The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by biguc

Bad takes.

France is the exception in Western Europe. There's nothing more than a broad, mushy consensus between European states, western or otherwise, about how they should or do treat religion. France's strident secularism stands out as the kind of blind-spot assholery characteristic of quibbling racists who think they've uniquely noticed that Islam isn't a race. "We're not oppressing Muslims, we oppress all religion" doesn't read that different from "I'm not racist, I hate all people".

Anglo Canada does take freedom of religion more seriously than most European countries (I think most Canadians would be stunned at just how cozy church and state get in Europe). The thing is, freedom entails choice. Revoking the right to practise being black is prima facie silly, if not absurd. Practising your religion, on the other hand, is a choice and therefore a meaningful freedom.

Anyway, tangling race up in the matter only happens because a lot of bozos can't tell the difference between brown people and Muslims.

"Diffrent takes", actually.

You actually just responded to something evoking cultural differences that lead people on either side to say the other is wrong, with a: "nope, it's not cultural differences at all; you guys are just plain wrong!"

Quod erat demonstrandum.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by biguc

Revoking the right to practise being black is prima facie silly, if not absurd. .

Any yet many people have indirectly done just that for hundreds of years.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by biguc

Bad takes.

France is the exception in Western Europe. There's nothing more than a broad, mushy consensus between European states, western or otherwise, about how they should or do treat religion. France's strident secularism stands out as the kind of blind-spot assholery characteristic of quibbling racists who think they've uniquely noticed that Islam isn't a race. "We're not oppressing Muslims, we oppress all religion" doesn't read that different from "I'm not racist, I hate all people".

Anglo Canada does take freedom of religion more seriously than most European countries (I think most Canadians would be stunned at just how cozy church and state get in Europe). The thing is, freedom entails choice. Revoking the right to practise being black is prima facie silly, if not absurd. Practising your religion, on the other hand, is a choice and therefore a meaningful freedom.

Anyway, tangling race up in the matter only happens because a lot of bozos can't tell the difference between brown people and Muslims.

It's past time religion got put in its rightful place. France aren't the —, the — are the people who have shoved that horseshit down our throats for millennia.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by begratto

France doesn't "oppress Muslims", they're preventing public institutions from the influence of *all* religions.

In fairness, traditionalist Islam does bump into the law more than most religions, but that's due to the nature of the religion as an all-encompassing belief system that covers every aspect of your life, both inside and outside the home.

Islam has been thought up and designed as a religion where it's assumed that everyone around you is Muslim too, and that the society and governance system are also Islamic. Many of Islam's precepts, from the way people dress to stopping for prayer several times a day to the muezzin screaming the call for prayer from a minaret for all to hear, are based on the assumption of an Islamo-normative society.

It's not surprising that it's sometimes a difficult fit in societies where religion has evolved to being a mostly private matter, not so much on display in public and there is a separation of church and state.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You actually just responded to something evoking cultural differences that lead people on either side to say the other is wrong, with a: "nope, it's not cultural differences at all; you guys are just plain wrong!"

I don't mean to be disrespectful to anybody but there appears to be a bit of Dunning-Kruger going on here along with the very high temperature on some culture war issues.

I talk to Francophones who lived in Quebec for 40 years and after a few years away they'll say they feel out of touch and like they can't definitively comment on the cultural or political issues there today. And then at the other end you've got people in Western Canada who will tell you exactly how it is even though they don't speak French and have never been there. It is rare to hear Canadians without much firsthand experience in Quebec admit that they don't have much of a window into the culture there. It is much more common for them to say they know the motivations behind the latest law in Quebec. It is similar with the UK and commentary on France. Is there a bigger French cultural expert than the Londoner who does occasional weekend trips to Paris and writes for an English newspaper?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

I don't mean to be disrespectful to anybody but there appears to be a bit of Dunning-Kruger going on here along with the very high temperature on some culture war issues.

I talk to Francophones who lived in Quebec for 40 years and after a few years away they'll say they feel out of touch and like they can't definitively comment on the cultural or political issues there today. And then at the other end you've got people in Western Canada who will tell you exactly how it is even though they don't speak French and have never been there. It is rare to hear Canadians without much firsthand experience in Quebec admit that they don't have much of a window into the culture there. It is much more common for them to say they know the motivations behind the latest law in Quebec. It is similar with the UK and commentary on France. Is there a bigger French cultural expert than the Londoner who does occasional weekend trips to Paris and writes for an English newspaper?

In fairness, Quebec's take on the ROC isn't necessarily bang-on either, and France's take on the British (those "anglo-saxons" as they like to say) is full of stereotypes too.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

In fairness, Quebec's take on the ROC isn't necessarily bang-on either, and France's take on the British (those "anglo-saxons" as they like to say) is full of stereotypes too.

Sure. Quebec can be insular, and may even be worse than other parts of Canada.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think it is a bit more subtle than that. Racism is one of the most serious social charges in Anglosphere countries in 2020, while religion has taken a back seat. It's natural for racism as an issue or concern, therefore, to creep out into these other areas. If you accuse your opponent of religious chauvinism that's an obscure debate over beliefs. If you accuse them of racism you can tar them as a Deplorable.

There are a lot of people who are on the hunt for subliminal racist messages. It is easy to read racism into complaints about Islam, rightly or wrongly, due to mere correlations of race. The anti-racist "spidey sense" tends to misfire a lot when considering foreign cultures. I think it was fairly accurate to charge say early 2000's George Bush supporting Christian fundamentalists with a kind of ethno-cultural chauvinism that bordered on racism (many would have been OK with Christians of any race, many would not), but that concept does not apply to France as clearly.

That's a fair description of the other side of the coin.

There aren't a lot of facts to draw on so these discussions tend to go in circles. But it does seem like Islam is especially subject to conflation with race. We don't see people attack Koreans for being Buddhists, or Sudanese for being Baptists. Nor do we see people called racists for criticising those religions.

People like Adam Purinton, who are willing to murder because of their stupid mix of racism and Islamophobia, are why those charges of racism draw water. In the age of social media, nuance and argument don't exist in public discourse. Every unsupported, vague 140 character statement has to respond to as many intentions of each unsupported, vague 140 character statement as possible. Especially the ugly ones.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by Acajack

"Diffrent takes", actually.

You actually just responded to something evoking cultural differences that lead people on either side to say the other is wrong, with a: "nope, it's not cultural differences at all; you guys are just plain wrong!"

Quod erat demonstrandum.

The cultural difference is real. But his take on it, he pulled out of his —. I made a post with more than one line. The rest of the post elaborates on why.

If he wanted to say something meaningful about the cultural difference between Anglo and French Canada he could have looked at how liberalism took root in France and England. How the need to shuck off the divine right of absolute monarchy and empire calls for protections of the republic's bureaucracy, vs competing factions spending hundreds of years limiting each other's power leaves a special place for ideas like Mill's Harm Principle.

Instead, he makes a mealy-mouthed, unsupported claim about Anglo Canadians thinking religion is inborn and immutable, like race. Like I already said, that's inconsistent with Anglo Canada's history as a religious refuge.

His claim about a Western European consensus is patently false. Talk to a few Portuguese about the Reconquista, or a few Germans about Martin Luther. You won't find these mythical Western Europeans who agree that religion is a simple choice (and, therefore, one you can simply choose to not participate in).

[biguc]

Originally Posted by milomilo

It's past time religion got put in its rightful place. France aren't the —, the — are the people who have shoved that horseshit down our throats for millennia.

It's possible that everyone is an —.

[kool maudit]

Some of these conversations about Islam really show the limitations of the American "race" framework which was developed in and for a country struggling with the brutal legacy of West African chattel slavery in a Northern European-majority polity.

I mean, Chechen and Balkan Muslims are a fairly visible factor in the whole European Islam convo, and Afghans can almost be more "white" than "white", which is I guess natural given Indo-European migrations etc.

It persists because much of the underlying stuff concerning how people think of "the other" and how societies treat majorities and minorities is universal, but the upper rhetorical layer of race and racism really shows its US roots.

It's almost like we have come to use this term to cover the entire in-group/out-group phenomenon. This is just plain empire: all minorities are proto-Black Americans because all majorities are proto-Americans. Now let's go liberate Berlin.

[kool maudit]

It is really kind of insidious. Think of a phrase like "the US just likes to bomb brown people". Properly understood, this is a critique of American ignorance and its crude racial classifications. It means that Washington is so blind and bigoted that it uses a "paper bag test"-style racial framework to justify military incursions into regions as diverse as Latin America, the Near East and Central Asia.

Which is all fine and good, so far as it goes. The trouble is that the phrase, accepted and repeated for decades, can begin to lose its sense of parody. After a while, even the critic comes to internalize the framing, and we begin to see other messages pop up regarding the US and "brown people", or even "brown people" on their own, divorced from the clumsy grouping method and the idea of imperial ignorance.

Which, I mean -- this is no way to speak of, for example, the Pashtun. It's no way to speak of Iran and Mexico. These are histories that should be understood on their own terms. Because the initial critique -- that the US is blinded by its insane, color-apartheid understanding of the world -- gets lost, and we find ourselves earnestly speaking in this way.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by biguc

The cultural difference is real. But his take on it, he pulled out of his —. I made a post with more than one line. The rest of the post elaborates on why.

If he wanted to say something meaningful about the cultural difference between Anglo and French Canada he could have looked at how liberalism took root in France and England. How the need to shuck off the divine right of absolute monarchy and empire calls for protections of the republic's bureaucracy, vs competing factions spending hundreds of years limiting each other's power leaves a special place for ideas like Mill's Harm Principle.

Instead, he makes a mealy-mouthed, unsupported claim about Anglo Canadians thinking religion is inborn and immutable, like race. Like I already said, that's inconsistent with Anglo Canada's history as a religious refuge.

His claim about a Western European consensus is patently false. Talk to a few Portuguese about the Reconquista, or a few Germans about Martin Luther. You won't find these mythical Western Europeans who agree that religion is a simple choice (and, therefore, one you can simply choose to not participate in).

Regardless of how people arrived at that point, he is totally correct that societal consensus among anglophones has evolved to a point where religion is innate and immutable. And that francophones tend to have a different view on this.

If I may add historical reasons of my own, we also must keep in mind that even among the early population from the British Isles, Anglo-Canada was always more religiously diverse than French Canada was. French Canada was massively Catholic with only small religious minorities, whereas Anglo-Canada was much more divided amongst various faiths. To some degree (perhaps not perfectly), France was also much more predominantly of a single religion (though not as much as French Canada was) than England or the UK were.

A good illustration of the situation in Canada is that when the English CBC had a Sunday morning program with religious celebrations (Meeting Place), it featured various religions. Whereas the French CBC's equivalent, Le Jour du Seigneur, had Catholic masses only.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by biguc

That's a fair description of the other side of the coin.

There aren't a lot of facts to draw on so these discussions tend to go in circles. But it does seem like Islam is especially subject to conflation with race. We don't see people attack Koreans for being Buddhists, or Sudanese for being Baptists. Nor do we see people called racists for criticising those religions.

People like Adam Purinton, who are willing to murder because of their stupid mix of racism and Islamophobia, are why those charges of racism draw water. In the age of social media, nuance and argument don't exist in public discourse. Every unsupported, vague 140 character statement has to respond to as many intentions of each unsupported, vague 140 character statement as possible. Especially the ugly ones.

While as I said Quebec does have skin colour-based intolerance, xenophobia and racism for sure, I don't think this maps onto Quebec particularly well.

Here among the model minorities (since the mid to late 20th century) you have Middle Eastern Christians (especially Lebanese) who are of course Arabs and ethnically indistinguishable from Muslim Arabs. Among them you have for example Céline Dion's late husband René Angélil who was born of one Lebanese and one Syrian parent and no ever thought about him as anything but Québécois.

Even though they look different from French Canadians, Middle Eastern Christians are viewed more as part of the gang than Ashkenazi Jews and even Italians (both perceived as siding too much with the anglos) who are not nearly as much a part of the in-group as Christian Arabs are, in spite of Jews and Italians being generally whiter-looking.

A more contemporary case would be Haitians who are widely seen as a very good fit as well and no one would say they generally look white.

[biguc]

That's really interesting. On the whole, I'm glad to hear it. It's very different from how most Europeans treat minorities, who may live in their country, and have been born in their country, but will never scratch being the special kind of weirdo it takes to be a real member of their country.

But I'm sure the stories of why and how these people landed in Quebec matters. Lebanese Christians, in particular. I won't make an ugly equivocation--Lebanon had a real civil war and real refugees--but Doug recently posted about how well South Africans fit in in Australia. That lot of shameless colonialists, incapable of sleeping in the bed they — in, would rub along nicely with Australia's shameless colonists. I can't help but wonder if, in the case of the Lebanese Christians in Quebec, the children of the master are welcoming the favored servant home, so to speak, when he's been run off the plantation.

Originally Posted by Acajack

Regardless of how people arrived at that point, he is totally correct that societal consensus among anglophones has evolved to a point where religion is innate and immutable. And that francophones tend to have a different view on this.

If I may add historical reasons of my own, we also must keep in mind that even among the early population from the British Isles, Anglo-Canada was always more religiously diverse than French Canada was. French Canada was massively Catholic with only small religious minorities, whereas Anglo-Canada was much more divided amongst various faiths. To some degree (perhaps not perfectly), France was also much more predominantly of a single religion (though not as much as French Canada was) than England or the UK were.

A good illustration of the situation in Canada is that when the English CBC had a Sunday morning program with religious celebrations (Meeting Place), it featured various religions. Whereas the French CBC's equivalent, Le Jour du Seigneur, had Catholic masses only.

To Kool Maudit's points, I'm guilty of downplaying American influence on Canadian culture--in general and in this discussion. From afar, it's easy to dismiss things like the woketarianism or whatever you're all gnashing your teeth at as an overplayed hand in an insipid, no-stakes culture war. So, yes, the stupid way Americans have of conflating race and religion (at least with respect to Islam) has shed spores, and mushrooms grow in Anglo Canada. Quebec is lucky (and wise) to enjoy a language barrier between themselves and that.

However, you're making a strong claim here, and it doesn't follow that there's an Anglo-Canadian cultural consensus that religion is immutable or innate. You talk like English Canada isn't full of apostates.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by biguc

There aren't a lot of facts to draw on so these discussions tend to go in circles. But it does seem like Islam is especially subject to conflation with race. We don't see people attack Koreans for being Buddhists, or Sudanese for being Baptists. Nor do we see people called racists for criticising those religions.

Well one way out is to admit a lack of knowledge and decide not to hold strong opinions on a subject. I don't feel like I am in a position to judge how racist Quebec or France are with respect to Middle Easterners or Muslims.

There are some concrete events or scenarios that tend to expose differences of opinion so it's not all airy discussions of philosophy. For example when that teacher in France got decapitated by meat cleaver after showing Charlie Hebdo cartoons in his class (the perpetrator was Chechen and doesn't look darker skinned in the photos than the median French person though I don't really know who qualifies as what race). Macron referred to it as an Islamist terrorist attack tied to free speech and almost every English-language piece of coverage I heard about it focused primarily on his tone and how Muslims could be scapegoated. I get the impression that a lot of North Americans don't believe there is any appropriate way to discuss Islamist terrorism as such, even if we are careful to be clear that the vast majority of Muslims are completely innocent non-terrorists, even in the wake of an extremely brazen and explicit terrorism event.

A related question is whether or not you think the Charlie Hebdo people should be allowed to publish their cartoons. Working on those cartoons and displaying them publicly is a somewhat risky activity. To me there's no question that if we want a modern society with free speech people need to be allowed to poke fun at public figures including religious ones. There will be some jokes made in poor taste that make some people happy but I'm not sure how it's avoidable in an open society.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by biguc

That's really interesting. On the whole, I'm glad to hear it. It's very different from how most Europeans treat minorities, who may live in their country, and have been born in their country, but will never scratch being the special kind of weirdo it takes to be a real member of their country.
.

I actually don't think it's really as bad in Europe as multiculturalist new worlders make it out to be, but while we might be an 8 compared to Anglo-Canada's near perfect 10 on this front, this is definitely something that Quebec has more in common with you guys and the Americans.

Originally Posted by biguc

So, yes, the stupid way Americans have of conflating race and religion (at least with respect to Islam) has shed spores, and mushrooms grow in Anglo Canada. Quebec is lucky (and wise) to enjoy a language barrier between themselves and that.
.

Quebec is lucky in some ways, unlucky in others.

Ultimately I guess it's a bit of an "I'm OK, you're OK" thing. We learn to live with the hands we're dealt.

Originally Posted by biguc

But I'm sure the stories of why and how these people landed in Quebec matters. Lebanese Christians, in particular. I won't make an ugly equivocation--Lebanon had a real civil war and real refugees--but Doug recently posted about how well South Africans fit in in Australia. That lot of shameless colonialists, incapable of sleeping in the bed they — in, would rub along nicely with Australia's shameless colonists. I can't help but wonder if, in the case of the Lebanese Christians in Quebec, the children of the master are welcoming the favored servant home, so to speak, when he's been run off the plantation.
.

That's a fascinating angle. Lebanese Christians as France's "bagmen" (so to speak) in a country filled with lots of Muslims.

But even if true, going home for them in this sense would be to France, not Quebec. And indeed, many of them did go to France.

Originally Posted by biguc

However, you're making a strong claim here, and it doesn't follow that there's an Anglo-Canadian cultural consensus that religion is immutable or innate. You talk like English Canada isn't full of apostates.

Well, yeah. I have to say that I find the consensus as it seems to exist (at least in the political classes, media, academia and polite company) is a bit baffling for this very reason.

I just put it down to "cultural differences".

[someone123]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Some of these conversations about Islam really show the limitations of the American "race" framework which was developed in and for a country struggling with the brutal legacy of West African chattel slavery in a Northern European-majority polity.

I mean, Chechen and Balkan Muslims are a fairly visible factor in the whole European Islam convo, and Afghans can almost be more "white" than "white", which is I guess natural given Indo-European migrations etc.

There's also the history of the Gulf War and Iraq/Afghanistan plus the fundamentalist Christian contingent in the US. A significant group in the US is somewhat unhinged about Islam and when they think of Islam they think of the Middle East and Arabs in particular. But this perspective isn't very illuminating when it comes to Europe.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by someone123

There's also the history of the Gulf War and Iraq/Afghanistan plus the fundamentalist Christian contingent in the US. A significant group in the US is somewhat unhinged about Islam and when they think of Islam they think of the Middle East and Arabs in particular. But this perspective isn't very illuminating when it comes to Europe.

True. But more broadly, I think there is a tendency to view all majority/minority issues as localized instantiations of "white people and black people in America", and this is because the scholarship produced along those lines for domestic consumption has radiated out along the soft-power axes of the US empire.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by biguc

That's really interesting. On the whole, I'm glad to hear it. It's very different from how most Europeans treat minorities, who may live in their country, and have been born in their country, but will never scratch being the special kind of weirdo it takes to be a real member of their country.

What makes you think this? I'm from the UK, so not quite "Europe", but this smug Canadian exceptionalism, that Canada is the only place that does multiculturalism (a silly term) is bizarre to me. The extent that multiculturalism exists in either country seems the same to me, with the only problems in the countries being where they are multicultural the most (in Canada - French/Anglo/indigenous, in the UK - ghettoes of certain cultural groups and Islamic extremism).

Plenty of minorities in the UK can trace their heritage back decades and count themselves just as much a special kind of weirdo as a white Briton. I've little reason to think this is much different on the continent.