Woke

Not too long after George Floyd, I happened upon a conversation at CBC radio between a well-known Caribbean-Canadian academic and writer, and a marquis CBC personality, who I hadn't previously realized was Black, because, well, it's sometimes hard to tell on the radio. Not that I'd ever given the matter any thought, but what the hell, maybe my thoughtlessness is part of the problem.

CBC was in the process of re-calibrating to fully-woke mode at the time, and who can blame them? The Floyd effect was causing a lot of soul-searching in a lot of places. The white bougie decision-makers at CBC can't be faulted for trying to get in front of the wave.

I was looking forward to what these two prominent Black Canadians might have to contribute to our understanding of race relations in Canada. What I heard was two extremely privileged and successful people swap stories about the micro-aggressions they had to overcome to make it to the top.

What?

The whole world is traumatised by that iconic image of Floyd's dying breaths, and these people want to talk about micro-aggressions? She's a household name, at least in that shrinking percentage of households where CBC Radio remains the go-to soundtrack. His $200k annual salary at U of T is a matter of public record. These Black Canadians are at the very pinnacle of Canada's cultural scene. They are part of the elite. Not the Black elite or the BIPOC elite; the actual, real-world Canadian elite, and the best they can do is micro-aggressions? Maybe those aren't the people we should be consulting for insights into the state of race relations.

It's not getting any better. Remember the CBC "scoop" last fall, when we got to hear, over and over again, the hysterical "this is what BIPOC people go through every day" shrieking of a 20-something Indian (from India) woman. Her dad is a cab-driver in Halifax, and she had released the in-car audio of an abusive drunk telling him to go back where he came from.

Sorry kid. Contrary to what you learned in your social justice seminar, that's not a BIPOC thing, it's a cab-driver thing. My father had a brief stint driving a cab in his early years in Canada. His cab was shit in, pissed in, puked in, and while his English wasn't yet good enough to appreciate the nuances of the verbal abuse, being spat on is something everyone understands. He was and remains white. It's what happens when you have drunks in your cab. It's not about racism; it's about drunken a-holes.

It's not just the CBC. What were the brainiacs at The Globe and Mail thinking when they plastered a picture of 24 yo Alfred Burgesson on the front page of Report on Business? That used to be a serious space, reserved for serious capitalists who had built some seriously polluting gold mines and made some serious billions or something. And only the most seriously successful of them would dare put their feet on the boardroom table.

I've followed Burgesson a little since that came out. He's a really sharp guy who knows intuitively which way the wind is blowing. You'll be hearing his name again, as long as the white bougie management types think there's something to gain in promoting him, but please, not on the front page of Report on Business, at least until he has some business experience, or business education, or... any accomplishment whatsoever!

The virtue signalling of bougie white folks doesn't do anything to improve race relations.

 

U of T professor agrees BIPOC is bullsh!t

Sweet vindication for the pot-addled hillbilly;  a philosophy prof at U of T has an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail today that essentially reprises something I wrote a month ago, Why BIPOC is bullsh!t. Here's a quote from Professor Joseph Heath;

... the Black population in Canada consists almost entirely of immigrants and their immediate descendants.

Exactly! They voluntarily came to Canada of their own accord. Their ancestors were not brought here against their will in the holds of slave ships. They are every bit as much "settlers" in this country as are the white settlers.

Heath goes on to suggest an alternative, more "Canadian" acronym for Canada's non-white population; FIVN, which stands for Francophone, Indigenous, and Visible Minority. I believe he's partially contradicting himself by favouring the Fs over the Is, but IFVM doesn't quite roll off the tongue as easily.

As much as I appreciate the back-up, I suspect the wokesters at U of T will soon be circulating a petition to have Professor Heath tarred, feathered, and run out of town. He will stand accused of erasing Blacks from the Canadian experience.

He is not. He is merely suggesting a more appropriate acronym.

Why BIPOC is bullsh!t

I've always had issues with the label. "People of Colour" seems a mighty large basket. I spent a few lazy hours perusing grad class photos from elite Canadian schools the other day, like Osgoode Law, U of T Law, software engineering at Waterloo, and so on. Check it out for yourself. POCs are absolutely thriving in Canada, and are statistically over-represented in these elite institutions.

But guess where People Of Colour are under-represented. Check out this pie chart of Canada's prison population in 2019. POCs are about 20% of Canada's population, but only 13% of the prison population.

Let's see how the other denizens of the BIPOC combine are faring in prison stats. The "B"s make up just under 4% of the population, but over 7% of the prison population. Looks to me like the "B"s don't have all that much in common with the POCs.

But the real outliers are the "I"s, our Indigenous population. While the B's are over-represented in the prison system by almost 100%, the "I"s are over-represented by a factor of 500%! 

Sure, they're both over-represented, but what do these groups actually have in common? 

Why are First Nations allowing themselves to be branded by the contrived nomenclature of the misguided social justice entrepreneurs who want to convince themselves that everyone not white suffers equally under the yoke of systemic racism?

The First Nations are called that because they were here first. From their perspective, everyone else is an immigrant, and that includes the Bs and the POCs. They have a claim on the conscience of this nation that is on a completely different level than the rest of the BIPOC agglomeration. 

They should assert that claim more aggressively, and not allow themselves to be used as water carriers for non-Indigenous social justice entrepreneurs with a larger agenda.

 

Toronto activists vandalize SpongeBob SquarePants statue

They actually missed that one, but they got a couple. A chap named Macdonald and another one, Ryerson. Apparently they were the brains behind the residential school system, the experiment in cultural genocide that tried for a hundred years but ultimately failed to eradicate Native culture in Canada.

The "event," such as it was, was called by Black Lives Matter - Toronto, with advance notice to all the local media for maximum photo-ops. Have you noticed that when BLM-Toronto organizes anything, hardly any black folks show up?

That's because the working class black folks in Toronto are too busy working two or three minimum wage jobs to have time for protests, while the middle class blacks are in no rush to be associated with the twenty-something white yahoos who will inevitably show up and start trouble.

I would think that issues around residential schools would be more a Native concern than one for Black Lives Matter, but these people seem to see themselves as natural leaders of the BIPOC coalition. My hunch is that BLM is so flush with corporate money now they have the resources to co-opt the more authentic social justice movements.

There could be a personal angle as well, at least in Ryerson's case. Seems one of the numerous co-founders of BLM-Toronto has a degree in "Performative Dance" from Ryerson. I would imagine he's got ample time for organizing protests, and perhaps harbours some resentment over the fact that Ryerson's guidance counsellors forgot to mention that career prospects in performative dance are not that bright.

Who says parenting is not one endless vale of heartbreak and tears...  "So tell me son, have you made a decision about your future?"

"Ya Dad, I'm going to Ryerson for Performative Dance..."


That's gotta hurt!