Australian hotels, racists and Qantas' long-haul business class

Talking about anecdotes... I stayed in four different hotels in Melbourne and Sydney this month: Common features, lousy cable TV selection and absolutely obscene internet charges. Right back at the airport hotel in Toronto, back to normal, no internet charges, pleasant staff. Anecdotes, I know, but: You read it here first :-).

Also, having left Australia some 15 years ago, I was shocked about the level of racism that is standard political operating procedure in that country today. Much of what leading politicians and newspaper columnists spouted there on a daily basis in that regard would be a career-killer in Canada, thankfully. Truly mind-boggling stuff.

Well, I was also able to fly in Qantas' long-haul business class in its Airbus 380 fleet. I love the A380. It's such a more quiet, overall smoother ride than any other plane on the market. The seats are comfy, even though the recline doesn't seem to be completely vertical. One big issue: For some reason the aisles don't seem to be cushioned properly. As a result, each time a passenger or flight attendant passes by at your seat you'll be awoken by the feel of an elephant passing by. Clearly a design problem. Compared to what American Airlines calls 'business class', well, it's a no brainer. Qantas' premium economy is superior to American's business class product, let alone Qantas' stellar business class. Even the business class lounges were remarkably different. Qantas offered decent food and drinks, while American tried hard to sell even that to you in its lounges.  Makes you wonder why anyone would fork out money for a business class fare on American Airlines.

Other than that, I cannot believe how much Melbourne and Sydney have changed since I left. The mining boom brought obviously tons of money and people into the country. New gleaming everythings have transformed the city scapes, and not necessarily for the better.

I gave talks both in Melbourne and Sydney on assisted dying and managed to catch up with old friends and colleagues in both cities. Overall it has been a delightful trip. Oh, did I mention the weather? No point in that, it's been fabulous, in Sydney more so than in Melbourne.

'Race' and God people

Not only in Canada institutions of higher learning have long been sensitive to concerns that students, staff or faculty might be subjected to unfair discrimination by virtue of their 'race', sex, sexual orientation and any number of other features. These concerns are well justified. You don't want anyone discriminated against just because they are of a particular skin color, or because they're female, or gay. The only thing that should matter, surely, is whether someone is best qualified for a job.

Of course, as we all know, common sense as this view undoubtedly is, the reality is quite different in many parts of the world. To my biased mind, it's not entirely coincidental that violations of this common sense rule are most frequently committed in developing countries. Also not coincidentally, to my biased mind, these violations seem to occur most likely in countries where religious ideologies are more rather than less influential. No wonder then that Muslims and Christians happily engage in genocidal acts against each other in Nigeria, gay folks are routinely subjected to mob 'justice' in Jamaica, women reportedly lose their lives during pregnancy in Nicaragua because Catholicism reigns supreme in that neck of the woods, and the list goes on and on and on.

Anyhow, I digress, so there's this Ryerson University in Toronto. It duly commissioned its own racism report. True to international form the writers of this report embarrassingly conflate racism (ie someone goes after you because of the color of your skin and other arbitrary ethnicity related features that are beyond your control) and discrimination because of something you choose (in this case your religious ideology). To be clear: I am not suggesting here that it is acceptable to discriminate unfairly against someone because she or he is Muslim, Christian, Jewish or subscribes to any number of other monotheistic ideologies. Quite rightly so, in a free society people are entitled to make those sorts of choices. The nice thing though, is that in a free society (unlike those men's outfits like the Vatican or Iran) people like myself are also entitled to make fun out of folks buying into such religious claptrap. Many religious people and their leaders don't like this bit at all, hence their attempts to get the same types of anti-discrimination protections that people are entitled to because of who they are as opposed to what kind of religious ideology they choose to believe.

It is deeply offensive to conflate in a report on racism racism with discrimination against people who make the choice to believe such stuff, and who then go out of their way to let the world know that they do (eg by putting black cloth over their heads, or wearing any number of religious knickknack around their necks etc). If you belong to an ethnic minority and you have been subjected to racism you will be permanently scarred to some extent or other. You will continuously wonder when the next shoe's gonna drop. Well, compare that to people who choose to wear religious paraphernalia in order to identify themselves as adherents to an ideology they have chosen. Surely this doesn't exactly fall into the same ballpark. Again, my issue is not at all that unfair discrimination against people because of the ideologies they subscribe to is fair game. Quite to the contrary.

Anyhow, back to the racism report at that Ryerson place. Here are some of the highlights that the experts who drafted the document included. Evidence of racism... a student quote:

“I am Muslim, and once I was fasting and there was an exam and I had to do my prayers and I felt like the Professor was not very accommodating, that he/she seemed to make it look like this was something that was my problem and I should just pray after the exam is done and I didn’t feel like that was fair.”

Here then is the difference between racism (eg a professor saying 'you can't attend my seminar because your skin colour is a tad bit too dark'), and the accommodation this student is clamouring for. The student chose to adopt an ideology as her belief system that requires her to stop eating at a certain point in the calendar, and to talk at a certain time to a higher entity that no one has ever demonstrated actually exists. It is clear to me at least that this indeed is the student's problem and not the professor's. Nobody forced her to make the choices she made. The ideology that she chose is her own responsibility, and so is her private matter. It's a bit like me choosing a membership in a political party, the boy scouts, or wherever. In case I wish to attend a party meeting, or go and stuff party political materials into letter boxes I have no reason to assume that my line manager would have to accommodate me. Equally though, as long as I do my job, she has no reason to discriminate against me either. The idea though, that my membership in a voluntary association should kind of trigger a special dispensation - as the Ryerson student seems to think is her God given right - is patently absurd.

Here's another bit from the Ryerson racism report,

Some Muslim students complained about the number of times jokes about sex are used by the instructor and students in class, and how, especially when they seem irrelevant to the subject matter at hand, this makes them extremely uncomfortable. One professor, for example, told a class one day that journalism is all about lots of sex and beer. Another professor who was teaching students how to modulate their voices for radio told the class to pretend they were having sex and to imagine the voice they heard when they experience “pleasure.” Other students joined in and began making “very weird noises,” leaving some students very uncomfortable. They suggested that cultural sensitivity is important in the classroom.

So, the idea here is that as professors we should not talk about sex anymore because it might affect our adult students' sensibilities. I take it, talk of evolution might just have the same effect, so perhaps we should consider dumping that, too. I mention things like abortion in my bioethics classes. Another culturally sensitive issue (and seemingly now a proper topic for a report on racism) obviously. Potentially my Christian students could be upset by what I have to say, or even by some of the language I might choose to describe a few hundred fetal cells (ie the Christian person equivalent). Wow, I can see already that I will find myself quoted in some other insane racism report.

To my surprise the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente truly nailed the Ryerson report in an OpEd. I don't say this lightly. I have cancelled my subscription to the Globe and Mail because too many of its editorial writers (Wente being one of em) are so utterly below grade. Anyhow, to give credit where credit is due, she wrote a brilliant OpEd on this occasion. Here's bits and pieces from her piece:

“I pulled my hair when I saw the coverage,” says Kamal Al-Solaylee, an assistant professor at Ryerson's School of Journalism (and a former Globe theatre critic). “I've never worked in a more accommodating environment in my life.”

Mr. Al-Solaylee is a brown-skinned Muslim who is openly gay. He thinks the entire exercise is a frivolous diversion. “There are things that I need from the university, but this isn't one of them,” he says. “I need computers that don't crash all the time. I want students who don't have to hold bake sales to raise money for their graduate projects. There should be money for these things, not equity officers.”

Sensitivity to perceived discrimination is so acute these days that it can lead to perverse results. One instructor at the University of Toronto was told not to criticize foreign-born students for their poor language skills, even if they were unintelligible. Some aboriginal students say they shouldn't be evaluated by the same standards as everyone else, because they have different ways of knowing. Yet, as Mr. Al-Solaylee sensibly observes, his students will be working in an English-speaking, Eurocentric world. So they might as well get used to it.

The most bizarre revelation can be found in the report's fine print. Among the students, racism and discrimination scarcely register at all. Only 315 students (out of 28,000) bothered to respond to a task force questionnaire. Half the respondents were white, and half non-white. On the question of whether Ryerson treats students fairly regardless of race, the vast majority of both groups – more than 90 per cent – believed it did. Fewer than 30 of the non-white students said they had ever experienced discrimination. That's a 10th of 1 per cent of the student body.

Naturally, the task force has an explanation for this: People are too scared to speak out! That's the great thing about systemic racism. You don't need any evidence. Every negative proves a positive, and the absence of evidence just proves how bad things really are."

Go Margaret go! My qualm about this whole sad saga is not that it's unreasonable to have a conversation about reasonable accommodation of God folks, but please do not permit anyone to confuse this with racism. It's beyond pale, and, frankly, unworthy of a university.

And the weekend good news: Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is dead

I like the hypocrisy of people insisting that we must never speak bad of the dead. Why not? If the dead were bad people, what's wrong with wishing them good riddance. A case in point is Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (better known as Dr Beetroot), the former South African health minister. Her policies and that of her boss Thabo ('I don't know anybody who died on AIDS in South Africa.') Mbeki led to about 300,000 preventable deaths among infected people. Beetroot insisted that it ain't clear that HIV causes AIDS, and claimed that anti-retrovirals for Africans were an evil scheme by the CIA and the pharmaceutical industry to poison Africans. Those suffering from, and dying on AIDS she offered, well, you guessed it, beetroot, lemon juice and garlic. Moron that she was she thought nothing of it to jump the waiting list for organ transplantations in order to grab a liver when her old failed as a result of her marriage to alcohol. Excuses were found for why this woman, in her 60s at the time, was deserving of the liver (ie public sector clinicians, working for her, colluded in lies about her legitimate rank on the waiting list). During the time it became public knowledge that as a hospital doctor in Botswana she was convicted of stealing patients' property while they were in surgery. It didn't occur to the ANC and its senior officials to fire Dr Beetroot. Well, I was elated when I found out that the transplant liver crapped up on her, and the system refused to offer her yet another one. Good riddance Dr Beetroot. Thabo, we're waiting for you to join her. After all, you also like your booze and there's some 300,000 people who are dead today because of you. Why don't you also call it a day?

On a slightly more analytical (as opposed to purely angry) level (even though my anger about these two South African politicians' murderous policies knows few boundaries, I have admit): What is of interest is that there's a pattern of colonial mentalities in play in South Africa as well as in Uganda. In South Africa, black nationalist politicians happily ganged up with Western crank scientists against their own people, because they were suspicious of mainstream Western science and knowledge. White Westerners taught them stuff that translated into genocidal policies costing about 300,000 predominantly black people's lives in that country alone. The attempted political emancipation drove these black nationalists straight into the hands of crackpots, that's how substantial their concern was that hooking their people onto life saving medicines was just another ruse by the West to poison and keep Africans down and dependent on the West. Incomprehensible. As good nationalists are wont to do, they insisted on 'local solutions', hence beetroot, garlic and lemon juice. African scientists and medical doctors standing up to them were fired and bullied sufficiently that Stalin could have taken a page from that book (Beetroot managed this without actually killing the scientists, she simple removed them from jobs and funding).

Uganda is another example. It has become clear by now, that draconian anti-gay legislation, threatening gays with the death penalty, was inspired by US evangelicals, white US evangelicals. How ironic that Africans, busily trying to assert themselves against 'evil Western values', are being goaded by other Westerners (crazy ones) to implement seriously civil rights violating policies against their own people ... bizarre stuff. The only good news is that they're being opposed frequently by younger generations of Africans who won't stand for that sort of crap.

Anyhow, Manto is gone, let's go and drink to her demise :).

Racism affecting nurses

Boggles the mind... but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised anymore about findings such as these (reproducing a press release from York University, Toronto, Canada):

Nurses stung by racism on the job, York U research finds

Nurses in Ontario experience racism on the job from patients, doctors, nurse managers, and most often from other nurses, research by a York University professor has found.

“I would call it a new racism, a subtle but systemic form,” says professor Tania Das Gupta, Chair of the Department of Equity Studies in York’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies. “It doesn’t use the language of racism, but it ranges from comments about accents and physical attributes, to a failure to recognize the nurse’s skills and knowledge.”

Das Gupta surveyed nurses through the Ontario Nurses’ Association, receiving 593 responses from nurses across the province. She conducted 18 in-depth interviews and closely studied arbitration cases.

In the survey, 41 per cent responded that they had been made to feel uncomfortable because of their race, colour or ethnicity. Most Black/African Canadian nurses (82 per cent) and Asian Canadian nurses (80 per cent) said they had experienced this, as well as 50 per cent of South Asian Canadian nurses and 57 per cent of Central/South American Canadian nurses. Even 25 per cent of the white/European Canadian nurses said they had been made to feel uncomfortable because of their ethnicity or religion, said Das Gupta.

The results of the survey, which was conducted a few years ago, are analyzed in Das Gupta’s recent book, Real Nurses & Others: Racism in Nursing (Fernwood, 2009). The title for the book came from the experience of one black nurse who was asked often if she was a “real” nurse.

Das Gupta decided to study racism in nursing closely because she had often been called as an expert witness in racial discrimination cases involving nurses. She expected that most of the racism toward nurses would come from their patients or managers, but the greatest proportion – 27.3 per cent – was from co-workers. Patients were the next most likely group to express racism (23.8 per cent), followed by doctors (14.3 per cent) and nursing managers (12.8 per cent).

Systemic racism in institutions arises from conscious or unconscious policies, procedures and practices that adversely affect people of colour, including their exclusion, marginalization and infantilization, says Das Gupta. Her research examines how fear, lack of support, management collaboration, co-worker harassment and ineffective institutional responses make it difficult for victims of racism to fight back.

Surprisingly, most nurses who experience racism don’t take the issue to their union, but try to handle it on their own, says Das Gupta. This is significant because 58.1 per cent of black/African nurses and 48.3 per cent of Asian nurses perceived that their race, ethnicity or colour affected their relationship with their colleagues, while 54.8 per cent of black/African nurses, 46.7 per cent of Asian and 44.4 per cent of South Asian nurses said it affected their relationship with their manager.

“Both those relationships can affect job promotion and there’s a pattern of differential treatment,” said Das Gupta. ”I think there’s a role for government to play to address this kind of systemic racism, as well as unions, employers, educators and even community groups.”

Should Planned Parenthood Accept Racists' Donations?

In the USA pro-life groups are currently running a campaign designed to smear Planned Parenthood with the claim that the pro-choice organization accepts knowingly donations from racists, and, as a corollary that it is a racist organization. Here's what happened: a pro-life activist group called Planned Parenthood offices across the USA. Their caller pretended to be a racist wanting to earmark a donation toward assisting African American pregnant women to have an abortion. To leave Planned Parenthood staffers in no doubt about his racist agenda, the caller made clear that he's concerned that his fictional white newborn might suffer as a result of affirmative action policies and so he wants to have his donation go toward the abortion of a 'black baby' (no doubt he meant fetus, but that's neither here nor there, and pro-lifers usually miss out on nitty-gritty details such as developmental stages of embryos).

So, Planned Parenthood staffers across the US told him that they'd happily accept his donation (and earmark it according to his wishes). Nobody said: we do not accept donations from racists. Pro-life groups are trying currently hard to give the impression that individual staffers were motivated by racist motives, but a fair evaluation of the videos the group posted on youtube suggests nothing of that sort. Planned Parenthood has always taken a liberal, pro-choice stance on the abortion issue, so it could not say that it takes donations to assist women of all colors to have abortions if they so wish, whatever their reasons, unless they happen to be African American. So, Planned Parenthood then offers termination of pregnancy to African American women as well as to women of any other skin color.

Comes the racist donor along. Well, of course there can't be an issue for Planned Parenthood in terms of accepting the donation! Big deal. If you've some racist idiot who wants to give a million dollars to Planned Parenthood so that more African American women can be assisted in having a termination of pregnancy, the organization should accept the money. End of story. African American women, like any other client of the organization ask to have a termination of pregnancy out of their own free will. So the money would not suddenly go toward forcing African American women to have abortions that they do not wish to have. If anything it would assist more such women to access affordable reproductive health services.

Just as importantly, perhaps, is of course that the donation provided by the racist would free the organization to re-direct financial resources to women of other color, including white women wanting to have an abortion (probably much to the horror of the racist).

So, here's that big old lesson then one more time: It's not motives that matter, but outcomes. In this hypothetical case, everyone would be better off: the racist is happy, because he thinks he served a racist cause (little does he know that he didn't, of course); African American women, because more of them would be able to access Planned Parenthood's services; women of any other color, including white women, because more money would be available for them after the donation earmarked for black women.

Pro-life activism, intellectually impoverished as it is, seems to know no shame in terms of how it campaigns for its causes. To produce videos linking Planned Parenthood to the KKK and trying to align themselves with Martin Luther King jr's civil rights movement is breathtaking.

Race or no ... race

Interesting bit of information taken from the GUARDIAN science site.

Are there genetic differences between "races"?

Mark Pagel, evolutionary biologist at Reading University. His research includes work on language and cultural evolution.

"Flawed as the old ideas about race are, modern genomic studies reveal a surprising, compelling and different picture of human genetic diversity. We are on average about 99.5% similar to each other genetically. This is a new figure, down from the previous estimate of 99.9%. To put what may seem like minuscule differences in perspective, we are somewhere around 98.5% similar, maybe more, to chimpanzees, our nearest evolutionary relatives.

"The new figure for us, then, is significant. It derives from among other things, many small genetic differences that have emerged from studies that compare human populations ... Like it or not, there may be many genetic differences among human populations - including differences that may even correspond to old categories of "race" - that are real differences in the sense of making one group better than another at responding to some particular environmental problem.

"This in no way says one group is in general "superior" to another ... But it warns us that we must be prepared to discuss genetic differences among human populations.

Should skincolour manipulating products be developed and sold?

Nice article today on the CBC news website. Some students from Carleton University have developed yet another cream capable of whitening the skin color of darker skinned people. It's kinda old news, due to continuing racist ideologies insisting that a lighter skin coloration is kinda better than a darker skin coloration, skin lightening products have been on the market for a very long time. You'll find them in most drug stores in places where larger numbers of darker skinned folks live. In many parts of India it is common knowledge that the darker a young woman is, the more difficult it will be for her to find a husband (or her family for her - don't ask). Now, the question is, of course, whether one should aid such skin color related prejudices by means of developing products that permit folks to lighten their skin color. We should never develop any kind of technologies that serve such purposes. They will only prolong the existence of such prejudices over time, because the cremes in question will be seen as an easy way out of the dilemma by many, while really they help cementing views about the inferiority of particular skin colors.

The inventors of the concoction in question insist that they're no racists (a claim likely to be true), and that in fact their creme could also be utilized by folks wanting to darken their skin color.

At first this seems an innocent enough idea then, as the technology kind of cuts both ways. It stops being innocent when we ask ourselves why some light skinned people like to look a bit darker (but not really dark, of course). The reason is that to many pink skinned folks a slightly darker look translates into ideas of vacation (you know, beach, sun and tequilas) and health. Of course, darker skinned folks will not have this kind of motive in mind. They are more likely to think that they might move up in societal status if they're lighter skinned. Equating then the two possible utilisations of the technology seems remarkably naive. Interestingly, one of the students is from India and should be painfully aware why such products are so popular in that country, yet clearly it doesn't seem to have hit home that, big as that market might be, it's nonetheless a market created by racist interpretations of skin color.

So, in the same way that I would not want a prenatal genetic test predictive for homosexuality in a homophobic society (even if it could be also used by homosexuals to detect heterosexual etc etc), I would not want to see products on the market that support racist societies' take on skin coloration.

Why give famous jerks a platform?

James Watson (Jim to his mates, I presume) is a famous man. Jointly with Francis Crick he discovered the structure of the DNA. That's pretty cool as far as their contribution to scientific progress goes. The thing is, Watson was always kind of known to be a jerk, but people went out of their way to pretend that he wasn't, because of his contribution etc. Why a jerk? Well, Watson has the habit of using his fame to speak out on other issues outside his area of expertise, such as arguing that if a test capable of forecasting the sexual orientation of people came about, pregnant women should be permitted to abort fetuses likely to evolve into homosexuals. This comment, he says, was designed to demonstrate his support for women's right to choose to have abortions for any reasons and none. The question remains, tho, why did he pick 'gay' fetuses to make his point? He also made quite clear that he thinks the reasons for the problems in Africa have kinda to do with the lower intelligence of African peoples. It goes without saying that he since came to realise that he actually has been misunderstood. It's always a misunderstanding, of course it is. Here is the wording of the quote in the context of the interview. Your guess is as good as mine how there could be a misunderstanding... - So, the question is why one should give famous ageing jerks (he's 78 at the time of writing) a public platform to express their prejudices, particularly so when these prejudices are not even in areas of their scientific expertise.

So, I am very pleased that the British Science Museum recently withdrew an invitation to Dr Watson to speak there, on the grounds that 'Dr Watson has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate and we are, as a result, cancelling his talk'. Thumbs up to the Brits for not caving into Jim-co-discoverer-of-the-DNA fame, and for asking him to take a hike, and take his prejudices with him. What a shame that he lost the opportunity to promote his latest book to a British audience...

Addendum 19 Oct 2007: More good news. Cold Spring Harbor Labs, the international temple of genetics research has announced that it has suspended Dr Watson. Makes me wonder what they're going to do about the 'Watson School of Biological Sciences', tho. Incidentally, the School, of which Dr Watson is the Chancellor, hasn't yet graduated a single black student. You know, my thing was always that you better honour folks posthumously, just in case they lose the plot on the way.

Madeleine McCann -unGodly twists in the story

I guess, if you live on this planet, you had little choice other than to watch some (many) news item or other about the disappearance of the Scottish toddler Madeleine McCann. The poor girl disappeared miraculously from the parental holiday apartment in Portugal Algarve region. There were several twists to the story. For a start, due to the parents' religious view TV viewers were treated to an unprecedented media campaign showing them searching for the toddler in odd places, including the Vatican where they met the current Pope. The Pope duly prayed etc etc but equally, God (if it exists) didn't give a damn and nothing much happened. Madeleine didn't pop up again. The incredulous public was treated by TV anchormen and women to ever more bizarre stories such as the family priest flying over to Portugal to pray a bit more (but, given that his boss failed already, no surprise, God didn't listen to the family preacher either). Since Madeleine McCann disappeared, hundreds if not thousands of kids disappeared the world all over, most of which were not off-spring of well-to-do medical doctors as Madeleine McCann was/is. Indeed, most of these kids were not blond either. Surprise, surprise, their fate has proven to be of little interest to newsmakers the world all over.

Since this story broke, new developments added a more than macabre twist. The parents have officially been declared suspects in the case a day or two ago. The toddler's blood was found in a car they had rented several weeks after the girls disappearance. Makes one wonder what has really happened. - The McCann family declared duly that the evidence must have been planted by the Portuguese police. That explains things, of course. It would have never occurred to me that that could explain how the missing girl's blood pops up in a car the parents rented several weeks after the disappearance...

I guess what this story tells is as much about media bias (it had to be a pedophile, or an international ring of criminals selling blond young girls into sex slavery, it goes without saying, preferrably to Muslim perverts) as it tells us about how 'God' continues to be abused by those that invented the thing to begin with.

Racism alive and kicking - why every ethnic group is capable of being racist

This is Evon Reid, a political science studies graduate from the University of Toronto. Evon shot to unexpected (probably international) fame because a government employee responsible for managing a recruitment process (and his job application) referred to him as a 'ghetto dude'. The Toronto Star newspaper reports the story today. Here's a brief excerpt:

'Evon Reid couldn't believe his eyes yesterday morning when he opened an email from the Ontario government's cabinet office where he'd applied for a position. "This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before," said the email to the University of Toronto honours student from the very person handling his job application.
... Ghetto dude? It means I'm black. It's very insulting," Reid told the Star yesterday. "It's still pretty shocking to me." As he sees it, the email explains why he hasn't gotten a followup interview for a job as a media analyst. He applied July 3 but missed a July 10 call from Aileen Siu in the cabinet office. Although he called her back and sent followup emails, there was no response. Until yesterday's email. "Based on my resumé I deserved to be called, but I was not worthy of being called back once they heard my mother's voice and my voice," said Reid, 22. "She has a Jamaican accent and it's about the way I talk. There's a nuance." ...

The email was never intended for Reid, according to Siu, who learned she had sent it to him only when the Star telephoned yesterday. An acting team leader in cabinet office hiring, she said she was "multi-tasking" Thursday when she hit the wrong button and copied Reid on an email she was sending to a job-search colleague. "It wasn't directed at Evon at all. That was internal ... It didn't have anything to do with any of the applicants," said Siu, 26, and a recent U of T political science graduate. She insisted the email didn't refer to anyone "outside my circle of friends."
Siu acknowledged the term is negative but said, "I don't even know what nationality he is, right?" She added she's of Asian descent and doesn't want anyone to think she makes racially based judgments.'

There we have it... a truly neat example of somebody one would think would have reached the bottom of the pit that she's dug herself into, but then she musters all her strengths and continues digging even deeper. First Ms Siu is pointing out to us that he wasn't meant to see the message and that it was directed at someone else in her office. Obviously, one should be concerned about the culture in her work environment, because seemingly such language and conduct must be considered acceptable there. Perhaps talking in suitably derogatory socially charged terminology about job applicants is one of the hallmarks in this government office.

Secondly she proposes that she couldn't make racially based judgments because she is of Asian descent. I have heard all of that before, in South Africa. Many 'black' folks, while talking in the most racially charged terminology about 'white' folks, insisted that they couldn't possibly be racists by virtue of their ethnicity. In fact, seeing the history of that country, one shouldn't be too surprised about such conduct. Also, lest someone charges me with being biased, in that country, I also heard 'whites' making racist comments about 'blacks', folks of East Asian descent would make nasty comments about both of the just mentioned groups, and so did folks that go under the label of 'coloured' in South Africa. My main point is that ethnicity (minority or otherwise) does not in its own right prevent racist conduct. Just think of continuing conflicts between African American and South Korean migrants in the USA... - So, Ms Siu's remarks are not only ill-considered, they also make one wonder about the quality of a political science degree at the University of Toronto. Surely one would expect graduates of such a programmes to be aware of such issues.

As a post scriptum: A few of the comments I received since I posted this comment, naturally anonymised.

'Thank you for sharing your solid view on the shocking attitude that exists
within Queen's Park. Since I am not a highly educated person I tend to keep
fairly basic in my thinking, as it serves me well. It struck me that Aileen
Siu would not have made that comment, unless she sincerely believed that it
was the type of grammar her 'job search colleague' enjoyed.'

'I just read your BLOG I totally agree with you. As a black Canadian male I see it all the time with my friends and society in general. Stereotyping other racist and nationalities it sickens me that someone young would have thoughts like this, if it was someone older you can at least use age or a generational gap as part of their ignorance.'

Racism and Pseudo-Islamophobia

Two unrelated news items I came across during the last few days. First of all, in Glasgow, since two slightly inept medical doctors crashed a four wheel drive into a glass door at Glasgow's International Airport, the police reports some 25 or so physical attacks on people perceived to be Muslim. This included even an attack on a local news agent (someone without medical degree crashed a car into the news agents' corner shop and managed to burn it to the ground). So, while this mindless kind of activity goes probably best under the label of Islamophobia, it's actually worse than that, because its victims were picked on based on their looks (you can't really deduce someone's religious persuasion from their ethnicity or even their beards). So, in a way, old-fashioned racism seems to have found a new outlet. Here's an intelligent take on this particular issue and the Scottish political ruling class' response to this issue.

Then, a report was published about Africa-Caribbean's living in London. Those interviewed suggested that racism in the capital had got quite a bit worse than it was just a few years ago. Here's an excerpt with some of the figures form the report, taken from The Guardian website:

'Of the 600 people questioned, 94% said there is continuing racism in the UK today, and the feeling was most acute among those of Caribbean backgrounds, 96% of whom felt advances have not gone far enough. More than a third felt that racism in the UK today is actually worse than three or four years ago - a galling statistic when one considers that most live in London, whose diversity helped win it the right to stage the 2012 Olympics - and 60% said black people fare worse than other racial minorities.Those questioned bemoaned their failure to be promoted at work and the effects of institutional racism, with 80% citing inequalities in the criminal-justice system. It's pretty gloomy stuff.'

This is significant for two reasons: one obviously is that life in a mega city such as London should be less difficult for Black people then, say Yorkshire's country side. There's plenty of other Black people, there are also plenty of support programmes, and, generally speaking, big city folks tend to be more open-minded than country town folks. This is, of course, an unacceptably broad generalisation, but no doubt, there's some truth in this. The other reason for why this survey is significant, because it suggests that despite historically unprecedented resources for programmes assisting minority ethnic folks, life hasn't got much better for far too many.

On the other hand, it should not surprise too much, that in a society where after more than 10 years of New Labour the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider, ethnic minority people (at least of Afro-Caribbean descent) have not done particularly well.