| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
 Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 4:33 pm Post subject: Guilty of unconscious racism |
 |
|
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/guilty-of-unconscious-racism/article1232881/
| Quote: |
In March, 2005, Constable Michael Shaw was on patrol in the Bridle Path, an ultra-affluent Toronto neighbourhood he knew well. He was showing a female trainee the ropes. Down the street, he spotted an unfamiliar letter-carrier delivering the mail. He asked him for ID, ran his name through the computer, thanked him for his trouble and verified with a regular postie that the new guy was a fill-in. The letter-carrier was not insulted, detained or charged with any crime.
Innocuous? Not to Ronald Phipps, the fill-in letter-carrier. He is black. The cop is white. Mr. Phipps decided he'd been a victim of racial profiling, and took his case to the Human Rights Tribunal. In a ruling last month, the adjudicator agreed.
The decision makes for scary reading, because it says someone can be found guilty just for making someone else feel bad. �There is no need to establish an intention or motivation to discriminate,� it says. �[T]he focus of the enquiry is on the effect of the respondent's action on the complainant.�
According to the tribunal, �unconscious� discrimination is no different from �conscious� discrimination. And the onus is on the accused to prove he's innocent. �Once a prima facie case of discrimination has been established, the burden shifts to the respondent to provide a rational explanation which is not discriminatory. ... The respondent must offer an explanation which is credible on all the evidence.�
Community policing is a big deal in Toronto these days. Its essence is getting to know the people in the neighbourhood. Mr. Phipps was a stranger there. But the adjudicator didn't buy Constable Shaw's rationale. A white cop had stopped an African-Canadian in an affluent neighbourhood, and �on a balance of probabilities,� that made the cop guilty of discrimination.
No one can deny that black men continue to be unfairly singled out because of skin colour. According to one survey, two-thirds of African-American men say they've experienced racial profiling at some time. The only surprise is that the figure isn't higher.
But condemning a police officer as a racist for exercising judgment on the job is not how to improve race relations. As Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair has pointed out, the tribunal has set a standard nobody, however fair-minded, can meet. �You can have the best of intentions and be totally without bias, but none of that matters if someone wants to believe you are biased.�
By his own account, Mr. Phipps has suffered grievously since the incident in 2005. He told the Toronto Star he has trouble sleeping, has lost weight and is �teased mercilessly� by co-workers. He wants financial compensation (unspecified) for his pain and suffering, and, for good measure, has also brought a discrimination claim over the same incident against the police chief and the entire force. (It will be heard in September.)
According to human-rights commissioner Barbara Hall, the case sends a message that �systemic discrimination ... requires hard work to get rid of.� But it sends another message: The tribunal is an easy mark. |
Unconscious racism. Diversity is our strength. It's gonna take one hell of a meddling government to purge (white, of course) Canadians of all unconscious racism. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
KuroBara
Joined: 15 Oct 2008
Location: Goyang-Si with a bit of Paju mixed in
|
| Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 5:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I don't see anything unconscious about it. If the postal worker was wearing regulation gear and only dropping mail into boxes or slots, why was he stopped at all? Just because he was not the regular guy? Is it the responsibility of the postal service to inform every cop when their employment rolls change? If the guy had been peering into people's houses, I could understand, but just dropping off mail and moving to the next house to drop off mail again? No, not buying it. I won't say racist though, as the constable may have stopped anyone else who was not the normal carrier, but this time the guy happened to be black. Still, I have to wonder why he would have stopped him at all. Is there a history in Canada of fake postal workers?
It's unfortunate the guy was black, because it does have a whiff of profiling. It may just be that the constable trusts no one but his inner circle. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
|
| Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:29 pm Post subject: Re: Guilty of unconscious racism |
|
|
| mises wrote: |
| Unconscious racism. Diversity is our strength. It's gonna take one hell of a meddling government to purge (white, of course) Canadians of all unconscious racism. |
Great, this ought to be a boon for psychoanalysts!
Or maybe police should just cease arresting or stopping black people. Not forever, just for a few decades. After all, we have centuries of slavery and racism to make up for, so it will take a while.
 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
benji
Joined: 21 Jul 2009
|
| Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:42 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| What are blacks called in Canada? African Canadians? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
E_athlete
Joined: 09 Jun 2009
Location: Korea sparkling
|
| Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:20 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| yeah the cop deserves it. If this isnt racial profiling I don't know what is. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:04 am Post subject: |
|
|
| E_athlete wrote: |
| yeah the cop deserves it. If this isnt racial profiling I don't know what is. |
You think 1) punishing unconscious racism and 2) guilty until proven innocent are proper for the Canadian government? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 5:10 am Post subject: |
|
|
| E_athlete wrote: |
| yeah the cop deserves it. If this isnt racial profiling I don't know what is. |
Unless you can demonstrate he did what he did for racially-motivated reasons, I don't see how you could consider him guilty of racial profiling.
| Quote: |
| No one can deny that black men continue to be unfairly singled out because of skin colour. According to one survey, two-thirds of African-American men say they've experienced racial profiling at some time. The only surprise is that the figure isn't higher. |
I think that one word makes all the difference regarding that particular data. It's all too easy to simply decide you've been discriminated against, especially when the alternative might involve some admittance of wrong doing or shedding a bit of your pride. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 8:52 am Post subject: |
|
|
The Caucasian is put in an interesting position. The diversity only has to 'feel offended' (aka hurt feelings) by any act by the Caucasian. The Caucasian is assumed guilty and dragged to an HRC. He will suffer financial damages and the stigma of having the state label him a racist. Further, it is not possible to prove that one is not an "unconscious racist". Motive, intention, evidence, due process...well, those are inventions by the Caucasians to keep the diversity down and ergo not relevant.
Imagine you're a Caucasian small business owner. How does the above factor in when making hiring decisions? What is the rational behaviour given the state of things? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
travel zen
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Location: Good old Toronto, Canada
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 6:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I'm taking a course in college and it deals with White Priviledge.
In the west, whites are generally the standard that all others are measured. Whites have few barriers due to their ethnicity, language and culture while 'others' have to deal with all of the above and the more 'diverse/non white' you are, the harder it is to do simple things like get a job, or even do your job around affluent houses.
African people are some of the most 'diverse' simply because of their skin colour and I believe its easier to discriminate against them because they stand out the most from the standard measurement in the west (whites).
A question for you: What/Who is a 'white' person? This definition changes from decade to decade. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Who is to say the policeman wouldn't have stopped a white letter carrier if he were a fill in?
This case is so bogus it is beyond ridiculous. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 5:20 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| I'm taking a course in college and it deals with White Priviledge. |
You don't say. Perhaps you might have been better off taking remedial classes in English, rather than studying such an intellectually bereft and entirely useless course. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 5:59 am Post subject: |
|
|
| bigverne wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I'm taking a course in college and it deals with White Priviledge. |
You don't say. Perhaps you might have been better off taking remedial classes in English, rather than studying such an intellectually bereft and entirely useless course. |
Come on now, at least it isn't called Applied Self-Loathing |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
travel zen
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Location: Good old Toronto, Canada
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 8:36 am Post subject: |
|
|
The course itself is called Global Citizenship, the topic is White Priveledge and its pretty damned interesting.
Other topics in the course are:
Bad Muslims
Ethnicity
The Politics of Racism
You get the message. It's not about hating anyone, its about understanding where hate comes from and how it is institutionalized.
Racism comes up in some ig-nant ways on this board and some people simply feed off of TV and all the propaganda that comes from it. A steady diet of "asians can't drive' or 'blacks steal and are violent' can make people believe it.
A simple test of stereotypng was done on people on an american street was asked about stereotypes for all the major races. When it came to whites ... they didn't have one. They didn't know one.
What does this say about stereoyping ? Class ?  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 9:10 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
The course itself is called Global Citizenship, the topic is White Priveledge and its pretty damned interesting.
Other topics in the course are:
Bad Muslims
Ethnicity
The Politics of Racism
You get the message. It's not about hating anyone, its about understanding where hate comes from and how it is institutionalized. |
I wonder if you will be learning, for example, about Koranic inspired Jew and Infidel hatred, or whether this course will concentrate entirely on how minorities are 'stereotyped', and how such stereotyping is done exclusively by those naughty whites, with their privilege.
If this garbage is what passes as a college education in the West, then we truly are f*cked. Might as well surrender to the Chinese now. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
travel zen
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Location: Good old Toronto, Canada
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 12:27 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I admire the west because they are some of the only governments that try to improve themselves.
If you were in Asia, chances are that they wouldn't care that you were discriminated against because you were not 'of that country' whatever the country (Korea, Japan, China) or Russia or, say, Mosambique or Ghana.
Doesn't matter what race you are, when you are the minority somewhere else, you would appreciate the understanding of these courses.
Salaam  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
