From rabble.ca

Top 10 list: How not to respond to Indigenous experiences of racism in Canada

BY MICHELLE REID | SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

Earlier this week, Ian Campeau of the band A Tribe Called Red made headlineswhen he argued that the Nepean Redskins, a youth football league in Ottawa, should change their name because "redskin" is a slur used against First Nations people. Predictably, non-Native people flocked to the internet comment threads to voice their objections to his opinion. Below, a summary of these knee-jerk responses that are always trotted out by the masses when indigenous Canadians describe their experiences of racism, and why you should not use them. 

1. Don't bring up your own experiences of discrimination.

 My favourite comment on the Nepean Redskins name debate comes from a man who proclaims that "my ancestors came right off the boat to Canada from Scotland however, they were badly discriminated against for many years," and then goes on to suggest that it's really the Indigenous people who are racist. Classy! Listen, we all know thateveryone's ancestors were invaded by the British and so you too can lay claim to historic oppression! And everyone has at one point or another been insulted for some intrinsic quality, and it made them feel bad. But someone calling you an "evil ginger" on the playground is not the same as living in a society that tramples your human rights and dignity. And even if you think your experience is equally bad -- or even worse! -- the fact is that this particular conversation is not about you. You know that person who interrupts someone else's story to say, "Oh man, I have an even WORSE story about flying with Air Canada"? Everyone hates that person. Don't be that person.

2. Don't claim you have more important things to worry about than racism.

 Someone is always eager to point out that there are "real things to worry about," like radiation or Syria or child poverty. This is a really cool way to say, "I don't care about you or your experience, but I'll mask my indifference by pretending I am fully preoccupied by a more important cause." Did you know it's possible for different awful things to be happening, and that there is not a finite amount of consideration for the awfulness of the world? That you caring about Syria does not preclude you acknowledging that racism is a damaging force in the lives of many, and that other people might want to pay attention to that too? It's true!

3. Don't argue that some racism is worse than other racism.

 Recently, AnOther Magazine put actress Michelle Williams on their cover, done up in dark makeup, feathers and braids. The cover was flagged and criticized for the depiction of Williams in "redface," but many felt that even if the cover was tasteless, redface was a grey area that wasn't as bad as, say, blackface. Even though it was pointed out by many that redface and blackface are both racist, detractors insisted that this wasn't bad enough to complain about. Let's just agree that all racism is bad, and should be avoided whenever possible.

4. Don't act like not being racist is a burden on you in particular.

 The discussions of headdresses at music festivals have illustrated an interesting phenomenon: people don't want to seem racist, but they also don't want to modify their behaviour at all. As Adrienne K from Native Appropriations has pointed out in detail,there are lots of good reasons why you shouldn't wear a headdress as a fashion statement. And yet many people act like it's a huge, unreasonable demand to ask them to shelf their Forever 21 headdress and wear something else to Coachella. But they fail to see that they have a choice: shelving their faux-Indigenous accessories or being easily identified as a lazy racist. That's a privilege, not a burden! You know who doesn't have a choice? Indigenous people, who have to see white teenagers trampling all over their identities and culture in pursuit of an awful trend.

5. Don't try and trap them in a racism logic puzzle.

Ian Campeau of A Tribe Called Red recently submitted to a tedious, insulting series of interview questions attempting to logic-puzzle him into admitting that some acts of cultural appopriation were okay and therefore all acts of cultural appropriation, including the one he thoughtfully objected to, were okay. Do not do this. Using inane thought experiments ("But what about the fact that Roman senators basically killed Christ and also threw Christians to lions, and The Ottawa Senators mascot is a lion?") to try and justify racism makes you sound not only like a racist but also like a C-minus philosophy undergraduate.

6. Don't trot out your "Native friend" stories. Did you text your one Native pal to see if he thought this incident was offensive and he texted back "dunno i guess not, what r u up 2 this wknd" and you have decided that opinion represents the other 1.4 million Indigenous people in Canada? In science we call that a "convenience sample" and it's cheerfully dismissed. That is, assuming we even believe you have this fictional convenient example friend.

7. Don't use ignorance as a shield.

"I don't get why this is racist!" you say, as if your similar ignorance about other topics -- astrophysics, post-modern literature -- are grounds to refute their existence or validity. It might be possible that as a person who does not belong to the cultural or ethnic group in question, you have never noticed certain incidents of racism or the erasure of identity because they just didn't apply to you. Your reality is not everyone's reality. Your reality is not necessarily the best or the most correct. If your reality involves dismissing or ignoring the suffering and dehumanization of others, well, it's definitely not the best or most correct.

8. Don't use history as a scapegoat or an excuse.

Yes, we know the past was racist. Extra-racist! But that was a long time ago, right? Well, no, it's a pretty unbroken continuum of racism. But don't pretend that just because the past was arguably worse, everything is fine now. Let's dare to strive for a higher standard than "Not as bad as smallpox blankets."

9. Don't refuse to acknowledge that you might be living in a racist society.

Everyone would prefer to think of themselves as not-racist. "I'm not racist," everyone insists, before detailing their racist position. But generally, insisting that you are not racist while trying to defend ideas that others have identified as racist is a losing battle. The fact is, Canada was founded on racism; it was so racist it was actually a role model to other racist regimes. It's likely that growing up here has resulted in internalizing some racist beliefs. It happens! If you're called out for them, don't trip over yourself to explain how you cannot possibly be racist because in your heart you know your intent was pure. Ask yourself: is it possible that living in a country that treats First Nations like a plague to be eradicated may be why you are so ready to dismiss their voices and claims, to assume that they are exaggerating or flat-out lying about their experiences? Is it possible that you might be wrong?

10. If you realise you're wrong, don't refuse to apologize.

Apologies are the mythical beasts of social interactions, especially when they are real apologies and not blame-shifting versions of "I'm sorry if you misunderstood what I was trying to say with this headdress." But we have a role model now: Paul Frank, designer (not to be confused with Frank Paul, an Indigenous man left to die by callous police officers!), held a terrible fashion party that was "powwow-themed" and was called out by Indigenous writers. Rather than defending their actions, or claiming that their detractors were just being hypersensitive, the company formally apologized, took responsibility for their actions, and made steps to rectify the situation by consulting with Indigenous designers on new, authentically First Nations collections. I'm not saying that if you make a tasteless Native joke you need to roll out a line of consumer goods in supplication, but a simple, "I see why I was wrong, and I'm sorry," goes a long way.

Michelle Reid is a health researcher, magazine editor and occasional writer living in Vancouver, BC. She is a proud member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation but doesn't use that as an excuse to wear headdresses to music festivals. She tweets frequently as @ponymalta

++++++

From WinnipegFreePress.com

SEPTEMBER 3, 2013

Racism yardstick: It's all about oppression

By David Camfield

What is racism? Manitoba media outlets have been full of coverage of the charge that a 2012 email sent by deputy premier Eric Robinson was racist.

The controversy took off after the media reported that Osborne House CEO Barbara Judt had filed a complaint with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission alleging racism. Provincial Tory Leader Brian Pallister and others have repeated that charge. As a result, as Free Press columnist Dan Lett puts it, "Robinson has been forced to fight the allegations he is a racist."

Racism is repugnant and harmful. That's why what's most worrying about the ongoing furor is the confusion about what racism is - and isn't.

In his 2002 book Racism: A Short History, historian George Fredrickson offers an excellent starting point for clarifying what racism is: "Racism exists when one ethnic group or historical collectivity dominates, excludes, or seeks to eliminate another on the basis of differences that it believes are hereditary and unalterable."

Fredrickson's summary contains three important insights. First, racism is a social or collective phenomenon, not simply a matter of individual behaviour. It involves a relationship between groups of people, one oppressing and the other oppressed. Of course, these groups are made up of individuals. People in the dominant group may actively practise racism, passively allow it to go on or consciously try to challenge it.

Second, a group of people who experience racism are treated as being somehow inherently different than members of the dominant group. Skin colour, other physical features, religion and cultural practices have all been singled out by dominant groups to define what makes oppressed groups inherently different.

Third, racism is entirely a creation of society. There is nothing natural about it or the different groups it creates.

As Fredrickson and many other researchers have shown, racism hasn't always existed. It spread and became a global phenomenon as European powers conquered and colonized other parts of the world.

Racism is quite different from how earlier conquerors sometimes treated the vanquished, and it's also different from how religious groups persecuted each other. With racism, the oppressed people are treated as inherently different and tainted.

Two examples illustrate this. The ancient Greeks saw people as either civilized or barbarians but this status was not something one inherited. Jews were undoubtedly oppressed in medieval Christian Europe because of their religion. Sometimes they were even murdered by mobs. But if they gave up their religion, they would no longer be oppressed. In Fredrickson's words, "even the mobs did not regard Jews as beyond redemption... to be baptized rather than killed was a real option." The development of racism turned the persecution of Jewish believers into the oppression of people designated as Jews, regardless of individuals' religious beliefs. In anti-Jewish racism, what mattered was "blood" ancestry, not religion.

Once we understand what racism is, we can see that in Canada today white people do not experience racism - on the contrary. White people as a group are not oppressed on the basis of their so-called race.

The evidence is clear. Equal rights in law don't translate into social equality. Whether we look at income, wealth, health, housing, unemployment, treatment by the police and the courts, political power or any other meaningful measure, it is people of colour and indigenous people who collectively are worse off.

Obviously many white people also have low incomes, live in poor housing or are treated badly on the job. This is a consequence of class division, not racism. The fact white people are less likely to experience such harmful conditions than indigenous people and people of colour shows who experiences racism in Canada and who doesn't.

No one denies some individuals who aren't white may have hostile attitudes to white people (given racism and colonialism past and present, is this any surprise?). The important point is such prejudices don't carry a lot of punch in a society in which white people as a group aren't oppressed. Such attitudes aren't manifestations of racism.

Once we take a step back and see Robinson's email in this larger context, it's obvious the allegations of racism against him are wrong and misguided.

In a racially divided province such as Manitoba, if there is anything positive about this situation, it's that there's an opportunity to sort out what racism is so more people can take effective action against it.

David Camfield is an associate professor in the labour studies program at the University of Manitoba, where he teaches a course on racism and work.