[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[viper37]

How would systemic racism be falsifiable?

It can't be.  The moment the left as decided something is real, it is.

Quebec&Canada are the most racist nations on hearth.  So has the left decided.  No argument is possible.

[Valmy]

Canada is the most racist nation until you compare it to all the other nations.

Is that picture a joke? Because that is amazing.

[crazy canuck]

Of course it can be falsified.  Do a mind experiment.  A white male aged 50 makes the claim he has faced systemic racism and sexism his whole life - falsify that argument.

[viper37]

Then ask the question you implied:

Why are Jews more interested in law?
Why are... Whites? more interested in policing?

Jews and Asians have a tendancy to value education.  Whites have a tendancy to dismiss education.  End of story.

For 1st nations the problem is simple, in a way, much, much more complex in other ways: they are often far away from the large population centers where superior education is given.  they face the same problem as whites living in remote region: you have to exile yourself for your studies and it's extremely hard to go back then, since your skills aren't appreciated in your localities.

But it's something that city dwellers will never understand and instead choose to see racism everywhere.

Not that it does not exist, far from it.  But the over-representation of 1st nations in our prisons comes not from systemic racism from the evil cops and the evil judges and inneficient evil public defense and evil overzealous crown prosecutors like BB who dream of nothing but condemning the most indians they can in any given day, but strives from the colonial&paternal laws promoted by the left and indifference of the general city population to what goes on beyond their city limits.

As long as we don't change the way we deal with reservations and forced segregation, nothing will change, and the left will be more than happy to keep on attacking civilians and police alike to demonstrate how brutal and racist our society is.

[viper37]

Is that picture a joke? Because that is amazing.

It dates from a few years ago, when the PQ promoted it's "Charter of values".  An organized protest against the proposed bill.

[viper37]

Of course it can be falsified.  Do a mind experiment.  A white male aged 50 makes the claim he has faced systemic racism and sexism his whole life - falsify that argument.

If he's working in government or in universities, many places are reserved for immigrants and women.  it's extremely hard to get a good job in the public sector if you're a white man.  You'd have to be there 20-30 years ago and have the right political connections.  I keep getting ignored when I submit my cv, I don't make a big fuss about it. 

My experience in SMBs in totally dismissed, and since I can't claim to any special status, I stand no chance.  I guess I'll have to move out of here sooner than later.

[crazy canuck]

Of course it can be falsified.  Do a mind experiment.  A white male aged 50 makes the claim he has faced systemic racism and sexism his whole life - falsify that argument.

If he's working in government or in universities, many places are reserved for immigrants and women.  it's extremely hard to get a good job in the public sector if you're a white man.  You'd have to be there 20-30 years ago and have the right political connections.  I keep getting ignored when I submit my cv, I don't make a big fuss about it. 

My experience in SMBs in totally dismissed, and since I can't claim to any special status, I stand no chance.  I guess I'll have to move out of here sooner than later.

Utter nonsense.  How many university faculty are white males.  How many high level civil servants are white males.  This is the problem with Malthus' argument.  Even when there is a lot of data to demonstrate the point there are always people, normally on the right, who have an anecdotal what about argument.

[Malthus]

it can not differentiate between (say) 'I am a member of minority X, my relatives would all hate me if I dared to become a cop, so I will become a nursing assistant instead" and "I am a member of minority X, I submitted my application to become a cop, but it was rejected because my name was Mohammed - while my friend with the same qualifications was accepted because his name was Smith, because he went to a school in an all-White area which their system was rigged to accept".

It's well-known that some cultures have an ingrained distrust of the police for no reason at all. It's just a preference. Like the color blue, for instance. It emerged from the ether.

Why are classical orchestra so white? The advent of blind auditions has seen a remarkable increase in non-white musicians, and women soloist - this, despite assurances from overwhelmingly liberal musicians that they were not individual racists, or individual sexists. Still, classical orchestras remain mostly white. Can't black people be classical musicians? Of course not.
They just "prefer not to". This, on the face of it, is true. They prefer not to. But *why* do they not prefer to?

This is quite similar to the women-in-math debate. It's not that women can't do math, it's just that they prefer not to. So... therefore, nothing should be done, right? It's just a preference. But, as decades of scholarship on feminism (and indeed on culture) have shown, preferences do not emerge from the ether. They are shaped by expectations, created and enforced by institutions, policed by conformism. And what you can expect for yourself is an extraordinary hurdle to overcome.

In the end, your cultural explanation is, I argue, a lot more plastic, a lot more amorphous, a lot more unhelpful, and ultimately, a lot more of an encouragement to do nothing. Yet you seem more than ready to accept it, and refute systemic racism. It really seems like the crux of your objection is that idea that racism requires individual intent. In short, you accept culture as a system that constrains individual behavior, but refute racism as such a system. It's easy to turn the argument on its head: it's within white culture to prefer white applicants. We end up with similar conclusions as the use of "systemic racism", except that now, it becomes extremely difficult to confront it. Rather than change behavior that can be studied in institutions, we are stuck confronting "culture". What isn't encompassed in "culture"? Should we intervene to change the culture, or do nothing because it's a culture, and nothing should be done to change a culture?

Needless to say, I disagree. I find the label "systemic racism" unhelpful, an example of progressive tendency to cry wolf - when you drill right down into it, it doesn't mean "racism" at all, yet is invested with all of the natural anger that comes, both for and against such language.

It's part of a larger phenomena, where emotionally evocative words are twisted into meaning other than their original meaning, which satisfies progressives but actually undermines anything useful they may have to say as a critique - recent notable example: the horrible blunder of the missing and murdered aboriginal women report in labelling the situation a "genocide". Everyone fell to arguing over that clearly nonsensical use of the term, and the fact that something need not be a "genocide" to still be bad and requiring change, and that useful and meaningful changes could be made, got overlooked.

This is why I dislike the use of such loaded, inaccurate and emotionally manipulative language. I understand fully the reasons people use it - a laudable desire to goad change - but I feel it actually has the opposite effect. People used to the vocabulary don't see how it appears to those who are not. They understand that "systemic racism" is not actual racism and that "genocide" has an attenuated meaning, and so also not actual genocide; that these are just calls to action. Others read "racism" and "genocide" and conclude that the authors label everting they don't like with those terms, and this reduces, not increases, the power of their rhetoric.

I suppose where you stand on that demonstrates whether you are liberal or progressive.

[Oexmelin]

Systemic racism is still racism. It's a way to envision racism as it always was, a system, as opposed to what people would wish it to be, a personal flaw that you can't do anything about, except in yourself.

That, I believe, is the one true dividing line - between people who believe it's all up to individuals, and people who believe that societies exist. As I have said before, people on the left and right exist on both these sides.

Is systemic racism a performative word? Of course it is. It's a way to reframe the issue in ways that would allow for us to enact change. 
I am sorry that it angers people, who resist it so, but I have to wonder why: is it because they see no problem at all, because of a  deep abiding concern for semantics, or because it will actually hurt the cause? Sometimes, it's difficult to know. So I try to explain how the word is being used and deployed, what it means, and why it may be useful to look at the situation in a different way.

[Malthus]

Systemic racism is still racism. It's a way to envision racism as it always was, a system, as opposed to what people would wish it to be, a personal flaw that you can't do anything about, except in yourself.

That, I believe, is the one true dividing line - between people who believe it's all up to individuals, and people who believe that societies exist. As I have said before, people on the left and right exist on both these sides.

Is systemic racism a performative word? Of course it is. It's a way to reframe the issue in ways that would allow for us to enact change. 
I am sorry that it angers people, who resist it so, but I have to wonder why: is it because they see no problem at all, because of a  deep abiding concern for semantics, or because it will actually hurt the cause? Sometimes, it's difficult to know. So I try to explain how the word is being used and deployed, what it means, and why it may be useful to look at the situation in a different way.

My concern is not with semantics, but with tactics. I believe that framing the matter in these ways actually harms the message. Everyone "believes societies exist", so that dividing line isn't a useful one. The issue is how to effectively create positive change within a society, and conflating systemic issues which may or may not have anything to do with actual "racism" with "racism" is a bad tactic - either the listener will conclude you are crying wolf, or worse, that if everything truly is "racism" perhaps racism isn't really all that bad.

Same goes, if even more so, for "genocide".

Racism and genocide ought to be things that are bad, not merely inevitable parts of every existing society. If they are the latter it becomes easier to ignore them.

[Oexmelin]

Racism and genocide ought to be things that are bad, not merely inevitable parts of every existing society. If they are the latter it becomes easier to ignore them.

But racism has not been an inevitable part of every society. Racism is a recent phenomenon. (Once again: all societies have had ways of othering people. Racism is specific to modernity).

It has been an inevitable part of every modern Western society, precisely because these modern states were constructed on establishing clear differences between whites, and non-whites. It's organized the allocation of resources, the structures of policing, the shape of the justice system, the notion of citizenship. It created hierarchies of worth; dominated international relations; influenced the content of mandatory systems of education. None of this is trivial. We are talking about deep, fundamental building blocks of modern states. This is why racism is a modern phenomenon: premodern societies are a lot more plastic, a lot more flexible. They reshape categories all the time. Modern societies are quite a lot more rigid, because we have rigidified, and segmented quite a lot of our daily lives.

As for tactics, well, I think invitations to reconsider ways of being that seem natural will always seem shocking and "counter-productive". In this specific instance, I feel a little uneasy about being a white guy telling people who experience racism in their daily lives how they really should be doing things and what words they should really be using.

[Malthus]

Racism and genocide ought to be things that are bad, not merely inevitable parts of every existing society. If they are the latter it becomes easier to ignore them.

But racism has not been an inevitable part of every society. Racism is a recent phenomenon. (Once again: all societies have had ways of othering people. Racism is specific to modernity).

It has been an inevitable part of every modern Western society, precisely because these modern states were constructed on establishing clear differences between whites, and non-whites. It's organized the allocation of resources, the structures of policing, the shape of the justice system, the notion of citizenship. It created hierarchies of worth; dominated international relations; influenced the content of mandatory systems of education. None of this is trivial. We are talking about deep, fundamental building blocks of modern states. This is why racism is a modern phenomenon: premodern societies are a lot more plastic, a lot more flexible. They reshape categories all the time. Modern societies are quite a lot more rigid, because we have rigidified, and segmented quite a lot of our daily lives.

As for tactics, well, I think invitations to reconsider ways of being that seem natural will always seem shocking and "counter-productive". In this specific instance, I feel a little uneasy about being a white guy telling people who experience racism in their daily lives how they really should be doing things and what words they should really be using.

Great. Racism isn't inevitable, it is just inevitable for the modern West. To get rid of it, we just need to go back to the good old premodern days.

In short, liberal reforms, which seek to make things better for people within their current society, will never do. What is necessary is fundamental change.. Which will no doubt be accomplished without disruptions making things worse.

Again, this highlights the difference between liberals and progressives. Liberals see a society with problems and propose reforms to make that society work better. Progressives see a society that is fundamentally problematic and propose that it be transformed. Progressives see liberals as, at best, willfully blind and at worst, mere apologists for a corrupt order. Liberals see progressives as, at best, impractical dreamers and at worst, utterly unconcerned with the fact that fundamental change is likely to come with a high body count.

[Valmy]

Which countries have no racism problems?

[Oexmelin]

Great. Racism isn't inevitable, it is just inevitable for the modern West. To get rid of it, we just need to go back to the good old premodern days.

I see we've moved to the caricature part of the conversation. I'll leave it at that.

[Oexmelin]

Which countries have no racism problems?

Currently, very few. Most current countries are the byproduct of European empires.