The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[dleung]

Originally Posted by lio45

I suppose in this case you'd probably be shocked to learn that someone who's still in my employment has, over the past few years, addressed several times, to his face, a Vietnamese businessman who was our commercial tenant (running a restaurant in one of my units) as "you fucking chink", as well as several times, to his face again, a Congolese businessman who's our commercial tenant (and still is years later, as I write this; I just gave him a nice Covid rent break because I like him) as "you fucking nigger", after which in all cases I then privately apologized on that person's behalf. (That's a good employee who's old and "rednecky" (grew up in a rural area in this corner of Quebec) and has no filter and doesn't care about being PC, and who does the job.)

You can also add to the above my Southern USA property manager who once when visiting a property with me and finding very amateur electrical work, pointed out "that's what we call 'nigger-rigged' here" (while acknowledging it's an extremely un-PC way to put it).

If someone does a good job in my view, they're going to be able to get away with a lot of such things as far as I'm concerned (mental incapacitation a.k.a. religion, homophobia a.k.a. religion, mild racism, mild sexism, etc.) because I'm results-focused; that's what mostly matters to me.

Not surprised at all

btw, "not PC" usually mean something closer to asking "where are you REALLY from?" than calling someone a "fucking n****er"

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Lio, this is an English-speaking forum. While it's something of a free-for-all, there are certain norms that are non-negotiable. One of the major ones relates to the use of what we call the "N-word."

You can't casually and arbitrarily spell that word out in full the way that you're doing. It's painful to look at, and whatever point you're trying to make is obscured and overshadowed by how cavalierly you're throwing that word around.

Every culture has live wires where you don't go. This is one of ours. Perhaps you're not aware of this? In any case, no more N-words please.

Trying to think of words in French that would be verboten in conversations among adults, even in cases where you're simply repeating what someone else said and that it's not actually your words.

None come to mind.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Trying to think of words in French that would be verboten in conversations among adults, even in cases where you're simply repeating what someone else said and that it's not actually your words.

None come to mind.

Yeah, I was thinking about this too. Wondering if maybe I just don't know them. I can think of plenty of "swear words" (that a parent might scold a kid for saying) but nothing that would provoke the same widespread reaction.

The very notion of having unspeakably offensive words is a cultural feature that doesn't necessarily have to exist everywhere. And I'm not sure it's a positive thing (I don't support the casual use of racist slurs, but I also don't think it's positive to give racists such power to offend). +1 for French culture I guess.

Years ago I wondered if French language was just behind and if a strong distaste for any term with even a tinge of racism/sexism would develop. I don't think that's how it's gone though. I have complained before that I wish Canada had more mixed Anglophone/Francophone media. I think that would slow things down a bit, add more viewpoints to debate, and keep us from following the US so closely. It is better for Canada to have a more cosmopolitan outlook. Canada is at its best when it borrows from around the world, not just the US. Navel gazing is one of the weaknesses of the US, while Canada as a smaller country naturally pays more attention to events outside of its borders.

[casper]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Hilarious.

Right now BLM has a lot of public sympathy and public support, but if this is really what they want, then their radical anarchosocialist agenda is showing, and they will lose public support so rapidly it'll be breathtaking.

Can you imagine a city without a police force? Nature abhors a vacuum, and organized gangs would fill the gap rapidly, charging the poor protection money to keep their neighbourhoods safe, while the white suburban enclaves will go the slightly more civilized route of "private security firms" for their own protection. Without prisons, what would you do with violent offenders? I am no fan of institutionalization for harmless offenders, but let's get real here.

Who are these people???

I can imagine a city without a police department where the police are aligned in other departments.

As an example here in Vancouver. Transit had security staff but not police. This became a problem when it became clear criminals were using skytrain (our subsway/LRT system) to move across municipal boundaries. End result was a new police force was created to deal with crime on or near transit.

The municipal police force was not setup to handle organised crime. Again it goes across municipal boundaries. So the Organised Crime Agency was created.

The municipal police force was not setup to deal with gangs, since they go across municipal boundaries so the Combined Forces Special Investigation Unit was created.

The municipal police does not have the spills to handle environmental. So the BC Conservation Officer Service exists.

The municipal police does not have the skills to enforce commercial vehicle safety regulations. You need people who can look at a bus or truck and determine if it is safe or not. So we have the BC Safety and Comercial Vehicle Enforcement.

When Cannabis became legal in BC it was decided to form another force call the Community Safety Unit to enforce regulations and safety around that product.

There are in fact an additional 25 other small little police forces that exist attached to various departments and agencies in the provincial government.

What exactly is the municipal police department left with as a mandate?

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by someone123

When we leave the realm of calmer civic debate and enter the realm of loud activism is the people in the middle tend to disengage while the extremists stick around.

Yep, I'm disengaged. I wouldn't dare voice any misgivings about BLM on Facebook, for example, where heresy is not tolerated. Numerous times I've been sorely tempted to ask whether the posts people are sharing apply to Canada or the US, but I can see that even something so seemingly anodyne as that would be like tripping a live wire. I'm quite convinced that I would lose friends, and I'm quite sure the lack of anonymity would put me in jeopardy professionally.

And I'm sure that many people would probably sarcastically say: "Old white guy moaning about not being able to share his negative opinion of BLM? Cry me a river..." Because BLM is totally right, and I'm totally wrong, of course.

Having said all that, I'm optimistic about one thing: the bright side of these challenges to police hegemony are that they confirm that we are not living in a police state. Hurrah! The people are speaking and police funding is being reimagined. For all of the sneering coming from China these days, I wonder if any of the more astute among them privately realize this?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by casper

The municipal police force was not setup to handle organised crime. Again it goes across municipal boundaries. So the Organised Crime Agency was created.

"This allegation of police brutality is completely unfounded! Your son was shot by the Organised Crime Agency, not the police department!"

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by someone123

Years ago I wondered if French language was just behind and if a strong distaste for any term with even a tinge of racism/sexism would develop. I don't think that's how it's gone though. I have complained before that I wish Canada had more mixed Anglophone/Francophone media. I think that would slow things down a bit, add more viewpoints to debate, and keep us from following the US so closely. It is better for Canada to have a more cosmopolitan outlook. Canada is at its best when it borrows from around the world, not just the US. Navel gazing is one of the weaknesses of the US, while Canada as a smaller country naturally pays more attention to events outside of its borders.

The French - and by that I mean the French of France who are the ones who set the bar, much like Americans are setting our bar - have a strange relationship with the concept of race.

There's no official recordkeeping of ethnicity in their census, and while that's a hangover from the fact that France was occupied by Nazis, and the English speaking countries weren't, it's perplexing why this persists 75 years later. France seems to be suffering the most from the post-colonial blues of any European country; it would be useful to have some recordkeeping of marginalization and its effects.

Not to mention that the equivalent to the "civil rights" movement in France resulted in the loss of territory. Losing Algiers was a lot more like losing Alabama than losing, say, Puerto Rico.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Having said all that, I'm optimistic about one thing: the bright side of these challenges to police hegemony are that they confirm that we are not living in a police state. Hurrah! The people are speaking and police funding is being reimagined. For all of the sneering coming from China these days, I wonder if any of the more astute among them privately realize this?

Very good point. I wonder if we've seen the high water mark of aggressive, militarized policing in the US which was one of the hallmarks of the 9/11 era up to now?

Or is that realistic given the heavily armed populace they have to contend with down there?

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

The French - and by that I mean the French of France who are the ones who set the bar, much like Americans are setting our bar - have a strange relationship with the concept of race.

There's no official recordkeeping of ethnicity in their census, and while that's a hangover from the fact that France was occupied by Nazis, and the English speaking countries weren't, it's perplexing why this persists 75 years later. France seems to be suffering the most from the post-colonial blues of any European country; it would be useful to have some recordkeeping of marginalization and its effects.

Not to mention that the equivalent to the "civil rights" movement in France resulted in the loss of territory. Losing Algiers was a lot more like losing Alabama than losing, say, Puerto Rico.

Latin America also tends to resist formal classification by race, as though to do so would itself be racist. At the same time, they can seem incredibly race conscious/racist to NAmericans, even as racial mixing can be more common and relaxed than in the
Anglo Saxon world. It’s confusing.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Trying to think of words in French that would be verboten in conversations among adults, even in cases where you're simply repeating what someone else said and that it's not actually your words.

None come to mind.

Depending on context, “colon”?

Although nothing that conveys "you are less than human, I may kill you" as does the "n-word" in English.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

There's no official recordkeeping of ethnicity in their census, and while that's a hangover from the fact that France was occupied by Nazis, and the English speaking countries weren't, it's perplexing why this persists 75 years later. France seems to be suffering the most from the post-colonial blues of any European country; it would be useful to have some recordkeeping of marginalization and its effects.

Not to mention that the equivalent to the "civil rights" movement in France resulted in the loss of territory. Losing Algiers was a lot more like losing Alabama than losing, say, Puerto Rico.

I won't pretend to be an authority on what's important to France but I always got the sense there's a big cutoff between metropolitan France and the rest.

There's no question that France has a lot of poor suburbs with limited opportunity that are populated by Algerians and other minorities, and that they have a strange history of allowing some temporary workers and then deporting most of them, etc. But then again you see plenty of people with an Algerian background who are successful in France and I don't get the impression there's a lot of overt racist sentiment toward them. The history is quite distinct from the United States.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Latin America also tends to resist formal classification by race, as though to do so would itself be racist. At the same time, they can seem incredibly race conscious/racist to NAmericans, even as racial mixing can be more common and relaxed than in the
Anglo Saxon world. It’s confusing.

Latin America has a lot of racial mixing that goes far back.

Canada today is pretty mixed too, particularly if you factor out the Baby Boomers or older generations. This is one of the things that I have a hard time squaring with rhetoric around POC vs. whites. I wonder when we'll move past the idea of declaring membership in discrete racial identity groups.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by esquire

Very good point. I wonder if we've seen the high water mark of aggressive, militarized policing in the US which was one of the hallmarks of the 9/11 era up to now?

Or is that realistic given the heavily armed populace they have to contend with down there?

It's weird that the post you replied to is attributed to me but I never said those words.

[esquire]

^ Whoops, that was my fault... I initially had a couple of posts quoted and somehow I messed it up. Thanks for pointing it out... I'll fix it.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ Whoops, that was my fault... I initially had a couple of posts quoted and somehow I messed it up. Thanks for pointing it out... I'll fix it.

It's unfortunate that the software running this forum allows people to change what others said. Only the original poster should be able to do that and any changes they make should propagate through the system if that post was quoted by others.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by someone123

Yeah, I was thinking about this too. Wondering if maybe I just don't know them. I can think of plenty of "swear words" (that a parent might scold a kid for saying) but nothing that would provoke the same widespread reaction.

The very notion of having unspeakably offensive words is a cultural feature that doesn't necessarily have to exist everywhere. And I'm not sure it's a positive thing (I don't support the casual use of racist slurs, but I also don't think it's positive to give racists such power to offend). +1 for French culture I guess.

On this facet, the Anglosphere (to us) is a bit like the Harry Potter universe: characters going about speaking of "You Know Who" and "The N Word".

[lio45]

Originally Posted by casper

I can imagine a city without a police department where the police are aligned in other departments.

As an example here in Vancouver. Transit had security staff but not police. This became a problem when it became clear criminals were using skytrain (our subsway/LRT system) to move across municipal boundaries. End result was a new police force was created to deal with crime on or near transit.

The municipal police force was not setup to handle organised crime. Again it goes across municipal boundaries. So the Organised Crime Agency was created.

The municipal police force was not setup to deal with gangs, since they go across municipal boundaries so the Combined Forces Special Investigation Unit was created.

Everything you listed above gets instantly fixed by having one single Metro Vancouver Municipal PD while nothing else changes.

Montreal's been set up like this since forever (early 1970s at least).

[lio45]

Originally Posted by someone123

I won't pretend to be an authority on what's important to France but I always got the sense there's a big cutoff between metropolitan France and the rest.

There is. (The loss of Alabama would be more like losing Alsace to Germany.)

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

Everything you listed above gets instantly fixed by having one single Metro Vancouver Municipal PD while nothing else changes.

Metro Vancouver is just kind of messed up for historical reasons. VPD is only for the City of Vancouver while the RCMP operate in different municipalities (and in UBC). New Westminster (pop. 70,000 or so) has its own police too while Burnaby which surrounds it is RCMP. This has an effect on questions like where illegal dispensaries are allowed to operate.

Halifax has a similar thing. There's an HPD but it does not police the whole municipality because some amalgamated outer areas (the old "county") retained the RCMP. I believe the NS RCMP HQ is in an area they don't police.

I don't think it's like the old Bonnie and Clyde stories where the police have to watch you drive away if you get past some imaginary line.

[WarrenC12]

Metro Van needs to amalgamate in so many areas, policing is just one of them. Think of how many elected officials we have across the region. Fire chiefs, HR departments, and so on.