The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Good thing this is a strawman nobody really put forward.

This is what he said:

When users here speak of the 'status quo' for Americans, and that the US serves the majority of the population 'well', I interpret it to mean that the US serves whites well, particularly wealthy whites.

[dleung]

Totally valid to question the intentions of people who have never in the past paid much attention to income inequality, inadequate welfare, discrimination against aboriginals, "black on black crime" and a host of other social ills, only to suddenly go "whataboutthese?" every time society shines a light on police killing/jailing black people over things other races get away with all the time.

There's Richard Spencer racist
There's MAGA racist
Then there's the "Yeah, I like Trump's, uh, economic policies, wink wink" racist
There's "hmm, maybe we should forget multiculturalism and be like the nordic/asian countries with token/non-threatening levels of diversity"
Then there's playing dumb about racism with whataboutisms because you see it as a zero sum game and need the status quo to hold onto any advantage in life.

Originally Posted by Acajack

In any event, the narrative that whites are all living the high life in the U.S. and everyone with a different skin tone is living in shit, is a total fallacy.

Dumbest strawman i've ever heard. Being white doesn't mean life is easy; it just means it's not one of the things making life hard.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by dleung

There's Richard Spencer racist
Then there's MAGA racist
There's the "Yeah, I like Trump's, uh, economic policies, wink wink" racist
Then there's "hmm, maybe we should forget multiculturalism and be like the nordic/asian countries with token/non-threatening levels of diversity"
Then there's playing dumb about racism with whataboutisms because you see it as a zero sum game and need to hold onto any advantage in life.

Somewhere in there is Rex Murphy racist. "I've never experienced it, so it doesn't exist."

[esquire]

Originally Posted by someone123

Stephen Pinker on anarchism:

When law enforcement vanishes, all manner of violence breaks out: looting, settling old scores, ethnic cleansing, and petty warfare among gangs, warlords and mafias. This was obvious in the remnants of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and parts of Africa in the 1990s, but can also happen in countries with a long tradition of civility. As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that had competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call ni the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist).

(The Blank Slate, p. 331)

Ha. I wasn't aware of this example but that type of scenario is what comes to mind when I see FTP/ACAB hashtags, or signs that read 'defund the police'. As a Winnipeg taxpayer I am none too thrilled with how much I have to pay in property taxes to the sustain the police, but even with my minimal exposure to the city's seedy underbelly I have to say that it beats the alternative. I do not think minorities would be better off in a scenario where the foxes run the henhouse.

Originally Posted by someone123

For a lot of life outcomes, there is another variable that correlates more strongly than race does. For example, having 2 stable parents for your whole childhood is much more important than what race(s) you belong to. The level of educational attainment and income of your parents matters a lot too.

I think a lot of disadvantaged minorities just don't get as much personal support, on average, as individuals. This definitely impacts indigenous people in Canada since many are faced either with staying in the poor community they were born in or moving away from their family support.

BTW it can be similar for a poor white person who comes from a trailer and was raised by a single parent in some remote town. Light coloured skin is not a magic ticket to prosperity.

Police are not the tool for tackling these issues.

I'm sure that a lot of the problems faced by Indigenous people, at least on the prairies, can be chalked up in part to isolation and lack of opportunity. If you're growing up in God's Lake Narrows, MB, then getting a chance to go to university is going to be very difficult no matter how motivated and talented you are. Even finding a job is a challenge. This is not a situation faced by most African Americans... it's hard to think of situations where a black American would face anything close to the level of isolation that people in northern reserves encounter.

[VANRIDERFAN]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Many, many different things, one imagines ...

Ture, but those heady days of railroad roadblocks have been quickly swept away under the rug.

[drew]

Speaking of Rex Murphy - what happened to him?

He went from regular contributor on the CBC to now writing significantly right of centre (for Canada anyway) opinion pieces in the National Post.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by someone123

For a lot of life outcomes, there is another variable that correlates more strongly than race does. For example, having 2 stable parents for your whole childhood is much more important than what race(s) you belong to. The level of educational attainment and income of your parents matters a lot too.

I think a lot of disadvantaged minorities just don't get as much personal support, on average, as individuals. This definitely impacts indigenous people in Canada since many are faced either with staying in the poor community they were born in or moving away from their family support.

BTW it can be similar for a poor white person who comes from a trailer and was raised by a single parent in some remote town. Light coloured skin is not a magic ticket to prosperity.

Police are not the tool for tackling these issues.

As far as I can tell, it seems pretty clear that the main root problems for African-Americans are the breakdown of the family leading to exponentially higher rates of crime combined with the greater militarization of police. The latter is practically solvable, while the former is a devilishly hard nut to crack.

But I've checked out of the conversation (if I ever checked in very much) purely in the interest of self-preservation. My Facebook feed is filled with outraged family and friends (Canadians) hectoring all and sundry to "repeat after me..." about how to think about this while at the same time telling us, without irony, to "shut up and let them speak," and "if you don't support BLM then we are not friends," and remonstrating with us to "check our white privilege," etc. etc. ad nauseam. I've only been on Facebook for a couple months, but I now understand first hand what a powder keg it is. These people brook no dissent, and their voices get shriller and shriller as they agonize over how to appropriate (see what I did there?) the US situation into Canada.

The hysteria has reached the point where I would not be surprised at all if someone made an attempt to sabotage my professional life for the heresy of demurring about the copycat protests in Canada.

It's not my fight, and as much as I may disagree with large parts of the ideology of BLM, obviously what I think about what is happening in the US right now is pretty much irrelevant. In an ideal world the browbeating hordes on Facebook would take their own advice to "shut up and let them speak" as well, but, well, you know what they say about ideal worlds...

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by drew

Speaking of Rex Murphy - what happened to him?

He went from regular contributor on the CBC to now writing significantly right of centre (for Canada anyway) opinion pieces in the National Post.

Between him and Conrad Black, I really question the funding of print media with taxpayer dollars. AMIRITE?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

These are good points though a significant part of the situation is attributable to governmental policies, past and present. Residential segregation that was enabled by blockbusting and redlining with complicit governments at various levels.

Also of course the way public schools are funded in the U.S. is a complex web that can only have originally been designed to discriminate against poorer communities, many of them African-American.

This is true although Canada is quite different in those areas.

I think the idea that any Canadian authorities were out to get minorities in the 1960's is seriously overplayed (it was true at times in history, like with wars against native groups or anti-Asian policies around 1900 but nobody from that era is alive today). It is more accurate to say that in the postwar period there was a paternalistic view toward minorities and the economically disadvantaged, combined with a mistaken belief that urban renewal was an effective tool. Back in those days there wasn't the same track record of failed interventions to consider, so we have to be careful how we judge people of that time. It was not necessarily obvious that Regent Park or Uniacke Square or Cabrini-Green would turn out as they did, and those were all examples of constructive intervention, people being given modern homes with what were good amenities many households didn't have back then.

If I were to pick the 2 biggest misconceptions about this issue, I think they'd be:

1) Poor or uneducated people don't know how to look after themselves, so they need to be controlled.
2) The state of affairs of disadvantaged minorities happened because of a history of malice or intentional bad decisions.

How you think about (1) and (2) can have big impact on how good different interventions look. (1) means you rely on less effective top-down directives rather than supporting people and getting buy-in. (2) allows you to believe that simple solutions will work.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Good thing this is a strawman nobody really put forward.

Hold on a minute: that's pretty much exactly what jhikka just said.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is true although Canada is quite different in those areas.
.

Oh for sure. There is no real Canadian comparative for those examples I gave.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Of course, but I don't think it's difficult to argue that life in the US is better if you're white and far better if you're wealthy and white. Of course there are also poor and disadvantaged whites, but i'm painting with a pretty wide and generalized brush.

That would be true in almost every non-Asian country in the world.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

The hysteria has reached the point where I would not be surprised at all if someone made an attempt to sabotage my professional life for the heresy of demurring about the copycat protests in Canada.
...

You can simply tell them you weren't logged on when you were asked to comply. Though they might be able to check that in some way...

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Hold on a minute: that's pretty much exactly what jhikka just said.

I don't think it's entirely inaccurate. From racial wage gaps, racial inequality regarding employment, home ownership, racial achievement gap, unemployment rates, district gerrymandering, public school funding, incarceration rates and, to stay on topic, police brutality, the indicators all seem to point in the same direction. That's a status quo that I think a lot of Americans, and more proportionally in the future, would seek to change.

Originally Posted by Architype

That would be true in almost every non-Asian country in the world.

Indeed.

[niwell]

I've mentioned it here in the past but there are actually a number of academic articles / studies that talk about both concepts of "geographies of whiteness" and "white supremacy" really means. It boils down to the fact that the term can't be taken 100% literally anymore and is more about societal norms and notions of power relationships. So yes, a poor white person can very easily be worse off than a rich black person. But that rich black person is generally only treated as equal so long as they conform to the idea of what a rich black person should look and act like. These are the same concepts that allow dismissal of rural people as dumb hicks, FWIW.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Hold on a minute: that's pretty much exactly what jhikka just said.

This seems to be a new trend as well. Something is posted, is not deleted, people react to it, and then there is denial that it actually means what it clearly says. Even if it's still there for everyone to see.

René Magritte made a great painting that nicely fits with this post of mine.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=ren%C3%A9...ZXuOSFq-e_QaoyLIQ&bih=802&biw=1368&hl=en

[someone123]

Originally Posted by esquire

This is not a situation faced by most African Americans... it's hard to think of situations where a black American would face anything close to the level of isolation that people in northern reserves encounter.

It is kind of similar. The black population in the US was historically spread out on rural plantations and when they were freed they often had almost no education, no property and struggled to find good jobs, so eventually they moved to industrial cities and had to start over.

Nova Scotia has a mini version of this with some rural black communities. They can be a bit remote and challenging to service at the municipal level, so people are faced with either living in their village or moving to a bigger town, whereas somebody else might be born in a place where their family owns valuable property and where there are good local education and job options. Hammonds Plains NS transitioned from a remote black rural community to a modern suburb. Around 1800 black settlers were granted land there and they mostly farmed, then took their produce into the city by wagon (start at 3 or 4 am, and travel for 5 hours on your pile of turnips on an oxcart). But today you can just drive into town in 20-30 mins. The old villages (there are a bunch of them, like Lucasville and Yankeetown) are pretty modest looking compared to the modern suburbs. Sometimes people argue that the difference is proof of discrimination but it is more accurately looked at as an effect of historical momentum.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You can simply tell them you weren't logged on when you were asked to comply. Though they might be able to check that in some way...

It hasn't reached the point where they're pointedly asking their Facebook friends to register their support of every tenet of their ad-hoc manifesto in lieu of being cast out into the wilderness. At the same time, though, my silence is probably suspicious.

Then again, the echo chamber is so loud that they probably haven't noticed.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

But I've checked out of the conversation (if I ever checked in very much) purely in the interest of self-preservation. My Facebook feed is filled with outraged family and friends (Canadians) hectoring all and sundry to "repeat after me..." about how to think about this while at the same time telling us, without irony, to "shut up and let them speak," and "if you don't support BLM then we are not friends," and remonstrating with us to "check our white privilege," etc. etc. ad nauseam. I've only been on Facebook for a couple months, but I now understand first hand what a powder keg it is. These people brook no dissent, and their voices get shriller and shriller as they agonize over how to appropriate (see what I did there?) the US situation into Canada.

.

Perhaps it's just my friends, perhaps it's just living in Quebec where things are (a tad) more detached from these U.S. matters, but I haven't been getting calls to action on this one. Some people are commenting, and some have also changed their profile picture to black or the BLM logo. But so far no one has been trying to recruit or compel me to join the social media movement.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by dleung

There's "hmm, maybe we should forget multiculturalism and be like the nordic/asian countries with token/non-threatening levels of diversity"
.

Been a while since you've been to a Nordic capital, has it? At this point they have way more diversity than most Asian big cities.

Not Toronto-level of course, but then again, few places do.