Ari Hits Home

“I would start on the issue of anti-Semitism by not having a mayor who refers to us — the Jewish people in this room — with a derogatory name that starts with ‘k,’” he said. “We cannot have a mayor like that because that is where it starts.”

 

Ari makes a damned good point here. 

 

Bigotry is something that exists in every society, seething just beneath the surface.  It's particularly prominent in places where a population or subset of the population feels like they're getting the short end of the stick.  Bigotry is always looking for validation by people of position, which enables it to push the envelope that much further.

 

There's a lot of anger out there right now, bitterness at the economy fueled by hyper-partisan populist nonsense at all levels.  And as we all know, Jews are history's favourite scapegoats.  At this particular juncture in history, our leaders don't get the luxury of "being human," if that means setting the wrong example for others to follow - which Rob Ford has unquestionably done.

 

The Fords don't see themselves as bigots, of course - from their point of view, they call a spade a spade.  Black youth are in need of a white saviour, but make for good slumin' buddies; gay people are a menace to society; anyone who believes in social responsibility is clearly a weak-minded fool.

 

That their supporters feel empowered to use the Ford Nation brand when sending in hate-mail to elected officials is deeply disturbing.  For elected officials to brush off or bait-and-switch on such issues of hate committed in their name is truly alarming.

 

While more polished candidates have been hesitant to poke the Ford Nation bear for fear of reprisal, Ari has the guts to call out bigotry for what it is.

 

Good on him.  Now's not the time for good folk to do nothing.  It's the time for them to speak out against bigotry with a strong voice.

 

As tension mounts globally and locally, we're going to need leaders like Ari unafraid to speak truth to power, even when personal risk is involved.

 

Ari's not the kind of guy to pick a fight - but he's certainly showing the willingness to end one.

 

I'm glad he's increasingly being included in the debates - his is a voice we need to be hearing more often.

Stimga and Straining the Limits of Perception

"We know that racialized youth face challenges with marginalisation, racism, employment barriers, education setbacks, and social and cultural isolation that can have a negative impact on their development."

Earlier in the month I was at a downtown Toronto event - a typically diverse crowd spanning age, gender, ethnicity, everything.  Towards the beginning of this event I was talking with a Korean-Canadian friend, Mr. Chung; fifties, average height, a little overweight.  A young "white" guy I knew came up to say hi to me and I introduced the two of them.

Towards the end of the night, my Caucasian friend came back to me to say goodbye. He had carefully remembered my Korean friend's name and said bye to the East Asian man I was talking with.

One problem - it wasn't the same guy.

As the night wound down I was speaking to a Chinese-Canadian who'd barely turned forty and was in good shape.

Put my Korean-Canadian friend and my Chinese-Canadian friend side by side, I could easily tell them apart. Given time my white friend would have learned to do the same, but right then and there, he could have been looking at silhouettes.  To him, they looked the same.

You could call that ignorance or a passive form of racism.  Me, I know it as a limitation of cognitive capacity.  It's something I have seen the world over, have experienced from both sides.  People, especially those of limited exposure to diversity are prone to generalizations.

 If I put a set of identical twins in front of you, you'd probably couldn't tell them apart.  Get to know those two individuals, though, and you'll begin to spot subtle differences in freckles, body mass, personality.  With time, you'll learn to clearly and quickly identify which twin is which, even if you don't see them together. Unless, that is, you don't associate any value in developing nuanced perspectives.   if you'd rather see the world as black and white, your brain will literally push back against the cognitive strain in the way muscles ache when they're exercised.

This is a pretty significant thing to understand as it explains stigma, why we fail to design social infrastructure that's inclusive and why we often fail to design services for end-users.  It's why George Bush preferred giving people nicknames instead of bothering to learn their given names and why Rob Ford doesn't think bikes belong on roads "designed for cars."

Bigotry is ignorance and ignorance is natural. We generalize because we need to; new stimuli must be rapidly assessed for potential threat (which is why simple narratives tend to focus on negatives). If we couldn't do that, new stimuli that could harm us wouldn't get properly assessed.  Why do wild animals unexposed to people not feel threatened by them? Because they have no memory file that tells them they should.

Why do people unexposed to other ethnicity tend to stigmatise The Other? Because we have a mental model of what people look like - us.  If something kinda looks like what it should but kinda doesn't, like a person who is unhealthy, we're programed for threat response.

The exact opposite formula explains why beautiful people have less employment challenges that unattractive ones.  We stigmatise in favour of visual cues on how we perceive health first, everything else after.

This might sound alarming to you - after all, the basic message is that we're not in control of how we think. That alarm bell you're feeling is the burn of your cognitive muscle flexing.  Ponder it a while and you'll be comfortable with the notion that humans run more on autopilot than we are in conscious control.
 

It's Never The Crime, But the Coverup That Condemns Us

"Torture is at the very centre of these prosecutions. Unless these trials are moved to a system with traditional due process protections, we face the shameful possibility that Khadr and others will be convicted with statements that were literally beaten out of them."

 

 

Omar Khadr is coming home.

 

There's not a lot of sympathy for Khadr here at home.  The general impression is that he's a bad kid, a soldier-killer from a bad family.  A psychologist has even suggested Khadr is "evil."  All of this, of course, is based on the impressions we have been given by governments, the military and the media.  None of us really know Omar Khadr as a person, not at all.  He hasn't been allowed to be one since 2002, when he was fifteen years old.

 

Once back in Canada, though, all of that landed perception is going to be challenged.  Looking at the evidence, there's already a pretty compelling case to be made that the handling of Khadr was a complete bungle in which many were complicit.  Sadly, this isn't a story without precedent - remember Maher Arar?

It could very well turn out that Khadr didn't kill Christopher Speer, was tortured into admitting he committed the crime while he himself was severely wounded and all this happening while he was 15 years old - a child in the eyes of the law.
 

Of course, the facts won't matter to some.  They've already made up their minds; anything else will be interpreted as spin by sympathizers or the whine of bleeding hearts.  There's a word for this confabulated justification of emotional responses - bigotry.

 

We keep telling ourselves that we are fighting against those who seek to destroy Western Civilization as embodied by freedom of person, freedom of speech and blind justice - yet we're narrowing that definition to exclude those we don't like.

Maybe it's time we start re-evaluating whether the greatest threat comes from troubles lapping at our shores, or from willful ignorance within our borders.