Disparities: Whither comest thou?

I throw around the terms ‘inequality’ and ‘disparity’ quite often when discussing issues of race and gender. Most often I am talking about differences in levels of access or achievement that are rooted in traditional prejudices relating to majority opinion of minority members, but the concept can really be used to describe any differential level in access/achievement that are based on anything other than merit (however one wishes to define that). I think it is a safe conceit on my part to assume that I don’t need to explain why merit is a legitimate basis for discrimination, whereas others are not.

What is not a safe assumption, however, is to assume that we all have the same idea of why these disparities exist, particularly how they manifest themselves in a contemporary setting. In yesterday’s discussion of the usefulness of diversity, I pointed out that it is in our societal best interest to reduce the amount of disparity (by increasing access) in group membership selection. I made a vague reference to the fact that I imagine that increased diversity along lines other than gender alone may have a benefit to the group that operates along similar lines. I’d like to extend that argument a bit today, in a discussion of one facet of race-based disparity in access and achievement – education:

The College Board is releasing two reports today on the crisis facing young black and Latino men, who, the reports find, continue to be measurably less educated than minority women and white men. According to the reports, 16 percent of Latino and 28 percent of African-American men ages 25 to 34 had obtained an associate’s degree or higher as of 2008, while the comparable figure for white men was 44 percent and for Asian men, 70 percent.

The report also said that foreign-born members of those lagging minority groups were more likely to drop out than those born in the United States, especially in the case of Hispanics. While the total dropout rate for male Latinos is 20 percent, the foreign-born dropout rate is 14 percentage points higher.

Before I delve fully into my argument, I want to make two points that I don’t think really connect to the main substance of my argument but are worth pointing out. First, as far as I am concerned education is the be-all-end-all of improving quality of life and moving society forward. Full stop. The better educated a society is, the more equipped it is to deal with new challenges, and understand the strengths and weaknesses of proposed solutions to novel problems. Fixing educational systems means fixing societies.

The second thing is that I found it fascinating that foreign-born students performed worse than domestic students, given what I felt was a fairly strong hypothesis proposed by John Ogbu – that black and hispanic students’ failure to thrive had something to do with feelings of displacement that are not shared by those who willingly immigrate. I wonder whether financial pressures or language skill disparity plays a role in this finding, or if the hypothesis itself must be thrown out and a new explanation found.

Okay, now on to the point I want to make. There are a number of reasons why black and brown people may do worse than white people. Some of that undoubtedly has to do with different cultures and the expectations that people have for themselves – if education is not prioritized in your home then you’re less likely to take it as seriously. I am unsure as to what the state of the evidence is that supports how different these cultures are, but for a moment I will grant that this factor has some explanatory power. Many others point to differential treatment and expectation by teachers – that teachers expect black and brown students to fail, so they encourage those pupils less than white students. Again, I am unsure of how strong the evidence for this conjecture is.

However, even granting those partial explanations, pre-existing poverty and lack of financial ability plays a huge role. Especially in the United States where private schools are often the only way for kids to have a fighting chance of getting into a good college, being poor is a huge barrier to success.

The second, smaller report shares firsthand stories from minority men. One African-American student currently enrolled as a freshman in a public university seems jaded about the process. The authors write: “He remembers that all through school people told him to get good grades so he could succeed and go to college, but senior year he realized it was all about money and affordability.” Money is cited as one of the biggest roadblocks to gaining an education, along with social stigma and lowered aspirations.

If you have to work part- or full-time to support yourself as you go through school, you have less time to devote to your studies. Even more so if you also have to support family members or a family of your own.

So we have a situation where black and brown (and apparently Asian as well) kids are less likely to be able to get an education. Follow me through a thought experiment: if education and income are linked (and they are), then being less-educated means that you have lower lifetime earning potential. If you have children of your own, those children will have less financial access than if you had been better educated. This creates a further gap in their ability to access education, which means their earning potential suffers. It is a problem that persists through generations, resulting in a systemic disparity in access/achievement that falls explicitly along racial lines.

The article offers no solutions to this problem, and I will not spend too long offering my own. I think that if we want to see these disparities reduced, we cannot simply stand by and wait for them to solve themselves. It is also no good to simply blame people for their lot in life – that might feel good (and I’ll even pretend for a second that it might be correct… I feel dirty now), but it does not solve the problem, it simply absolves us of any responsibility for ameliorating it. We must take an active role to improve levels of access and genuine chances for success, so that any differences in achievement are not due to the structure of the education system. If the schools fail our kids, how can our kids succeed at our schools?

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This post is for Lawrence Hill

Regular readers here will remember my frustration and anger toward a Dutch group representing ancestors of former slaves, who threatened to burn a book by one of my favourite authors, Lawrence Hill. Not only are book burnings stupid and counterproductive (since they elevate the profile of the idea you’re attempting to destroy), but they are barbaric and violent. Burning a book is an implicit threat to the author of that book, not simply a rejection of an idea.

The second part of my frustration was the fact that it was clear that the people involved had not bothered to even read coverage of the book. They let their single-minded focus on the issue of the title completely blind them to the fact that the book is about slavery and its related horrors. Not only that, but the title of the book (the source of their objection) is based on an actual existing document – it is a reference to a real thing. If they had stopped for 5 seconds before getting their backs up, they would have easily understood the significance.

However, they chose to ignore the lessons of history and just good sense, and staged the burning anyway. They did it at the slavery memorial in Osterpark in Amsterdam. As you know, I was in Amsterdam recently, and I visited Osterpark.

Mr. Hill, these photos are for you:

 

Something's missing...

Much better

We shouldn’t burn books. We certainly shouldn’t burn great books. We should learn from them, and if we disagree we should exercise our rights to free speech to do so. Those same free speech rights protect things we like and dislike, and threatening those rights with fire is threatening our entire civilization.

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Special feature: I go to Amsterdam!

Hey everyone, so as I mentioned, I was out of town this past week. I am in fact still out of town, but at least I am back in the country. Where was I, you ask? Well, as the title probably tipped you to, I was in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I had two poster presentations accepted at the IASLC’s World Conference on Lung Cancer. This is kind of a big deal, career-wise, since it’s a high-profile venue for me to showcase not only my work, but myself as a researcher.

While I was there for work, I did manage to find time to explore the city and see some things that I think you might find interesting. I’m going to try and summarize as much as I can in one post, but it’s probably going to be a long one.

The City of Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the capital city of the Netherlands, and has a long history that relates predominantly to two things: land reclamation and banking. See, the Netherlands used to be largely under water, so the Dutch used windmills to pump water away from the land, creating a harbour. They dug canals that surround the city, allowing buildings to be constructed. They used materials exploited from colonial territory to establish Europe’s first stable banking system. It’s not really an exaggeration to say that Europe would not exist in the absence of the financial stability that was afforded by Dutch banking institutions.

Of course, one has to remember that when we say “the Dutch” dug canals and “the Dutch” exploited resources, we are referring predominantly to Dutch slave owners. The labour responsible for the human-made miracle that is Amsterdam was stolen from Africans, Indonesians, and Caribbean aboriginals. It is certainly no exaggeration to say that Europe was built on the backs of slaves. This is me at a monument to those slaves in Oosterpark on the east side of the city:

There is a nearby museum devoted to exploring and discussing the slave trade. Of course I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, and I went. Unfortunately (for me, anyway), the entire exhibit was in Dutch. Dutch is actually a remarkably easy language to learn, provided you speak English and have even just a little German. So, while I missed some of the meaning, I did manage to catch most of the general idea of the displays:

Want to be flip about this, but can't

The people of Amsterdam

I have never been to Europe before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. One of the first things I noticed about people in Amsterdam is that they’re all really good-looking. There were stunningly gorgeous women everywhere I went – riding bicycles, running, working, pushing strollers with good-looking kids in them. It was like walking through some kind of eugenicist’s wet dream.

The next thing I noticed was the sheer amount of race mixing happening. In addition to the fact that there was a large proportion of black people in the populace, I noticed that there wasn’t any kind of “sticking with our own” going on, at least not along race lines. Groups of teenagers, kids, adults, rich, poor, young and old – all sprinkled with people from around the globe. It was pretty amazing to see, especially coming from a place where despite our vaunted tolerance we don’t see a great deal of heterogeneity in peer groups.

There were also a number of interracial couples and people who were clearly (like me) the product of those couplings. I was expecting that everyone was going to confuse me for American because of my skin colour. That definitely wasn’t the case – they took me as Dutch until I began speaking. Then it was my accent rather than my appearance that got them to make that conclusion. Everyone was still very friendly though – maybe the stereotype about the way Europeans treat Americans is a bit out of date.

Life in Amsterdam

I was told by people who have been before that the way to get around Amsterdam is by bicycle. Everyone bikes here. All of the streets have separate lanes for bikes, and bike traffic has right of way. Since it’s a small city and parking is a motherfucker, biking is definitely the most convenient way to get from A to B. While the conference provided me with a transit pass, I only used it once.

Of course Amsterdam is famous for its Red Light District, where prostitution is legalized. I checked it out while I was there (of course) – it was pretty exciting and definitely worth seeing, but I’m not much of a sex tourist. Most of the stuff there is only appealing in the sense that you’ll have a great story to tell afterward. Plus, being there on my own meant that if I wanted to check out some of the more exciting shops, I’d have to go in on my own. That crosses a line in my mind from ‘hilarious curiosity’ to ‘full perv’. Wasn’t ready to make that jump yet.

The other thing that is legal in Amsterdam is marijuana. I live in Vancouver, where we have a sort of “hear no evil, smoke no evil” policy. I wasn’t altogether that fired up to smoke pot, since the novelty is blunted by how readily available it already is. I did, however, try some space cake:

I definitely recommend trying it if you haven’t before, but I also definitely recommend only eating half! That’s all I think I’m comfortable saying about the whole experience.

Concluding thoughts

I really enjoyed being in Amsterdam, and would definitely go back again. The city seems to be inhabited exclusively by happy people, who are also really attractive. Despite the rich heritage and beautiful scenery, it’s important not to forget the country’s history with slavery. Understanding that history is key to understanding the contemporary situation, just as it is here in Canada.

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Learning a new language

Part of my reason for starting this blog is because I have been led to believe by multiple interactions with people my own age (and occasionally older) who are terrified to discuss race. Part of this comes from a general distaste for even the concept of race, such that certain people think it is not a subject to be discussed in polite society. Still others (fewer of my own friends, to be sure) think that the discussion of race is redundant, and that talking about race is what causes racism in the same way that Wile E. Coyote was immune from the effects of gravity until he noticed he’d walked off the cliff.

Those two camps aside, the most common response I get from people when discussing why they don’t like talking about race is that they are uncomfortable discussing the subject for fear of being perceived as racist. We have a strong societal taboo about racism – so strong in fact that it has begun to interfere with our ability to discuss strategies for dealing with racism. We thereby get mired in the morass of a kind of “hear/see/speak no evil” approach to a major societal problem.

My reason (one among many others) for speaking about racism as candidly and frequently and publicly as I do is to try and equip the average person with some basic vocabulary that we can use in our discussions of inequities of various types, racism being one of those. Given that our (my) generation is born into a discussion of race that has never really happened before, we are in the unique (and perhaps unenviable) position of inventing a new language to talk about it:

There’s little question that most Millennials [those people born after 1980] struggle to articulate their views on how race and racism operate in their lives. But our focus groups’ deeper discussions revealed that a structural understanding of racism—of racism as something that grows out of political and economic systems rather than individual animus—is not completely lost on this generation. And that, of course, has serious implications for how they will go about eradicating it from our society.

It’s certainly unusual to find yourself in the position of having to describe something that operates outside our capacity to tangibly identify. Racism is a bad idea – a product of crappy human brains and superficial but prominent differences between groups. Because it is folded into our societal interactions, most of it happens in such a way as to appear completely normal, but resulting in disparity that runs in a consistent direction.

This report, abstracts of which are published in Colorlines, is an attempt to determine how the conversation is having on the “front lines” of the discussion – the people who are inheriting the problem and charting the course for society’s future:

“This is a hard one. Racism today would be, um…” stumbled Jenny, a 21-year-old Asian-American college student in the Los Angeles area, where we held focus 16 groups in late 2010 and early 2011. “I guess discriminating based on the color of someone’s skin,” Jenny continued, falling back upon the type of relatively generic description that many participants of all races and ethnicities used.

I have given my own ham-handed attempt to define racism, or at least what racism means to me. Briefly, racism is what happens when ideas about an ethnic group are applied to an individual. So when someone thinks that I am handy in a fight because I’m black, or assumes that my buddy Joel is good with money because he’s Jewish, or assumes that Brian is a habitual drunk because he’s Irish, we’re all being judged as individuals by group characteristics. Inherent is this judgment is the embedded assumption that your ethnic group comprises a meaningful encapsulation of your entire persona – that there is enough truth in stereotypes that you can judge someone entirely based on something as superficial as skin colour or cultural background.

What’s interesting is that while we all struggle with this problem, some differences in understanding do seem to fall along group lines:

Of course, the fact that most Millennials believe race still shapes American life should not mask the very real differences of opinion both across and within racial groups about the extent to which it matters. Which is the second theme that emerged from our focus groups: There are real differences in how young people of different races and ethnicities think and talk about this subject. Young people of color are more likely to independently bring up race, resources and access to them, while white Millennials are less likely to make connections across systems like housing and education, and less likely to prescribe political action to fix it.

It is fairly elementary psychology to understand why white kids may see racism as being an individual failing, and youth of colour are more likely to see a systematic process. These are more or less th realms in which these groups experience racism – white kids as seeing the actions of racist people as those people victimize people of colour (PoCs); PoCs seeing a systemic lack of both respect and access coming from all areas in their lives, without having to encounter too many white-hood-wearing “racists”. In this way, both groups are protected from having to make negative judgments about themselves: white kids don’t feel like they’re responsible for a system they can’t exert control over (and which was laid down before they were born), and kids of colour can point to racism as a reason for lack of success.

Whether either of these narrative is true (it is my opinion that they are both false), it reveals a significant disconnect between the way that white people and PoCs understand race and racism:

[One participant’s answer that the public school system isn’t racist…] revealed a broad tendency among our participants who were white college students, and came from comparatively privileged backgrounds. They didn’t believe their high schools intentionally discriminated against anyone; the segregation they witnessed and the corresponding difference in resources were just “the way it is,” and there was no need to question that fact. Participants like Justin generally did not talk about the policies and practices that created their public school systems—property tax-based funding, abundant availability of college-prep courses, and low student-counselor ratios, among others.

And until we can begin to speak each other’s languages and learn from each other’s experiences, we cannot get ourselves dislodged from our reluctance to talk to each other about problems and potential solutions. I strongly recommend, regardless of your pigment, you read these articles in their entirety. They’re quite interesting.

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Germany: We can’t be

Then again, sometimes there are stories that completely shatter my faith in humanity:

A row with uncomfortable echoes of the past is gripping the world of Germany’s student duelling societies after a club admitted a non-European member. Duellers in Munich objected to the fact a Mannheim club had allowed a member with an Asian background to join, despite his service in the German army.

Yep… that’s happening. Apparently the member in question is German enough to serve Germany in the armed forces, but not German enough to dress up in a silly costume and wave a sword around. The reaction of the club? Well I think we could all have predicted this one:

The clubs’ national association insisted they were not racist.

“We’re not racist, honest! We just don’t like darkies being in our clubs!” The story reads like the plot of a bad Disney movie (Erinner Das Titan maybe?), and just gets more ridiculous the further in you go:

Such societies are usually male and involve dressing up in traditional 19th Century outfits, as well as drinking and fighting with swords. Real swords are used and the men who join often sport a scar on their cheeks to show they have fought a real duel.

There was a feeling from the more conservative elements in Bavaria that, according to internal documents, members with “non-European facial and bodily characteristics” did not qualify as Germans and so could not join what the objectors see as a bastion of true German identity, our correspondent says.

It’s funny, many of the rampant anti-immigrant sentiment currently running through Europe hinges around the idea that immigrants won’t “assimilate”. That people whose ancestry hails from another part of the world (by the way, Germany – your ancestry is from Africa, so maybe you should put down the swords and pick up a drum) will refuse to adopt the customs and mores of the majority group. Since immigrants won’t take on native ideas, we should keep them out! Except here’s a guy who is trying to do just that – take part in a custom that is about as German as it gets, and he’s being forced out by the same majority group.

These kinds of attitudes come from a mindset in which culture is a static thing that cannot and should not change. This is a faulty view of the world – all currently-existing cultures are departures from ones that came before. Those elements of cultures that are valuable are retained (co-operation, family cohesion, respect for individual rights), and those that are not necessary for survival can be sloughed off (exclusion of outsiders, absolute power of the patriarch, tyranny of the majority). There can be debate over the merit of the individual component values, but it is ludicrous to suggest that any change to traditions is a destruction of those values.

The fact that this kind of story merits any discussion at all, let alone the tide of public opinion against the egregious racism on display by these clubs (or at least their conservative elements), is evidence of the fact of this cultural evolution. Time was, not long ago, it was considered entirely reasonable to exclude members of certain racial groups from “private clubs”. This practice still occurs, mind you, but only in those places where the light of modernity hasn’t quite penetrated the curtain of stupidity.

As with the story this morning, these kinds of attitudes will be consigned to the dustbin of history, and be seen as simply an odd curiosity of our ancestry.

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Well, they burned it. Everyone still alive?

 

This morning I warned you all of a dire plot by a group of fanatics in the Netherlands to do something profoundly silly:

But of course, banning a book doesn’t prevent people from reading it. Especially in this day of instantaneous transfer of information, burning a book is simply raising a flag that says “We are ignorant” and “We are out of touch with reality” at the same time. If people in the Netherlands wanted to find a copy of [Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes], they could simply go to Amazon or any number of other online bookstores. Banning the book is therefore futile. Burning the book may have some kind of psychological satisfaction for the protesting group, but it is an outmoded and meaningless gesture.

Well, undaunted by rational thought or… y’know… bothering to read the book, these Jell-o heads have decided to forge ahead with their agenda of public stupidity:

The activists vowed to burn copies of the book, published in Dutch as Het Negerboek, in an Amsterdam park unless its name was changed.

However, group member Perez Jong Loy said Wednesday that they did not burn the entire work because it’s not the novel’s content they find offensive, only the title. “We are upset by the title of your book because the name you gave, it’s insulting to the black community. It’s an insult,” he told CBC News.

Never mind the fact, of course, that Hill is a member of the black community, and is a prolific defender of black people. Never mind that his books have reached millions of readers across the world, and have thereby advanced the discussion of race and the history of slavery. Never mind that the title of the book is a direct reference to a historical document, and was intentionally chosen to reflect that fact. Never mind that burning a book (even just the cover) only serves to increase its popularity. Never mind that in the age of digital media, burning a book is about as meaningful as vandalizing the card catalogue in a library or fighting to close an adult movie store – people will find a way to read the book no matter what you do.

No, let’s ignore reality and reason, and instead make a big show of how angry and stupid we are. That’ll show ’em!

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The Book Burning of Negroes

Long-time readers of this blog (at least, those that memorize everything I say) may remember two salient details. The first is that I am a big fan of Canadian author Lawrence Hill. His books explore race and racial issues through a Canadian and mixed-race lens, so it’s perhaps no surprise that I am such a fan. The other thing that you might remember is that I think book burnings/bans are possibly the dumbest thing of all time – not only because they don’t work, but because they usually accomplish the exact opposite of their intent, and make more people likely to read the book.

And so it seemed as though this news item was tailor-made for me:

A Dutch group is threatening to burn Lawrence Hill’s award-winning novel The Book of Negroes, because they oppose the use of the word “negro” in the title. The Canadian writer’s novel, which traces the life of a slave girl, was recently published in the Netherlands, where a group that represents slavery victims has threatened to burn the book if its title isn’t changed.

This week, Hill received a letter from Roy Groenberg, the leader of Dutch group Foundation Honor and Restore Victims of Slavery in Suriname. “We, descendants of enslaved in the former Dutch colony Suriname, want let you know that we do not accept a book with the title The Book of Negroes,” he said in the letter.

For those of you that haven’t read this book, you should. Hill is a master of the written word, and his skill is on full display in this particular book (which is hailed as his magnum opus, but I think he’s capable of better), in which he takes the narrator’s chair for the coming-of-age tale  of a young African slave girl. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to speak from a complete lack of personal experience (when’s the last time Hill experienced menarche?), but he pulls it off convincingly.

Besides the fact that the book is well-written, it’s also historically relevant. It chronicles the nascent and developing abolition movement in Canada, the United States, and England. It documents (fictionally) the foundation of the country of Sierra Leone, thought of as a refuge for freed slaves. It puts context around a period of history that has many myths built around it.

And these idiots want to ban the book because they don’t like the title:

“We struggle for a long time to let the word ‘nigger’ disappear from Dutch language and now you set up your Book of Negroes! A real shame!” Groenberg’s group plans to burn the book on June 22 just over a week before July 1 — which marks the abolition of slavery in the Netherlands.

This is the same mindset of people who would ban the book ‘Moby Dick’ because children would see a naughty word. First off, The Book of Negroes is an actual physical document, from which the novel gets its name. The title is not incidental – it references both the historical document and the people who are the focus of the story. Slavery abolition is the entire purpose of the novel, and to have an anti-slavery body object based on something like a naughty word in the title, one has to wonder whether they’ve actually read the damn book.

But of course, banning a book doesn’t prevent people from reading it. Especially in this day of instantaneous transfer of information, burning a book is simply raising a flag that says “We are ignorant” and “We are out of touch with reality” at the same time. If people in the Netherlands wanted to find a copy of TBoN, they could simply go to Amazon or any number of other online bookstores. Banning the book is therefore futile. Burning the book may have some kind of psychological satisfaction for the protesting group, but it is an outmoded and meaningless gesture.

Book bans also draw attention to the work in question. In this particular case, I have to confess I’m sort of glad for that. People should read this book, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s excellent. And while I can sympathize with those who don’t want to see racism spread through their country, objections to racist language should be based on fact and reason, not knee-jerk reactions based on poor understanding of language.

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Movie Friday: So… this happened

Yesterday I called out Alabama as being the most racist place in the United States. But after watching this video, I’m not sure anymore:

Watching this, part of me literally had a hard time processing and believing that it was real. First, because it’s of such poor quality, and second because this kind of over-the-top racism is pretty rare. But I guess people are feeling more safe in being openly hateful against minority groups – likely fueled by anti-Muslim and anti-gay sentiments becoming part of the mainstream discussion.

What also baffles me, aside from the fact that it wasn’t taken down as soon as it was discovered by media outlets, is the supportive comments it’s been getting:

I’d say this really does sum up Hahn. What is she afraid of, the truth? Not a voter, the system is not for the hard working man/women, its for the special interest and non-whites to bleed the whites. So republican or democrat, have no place for you. But would say this girl is the worse of the two evils. GREAT VIDEO. – MrWhitey88

I wish liberals would get this upset when real rap videos came out. Yeah yeah yeah, It’s racist if a conservative does a parody, but its somehow a noble reflection of their culture when rappers make them. Outrage Hypocrites. – Yereviltwin2

What a down to earth, common sense video. There is absolutely NOTHING offensive in this political ad… if you can tolerate/allow current rap music. Now, I can understand people completely against ANY form of ganster rap and demanding it ALL be banned. However, if not, this very reasonable ad would certainly be acceptable. Word. Freedom of speech is a two way street. Now… SWALLOW that biotch. LOL! – kyvenom

In case you were wondering: this is not parody. Parody would be making fun of rap videos, thus making the rappers themselves the object of fun. This is cruel and exploitative racism, designed to equate urban blacks with criminals. This is to say nothing of how sick it makes me to see the two ‘actors’ in the video dancing around like it’s a Minstrel show.

For the record, Hahn’s opponent has denied knowledge of this video and has denounced it publicly. That isn’t the point. This is intentionally stoking racial hatred to win the votes of racists. And, of course, the candidate is a conservative Republican.

So now I can cross off Los Angeles from places I would ever visit (which is too bad, because I had been looking forward to driving down along the coast). I guess my trip will stop in San Francisco – I can check out Stonewall!

Here’s a black and white otter managing, against all odds, to live in harmony with each otter (see what I did there?):

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Ah, sweet juxtaposition

I’m not sure if it shows (and I sure hope it doesn’t, because I really am trying to become a good writer), but my last instruction on literature or the craft of writing came at the hands of my OAC (that’s grade 13) English teacher, Mr. Lowens. By the time I got to his class, I had already been well-schooled on one of my all-time favourite literary techniques at the hands of Ms. Mooney (the ~25 people who read this blog at the time will no doubt remember that she appeared in one of my first posts). That technique, friends, is the fine art of juxtaposition.

Let’s contrast two news stories out of the USA, shall we?

Alabama passes extreme anti-Mexican law

The new legislation, similar to one passed last year in Arizona, requires schools to find out if students are there illegally. The law, which takes effect on 1 September, also make it a crime to give an illegal immigrant a ride in a car…

…in addition, businesses and schools will be required to check the legal status of workers and students, while landlords will be committing a crime if they knowingly rent to illegal immigrants. Republican Governor Robert Bentley, who signed the bill into law Thursday, said: “We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country.

The actual headline read “Alabama passes tough immigration law”, but that’s too euphemistic for my taste. First, it’s not “tough”, it’s cowardly. It’s refusing to actually deal with the issues your state is facing, and instead choosing to blame them on a poor, brown scapegoat. Second, it isn’t about immigration – it’s about harassing Mexicans. So congratulations, Alabama, you are still the most racist place in the entire United States. Feel proud – you’ve come a long way since Montgomery (in that you haven’t changed at all).

But wait… what’s this other story?

U.S. Border Guards accept bribes from Mexican drug cartels

Mexican drug cartels are increasingly targeting American border guards and customs agents with bribes and sexual favours, a US security official says. Charles Edwards of the US Department of Homeland Security told a Senate committee the cartels were using what he called systematic corruption to smuggle drugs and migrants into the US. He said the cartels were also seeking tip-offs about police investigations.

Ah, those crafty illegal immigrants… sneaking across the borders at the risk of drowning, police dogs, detention centres, and at great personal cost. If only they knew that all you had to do to gain entry into the United States was to give a handjob to an American border guard! Then you can just waltz (salsa?) right across the border and into your new life being legislated against by the reactionary bigots that run the southern states.

Gawrsh, Governor Bentley. Doesn’t it seem as though the problem isn’t that your laws aren’t tough enough, but that the people who are enforcing them are absuing their power? Well, I guess the answer is to give them more power, right? That’ll fix everything! Or maybe, just maybe, this law isn’t about your illegal immigration problem at all, but about your racism and the racism of your state.

We should try deporting all the reactionary xenophobic assholes out of Alabama. See if that helps.

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Canada’s third world nations

Remember when Katrina hit, and the underbelly of American neglect was exposed to the world? The fact that millions of people in the richest, most prosperous country in the world were living in squalor was the subject of much consternation and concerned tongue-clucking. The fact that the vast majority of people affected (and subsequently neglected) by the disaster were from a racial group that has historically been abused and continues to be patronized or ignored by the powers that be also didn’t escape notice. We here in Canada were comfortable, perched atop our high horse, thanking the heavens above that we were simply better than that:

Conditions in one Haida Gwaii hospital are so bad that chemotherapy drugs are mixed in an outdoor wooden shed and the morgue is housed in a temporary trailer. Not only that, but the regional hospital district says water needs to cleared from the main building’s roof by hand and physiotherapy sessions need to be conducted in an old greenhouse.

The problems at the 61-year-old Queen Charlotte General Hospital and Health Centre were detailed to the NDP in a letter from the North West Regional Hospital District, sent in mid May. On Tuesday, the NDP raised the issue in the legislature, pressing the government on why it has let the facility deteriorate to such a low level.

I am not a popular entertainer, and I don’t have an internationally-televised live broadcast to exploit. All I have is this humble blog and my microcelebrity (I got Pharyngulated yesterday! Sniny!) to make this statement: Christy Clark doesn’t care about Native people. Neither does Gordon Campbell, under whose watch all of this happened, but he’s gone. For those readers outside of British Columbia, I should probably explain. Christy Clark is the current premier (akin to a governor in the United States, or a First Minister in many other parliamentary democracies) of British Columbia, having recently been elected after the resignation of the disgraced Gordon Campbell.

Health care is administrated by the provinces, meaning that the premier is responsible for ensuring the funding and oversight of health care facilities meets a provincial standard. It is up to her (or him) to ensure that resources are properly allocated, which means that the extremely sub-standard conditions of the Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlote Islands) are her responsibility.

If this were an isolated incident in which political powers neglect First Nations communities, then I might be content to shrug it off. Shit happens, and sometimes things get missed. But for some reason (more on my suspicions on what that reason is later) it is always Native communities getting a shipment of body bags instead of health supplies; it’s always Native people being the subject of NIMBY protest, and because they receive taxpayer support, everyone with an internet connection thinks that they’re qualified to offer an opinion on the issue, which usually contains at least one racial slur (prefaced by “I’m not racist, but…”) and an admonishment to “get off their asses”.

I’ve spoken before about the need for effective political opposition, and this is exactly what I was talking about. Instead of running around trying to score cheap political points and play games with the debt ceiling, the provincial NDP has found an area where the government is slacking, and has brought it to the forefront. My cap is tipped to them, at least on this issue (although I am no fan of the provincial NDP generally). However, this issue is not simply relegated to the provinces:

Announcing the release of the joint work plan, INAC Minister John Duncan noted that “Canada and First Nations have an enduring historic relationship based on mutual respect, friendship and support.” However, the 2011 June Status Report of the Auditor General of Canada (AG Report) tells a different story. Chapter 4 of the report highlights the ongoing appalling conditions on First Nation reserves, the stark contrast between conditions of First Nation reserves and other communities and the federal government’s repeated failures to address adequately the deplorable conditions on First Nation reserves.

The report itself is pretty chilling, detailing the several ways in which the federal government has failed to take meaningful action on issues of basic necessities to First Nations communities across the country. Their approach is disorganized, slipshod, and shows a complete lack of commitment to actually ameliorating the problems faced by First Nations people. And therein lies the problem: it is convenient and easy to blame Native people for their lack of success, but when the support they receive from the federal government is so woefully inadequate (compared, say, to the amount that municipalities receive), one cannot simply chalk these problems up to being lazy. We’re talking about thousands of people who don’t have clean drinking water. This isn’t asking for “a handout” or special favours – this is ensuring that our citizens have what we would describe as the bare necessities to live.

So, if bringing the conditions of Haida Gwaii to provincial attention represents a successful official opposition, then the complete lack of progress and the widening disparity between Native Canadians and everyone else represents an appalling dereliction of duty on the part of the Liberal Party of Canada (with whom I am aligned) and the New Democrats. Government has a duty to look after the interests of its people, and the opposition has the responsibility to take the government to task when it fails in that duty. This failure is just as appalling as what happened in New Orleans – more so, because it’s happened over the stretch of several years.

Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, describes the problem in much the same words I would use:

This isn’t about assigning blame or pointing fingers – it’s about accepting responsibility and saying “my brothers and sisters need my help.” And while Mr. Atleo wasn’t at liberty to say it, I will put into words the general feeling I got from his discussion: First Nations people are treated like the ‘niggers’ of Canada, and we have work to do if we care enough to change that.

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