measure inequality and deal with it.

Having lived in the country for over a decade and a half, I can assure you that racism is rampant. I also therefore agree with the race campaigners in the article who say that the society is “plagued by discrimination”. This is a country that only got its first primetime newscast journalist of colour this decade.

However, I really do not believe that any light can be shed on the extent of this discrimination until reasonably reliable statistics are produced. Unfortunately, many, many groups do not agree with me, including the ground-breaking SOS Racisme.

Racist literature – or teaching?

So how useful do you think studying a classic anti-racist work of literature is in teaching children about anti-racism? A student of African heritage in the UK doesn’t think it’s very useful at all. The book in question is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird:

“People speak like that in real life but we can study that in history or politics, there is no need to make up fictional stories about it.

“Books like this do nothing to alleviate or reduce racism, but have contributed negatively to the school community with me getting the worst impact of its negativity.

“This type of book only creates and incites hate, violence and racism among races due to terms used in them, which are grossly degrading.

“Times have changed. Racist fiction should be buried in the past.”

Although I enjoyed this book very much, I don’t agree with the teachers at the student’s school that “the point of studying it is to challenge racism”.

Colour and the City

Yesterday evening, I watched (again) the Modeliser episode of Sex and the City. There’s a scene at the end where Miranda and Skipper bump into each other at a corner store. The owner is Asian.

For some reason, I actually watched the credits, where the role is listed as “Korean grocer”. There was only one grocer in the whole episode.

Now what is that all about, exactly? How does it help us to know he was Korean? What bearing does his heritage have on the story? And if it was so important, why not get an actor of Korean heritage?

My condolences, Ryohei Hoshi.

What people of colour think

To all those involved in a love relationship with a person of colour,
(whether that be parental, romantic, fraternal or platonic)

We here at RR would like you to know that every time you condone racism, your SPOC (significant person of colour)

• feels sad
• feels alone
• wonders, if you can have these feelings about others, how worthy you think s/he is
• worries that if s/he called you on your racism, your love for him/her would suffer
• wonders whether this is just a part of him/herself that s/he will have to hide
• wonders whether one day her/his love for you will also suffer

Think about it. Act on it.

Exercise in privilege

Respecting ethnic groups
Role play

MESSAGE

You, a francophone Acadian, are on a foreign planet with a Chinese person, a black African, an English person, an Amerindian.
You receive the following radio message:

ATTENTION! IMPORTANT MESSAGE. THE PLANET YOU ARE ON IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE. A ROCKET IS ON ITS WAY, WITH ROOM FOR THREE PEOPLE. YOU HAVE 10 MINUTES TO MAKE A DECISION. WHO WILL BE ON BOARD THE ROCKET?

Did you make a decision? (yes)
Which one? (Acadian, Amerindian, African)
Did you find the decision difficult? (yes)
Why? (because there were a lot of ethnic groups)

The story of this exercise given to 10-year-olds in New Brunswick, (see image underneath the article), as part of a curriculum teaching about diversity, was reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) after complaints from two mothers of children adopted from Ethiopia. The province’s Minister of Education had to step in to stop the school from using the exercise which, he said, “invites and encourages defining people by stereotypes”. Good for him.

The school thinks the exercise is a good one because

• it is intended to show the students how to be respectful to all groups
• some students have advocated keeping everyone
• some students have suggested keeping the three main groups in the community (“English, French and Amerindian”), “because of being able to communicate”

It’s hard to know where to even start with this one, so I’ll start at the beginning:

Firstly, the exercise assumes that everyone in this French-speaking school is an Acadian – a white Canadian of ultimately French origin – which clearly is not true. One of the mothers, at least, is apparently English-speaking (I could find no references to this event in the French-speaking press), and her daughter is not white.

Secondly, the assumption and lesson is that Chinese people, black Africans, “English people” (they mean English-speaking Canadians) and Amerindians are not like Acadians. And we’re not just talking ethnicity here. It doesn’t say, “a person of Chinese heritage, a black person, an English-speaking person, and a person of Amerindian heritage”.

Thirdly, what’s with the pictures? Check out the thick lips, the slanted eyes and the animal skins (it’s only mildly reassuring that there are no slitty eyes and feather headdresses).

Finally, how exactly does obliging children to decide who should be saved teach them to be respectful of all groups??? In fact, what it does is

• teach them their ethnic group (white) has that power over others, in particular people of colour
• reinforce the notion that certain groups have a right to be here and others don’t (as evidenced by the school’s comment above)
• perpetuate otherisation through its choice of ethnic descriptors

These are ten-year-olds, for pete’s sake! Instead of asking them to make a decision, how about telling them in no uncertain terms that it would be wrong to choose and ask them to think about why?!

(Thanks to pinkpoppies for the tip.)

Don’t stand too close, you don’t know what they’ve got

Taken from the Facebook group “1,000 Strong Against the Immigrant HPV Vaccine Requirement”:

The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in 2007 recommended that Gardasil, the only FDA approved HPV vaccine, be administered to females ages 11 to 26 in the U.S. This recommendation became an automatic requirement for those applying for immigrant visas or adjustment to permanent residency status when the government updated its vaccination list in July 2008. U.S. citizens are currently not required to receive the vaccination, and yet it is mandatory for prospective immigrants. Although the HPV vaccine has been deemed safe and effective by the FDA, it is not designed to combat the types of infectious diseases that the immigration requirements are intended to address. Moreover, the vaccine is prohibitively expensive-costing a minimum of $360 to receive the three-dose vaccination in addition to over $1,000 in filing fees-making the mandate an undue financial burden for prospective immigrant women and their families.

Tell the CDC to Reverse the HPV Vaccination Mandate for Immigrants Petition

You have until Friday.

(The title is something I once heard a woman telling her daughter who was standing right next to me at a market stall. That was over 30 years ago, but I still remember it.)

Special offer! Free apologies

Don’t say we at Resist Racism never do anything for you. In an effort to increase the total number of real apologies received by anyone really, but in particular people of colour after some thoughtless racist comment, here is a ready-made apology that can be cut and pasted or learnt by heart.

Make some cards for your friends!

I  am/we are sorry for what I/we did/said. I/we now understand that it was offensive and wrong. I/we will not do it again.

That should suffice. But in the event of a burning need to justify oneself, additional cards could be made:

I/we would like you to know that I/we did not intend to offend anyone. Since I/we did, I/we acknowledge that impact is very different from intent, and realize that I am/we are woefully ignorant of what it means to live in a diverse society. I/we promise to unpack my/our white privilege and help others do so.

Have the courage of the convictions you profess

Whenever I see or hear of a controversy over racist, sexist, homophobic etc language, I hear people talking about “PC gone mad”. It seems that political correctness, whatever that phrase is supposed to mean, is becoming more and more of a bugbear for the average Joe or Joanne.

We live in a world now where the common perception is that we no longer have any control over our lives. More and more we are being told what to do and how to do it.

• We should eat five to ten fruits and vegetables a day, (when many of us can’t see that as a physical possibility barring becoming vegetarian)

• We shouldn’t drink more than one glass of alcohol a day, (when most of us don’t drink any most of the time, but almost a full bottle of wine on the one night a month when we actually get to socialise)

• We should make our kids wear helmets for anything even remotely dangerous, including crawling if we are to believe some of the children’s play and equipment catalogues, (when most of us remember falling off the swing and even cutting our heads open, but are still here today and not that mentally impaired)

But most of all, we should avoid giving ANY offence to ANYone. So that means

• Teachers in Queensland, Australia shouldn’t be using red pens for marking because it’s too aggressive
• City councillors in Hull, UK should say ‘woman’ and not ‘lady’
• Kindergartners shouldn’t kiss their schoolmates because it’s sexual harassment

“Enough already!”, people are saying. And rightly so, because while various corporations, institutions and law-making bodies are slamming people for what is only human, they are not doing what they should be doing, i.e educating people to understand what the crux of the problem is.