South Africa doesn’t have a race problem

I was watching The Daily Show a few weeks ago, during the coverage of the World Cup. John Oliver was talking about race relations in South Africa – to people on the street, to a hard-line racist activist, and to a government minister in charge of racial relations. The most poignant part of the interview for me was when the minister looked John in the eye and told him flat out that South Africa doesn’t have a race problem. I’m glad I wasn’t drinking milk at the time, because it most assuredly would have flown out of my nose as I laughed derisively.

I feel compelled at this point to re-state a maxim that I’ve danced around many times at this blog. It is a central tenet of my approach to race and improving the climate of racial discourse in Canada (and other countries, of course). It is not… It is not… IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to simply wish racism away. It is not possible to declare that there is no race problem simply by asserting it and hoping to high heaven that it comes true. Racial issues are deeply entrenched in our society, in our history, and there is some evidence to suggest that elements of it are present in our very human nature. The first step toward progress is recognizing the subtle effect that non-obvious racism has on our day-to-day lives.

Hence my scoffing and incredulity when presented with the statement that “South Africa doesn’t have a race problem”. As though hundreds of years of colonialization, coupled with an absolutist and brutal apartheid regime that existed within my own living memory could somehow be erased by good will and warm, fuzzy feelings. It was times like that I wished I had a roommate, and that the roommate was a bit slow – I would have made a bet. “Within a month of this statement,” I would have said “we’re going to hear about some major race issue out of South Africa.”

I would have won some money.

Four white South Africans have been convicted of humiliating five black university domestic staff after a video of the incident was posted online. The video showed the five staff being made to kneel and forced to eat food which had apparently been urinated on by one of the students.

I don’t speak Africaans (and neither do you, likely) so I can’t translate the video for you, but the actions are pretty clear. The ‘urinating’ in the food is simulated by a water bottle, but wow does that ever not matter. The former students (those rapscallions) claim that they didn’t intend for the video to be humiliating, and that they never would have done it if they had known what the outcome would be. That’s cold comfort for the millions of black South Africans who see the barely-retreated spectre of apartheid – where being black meant that you were legally at the bottom rung of society and had no legal protections – rearing its head in the form of these students forcing hostel workers to eat contaminated food for their entertainment.

But hey, at least justice was done:

The four – RC Malherbe, Johnny Roberts, Schalk van der Merwe and Danie Grobler – were also given six-month prison terms, suspended for five years on condition they are not found guilty of discrimination during that period. The fines of 20,000 rand (~$2,700) were higher than that requested by the prosecution.

“It sends a strong message to potential offenders of similar crimes,” said magistrate Mziwonke Hinxa in the mainly white town of Bloemfontein.

It does send a strong message – if you’re white and have enough money, you can get away with pissing on the rights and dignity (and food) of black people in South Africa.

In a statement read out by their lawyer, the men said the video had been made to demonstrate the traditions of their hall of residence and to protest at plans to make the university more racially mixed.

Well you’ve essentially taken care of that, boys. Why any black person would want to attend the University of the Free State (someone’s been reading George Orwell) is incomprehensible to me.

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“Polite” Racism

Feeling like I’ve been picking on religion too much in my Monday morning think pieces, I’ve decided to re-publish some essays I wrote during Black History Month in February, 2010. This post, which originally appeared on Facebook on Monday, February 15th, 2010, is part 5 of a 6-part series on race and racial issues.

This will probably be everyone’s least favourite post in this series, but it’s a topic that I find the most fascinating and most dangerous – Canadian racism, or racism in the “post-racial” utopia we supposedly have. I say least favourite because it makes everyone uncomfortable, particularly white people in my generation (my own friends included). Nobody likes to be accused of being racist, and I would imagine that most people honestly believe they aren’t, and harbor no active anti-racial sentiments or prejudices. You won’t have to look very hard to find someone who will say that racism isn’t a serious problem in Canada, or find someone who makes the statement “we don’t have racism in Canada” – a patently absurd claim.

The nature of racism has changed a great deal in the past handful of decades. The face of racism, as we’re used to seeing it, comes in the form of hooded Klansmen, burning crosses, police with dogs and hoses turning on angry crowds, lynch mobs, the whole nine yards. We’re used to seeing a system where people actively and overtly discriminate against other people based on their skin colour or ethnic heritage. After a prolonged fight (much less rancorous here in Canada than in the States), we have overthrown that kind of racism. Even within my lifetime, I’ve seen a difference in the tenor of public discourse.

So does that mean that racism is over? Have we finally reached that level playing field? Can we please stop talking about racism and racial issues?

Not on your life.

We may not have police dogs, we may not have lynchings, we might not call people racial slurs (at least to their faces) anymore, but we have not solved the racism problem. We’ve just cleaned it up. We gave people language to avoid offending people, we passed laws to make it harder to discriminate based on race, we went out of our way to put non-white people in prominent, visible positions. All of these have been seen as important, positive steps toward a bias-free society. I see things a little differently.

Imagine if medical science progressed to a point where we could develop such effective anti-sneeze, anti-cough, decongestant, muscle stimulant medications so that the common cold would be completely invisible. A person with a cold would simply pop a handful of pills and be completely symptom free. In fact, taking them prophylactically would ensure that symptoms would never develop. He’d be able to go about his life as though he wasn’t sick. As long as he kept taking the pills, he’d never have to see the effects of illness. However, the reality would be that there’s a serious problem happening inside his body; a problem that doesn’t go away just because it can’t be seen. This person wouldn’t even be aware that he was sick, would take no corrective actions in his life to deal with the susceptibility to illness that made him sick in the first place, and might even go so far as to deny the existence of illness in his body.

By successfully attacking the symptoms of racism – the hate groups, the discriminatory hiring laws, the violence – we have lulled ourselves into thinking that we have solved the underlying problems of racial discrimination and injustice. A friend on comments in another post (on Facebook) actually pulled the “but there’s a black president now” card. As though one black man getting elected to one high office is evidence that justice has been done and everyone should just get over their racial issues and hold hands under a rainbow.

Racism is still alive and well. We still don’t have proportional representation in political life. The poorest people living in the worst conditions are, even in Canada, predominantly dark-skinned. Our history of treatment of Native peoples and our continued discrimination against them is still happening every day. If ability is evenly distributed among the human population, then opportunity should be as well. What we should see if this is the case is a meritocracy in which power is held by those who are the most able. Such a system would look far more multi-cultural (and gender balanced) than the one we have today. One doesn’t have to look too far beyond our own senate and parliament to see that we just ain’t there yet.

Furthermore, by denying the existence of the problem, we grow up unable to see the evidence in front of our own eyes. We become unable to distinguish racial prejudice from bad luck, or circumstance, or a real lack of ability. I was stunned recently to hear someone say “well maybe there just aren’t enough qualified people from minority groups to run for high office.” This little gem is one of the oldest in the book, cited frequently when discussing Affirmative Action laws in the United States. If innate ability is evenly distributed throughout the population, but achievement is not, then we have a racist system. On an even playing field, success will be based on innate ability and hard work, and the best and brightest will move to the front of the line. Again, we’d see a much different distribution of power/race. The fact that we don’t means that either a) the playing field isn’t as even as we’d like to think it is, or b) ability is not distributed evenly throughout the population. Looking at the world, I’m more inclined to believe A over B, but if you honestly think it’s B I’d really like to see some evidence of that.

If we move back for a moment to the analogy of the man with the medicated cold, one would expect occasional flare-ups of sickness when compliance with the drug regimen slips. Our sick man forgets to take his pills one day, and the next day he’s got a runny nose, sneezing, etc. He quickly bombards his system with more pharmaceuticals and the illness subsides until the next time he forgets.

Enter Michael Richards’ tirade; enter Don Imus’ nappy headed ‘hos; enter Mitt Romney’s invocation of Baja Men; enter George Bush’s reaction to Katrina. These are high-profile (and recent) examples of what happens when symptoms are suppressed but the underlying problems aren’t dealt with. It doesn’t take a lot of scratching of the surface to unearth the racial problem. As I said, the problem is far worse in the United States than in Canada, but it’s still happening here.

Reading this, one might get the impression that I think the problem is as bad as it’s ever been. That is not my feeling. We are far better now than we were in my father’s time. I can work where I want, get access to the same government services as anyone else, marry whom I choose, vote, protest, and exploit my human rights. 50 years ago this was inconceivable for many people (both black and white). We’ve absolutely come a long way. However, we haven’t fixed the problem, and our denial and refusal to discuss it has only forced it underground to a place where it’s so subtle, we don’t even know it’s influencing our decisions. As far as we’ve come, we still have miles more to go.

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Our own home-grown racism

I read my post yesterday, and something in it made me cringe. I wrote that the United States has a serious race problem. The reason I cringe is not because it isn’t true, but because it suggests to the casual reader that Canada is somehow better than the USA in terms of racism. Our country has a very different racial history than our southern neighbours. Canada, as part of the British Empire, abolished African slavery in the early 19th century, more than 50 years before Confederation. African slavery had been curtailed for many years before the official abolition, and as a result there were comparatively few Africans living in Canada following the abolition of slavery. The majority of Canada’s black citizens are immigrants from the Caribbean, and more recently directly from Africa (this being largely due to changes in immigration policy and what countries immigrants were allowed to be from). It is fair, therefore, to say that Canada was not built on the backs of African slaves – the immigrant labour here was largely accomplished by East and South Asian people, as well as many white eastern Europeans and Irish.

The United States, as a contrast, did not officially abolish slavery until 1863, following a civil war fought over the very issue (admittedly among other factors). Slavery was an integral part of America’s ability to exploit its natural resources; exploitation which resulted in their emergence as a major economic power. America was built upon the whipped backs of African slaves, and had a slavery system of unparalleled cruelty. Following the official emancipation of African slaves, the black population of the United States was held in unofficial slavery for generations more (and, it can be argued, still is with racial profiling, discriminatory drug laws, school funding shortages, social program erosion, the list goes on). Black people did not become full citizens in the entire United States until 1964, an entire century after they were supposedly “freed” from slavery. The race problem we see today in the US is definitely part of its history of brutal racist oppression.

But before we Canucks start patting ourselves on the backs for being such enlightened and decent folk, we have to remember something important: black people aren’t the only targets of racism. Canada has its own history of systemic, brutal, racist oppression to deal with – that of its Native peoples. Our track record in the treatment of Aboriginal people is horrible, and still rears its ugly and ignorant head:

All Lori Flinders wanted was to build a group home for displaced native youth in the town of Alberton, Ont. What she encountered was a wave of local resistance that, to her, provided a lesson in reflexive racism. A director with Weechi-it-te-win Family Services – a child welfare agency for 10 First Nations communities in in Northwestern Ontario – Ms. Flinders says a racist smear campaign and a town council swayed by a “lynch-mob mentality” recently trounced plans to build the home.

I’ve lived in cities almost my entire life. It’s easy to become beguiled living in places like Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, and Vancouver, into thinking that Canada is a multi-ethnic and multicultural society. Drive an hour outside the city limits of any of those cities and you’ll find a picture of Canada that is very different. Canada is still very much a white country, with people living in many places that do not subscribe to the philosophy of multiculturalism. Far be it from me to suggest that there is anything more sinister than simple ignorance at play, but there can be a serious shortage of the kind of tolerance we like to think is part of our national identity outside of major cities. This case is an illustration of this phenomenon.

After applying to build a children’s group home outside the town of Appleton, ON, Ms. Flinders was besieged by angry citizens distorting facts and expressing extreme hostility to having Native kids near their homes:

“They said the most awful things,” Ms. Friesen recalled. “They said they’d have to lock their doors now. One person said, ‘I have native friends but this is going too far.’ Another person brought an article about a murder around an Alberta group home. So all of a sudden this youth centre is being equated with violence and murder.”

Of course, while the town denies that race plays a part in the decision, it is pretty clear from the nature of the reaction that the people of Alberton are not concerned about the preservation of zoning bylaws or the appropriateness of the property for children – they don’t want no stinkin’ redskins in their town.

To Ms. Flinders, the council meeting inspired a personal epiphany. “I’d never experienced racism like I did there,” she said. “I grew up in this area and never realized the kind of harsh feelings that lay just below the surface. In a way, it was a gift.”

And another person finally gets it. Racism is inherent in the system. It’s not a problem that’s been solved, it’s a disease that has been bandaged over. Let’s hope the people of Alberton are able to examine this incident and get in touch with their own racial prejudices. I’m not going to be holding my breath though.

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The consequence of misunderstanding racism

It seems I’ve been having this fight more and more since I started blogging about it: people don’t particularly like my definition of racism. Some argue that it is too broad, and that acts that are not maleficent should not be branded as ‘racist’. Others argue that using the word in this way strips it of its power – that ‘racist’ should be a term that shuts down conversation. I do not recognize the validity of either of these arguments, for reasons I have explained in my definition post. Briefly, an act does not have to be distinctly negative to be racist, and as a direct consequence the word should never be used to shut down conversation; rather, it should be used to accurately label those things that are motivated by an ideology that a member of an individual group is representative of the entire group.

Despite all the pretty talk about the so-called “post-racial” America, the United States has a serious race problem:

Mrs (Shirley) Sherrod was videoed giving a speech in March at a dinner of a Georgia chapter of the NAACP, a prominent civil rights group. The clip was picked up on by conservatives as evidence of anti-white racism in President Barack Obama’s government and within the NAACP, an organisation seen as Democratic-leaning.

The remarks in question were part of a story Mrs. Sherrod was telling about being reluctant to help a white farmer gain government assistance because of her history with white people. The offending clip can be seen here:

Pretty bad, right? Racist, in fact! A government employee discriminating against someone based on their race! It’s perfectly right to fire her, isn’t it?

The entire speech is 44 minutes long, and it was distilled into a 90-second clip by Fox News. Your bullshit radar should immediately go off. But of course, you’re a reasoning, thinking adult. You know whose bullshit radar didn’t go off?

Mrs Sherrod was promptly sacked, her remarks condemned by the administration and the NAACP.

That’s right, the NAACP (who, by the way, hosted the event, and heard her remarks in context) and her boss, Secretary Tom Vilsack, leaped into the fray with both feet before examining any of the evidence. Here’s the full speech, with the remarks in context (start watching at about 17:30):

Taken in context, this is a story about how this woman was able to realize that the black/white issue she had been taught was in have a rich/poor issue. She saw the man being mistreated at the hands of other white people, and realized the issue was about haves vs. have-nots, with race being a coincidental heuristic. It’s a positive story about learning to put racial history and animosity aside, and to deal with things as fact.

(@21:20)”Working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who haven’t. They could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic. And it made me realise then that I needed to help poor people – those who don’t have access the way others have.”

So why was such a snap judgment made? Why did this woman get fired immediately without having an opportunity to tell her side of the story? Why did the White House have to intervene and backtrack from a hasty and stupid decision? Because the word ‘racism’ was thrown into the conversation. As soon as that word comes up, conversation shuts down. Brains shut down. In order to avoid even the appearance of complicity with racism, we make stupid and hasty decisions. All this because we are so paranoid over talking about race and racial issues. Well the conversation is happening now.

It sends a chill down my spine whenever Glenn Beck gets something right:

But in this case, the blind squirrel finds a nut of truth.

Re-Update: Courtenay BC men found guilty of assault

I’m a big fan of being wrong. It’s incredibly reassuring to me when I make predictions and they turn out to be incorrect, or when someone can demonstrate to me a flaw or incompleteness in my reasoning. It helps me to know two things: 1) that I still have lots more to learn, and 2) that I am at least partly shielded from accusations of arrogance and closed-mindedness.

Back on the 13th of July, I predicted that the 3 men who viciously attacked a black man in Courtenay, BC while screaming racial slurs at him would walk free. Their lawyer was arguing that he (the victim of the assault) consented to it and that it was his own fault. Racism that strong doesn’t usually happen in isolation, and I feared that the community would use that explanation as a scapegoat to free the attackers.

Once again, and I say this with as much enthusiasm as I can muster… I WAS WRONG!

Judge Peter Doherty delivered a guilty verdict Thursday against all three men accused of assaulting a lone man last July in Courtenay. The judge ruled in Supreme Court in Courtenay that David Samuel White, 19, Adam David Huber and Robert William Rogers, both 25, were each guilty of assault, although Doherty declined to add additional racially motivated penalties.

I couldn’t have asked for a better ruling. The three men were found guilty of the crime they committed, and the waters weren’t muddied by adding race-based penalties. I realize that this second part might seem counter-intuitive to what one would expect a black man in BC to be happy about, but I’ll try to explain my reasoning.

A crime is a crime. If you do harm to someone, you should be punished. However, to say that some crimes are special because they are perpetrated against groups we like, and that additional punishment is merited in certain circumstances is philosophically dicey ground. The same reasoning was used by lynch mobs in the southern United States, when black men were hanged for raping (which in many cases was simply the act of holding hands with, or looking at) a white woman. Should this event be recorded as a hate crime? Absolutely. It was, by definition, a hate crime, and calling it what it is highlights an underlying problem in the community. I can’t sit comfortably, however, with the idea that special punishment should be merited for acts by a specific group against a ‘favoured’ group. Counselling and community service may be appropriate remedial actions to take for perpetrators of hate crimes (which is different from punishment because it ostensibly lowers the likelihood of repeat attacks), but not longer prison sentences.

From a pragmatic standpoint, I’m also glad because it gives the defense fewer options for an appeal to reduce the sentence.

Anyway, I am happy with the ruling, and I hope that Jay Phillips is too. This story is not over, but at least this part of it has reached a satisfying conclusion.

New Westminster gets it EXACTLY right

Here’s a rarity: a bit of good news on the racial front right here at home:

John Stark, the city’s senior social planner, said the Chinese reconciliation process undertaken by the City of New Westminster is the first such process taken by a municipality in Canada. He said research done by staff confirmed that city council acted in a discriminatory matter, particularly by restricting employment opportunities and by asking senior governments to pass discriminatory laws.

I was a bit dumbfounded, to be honest, when I read the rest of the article. Usually, apologies like this are simple declarations that the problem existed, and that the current office-holders are sorry that it happened. While those kinds of apologies do have some merit, at the end of the day there’s very little concrete difference in the lives of those affected. New Westminster has taken an extra (and, as far as I know, unprecedented) step of rolling out an ambitious agenda of a way to make recompense to the community, including the establishment of a cultural monument and earmarking funds to document and incorporate the contribution of the Chinese community into the history of the city. That’s a real apology (are you paying attention, Catholic Church?)

I spoke in a previous post about the merit of acknowledging the mistakes of the past, but I didn’t really get to put a very fine point on it. There is a common refrain that comes from people who are ignorant of or ambivalent toward race issues when things like this make it into the news: “Why dwell on the past? We have to move forward, and separating people by race only makes things worse.” While I’m sure their hearts are in the right place, this argument is largely nonsense. It’s essentially a re-hashing of the “colour blind” argument that I debunked two months ago. Briefly, the reason why colour blindness doesn’t work as a strategy to improve race relations is because it requires all people to be blind to race, particularly those for whom their race exposes them to discrimination. It is an attempt to paint over rust – it might make things look better but it fails to address the underlying problem and allows it to get worse.

The problem with the “why dwell on the past” argument is that we have buried or otherwise distorted what the past actually is. Immigrant groups (Chinese, African, South-Asian, Irish, eastern European, the list goes on) built this country in just as real a way as English and French immigrants did. First Nations Canadians made real contributions to the foundation of the country before it was even a country. All of these groups suffered systemic and ongoing discrimination for centuries in this country – many of them continue to experience it. Ignoring that legacy isn’t a step forward toward racial harmony, it’s another step along the line of having those types of discrimination become endemic in the social fabric. While it might make some people feel less guilty to have to acknowledge our country’s history of racism, the recognition that we are all a part of that history is a real opportunity to move forward.

Until we acknowledge and accept the real history of prejudice and racism in Canada, as New Westminster has done, we will continue to founder in our attempts to build a nation of equal Canadians. I applaud the city council of New Westminster for taking this step, and I hope it is so successful that other municipalities cannot help but take notice.

To kill a classic novel

I guess I have some re-reading to do:

I refuse to go along with this week’s warm, feel-good celebrations of Harper Lee’s novel (published fifty years ago today), To Kill a Mockingbird. Simply put, I think that novel is racist, and so is its undying popularity. It’s also racist in a particularly insidious way, because the story and its characters instead seem to so many white people like the very model of good, heartwarming, white anti-racism.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in high school. It was during a glut of classic literature in which I devoured as many ‘must-read’ books as I could. No part of the book resonated with me whatsoever, and I put it down feeling a little mystified as to what the big deal was. Perhaps if I had read it and considered the context of what was happening at the time of its publication, it would have meant more to me.

Macon D. is clearly not a fan:

Actually, that right there is the first reason I think this novel is, in effect, racist — it allows, indeed encourages, today’s well-meaning white people to think that “America is a very different place” than it was when Lee wrote her novel, and thus to think that widespread and deeply entrenched racism died a long time ago.

I must admit, my initial reaction to reading this article was to disagree. “It speaks to its time – the anti-racism movement in its contemporary form wasn’t even on the horizon.” While this may be true, we’re still teaching it in schools today as an exemplar of anti-racist fiction. It is most certainly not anti-racist fiction for reasons that Macon outlines:

1. A common reading of its central symbol (mockingbird = black people) degrades black people.

2. The novel’s noble, white-knight hero has no basis in reality, and the common white focus on the heroism of Atticus Finch distracts attention from the pervasiveness of 1930s white-supremacist solidarity among ordinary white people.

3. The novel reduces black people to passive, humble victims, thereby ignoring the realities of black agency and resistance.

Highlighting To Kill a Mockingbird as anti-racist is like calling Tess of the D’Urbervilles* a triumph of feminism (yeah, I made a Thomas Hardy reference – deal with it!). By the time I got to the end of the article, I was firmly in agreement with the conclusion, albeit with one caveat, which I will present here.

Novels like To Kill a Mockingbird or Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Huckleberry Finn, each of them a stunning example of “aw shucks” racism, should be taught. They should be taught as what they are – signposts on the road to establishing equality. Each of them is a missive from the past that tells us where we once were. They should be taught in their modern context. The racism that Macon (rightly) attributes to the book is not necessarily a fault of the book it’s self. Rather, it is the product of the day in which it was written, and its failings need to be discussed. To Kill a Mockingbird is not the example of racial empowerment I want exemplified – all the power is still held by Atticus Finch and the white judge. Highlight the failings of the book, and where we have to go still now that lynchings aren’t commonplace.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting and deserved re-posting. Read it!

*For those of you who aren’t up on the latest classics of the romantic period, I’ll give you a brief summary. Tess is a peasant. She meets a rich guy. He buys her. She resists his ‘charms’, so he rapes her(?). She gets pregnant, and delivers. The baby dies. She becomes a milkmaid, meets a seemingly nice guy who says he’s in love with her. She tells him what happened. He disowns her. She goes back to the rapist, eventually stabs him, then slinks off and dies. Nobody learns anything. I’m not a big fan of this book either, clearly 😛

Update of Courtenay, BC attack: he was asking for it!

If anyone knows a decent orthopaedic surgeon, I did some serious damage to my wrist. Reading this article caused me to facepalm so hard, I may have fractured something:

In his closing submissions, defence lawyer Doug Marion said Mr. Phillips “consented” to a three-on-one fight with the men and “could have walked away from this fight if he wanted to. You can see him in the video, he’s backing away but his arms are open and he’s screaming ‘come on!’ and then pointing to his chest,” Mr. Marion said. “The reality is, that is consent.”

I feel a bit bad for Mr. Marion, having to defend clients who are the cowardly scum of the Earth. This desperate grabbing at straws defense is about as feeble as the fighting skills of his clients. I wonder what would happen to Mr. Marion if he was accosted by three people on racial grounds, and forced to defend himself. Would he have walked away from the fight? Better question – would he have dared to turn his back on three drunk rednecks who were trying to hit him and screaming racial obscenities at him? The fact is that when you look at the video, it’s pretty obvious what’s happening. Far from egging his attackers on, Mr. Phillips is doing pretty much the same thing a cat does when threatened – making himself appear larger.

Mr. Phillips says that he refused to allow the verbal assault to go on without reaction, since lack of dissent was, in his mind assent. He saw himself as standing up for other members of the black community who face similar discrimination but don’t speak up. I’m inclined to believe Phillips’ account, given that racism of the type evinced by his attackers rarely happens in a vacuum – there’s always something going on in the community that feeds that. Of course, there is always more to the story. Jay Phillips is no saint, having had run-ins with the law in his past; however, that doesn’t matter one bit. There is no excusing the actions of three cowards who shouted racial epithets at a person on the street, then stopped their truck and engaged in a three-on-one beating.

My sympathies for Mr. Marion are somewhat blunted by the fact that he’s going to the same default excuse that accused rapists like to use: “look at what she was doing – she was asking for it!” There is a fantastic article about this issue on a feminist blog called The Curvature. The subject matter is different, but the take-home message is the same: nobody ever asks to be assaulted, regardless of what twisted interpretation of their actions you might be able to produce.

My concern in all this is that as stupid as this defense obviously is, it might work. Racism of the type that seems to be endemic in Courtenay means that the members of the jury may be swayed by the argument. Either subconsciously or consciously, they may want to find a reason to excuse the actions of these pea-brained thugs and may seize upon this flimsy argument as sufficient grounds for acquittal. I hope I’m wrong about this.

Racist beating of black man in Courtenay, BC

This doesn’t exactly fill me with a feeling of safety:

A swarming attack on a black man in this Vancouver Island community began when one of the accused hurled a racial slur, a court heard on Thursday.

Three men riding home in a truck (way to buck the stereotype there, guys) came across a black man walking home from the gym. One of the guys in the truck called out, audibly, “there’s a nigger” as they drove past (you know, like anyone would in that situation). Understandably, the victim of the verbal assault (Jay Phillips) was angered by the word and threw his water bottle at the truck.

So the three men turned around, got out of the truck, and tried to beat Phillips up.

So Nova Scotia, you’re temporarily off the hook. Courtenay, BC is now (apparently) the most blatantly racist place in the country. Congrats, Courtenay. I’m sure that’s a legacy you’re proud of.

Hilariously, the whole thing was caught and posted on Youtube:

The high-kick that the one asshole throws made me laugh. The rest of the video just made me sad.

Once again, while I am deeply saddened (and frankly, more than a little frightened) by this event, I am not surprised in the least. As much as we like to go on and on about how racism is a thing of the past, it’s still alive and well. Of course the most bizarre thing about this particular story is that British Columbia (and certainly Courtenay, BC) doesn’t have a history of conflict with black Africans or African Americans. Black people coming to BC were more likely to be working-class or middle-class, and that exodus came much later than settlements like Chatham, Ontario or Africville in Halifax, NS. Maybe not so bizarre, if you consider the fact that these guys had probably never seen a black person before, except on television. They probably don’t know what the word “nigger” even means, or have any particularly well-organized hatred of blacks.

While this in no way excuses their unbelievably horrendous actions, this attack is a symptom of a larger problem – we live in a racist society. The assholes in the truck are undoubtedly bigots, and the fact that they mobbed and beat a guy based on their racism suggests they’re probably not the kind of guys you’d want to have around, but they’re an extreme reflection of an underlying cultural narrative that says that race is meaningful when judging a person’s worth. While it’s completely appropriate to notice that someone is from a different cultural background, and important to think about how that impacts their day-to-day life, it’s not the most important thing about them. It’s definitely not a cause of verbally and physically assault them.

I don’t live near Courtenay (it’s on Vancouver Island), so it’s unlikely I’ll be called for jury duty in this case or any that are connected to it. It’s too bad though, because I’ve been working on my Samuel L. Jackson impression:

Racism: a definition

I recently got into a friendly debate with a friend of mine over my use of the word ‘racism’. She objected to my broad definition, and my labeling of rather innocuous and neutral events as ‘racist’, preferring to reserve that label for more overt, “classic” racism. I thought I’d use this platform to discuss my definition, and why I think mine is better and more applicable to a contemporary context (Jen, feel free to refute my position in the comments).

I use a definition that I refined from a social/psychological definition of group prejudice:

Racism: the attribution of personal traits to an individual, or group of individuals, based on ethnic background.

So when a police officer “randomly” pulls me over to check my driver’s license and to make sure I own the car I’m driving, or when by buddy Atif gets “randomly selected” for airport security checks, that’s racist. Similarly, when an old guy says to by buddy Howie An (who has Chinese parents) “you’re fit because you eat a lot of rice”, that’s also racist. Sure, the second one is a kind of “aw, shucks” racism that isn’t inherently negative, but it’s still racism.

There’s an article, somewhat dated now, but still correct, in Slate. The basic thrust of the piece is as follows:

Whites may have been horrified by the fire hoses and police dogs turned on children, but they could rest easy knowing that neither they nor anyone they’d ever met would do such a thing. But most racism—indeed, the worst racism—is quaint and banal. There’s nothing sensationalistic about redlining (segregating investment areas for banks and supermarkets based on the racial makeup of the region) or job discrimination.

My definition goes a bit further than Slate‘s, because under mine an act or phrase doesn’t necessarily have to be negative to be racist. Certainly nobody would make the claim that the old guy Howie encountered was saying anything bad about either Howie or people of Chinese descent. My point is that it doesn’t matter, it’s still racist. The guy was assuming, either accurately or incorrectly, that Howie eats a lot of rice because he’s Chinese. It’s a race-based individual judgment.

I will share a story of my own. Recently, I was out for drinks with a friend and some of his crew. One of the girls with the group, I’ll call her “Sally” for the purpose of this post, and I were talking at one point in the evening. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but Sally asked me what my background was (I think she said something like “where are you from?”) I told her I was from Canada, and then (predictably) the conversation went something like this:

Sally: No, but where are you from really?

Me: Vancouver

Sally: Fine, what’s like, your background

Me: I’m black

Sally: Okay, but where are your parents from?

Me: They can’t be from Canada?

Sally: Why are you making this so difficult? I’m not being racist or anything, I’m being complimentary! I love black people!

Me: You love all black people?

Sally: Yeah totally! You guys have good taste in music, and you’re so laid-back!

This is conversation I’ve had more times than I care to recall. First of all, there’s a lot of things that I do that don’t fall into the “black people” stereotype: I am an accomplished classical violist; I have two university degrees in science; I grew up in a small mountain town in rural BC. You’re not going to see a guy like me on BET or TBS, unless it’s as a completely tokenist character (“wow, this black guy is so different from the other ones on the show! We’re diverse!”) The only black people I’ve ever seen who even remotely resemble me are Alvin from The Cosby Show and Lem from Better off Ted, and even then they were socially awkward turbo-nerds. I’ve long made peace with the fact that I’m not archetypal, it doesn’t really bother me. What does bother me is the implication that my entire identity can be boiled down to the colour of my skin, or more specifically the colour of my father’s skin. While my racial identity does inform my outlook on life, so does my scientific training and my musical background. It doesn’t matter that Sally wasn’t saying anything negative about me, the fact is that she was attributing to me the characteristics of people who may or may not be like me in any way, simply because we have similar skin colour. I was at a different bar talking to a different girl who told me that I was probably good at scaring people because I’m black, and that “(us) guys” are good in a fight. Again, not necessarily negative, but definitely not true (most of the time I’m about as threatening in a fight as an asthmatic koala bear).

This perhaps wouldn’t be a big deal if it didn’t go any farther than conversations at bars with drunk girls. The reality is, however that we form impressions of other people based on race, whether we acknowledge it or not:

The roots of racial prejudice lie deep within the brain, research has suggested. A study found that when we watch someone from our own race do something our brain simulates the action mentally as a form of empathy, known as ‘mirroring’.

The study has a lot of flaws, the biggest being that it only observed white participants, but the principle is likely sound – we are primed to view people who look the same as we do differently than those who are dissimilar. Sally chose to share her positive impressions of black people. I wondered immediately what other impressions she might have based on my race, considering how black people are portrayed in media.

Race, whether we like it or not, is still a part of our decision-making apparatus. Racism, for the most part, has taken on a much more subtle and innocuous form (unless of course you live in Nova Scotia). The way that we identify it and deal with it needs to change to reflect this. The Slate article talks about Dogg the Bounty Hunter and Michael Richards’ use of the word “nigger”, and how the reaction from both of these men was “I’m not racist.” Of course you’re racist. You live in a racist system. You can’t just decide to be non-racist by sheer force of will.

I’ll drop a bombshell on all you readers right now: you’re racist.

Here’s another one: I’m racist too.

We are products of the system that raised us, and the system has deep racist roots. Pretending as though it doesn’t exist, or that racism is only when you’re actively campaigning for the supremacy of a single racial group (that’s how it’s defined in the dictionary, albeit with my definition tacked on as #2) is ignoring the real and present influence that racism has in our day-today lives.

My friend (the one with whom I had the semantics debate) wanted the word ‘racism’ to shock and appall people, such that if your actions were labeled ‘racist’, you’d immediately stop doing them because of the emotional impact of the word. The fact is that the kind of “classic”, white-hooded lynch-mob ‘racism’ has all but completely faded from day-to-day reality in Canada (and for the most part in the US, although there are still a few holdouts). In my mind, restricting the word to only those kinds of actions would only serve to make the problem worse, since people would be incredibly unwilling to admit to having any race-based prejudice for fear of being associated with violent hate groups. The status quo would be maintained in perpetuity, and no progress could be made. The way to remove racism completely is to expose and discuss it dispassionately, not condemn people for the attitudes instilled in them by society while the rest of us smugly say “well at least we’re not racist.”

Another common colloquial use of the word is to refer to any group bigotry. I recently got yelled at on an online forum for suggesting that Richard Dawkins wasn’t being ‘racist’ when he made disparaging comments about Muslim people. The comments were targeted at people of the Muslim faith, suggesting that this particular religious tradition was more repressive of women than others. I’m not sure whether or not that’s true, but it’s certainly the case today. However, my point was that Dawkins was referring to Muslim people, not Arab or Persian people. The fact that those nationalities are disproportionately represented among British Muslims is irrelevant; the comments were about Islam. People on the forum were not having it. Apparently, in their minds, ‘racism’ simply means bigotry against any group. Sexism is racism, homophobia is racism, nationalism is racism. This argument is patently ridiculous, under any definition. Race bigotry is a specific phenomenon with specific hallmarks. Race bigotry might often parallel nationalistic bigotry, but they are not the same thing. I can decry the stupidity of Christianity and the way it infiltrates politics without hating white Americans, I can bemoan the corruption in African countries without hating black Africans, and I can detest the actions of the Chinese government without having any particular animosity towards Chinese people. The fact that there are large overlaps is completely separate from the label of ‘racism’, the defining characteristic is the method of grouping people. If it’s by race, it’s racism; if it’s not, then it’s something else.

This has been a mammoth of a post, and I thank you for sticking through all of it. The take-home message of this piece is simply this: our definition of racism cannot be simply relegated to vicious acts of brutal, overt repression; nor can it be thinly spread over all types of prejudice. Racism is a real phenomenon with real effects. Claiming “I’m not being racist” is a fallacy; we are all products of a system in which racism is endemic. Nobody, not even yours truly, is immune from its effects. I offer my definition – attributing race-group stereotypes to an individual – as a useful and value-neutral meaning for the word. It encapsulates “classic” racism, but allows us to intelligently discuss issues of race prejudice happening in society without risking censure or being labeled as ‘a racist’.