tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/racist-31180/articlesRacist – The Conversation2023-07-11T20:05:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2080092023-07-11T20:05:09Z2023-07-11T20:05:09ZWhat is ‘reverse racism’ – and what’s wrong with the term?<p>“Reverse racism” is sometimes used to describe situations where white people believe they are negatively stereotyped or discriminated against because of their whiteness – or treated less favourably than people of colour. </p>
<p>“Reverse racism” claims have surfaced in the current debate around the <a href="https://theconversation.com/10-questions-about-the-voice-to-parliament-answered-by-the-experts-207014">Voice to Parliament</a> referendum. “The concept looks racist to me,” <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/building-a-voice-to-parliament-into-our-constitution-would-divide-us-along-racial-lines-and-do-nothing-to-change-the-past/news-story/794a86f16d664e6a4ebfbed589b27a01">wrote Sky News commentator Kel Richards</a> last August.</p>
<p>Such views misrepresent the Voice as preferential treatment of First Nations peoples, falsely suggesting it would somehow weaken the political say of non-Indigenous Australians.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/far-from-undermining-democracy-the-voice-will-pluralise-and-enrich-australias-democratic-conversation-205384">Far from undermining democracy, The Voice will pluralise and enrich Australia’s democratic conversation</a>
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<p>Complaints of reverse racism can be found in the community more generally, too.
“I think average, working-class, white Australian males have it the hardest out of anyone in society,” said one 23-year-old man in a <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2673-995X/3/1/19">2023 study</a> of Australian men, “we are the victims of reverse racism”. </p>
<p>“Reverse racism” is an idea that focuses on prejudiced attitudes towards a certain (racialised) group, or unequal personal treatment – namely, discrimination. But it ignores one of racism’s central markers: power.</p>
<p>“Prejudice plus (institutional) power” is the widely accepted basic definition of racism. Or, as <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-07453-002">two researchers defined it</a> in 1988: “Racism equals power plus prejudice.”</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jun/04/aamer-rahman-reverse-racism-comedy-tour">famous 2013 sketch</a>, comedian Ahmer Rahman said, yes, reverse racism is possible … if you go back in a time machine and convince the leaders of Africa, Asia and the Middle East to invade and dominate Europe hundreds of years ago, leading to systemic inequality across every facet of social and economic life, “so all their descendants would want to migrate [to] where black and brown people come from”.</p>
<p>Put simply, the concept of “reverse racism” – or “anti-white racism” – just doesn’t work, because racism is more than just prejudice.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Comedian Ahmer Rahman unpacks ‘reverse racism’, and why making it real would need a time machine.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Why ‘reverse racism’ is a myth</h2>
<p>Prejudice and discrimination are inherently tied to historically rooted and entrenched, institutionalised forms of systemic racism and racial hierarchies, injustices and power imbalance. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-systemic-racism-and-institutional-racism-131152">Explainer: what is systemic racism and institutional racism?</a>
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<p>The continuing lack of diverse representation in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/25/the-47th-parliament-is-the-most-diverse-ever-but-still-doesnt-reflect-australia">political</a>, social and economic positions of influence is just one of many indicators that we’re still a long way from living in a post-racial society. </p>
<p>White people may be called a derogatory name with a reference to their whiteness. They may be discriminated against: for example, by an ethnic business owner who prefers to employ someone from their community background. </p>
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<span class="caption">Far-right activist Lauren Southern.</span>
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<p>This may sometimes be unlawful. At other times, it may be a lawful form of “positive action” or “affirmative action”, aimed at reducing historically entrenched, intergenerational and systemic inequalities. </p>
<p>But in all these instances – and regardless of whether it’s lawful or not – the term racism, or “reverse racism”, would not apply. </p>
<h2>How common are reverse racism claims?</h2>
<p>A representative US survey, conducted by PEW in <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/race-in-america-2019/">2019</a>, found that around 12% of respondents believed “being white hurts people’s ability to get ahead in the country nowadays”. Among white Republicans, the proportion was 22%. It was only 3% among white Democrats.</p>
<p>A more recent US survey, in <a href="https://theconversation.com/poll-reveals-white-americans-see-an-increase-in-discrimination-against-other-white-people-and-less-against-other-racial-groups-185278">2022</a>, concluded that 30% of white respondents saw “a lot more discrimination against white Americans”. </p>
<p>Representative data on these issues is lacking in Australia. But there is evidence a significant minority of Australians seem convinced anti-white racism is a thing. </p>
<p>A 2018 <a href="https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/128799/4/Reverse%20racism%20and%20white%20victimhood%20in%20Australia%20JIS%20March%202018%20clean.pdf">Australian survey</a> found that around 10% of respondents who stated they had witnessed racism as bystanders said the victim of the allegedly “racist” incident was a white person. </p>
<p>Another recent (non-representative) <a href="https://periscopekasaustralia.com.au/papers/volume-10-2-2023/demarcating-australias-far-right-political-fringe-but-social-mainstream/">survey</a> of 335 Australian men in 2021 showed that one in three respondents agreed with the statement: “white people are the victims these days”.</p>
<p>Australian senator <a href="https://theconversation.com/pauline-hanson-built-a-political-career-on-white-victimhood-and-brought-far-right-rhetoric-to-the-mainstream-134661">Pauline Hanson</a> has been complaining about “reverse racism” since her maiden speech to parliament in 1996, when she described “the privileges Aboriginals enjoy over other Australians”. <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/pauline-hansons-1996-maiden-speech-to-parliament-full-transcript-20160915-grgjv3.html">She said</a>:</p>
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<p>We now have a situation where a type of reverse racism is applied to mainstream Australians by those who promote political correctness […]</p>
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<p>Gamilaraay man <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2020/mar/12/its-time-to-put-an-end-to-the-gaslighting-that-occurs-every-day-in-australia">Joshua Waters says</a> most First Nations Australians have heard this kind of sentiment, and statements like: “Uh, I’m not racist. You’re racist for calling me racist. Actually, that’s reverse racism!”</p>
<p>But as he has argued, “To be called racist for identifying actual racist behaviours and rhetoric is not OK.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-believers-in-white-genocide-are-spreading-their-hate-filled-message-in-australia-106605">How believers in 'white genocide' are spreading their hate-filled message in Australia</a>
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<h2>Backlash against racial justice</h2>
<p>“Reverse racism” sometimes reflects a naïve but profound lack of racial literacy. But more often, it’s a defensive backlash against societal reckoning with racial injustices, both past and present. </p>
<p>And it’s often an expression of “<a href="https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116">white fragility</a>” in the face of an <a href="https://scanloninstitute.org.au/mapping-social-cohesion-2022">increasing awareness</a> of racism in Australia – as epitomised by Hanson’s political career.</p>
<p>“Reverse racism” claims are often strategically adopted by right-wing populist political actors and far-right fringe movements, to garner support and recruit new sympathisers and members. This can manifest in political stunts such as the infamous “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/15/australia/pauline-hanson-white-australia-intl/index.html">ok to be white</a>” motion Hanson put to the Australian Senate in 2018, which claimed to condemn alleged “anti-white racism”. </p>
<p>The phrase “it’s OK to be white” had <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-17/origins-of-its-ok-to-be-white-slogan-supremacists-united-states/10385716">previously been used</a> by white supremacists in the US.</p>
<p>Anti-white racism claims have also been expressed in more explicit, aggressive and extreme ways: as threats of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-believers-in-white-genocide-are-spreading-their-hate-filled-message-in-australia-106605">white genocide</a>”, a core neo-Nazi belief. </p>
<p>In far-right extremist movements, in Australia and globally, these conspiratorial narratives are commonly used to mobilise – and in some cases, have become crucial drivers for – white supremacy terror attacks, like the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, which killed 51 people and injured 49.</p>
<p>“Reverse racism” is a skewed, reductionist and ultimately inaccurate understanding of racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mario Peucker receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth).</span></em></p>‘Reverse racism’ focuses on prejudiced attitudes towards a certain (racialised) group, or unequal personal treatment. But it ignores one of racism’s central markers: power.Mario Peucker, Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2004172023-04-25T12:27:16Z2023-04-25T12:27:16ZWhite power movements in US history have often relied on veterans – and not on lone wolves<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512087/original/file-20230223-4425-vmxhup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A member of the Ku Klux Klan shouts at counterprotesters during a July 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va., calling for the protection of Southern Confederate monuments.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/member-of-the-ku-klux-klan-shouts-at-counter-protesters-news-photo/810860866?phrase=white%20supremacists%20rally&adppopup=true">Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>For decades, the white power movement has gained steady momentum in the U.S. <a href="https://history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core-faculty/kathleen-belew.html">Kathleen Belew</a> is an expert on the history of the white power movement and its current impact on American society and politics. Her book “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America</a>” examines how the aftermath of the Vietnam War led to the birth of the white power movement.</em></p>
<p><em>In March 2023, Belew spoke at the <a href="https://www.imaginesolutionsconference.com/">Imagine Solutions Conference</a> in Naples, Florida, about how the narrative of the “lone wolf” actor distracts from the broader threat of the white power movement in America. The Conversation asked Belew about her work. Her edited answers are below.</em></p>
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<h2>What is the white power movement?</h2>
<p>The white power movement is an array of activists that is, in all ways but race, remarkably diverse. Since the late 1970s, it has convened people of a wide variety of belief systems, including <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/ku-klux-klan">Klansmen</a>, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/neo-nazi">neo-Nazis</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/77.3.1221">white separatists</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/883115867/white-supremacist-ideas-have-historical-roots-in-u-s-christianity">proponents</a> of white supremacist religious theologies, and, starting in the late 1980s, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2016.1243349">racist skinheads</a> and militia movement members. These activists represent a <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">wide range</a> of class positions. The movement has long included men, women and children; felons and religious leaders; high school dropouts and holders of advanced degrees; civilians and veterans and active-duty military personnel. They have lived in all regions of the country, including suburbs, cities and rural areas.</p>
<h2>How has the legacy of US warfare fueled white power groups?</h2>
<p>After every major American war, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">the historical record</a> shows a surge in membership and activity among extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. In each example, <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/military-police-and-rise-terrorism-united-states">these groups also adopt</a> elements of military activity, like uniforms, weapons and the latest military tactics. But this doesn’t mean that these surges are entirely composed of veterans. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Violence-Military-Social-Weapons-ebook/dp/B00PSSF7UC?ref_=ast_author_dp">All measures of violence rise after warfare</a>, including acts carried out by women, children and older people. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan have been able to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bring-War-Home-Movement-Paramilitary/dp/0674237692/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678477040&sr=8-1">use this postwar opportunity</a> for their own purposes: recruitment and radicalization.</p>
<h2>When and why did the white power movement emerge in the US?</h2>
<p>The white power movement <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/the-secret-history-of-white-power.html">came together</a> in the late 1970s around a <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/605661710">shared narrative of the Vietnam War</a>. In this narrative, the war exemplifies the failure of government, the betrayal of the American people by the government and the betrayal of American men by the state. </p>
<p>Disillusioned veterans and civilians alike mobilized around a number of other <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Backlash-Undeclared-Against-American-Women/dp/0307345424">social grievances, such as dissatisfaction</a> with changes caused by feminism, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eyesontheprize-responses-coming-civil-rights-movement/">Civil Rights Movement</a> and other movements at home, as well as frustrations with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-74.2.366">economic changes like the farms crisis</a> and the general move to financialization in the 1970s that made it harder to find and keep a working-class job.</p>
<p>This disaffection allowed for the white power movement to recruit in two different ways: narrative force – the story that was used to hold these activists together; and contextual force – the social grievances many of them had in common.</p>
<h2>What role do women play in the white supremacist movement?</h2>
<p>People often think of the white power and militia movements as men’s movements. It’s true that the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/">majority of media reports heavily feature men</a>; that’s because those who participate in public demonstrations and those who get arrested because of underground activity tend to be men. But this is a movement that has relied in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190204204.013.37">extraordinarily heavy ways on women</a>. </p>
<p>Women have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190265144.003.0013">been tasked with normalizing</a> and legitimating violence, orchestrating recruitment and maintaining the relationships that allow this movement to operate as a social network. Take, for instance, the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">Aryan Nations World Congress</a>, a 1983 meeting in which the white power movement declared war on the United States. This meeting featured men’s speeches and ideological activities, a cross burning and a swastika burning. But it also featured matchmaking and a big spaghetti dinner, which socially bound activists together to enable the organization of violence. Women were indispensable for arranging these kinds of activities and for maintaining strong relationships between groups.</p>
<h2>Where do US veterans fit in?</h2>
<p>Veterans are specifically targeted for recruitment into white power groups because they and active-duty service members have a set of experiences and expertise that is very much in demand by these groups. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/24/us-military-white-supremacy-extremist-plot">Veterans have tactical training</a>, munitions expertise and weapons training that the white power movement wants because it is trying to wage war on the American government – in fact, this movement has <a href="https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/113968/witnesses/HHRG-117-VR00-Wstate-JonesS-20211013.pdf">directed recruitment</a> specifically aimed at veterans and active-duty troops. </p>
<p>While very few veterans returning from war join white power groups, the groups still feature an <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/02/06/signs-of-white-supremacy-extremism-up-again-in-poll-of-active-duty-troops/">enormous percentage of people who are veterans</a> or active duty – or falsely claim to be. This is because those military roles are in high demand among these groups – and their command structure within the movement mirrors military organization. </p>
<h2>How can the US address its lack of care toward veterans?</h2>
<p>The white power movement is one example of a broader social failure to support veterans and to reckon with the cost of warfare. This movement is able to <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2022/06/23/military-veterans-targeted-by-extremists-preying-on-patriots/">opportunistically mobilize disaffected people</a> in the aftermath of war because <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Failing-Our-Veterans-Vietnam-Generation/dp/0814724876">our society lacks robust social structures</a> to reintegrate people after warfare and to have a real public discourse about the price of war. </p>
<p>Before <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/magazine/fall-of-kabul-afghanistan.html">the fall of Kabul</a> in Afghanistan, my undergraduate students at Northwestern and the University of Chicago had been at war for their entire living memory. These are kids who don’t remember 9/11. And yet that war has not featured prominently even in the list of the top five or 10 crises facing our nation. In the recent past, war has not been at the center of our political conversation. We <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629612001178">don’t reckon with the massive impact</a> the people who serve in our armed forces shoulder for the nation. </p>
<p>In all of these ways, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/war-on-terror-timeline">global war on terror</a> has <a href="https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/113968/witnesses/HHRG-117-VR00-Wstate-Miller-IdrissC-20211013-U1.pdf">continued the cycle</a> of generating a recruitment opportunity for extremist groups. We are now in the middle of a <a href="https://acleddata.com/2022/12/06/from-the-capitol-riot-to-the-midterms-shifts-in-american-far-right-mobilization-between-2021-and-2022/">massive groundswell of white power</a> and militant right activity, both underground and in public-facing actions.</p>
<h2>What are you working on now that people might not be aware of?</h2>
<p>My next project departs from the white power movement to examine gun violence in America, specifically the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/1990s/columbine-high-school-shootings">Columbine shooting</a> – which happened when I was in high school, not far from where I was in high school – as a fulcrum point between the 20th century and the 21st. There were mass shootings at schools and elsewhere before Columbine. But Columbine really marks the moment when mass shootings became normalized. I think the event signals major fissures in the social fabric and reflects other massive changes in how society thinks about place, politics and violence – not only in Colorado but in the nation as a whole.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An expert in American history explains the white power movement, its impact on veterans and women and how the Vietnam War was the impetus for extremist groups to gain new members.Kathleen Belew, Associate Professor of History, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1908142022-12-08T13:33:02Z2022-12-08T13:33:02ZWhite teachers often talk about Black students in racially coded ways<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492368/original/file-20221028-13-t8n33a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C68%2C5084%2C3427&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Educators stereotype Black students in subtle ways.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/fourth-grade-girls-on-computers-royalty-free-image/608899871?phrase=black%20students%20classroom&adppopup=true">Jonathan Kirn via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a white Texas middle school teacher <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/local/pflugerville/pflugerville-teacher-who-made-inappropriate-comments-no-longer-employed-by-district/">told his students</a> in November 2022 that he was “ethnocentric” and thought his race was “superior,” he attempted to explain his position by arguing that he was hardly the only person who held such a view.</p>
<p>“Let me finish …” the teacher is seen telling his students on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxMM-WwrNWs">now-viral video</a> as they began to push back against his remarks. “I think everybody thinks that; they’re just not honest about it.”</p>
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<p>The teacher in question has <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-teacher-at-bohls-middle-school-in-pflugerville-benched-over-viral-rant-on-superior-race">since been fired</a>. His termination is hardly surprising given that he was captured on video making blatantly racist remarks in a public school classroom. But as we discovered while performing a study at a predominantly Black school with mostly white teachers, many of them – whether consciously or unconsciously – often harbor negative racial views and stereotypes about Black students and their families. The key difference is they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221119115">verbalize those negative views in less obvious ways</a> than the Texas teacher.</p>
<p>At the school we studied, the negative views were not isolated occurrences, but rather a part of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221119115">culture of coded racial stereotypes</a>, which we argue encourages the disciplining of Black students at disproportionately higher rates.</p>
<p>Our findings were published in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221119115">peer-reviewed study</a> that appeared in Urban Education in 2022. They are based on a study that began in 2015 when administrators at a predominantly Black high school asked our research team for help understanding why the predominantly white teaching staff was struggling to form positive relationships with the students. In the first part of our partnership with the school, we found that while Black students made up 89% of the student body, they represented 97% of all disciplinary infractions. Conversely, while white students made up 8% of the student population, they received only 1% of the disciplinary referrals. This early quantitative finding confirms studies from across the nation that showed that, even when controlling for rates of misbehavior and poverty, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831214541670">Black students are still disproportionately</a> disciplined compared to their white peers.</p>
<p>We are education researchers who specialize in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PkC_OxQAAAAJ&hl=en">cultural</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Olivia-Marcucci-2156367933">racial justice</a> issues. We believe our findings shine light on how often educators hold racial biases against the students they’ve been entrusted to teach.</p>
<h2>Stereotyping was prevalent</h2>
<p>The racial biases came to light as we conducted focus groups with teachers and students to ask them about their school’s culture and experiences with classroom discipline.</p>
<p>Of the teachers who participated in the focus groups, 84% were white. During focus group discussions, 36 out of 38 teachers voiced a stereotype at least once, though some did so up to 10 times. While some teachers pushed back against stereotypes they heard, and even more often acknowledged systemic racism in the lives of their students, the teachers still frequently used stereotypes when discussing their students and families.</p>
<p>In a series of focus groups, we asked educators from the school to reflect on their experiences in the school, interacting with students, and their thoughts on the school discipline practices. We were particularly interested in hearing their thoughts on the types of infractions for which students were disciplined and how specific punishments were decided on. For example, why were some students who disrupted class sent back from the office to the classroom immediately, but others received 10 days of in-school suspension? </p>
<p>The majority of the focus group questions were not focused on race explicitly. Even so, we still noticed an undercurrent of racially coded stereotypes as the teachers reflected on the statistical trends in school discipline and on their school culture as a whole. </p>
<p>For example, in one focus group, a white teacher notes that when the then-vice principal, a Black man, went to the school as a student, “we had a much more diverse student body. So, he had an opportunity to see different types of behavior. And I think a lot of these kids that we have, the chronic misbehaviors, they don’t have that option. They’re in a class, class by class where they’re all very similar socioeconomic background, and that really makes a difference, I think. Their parents are working and are unable to monitor them. Maybe they didn’t have such a successful high school experience, so they don’t have the tools that some of the other kids – we still have a few of them, fortunate to have a number in my classes.”</p>
<p>The teacher directly connects the presence of “chronic misbehaviors” with a change in the school’s demographics. The teacher opines that in the past, when the student body was nearly equally Black and white, that Black individuals, such as the then-vice principal, in his example, could observe better behavior in school. The teacher therefore communicates an anti-Black stereotype in a coded way, implying that Black students needed white students to “see different types of behavior.”</p>
<p>In a different example, two white teachers began talking about how parents at their school didn’t care about their children. At one point, they pretended to be parents, with one of the teachers even making a joke that one of the parents completely forgot they even had a child: </p>
<p>Teacher 1: Yeah, just somebody saying, ‘Hey, you know you have a baby, right?’
Teacher 2: I do?
Teacher 1: Yeah.
Teacher 2: Oh.
Teacher 1: Oh, wooord.</p>
<p>Nothing about this interaction is racially explicit. But the teacher’s joke invokes a stereotype of Black parents as disengaged from their children’s lives by using a stereotypical African American vernacular – “wooord.” When white teachers at a predominantly Black school make statements like these, they are upholding the stereotype that Black parents lack concern for their children – even if that is not the teachers’ intention.</p>
<h2>A way of bonding</h2>
<p>Using <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691123899/interaction-ritual-chains">a theory</a> that measures the speed of bonding, we found that when teachers used anti-Black stereotypes, they often bonded with each other more quickly and effectively. Certain types of communication — often ones that happen nonverbally — can <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691123899/interaction-ritual-chains">help individuals bond with each other</a>. These bonds then make individuals feel better about themselves and their community. In the data, teachers often used nonverbal communication or noises like “uh-huh,” laughter, and conversational rhythm, while stereotyping their students. </p>
<p>For example, in the “Hey, you know you have a baby, right?” joke, both teachers laughed as a result of the joke. Just as importantly, the rest of the teachers in the room also laughed. Laughter is an important display of bonding. In other interactions, teachers used verbalizations like “mhmmm” or “This is it” to support each other as they engaged in stereotyping their students.</p>
<h2>Reform through reflection</h2>
<p>Based on what <a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Dual-Process-Theories-of-the-Social-Mind/Sherman-Gawronski-Trope/9781462514397/contents">social psychologist Russell Fazio</a> has found, if teachers are given time to reflect on their potential biases, they have a better chance of removing those biases from their teaching. Through <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED521618">systematic and sustained professional learning</a>, teachers can become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0299-7">aware of their implicit and explicit biases and how those biases may impact their behavior</a>. This type of professional learning must be coupled with structural reforms to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2019.1579743">re-professionalize teaching</a> to achieve lasting, anti-biasing results. </p>
<p>Since our study was completed, the educators, school and district have sought to revamp their disciplinary policies and school culture, including deep discussions about how their biases might affect how they discipline students. The school has begun to use <a href="https://www.wested.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/resource-restorative-justice-in-u-s-schools-an-updated-research-review.pdf">restorative justice practices</a>, an alternative approach to discipline that focuses on humanizing individuals and repairing harm after a wrong occurs. The school hired a full-time staff person to support restorative justice. According to the current principal, in the year following, suspensions dropped by 47% in one year and chronic absenteeism dropped by 7%.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>ROWHEA ELMESKY received an internal university grant which helped fund this study. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Marcucci does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though difficult to pinpoint, white educators often put forth stereotypes when they discuss Black students among themselves, new research has found.Rowhea Elmesky, Associate Professor of Education, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisOlivia Marcucci, Assistant Professor of Education, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1759022022-02-01T16:47:19Z2022-02-01T16:47:19Z‘Freedom convoy’ rolls through Ottawa encouraging the participation of Canada’s far-right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443549/original/file-20220131-15-4qnrra.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C0%2C4800%2C3190&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sign reads 'Assassin Trudeau' but the letters S in assassin are replaced with SS, abbreviation of Schutzstaffel, the black-uniformed self-described “political soldiers” of the Nazi Party.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/-freedom-convoy--rolls-through-ottawa-encouraging-the-participation-of-canada-s-far-right" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>This past weekend, thousands of people <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawa-police-investigate-desecration-of-monuments-by-trucker-convoy/">stormed Ottawa</a> as part of what’s being called the “freedom convoy.” </p>
<p>What started as a protest over the federal government’s Jan. 15 vaccine mandate that <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/28/why-are-anti-vaccine-canadian-truckers-converging-on-ottawa">requires all truckers crossing the Canadian border be fully vaccinated against COVID-19</a> — <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/28/why-are-anti-vaccine-canadian-truckers-converging-on-ottawa">the United States has since implemented a similar mandate</a> — has evolved into something much more sinister. </p>
<p>Starting last week in Delta, B.C., the convoy has attracted support from across the country. </p>
<p>People have come from <a href="https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/heavy-police-presence-as-truckers-arrive-in-downtown-ottawa-1.5757761?autoPlay=true">both the West Coast</a> <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8541993/nova-scotia-freedom-convoy-departs/">and East Coast</a> to meet in Ottawa, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60202050">disrupting traffic</a>, <a href="https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/downtown-ottawa-mall-remains-closed-sunday-due-to-convoy-protest-1.5760081">entering buildings maskless</a>, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/01/30/ottawa-police-investigating-threats-desecrations-as-protest-of-covid-19-restrictions-continues.html">honking horns late into the night</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/convoy-workers-two-days-later-1.6333017">harassing the city’s residents</a>. </p>
<p>The convoy says it will stay in Ottawa until it hears from the federal government. The movement has been <a href="https://www.antihate.ca/the_freedom_convoy_is_nothing_but_a_vehicle_for_the_far_right">heavily criticized as being organized by</a> or at the very least encouraging the participation of Canada’s far-right. </p>
<h2>Who is participating?</h2>
<p>The convoy was started by <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-truck-convoy-alberta-legislature-vaccine-mandate-1.6332527">Canada Unity, a group that has been extremely critical of COVID-19-related mandates</a>. Reports have shown that <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8543281/covid-trucker-convoy-organizers-hate/">far-right sympathizers</a>, or members of the far-right themselves, are behind much of the organizing. </p>
<p>For example, Tamara Lich, <a href="https://www.maverickparty.ca/tamara-lich">a member of the right-wing Maverick Party</a>, formally affiliated with <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/59na9q/wexit-founders-are-far-right-conspiracy-theorists">the Wexit Movement</a>, began a GoFundMe for the convoy which, as of Feb. 1, had raised over $9.5 million. </p>
<p>When asked about the convoy Lich <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/01/26/BC-Ex-MP-Western-Separatists-Truck-Protest/">stated that it was not about vaccinations, but instead was about protecting Canadian rights and freedoms</a>. </p>
<p>Another convoy leader, Dave Steenburg, has been sharing <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/01/28/freedom-convoy-leader-shared-symbol-of-far-right-hate-group-on-tiktok.html">conspiracy theories pertaining to COVID-19 vaccination</a> and has even shared posts depicting war crime punishments for those who have legislated and enforced COVID-19 mandates. </p>
<p>Steenburg made headlines when he posted a Soldiers of Odin logo (a known far-right hate group) <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/01/28/freedom-convoy-leader-shared-symbol-of-far-right-hate-group-on-tiktok.html">on his social media page</a> with captions encouraging Canadians to stand up for their rights.</p>
<p>Patrick King, another organizer stated that he believes the vaccine was created to <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8543281/covid-trucker-convoy-organizers-hate/">“depopulate” the white race</a>. And B.J. Dichter, another convoy participant, is known for spewing <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8543281/covid-trucker-convoy-organizers-hate/">Islamophobic sentiments</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man stands in front of a sign on a transport truck that reads 'I am not a racist, I am not an extremist, I am Canadian'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443553/original/file-20220131-23-7c9e0k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443553/original/file-20220131-23-7c9e0k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443553/original/file-20220131-23-7c9e0k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443553/original/file-20220131-23-7c9e0k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443553/original/file-20220131-23-7c9e0k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443553/original/file-20220131-23-7c9e0k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443553/original/file-20220131-23-7c9e0k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A trucker laughs as he fist bumps a protester participating in a cross-country truck convoy protesting measures taken by authorities to curb the spread of COVID-19.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While some have stated the convoy is about the vaccine mandates, others have claimed that this is a national movement about general rights and freedoms and government interference.</p>
<p>This isn’t a homogeneous movement, and it has even been criticized from within the industry — most truckers are complying with the mandate. <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8533779/truckers-convoy-canada-vaccine-mandate/">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau</a> and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/28/why-are-anti-vaccine-canadian-truckers-converging-on-ottawa">the Canadian Trucking Alliance have stated that between 85 and 90 per cent of truckers are already vaccinatated</a>. Some have also spoken out against the convoy calling it “<a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/embarrassment-for-the-industry-not-all-truckers-support-the-freedom-convoy-1.5757952">an embarassment</a>.” </p>
<p>Those in the industry participating in the “freedom convoy” make up a very small minority of truckers in Canada. </p>
<h2>Freedom for whom?</h2>
<p>Because of what’s happening, many Ottawa residents currently feel <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60202050">trapped inside their homes</a>, the antithesis of freedom.</p>
<p>Members of the Canadian far-right have been present in both <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8543281/covid-trucker-convoy-organizers-hate/">organizing and participating in the convoy</a>, and their participation is troubling. </p>
<p>We need to be asking how far-right groups got involved in the convoy, what their roles are and how a <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/01/27/freedom-rally-convoy-has-withdrawn-1-million-from-once-frozen-viral-fundraiser-gofundme.html">perceived “loss of freedom</a>” has drawn so many supporters. </p>
<p>The Canadian far-right movement has grown in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2016.1139375">recent years</a>, and many have raised concerns about <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17467586.2021.1876900">far-right sympathy across Canada suggesting there is a very present threat</a>. There are also growing concerns over how its supporters <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12633-9_2">mobilize online</a>. </p>
<p>Many infamous far-right riots originate and continue online well after protests are finished — <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-020-00080-x">including the Unite the Right rally in 2017</a>. Some far-right groups have also influenced offline politics and political parties, suggesting the possibility of far-right movements, or their political platforms, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315123851-8/remaining-streets-man%C3%A8s-weisskircher-lars-erik-berntzen">reaching electoral politics</a>. </p>
<p>The “freedom convoy” is just one iteration of how the far-right can and does mobilize willing participants into their movements under the guise of moral freedoms and rights. </p>
<p>Reports have lodged concerns that the convoy may add fuel to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-will-the-ottawa-convoy-morph-into-a-tea-party-style-populist-movement/">future populist participation in Canadian politics</a>. </p>
<p>This past week’s events have overshadowed many communities’ mourning. While the convoy rolled toward Ottawa, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/25/canada-indigenous-community-uncovers-93-potential-unmarked-graves">93 graves of Indigenous children were found on the ground of the former St. Joseph Mission Residential School</a>. </p>
<p>Some part of the convoy <a href="https://www.jta.org/2022/01/30/politics/swastikas-displayed-at-canadian-freedom-convoy-protests-against-vaccination-mandates">carried swastika flags</a>
during <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/truck-convoy-rideau-centre-closed-large-crowds-remain-downtown">Holocaust Remembrance Day</a>. And an in-person vigil to commemorate the anniversary of the Québec City mosque attack was cancelled in Ottawa due to <a href="https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/freedom-convoy-2022-police-report-no-injuries-no-incidents-of-violence-after-first-day-of-protest-100686683/">fears of violence</a>. </p>
<p>At a time when the nation should be rallying around these issues, fighting against structural violence for our communities, time, resources and attention are being given to this “freedom” convoy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kayla Preston is a SSHRC Joseph- Armand Bombardier scholar</span></em></p>At a time when the nation should be fighting against structural violence, resources and attention are being given to a cause that doesn’t deserve it.Kayla Preston, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1748522022-01-27T17:33:47Z2022-01-27T17:33:47ZRacial tokenism: What happened to Miranda in the ‘Sex and the City’ reboot?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443037/original/file-20220127-6492-lo3qbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C1908%2C1273&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cynthia Nixon reprises her role as Miranda on the 'Sex and The City' reboot 'And Just Like That.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pressroom.warnermedia.com/us/image/cynthianixonkarenpittman">(Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max)</a></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/racial-tokenism--what-happened-to-miranda-in-the--sex-and-the-city--reboot" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><em>Warning: This article contains spoilers about ‘And Just Like That …’</em></p>
<p>I was eager to see what the <em>Sex and the City</em> (<em>SATC</em>) franchise had to offer in its new series <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy8Zz7Q56dY"><em>And Just Like That …</em></a>. </p>
<p>Billed as a reboot, the show has us meet three of the original four women in their ‘50s while attempting to address <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-ca-st-sex-and-the-city-anniversary-commentary-20180601-story.html">representation issues that plagued the original</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sex-and-the-city-reboot-is-more-groan-than-groove-and-misses-the-mark-173722">'Sex & the City' reboot is more groan than groove, and misses the mark</a>
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<p>The show does continue its tradition of feeding us high fashion and providing humorous banter between friends, but that’s all that kept me from turning off the TV. </p>
<p>While much can be said about how each of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-12-10/nicole-ari-parker-sex-and-the-city-and-just-like-that-black-girlfriends">the three main characters acquired a new racialized friend</a> and the stereotypes they reproduce, I’ll focus on one storyline: what happened to Miranda? </p>
<h2>Fumbling white woman</h2>
<p>I’m not a superfan or <em>SATC</em> expert, but I do think Miranda’s role as the anxious, fumbling white woman is disappointing. </p>
<p>One of the reasons <em>SATC</em> was so popular was because <a href="https://bust.com/tv/194796-sex-and-the-city-legacy.html">the show depicted successful women not afraid of a challenge</a>, willing and able to grow. It was extremely jarring to see Miranda, who was the assertive, sharp, spicy-tongued lawyer in the original series turn into a bumbling, awkward woman tripping over her words. </p>
<p>Miranda is now getting her masters in human rights and befriends her Black professor, Nya Wallace. The awkward conversations between these two women are emblematic of what is wrong with representation in television today — that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0092055X14553710">throwing token racialized characters onto television is not enough</a>, the way the story is told is just as important. </p>
<p>Miranda assumes Nya is not a professor, makes casually racist comments about Nya’s hair and behaves like a white saviour when her professor is having trouble finding her identification to pass campus security. </p>
<p>Some might find that Miranda is a reflection of the anxiety and fear that <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/whats-so-bad-about-robin-diangelo">white women experience in our society today</a> — trying to avoid offending racialized people, and seeking assurances that they are doing the right thing when it comes to racism.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Cynthia Nixon discusses her character Miranda on The View.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In later episodes, we see an unrealistic development of Nya’s friendship with Miranda. We jump into the future with no depiction of any difficult conversations Miranda may have had with Nya <a href="https://thecheapestuniversity.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/bell-hooks-teaching-community-a-pedagogy-of-hope.pdf">about her white privilege in the classroom</a> and the difficult work she needed to do to show growth to gain Nya’s trust. </p>
<p>Completely absent is the emotional exhaustion and <a href="https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/dlj/vol37/iss2/12/">intense intellectual conversations racialized professors like Nya have in educating their students</a>. It would have been a treat to see Nya demonstrate the <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1552-the-anti-racist-writing-workshop">many anti-racism tools available in education</a>.</p>
<h2>Having it all</h2>
<p>Over dinner, Nya talks about her challenges in trying to conceive and doubts on becoming a mother. While Nya is sharing intimate details, <a href="https://medium.com/mind-cafe/why-you-should-stop-talking-about-yourself-during-conversation-b73cc7ff5df3">the conversation nevertheless centres on Miranda’s</a> well-worn storyline <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH5iEf9oxaI">of trying to have it all</a> — a career while being a good mother.</p>
<p>This depiction of Miranda does a disservice to her original self — I expected Miranda to still be at the top of her game. But today’s version misses an opportunity to show what it means to <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/06/09/Ways-To-Be-An-Ally/">be a good ally</a> to our racialized friends and colleagues. </p>
<p>More than that, this version of Miranda harms the anti-racism project many of us are undertaking in our workplaces and social circles. Miranda’s storyline <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ899418.pdf">privileges her experience as a white woman encountering racial discussions</a> as foundational, pitting the racialized figure as the <a href="https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116">source of discomfort for the white woman</a>. </p>
<p>What I saw was a white woman’s reality being made visible, acknowledged and even legitimized, while a racialized woman’s struggle being situated only in relation to that of the white woman. </p>
<p>As feminists Audre Lorde and Mariana Ortega have written, presenting “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2006.tb01113.x">loving, knowing ignorance</a>” of the knowledge and experience of women of colour is not only arrogant, but reproduces a harmful and dominating relationship where knowledge about women of colour is shared from the perspective of white women. </p>
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<h2>Racialized woman’s reality is invisible</h2>
<p>Novelist Toni Morrison"s book, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674673779"><em>Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination</em></a> discusses how identity is formed against a black shadow — that Black people are represented through the lens of white perception. The racialized woman’s reality is invisible, overlooked and pathologized based on how it affects the white woman. </p>
<p>In Miranda’s interactions, it is her discomfort that is the focal point. The experiences of racialized women are made invisible in this. Nya was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000016641193">experiencing microaggressions</a>, and her behaviour was that of a woman who was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41819275">used to putting up with them</a>.</p>
<p>I know a television show whose primary aim is to entertain cannot be the primary source for anti-racism work, but if the show was really dedicated to bringing in more representation, inserting queer and racialized people into the mix as ancillary characters is not enough. </p>
<p>The show would have been an excellent platform to demonstrate healthy strategies for <a href="https://www.sealpress.com/titles/ijeoma-oluo/so-you-want-to-talk-about-race/9781580056779/">difficult dialogues between white women and racialized women</a>, re-centring the experiences of others more prominently. </p>
<p>Miranda would have been the ideal character to show how to make space for our racialized colleagues in respectful and thoughtful ways, leading her friends through critical thinking rooted in empowerment, not guilt. Critical race theory teaches us that a key way of <a href="https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/65944/1/Looking%20to%20the%20Bottom.pdf">elevating voices from marginalized or less represented communities</a> is to give them meaningful space.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Chai Yun Liew does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Miranda’s role as the anxious, fumbling white woman is disappointing. Some might find that Miranda is a reflection of the anxiety and fear that white women experience.Jamie Chai Yun Liew, Director of the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies and Associate Professor, Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1698062021-10-17T11:56:25Z2021-10-17T11:56:25Z‘I don’t have an ounce of racism in me’: Jon Gruden and the NFL’s whiteness problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426474/original/file-20211014-20-7qgzua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=77%2C0%2C8640%2C5716&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jon Gruden is out as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders after emails he sent before being hired in 2018 contained racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Rick Scuteri) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last weekend, the NFL (the <a href="https://sportytell.com/sports/most-profitable-sports-leagues/">world’s most profitable sports league</a>) found itself in an all-too-familiar controversy after a now-former head coach’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/sports/football/what-did-jon-gruden-say.html">disparaging emails</a> containing racist, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic content were brought to light by a third-party investigation. </p>
<p>After the first emails were released last week, the former head coach in question, Jon Gruden of the Las Vegas Raiders, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jon-gruden-racism-denial-raiders-loss/">stood in front of reporters and said</a>: “I don’t have an ounce of racism in me. I’m a guy that takes pride in leading people together. And I’ll continue to do that for the rest of my life.” </p>
<p>The type of leadership Gruden referenced in his mad dash to damage control is everywhere, from the league’s ownership groups to its front offices and coaching staff. It demands the protection of men like Gruden while ostracizing anyone who dares challenge the dominant system of power (like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/sports/football/george-floyd-kaepernick-kneeling-nfl-protests.html">Colin Kaepernick</a>). Its existence has resulted in what some have described as a <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/163980/jon-gruden-espn-email-scandal">culture of rot</a> throughout the league. </p>
<p>What’s fascinating and perhaps unique about the coverage, response and fallout of the league’s most recent controversy is how clear it’s made it that whiteness is at the epicentre of this rot. </p>
<h2>Protection of white men in power</h2>
<p>The systemic and systematic protection of white men in power has bred <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/sports/football/what-did-jon-gruden-say.html">hypocrisy</a>, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-nfls-racist-race-norming-is-an-afterlife-of-slavery/">race norming (the practice of assuming a lower baseline of cognitive abilities in Black players)</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/dec/07/the-nfls-problem-with-violence-against-women-a-story-of-profit-and-apathy">gender exclusion and violence</a> and <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/nfl-qb-drew-brees-kneeling-ignorance-and-performative-white-allyship">preformative acts of solidarity</a> with the <a href="https://www.tidesport.org/racial-gender-report-card">league’s majority racialized player pool</a>. </p>
<p>Abhorrent language connected to racism, sexism and homophobia is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305892_6">inextricably linked to behaviours and value systems aligned with white supremacy</a>. </p>
<p>When the news first broke, it looked like Gruden might actually keep his US$100 million contract position, as <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32377814/las-vegas-raiders-players-react-jon-gruden-2011-emails-coach-apologizes-again">several players and related personnel appeared neutral</a>. In instances like these, why don’t more people speak up? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden speaks with officials" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426562/original/file-20211014-25-1gdegcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426562/original/file-20211014-25-1gdegcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426562/original/file-20211014-25-1gdegcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426562/original/file-20211014-25-1gdegcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426562/original/file-20211014-25-1gdegcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426562/original/file-20211014-25-1gdegcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426562/original/file-20211014-25-1gdegcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Assuaging white guilt, like Jon Gruden’s, by not disavowing racism obscures any required accountability of the NFL.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a vivid display of the systemic power operating within the league, <a href="https://www.sportscasting.com/tony-dungy-mike-tirico-let-jon-gruden-off-hook-racially-insensitive-language-during-sunday-night-football-delay-we-need-to-except-that-apology-and-move-on/">Mike Tirico and Tony Dungy defended Gruden’s character</a> and advocated for his vindication on <em>Sunday Night Football</em>. Dungy, a former player and coach himself, <a href="https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/8423224002">stated during the broadcast</a>: “I’m not going to chalk everything up to racism. I think we accept his apology, move forward and move on.” </p>
<p>After more emails were released and Gruden’s resignation was announced, Dungy sort of walked back on his on-air comments. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1447887228433313794"}"></div></p>
<p>What the segment revealed, however, was the <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/11021/33882">depth of dominant white patriarchal ideologies upheld by people</a> and impenetrable systemic practices within the NFL. Assuaging white guilt by not disavowing racism obscures any required accountability of the NFL. </p>
<h2>A certain kind of leadership</h2>
<p>In a league run, owned and coached by a handful of executives — the “Jon Grudens” of the world — the resulting enabling of systemic, oppressive white supremacy makes pushing for meaningful change seemingly impossible. </p>
<p>Countless examples illustrate the pervasiveness of this “leadership” issue like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/sports/football/nfl-washington-fine-snyder.html">rampant sexual harassment claims</a> and the failed <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/its-time-for-the-nfl-to-take-the-rooney-rule-seriously-or-get-rid-of-it/">Rooney Rule policy</a> — an NFL policy that <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/12/31/rooney-rule-explained-nfl-diversity-policy">requires teams to interview ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching jobs</a>. Only three out of 32 coaches are Black, in a league where <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1167935/racial-diversity-nfl-players/">over 57.5 per cent of its players are Black</a>. </p>
<p>The way in which such controversies are covered also constrains opportunities for organized resistance. For several decades, news outlets have recognized that <a href="https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/race-after-technology">racial slurs and misogynistic remarks from high-profile leaders are top revenue generators</a>. The preoccupation with dragging people through (virtual) public platforms happens within a matter of minutes. </p>
<p>The label of “racist” is depicted as a death sentence, immediately denied using various tactics like “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/">I don’t see colour</a>” or “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/racial-microaggressions-examples-responses-wellness/index.html">I have Black friends</a>.” As readers, we must critically examine the deeper issues related to systems of racism that are at the root of these behaviours. </p>
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<img alt="Las Vegas Raiders former head coach Jon Gruden walks across the field during an NFL football training camp practice" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426564/original/file-20211014-15-1j3f1t4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426564/original/file-20211014-15-1j3f1t4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426564/original/file-20211014-15-1j3f1t4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426564/original/file-20211014-15-1j3f1t4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426564/original/file-20211014-15-1j3f1t4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426564/original/file-20211014-15-1j3f1t4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426564/original/file-20211014-15-1j3f1t4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Only three out of 32 coaches are Black, in a league where over 57.5 per cent of its players are Black.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/John Locher)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While airing such vile acts provides necessary opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations, <a href="https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/race-after-technology">shaming and humiliation can be cathartic for people that too frequently have their experiences questioned or silenced</a>. A persisting consequence of witnesses labelling individuals as racists to be cast away <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11vcbrf">too often delineates and absolves institutions from redressing larger systemic issues</a>. </p>
<p>When similar events occur (think of the <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/don-cherry-fired">firing of Don Cherry</a> or the <a href="https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2021/08/26/espn-pulls-rachel-nichols-from-nba-coverage-cancels-the-jump">Rachel Nichols debacle</a>), and some racialized community members surface in defense of “the system” or supposed “forgivable acts,” the <a href="https://www.crrf-fcrr.ca/en/resources/glossary-a-terms-en-gb-1/item/27038-lateral-violence">lateral violence</a> inflicted against one another <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2018.1427586">strengthens anti-Black racism, as well as existing white supremacist institutions, policies and practices</a>.</p>
<h2>The colloquial apology</h2>
<p>Gruden’s resignation message included the seemingly ubiquitous “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone” trope. This, of course, is not an apology, but rather a failed acknowledgement insinuating a false narrative that his words were not meant for harm. </p>
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<p>While we can debate intention versus impact, what cannot be understated is the power that words hold; they carry the weight, harm and oppression of the systems in which they are spoken. </p>
<p>As we continue to uncover behaviours and actions of coaches and other people in positions of power within institutions, we must interrogate the systemic structures of oppression which too often validate the transgressor and justify such practices. </p>
<p>While the resignation of Gruden signals a much-needed shift that hopefully forces franchises to be introspective when shaping their team’s social climate, we must not forget who the system was built to protect.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Braeden McKenzie receives funding from Sport Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sabrina Razack does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jon Gruden’s resignation signals a much needed shift that hopefully forces franchises to be introspective when shaping their team’s social climate.Sabrina Razack, Sessional Instructor, Kinesiology & Physical Education, University of TorontoBraeden McKenzie, PhD Candidate; Reseach Assistant @ the IDEAS lab; Sessional Instructor, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1633982021-08-05T16:11:45Z2021-08-05T16:11:45ZCritical race theory: ‘Diversity’ is not the solution, dismantling white supremacy is<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413616/original/file-20210728-27-w7de47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C6%2C4360%2C2909&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Whether the conservative target is critical race theory, anti-racism, Black Lives Matter movements or anything else — the problem will remain until we remove diversity from the solution pile.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Race has been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/01/what-2020-taught-us-about-race-class-america/">a mainstay in the media this year</a>. Everyday there is another <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-riots-race-and-ethnicity-capitol-siege-51e7098111e221b88e3b64d476f241c8">racism story in the news</a>, on a podcast, trending on Twitter or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsxukOPEdgg">being joked about on late night television</a>. </p>
<p>As a critical race educator and activist I have spent most of my life inserting race into the conversation. You would think this focus would have me thrilled. Finally everyone is talking about race. </p>
<p>Not only are people talking about race, they are talking about <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/critical-race-theory-classroom-understanding-debate/story?id=77627465">critical race theory (CRT)</a> and having important conversations about the role of <a href="https://www.raceforward.org/videos/systemic-racism">systemic racism</a> in our country and across the globe. </p>
<p>This sudden interest in CRT is largely due to former U.S. president Donald Trump’s now defunct executive order <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/how-trump-ignited-fight-over-critical-race-theory-schools-n1266701">banning the teaching of critical race theory</a> in school. Since then <a href="https://apnews.com/article/florida-race-and-ethnicity-government-and-politics-education-74d0af6c52c0009ec3fa3ee9955b0a8d">many states have taken up similar policies</a>. </p>
<h2>What is critical race theory?</h2>
<p>CRT started as a <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/">legal theory that illustrates how racism becomes institutionalized</a>, even though <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/28/18241973/workplace-discrimination-cpi-investigation-eeoc">discrimination is illegal</a>. It has since branched out, but the essence remains — to show how race and racism continue to operate across various systems, interrogating their role in society. </p>
<p>As American policies on CRT education in schools shows, the problem has become showing how racism operates instead of racism itself. Mainstream society becomes fearful that people will be able to articulate the ways in which systemic discrimination operates and as a result demand that we do better.</p>
<p>This is convenient because it upholds the foundations of mainstream societal concepts like white supremacy and capitalism. And by white supremacy I don’t mean white supremacists, like the angry rioters in MAGA hats that <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/07/27/1019736664/jan-6-insurrection-hearing-police-nancy-pelosi-committee">stormed the U.S. Capitol</a>. I mean the <a href="https://www.adl.org/education/resources/glossary-terms/defining-extremism-white-supremacy">ideologies of white supremacy</a>, the implicit systems that maintain whiteness as superior and allow for situations like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd.html">George Floyd</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-joyce-echaquan-reaction-1.6044631">Joyce Eschanquan</a> as matter of fact aspects of existence with little to no consequences.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two people stand holding signs that read 'Justice for George Floyd' in front of a mural depicting his face and name" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413606/original/file-20210728-13-1mx6hgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413606/original/file-20210728-13-1mx6hgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413606/original/file-20210728-13-1mx6hgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413606/original/file-20210728-13-1mx6hgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413606/original/file-20210728-13-1mx6hgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413606/original/file-20210728-13-1mx6hgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413606/original/file-20210728-13-1mx6hgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People stand in front of a mural for George Floyd after a guilty verdict was announced at the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin for the 2020 death of Floyd.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Morry Gash)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>CRT has simply become the latest target of white supremacy. But as you may guess, CRT is not the problem. The problem is diversity. </p>
<h2>The solution to every problem</h2>
<p>Progressive folks take up “diversity” like it is the solution to every problem. We are bombarded with it through committees, policies and “commitments.” You see it everywhere from public institutions to private corporations. </p>
<p>Even Canada’s iconic Hudson Bay Company (HBC) has been embroiled in a recent diversity scandal. While HBC was collecting donations for a campaign to “empower” Indigenous people, Black people and people of colour across the country, they <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/the-bay-hudson-hadiya-roderique-1.6091025">used the image of Hadiya Roderique, a prominent Black lawyer in Toronto, without her permission</a>. </p>
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<p>HBC became so blinded by their diversity mission they forgot to use diversity principles in their promotion. As a public we are inundated with images and information of different organizations and corporations attempting to advance diversity initiatives, when really it has simply become a public relations call to capitalize on woke culture. </p>
<h2>Acknowledging systemic racism</h2>
<p>If HBC was actually trying to enact change for Indigenous people, Black people and people of colour, they would know that this cannot be achieved by asking individual customers to donate $5. </p>
<p>Instead, the corporation would have to acknowledge the systemic, institutional and residual effects of racism and white supremacy embedded in our country and as a result, their corporation. They would also have to put their money where their mouth is. </p>
<p>This means investing in hiring and retaining diverse staff, promoting radical racialized people to senior leadership positions, making working conditions better for diverse staff through safer corporate cultures, fair pay, showing respect with initiatives like affordable childcare and paid sick days and supporting diverse brands and designers. </p>
<p>And all of this would need to be measured and calculated to ensure progress was being made — and not some vague promise with no material evidence.</p>
<p>In her book <em><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-being-included">On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life</a></em>, Sara Ahmed shows how diversity is another tool of white supremacy. Ahmed highlights that as diversity advances in institutions, it is operating exactly the way it is supposed to: to do absolutely nothing and thus maintain the status quo. </p>
<p>Diversity has become a way to appease the masses and occupy people like me, the critical race agitators so we chase diversity up the chain of command instead of demanding radical change. Instead of starting a revolution.</p>
<p>So whether the conservative target is critical race theory, anti-racism, Black Lives Matter movements or anything else — the problem will remain until we remove diversity from the solution pile and fundamentally change white supremacist systems.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163398/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manjeet Birk receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). </span></em></p>Critical race theory has simply become the latest target of white supremacy. But as you may guess, CRT is not the problem. The problem is diversity.Manjeet Birk, Assistant Professor, Institute of Women's and Gender Studies, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1628872021-07-06T15:54:07Z2021-07-06T15:54:07ZImplicit bias within Canadian media often means providing excuses for white accused<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407718/original/file-20210622-15-1vml92t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C0%2C3964%2C2245&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Structural racism in media is deeply embedded, and resolving it will require frank discussions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Canada celebrates itself as a multicultural and inclusive nation, yet when it comes to media representation, the different portrayals of Muslims and white people disguise a culture of <a href="https://perception.org/research/implicit-bias/">implicit bias</a> and racism.</p>
<p>Take, for example, two high profile crimes in which vehicles were used to kill people.</p>
<p>On Dec. 31, 2020, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-police-andrew-harnett-1.5859221">a police officer in Calgary was killed when struck by a vehicle trying to flee a traffic stop</a>. On June 6, <a href="https://theconversation.com/muslim-family-killed-in-terror-attack-in-london-ontario-islamophobic-violence-surfaces-once-again-in-canada-162400">four members of a Muslim-Canadian family in were killed</a> when they were out for an evening stroll in London, Ont.</p>
<p>In the Calgary incident, those arrested and charged with first-degree murder were two Muslim teenagers. The suspect in the London attack is a 20-year-old white man.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-child-psychiatrist-who-knew-those-killed-in-the-london-terror-attack-offers-advice-on-helping-kids-deal-with-trauma-162761">A child psychiatrist who knew those killed in the London terror attack offers advice on helping kids deal with trauma</a>
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<p>Canadian news outlets captured these two crimes in very different ways.</p>
<p>In the incident about the killing of the Muslim family members, some news outlets illustrated a story about the accused by using a photo of him <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/06/09/suspect-in-attack-on-muslim-family-laughed-during-arrest-report/">from a recent fishing trip</a>. </p>
<p>While the Crown would add a charge of terrorism <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-terrorism-charge-filed-in-the-london-attack-is-the-first-of-its-kind-in-canada-162739">in addition to the murder charges</a>, news outlets became a channel for the accused’s family and friends to <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/christian-terrorist-mowed-down-muslim-180540029.html">send out their positive thoughts about him, praise him and deny his Islamophobia and racism</a>. </p>
<p>Friends spoke about a recent fishing trip and how the accused was “<a href="https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/who-is-nathaniel-veltman-accused-in-alleged-london-hate-killings">happy as ever</a>,” how he had “trouble with the steering of his truck” and was distraught over a death in the family.</p>
<p>Eventually, news outlets cited the accused’s <a href="https://www.iheartradio.ca/610cktb/news/court-documents-portray-london-attack-suspect-as-prone-to-anger-medicated-for-mental-illness-1.15391880">mental illness, anger management and parent’s separation</a>.</p>
<p>In the Calgary incident, no friends or family of the accused were quoted by the media. No one spoke of their character or offered any other personal information about them. Photos used in media stories were <a href="https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/alberta-s-top-court-reserves-decision-on-bail-for-suspect-in-hit-and-run-death-of-calgary-officer-1.5480543">police mug shots</a>. </p>
<h2>Delegating responsibility</h2>
<p>Research has shown that in cases of mass killings where the accused is white, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427818787225">the media often cite mental illnesses as a possible explanation for the crime</a>.</p>
<p>The media’s delegation of responsibility of the crime to mental illness reduces moral panic. It provides peace of mind for readers that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427818787225">“normal” white people would not commit such crimes</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, the sympathetic image of a mentally ill individual becomes an asset for the defence <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854818794742">during the trial and sentencing</a>. </p>
<p>Nancy Heitzeg, a professor of sociology and critical studies of race and ethnicity at Saint Catherine University in Minnesota, notes there is a “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10282580.2015.1025630">double standard</a>” when it comes to the white people versus people of colour when they commit the same crime.</p>
<p>When a white individual is committing a crime, she explains, there is always a life story that gives characteristics to the accused. However, when a minority individual is committing the crime, there are no backgrounds, no excuses and no side stories. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/muslim-family-killed-in-terror-attack-in-london-ontario-islamophobic-violence-surfaces-once-again-in-canada-162400">Muslim family killed in terror attack in London, Ontario: Islamophobic violence surfaces once again in Canada</a>
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<p>Journalists are influenced by their own perceptions of race when creating content. They are <a href="https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1478&context=msw_papers">embedded within societies that are impacted by racial tensions and misperceptions</a>. This can translate into stories that reinforce stereotyping.</p>
<p>While news outlets should be a neutral source of information, research has indicated that <a href="https://www.crrf-fcrr.ca/en/resources/research-projects/item/23532-racist-discourse-in-canadas-english-print-media-en-gb-1">Canadian media shows implicit biases and racism</a>. In particular, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895813476874">articles describe crimes against white victims with significantly more fearful language</a>.</p>
<p>Implicit bias is often in the details left out. <a href="https://www.unlv.edu/news/article/unpacking-how-media-influences-our-views-racism">Structural racism in media is deeply embedded</a>, and resolving it will require frank discussions, diverse workforces and a confrontation of racism’s roots.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shila Khayambashi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Existing racism and implicit bias in Canadian media downplayed the terrorist attack by a white accused while exaggerating and staying silent on the reasons behind a hit-and-run by Muslim teens.Shila Khayambashi, Ph.D. Candidate, Communications and Culture, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1629902021-07-04T11:28:27Z2021-07-04T11:28:27ZIndian Residential School tragic discoveries see calls for action, but words can make a difference too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409547/original/file-20210704-35953-l3e14c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C7%2C4955%2C3128&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters wave a flag at Parliament Hill in Ottawa at a "Cancel Canada Day" protest in response to the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at Indian Residential Schools. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent discoveries of remains at the sites of former Indian Residential Schools in <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-longer-the-disappeared-mourning-the-215-children-found-in-graves-at-kamloops-indian-residential-school-161782">Kamloops, B.C.</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/team-investigating-brandon-former-residential-school-help-model-follow-1.6073118">Brandon, Man.,</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/cowessess-marieval-indian-residential-school-news-1.6078375">Cowessess, Sask.,</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/CBCAlerts/status/1410265038808563718?s=20">Cranbrook B.C.</a> have forced many Canadians to confront the horrors of brutal mistreatment and the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people. </p>
<p>The reactions to this discovery have ranged from <a href="https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/bishop-responds-with-shock-grief-and-compassion-over-kamloops-215-3837698">expressions of shock and grief</a> to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/northern-ontario-residential-schools-kamloops-discovery-1.6047162">resignation and even cynicism</a>. The sad and painful truth is these are <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/cowessess-marieval-indian-residential-school-news-1.6078375">not the first, nor will they be the last of such discoveries</a>.</p>
<p>As a communications scholar and white settler in Canada, my privileged place requires that I assume a responsibility to critically interrogate a pattern that appears in the aftermath of these discoveries. It is a pattern we continually see.</p>
<p>People from communities impacted by these events, along with advocates and politicians from all sides, call for action. Almost invariably, that call will also decry the emptiness of “more words.” </p>
<h2>Words are actions</h2>
<p>Following the discovery in Kamloops, <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/canadian-party-leaders-call-out-the-liberals-for-inaction-on-residential-schools/">NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said</a>, “I want us to move on from symbolic gestures and nice words that the Liberal government has done again and again. We need concrete action.”</p>
<p>These statements suggest that words and action are separate things and that one must replace the other. This idea is a danger to our democratic response to violence and oppression. Because words, images and symbols are how we share experiences. They’re how we learn to live with those who have different beliefs than us. They give us a way to resolve those differences not through violence, but through a shared language.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Group of people wearing orange stand in front of steps covered with childrens shoes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408963/original/file-20210629-11592-qasq9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408963/original/file-20210629-11592-qasq9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408963/original/file-20210629-11592-qasq9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408963/original/file-20210629-11592-qasq9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408963/original/file-20210629-11592-qasq9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408963/original/file-20210629-11592-qasq9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408963/original/file-20210629-11592-qasq9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Indigenous people sing and drum during a ceremony and vigil on Indigenous Peoples Day for the children whose remains were found at the former Indian Residential Schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
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<p>As philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, democratic power works “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo29137972.html">only where word and deed have not parted company</a>.” Words are the fundamental building blocks of our laws and policies. Actions shape the world, as do words. In this sense, words are actions. Suggesting that words pale in comparison to action is building an apathy and cynicism that is infecting Canadian democracy.</p>
<h2>How to do things about oppression</h2>
<p>The old playground adage about sticks and stones has been proven time and again to be patently false. Words can hurt us. </p>
<p>People from marginalized communities are particularly aware the power words have and the damage they can do - so much so that we have <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/lynn-beyak-who-defended-good-of-residential-schools-retires-early-from-the-senate/">rightly censured people in power who wield words to inflict violence</a>. </p>
<p>Philosophers of language like J.L. Austin have theorized the ways these <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674411524">words “do things</a>.” In other words, they don’t only represent or describe things but create and enact things — they are what theorists call a “performative.”</p>
<p>Austin uses the example of “I do” at a wedding ceremony. Saying those words, he argues, at the appropriate time and in the proper context, creates a marriage, with all the rights and responsibilities, legal and social, that attends to that union.</p>
<p>Austin’s work has been critiqued and elaborated on by many, including feminist legal and rhetorical scholar Judith Butler. In her groundbreaking work <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-Trouble-Feminism-and-the-Subversion-of-Identity/Butler/p/book/9780415389556"><em>Gender Trouble</em></a>, Butler argues that performativity is much more present than we think, even in supposedly constative statements (something that is either true or false). </p>
<p>She says that a doctor’s declaration, “it’s a boy,” during the birth of a child would appear to be a description of the child’s gender. But really gender itself is a performance, an array of social and political behaviours that can be subverted and challenged. </p>
<p>“It’s a boy” does not lock a human into a described social existence, but rather places certain expectations onto the child about how they will behave, expectations which that child may later challenge.</p>
<h2>Separating words from actions</h2>
<p>Marianne Constable, a professor of rhetoric at Berkeley, employs Butler’s ideas in her critique of former U.S. president Donald Trump. Constable <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/10418385-4208415">explains how Trump’s refusal to name his order to “ban”</a> travel from majority-Muslim countries a “ban,” made it difficult for media and advocates to challenge this speech act. </p>
<p>By tweeting “Call it what you will,” and then ordering his press secretary to advise reporters not to call his order a “ban,” he divorced the word from its meaning. The resulting actions on borders and at airports were confusing and sometimes violent, as well as being hard to challenge in court. </p>
<p>Constable writes that separating words and actions is “problematic because the actions of Trump, as head of state, are matters of law that are done, more often than not, precisely through words.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman holds a sign that reads 'end white silence'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408965/original/file-20210629-21-168q2u3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408965/original/file-20210629-21-168q2u3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408965/original/file-20210629-21-168q2u3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408965/original/file-20210629-21-168q2u3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408965/original/file-20210629-21-168q2u3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408965/original/file-20210629-21-168q2u3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408965/original/file-20210629-21-168q2u3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Words as actions can also have positive impacts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mike Von/Unsplash)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Words can do harm but also heal</h2>
<p>These are the dangers of performative words, but words as actions can also have positive impacts. </p>
<p>In the wake of these tragic discoveries by Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc and Cowessess First Nation, many words were spoken and symbolic actions taken. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/canada-9707e8f0c4746a6bb0512c0d01729832">Flags were lowered</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn1pwRV7XG4">debates occurred in the House of Commons</a>, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7980719/residential-schools-trudeau-apology-cowessess-751-unmarked-graves/">apologies were offered</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cancel-canada-day-canadian-voices-1.6076022">celebrations are being reconsidered</a>. </p>
<p>While some may decry these words and symbolic acts as “performative,” we need to ensure it is not as a dismissal of the actions altogether, but part of a way forward that is possible through sharing words. </p>
<p>An apology by a prime minister, an admission of culpability in words, may have legal consequences that lead to redress and compensation.</p>
<p>As Angela White, director of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, said <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/indian-residential-school-survivors-society-calls-for-action-1.6045448">in response to statements from the government and the Church</a>: “Reconciliation does not mean anything if there is no action to those words.”</p>
<p>While acknowledging that reconciliation itself is a performative word, White is saying that coupled with action it can lead to ongoing changes to laws, funding, relationships and knowledge.</p>
<p>Just a few days after the discoveries in Kamloops, <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/indigenous-people-can-now-reclaim-traditional-names-on-their-passports-and-other-id">a law was passed allowing First Nations people to reclaim their traditional names on Canadian passports and other official documents</a>. Names —powerful words of identity, family, culture, and belonging that were stripped from Indigenous people — are being returned to them through law. </p>
<p>Austin acknowledges that <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674411524">even performative words can be lies</a>, promises can be broken and marriages can be dissolved. But <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689583/pdf">as Constable writes</a>, “If words promise to reveal the world, then law, one might say, insists that the promise be kept.” Laws can be the words that enshrine our promises to one another, bringing about the actions we seek to promote and protect a common good. </p>
<p>There is still a lot of work needed on the path to reconciliation, but if we accept and encourage instances like these as actions that are part of that important process, we will strengthen our democracy. </p>
<p>Words can challenge the forces of cynicism and apathy that come from the cries that we cannot <em>just keep talking</em>. Talking is what we must do because words are actions and we need them now more than ever.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lowell Gasoi has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Fonds de recherche
du Québec - Société et culture, and Carleton University.</span></em></p>People often decry words and call for action after tragic events. But words are action and they’re fundamental to Canadian democracy.Lowell Gasoi, Instructor in communication studies, performativity, and arts advocacy, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1620482021-06-04T23:06:57Z2021-06-04T23:06:57ZAs an Indigenous doctor, I see the legacy of residential schools and ongoing racism in today’s health care<p>“We didn’t know what he was on.”</p>
<p>That’s what the emergency room physician said to me when I asked why my father, then 49, wasn’t sedated even though he was on a ventilator and in shock. My dad is alive today because I was a second year internal medicine resident and was able to get to the emergency room and take control of the health care he was receiving. </p>
<p>It was the most traumatic moment of my life.</p>
<p>I relived the impact of that systemic racism <a href="http://ignoredtodeathmanitoba.ca/index.php/2017/09/15/out-of-sight-interim-report-of-the-sinclair-working-group/">when Brian Sinclair died</a>. When <a href="https://www.stalberttoday.ca/beyond-local/the-horrific-treatment-of-joyce-echaquan-shows-canadas-systemic-racism-again-2794483">Joyce Echaquan died</a>. When <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/eishia-hudson-vigil-winnipeg-police-1.5980336#:%7E:text=Police%20were%20trying%20to%20apprehend,death%20was%20labelled%20a%20homicide">Eishia Hudson died</a>. And again when the bodies of 215 children, who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School and <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-longer-the-disappeared-mourning-the-215-children-found-in-graves-at-kamloops-indian-residential-school-161782">were buried in unmarked graves, were found</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-longer-the-disappeared-mourning-the-215-children-found-in-graves-at-kamloops-indian-residential-school-161782">No longer 'the disappeared': Mourning the 215 children found in graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School</a>
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<p>Each tragic discovery or incident is an opportunity to act. But repeatedly Canada’s decision is no action — or insufficient action, and the next thing happens and we’re forced to grieve and call for action again.</p>
<p>Like many of my Indigenous physician colleagues, the anger and grief of these incidents has shaped my career — providing powerful fuel to lead change even when, and especially when, there is resistance to that change. We work for the safety of our loved ones and remain unwilling to settle for the status quo that inaction upholds. </p>
<h2>Assimilating Indigenous peoples</h2>
<p>It would be incorrect to think of the racism of residential schools as separate from systemic racism in health care.</p>
<p>In March of 1942, Dr. Percy E. Moore, who was superintendent of the medical service branch of the federal Department of Indian Affairs at the time, <a href="http://www.ianmosby.ca/administering-colonial-science/">co-led a trip of scientific and medical researchers to First Nations communities in northern Manitoba</a>.</p>
<p>The purpose of that trip was to study the nutritional status of First Nations people. This was followed by a series of controlled experiments in <a href="http://doi.org/10.1353/his.2013.0015">some First Nation communities and Indian Residential Schools</a> without informed consent or even knowledge that the experiments were taking place.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Archive photo: building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404595/original/file-20210604-15-1ytblf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404595/original/file-20210604-15-1ytblf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404595/original/file-20210604-15-1ytblf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404595/original/file-20210604-15-1ytblf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404595/original/file-20210604-15-1ytblf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404595/original/file-20210604-15-1ytblf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404595/original/file-20210604-15-1ytblf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Classroom building at Kamloops Indian Residential School circa 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/14114043844/in/album-72157644114192579/">(Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development/Library and Archives Canada)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The reasons Moore thought that these nutritional experiments were necessary wasn’t for the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples. Rather, he felt addressing the poor health and nutrition of Indigenous peoples was necessary to protect the white population from Indian “<a href="http://doi.org/10.1353/his.2013.0015">reservoirs and vectors of disease</a>.”</p>
<p>He also saw it as important to fulfil the longer term goal of assimilating Indigenous peoples into the Canadian population. This medical experimentation, as well as the health services delivered by Indian Affairs, had the same purpose as residential schools — “<a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/chapter-3/killing-indian-child">to kill the Indian in the child</a>.”</p>
<p>Moore still has a federal hospital named after him in Hodgson, Man., which provides health services to several nearby First Nation communities.</p>
<h2>Inaction in the face of need</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cmaj.ca/content/189/32/E1043">Malnutrition</a> and crowding in residential schools were root causes of widespread infectious diseases like tuberculosis. They also contributed to the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/at-least-3-000-died-in-residential-schools-research-shows-1.1310894">devastating toll on students during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>Food insecurity and overcrowded housing contributed to the significant <a href="https://www.cmaj.ca/content/182/3/257">disproportionate impacts of H1N1 on First Nations people</a>. These factors are also contributing to the significant <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7569078/manitoba-active-coronavirus-cases-first-nations/">disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on First Nations people</a>. </p>
<p>Dr. Camara Jones, former president of the American Public Health Association, has described <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.90.8.1212">inaction in the face of need as one form of institutionalized racism</a>. </p>
<p>We have long had evidence of the need. We have similar long evidence of inaction. </p>
<h2>Breeding mistrust</h2>
<p>Systemic racism has widely been acknowledged <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2021693">to breed mistrust in the health-care system</a>. Our personal experiences of racism in health care breed this mistrust. </p>
<p>When the catastrophic and public events such as the deaths of Brian Sinclair and Joyce Echaquan occur — separated by time but without evidence of action in between — our mistrust is furthered. When accountability comes because <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/what-joyce-echaquan-knew/">a dying woman uses social media to broadcast the treatment she is receiving</a> and not because of internal intervention or safeguards, that demonstrates the mistrust is well deserved. </p>
<p>The coroner’s inquest <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebec-coroner-finishes-echaquan-inquest/">into Echaquan’s death just finished</a>. And although the final report with its recommendations will likely take months, coroner Gehane Kamel stated her hope is that it would be the “foundation of a new social pact that will bring us to say, ‘Never again.’” But with the refusal of the Québec government to acknowledge the systemic racism in health care that led to Echaquan’s death, it is hard to believe that the social pact has in fact changed.</p>
<p>When the COVID-19 vaccine rollout started, there was a lot of speculation that Indigenous people would be more vaccine hesitant <a href="https://www.cmaj.ca/content/193/11/E381">and exploration of potential reasons included past medical experiementation</a>. </p>
<p>That speculation has seemingly overestimated what the hesitancy would be. In places like Manitoba, as of the end of May, <a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/sixty-per-cent-of-adults-in-manitoba-have-first-dose-574495642.html">the only three health districts where over 80 per cent of people have received their first dose are health districts comprised of First Nations communities</a>. The credit for this lies most likely with First Nations leaders who <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/pimicikamak-vaccination-campaign-1.5982574">have worked hard to address mistrust and ensure vaccines are accessible</a>. </p>
<p>Structural racism <a href="https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/38/E1098">created the conditions that put Indigenous people at higher risk for COVID-19</a>. Inequitable access to culturally safe health care that is free of racism layers on and furthers these disproportionate impacts. </p>
<p>Rather than labelling Indigenous people hesitant, health systems should engage in critical self-reflection on what they have done to create mistrust, and what action they need to take to rebuild that trust.</p>
<h2>The legacy is embedded in our society</h2>
<p>The legacy of residential schools is not just in the intergenerational trauma and impacts on Indigenous families and communities — it is also in the health care system. </p>
<p>The legacy is displayed through Canada’s failure to act in ways that show that racism will no longer be tolerated in any space and that our lives, Indigenous lives, are valued: past, present and future. </p>
<p>A commitment to eliminating racism must be reflected in accountability mechanisms that focus on the impacts of co-ordinated and consistent anti-racist action. </p>
<p>Until that happens, we will do what we can to heal from this and prepare ourselves to grieve again.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marcia Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A commitment to eliminating racism must be reflected in accountability mechanisms that focus on the impacts of coordinated and consistent anti-racist action.Marcia Anderson, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1587322021-04-25T14:08:04Z2021-04-25T14:08:04ZHistory of Asian activism tells us to share the burden of responsibility in fighting racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394644/original/file-20210412-21-1bn1xsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4493%2C3002&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Although we would like to think there is a big difference between racialized curiosity and physical violence, there is not. Rather, it is a spectrum of violence that hinges on the very assumptions behind a seemingly innocent question. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2003, I was standing at a bus stop in Toronto when someone first asked me, “Where are you from?” </p>
<p>At the time, I attributed the question to idle curiosity but my perception of this question has changed over the years. This has been partly as a result of my work as a historian of migration and because of the ways I have listened to students talk about their experiences with race.</p>
<p>For citizens and newcomers alike, <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/10/whats-wrong-with-asking-where-are-you-from">the question of “Where are you from?”</a> is jarring because of the assumptions behind it. The questioner assumes difference, infers otherness and ignores deep histories of place and experience. </p>
<p>The rise in <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/reports-of-anti-asian-hate-crimes-are-surging-in-canada-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-1.5351481">anti-Asian violence</a> highlights the dangers of assuming that people are different. People are targeted because they are perceived as foreign rather than as fellow human beings and citizens. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-asian-canadian-scholars-we-must-stopasianhate-by-fighting-all-forms-of-racism-157743">As Asian Canadian scholars, we must #StopAsianHate by fighting all forms of racism</a>
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<p>Although we would like to think there is a big difference between racialized curiosity and physical violence, there is not. Rather, these two acts fall along a spectrum of violence that hinges on the very assumptions behind a seemingly innocent question. </p>
<p>In March, a 65-year-old Filipino woman was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/nyregion/asian-attack-nyc.html">violently attacked in Times Square</a>, New York, by a man who yelled “you do not belong here,” while a security guard and bystanders stood by and did nothing. This inaction was jarring, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/nyregion/asian-attack-nyc.html">provoked public outrage</a>, but in some ways it was not surprising. </p>
<p>The burden of responsibility for responding, and changing the situation has always rested disproportionately with those immediately affected. </p>
<h2>History of exclusion</h2>
<p>When bystanders do nothing, they are channelling a historic phenomenon in which the victims of racism and prejudice must speak out and advocate on behalf of themselves. </p>
<p>This is as true of the racist immigration legislation that denied American citizenship to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/americans-in-waiting-9780195336085">non-whites in 1790</a>, and governed <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691176215/the-good-immigrants">Chinese migration</a> to the United States and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199733132.001.0001">Canada</a>. Exclusionary laws facilitated the exploitation of labourers and denied the possibility for families to be reunited. </p>
<p>When American and Canadian governments eventually modified their racist immigration laws in the <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/the-triumph-of-citizenship">1960s</a>, they did not do so because they suddenly became enlightened. </p>
<p>They did so because people fought hard for justice and equality. </p>
<h2>History of activism</h2>
<p>Activism takes many shapes and forms. The <a href="https://www.asahibaseball.com/history.html">Vancouver Asahi Team</a> is a prime example of this, playing exemplary baseball from 1914 to 1941 in the face of racist treatment on and off the field. </p>
<p>Canadian soldiers such as <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/masumi-mitsui">Masumi Mitsui</a> who served in the First World War and then lobbied the B.C. government to grant Japanese Canadian veterans the right to vote, and <a href="http://www.ccmms.ca/veteran-stories/army/victor-j-y-louie/">Victor Louie</a> who lived through the <a href="https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/WorldWar2/manchuria.htm">Japanese attack on Manchuria</a> in 1937 and then served in the Canadian Army, were also activists — through their service but also by simply persisting. </p>
<p>In the U.S., 23-year-old Fred Korematsu <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fred-korematsu-fought-against-japanese-internment-supreme-court-and-lost-180961967/">fought Japanese American exclusion orders</a> all the way to the Supreme Court, which heard his case and ruled against him in 1944. </p>
<p>After the Second World War, Asian people continued to fight for equality in the face of racist immigration laws. <a href="https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=11991">Wong Foon Sien</a> of the <a href="http://www.chinatownsocieties.org/society/chinese-benevolent-association/">Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver</a> made a pilgrimage to Ottawa every year for over a decade, simply to ask, as he said, “for equality and nothing more.” </p>
<p>The governments of the U.S. and Canada did not simply decide that the internment of <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation">120,000 Japanese Americans</a> and almost <a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/japanese-canadian-internment-and-the-struggle-for-redress">22,000 Japanese Canadians</a> during the Second World War was wrong and then choose to apologize. Rather, Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians, along with their supporters, protested and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/japanese-canadian-internment-refusing-to-comply">resisted</a> the original internment orders, challenged the conditions of the camps throughout 1942 and 1943 (as historian <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/civilian-internment-in-canada">Mikhail Bjorge</a> has carefully documented through his study of riots and protests in this period) and fought hard for <a href="http://najc.ca/history/">redress</a> after the war, and continue to fight in different arenas. </p>
<p>More recently, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kitagawa">Mary Kitagawa</a> tirelessly lobbied the University of British Columbia to secure “a <a href="https://japanese-canadian-student-tribute.ubc.ca/">degree of justice</a>,” decades after the expulsion of Japanese Canadian students in 1942.</p>
<p>Activists faced considerable resistance and decades worth of work in their fight for recognition and reparations. And some of this resistance came from former <a href="http://torontonajc.ca/torontostory/chapter7.html">Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau</a>, who did not believe in apologizing for past mistakes.</p>
<p>As Japanese Canadian activist Roy Miki <a href="http://services.raincoast.com/scripts/b2b.wsc/featured?hh_isbn=9781597144988&ht_orig_from=raincoast">observed</a>, “seeking the full rights of citizenship, including the right to seek redress, had always been a large part of what ‘Japanese Canadian’ meant.”</p>
<h2>Role of advocacy and empathy</h2>
<p>To insist on the work that victims have done to secure justice, equality and redress is not to deny or overlook the important work by supporters and advocates (like that <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/voices-raised-in-protest">documented by historian Stephanie Bangarth</a>). Nor is it to suggest that this work has been entirely benign, or that it has not caused other forms of damage. This has been most notable in terms of settler colonialism and the continued marginalization of Black communities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-model-minority-myth-hides-the-racist-and-sexist-violence-experienced-by-asian-women-157667">The model minority myth hides the racist and sexist violence experienced by Asian women</a>
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<p>It is, however, to underscore that the burden of responsibility for effecting change has always rested with those most impacted by violence and injustice in North America, whether it be Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian or other racialized people. And because this dynamic continues to be perpetuated, the possibility of doing nothing persists.</p>
<p>This dynamic results from different understandings and connections to historical and contemporary injustices. Solidarity and advocacy were possible historically when people perceived a common cause, or had a sense that larger ideals were at stake.</p>
<p>Recent statements of condemnation by political and civic leaders about anti-Asian violence are important and necessary. As are statements by <a href="https://www.iehs.org/statement-of-solidarity-with-professor-mae-ngai-and-all-aapi-survivors-of-racist-hate/">leading scholars</a> who can highlight injustices and speak to the broader issues. </p>
<p>Equally important is understanding how and where the impetus for change has come from historically and why it is important to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/22/us/afraid-cnn-special-report-asian-americans/index.html">listen when people say they are scared</a>. The burden of responsibility should not include convincing others that historical experiences, and present-day fears, are real and viscerally felt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158732/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Madokoro receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>To remove the burden of responsibility, everyone must take over some of the work that diverse communities have been doing to combat prejudice and fear for decades.Laura Madokoro, Associate Professor, Department of History, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1576372021-04-13T13:55:05Z2021-04-13T13:55:05ZWhy words matter: The negative impacts of racial microaggressions on Indigenous and other racialized people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393208/original/file-20210401-19-k45hg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4377%2C2894&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A more equitable approach to dealing with microaggressions would be to put the onus of addressing them onto the perpetrators. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Don’t you go to school for free?”, “You don’t pay taxes!”, “Do you live in a teepee?” are things Indigenous students have heard.</p>
<p>In some cases, there is widespread agreement on what racism is. For example, most people would agree that restricting a racial group’s right to vote in a federal election is racist. (Indigenous people were the last to gain full <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indigenous-suffrage">voting rights in Canada in 1960</a>.) </p>
<p>But in other cases, the agreement is scant — the quotes at the top of this page represent some of those cases. They are examples of racial microaggressions. Racial microaggressions are often considered “minor.” </p>
<h2>What are racial microaggressions?</h2>
<p>Racial microaggressions are <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319703312">incessant, subtle forms of racism</a> that can be <a href="http://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.62.4.271">verbal, behavioural or environmental</a>. Racial microaggressions have been described as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027658">racial indignities</a>.” </p>
<p>As a mixed-race Haida woman, I’ve been routinely told I “don’t look Indigenous” or I’m “not like other Indigenous people” because I was born with my mother’s skin tone instead of my father’s. This is an example of a racial microaggression. </p>
<p>Microaggressions may seem small or “micro,” but as incessant forms of racism, they can have big impacts on mental health, physical health and social life.</p>
<p>One study of university students found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036573">non-Indigenous university students regularly asked Indigenous university students if they lived in teepees</a>. Another study found that Indigenous students were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/070674371205701006">stereotyped by others as drunks, addicts or on welfare</a>.</p>
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<h2>Daily hassles</h2>
<p>One way of looking at the impact of racial microaggressions could be to look at daily hassles. <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2014.06.019">Daily hassles</a> are defined as “relatively minor, everyday problems such as commuting problems, family arguments or household repairs.”</p>
<p>The cumulative impact of daily hassles is linked to chronic health conditions like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-012-9423-0">digestive problems</a>, mental health conditions like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-380882-0.00012-7">depression and anxiety</a> and <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2014.06.019">even death</a>. Some researchers have even found that daily hassles have a <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2014.06.019">larger impact on health than major life events</a> given their relentless nature. </p>
<p>The concept of daily hassles show that small things can have big impacts. </p>
<h2>Racial microagressions and health</h2>
<p>Researchers have shown that racial microaggressions are associated with depression in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000077">Latino community members</a>, in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00377317.2021.1882922">university students of Asian descent</a> and create <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000259">PTSD symptoms in Black participants</a>. Microaggressions are also related to physical health outcomes. Experiencing racial microaggressions during the COVID-19 pandemic was related to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/sah0000275">physical health issues and sleep troubles for Asians and Asian Americans</a>. </p>
<p>They’re also associated with a whole host of other negative outcomes like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-020-00778-8">substance use, anxiety, stress and even suicidal thoughts</a> in many racialized groups. </p>
<p>Although there is little quantitative research on the impacts of microaggressions on Indigenous people, qualitative research has indicated that Indigenous people feel <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036573">disrespected, degraded, uncomfortable or like they have to hide their Indigenous identity</a> after experiencing microaggressions. </p>
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<img alt="Queer couple smiling at each other" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393215/original/file-20210401-13-1h06wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393215/original/file-20210401-13-1h06wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393215/original/file-20210401-13-1h06wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393215/original/file-20210401-13-1h06wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393215/original/file-20210401-13-1h06wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393215/original/file-20210401-13-1h06wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393215/original/file-20210401-13-1h06wz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A person can experience multiple types of microaggressions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<h2>Microaggressions aren’t just based on race</h2>
<p>Microaggressions can be based on many factors. Researchers have identified microaggressions based on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00268-021-05974-z">gender</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2018.1542206">LGBTQ identity</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2019.1680344">ability</a>. </p>
<p>Experiencing microaggressions based on these other factors can have similar effects as racial microaggressions: for example, experiences of disability-related microaggressions were related to higher levels of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2019.1680344">anxiety in Canadian university students</a>. </p>
<p>A person can experience multiple types of microaggressions, due to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination">intersectionality of their identities</a>.</p>
<p>For example, an Indigenous woman who identifies as bisexual might experience race, gender and sexual orientation-related microaggressions all in one day. Based on research on the impact of microaggressions and daily hassles, it is likely these combined experiences have negative impacts. </p>
<h2>What to do about them?</h2>
<p>What can people do about microaggressions? Freelance writer Hahna Yoon <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/smarter-living/how-to-respond-to-microaggressions.html">wrote a piece in the <em>New York Times</em></a> on how the targets of microaggressions might respond. These discussions are important because microaggressions exist and targets of them must have coping mechanisms. For example, people who experience microaggressions might share their experiences with others who have common experiences as a way to cope.</p>
<p>However, focusing on the target’s response misplaces the burden. A more equitable approach would be to put the onus of addressing microaggressions onto the perpetrators of the microaggressions. But there is relatively little research on this. </p>
<p>One study found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2020.04.008">white participants said they were less likely to engage in microaggressions</a> after a day-long workshop on race, racism and racial microaggressions. The study provides hope to those who do this work, but more information is needed. </p>
<p>Microaggressions cause harm. More research needs to be done to understand how best to prevent them. Thinking about how words matter might be a good place to start.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Iloradanon Efimoff receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>Does it really matter that Indigenous people and other racialized people experience microaggressions? The short answer: Yes.Iloradanon Efimoff, Ph.D. Candidate, Social and Personality Psychology, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1582812021-04-11T11:47:51Z2021-04-11T11:47:51ZWriting from 130 years ago shows we’re still dealing with the same anti-Asian racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393621/original/file-20210406-21-1r2zfi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C201%2C4183%2C2443&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Community members gather for a vigil in memory of the victims of the Atlanta shootings and to rally against anti-Asian racism in Ottawa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In March, when a white man <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/03/8-people-killed-in-atlanta-rampage-6-of-them-asian-women.html">targeted and killed eight women in Atlanta, six of whom were Asian</a>, mainstream media and police initially <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-atlanta-attacks-were-not-just-racist-and-misogynist-they-painfully-reflect-the-society-we-live-in-157389">refused to categorize it as a racially motivated hate crime</a>. But for Asian people, across North America and globally, this tragedy was one more episode in a long history of anti-Asian violence. </p>
<p>Over 150 years ago, <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11825013">white settlers in the United States rounded up Chinese merchants and miners</a> and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520256941/driven-out">put them onto burning barges, threw them into railway cars and even lynched them</a>. But this story is not limited to the U.S. — early Chinese immigrants were not welcome in Canada either. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/asian-americans-top-target-for-threats-and-harassment-during-pandemic-158011">Asian Americans top target for threats and harassment during pandemic</a>
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<p>This is documented in the life and works of Chinese-Canadian author and journalist <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/eaton_edith_maud_14E.html">Edith Eaton</a> (1865-1914). While researching <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/becoming-sui-sin-far-products-9780773547223.php"><em>Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton</em></a>, I discovered numerous accounts of early Canadian anti-Chinese racism in her work.</p>
<h2>Memoirs from the past show similar hatred</h2>
<p>In Eaton’s memoir <a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/far/leaves_mental_portfolio/"><em>Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian</em></a>, she recalls being called “Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, yellow-face, pig-tail, rat-eater,” after moving to North America with her family — a white father, Chinese mother and five siblings — in 1872.</p>
<p>Soon after the family’s arrival in Montréal, locals would call out “Chinese!” “Chinoise!” as they walked down the street. Classmates would pull Eaton’s hair, pinch her and refuse to sit beside her.</p>
<p>These taunts and torments were felt deeply by Eaton throughout her life. She wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I have come from a race on my mother’s side which is said to be the most stolid and insensible to feeling of all races. Yet I look back over the years and see myself so keenly alive to every shade of sorrow and suffering that it is almost a pain to live.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Eaton published <a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/mrs-spring-fragrance/#tab-description">a book of short stories depicting Chinese immigrants’ encounters with racism</a> under the pseudonym “Sui Sin Far” (Cantonese for narcissus). And her advocacy was appreciated by Chinese people in Montréal <a href="https://winnifredeatonarchive.org/timeline.html">who erected a memorial beside her grave</a> with the inscription “Yi bu wang hua,” which means “The righteous one does not forget China.” </p>
<p>Since the Atlanta shootings, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/nyregion/asian-attack-nyc.html">Asian women have been assaulted and even killed</a>. Asian people have been accused of causing <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/26/980480882/why-pandemics-give-birth-to-hate-from-black-death-to-covid-19">COVID-19</a>, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/03/sery-kim-texas/">stealing intellectual property</a> and more. What Eaton described in her fiction and memoir continues to happen today.</p>
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<img alt="1896 newspaper article titled 'The Chinese Defended'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393620/original/file-20210406-13-18nfy9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">In a signed letter to the editor, Edith Eaton defends Chinese people in Montréal who have been the target of hate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Montréal Daily Star</span></span>
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<h2>1890s headlines interchangeable with today’s</h2>
<p>Eaton also documented anti-Chinese violence and championed the rights of Chinese immigrants in stories published in the <em>Montréal Star</em> and the <em>Montréal Witness</em> throughout the 1890s. </p>
<p>At the time, <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/history-ethnic-cultural/early-chinese-canadians/Pages/history.aspx#rac3">white men were convinced that Chinese immigrants were taking their jobs away</a> and that Chinese men — many of whom lived alone behind their shops (because of the <a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/the-chinese-head-tax-and-the-chinese-exclusion-act">Head Tax</a> — had an unfair advantage over white men with families. </p>
<p>In the <em>Montréal Star</em>, Eaton published <a href="https://issuu.com/reillyreads/docs/a_plea_for_the_chinaman?backgroundColor=%2523222222">A Plea for the Chinaman</a>, in which she called out politicians for mistreating Chinese men in Canada: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Every just person must feel his or her sense of justice outraged by the attacks which are being made by public men upon the Chinese who come to this country.… It makes one’s cheeks burn to read about men of high office standing up and abusing a lot of poor foreigners behind their backs and calling them all the bad names their tongues can utter.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Anti-Chinese violence was so common in 1890s Montréal that Chinese men carried police whistles in their pockets. In an <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/becoming-sui-sin-far-products-9780773547223.php">1895 article, titled Beaten to Death, Eaton noted</a> that even when they blew their whistles, no one would come to Chinese men’s aid. Bystanders often refused to identify their assailants and police told the men who had been assaulted that they should be arrested for bothering them.</p>
<p>The recent reports of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/nyregion/asian-attack-nyc.html">security guard’s refusal to act when a Filipino woman was brutally beaten</a> uncannily recall the anti-Asian violence Eaton documented 125 years ago.</p>
<p>My research leads me to suspect that Eaton published other <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/419804834/?terms=Chinese%2Blaundries">unsigned articles documenting anti-Chinese racism</a> in Montreal newspapers at this time. She may have written a <em>Gazette</em> article reporting on youth who would gather nightly in Montreal’s Chinatown to <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/419785179/?terms=Chinese%2Bwindows">throw stones at passing Chinese men and through the plate glass windows of their businesses</a>, or those describing Chinese men being <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/419785179/?terms=Chinese%2Bwindows">punched, kicked or beaten to death</a>.</p>
<h2>What was written when?</h2>
<p>Looking at literature and journalism of the past such as Eaton’s can help illuminate the challenges of today. Her observations about people’s motivations — ignorance, jealousy, suspicion, competition — invite us to reflect on the motivations of today’s perpetrators of anti-Asian violence and conclude that not much has changed.</p>
<p>The anti-Asian racism recorded in Eaton’s work and journalism across Montreal persists today. Recent reports of <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/new-report-details-disturbing-rise-in-anti-asian-hate-crimes-in-canada-1.5358955">racist violence</a>, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7734109/anti-asian-racism-canada-what-to-do/">hate crimes</a>, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7726666/guelph-woman-anti-asian-slurs/">verbal harassment</a>, <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/opaque-policing-two-deaths-other-attacks-loom-as-asian-montrealers-fear-unrecognized-hate-crimes-1.5353647">opaque policing</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/03/983406365/in-response-to-anti-asian-hate-incidents-groups-step-up-trainings-for-bystanders">passive bystanders</a> could have been written more than a century ago. </p>
<p>We have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to make up for over a century of treating Asian people like they do not belong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158281/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Chapman receives funding from SSHRC and UBC's Faculty of Arts. </span></em></p>Chinese-Canadian journalist Edith Eaton documented anti-Asian racism in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th century. Over 100 years later, not much has changed.Mary Chapman, Professor of English and Academic Director of the Public Humanities Hub, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1581052021-04-01T18:47:35Z2021-04-01T18:47:35Z‘Godzilla vs. Kong’: Monster movies evoke adventure but also ‘dangers’ of tropics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393182/original/file-20210401-19-kx3hwy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C12%2C1349%2C679&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hollywood movies have historically represented the tropics as lush green coasts but lurking underneath is disease and danger.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For audiences stuck in their living rooms, the new monster film <em>Godzilla vs. Kong</em> offers an opportunity to do some armchair travelling. But before you imagine a tropical island getaway — perhaps a lounge-chair by a beach soaked in sunshine — this is a monster movie and so you must also make room for a scary lurking creature. </p>
<p>The duality of these images are with us partly because <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/hollywoods-hawaii">Hollywood movies have long leaned into colonial representations</a> of the tropics: imagined as romantic palm-fringed coasts full of abundance and natural fertility, but also scary places full of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9493.00060">pestilence, disease and primitiveness</a> and previously “undiscovered” creatures. </p>
<p>Through stories of colonial exploration, tropical landscapes become places where the western explorer can experience the unbridled sensuality of nature as well as the thrill of danger from the unknown. In this view, the tropics become a landscape where nature towers over man, a power imbalance that monster films seek to address. </p>
<p>Though these films start with tropical locales, the threat posed by mega-creatures does not become real until they cross into the realms of the western world. For example, Godzilla’s journey begins with former colonies and ends in New York. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book Cover: Contagious: Cultures, Carriers and the Outbreak Narrative" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Monster movies are about protecting western lands and people from exposure to strange lands, people and disease.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Duke Press)</span></span>
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<p>The problem in these monster movies then becomes one of protecting western lands and people from <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/bioinsecurities">exposure to strange lands</a> and the “aberrant” creatures and people contained in those lands. Non-western landscapes and people thus become endowed with the burden of embodying these threats, magnified many times over in monster films. The same trajectory is also invoked with narratives of disease transmission: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390572">from a “primitive” space to the metropolitan centre</a>. </p>
<p>Although <a href="https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/godzillas-island-origin/">Godzilla originated out of Japanese history and culture</a>, when it crossed over into Hollywood, the setting of the films relied on tropes from colonial history. So while monster films may be entertaining, they build on structures with long imperial histories and have implications for the way <a href="http://www.siupress.com/books/978-0-8093-2624-2">Hollywood audiences perceive the tropics</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Savage wilderness’</h2>
<p>The narratives of tropics simultaneously containing possibilities for paradise and pestilence can be traced back to the beginning of colonial scientific exploration.</p>
<p>These ideas come alive in <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/61933b5a4492e779/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2599">a 19th-century explorer’s account of a journey </a> to French Guiana. He writes about “virgin forests,” “tropical luxuriance,” “wild denizens” and their “gloomy recesses” and “the poetry of savage wilderness.”</p>
<p>The 19th-century British explorer, Joseph Banks, who accompanied cartographer James Cook on his voyage to the South Pacific, marvelled <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/joseph-banks-endeavour-journal">how nature had provided for the inhabitants of these lands in abundance. He even said the tropical land yielded fruit without labour</a>. These perceptions shaped the idea of tropics as a place of natural abundance, and gave rise to the trope of <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14096.html">tropical bounty</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/earth-day-colonialisms-role-in-the-overexploitation-of-natural-resources-113995">Earth Day: Colonialism's role in the overexploitation of natural resources</a>
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<p>The “discovery” of new lands was combined with the impulse to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/history/regional-history-after-1500/green-imperialism-colonial-expansion-tropical-island-edens-and-origins-environmentalism-16001860">recreate the Biblical idea of an Eden, or paradise on Earth</a>, a phenomenon which played out with colonial explorers on tropical islands. </p>
<h2>The yellow filter</h2>
<p>Hollywood’s monster films like <em>Godzilla</em> (1998, 2014) and <em>Kong: Skull Island</em> (2017) have used similar ideas. In all three films, the tropical island is an important setting, a place where the story is set in motion. All three films fall into similar patterns and use similar techniques to depict the tropics versus the west.</p>
<p>The opening sequences in the 1998 and 2014 versions of <em>Godzilla</em> rely on footage of sepia-toned palm lined beaches, Indigenous Peoples and a warmly lit mine next to a lush forest in the Philippines. </p>
<p>The sepia tone in the 1998 <em>Godzilla</em> resembles Hollywood’s common use of the <a href="https://matadornetwork.com/read/yellow-filter-american-movies/">yellow filter</a> to show tropical locations. Critics like journalist Elisabeth Sherman have pointed out the use of the yellow filter as something western movie makers do to “depict warm, tropical, dry climates.” But she says, “it makes the landscape in question look jaundiced and unhealthy.” <em>Kong: Skull Island</em> also makes use of a warm yellow tinge for the scenes that unfold in the tropical jungle that is Kong’s turf.</p>
<h2>The photographic lens</h2>
<p>Modes of representation such as the camera and photography were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/magazine/when-the-camera-was-a-weapon-of-imperialism-and-when-it-still-is.html">part of the imperial apparatus</a>. As technology brought by the white explorers, photography provided a means to <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo15581095.html">capture the land, erase and arrange the people</a> being looked at through the camera.</p>
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<img alt="Two people, one with a gun raised and one with a camera search under dinosaur bones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A scene from ‘Kong: Skull Island.’ Brie Larson plays the photographer and Tom Hiddleston is the tracker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span>
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<p><em>Kong: Skull Island</em> features an “uncharted” island in the South Pacific. In the film, the inhabitants of the island are often shown through the photographer’s camera. The residents are mute in the film; the audience and the rest of the team in Skull Island need the westerner’s help to parse what they mean with their gestures.</p>
<h2>Depicting Indigenous Peoples as in the past</h2>
<p>In <em>Kong: Skull Island</em>, expedition leader William Randa (played by John Goodman) tries to get funding for his trip to the uncharted island by describing it as a place “where God did not finish creation” or, in other words, a place where time has stood still. </p>
<p>Indeed, the inhabitants of Skull Island are situated squarely in a <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/time-and-the-other/9780231169264">prehistoric</a> time-frame, separate from the contemporary time inhabited by the explorers.</p>
<p>Building on the colonial imagination that casts Indigenous inhabitants as being close to nature, the 2021 film features an Indigenous girl from Skull Island as the sole contact between Kong and the rest of the world. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Official trailer of King Kong vs. Godzilla/Warner Bros. 2021.</span></figcaption>
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<p>With its unknown creatures and lush forests, Skull Island occupies a different space-time. These sentiments of the Indigenous populations and flora and fauna were commonly expressed by colonial explorers. Ernst Haeckel, the famous naturalist and proponent of Darwinism, on his visit to Sri Lanka said the flora of the land reminded him of <a href="https://archive.org/details/visittoceylon00haecuoft">fossils from earlier geological ages</a>. </p>
<p>Reminiscent of the competition between various colonial powers to map “unknown” lands and resources, what gets Randa his funding is the assurance that Americans will “discover” the uncharted island first.</p>
<h2>Old texts still have everyday impact</h2>
<p><em>Kong: Skull Island</em> builds on the long history of colonial literature. Two characters in the film: the tracker, named Conrad (played by Tom Hiddleston), and Marlow (John C. Reilly) are a nod to the literary journey up the Congo river in the novel, <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310601/heart-of-darkness-by-joseph-conrad/">Heart of Darkness</a></em> about an explorer named Marlow and written by Joseph Conrad. The novel’s premise that the journey up the Congo river is a journey into darkness <a href="https://www.massreview.org/volume-57-issue-1">has raised many debates</a> about the racism in Conrad’s text. </p>
<p>Though the new <em>Godzilla vs. Kong</em> offers the two mega-creatures a common enemy, the film still traffics in established tropes of monster films. </p>
<p>For decades, these landscapes have been characterized as sites of abundance but also disease outbreaks. At the same time, they also become places full of resources that need extraction. In Hollywood and colonial literature imaginations, the tropics hold cures for disease, alternative medicines and other geological resources, building on the long history of collaboration between <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-bears-fingerprints-colonialism-180968709/">scientists and the colonial enterprise</a>. </p>
<p>Even though these tropes came into being centuries ago as a result of colonial expeditions, they still underpin how space gets imagined in contemporary pop culture, revealing the everyday impact of old literary texts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Priscilla Jolly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hollywood movies have long leaned into colonial representations of the tropics: imagined as romantic palm-fringed coasts full of abundance, but also scary places full of pestilence and primitiveness.Priscilla Jolly, PhD student, Department of English, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1214712019-08-07T13:37:06Z2019-08-07T13:37:06ZMass shootings aren’t growing more common – and evidence contradicts common stereotypes about the killers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287111/original/file-20190806-84210-n7l4h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=474%2C7%2C4266%2C3233&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Just like the memorials after a shooting, some myths are bound to appear.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Texas-Mall-Shooting/14b0fdfd31a74d3bb9cf403b4af69cf9/1/0">AP Photo/John Locher</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When 22 people were killed in El Paso, Texas, and nine more were killed in Dayton, Ohio, roughly 12 hours later, responses to the tragedy included many of the same myths and stereotypes Americans have grown used to hearing in the wake of a mass shooting.</p>
<p>As part of my work as a psychology researcher, I study mass homicides, as well as society’s reaction to them. A lot of bad information can follow in the wake of such emotional events; clear, data-based discussions of mass homicides can get lost among political narratives.</p>
<p>I’d like to clear up four common misconceptions about mass homicides and who commits them, based on the current state of research.</p>
<h2>Violent video games cause mass homicides?</h2>
<p>By Monday morning after these latest shootings, <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?463254-1/president-trump-calls-nation-condemn-racism-bigotry-white-supremacy-mass-shootings">President Donald Trump</a> along with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/sports/trump-violent-video-games-studies.html">other Republican politicians</a> had linked violent video games to mass shootings.</p>
<p>I’ll admit my surprise, since only last year the Trump administration convened a School Safety Commission which studied this issue, among many others. I myself testified, and the commission <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/documents/school-safety/school-safety-report.pdf">ultimately did not conclude</a> there was sufficient evidence to link games and media to criminal violence.</p>
<p>Long-term studies of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01069-0">youth</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0646-z">consistently</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000035">find</a> that violent games are not a risk factor for youth violence anywhere from one to eight years later. And no less than the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZS.html">U.S. Supreme Court</a> declared in 2011 that scientific studies had failed to link violent games to serious aggression in kids.</p>
<p>A 2017 public policy statement by the American Psychological Association’s <a href="https://div46amplifier.com/2017/06/12/news-media-public-education-and-public-policy-committee/">media psychology and technology division</a> specifically recommended politicians should stop linking violent games to mass shootings. It’s time to lay this myth to rest.</p>
<h2>Mass shooters are male white supremacists?</h2>
<p>Early reports suggest that the El Paso shooter was a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/04/whats-inside-hate-filled-manifesto-linked-el-paso-shooter/">white racist concerned about Latino immigration</a>. Other shooters, such as the perpetrator of the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/03/15/new-zealand-christchurch-mosque-shootings-who-brenton-tarrant/3172550002/">Christchurch, New Zealand</a> attack, have also been white supremacists.</p>
<p>Overall, though, the ethnic composition of the group of all mass shooters in the U.S. is <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/">roughly equivalent</a> to the American population.</p>
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<p>Hateful people tend to be attracted to hateful ideologies. Some shootings, such as the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dallas-police-ambush/protests-spawn-cities-across-u-s-over-police-shootings-black-n605686">2016 shooting</a> of police officers in Dallas, were reportedly motivated by anti-white hatred. Other shooters, such as the 2015 <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wife-calif-shooting-victim-believes-husband-targeted-article-1.2458790">San Bernardino</a> husband and wife perpetrator team, have espoused other hateful ideas such as radical Islam.</p>
<p>Most mass homicide perpetrators <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/14/what-do-most-mass-shooters-have-in-common-hint-it-isnt-politics-video-games-or-religion/">don’t proclaim</a> any allegiance to a <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Murder-United-States-Ronald-Holmes/dp/0139343083/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=Mass+Murder+in+the+United+States&qid=1565110526&s=gateway&sr=8-4">particular ideology</a> at all. </p>
<p>Of course, mass homicides in other nations – such as several <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/25/tokyo-knife-attack-stabbing-sagamihara">deadly</a> <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/what-we-know-about-the-knife-attack-in-kawasaki-japan.html">knife</a> attacks in Japan – don’t involve U.S. race issues.</p>
<p>As far as gender, it’s true that most mass homicide perpetrators are male. A minority of shooters <a href="https://www.crimetraveller.org/2017/04/amy-bishop-university-professor-mass-murder/">are female</a>, and they may <a href="https://time.com/4375398/andrea-yates-15-years-drown-children/">target their own families</a>. </p>
<h2>Mental illness definitely is or is not to blame?</h2>
<p>Whether mental illness is or is not related to mass shootings – or criminal violence more broadly – is a nuanced question. Frankly, proponents on both sides often get this wrong by portraying the issue as clear-cut.</p>
<p>As far back as 2002, a <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/preventingattacksreport.pdf">U.S. Secret Service report</a> based on case studies and interviews with surviving shooters identified mental illness – typically either psychosis or suicidal depression – as very common among mass homicide perpetrators.</p>
<p>As for violence more broadly, mental illness, such as <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0016311">psychosis</a> as well as a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-010-9610-x">mixture of depression with antisocial traits</a>, is a risk factor for violent behavior. </p>
<p>Some people suggest mental illness is completely unrelated to crime, but that claim tends to rely on mangled statistics. For instance, I’ve <a href="https://www.amhca.org/blogs/joel-miller/2017/10/03/gun-violence-and-mental-illnessmyths-and-evidence-based-facts">seen the suggestion</a> that individuals with mental illness account for just 5% of violent crimes. However, that assertion is based on research like one <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1557975/">Swedish study that limited mental illness to psychosis only</a>, which is experienced by about <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/schizophrenia.shtml">1% or less</a> of the population. If 1% of people commit 5% of crimes, that suggests psychosis elevates risk of crime. </p>
<p>It’s also important to point out that the vast majority of people with mental illness do not commit violent crimes. For instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291714000695">in one study</a>, about 15% of people with schizophrenia had committed violent crimes, as compared to 4% of a group of people without schizophrenia. Although this clearly identifies the increase in risk, it also highlights that the majority of people with schizophrenia had not committed violent crimes. It’s important not to stigmatize the mentally ill, which may reduce their incentive to seek treatment.</p>
<p>So improving access to mental health services would benefit a whole range of people and, by coincidence, occasionally bring treatment to someone at risk of committing violence. But focusing only on mental health is unlikely to put much of a dent in societal violence.</p>
<h2>Mass homicides are becoming more frequent?</h2>
<p>Mass homicides get a lot of news coverage which keeps our focus on the frequency of their occurrence. Just how frequent is sometimes muddled by shifting definitions of mass homicide, and confusion with other terms such as active shooter.</p>
<p>But using standard definitions, most data suggest that the prevalence of mass shootings has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767913510297">stayed</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.VV-D-16-00039">fairly</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/04/mass-shootings-more-deadly-frequent-research-215678">consistent</a> over the past few decades.</p>
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<p>To be sure, the U.S. has experienced many mass homicides. Even stability might be depressing given that <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/421900-crime-murder-rates-drop-in-big-cities">rates of other violent crimes have declined</a> precipitously in the U.S. over the past 25 years. Why mass homicides have stayed stagnant while other homicides have plummeted in frequency is a question worth asking.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it does not appear that the U.S. is awash in an epidemic of such crimes, at least comparing to previous decades going back to the 1970s.</p>
<p>Mass homicides are horrific tragedies and society must do whatever is possible to understand them fully in order to prevent them. But people also need to separate the data from the myths and the social, political and moral narratives that often form around crime.</p>
<p>Only through dispassionate consideration of good data will society understand how best to prevent these crimes.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher J. Ferguson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mentally ill, white supremacist video game-playing men are pushing rates of mass homicide ever higher in the US? The real data is more nuanced than common misperceptions suggest.Christopher J. Ferguson, Professor of Psychology, Stetson University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1192772019-07-29T21:08:07Z2019-07-29T21:08:07ZBotswana recognizes LGBTQ rights, leading the way in southern Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285617/original/file-20190724-110195-1m98npd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=111%2C19%2C2083%2C1448&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Activists celebrate outside the High Court in Gaborone, Botswana on June 11, 2019. Botswana became the latest country to decriminalize gay sex.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> (AP Photo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Botswana is a small country by population, but a big one by its role in the history of <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/botswana/">multi-party democracy and human rights</a> in southern Africa. Botswana, although it did not sacrifice as much as many of the other frontline states, just got bigger. Last month, its High Court determined that the law that criminalised “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” was discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. </p>
<p>Botswana now joins a select group of African countries that <a href="https://theconversation.com/botswana-court-ruling-is-a-ray-of-hope-for-lgbt-people-across-africa-118713">recognizes</a> the rights and dignity of its sexual minorities.</p>
<p>This ruling is a tremendous victory for all LGBTQ people in Botswana. The path is now open to liberate LGBTQ people from fear of arrest and harassment by the police, of <a href="https://africanarguments.org/sexuality-and-social-justice-in-africa/">shaming and outing</a> by health-care professionals and of extortion by ex-lovers, among other presently common experiences. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/botswana-court-ruling-is-a-ray-of-hope-for-lgbt-people-across-africa-118713">Botswana court ruling is a ray of hope for LGBT people across Africa</a>
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<p>It has the potential to liberate LGBTQ people psychologically from the stigma of being criminalized. That stigma often <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/sexual-diversity-in-africa-products-9780773541887.ph">drove men</a> who have sex with men (MSM) to hide their sexuality behind a façade of heterosexual relationships. This ruling provides some hope for a safer and greater dignity as the need to hide from the law is removed.</p>
<p>The ruling <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b_ZWsVbLiI">has significance</a> far beyond Botswana’s borders. </p>
<h2>Botswana is widely respected</h2>
<p>Although human rights monitors in South Africa have <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/same-sex-marriage-global-comparisons">reported failures</a> by security forces to uphold rights of lesbians and transgender men,
it was the first country in the world to enshrine freedom from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in its <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/southafrica-lgbtq-rights/593050/">national constitution</a>. It was also one of the first governments in the world to recognize full equality of marriage for sexual and gender minorities. </p>
<p>While Cape Town markets itself as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/southafrica-lgbtq-rights/593050/">“Africa’s gay capital,”</a> South Africa has been cautious to avoid the accusation of exporting its approach to human rights. Some consider the South African laws an idiosyncrasy linked to <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/web-features/good-leadership-about-people-%E2%80%93-festus-mogae">white settler colonialism</a>. </p>
<p>But Botswana was never a colony. It was a protectorate in which core aspects of traditional authority and culture were preserved and almost no white settlement was allowed. Botswana, Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are widely respected throughout Africa for their role in the liberation of South Africa from white supremacy.</p>
<p>The Botswana ruling may slightly embolden South African’s Minister of International Affairs. Now that South Africa is just one of four nations in the region to have decriminalized consenting homosexual acts, it may become more forthright in speaking out against gross violations of the human rights of sexual and gender minorities in other African countries.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285754/original/file-20190725-136737-7rzr4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285754/original/file-20190725-136737-7rzr4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285754/original/file-20190725-136737-7rzr4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285754/original/file-20190725-136737-7rzr4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285754/original/file-20190725-136737-7rzr4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285754/original/file-20190725-136737-7rzr4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285754/original/file-20190725-136737-7rzr4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">In this May 2010 photo, women protest against a sentence of 14 years in prison, with hard labour, given to two men in Malawi under Malawi’s anti-gay legislation, in the city of Cape Town, South Africa,</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)</span></span>
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<h2>Urbanized and progressive</h2>
<p>The common assumption is that traditional culture in Botswana is inimical to gay rights. That assumption is mistaken. </p>
<p>Botswana is one of the most urbanized countries on the continent (more so than South Africa, and not much behind Switzerland). <a href="http://www.legabibo.org/">LEGABIBO</a> (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals of Botswana, whose CEO testified as a friend of the court in this case), is one of the oldest sexual minority rights associations on the continent outside of South Africa. </p>
<p>While Sotho-Tswana remain strong and integral to national identity, traditional culture is actually more open than commonly assumed. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10220461.2017.1298052">The concept of <em>batho</em> (often translated as “African humanism”)</a> is perhaps relevant to that understanding. How can you be a human being with dignity and meaning if you do not respect your fellow humans — alive, yet-born and ancestral — as equally endowed with dignity and humanness, notwithstanding their (and our own) many differences and flaws? <a href="https://76crimes.com/2019/01/23/botswana-president-speaks-up-for-lgbti-rights-2/">The current president appears to share the same view.</a></p>
<p>Former president Festus Mogae <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/web-features/good-leadership-about-people-%E2%80%93-festus-mogae">hinted at this cultural attribute</a> a few years ago when he admitted that, as president, he quietly ordered the police not to enforce the-then law. Why enforce something that humiliates our family members and ourselves, especially when that law is a relic of a colonial, racist system?</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/botswana-joins-list-of-african-countries-reviewing-gay-rights-113586">Botswana joins list of African countries reviewing gay rights</a>
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<h2>Judicial independence</h2>
<p>Botswana has a long and proud tradition of judicial independence and of the courts taking a stand against the misuse of power. </p>
<p>The current ruling is actually the culmination of an incremental process of legal victories over the past decade, including winning the rights to non-discrimination in places of employment, change gender identity on official documents and form civil society associations. This process of respect for the rule of law is powerful testimony to the strength of Botswana’s democratic institutions.</p>
<p>But democracy, of course, does not always favour progressive change. Botswana’s Attorney General has already filed an appeal against <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48892517">the new ruling</a>. Although, without providing a strong rationale and running counter to the President’s earlier sympathetic statements toward sexual minorities, it is difficult to see the appeal as much more than a performance of rectitude. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285755/original/file-20190725-136759-bxxw20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285755/original/file-20190725-136759-bxxw20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285755/original/file-20190725-136759-bxxw20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285755/original/file-20190725-136759-bxxw20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285755/original/file-20190725-136759-bxxw20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285755/original/file-20190725-136759-bxxw20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285755/original/file-20190725-136759-bxxw20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Activists celebrate inside the High Court in Gaborone on June 11, 2019 after Botswana became the latest country to recognize LGBTQ human rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
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<p>Several African countries have used appeals to democracy to cement majoritarian cultural preference into their constitutions precisely to block sexual minority rights. <a href="https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4f9eae7c2.pdf">This was the main argument in the Kenya case</a>, where decriminalization of sodomy theoretically opened the door to a challenge on the constitutional definition of marriage as heterosexual. </p>
<p>In Botswana, a public health crisis clarified that democracy means more than majority preference. <a href="https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/sub-saharan-africa/botswana">Botswana has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS prevalence in the world, roughly 100 times that of Canada’s.</a> Botswana was among the first governments on the continent to recognize the imperative of a holistic, science-based approach to fighting the pandemic. </p>
<p>Since men who have sex with men (MSM) and trans people have <a href="https://hivlawcommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/HIV-and-the-Law-supplement-FINAL.pdf">disproportionately high rates of HIV </a>, it only makes sense to help that “key population” protect itself (and hence the non-key majority, who can now be equipped with honest sexuality education). Rationally, and compassionately, who can oppose this logic on the most basic public health grounds?</p>
<p>Bravo, Botswana, for saying so loudly and clearly that they cannot.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>marc epprecht receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>The recent ruling to decriminalize same sex behaviour in Botswana may have a positive impact on the rest of southern Africa.Marc Epprecht, Professor of Global Development Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1126702019-02-27T23:06:29Z2019-02-27T23:06:29ZMichael Cohen’s verbal somersault, ‘I lied, but I’m not a liar,’ translated by a rhetoric expert<p>Michael Cohen, who admits to lying, also says he’s not a liar. </p>
<p>Can we separate what someone does from who they are? Cohen thinks we should and it would help us to understand both him and Trump better.</p>
<p>Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/431812-cohen-in-testimony-i-am-no-longer-your-fixer-mr-trump">and fixer</a>, <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/636-michael-cohens-congressional-t/3a1530b333230e775df5/optimized/full.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0OFf-paXmS6nFaV4NsG5aQGpzKwEv9Tyl6oKgKbJCDACfT1PDp3e-pMA4#page=1">testified</a> before Congress about his former client Wednesday. </p>
<p>Cohen claimed that he wanted “to correct the record” about his previous testimony. Correcting the record now, Cohen hoped, would prove to the nation that lying was what Cohen <em>did</em>, but not who he <em>is</em>. </p>
<p>“I have lied, but I am not a liar,” said Cohen. “I have done bad things, but I am not a bad man,” he assured Congress.</p>
<p>At issue in Cohen’s testimony, therefore, were the points of <a href="https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/stasis_theory/index.html">stasis</a>, a Greek term used here to mean “points of argument.” Those stases centered on fact and quality: What happened and how should we judge it? </p>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.jennifermercieca.com/">scholar and teacher</a> of rhetoric and argumentation who is finishing a book about Trump’s presidential campaign, I paid close attention to how Cohen explained his actions on Trump’s behalf to Congress. </p>
<p>Cohen relied on the argumentative strategy of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00028533.1985.11951304">dissociation</a> – it’s not this, it’s that – to carefully separate his actions from his essence and Trump’s actions from Trump’s essence. </p>
<h2>Exonerate Cohen, implicate Trump</h2>
<p>According to this strategy a person who lies is not necessarily a liar; a person who does bad things is not necessarily a bad person. </p>
<p>The strategy invites audiences to separate the elements of an apparent unity – the person who does the thing <em>is</em> the thing – so that each can be judged separately. By doing this, Cohen attempted to exonerate himself and implicate Trump in several fraudulent schemes and attempted to define Trump’s essence as a “racist, a con man, and a cheat.” </p>
<p>Trump called Cohen a liar when he tweeted – and then retweeted while Cohen was testifying – that Cohen was disbarred for “lying and fraud” and that he lied again in his testimony. Cohen is a liar who lied, it is his essence, claimed Trump.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1100683974899363840"}"></div></p>
<p>Likewise, Republican lawmakers who questioned him rejected Cohen’s attempt to dissociate actions from essence. </p>
<p>“If you’ve lied, then you are a liar,” Georgia Rep. Jody Hice told Cohen, in one of the more heated exchanges of the testimony. </p>
<p>Cohen’s testimony wasn’t just about his own essence, it was also about Trump’s essence. </p>
<p>“Mr. Trump is an enigma,” testified Cohen. “He is complicated, as am I. He has both good and bad, as do we all.” </p>
<p>Cohen explained to Congress that Trump’s complicated nature, like his own, could best be understood by separating Trump’s actions from his essence. </p>
<p>According to Cohen, Trump’s actions made him appear to be something that he is not. Like the Trump brand’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Faking-News-Rhetoric-Donald-Societas/dp/1845409698/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8">signature gilding</a>, what was manifest on the outside was not what was on the inside. Trump’s exterior may glitter with gold, but according to Cohen, Trump does not have a heart of gold. </p>
<p>“The bad far outweighs the good,” said Cohen. Trump “is capable of <em>behaving</em> kindly, but he is not kind. He is capable of <em>committing acts of generosity</em>, but he is not generous. He is capable of <em>being loyal</em>, but he is fundamentally disloyal.” </p>
<h2>Between action and essence</h2>
<p>A central issue of Cohen’s testimony was about the distinction between appearance and reality, between his and Trump’s actions and their respective essences. </p>
<p>Cohen has invited the nation to render two separate judgments about himself and about Trump. The nation ought to render opposite judgments, argued Cohen, but both cases ought to be decided based upon a person’s essential character.</p>
<p>To make sense of Cohen’s testimony, the fundamental question is this: How should the actions of people like Trump and Cohen be judged? </p>
<p>Is a person a liar because they lie? Is a person kind because they appear to be kind? Should we dissociate the quality of the person from their actions? <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Democracies-Die-Steven-Levitsky/dp/1524762938">The fate</a> of the nation may hang on its citizens’ ability to judge correctly.</p>
<p>“Mr. Cohen, you call Mr. Trump a cheat,” Kentucky Rep. James Comer said to Cohen during the testimony. </p>
<p>“What would you call yourself?” Comer asked. </p>
<p>Cohen answered: “A fool.” </p>
<p>Was Cohen a fool – or did he merely act foolishly?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Mercieca does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Michael Cohen wants you to know that throwing your kid a ball doesn’t make you a Red Sox pitcher. So he told lies, he says, but that doesn’t make him a liar. A rhetoric scholar dissects his argument.Jennifer Mercieca, Associate Professor of Communication, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/941792018-03-29T11:02:39Z2018-03-29T11:02:39ZJail time for South African woman using racist slur sets new precedent<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212631/original/file-20180329-189807-rcwqg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African court rules that racism is a criminal offence.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>A South African estate agent Vicky Momberg was caught on video <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/vicki-momberg-sentenced-to-an-effective-2-years-in-prison-for-racist-rant-20180328">verbally abusing </a> a black policeman. She used the word <a href="http://thelawthinker.com/south-africa-calling-people-kaffirs-is-a-crime/">‘kaffirs’</a> repeatedly during her tirade against men who were trying to assist. The word is deeply offensive and considered the most racist in South Africa. The state brought a case of crimen injuria against Momberg and a court has sentenced her to three years in jail (one suspended). This makes her the first person in the country to be jailed for this offence. Thabo Leshilo asked legal experts Penelope Andrews, René Koraan and Chantelle Feldhaus to explain the significance of the judgment.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>What is the significance of the judgment?</strong> </p>
<p><em>Penelope Andrews:</em> The significance of the judgment is substantive and symbolic. It’s substantive in that the crime committed by the accused is punished severely. Symbolically it sends a message that racism is not to be tolerated. In fact, one could go so far as to say that the law establishes that anyone using the “k” word publicly to abuse and humiliate will be severely punished.</p>
<p><em>René Koraan and Chantelle Feldhaus:</em> Past cases indicate that the verbal form of crimen injuria is not that serious. But the Momberg sentence is a first of its kind in South Africa. She was sentenced to three years imprisonment of which one year was suspended for a period of three years, on condition that she did not commit crimen injuria again. In effect this means that Momberg will serve two years imprisonment.</p>
<p><strong>What is crimen injuria in South Africa and its basis?</strong></p>
<p><em>Penelope Andrews:</em> According to <a href="http://www.loot.co.za/product/jonathan-burchell-principles-of-criminal-law/vjmg-3196-g260?PPC=Y&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8JyXxJGR2gIV6JztCh3eDwyiEAAYAiAAEgIBIfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">principles of criminal law</a> crimen injuria consists in unlawfully and intentionally impairing the dignity or privacy of another person.</p>
<p><em>René Koraan and Chantelle Feldhaus:</em> South Africa’s criminal law system is based on common law and statutory law. Common law offences include abduction, arson, bigamy, fraud, incest, housebreaking, rape, robbery, and treason. Statutory crimes include crimes such as tax fraud and prevention of organised crime.</p>
<p>Crimen injuria (or iniuria) is a crime under the South African common law, defined as the act of <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/faqdetail.php?fid=9">“unlawfully and intentionally impairing the dignity or privacy of another.”</a>.</p>
<p>Crimen injuria provides the basis of protecting the constitutional right to human dignity in criminal prosecutions. It can happen either verbally or by deed. Importantly, crimen injuria should be distinguished from criminal defamation which has to do with the good name or reputation of a person. Both the right to privacy and dignity are protected in different sections of the <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">Constitution of the Republic of South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>To determine if a person’s dignity was impaired the victim should, firstly, have been aware of what the accused was doing to them and secondly, the victim should have felt degraded or humiliated because of what the accused did to them. This is also objectively determined by the court. The court then considers whether a reasonable person in the same circumstances of the accused would also have felt humiliated or degraded by the conduct of the accused.</p>
<p>It seems that currently, the most serious form of verbal crimen injuria is the use of the word <em>kaffir</em>. It is evident from case law that calling a police officer the ‘k’-word in South Africa is regarded as serious enough to warrant criminal proceedings.</p>
<p><strong>How does it differ from hate speech?</strong> </p>
<p><em>Penelope Andrews:</em> Crimen injuria is a criminal offence. Hate speech is a civil offence. Rather, it’s prohibited in the constitution as well as legislation that protects people against <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/2000-004.pdf">unfair discrimination</a>. Hate speech also has a very specific definition, whereas (crimen inuria) is arguably more broadly defined.</p>
<p><em>René Koraan and Chantelle Feldhaus:</em> The Constitution promotes free speech, but that doesn’t extend to hate based on “race”, ethnicity, gender or religion. South Africa is also a signatory to the International Convention on the Elimination of <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CERD.aspx">All Forms of Racial Discrimination</a>, which requires countries to make racial superiority or hatred punishable by law.</p>
<p>South Africa has drafted a new bill to cover this. <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/hcbill/hatecrimes.html">The hate-speech bill</a> being considered by parliament provides for the criminal prosecution of people who commit the offences of hate crime and hate speech. It defines hate speech as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>an intentional communication (including speech) that advocates hatred or is threatening, abusive or insulting towards any other person or group of persons; ranging from race and gender to social origin.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to the bill, a guilty first offender may receive a maximum of three years prison sentence and up to ten years for a subsequent conviction.</p>
<p><strong>What are the implications of the precedent-setting judgment?</strong> </p>
<p><em>Penelope Andrews:</em> There may be several implications. First, the judgment is a clear statement that the use of racial slurs and the impairment of human dignity will not be tolerated. One could argue that there is now an unequivocal zero tolerance for the use of the “k” word. </p>
<p>Second, the implication may be that all kinds of racial slurs, that involve not just anti-black hatred, but also anti-semitic, xenophobic, anti-female and homophobic slurs, will not be tolerated. </p>
<p>The third implication is that there is a strong sensitising and educational effect. The airwaves and social media have already been abuzz with commentary since the sentence was passed. Crimen injuria has become a household term as people argue about the law’s meaning, the punishment, what constitutes (crimen inuria) and whether the judgment was fair.</p>
<p><em>René Koraan and Chantelle Feldhaus:</em> The court sent a message that racism is not just inappropriate, but it is criminal. The hope must be that the penny drops for South Africans that their actions carry big repercussions. The judgment and the sentence highlight the fact that South Africa needs to put hate crime legislation in place. It’s already at an advanced stage but it needs to be promulgated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94179/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Past cases indicate that verbal crimen injuria is not that serious. But a landmark sentence in South Africa has changed that.Penelope Andrews, Dean of Law and Professor, University of Cape TownChantelle Feldhaus, Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, North-West UniversityRené Koraan, Senior Lecturer: Criminal Law, North-West UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/901182018-01-15T10:49:43Z2018-01-15T10:49:43ZAfrica should respond to Trump’s racist rant by taking the moral high ground<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201920/original/file-20180115-101511-16zdv8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Donald Trump has yet to announce his administration's Africa policy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Jonathan Ernst</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Official reactions from Africa were appropriately critical of President Donald Trump’s credibly reported comments about not wanting more immigrants coming to the US from “shithole” countries. This included all those south of the Sahara. A few reactions even included constructive suggestions.</p>
<p>The African Group of United Nation ambassadors unanimously dismissed the comments as “outrageous, racist and xenophobic”. They demanded Trump retract them and apologise. Botswana, Senegal and South Africa summoned US local representatives to be served with a demarche. In normal diplomatic practice this is a stern request for an explanation and is tantamount to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-africa-trump-comments-reaction-20180112-story.html">a formal protest</a>.</p>
<p>But in dealing with Trump, normal protocols are beside the point.</p>
<p>More than a year after he took office Trump has yet to announce an Africa policy, or even fill important diplomatic positions. He has <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/new-study-trump-administrations-impact-us-africa-relations">yet to nominate</a> an Assistant Secretary of State for Africa or an ambassador to South Africa. This means that African leaders lack any policy context in which to frame and guide traditional diplomatic reactions.</p>
<p>The Trump administration’s incompetence makes it difficult for African countries to engage Washington in seeking meaningful explanations, much less substantive negotiations. Even at lower working levels sustaining routine relations are complicated by a lack of policy guidance, budgetary uncertainty, and inter-agency management. This affects complex development, environmental, trade or security issues. </p>
<p>Africa’s limited resources, institutional capacities and vulnerabilities add to the risks associated with the current state of affairs. </p>
<h2>Challenging racism with reason</h2>
<p>Ebba Kalondo, chief spokesperson for the African Union said Trump’s comment “flies in the face of accepted behaviour and practice”. But she then <a href="https://m.news24.com/Africa/News/latest-african-union-frankly-alarmed-by-trump-statement-20180112">sounded</a> a possibly hopeful note. She added that the US </p>
<blockquote>
<p>remains a global example of how migration gave birth to a nation built on strong values of diversity and opportunity. We believe that a statement like this hurts our shared global values on diversity, human rights and reciprocal understanding.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kalondo’s appeal to what Abraham Lincoln <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/31631-we-are-not-enemies-but-friends-we-must-not-be">famously called</a> “the better angels of our nature” also recalls how Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, sought to transform troubling moments into what he suggested could be <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/52817-obamas-teachable-moment">“teachable moments”</a>.</p>
<p>In this spirit prominent African Americans, such as popular TV news pundit Joy Reid, have responded to Trump with positive reminders. Reid <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/my-parents-were-from-what-trump-calls-shithole-countries-joy-reid-1135156803538?cid=eml_mda_20180112">informed her viewers</a> that her mother is a professor who immigrated from Guyana and her father a successful Congolese-American geologist. Other successful Africans are also speaking out. This affirms that Kalondo’s reference to enduring shared global values may not ring as hollow as Trump’s bigoted comments might cause us to fear.</p>
<p>This does not deny the immediate danger posed by Trump. As a New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html">editorial reminded</a> readers the day after the reported comment and his attempt to retract it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mr Trump is not just a racist, ignorant, incompetent and undignified. He is also a liar … </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And still supporting Trump are a substantial number of the 63 million voters who elected him. It is these people, albeit a national minority, who he continues to court, with his denigration of immigrants and especially those of African origin.</p>
<p>Trump’s comments can be viewed as a reflection of his personal animus and a conviction that they will play well with his political base. </p>
<p>Further complicating any effort to hold Trump and his supporters to account is that he’s repeatedly said he “is the least racist person he knows”. Polling suggests that most of his political supporters also believe they’re not racists. </p>
<p>Such denials have a long history in US politics. They are at the heart of America’s ongoing struggle for racial justice as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-nationalists-delusion/546356/">recounted</a> in “The Nationalist’s Delusion” by Adam Serwer. </p>
<p>Trump and his white nationalist supporters will also never concede that the history of slavery and colonial exploitation perpetrated by their own American and European ancestors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/world/europe/trump-immigration-outrage.html?mtrref=www.google.co.za&gwh=D66D69336B8226813510AF4F1589FB18&gwt=pay">contributed</a> to Africa’s problems of economic underdevelopment and political balkanisation. </p>
<h2>Time to break with protocol</h2>
<p>African governments and non-governmental groups are right to voice outrage in reaction to Trump’s outbursts, and to criticise his behaviour. </p>
<p>But they need to do more. They can encourage and cooperate directly with those in Congress, African-Americans and the growing network of civil society groups opposed to Trump. This may bend, or even violate, traditional diplomatic practice. But Trump’s own disregard for international principles and norms justifies using alternative methods and interventions.</p>
<p>Having America as a more politically capable, willing and acceptable partner is surely in Africa’s long-term interests. This aspiration can be rooted in the same values as the pan-African democratic vision enshrined in the AU’s Constitutive Act. The vision was championed more than a decade ago under the banner of an African Renaissance. It is based on shared commitments to democratic cooperation, greater collective self-reliance and eventual democratic integration. But it is floundering and could founder.</p>
<p>If Americans succeed in resisting Trump and reconsolidating their democracy, then this could lend critical support for African democrats who still believe in the shared vision that the AU’s Kolondo refers to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John J Stremlau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Trump administration’s incompetence makes it difficult for African countries to engage Washington in seeking meaningful explanations, much less substantive negotiations.John J Stremlau, 2017 Bradlow Fellow at SA Institute of International Affairs, Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/729192017-06-12T11:02:22Z2017-06-12T11:02:22ZIs there structural racism on the internet?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173174/original/file-20170609-4794-1e86c1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do people use the internet in ways that disadvantage nonwhites?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/horizontal-vector-illustration-big-number-people-491897284">magic pictures/shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The racial inequalities afflicting Americans and our society today are in many ways a result of <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2089_reg.html">the result of spatial segregation</a>. White people and nonwhite people tend to live in different neighborhoods, go to different schools and have dramatically different economic opportunities based on their race. That physical manifestation of structural racism has been <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/46131/invisible-man-by-ralph-ellison/9780679732761/">true historically in this country</a>, and is <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/220290/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/9780812993547/">still the case today</a>.</p>
<p>Today’s internet is built on a similar spatial logic. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12190">People travel from website to website</a> in search of content in the same way they travel from neighborhood to neighborhood looking for stuff to do and people to hang out with. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39426-8_8">Websites accrue and compound value</a> as visitor traffic and site visibility increases.</p>
<p>But there is a crucial difference: Internet users have – more or less – complete freedom to travel where they choose. Websites can’t see the color of a user’s skin and police incoming traffic in the same way human beings can and do in geographical spaces. Therefore, it’s easy to imagine that the internet’s very structure – the social environments it produces and the new economies it births – might not be racially segregated the way the physical world is.</p>
<p>And yet the internet does appear in fact segregated along racial lines. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1206137">My research</a> demonstrates that websites focusing on racial issues are visited less often, and are less visible in search result rankings than sites with different, or broader, focuses. This phenomenon is not based on anything that individual website producers do. Rather, it appears to be a product of how users themselves find and share information online, a process mediated mostly by search engines and, increasingly, social media platforms.</p>
<h2>Exploring online racism</h2>
<p>Words like “racist” and “racism” are loaded terms, primarily because people almost always associate them with individualized moral and cognitive failures. In recent years, though, the American public has become increasingly aware that racism can apply to cultures and societies at large. </p>
<p>My work looks for online analogues of this systemic racism, in which <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Racial-Theories-in-Social-Science-A-Systemic-Racism-Critique/Elias-Feagin/p/book/9781138645226">subtle biases permeate society and culture</a> in ways that yield overwhelming advantages for whites, at the expense of nonwhites. Specifically, I am trying to determine whether the online environment, one completely constructed by humans, systematically produces advantages and disadvantages along racial lines – whether intentionally or inadvertently. </p>
<p>This is a difficult question to approach, but I begin by assuming that today’s technological systems have developed within a culture and society that is systemically and structurally racist. This makes it possible – even likely – that existing biases operate in similar ways online.</p>
<p>In addition, the historical geographical configurations that produced and perpetuated racial inequality provide a useful guide to investigating what systemic racism might look like online. The online landscape, and how people travel through it, are both important factors to understand this picture.</p>
<h2>Understanding online navigation</h2>
<p>First, I wanted to look at the map – how the web itself is structured by website producers. I analyzed what Alexa.com characterizes as the internet’s <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/Society/Ethnicity/African/African-American">top 56 African-American sites</a> using a software program called <a href="http://uberlink.com/">Voson</a>. Voson crawls the web to identify what websites the source sites link to, and what sites link to the source sites.</p>
<p>Then I set out to determine the racial content, if any, of each of those thousands of websites, to begin measuring any inequalities that might exist in the online landscape.</p>
<p>Measuring spatial inequality offline typically involves measuring attributes of the people who live in a specific geographic location. For example, ZIP code 65035 designates a “white” neighborhood because <a href="https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/DEC/10_SF1/QTP3/8600000US65035">99.5 percent of the people residing there</a> (Freeburg, Missouri) are white, according to U.S. census data. By contrast, ZIP code 60619, an area in Chicago, would be considered “nonwhite,” because <a href="https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/DEC/10_SF1/QTP3/8600000US60619">0.7 percent of its residents are white</a>.</p>
<p>To make this type of distinction between websites, I relied on website metatags – website producers’ descriptions of the site coded to be picked up by and reflected in search engine results. I designated as “racial” websites with metatags including terms such as “african american,” “racism,” “hispanic,” “model minority” and “afro.” Sites without those terms in their metatags I designated “nonracial.” </p>
<p>By using website metatags, I was able to distinguish between racial and nonracial sites (and the segregated traffic between them) based on whether the site’s producers themselves define the site’s identity in racial terms.</p>
<h2>Understanding online navigation</h2>
<p>Once I had labeled each site as racial or nonracial, I looked at the links website producers created between them. There were three possible types of links: between two racial sites, between two nonracial sites, or between a racial site and a nonracial one.</p>
<p>How many of each type of link the data contained would reveal whether bias influenced website producers’ decisions. If there were no bias, the number of links would be proportional to the number of each type of site in the data set. If there were bias, the numbers of links would be disproportionately high or low.</p>
<p><iframe id="SL6kc" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/SL6kc/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>While I found slight differences between the ideal theoretical proportions and the actual number of links, they were not significant enough to indicate that any segregation in people’s internet behavior is caused by web producers. People who travel the web just clicking links on websites at random would not arrive at racial or nonracial sites substantially more or less than they should based on the number of such sites that exist. But people don’t just follow links; they exercise their preferences when navigating the web. </p>
<h2>Seeing segregation</h2>
<p>For my second inquiry, I wanted to find out how people actually move between websites. I looked at the same 56 sites as for the previous analysis, but this time used <a href="https://www.similarweb.com/">Similarweb</a>, a prominent web traffic metrics site. For each site, Similarweb produces data showing what websites people came from and what websites people navigated to next. I characterized those sites, too, as “racial” or “nonracial,” and identified three types of paths people took when clicking: between two racial sites, between two nonracial sites, or between a racial site and a nonracial one.</p>
<p><iframe id="UQjbw" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/UQjbw/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In this analysis, the number of clicks between different types of sites would reveal whether bias influenced users’ decisions. I found significantly greater numbers of clicks between nonracial sites, and fewer numbers of clicks between racial and nonracial sites. That indicates that users are going out of their way to visit nonracial sites.</p>
<h2>Capitalizing on search engines</h2>
<p>This gets us closer to the whole story when it comes to segregated traffic patterns and potential inequalities along racial lines. My data also showed that nonracial sites rank significantly higher in search results, and therefore likely enjoy greater visibility, than racial sites. The racial sites are less visible, get less traffic and therefore likely reap fewer benefits from visibility (such as advertising revenue or higher search engine rankings).</p>
<p>It might be tempting to suggest that this merely reflects user preferences. That could be true if users knew what websites they want to go to, and then navigate directly to them. But usually, users don’t. It’s <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Much-Search-Traffic-Actually-Comes-Googling/1011814">much more likely</a> that people type a word or phrase into a search engine like Google. In fact, direct traffic accounts for only about one-third of the traffic flow to the web’s top sites. To quote a <a href="https://www.brightedge.com/sites/default/files/Cracking%20the%20Content%20Code.pdf">conclusion from search optimization firm Brightedge</a>, “overwhelmingly, organic search trumps other traffic generators.”</p>
<p>While more research is of course necessary, my work so far suggests that in conjunction with users’ preferred choices to navigate to nonracial sites more than racial sites, search engines do something with a similar effect: Nonracial sites rank significantly higher than racial sites. That can give racial sites less traffic and less financial support in the form of advertising revenue. </p>
<p>In both of these situations, people and search engines steer traffic in ways that give advantages to nonracial websites and disadvantages to racial sites. This approximates what, in the offline world, is called systemic, structural racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlton McIlwain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The physical world is racially segregated as a result of structural racism. A researcher examines whether similar problems exist online.Charlton McIlwain, Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/781532017-06-05T11:26:51Z2017-06-05T11:26:51ZHow to challenge racism in British schools<p>Since the announcement of Brexit, there has been a considerable <a href="https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/education/brexit-fuelling-rise-racist-language-scottish-schools/">increase in reports of racism</a>, hate crime and racist incidents across the UK. These types of incidents have largely been random and directed at anyone perceived to be “not British”.</p>
<p>Perhaps most worrying though is that a lot of teachers have also reported seeing a rise in the number of children experiencing racist incidents in the classroom. <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-school-hate-crimes-spike-following-brexit-and-trump-votes">Police figures show</a> reports of hate crimes and incidents in schools rose by 89% in the middle of the Brexit campaign.</p>
<p>This has led to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ged-grebby/anti-racism_b_14241942.html">calls by many</a> for more to be done, not only in terms of helping teachers know how to better cope and deal with these types of incidents, but also for children to have more of an education and understanding of racism along with Britain’s multicultural heritage. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/incidents-of-racism-in-schools-up-post-brexit/#.WN-p7JITffk.mailto">recent survey of teachers</a> into the issue highlighted a “lack of confidence, training and support” in this area. Teachers questioned were in “overwhelming agreement” that anti-racist education should be integrated into the curriculum – with 90% of teachers strongly believing <a href="http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/incidents-of-racism-in-schools-up-post-brexit/#.WN-p7JITffk.mailto">that this was the way forward</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/incidents-of-racism-in-schools-up-post-brexit/#.WN-p7JITffk.mailto">One teacher</a> said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve been trying to do this for years – I think it is of the utmost importance. However, staff mostly avoid conversations about race and religion for fear of opening a can of worms. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A climate of racism</h2>
<p>The Scottish government has been looking further into this issue. Researchers from the Moray House School of Education in Edinburgh recently provided evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee. And they called for “race” to be put “explicitly back on the agenda” in schools <a href="https://inews.co.uk/?p=30766">so that racist views could be challenged</a> in the classroom. </p>
<p>They added that teachers were currently “reluctant and anxious” about addressing racism in the classroom, and called for updated advice to be provided. They also spoke of the need to have a better way of <a href="https://inews.co.uk/?p=30766">recording incidents of racist bullying</a> and harassment in schools. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171863/original/file-20170601-1275-sz3ff4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171863/original/file-20170601-1275-sz3ff4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171863/original/file-20170601-1275-sz3ff4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171863/original/file-20170601-1275-sz3ff4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171863/original/file-20170601-1275-sz3ff4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171863/original/file-20170601-1275-sz3ff4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171863/original/file-20170601-1275-sz3ff4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teachers don’t always feel comfortable talking to children about</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a separate submission to the committee, the <a href="http://www.eis.org.uk/">Educational Institute of Scotland</a> (EIS), a teaching union, said it was also concerned that inflammatory language used by politicians and the media may be <a href="https://inews.co.uk/?p=30766">fuelling racist bullying in schools</a>. </p>
<p>The report said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The current political discourse around immigration is creating a climate which will exacerbate bullying and harassment of refugee and asylum-seeking children, and children from visible [or] audible ethnic minorities, who are or are perceived to be refugees or migrants. </p>
<p>We fear that current narratives about ‘migrants’ in the tabloid media put certain children at greater risk of bullying and harassment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In response to this the EIS, <a href="http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/resources-released-in-bid-to-challenge-asylum-seeker-and-immigration-myths/">produced three guides</a>, for different age ranges, to help challenge misconceptions about immigration and asylum-seekers. These are being sent to all nurseries, schools, colleges and universities in Scotland.</p>
<h2>Anti-racist curriculum</h2>
<p>There have also been calls for more focus on these types of issues across the curriculum. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers recently carried out a survey on the topic. It showed that 84% of <a href="https://www.atl.org.uk/latest/pupils-subjected-hate-crime-and-speech-while-school-atl-poll">teachers questioned</a> believe education about hate crime, hate speech and discrimination should form part of mandatory lessons on the subject. </p>
<p>In the same survey, 33% of the teachers questioned said they hadn’t received any training on how to deal with hate crime or speech – but that they would like some. </p>
<p>Off the back of this, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Mary Bousted, said that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Government needs to produce updated guidance that includes discussion of hate crime and speech and encourages critical thinking.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://tellmamauk.org/">Tell MAMA</a> – a national project which records and measures anti-Muslim incidents in the UK – believes that both Ofsted and the Department for Education should consider <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-muslim-racism-hate-crime-islamophobia-eu-referendum-leave-latest-a7106326.html">anti-Muslim bullying and hate in their evaluations</a> of schools. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171865/original/file-20170601-25664-erqpc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171865/original/file-20170601-25664-erqpc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171865/original/file-20170601-25664-erqpc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171865/original/file-20170601-25664-erqpc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171865/original/file-20170601-25664-erqpc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171865/original/file-20170601-25664-erqpc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171865/original/file-20170601-25664-erqpc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Muslim children are more likely to be bullied in school than children of other faiths.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This would ensure that teaching staff are adequately trained to identify challenge, and combat bigotry towards Muslims in the classroom. And this is especially important considering that Tell MAMA’s <a href="https://www.tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/tell_mama_2015_annual_report.pdf">data suggested</a> the largest proportion of incidents involved perpetrators aged between 13 and 18.</p>
<h2>Talking about racism</h2>
<p>By introducing these types of programmes into schools, children could learn about both the continuing and changing nature of racism in British society, which is discussed in detail in my <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Developments-Critical-Race-Theory-Education/dp/1137535393">new book</a>.</p>
<p>Programmes to tackle racism could encourage children to find out more about the historical multicultural nature of British society, dating back centuries, along with the influence and positive impact this has had on UK society.</p>
<p>Children could also look at the very crux of the issue to try and understand more about what racism actually is – discussing issues such as how racism isn’t always based on skin colour, as well as how “race” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/09/race.science">is a social construct</a>. </p>
<p>But ideas aside, ultimately given these new increased levels of racism are being experienced widely both on the streets and in classrooms, programmes are something that needs to be implemented sooner rather than later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Cole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More needs to be done to stop racist attacks and abuse in UK classrooms.Mike Cole, Professor of Education, specialising in racism and politics, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/651322016-09-14T21:18:46Z2016-09-14T21:18:46ZUncovered: the hidden history record sleeves tell about South African music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137572/original/image-20160913-4944-q50k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of the South African afro-jazz band Batsumi's self-titled album, which was designed by its bassist Zulu Bidi.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>As the age of disaggregated, cloud-stored music flowered, the album cover almost died. There was a depressing time, back at the start of the new millennium, when it seemed the future of music lay with tiny little <a href="http://mistupid.com/mp3/">MP3</a> tracks downloaded from the Web. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.</p>
<p>Albums are a thing again. Memorabilia has emerged as a money spinner in the music industry value-chain. Led by DJs, hipsters and anoraks, vinyl has returned from the grave. Vinyl sales <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/64345-vinyl-sales-made-more-money-than-free-streams-last-year/">rose 32%</a> in 2015. Since an album curates and conveys a musician’s vision far better than individual tracks can, this resurrection is welcome.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Erroll Garner’s ‘The most happy piano’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the cover art is important too. Sometimes it reveals almost nothing about the music, rather illuminating the society it sprung from, revealing unexpected stories of people, art forms and struggles.</p>
<p>American music writer <a href="http://mta.mit.edu/person/lara-pellegrinelli">Lara Pellegrinelli</a> grew up intrigued by the models who decorated her family’s jazz LP covers. When, for example, American jazz pianist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/erroll-garner-mn0000206967/biography">Erroll Garner</a>’s “The Most Happy Piano” was fronted by a <a href="http://jazztimes.com/articles/20072-the-women-jacketed-by-records">glamorous redhead</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Narrowed blue eyes peered from under thin, arched brows… The record jacket squarely framed the slender face, with a teasing hint of bare shoulders below.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But as Pellegrinelli’s interviews about the attitudes of the record industry revealed, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>if Erroll Garner really had been a gorgeous redhead, the cover would have been as far as she’d get.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That same tantalising sense of a history as much hidden as disclosed by the pictures permeates the Alliance Francaise “September Jive” Musical Graphics <a href="http://www.alliance.org.za/events/johannesburg/september-jive">exhibition</a> in Johannesburg. Curators Rob Allingham, Siemon Allen, Molemo Moiloa and Lara Preston have assembled and displayed chronologically 150 covers of South African records, dating from 1957 to the present. The selection was guided by both aesthetics and the musical choices of industry role-players, whose portraits form a parallel display.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dudu Pukwana’s album with The Spear is a South African collector’s record of note.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Apart from provoking a serious case of platter envy in any collector – saxophonist, composer and pianist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mtutuzeli-dudu-pukwana">Dudu Pukwana</a>’s 1969 hard to find <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/2010/03/one-for-charlie-dudu-pukwana-and-spears.html">debut</a> with “The Spears”, anybody? – these 12-inch cards can be shuffled in a range of ways, to unfold multiple narratives. Collector Siemon Allen’s magical 2013 Recording History <a href="http://flatint.blogspot.co.za/2013/01/siemon-allens-labels-curtain-at-slave.html">installation</a> at the <a href="http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/slave-lodge">Iziko Slave Lodge</a> in Cape Town had already made that point, but never found gallery space in Johannesburg. </p>
<h2>Bitter, committed riffing</h2>
<p>There are, for example, at least three “white” histories on display: religious, military and oppositional. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The record label of the anti-conscription compilation album, ‘Forces Favourites’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oppositional work ranges from the bitter, committed riffing on leftwing themes in compilations such as the anti-conscription, “<a href="http://shifty.co.za/compilations/forces-favourites/">Forces Favourites</a>”, or anti-establishment Afrikaner punk-rock by <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-05-10-00-johannes-kerkorrel-the-wise-fool-who-left-the-fray">Johannes Kerkorrel</a> and his peers, to the slightly comic attempts of aspiring bohemians at smuggling the Swinging Sixties into “verkrampte” (reactionary) South Africa. <a href="http://henniebekker.com/">Hennie Bekker</a>’s 1971 “<a href="https://www.discogs.com/Hennie-Bekker-Turn-On/release/3930050">Turn On</a>”, for example, shows a torrent of psychedelic images pouring from a crudely superimposed galvanised tap.</p>
<p>The military history is the most distasteful: deeply racist, sexist and disgendered. It is simultaneously titillating and coy about both female bodies and guns. There was an epidemic disappearance in South Africa of white female nipples during the 1960s and 1970s. <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/sociology/staff/academicstaff/assprofmichaeldrewett/">Michael Drewett</a>, scholar of this manipulation of desires during the era of “our boys on the border”, will lecture during the September Jive season.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most intriguing narrative shows how a common visual language around jazz coalesced among the community of black artists in 1970s Johannesburg. Some of these painters became famous. Some are barely known outside collectors’ circles. </p>
<p>But just as the official history of choral music has erased the tradition of workers’ choirs from its syllabus, so official art history seems to have little place for these artists or this genre of subject matter. </p>
<h2>Let’s talk about all that jazziness</h2>
<p>For the past two months, we have preferred to discuss the <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-07-13-00-henri-matisse-clawing-at-glory-and-jazz">jazziness of Henri Matisse</a> over the jazziness of the South African artists <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dumile-feni">Dumile Feni</a> or <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/sowetan/archive/2007/10/05/lefifi-tladi-poet-extraordinaire-an-inspiration">Lefifi Tladi</a>. Let alone discussing the artists on display here: <a href="http://www.capegallery.co.za/hargreaves_ntunkwana_cv.htm">Hargreaves Ntukwana</a> and <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/2010/05/batsumi-brings-sunshine.html">Zulu Bidi</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dumile Feni designed the cover for ‘Underground in Africa’ by pianist Dollar Brand, now Abdullah Ibrahim.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The art of Ntukwana and Bidi came from a community and reflected a legacy. In another kind of exhibition we might have grouped it together and used the term “school”. The places where such artists studied, such as Cecil Skotness’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/polly-street-era">Polly Street Art Centre</a>, built on an urban black visual arts tradition that can be traced back at least to John <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/john-koenakeefe-mohl">Koenakeefe Mohl</a>’s “White Studio” in Johannesburg’s Sophiatown suburb in the 1940s. </p>
<p>Both Polly Street and the White Studio permitted walk-in students. We <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thamsanqa-thami-mnyele">learn from memoirs</a> about the rich cross-fertilisation among practitioners of different genres even after apartheid removed and separated artistic communities. But students outnumbered the formally enrolled: those who studied shared skills with their peers, as in every roots creative community. Some members of those circles travelled, studied and exhibited abroad, and gained fame: Feni, Tladi, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-methuen-mancoba">Ernest Mancoba</a> and more. Ntukwana eventually made it to the Artists’ Colony in Toledo, Spain. </p>
<p>Others stayed home, putting art or music on the back burner to earn for their families. The occasional album cover commission must have provided a welcome opportunity to reawaken that side of their creativity. These covers should be looked on as a legitimate part of their opus, since other creative opportunities under apartheid were so limited, stereotyped and censored. </p>
<p>Both Ntukwana and Bidi were musicians: the former had played in the pit band of the musical “<a href="https://soulsafari.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/king-kong-the-first-all-african-jazz-opera-1959/">King Kong</a>”; the latter was bassist with jazz band <a href="http://afrobeat-music.blogspot.co.za/2012/05/south-african-jazz-batsumi.html">Batsumi</a>, and sideman for countless other bands. </p>
<p>But those skeletal biographies make up much of what we know about them – in Bidi’s case, almost all of it. The historical record is incomplete. We can only speculate about motives and inspirations and have no complete catalogues of works. That matters for several reasons, not merely completeness.</p>
<p>Without such information, it’s hard to add this work to the curriculum. Further, the lacunae handicap the history not only of art, but also of jazz. </p>
<p>A distinctive visual language about South African music was being shaped by these artists and their peers: a particular way of engaging with the music in images, analogous to the way that the jazz appreciation societies developed a kinetic language for engaging with the music through steps. We cannot accurately trace the development of that language through such a partial record.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of Benjamin Jephta’s most recent jazz album, which was designed by contemporary artist, Mzwandile Buthelezi.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All the artists building this visual vocabulary paved the road that has brought us to today’s jazz cover art from, for example, <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-12-09-album-art">Mzwandile Buthelezi</a>. He is his own man, but he did not emerge, fully formed, from nowhere. More postgraduate research into these lives and works is desperately needed, so that Ntukwana, Bidi – and their still unknown peers – become more than signatures on the corner of an LP sleeve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65132/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sometimes album sleeves reveal little about the music. Instead they illuminate the society it came from, exposing unexpected stories of people, art forms and struggles.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.