[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[crazy canuck]

It had been co-opted by the sovereignist movement in the 1960s and 1970s (when the Quebec flag was still closely associated with Maurice Duplessis and its brand of religious identity).

you mean his brand of corruption.  We still teach the Roncarelli case in law schools across the country.

As well it should.

It was Duplessis' own Unholy Trinity. He was an educated man who masqueraded as a country bumpkin, a man who deliberately instrumentalized government in the service of his party, who corrupted church and institutions, and allowed corruption to flourish in church and institutions.

I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.  That case is the cornerstone of a lot of modern arguments when you want to get a judge to look at what is really happening within an administrative decision.

[Barrister]

So let's talk about Stockwell Day.  He's been de-platformed, fired from the couple of corporate boards he sat on, fired from the law firm he worked for, and from other various roles.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stockwell-day-systemic-racism-canada-1.5597550

So what did he say?

"We have to recognize that our system is not perfect in Canada," Day said during the panel discussion. "Yes, there's a few idiot racists hanging around but Canada is not a racist country and most Canadians are not racist. And our system, that always needs to be improved, is not systemically racist."

"Should I have gone through school and been mocked because I had glasses and was called four-eyes and because of the occupation of my parents?" Day asked. "Should I have been mocked for all that? No, of course not. But are Canadians largely and in majority racist? No, we are not.

"We celebrate our diversity around the world and for the prime minister to insinuate — and it is an insinuation — that our system is systemically racist is wrong."

Now I think the worst part was comparing racism to wearing glasses as a kid.  That's just a stupid analogy, and he certainly deserves criticism for it.

But for denying there is "systemic racism"?  What exactly is "systemic racism"?  I've even been googling the term and don't know that I'm any better informed than I was.  So I think I would question whether Canada has "systemic racism" or not - with some qualifiers similar to what Day said.

[crazy canuck]

I was going to post about his comments and be snarky and say he was saying what most Conservatives really think.

If you cannot see racism in Canada, you are just not looking.  It is not a problem of "a few idiots" that we can easily dismiss an American problem as we look on at what is happening in the US.

[Barrister]

I was going to post about his comments and be snarky and say he was saying what most Conservatives really think.

If you cannot see racism in Canada, you are just not looking.  It is not a problem of "a few idiots" and so we can easily dismiss this as an American problem as we look on at what is happening in the US.

Sure i see racism.

The question is whether it is "systemic racism".

[crazy canuck]

I was going to post about his comments and be snarky and say he was saying what most Conservatives really think.

If you cannot see racism in Canada, you are just not looking.  It is not a problem of "a few idiots" and so we can easily dismiss this as an American problem as we look on at what is happening in the US.

Sure i see racism.

The question is whether it is "systemic racism".

How is it not?

edit: or do you agree there are just a few idiots out there.

[Barrister]

I was going to post about his comments and be snarky and say he was saying what most Conservatives really think.

If you cannot see racism in Canada, you are just not looking.  It is not a problem of "a few idiots" and so we can easily dismiss this as an American problem as we look on at what is happening in the US.

Sure i see racism.

The question is whether it is "systemic racism".

How is it not?

I don't know - I couldn't even tell you what systemic racism means.  And not for lack of trying.

[crazy canuck]

If you do not know what it is, then you should probably not be defensive of Day's denial that it exists.

A few months ago a grandfather took his young granddaughter into a bank in downtown Vancouver.  It was a big day for the little girl.  Her grandfather was going to help her open her first bank account with money he was giving to her.  He was looking forward to teaching her about how banking worked and start her on the road to financial literacy.

The bankteller thought they were up to no good (for as it turned out no good reason) and called the police saying that the teller suspected the two of attempting to commit a fraud.  The police were quickly on scene and arrested both the grandfather and the little girl.  In the process of carrying out the arrest they cuffed the little girl.

They were both released soon after and the police publicly apologized for the lack of judgment.

The grandfather and granddaughter are first nations.

What explains that tragic series of events?  A few racist idiots?  I don't think so.  Systemic racism which permeates our culture?  Much closer to the mark.

[Valmy]

I think the idea is you have a culture that is racist and it infects the systems and how they function. After all the systems of a society are a result of its cultural assumptions and values.

Maybe.

[Oexmelin]

There is a lot of resources out there about systemic racism.

Systemic racism simply means that discrimination is embedded in institutions that often do not have a racist objective. It is enforced through the compounded and frequently unintended consequences of individual actions taken collectively. It doesn't mean "systematized" racism, nor does it mean that the state functions in a regime of apartheid, or legal discrimination - which is what I think most people who are opposed to the term hear when they hear systemic racism.

It emerged as a term in order to continue to address the persistence of racism despite repeated individual claims from individuals that they are not racist. Why is the exact same cv from a person who calls himself Muhammad in one, and Bill in the other, treated differently? Why are certain people more liable to be arrested for "routine" inspections than others? Why are certain schools, certain districts, certain neighborhood, more poorly funded? In many cases, it's not out of malice by people in charge. It's out of certain unacknowledged biases, of certain habits to trust more certain people over others, of embedded fear that's been subtly enforced by what we have read, seen, and heard.

[Malthus]

Canada has a serious systemic racism problem dealing with its native Canadian population.

It is 'systemic' because it is encoded into the legal system, and is a result of our difficult and complicated history with native groups. It is "racial" because the concept of who belongs to native populations was and remains cast in racial terms.

Our other clearly systemic problem is not racial, but ethnic - the divide between our ancestral French and Anglo populations, which is also deeply encoded into our legal systems (and indeed our constitution). This has more to do with language and religion than race.

Compared with these two massive issues, Canada's concerns with race in the way Americans are familiar with it is considerably more minor, and in part derives from our shared history with America. Like America, we used to be an English colony and we had slavery as well - albeit in most places slavery was shallowly rooted and died out quite early (technically it lingered into the 1830s, but in Lower and Upper Canada (Quebec and Ontario) it died out much earlier.

In reality, the majority of Canadian "racism" unrelated to the two big issues mentioned above is of more recent vintage and comes from a largely shared culture with the US, and from tensions involved in immigration - often a much more complex situation than advocates right or left make out.

To give an example, my city of Toronto - it's now a city in which Immigrants are an absolute majority, and has large numbers of visible minorities. It is a city that, just like the US today, has a problem with police relations with some minority groups - notably, Blacks. Is this "systemic racism" at work?

I would argue it is not. It certainly isn't a "systemic problem" like the two I mentioned, actually encoded in the legal DNA of the nation. Rather, it appears more to be a problem dealing with immigration.

Toronto has long had a problem with gang violence, and a lot of shootings that lead to lots of heat on the cops to do something about it. While not publicized (to avoid inflaming racism), it did not escape attention that an over large percentage of these gangsters were Black - specifically, Jamaicans - and Jamaica has an unfortunate history of gang violence. That sowed the seed of heavy handed police tactics towards this community.

That isn't to say that there are not actual honest to god racists on the force, only that the problem isn't "systemic" in the same manner as the other problems mentioned above. Unfortunately, for progressives, that Canada is systemically racist towards all visible minorities is now an article of faith that can't be questioned, so the true roots of problems can't be examined.

[Oexmelin]

I would argue it is not. It certainly isn't a "systemic problem" like the two I mentioned, actually encoded in the legal DNA of the nation. Rather, it appears more to be a problem dealing with immigration.

Systemic racism doesn't need to be encoded in the DNA of the nation. It can be embedded in the operations of institutions, without even having an overt racist objective. Like the Toronto police - 75% white, despite the city being 50% white.

[Monoriu]

"We have to recognize that our system is not perfect in Canada," Day said during the panel discussion. "Yes, there's a few idiot racists hanging around but Canada is not a racist country and most Canadians are not racist. And our system, that always needs to be improved, is not systemically racist."

"Should I have gone through school and been mocked because I had glasses and was called four-eyes and because of the occupation of my parents?" Day asked. "Should I have been mocked for all that? No, of course not. But are Canadians largely and in majority racist? No, we are not.

"We celebrate our diversity around the world and for the prime minister to insinuate — and it is an insinuation — that our system is systemically racist is wrong."

I am not familiar with him, but I don't see anything wrong with what is said here.  I think Canada is extremely nice to its immigrant population.  I experienced far less racism than I expected. 

[Barrister]

"We have to recognize that our system is not perfect in Canada," Day said during the panel discussion. "Yes, there's a few idiot racists hanging around but Canada is not a racist country and most Canadians are not racist. And our system, that always needs to be improved, is not systemically racist."

"Should I have gone through school and been mocked because I had glasses and was called four-eyes and because of the occupation of my parents?" Day asked. "Should I have been mocked for all that? No, of course not. But are Canadians largely and in majority racist? No, we are not.

"We celebrate our diversity around the world and for the prime minister to insinuate — and it is an insinuation — that our system is systemically racist is wrong."

I am not familiar with him, but I don't see anything wrong with what is said here.  I think Canada is extremely nice to its immigrant population.  I experienced far less racism than I expected.

I think he would have been the leader of the official opposition when you were here.  He went on to have a few cabinet positions during the first few years of Harper.

[Monoriu]

I remember the leader of the opposition was that guy from the Quebec independence party when I was in Canada.  A little strange to me that the official opposition party only concerned itself with one of the provinces 

[Malthus]

I would argue it is not. It certainly isn't a "systemic problem" like the two I mentioned, actually encoded in the legal DNA of the nation. Rather, it appears more to be a problem dealing with immigration.

Systemic racism doesn't need to be encoded in the DNA of the nation. It can be embedded in the operations of institutions, without even having an overt racist objective. Like the Toronto police - 75% white, despite the city being 50% white.

I disagree with the conclusion that the fact that membership of an institution does not match the racial mixture of the population makes it "systemically racist". That diluted the term to a meaningless truism, since the membership of institutions will rarely match that of the population unless such matching is mandated.

Moreover, arguably an institution can be "systemically racist" regardless of the identity of its membership. I would argue that "systemic" implies that racism is part of the system, and if the system is racist, the institution is racist even if every single person in it is Black.

Indeed the chief of police in Toronto is Black right now, though this makes no difference to the analysis either way.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Saunders_(police_officer)