The bankruptcy of racism

Many of the topics we discuss here are personal, at least insofar as race is concerned. We talk about the effect race has on colouring people’s experiences, on how they may perceive identical treatment quite differently. I’ve occasionally shared some anecdotes from my own life to underscore some point or another. This is no accident – race and experiences of racism are incredibly personal, and the facts can often not be divorced from the subjective experience.

That being said, I hope that you haven’t been left with the impression that racism only has interpersonal consequences. From the get-go, I have been trying to convey the fact that attitudes about race work their way into every aspect of our lives, often without our knowledge or consent (and certainly without the consent against whom the weight of racism is pressed).

It is a fact, therefore, that if you scratch the surface of just about any human activity, you will find racism simmering just below the surface: [Read more…]

What actual honour looks like

One of the neat remnants of the British Parliamentary system is the practice of referring deferentially to colleagues by an honorific title. So if I were addressing the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, I would not simply refer to him as “Mister Harper” or “hey you Lego-haired fascist”, he would be properly addressed as “the Right Honourable Prime Minister”. Lesser MPs are still “the honourable member from (riding)”. While it may help to preserve civility, there are no conventions about what kind of language follows the honorific:

Winnipeg NDP MP Pat Martin added fuel to the obscenity-laden firestorm he created this week when he cursed at a Conservative senator who suggested murderers should be given ropes to hang themselves. On Wednesday, Martin called Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu an “a—hole” for the comment that sparked controversy. When demands for an apology were made Thursday, Martin refused.

“Nobody elected this son of a bitch, he should keep his comments to himself,” Martin told the Winnipeg Free Press. He added perhaps his only mistake was that he didn’t include the required honorific when addressing a senator. “I should have called him an honourable a—hole.”

Pat Martin, incidentally, has a Twitter account and is consistently awesome.

There is again something vaguely Orwellian, however, about referring to politicians as “the honourable” when many of their actions reveal them to be something else quite entirely*. It is refreshing, therefore, to see a member of public office truly live up to their responsibility to serve the people: [Read more…]

Hey look over here!

Life is seriously cutting into my ability to read blogs. It’s becoming a serious problem. I’m starting to get Pharyngula withdrawal shakes (it’s been over a week). If someone wants to work for me as my personal assistant, that’d be cool.

Anyway, I interrupt our regularly-scheduled blogcast to bring you this important message from Hank Fox:

What if there was a Book of Good Living?

Picture it as a collection of wisdom from people all over the world.

It would be all the stuff you should probably do, and the stuff you probably shouldn’t do, and the way you do it all, in order to live a good life. The way you treat people. The things you do in the course of a day. The broad-based forethought that goes into each life, all the lessons your parents, or their parents, or the people a thousand generations back, learned from the mistakes and hard knocks in their own lives.

Always look both ways before you cross the street. When two workmen meet in a narrow doorway, the one with the heavier load has the right of way. Any architect designing a building for use by large numbers of the public – a stadium or theatre, for instance – should include twice as many bathroom stalls for women as for men. On a hot day, your dog likes ice water just as much as you do. If you eat a little bit less, and exercise a little bit more, you’ll lose weight – no diets, books or courses needed.

Go read Hank, he has good ideas and is a hell of a guy.

Also, the guys over at The Atheist Experience are displaying more stomach and courage than I can claim, by delving into the Bog of Eternal Stench that is Men’s Rights Activist forums and The Amazing Atheist: [Read more…]

A twisted sense of honour

This may end up being yet another one of those kind of posts where I end up in a crouch against one of my fellow FTBorg. Today’s bone is picked with Matt Dilahunty of The Atheist Experience. I am similarly terrified of dueling with Matt, but I would be remiss if I let his comment pass unchallenged.

On Sunday’s episode of The Atheist Experience, a caller asked Beth and Matt for their opinion on ‘honour killings’, in light of the recent conviction of Mohammad Shafia. Beth and Matt were, in the least shocking plot twist imaginable, opposed to them. No big deal – killing is wrong, killing because of something as misguided as patriarchial, misogynistic concepts of “honour” is even more wrong. I’ve said as much before:

There’s no honour in murder. It is the weak-willed act of a coward who lacks any human decency. One might be able to persuade me that there is honour in the suicide tradition of Bushido, in which failure to act honourably moves the samurai to take his/her own life. I’m generally against the idea of suicide, but a person’s life is their own to do with what they want. What he is not entitled to do, however, is murder someone else to restore his own sense of ‘honour’. Any society in which one person’s mental state or social status trumps another’s right to the security of their person cannot stand.

Matt then pivoted from what was essentially a good point about the intolerability of murder in a sustainable society into a terrible point about religion. His argument, as best I could understand it, was that Islam provides a context in which honour killings are permissible. The implication of this statement is that Mr. Shafia’s Muslim beliefs fueled his decision to murder his three daughters and first wife. I’ve also expressed my objection to this concept:

[Read more…]

Empowered Health: Week 3

The Vancouver Sun hasn’t stopped publishing this series, so I will not stop critiquing it.

10 ways to evade Alzheimer’s

Anyone who has a close relative with Alzheimer’s shares the same worry: Am I next? However, a growing body of research indicates that our lifestyles — particularly what we eat and whether we’re obese — play a greater role than our genes in determining our brain health as we age. “For years, scientists thought that Alzheimer’s was primarily genetic,” said Gary Wenk, professor of neuroscience at Ohio State University. “We now believe that, while there’s a genetic component, Alzheimer’s is primarily a lifestyle disease.”

This little blurb really does give you all the information you need about this article. Gerontologists (those who study human aging) know that maintaining an active, healthy lifestyle is a key component of avoiding all kinds of chronic illnesses. Many of these diseases were thought to be the natural consequence of getting old, but as we learn more about aging and the importance of diet and exercise on human health we recognize that it plays a role in all kinds of degenerative conditions. Alzheimer’s is no exception, although the disease’s genetic cause is still a major factor in learning to treat it. This piece isn’t about curing Alzheimer’s though, it’s about steps people can take to avoid it, or reduce its impact.

Overall rating: 5/5 – nothing particularly innovative or informative here, but it doesn’t make any missteps and I’m constantly surprised by how little people know about this stuff. [Read more…]

Islamophobia exists

So I am lucky to share the FTB platform with two titans of free thought: Ophelia Benson and Maryam Namazie. I was fans of both of these women long before I ever even dreamed about being counted among their colleagues. And because of the level of fearspect I have for both of them, I am really quite hesitant to disagree with them, so I haven’t so far.

What I am talking about is their seeming denial of the existence of Islamophobia:

That’s what the term is there for – to protect Islam – from prejudice, not Muslims. Given the havoc Islamism (and its banner, Islam) are wreaking worldwide, a criticism is not just a right but a historical task and duty.

…

Yes but even though there is such a thing as stupid blanket hatred of a meaningless collective noun called “Muslims,” it still shouldn’t be called “Islamophobia.”

In all fairness, and to hopefully safeguard against accusations that I am straw-manning their argument, I think they object to the word ‘Islamophobia’ on more or less the same grounds that I object to the term ‘reverse racism‘. It is a political phrase, built on a foundation of false equivalence and poor argument. It is used almost exclusively to describe any criticism, no matter how valid, of Islam as a religion, or the activities of extremist Muslim groups (or the complicit silence of moderate Muslim groups in the face of extremism). By throwing up accusations of intolerance every time someone makes disparaging comments about a particular religion, you create a smokescreen to deflect attention from real problems. It is a trap to bait arch-liberals, who refuse to distinguish between criticism and bigotry, into attacking secular arguments for reasons of misdirection rather than actual flaw.

If the argument started and ended there, then I strongly suspect that Ophelia, Maryam and I would be all pulling in the same direction. However, I cannot join them on their blanket dismissal of the word Islamophobia, or their statements that seem to indicate belief that the word is purely fiction, created as an obfuscatory countermeasure by Islamists to discredit anyone who criticizes Islam. The fact is that there is irrational fear and hatred directed toward Muslims because they are Muslims, and not for any other reason. To wit: [Read more…]

Black History in Canada: some interesting stories

It is easy for me to stand up and insist that you all go learn about black history. The fact is, however, that I am mostly chiding myself for my own ignorance. After all, it wasn’t until relatively recently that I took an active interest in black history beyond whatever tidbits I could glean from organizations with a mandate for education. As a result, reading through Mensah’s book, I’m learning quite a number of surprising and fascinating things.

Canada has a hundred-year history of black slavery

“It was towards the end of the seventeenth century that acute labour shortages prompted the importation of Blacks in significant numbers. And, as Walker (1980: 19) points out, ‘from then until the early nineteenth century, throughout the founding of the present Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario, there was never a time when Blacks were not held as slaves in Canada.” (p. 46)

The narrative we pick up from the little black history we learn in school is that Canada was the promised land at the end of the Underground Railroad. The truth is that Canada, like most of the colonies (and, by extension, Europe), was built using slave labour. Much of this labour was carried out by African slaves. This was happening during the same point when the original provinces were coming into existence, and yet even the existence of these slaves is omitted from the account. [Read more…]

Science says we should blame the victims

Let’s face facts, people: if you get assaulted, or worse, it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have been walking in that area. You shouldn’t have been out at night. You shouldn’t have been alone. You shouldn’t have worn that dress or those shoes, or been wearing such an expensive watch/handbag/ribbon.

I mean, there are studies to demonstrate these things.

You can, of course, ignore this information. But once you know that certain behaviours increase your risk, then choosing to express that particular behaviour… Well… That’s all on you.

Right?

[Read more…]

Understanding black history

This is the first in a series of posts I am writing in my annual commemoration of Black History Month. My inspiration, and source of historical material, is a book by Joseph Mensah called Black Canadians: history, experiences, social conditions. As I work my way through the book, I will be blogging my reactions and things that stand out.

Imagine for a moment that you were stranded in a lifeboat somewhere in the ocean. You have no way of knowing which direction the land is, but if you have any chance of reaching safety, you’ve got to start paddling somewhere, right? What piece of information would be useful for you to have?

Aside from “which direction land is in”, you would probably do pretty well knowing which direction you came from. You may be too far out to be able to paddle back, but you could possibly move forward in the correct direction. Simply paddling forward without keeping track of where you’ve been could have you going in circles indefinitely.

Such is how we have to understand our own history. We cannot (or should not) pilot a safe route forward if we don’t take time to reflect on how we came to be here. This is certainly true of all history, but it has a particular relevance to black history. After all, while the historical contributions and narratives of minority groups within Canada are generally under-represented in classical narratives of Canadian history, that may be no more the case than for black Canadians. [Read more…]

Crommunist celebrates Black History Month

So it’s Black History Month once again. For those of you who haven’t really “done” the whole Black History Month thing before, this is required reading:

So, for those of you who are unaware, tomorrow marks the start of Black History Month. I am so not looking forward to this. Since this year is a leap year, I have 29 of whitewashed history and white people complaints and tears to look forward to. Hip hip hoo-fucking-ray. I fucking hate Black History Month with a god damn passion.

In school, it was nothing but a fucking joke. The history teacher would pull out a specialized lesson plan for a few weeks. We would do reports on the same few people and hear the same bullshit stories. If you were lucky, you might have watched a movie.

(snip)

I love Black history. Real Black history is a thing of beauty. When you learn about what Black people really had to face, you see that it’s a damn near miracle that we’re still in this country and surviving. The whitewashing that goes down during Black History Month is a damn shame. It’s not bad enough that we have the shortest fucking month of the year, but you have to dilute our history too???

I just want this to be over already. If you’re Black in America, February is probably not a good month for you.

I will add my own list of complaints about how Black History Month is handled. We will inevitably be treated to a number of (overlapping) lists of things that black people have invented. I could not possibly care less about who cultivated peanuts or invented the straightening comb and the traffic light. I’m more interested in actual history. Narratives. Stories. Experiences. Instead we get a “hey look, here’s a list of black people that have done a thing.” How utterly banal and useless.

Two years ago, I wrote a series of Facebook notes (this was in my pre-blog days) for Black History Month. Those notes formed the underpinning of the race discussions on this blog, which was launched the following month: [Read more…]