In defense of the “weaker sex”

Note: This article first appeared on Monday, February 28th on Canadian Atheist. While it is CA policy not to cross-post, I felt that this case needed to be made on as many outlets as I could.

A good friend of mine posted a story on my Facebook wall last week about a police officer who fell victim to the arch-stupidity of the “she was asking for it” argument:

A police officer who suggested women can avoid sexual assault by not dressing like “sluts” has apologized, saying he is “embarrassed” by the remark and that assaulted women are “not victims by choice.”

“I made a comment which was poorly thought out and did not reflect the commitment of the Toronto Police Service to the victims of sexual assaults,” Const. Michael Sanguinetti wrote on Thursday to Osgoode Hall Law School where he made the comment. “Violent crimes such as sexual assaults can have a traumatizing effect on their victims. . . . My comment was hurtful in this respect.”

It’s a tired trope that is almost guaranteed to come up in any discussion of women and sexuality – if women didn’t make themselves so open to sexual predators then they’d be safer. It is due to the privilege of being male that this argument offends me only intellectually, since I will never be the target of a sexual assault. I will never appreciate the visceral part of the feminist response to this argument, try as I might. The reason this particular friend posted the link on my wall is that she and I have gone 9 rounds on it in the past, with me articulating the “personal responsibility” position. Don’t worry – I got better.

However, a second friend of mine saw this and posted what he thought was an entirely reasonable response. His response (I’ll call him “Billy” just so we can avoid pronoun confusion) was that the story failed to take the police officer’s side into account. It is a fact, said Billy, that women will be less inviting targets for assault if they are dressed more conservatively and hide their sexuality. Billy didn’t understand why this was such a controversial statement, and was taken aback with Sheila’s (again, for the same of pronoun confusion) full-throated and confrontational response. Billy messaged me afterward to apologize for starting a fight on my wall, and confessing that he couldn’t really understand what he had said that was so inflammatory.

The problem with this “she was asking for it” argument, aside from the fact that it isn’t true (sexual assault is just as common in Muslim countries where women have to stay covered and none of them dress sexy for fear of being arrested, beaten, or scalded with acid), is that it completely misses the point, and tries to derive an “ought” from an “is”. The mere fact that a woman is more likely to be assaulted if she wears certain types of clothing does not make it right. The solution to the problem is not for women to “dress less slutty” (a phrase which is provocative enough on its own), but for men to realize that a woman’s choice of dress is not an open invitation to sexual assault.

It seems as though this seemingly-obvious (once explained) argument still has yet to suffuse through common consciousness:

A University of Manitoba law professor has concerns about a judge’s comments at a sexual assault sentencing. Karen Busby said the remarks by Justice Robert Dewar are a legal throwback to the time when how a woman dressed or acted could be treated as implied consent to sex. Dewar said “sex was in the air” when he spared a man jail time by handing him a two-year conditional sentence instead and allowing him to remain free in the community.

During the sentencing, Dewar also commented on the way the woman was dressed and her actions the night she was forced to have sex in the woods along a dark highway outside Thompson in 2006. The man and a friend met the 26-year-old woman and her girlfriend earlier that night outside a bar under what the judge called “inviting circumstances.” He pointed out the victim and her friend were dressed in tube tops, no bras, and high heels and noted they were wearing plenty of makeup. Dewar called the man a “clumsy Don Juan” who may have misunderstood what the victim wanted.

On a Facebook wall, the kind of statement that Billy made (although, to be sure, he didn’t intend to suggest that it is a rape victim’s fault for being assaulted and he went out of his way to say so) is merely annoying. When it comes from a judge’s mouth, it carries behind it the force of law. I do not wish to derogate Justice Dewar’s abilities as a jurist – perhaps he would have handed down an identical sentence if the victim’s clothing had not been a factor. One cannot guarantee that this would have been the case for all judges, although it certainly should be.

And certainly, this kind of cavalier attitude toward sexual assault does appear in other places:

Reports that women are being sexually assaulted at a Downtown Eastside shelter are being ignored, a coalition of women and women’s groups is charging. But the agency that oversees the First United Church co-ed shelter at Gore and Hastings says it has had meetings with both police and women’s groups on the matter and is actively working to address it. “The safety and security of people using provincially funded shelters are our top priority,” said a statement from BC Housing, which funds and has an operation agreement with the shelter. “We will continue working together to make sure the shelter is a safe place to stay.” But Harsha Walia, a coordinator at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Shelter, said women have reported sexual abuse to front-line workers, police and staff at the shelter, and nothing has been done about it.

When it is a woman’s fault for being assaulted, when her mere presence is provocation enough to justify some kind of violence against her, we know something has gone terribly wrong. When we turn a blind eye to women being assaulted, we cannot call ourselves a society where women enjoy equal or sufficient rights under the law. And because language like “she was asking for it” or “don’t dress like a slut” only serves to reinforce the casual tolerance of violence against women that leads to assault, it is the job of every feminist to speak out against it whenever it comes up. It will forever be a source of chagrin for me that I didn’t always speak this way, but I bloody well will from now on.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

Freedom of religion: that’s not what it means

Yeah, I’m back on this subject again. It seems as though the phrase “freedom of religion” is a commonly misunderstood construct whereby those with religious beliefs think that they can do whatever they like as long as they believe in it hard enough. As I said two weeks ago, freedom of conscience and religion means that it is unlawful to prohibit the practice of religion, or compel someone to engage in a religious act. It does not mean that anything done in the name of religion is your legal right.

To use an extreme example, preventing someone from stoning their disobedient child to death is not infringing on that person’s religious rights. Telling someone that she cannot cut the hands off of a thief is not infringing upon her religious rights. Telling someone that they cannot import 12 year-old children to enslave through compulsory marriage is not infringing upon his religious rights:

Two fathers from Bountiful, B.C., smuggled their 12-year-old daughters across the border to marry an accused pedophile and fugitive intent on increasing a harem that already included 57 wives. MacRae and Spencer Blackmore were part of a 2005 scheme to sneak their daughters from Bountiful into the United States to marry Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, according to Jeffs’ diaries.

There are a great many diverse religious beliefs, and some of them, like those of the FCJCLDS, are monstrously evil and destructive. A child cannot possibly consent to something like marriage, and it is destructive to that child’s psychological development to bind them to an old paedophile. There is a clear harm in this kind of behaviour. In the light of a clear harm, the right to religious expression becomes secondary.

This testimony came to light as part of an ongoing case before the Supreme Court of British Columbia testing the constitutionality of polyamorous marriages. While I doubt very much that a ban on the right to marry multiple adult, consenting people can stand up to fair constitutional scrutiny, it cannot be struck down or held up on religious grounds. Whether or not someone believes in their right to marry multiple people (which, for now, is against the law) has nothing to do with their right to practice their religion.

No matter how fucking creepy your religion might be:

A boss who frequently hugged two young sisters to dispel negative energy from them and the cart they worked on has been found guilty of sexual harassment and ordered to pay them $10,000 by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. Algebra and Aja Young complained that Clint Petres, of Victoria, hugged them for up to 10 seconds, sometimes rocking back and forth.

Algebra testified that the hugs made her uncomfortable. But when she declined to hug Petres, “he would stand with his arms extended until she gave in, which she did because he was her boss,” tribunal member Barbara Humphreys wrote in a judgment released Thursday.

I’m not particularly inclined to complain about my boss. He’s nice to me, he’s fair, he gives me quite a bit of freedom, and has never once demanded that I hug him to dispel my negative energy. I don’t think (and neither does the Human Rights Tribunal) that Petres’ wacky mish-mash of pseudoscientific beliefs reaches the level of religion, nor can one claim that having to put up with religious iconography infringes on someone’s right to disbelief (the two women are atheists). However, when in the workplace, that kind of externalization of what are supposed to be personal beliefs are inappropriate. Making unwelcome physical contact with your employees is definitely inappropriate.

It would certainly be wildly inappropriate to compel your employees to participate in a religious service:

A Tulsa police captain who refused to require that some of his subordinates attend a Law Enforcement Appreciation Day at a Tulsa mosque filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday, claiming that his First Amendment rights have been violated. Capt. Paul Fields also claims that Deputy Chief Daryl Webster — the sole defendant in the case at this point — retaliated against him for his “exercise of his First Amendment rights” and singled out Fields for disparate treatment.

The Law Enforcement Appreciation Day is scheduled to be held at the mosque of the Islamic Society of Tulsa on March 4. Police Chief Chuck Jordan has said the society scheduled the event to show its appreciation for the officers’ response to a threat against them.

I am loath to comment on this story because it is missing one vital piece of information: was the event held at the mosque religious in nature? If it was held at the mosque because it was a community site (i.e. for reasons of convenience rather than worship), then the objection to attendance cannot be founded on the First Amendment. However, if the police were being invited to be preached to, then refusing to participate is a reasonable objection; however, it should be noted that you don’t have the right to not be exposed to ideas that conflict with your beliefs. Regardless of whether or not the objection was reasonable, singling someone out for punitive treatment because they’re either a) xenophobic or b) unwilling to be proselytized to is a dick move.

Whatever the resolution to these stories, the fact remains that freedom of religion has a specific meaning that does not give you license to do whatever you like so long as you can find some kind of supernatural justification for it. The corollary to this is that your right to think and believe as you like ends where my rights begin, whether that be my right to security, my right to be free of sexual harassment, or my right to object to evangelism.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

Shawna Forde sentenced to die

I’ve been holding this one in my pocket for a while, hoping to have something to connect it to. However, nothing has come up and I don’t want to let it go uncommented:

An anti-immigration activist has been sentenced to death for the 2009 murder of a nine year-old-girl and her father. Shawna Forde, 43, organised a break-in at the Arizona home of Raul Flores apparently to fund her group, which campaigns against illegal immigration. But the burglary went wrong and 29-year-old Mr Flores was shot dead along with his daughter Brisenia.

I don’t like the BBC’s use of the word “activist” in this context. Shawna Forde is a terrorist who used violence and intimidation as tools to advance her political agenda. Her group, Minutemen American Defense should not be confused with The Minutemen, which is a non-violent group (one that I still think is misguided, but nonetheless non-violent) of volunteers that patrols the US/Mexican border looking for illegal immigrants. Shawna Forde was kicked out of the Minutemen for being too insane.

Shawna Forde and two other people broke into the Flores home looking for drugs that they could sell to fund their organization. They shot the inhabitants of the home, killing two and wounding one. One of those who died was 9 year-old Brisenia Flores. Less of a fuss was kicked up over this murder than the equally-tragic shooting death of Christina Taylor Green at the hands of Jared Loughner in January, a fact that may have a number of explanations of which race is undoubtedly one.

Even for a hateful monster like Shawna Forde, I cannot condone the death penalty. Not only is it not an effective deterrent for further crimes, it is far more expensive than simply jailing her for life. While it may be just to kill someone who kills another, there is no value to such a murder except removing Shawna Forde from society. It is likely to turn her into a martyr, as is evinced by her fan page. Maybe if they just flew her into the middle of the Mojave and left her out there without any supplies…

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

Not a good day to be Pope

For the first time in more than 1000 years, it might be considered a bad thing to be Pope. Up until now, the Pope has commanded a great deal of influence and respect (the Reformation notwithstanding) worldwide. Being Pope means that whatever thought crosses your mind carries the force of law for millions of adherents worldwide. Get caught in a lie? No problem, it’s one of those divine mysteries. Want to declare war or raise an army? Justify it by calling it a holy war. Want to raise money for your ridiculously huge home in your city/state with your own private guards? Sell indulgences! Don’t like the concept of limbo? Fuck it – it’s done.

Yeah, being Pope is a pretty sweet deal, giving you control over people’s bodies, minds and souls. No other leader in the world commands the kind of power that the Pope has. Except the cracks are starting to show in the facade:

Two German lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity. Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo. Their charges concern “three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.

They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”.

It can be difficult to pull back from revering religion and those who claim its authority to examine their actions dispassionately. However, once you do, you immediately begin to recognize that the Catholic Church is a massive organization with hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide. Imagine for a moment that BP required that all of its employees refrain from using birth control and outlawed extramarital sex. Imagine that Microsoft recruited its software developers as infants and threatened them with torture if they ever quit. Imagine that Google tried to regulate how its marketing directors thought, compelling them to report all unapproved thoughts and handing out punishments as “atonement”.

Divorced from its God claim, this is exactly what the RCC has done for centuries. Of course one could make the argument that membership is voluntary, but how “voluntary” can it possibly be when their main source of recruitment is infants who are then indoctrinated in corporate schools to have many babies and continue the cycle ad infinitum? As someone who has broken out of the indoctrination I can personally attest to the fact that it ain’t so easy as “voluntary” makes it sound.

That’s what those evil secularists do though, right Joseph? It’s all those darn secularists that are making your life so hard:

Six Moroccan men have been arrested in northern Italy on suspicion of seeking to incite hatred of Pope Benedict among Muslims. Police in the city of Brescia said the suspects had allegedly banded together to stir up religious hatred. A note was found calling for the Pope to be punished for converting a Muslim journalist to Roman Catholicism.

Oooor maybe it’s your co-religionists. The Pope has a very fine line to walk. First, he has to assert (without evidence) that his particular interpretation of scripture is the correct one. Second, he has to assert that his particular scripture is the correct one. Third, he has to do all this while simultaneously reaching out to all those people who are so clearly wrong as to believe in a different magic book. He has, of late, decided to try and unite the faithful by putting all the blame against a common enemy – those with no magic book whatsoever. Sadly, while the non-book people have been content to voice their objections through legal channels, those of a different belief are fomenting violence and hatred against him.

Ratzinger has done a poor job of picking his allies, and has done an even worse job of picking his enemies. The history of his own organization should have been enough to teach him that religious groups will always fracture, splinter, and turn against each other. Those same groups he’s reaching out to for some kind of ecumenical allegiance against those who would simply like religion gone from the public sphere will turn against him at the first opportunity, but not before his influence and numbers have dwindled past the point where he can mount a sufficient defense.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

Religion’s double-edged sword cuts through Libya

One of my (several) major problems with religious faith, particularly that faith which is based on scripture, is that it can be used to justify or condemn just about any action. Like a fortune cookie, a Tarot card reading or an astrological prediction, scripture is vague and contradictory enough that a wide variety of interpretations can be said to have equal validity. It is for this reason that people as day-and-night different as Shelby Spong and Fred Phelps can both call themselves “Christian” and claim to be “followers of Christ”. They have both read the same document diligently and came out with wildly different interpretations, both of which they can defend with equal fervor.

It is for this reason that a government that is based on religion is pretty much guaranteed to get caught in its own hypocrisy – not because religious people are inherently hypocritical but because the scriptures do nothing more than give the illusion of divine justification for one’s a priori decisions. Moammar Gaddafi is learning this lesson:

Violence flared up even before the Friday sermons were over, according to a source in Tripoli. “People are rushing out of mosques even before Friday prayers are finished because the state-written sermons were not acceptable, and made them even more angry,” the source said.

Libyan state television aired one such sermon on Friday, in an apparent warning to protesters. “As the Prophet said, if you dislike your ruler or his behaviour, you should not raise your sword against him, but be patient, for those who disobey the rulers will die as infidels,” the speaker told his congregation in Tripoli

Contrast this state-sponsored co-opting of religion, not to mention Gaddafi’s full-throated endorsement of an Islamic Europe, with what he said in a long, rambling, and mostly incoherent speech last week:

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has said in a speech on Libyan state television that al-Qaeda is responsible for the uprising in Libya. “It is obvious now that this issue is run by al-Qaeda,” he said, speaking by phone from an unspecified location on Thursday. He said that the protesters were young people who were being manipulated by al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden, and that many were doing so under the influence of drugs.

So when Islam is used as justification for his continued reign, it is a good and useful thing. However, when it is used as justification for violence (as is al-Qaeda’s whole reason for being), it is a bad thing. Mosques are to spread pro-government propaganda as decreed by Allah, but are to be bombed when used against the government, supposedly under the same authority. It should be stated unequivocally that there is no truth to Gaddafi’s assertion, or at least no evidence to support it. Given that he is becoming crazier and more disconnected from reality, it is probably wise to just assume that everything he says is a self-serving lie.

The tragic thing in all of this, aside from the thousands of people dead and the thousands more injured by pro-government forces and foreign mercenaries, is that both sides are claiming that Allah favours their cause rather than the other. It means that no matter what the outcome, it is because of Allah, rather than placing the credit (and blame) where it firmly belongs – on the people of Libya.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

The more things change…

For someone with a more than passing interest in politics, religion and human rights, my cup doth overflow this week with stuff to talk about. I am hoping to group this week’s posts thematically so as not to completely drown you in my random thoughts, but if my threads aren’t clear please forgive me – I am doing my best.

I am not an expert in international law or foreign relations (“and the ‘Understatement of the Year’ award goes to…“), but I knew that the protests in Egypt were going to be a big deal. What I didn’t for a moment suspect is that they would explode in the way they have, turning much of the Arab world on its heels in a way that, to my knowledge, has no precedent. Of course my attention, along with the rest of the world’s, has moved from Egypt to Libya where things have taken a much more frantic and vitriolic turn. However, when I got a chance to step back from the rah-rah pro-democracy feeling I had about what’s happening, I realized that there’s a much more interesting picture happening.

The more things change…

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention (and you really should be), Libya has been completely turned upside down:

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s long-standing ruler, has reportedly lost control of more cities as anti-government protests continue to sweep the African nation despite his threat of a brutal crackdown. Protesters in Misurata said on Wednesday they had wrested the western city from government control. In a statement on the internet, army officers stationed in the city pledged “total support for the protesters”. Much of the country’s east also seemed to be in control of the protesters, and an Al Jazeera correspondent, reporting from the city of Tobruk, 140km from the Egyptian border, said there was no presence of security forces

Libya has an interesting political layout. In the stereotypical style of a warlord, Gaddafi was able to unite a number of tribes under one banner that was formerly ruled by a monarch. Libya has no constitution per se, instead purportedly relying on the general will of the people to govern itself. However, in reality it has been a dictatorship that is only egalitarian on paper. There is a significant east/west divide, based on historical tribal affiliations, now punctuated by the dictator’s strongholds in the western city of Tripoli standing in opposition to the bastion of the anti-government movement based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

The take-home message of all of this is that eastern Libya (which, perhaps coincidentally, shares a border with Egypt) is out of government control. Not only has Gaddafi lost control of the eastern cities, but his power base is rapidly crumbling:

Libyan diplomats across the world have either resigned in protest at the use of violence against citizens, or renounced Gaddafi’s leadership, saying that they stand with the protesters. Late on Tuesday night, General Abdul-Fatah Younis, the country’s interior minister, became the latest government official to stand down, saying that he was resigning to support what he termed as the “February 17 revolution”

While I have to express a little bit of skepticism at the true motivation behind these resignations and sudden allegiance to the protesters, the short-term result is that Gaddafi is finding himself more and more without allies.

Libya isn’t the only place facing major changes as result of protest:

Algeria’s cabinet has adopted an order to lift a 19-year-old state of emergency in a concession designed to avoid the tide of uprisings sweeping the Arab world, but protesters said the measure did not go far enough. A draft law approved by the cabinet would repeal the emergency law as soon as it is published in the government’s official journal, the official Algerie Presse Service reported on Wednesday. Ending the emergency powers was one of the demands voiced by opposition groups which have been staging weekly protests in the Algerian capital that sought to emulate uprisings in Egypt and neighbouring Tunisia.

These “emergency powers” are nearly always problematic, especially in countries with a weak opposition party. To exist in a state of emergency for 19 years is essentially the government’s way of cracking down on all opposition and adopting a sort of “l’état, c’est moi” approach to governance wherein the political rulers conflate themselves with the entire country – political dissent thereby becomes treason. Seemingly inspired by what’s been happening in neighbouring countries, Algerians have pushed the government to release their grip in an effort to save their state control. They’ve also passed a number of economic measures designed to stimulate the private sector (which makes my inner capitalist very happy). We’ll see if it goes far enough to placate the people, who may not stop until they have achieved the same kind of wholesale change being demanded in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and their other African neighbours.

…the more they stay the same

It is incredibly tempting to see these protests as the dawning of a new era of Western-style democracy in the Middle East, but such a conclusion would be incredibly naive. The region doesn’t have a history of democratic rule, and has far too much foreign entanglement to simply start afresh. One of the most sensitive entanglements is that of the United States:

In finally supporting the Tahrir experiment, President Obama was, in effect, pledging to end decades of American hypocrisy in its policies towards the Middle East and larger Muslim world. But in order to live up to this promise he will have to develop one set of policies for all the peoples and countries of the region. And doing that will demand an even more costly break with the past, putting old allies at arm’s length until they respect the rights of their peoples while embracing, however tentatively, groups that once seemed more easily characterised as, if not quite foes, then at least untrustworthy partners in securing American interests.

Unless the United States (and the West in general) suddenly becomes uncharacteristically non-interventionalist and allows these protests to reach their equilibrium on their own, there is a real risk that after a brief and bloody insurrection, the status quo will simply re-emerge and the region will simply exchange one set of dictatorial rulers for another. This, sadly, seems to be the case in Egypt:

Egypt’s key portfolios of defence, interior, foreign, finance and justice were unchanged in a cabinet reshuffle, state television confirmed. The list of new ministers that was presented on Tuesday included changing the veteran oil minister, as well as introducing politicians who had been opposed to the rule of Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down from office after widespread protests. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who leads the ruling military council and has been defence minister for about 20 years, took the new ministers’ oaths of office.

But the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s biggest opposition group, said the new cabinet showed that Mubarak’s “cronies” still controlled the country’s politics. “This new cabinet is an illusion,” Essam el-Erian, a senior Brotherhood member, said. “It pretends it includes real opposition but in reality this new government puts Egypt under the tutelage of the West.”

One must be aware of the fact that these criticisms come from the Muslim Brotherhood, which does not support democratic rule, and any pro-democracy politicians could be considered “under the tutelage of the West”. Given that the entire direction of this movement is balancing on a knife edge, the only way to ensure there is no backlash against Europe and America is to stay the hell away from the whole situation, and encourage the protesters to decide their own path.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

As in all things, context is key

I don’t usually double-post on Mondays (I find it uncouth), but there was so much to talk about this week that I felt it necessary to hit you with two shots of the good stuff every day this week (don’t worry, Friday is still for movies only, and I have a great one for you this time around).

If I can, I will commiserate with my conservative brethren for a moment: it is often incredibly difficult to know the right thing to say when discussing race, and sometimes people’s reactions can seem overly sensitive. The fact that their reactions always seem overly sensitive to you is because you haven’t bothered to try and understand why, but that’s your issue to deal with. Two stories came to my attention this week that I thought were good illustrations of when even your humble narrator found it difficult to pick a side.

Beyoncé raises some eyebrows with her makeup choice

For the 90th anniversary of French fashion mag, L’Officiel Paris, Beyonce Knowles appears in a pictorial which pays tribute to an “African Queen” theme. More specifically, Knowles channels Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician and human rights activist who supposedly inspired the music on her upcoming album.

Is this going where you think it is?

Ayup!

Beyoncé has dressed in what could accurately be described as “blackface” for a photo shoot. Now as I’ve said before, blackface has a history in the United States that is connected to buffoonery and the outright mockery of black people. It would be incredibly difficult to make that connection here – Ms. Knowles is going out of her way to pay tribute to the cultural history of Nigeria, which is about as far from mockery as you can get. She is also simultaneously wedding dark skin with the idea of beauty and power – a positive image, especially considering the dearth of dark-skinned models of colour in fashion today. It would be ludicrous to accuse her of “blackening up” in the same tradition of a minstrel show.

However, there is another side to this issue. Firstly, Ms. Knowles is fair-skinned, a fact which has earned her her fair share of criticism. With her straightened hair (often dyed blonde) and her status as a sex symbol, Beyoncé’s image is that of having “good hair” and “good skin”, which does no favours to her dark-complected sisters. After the shoot is over, Beyoncé gets to wash the makeup off and reclaim her status as being light-skinned (and anyone who thinks that doesn’t make a difference is woefully out of touch). It is not so for someone whose skin is naturally that hue – they’re always dark. Additionally, it is not necessary to the shoot that Ms. Knowles darken her skin – the image could be conveyed just as convincingly with the cheek makeup and the clothing. The makeup seems completely extraneous, and suggests to me that she is trying to convey some kind of additional message about dark skin. What that message is is subject to interpretation, and I will not speculate.

Professor retires over racial remarks

A longtime Murray State University professor has decided to retire after referring to slavery while making a point about tardiness to two black students last semester, the school said Friday. “I did say, ‘Do you know why you were late? There’s a theory that a way to protest their master’s treatment was for slaves to be late.’

The newspaper reported that according to Johnson’s official complaint, when she asked (professor) Wattier what he meant, he replied: “It is part of your heritage. The slaves never showed up on time to their owners and were lashed for it. I just don’t have the right to do that.”

Yeah… that was a stupid thing to say. The original remark was bad enough on its own, but the elaboration was the nail in the coffin.

As with the “blackface” issue above, this is one of those situations in which context is crucial. I do not doubt professor Wattier’s assertions that he is not a dispositionally racist person. Testimony from his colleagues reveals him to have many connections to the black community stretching back many years. However, the fact remains that a while professor comparing his black students to slaves and lamenting his inability to humiliate and punish them in the way that their ancestors (possibly – the students may not have had slaves for forebearers) would have experienced is inexcusable.

It’s remarkable how easy it is to bring the pain of historical mistreatment to the surface. One misplaced word, an off-hand comment, an inadvertent (or completely innocently-intended) reference can expose the scars of the past almost instantaneously. It is for this reason that I continually go out of my way to extend the benefit of the doubt to those who say racially insensitive things. However, I will not excuse that ignorance, nor will I ever let an opportunity for education pass. I certainly have no interest in “calming down” or “getting over it”, as is the common refrain whenever anyone points out the effect of unintended or historical racism. We all make mistakes – it is those who are willing to learn from them that will make sure they become more rare.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

Black history in Canada moment: the maritimes

This year for Black History Month, I have decided to do a bit of research into black history in my home and native land, Canada. Since there are 4 Mondays in February, I am going to focus on 4 different regions of the country. Last week I looked at black history in Ontario. This week I will be concluding this series with a look at black history in the maritime provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island.

It’s somewhat psychologically satisfying to conclude this series on the east coast. I say that because one of the very first things I ever talked about on this blog, and something I have made repeated reference to, is a hate crime that occurred in that region. At the time, I pointed to the complicated history of the region:

Nova Scotia is home to a surprisingly large number of black people – that is, surprising unless you know some of the history. Africville is an area in Halifax that was home to hundreds of recently-freed slaves and imports from Africa. Some black families in Nova Scotia can trace their lineage back hundreds of years. However, due to overt racism in the 1800s and early 20th century, and more subtle systemic (“polite”) racism in the latter half of the 1900s, black people in Canada have rarely been able to move into the upper middle class. Since race and class are closely related, and given the economic fortunes of the maritime provinces (largely agricultural, less industrial, economic decline in recent years due to fisheries changes), black people have commonly got the short end of the stick.

The maritime region of Canada has a long and storied racial history. With Nova Scotia and New Brunswick both joining confederation as one of the original provinces, much of the foundational history of these provinces is tied inextricably to Irish immigrants. In fact, even a brief period spent in Halifax or St. John will immediately call that lineage forth. However, in addition to British, Irish, Scottish and Welsh, a large population of black immigrants were instrumental in building the territories even before confederation in 1867.

The first group of black New Brunswickers were Loyalists – black men and women loyal to the British Empire who left America following the war of independence. Despite being given land to farm by the government, there was little by way of instructional assistance available to these Loyalists, meaning that they struggled to raise enough to live off of from their land. Given that they were barred from voting, essentially banned from living or practicing a trade within the St. John city limits (something that’s been mentioned on this blog before), and could be kept in unofficial slavery as indentured servants, life was not exactly pleasant for black Loyalists well into the 19th century.

One fascinating chapter of Canadian history that is unique in the world is our role in the country of Sierra Leone. This country enjoys the somewhat backhanded distinction of being an experiment in the “back to Africa” concept – returning the children of slaves back to Africa to return to their roots. 1200 escaped slaves and freemen who had given up on living in Canada were loaded onto transports and shipped back to Africa to establish a place for themselves. Of course, the interests of the colonial powers and foreign corporations undermined any attempt for the newly-relocated settlers to gain any kind of economic independence (a practice that still persists to this day), and the welfare of the relocated black people wasn’t much improved. Much of this process has been described in Lawrence Hill’s novel The Book of Negroes.

In addition to the Loyalists, another group of black immigrants landed in Nova Scotia following the war of 1812. These refugees, largely from Virginia and Maryland, were also given land. Many of them were relegated to ghettoes, the most famous of which being called Africville in Halifax. Despite having land and the right to trade within the city of Halifax, it was exceedingly difficult for black Nova Scotians to secure employment, due to a variety of factors which include lack of access to education, and the pervasive racism of the time. That employment that was available was mostly manual labour, working in shipyards or processing the imports and fisheries.

Africville was always considered a ghetto – while the rest of Halifax was kept modern with infrastructure, Africville lacked plumbing or sewage systems. Home ownership was low, meaning that the accumulation of wealth by black families was next to impossible. After a huge explosion in 1917, the city of Halifax was rebuilt and updated – Africville was not. The city began relocating whatever unsightly detritus they didn’t want in the nicer parts of the city into the Africville area, including sewage treatment plants, garbage dumps, and prisons. Advocates of a “chez nous” approach to social services will be interested to know that the churches provided most of the types of services that we would currently expect from the government. However, being consistently and purposefully excluded from the larger Halifax community meant that these approaches were limited in their effectiveness.

In the 1960s, the government decided (in their enduring wisdom) that Africville was an eyesore that could not be allowed to stand any longer. Residents were forcibly evicted (remember that most did not own their homes – those who did have ownership title were given a tiny stipend and forcibly relocated to housing projects) and the area was bulldozed. The matter would not be investigated, and an apology would not be forthcoming, until 2004 – 40 years too late to do anything about it. The CBC has a film archive of the history of the area and its eventual destruction.

It is perhaps unsurprising, given the context of this history, that there is a great deal of racial tension in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick today. Social norms and attitudes about racism don’t change overnight, and much of the history was swept under the carpet for many years. Black immigration into the eastern provinces would all but stop in the early 20th century. Despite the fact that black people helped build the maritimes, they were never granted a place there. The story of the maritimes reflects well the story of black people in the rest of Canada – we’ve been here forever, but have never been welcome.

Summarizing thoughts

The stereotypical refrain of the put-upon hight school history student is “why do we have to learn this stuff? It’s just names and dates!” A knowledge of history is crucial if we want to understand why things are the way they are now. Historical ignorance breeds contemporary ignorance – one of the many bones I have to pick with those who would clamor to “take our country back“: more likely than not there were real problems for major groups of people at any point in history you’d like to point to, and members of those groups do not particularly want to go back.

Black history in Canada is not merely a subject thrown in people’s faces to make up for historical injustices, or to remind us that black people used to be slaves a million years ago – it serves to remind us that the daily reality of being black in Canada is built on an ancient foundation of hatred, distrust, exclusion, and intentional suppression. From the east to the west coast, every black Canadian carries that heritage on her/his shoulders, regardless of how long or short her/his family has been here. I was born into this history, despite the fact that my father was not born Canadian.

You were born into this history too, regardless of what your feelings toward it are. We are all products of our society, which is itself a product of our history. Understanding the historical forces at work provides us with much-needed context with which to colour our daily experiences. To understand our history is to understand ourselves, and it is only when we are armed with that kind of understanding that we can take the steps necessary to walk into the future together.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

Thou shalt NOT believe

One of the more tedious and bizarrely inaccurate straw men that anti-secularists like to pin on secular advocates is that we want to take people’s religion away from them. Having established this completely untrue assertion, they trot out the shopworn examples of people like Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, and Adolph Hitler. While atheists often counter that Hitler was a Catholic, that Stalin created a new religion based on worship of the state, and that Pol Pot created a cult of personality centred on himself – hardly non-religious actions – I think that this response grants far too much credence to the complete lack of merit present in the assertion.

There is a world of difference between the kind of mandatory atheism that were attempted in Cambodia, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany and the kind of state atheism that is proposed by secularists. The first is an attempt at thought control – criminalizing certain types of beliefs as being non-harmonious with the interest of the state and punishing any kind of expression of those beliefs. The second is the prescription of a stance toward religion by the state – a refusal to recognize the supremacy of any supernatural belief as worthy of state sanction. The difference between these two positions is akin to the difference between eating at a vegetarian restaurant and murdering anyone who’s ever had a hamburger (albeit inverted – and I’m not likely to do either).

As a committed secularist (not to mention a decent, feeling person) I am an ardent supporter of the principle of freedom of conscience and belief. The punishment of thoughtcrime was, for me, one of the most chilling aspects of Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 – one did not even have to do something to merit punishment; one only had to betray a thought that didn’t meet official approval and one was subject to torture. Hand in hand with the idea of freedom of conscience must be freedom of expression – to me, the most important and least negotiable of the fundamental human freedoms. Every human person has the right to be sovereign in her/his own head, and should be allowed to civilly discuss and disagree with even our most closely-held ideals – it is the only path toward freedom and progress.

If this wasn’t a compelling enough reason to oppose the caricature of secularism that is mandatory state-sponsored atheism, there’s also the fact that it doesn’t work:

One of the last great efforts at state-sponsored atheism is a failure. And not just any kind of failure. China has enforced its anti-religion policy through decades of repression, coercion and persecution, but the lack of success is spectacular, according to a major new study. No more than 15 percent of adults in the world’s most populous country are “real atheists;” 85 percent of the Chinese either hold some religious beliefs or practice some kind of religion, according to the Chinese Spiritual Life Survey.

Members of the Chinese Communist Party and Youth League are required to be atheists, yet 17 percent of them self-identified with a religion, and 65 percent indicated they had engaged in religious practices in the last year, reported sociologist Fenggang Yang of Purdue University, a lead researcher in the project.

What’s interesting is that a place like China, which has been officially anti-theist for more than a generation, has much higher rates of religious belief than places like Denmark or Sweden (or even my homeland of Vancouver), with their strictly secular attitudes toward religion. It somewhat reminds me of a poem I read on a bus in Toronto about two dogs who strain at the leash, yearning for freedom, until the leash is removed. The dogs, newly freed, are content to stay where they were. Of course, in this example, religion is closer to a leash than it is to freedom, but mandatory atheism is not much preferable to state religion.

Defenders of the faith will be quick to seize upon results like the ones found in the study as evidence to support the conjecture that faith is an organic part of being human – that our brains are “wired” to believe in some kind of god. These results do not show any such thing. I’m more inclined to believe that if there is any connection between brains and faith, it is that we have a tendency to invent explanations for strange phenomena, irrespective of how plausible those explanations are (bump in the night? must be a ghost). What they do suggest is that religion cannot be abolished by simply making it illegal.

Personally I am relieved to know that mandatory atheism in China isn’t working. Compelling people to hold a certain belief is an immensely evil act, whether that belief is religious or anti-religious. While it’s disappointing that people are turning toward religion, China is a place that places great value in ancient wisdom and tradition as opposed to science and reason. Atheism is the result of a refusal to accept antiquity and authority as legitimate paths to truth – once those props are gone, religious and other supernatural beliefs are left without anything to hold them up. This is not a process that can be forced on someone; only encouraged.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!