Canada: an open, peaceful and caring society that welcomes newcomers and values

[Guest guest]

, " jagbir singh "

<adishakti_org> wrote:

>

> i had the great fortune of being born in Malaysia before moving on

> to Canada. Canada's experience with diversity distinguishes it

> from most other countries. Our 30 million inhabitants reflect a

> cultural, ethnic and linguistic makeup found nowhere else on

> earth. Approximately 200,000 immigrants a year from all parts of

> the globe continue to choose Canada, drawn by its quality of life

> and its reputation as an open, peaceful and caring society that

> welcomes newcomers and values diversity.

>

>

 

A burning issue for us all

 

The violence in Paris is a warning to the whole of Europe that race

issues have become central to politics

 

Trevor Phillips

Sunday November 6, 2005

The Observer

 

 

In the Caribbean, the phrase 'nine nights' usually betokens a period

of mourning. France's nine nights of rioting started in the Paris

suburbs and spread to other cities, including Marseille, Dijon and

Rouen. They were triggered by the deaths of two French teenagers of

North African extraction, who were fleeing the police, no doubt

fearing the routine harassment meted out to black and Arab youths in

France's ghettoised banlieue. The hundreds of cars that have now

been burnt in French streets are pyres that mark the passing of a

French delusion - that the incantation of 'liberté, égalité,

fraternité' would somehow mask the réalité °of life for non-white

French men and women: repression, discrimination, segregation.

 

The French establishment, which a generation ago exiled immigrant

workers to the doughnut of miserable new towns around Paris, is in

full panic mode. Prime Minister Dominique Villepin called emergency

cabinet meetings, met the bereaved parents and urged a moderate

response. His rival for the presidency, Interior Minister Nicolas

Sarkozy, having denounced the rioting youths as 'scum', ordered a

police lockdown. Whoever wins this power struggle will instantly

become the frontrunner for the top job.

 

France is not alone. The Netherlands, which most of the world had

marked down as the ultimate in relaxed, progressive cosmopolitanism,

is gripped by a vicious anti-Muslim backlash. Both reactionary

Christian conservatives and anxious liberal secularists talk openly

and sometimes approvingly of the virtues of 'black' and 'white'

schools which inoculate the Dutch from the 'toxin' of Islam.

 

Across the Atlantic, the issue of race, ghettoisation and neglect

has also penetrated mainstream politics. The sight of thousands of

poor, elderly African-Americans left to fester in a sports stadium,

sheltering from hurricane Katrina, ripped away the mask created by

celebration of black success in entertainment, sport and politics,

to reveal a nation that remains deeply divided by ethnicity. The

government's faltering response marked the moment that George W

Bush's presidency started its slide into disrepute.

 

Everywhere, smugness about the state of race relations is being

punctured. And this is no longer the patronising 'be kind to blacks'

territory with which politicians and minority leaders of the past

may have felt safe. It is big politics, on which governments will

stand or fall. In the 1970s and 1980s, industrial relations marked a

tense dividing line in Western societies. Disputes periodically

erupted into dangerous and even violent confrontation - remember

Orgreave, Grunwick and Wapping? - that menaced and sometimes brought

down governments. Race relations threaten to become a similarly

potent battlefront in the first part of the 21st century.

 

In the UK, we passed, 40 years ago this week, the first serious anti-

discrimination laws in Europe. A generation ago, we set up what has

become a network of local race equalitycouncils, involving several

hundred full-time workers and tens of thousands of unpaid

volunteers. Their patient work at local level has often prevented

tensions flaring into open conflict, but the face-off in Birmingham

two weekends ago shows we still have to be smarter and work harder.

We cannot afford to hope that everything will come right with time

and goodwill.

 

There are two big mistakes we could make. The first is to imagine

that racial conflict is caused only by the sort of foul white

supremacists convicted last week, or by the sick bigots (who may

have been white or black) who desecrated a Muslim cemetery in

Birmingham. The million or so people who voted for BNP councillors

last year aren't all knuckle-dragging racist apes. Many are ordinary

folk frightened by the pace of change in their communities who can

be persuaded that somehow this must be the fault of people who do

not look like them.

 

The other error is to believe that regeneration of areas in which

poor minorities live will overcome all differences. Yes, the poor

need jobs and better homes, but this will not be enough. In New

Orleans, the left-behind blacks complained of being neglected. In

Paris, when asked what they want, young people say: 'Stop addressing

us as tu ', a bit like the French equivalent of being addressed

as 'boy' in pre-civil rights America.

 

In Birmingham, African-Caribbean and Asian community leaders talk

about a lack of mutual respect. So, alongside equality of material

things, we have to instil other kinds of equality, starting with

equality of esteem between different communities.

 

Another missing equality is that of power: why is it that in all the

countries involved there are still so few minority politicians who

have clout? Even the much-vaunted American success story can only

boast one black senator. We, who should be able to count more than

60 MPs from minority communities, can muster just 15.

 

Finally, we need equality of interaction. The far right thrives on

our residential segregation, which allows them to scare people about

communities they do not know and understand. And when we have the

chance to mix with people not like ourselves, we increasingly fail

to seize it.

 

At the CRE, our integration agenda - more equality enforcement, new

targets for government, better scrutiny of new laws, more diverse

public appointments - is designed to meet this challenge. But there

is only so much we can do.

 

This is a job, above all, for politics. And so far, politics seems

distressingly comfortable either fighting old race battles or

celebrating our imagined happy diversity.

 

Our French neighbours are giving us the loudest alarm call they can.

Wake up, everybody.

 

· Trevor Phillips is chair of the Commission for Racial Equality

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1635431,00.html