Antisemitism in Canada
Antisemitism in Canada has affected Canadian Jews ever since Canada’s Jewish community was established in the 18th century.[1][2] Despite having a Jewish population approximately 1/20th the size of the United States, there have consistently been more antisemitic incidents reported annually since the late-2000s in Canada than in the United States. About 90% of incidents occur in Ontario or Quebec, where the vast majority of Canadian Jews reside.
---------------------------------------------------------http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-2/Macleans.ca
Canada’s race problem? IT'S EVEN WORST THAN AMERICAN'S
.
For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis?
Scott Gilmore
January 22, 2015
BERNARD WEIL/TORONTO STAR/CP
The racial mess in the United States looks pretty grim and is painful to watch. We can be forgiven for being quietly thankful for Canada’s more inclusive society, which has avoided dramas like that in Ferguson, Mo. We are not the only ones to think this. In the recently released Social Progress Index, Canada is ranked second amongst all nations for its tolerance and inclusion.
Unfortunately, the truth is we have a far worse race problem than the United States. We just can’t see it very easily.
Terry Glavin, recently writing in the Ottawa Citizen, mocked the idea that the United States could learn from Canada’s example when it comes to racial harmony. To illustrate his point, he compared the conditions of the African-American community to Canada’s First Nations. If you judge a society by how it treats its most disadvantaged, Glavin found us wanting. Consider the accompanying table. By almost every measurable indicator, the Aboriginal population in Canada is treated worse and lives with more hardship than the African-American population. All these facts tell us one thing: Canada has a race problem, too.
How are we not choking on these numbers? For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis? Why are governments not falling on this issue?
RELATED: Welcome to Winnipeg: Where Canada’s racism problem is at its worst
Possibly it is because our Fergusons are hidden deep in the bush, accessible only by chartered float plane: 49 per cent of First Nations members live on remote reserves. Those who do live in urban centres are mostly confined to a few cities in the Prairies. Fewer than 40,000 live in Toronto, not even one per cent of the total population of the Greater Toronto Area. Our racial problems are literally over the horizon, out of sight and out of mind.
Or it could be because we simply do not see the forest for trees. We are distracted by the stories of corrupt band councils, or flooded reserves, or another missing Aboriginal woman. Some of us wring our hands, and a handful of activists protest. There are a couple of unread op-eds, and maybe a Twitter hashtag will skip around for a few days. But nothing changes. Yes, we admit there is a governance problem on the reserves. We might agree that “something” should be done about the missing and murdered women. In Ottawa a few policy wonks write fretful memos on land claims and pipelines. But collectively, we don’t say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”
If we don’t have a race problem then what do we blame? Our justice system, unable to even convene Aboriginal juries? Band administrators, like those in Attawapiskat, who defraud their own people? Our health care system that fails to provide Aboriginal communities with health outcomes on par with El Salvador? Politicians too craven to admit the reserve system has failed? Elders like Chief Ava Hill, cynically willing to let a child die this week from treatable cancer in order to promote Aboriginal rights? Aboriginal people themselves for not throwing out the leaders who serve them so poorly? Police forces too timid to grasp the nettle and confront unbridled criminality like the organized drug-smuggling gangs in Akwesasne? Federal bureaucrats for constructing a $7-billion welfare system that doesn’t work? The school system for only graduating 42 per cent of reserve students? Aboriginal men, who have pushed their community’s murder rate past Somalia’s? The media for not sufficiently or persistently reporting on these facts?
Or: us? For not paying attention. For believing our own hype about inclusion. For looking down our noses at America and ignorantly thinking, “That would never happen here.” For not acknowledging Canada has a race problem.
We do and it is bad. And it is not just with the Aboriginal peoples. For new immigrants and the black community the numbers are not as stark, but they tell a depressingly similar story.
If we want to fix this, the first step is to admit something is wrong. Start by saying it to yourself, but say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”
----------------------------------------------------
Next Time Someone Says Canada's Not Racist ; Show Them - Video
http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/6673262/
-----------------------------------------------------
Canada's Has A Shocking Racism Problem
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-2/
------------------------------------------------------
http://m.huffpost.com/ca/news/canada-racism/
THE BLOG
If Racial Profiling Happens To Doctors At Their Own Hospitals, Who Can Be Safe From It?
Feb 17, 2015 | Updated Apr 19, 2015
Dr. Boluwaji Ogunyemi Physician, Researcher, Freelance Writer and Blogger
John Neff via Getty Images
As a newly-minted resident physician, I arrived at a tertiary hospital in Vancouver just before midnight for one of my first shifts in the emergency room in casual street clothes -- jeans, a T-shirt, and a windbreaker. I began to pack a set of hospital scrubs into my backpack to change into before starting my overnight shift in the emergency room.
I was interrupted by a middle-aged woman who briskly approached me and asked in an a demanding manner: "Do you work here?" I was stunned by the accusatory tone of this hospital clerk.
In my head transpired a mental calculus normally reserved for delineating molecular pathways in the etiology of different diseases. It would dawn on me that as a young black male in casual street clothes at midnight in the act of placing hospital property into my personal bag, there was a likelihood that she thought I was stealing.
After what surely was inordinate period of time, I confirmed that I was, indeed gainfully employed by the hospital while I simultaneously frantically unzipped my jacket to make my photo identification card visible.
Of course, the only way that I could definitively establish that the reason I was accused of attempted theft was being a young black male would be if I would rewind time and enter the same door of the hospital at the same time as a young man of another ethnic background or a woman. This is just as unnecessary as it is impossible.
The hospital clerk thought that the probability that a young black man was stealing from her place of work was sufficiently high that she would audaciously accuse me of this act.
Is this part of the North American dream? Is this what my family left a low-income West African country for?
Whitewashing in Media Made Me Self-Conscious About Being Chinese
In his piece for The Atlantic in August 2014 entitled "Self-segregation; Why It's So Hard for Whites to Understand Ferguson," Robert P. Jones describes ethnic heterogeneity within social networks. I believe that an understanding of the ethnic background of one's closest friends, colleagues, and family members proves useful in understanding issues of discrimination and racial stereotyping in among visible minorities.
The social networks of white respondents were 91 per cent white, on average. Black survey respondents had 65 percent homogeneity in their social networks while the figure was 46 per cent among Hispanics. If the hospital clerk does not have much regular interaction with black individuals either within or outside of the hospital setting -- the study suggests an average white woman would not -- she would not have a place to anchor conceptions of hard-working black men. Without this mental anchor, images on the media and stories from others allow prejudiced biases among us to remain unopposed. The latter is true for everyone.
As a former sociology major, I have both academic and real world experience to confirm that society is external and coercive in its effect on the individual.
If racial profiling occurs to physicians at their own hospitals, who can be safe from this practice?
In the province of British Columbia, where black people comprise only 0.78% of the population, it is entirely plausible that she does not regularly contact with individuals from the African Diaspora. This explanation does not serve as an excuse.
Moving forward, I would encourage others to prove audacious in learning about each other rather than going out of our way to judge each other others based on immutable characteristics. If we do not take time to get to know people of different religions, sexual orientations, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses than ourselves, our full humanity remains unawakened.
When we do not purposefully create heterogeneous social networks, our biases remain unperturbed. We will categorize others based on stories from others, from media portrayal and not on their genuine selves.
In an investigation published last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology headed by UCLA social psychologist Dr. Phillip Goff, black males older than 10 years of age were significantly less likely to be seen as innocent than their white counterparts when judged by 123 participants of various ethnicities. Results were gathered from an Innocence Scale that was created for the study with reliable psychometrics.
The problem is not that we see colour and the solution is not colour blindness. The problem is what we think, say and do when we see colour. We must deliberately and audaciously approach our discomfort and spend time with those from groups that are foreign to us if we are to challenge our latent, unconscious biases. In doing this, we will understand and benefit from narratives of personhood that are different from our own and see humanity in one another to the fullest.
ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Racist Moments: 2013 Edition
Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
More:
#Racism #Vancouver #Canada
------------------------------------------------------
The Canadian Encyclopedia Of Racism
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/m/article/racism/
--------------------------------------------------------
Edited by
SassyEuro2
on Mon 06/22/15 09:25 PM
