Arizona doesn’t have a race problem

While I have mentioned it tangentially, I haven’t devoted an entire post to what is probably the biggest racial civil rights struggle since the 1960s: Arizona’s new immigration law. In brief, the law requires police officers to detain anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. If a suspected person cannot prove they aren’t an illegal immigrant, they can be arrested and put in jail. When I say that the law requires police to do this, I mean just that – a component of the bill is that if an officer fails to interrogate someone, and a citizen notices it, the officer can be found in dereliction of his/her duty. Basically, the reins of law are turned over to the most paranoid and least informed members of the populace of Arizona.

The reflexive question that everyone immediately asks is “how do you tell if someone looks like an illegal immigrant?” Good question: let’s ask the governor who signed the bill

Huh… even she doesn’t know. Not to worry though, she says. People will have their civil rights protected, as it says in the bill:

“This act shall be implemented in a manner consistent with federal laws regulating immigration, protecting the civil rights of all persons and respecting the privileges and immunities of United States citizens.”

Handy! What about this right?

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

If the law respects the right to be innocent until proven guilty, and the constitution outlaws unreasonable seizure, then the immigration bill is pretty clearly meaningless. After all, if you cannot prove that someone is illegal (which is the standard of innocent until proven guilty), you cannot compel them to prove they are illegal (that pesky 5th Amendment) and you’re not allowed to arrest them arbitrarily, then the bill is moot.

Well, the federal government didn’t argue that case, but still managed to block the bill’s enforcement, arguing instead that immigration policy is the purview of the federal government and that the law went outside the state’s jurisdiction. Of course, Arizona plans to appeal:

Lawyers for Republican governor Jan Brewer and the Arizona government filed their appeal at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday. “I have also asked the 9th Court to expedite the briefing schedule and its ruling, since Congress and the president have once again failed to act,” Ms Brewer said in a statement.

I want to take a moment to talk about the people of Arizona. While I think they’ve made a frighteningly poor decision and are wearing their entrenched racism out on their sleeves, I am loath to condemn them outright. Arizona has major economic problems (which this bill will only make worse, but we’re not dealing with rational people here), and as I’ve said before, racism will bubble up from beneath the surface whenever there is economic hardship. Illegal immigrants are a convenient scapegoat in times of crisis, especially if they are brown-skinned. While people affirm up and down that this isn’t a race issue, it strains credulity to think that the cops are going to be on the hunt for illegal French and German immigrants.

Especially with this guy in charge…

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First, kill all the lawyers

All:
God save your majesty!

Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat
and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,
that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

Dick:
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

Cade:
Nay, that I mean to do.

Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78

The common temptation is to read the above quote out of context, and to imagine that killing the lawyers will somehow usher in a Utopian society. Certainly we can all think of our favourite lawyer sterotype – the slick corporate lawyer who gets the megacorporation out of having to pay damages, the wily defence lawyer who helps the rich defendant escape punishment, the aggressive divorce lawyer who strips a man of all of his possessions through litigation.

I’d like to add another stereotype to your arsenal: the lawyer who is kidnapped for have the temerity to assert that his client has the right not to be executed for having a boyfriend:

Mohammad Mostafaei, who is defending the woman (Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtani), was called in on Saturday for questioning at Tehran’s Evin prison. Amnesty (International) says he appears to have gone missing after his release. The authorities have since detained his wife and brother-in-law, it says.

I attended a rally here in Vancouver in support of this woman. It was sparsely attended, and largely failed to capture the attention of the crowds going by – highly disappointing. There was one highlight, however. During a speech, the speaker decried the practice of stoning and the oppression of women in Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. A man in the crowd began shouting his dissent, saying that women were well-treated in Saudi Arabia. The speaker on stage pointed out that women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive. The heckler shot back, and I am not making this up, that they didn’t want to drive. I am gratified that the audience immediately broke out laughing. It is utterly ridiculous to pass a law banning someone from doing something that they don’t want to do in the first place. If the women of Saudi Arabia don’t want to drive, they should be able to choose not to – no need for a law.

At any rate, the execution of this woman appears to be a foregone conclusion. The government of Iran has decided that she is guilty and worthy of death, and no amount of legal argument or international protest seems sufficient to sway them from their course. Considering what’s happening in Iran, and in Gaza, and the ongoing idiocy of Pakistan, it seems like the Middle East is leading the bold charge forward into the 15th century.

UPDATE: Mr. Mostafaei has turned up in Turkey and is seeking asylum there.

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South Africa doesn’t have a race problem

I was watching The Daily Show a few weeks ago, during the coverage of the World Cup. John Oliver was talking about race relations in South Africa – to people on the street, to a hard-line racist activist, and to a government minister in charge of racial relations. The most poignant part of the interview for me was when the minister looked John in the eye and told him flat out that South Africa doesn’t have a race problem. I’m glad I wasn’t drinking milk at the time, because it most assuredly would have flown out of my nose as I laughed derisively.

I feel compelled at this point to re-state a maxim that I’ve danced around many times at this blog. It is a central tenet of my approach to race and improving the climate of racial discourse in Canada (and other countries, of course). It is not… It is not… IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to simply wish racism away. It is not possible to declare that there is no race problem simply by asserting it and hoping to high heaven that it comes true. Racial issues are deeply entrenched in our society, in our history, and there is some evidence to suggest that elements of it are present in our very human nature. The first step toward progress is recognizing the subtle effect that non-obvious racism has on our day-to-day lives.

Hence my scoffing and incredulity when presented with the statement that “South Africa doesn’t have a race problem”. As though hundreds of years of colonialization, coupled with an absolutist and brutal apartheid regime that existed within my own living memory could somehow be erased by good will and warm, fuzzy feelings. It was times like that I wished I had a roommate, and that the roommate was a bit slow – I would have made a bet. “Within a month of this statement,” I would have said “we’re going to hear about some major race issue out of South Africa.”

I would have won some money.

Four white South Africans have been convicted of humiliating five black university domestic staff after a video of the incident was posted online. The video showed the five staff being made to kneel and forced to eat food which had apparently been urinated on by one of the students.

I don’t speak Africaans (and neither do you, likely) so I can’t translate the video for you, but the actions are pretty clear. The ‘urinating’ in the food is simulated by a water bottle, but wow does that ever not matter. The former students (those rapscallions) claim that they didn’t intend for the video to be humiliating, and that they never would have done it if they had known what the outcome would be. That’s cold comfort for the millions of black South Africans who see the barely-retreated spectre of apartheid – where being black meant that you were legally at the bottom rung of society and had no legal protections – rearing its head in the form of these students forcing hostel workers to eat contaminated food for their entertainment.

But hey, at least justice was done:

The four – RC Malherbe, Johnny Roberts, Schalk van der Merwe and Danie Grobler – were also given six-month prison terms, suspended for five years on condition they are not found guilty of discrimination during that period. The fines of 20,000 rand (~$2,700) were higher than that requested by the prosecution.

“It sends a strong message to potential offenders of similar crimes,” said magistrate Mziwonke Hinxa in the mainly white town of Bloemfontein.

It does send a strong message – if you’re white and have enough money, you can get away with pissing on the rights and dignity (and food) of black people in South Africa.

In a statement read out by their lawyer, the men said the video had been made to demonstrate the traditions of their hall of residence and to protest at plans to make the university more racially mixed.

Well you’ve essentially taken care of that, boys. Why any black person would want to attend the University of the Free State (someone’s been reading George Orwell) is incomprehensible to me.

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Michael Bloomberg gets it EXACTLY right

Holy crap, can I vote in the next New York City election? That is, can I vote for Bloomberg to move to Canada and run for office?

“On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn’t want us to enjoy the freedoms to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams, and to live our own lives. Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that even here — in a city that is rooted in Dutch tolerance — was hard-won over many years.”

This is in reference to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque“. Bloomberg had expressed his opposition to the attempts to block the building previously, but this was a great speech in support of civil rights and personal freedoms. While I’m not thrilled about the “God’s love and mercy” part, I recognize a political pander when I see one. Secular society requires us to respect the rights of people to think and believe as they like, even if we don’t agree with them.

For the text of the speech, you can click here.

“Polite” Racism

Feeling like I’ve been picking on religion too much in my Monday morning think pieces, I’ve decided to re-publish some essays I wrote during Black History Month in February, 2010. This post, which originally appeared on Facebook on Monday, February 15th, 2010, is part 5 of a 6-part series on race and racial issues.

This will probably be everyone’s least favourite post in this series, but it’s a topic that I find the most fascinating and most dangerous – Canadian racism, or racism in the “post-racial” utopia we supposedly have. I say least favourite because it makes everyone uncomfortable, particularly white people in my generation (my own friends included). Nobody likes to be accused of being racist, and I would imagine that most people honestly believe they aren’t, and harbor no active anti-racial sentiments or prejudices. You won’t have to look very hard to find someone who will say that racism isn’t a serious problem in Canada, or find someone who makes the statement “we don’t have racism in Canada” – a patently absurd claim.

The nature of racism has changed a great deal in the past handful of decades. The face of racism, as we’re used to seeing it, comes in the form of hooded Klansmen, burning crosses, police with dogs and hoses turning on angry crowds, lynch mobs, the whole nine yards. We’re used to seeing a system where people actively and overtly discriminate against other people based on their skin colour or ethnic heritage. After a prolonged fight (much less rancorous here in Canada than in the States), we have overthrown that kind of racism. Even within my lifetime, I’ve seen a difference in the tenor of public discourse.

So does that mean that racism is over? Have we finally reached that level playing field? Can we please stop talking about racism and racial issues?

Not on your life.

We may not have police dogs, we may not have lynchings, we might not call people racial slurs (at least to their faces) anymore, but we have not solved the racism problem. We’ve just cleaned it up. We gave people language to avoid offending people, we passed laws to make it harder to discriminate based on race, we went out of our way to put non-white people in prominent, visible positions. All of these have been seen as important, positive steps toward a bias-free society. I see things a little differently.

Imagine if medical science progressed to a point where we could develop such effective anti-sneeze, anti-cough, decongestant, muscle stimulant medications so that the common cold would be completely invisible. A person with a cold would simply pop a handful of pills and be completely symptom free. In fact, taking them prophylactically would ensure that symptoms would never develop. He’d be able to go about his life as though he wasn’t sick. As long as he kept taking the pills, he’d never have to see the effects of illness. However, the reality would be that there’s a serious problem happening inside his body; a problem that doesn’t go away just because it can’t be seen. This person wouldn’t even be aware that he was sick, would take no corrective actions in his life to deal with the susceptibility to illness that made him sick in the first place, and might even go so far as to deny the existence of illness in his body.

By successfully attacking the symptoms of racism – the hate groups, the discriminatory hiring laws, the violence – we have lulled ourselves into thinking that we have solved the underlying problems of racial discrimination and injustice. A friend on comments in another post (on Facebook) actually pulled the “but there’s a black president now” card. As though one black man getting elected to one high office is evidence that justice has been done and everyone should just get over their racial issues and hold hands under a rainbow.

Racism is still alive and well. We still don’t have proportional representation in political life. The poorest people living in the worst conditions are, even in Canada, predominantly dark-skinned. Our history of treatment of Native peoples and our continued discrimination against them is still happening every day. If ability is evenly distributed among the human population, then opportunity should be as well. What we should see if this is the case is a meritocracy in which power is held by those who are the most able. Such a system would look far more multi-cultural (and gender balanced) than the one we have today. One doesn’t have to look too far beyond our own senate and parliament to see that we just ain’t there yet.

Furthermore, by denying the existence of the problem, we grow up unable to see the evidence in front of our own eyes. We become unable to distinguish racial prejudice from bad luck, or circumstance, or a real lack of ability. I was stunned recently to hear someone say “well maybe there just aren’t enough qualified people from minority groups to run for high office.” This little gem is one of the oldest in the book, cited frequently when discussing Affirmative Action laws in the United States. If innate ability is evenly distributed throughout the population, but achievement is not, then we have a racist system. On an even playing field, success will be based on innate ability and hard work, and the best and brightest will move to the front of the line. Again, we’d see a much different distribution of power/race. The fact that we don’t means that either a) the playing field isn’t as even as we’d like to think it is, or b) ability is not distributed evenly throughout the population. Looking at the world, I’m more inclined to believe A over B, but if you honestly think it’s B I’d really like to see some evidence of that.

If we move back for a moment to the analogy of the man with the medicated cold, one would expect occasional flare-ups of sickness when compliance with the drug regimen slips. Our sick man forgets to take his pills one day, and the next day he’s got a runny nose, sneezing, etc. He quickly bombards his system with more pharmaceuticals and the illness subsides until the next time he forgets.

Enter Michael Richards’ tirade; enter Don Imus’ nappy headed ‘hos; enter Mitt Romney’s invocation of Baja Men; enter George Bush’s reaction to Katrina. These are high-profile (and recent) examples of what happens when symptoms are suppressed but the underlying problems aren’t dealt with. It doesn’t take a lot of scratching of the surface to unearth the racial problem. As I said, the problem is far worse in the United States than in Canada, but it’s still happening here.

Reading this, one might get the impression that I think the problem is as bad as it’s ever been. That is not my feeling. We are far better now than we were in my father’s time. I can work where I want, get access to the same government services as anyone else, marry whom I choose, vote, protest, and exploit my human rights. 50 years ago this was inconceivable for many people (both black and white). We’ve absolutely come a long way. However, we haven’t fixed the problem, and our denial and refusal to discuss it has only forced it underground to a place where it’s so subtle, we don’t even know it’s influencing our decisions. As far as we’ve come, we still have miles more to go.

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Movie Friday – What up, Ninja?

Seeing as the topic came up on Monday, I thought it would be fun to play this video

I really liked this video. While I’m not sure if the authors “get it”, they do expose some of the risible and arbitrary rules around the use of a word, and explore it using humour. Even if it was offensive, it’s funny enough to be excused.

My favourite part is the last scene, where they seem to have a quick debate to see if the non-eastern Asian guy can use the term without offence. “He counts,” apparently. Hilarious.

Enjoy!

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Our own home-grown racism

I read my post yesterday, and something in it made me cringe. I wrote that the United States has a serious race problem. The reason I cringe is not because it isn’t true, but because it suggests to the casual reader that Canada is somehow better than the USA in terms of racism. Our country has a very different racial history than our southern neighbours. Canada, as part of the British Empire, abolished African slavery in the early 19th century, more than 50 years before Confederation. African slavery had been curtailed for many years before the official abolition, and as a result there were comparatively few Africans living in Canada following the abolition of slavery. The majority of Canada’s black citizens are immigrants from the Caribbean, and more recently directly from Africa (this being largely due to changes in immigration policy and what countries immigrants were allowed to be from). It is fair, therefore, to say that Canada was not built on the backs of African slaves – the immigrant labour here was largely accomplished by East and South Asian people, as well as many white eastern Europeans and Irish.

The United States, as a contrast, did not officially abolish slavery until 1863, following a civil war fought over the very issue (admittedly among other factors). Slavery was an integral part of America’s ability to exploit its natural resources; exploitation which resulted in their emergence as a major economic power. America was built upon the whipped backs of African slaves, and had a slavery system of unparalleled cruelty. Following the official emancipation of African slaves, the black population of the United States was held in unofficial slavery for generations more (and, it can be argued, still is with racial profiling, discriminatory drug laws, school funding shortages, social program erosion, the list goes on). Black people did not become full citizens in the entire United States until 1964, an entire century after they were supposedly “freed” from slavery. The race problem we see today in the US is definitely part of its history of brutal racist oppression.

But before we Canucks start patting ourselves on the backs for being such enlightened and decent folk, we have to remember something important: black people aren’t the only targets of racism. Canada has its own history of systemic, brutal, racist oppression to deal with – that of its Native peoples. Our track record in the treatment of Aboriginal people is horrible, and still rears its ugly and ignorant head:

All Lori Flinders wanted was to build a group home for displaced native youth in the town of Alberton, Ont. What she encountered was a wave of local resistance that, to her, provided a lesson in reflexive racism. A director with Weechi-it-te-win Family Services – a child welfare agency for 10 First Nations communities in in Northwestern Ontario – Ms. Flinders says a racist smear campaign and a town council swayed by a “lynch-mob mentality” recently trounced plans to build the home.

I’ve lived in cities almost my entire life. It’s easy to become beguiled living in places like Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, and Vancouver, into thinking that Canada is a multi-ethnic and multicultural society. Drive an hour outside the city limits of any of those cities and you’ll find a picture of Canada that is very different. Canada is still very much a white country, with people living in many places that do not subscribe to the philosophy of multiculturalism. Far be it from me to suggest that there is anything more sinister than simple ignorance at play, but there can be a serious shortage of the kind of tolerance we like to think is part of our national identity outside of major cities. This case is an illustration of this phenomenon.

After applying to build a children’s group home outside the town of Appleton, ON, Ms. Flinders was besieged by angry citizens distorting facts and expressing extreme hostility to having Native kids near their homes:

“They said the most awful things,” Ms. Friesen recalled. “They said they’d have to lock their doors now. One person said, ‘I have native friends but this is going too far.’ Another person brought an article about a murder around an Alberta group home. So all of a sudden this youth centre is being equated with violence and murder.”

Of course, while the town denies that race plays a part in the decision, it is pretty clear from the nature of the reaction that the people of Alberton are not concerned about the preservation of zoning bylaws or the appropriateness of the property for children – they don’t want no stinkin’ redskins in their town.

To Ms. Flinders, the council meeting inspired a personal epiphany. “I’d never experienced racism like I did there,” she said. “I grew up in this area and never realized the kind of harsh feelings that lay just below the surface. In a way, it was a gift.”

And another person finally gets it. Racism is inherent in the system. It’s not a problem that’s been solved, it’s a disease that has been bandaged over. Let’s hope the people of Alberton are able to examine this incident and get in touch with their own racial prejudices. I’m not going to be holding my breath though.

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California Supreme Court strikes down Proposition 8

More good news!

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled Wednesday that the controversial rule was unconstitutional and struck it down… Proposition 8 “fails to advance any rational basis for singling out gay men and women,” the judge wrote in his ruling. “[This law] does nothing more than enshrine — that opposite sex couples are superior,” he wrote to justify his decision to rule it unconstitutional.

For those of you who don’t follow US politics, Proposition 8 was a referendum on gay marriage passed in California in 2008. It challenged a previous ruling that made same sex marriage legal. It was an ugly, hate-filled fight that was fueled by money from Christian religious groups hell-bent on sticking their noses into gay people’s pants. Luckily, as Judge Walker noted in his ruling, the ban on gay marriage violates the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The emphasis in the above article is mine. It is known colloquially as the “equal protections clause”, and ensures that all citizens have access to privileges and rights provided by the state. Marriage being one of those rights, the judge ruled that it would violate the constitution to allow Proposition 8 to stand. While some violation of the constitution is occasionally warranted (i.e., incitements to violence are not protected by free speech laws), the defense failed to establish that there would be any amount of harm done to anyone that would warrant the violation of their rights under the amendment.

Of course the case seems destined to go to the Supreme Court, but because the State Supreme Court ruling is solidly based in the constitution, it will be difficult for the defense to win such an appeal.

Sometimes, the system works.

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The Giving Pledge: Take THAT, free market!

If I had any money, this is what I’d do with it:

The Giving Pledge is an effort to invite the wealthiest individuals and families in America to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice either during their lifetime or after their death.

Basically, Bill and Melinda Gates are encouraging their rich fat-cat friends to put their vast fortunes to a specific use – financing philanthropic projects. In a gesture that is essentially a big “fuck you” to Ayn Rand, those people who most typify her heroic characters are deciding not to let the free market decide how best to solve the problems of the world. Instead, they’re pledging their (quite frankly) obscene amounts of money to make measurable and concrete improvements in the lives of those who will benefit from it most.

This is far from simply throwing away money to expurgate white guilt or noblesse oblige, as Eli and Edythe Broad note:

“Before we invest in something, we ask ourselves three questions that guide our decision:

  1. Will this happen without us?  If so, we don’t invest.
  2. Will it make a difference 20 or 30 years from now?
  3. Is the leadership in place to make it happen?

Philanthropy is hard work.  Many people think it’s easy to give money away.  But we are not giving money away.  We want our wealth to make a measurable impact.  And after running two Fortune 500 companies, we’re having more fun now – and working harder – than ever.”

I don’t know how many of you have read Rand’s books. In those books, charity is done out of mewling and wheedling obligation to the hordes of lazy poor, hands outstretched. While there’s no doubt that there are lazy poor out there, and while I definitely don’t doubt that much charity is done merely so people feel (and look) less greedy for having money, that’s not an accurate description of general reality. There are real problems out there that can be solved by real investments from real people. It benefits all of us to have as few barriers to excellence as possible – how many Einstein-level intellects may have died of AIDS or malaria? What would have happened if Steven Hawking hasn’t had the benefit of modern medical technology? What if Bill Gates had been born in Harlem or on a reserve?

Anyway, this made me happy, so hopefully it makes you happy too. Also, a quick scan of the letter from the pledges reveals no invocations of Jesus or Judeo-Christian ethics (The Hiltons appear to be Catholic, so maybe I’ve spoken too soon). Seems as though people are happy just to be good human beings, rather than trying to pass through an eye of a needle.

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