Institutional Racism In Conservative Ideology

This post has been evolving for quite a long time.  However, in the last few days, a series of pieces have been published which bring together several threads of thought that I have been exploring for the last several years.  

There has long been a degree of bigotry and racism underlying modern day conservative ideologies.  At a glance, it appears to have its roots in the politics of religious literalism and the desire for simple, black-and-white explanations of the world in which we live.  My thinking on this matter has clarified enormously in the last few days.

The first part of this was a very thoughtful analysis published in the Toronto Star:  "The Ideological Roots of Stephen Harper's Vendetta Against Sociology".

Harper’s two disparaging comments about sociology, however, also need to be understood alongside his gutting of the long-form census in 2010. It is widely accepted that this action fundamentally undermined Canada’s ability to understand its own demographics, long-term social trends, and inequalities — in short, its sociology.

So what does Harper have against sociology? First, Harper is clearly trumpeting a standard component of neo-liberal ideology: that there are no social phenomena, only individual incidents. (This ideology traces back to Margaret Thatcher’s famous claim that “there is no such thing as society.”) Neo-liberalism paints all social problems as individual problems. The benefit of this for those who share Harper’s agenda, of course, is that if there are no social problems or solutions, then there is little need for government. Individuals are solely responsible for the problems they face.

If this isn't chilling to you, it certainly should be, because it is a concise explanation of the apparent blindness of the Harper government to the consequences of decisions such as cancelling the long form census and other tools which can be used to inform government policy.

The second and third pieces of this story were published in the Calgary Sun today.  The first being Lorne Gunter's column:  Aboriginal Leaders: Canada's Shame in its Relations With First Nations.

Aboriginal leaders claim the Harper government's decision highlights Canada's "shame" in its relations with First Peoples. They believe it is proof of widespread racism and sexism in the government and in the broader Canadian society as a whole. 

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says the Harper government is "out of touch" and "on the wrong side of history." 

The United Nations - that paragon of sanctimony, hypocrisy and inaction on real human rights abuses around the world - has chimed in. 

And even the country's police chiefs have insisted something must be done. 

So does all this support mean an inquiry really would be a good idea? 

No, it is simply another example of how much our nation's elites (police chiefs included) are seized by political correctness.

It's true that aboriginal women and girls are killed or disappear with greater frequency than non-aboriginal women - nearly three times as much. But the "why" is not as much of a mystery as our chattering classes would have us believe.

Most murdered or disappeared aboriginal women are not the victims of some vast conservative conspiracy or of white racism. They are the victims of the men in their lives.

Most killed or abused aboriginal women are killed or abused by aboriginal men - not callous white cops or violent white johns.

Wait a minute.  Nobody in their right mind is going to believe that a public inquiry is going to identify the guilty culprits.  That isn't the purpose of an inquiry.  The purpose of such an inquiry is to ask much bigger questions.  Questions such as whether the conditions on reservations contribute to domestic violence, and how a man like Picton managed to operate for multiple years, or why aboriginal people are grossly over-represented in Canada's prisons.

Of course, if you take a simplistic, black-and-white view of the world, any murder boils down to "catch the offender and punish them".  Simple, easy and horrendously misguided.   If you don't ask the big picture questions about these situations, you will never fully understand what is going on.  In fact, one is left very much in the dark, with the rather ridiculous assumption that bad people do bad things and that's all there is to it.

Anyone with even a little bit of grounding in reality and common sense will have long ago realized that people respond individual to their circumstances, and collectively to their environment.  Sociology is the study of societies and their behaviours.  The systems within a societal context will influence the individuals living in it.

In Canada, we have over two centuries of relations with the First Nations.  There are enormous problems with these relations, and much of it goes to the differences in what the First Nations understand the treaties to mean and how the Indian Act enacts those same treaties.  I know there are a plethora of other issues to be considered as well, but at its core, the Indian Act is a profoundly flawed piece of legislation which assumes the "superiority" of Colonial-era British society relative to the First Nations and very much embodies a series of structures that to modern eyes arguably impose a degree of structural and system racism which acts against our First Nations.

The overly simplistic rubric of the Harper Government blinds it to these issues.

The second item was a column by Michael Coren:  In The Wake of Tragedy a Sobering Reality

As a Catholic I can tell you with absolute certainty that if countless horrors had been committed by Catholics in the name of Catholicism, I and legions of my co-religionists would protest. I know the same would be true of most other religions and cultures.

Coren's claim that he would protest if countless horrors had been committed in the name of Catholicism is of course completely undermined by his own past utterances on a wide range of matters, not to mention his relative silence with regards to the sex abuse scandal that has plagued his Church for decades now.

But, we are told, these repeated beheadings and murders have nothing to do with most law-abiding, civilized Muslims. Perhaps so, but then it could be argued that neither does a book by Salman Rushdie or a drawing by a Danish cartoonist but that hasn’t stopped endless demonstrations and threats. 

Then there is the reality of the Islamic response. While I am sure that most Muslims are appalled by what happened to James Foley, even a cursory glance at social media reveals thousands of comments defending and justifying what happened, by Muslims on every continent. It might be comforting to believe that Islamist violence and bloodlust is a fringe psychosis, but every survey and all of the anecdotal evidence indicates that a sizeable minority of Muslims support it, an even greater number feel it is in some obscure way justified, and more still refuse to condemn it.

Funny how Coren can see this so clearly in the Muslim faith, and is so quick to call it out while turning a blind eye to the centuries of misdeeds done in the name of Catholicism.

While Coren may well be his own special brand of crazy, his blindness to the systemic racism and bigotry of his position is no different than that of Harper.  The simple, harsh reality is that the ideology they all subscribe to blinds them to the systemic problems they are creating and the very problems which aggravate already awful situations.

The minute you take a position that there "is no such thing as society", it becomes easy to wash one's hands of collective responsibility.  Perhaps the even greater irony of that is that same flight from collective responsibility makes it easier to label entire groups as "other" and criticize them for not meeting whatever arbitrary standard you may set.

I am quite certain that if you were to confront Harper, Gunter or Coren with the implicit bigotry of their positions, they would deny it.  Their very ideological constructs are so limited in their understanding of large, complex systems like societies that they cannot comprehend the idea that their positions foster othering and judgments on incomplete information.

A stage is not only set upon which racism and ethnic bigotry can flourish.  In Harper's Canada, it is not only growing and flourishing, but the flames of ire are being fanned by it.  I can only hope that we are able to replace our current government with one whose perspective encompasses a much broader view of what Canada is, and what it can become.

Of Just Societies and Aboriginal Affairs

Many years ago, when I was but a small child, Pierre Trudeau spoke of a "Just Society".  It is a noble, if somewhat lofty and abstract goal.

The Just Society will be one in which the rights of minorities will be safe from the whims of intolerant majorities. The Just Society will be one in which those regions and groups which have not fully shared in the country's affluence will be given a better opportunity. The Just Society will be one where such urban problems as housing and pollution will be attacked through the application of new knowledge and new techniques. The Just Society will be one in which our Indian and Inuit populations will be encouraged to assume the full rights of citizenship through policies which will give them both greater responsibility for their own future and more meaningful equality of opportunity. The Just Society will be a united Canada, united because all of its citizens will be actively involved in the development of a country where equality of opportunity is ensured and individuals are permitted to fulfil themselves in the fashion they judge best.

When I read this morning's article on Huffington Post about the broken education system on Canada's reserves, I was appalled.  I have long understood that our reserve system was badly broken on many levels.  When the level of spending on education for students on reserves is half what students elsewhere in Canada receive, there is a serious problem.

There is a wide gulf between how the federal government funds students on reserves and the spending per student in provincial school systems. Some estimates peg the amount of on-reserve funding at just half what other Canadian students receive.

This isn't a failing of one government.  It is a long term failure of Canada's governments - one that likely as not goes all the way back to governments that succeeded Sir John A. Macdonald.    Whether through deliberate action, or simple ignorance, Canada's governments have dropped this ball repeatedly.

It doesn't help that over time, attitudes such as the following expressed in the comments on Huffington Post have taken root:

they have educations handed to them books, lodging ,financial aid just because of their ethnicity way more than non natives have i wish i had all of these options handed to me then i could afford university

Unfortunately, people hear about the funding which is available to aboriginal students in Canada, they presume that everything is handed to them "on a platter".  When we are in a place such that high school students have to live away from their families during a key part of their development as human beings and in their education - a recipe for failure if there ever was one.

The proposed changes to aboriginal education released this fall appear to continue to perpetuate the already broken system:

Under the draft legislation, band councils would be allowed to operate schools directly, as many already do, but also to purchase services from regional or provincial school boards or even from the private sector. First Nations could also form education authorities that would oversee one or more schools in a region. 

But it would be the federal government that would set and enforce standards for schools on reserves. And the minister would retain the power to take over a school or school authority if an inspector finds problems.

The broken system here is patriarchal in form.  Where the "minister has the power to take over a school or school authority", there is an implicit distrust in place.  On one level, it may appear to be a reasonable piece of authority for the crown to wield, but in the broader context of relations with Canada's First Nations, it seems too much akin to the same kind of system that has been built on the assumption that First Nations are not "ready" or "able" to manage these programs themselves.

Given the political relationship between the Federal Government and Canada's First Nations, this is no trivial matter.  Certainly, money is part of the picture, but another part has to be addressing the degree of control that the Federal Government exerts over First Nations.  The Kelowna Accord (nearly a decade ago now) appears to have been an ambitious first step in addressing these issues.

Unfortunately, Harper pitched the whole thing in the trash, and since then has done little on the file.

By any measure, what we have today is far from just where First Nations are concerned.  Much needs to change.

I'm No Expert On Aboriginal Issues ...

But I'm pretty sure that the Harper Government(tm) isn't doing it right.  

Carolyn Bennett has an excellent article on Huffington Post today on the subject in light of the most recent bunch of documents to be released from the RCMP's investigation into the Senate mess:

We now know the Conservatives' refusal to fund First Nations students attending school on reserves at the same level as their provincial counterparts is coming straight from the top. An internal PMO memo released as part of the ITO suggested language to the Prime Minister to reprimand the Conservative Leader in the Senate for not having better control over Senators and the work of Senate Committees. The memo specifically uses a Senate report calling on the government to "invest heavily in Aboriginal education" as an example of a failure to ensure "Government messaging and direction are followed." 

This is not just a shocking example of Stephen Harper's anti-democratic command and control style of government, but clearly demonstrates that the Prime Minister callously refuses to provide First Nations students with the equality of opportunity they deserve. The federal government only provides half to two-thirds of the per-student funding for First Nation schools compared to provincial schools and only one third of First Nations students are graduating high school. Rather than fixing the funding gaps highlighted by First Nations, the Auditor General and numerous other reports, the response of the Prime Minister is to simply clamp down on Parliamentarians trying to highlight the issue. Whether it is First Nations water systems, housing or education, the Conservative answer is to ignore funding shortfalls and download further responsibilities onto already underfunded First Nations with no additional resources.

 I don't know what the right answers are, but when our own government's internal communications is treating Canada's First Nations peoples as "adversaries", there is little chance that we will see meaningful reform and improvement of the lot of our First Nations under this government.

Canada deserves better than this, our First Nations deserve better.

Will Fracking Be The Catalyst?

In the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot in the news regarding Canada's First Nations.  The UN Special Rapporteur finished his tour and quite correctly stated that Canada is facing a crisis with respect to its relations with its First Nations.

Harper threw a couple of ambiguous references to Aboriginal peoples in the Speech From The Throne, but it seems unlikely that any of those represent meaningful change as the aboriginal peoples would like to see.

Ironically, the thing that might just serve as a catalyst for a meaningful change for Canada's First Nations in the national dialogue is resource exploitation.  Whether that is Fracking, Oilsands, or Transportation of those resources, the public is not entirely in love with these practices.  Industry hasn't been very successful in gaining public support for their efforts.  Outside of Alberta (which is a political anomaly in Canada), there seems to be a great deal of discomfort with these practices, and events like today's rail explosion will only serve to make more Canadians uncomfortable with the implications of how these resources are being exploited.

While the events this week in New Brunswick are profoundly troubling on a number of levels, the protest itself is aimed at a target which I think a good many Canadians will be able to get behind and support - namely putting the brakes on exploiting resources using techniques which are coming increasingly into question.  What exactly happened between the RCMP and the protestors to provoke the heavy response from the RCMP and the escalation into violence and property destruction is not clear to me, and the accounts that I have been able to find have all suffered from a distinct feeling of being incomplete.  

That said, Canada's First Nations people are at a crossroads with respect to the national dialogue.  If they play their hand carefully, First Nations will be able to use this to initiate a much broader discussion with the engagement of Canadians as a whole.  Canadians are becoming more and more wary of the activities of large corporations and a government which is increasingly willing to bend to their will, and the combination of ongoing problems related to fracking activity, issues with the oil sands developments and the repeating problems with transportation of oil and bitumen creates a point of shared intersection where a conversation might be started.