Taking them on Solo

I have, in the past, erroneously made the point that Canada’s Charter does not explicitly separate church and state. I thought it was cute and curious that a country like Canada, with a very secular population (particularly compared to the United States), has no need to enshrine and codify the explicit segregation between religious matters and governmental ones. Of course, as with so many things that I just make up off the top of my head, it turns out that I am wrong. Section twenty-seven of the Charter, guaranteeing a right to multiculturalism, has been interpreted by the courts as expressly forbidding government recognition of one religious tradition over others.

Someone should probably tell the mayor of Saskatoon that: [Read more…]

We’ll tread that fine line…

I hope nobody mistakes my approach to racism and cultural tolerance as ‘the right way’. People a lot more well-versed than I am in the vagaries of anthropology, history, sociology, and psychology (just to name a few relevant fields that I am utterly clueless in) have time and again failed to find the surefire path forward to diplomacy and harmony. I can barely sweet-talk women at the bar. If there is a ‘right way’, and I don’t believe that there is one, I’m an unlikely candidate to be the one who comes across it.

That being said, I know that some methods are better than others. There may be few things that we know to be surefire correct, but there are a hell of a lot that we know to be just plain wrong. There are, like logical fallacies or lousy apologetics arguments or privileged whines, arguments that are uttered pre-refuted. We know colour blindness doesn’t work, we know that ‘reverse discrimination’ isn’t what people say it is, we know that dividing the world into ‘racists’ and ‘non-racists’ is a house built on the sand of bad psychology. We can dispose of these arguments just like we can the “well then why are there still monkeys” ‘proof’ that evolution is a liberal conspiracy from the Muslim atheist devil.

Some situations, however, are quite a bit more tricky: [Read more…]

Movie Friday: RCA, Sony, and big black cocks

Name three stereo types…

Animated gif of a young man shaking his head 'no'

No? Not even a little? All right then, let’s move on.

One of the things that stuck out for me when I was studying cognitive psychology is the extent to which our brains are happiest when they have the least amount of work to do. We have a wide variety of mechanisms evolved specifically to let our brains ‘coast’ and do as little work as possible. Stereotypes, whether about people or groups or behaviours (or anything, really) are one very popular and powerful way of classifying information without having to put a lot of thought into it. Of course, the downside of stereotypes is that they often lead us to make erroneous conclusions based on bad information.

Those stereotypes propagate, and we come to see the entire world through the lens of our own lazy ignorance. For example: [Read more…]

Race and gay marriage: the story of a proposition

It’s been a weird week for Americans who support equal marriage rights for gay people. On the disappointing side, there was the more-or-less inevitable passage of an amendment to North Carolina’s state constitution that doubly extra-bans gay marriage (while smuggling in a bunch of other assholish nonsense for good measure). It also appears that Colorado would rather dither and adopt a faux-libertarian posture than see gay people achieve even second-class status. On the other hand, the President finally decided to alight from his perch on the fence* and state, finally, that he supports gay marriage. Of course, marriage is not the be-all-end-all of the gay rights struggle, but it has become a proxy for general acceptance of gay Americans as full-fledged citizens.

Whenever the gay marriage issue comes up, there is always someone in the conversation (and sometimes it’s me) who brings up the intersectionality between race and homophobia – pointing out that in California’s notorious “Proposition 8” battle in 2008, black Californians voted 70% in favour of denying marriage equality to gay people. It is often raised in discussions of the seeming hypocrisy in a group that was so long denied civil rights using those freshly-granted rights to deny others the same. I stumbled across an interesting analysis of actual voting data (rather than exit polls) that examines this exact question, and I thought it would be worth taking a closer look. [Read more…]

A chip off the old blockhead

So, for reasons that I honestly cannot fathom, Ted Nugent has been in the news lately. A man who has not had a certified album since 1980 (i.e., 4 years before I was born) is suddenly being solicited for his political “opinions” – a more accurate term would be lunatic ravings. It’s kind of like asking MC Hammer for his opinion on the state of contemporary French cuisine – why on Earth would anyone care what a ridiculously out-of-fashion rock “star” thinks about the political process? Is partial name recognition and possible clinical psychosis all that is required to become a political player? If that’s the case, much of the mystery surrounding the morass of American politics has been rendered much clearer.

I feel more or less the same about Ashton Kutcher. I didn’t understand why anyone cared that Kelso from The 70s Show was on Twitter, I couldn’t fathom why the douche who “Punk’d” half of Hollywood was appointed to the lofty position of “less funny Charlie Sheen”*, and I was baffled by the fact that anyone would want him to be the face of their snack food. But whatever, that’s modern celebrity for you, right? At least he can’t fuck up a chip, right? [Read more…]

The worst thing in the world (Tuesday edition)

Trigger warning: graphic violence and extreme racism. Also, Republicans.

There was a subtle visual gag in an episode of The Simpsons where a Fox News chopper flies by the camera with a “new” slogan emblazoned on the side:

The chopper says "Fox News: Not racist, but #1 with racists"

This is more or less how I feel about political conservatism. I don’t believe that racism and political liberalism are antithetical – indeed, the racism one hears from liberals is often the most frustrating in that it is subtle and well-meaning, but no less damaging. That being said, there is a special relationship between conservatism and racism – a relationship we are beginning to understand. Conservatives will complain until they are blue in the face* that they are not racist, that liberals are the “real racists”, that calling someone “a racist” is just as bad as being racist… there are any number of weasel phrases. The fact is, however, that insofar as contemporary conservative ideology when followed to its natural conclusion will result in the continued (or exacerbated) disadvantage of non-white folks. The policies are racist, without necessarily meaning to.

And whether or not you fully accept the idea that non-human things (ideas, institutions, behaviours) can be racist in the absence of conscious hatred, you simply cannot ignore that when you scratch the surface of a racist extremist, you find a conservative. Sometimes you don’t even have to scratch: [Read more…]

Movie Friday: Jay Smooth on Trayvon

Because I will never NOT share something by radio host and vlogger Jay Smooth, here’s his take on an aspect of the Trayvon Martin case that hasn’t been fully explored:

It’s weird for me to hear my beliefs coming out of someone else’s mouth, but there you go.

Jay is making the same point that I tried to make with my posts about Occupy – that we have to be active participants in our system, whether that be political or judicial. No, we may not be the ones running for office or sitting on the bench, but we have to be actively engaged. Should we fail to remain vigilant, the system is allowed to run on its laurels, which inevitably serves only those at the top. In the case of Trayvon Martin, no justice was even pursued until people stood up and started paying attention. A man murdered a 17 year-old kid, and the police let him walk free, right up to the point where the cries of a small number of people who were acquainted with the case were heard by other people who believed that a just solution must be, and could be pursued.

This week I’ve been throwing examples at you in support of the basic tenet that we have to keep our brains switched on and our eyes open, because the system we live in is seriously flawed and unjust. We can and should expect more, and in order to achieve it we have to be asking the tough questions and demanding more than pat answers.

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Here come da judge…

This weekend this blog was visited by a rather unsavoury character who decided to take your humble narrator to school on why passing laws against black people isn’t racist. At first I was amused, much the way I would be watching a dog try to take a stick through the doggy door. It’s cute and entertaining in a pathetic sort of way, watching the poor thing struggle to achieve its goal. Unlike a friendly mutt, however, this particular commenter got progressively more unhinged as I refused to take him seriously, and he began lashing out. I quickly became bored, and left him to rage by himself in the dark.

One of the points that he was sure he had ‘got’ me on was the fact that black people are incarcerated at a much higher rate than white people. This proved, he asserted, that there was something wrong with black people that made them more likely to commit crimes. It’s just statistics, he claimed. The problem with his theory is that it is not supported by the evidence, or at least the evidence is not sufficient to justify the conclusions he draws. We know, for example, that racism often acts as a confounder in what appears to be a straight-line relationship. We also know that race can play an undue role in things like sentencing and presumed innocence, putting the weight of the judicial system disproportionately against defendants of colour.

This phenomenon is not necessarily because judges are ‘racists’ or because they have a grudge against black people or anything quite so simplistic. The issue is complicated, but one of the culprits is our inability to think critically about our own attitudes about race and racism. By making race a taboo subject, we have set up a situation where people would rather ignore it than discuss it. It happens to police, it happens to lawyers, it happens to judges, and it happens the next level up as well: [Read more…]

A Wildrose by any other name…

DISCLAIMER: I am going to do my absolute best not to make fun of Alberta in this post.

Those of you who do not follow Canadian politics news closely may be unaware that the province of Alberta recently had a provincial election. Alberta has often been (somewhat unfairly, but not entirely) characterized as the Texas of Canada. It is rich in oil wealth, and has long held itself out as the victim of a campaign of neglect by central Canada. At least partially as a result of this, and the entrenched conservatism that seems to accompany life on a frontier, Alberta has long been to the political ‘right’ of most Canadian issues. Of course, now that we have a Prime Minister from Alberta who is to the political ‘right’ of most Canadian issues, it’s a confusing time to be Albertan. What does it mean to your long-standing identity as the middle child of the Canadian family when one of your own is calling the shots?

In the wake of this confusion sprung the Wildrose Party, a provincial party that is even further to the right than the Progressive Conservative Party that has run Alberta for the past 40 years. Yes, you read that right – Alberta has been represented by a single party for 40 years, and it is called the “Progressive Conservative” party – Americans, sorry for blowing your minds with our weirdo Canuck ways. The Wildrose Party, branding itself as the populist conservative alternative to the staid, Tory leanings of the PC party, made a strong bid to unseat the reigning PCs in this latest election. Up until recently, political observers (plus everyone with a sense of civic duty) were gnawing their fingernails at the prospect of the right flank of the right wing seizing control – it was a real possibility.

Then… the wheels kind of came off: [Read more…]

Racism? Let them eat cake!

Sometimes stuff comes up in the news and I just don’t bother going after it. There are low-hanging news stories that are so silly or frivolous that I can’t think of anything worthwhile to say about them. Sometimes I file them away for a rainy day when I don’t have a lot of time or energy, or on the off chance that I’ll be able to link to it later in a more substantive piece. So when I read about Sweden’s “racist cake” incident, I figured it was worth taking a pass:

Sweden’s culture minister is facing calls to step down after she was photographed cutting a cake shaped in the form of a naked black woman. The incident involving Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth happened at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. According to Radio Sweden, the museum said the cake was supposed to highlight the issue of female circumcision. But the Association for African Swedes said it was a crude racist caricature and called for Ms Liljeroth to resign.

A few people asked me to respond, but I thought it was a waste of time. After all, it’s a very silly story about an art installation that, as is often the case, was provocative and not in the greatest ‘taste’ (sorry for the pun). Avant garde art is, by definition, ahead of public opinion and designed to shock to prove a point. The involvement of the Swedish culture minister was a regrettable move on her part, but what would you do if asked to cut into a living cake at an art gallery? Staunchly refuse and launch into a tirade against the artist? It was the result of really shitty staff work and a questionable piece of art.

But damn if that confection didn’t have staying power. I guess it’s true – chocolate just doesn’t come out! So here’s a brief issue-by-issue breakdown of my thoughts. [Read more…]