tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/intolerance-10728/articlesIntolerance – The Conversation2022-12-06T18:33:14Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1957952022-12-06T18:33:14Z2022-12-06T18:33:14ZEnglish only? The Emergencies Act inquiry showed Canada’s hostility towards francophones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498744/original/file-20221202-26-bw5skl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C21%2C7303%2C4112&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite being French-speaking, CSIS Deputy Director of Operations Michelle Tessier, Director David Vigneault and Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre Executive Director Marie-Hélène Chayer testified in English only before the Rouleau Commission in November 2022 in Ottawa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/">The Public Order Emergency Commission</a>, which examined the federal government’s decision to declare a state of emergency during the occupation of the so-called freedom convoy in Ottawa, is bringing into the light debates over how bilingual Canada really is.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2022/11/21/commission-sur-letat-durgence-le-francais-en-prend-un-coup-une-fois-de-plus">French-language media</a> lamented the surprising absence of French during the recent proceedings. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/772157/commission-sur-l-etat-d-urgence-trudeau-promet-de-faire-des-efforts-en-temoignant-en-francais">In response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised he would speak French</a> during his testimony — which he did <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-testifies-public-order-emergency-commission-1.6664962">for a total of 10 minutes during the five hours of his testimony</a>).</p>
<p>Although the proceedings were established in French and English by an Order in Council and, as a national inquiry, are bound by the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/o-3.01/">Official Languages Act</a>, they were conducted almost exclusively in English. Indeed, of the more than 75 witnesses who testified, only one spoke entirely in French.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498054/original/file-20221129-12-git4lo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498054/original/file-20221129-12-git4lo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498054/original/file-20221129-12-git4lo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498054/original/file-20221129-12-git4lo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498054/original/file-20221129-12-git4lo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498054/original/file-20221129-12-git4lo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498054/original/file-20221129-12-git4lo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&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">Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc testifies before the Commission on the State of Emergency in Ottawa in November 2022. The Acadian chose to testify in English only.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Many francophone witnesses, such as proud Acadian Dominic LeBlanc, chose to testify in English. </p>
<p>As a discrimination researcher, I am interested in the power structures that prevent members of minority groups from asserting their rights. I seek to provide insight into the reasons for the absence of French at the commission hearings.</p>
<h2>A bilingual judge</h2>
<p>On the face of it, one would have had every reason to expect the Public Order Emergency Commission to be welcoming to both official languages. Its commissioner, Franco-Ontarian Judge Paul Rouleau, has long been an advocate for minority language rights. He was instrumental in developing and overseeing the implementation of <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/tld-documents.llnassets.com/0030000/30791/access%20to%20justice%20in%20french.pdf">pioneering access to justice initiatives for francophones in Ontario</a>.</p>
<p>So it’s not surprising that Rouleau tried to set the tone for the commission by delivering an opening speech in both languages, noting that the proceedings would be accessible in both official languages and that witnesses were encouraged to testify in either French or English. </p>
<p>In fact, the Order in Council that created the commission gave it the mandate to <a href="https://commissionsurletatdurgence.ca/files/documents/Order-in-Council-De%CC%81cret-2022-0392.pdf">“ensure that … members of the public can communicate with and obtain available services from the Commissioner simultaneously in both official languages.”</a></p>
<h2>Anglonormativity</h2>
<p>Just as researchers have observed that appointing women to head an organization is not enough to eradicate gender discrimination, simply appointing a francophone to chair the Commission is not enough to counter anglonormativity, the powerful force that prevents francophones from feeling comfortable in their language. </p>
<p>Alexandre Baril, a professor and expert in feminist, trans and intersectional theories, defines this concept as a <a href="https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/4088/125-137%20PDF">“system of structures, institutions and beliefs that mark English as the norm.”</a> According to Baril, anglonormativity is the norm by which non-English speakers are judged, discriminated against and excluded.</p>
<p>One of the explanations as to why, despite Rouleau’s efforts, all but one of the francophones chose to testify in French is that the commission is only a window into other anglonormative worlds.</p>
<p>Many francophones may have chosen to speak English because they were testifying about events in their workplaces, such as the police or the federal public service, which are anglonormative.</p>
<p><a href="https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/201169F?">Several reports</a> published by the Commissioner of Official Languages paint a picture of a federal public service where French is often marginalized and where the organizational culture is unapologetically anglonormative. Even for the most ardent francophones, it may simply be easier to recount conversations that took place in English and to describe documents written in English, in English.</p>
<h2>Voluntary servitude or fear of contempt?</h2>
<p>Some commentators characterized the commission’s French-speaking witnesses who testified in English as being in <a href="https://www.journaldequebec.com/2022/11/28/lart-de-secraser">“voluntary servitude.”</a> Such statements amount to victim-blaming because they fail to take into account the obvious contempt and hostility that francophone participants faced and the impact that francophobia can have on the decision to assert one’s rights to speak Canada’s minority official language.</p>
<p>Take, for example, Mathieu Fleury. The former city councillor, a strong advocate for <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2022/10/26/francophonie-meets-francophobia-at-the-emergencies-act-inquiry.html">francophone rights at Ottawa City Hall</a>, chose to testify in English. </p>
<p>When he expressed difficulty answering a technical question because it was not in his mother tongue, a lawyer for the freedom convoy protesters mocked him. “Je m’appelle Brendan,” the lawyer said, in a derogatory manner causing the audience to laugh.</p>
<p>One wonders what the public’s — and the law society’s — reaction would have been if a lawyer, who has a special responsibility to uphold the values of equality protected by human rights legislation, had ridiculed a witness with a hearing impairment who spoke through an interpreter, or a witness who spoke about their religious beliefs.</p>
<p>Trudeau was also subject to brutal attacks by some English speakers on social media for speaking in French for 10 minutes. The choice was described as petty, irritating and a <a href="https://twitter.com/anneslevesque/status/1596497784693219329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1596730386901786624%7Ctwgr%5E2a4999fdceb6181be3f1552745307862a8c6665d%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconversation.com%2Fle-comble-de-langlo-normativite-les-francophones-parlant-anglais-a-la-commission-sur-letat-durgence-195275">“smoke screen to dissuade people from listening.”</a></p>
<p>There was, of course, nothing malicious about Trudeau’s decision to testify in French. He had the right to speak in the official language of his choice, a language in which he grew up and which is spoken by most of the constituents in the riding he represents. </p>
<p>As our country’s highest federal official, he also has an obligation to work proactively to enhance the vitality of official language minority communities in Canada.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498050/original/file-20221129-22-mvvnfo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498050/original/file-20221129-22-mvvnfo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498050/original/file-20221129-22-mvvnfo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498050/original/file-20221129-22-mvvnfo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498050/original/file-20221129-22-mvvnfo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498050/original/file-20221129-22-mvvnfo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498050/original/file-20221129-22-mvvnfo.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">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before the Commission on the State of Emergency in Ottawa on Nov. 25, 2022. He spoke in French for about 10 minutes out of more than five hours of testimony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
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<h2>Francophobia: The last acceptable prejudice?</h2>
<p>The hostility that the two francophones faced for their choice of testimony language is a classic example of what feminists call a double bind.</p>
<p>Indeed, francophones who speak French in anglonormative contexts are often labelled as difficult or ascribed bad intentions. On the other hand, francophones who try to be accommodating and speak the language of the majority face ridicule when they are unable to speak or understand at the level of a native speaker. </p>
<p>In the eyes of francophobes, no choice made by a francophone is a good choice because, in the end, it is not the choices of francophones they deplore but francophones themselves.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, discriminatory statements against francophones who speak French are rarely denounced. Worse, most human rights laws across the country offer francophones no protection against discrimination based on their language.</p>
<p>Is francophobia, as Jean-Benoît Nadeau has written, the <a href="https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/467789/le-dernier-prejuge-acceptable">last acceptable prejudice</a>? </p>
<p>A recent front-page article in the <em>Toronto Star</em> <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/11/09/canadas-childrens-tylenol-shortage-is-getting-worse-and-bilingual-labels-are-part-of-the-problem.html">blamed the lack of children’s medication on bilingual labelling requirements</a>. </p>
<p>The headline turned out to be false. Yet even if it had been true, it is disappointing that a national newspaper would choose to blame a minority for the problem rather than the failure of governments to put in place a system that meets the necessary regulatory requirements to protect them.</p>
<p>With strong language rights protection, francophones are certainly privileged compared to other minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Canada. However, this unique protection may also expose francophones to particular forms of discrimination and contempt.</p>
<p>Rights should be a matter of levelling up rather than levelling down. Francophones should not be discriminated against for asserting their right to speak the official language of their choice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195795/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Levesque ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The almost complete absence of French at the Public Order Emergency Commission does not come from a subservient reflex on the part of French speakers so much as their fear of being scorned.Anne Levesque, Assistant professor, Faculty of Law, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1874622022-07-22T15:25:31Z2022-07-22T15:25:31ZAngola’s Eduardo dos Santos: a divisive figure in life - and in death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475634/original/file-20220722-228-ecstnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jose Eduardo dos Santos. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">epa-efe/Tiago</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is unlikely to be consensus on what <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/president-jos%C3%A9-eduardo-dos-santos-1942">José Eduardo dos Santos</a>, Angola’s former longtime president who died earlier this month in Barcelona, Spain, will represent in the memory of Angolans.</p>
<p>While he has been credited for steering his country through a decades long <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">civil war</a>, his rule was marred by authoritarianism, high levels of corruption, and the securitisation of the state.</p>
<p>Critics were not tolerated and inequality marred attempts at post-conflict reconstruction. The failure to significantly diversify the country’s economy beyond its heavy reliance on oil has continued to haunt his successor, <a href="https://www.angola.or.jp/2020/08/24/biography-pr-joao-lourenco-en/">João Lourenço</a>. </p>
<p>Dos Santos was not a man known for his speeches or for intense public engagement. The most common way that he was encountered was through his face being on the country’s banknotes, an ironic reminder of the <a href="https://www.plataformamedia.com/en/2020/06/26/jose-eduardo-dos-santos-is-still-the-richest-man-in-angola/">wealth he seemed to personally control</a>. </p>
<p>Outside election cycles, Dos Santos was a withdrawn president. He stayed in his presidential homes, trusting only a small group of advisers and preferring to give verbal instructions rather than written ones. Angolans generally only saw him in the media and occasionally at official events if they were allowed to be present. </p>
<p>His silence allowed people to project their beliefs onto him, rather than ever be sure of an insight into his own thoughts. It was precisely this distanced silence, therefore, which produced his aura of power and the cult of personality that surrounded him.</p>
<h2>Absent but omnipresent</h2>
<p>Dos Santos came to power in September 1979 <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/president-jos%C3%A9-eduardo-dos-santos-1942">at the age of 37</a>. He quickly came to inhabit his presidential position, side-lining many of the original prominent leaders of the governing People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Popular-Movement-for-the-Liberation-of-Angola">MPLA</a>), while installing his own people in positions of power. </p>
<p>His understanding of the workings of state institutions, presidential power and financial flows became apparent as the MPLA found itself increasingly unable to counteract its own president, causing frictions between party and leader.</p>
<p>Oil funds were used to ensure the viability of the MPLA’s war effort against the rebel movement Unita through the purchase of weapons and food. They also became a means of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43664097#metadata_info_tab_contents">disbursing patronage and favours</a>, tying the elite to the president’s whims. The fear of losing access to financial support in a country where to be poor meant having almost nothing acted as the ultimate threat for the elites.</p>
<p>By the end of the country’s civil war <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">in 2002</a>, decisively won by the MPLA led by Dos Santos, the presidency had almost rendered other decision-making structures irrelevant. The new <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Angola_2010.pdf?lang=en">2010 constitution</a> further embedded presidential powers. These had been informally accumulated during the 1980s and strengthened in the 1990s. This included the elimination of the position of prime minister as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Angola/Government-and-society">head of the government</a>.</p>
<p>Dos Santos inspired loyalty and fear. A number of factors made this possible. These included his long stay in power <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2022/07/08/former-angolan-president-jose-eduardo-dos-santos-dies-at-79//">(1979 to 2017)</a> as well as the creation of a parallel security state answerable almost exclusively to him. People were wary of phones being tapped, of acquaintances working for intelligence services, and the internet being monitored.</p>
<p>This fear created a relationship to the presidency in which it was understood as socially remote from ordinary Angolans; but seemingly omnipresent due to the belief in the office’s capacity to collect information about the most banal of everyday actions and statements.</p>
<p>These beliefs often seemed to be realised in the late days of Dos Santos’s rule when activist circles were infiltrated. This led to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2015/11/angola-trial-of-15-activists-after-five-months-in-detention-a-travesty-of-justice/">arrests and show trials</a> of those questioning state policies and the political system.</p>
<p>One of the long-term legacies of his rule is a paranoid and authoritarian political system. It does little to serve the needs of the majority and centres too much power in the presidency.</p>
<p>Attempts at opening up the political space and producing an engaged civil society <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2017/09/26/profile-angolas-eduardo-dos-santos-guerilla-fighter-to-democratic-president//">were dampened if not openly crushed</a>. Despite leading the country into its most-prolonged period of peace since 1961, when the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-61792-3_13">insurrection against Portuguese colonial rule began</a>, Dos Santos’s style of rule was detrimental to the growth of a vibrant democracy. Criticism was treated as a threat. Security forces were readily used to harass critics and opposition.</p>
<h2>Oil dependence, corruption and inequality</h2>
<p>Dos Santos’s economic legacy, more than his political one, attracted the most attention abroad. During his final years and his retirement in 2017, the accumulation of wealth by his family, especially his eldest child, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59616316">Isabel dos Santos</a>, generated significant criticism from Angolans and foreigners.</p>
<p>His children’s actions were viewed by many as symbolic of the broader scourge of corruption that had come to characterise Angola’s political economy. This, under the pretence of building a “national bourgeoisie”.</p>
<p>At the heart of Dos Santos’s power and Angola’s wealth stood oil. While many understood the country’s continued reliance on oil during the civil war period (1975-2002), Dos Santos’ inability to encourage significant diversification of the economy during the decade long post-conflict oil boom was perhaps one of his greatest failures.</p>
<p>If poverty was already extreme for many Angolans, the failed promises of the oil boom only made the period that followed worse. With <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/what-triggered-oil-price-plunge-2014-2016-and-why-it-failed-deliver-economic-impetus-eight-charts">the crash of oil in 2015</a>, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/angola/overview#:%7E:text=Since%202015%2C%20the%20oil%20sector,GDP%20decline%20of%209.9%20percent.">the country has experienced</a> austerity, rising unemployment and worsening social conditions. This situation could have been alleviated if more focus had been placed on building alternatives to the oil industry.</p>
<h2>Legacy unclear</h2>
<p>Dos Santos died five years after leaving office in self-imposed exile, abandoned by his previous political allies, especially those belonging to his own generation of the anti-colonial struggle.</p>
<p>His body is now <a href="https://www.expatica.com/es/general/spanish-court-refuses-to-hand-over-dos-santos-body-192519/">in litigation in a Spanish court</a> and is the subject of a close dispute between different wings of his family and the Angolan state. President João Lourenço <a href="https://nation.africa/africa/news/angola-declares-7-days-of-national-mourning-after-jose-eduardo-dos-santos-death-3874220">decreed seven days of national mourning</a> and insists on holding a state funeral. Dos Santos’s children have accepted to bury him in Angola, but only after the 2022 election as they seek to leverage the political significance that his body symbolises. </p>
<p>The dispute is evidence of the power Dos Santos’s wielded in life and now in death. On the eve of the Angola’s <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2022/06/04/angola-to-hold-general-elections-on-august-24//">August 24 elections</a>, his funeral would be a means for Lourenço to gain electoral advantage and redeem himself in the face of public criticism for the attacks carried out against Dos Santos and his children.</p>
<p>For Lourenço and the hard-core of the MPLA, Dos Santos’ body is a political asset with the potential to appease internal divisions, negotiate with his children, and calm popular dissatisfaction with Lourenço’s and the party’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/angolas-president-has-little-to-show-for-his-promise-of-a-break-with-the-authoritarian-past-167933">performance since 2017</a>.</p>
<p>Amid the political dispute over the body and general elections, Dos Santos’s political legacy will continue to divide Angolans immensely for a long time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudia Gastrow has previously received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Research Council of Norway, and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gilson Lázaro receives funding from the Norwegian Embassy programme for research.</span></em></p>Dos Santos was a withdrawn president. His silence produced an aura of power and the cult of personality that surrounded him.Claudia Gastrow, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of JohannesburgGilson Lázaro, Research associate, Catholic University of AngolaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1839842022-06-20T14:28:23Z2022-06-20T14:28:23ZSex workers in Nigeria deserve fair treatment from the media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468191/original/file-20220610-17-xhpq8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Nigerian women's group demands sex workers' rights at a protest.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Adekunle Ajayi/NurPhoto via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In most African societies today, social, cultural, economic and political forces continually place women in the back seat. While there is much focus on the physical abuse of women, there are other ways through which abuses are sustained. One is how the media represent the realities of sex work and sex workers.</p>
<p>The term ‘sex work’ (derogatorily known as prostitution) was <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780203700655-37/inventing-sex-work-jill-nagle">coined</a> by Carol Leigh as a means of creating “an atmosphere of tolerance within and outside the women’s movement for women working in the sex industry”. The growing popularity of the term is a result of the rise of activism among sex workers and advocacy for their rights.</p>
<p>Sex work is abhorred in many African societies. But, “Why is it that a practice so thoroughly disapproved, so widely outlawed … can yet flourish so universally?” <a href="https://www.romolocapuano.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/davis_prostitution.pdf">asks</a> American sociologist Kingley Davis. The sex business has remained with man because it performs a role in society.</p>
<p>There are inconsistent and unreliable statistics about sex work and sex workers worldwide. But by way of comparison, in Germany it has been <a href="https://www.stearsng.com/article/commercial-sex-in-nigeria-is-regulation-an-option">reported</a> that the sex industry is worth roughly €14.5 billion, the equivalent of a third of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. However, while sex work is recognised as work in Germany, in Nigeria, the business is considered abhorrent even though it is thriving, with an estimated population of <a href="http://www.healthnews.ng/nearly-all-sex-workers-and-drug-users-in-nigeria-use-condoms/">103,506</a> sex workers in 2017. </p>
<p>It has been <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/criminology-the-core/oclc/85507836">estimated</a> that women involved in sex work are 60 to 100 times more likely to be killed than the average woman. They suffer crass human rights and sexual abuses. Like most minority groups, they suffer marginalisation and social exclusion.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.arcjournals.org/international-journal-of-media-journalism-and-mass-communications/volume-3-issue-1/3">While</a> <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315672633_Gendered_Portrayal_of_Political_Actors_in_Nigerian_Print_Media_What_Impact_on_Women's_Political_Participation">studies</a> in Nigeria emphasise the general representation of women in a multi-cultural society, there are sparse studies that problematise and address the voice of sex workers within a media context. </p>
<p>It is in view of such gaps that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17512786.2022.2065336">our recent study</a> seeks to examine how sex work and sex workers in Nigeria are represented by the news media. </p>
<h2>The study</h2>
<p>The study sought to identify the different ways in which sex work, sex workers and their clients are constructed and represented. We further wanted to know how the news media orchestrate, coordinate and perpetuate male dominance through the portrayal of the sexuality of men and women. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-covid-19-restrictions-prevent-nairobis-sex-workers-from-accessing-vital-healthcare-153108">How COVID-19 restrictions prevent Nairobi's sex workers from accessing vital healthcare</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>We sampled 30 news stories that were published between 2017 and 2020, collected from the websites of three newspapers: <a href="https://www.sunnewsonline.com">Daily Sun</a>, <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com">Vanguard</a> and <a href="https://dailytrust.com">Daily Trust</a>. These were selected based on their market segmentation, continuous publication over time and regional pre-eminence of coverage. We also interviewed two male and two female journalists who authored some of the stories we analysed.</p>
<h2>Findings</h2>
<p>The study found that newspapers are used as channels where issues about sex workers and their lived experiences were framed and reframed, their identities negotiated and renegotiated. The Nigerian news media we studied tend to be obsessed with framing female sex workers in negative ways. They were mainly constructed as dangerous to society.</p>
<p>Even though <a href="https://mpra.ub.unimuenchen.de/88402/">studies</a> in Nigeria reveal that there are male sex workers, the news media all framed sex work as a business only of and by women. </p>
<p>The media in our study tended to be vocal about the suppliers of sex while downplaying those who patronise their services. Sex providers, for instance, were described as “women of low virtues” or “ladies of the night” who ply an “unholy trade”. Their male patrons were simply described without pejorative words; as “men”, “politicians”, “clients” and “patrons”. </p>
<p>This suggests problematic journalistic biases that entrench the culture of male-privileging. This is an ideology of double standards that make men feel morally and physically edified, while women are tarnished for violating the same social norms.</p>
<p>Many of the news stories we analysed were illustrated with cropped pictures emphasising female breasts, thighs, legs, lips and buttocks. Seven of 10 stories by Daily Sun used photos in this way to provoke reader attention and stir controversy. A <a href="https://asijiki.org.za/wp-content/uploads/Final-Journalist-Guide_15-Jan-2015.pdf">study</a> by Sonke Gender Justice in South Africa reveals that such use of images undermines “the multiplicity and complexity of sex worker lives and reinforce negative stereotypes”.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africas-hiv-prevention-programmes-should-include-sex-worker-clients-157264">Why South Africa's HIV prevention programmes should include sex worker clients</a>
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<p>Sex workers face dangers that include physical attack, rape, ritual killing and murder. Their many challenges were sparingly mentioned by the news media. When they were, sex workers were still mainly cast in a poor light. Daily Trust <a href="https://dailytrust.com/abakaliki-market-where-prostitutes-outnumber-traders">reported</a> that in Ebonyi State “prostitutes” and “harlots” were threatened with eviction. The report quotes a government representative:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we don’t (evict them), it means that the whole place … would be threatened by these hoodlums hiding behind the prostitutes in the market.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even though the sex workers were not “hoodlums”, they were treated like they were. The content analysis determined that of the articles sampled, 73.3% were constructed as “bad” (the language used to portray and construct sex work was used in a negative, derogatory way), 23.3% were “neutral” and 3.3% “good”.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Other studies reveal that most government policies have neglected the multifarious needs of sex workers. This makes sex workers vulnerable to violence, poor health and numerous other factors, making it more challenging to move out of their circumstances. </p>
<p>This study reveals a systematic delegitimisation of sex workers through biased and negative representation by news media in Nigeria, entrenching a culture of privileging that pushes these women into deeper marginalisation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Gever Verlumun Celestine works with University of Nigeria, Nsukka</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hashim Muhammad Suleiman and Nathan Oguche Emmanuel 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>The study reveals a consistently biased and negative depiction of sex workers by news media in Nigeria.Nathan Oguche Emmanuel, Lecturer/Researcher, Department of Mass Communication,, National Open University of NigeriaGever Verlumun Celestine, Lecturer in Mass Communications, University of NigeriaHashim Muhammad Suleiman, Lecturer in Mass Communication, Ahmadu Bello UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1656812021-08-19T08:54:33Z2021-08-19T08:54:33ZIndonesia’s obsession to maintain social order hinders equal treatment of minority faiths<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416730/original/file-20210818-15-17fbihz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C251%2C3988%2C2407&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aprillio Akbar/Antara Foto</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A few weeks ago, Religious Affairs Minister Cholil Yaqut Qoumas became a target of public <a href="https://en.tempo.co/read/1489204/religious-freedom-group-lauds-ministers-greetings-for-bahais">criticism and praise</a> for congratulating followers of the minority Baha'i faith in Indonesia on celebrating their Nowruz holiday.</p>
<p>Nowruz is the <a href="https://bahai-library.com/walbridge_encyclopedia_nawruz">first day</a> of the Bahaʼi calendar year. It is one of nine holy days for Bahaʼi adherents.</p>
<p>Indonesian state and government officials extending holiday greetings to the followers of majority faiths is a common practice in Indonesia. It is often seen as the practice of tolerance. </p>
<p>But expanding it to the community of minority faiths, especially those who are not officially acknowledged by the state, is still considered a serious political and social sin. </p>
<p>For decades, the Indonesian government has recognised only six major religions – namely, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Protestant Christianity and Roman Catholicism.</p>
<p>Cholil’s holiday greeting to the Baha'i is not his first “progressive” move as the religious minister. Soon after he was installed as minister at the end of last year, he vowed to affirm the rights of Ahmadiyah and Shia, two minority faiths with sizeable followings in Indonesia. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, he requested prayers that <a href="https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2021/04/08/18015461/soal-doa-dari-semua-agama-menag-salahnya-doa-ini-apa-sih-orang-disuruh-doa">address all major religions</a> – not only Islam – be read out at events organised by his ministry.</p>
<p>Despite his more progressive, liberal leaning, it is unlikely Cholil will succeed in bringing in major reforms promoting equal treatment of minority faiths. </p>
<p>The minister faces a culture among state officials that tends to preserve “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0967828X18769393">majoritarian social order</a>”. This means the majority (either by religion, ethnicity, social class, or other identity) of the population holds certain powers or can make decisions for the entire society.</p>
<h2>Social order</h2>
<p>The inclination to preserve social order has been developed since the establishment of the Indonesian state and began in the Dutch colonial era. </p>
<p>Scholars found that this <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0967828X18769393">culture</a> survived through various eras, although the degree of implementation varied from time to time. </p>
<p>Under the authoritarian regime of Suharto, the state excessively emphasised harmony in the community. This resulted in the repression of dissent. </p>
<p>The regime often accused dissidents of being a destructive force against the country’s social order. </p>
<p>In the post-Suharto era, all branches of the state, including the judiciary, continued this culture. The majority faiths were privileged, at the expense of people who subscribed to minority faiths. </p>
<p>One example is the trial of Tajul Muluk, a Shia leader, who was <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/07/13/convicted-shiite-cleric-i-am-not-infidel.html">convicted</a> of having blasphemed Islam and disrupting social harmony. </p>
<p>Shia is a minority Islamic sect within the country’s Muslim-majority population, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims.</p>
<p>The East Java district court sentenced him to two years in jail in 2013. He appealed but, in the end, the Supreme Court doubled his sentence to <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/09/19/mk-rejects-tajul-muluk-s-request-a-judicial-review.html">four years</a> in jail. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/02/28/religions-name/abuses-against-religious-minorities-indonesia">Numerous</a> other Indonesian religious figures have been jailed for blasphemy charges after trying to introduce new religious practices or habits that were said to have deviated from religious rituals practised by followers of the majority faiths. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-competition-for-religious-authority-breeds-islamist-militancy-in-java-146919">How competition for religious authority breeds Islamist militancy in Java</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Monotheism</h2>
<p>The founding ideology of Indonesia, called <em>Pancasila</em> (literally, “five principles”), comprises monotheism, civilised humanity, national unity, deliberative democracy and social justice. </p>
<p>The first principle, “Belief in One God”, is an important factor that hindered the establishment of equal treatment. </p>
<p>Indonesia’s founding father created the ideology during a series of meetings leading to independence. According to political scholar B.J. Boland, it was later used by the Ministry of Religious Affairs as an “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvbqs4mn">operative principle</a>” to support the Muslim majority. Non-mainstream faiths have been repressed since the early years of the Indonesian state.</p>
<p>This value, which promotes both monotheism and the establishment of a more religious country, inspires and influences the formulation of laws and regulations in Indonesia. These regulations include <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/files/_index-_asa_210182014.pdf">the 1965 blasphemy presidential decree</a>, which has often been used to repress minority faiths. </p>
<p>President Sukarno issued the decree in 1965 to prevent conflicts between the followers of mystical beliefs or folk religions and the followers of mainstream faiths such as Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. </p>
<p>The decree became law four years later. To this day, state apparatuses often use this law to curb faiths that are claimed to be deviant sects and to criminalise their leaders.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-daily-lives-of-indonesian-youth-can-tell-us-why-they-become-more-conservative-132019">How the daily lives of Indonesian youth can tell us why they become more conservative</a>
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<h2>Uphill battle</h2>
<p>These cultural and ideological values are so well entrenched in the practices of the Indonesian state that any efforts to reform certain discriminatory laws and practices will be destined to fail. </p>
<p>For example, Indonesians have to state their religion in identity documents – one of the six religions recognised by the state for decades. </p>
<p>Followers of minority and native faiths have faced <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2017/11/13/native-faith-followers-survive-decades-discrimination.html">discrimination</a> for failing to comply with this requirement. They are often barred from receiving public services such as getting a marriage certificate.</p>
<p>It was not until <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/05/02/faith-optional-e-id-card.html">2012</a> that the Indonesian government allowed citizens, especially subscribers to nondenominational faiths, to forgo declaring their religious beliefs on the identity card. Indigenous faith followers have only been able to cite their religious preferences on identity cards since <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/05/20/indigenous-faiths-allowed-id-card.html">2015</a></p>
<p>Despite such progressive measures, and although the current religious affairs minister has shown some progressive impulses, more fundamental reforms are needed to abolish the discriminatory laws and practices. The process of reform requires major overhaul of the discriminatory cultural and ideological values behind these laws and practices. </p>
<p>Failure to do so will be harmful for freedom of religion in Indonesia, particularly in regard to ensuring equal treatment of minority faiths.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165681/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A'an Suryana tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>To put an end to discriminatory laws and practices, more fundamental reforms are needed.A'an Suryana, Visiting Fellow, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1513592020-12-17T13:28:18Z2020-12-17T13:28:18ZWhy the Puritans cracked down on celebrating Christmas<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375505/original/file-20201216-19-11ac6dx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=150%2C0%2C615%2C413&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Going To Church,' N.C. Wyeth (1941).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://collections.brandywine.org/objects/11513/going-to-church;jsessionid=51AD385B0B564B74FCDCFC5C98B19EFF">Archival photograph, Brandywine River Museum library, Edward J. S. Seal Collection.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When winter cold settles in across the U.S., the alleged “War on Christmas” heats up. </p>
<p>In recent years, department store greeters and Starbucks cups <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/2/18052550/starbucks-holiday-cup-explained-2018-controversies">have sparked furor</a> by wishing customers “happy holidays.” This year, with state officials warning of holiday gatherings becoming superspreader events in the midst of a pandemic, opponents of some public health measures to limit the spread of the pandemic <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/04/tucker-carlson-brings-back-war-christmas-maybe-thats-good-thing/">are already casting them as attacks on the Christian holiday</a>. </p>
<p>But debates about celebrating Christmas go back to the 17th century. The Puritans, it turns out, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122132/the-battle-for-christmas-by-stephen-nissenbaum/">were not too keen on the holiday</a>. They first discouraged Yuletide festivities and later outright banned them.</p>
<p>At first glance, banning Christmas celebrations might seem like a natural extension of a stereotype of the Puritans as joyless and humorless <a href="https://media.newyorker.com/cartoons/5fb44c558e27531302a6e768/master/w_2560,h_2068,c_limit/201130_a23576.jpg">that persists to this day</a>.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-complicated-legacy-of-the-pilgrims-is-finally-coming-to-light-400-years-after-they-landed-in-plymouth-145002">as a scholar who has written about the Puritans</a>, I see their hostility toward holiday gaiety as less about their alleged asceticism and more about their desire to impose their will on the people of New England – Natives and immigrants alike. </p>
<h2>An aversion to Christmas chaos</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24950/24950-h/24950-h.htm">The earliest documentary evidence</a> for their aversion to celebrating Christmas dates back to 1621, when Gov. William Bradford of Plymouth Colony castigated some of the newcomers who chose to take the day off rather than work.</p>
<p>But why? </p>
<p>As a devout Protestant, Bradford did not dispute the divinity of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Puritans spent a great deal of time investigating their own and others’ souls because they were <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801490415/visible-saints/#bookTabs=1">so committed to creating a godly community</a>.</p>
<p>Bradford’s comments reflected Puritans’ lingering anxiety about <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/christmas-under-puritans">the ways that Christmas had been celebrated in England</a>. For generations, the holiday had been an occasion for riotous, sometimes violent behavior. The moralist pamphleteer Phillip Stubbes believed that Christmastime celebrations <a href="http://tei.it.ox.ac.uk/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/A13/A13086.html#index.xml-body.1_div.6">gave celebrants license</a> “to do what they lust, and to folow what vanitie they will.” He complained about rampant “fooleries” like playing dice and cards and wearing masks.</p>
<p>Civil authorities had mostly accepted the practices because they understood that allowing some of the disenfranchised to blow off steam on a few days of the year tended to preserve <a href="https://earlymodernnotes.wordpress.com/2004/08/31/carnival-and-the-carnivalesque/">an unequal social order</a>. Let the poor think they are in control for a day or two, the logic went, and the rest of the year they will tend to their work without causing trouble.</p>
<p>English Puritans objected to accepting such practices because they feared any sign of disorder. <a href="https://public.wsu.edu/%7Ecampbelld/amlit/purdef.htm">They believed in predestination</a>, which led them to search their own and others’ behavior for signs of saving grace. They could not tolerate public scandal, especially when attached to a religious moment. </p>
<p>Puritan efforts to crack down on Christmas revelries in England before 1620 had little impact. But once in North America, these seekers of religious freedom had control over the governments of New Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut. </p>
<h2>Puritan intolerance</h2>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179995/the-city-state-of-boston">Boston became the focal point</a> of Puritan efforts to create a society where church and state reinforced each other.</p>
<p>The Puritans in Plymouth and Massachusetts used their authority to punish or banish those who did not share their views. For example, they exiled an Anglican lawyer named <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300230109/trials-thomas-morton">Thomas Morton</a> who rejected Puritan theology, befriended local Indigenous people, danced around a maypole and sold guns to the Natives. He was, <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24950/24950-h/24950-h.htm#a1627">Bradford wrote</a>, “the Lord of Misrule” – the archetype of a dangerous type who Puritans believed create mayhem, including at Christmas. </p>
<p>In the years that followed, the Puritans exiled others who disagreed with their religious views, including <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw01_11804.html">Anne Hutchinson</a> and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/god-government-and-roger-williams-big-idea-6291280/">Roger Williams</a> who espoused beliefs deemed unacceptable by local church leaders. In 1659, they banished three Quakers who had arrived in 1656. When two of them, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, refused to leave, <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/quakers-fight-religious-freedom-puritan-massachusetts-1656-1661">Massachusetts authorities executed them in Boston</a>.</p>
<p>This was the context for which Massachusetts authorities outlawed Christmas celebrations in 1659. Even after the statute <a href="https://www.history.com/news/when-massachusetts-banned-christmas">left the law books in 1681</a> during a reorganization of the colony, prominent theologians still despised holiday festivities. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Increase Mather poses wearing a black cape." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375508/original/file-20201216-19-1625b07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375508/original/file-20201216-19-1625b07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375508/original/file-20201216-19-1625b07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375508/original/file-20201216-19-1625b07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375508/original/file-20201216-19-1625b07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375508/original/file-20201216-19-1625b07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375508/original/file-20201216-19-1625b07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Minister Increase Mather loathed Christmas celebrations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-american-congregational-minister-author-and-news-photo/51160348?adppopup=true">Stock Montage via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In 1687, the minister Increase Mather, who believed that Christmas celebrations derived from the bacchanalian excesses of the Roman holiday Saturnalia, <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo2;idno=A50236.0001.001">decried those consumed</a> “in Revellings, in excess of wine, in mad mirth.”</p>
<p>The hostility of Puritan clerics to celebrations of Christmas should not be seen as evidence that they always hoped to stop joyous behavior. In 1673, Mather had called alcohol “a good creature of God” <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N00124.0001.001/1:3?rgn=div1;view=fulltext">and had no objection to moderate drinking</a>. Nor did Puritans have a negative <a href="https://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/2016/10/18/puritans-and-sex-myth/">view of sex</a>.</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/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>What the Puritans did want was a society dominated by their views. This made them eager to convert Natives to Christianity, <a href="https://www.natickhistoricalsociety.org/naticks-beginnings">which they managed to do in some places</a>. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1917047?seq=1">They tried to quash what they saw as usurious business practices</a> within their community, and in Plymouth <a href="http://mayflowerhistory.com/crime">they executed a teenager who had sex with animals</a>, the punishment prescribed by the Book of Leviticus. When the Puritans believed that Indigenous people might attack them or undermine their economy, they lashed out – <a href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/208.html">most notoriously in 1637</a>, when they set a Pequot village on fire, murdered those who tried to flee and sold captives into slavery.</p>
<p>By comparison to their treatment of Natives and fellow colonists who rebuffed their unbending vision, the Puritan campaign against Christmas seems tame. But it is a reminder of what can happen when the self-righteous control the levers of power in a society and seek to mold a world in their image.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151359/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter C. Mancall 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>It was less about their asceticism and more about rejecting the world they had fled.Peter C. Mancall, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1168512019-06-13T04:21:17Z2019-06-13T04:21:17ZUnderstanding intolerance with a better research method<p>Intolerance has been one of the most discussed topics in Indonesia, a secular country with the world’s biggest Muslim majority, due to a rise in cases of intolerance across the country. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-intolerance-can-persist-in-democratic-countries-the-case-of-indonesia-110607">How intolerance can persist in democratic countries: the case of Indonesia</a>
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<p>Researchers and civil society organisations have carried out various surveys to capture intolerance in Indonesia’s diverse society. But <a href="http://wahidfoundation.org/index.php/publication/detail/Hasil-Survey-Nasional-2016-Wahid-Foundation-LSI">most of them</a> only show percentages of intolerant people in Indonesia’s population. </p>
<p>These descriptive studies provide only a general pattern of intolerance in Indonesia. They don’t identify factors causing intolerant practices. </p>
<p>We need research on intolerance that goes beyond numbers to find out why and how people become intolerant, and to find solutions.</p>
<p>Using a statistical analysis method called structural equation modelling (SEM), my team and I <a href="https://magdalene.co/story/new-lipi-study-shows-rising-religious-conservatism-intolerance-weaponized-for-politics">identified</a> that strong religious and ethnic identity is a factor in someone having intolerant attitudes. </p>
<h2>Method beyond statistics</h2>
<p>Researchers who have interest in intolerance issues rarely use SEM, a method that can show causality between several dependent variables and independent variables. </p>
<p>This method is usually applied to research on marketing, motivation and level of satisfaction with health facilities. Social science researchers also use it to measure something that’s abstract. </p>
<p>But it’s also useful to use this method to fill the gaps left by descriptive studies. By using SEM, we can identify and understand factors causing intolerance and to what extent the various factors affect the level of intolerance. </p>
<p>It can also be used to measure something abstract, like tolerance, by using indicators to represent the concept. For our research, we used indicators such as rejection of leaders from different religions and ethnic groups and rejection of neighbours with different religions and ethnicity. Once we’ve identified these indicators, we can measure the variables and determine their relationships. </p>
<h2>Our findings</h2>
<p>In 2018, we interviewed 1,800 respondents in nine provinces across Indonesia. We chose respondents who are eligible to vote as some of the questions to measure intolerance related to their views on election candidates with different faiths and ethnicity. Therefore, we used a multistage random sampling to obtain a sample of people aged 17-64 years or married, who under Indonesian law are eligible to vote. </p>
<p>From our analysis we identified factors that cause intolerant attitudes: religious identity and fanaticism, ethnicity, distrust, secularism, perceived threat and social media. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274860/original/file-20190516-69195-ormob9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274860/original/file-20190516-69195-ormob9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274860/original/file-20190516-69195-ormob9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274860/original/file-20190516-69195-ormob9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274860/original/file-20190516-69195-ormob9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274860/original/file-20190516-69195-ormob9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274860/original/file-20190516-69195-ormob9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274860/original/file-20190516-69195-ormob9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Table 1. Characteristics of respondents.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our research finds that perceived threat, distrust, secularism, religious fanaticism and social media can trigger intolerance directly. </p>
<p>Our respondents who feel threatened and distrust other religions and ethnicity tend to be intolerant. The same tendency is also found in those who are religious fanatics and heavy social media users. </p>
<p>The research suggests distrust due to religious differences is one central aspect contributing to intolerance. Our respondents say people from different faiths can’t be trusted and they tend to exploit others when they are in power. These respondents also feel threatened when people with different faiths become leaders and are more powerful economically and politically. </p>
<p>The research also finds that the more secular a person is, the more tolerant that person is. </p>
<p>We identified these secular people not only based on their religious values but also their belief in the roles of the state to protect the rights of citizens of different religions.</p>
<p>We find that 56.6% of our respondents can accept candidates with different religions to run for government offices. Most of them also don’t judge religious and ethnic backgrounds of candidates in presidential and local elections. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274861/original/file-20190516-69209-lzwa5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274861/original/file-20190516-69209-lzwa5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274861/original/file-20190516-69209-lzwa5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274861/original/file-20190516-69209-lzwa5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274861/original/file-20190516-69209-lzwa5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274861/original/file-20190516-69209-lzwa5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274861/original/file-20190516-69209-lzwa5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274861/original/file-20190516-69209-lzwa5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Picture 1. Visualisation of SEM results modelling intolerance and radicalism.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Research-based policymaking</h2>
<p>Our research suggests SEM can be used as an alternative to explore and understand the issues of intolerance.</p>
<p>We can use the findings as a basis to create a policy to address growing intolerance in Indonesia. </p>
<p>Finding out how many people in society have intolerant attitudes is important, but it is crucial to dig deeper to understand why.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116851/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sari Seftiani secures funding from Indonesian government
</span></em></p>It is important to understand the issues of intolerance through statistics. But it is crucial to dig deeper to understand why a person becomes intolerant.Sari Seftiani, Researcher at Research Center for Population - Indonesia Institute of Sciences, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1152112019-05-08T10:13:21Z2019-05-08T10:13:21ZHarsh punishments under Sharia are modern interpretations of an ancient tradition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272565/original/file-20190503-103082-15qu5ta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque, one of the landmarks in Brunei. Brunei recently announced punishing gay sex by stoning offenders to death.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Brunei-Sharia-Law/b31b0762904e4cc8ae84f741a2335dda/2/0">AP Photo/Vincent Thian</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After Brunei introduced death by stoning for homosexuals under its Islamic law, or Sharia, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/world/asia/brunei-stoning-gay-sex.html">condemnation</a> from human rights organizations and others was swift. Recently, the country backed down under mounting international pressure, saying it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/world/asia/brunei-gays-stoning-execution.html">would not carry out executions</a> under the new law. The sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, said,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“As evident for more than two decades, we have practiced a de facto moratorium on the execution of death penalty for cases under the common law.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And this, he added would also be applied to cases under the Sharia penal code.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, homosexuals in Brunei are still subject to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/05/asia/brunei-lgbt-death-penalty-intl/index.html">penalties</a> such as whipping and amputation. </p>
<p>Is Brunei’s law an accurate reflection of Sharia?</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1057944">scholar</a> of law and religion, I would argue that Sharia is not one thing: It is a complex tradition with multiple interpretations – one that accommodates the celebration of same-sex attraction alongside rulings condemning homosexual intercourse. </p>
<h2>Different views</h2>
<p>Starting in the early medieval period, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3YvEt3PxmAcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hallaq+sharia&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJy7W0jfvhAhUjMX0KHW6TDZMQ6AEINjAC#v=onepage&q=hallaq%20sharia&f=false">Sharia</a> developed as a sprawling corpus of texts and sources of authority that were often quite independent of the state.</p>
<p>Over the centuries, jurists of Islamic law have reached different decisions about what the tradition mandates in a particular case. Within Sunni Islam, four different <a href="https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/madhhab-SIM_8798?s.num=0&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopaedia-of-islam-2&s.q=madhhab">schools</a> have agreed to disagree about everything from criminal law to ritual observance. Shia Muslims have their own school of Islamic law. </p>
<p>Take, for instance, Muslim jurists’ approach to <a href="https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/liwat-SIM_4677?s.num=0&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopaedia-of-islam-2&s.q=liwat">anal intercourse</a> between two men. The Quran offers only a general condemnation, with no specific legal consequences. There are some sources in the Hadith – the vast corpus of sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and collected centuries after his death – that are more specific, including condemning those convicted of anal intercourse to death.</p>
<p>Some schools of Islamic law – such as the Shafii school, which is predominant in Brunei – classify sodomy as a type of <a href="https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/zina-or-zina-SIM_8168?s.num=0&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopaedia-of-islam-2&s.q=zina">fornication</a>, which requires the death penalty. </p>
<p>But others, such as the Hanafi school, which was the official school of the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9cTHyUQoTyUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hanafi+law+ottoman+empire&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjyrvmNkvvhAhXSLH0KHfvrDqgQ6AEIXzAJ#v=onepage&q=hanafi%20law%20ottoman%20empire&f=false">Ottoman Empire</a>, prescribe far lighter penalties for this act. The Hanafi school is still one of the most widespread in the Islamic world, including in Turkey, the Balkans, South Asia and Central Asia.</p>
<p>And even in those schools of Islamic law that prescribe the death penalty for anal intercourse, jurists have made the standard of proof so high as to be nearly impossible to meet. </p>
<p>To condemn someone for sodomy requires four male, Muslim witnesses to have had such an intimate view of the act that they could see the genitals of the offenders. All schools of law require this type of evidence to condemn someone for fornication. Needless to say, such proof was exceedingly hard to come by. </p>
<h2>Celebrating same-sex attraction</h2>
<p>Moreover, as scholar <a href="https://nelc.fas.harvard.edu/people/khaled-el-rouayheb">Khaled El-Rouayheb</a> has <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=undbSDztxVMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=khaled+el-rouayheb+homosexuality&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLnbDYjvvhAhVFlFQKHRmXBMkQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=khaled%20el-rouayheb%20homosexuality&f=false">argued</a>, while jurists might have condemned sodomy, they also celebrated homoeroticism, that is, erotic love between members of the same sex.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272568/original/file-20190503-103082-1ie3ijg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272568/original/file-20190503-103082-1ie3ijg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272568/original/file-20190503-103082-1ie3ijg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272568/original/file-20190503-103082-1ie3ijg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272568/original/file-20190503-103082-1ie3ijg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272568/original/file-20190503-103082-1ie3ijg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272568/original/file-20190503-103082-1ie3ijg.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cairo’s Al Azhar Mosque and University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cairo_-_Islamic_district_-_Al_Azhar_Mosque_and_University_front.JPG">Daniel Mayer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 18th century, Abdallah al-Shabrawi, the rector of al-Azhar in Cairo – then, as now, one of the Islamic world’s most prestigious centers of religious learning – was known both as a scholar and a poet. Al-Shabrawi dedicated a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=undbSDztxVMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=khaled+el-rouayheb+homosexuality&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj36aj34__hAhXo0FQKHXx7DQoQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=khaled%20el-rouayheb%20homosexuality&f=false">love poem</a> to his male student, and wrote many others celebrating young men.</p>
<p>As scholars of Ottoman history and literature <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/walter/">Walter Andrews</a> and <a href="http://mehmetkalpakli.com/">Mehmet Kalpaklı</a> have shown, Ottoman sexuality was in many ways like that of ancient Greece and Rome. Far from stigmatizing men who sexually desired other men, young boys were often considered <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jID6Z1l0IfEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=andrews+kalpakli+age+of+beloveds&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidlNrh5v_hAhVLs1QKHT9jA04Q6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=andrews%20kalpakli%20age%20of%20beloveds&f=false">more perfect objects of desire and love</a> than women.</p>
<p>Celebrations of same-sex love did not flout Islamic law. Rather, love for another man was considered widely acceptable even by jurists, as long as one avoided the sin of sodomy.</p>
<h2>Islamism and Sharia</h2>
<p>The interpretation of Sharia that originally guided the recent laws in Brunei is not a straightforward revival of an ancient tradition. </p>
<p>On the contrary, this interpretation is related to a particularly modern approach to Islamic law, one that is typical of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2hxmm2N6jOgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=introduction+to+islamism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1osCHkPvhAhUcJzQIHez0CBkQ6AEIPDAD#v=onepage&q=introduction%20to%20islamism&f=false">Islamism</a>. Islamism is an approach to Islam and the Sharia that arose in the 20th century across the Muslim world. Among its best-known example is the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ltVtj3Kh7IIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Richard+P.+Mitchell,+The+Society+of+the+Muslim+Brothers&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj18-rI5ofiAhUHsFQKHeB3AjAQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=Richard%20P.%20Mitchell%2C%20The%20Society%20of%20the%20Muslim%20Brothers&f=false">Muslim Brotherhood</a>, which originated in Egypt and argued, for instance, that Sharia was indispensable to a vibrant Muslim community.</p>
<p>Today, many Islamist political parties point to a revival of the Sharia as a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CE_sgHj4k0EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=noah+feldman+the+fall+and+rise+of+the+islamic+state&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwivtajQ5__hAhWmwFQKHZ7BDBoQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=noah%20feldman%20the%20fall%20and%20rise%20of%20the%20islamic%20state&f=false">political solution</a> to the problems plaguing Muslim-majority societies, including corruption and inequality. </p>
<p>However, there are many different viewpoints even among those linked with Islamism. For example, the Egyptian Islamist group al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyah <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ieflBQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=jackson,+S.+A.+(2015).+Initiative+to+Stop+the+Violence:+Sadat%27s+Assassins+and+the+Renunciation+of+Political+Violence&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwpq6M5IfiAhXIr1QKHbDnDPgQ6AEINDAC#v=onepage&q&f=false">renounces violence</a>. On the other end of the spectrum is the Islamic State, which has taken up perhaps the most extreme version of a violent interpretation of Islamism. </p>
<p>In spite of these differences, many Islamists share the belief that Sharia is a way to harken back to an authentic Islam free of the corruption that is perceived to come from the West. </p>
<h2>Pre-colonial Sharia</h2>
<p>In fact, Sharia was not usually the primary source of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7EAsmttzXjcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=criminal+law+islamic+world&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDr96ukPvhAhXNIzQIHbkcAqwQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=criminal%20law%20islamic%20world&f=false">criminal law</a> in the pre-modern period.</p>
<p>Rather, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3YvEt3PxmAcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hallaq+sharia&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJy7W0jfvhAhUjMX0KHW6TDZMQ6AEINjAC#v=onepage&q=hallaq%20sharia&f=false">Sharia courts</a> focused more on regulating issues such as contracts, debts, marriage, divorce, mortgages and other everyday matters of civil law. This was in part because the Sharia required such high standards of proof for crimes as to make conviction nearly impossible.</p>
<p>My own <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=WqIqDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=marglin+across+legal+lines&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjuqqGuj_vhAhXLwlQKHUIUBmMQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=marglin%20across%20legal%20lines&f=false">research</a> on law in pre-colonial Morocco shows that everyone – Muslims and Jews alike – used Sharia courts, which were mostly concerned with making sure that debtors paid their debts.</p>
<h2>Sharia stereotypes</h2>
<p>The way in which Sharia is codified and enforced by the state in a place like Brunei bears little resemblance to the way it functioned when al-Shabrawi was rector of al-Azhar.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272570/original/file-20190503-103057-142gr37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272570/original/file-20190503-103057-142gr37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272570/original/file-20190503-103057-142gr37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272570/original/file-20190503-103057-142gr37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272570/original/file-20190503-103057-142gr37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272570/original/file-20190503-103057-142gr37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272570/original/file-20190503-103057-142gr37.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">Some countries use a harsh interpretation of Sharia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Indonesia-Aceh-Islamic-Law/59b08543977f4195b246cd0048ee9f65/2/0">AP Photo/Heri Juanda, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To many Americans, Sharia has become synonymous with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-sharia/2016/06/24/7e3efb7a-31ef-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.962edfb45af4">harsh punishments</a> and intolerance. This is a misunderstanding of Islamic law, both as it functioned historically and as it informs the daily lives of millions of Muslims today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115211/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Marglin is affiliated with the Democratic party. </span></em></p>Some Islamic nations, including Brunei, have harsh punishments under Sharia. In pre-modern times, Sharia was rarely used as criminal law, and standard of proof for any prosecution was very high.Jessica Marglin, Associate Professor of Religion, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1106072019-05-07T01:31:40Z2019-05-07T01:31:40ZHow intolerance can persist in democratic countries: the case of Indonesia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271281/original/file-20190428-194603-1u9c8e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C991%2C664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Democracy can still perform in Indonesia despite the absence of tolerance. Fifteen years after the Acehnese tsunami, various religious people visited mass graves built by Muslims in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is tolerance among different groups a prerequisite for democracy?</p>
<p>Indonesia’s case shows that it’s not. Democracy, a system of government based on elected representation, is thriving in the world’s most populous Muslim country. Democratically elected presidents have governed Southeast Asia’s largest economy since the fall of Soeharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998. The country has just carried out elections in April. </p>
<p>At the same time intolerance of minority groups is widespread. </p>
<p>The capital, Jakarta, and former capital, Yogyakarta, located about 500km southeast from Jakarta, are top of the list on the <a href="https://www.bps.go.id/dynamictable/2017/05/04/1241/indeks-demokrasi-indonesia-idi-menurut-provinsi-2009-2017.html">Indonesia Democracy Index</a>. But they are also listed as <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/10t_zzYEUnz63C2P5q5lc7q7yR_zUEVh1/view">the most intolerant cities</a>, according to human rights advocacy group Setara Institute. Its latest report indicates that this is due to poor regulation and governance in response to intolerant practices in both cities.</p>
<p>Referring to these cases in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, we argue that democracy and tolerance are independent of each other. </p>
<p>Democracy can still perform in Indonesia despite intolerance of minority groups. To ensure that consensus as a prerequisite for a democratic society can be reached, the minority has no choice but to keep silent and succumb to the power of the majority. </p>
<h2>Democratic but intolerant in Yogyakarta and Jakarta</h2>
<p>Last year, Indonesia’s Statistics Agency published a report showing the <a href="https://www.bps.go.id/dynamictable/2017/05/04/1241/indeks-demokrasi-indonesia-idi-menurut-provinsi-2009-2016.html">Indonesian Democracy Index improved in 2017</a>, compared to 2016. The index rates each province in Indonesia based on its civil liberties, political rights and democratic institutions. </p>
<p>Yogyakarta, the seat of the Javanese monarch Hamengkubuwono X, has always <a href="https://www.bps.go.id/pressrelease/2018/08/15/1534/indeks-demokrasi-indonesia--idi--tingkat-nasional-2017-mengalami-peningkatan-dibandingkan-dengan-idi-nasional-2016.html">secured top spot</a> in the index in the past few years. </p>
<p>However, Yogyakarta’s tolerance index was the <a href="http://setara-institute.org/indeks-kota-toleran-tahun-2017/">sixth-lowest</a> compared to 93 other cities in 2017. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://crcs.ugm.ac.id/news/12185/unduh-buku-krisis-keistimewaan-di-yogyakarta.html">Centre for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies</a> identified around 66 violent conflicts in Yogyakarta between 2011 and 2016. In the latest case this year, <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/indonesias-yogyakarta-city-in-spotlight-as-more-crosses-desecrated">11</a> wooden crosses at a Christian cemetery in Yogyakarta were destroyed. A village in Yogyakarta also recently <a href="https://kumparan.com/@kumparannews/slamet-ditolak-tinggal-di-dusun-karet-bantul-karena-bukan-muslim-1554185490394432521">barred</a> a non-Muslim from living in their village.</p>
<p>A similar pattern can be found in Jakarta.</p>
<p>The capital was rated <a href="https://www.bps.go.id/dynamictable/2017/05/04/1241/indeks-demokrasi-indonesia-idi-menurut-provinsi-2009-2016.html">Indonesia’s most democratic city</a> for three years: 2014, 2015 and 2017.</p>
<p>In 2016, <a href="https://jakarta.bps.go.id/pressrelease/2017/09/14/249/indeks-demokrasi-indonesia--idi--provinsi-dki-jakarta-2016-mencapai-angka-70-85.html">Jakarta lost that title</a> due to a combination of acts of communal violence by sections of society and a poor response from the local administration in handling these violent cases. Jakarta ranked 24th out of 34 provinces in 2016. </p>
<p>However, similar to Yogyakarta, Jakarta scored the lowest in the tolerance index in <a href="http://setara-institute.org/indeks-kota-toleran-tahun-2017/">2017</a>. </p>
<p>Jakarta gained its status as an intolerant city after intolerant practices by Muslim conservatives marred its gubernatorial election in 2017. In the end, the conservative groups ousted Christian-Chinese incumbent Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama. </p>
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<h2>Between democracy and tolerance</h2>
<p>There are at least two conditions to have a democratic society. First, it must ensure <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300194463/democracy">equality</a> for all actors to participate in decision-making processes. </p>
<p>Second, when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.1990.0047">conflicts arise</a>, society can manage them within defined and universally accepted boundaries.</p>
<p>For example, imagine that you are attending a public forum or discussion to choose a leader for your community. The organiser announces that each one of you has the same right to participate and you are delighted to hear that. As the debates continue between different sides defending their arguments, you realise that things may become uncontrolled as no one wants to compromise and no one wants to lose. </p>
<p>Hours later, everybody is tired, and someone finally says: “Let’s remember that each one of us should have the same right to participate, therefore, let’s ask each one of us who is the better leader, then the one who has the most support wins.” </p>
<p>There you have the ideal condition that most democracies imagine today: participation and manageable conflict.</p>
<p>Let’s turn to tolerance. We define tolerance as putting up with those we disagree with, dislike, or who are different from us, without coercion. Don’t forget that the act of tolerance means that one side (the one that tolerates) accepts the other side (the one that is tolerated) so it masks unbalanced <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487392">power relations</a>. Therefore, in the context of plural communities, tolerance from both sides is needed. </p>
<p>From the conceptual exercise, we can argue that tolerance is highly relevant in democracies because disagreements, dislikes and differences are inevitable in plural communities. </p>
<h2>Intolerant practices in the democratic sphere</h2>
<p>It is also important to note that consensus in a democratic society can be reached through domination by the majority that silences the minority. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dw.com/id/noelle-neumann-pionir-peneliti-opini-publik-di-jerman/a-5398080">Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann</a>, a leading German researcher on public opinion, calls the process a “spiral of silence”. </p>
<p>From the “spiral of silence framework”, we can see how an idea takes hold in society. </p>
<p>We can see how this concept works through analysing how the rejection of Ahok, which was based on racial and religious grounds, could be accepted.</p>
<p>Ahok’s rejection was made possible through a mainstreaming of Islamic values via popular culture and daily lives. This process is called “<a href="https://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/cilis/research/publications/cilis-policy-papers/normalising-intolerance-elections,-religion-and-everyday-life-in-indonesia">normalisation</a>”. </p>
<p>As a result of this normalisation, it is difficult to counter the intolerant narratives without being accused of being anti-Islam. Living in a Muslim-majority country, people fear the anti-Islam label. </p>
<p>A similar thing also happens in Yogyakarta. The minority tends to accept mistreatment by the majority as they feel the power of the majority is so big that it doesn’t leave any option for the minority but to succumb. They also feel that their fight against <a href="https://kontras.org/2018/11/16/kitaberhak-catatan-atas-hari-toleransi-internasional-2018/">intolerant practices</a> will be useless as those in authority and legal enforcers tend to defend the majority. </p>
<p>Both processes of mainstreaming and normalisation are arguably part of efforts to push ideas belonging to the majority to dominate the public sphere, while at the same time suppressing opposing ideas belonging to minority groups. </p>
<p>Democracy in Indonesia, then, seems to allow the majority to rule over the minority. What is happening in Jakarta and Yogyakarta shows that consensus in a democratic setting can be continuously achieved, but it will not always be a tolerant one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jimmy Daniel Berlianto Oley terafiliasi dengan The SMERU Research Institute. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yudi Fajar M Wahyu terafiliasi dengan The SMERU Research Institute. </span></em></p>Let’s rethink the way we understand democracy and tolerance.Jimmy Daniel Berlianto Oley, Junior Researcher, SMERU Research InstituteYudi Fajar M Wahyu, Senior Researcher, SMERU Research InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1146672019-04-09T18:02:38Z2019-04-09T18:02:38ZThe lesson of ‘The White Ribbon’ for today: How tolerant societies can drift into hatred<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268170/original/file-20190408-2924-o8jkaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C1022%2C761&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Graffiti probably Banksy, denouncing the conditions in which prisoners have been detained in Guantanamo.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/eadmundo/50033762/">Photo Eadmundo</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been nearly 10 years since the release of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/nov/12/the-white-ribbon-review"><em>The White Ribbon</em></a>, by Austrian director Michael Haneke. The film is set in the summer of 1914 in a small Protestant village in northern Germany. Once-tranquil, it has been troubled by a series of mysterious, violent acts, including vandalism, arson and beatings. </p>
<p>Though local children are suspected of being the culprits, the crimes remain unsolved by the community – and therefore unaddressed. As the film ends, the village is overtaken by the news of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and the start of the conflict that would become World War I.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>The White Ribbon</em>, trailer (Michel Haneke, 2009).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Why is <em>The White Ribbon</em> so relevant today? Through a well-crafted metaphor, it addresses the rise of intolerance within a single lifespan. A quarter-century later, the generation that the village residents represent would come to constitute the bulk of the Third Reich, as so chillingly described in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s 1997 history, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/68841/hitlers-willing-executioners-by-daniel-jonah-goldhagen/9780679772682"><em>Hitler’s Willing Executioners</em></a>.</p>
<p>Similarly, Haneke’s earlier whodunit, <em>Caché</em> (2005), was really about the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09639489.2011.588792">French colonisation of Algeria</a>. In a review of the film after its release, the daily <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2005/10/04/cache-les-racines-historiques-de-la-barbarie_695624_3476.html"><em>Le Monde</em></a> wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Haneke seems to depict a civilised world from which all barbarism has been expelled, but what really asserts itself in his cinema is that its eradication – whether or not an admitted utopia of contemporary Western society – could be just another way for it to come back.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the post-9/11 era in which we live, with societies around the world being increasingly overtaken by intolerance, a similar self-reflection is required.</p>
<p>What indeed is the genesis of societal, not merely group, radicalisation? How and when does a previously tolerant and civil community drift into ways of interaction – toward each other and also outsiders – that can be described as extremist? What can be done when one observes the slow-motion <a href="https://www.letemps.ch/opinions/retour-racisme">proliferation and acceptance of hate</a>? As in Haneke’s allegorical film, such a transformation can take place within a single generation. It is also one urged forward by the collapse of education, the hijacking of knowledge and, more problematically, political and ethical passivity.</p>
<h2>A new type of witch hunt</h2>
<p>While 9/11 has certainly been overemphasised in terms of its novelty in international affairs, it is nonetheless the opening salvo in this sequence.</p>
<p>As vividly shown in the human-rights abuses in the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons and the <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/03/poll-majority-of-americans-okay-with-torture.html">rationalisation of torture</a>, 9/11 led to the introduction of the key components of this new socialisation in-the-making: the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-new-american-militarism-9780199931767">militarisation of international affairs</a>, the <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479876594/the-securitization-of-society/">securitisation of society</a>, the <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/rogue-justice-9780804138239">violation of the rule of law</a>, the normalisation of <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745337166/the-islamophobia-industry-second-edition/">discriminatory discourse and practice</a> and global surveillance. In time came the rise of a wave of <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/authoritarianism-goes-global">neo-authoritarianism</a> underwritten by the monetisation of democracy as explained by Jane Mayer in <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/215462/dark-money-by-jane-mayer/9780307947901/"><em>Dark Money</em></a>, which details how some of the ultra-rich have been pouring money into the American “alt-right” extremists.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>The Secrets of Abu Ghraib prison</em>, CBS (2009).</span></figcaption>
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<p>All along, the lethal transnational terrorism of <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/T/bo27405381.html">Al Qaeda and the Islamic State</a> and social science research that concentrated near-exclusively on the violence of Islamist armed groups allowed for the development of repressive public policies and a drift into a new type of witch-hunt populism that became more and more politically acceptable. These remained less seen because they are in effect more widely present and more problematic, and thus harder to pin down. </p>
<h2>The normalisation of hate speech</h2>
<p>In such a context, the near-normalisation of hate speech has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-the-united-states-right-wing-violence-is-on-the-rise/2018/11/25/61f7f24a-deb4-11e8-85df-7a6b4d25cfbb_story.html">elevated the extremism of groups</a> to a point where anti-racist militants find themselves on the defensive, while saying the unsayable has become just another opinion.</p>
<p>On January 27, 2017, just seven days into his presidency and quite symbolically at the occasion of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, US President Donald Trump signed <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states/">Executive Order 13769</a>, commonly referred to as the “Muslim ban”, a ruling later upheld by the US Supreme Court, which introduced formally a discrimination against individuals on the basis of their religion.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267595/original/file-20190404-123395-1k2sxqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267595/original/file-20190404-123395-1k2sxqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267595/original/file-20190404-123395-1k2sxqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267595/original/file-20190404-123395-1k2sxqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267595/original/file-20190404-123395-1k2sxqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267595/original/file-20190404-123395-1k2sxqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/267595/original/file-20190404-123395-1k2sxqf.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">Protest against Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’, Minneapolis, Minn., January 31, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fibonacciblue/32600494826">Fibonacci Blue/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The crucial opening of such space was then occupied tactically by extremists to further broadcast their views. Neo-Nazis and KKK militants held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August that year, openly promoting white supremacy. When one of those white nationalists rammed his car into a group of counter-protestors, killing one woman, President Trump expressed the view that there were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-charlottesville-white-nationalists.html">“very fine people on both sides”</a>.</p>
<p>More than ever in recent years, particularly in Western societies, more people are increasingly listening to right-wing views that speak the language of identity, culture and religion – a lethal trend also playing out in non-Western societies such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/kashmir-india-and-pakistans-escalating-conflict-will-benefit-narendra-modi-ahead-of-elections-112570">India</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/rightist-bolsonaro-takes-office-in-brazil-promising-populist-change-to-angry-voters-106303">Brazil</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-how-benny-gantzs-campaign-has-turned-state-violence-and-dead-palestinians-into-political-capital-113145">Israel</a>.</p>
<p>Ironically, the intolerant and anti-democratic ideology of violent groups that targeted the West in the 2000s is in the 2010s becoming the vernacular of this same Western world. It is now reproducing high levels of racism in its very midst – racist views that in turn generate right-wing terrorism such as the killing of 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019.</p>
<p>As these societies tolerate such views in their midst while talking about the violent extremism of others, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/27/europe/paris-fake-kidnapping-scli-intl/index.html">their own radicalisation escapes them</a>.</p>
<h2>Italy, Germany, the US and France</h2>
<p>Among others nations, Italy, Germany, the United States and France are at the forefront of this disturbing new sequence. Celebrated by the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-a-white-supremacist-told-me-after-donald-trump-was-elected">Ku Klux Klan</a>, the election of President Donald Trump did not so much launch this trend but brought out into the open dystrophies playing out over the past 15 years.</p>
<p>Racism is the most visible one. It takes the shape of Islamophobia, <a href="https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/racism-america-black-african-american-culture-news-latest-world-news-today-20126/">anti-Black</a>, anti-Semitism or anti-Latino sentiments and grows among average citizens who say they are <a href="http://time.com/5388356/our-racist-soul/">“comfortable with racism”</a>. Yet the term <em>extremism</em> is rarely used in this context, reserved primarily for radical Islamism.</p>
<p>In France, the socioeconomic malaise of the past years has given birth to a nationwide movement, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-frances-gilets-jaunes-protesters-are-so-angry-108100">“gilets jaunes”</a> (yellow vests). While its right-wing tendencies are <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/152853/ugly-illiberal-anti-semitic-heart-yellow-vest-movement">tangible</a>, the movement is generally depicted as a group of ordinary, disenfranchised citizens threatened by globalisation whose violence is thus <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4242-understanding-the-gilets-jaunes">“understandable”</a>.</p>
<p>All along, the forceful drive of overtly racist leaders – Hungary’s Victor Orbán, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte or Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro – was matched only by the tepidity of the societal reaction to the views that have been materialising amidst this global zeitgeist of intolerance.</p>
<h2>Troubling signs</h2>
<p>What this mid-to-late 2010s sequence may well spell is that the 2020s can easily come to cement this radicalisation of societies.</p>
<p>The rise of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-the-united-states-right-wing-violence-is-on-the-rise/2018/11/25/61f7f24a-deb4-11e8-85df-7a6b4d25cfbb_story.html">right-wing terrorism</a>, the proliferation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/28/italys-intelligence-agency-warns-of-rise-in-racist-attacks">attacks on migrants</a>, the redefinition of populism as a benign expression of anti-elitism, the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/italy-bannon-backed-populists-academy-draws-criticism-190303111226073.html">rewriting of school books and curricula</a> and indeed new-old techniques such as Italian politicians’ <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/27/according-to-italys-leaders-rap-music-is-un-italian-sanremo-mahmood-m5s-salvini-di-maio-league/">criminalisation of art forms such as rap</a> are tell-tale signs that the current moment of global animosity continues to forge ahead dangerously – as it did, unchecked, a century ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Michael Haneke’s allegorical 2009 film showed how a peaceful society can be shattered within a single generation. It’s a lesson for us now in a world drifting toward populism and violence.Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Professor of International History, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1076122018-12-11T15:11:15Z2018-12-11T15:11:15ZInternational students: universities must lead fight against intolerance of migrants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249433/original/file-20181207-128217-l3ztfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">International students are a valuable cultural and economic asset for universities.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/education-graduation-people-concept-group-happy-764441251">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What happens when the president of the world’s leading superpower makes <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-united-nations-human-rights-chief-zeid-raad-al-hussein-attack-minorities-policies-a7619336.html">inflammatory comments</a> about immigrants and wins an election based largely on a <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/economic-anxiety-didnt-make-people-vote-trump-racism-did/">racist and nationalist platform</a>? As we’ve seen over the past two years, his followers feel emboldened and righteous in their discrimination against immigrants, despite their hopes, ambitions and rich personal histories.</p>
<p>Similarly in the UK, after the referendum to leave the EU, some voters felt free to vent their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/world/europe/brexit-immigrants-great-britain-eu.html">racist views</a>. International students have also been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/apr/23/are-international-students-getting-a-raw-deal">feeling unwelcome</a> due to high tuition fees, tight immigration laws and the introduction of charges to use the NHS. </p>
<p>This has profound implications for the higher education sector, where international students bring numerous social, cultural and financial benefits to their host institutions and country. In the US for example, in 2017-18, there were 1,094,792 international students who contributed US$39 billion to the economy, <a href="http://www.nafsa.org/Policy_and_Advocacy/Policy_Resources/Policy_Trends_and_Data/NAFSA_International_Student_Economic_Value_Tool/">supporting 455,622 American jobs</a> – equal to three jobs per seven international students.</p>
<p>Yet prejudice against international students is on the rise in the US and the UK. A recent US study <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2018-37020-001.pdf">found</a> that this prejudice was predicted by support for Trump. Its author suggests that students who champion Trump’s vision of America might see international students through a racist lens, viewing them as unwelcome “others”.</p>
<p>A small study of just 389 home students, it can’t be used to generalise attitudes of all Trump supporters, but it can provide a window on what might be happening on university campuses across the the country where there are international students. And it serves as an important reminder for other countries, such as the UK, to consider how <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14767724.2017.1414584">political debate</a> can have an impact on international students.</p>
<h2>Dealing with change</h2>
<p>Regardless of the political context of the country they choose to study in, international students <a href="http://oro.open.ac.uk/45022/">typically experience many changes</a>, including moving to a new country and city with different educational, social care and health systems. They also face separation from family and friends and the need to make new friends and establish relationships with staff and the local community.</p>
<p>They encounter different cultures and languages, experience new expectations and realities and have to deal with issues such as housing, finances and health care. Most international students not only adapt well to these changes, they thrive. But for some, the challenges can have a negative impact on their well-being – particularly in places which are less than welcoming to international students.</p>
<p>There is a large body of research, <a href="https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/6159395/BJSE_10_01_2014_clean_format_DJS.pdf">including our own</a> highlighting the fact that for international students, mixing with home students can be challenging – even without a political climate that discriminates against them as immigrants. We, and other researchers, have found that most visiting students don’t have much interaction with home students, which can explain why they are often perceived as “other”.</p>
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<p>How well students are able to develop academic relationships and social friendships has an impact on their ability to cope with the complex demands of higher education. Some are more at risk in terms of isolation and stress, which can seriously affect their education and well-being. These consequences also come at a cost to the university and the wider community beyond, where positive experiences between different cultures can contribute to more tolerant, inclusive societies. </p>
<p>It is also important to remember that international students choose to go abroad to learn about other cultures, an experience that can also benefit home students. It can lead to a better understanding and appreciation of the world, an ability to think critically and consider different perspectives in their studies. When there is so much to gain, failure to integrate international students is a wasted opportunity for host communities and visiting students alike. </p>
<h2>Role of university staff</h2>
<p>Academic staff can be one of the most important support networks for international students. In their new environment – cut off from friends and family ties – they often see staff as the most familiar and trusted people, especially before they’ve had a chance to make new friends.</p>
<p>So how can universities encourage and nurture meaningful integration, especially in environments which can be hostile towards immigrants? Our studies have documented the <a href="https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/5682503/JSIE_07_09_2013.pdf">positive impact</a> of authentic group-work activities. By mixing up students’ normal groupings, teachers can influence the academic and social learning of both international and home students. </p>
<p>In the same way, using <a href="https://oro.open.ac.uk/52261/1/JM%20Thesis%20FINAL.pdf">culturally relevant learning materials</a>, such as books by authors from different countries, exploring topics like international human rights, and using case studies that include international contexts, can encourage students to share their own diverse range of perspectives in inclusive ways.</p>
<p>The responsibility of a university is not limited to just providing a good learning environment – it must provide a <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-017-0131-3">good social environment</a> too. Our <a href="https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/studentnews/1242/Paul-Webley-Award-for-Innovation-in-International-Education-winner-announced">award-winning research</a> into social transitions of international doctoral students in the UK found that participants wanted staff to see them as more than just students – to see them as human beings first. Mixing socially and sharing cultural events provides an enjoyable social setting for students and staff to get together, helps to break down stereotypes and enhances understanding of different cultures.</p>
<p>In a climate of rising intolerance across the world, it is more important than ever that universities step up and lead by example when it comes to being inclusive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107612/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Divya Jindal-Snape received funding from UKCISA for STRIDE study. We subsequently also received an award from them.
Other research cited here was unfunded.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bart Carlo Rienties works for the Open University UK. He receives funding from UKCISA and ESRC IDEAS on research on internationalisation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenna Mittelmeier has received funding from the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) grant schemes.</span></em></p>International students are a huge asset, but universities must guard against prejudice and ensure they they are properly integrated and supported.Divya Jindal-Snape, Professor of Education, Inclusion and Life Transitions, University of DundeeBart Carlo Rienties, Professor of Learning Analytics, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open UniversityJenna Mittelmeier, Lecturer in Education (International), University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1067952018-11-12T21:05:49Z2018-11-12T21:05:49ZIntolerance on social media: #refugeeswelcome and the Paris terrorist attacks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245095/original/file-20181112-83564-17gfqj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C31%2C1920%2C1241&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstration of support of refugees, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/refugees-welcome-demonstration-2337656/">Netavisen_Sameksistens_dk/Pixabay</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is now a fairly uncontested fact that racism and intolerance characterise a significant portion of the content shared on major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. From the United States to Europe, the spread of hate speech has been witnessed by ordinary users as well as journalists, politicians, celebrities and activists. Digitally mediated death threats have become the <a href="https://medium.com/@ExtremeArturo/death-threats-on-social-media-the-new-normal-274b88cca65a">“new normal”</a>. For example, last summer an Italian man denounced via social media discriminatory behaviour against Roma travellers on a regional train in Lombardy. After Italy’s vice-president and interior minister Matteo Salvini polemically <a href="https://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/08/09/news/salvini_dovrebbe_proteggermi_e_invece_incita_al_linciaggio-203764448/">shared the story with his Facebook followers</a>, the man received more than 42,000 messages with insults and threats.</p>
<p>Comparable episodes of intolerance diffused by social media toward minorities and civil-rights supporters have been reported not only in Italy, currently governed by the populist Five Star Movement and xenophobic League, but also throughout the world, and especially where right-wing populist parties have <a href="https://lesshate.openpolitics.ro/en/project-objectives-and-results/">risen to power</a>.</p>
<p>Is this social media’s fault? Should we blame digital platforms such behaviour? The common-sense answer is probably “yes”. Facebook, Twitter and other social media have certainly made social intolerance more visible and, as a consequence, more legitimate, and contributed to the acceleration and disintermediation of (undesirable) public opinion processes. Nevertheless, the roots of ubiquitous hate-speech lie elsewhere.</p>
<p>To illustrate this argument, I will briefly discuss the results of an empirical study authored by Mauro Barisione (University of Milan), Asimina Michailidou (ARENA Centre for European Studies) and myself, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1410204">published in <em>Information, Communication and Society</em></a>. In this research paper, we analyse the evolution of the public debate around the popular hashtag #refugeeswelcome on Twitter, from September 2015 – when this <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-59890-5_4">“digital movement of opinion”</a> went viral – to mid-November 2015, right after the Paris terrorist attacks. This story suggests that events exogenous to social media are the raw material through which intolerance is politically constituted and digitally reinforced.</p>
<h2>The rise and fall of #refugeeswelcome</h2>
<p>In September 2015, the public and political debates about migrants in Europe looked very different than they do today. A strong wave of support toward refugees was shown both physically and digitally. The powerful photos of three-year-old <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/31/alan-kurdi-death-canada-refugee-policy-syria-boy-beach-turkey-photo">Alan Kurdî’s lifeless body on a Turkish beach</a> were ubiquitously circulating on both traditional and social media. A general climate of empathy influenced, in turn, national and EU political leaders’ declarations and policies – as witnessed by the welcoming attitudes of Angela Merkel’s Germany and David Cameron’s United Kingdom toward Syrian refugees.</p>
<p>In this context, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/refugeeswelcome">#refugeeswelcome</a> reached an unprecedented peak of volume on Twitter. On the single day of September 12, 2015, we counted more than 74,000 tweets featuring the hashtag. As one might expect, the Twitter debate was unanimously in favour of migrants. ONGs and celebrities were leading the discussion, and their solidarity messages were heavily retweeted by almost 40,000 users (see Fig. 1). The following is a largely popular tweet by the singer of the band One Direction, Harry Styles: <a href="https://twitter.com/Harry_Styles/status/640181775822663680">“Take a stand with us & @savechildrenuk: help make #RefugeesWelcome”</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245129/original/file-20181112-83582-1gtaj55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245129/original/file-20181112-83582-1gtaj55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245129/original/file-20181112-83582-1gtaj55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245129/original/file-20181112-83582-1gtaj55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245129/original/file-20181112-83582-1gtaj55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245129/original/file-20181112-83582-1gtaj55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245129/original/file-20181112-83582-1gtaj55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 1: Visualisation of the #RefugeesWelcome retweet network on September 12, 2015. Labels show the 20 main hubs, their sizes being proportional to the number of times they were retweeted. Colour blue indicates pro-refugee users.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We continued to monitor the same hashtag, and explored what happened on November 14, 2015 – the day after the infamous Paris terrorist attacks. By that time, the configuration of the Twitter discussion about #refugeeswelcome had entirely changed.</p>
<p>The debate was smaller (about 12,000 tweets). More surprisingly, almost half of the most retweeted users argued against refugees and their supporters, portrayed – respectively – as terrorists and accomplices in crime. “We tried to warn you. #refugeeswelcome blood is on your hands”, tweeted the British far-right leader Tommy Robinson, collecting 370 retweets in few hours. Today, the same politician is considered <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/25/tommy-robinson-and-the-far-rights-new-playbook">“one of a new breed of entrepreneurial activists who are bringing extremist myths into the mainstream”</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245130/original/file-20181112-83586-3m1rid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245130/original/file-20181112-83586-3m1rid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245130/original/file-20181112-83586-3m1rid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245130/original/file-20181112-83586-3m1rid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245130/original/file-20181112-83586-3m1rid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245130/original/file-20181112-83586-3m1rid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245130/original/file-20181112-83586-3m1rid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 2: Visualisation of the #RefugeesWelcome retweet network on November 14. Colour blue indicates pro-refugees influencers and their re-tweeters, while colour red highlights anti-refugees ones.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An exogenous event was exploited by far-right political activists, and immediately used as a symbolic weapon for hijacking #refugeeswelcome and attacking its supporters. After a short revival of the hashtag on November 19, mainly fostered by US-based users, the following months basically saw a constant decline in usage on Twitter.</p>
<p>It is hard to say that Paris terrorist attacks constituted a turning point in European citizens’ attitudes toward migrants – <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167217752118">findings on this issue are, for the moment, contradictory</a>. This empirical example does show that, after the far-right politicisation of an unrelated tragedy, the same hashtag that at first allowed a large and nearly unanimous emotional wave of empathy toward refugees had rapidly become the stage for thousands of intolerant messages.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245106/original/file-20181112-83589-13xy05i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245106/original/file-20181112-83589-13xy05i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245106/original/file-20181112-83589-13xy05i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245106/original/file-20181112-83589-13xy05i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245106/original/file-20181112-83589-13xy05i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245106/original/file-20181112-83589-13xy05i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245106/original/file-20181112-83589-13xy05i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Bataclan on November 14, 2015, the day after the Paris terrorist attacks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Paris_Shootings_-_The_day_after_(22593744177).jpg">Maya-Anaïs Yataghène/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hate, platforms and politicisation</h2>
<p>Within few hours after the mass shooting at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, #refugeeswelcome had already become something else. The seeds of intolerance, injected by few extremist politicians and activists, were spreading fast. Twitter was the medium, but hardly the cause.</p>
<p>The acceleration and disintermediation of communication brought by social media cannot be neglected. Surely, this mutated information ecology is likely to contribute to public debates’ increasing polarisation and volatility. Nevertheless, I believe that we should not blame platforms for the diffusion of hate speech, but the irresponsibility of opportunistic mass media and political actors instead.</p>
<p>The roots of social intolerance have always been lying in the ways salient events – e.g., economic crises, peace treaties, migration flows, everyday tragedies – have been framed for contingent political purposes. Social media are the stage where the cynical politicisation of news stories is systematically enacted and, then, amplified by click-baiting media outlets.</p>
<p>Three years after Paris terrorist attacks, cases like #refugeeswelcome are <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/11702239/why-its-so-hard-to-scrub-hate-speech-off-social-media">more and more common</a>. The demolition of EU is currently the major aim of European populist leaders like Salvini, who successfully exploits social media not only as key communication channels, but also as <a href="https://www.wired.it/attualita/politica/2018/02/15/matteo-salvini-strategia-social-network/">real-time sources of data about political opinion trends</a>. Social media can be used to promote social and political change, as the recent case of #metoo and the early phase of #refugeeswelcome witness. If they often don’t, it is because the industrial production and distribution of hate is a major political business in our unequal and datafied societies. Understanding how to repair the rigged game of democracy in the age of populism and online platforms is, therefore, an urgent priority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106795/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Massimo Airoldi ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>How can a hashtag supportive of refugees be hijacked by those opposing them? An empirical study explores the process.Massimo Airoldi, Assistant Professor, EM Lyon Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/980562018-09-17T18:39:32Z2018-09-17T18:39:32ZDiversity predicaments on the campus: moral tribalism, free speech, and productive discomfort in a polarised world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234494/original/file-20180831-195322-cvilib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=61%2C27%2C1983%2C1333&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Opposing demonstrators at a marriage-equality rally in front of the US Supreme Court in April 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/perspective/17323224392/in/photolist-soN45C-s6FeHy-rr5ZSZ-qiLB2e-s6zvqD-skMx2o-skqCkm-rdFSZa-rfnEoP-444zt-qg5RxG-s6uQ9Q-snz5TQ-snEAyF-rr6oFe-raKPGE-s6JrBh-s6fnat-s3W1Zp-s4L5QV-sokad6-qY6sha-s6c3hL-rqxZ5Z-rqU991-snywSA-rrc2aM-s4odmv-qixtyf-snjoyD-snS1Jc-s6QWnn-cnQY6Y-rdx5zu-qgeHJB-rS6Xu5-3BWmw-s9CQi6-rdCPyt-s6rxV4-rS5LvL-cqC83E-s5AaF3-coxn5U-s6k8ZG-rqx9zn-s68URQ-sneDSp-s3Vj5Z-s4ocFn">Elvert Barnes/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our previous article <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-predicament-of-diversity-re-boot-for-diversity-3-0-97109">“The predicament of diversity: re-boot for diversity 3.0”</a> explored the multiple definitions of diversity and the factors shifting its focus from <em>social and racial inequality</em> to the diversity of <em>identity</em> … and the distractions that this creates. Diversity and race keep getting confused, amalgamated and co-opted for different political gains and purposes. At the same time, we seem to be experiencing a crescendo effect in terms of the number reported incidents involving minorities. Spike Lee’s new film <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/movies/blackkklansman-review-spike-lee.html"><em>BlacKkKlansman</em></a>, based on Ron Stallworth’s true story of infiltrating the KKK in the 1970s, demonstrates that this is not really a new story at all. What exactly is going on?</p>
<h2>Navigating the adversity: public space as a minority</h2>
<p>Whether <a href="http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-nws-golf-four-black-women-police-york-pennsylvania-20180424-story.html">playing golf</a> in a slow-moving group, arriving late for a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/04/native-american-students-colorado-state-college-tour-police">campus tour</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/us/muslim-children-pool-wilmington.html">swimming in a neighborhood pool</a>, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/moron-harangues-woman-for-puerto-rico-t-shirt-in-america_us_5b44015ae4b048036ea1971d">getting ready for a barbecue</a>, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/golden-west-college-racist-video-rant-tony-kao-tarin-olson-counselor-european-830850">walking on a sidewalk with a baby stroller</a>, or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/nyregion/yale-black-student-nap.html">napping in a university common area</a>, it seems that minorities face greater obstacles than ever in receiving fair or equal treatment in the public space.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233594/original/file-20180826-149490-1h1eg71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233594/original/file-20180826-149490-1h1eg71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233594/original/file-20180826-149490-1h1eg71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233594/original/file-20180826-149490-1h1eg71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233594/original/file-20180826-149490-1h1eg71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233594/original/file-20180826-149490-1h1eg71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233594/original/file-20180826-149490-1h1eg71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Racial discrimination and equality.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an atmosphere where excessive use of force and fatal shootings continue to devastate communities, overreactions are inevitable and only compound the problem. Data is slowly becoming available on racial profiling practices – from <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33868658">“driving while black”</a> or <a href="http://walkingwhileblackthemovie.com/">“walking while black”</a>, to rage buildup from the constant impact of <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Microaggression+Theory%3A+Influence+and+Implications-p-9781119420040">microaggressions</a>. Bias can extend to anyone, as in the case of an airline asking a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44292513">mother to prove her relation to her mixed-race son</a>. In the case of Starbuck’s company-wide bias training last May 29, a <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40579848/the-director-of-the-film-made-for-starbucks-employees-explains-his-aim">short film created by Stanley Nelson</a> highlights the unequal and invisible wall of difference. Activist groups have begun to <a href="https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/">map the violence</a> and daily injustices at the hands of authorities. In turn, a <a href="http://time.com/4413732/iowa-police-shooting-blue-lives-matter/">“Blue Lives Matter” movement</a> was started in 2016 to raise awareness and pass legislation opposing hate crimes against police. </p>
<h2>Meanwhile in the classroom…</h2>
<p>As educators, we seek to maximise inclusion and involvement and help students detect their own blind spots without publicly shaming them. So far, so good. And yet as discussion leaders in any discipline of study, we can get painted into a corner where discussions are risky and emotionally fraught. Jerome Bruner advocated a <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674897014">teaching style</a> that encourages students to construct their own hypotheses through ‘ideas negotiation’ with others – and this should not remain within their comfort zones. But this is where a predicament resides: on a college campus, how far can we really lead people outside their moral, social, or political comfort?<br>
Critics indicate that we should be going much further, and political correctness is one of the culprits. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/">Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt</a> lament that college campuses are increasingly “coddling” students minds by maintaining an ever-inclusive “safe space” that <em>avoids</em> healthy debate and normal exposure to ideas that some may find offensive. In a talk given at NYU later on, Haidt critiques the lack of <em>viewpoint diversity</em> on college campuses where a <a href="https://www.edge.org/conversation/jonathan_haidt-the-bright-future-of-post-partisan-social-psychology#">moral tribal mentality</a> of the majority has led to intolerance and a lack of free speech. </p>
<p>This is where the work starts for educators. Before leading students toward self-knowledge, can we pause, and examine <em>our own</em> biases and automatic preferences? Can we come to terms with our ‘tribal’ allegiances that, for a majority of university educators, tend to be favourable towards the sort of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-conversation-with-mark-lilla-on-his-critique-of-identity-politics">identity liberalism</a> that has been identified as polarising force? And then, how far is too far when it comes to free speech in the classroom? How can we respect <em>all</em> viewpoints and not offend anyone? Whose ideas are valid as debatable, and whose are not? Where do we draw the line?</p>
<p>The answer is clear: educators cannot, and should not, aspire to never offend (or be offended). Ever since Plato’s <em>Republic</em> expounded the Socratic method, teachers have aspired to lead students toward self-inquiry and the examined life. This method involves what we call a form of ‘productive discomfort’ that humans need in order to make moral progress. We need “idea collisions” – even with those that we may find repulsive. So when it comes to discussion of discrimination and racial justice, we cannot afford avoidance of awkward moments. Below, we share some ideas about how we can paint ourselves out of that corner, boost engagement, and keep learning from our students.</p>
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<p><em>Jon Haidt discussed free speech in September 2017 for the Wall Street Journal.</em></p>
<h2>Let’s flip the script</h2>
<p>If the discussion in the classroom turns to questions of identity and cultural differences, one key to promoting self-examination can be found the words, phrases, and scripts used in daily interactions. Sociologist Erving Goffman, in his seminal 1959 work <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/1/19/Goffman_Erving_The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Life.pdf">“The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.”</a> leveraged the language of the stage to describe social interactions, exploring the varying ways scripts, as in a play, guide everyday social dynamics on life’s stage. These scripts frame both how the actors interpret the scenario and how the audience (or the “other”) experiences the same event. Each individual takes away a different interpretation of events depending on his or her own perspective, individual biases, and other invisible factors. </p>
<p>Instructors can give assignments involving time-tested <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycinfo/cit-article.pdf">critical incident techniques</a> or role plays linked to any form of uncomfortable situations where such internal scripts are revealed. The ‘scripts’ approach can also be used to interpret events and critical incidents in class discussions. Let’s take for example the case of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/oakland-black-firefighter-bias.html">black firefighter</a> who was reported to police and, on a separate occasion, questioned and videotaped by a resident who found him suspicious, even though he was in full uniform with his fire truck parked nearby while carrying out routine fire inspections in the leafy, white-majority neighbourhoods of Oakland, California. With which narrative were his actions being assessed by the viewer, in this case the homeowners? What were the cultural scripts in use and what actions did it then trigger?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233595/original/file-20180826-149478-1urvo2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233595/original/file-20180826-149478-1urvo2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233595/original/file-20180826-149478-1urvo2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233595/original/file-20180826-149478-1urvo2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233595/original/file-20180826-149478-1urvo2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233595/original/file-20180826-149478-1urvo2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233595/original/file-20180826-149478-1urvo2p.png?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 cultural sense-making model.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A second technique that can help students decode the invisible factors in critical incidents is the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4165609?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">cultural sense-making model</a> developed by Osland and Bird. Using the model’s three-step process – <em>framing, making attributions, selecting a script</em> – students can challenge their own assumptions, as well as the people in the story. When the neighbour saw the man in the yard, what frame was in use? What beliefs and stereotypes were being confirmed? How did that person’s <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228951959_The_relation_between_design_patterns_and_schema_theory">schema</a> (mental patterns that stem from an individual’s background, experiences, or attitudes) fuel the attributions being made? What then was the script that led to the actions taken? By asking themselves such questions during activities like these, students not only assess their own biases and recurrent scripts, but may also start re-writing and adopting new scripts about the others with whom they come in contact.</p>
<h2>Crafting productive discomfort: more practice scenarios</h2>
<p>One way to practice productive discomfort is to confront the ‘strangeness’ of the others head-on. Taking the above suggestions a step further, students can practice what we call “embracing the strange” through script-writing (actively producing scenarios of managing the foreign, unexpected, sometimes disturbing “otherness of the other”.) These activities can provide powerful ways to mirror – and rehearse for–real-life problems where cultural sensitivity and perspective-taking can emerge.</p>
<p>Other approaches invite both individual reflection and group discussion (like real-life scenarios on implicit bias or microaggression where students were either on the “receiving” or “giving” ends). These re-enactments may help them reflect on their individual experiences of being “put into a box” and offer opportunities to revisit the situation and to provide new perspectives. A new script can be written, and performed for the group, to replay things differently.</p>
<p>They can also engage in a testimonial-writing activity focused on individual or group behaviors. Implementing an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40010651_Autoethnography_as_Method">autoethnographic exercise</a> or a <a href="http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/442/2758">critical</a> ethnographic assignment may also provide students a space to examine and question their own scripts when it comes to implicit bias.</p>
<h2>Calling out discrimination and injustice: subverting the safe space</h2>
<p>The 21st century is all about <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55883/cosmopolitanism/">being home in a world of strangers and strangeness</a> as is the ability to recognise instances where discomfort is not always so productive–sometimes leading to adverse reactions. Now, thanks in large part to social media, there really is a heightened visibility surrounding bias and daily discrimination occurring on our streets and in our workplaces. We need to examine the facts to help students recognise how <em>easy</em> it is to fall into bad reactions that can haunt us long after the fact.
Well before the rise of Twitter and Facebook, Spike Lee’s films consistently demonstrated the ease with which racial epithets can be tossed around from one group to the other until violence erupts, and the <a href="http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2014/12/12/revisiting-spike-lee-s-racial-slur-montage-ya-need-cool-shit-out">“racial slur montage”</a> from his 1989 film <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/do-the-right-thing/2017/06/27/5754b810-5b6a-11e7-a9f6-7c3296387341_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1d759883297b">Do the Right Thing</a> provides a potent example. Everyone gets offended and uncomfortable hearing the insults–and at the same time everyone gets a good laugh. That’s the paradox when film mirrors life, and real-life scripts get transferred to the screen. But in the end of the film, just as in real life, it’s not funny… at all.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234153/original/file-20180829-195322-19ax5wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234153/original/file-20180829-195322-19ax5wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234153/original/file-20180829-195322-19ax5wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234153/original/file-20180829-195322-19ax5wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234153/original/file-20180829-195322-19ax5wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234153/original/file-20180829-195322-19ax5wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234153/original/file-20180829-195322-19ax5wo.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">Faith Christian protest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kevin J. Beaty</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We suggest that instructors, no matter what their topic of instruction, find ways to visit and revisit these uncomfortable places with their students, and get accustomed to being there. Being in a place where our biases are made visible, and where we can be offended and may offend others, is one way to rehearse for the role of informed citizen in the 21st century. And just perhaps someday when they are on the streets, in their homes, at school or at work, and one of those real-life moments of discrimination or injustice occurs, they’ll be a bit more prepared for the discomfort, and have a script ready to help them do the right thing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98056/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Educators must work to ensure inclusion with diverse student bodies, yet it seems inevitable that in today’s world, talking about identity issues can be risky and emotional. So how to move forward?Michelle Mielly, Associate Professor in People, Organizations, Society, Grenoble École de Management (GEM)Naida Culshaw, Affiliate Professor, Grenoble École de Management (GEM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/990522018-07-05T20:22:00Z2018-07-05T20:22:00ZEveryday homophobia and imposed heterosexuality in football<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226433/original/file-20180706-122280-5h68nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1500%2C839&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 2016, Norwich City Football Club was one of dozens of English football teams that took part in the Stonewall Charity's "Rainbow Laces" campaign to combat discrimination against LGBT fans and players. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.canaries.co.uk/News/2016/november/city-and-aviva-join-rainbow-laces-campaign/">Canaries.co.uk</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How many top athletes worldwide are openly gay? And how were their coming outs received? In 2018, the issue of homosexuality in sport is still taboo and creates discomfort among both players and fans.</p>
<p>Recent surveys indicate that in a number of countries, the public is more accepting of gay athletes. A <a href="https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/Actualites/Sondage-sur-l-homosexualite-dans-le-football-85-des-francais-estiment-qu-il-faut-lutter-contre-l-homophobie/902142">2018 poll in France</a> found that 85% of those surveyed felt that homosexuality in football was “acceptable” and that it was important to fight homophobia. A US poll, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/13/gay-athletes-poll_n_4781448.html">conducted in 2014</a> after NFL draft prospect Michael Sam announced that he was homosexual, found that 65% of Americans would be supportive of a gay athlete on their team, with 46% strongly supportive.</p>
<p>But that’s not the case worldwide. The 2018 World Cup is being held in Russia, a country that is seen as particularly homophobic. Among other legislative actions, in 2013 Russia banned <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/world/europe/russia-passes-bill-targeting-some-discussions-of-homosexuality.html">“gay propoganda”</a>, and during the ongoing competition <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/may/30/russia-sees-spike-in-discriminatory-chants-before-world-cup">homophobic chants have been widespread</a>.</p>
<p>While football is a discipline that presents itself as neutral, universal and in a way, desexualised, it is important to examine the sport’s deep heterosexist foundations.</p>
<h2>Coming outs are rare</h2>
<p>In a 2009 autobiographical work, <a href="http://www.parlonsfoot.com/archives/2009/12/16/idee-cadeau-je-suis-le-seul-joueur-de-foot-homo/"><em>I’m the Only Gay Football Player, or I Was…</em></a>, amateur-league French footballer Yohan Lemaire wrote about the unexpected cost that his coming out to his teammates had. This year he completed a documentary, <a href="https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/grand-est/homosexualite-ancien-footballeur-yoann-lemaire-presente-son-documentaire-1476419.html"><em>Footballer and Gay: One Doesn’t Rule Out the Other</em></a>, which was broadcast on the France 2 television channel.</p>
<p>The process Lemaire describes is similar to that found in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3081938?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">North American contexts</a>, with three stages. Initially there’s the fear of speaking out, followed by efforts to control all signs that might betray one’s sexuality – even to the extent of producing the appearance of heterosexuality to avoid questions – in an environment perceived as extremely hostile. Finally, after the announcement the strongest impression is generally surprise at not being excluded. The much-feared storm fails to erupt. But heterosexist culture persists, meaning that many players eventually withdraw of their own volition, no longer able to tolerate it.</p>
<h2>Paying the price of intolerance</h2>
<p>Is this why so few players come out? And why those who do sometimes pay a high price?</p>
<p>In May 1998, during that year’s World Cup competition, Justin Fashanu, once seen as one of English football’s great hopes, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/sep/20/justin-fashanu-problems-gay-sport">committed suicide</a>. He came out eight years earlier, but his doing so had the opposite of the intended effect. He quickly became a scapegoat for fans and fellow professionals, and at Nottingham Forest, his own trainer echoed supporters’ insults, calling Fashanu “a fairy”. He was obliged to switch clubs several times.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">In 1980, Justin Fashanu scored the ‘goal of the season’ in the match between his club at the time, Norwich City, and Liverpool.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After France won the World Cup that year, the French LGBT magazine <em>Têtu</em> highlighted the invisibility of homosexuality in professional football. As there were questions about the sexuality of France’s goalkeeper, <a href="http://backpagefootball.com/french-team-of-1998-where-are-they-now/1351/">Fabian Barthez</a>, <em>Têtu</em> wondered if there might not be “one or two real gems” among France’s team.</p>
<h2>History of modern sport</h2>
<p>During the second half of the 19th century, sport became an <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/lectures/20422">independent practice</a>, separated from other social activities. The normalisation of heterosexuality is an inherent part of that history. Engaging in sports implies the desexualisation of the human body, the neutralisation of its erotic power. Contact with other bodies is functional, and sexuality is set aside.</p>
<p>Collective manifestations of joy in football – after a goal is scored or a match won – are no exception to this. They are ritualised expressions that, from the perspective of those performing them, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/corpsetculture/275">are in no way sensual</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, if football provides insight into sexuality, it is only in a roundabout way, through the performance of a cold, pragmatic virility. This virility is based on two implicit assumptions: there is no sexuality in the game, and there is no place for homosexuals.</p>
<p>This is also why, early on, the magazine <em>Têtu</em> took the opposing view of traditional football culture, hypersexualising elite footballers and trying to identify gay players in their ranks. In June 1996, French football player Eric Cantona was presented as part of a “new gay generation”, and in 2011 the magazine gave a cover treatment to former player <a href="http://www.ozap.com/actu/david-ginola-pose-tetu-photos-mensuel-gay/413558">David Ginola</a>, outspoken for his support of gay players and efforts against homophobia.</p>
<h2>A footballer’s body is always heterosexual</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226243/original/file-20180705-122268-11q1mh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226243/original/file-20180705-122268-11q1mh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226243/original/file-20180705-122268-11q1mh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226243/original/file-20180705-122268-11q1mh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226243/original/file-20180705-122268-11q1mh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226243/original/file-20180705-122268-11q1mh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226243/original/file-20180705-122268-11q1mh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former French football player David Ginola posed for the cover of the LGBT magazine <em>Têtu</em> in 2011 to express his support for gay players.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.ozap.com/actu/david-ginola-pose-tetu-photos-mensuel-gay/413558">Têtu/Pure Medias</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such coverage aside, the body of a footballer remains under strict heterosexual embargo. In June 2018, US soccer player <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/us-sport/mls-collin-martin-gay-soccer-minnesota-united-lgbt-us-football-twitter-a8423856.html">Collin Martin came out as gay</a>, the first to do so since England’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/nov/07/robbie-rogers-first-openly-gay-us-male-soccer-player-retires">Robbie Rogers in 2013</a>. In France, Olivier Royer is the only professional footballer to have <a href="http://www.sofoot.com/rouyer-on-n-est-pas-la-pour-savoir-qui-est-gay-et-qui-ne-l-est-pas-166587.html">publicly revealed his homosexuality</a>. But he did so in 2008 at the age of 52, long after the end of his career.</p>
<p>There is substantial official support for more tolerance in football, including the 2004 commitment by the top French club, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), to fight homophobia. In September 2007, PSG drew up a charter against homophobia in the sport, and nine Premier League and League 2 clubs joined the effort. In England, dozens of football teams have taken part in the Stonewall Charity’s <a href="https://www.stonewall.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/rainbow-laces">“Rainbow Laces”</a> campaign, which combats discrimination against LGBT fans and players. </p>
<p>In France there was even a gay football club, <a href="http://www.sofoot.com/le-paris-foot-gay-c-est-fini-209163.html">Paris Foot Gay</a> (PFG), created to raise public awareness of homophobia. However, in 2015 the organisation published a terse press release that announced the <a href="https://www.20minutes.fr/sport/football/1698575-20150930-homophobie-paris-foot-gay-arrete-cause-indifference">dissolution of PFG</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In the face of remarkable indifference, reluctance on the part of institutions to actually commit, and the shame some still associate with this topic, we must face facts: we can no longer make progress in our fight against homophobia.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Culture of homophobia</h2>
<p>While there has been a great deal of talk and a large number of initiatives aimed against homophobia in football, real change remains elusive. This is because homophobia is perpetuated through everyday behaviour in less official channels.</p>
<p>For example, in 2009, Louis Nicollin, president of the Montpellier Hérault Sport Club, called Auxerre player Benoît Pedretti a <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/sport/article/2009/11/01/les-associations-de-lutte-contre-l-homophobie-demandent-des-sanctions-contre-nicollin_1261368_3242.html">“little faggot”</a> in a TV interview. Nicollin, known for his “slip-ups”, was sanctioned and eventually apologised. Another example took place in Australia in 2014, when TV commentator Brian Taylor called AFL player Harry Taylor a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/despite-ian-thorpes-announcement-poofter-remark-from-commentator-shows-how-far-we-have-to-go-20140713-zt5sk.html">“big poofter”</a> during a broadcast. Brian Taylor’s comments were widely criticised and he too apologised.</p>
<p>Yet such corrosive insults are far from absent on the field. Slurs like “faggot” and “cocksucker” are repeated ad infinitum. In the 2018 World Cup, Argentina’s team was heavily fined after its fans <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/argentina-world-cup-2018-fine-fifa-homophobic-chanting-violence-watch-fight-stadium-violence-a8417631.html">sang homophobic songs</a>, as was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/world-cup-2018-mexico-fans-homophobic-chants-investigation-germany-a8404651.html">Mexico’s team</a>. When the offending players or fans are called to order, they often claim that their insults had nothing to do with sexuality – they are simply adhering to the collective definition of what is considered negative. The sexuality of the person targeted by the insult is not truly at issue. Culturally, their heterosexuality is assumed, like that of all the other players.</p>
<p>Without seeming so, such slurs are a way of defining what a football player must be. A way of evoking not only the values shared within the world of football but also the sexual orientation that is supposed to embody them. That is why football leaves little or no room for narratives outside of the established “norm”.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en/">Fast for Word</a> and Leighton Kille.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvain Ferez ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Football presents itself as a neutral, universal and, in a way, desexualised sport. Yet despite widespread campaigns against homophobia, deeply negative attitudes about gay players persist.Sylvain Ferez, Maître de conférence, sociologie, Université de MontpellierLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/971092018-06-22T12:43:10Z2018-06-22T12:43:10ZThe predicament of diversity: re-boot for diversity 3.0<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222862/original/file-20180612-112623-suksqm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C134%2C2048%2C1226&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pro-tolerance march in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tabor-roeder/16351899436/in/photolist-qUXL1C-ckAFmh-ckAEaj-qqzFyD-qn2LEX-2gmcuc-9X7YQM-qXbids-RFaeux-RQpPPN-7bWhzG-RH6uTK-dhcA7B-SkeSmg-q5tqAG-S93UyB-RgMacW-QDDdV2-4vAyK1-RjKbKS-5i7QV4-e9kfAC-atZrsM-9XaVJ7-RMEbX9-RDBRdY-SkdKwB-QyPkKf-ckAJEd-TgHuFT-ckAYsW-Rh826L-ckAQDw-4W6Zsn-cHu4B-9XaRdU-ckADkq-8d8o6u-RH6uSH-atZfi6-9XaR29-cHu4C-9jaUcb-9X7YsB-ckAMSG-qXbimU-qEFdHA-ckAHBm-9XaQuU-SgxRvN">Phil Roeder/Flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Diversity” as a concept has a lexical and political value all its own, with a widespread appeal. The problem with that is, however, that no one actually has the same idea of what diversity actually <em>means</em>. There is some consensus that the concept has, over time, morphed into something that it was not originally intended to be. Denise Green’s <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042085904265109?journalCode=uexa">2004 study</a> looks at the University of Michigan’s response to a 1997 affirmative action case, and argues that legal precedents such as this one moved the cursor away from social and racial justice towards a narrower, simplified idea about diversity. </p>
<p>Walter Benn Michael’s 2006 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250099331/ref=as_at?creativeASIN=1250099331&linkCode=w61&imprToken=EafxYZKQYtqCBq7uYfTgKg&slotNum=2&tag=thneyo0f-20"><em>The Trouble with Diversity</em></a> views it as a conservative concept that shifts the focus from social and racial <em>inequality</em> to the diversity of <em>identity</em>, sweeping the important issues under the carpet. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/the-weakening-definition-of-diversity/393080/">Millennials have been demonstrated</a> to associate the concept more with diversity of “experiences” and viewpoints instead of with issues of race and gender. <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8757.html">Scott Page’s work</a> has demonstrated that among all diversity metrics, one very important one – cognitive diversity – is the real game-changer in the workplace. </p>
<p>This diversity of definitions illustrates the precise problem with diversity: it cannot be “all things to all people” without losing some of its earlier focus. Longer-term struggles for equality and civil rights get diluted in this eclectic mix, and <a href="http://theconversation.com/are-identity-politics-emancipatory-or-regressive-94434">identity politics</a> cloud the path forward. It seems that diversity as a concept is so appealing, and so emblematic of our global era, that it has simply brought “too many cooks into the kitchen”; creating distractions away from the focus of the pressing social issues we face in modern democracies.</p>
<h2>Desperately seeking diversity</h2>
<p>Sociologist Ellen Berrey’s 2015 study, <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo19910067.html"><em>The Enigma of Diversity</em></a>, examines how diversity actually plays out in three different sectors of society – a large publicly traded company, a mixed neighbourhood in Chicago, and the University of Michigan. Berrey’s six-year ethnography reveals once more that diversity clearly means <em>different things to different constituencies</em>. Her more worrying conclusions demonstrate that the diversity concept is mobilized by different groups with different interests in a way which has significantly <em>weakened the demand for racial and social justice</em>.</p>
<p>So diversity still remains, despite all positive evidence of its value, and the noble efforts to make it work, more an aspirational ideal than a reality in the global workplace today. Calls for <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/its-time-for-diversity-20-more-women-from-different-backgrounds-9969623.html">“diversity 2.0”</a> have focused on <em>gender equality</em> and diversity of <em>experience</em>, specifically in Silicon Valley, where a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-silicon-valley-is-trying-to-fix-its-diversity-problem">diversity drama</a> has been playing out among tech firms, even inspiring the popular HBO series <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-valley-nails-silicon-valley"><em>Silicon Valley</em></a>. Adding to the drama, a polemic and provocative <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf">anti-diversity manifesto</a> written by Google engineer James Damore was leaked last summer.</p>
<p>Finally, with the explosion of digital content and connected online users, we have paradoxically come to lack a diversity of <em>viewpoints</em>. When Google introduced personalised search algorithms in 2009, it translated into the fact that no two people obtain the same search results, creating an information <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=-FWO0puw3nYC&oi=fnd&pg=PT3&dq=calls+for+information+diversity+filter+bubble&ots=g4IuFvuWNZ&sig=i_uqFeupZbD3Tsp4FI-m0SQ7fHg#v=onepage&q&f=false.">filter bubble</a> where we cannot capture the ideas of others as easily. Living in this bubble prevents us from gaining access the same online information as our family, friends and close acquaintances. Imagine then what this means when it comes to viewing the same content as those who are very different from us. By generating overwhelmingly one-sided content, tailored for our individual preferences, Google funnels us into social “silos” where we do not have exposure to diversity of opinions and ideas.</p>
<p><a href="http://cascade.cs.illinois.edu/publication/p2359-liao.pdf">Studies demonstrate</a> that these silos further entrench our preferences when it comes to information selection. So whereas we aspire to diversity of opinion and information, the very tools we use to connect to others prevent us from our full diversity potential.</p>
<h2>Race: a human invention</h2>
<p>If information diversity has been sabotaged by digital media platforms, questions of <em>social and racial diversity</em> need to get put back on the front burner to address issues of fairness and justice. Nowhere does the unfinished business of diversity play out more visibly and dramatically than in the United States, with its long and violent history of race that, for Princeton historian Nell Irving Painter, is itself “an idea” based neither on science nor fact, constructed by humans for human purposes. Painter’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/books/review/Gordon-t.html"><em>History of White People</em></a> traces a long and tortured heritage of “whiteness” dating from Antiquity up to the present-day America of mass incarceration and the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/blacklivesmatter?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag">#blacklivesmatter</a> movement. The implications of race-as-an-invention are startling, because it means that we are actually perpetuating and giving currency to a flawed, “imagined” concept in day-to-day life.</p>
<p>We should actually question the terms we use – instead of <em>race</em>, terms like <em>ethnicity</em> or <em>skin colour</em> that have observable scientific grounding. This begs a broader question: do we actually believe that race exists in reality? Do we have to use the word <em>race</em>? We may question its existence today, but a good many white European and American male scientists certainly believed it existed in the past. If we turn our attention to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03612759.2006.10526967">history of science and its intersection with “race”</a> throughout the 18th and 20th centuries, we see how ‘race’ as a concept paved the way for not only slavery and the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300181364/american-genocide">genocide of native Americans</a>, but also for Hitler’s <a href="http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395043">racist ideology</a> against the Jews and other minority groups. Although social Darwinism, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2967206?seq=1">scientific racism</a>, and <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Mismeasure-of-Man/">biological determinism</a> have been thoroughly debunked, we remain the heirs to these defective, racial supremacist ideas which infiltrate the very ways we talk about diversity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222856/original/file-20180612-112637-12uso42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222856/original/file-20180612-112637-12uso42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222856/original/file-20180612-112637-12uso42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222856/original/file-20180612-112637-12uso42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222856/original/file-20180612-112637-12uso42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222856/original/file-20180612-112637-12uso42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222856/original/file-20180612-112637-12uso42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Solidarity march in London, February 4, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alisdare Hickson/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Racial justice: the diversity elephant in the room</h2>
<p>So while most people think that diversity is a good idea, it remains, like race, more an <em>idea</em> than a fact. And it appears to have effectively shifted our attention away from the festering and indisputable problem of racial inequality. European countries continue to struggle with racial discrimination due to postcolonial legacies, as well as the influx of desperate asylum-seekers and migrant workers. France began to respond to its racial inequity problems <a href="https://www.sss.ias.edu/files/pdfs/Fassin/Racialization.pdf">in the 1990s</a>and Germany has seen a shift from a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.1995.9993862">class-based to an ethnicity-based</a> welfare state. Scholars in the UK have focused on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2018.1409902?src=recsys">popular culture and black youth</a> and on the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2018.1409902?src=recsys">problems of blackness</a> in the academic environment. Again, the United States stands out among advanced economies in terms of its racial inequities. </p>
<p>These disparities are manifested everywhere in the US – in the <a href="http://lj.uwpress.org/content/26/1/10.short">urban space</a>, in the way <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4678876/">people think about their health</a>, and simply in the ways racism is shown to be deeply <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446334/pdf/10936998.pdf">embedded in institutions</a>. Drawing attention to this elephant in the room, Bryan Stevenson’s <a href="https://eji.org/racial-justice">Equal Justice Initiative</a> has made strides to clarify those areas of society where the inequities reside and to educate citizens about their shared history of racial injustice.</p>
<p>Yet this is nothing new. A <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/american-racial-and-ethnic-politics-in-the-21st-century-a-cautious-look-ahead/">report</a> put out by the Brookings Institute in 1998, years before Obama’s election, envisioned a tenuous future for black-white relations, noting that even affluent and successful African-Americans expressed a particular rage at their consistently unequal treatment. Today, thanks to <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/08/15/social-media-conversations-about-race/">social media conversations about race</a> and their viral nature, we seem to be experiencing a crescendo effect in terms of the number reported incidents involving minorities. These conversations and video evidence continue to pile up, spanning from everyday discriminatory grievances to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5761867/">fatal shootings by police</a> and retaliatory actions taken in the aftermath. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/...us-race.../66548936-4aa8-11e6-90a8-fb84201e06...">Polls</a> show that Americans are more cynical than ever about race relations.<br>
Diversity and race keep getting confused, amalgamated, or co-opted for different political gains and purposes. Harvard President Drew Faust published a letter on June 12th 2018 in support of <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2018/defending-diversity">“Defending Diversity”</a> as the school prepares to defend the integrity of its diversity policy and admissions process in an upcoming <a href="https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education">legal battle</a>. Student body diversity is for Faust the inclusion of “people of <em>different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives</em>”, an ideal that just about anyone would find laudable and worthwhile. And yet this concept of diversity is, as we have seen, just broad enough for anti-diversity special interest groups like <a href="https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/">Students for Fair Admissions</a> to cherry-pick admissions data and instrumentalize <em>race</em> once more as the culprit behind what they allege are unfair, biased, and unconstitutional admissions processes.</p>
<h2>Diversity 3.0</h2>
<p>And yet there are signs of hope for the future of diversity. Generation Z is said to be <a href="http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/generation-z-profile-2017-9">even more inclusive and tolerant</a> than its predecessor, the Millennial generation. There has been a shift from studying race relations and racism towards understanding racialization, a process of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870120049806">“ascribing physical and cultural differences to individuals and groups”</a> which demonstrates a deeper and broader understanding of society’s unfinished business. Studies show that <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304747383_Racism_Racial_Resilience_and_African_American_Youth_Development_Person-Centered_Analysis_as_a_Tool_to_Promote_Equity_and_Justice">minority youth can be extraordinarily resilient</a> in the face of racism, and that novel forms of therapy can help them cope. </p>
<p>Movements such as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NeverAgainMSD/">#neveragainMSD</a> show us that young people can rise to their political calling, organize a grassroots movement, and inspire an entire nation to pressure government and special-interest groups. Activist groups like <a href="http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/">Showing Up for Racial Justice</a> demonstrate that majority groups can take a stand to speak out forcefully against racism and challenge the permission structures that make it possible. There remains so much more to be done. </p>
<p>Next on the agenda, in my upcoming article, I will explore how educators can play a vital role in raising awareness and in moving the conversation about diversity in more productive directions through practice scenarios in the classroom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97109/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Mielly ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Diversity is an enormously appealing and powerful concept, yet it can also distract us from the focus we need to face today’s pressing social issues. So what’s the way forward?Michelle Mielly, Associate Professor in People, Organizations, Society, Grenoble École de Management (GEM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/922502018-03-05T11:44:56Z2018-03-05T11:44:56ZCould there be another Billy Graham?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208728/original/file-20180302-171274-de9gt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Several thousand people gather at a rally in Washington in 1952 to hear Evangelist Billy Graham preach.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At this time of Billy Graham’s passing, American evangelical Christianity looks to be in steep decline, at least judging by numbers. The proportion of white Americans who identify as evangelical has fallen from 23 percent of the population in 2006 to 17 percent in 2016. Furthermore, a recent survey shows that evangelicalism is aging: <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-evangelicals-sacrificing-the-future-in-search-of-the-past/">Only 8 percent</a> of whites ages 18 to 29, versus 26 percent over 65, identify as evangelicals.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208729/original/file-20180302-65511-103g7ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208729/original/file-20180302-65511-103g7ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208729/original/file-20180302-65511-103g7ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208729/original/file-20180302-65511-103g7ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208729/original/file-20180302-65511-103g7ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208729/original/file-20180302-65511-103g7ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208729/original/file-20180302-65511-103g7ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Billy Sunday.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABilly_Sunday_1921.jpg">Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Current trends, then, suggest that the evangelicalism of the future will be smaller, grayer, more closely identified with the Republican Party, and more out of step with the views of younger Americans than it is at present. It might seem that Billy Graham is the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/opinion/billy-graham-nonpartisan-evangelical.html">last nonpartisan evangelical</a>. But as one who <a href="https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/adole">teaches</a> the history of evangelicalism, I can imagine different possibilities. </p>
<p>In 1935 the premier magazine of liberal Protestantism, the Christian Century, called the famous early 20th-century revivalist Billy Sunday “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZSLgWIp_7-YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=intitle:revive+intitle:us+intitle:again+inauthor:carpenter&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiam4S8ucbZAhXMUt8KHYrlAygQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">the last of his line</a>.” But less than 20 years later, Billy Graham would lead evangelicalism to revival.</p>
<p>In a way, evangelicalism has been here before. </p>
<h2>What facilitated Graham’s rise</h2>
<p>Graham rose to prominence in the post-World War II period as the public face of what scholars describe as <a href="https://religionnews.com/2018/02/23/how-billy-graham-changed-religion-in-america/">“neo-evangelicalism.”</a> </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208722/original/file-20180302-65541-hswwf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208722/original/file-20180302-65541-hswwf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208722/original/file-20180302-65541-hswwf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208722/original/file-20180302-65541-hswwf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208722/original/file-20180302-65541-hswwf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208722/original/file-20180302-65541-hswwf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208722/original/file-20180302-65541-hswwf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John T. Scopes, a high school biology teacher, at the time of his trial.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The historian of religion <a href="https://calvin.edu/directory/people/joel-a-carpenter">Joel Carpenter</a> describes neo-evangelicalism as the vision of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/revive-us-again-9780195129076?cc=us&lang=en&">a number of prominent religious leaders</a> who wanted to create a form of conservative Protestantism that could escape from the long shadow of fundamentalism. </p>
<p>In 1925 fundamentalists succeeded in passing a law in Tennessee banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. That same year the young teacher, John Scopes, was prosecuted for teaching evolution in the famous <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/us/47b.asp">Scopes “monkey trial</a>.” Since then, “fundamentalism” had become synonymous with intolerance and anti-intellectualism. </p>
<p>However, as the Congregationalist minister Harold Ockenga <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/revive-us-again-9780195129076?cc=us&lang=en&">put it,</a> a new generation wanted to create “a progressive fundamentalism with an ethical message.” </p>
<p>Graham, already a rising star, was soon adopted as the right man to represent the new “evangelicalism.” Over time, as described by his close associate A. Larry Ross, Graham became the <a href="https://religionnews.com/2018/02/21/because-of-billy-graham-the-world-will-never-be-the-same/">closest thing to an official spokesman for this movement</a>. </p>
<p>It is true that Graham did not single-handedly rescue evangelicalism from fundamentalism, but his contribution remains unmatched.</p>
<p>The question now is whether a repeat of the neo-evangelical project possible – could there be another Billy Graham? </p>
<h2>Factors today</h2>
<p>Graham’s success was enabled by the conditions of his day. And there are similarities between his day and ours. </p>
<p>First and perhaps most importantly, evangelicalism has an image problem comparable to that of earlier fundamentalism: Large numbers of Americans, particularly younger ones, regard evangelicalism as simply <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vh3fVxt5uNUC&lpg=PA66&vq=unchristian&pg=PA66#v=onepage&q&f=false">un-Christian</a>. Evangelicalism, in other words, is ripe for revival.</p>
<p>Second, Graham had backers among the established religious leaders of his day. Today too there are pastors and authors – such as <a href="http://saddleback.com">Rick Warren</a>, <a href="http://www.tdjakes.com">T. D. Jakes</a> and <a href="https://www.joelosteen.com/Pages/Home.aspx">Joel Osteen</a> – who have large followings and good reputations. They might unite behind a rising star, as Ockenga and others did behind Graham.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208723/original/file-20180302-65533-usxkm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208723/original/file-20180302-65533-usxkm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208723/original/file-20180302-65533-usxkm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208723/original/file-20180302-65533-usxkm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208723/original/file-20180302-65533-usxkm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208723/original/file-20180302-65533-usxkm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208723/original/file-20180302-65533-usxkm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pastor Joel Osteen leading his congregation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Richard Vogel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And third, Graham benefited significantly from <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jwGCBgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA294&dq=intitle:one%20nation%20inauthor:kruse&pg=PA49%23v=onepage&q&f=false">business interests</a> who backed his free-market message. If anything, the <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/november/24.24.html">links between conservative Protestantism and corporate capitalism</a> have only strengthened in recent decades. </p>
<p>A prospective successor to Graham could probably count on support from the business sector so long as he or she stayed away from sensitive topics like <a href="https://sojo.net/articles/economic-inequality-should-we-call-it-sin">economic inequality</a>.</p>
<h2>What stops the rise of evangelicalism</h2>
<p>But on the other hand, consider what has been happening of late to once-prominent evangelical leaders who have <a href="http://www.zondervan.com/a-generous-orthodoxy">suggested</a> that evangelicalism does not have to be as fundamentalist or as wedded to social and political conservatism as it has sometimes been. </p>
<p>I have in mind figures who want to be recognizably centrist evangelicals, not those who clearly belong to the small but persistent “<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15015.html">evangelical left.”</a> A rather large number of this first group are now, publicly, “former” evangelicals. </p>
<p>Take the case of David Gushee, author of <a href="https://www.cokesbury.com/product/9780664263379/still-christian/">“Still Christian: Following Jesus Out of American Evangelicalism.”</a> Gushee converted to evangelical Christianity in 1978 and has had a distinguished career as an evangelical Christian ethicist. But tensions arose when he began publicly addressing issues like climate change and torture. </p>
<p>The event that triggered his departure from evangelism was his public <a href="https://religionnews.com/2014/10/24/david-gushee-lgbt-homosexuality-matters/">embrace of same-sex relationships</a>. On the day the news broke, Gushee <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Fz8zDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=gushee+still+christian&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW-L3F-MjZAhUiZN8KHVcDA5AQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">recalls</a>, “My phone, as the kids say, blew up.” </p>
<p>Alongside expressions of support and appreciation he received a flood of rejections via the entire range of contemporary media, including, as he <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Fz8zDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=gushee%20still%20christian&pg=PA139#v=onepage&q&f=false">explains</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“anonymous letters in the mail with lots of vile photocopied materials, angry e-mails, Facebook posts and direct messages, tweets, critical reviews, invitations to debate, Twitter bomb attacks when I refused to debate.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shortly afterwards, the “disinvitations” started: scheduled speaking engagements canceled, a revised edition of a book pulled, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Fz8zDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=gushee%20still%20christian&pg=PA139#v=onepage&q&f=false">on and on</a>. Four months later <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Fz8zDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=gushee%20still%20christian&pg=PA142#v=onepage&q&f=false">Gushee realized</a> that he had “left an entire world behind.” It is not clear whether Gushee chose to leave evangelicalism or whether he was pushed out.</p>
<p>Many other former evangelicals have similar stories. Among these are <a href="https://sojo.net/articles/what-ever-happened-rob-bell-pastor-who-questioned-gates-hell">Rob Bell</a>, the author of “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062049643/love-wins">Love Wins</a>,” the controversial book that questioned common evangelical positions on hell; <a href="http://brianmclaren.net/q-r-how-did-you-transition-out-of-evangelicalism/">Brian McLaren</a>, the intellectual force behind “the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2005/07/08/july-8-2005-the-emerging-church-part-one/11744/">emerging church</a>,” a once-promising movement of renewal among younger evangelicals; and prominent bloggers and authors <a href="https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/life-after-evangelicalism">Rachel Held Evans</a> and <a href="http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2017/04/14/my-saddest-good-friday-in-memory-when-treasured-things-are-dead">Jen Hatmaker</a>.</p>
<p>At one time these were all regarded as bright lights of younger evangelicalism. All of them have tried to moderate those aspects of evangelicalism that are responsible for its generally poor reputation in American society at large. And all of them, after attracting significant amounts of criticism from their fellow evangelicals, have moved on from evangelicalism.</p>
<h2>Who can be the next Billy Graham?</h2>
<p>Not everything about this pattern is new. For as long as there has been “evangelicalism,” there have been debates about what, exactly, being an evangelical requires. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208725/original/file-20180302-65541-r8nets.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208725/original/file-20180302-65541-r8nets.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208725/original/file-20180302-65541-r8nets.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208725/original/file-20180302-65541-r8nets.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208725/original/file-20180302-65541-r8nets.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208725/original/file-20180302-65541-r8nets.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208725/original/file-20180302-65541-r8nets.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Can there be another Billy Graham?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Richard Vogel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A delicate question for neo-evangelicalism has always been <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780312224622">where exactly the boundary lies</a> between it and the liberal Christianity of the mainline Protestant denominations. And the issue today is that symbolic boundaries work very differently in the age of the internet. The sheer volume of criticism that a public figure can receive these days is infinitely greater than it was a generation ago. Today <a href="https://religionnews.com/2016/06/06/the-gospel-coalition-and-how-not-to-engage-culture/">anyone can get in on the business of policing the boundaries.</a></p>
<p>Under current conditions, anyone practicing the sort of evangelical self-criticism that figured prominently in the early history of neo-evangelicalism – like, say, that of theologian <a href="http://henrycenter.tiu.edu/carl-f-h-henry/">Carl Henry</a> in his 1948 book, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2WVu5YK20HUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=intitle:uneasy+intitle:conscience+inauthor:henry&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix-fyi18TZAhVQC6wKHZHcC0AQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">“The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism,”</a> which argued that fundamentalists should show more interest in pressing social issues – would be vulnerable to a barrage of online criticism. Henry, and Graham for that matter, never ran into this dynamic. </p>
<p>Success in the business of reviving evangelicalism will require more in the way of personal qualities than just integrity, charisma and good preaching: It will require a deep bench of supporters, whether persons or institutions, capable of withstanding criticism for more than, say, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/us/christian-charity-backtracks-on-gays.html">two days</a>.</p>
<p>It will also require the thickest of skins.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92250/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dole 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>Current trends suggest that evangelicalism is out of step with younger Americans. But, a scholar says, evangelicalism has been here before.Andrew Dole, Professor of Religion, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/869112017-11-28T11:25:56Z2017-11-28T11:25:56ZGovernment regulation of social media would be a ‘cure’ far worse than the disease<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195753/original/file-20171121-6039-10hgvnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C490%2C7017%2C3583&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/social-media-thumbs-like-button-chains-651628738?src=18RcbitLiOBOVE_FjdLKMQ-1-2">NextNewMedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent weeks, Congress has grilled Twitter, Facebook and Google about their role <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/31/election-inference-shell-companies/">in allowing foreign interests</a> to place ads and articles intended to divide the electorate and spread false information during the 2016 election. </p>
<p>Now a number of people in and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/31/americans-evenly-split-over-need-to-regulate-facebook-and-other-big-tech">out</a> of government <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethmacbride/2017/11/18/should-twitter-facebook-and-google-be-more-regulated/#29ee65cc1bc5">are calling for federal regulation</a> of social media.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/regulate-social-media-platforms-before-its-too-late-86984">Lay down some rules</a>, the thinking goes, and we would be able to prevent the infestation of bots and fake news from our news feeds and ads. Democracy would be saved – or, at least, foreign interference in our elections kept in check.</p>
<p>However, as someone who has studied and taught the <a href="https://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2007/07/flouting-of-first-amendment-transcript.html">First Amendment</a> for decades, I would argue that if such regulations were enacted, the main victims would be not the purveyors of fake news, but our freedom of expression. In my view, the result would do far more damage to our democracy than any foreign misinformation campaign ever could.</p>
<h2>Free speech being attacked from all sides</h2>
<p>The First Amendment is under a lot of duress.</p>
<p>Arguably, it’s been that way since the Supreme Court’s “<a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/249us47">clear and present danger</a>” decision in 1919, which spelled out when limits on free speech could be lawful. It not only held that the government had an obligation to stop someone from “falsely shouting fire in a theater,” but also opened the gates to all manner of government violations of the First Amendment injunction that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” </p>
<p>These range from the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine,” which was upheld by the Supreme Court, that required broadcasters to present controversial issues in a balanced way (in the FCC’s view), to the FCC’s <a href="http://ultimateclassicrock.com/fcc-drug-lyrics/">warning to radio broadcasters in 1971</a> not to play songs that glorified drug use, which actually <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1971/03/13/archives/johnson-of-f-c-c-scores-notice-on-drug-lyrics.html">had the effect of limiting the airplay of songs that critiqued drug culture</a>. </p>
<p>Indeed, with the exception of Supreme Court decisions in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971 and the Communications Decency Act in 1997, the American government <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OT7WDK">has systematically increased its control of media</a>.</p>
<p>The situation has gotten much worse over the past year. President Trump has tweeted about withholding the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/11/trump-nbc-broadcast-license-243667">licenses of NBC</a> affiliates and <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/01/11/jim-acosta-trump-cnn-reporter-spar-in-press-conference.html">lashed out</a> at other media not to his liking.</p>
<p>Although Trump’s bluster about limiting and punishing media may be easy enough to deride, the fact that he is in the White House – and has the ability to appoint FCC commissioners – means his threats must be taken seriously. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, a theory of philosopher Karl Popper – the “paradox of tolerance” – is being <a href="https://qz.com/1054694/a-philosophical-principle-coined-in-1945-could-be-a-key-us-defense-against-white-supremacists/">widely cited</a> as a justification for outlawing hate speech, notwithstanding the First Amendment. From his 1945 book “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies">The Open Society and its Enemies</a>,” it says that tolerance defeats itself when it permits intolerant speech. </p>
<p>I studied Popper extensively while researching <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0391026097">my first book</a>, an anthology of essays about Popper’s work. There are many aspects of Popper’s philosophy to admire, but I don’t believe the “paradox of tolerance” is among them. </p>
<p>To ban hate speech could turn our tolerant, democratic society into precisely the kind of state that hate speech is calling for: It could open up an opportunity for all sorts of speech to be dubbed “hate speech.” </p>
<h2>A slippery slope</h2>
<p>When regulating fake news on social media sites, there’s the danger of the same sort of phenomenon taking place. And it’s exactly why the well-meaning <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/reporter-ftc-can-regulate-whats-real-news-whats-fake-news/article/2613392">hue-and-cry</a> that the government needs to intervene and forbid social media sites from disseminating fake news or allowing accounts that are actually bots is so dangerous.</p>
<p>Fake news <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MSXG574">is nothing new</a>. Centuries ago, anti-Semitic publications spread rumors that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood on holidays.</p>
<p>Over the past two years, social media have increased the amplitude and reach of fake news. But there’s also been the ascension of a political figure – Trump – who has turned the tables by labeling any unwelcome news as “fake.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195521/original/file-20171120-18528-18j8dlw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195521/original/file-20171120-18528-18j8dlw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195521/original/file-20171120-18528-18j8dlw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195521/original/file-20171120-18528-18j8dlw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195521/original/file-20171120-18528-18j8dlw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195521/original/file-20171120-18528-18j8dlw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195521/original/file-20171120-18528-18j8dlw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195521/original/file-20171120-18528-18j8dlw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Facebook ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process are displayed as representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Nov. 1.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-Russia-Probe-Social-Media/bf6fa883a03141398976f06f2bd5e915/14/0">Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The latter should be more than enough reason to reject <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/reporter-ftc-can-regulate-whats-real-news-whats-fake-news/article/2613392">calls for government censorship of fake news</a>. After all, who’s to say a government that determines what’s “fake” won’t simply follow Trump’s lead, and suppress critical and truthful content under the guise that it’s fake?</p>
<p>Instead, social media networks could develop and implement algorithms for identifying and removing fake news by marshaling the same engines that spread fake news in the first place. These algorithms would not be administered by the government; rather, Facebook and other social media would be responsible. </p>
<p>Twitter has already made considerable progress flagging and removing accounts that spread <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603626/data-mining-reveals-the-rise-of-isis-propaganda-on-twitter/">Islamic State propaganda</a>. There’s no reason to think that the same process can’t be applied to Russian bots seeking to inflame political discord and therein damage America’s political system. </p>
<p>Such self-regulation is in the best interest of these media companies. It would increase the confidence of their users in what they encounter online. It would also have the added benefit of keeping government regulators at bay.</p>
<p>In the end, the ultimate antidote to fake news and bots is the rationality of the human mind. </p>
<p>As John Milton famously urged in his “<a href="https://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Emilton/reading_room/areopagitica/text.html">Areopagitica</a>,” if you let truth and falsity fight it out in the marketplace of ideas, human rationality will most likely choose the truth. Regulating what can enter that marketplace could impair or destroy this process, by inadvertently keeping truth from public awareness.</p>
<p>Rational thinking’s ability to identify fake news is more than a Miltonian ideal: It’s been demonstrated in a <a href="http://johnbullock.org/papers/partisanBiasInFactualBeliefs.pdf">carefully conducted 2015 experiment</a>. When given a small financial incentive, the subjects were able to identify fake news as fake, even if the fake news supported the political views of the subjects. </p>
<p>Indeed, rationality is deeply implicit in democracy itself. You can’t have the latter without the former.</p>
<p>The key in combating fake news and kindred attacks on our body politic is to give our rationality maximum access to all information, including the truth. And in my view, this means resisting any attempts by government to limit the information that reaches us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Levinson 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>Many are calling for government to step in to stop bots and the spread of fake news on sites like Facebook and Twitter. A media expert explains why this is a slippery slope.Paul Levinson, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/803542017-07-04T23:01:10Z2017-07-04T23:01:10ZHow the Nazis destroyed the first gay rights movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176456/original/file-20170630-8203-170x8ih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Damenkneipe,' or 'Ladies’ Saloon,' painted by Rudolf Schlichter in 1923. In 1937, many of his paintings were destroyed by the Nazis as 'degenerate art.'</span> </figcaption></figure><p>In 2017, Germany’s Cabinet approved <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39350105">a bill</a> that would expunge the convictions of tens of thousands of German men for “homosexual acts” under that country’s anti-gay law known as “<a href="https://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/homosexuals-victims-of-the-nazi-era/paragraph-175">Paragraph 175</a>.” That law dates back to 1871, when modern Germany’s first legal code was created. </p>
<p>It was repealed in 1994. But there was a serious movement to repeal the law in 1929 as part of a wider LGBTQ rights movement. That was just before the Nazis came to power, magnified the anti-gay law, then sought to annihilate gay and transgender Europeans. </p>
<p>The story of how close Germany – and much of Europe – came to liberating its LGBTQ people before violently reversing that trend under new authoritarian regimes is an object lesson showing that the history of LGBTQ rights is not a record of constant progress.</p>
<h2>The first LGBTQ liberation movement</h2>
<p>In the 1920s, Berlin <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UYh_OaQrEvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+men+with+the+pink+triangle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX0dX8uZzSAhWIRyYKHfj0DU8Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=nearly%20a%20hundred%20gay%20and%20lesbian%20bars%22&f=false">had</a> nearly 100 gay and lesbian bars or cafes. Vienna <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/opposing-fascism/homosexual-men-in-vienna-1938/54937C49AA3BBCC3E27C8B0E2FF5ABDE">had</a> about a dozen gay cafes, clubs and bookstores. In Paris, certain quarters were renowned for <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/12215">open displays</a> of gay and trans nightlife. Even <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PW1GjP0_6Y4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=gay+paris+1920s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-koifqprSAhXJLSYKHXFMBPoQ6AEILDAD#v=snippet&q=%22to%20florence%2C%20where%20he%20could%22&f=false">Florence</a>, Italy, had its own gay district, as did many smaller European cities.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/movies/different-from-the-others-a-1919-film-on-homosexuality.html">Films</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aO7YCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=robert+beachy+gay+berlin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjbluu9mN7SAhVI74MKHek_CxEQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=%22different%20from%20others%22&f=false">began</a> depicting sympathetic gay characters. Protests were organized against offensive depictions of LGBTQ people in print or on <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aO7YCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=robert+beachy+gay+berlin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjbluu9mN7SAhVI74MKHek_CxEQ6AEIGjAA#v=snippet&q=">stage</a>. And media <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aO7YCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=robert+beachy+gay+berlin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjbluu9mN7SAhVI74MKHek_CxEQ6AEIGjAA#v=snippet&q=entrepreneur&f=false">entrepreneurs</a> realized there was a middle-class gay and trans readership to whom they could cater.</p>
<p>Partly driving this new era of tolerance were the doctors and scientists who started looking at homosexuality and “transvestism” (a word of that era that encompassed transgender people) as a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4ss2DAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1155&dq=hirschfield+transvestism+natural&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCk5eS_eXUAhXs5oMKHfwZDYkQ6AEIOTAE#v=onepage&q=normal%20variations%20on%20human%20experience&f=false">natural</a> characteristic with which some were born, and not a “derangement.” The story of Lili Elbe and the first modern sex change, made famous in the recent film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810819/">“The Danish Girl,”</a> reflected these trends.</p>
<p>For example, Berlin <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mWXFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA83&dq=Berlin+opened+its+Institute+for+Sexual+Research&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTvuzA_eXUAhVFw4MKHURNC0QQ6AEIRzAG#v=snippet&q=opening%20the%20institute%20was%20a%20dream&f=false">opened</a> its Institute for Sexual Research in 1919, the place where the word “transsexual” was coined, and where people could receive counseling and other services. Its lead doctor, Magnus Hirschfeld, also consulted on the Lili Elbe sex change.</p>
<p>Connected to this institute was an organization called the “Scientific-Humanitarian Committee.” With the motto “justice through science,” this group of scientists and LGBTQ people <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=m-mc76HwPdwC&pg=PA94&dq=motto,+%22justice+through+science,%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ9bL0_eXUAhWDyoMKHWVsBn0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=motto%2C%20%22justice%20through%20science%2C%22&f=false">promoted</a> equal rights, arguing that LGBTQ people were not aberrations of nature.</p>
<p>Most European capitals hosted a branch of the group, which sponsored talks and sought the repeal of Germany’s “Paragraph 175.” Combining with other liberal groups and politicians, it succeeded in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xmlWr4aAt4EC&pg=PA204&dq=motto,+%22justice+through+science%22+for+a+repeal+of+Paragraph+175&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwipvaun_uXUAhXM8YMKHQwrD0IQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=motto%2C%20%22justice%20through%20science%22%20for%20a%20repeal%20of%20Paragraph%20175&f=false">influencing</a> a German parliamentary committee to recommend the repeal to the wider government in 1929.</p>
<h2>The backlash</h2>
<p>While these developments didn’t mean the end of centuries of intolerance, the 1920s and early ‘30s certainly looked like the beginning of the end. On the other hand, the greater “out-ness” of gay and trans people provoked their opponents.</p>
<p>A French reporter, bemoaning the sight of uncloseted LGBTQ people in public, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/12215">complained</a>, “the contagion … is corrupting every milieu.” The Berlin police grumbled that magazines aimed at gay men – which they called “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=YquzCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=laurie+marhoefer+sex+and+the+weimar&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisxuafhJrSAhXB3SYKHV4pBUAQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=%22obscene%20press%20materials%22&f=false">obscene press materials</a>” – were proliferating. In Vienna, lectures of the “Scientific Humanitarian Committee” might be packed with supporters, but one was <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/opposing-fascism/homosexual-men-in-vienna-1938/54937C49AA3BBCC3E27C8B0E2FF5ABDE">attacked</a> by young men hurling stink bombs. A Parisian town councilor in 1933 called it “a moral crisis” that gay people, known as “inverts” at that time, could be seen in public.</p>
<p>“Far be it from me to want to turn to fascism,” <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/12215">the councilor said</a>, “but all the same, we have to agree that in some things those regimes have sometimes done good… One day Hitler and Mussolini woke up and said, ‘Honestly, the scandal has gone on long enough’ … And … the inverts … were chased out of Germany and Italy the very next day.”</p>
<h2>The ascent of Fascism</h2>
<p>It’s this willingness to make a blood sacrifice of minorities in exchange for “normalcy” or prosperity that has observers drawing uncomfortable comparisons between then and now.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, the Depression spread economic anxiety, while political fights in European parliaments tended to spill outside into actual <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=V42QBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT110&dq=germany+rise+fascism+street+fighting+violence&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik-ufk_uXUAhWBzIMKHWK8B9IQ6AEIQTAE#v=onepage&q=violence%20occupied&f=false">street fights</a> between Left and Right. Fascist parties offered Europeans a choice of stability at the price of democracy. Tolerance of minorities was destabilizing, they said. Expanding liberties gave “undesirable” people the liberty to undermine security and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=YquzCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=laurie+marhoefer+sex+and+the&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyp8Hknd7SAhUI0oMKHRxXAqAQ6AEIGjAA#v=snippet&q=complained%20of%20the%20%22rapid%20flood%22&f=false">threaten traditional</a> “moral” culture. Gay and trans people were an obvious target.</p>
<p>What happened next shows the whiplash speed with which the progress of a generation can be thrown into reverse.</p>
<h2>The nightmare</h2>
<p>One day in May 1933, pristine white-shirted students marched in front of Berlin’s Institute for Sexual Research – that safe haven for LGBTQ people – calling it “Un-German.” Later, a mob hauled out its library to be burned. Later still, its acting head <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=t7pEmb3nQ2cC&pg=PA66&dq=kurt+hiller+institute+berlin+concentration+camp&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9rfquqOXSAhUBGGMKHTEYDiUQ6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=kurt%20hiller%20was%20arrested&f=false">was arrested</a>.</p>
<p>When Nazi leader Adolph Hitler needed to <a href="http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-roehm.htm">justify</a> arresting and murdering former political allies in 1934, he said they were gay. This <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007885">fanned</a> anti-gay zealotry by the Gestapo, which opened a special anti-gay <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/scotts/ftp/pro-choice/himmler-order.html">branch</a>. During the following year alone, the Gestapo arrested more than <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/opposing-fascism/homosexual-men-in-vienna-1938/54937C49AA3BBCC3E27C8B0E2FF5ABDE">8,500</a> gay men, quite possibly using a list of names and addresses seized at the Institute for Sexual Research. Not only was Paragraph 175 not erased, as a parliamentary committee had recommended just a few years before, it was amended to be more expansive and punitive. </p>
<p>As the Gestapo spread throughout Europe, it expanded the hunt. In Vienna, it <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/opposing-fascism/homosexual-men-in-vienna-1938/54937C49AA3BBCC3E27C8B0E2FF5ABDE">hauled in</a> every gay man on police lists and questioned them, trying to get them to name others. The fortunate ones went to jail. The less fortunate went to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/opposing-fascism/homosexual-men-in-vienna-1938/54937C49AA3BBCC3E27C8B0E2FF5ABDE">Buchenwald and Dachau</a>. In conquered France, Alsace police <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/12215">worked with</a> the Gestapo to arrest at least 200 men and send them to concentration camps. Italy, with a fascist regime obsessed with virility, sent at least 300 gay men to brutal camps during the war period, declaring them “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NLrCagrmdvwC&dq=book+%22the+enemy+of+the+new+man%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE7MK3lZ3SAhVDeCYKHV_ABbIQ6AEIGjAA">dangerous</a> for the integrity of the race.” </p>
<p>The total number of Europeans arrested for being LGBTQ under fascism is impossible to know because of the lack of reliable records. But a conservative estimate is that there were many <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib214108">tens of thousands</a> to <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/ernst-rohm-the-highest-ranking-gay-nazi/">one hundred thousand</a> arrests during the war period alone.</p>
<p>Under these nightmare conditions, far more LGBTQ people in Europe painstakingly hid their genuine sexuality to avoid suspicion, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UYh_OaQrEvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+men+with+the+pink+triangle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWjr-vj5_SAhVI4CYKHWsgB-oQ6AEIHDAA#v=snippet&q=%22escaped%20into%20marriage%22&f=false">marrying</a> members of the opposite sex, for example. Still, if they had been prominent members of the gay and trans community before the fascists came to power, as Berlin lesbian club owner Lotte Hahm was, it was too late to hide. She was <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PW1GjP0_6Y4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=A+history+of+homosexuality+in+Europe:+Berlin,+London,+Paris,+1919-1939&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-krqE9p7SAhVG7YMKHaw9DhkQ6AEIHDAA#v=snippet&q=lesbian%20club%20Violetta%20was%20arr">sent</a> to a concentration camp. </p>
<p>In those camps, gay men were marked with a pink triangle. In these places of horror, men with pink triangles were <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20050726-giles.pdf">singled out</a> for particular abuse. They were mechanically <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/I_Pierre_Seel_Deported_Homosexual.html?id=S6sdDOjK05YC">raped</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260778?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">castrated</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UYh_OaQrEvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=men+with+the+pink+triangle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF-5rUjJ_SAhWF7iYKHairBhUQ6AEIHDAA#v=snippet&q=prioritized%20for%20medical%20experiments&f=false">favored</a> for medical <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UYh_OaQrEvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22the+men+with+the+pink+triangle%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjirZC8mJ_SAhUl3YMKHXUZDDsQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=capsules&f=false">experiments</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=S6sdDOjK05YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=I+pierre+seel&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBhKT4jZ_SAhVCRiYKHQdDAc4Q6AEIHDAA#v=snippet&q=%22never%20forget%20the%20barbaric%20murder%22&f=false">murdered</a> for guards’ sadistic <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UYh_OaQrEvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=men+with+the+pink+triangle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF-5rUjJ_SAhWF7iYKHairBhUQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22use%20us%20pink-triangle%20prisoners%20as%20living%20targets%22&f=false">pleasure</a> even when they were not sentenced for “liquidation.” One gay man attributed his survival to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UYh_OaQrEvcC&dq=tear+off+pink+triangle+for+red&source=gbs_navlinks_s">swapping</a> his pink triangle for a red one – indicating he was merely a Communist. They were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=cRUfXHoNfNcC&dq=V%C3%ADctimas+de+la+victoria&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQo4Hcjp_SAhUFOyYKHePeCfoQ6AEIGjAA">ostracized</a> and tormented by their fellow inmates, too.</p>
<h2>The looming danger of a backslide</h2>
<p>This isn’t 1930s Europe. And making superficial comparisons between then and now can only yield superficial conclusions. </p>
<p>But with new forms of authoritarianism entrenched and seeking to expand in Europe and beyond, it’s worth thinking about the fate of Europe’s LGBTQ community in the 1930s and ‘40s – a timely note from history as Germany <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-gay-marriage-idUSKBN19L0PQ">approves</a> same-sex marriage and on this first anniversary of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0">Obergefell v. Hodges</a>. </p>
<p>In 1929, Germany came close to erasing its anti-gay law, only to see it strengthened soon thereafter. Only after a gap of 88 years are convictions under that law being annulled. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Broich 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 1920s and early ‘30’s looked like the beginning of the end for centuries of gay intolerance. Then came fascism and the Nazis.John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/730762017-04-03T16:15:17Z2017-04-03T16:15:17ZHow ethnic and racial harassment damages mental health<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159835/original/image-20170307-14963-106azdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">via shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/03/three-people-wanted-by-police-over-croydon-asylum-seeker-attack">vicious attack</a> on a 17-year-old asylum seeker in Croydon has drawn widespread condemnation and is being investigated as a hate crime. It follows a spike in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/28/hate-crime-horrible-spike-brexit-vote-metropolitan-police">hate crimes</a> following the Brexit vote in June 2016 which brought the issue of ethnic and racial harassment into sharp focus. Yet harassment of people for their ethnicity, religion or race has long been a problem for minority communities in Britain. </p>
<p>Over 20 years ago a <a href="http://www.psi.org.uk/site/publication_detail/694">survey</a> found that around 13% of people of ethnic minority had been racially attacked or racially insulted in the preceding year. Since then migration patterns and attitudes have changed. But even as more people from ethnic minorities <a href="http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_04_10.pdf">are now born</a> in the UK, reports of harassment have remained relatively stable. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/research/publications/working-papers/iser/2016-14">recent working paper</a>, which used data from <a href="https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/">Understanding Society</a>, the most recent large-scale nationally representative household survey, found that in 2010, 9% of all ethnic minorities in Britain reported experiencing ethnic or racially motivated harassment in the previous year.</p>
<h2>Who is targeted</h2>
<p>We define ethnic and racial harassment as people saying that they had been insulted, called names, threatened or shouted at, or been physically attacked in a public place at least once in the past 12 months because of their ethnicity, religion or nationality. Our analysis was based on over 10,000 interviews with members of ethnic minority groups. </p>
<p>Using this very specific definition, we <a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/projects/health-and-harassment/Health%20and%20Harassment%20Briefing%20Note%20Oct2016.pdf">found</a> that, overall, 10% of ethnic minority men reported experiencing ethnic and racial harassment, and 7% of women. This varied for some ethnic groups, for example around 15% of Chinese, Pakistani, Indian-Sikh and Indian-Muslim men reported experiencing harassment.</p>
<p>Within each ethnic group, women were also less likely to report harassment than men – although there were exceptions for people of Bangladeshi and black Caribbean origin. Yet women were more likely to fear harassment than men, and in most ethnic groups they were more likely to report feeling unsafe or to avoid public places due to their race or ethnicity. </p>
<p>The data also supported the old adage of safety in numbers. People of ethnic minority living in neighbourhoods where there were more people of their own ethnic group were less likely to report ethnic and racial harassment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159837/original/image-20170307-14963-lil1m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159837/original/image-20170307-14963-lil1m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159837/original/image-20170307-14963-lil1m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159837/original/image-20170307-14963-lil1m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159837/original/image-20170307-14963-lil1m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159837/original/image-20170307-14963-lil1m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159837/original/image-20170307-14963-lil1m7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Your neighbours count when it comes to mental health.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/6064681242/sizes/l">daniel.d.slee/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lower mental health</h2>
<p>There can be various consequences of such experiences: fear of going out, increased levels of stress and anxiety, low self-esteem and poor mental health. </p>
<p>In our analysis we focused on people’s self-reported levels of depression and anxiety. On a scale of zero to 36, we found that a person who experienced ethnic and racial harassment reported having levels of depression and anxiety that were two points higher than people who didn’t experience harassment. The fear of harassment alone is detrimental to mental health: those who feared harassment but had not experienced it reported lower mental health than those who neither experienced nor feared it. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, we did not find very many factors which helped to mitigate the effects of harassment on mental health. On average, those people living in neighbourhoods with a higher proportion of residents from their own ethnic group experienced lower levels of harassment and better mental health. But we found that living in an area with more people of their own ethnic group didn’t protect somebody against the possible negative mental health impacts of ethnic and racial harassment. </p>
<p>We did find though that people who said they had a large number of friends also reported having less of a decline in their mental health after experiencing ethnic and racial harassment. This means that large friendship groups can offer some protection for those who are targeted. </p>
<p>Our research has established links between ethnic and racial harassment and worse mental health. But we have not established if ethnic and racial harassment had a direct effect on mental health or if those with worse mental health are more likely to report harassment. It’s also possible that certain types of people are more likely to report harassment and poorer mental health. Any interventions designed to help improve mental health of people from minority communities, will need to take this into account.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alita Nandi receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Renee Luthra receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>Hate crime hurts.Alita Nandi, Research Fellow, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of EssexRenee Luthra, Research Fellow, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/661812016-11-01T15:57:12Z2016-11-01T15:57:12ZWhat we’ve found by mapping incidents of intolerance across South Asia<p>Intolerance is a rising global concern and South Asia is no exception. In Uttar Pradesh, India, a young victim of a so-called honour killing left a <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/57be948d37ba49f233000001">chilling video</a> predicting her death at the hands of family members. In Quetta, Pakistan, an <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/57aab20506c616e72000001">entire generation</a> of lawyers was killed in a deliberate attack. In Bangladesh, <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/56cdce23fc4f117a06000085">independent bloggers</a> who have spoken out for <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/56c120549de1c39c6c000001">LGBT rights</a> and for preserving the secular fabric of the nation have been killed with frightening frequency.</p>
<p>Disturbed by such incidents and grappling with questions about how disparate events relate to one another, in March 2016 we initiated <a href="http://intolerancetracker.com/">Intolerance Tracker</a>, a website to collect and document stories from across South Asia. Collaborating with <a href="http://timescape.io">Timescape</a>, an online map-based storytelling platform, we aimed to track these events to consider their frequency and to highlight patterns. Too often, past events inevitably slip from memory within contemporary news and social media cycles. </p>
<p>Over the past six months, members of our growing team of students and other supporters have tracked over 300 incidents covering India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. These stories can be uploaded by anyone – and so to ensure credibility we have referenced them through established media reports. </p>
<p>The map takes its starting point from two definitions of intolerance: first, the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ReligionOrBelief.aspx">1981 declaration by the UN General Assembly</a> on the elimination of all forms of intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief. Crucially, this also highlights the importance of the active intention behind an action. Second, we used the <a href="http://www.unesco.org/webworld/peace_library/UNESCO/HRIGHTS/124-129.HTM">1995 UNESCO Declaration of Principles of Tolerance</a> which sees tolerance as a rejection of “dogmatism and absolutism” and “an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others”.</p>
<p>We started tracking stories by including incidents where people had been targeted on the basis of their religion, activism and political ideology, caste, ethnicity, gender, class and sexual orientation. The perpetrator list includes governments, police, private companies and other political, social and religious organisations as well as individuals. Recognising that in many cases a particular incident often has multiple actors as well as layers of influence and politics, the map allows users to choose as many options as applicable in an attempt to highlight the complexity of a particular incident.</p>
<h2>Lessons from the map</h2>
<p>Some revealing patterns are already emerging. In 86 cases, the government itself was a key perpetrator. Equally revealing was that of these 86 cases, 64 were instances where the views of individuals and groups were seen to challenge the state. It’s difficult to challenge structural and top-down forms of intolerance, such as the use of archaic “sedition” laws to silence student activists in India, when <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/57a7433006c616e720000008">claims of national security</a> and <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/57a7433006c616e720000008">sedition</a> are used to stymie alternative views. In such instances, people are faced with difficult choices about which institutions or organisations they can turn to as they resist the impunity of their governments. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143669/original/image-20161028-15779-jgy9o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143669/original/image-20161028-15779-jgy9o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143669/original/image-20161028-15779-jgy9o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143669/original/image-20161028-15779-jgy9o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143669/original/image-20161028-15779-jgy9o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143669/original/image-20161028-15779-jgy9o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143669/original/image-20161028-15779-jgy9o7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tracking intolerance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">http://intolerancetracker.com/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The category of “individuals” as perpetrators is a curious one, because in many incidents it is unclear whether particular individuals have acted independently or on behalf of someone else, for instance, <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/56d03a8796ac166370000003">fringe religious</a> and social groups. Worryingly, their actions often overlap with those of <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/5723749ee8acecbb6d000004">government or police</a> or extend discriminatory legal frameworks, such as the <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/571e960647eb7ea91a00000c">numerous cases</a> of vigilante violence related to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. In cases where the state is complicit in perpetuating a culture of intolerance and cycles of violence, it’s difficult to really determine the perpetrator with certainty. Particularly if fringe groups and individuals start to become unofficial arms of state violence.</p>
<p>Attacks against women, gender and sexual minorities are also common. These include honour killings and moral policing of women’s actions and behaviour by family members and other self-professed moral authorities. In Pakistan, Qandeel Balooch, a television and social media celebrity, was <a href="https://theconversation.com/qandeel-baloch-stricter-pakistani-laws-have-not-deterred-honour-killings-62873">recently murdered</a> for “bringing disrepute to her family”, while in Mangalore, a pub and lounge <a href="https://www.timescape.io/intolerance-map/56c6132abf3117140200000b">was attacked</a> and women brutally beaten up for “tarnishing Indian values”. </p>
<h2>An uneven landscape</h2>
<p>Our reliance on news reports undoubtedly means that the map might reinforce some of the unevenness of the media reporting on incidents of intolerance. For example, rampant and everyday forms of gender, caste, or class discrimination perpetuate structural intolerance but often fly under the media radar. And while religious violence is also widely reported, incidents related to gender and sexual orientation appear less frequently. This could be because victims of sexual violence are less inclined to report such cases. </p>
<p>As we continue to use the map to track incidents of intolerance, we’re seeking to overcome these imbalances by reaching out to institutions and individuals in South Asia and widening our scope of sources. We hope that by putting these stories on the map, trying to understand their spatial patterns and visualising their cumulative impact, we can open new lines of inquiry and spur debate about solutions to this urgent and growing problem.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66181/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>A new tool is tracking attacks on people for their religion, politics, caste, ethnicity, gender, class and sexual orientation.Siddharth Peter de Souza, PhD candidate in Law, Humboldt University of BerlinNida Rehman, PhD candidate in Geography, University of CambridgeSaba Sharma, PhD Candidate in Geography, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/577632016-05-16T21:43:13Z2016-05-16T21:43:13ZOrganised religion must join the fight against homophobia<p>Established in 2004, the <a href="http://dayagainsthomophobia.org/">International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia</a> seeks to raise global awareness of the discrimination which many millions of people continue to suffer simply on the grounds of their sexual orientation. It falls on May 17 – the date in 1990 when the World Health Organisation <a href="http://www.lgbt-education.info/en/news/global_news/news?id=572">finally removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders</a>.</p>
<p>The world has come a long way since then. But demolishing prejudice can rarely be achieved overnight, and in many parts of the world, homophobia, transphobia and biphobia are widespread and deeply entrenched. </p>
<p>Many campaigners argue that the keys to changing discriminatory attitudes towards sexual minorities are education and availability of positive role models. But for all the good they do, approaches based upon the raising of consciousness are increasingly having to confront a very powerful and, in many cases, seemingly intractable opponent: religion.</p>
<p>Prejudice based on religious belief is far harder to shift than the more conventional folkloric attitudes that have long provided shaky and unstable support to widespread homophobia. </p>
<p>A series of recent developments illustrate the extent to which parts of established churches and religious communities are increasingly targeting sexual minorities. </p>
<p>In January 2016, the Church of England held its bi-annual <a href="https://theconversation.com/together-but-at-what-price-anglican-ruling-against-same-sex-marriage-marginalises-us-church-53252">Primates meeting</a>, in which the world’s 38 principal Anglican leaders met to discuss doctrinal and administrative matters. Despite (or perhaps because of) a perception that the Church of England has been leaning towards a liberal standpoint on the question of sexual minorities, the meeting became embroiled in a bitter row over the question of whether the church should accommodate homosexuality, same-sex marriage and the appointment of gay clergy. </p>
<p>The disagreement saw the head of the Ugandan Anglican church reject calls for an end to the victimisation of gays and lesbians, stating that homosexual practices are “<a href="http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Church-of-Uganda-boycott-Anglican-Summit-gays/-/688334/3093818/-/68jefl/-/index.html">incompatible with Scripture</a>”. </p>
<p>The Catholic Church, too, has moved slowly. While Pope Francis has called for an end to unjust discrimination against gays and lesbians, he has also stated that the church will not change any of its official doctrines on homosexuality – and beyond the ostensibly liberal climate of the Vatican, leading Catholic clerics elsewhere have reasserted the need to remain steadfast on the question of sexual minorities. </p>
<p>As with the Anglican communion, certain wings of the Catholic church have been taking harsh conservative stands of late. In <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201605160790.html">Malawi</a>, Catholic bishops recently <a href="http://www.nyasatimes.com/2016/03/13/full-text-of-pastoral-letter-of-episcopal-conference-of-malawi/">issued a pastoral letter</a> in which they faulted the government’s moratorium aimed at stopping gay arrests under the Malawi Penal Code. The bishops expressed worry at the government’s “betrayal” of bowing to human rights campaigners and international actors on homosexuality.</p>
<h2>Spreading the word</h2>
<p>But lest anyone imagine that such prejudices are only to be found among congregations in the Southern Hemisphere, the recent and well-publicised series of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/lgbt-discrimination-protection-states-religion/422730/">legal attacks against sexual minorities in the US</a>, often in the name of “religious freedom”, is a reminder that discrimination on grounds of sexual identity is a truly global phenomenon. </p>
<p>For years now, Christian conservative groups from the US have been extending their prejudices into the African continent. Prominent African religious leaders have been deployed to campaign against LGBT rights. Right-wing American Christian organisations have opened new offices and increased resources in Africa to expand operations. Their stated aim is typically to popularise their teaching and to advocate for the incorporation of “Christian views” in legislation and policies. </p>
<p>The most notorious example is its instigation and support of anti-homosexuality sentiment in Uganda, which has resulted in some of the African continent’s harshest homophobic laws.</p>
<p>Beyond Africa and the US, sexual minorities have long been persecuted in parts of the Middle East. Their suffering has reached a new and terrible low point in those areas controlled by the so-called Islamic State (IS), with reports detailing IS’s systematic executions of gay men in the towns and villages it has captured.</p>
<h2>Humanity and inhumanity</h2>
<p>The right to free expression of religion and conscience is a fundamental human right. The historical struggles for religious freedom across the world have exerted a profound influence upon human rights. We must all be free to hold (or not to hold) to a particular belief system from which we seek to derive meaning, inspiration and guidance. </p>
<p>But even as a human right, religious freedom does not extend to persecuting or enabling the persecution of others.</p>
<p>Many religious believers base their faith on very difficult and demanding values and commitments. It is extremely difficult to love one’s neighbour when neighbours have become a source of fear and hostility. It is extremely difficult for many to recognise those they deem “unfaithful and godless” as God’s children.</p>
<p>May 17 offers all of us, religious and non-religious alike, the opportunity to recognise the sheer inhumanity of discriminating against others simply because of who they love. In a world so dogged by suffering and oppression, the energy and commitment of many religious communities can be put to far better use.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57763/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>Religious leaders have done little to help combat institutionalised homophobia – and some have flat-out encouraged it.Andrew Fagan, Co-Director of Postgraduate Studies, Human Rights Centre, University of EssexAlan Msosa, PhD Student, University of Essex Human Rights Centre, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/512342015-12-04T11:11:01Z2015-12-04T11:11:01ZHow pervasive anti-millennial sentiment has hurt the cause of student protesters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104349/original/image-20151203-29636-1yfakuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The so-called 'lamest' generation has some very real grievances.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-270054716/stock-photo-new-york-city-april-students-adjuncts-union-representatives-gathered-at-columbia.html?src=K2pZdE1oL1o6-BejpdpCUw-1-1">'Protestor' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s now readily apparent that <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-have-the-demands-of-black-students-changed-so-little-since-the-1960s-50695">we’re in the midst of a new wave of college student protests</a>. </p>
<p>From the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/protests-university-of-missouri_56401af5e4b0307f2cade647">ConcernedStudent1950</a> movement that led to the ouster of University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe to the <a href="http://college.usatoday.com/2015/11/12/million-student-march-debt-tuition/">Million Student March</a> that spanned 110 campuses and called for a debt-free education, campuses across the nation are witnessing an upsurge in student resistance.</p>
<p>The protests have focused on the biased treatment of specific student populations, discriminatory practices and the economic challenges students face. </p>
<p>Interestingly, though, much of the response to these protests has focused less on the issues raised by students and more on the character flaws of the students themselves. The story has been that there must be something wrong with these kids. </p>
<p>Building on anti-millennial rhetoric, student protesters have been described as <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/">overreacting</a>, hysterical, entitled and <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426853/yale-student-protest-safe-space-political-correctness">coddled</a>. They’ve been accused of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges">lacking resilience</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/">practicing intolerance</a> and <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/11/13/million-student-march-organizer-cant-explain-how-to-pay-for-free-college">being unable to grasp reality</a>. </p>
<p>But the critiques and characterizations of the student protesters actually aren’t grounded in any sort of reality. Instead, public response to student protests has been largely based on anecdote, intolerance and a failure to recognize the very real challenges students face today. </p>
<h2>The “lamest” generation</h2>
<p>The attacks on student protesters shouldn’t come as a surprise. They add to the pervasive view that millennials are spoiled slackers. They’ve even <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/29/from-led-zeppelin-to-breaking-bad-the-lamest-generation.html">been described</a> as “the lamest generation.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Citizen-Generation-Reshaping-American/dp/0872895386/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1443802007&sr=8-5&keywords=russell+dalton">According to political scientist Russell Dalton</a>, millennial Americans may be the most disparaged generation of young people in the nation’s history. Yes, older people have always belittled younger generations. (Even the so-called “Greatest Generation” <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/002774-milennial-generation-safe-home">was criticzed</a> for being “over-mothered.”) But Dalton’s research shows that millennials may be the most publicly denounced generation of all time.</p>
<p>In an article about European millennials, Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/31/downward-mobility-europe-young-people">wrote</a>, “every generation has its measure of outcasts. However, it doesn’t happen often that the plight of being outcast may stretch to embrace a whole generation.” </p>
<p>Indeed, the problem seems to run deeper than standard-issue generation bashing.</p>
<p>For one, the attacks seem to mimic the economic and political realities into which millennials were born. Along with the rise of a neoliberal economic order that privileges the market over citizens, <a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/staggering-ways-america-rigged-traumatize-and-impoverish-kids-coming-out-college">we’ve witnessed the evolution of a national attitude that increasingly views social crises as personal problems</a>. </p>
<p>In other words, rather than understanding the challenges facing this generation of young people – student debt, a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/even-baby-boomers-think-its-harder-to-get-started-than-it-used-to-be/395609/">hostile economy</a>, a <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/">highly polarized society</a>, strained race relations, increased academic pressures – as a social crisis that affects us all, the trend has been to “privatize” their problems and assume that students just need to “toughen up.” </p>
<p>These sorts of claims are legion among university leaders, faculty and the media. </p>
<p>At a recent meeting I attended on academic leadership at the University of Wisconsin, I was astonished at how often university leaders disparaged millennial students, referring to them repeatedly as whiners. In one particularly disturbing exchange I had with a faculty member from Purdue, she called her students entitled slackers. Her evidence? They wanted to retake tests when they hadn’t done well. At the same meeting, a colleague from Penn State said he thought students benefited from debt, since it taught them the value of education. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Jeffrey Selingo, a faculty member at Arizona State University, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/10/21/helicopter-parents-are-not-the-only-problem-colleges-coddle-students-too/">complained in The Washington Post</a> that students are not only raised by helicopter parents; they’re also coddled by helicopter universities that cater to their every whim, while virtually guaranteeing that they graduate. And Psychology Today <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201509/declining-student-resilience-serious-problem-colleges">published</a> a widely circulated piece detailing how students lack resilience and are overburdening campus counseling services for unfounded anxieties. </p>
<h2>The millennial myth mill</h2>
<p>All one has to do is look at the numbers to see how the complaints of academics and the media are overblown. </p>
<p>At Arizona State University, the four-year graduation rate <a href="http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/asu-1081">is actually 43%</a> – a far cry from the diploma turnstile described by Selingo. </p>
<p>And asking to retake a test isn’t an example of entitlement: the student is asking for a second chance, not a gift. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/jobs/31gpa.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">Given the real ways that GPAs affect a student’s future</a>, such worries aren’t unreasonable. </p>
<p>With regard to student resilience, discounting the real anxieties of college students ignores the real pressure they face. Suicide among high school students is also on the rise; <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/">recent data show</a> that some of America’s most privileged students are thinking about suicide at alarming rates. </p>
<p>More disturbing is the claim that debt helps students. It may seem unfair to home in on an anecdote, but the idea that student debt builds character is all too common. We can even find <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/17/why-im-glad-i-had-student-loans/">students chiming in about the character benefits to their loans.</a></p>
<p>While student loans can <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-09-06/student-loans-debt-for-life">sometimes be called “good debt,”</a> there’s mounting evidence against it. Debt creates tremendous pressure on students – most of it far from good. Beyond greatly hindering graduates in their selection of future careers, there’s <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-cryn-johannsen/student-loan-debt-suicides_b_1638972.html">even ample evidence</a> that, in extreme cases, student debt can lead to suicide. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/15/the-high-economic-and-social-costs-of-student-loan-debt.html">CNBC reports</a> that “The high levels of student debt are also serving to perpetuate and even worsen economic inequality, undercutting the opportunity and social mobility that higher education has long promised.” In addition, <a href="http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/student-loan-ranger/2013/05/01/how-student-debt-affects-women-minorities">studies have shown</a> that debt disproportionately hurts women and minorities. </p>
<h2>Facts versus fiction</h2>
<p>Clearly our nation’s young are in crisis – and it’s not all in their heads. There’s overwhelming evidence that college students live in an era of insecurity.</p>
<p>Here’s a sampling:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>About <a href="http://www.cic.edu/meetings-and-events/Leadership-Development/Documents/ELA-resources/First%20Generation%20College%20Students.pdf">one-third</a> of all college students are first generation.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/millennials_report.pdf">Forty-three percent</a> of millennials are of color and deal on a daily basis with the challenges of white privilege.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/4.8-million-college-students-are-raising-children">Twenty-six percent</a> of undergraduates are raising dependent children.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf">One in five female students</a> will be sexually assaulted in college.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_debt">Seventy percent</a> of college students have student debt. Nationwide, that adds up to US$1.2 trillion – a per student average of $29,000.</p></li>
<li><p>Student debt is <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/11/black-lives-matter-on-campus-too.html">higher for black students than white students</a>. In 2013, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-disproportionate-burden-of-student-loan-debt-on-minorities/392456/">42%</a> of black families carried student loan debt, compared to 28% of white families.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/millennial-college-graduates-young-educated-jobless-335821.html">Forty percent</a> of the nation’s unemployed are millennials.</p></li>
<li><p>Hate crimes on campuses are on the rise, and <a href="https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/locationtype.html">over 11%</a> of all hate crimes in 2009 took place on college campuses.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/half-of-blacks-arrested-23_n_4549620.html">By the age of 23</a>, nearly half of black males and 40% of white males have been arrested. </p></li>
<li><p>Despite recruiting efforts to draw a diverse student body, <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=173718711">students of color often find a lack of inclusion and support once they arrive.</a> From offensive Halloween garb to KKK graffiti, these students often encounter unwelcoming, or even hostile, environments. This is especially true at schools located outside of urban areas.</p></li>
<li><p>Black and Hispanic students <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/race-gap-narrows-in-college-enrollment-but-not-in-graduation/">have lower graduation rates</a> than whites. In 2005, 62% of whites got a degree within six years, versus 40% of blacks and 51% of Hispanics.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61">Seventy-nine percent</a> of faculty are white, a statistic that, <a href="http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ839497.pdf">according to research</a>, can negatively influence the academic success of nonwhite students.</p></li>
<li><p>College-educated black students are also <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/business/for-recent-black-college-graduates-a-tougher-road-to-employment.html?_r=2">disproportionately unemployed</a>. In 2013, 12.4% of black graduates were unemployed, compared to 4.9% of whites.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Clearly, students protesting race relations and economic insecurity have valid concerns. And if it makes sense to talk about taking down the Confederate flag, isn’t it also reasonable to debate the commemoration of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/wilson-legacy-racism/417549/">racists like Woodrow Wilson</a> on our nation’s college campuses? </p>
<p>Yet when protests – like the recent one at Yale University – are covered, the students are derided as intolerant and hysterical. Comedian Bill Maher <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-goes-off-on-pc-college-protesters-who-raised-these-little-monsters/">referred to them</a> as “little monsters.” </p>
<p>Rather than analyze the complex realities that caused the protests in the first place, much of the attention has been on the character – or lack thereof – of the protesters themselves.</p>
<p>As Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/11/black-lives-matter-on-campus-too.html">reported</a> from the front lines of the Black Lives Matter campus protests, “All of these streams feed the river of anxiety, frustration and disappointment flowing through black students across the country. These students are not coddled or hypersensitive. Rather, they are grappling with the uncertainty and insecurity that accompanies much of black life in the United States today.”</p>
<p>Why is there an inability to imagine that students have legitimate grievances? And why does the critique focus on the flaws of the protesters rather than the flawed institutions that sparked the protests in the first place? </p>
<p>Unfortunately, until we change the narrative of coddled-millennial-cum-entitled-activist, it’s unlikely any serious thought will be given to the matter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophia A. McClennen 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>Why do critiques focus on the flaws of the protesters, rather than the flawed institutions that sparked the protests in the first place?Sophia A. McClennen, Director, Center for Global Studies, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/273562014-06-02T04:55:24Z2014-06-02T04:55:24ZNightmare in Northern Ireland seeing race replace religion as society’s open sore<p>For the rest of the world, Northern Ireland already has a notorious reputation for religious intolerance and sectarian hatred. This well-worn yarn tells of ancient enmities dividing Irish Catholics and Ulster Protestants. Despite the 1998 peace accord to end 30 years of violent conflict, Northern Ireland remains a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8129.2010.00474.x/abstract">deeply divided society</a> and the appearance of intense residential segregation, separate schooling and low levels of mixed marriage are a serious problem.</p>
<p>But Northern Ireland has now put in a bid to be seen as a haven for equal opportunity bigots, demonstrating its capacity to broaden the local sphere of intolerance to embrace groups outside of the traditional Catholic/Protestant dualism.</p>
<p>First, a leading Protestant preacher announced that <a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/satanic-islam-sermon-cleric-surprised-and-touched-by-peter-robinsons-support-30313757.html">“Islam is Satanic”</a>. The pastor’s reputation was defended by the leader of Northern Ireland’s government, Peter Robinson. Robinson added, somewhat peculiarly, that while he doesn’t trust Muslims that practice Sharia law, he would <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-27604841">“trust them to go to the shops”</a> for him. </p>
<p>Then, Anna Lo – a local Northern Irish politician originally from Hong Kong – threatened to leave politics after experiencing <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/29/northern-ireland-chinese-mp-might-leave-province-racist-abuse">racist threats</a> and abuse.</p>
<h2>Race hate capital</h2>
<p>The preacher’s comments and Anna Lo’s experience are not altogether surprising. In 2004, Belfast was awarded the dubious honour of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3390249.stm">“Europe’s race hate capital”</a> after a series of racist attacks. In 2009, around <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/belfast-roma-attacks-highlight-european-racism-issue-20090617">20 Roma families</a> were forced to flee their homes in Belfast in the aftermath of sustained racist attacks from local gangs. </p>
<p>Recent research notes <a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/two-racist-attacks-every-day-in-northern-irelands-racehate-crime-surge-30202329.html">increasing numbers of attacks</a> against ethnic minorities. Sexual minorities are also the target of hate crime in Northern Ireland. In 2013, there were 246 homophobic incidences reported to the <a href="http://www.psni.police.uk/index/updates/updates_statistics.htm">Police Service in Northern Ireland (PSNI)</a>, the highest number of incidents ever recorded. In June that year, Northern Ireland’s biggest political party used its power of veto to block the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-27201120">legalisation of same-sex marriage</a>.</p>
<p>A trend can be identified. While trust between Catholics and Protestants remains largely poor, public attitudes reveal a shift of antagonism. This trend points to prejudice moving away from the traditional Catholic/Protestant cleavage to outsider groups such as migrants, Travellers and sexual minorities. For example, evidence from the 2012 <a href="http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/results/comrel.html#contact">Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey</a> demonstrates that only 20% of those surveyed object to inter-marriage between Catholics and Protestants, a decrease of 19 percentage points since 1989. </p>
<p>But when people were asked whether they “would accept an ethnic minority as a relative by way of marriage to a close member of my family”, higher rates of intolerance were exposed: some <a href="http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2012/Minority_Ethnic_People/MUSREL2.html">54%</a> of respondents said they wouldn’t accept a Muslim and <a href="http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2010/Minority_Ethnic_People/TRAVREL.html">53%</a> said they would not accept someone from a Traveller background. Two-fifths of the public would not accept a marriage by a relative with a member of the Chinese or Asian community. </p>
<p>These shifts in intolerance demand an explanation. A dual-track analysis is needed here. One part focuses on the nature of so-called <a href="http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/resources/online-library/childhood-transition-experiencing-marginalisation-and-conflict-northern">post-conflict transition</a>. In this analysis, as part of the peace process a number of policies have emerged designed to make sectarianism socially unacceptable. At the same time, given that these policies have done little to tackle the legacy of sectarian divisions, the groups have refocused their intolerance onto other groups who are not so well covered by the legislation of the peace agreement. </p>
<p>Sitting alongside this is the wider-context of <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-more-britons-admit-racism-far-right-draws-strength-from-mainstream-party-pandering-27344">growing racist and xenophobic attitudes</a> across Britain recently highlighted by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/27/-sp-racism-on-rise-in-britain">survey evidence</a>. Rising hostility to migrants and a groundswell of Islamophobia is witnessed across the UK. Northern Ireland is not immune to such a worrying trend.</p>
<h2>Wanted: leaders with vision</h2>
<p>While Northern Ireland’s “new prejudice” requires specific measures to address it, it cannot be completely divorced from a society in which communal antagonism has generated extreme conflict. A vision is required by Northern Ireland’s political class to create policies aimed at a more sharing and cohesive society. This aims to ensure that separation and distrust are eliminated across all sectors of society. Such a vision is sadly lacking by politicians that seek to serve only the narrow interests of their own ethnic or religious communities.</p>
<p>But there are grounds for optimism. Northern Ireland’s strong trade union movement has long taken a <a href="https://www.unison.org.uk/news/articles/ituc-launches-report-on-migrant-workers">leading stance</a> against sectarianism, racism and homophobia. Similarly, the region’s impressive <a href="http://nigra.org.uk/">Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender</a> groupings have been at the forefront of promoting diversity and tolerance, including initiating major policy changes. </p>
<p>Yet the opportunity for hardline sentiments to flourish is obvious. The dream of many cosmopolitans of a truly non-sectarian political force in Northern Ireland that attracts both Protestants and Catholics could take on a nightmarish quality. This would see a successful political entity that unites people across “the divide” in their anti-migrant sentiments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27356/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Nagle has received funding from the AHRC.</span></em></p>For the rest of the world, Northern Ireland already has a notorious reputation for religious intolerance and sectarian hatred. This well-worn yarn tells of ancient enmities dividing Irish Catholics and…John Nagle, Lecturer in Sociology, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.