Racism Remains A Problem
Why are people of colour having trouble getting good jobs?

By Karl Flecker
From CCPA Monitor

A recent population projection study done for the Department of Canadian Heritage predicts that by 2017 one in every five residents of Canada will be a member of what the government defines as “a visible minority.” This means that, in just 10 years, there will be from 6 to 8 million people of colour living in Canada.

Add to this picture an aging population and declining birth rates, and the result is a country that is replenishing its population base largely through immigration. And since 80% of the immigrants to Canada now come from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific region, the vast majority are people of colour—and they are also the primary source of growth in our labour force.

Consider these statistics:
Among the 7 million Canadians aged 18 to 34, 20% are persons of colour.

One in three of 5-to-15-year-old Canadians is racially visible.

Two-thirds of all children of colour born in Canada are under the age of 16.

The majority—56%—of Canada’s Aboriginal population is under the age of 24 (compared to 34% of all Canadians).

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples forecast over 10 years ago that an additional 225,000 jobs would have to be found over the next 20 years just for members of this community.

The percentage of racialized immigrants with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) or higher is 31.5 %, while the proportion of Canadian-born workers of colour with a BA degree or higher is 37.5%. For those not racialized and Canadian-born, the figure for those with a BA or higher is only 19.1% for the same age group.

Racialized immigrants hold the second highest unemployment rate (10%) eclipsed, surprisingly, by Canadian-born workers of colour (11%), while white workers face the lowest unemployment rate at 7%.

The unemployment rate for racialized immigrant youth (15-to-24-year-olds) is 14.8%, and for racialized Canadian- born youth 15.5%–compared with the overall youth unemployment rate of 13.3%.

Bottom line: The average earnings for workers of colour are significantly lower than for other workers. In addition, the type of work they may have is insecure, with fewer benefits and protections. And, tragically, higher education, when viewed in colour, does not translate into more income or more job security.

Racial discrimination, both overt and covert, is clearly a large contributing factor to the poor labour market outcomes of workers of colour. Lower incomes, higher unemployment, and precarious work are prevalent for workers of colour as a whole. The fact that Canadian-born racialized workers are doing slightly worse than racialized immigrants underlines the force of the racism operating with impunity in the labour market.

The conclusion is hard to ignore: economic disadvantage is racialized, poverty is colour-coded, and the racialized cohort, because of their colour, are not living in the black. Racism persists in Canada, and it is impeding people of colour from entering the labour market at a pace—and place—commensurate with their skills.

One 1995 study, for example, found that the gross earnings of South Asians in Canada was nearly $7,000 less than the national average, and that the earnings of Aboriginals were $9,000 less.

Another more recent development that serves to deny racialized communities fair access to jobs is the series of “national security” policies that Canadian governments have rushed to implement in the wake of the 9/11 events in the United States. Prominent among these policies is a 186-page piece of legislation called the Anti-Terrorism Act and Security Certificates legislation that resides under what is ironically called the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

These two legal tools grant vast powers to the police and other Canadian security officials to monitor (spy on), detain, and incarcerate immigrants who are predominantly folks of colour, to do so outside of a due judicial process, and even deport them to countries where they can be tortured.

And what persons are most vulnerable to the arbitrary application of these laws? Naturally they are members of Canada’s communities of colour–particularly the bearded, suspicious-looking Muslims or Middle Eastern types–or their kids–dubbed by the media “the homegrown terrorists.”

Maher Arar was the most prominent victim of such barbaric treatment, but other Muslims—Adil Charkaoui, Mohammed Harkett, Hassan Almreii and Mohammad Mahjoub, to name a few—have been detained for years. Others, including Canadian citizens Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nuredin—were “rendered” overseas to military officials in Syria and Egypt to be incarcerated and tortured with the likely knowledge and approval of some members of the Canadian government.

Since 2001, Canada has spent (overspent) almost $8 billion on increased security—including extra funds for policing, the military, and immigration, airport and border controls—a vast sum allocated to fighting the “war on terror,” mainly at the behest of the United States.

How will the allocation of such vast public revenues to a national (in)security agenda affect the hiring, retention, and promotion of equity-seeking groups that are the first to be put under surveillance? Will the national insecurity agenda help or keep out some groups?

We got some idea of this threat last year from a U.S. regulation that prevents Canadian workers holding dual citizenship with some 20 countries from working on U.S. military contracts. It’s called the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR).

An aerospace industry worker in Montreal was told he would have to revoke his Lebanese citizenship in order to qualify for working under his private employer’s U.S. military contract. A Venezuelan-born aerospace worker, Jamie Vargas, has filed a human rights complaint, claiming that the ITAR rule is discriminatory because it denies him work on the basis of his place of birth. He cites occasions when he and another employee working at Bell Helicopter Textron were excluded from a computer program because of where they were born, thus adversely affecting their employment prospects.

Given the billions of dollars in military contracts and the many new jobs that could flow from the insecurity agenda, this kind of job discrimination against those born in or holding dual citizenships with certain countries can be expected to worsen. The race, rights, and equity agenda is colliding with the insecurity agenda and its fixation with alleged risks and lists of suspects. A “terror watch” list compiled by the FBI has swelled to include more than half a million names.

A spokesman for the U.S. inter-agency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government's list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity--"Usama bin Laden" and "Osama bin Laden" for the al Qaeda chief, for example.

The NCTC database has grown at an incredible pace, more than quadrupling since 2003. And rest assured: this is not a white list; this is brown and black list. Canada is now building its own “no-fly” list, which has already resulted in a couple of children with the same names on the list being prevented from boarding Air Canada planes. The mother of one of the boys, when she complained, was actually advised by an airport security official to change his name! No one outside the security apparatus can find out if they are on the list. You won't find out if your name or your wife’s or kid’s names are on the list until you arrive at the airport.

So where is all this racial profiling and risk-list-building going? Consider not only which members of our community are most likely to make it onto these new lists; consider also how much our governments are investing in infrastructure, administration, and technology to compile, share, and utilize this personal information.

Consider, too, that when the federal Minister of Transport introduced Canada’s no-fly list, he also disclosed that it would be followed by a much broader screening program using sophisticated computer software and complex algorithms that determine risk factors based on undisclosed criteria. What he was referring to was the computer profiling and security check of all travellers (land, sea and air) in order to assign to each and every one of them a "security level." The technology to do this is being developed at the National Risk Assessment Centre in Ottawa.

The program will parallel--and be interoperable with--a similar program underway in the U.S., in effect putting in place the infrastructure of a North American Security Perimeter. In October of 2006, the U.S. government disclosed that its border security program will screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual, and retain that information for up to 40 years. Imagine the deterrent effects on long-term job hunting if your name wrongly appears on one of these lists.

According to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office--the equivalent of our Office of the Auditor-General--more than 30,000 travellers already have been falsely associated with terrorism as they crossed the border, took a plane, or were arrested for a traffic offence.

And, to be fully functional, the system will rely on biometrics identifiers, thus the push to introduce biometrics passports (a technology that has some glitches in it when looking at folks of colour) or other forms of biometrics I.D. cards. Under such a scheme, records are kept on everyone and the concept of "presumption of innocence" is reversed: every citizen becomes a suspect. All of this is being incrementally implemented here in Canada without any political debate or input from our elected representatives.

Think of it this way: if the new risk assessment screening program were assigning a colour to every prospective traveller—orange for slow down, green for you’re free to go, and red meaning you’re not free--what colour do you think you will get in Canada’s new insecurity system? And to what extent will it depend on your colour?

(Karl Flecker is the national director of the Anti-Racism and Human Rights Department of the Canadian Labour Congress.)



On Critical Mass and the First Amendment

By Reverend Billy
From Yes! Magazine

Reverend Billy—that would be me—was arrested while reciting the First Amendment during a Critical Mass bicycle ride in downtown New York City. I joined the hundreds of bicyclists who have been arrested over the years for their wheeled First Amendment expression. The New York police have curtailed, or demanded that we get Kafka-nightmare police permits for: dancing, shouting too loudly (as defined by the officer) with the unaided voice, parading, biking, postering, handing out political leaflets, using a battery-operated bullhorn, selling art on the sidewalk, well—you get the picture. We certainly do. We have our own adjustment to the First Amendment. “NYPD shall make no law… .”

People sense that now is the time to support the First Amendment. Critical Mass bicyclists are supporting it by saying that it is their only required permit. The rides are peaceable assembly. Their free expression comes in an intriguing form—the act of traveling by bicycle up streets and down avenues where defenders of the internal combustion engine have built a thick book of pre-emptive, car-friendly laws.

Critical Mass is leaderless and has no set route for its parades. To the cops it is like a mirage. Something in the sinuous mystery of the rides makes them gravitate to their power. The uninstructed bicyclists slowly circle out from Union Square and might suddenly take a hard left up 16th Street in an act like the flock-mind of birds. They just go.

Critical Mass represents freedom in public space, where ads, cell phones, surveillance, and traffic jams have melded together to make sections of Manhattan the outdoor equivalent of a privatized (First Amendment-free) super mall. These bikers don’t wear logos; they are not en route to a purchase. The bicyclists are opening up public space as citizens see them wheeling by, and their trips through the city are ushered forward by a rolling citizens’ cheer. Critical Mass bikers make it realistic that there is more in life than consumption, and people who see them feel relieved.

What form would the Boston Tea Party take today, against our psychological traffic jam? What is our equivalent to Rosa Parks sitting in the front of the bus? … of Lenny Bruce talking dirty? … of Wangari Maathai lowering a seedling into the ground? We are instructed by all the enforcers of consumption that to speak up is inappropriate, to act up is illegal, and to ride a bicycle you must file your parade plans. But if we all begin to re-inhabit public space bravely, then there is a critical mass we can reach with the help of the First Amendment’s 45 words.

There has been sacrifice for our freedoms, and not only sacrifice in war but also here at home as strikers, civil rights marchers, anti-war demonstrators, and now Critical Mass riders put their bodies on the line. We are walking around inside the freedom that has been opened up by brave people, their bodies, and their words.

The First Amendment offers all of us our sweaty bodies and souls back. Our 45 beautiful words invite us to appreciate who we always were, and that is the most powerful thing. I mean, that is my faith.


The Fine Art of Raising a Ruckus

By Jen Angel
From Yes! Magazine

On the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, San Francisco Bay area activists locked themselves to barrels in front of the world headquarters of Chevron. They were there to draw attention to the link between climate change and war, and specifically to the oil law before Iraq’s parliament that would give much of the profit from Iraq’s natural resources to foreign corporations like Chevron.

How do we know that’s what they were protesting? Their giant banners read, “Chevron loves Oil Wars” and “End Chevron’s Crimes from Richmond to Iraq.”

Likewise, the barrels that the activists were locked down to were painted with slogans like, “Stop the Iraqi Oil Theft Law” and “Chevron = Climate Criminal.”

Red-clad demonstrators held placards in the shape of oil drums, and there were 10-foot-tall puppets of the corporation’s leadership.

And there was street theater: a “Tug of Oil War,” a funeral for the last piece of ice on earth, and a performance by a political theater group called the Ronald Reagan Home for the Criminally Insane (www.insanereagan.com). In short, the activists completely dominated the visual space.

The Power of Spectacle
Art, music, and theater are often more effective than speeches and leaflets.

Jessica Bell, one of the organizers of the March 19, 2007, Chevron protest, says art and culture communicate in a way that is “more interactive and participatory, not just in how protesters interact with the public, but how activists interact with each other.” Bringing in culture creates space for people to learn, grow, and express themselves. She adds, “Art and theater can also challenge people—activists and observers—by putting them in new situations.”

Rebel Clowns
Imagine being a police officer during the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, preparing to face thousands of protesters. Now imagine being confronted by an army of clowns.

The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army was organized by UK activists and included hundreds of clowns (some veterans, some novices) from around the world. The point, according to Clown Army participant Subsubcommandante Robin Hood, is to “confront the eight most dangerous men in the world—the G8—with ridicule and disobedience; from clowning traffic to a standstill and blocking G8 delegates on the A9 motorway to undermining police discipline by placing them on the unfamiliar terrain of laughter.”

Film footage of the protests show a befuddled group of police officers who stand idly by while the clowns take over roads. What does clowning do for the protesters? “Rebel clowns work with our bodies to peel off the activist armor and find the person who once felt so deeply,” he says. That’s how we “find courage to both feel and overcome the fear and despair that can make activists withdraw behind that armor.”

Pushing the edge of protest means opening space for creativity, experimentation, and growth. Billionaires for Bush, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and other activists around the country are creating new ways to challenge consumerism, war, and empire.

“Public interventions by artists catch the public off guard and disrupt business as usual,” says Nicolas Lampert, an activist and radical art historian living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “These types of actions also encourage people to think and question their own daily routine and the daily routine of the city. In actions such as these,” he adds, “artists present other possibilities—the possibility of reclaiming public space.”

“Old power relations that have been reified and made invisible suddenly stand out in stark contrast when art is used to point them out in a novel way,” says University of California at Davis political theater professor Larry Bogad.

“Just as important, a spectacular, participatory, creative protest can give participants and passersby a sense of the better world we want to see,” he says, “and not just what we’re against.”

Author and activist Stephen Duncombe urges activists to learn the art of using public spectacles to influence public opinion and dominate culture. In his recent book, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, he points to the Bush administration’s May 2003 “Mission Accomplished” aircraft carrier stunt as an example of spectacle and theater.

Duncombe also cites a now-famous quote by an unnamed senior advisor to Bush (now widely believed to have been Karl Rove) who told a reporter, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create reality.” Conservatives, Duncombe says, understand how important it is to create images and narratives to support their agendas, or “to manufacture consent” as Walter Lippmann argued in 1922.

Duncombe argues for the “ethical spectacle” using the same techniques as the conservatives to advance a radical or progressive agenda to “manufacture dissent.” But, he argues, we must do this in a way that is not manipulative or exploitative.

“Our spectacles will be participatory: dreams the public can mold and shape themselves,” he says. “They will be active: spectacles that work only if people help create them. They will be open-ended: setting stages to ask questions and leaving silences to formulate answers. And they will be transparent: dreams that one knows are dreams but which still have power to attract and inspire.”

“And finally,” he says, “the spectacles we create will not cover over or replace reality and truth but perform and amplify it.” These criteria will allow us to meet people where they are, he says, drawing on pre-existing desires and redirecting them toward a positive, more just world.

Stephen Duncombe and all the activists who use theater and art to communicate are saying one thing: dreams and spectacles are important ways of imagining the future world we want to live in.