Global Racism/Satanism, America and the World -- Decline or Progress? #00001

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H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

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Jun 25, 2014, 11:48:13 AM6/25/14

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Charlie Rangel Suggests Republican Opposition To Obama Is Rooted In Racism

The Huffington Post | By Ashley Alman

Posted: 06/23/2014 8:04 pm EDT Updated: 06/24/2014 3:59 pm EDT

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) on Monday spoke out against Republicans, who he said discriminate against President Barack Obama because he's African-American.

MSNBC's Kasie Hunt asked Rangel, also African-American, whether he believed the president faces Republican opposition because of his race.

“You know, that’s a subjective question," responded Rangel, who faces a tough reelection in Tuesday's primary. "But, let me say this: Are most of the states that they represent, are they in the Confederate states that fought the Union? Were they slaveholder states? And when they come to Washington, do you see more Confederate flags than American flags?”

Rangel suggested the far right opposes Obama's domestic policy just to embarrass the president -- a goal he said is rooted in their prejudice.

“Who would hurt their own people -- in terms of cutting off health, job opportunity, food stamps -- to get after this president? It takes a lot of hatred to hurt yourself just to embarrass the president," Rangel said. "So, I’m trying to think with the tea party -- and basically what they have said and what their spokespeople have said -- this would not be the same if the president was not of color."

Despite Rangel's support for the president, Obama has chosen not to endorse anyone in the race to represent New York's 13th Congressional District, where incumbent Rangel faces a challenge from state Sen. Adriano Espaillat (D). Rangel defeated Espaillat in 2012 by fewer than 1,000 votes.

“Like 2010 and 2012, the president will not be endorsing in this race,” Michael Czin, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “However, he believes that Mr. Rangel has been and continues to be an advocate for quality, affordable health care, fair wages and opportunity for all his constituents.”

Rangel has received endorsements from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and former President Bill Clinton.

Immigration reform is needed, says J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon

June 24, 2014, 2:42 PM ET

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Immigration is one of the biggest problems in this country, says the CEO of the biggest U.S. bank by assets.

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/MWimages/MW-CJ366_dimon__MD_20140624143341.jpg

AFP/Getty Images

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM -0.03% chief Jamie Dimon weighed in on the national debate saying the country needs immigration reform for both moral and economic purposes in an interview with CBS News. The firm announced an expansion of The Fellowship Initiative to Chicago and Los Angeles to help young men of color rise to their potential.

Dimon warned the country needs to improve in a number of areas, unless it wants to get left behind compared to the rest of the world.

“The rest of the world has gotten much better,” said Dimon. “But it’s going to be competitive.”

Other problems the country need to focus on include infrastructure planning, inner city education and long-term energy policy, noted the CEO.

“If we don’t get all of those things right, we won’t be in the same position in 30 to 40 years,” said Dimon. “And we need long-term fiscal and tax reform because those things can cripple this country, too.”

Never one to be too gloomy on the outlook for America, the CEO says the country is in “extraordinarily good shape.”

What does he mean?

“We have the best military on the planet, the best universities, the widest and deepest capital and financial market, which is a good thing,” said Dimon.

Dimon, by nature an optimist, explains it this way.

“We’ve got a great work ethic and we’re very vibrant in large, middle and small businesses — some countries aren’t.”

– Sital S. Patel

John Boehner Is Getting Ready To Mount A Potentially Gigantic Lawsuit Against Obama

By Brett LoGiurato 16 hours ago

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House Speaker John Boehner could file a lawsuit against President Barack Obama in days, in an attempt to challenge the administration's heavy use of executive actions to further its agenda.

Roll Call's Daniel Newhause reports Boehner told House Republicans during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday he could have an announcement in the coming days on whether he will mount the legal challenge. According to the report, he has been "consulting with legal scholars" ahead of his next move.

Boehner's office confirmed the Roll Call story, but declined to comment on whether specific executive actions would be targeted. Any legal action by Boehner would be a significant and somewhat unprecedented challenge to executive power.

Obama, however, has given House Republicans plenty of potential material. He has made 2014 a self-proclaimed "year of action," issuing executive orders on everything from the minimum wage to federal pay discrimination. Perhaps the most controversial administrative-only move this year came in the form of newly announced regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency on carbon emissions.

Republicans have also roundly criticized Obama for taking administrative action to delay parts of the Affordable Care Act, most notably the so-called employer mandate.

In March, the House passed a bill to speed up potential lawsuits against the president. But the Senate has failed to take up that bill, along with others passed by the House that target Obama's executive actions. Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said the Senate's failure forced the House to examine other options.

"The president has a clear record of ignoring the American people’s elected representatives and exceeding his constitutional authority, which has dangerous implications for both our system of government and our economy," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement.

Immigration reform? Nah, these are the GOP's three biggest battles

The House GOP has a new leadership team and is happy. But three big challenges lie ahead that could reopen old fissures. And they're not in the headlines.

By Francine Kiefer June 23, 2014 8:16 PM

Last week, some House Republicans brimmed with confidence at the unity expressed in members’ strong backing of two new House GOP leaders: Kevin McCarthy of California, who was elected to the No. 2 slot as majority leader, and Steve Scalise of Louisiana for the third spot, as majority whip.

“In both cases, it’s a strong consensus for our conference,” said Rep. Steve King of Iowa, smiling.

But the ebullience of a week ago will be quickly challenged, if not by ideological and tactical differences between the men – Mr. Scalise is a red-state Southerner close to the right wing of the House GOP, Mr. McCarthy is a blue-state Westerner seen as more moderate – than by issues on the near horizon.

Given the nearing midterm elections, the time for doing big things such as immigration reform or overhauling the tax code is rapidly winding down, if there ever was such a time. It’s the day-to-day business that may well spell trouble. Here are three issues to watch for:

Filling potholes. The federal fund that helps states pay for highway maintenance and improvement is about a month away from a shortfall. That means there will not be enough in it to meet expected road construction bills from states.

The US Department of Transportation says that hundreds of projects and thousands of jobs are at risk, not to mention the good humor of America’s driving vacationers.

The House GOP leadership had a plan to patch this shortfall: Pay for it by stopping Saturday delivery by the US Postal Service. But support for that option fell apart earlier this month.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are struggling to find a fix for the long-term solvency of the fund, which depends on the federal gas tax. Last week a Republican and a Democrat in the Senate called for a 12-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax. They say they need six months to build support for it. McCarthy just told Fox News Sunday he’s not buying the idea.

Right-wing conservatives see the debate over short- and long-term highway funding as an opportunity to pitch their idea: drastically reduce the federal gas tax and kick most highway funding back to states to manage.

The budget – again. Yes, there was a bipartisan budget deal in December. But the money still needs to be appropriated among the various government agencies and approved by Congress. That process was moving along pretty well until the first appropriations bill – three different bills rolled into one – hit the Senate last week. It got bogged down in a typical partisan floor-fight over amendments, even while other appropriations bills got stuck in Senate committees.

The danger here is that the budgeting process grinds to a halt, or gets way behind schedule; that the appropriations bills are not passed in time for the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1, and that a short-term continuing resolution is needed to keep the government open while a solution is worked out.

Tea party conservatives in both chambers have, in the past, used these deadlines as leverage to drive hard bargains or – as the country saw last year, shut down the government.

The Export-Import Bank. A Sept. 30 deadline looms to renew the charter for this bank that helps foreign buyers who want to purchase US exports by providing loan guarantees and credit insurance.

Conservative House Republicans, including Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas, want to let the charter expire. They call it corporate welfare – government interference in the free market on behalf of big business. McCarthy announced on Fox News Sunday that he, too, is willing to let it go.

“This is a direct result” of a conservative challenge to McCarthy in last week’s election, says Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, a tea party group. There’s “a growing block of votes in the Republican conference to move away from crony capitalism and toward fiscal responsibility,” Mr. Kibbe says.

The clash here may not be between House leaders, but between them and America’s traditional business groups – the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Small Business Association. These lobbyists all heavily favor the bank as indispensable to America’s exporters.

H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

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Jun 26, 2014, 4:32:15 PM6/26/14

Racism in Germany

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Racism in German history inextricably is linked to the Herero and Namaqua genocide in colonial times, and to the Holocaust, a program of systematic state-sponsored murder during the Nazi regime. According to reports by the European Commission, milder forms of racism still are present in parts of the German society.

Contents

1 19th and early 20th century

1.1 Against Polish population

19th and early 20th century

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/Herero_chained.jpg/220px-Herero_chained.jpg

Herero people chained up in 1904

When Germany struggled to become a belated colonial power in the 19th century, several atrocities were committed, most notably the Herero and Namaqua Genocide in what is now Namibia. The German authorities forced the survivors of the genocide into concentration camps.

Eugen Fischer, a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics conducted "medical experiments on race” in these camps, including sterilization, injection of smallpox, typhus as well as tuberculosis. He advocated genocide of alleged "inferior races" stating that "whoever thinks thoroughly the notion of race, can not arrive at a different conclusion".^[1]

The Herero genocide has commanded the attention of historians who study complex issues of continuity between this event and the Nazi Holocaust.^[2] According to Clarence Lusane, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the American University School of International Service, Fischer's experiments can be seen as testing ground for later medical procedures used during Nazi Holocaust.^[1]

Against Polish population

The policies against the Polish population in Germany were largely concentrated in territories conquered from Poland during the Partitions of Poland, but also in Silesia, Pomerania and Masuria. They were motivated by racism.^{[citation needed]}

The Holocaust

Main article: Holocaust

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Buchenwald_Corpses_60623.jpg/220px-Buchenwald_Corpses_60623.jpg

Corpses at the Buchenwald concentration camp

With the installation of the Nazi government in 1933, racism became part of the German government's ideology.^[3] In the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi Germany's military conquest of Europe in the Second World War was followed by countless acts of racially motivated murder and genocide.

The expression Holocaust in broad definition refers to an industrially run programme of state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany, a genocide of different groups and a murdering of individuals, who the German authorities in this time defined as belonging to an "inferior race" or as "life unworthy of life" or as disturbing their politics. The affected cultures use their own expressions as: The Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, HaShoah, "catastrophe"; Yiddish: חורבן, Churben or Hurban,^[4] in the Jewish context, the Porajmos [ˌpɔʁmɔs] (also Porrajmos or Pharrajimos, literally "devouring" or "destruction" in some dialects of the Romani language) used by Gypsies, or the Polish word "Zagłada" (literally meaning "annihilation", or "extinction") often used by Poles as a synonym of the word Holocaust.^[5]

The holocaust had been one of the outbreaks of antisemitism, a term coined in the late 19th century in Germany as a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred"). Scientific theories on antisemitism are divided on to what degree it can be subsumed under racism or rather has other causes and mechanisms.

Incidents in reunified Germany

More than 130 people were killed in racist street violence in Germany, in the years between 1990 and 2010, according to the German newspaper Die Zeit.^[6] Only some of the most publicly noted cases are listed below. In particular, after German reunification in the 1990s a wave of racist street violence claimed numerous lives, with notable incidents including the arson attack of Mölln and the Riot of Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992, the Solingen arson attack of 1993, and the attack on Noël Martin in 1996.

Eighty Nazi skinheads went on the rampage, attacking Turkish and African immigrant workers in the German city of Magdeburg on May 12, 1994. Far from stopping the attack, at one point police joined in, holding down the victims while their attackers beat them.^[7]

In 2006, a black German citizen of Ethiopian descent named as Ermyas M., an engineer was beaten into a coma by two unknown assailants who called him "nigger" in an unprovoked attack that has reawakened concern about racist violence in eastern Germany.^[8] He was waiting for a tram in Potsdam, near Berlin, when two people approached him shouting "nigger". When he objected, they attacked him with a bottle and beat him to the ground.^[9]

Also in 2006, German-Turkish politician Giyasettin Sayan, a member of Berlin's regional assembly, was attacked by two men who called him a "dirty foreigner". Sayan, who represents the Left party, suffered head injuries and bruising after his attackers struck him with a bottle in a street in his Lichtenberg ward in the East of the city.^[10]

In August 2007, a mob consisting of about 50 Germans attacked 8 Indian street vendors during a town festival in the town of Muegeln near Leipzig.^[11][12] The victims found shelter in a pizzeria owned by Kulvir Singh, one of those being chased, but the mob broke through the doors and destroyed Singh's car. All eight were injured and it took 70 police to quell the violence^[13]

In 2009, the murder of Marwa El-Sherbini caused considerable public reaction in Germany and other countries. Al-Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian national, was stabbed to death in a Dresden courtroom on July 1, 2009 by Alex Wiens, an ethnic German immigrant from Russia. She had been in court to testify against Wiens who had before racially insulted her for wearing a headscarf. Her husband, Egyptian academic Elwy Ali Okaz, was critically wounded in the attack, being stabbed by Wiens and accidentally shot by court security.

General reports

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) noted in 2001, in its second report on the situation of the approximately 9% non- citizen population after German reunification:

“

(…) that, in spite of the considerable number of non-citizens who have been living in Germany for a long time or even from birth, there was a reluctance by Germany to consider itself as a country of immigration.” Persons of immigrant origin, including those who are second or third generation born in Germany, tended to remain “foreigners” in German statistics and public discourse.^[14]

”

According to the United Nations, people with a migrant background also "are under-represented in important institutions, including the political system, the police and the courts".^[15]

Public debate

Critics say that a lingering xenophobia in parts of German society is being ignored. A representative from the country's Jewish Council argued that Germany is lacking a coordinated "nationwide action plan" when it comes to right-wing extremism.^[16] The German government was quick to condemn attacks, fearing that the developments could tarnish the country’s image.

A former government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye said that dark-skinned visitors to Germany should consider avoiding the eastern part of the country where racism runs high. "There are small and medium-sized towns in Brandenburg, as well as elsewhere, which I would advise a visitor of another skin color to avoid going to.^[17] It is also reported that German police 'routinely ignore racist attacks'.^[18] SPD politician Sebastian Edathy said "People with dark skin have a much higher risk of being a victim of an attack in eastern Germany than in western Germany." He also accused municipalities in the east of not investing enough in the prevention of right-wing extremism."^[19]

Undercover journalist Günter Wallraff traveled across Germany for more than a year wearing a dark-haired curly wig and his white skin painted black, in a documentary film titled Black on White.^[20] He said that "I hadn't known what we would discover, and had thought maybe the story will be, what a tolerant and accepting country we have become, unfortunately I was wrong."^[20][21]

Racist organizations in Germany

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Neo-Nazi_Skinhead.jpg/220px-Neo-Nazi_Skinhead.jpg

German white power skinhead

Despite widespread rejection of Nazi Germany in modern Germany there have been Neo-Nazi activities and organizations in post-war Germany. These groups at times face legal issues. Hence Volkssozialistische Bewegung Deutschlands/Partei der Arbeit, Action Front of National Socialists/National Activists, Free German Workers' Party, and the Nationalist Front were all banned. The National Democratic Party of Germany has been accused of Neo-Nazi or Neo-Fascist leanings ^{[22][23][24][25]} but historian Walter Laqueur writes that it cannot be classified that way.^[26]

References

Olusoga, David; Erichsen, Casper W. (2010). The Kaiser’s Holocaust. Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-23141-6.
A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures - Continental Europe and its Empires, page 240 Edinburgh University Press 2009
Christian Geulen: Geschichte des Rassismus, C.H. Beck, München 2007, 97f
"Holocaust," Encyclop?dia Britannica, 2009: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Nazis called this "the final solution to the Jewish question ..."
Niewyk, Donald L. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II."
[1] Die Zeit: Rechte Gewalt
"New racist attacks in Germany | Green Left Weekly". Greenleft.org.au. 1994-06-01. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"Germany Shocked by Racist Attack: Ethopian-Born Man Beaten Into Coma". Der Spiegel. 2006-04-18. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"Racist Attacks Have Germany on Edge Ahead of World Cup | Germany | DW.DE | null". Dw-world.de. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"German-Turkish Politician Injured in Racist Attack". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"Racism Alive and Well: After Attack on Indians, Germany Fears For its Reputation". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"Mob Rule in Eastern Germany: Indians Attacked by Crowd at Street Party". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"'Shame, Shame, Shame!': Readers React to German Racist Attack". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"Third report on Germany", European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2003, pp. 13, point 29
"UN says Germany needs to tackle racism". The Local. 1962-02-28. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"World Blog - Mob attack in Germany sparks outrage". Worldblog.msnbc.msn.com. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"Is Eastern Germany Safe for Foreigners?: Racism Warning Has German Hackles Raised". Der Spiegel. 2006-05-18. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
de Quetteville, Harry (December 5, 2007). "German police 'routinely ignore racist attacks'". The Daily Telegraph (London).
[2]^{[dead link]}
"New film uncovers racism in Germany". BBC News. November 6, 2009.
Pilaeczyk, Hannah (2009-10-23). "German Journalist Criticized for Film on Racism". ABC News. Retrieved 2012-05-29.
"Neo-Nazi NPD party takes hold in municipal vote in Saxony". The Local. 9 Jun 2008. Retrieved June 10, 2009. "The neo-Nazi NPD party has representatives in every county council in the eastern German state of Saxony after it increased its share of the vote in municipal elections on Sunday."
"Poll shows majority of Germany believe NPD to be non-democratic and damaging to Germany's image". Der Spiegel. 22 Sep 2006. Retrieved July 21, 2009.
"Neonazis in der NPD auf dem Vormarsch". [3]. 19 May 2009. Retrieved August 23, 2009. "Das neonazistische Spektrum hat seinen Einfluss innerhalb der NPD ausgebaut."
Verfassungsschutzbericht 2008. [4]. May 2009. p. 51. Retrieved August 23, 2009. "Auch 2008 ist es in der Kooperation zwischen der NPD und der Neonazi-Szene zu erheblichen Spannungen gekommen."
Laqueur, Walter, Fascism: Past, Present, Future, p.110

External links

Official reports

News items

[show]

Antisemitism

[show]

Racism

[show]

Racism in Europe

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Supreme Court reminds Obama our Constitution applies to him, too

By Lloyd Green

Published June 26, 2014

FoxNews.com

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This June 27, 2012, file photo shows an American flag in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.AP

Sometimes, Barack Obama acts like the Constitution does not apply to him and the Congress is an imaginary being. Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court brought the president back to Earth when it reminded him that that the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and the U.S. Senate are very much part of reality. They did this by saying that the U.S. Court of Appeals got it right when it voided three of Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

The High Court upheld the D.C. Circuit’s 2013 ruling that the president could not end-run the confirmation process merely because at the beginning of 2012 the U.S. Senate was meeting every three business days in, what lawyers call, pro forma session. Oh, and during that pro forma session the Senate was also busy passing the payroll tax extension. Some pro forma session.

Yes, the Senate can be cantankerous, unruly and even stupid. But, these are not constitutionally recognized rationales for the president to thumb his nose at the Appointments Clause.

In its decision, the Court made clear that our president answers to Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution which, in the words of the Court, “says that the President ‘shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States.’”

For good measure, Justice Stephen Breyer, a Clinton Appointee, gave the Founding Fathers their due, “The Federalist Papers make clear that the Founders intended this method of appointment, requiring Senate approval, to be the norm.”

Now, the language of the Constitution is pretty straight forward. If you are the president and you want to appoint someone to a position of serious responsibility that nominee must be vetted and approved by the Senate.

Yes, the Senate can be cantankerous, unruly and even stupid. But, these are not constitutionally recognized rationales for the president to thumb his nose at the Appointments Clause.

The president thought that he had a better idea, and decided to take his cue from that paragon of virtue Warren G. Harding and the first president to be impeached, Andrew Johnson. Mr. Obama appointed someone (make that three someones) to posts that otherwise required confirmation, despite the fact that the Senate was still in session.

Barack Obama figured that he could roll the Senate and roll the dice in one fell-swoop. He bet that he could hang his hat on the Constitution’s Recess Appointments Clause -- and get away with it. He bet wrong.

The Recess Appointments Clause permits the president to make a temporary appointment when Congress is really out of session, not when it has adjourned for a period of less than 10 ten days -- in the view of the Court.

But, here’s the thing. When the president filled the NLRB with three supposed recess appointments the Senate was still doing its thing. It was very much “in session.” In other words, the Senate was busy, but the White House was hell-bent on imposing its appointees on the American public, advice and consent be damned.

A reminder. Mr. President, although you may feel nothing but contempt for the GOP you remain bound by the Constitution.

Attorney Lloyd Green was the opposition research counsel to the George H.W. Bush campaign in 1988, and served in the Department of Justice between 1990 and 1992.

=====================================

Cliven Bundy’s racist remarks

The recent events with rancher Cliven Bundy and his refusal to remove his cattle from federal lands has reinvigorated the federal authority/state’s rights debate. Recent “racist” remarks from Bundy have created a controversy.

Are Republicans Racist?

Most people who vote Republican no doubt vote out of belief that the Republican Party is the right choice (or at least preferable to Democratic Party). And racist sentiments likely have absolutely no bearing on their decisions. However, it is well established that the Republican Party began catering to racist sentiments in the late 1960′s using tactics that still appear to be in practice (more on this below). What’s more: there certainly appears to still exist a racist Republican voting bloc, and this is largely displayed in the electoral map, where the south came to be dominated by the Republican Party as the aforementioned tactics came into play.

Republican/GOP Racism: The History

Something that’s rarely mentioned is how the voting power of the modern Republican party is largely grounded in racist sentiments that grew out of racist disfavor toward:

A Democratic administration who passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
A subsequent switch of African Americans who began voting Democrat due to policy changes in Republican circles intended to gain the ‘anti-black’ vote.

The Democratic Party’s Historical Racism

It’s no secret that historically, it had been the Democratic Party who had catered to racist sentiment. Abraham Lincoln was himself a Republican (as Republicans happily point out). Martin Luther King was also a Republican in his day. But what people generally overlook is this: After 1964, when the Civil Rights Act passed under a Democratic administration, America’s racists switched to the Republican Party. The history of the electoral map makes this quite clear. http://www.270towin.com/

After the Act passed, the electorate in the south went to the Republican party. The only exceptions to this are in 1968 when the South actually voted for George Wallace (who ran as an American Independent; a party that had very pro-segregation views) and Jimmy Carter, an evangelist from the South who unlike future Democrats, would have the backing of popular evangelists. You can see the voting trends for yourself below.

Republican racism - Tea party and the south

Click to Enlarge

In other words, the Democratic party indeed used to be the party of racists, but this changed after 1964. Those who attempt to tie the Democratic party to racism rely well into the past in order to claim that the Democratic party is the party of racism.

The Republican Party begins pandering to Racism

As African Americans begin turning more and more Democrat, and the Democratic Party becomes more African American-friendly, and the Republican Party begins pandering to disillusioned racists who now switch party affiliation. There exists no shortage of examples on this.

Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy

According Kevin Phillips, Richard Nixon’s strategist at the time;

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that… but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.^[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

From Lee Atwater, also a Republican political strategist;

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes,and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger“.^[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

So much for subtlety! Of course, unlike former Republican strategists, Republican politicians would proceed with caution, using the coded guise of “smaller federal government” to pander to those who despised the federal government’s enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Ronald Reagan provides a perfect example.

Ronald Regan pandering to Civil Rights Act Opposition

Just after the 1980 GOP convention, Ronald Reagan visited Philadelphia, MS, where sixteen years earlier, three civil rights activists were murdered. Reagan explained his support for states’ rights, a rallying cry for racists opposed to civil rights laws.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan described The Voting Rights Act of 1965 as “humiliating to the South” in his open opposition to the act.
http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Ronald_Reagan_Civil_Rights.htm

According to Bill Moyers, Lyndon B Johnson soon after made the following prescient observation: “we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”
http://presidentialrecordings.rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/essays?series=CivilRights

“But Martin Luther King was Republican!”

Republicans often cite the fact that MLK was Republican. While true, this avoids the simple fact that the political turning point happened in 1964. It should be no surprise that MLK was Republican throughout his life.

Below is a video of Martin Luther King speaking about social injustices and the need for a radical redistribution of economic power (read more about this here). This hardly sounds like something from the Republican Party of today.

It should also be noted that Martin Luther King Sr, who had been a lifelong Republican, helped Jimmy Carter get nominated as the Democratic candidate for President in the 1976 election.

Last but not least, it should be noted, that the Drum Major Institute, founded by Harry Wachtel (and adviser to MLK Jr) and later relaunched by Martin Luther King III after years of inactivity runs the website TheMiddleClass.org, which quite often rates Democrats higher than Republicans on their voting record’s effects middle class.TheMiddleClass.org rates Senators and House Reps on their voting records in regards to matters like public infrastructure, workplace & job creation, college tuition, and more.

Does the Democratic Social Safety net “keep” minorities poor?

A common assertion made by Republicans is that it’s the belief in a social safety net by the Democratic Party that keeps minorities depending on a social safety net instead of obtaining better self-sufficiency. In order for this to be true, it either means that our social safety net some how keeps minorities from finding work (difficult to imagine since job placement assistance is one of the services offered) or that the existence of a social safety net leads minorities to choose assistance over seeking employment. The latter seems a bit pessimistic and it can just as easily be said that dependence on any sort of government assistance is not something many of those users are proud of.

Wealth Disparity Across Nations

One way to settle this is to look at the poverty data across countries to better understand poverty’s relationship with our social safety net. If a stronger social safety net somehow exacerbates or encourages perpetual poverty, the data certainly doesn’t show this. If anything, it’s quite the opposite. Not only is poverty worse here in the United States than our Industrialized counterparts with stronger social safety nets (in fact, it ranks closer to many developing nations in this area), but upward mobility is also lower.

wealth disparity oecd states france canada england germany

Wealth Disparity - United states vs canada britain france germany

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Click to see full report (PDF)

social safety net - united states vs europe

Some Republicans may object to this data, citing that the data pertains to poverty in general and not poverty specific to minorities. However, it’s difficult to claim that social safety nets encourage minorities to stay poor while their non-minority counterparts without coming off as a racist. As Algernon Austin puts it in Three lessons about black poverty:

And consider crime. In 1992, blacks were arrested for 35 percent of all serious crimes.7 But even if you remove blacks entirely from the statistics, America still has the worst crime rate in the world, and by far! (It should also be emphasized that that these were 35 percent of all arrests; debate rages as to whether the police target blacks for arrest more than whites.)

The same generalization holds for all the statistics, but it is important to realize why minorities are not responsible for America’s worse showing. And that is because society’s most visible problems do not stem primarily from race; they stem from poverty. The poor, both white and black, share the same approximate rates of crime, welfare, teenage and single parenthood, substance abuse and other social problems. The rich, both white and black, share many of the same admired social qualities in the same general percentages. Race is only important in that discrimination against minorities has relegated a disproportionate number of them to poverty.

Read More:

The small-government agenda of the party of racists

It’s common-place to hear free market/smaller government/federalist advocates claim that allowing states (and not the federal government) to pass such acts as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would actually be better for society. In fact, there appears to be a clear correlation between white supremacy and the free market/smaller government advocates. Just as Reagan expressed opposition to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 citing anti-federal government sentiment, Ron Paul (quite popular among small-government advocates for his own small-government sentiment) cites the same reasoning for his opposition to The Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A perfect example of why Ron Paul receives such a low score with The Middle Class webste is his consistent voting against measures which would help middle/lower income people/families, for example; Paycheck Fairness Act of 2008, Employee Free Choice Act of 2007, Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, etc (see entire list here). These are measure which hurt people at the middle/lower end of the pay spectrum, and minorities are overrepresented here. Note, I am not saying that Ron Paul himself necessarily votes this way for this reason, but rather, that there are those who would prefer to see minorities remain there would vote for him for those very reasons.

Click to Enlarge

Myth: the Free Market would have weeded out Segregation

Another common myth repeated by many who oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (their stated reason being that it’s unconstitutional and that it grants the Federal government too much power over our lives) is that the free market would have done a much better job of ending segregation.

This is no doubt true by today’s standards. Any restaurant that suddenly refused to serve minorities would result in an media frenzy which would lead to an outrage and boycotts that would likely end in bankruptcy for the restaurant. The problem is: this was not the case in 1964. In fact, under the ethos of 1964, barring African Americans from entering a restaurants would have been a wise business decision, given the number of white customers that restaurant would lose. There would no doubt exist a niche for “black-friendly” restaurants that served African Americans and perhaps had a few “bleeding heart liberal hippy” (by the standards of 1964) white customers, but this would have been a limited market. It took the size and scope of the Federal government to end this.

Since it’s easy to overlook the progress that’s been made over the last few decades and difficult to imagine an America where this was the ethos, let’s take a look at the approval/disapproval of interracial marriages. According to a Gallup poll, in 1958, 94% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriages and only 4% approved. As of 2007 17% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriages and 77% approved.

Even the 2007 numbers may seem a bit staggering. But the same Gallup poll breaks these opinions down by age group. The disapproval of interracial marriage is largely among older people in the US (who grew up under the pre-Civil Rights Act ethos).

What happens when we break these poll numbers down by geography and political affiliation?

Republicans are still less likely to approve of interracial marriage

The South lags in approval of interracial marriage

Tea Party Racism towards Obama?

While there are numerous of anecdotal examples of racism coming from Tea Party, this in of itself doesn’t prove the entire movement is itself, racist. So how about the Tea Party’s claims that they are merely concerned with the size of government and taxes? The problem with this is that studies have shown that the Tea Party is amazingly misinformed on both accounts. Oh, and it turns out that fifty-two percent of the Tea Party “believe too much has been made of the problems facing black people” compared to 28 of Americans overall.

Examples of Tea Party Ignorance on issues they are supposedly angry about

Read More:

GOP/Republican Congress Racism towards Obama?

While it’s almost excusable that the Tea Party is highly misinformed regarding tax rates and the size of government (which they spend so much time railing against), no such excuse exists for Congressional Republicans.

“Obama is spending us into oblivion…”

Much like the Tea Party, Congressional Republicans were amazingly silent when George W Bush was president and cutting taxes, sending us into 2 wars, and virtually ever using his veto power. In fact, many of the more outspoken Republicans in regards to our debt (like John Boehner and Paul Ryan were happily going along and voting along party lines for said spending. What’s more is Republicans voted 19 times to increase the debt-ceiling (which they later held the economic recovery hostage over).

The huge leap in government debt happens in fiscal year of 2009. Tea Party members can be excused for not understanding that the 2009 fiscal year started on October of 2008 and hence, the spending for 2009 was largely decided months before Obama would be inaugurated on January 20, 2009 (though one must ask themselves why these people would spend so much time and energy railing against something they didn’t bother Googling). But for Congressional Republicans, such an excuse does not apply.

So given that all of the “reasoning” for the GOP’s constant battling with Obama (leaving him so compromise heavily on virtually every issue) is demonstrably incorrect, and that these Congressional Republicans by default should know this (especially since they were the ones who passed much of the legislation that’s led us to this point), one must ask what the “real” reason for this unprecedented political divide. It’s difficult to “prove” that Congressional Republicans are racist (or are merely answering to racist constituents) but their stated reasons for their opposition to Obama simply doesn’t hold (and nor can they reasonably claim ignorance on these matters).

GOP policies are the reason for the ongoing debt/deficit issues

GOP Senators and debt ceiling increases

Read More:

Anecdotal examples of Racism fueling Republican votes and Tea Party Sentiment

“Good American” Holds Racist Obama / Monkey Doll At Palin Rally

FOX News is Blind to GOP Racism

Rachel Maddow Calls Out the GOP on Their Overt Racism

http://www.factandmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/small-republlican-racism-niggar-sign.jpg

http://www.factandmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/racist-tea-party.jpg

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Read More:

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H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

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Jun 27, 2014, 12:21:04 PM6/27/14

Racism in France

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[hide]This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.

The lead section of this article may need to be rewritten. (November 2012)

This article may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. (May 2014)

Racism is defined as the “poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race” and “the belief that some races of people are better than others”. Race is defined as “a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics”.^[1] In principal, minority groups do not exist in France. French political tradition does not use the term “minority” in its discourse because all of the rights that the French Revolution represents lie on two notions: the notion of state and the notion of man. Thus, French political tradition sees rights as universal and natural benefits of being human.^[2] The 1958 French constitution states:

“France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social republic that assures equality in front of the law for all citizens, regardless of origins, race or religion.”

Some believe that politicians' desire to adhere to these ideals leads to a lack of recognition of ethnic minority groups. In this vein, the State seeks that foreigners, who have acquired the French nationality, be considered and designated as French by the rest of the population and not by their ethnic origins. This leads to a lack of utilization of the term “ethnicity” in France. It is said that the notion of ethnicity, when it is used in France, ignores all reference to race, contrarily to the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the term.^[2]

In many European nations, minority groups are characterized by a unique identity, culture, language and religion. Settlement and immigration have been accompanied by the formation of tight-knit communities within the host country, centered around a similar cultural identity. Those who are born or who have grown up in the host country have often assimilated to the host country's culture. This, however, does not prohibit them from openly claiming their origins.

The existence of these groups is recognized in many European nations in both a judicial and at times political landscape. Some states give migrants specific rights related to what minority group they belong to. For example, some European nations offer minority groups the right to receive an education in their native language. France, however, does not allow these rights as it only recognizes rights in the context of citizenship and human characterization.^[2]

Racism against Jews

The Dreyfus Affair

Main article: The Dreyfus Affair

In 1894, a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was accused of giving secret French documents to the German army and was condemned for treason. In 1895, the real culprit, Commander Esterhazy was found, judged and although abundant proof of his guilt was brought to court, acquitted. Dreyfus and his family then decided to contact the President of the Senate to put forth the weakness of the allegations brought against him. Because late 19th century France was plagued with anti-Semitic and nationalist ideals, Dreyfus was quickly targeted due to his Jewish origins and fell victim to much anti-Semitic discrimination. Eleven years after his condemnation, Dreyfus was found to be innocent.^[3]

The Vichy Regime of 1940-1944

In 1939, in the wake of the Second World War in Europe, France declared war against Germany after the German invasion of Poland. Many tensions arose within the government, separating supporters of the war effort from its dissidents. Marshal Pétain became Council President after Paul Reynaud stepped down from office due to the harsh climate that the French government was experiencing. Pétain left Paris and traveled to Vichy (a free zone) with his government. With the support of Pierre Laval, he obtained full powers from the National Assembly to create a new constitution for the French state, putting an end to the 3rd Republic.^[4]

The new Pétain government, also called the Vichy Government, surrendered to Germany and the Nazi powers on June 22, 1940 in Rethondes, France. Germany thus moved into France and the Gestapo occupied the Northern part of the country. Pétain, after becoming head of State, set up a cult of personality system, suspended political parties and censured the press.^[5] After these reforms, the Vichy government began to display its anti-Semitic views by installing laws discriminating against Jews and imitating the Nazi German Nuremberg laws.^[6] In 1940, Jews were prohibited from working certain jobs and going to certain places such as restaurants and stores. They were obligated to wear the star of David on their shirts in order for people to know at first sight that they were Jewish. As the Vichy government continued its collaboration with Nazi Germany and Jews continued to be marginalized from French society, French officials organized raids and began calling for the deportation of all Jews within French territory.^[5]

The Vélodrome d’Hiver

In July 1942, 13 152 Jews (mostly women and children) were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Vélodrome d’Hiver raids. Arrested Jews were transported by bus to the Vélodrome d'hiver (or Vel’ d’hiv’). Singles or couples without children were sent to the Drancy concentration camp and from there, deported to Auschwitz, where most of them were killed. Families were sent to the Beaune-la Rolande or Pithiviers transit camps, where they were forcibly separated and then deported to Auschwitz.^[7] For the first time, women and children were raided and deported. These raids focused on foreign Jews which meant that most of these children were of French nationality since they had been born in France. No children came back from Auschwitz and less than ten women survived.

Apology from France

July 16, 1995, in a site near the Vel d'Hiv, French president Jacques Chirac, pronounced in an important speech, that he recognized France’s responsibility in the persecution of Jews during the Second World War, an action that had been long awaited by the French- Jewish community.^[8]

Racism against Blacks

The African Slave Trade

In 1315, King Louis X stated that “French ground frees any slave that touches it”. Although the Portuguese had been involved in slavery since 1441, it was only in 1594 that the first French slave expedition occurred and it was only in the middle of the 17th century that the Caribbean islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Grenada, St. Domingue (Haiti), St Martin and St Bart were occupied by French powers. Although the deportation of slaves to French colonies had been legalized in 1626 and the trade of slaves had been made legal by King Louis XIII in 1642, transatlantic expeditions had only been transporting goods and “engagés” (European workers who paid for their travel by working for 36 months in tobacco plantations upon their arrival in the New World). However, the year 1674 portrayed a shift in France’s position in the trade of African slaves.^[9]

In 1674, due to oversupply, the price of tobacco was dragged down. This encouraged colonists to turn to the cultivation of sugar. Granted that the sale of sugar cane was a lot more profitable than the sale of tobacco, its cultivation was also a lot more difficult and intensive.^[10] African slaves thus replaced “engagès” as their servile labor was necessary for the economic development of France. In 1673, the Senegal Company was founded. It was responsible for the provision of slaves to the island of Saint Domingue. Up until then, commerce had simply been between the West Indies and France, but now France had entered in the Triangular Trade, which meant that commerce was now between France, Africa and the West Indies. Although France’s participation in the trade was delayed, it ended up playing an important role in the overall trade of African slaves. In total, 17 French ports participated in the slave trade with over 3300 slave expeditions. The port of Nantes was France’s principal slave port as it was responsible for about 42% of France’s slave trade. Other important ports were those of La Rochelle, Marseille, Honfleur, Lorient, Le Havre, Bordeaux and Saint- Malo.^[9]

In 1685, Louis XIV set up the Black Code (written by Colbert), a set of rules based on the principle that the black slave had no judicial rights and was the property of his master. Below are some examples of articles present in the Black Code:

Article 44: the black slave is declared “movable” which means that he is a good that can be sold or passed down from generation to generation.

Article 46: the black slave can be sold at an auction.

Article 28: the black slave is prohibited from owning anything.

Articles 30 and 31: the black slave has no right to go to court, even if he is a victim, and his testimony holds no value whatsoever. However, if a slave hits his master (article 33), acts inappropriately towards a free person (article 34) or steals a horse or cow (article 35), he is to be killed.

Article 38: the runaway slave is to have his ears cut and is to have the image of a lily “fleur-de-lys” ( a symbol of French royalty) branded unto his shoulder. If he relapses, he is to have the shallow of his knee cut and is to have a lily branded on his other shoulder. After a third offense, he is to be killed.

In 18th century France, the funding for African slave ships came from 500 wealthy families, with only about 20 of them funding about a quarter of the 2800 ships headed towards Africa. This slave-owning aristocracy occupied a very prominent part in port-based societies on both an economic and political level. During this period, French commerce flourished due to the development of the slave trade in its colonies. It is estimated that between 1676 and 1800, France deported one million slaves to the West Indies. Between 1815 and 1830 nearly all of Nantes mayors had been slave owners and traders.^[9]

During the period of Enlightenment in France, however, slavery and the trade of slaves was more and more criticized by philosophers of the Enlightenment For instance, Montesquieu, in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) criticized those who called themselves Christians yet practiced slavery.^[11] Also, Voltaire, in Candide (1759), denounced the difficult conditions faced by African slaves.^[12] In 1788, la Société des Amis Noirs (the Society of the Friends of the Blacks) is founded with the goal of abolishing the slave trade using the argument that slavery was in fact not economically profitable.^[9]

In 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen abolished slavery. However, it was only truly abolished in the colonies in 1794 thanks to the Society of the Friends of the Blacks’ efforts. In 1802, Napoleon, encouraged by wife Josephine who originated from and owned many assets in Martinique, reestablished slavery, the slave trade and the Black Code. He sent military expeditions in Saint Domingue and Guadeloupe to contain the rebellions. The rebels of Saint Domingue ended up being victorious and proclaimed their independence after what is commonly known as the Haitian Revolution. In January 1803, the first black republic was founded and took the name of Haiti.^[13] In 1815, after the Napoleon Hundred Days, Napoleon aligned himself with Congress and decreed the abolition of slavery. However, slavery continued all the way up to the 1840s on Goree Island, Senegal. In 1848 king Louis- Phillippe was abdicated and the provisional government of the Republic was founded, proclaiming that “No French territory can hold slaves”. Finally, on April 27, 1848, the provisional Government abolished slavery in all French colonies. The government abolished slavery on May 23 for Martinique, May 27 for Guadeloupe, August 10 for Guyana and December 20th for Reunion. An illegal slave commerce persisted for a short time after but was quickly transformed into a commerce of Chinese or Indian “engagés” workers.^[9]

On May 10, 2001, the French Senate adopted a law that recognized the trade of slaves as a crime against humanity. In 2006, May 10 was held to be a national date of commemoration of the abolition of slavery.^[9]

Racism against Algerians

The Algerian presence in France, both Berbers and Arabs, resulted from a unique history that began over a century ago. Algerians have been migrating from the colonies to the metropolis since the second half of the 19th century. Not recognized as French or foreign, Algerians have gone from being indigenous people, to French subjects to “French Muslims of Algeria”. The Algerian migration to the French metropolis did not coincide with the colonial conquest of the Algerian territory in 1830. At that time, Algeria was a colony that attracted hundreds of thousands Europeans coming from France, Spain, Italy and Malta. French presence in Algeria gravely hurt the indigenous populations of Algeria, impoverished rural communities and reduced resources within Algerian land. These events, along with large increases in population caused the great migration from colonial Algeria to the French metropolis at the end of the 19th century.^[14]

Principally Kabyles (members of a Berber ethnic group), young men provided labor in the development of French cities and of agricultural exploitations in the Mediterranean littorals of the metropolis (mainly Marseille). Migrant workers from Algeria composed a community in the metropolis. These workers created a network that facilitated their access to work, news from Algeria and the preservation of both cultural and religious traditions in France. It was difficult to measure the size of this community as Algerians were not distinguished from the French but simply called “workers originating from Algeria”. In 1912, a census estimated that 4,000 to 5,000 Algerians lived in France and about 1,000 of them lived in the capital. They had become a crucial part of France’s agricultural, industrial and urban sectors as they offered good and cheap labor. The First World War later increased the migration to France. Close to 100,000 workers from Algeria and over 175,000 colonial soldiers were recruited by the French army between 1914 and 1918. However, after the end of the war, public powers sent many of these workers and soldiers back to their colonies.^[14]

Algerians had the French nationality, so they were not called foreigners; however, they were excluded from the rights given to French citizens. Migratory fluxes from Algeria to the metropolis began to be regulated. Algerian migrants had to present work contracts, proof of savings, health certificates and identity cards with pictures. Most of these migrants were young men looking for work. Many Algerian authorities, entrepreneurs and colonists began to fear the draining of the Algerian labor force in the colony and began to criticize this strong migratory current. In France, public powers searched to assist and protect its “Muslim subjects” by inaugurating the Great Mosque of Paris in 1926, constructing the French Muslim hospital in 1935 and constructing the Muslim cemetery in 1937. These initiatives were thought to be masking certain desires to control and keep a close eye on the immigrated community. In 1925, the Service of North African Indigenous Affairs (SAINA) was created to satisfy these objectives. The SAINA led to the development of nationalist and anti colonial ideals within the Algerian community. In June 1926, Messali Hadj founded the North African Star in Paris. These militants criticized the colonial system and called for the independence of Algeria and all other Maghreb countries (Morocco and Tunisia). The Popular Front put an end to the North African Star in January 1937. The Star reappeared on May 11 under the name of the Party of the Algerian People which was later prohibited in September 1939.^[14]

Algerians fought along the French during the Second World War, fighting Nazi powers and helping in the liberation of France. After the end of the war, Algerians sought to obtain their independence from France during the Algerian War. During the eight years of war, the number of Algerians in the metropolis went from 211,000 in 1954 to 350,000 in 1962. However, violence faced by the “Muslim population” only got worse. The French army sectioned off prohibited zones in which it regrouped the Algerian migrants and put them under military surveillance. The army regrouped about 2 million Algerians. Furthermore, Algerian migrants worked the harshest, most difficult and less remunerative jobs. Finally, on October 17, 1961, during a manifestation organized by the Front of National Liberation, 11,538 people were arrested and over 100 were killed. Nevertheless, Algerians continued to migrate to the metropolis, staying for longer periods of time and bringing their entire families along. There were 7,000 Algerian families in 1954 and 30,000 by 1962.^[14]

On July 5, 1962, Algerians obtain their independence. Independent Algeria continued to see more and more of its young population migrate to France. This phenomenon has contributed to a durable change in the societies of both countries.^[14]

Racism against Arabs and Berbers

In March 1990, according to a poll reported in Le Monde, 76% of those polled said that there were too many Arabs and Berbers in France while 39% said they had an "aversion" to Arabs and Berbers.^[15] In the following years, Interior Minister Charles Pasqua was noted for dramatically toughening immigration laws.^[16]

In May 2005, riots broke out between North Africans (Arabs and Berbers) and Gypsies in Perpignan, after a young North African man was shot dead and another North African man was lynched by a group of Gypsies.^[17]^[18]

The "Hijab ban" law, presented as secularization of schools, and supported by all major parties in the French parliament, as well as many feminists,^[19] was interpreted by its critics as an "indirect legitimization of anti-Muslim stereotypes, fostering rather than preventing racism."^[16]

In 2010, a poll found that 28 percent of French people think that Arabs and Berbers are "more likely to commit crimes than members of other ethnic groups".^[20]

Racism against Chinese people

In June 2013 six Chinese students were attacked in a racist incident in Bordeaux. One of the students had a bottle thrown at her face, causing injuries that required surgery. The incident prompted the Chinese government to demand protection for their citizens.^[21]

Racism against Gypsies

In July 2013, a nighttime attack on a Gypsy camp in Seine-Saint-Denis took place.^[22]

In 2010, the United Nations accused France of racism against Gypsies as it began deportations, declaring: "The United Nations finds the recent French government hardline stance worrisome." Activists charged that France's treatment of Gypsies was 'simply inhuman.' ^[23] It was condemned as "abusive and racist," saying "the Roma have too often been Europe's scapegoats."^[24]

Racism against white French

The claim of racism against whites has been brought forward by various far-right parties since 1978,^[25] and recently also from the right: In September 2012, Jean-François Copé, the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UPM), and then incumbent for his reelection, denounced the development of an anti-White racism by people living in France, some of them French citizens, against the "Gauls" – a name among immigrants for the native French according to him – on the basis of these having a different religion, colour skin, and ethnic background.^[26]^[27]^[28]^[29] The former minister of interior, Claude Guéant, went on record stating that this kind of racism is a "reality" in France and that there is nothing worse than the political elite hiding from the truth.^[26] Marine Le Pen criticized that the UMP itself had denied the existence of such a racism during its five-year reign in power (2007–2012) and suspected a tactical move to win over voters and support from the Front National.^[30]

Consequences of racism

In politics

In 1964, the Occident movement was founded by former members of the FEN syndicate (Fédération des Etudiants Nationalistes) which had stood against the abandonment of French Algeria. Initially directed by Pierre Sidos, Occident positioned itself as a movement perpetuating popular French extreme-right traditions of the 1920s and 1930s, which included racist themes, maurrassism and fascism. The Occident movement later became the Ordre Nouveau movement which in turn, became today’s Front National Party (1974).^[31]

The National Front Party is France’s extreme-right party which openly claims its nationalist and conservative ideals. This party was initially led by Jean Marie Le Pen, who has often been considered to be the spokesperson and face of the National Front party. Le Pen has been reprimanded many times for racist actions and the National Front has been held responsible for a couple of race-based crimes.^[31] For example, in 1995, three militants of the National Front party shot at two young boys of African origins who were running to catch their bus. One of the young boys, Ali Ibrahim, a 17 year old from the Comoros Islands, was fatally wounded. Bruno Megret, who was 2nd in command of the National Front at the time, stated that this event was due to “massive and uncontrollable immigration” in France. He added that he was thankful that his militants had been armed.^[31] In 2011, Marine Le Pen, Jean Le Pen’s daughter, took over as President of the National Front party and also expressed her anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views.^[31]

The claim of racism against whites has been brought forward by various far-right parties since 1978,^[25] and recently also from the right. In September 2012, Jean-François Copé, the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UPM), and then incumbent for his reelection, denounced the development of an anti-White racism by people living in France, some of them French citizens, against the "Gauls" – a name among immigrants for the native French according to him – on the basis of these having a different religion, color skin, and ethnic background.^[26]^[27]^[28]^[29] The former minister of interior, Claude Guéant, went on record stating that this kind of racism is a "reality" in France and that there is nothing worse than the political elite hiding from the truth.^[26] Marine Le Pen criticized that the UMP itself had denied the existence of such a racism during its five-year reign in power (2007–2012) and suspected a tactical move to win over voters and support from the Front National.^[30] In 2010, a White couple and their 12-year-old daughter living in a mainly Maghrebi neighborhood were the victims of racist insults and death threats and were evacuated from their home under police protection.^[32] In 2013, three men were convicted in the case.^[32]

In recent years, many newspapers, such as Libération and The Washington Post, have done segments on the increase of racist comments made by political leaders against minority groups.^[33] In 2009, Nadine Morano, Secretary of State for the Family, explained that what she expected from the young French Muslim was that “he love his country, that he find a job, that he not speak "verlan" or slang, that he not wear his baseball cap backwards”. In February 2012, the Minister of the Interior at the time, Claude Gueant continued the targeting of Islamic populations by stating that leftist ideologies were wrong and that in fact, all civilizations did not equate each other. He stated that nations which defend liberty, equality and fraternity (France’s motto) were superior to nations which accepted tyranny, inequality for women and social and ethnic hatred. He concluded by asserting that his “civilization” must be protected.^[33] Most recently in October 2013, a National Front municipal candidate, Anne-Sophie Leclere, compared the French Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira, to a monkey and affirmed that she would rather see the French Guinean native “in a tree than in the government”.^[33] About a week later, students at an anti-gay manifestation surrounded Toubira in Angers, with signs that read “monkey, eat your banana”. Taubira later mentioned that France is in the midst of an identity crisis.^[34] On April 29, 2014, in the Independent, a UK newspaper, Taubira stated:

“I see a country in distress. We need to reconstruct its sense of history and its capacity to live together. Can the ‘public word’ – our political debate – raise itself to address these big questions? I don’t just mean the government. I mean all political forces, both government and opposition, and all the opinion-makers in the media.”^[34]

In legislature

Immigration laws

In October 2013, Jean- Francois Copé, head of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), sought to reform immigration laws by changing the acquisition of French citizenship by birth. Relying on the Civil Code which states that one becomes French through heritage, Copé claimed that the right of blood trumped all in the acquisition of citizenship.^[35] For Copé, the automatic acquisition of French citizenship at birth needed to be reformed as a means of achieving full assimilation of those in France, fighting for secularism and fighting against communitarianism. Guillaume Peltier, the co-founder of the “La Droite” (Right) movement mentioned that in the same way that the right to express the desire to enter a community is a basic principle, so is the power of a national community to accept or refuse such an entry.^[36]

Secularization Laws

In December 2013, the French socialist government displayed its fear of growing racism and divisions between ethnic groups in France. In its report, the social government recommended emphasizing the “Arab-Oriental” side of French culture by “barring the media from mentioning a person’s ethnicity and promoting the teaching of Arabic and African languages in schools.”^[37] However, these recommendations were not well received by France’s conservative opposition who claimed that such actions meant abandoning French culture and secular values. Jean- Francois Copé called for the government to reject the report. French Prime Minister, Mr. Ayrault, responded that he did not plan to remove the ban and that these reports did not in any way represent the position of the government.^[37]

References

Merriem, Webster. "Racism". Retrieved 15 March 2014.
"Minorité Ethnique". Retrieved 15 March 2014.
"Qu'est ce que l'affaire Dreyfus?". Retrieved 15 March 2014.
"Le gouvernement de Vicky". Retrieved 15 March 2014.
"La France dans la Seconde Guerre Mondiale". Retrieved 15 March 2014.
"Le gouvernement de Vichy". Retrieved 15 March 2014.
"Le raffle du Vél' d'Hiv". Retrieved 15 March 2014.
Michel, Alain. "Le gouvernement de Vichy et le rafle du Vél d'Hiv". Retrieved 15 March 2014.
Mariottini, Dominique et Paul. "La France Negrière". Diffusion Photo. Retrieved 28 March 2014.
Sweet, James (2011). Domingos Álvares, African healing, and the intellectual history of the Atlantic world. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807834497.
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France has become more racist, say the French

Published: 07 Oct 2013 18:51 GMT+02:00
Updated: 07 Oct 2013 18:51 GMT+02:00

A majority of French people believe racism is worse in France in 2013 than it was 30 years ago and that it is also now "more difficult" to be a Muslim. The head of an anti-racism organisation tells The Local why the French president and his government must take their share of the blame.

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After last month's divisive rows over the Roma community and reports of an increase in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents in recent months, the results of a poll released on Monday might not be a surprise to many people.

According to a survey carried out by polling agency OpinionWay, a majority of French people (59 percent) believe that racism has increased in their country.

An even higher percentage of French people (61 percent) believe it is more difficult to be a Muslim in France in 2013 than it was in the 1980s. Over a third of French people also believe it is more difficult to be Jewish in the France of today than in 1983, although 61 percent believe it is easier to be black.

“I am not surprised by the results of this survey,” Louis-Georges Tin, president of the Representative Council for Black Associations (CRAN) told The Local on Monday. Tin blamed President François Hollande and the current Socialist government for breaking promises and failing to soften the political discourse.

“The former President Nicolas Sarkozy did many things to encourage racism in this country and the current President François Hollande has done nothing against it. The same political discourse around Muslims and Roma just continues.

“It’s obviously a European phenomenon, but what is terrible in France is that we had a conservative government and now we have a socialist government, who are supposed to be promoting anti-racism policies, but in fact things are getting worse. There’s no hope for us. This is why we are desperate."

http://www.thelocal.fr/userdata/images/1381164031_TIN-682x1024.CRAN.jpg

(Louis-Georges Tin Photo: CRAN)

Tin laid particular blame for the continuation of xenophobic rhetoric under the Socialist government at the feet of Interior Minister Manuel Valls.

Valls has come under fire recently for his remarks about the Roma community, whom he accused of not wanting to integrate.

“Hollande says nothing against Valls. When he was running to be president Hollande said he would introduce a policy to end ethnic profiling, but Manuel Valls has gone against that. We are left wondering who is the real president here?

Tin said black and Arab voters, who had backed Hollande in last year’s election are disillusioned. “They may not vote for him again,” he said.

Tin stresses, however, that France is no different to the rest of Europe and in comparison to some countries it's much better.

“We are very aware of the situation in Greece, in Hungary and in Italy. It is certainly not as bad in France as it is in those countries. But what is shocking in France is that we have this attitude that we are the country of human rights and we give lessons to everyone else."

Alain Jakubowicz, president of the anti-racism organisation LICRA, which commissioned the OpinionWay poll said: “Our citizens are lucid. Yes, racist and anti-Semitic acts have increased in our country, particularly in the last three years. This is also the case throughout the whole of Europe.

“The economic, moral and social crisis that we all know as been accompanied by an increase in xenophobia and assertion of identity,” Jakubowicz told Le Parisien newspaper.

If LICRA’s survey suggested the French believe their country is now more racist, it also revealed the population believes anti-racist groups like LICRA are doing little in the fight against it, with 70 percent considerng their work “ineffective”.

“Our citizens have given us a big kick up the backside,” said LICRA’s Jakubowicz. “In the 80s we were the kings at the dinner table but now people view us as draconian organisations disconnected from reality that suck money out of society.”

The poll also revealed French people believed groups like LICRA should be fighting against racism on the battleground of schools, businesses, sports clubs and in the media.

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Dec 16, 2013 - “It shows that today's France is a mixed France, where there is every culture, and I think a lot of people will see themselves in me,” she added.

Skin Color and Race

Origins of the word "race"

The concept of "race" generates the most tenacious kind of prejudice in relations between human groups and is the main cause of their clashes.

The concept of race remains unclear to many people who confuse the terms of race, colour, and even ethnic or national origin, and culture. This confusion stems from the heavy baggage accumulated by the concept of race, from misconceptions about human nature perpetuated by philosophers, biologists and anthropologists over the centuries.

In its old definition, the term "race" meant a group of individuals sharing externally visible physical traits (phenotypes) whose origin was considered genetic.

Skin, hair and eye colour, size, shape of lips and head were the criteria most often applied to classify humanity into distinct races.

Racism

Racist doctrines are based on reasoning, express or implied, of the superiority of one human group over others and the belief that biological, social and cultural differences between human groups are transmitted hereditarily.

Racism is also a colonial ideology invented to promote the conquest of other continents by Europeans. The best way to exclude human beings to exploit them, sometimes as slaves, was to say they were not quite human. Therefore, the dominators had no moral obligation to face the dominated.

Racist ideology is sometimes manifested openly, in insults, malicious jokes, acts of hatred, inequality. Nevertheless, in many cases, it is deeply rooted in values, beliefs and stereotypical attitudes.

Racism is also associated with power - institutional, political, economic and social - wielded by the dominant group in society. Thus, in Nazi Germany and South Africa under apartheid, State racism was official.

Also in Europe, since the 1990s, many populist and xenophobic parties openly declare themselves racist (the Front National in France, British Party in the United Kingdom, Vlaams Blok in Belgium, etc.).

Definitions of race and species

In the general classification of living things, we use the word “species” to describe all interbreeding populations (that is, which can reproduce together) and whose progeny can also reproduce and perpetuate morphological and physiological characteristics.

We use the expression species and subspecies in the plural to refer to wild animals and to (there are thousands of species), breed for domestic animals and varieties for domesticated plants.

The concept of "human race" was abandoned about fifty years ago by scientists, because there is no genetic subdivision within the human species. Humans are too genetically similar (99.9%) for us to be able to speak of different "races" among the species, as the decoding of the human genome demonstrated in 2001.

Clearly, the notion of human "races" cannot accurately be applied, for the incredible diversity of human societies does not lend itself to any simple or scientifically acceptable classification.

The minor differences that we perceive between an Asian and a European, for example, are a fairly strong expression of common genes and secondary elements that reflect a process of environmental or dietary adaptation (skin colour varies according to the degree of sunlight; the number of red blood cells increases in higher altitudes; immunization against certain viruses and predisposition to certain diseases vary according to region, and so on).

These differences do not define "races" and do not justify racism! However, the "sorcerer's apprentices" persist in using DNA testing to restore old racial categories that could be used to demonstrate differences in intelligence and criminality.

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Jun 28, 2014, 12:49:34 PM6/28/14

France: police brutality, not burkas, the source of tensions

Systemic racism has not seen any consequences among French police forces and contribute to tensions with Muslims.
Last Modified: 26 Jul 2013 12:25
style='box-sizing: border-box;font-size:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-variant: inherit;font-weight:inherit;line-height:inherit' alt="Myriam Francois-Cerrah " class=AuthorProfileImage v:shapes="ctl00_cphBody_AuthorDataCtrl1_imgAuthorProfile"> Myriam Francois-Cerrah

Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a freelance journalist. She is studying for a DPhil at Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco.

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French Interior Minister Manuel Valls was confronted, to no avail, by women distressed by a "two-tier system" for the treatment of Muslims and non-Muslims by the police [AFP]
Until recently, the Parisian suburb of Trappes was famous for producing some of France's brightest stars, including footballer Nicolas Anelka and comedian Jamel Debbouze. But this weekend, it gained notoriety as the site of the latest burka ban controversy.
At the heart of the recent protests is a concern over systemic and institutionalised racism in France's establishment and the unwillingness on the part of politicians and sections of the media, to confront it.
The disturbances began following the ID check of a woman wearing the face veil. What ensued remains unclear, with dramatically diverging testimonials from police and eyewitnesses.
[There are] persistent allegations that French police use excessive force, particularly in their dealings with residents of France's impoverished and marginalised suburbs.
The police claim face-veil clad Hajjar, who was accompanied by her mother, husband and four month old baby resisted the check and that her husband reacted violently, assaulting an officer. Official sources present the resultant protests as opposition to the enforcement of the 2011 ban on face veils by 'Islamic militant elements'.
For her part, Hajjar claims she and her husband, 21 year old Michael, were the victims of excessive force used by bigoted police officers. Eyewitnesses confirm Hajjar's testimonial that she was violently dragged by her hair and pinned against a police car. Her husband intervened and was handcuffed.
Both Hajjar and eyewitnesses deny police claims that the couple were violent towards police officers. According to Samba, a representative for the Association of residents of Trappes, a North African woman who attempted to intervene was told to "sod off, you dirty Arab", by officers present.
Following the incident, around 200 (mainly) peaceful protestors, including women and children, gathered outside the local police station on Friday evening, objecting to the treatment of the couple and to the unwillingness of the local police station to hear a complaint over the behaviour of the officers.
What is certain is that a minority of protestors clashed with police officers who responded in full riot gear, using tear gas. A fourteen year old boy suffered a serious eye injury and a police officer was injured. Six people were arrested - three of whom have since been handed sentences ranging from ten to six months.
One of those arrested ended up with 15 stitches, head injuries and a broken leg, all of which he claimsoccurred at the hands of seven police officers who assaulted him without provocation.
In a visit to Trappes on Monday, Interior Minister Manuel Valls was intercepted by a woman who expressedthe distress of the residents and concern over a "two tier system" in which police violence goes unchecked. Highlighting the current gulf separating politicians from some of France's most marginalised communities, Valls responded by chastising the woman for questioning the police force's integrity.
Despite the serious nature of the allegations, as well as the injuries sustained, Valls has publicly stated that he is in no doubt that the "police did their job perfectly". This, despite persistent allegations that French police use excessive force, particularly in their dealings with residents of France's impoverished and marginalised suburbs.
France has yet to have an equivalent to the Stephen Lawrence case, a watershed moment in which the entire police force is made to confront its racist elements
A 2009 Amnesty International report highlighted how allegations of unlawful killings, beatings, racial abuse and excessive use of force by France's police officers are rarely investigated effectively. Despite accusations of gross human rights violations, often against ethnic minorities, officers are seldom brought to justice.
Just last year, 30 year old Wissam El Yamni fell into a coma and died in police custody following a forceful arrest. It has been a year, and no police officer has been put on trial or has even faced a judge. No explanations have yet been offered on why Wissam's body showed bruises, red marks around his neck as well as fractures.
Also last year, residents of Aulnay sous-Bois accused the police of complicity in the death of 25 year old Christian Lambert during a stop and search. Although official reports claim he died of a heart attack, friends point to the excessive use of force by officers on the day which they felt was partly to blame.
Allegations of police brutality are not uncommon in France's poorest neighbourhoods where the police are often viewed as a violent instrument of state repression, subduing the poorest and most marginalised, with little accountability. Just days before this most recent incident, residents of Aulnay-sous-bois complained of the police's heavy handed tactics during Bastille Day celebrations on July 14th, in which municipal employees claim to have been beaten by officers.
These incidents are indicative of the tense relationship between residents of certain neighbourhoods and some of the officers charged with policing the areas. Just days after the disturbances in Trappes, French Muslim website al-Kanz posted screenshots from an unofficial police Facebook forum, "Forum Police-Info", in which officers expressed racism and violent intent including a call to "empty your munitions in Trappes" and "watch out for cameras and take no prisoners" as well as support for the Far Right.
"Spent the night in Trappes, poor France, long live bleu Marine", one post read, in reference to national front leader Marine Le Pen. The page has since been taken down, as has the profile of one of the officers who appeared to have been present in Trappes, but the feeling that officers are often racist and bigoted prevails.
Politicians and sections of the French media have framed the incident as reflecting tensions over the ban on face veils, however Hajjar states she has previously been stopped because of her face veil and no trouble resulted.
id="li_ui_li_gen_1403971706981_0-link" sl-processed=1' v:shapes="_x0000_i1032">
Clashes erupt in France over veil ban
Although the ban on face veils is perceived in some circles are another opportunity to stigmatise Muslims, recent events reflect far deeper anxieties over police brutality, an unwillingness among government officials to hear sections of the French citizenry and double standards in the treatment of ethnic minorities who already experience discrimination in many facets of French life, from employment to housing.
Valls' statement confirms a widespread sentiment that French citizens who live in impoverished suburbs, be they Muslim or not, don't matter and that violence against them occurs in all impunity.
Despite the law banning face veils having been justified on the basis of protecting public order (although there is no evidence it previously threatened it), the law has led to increased discrimination against Muslim women, including acts of violence by vigilantes.
With worrying acts of Islamophobia increasingly common in France, including at a legislative level where UMP MPs are now seeking to extend the ban of the headscarf from the public sector to the private sector, many French Muslims feel the authorities are deaf to their concerns.
Hajjar's offence was no more serious than a minor traffic infraction - but the treatment which she, and others, allege followed is far more serious. In dismissing accounts of police brutality, the authorities are confirming the widely held perception of a system in which residents of poorer suburbs, minorities and Muslims in particular are less worthy of public protection and fair game for stigmatisation and violence. France has yet to have an equivalent to the Stephen Lawrence case, a watershed moment in which the entire police force is made to confront its racist elements.
In response to the events in Trappes, Valls insisted there is "only one law in this country", a law burka-clad women could not be absolved from obeying. It is time for an independent inquiry which can help heal the chasm in French society by vindicating victims of police abuse and reassuring the residents of Trappes and elsewhere that indeed, there is only one law and that no one stands above it. Not even the police.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a freelance journalist. She is studying for a DPhil at Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco.
Follow her on Twitter: @MFrancoisCerrah
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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FEATURED
ON AL JAZEERA

Jeudi 24 septembre
“Postcolonial Racism” In France: Systemic And
Institutional Reproduction Of Negative Representations Of Colonized People.

1. Can we
talk about ‘postcolonial racism’ in France?
As
a French citizen of African migrant origin, this question concerns me
personally. It also concerns more than 10 million women and men, young and old,
who have left their country to live in France for various reasons. Some
people or their parents fought alongside those of ‘French origin’ against the
German occupation and in Indochina. For
others, it is the French
State that encouraged them
to come in the 1960s because of the country’s economic needs. Others still came
to France fleeing terror or
dictatorial and tyrannical governments and/or wars supported by France.
Whether
they came as adults or as children, or were born here, African immigrants have
one thing in common:
(1)
They come from formerly colonized countries and are always the most feared,
scorned, depreciated migrants and carry with them negative images dating back
to slavery and colonization.
(2)
They are all victims - to varying degrees of course - of exploitation,
experience difficult living conditions, are subjected to police repression
(based on their physical appearance), and are stigmatized.
2. A very
French question:
‘Where
are you from?’ This is the question you cannot escape
in France
when you are Black or Arab. Moreover, it is the first response after ‘Hello’ in
a benign conversation.
Having
an origin or otherwise is not the problem. The problem stems from the
consequences of this question: it indicates that the person who is asked is
primarily considered as a ‘foreigner’ before being French. It reminds Blacks
and Arabs that they have another ‘home’ than France. It is a devastating question
for the French West Indian (Antillais) – a very harsh question for young people
born and having grown up in France, who know only France as their country.
This
situation tells us that, in the French national collective unconscious, French
nationality and skin color are linked. The whiter you are, the more French you
are!
3.
Systematization and institutionalization of racism and/or discrimination in France
In Imperial
culture, Colonial culture, Postcolonial culture, Nicolas Bancel,
Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire show how France’s colonial past continues
to have a profound impact in various areas: international development with
Africa (coopération),
policies on immigration and integration, or even in ‘humanitarian’ policy,
tourism, mass culture or/and debates on collective memory.
This
hypothesis is supported by the writings of Karl Marx. He studied the
interaction between the past and the present, and the role of the inherited
social imaginary through which borders between ‘us’ and ‘them’ take shape: the
weight of the past similarly explains how postcolonial immigrants are treated
today, and how their economic, social and political marginalization is
legitimized: they are a people reduced to their identity as workers. The
emergence of mass unemployment and of various precarious socio-economic
statuses since the 1980s has taken place on the basis of this form of
domination in which immigrants (Black and Arab) constitute the ‘dominated among
the dominated’. Everything seems to have happened as if the ‘French citizens of
colonial origin’ have inherited their place in society from their parents.
Two
situations can currently be seen in France:
(1)
The existence of xenophobic stigmatization in an exacerbated form for those
people having recently arrived in France.
(2)
Racist images which crystallize deep-rooted representations concerning Blacks
and Arabs. This can be seen with the renewal of generations and the emergence
of people of postcolonial migrant origin with their roots in France. One
example: on their arrival in France, immigrants from Italy,
Poland, Armenia, Portugal,
Spain,
etc. were certainly victims of xenophobic discourse and discriminatory measures
comparable to what postcolonial immigrants suffer today. But the situation is
not the same for their children, and even less grandchildren. Only the
descendants of postcolonial migrants are condemned to the absurd but
politically telling epithet ‘second’ or ‘third generation’.
In
effect, racism can be defined as the widespread and definitive insistence on
real or imaginary differences to the benefit of the accuser and the detriment
of his/her victim, in order to legitimize an assault or some privileges. It
displays the following characteristics:
·        the
‘essentialization’ and naturalization of ‘cultural differences’ (including
reference to Islam);
·        The
‘moral disqualification’ that these differences contain, and
·        The
theorization and production of the ‘indigenous subject’ as the ‘body of
exception’ framed by specific devices such as in Algeria with the Sénatus-Consulte
law of 14 July 1865.
Postcolonial
racism is therefore not a mere survival of the past. It is thus a permanent,
systemic and institutional production of the representations inherited from
slavery and colonialism. These representations are then reformulated and
reinvested under the terms ‘integration’ and ‘insertion’: politically, such terms serve
to produce ‘lower-class citizens’, ‘subjects’ who, although they are not foreign in the legal sense of the
term, are nonetheless not treated like French citizens.
The
following quotes show that racism has its roots in French political philosophy:
‘Finally
I see men who appear to me superior to these Negroes, like these Negroes are to
monkeys and the monkeys are to the oysters and
other animals of this species’ (Voltaire, Treaty of Metaphysics, 1734).
‘It
is there before you, this block of sand and ash, this lifeless and passive heap
that since six thousand years preclude universal walking this monstrous Cham
stops Sem by its enormity, Africa. What earth is that this Africa!
Asia has its history, America has its history, Australia itself has its
history, which dates from its beginning in the human memory. Africahas not the history; something of a
legend, large and obscure, wraps it up’.(Victor Hugo). These
words have been adopted recently by Nicolas Sarkozy in Dakar
(Senegal).
‘Nature
made a race of workers. This is the Chinese race of a dexterity of wonderful
hand without hardly any sense of honor; govern it with justice by taking it for
the benefit of a such a Government ample dower for the benefit of conquering
race, it will be satisfied; the earth workers race, is the nigger : be for him
good and human and everything will be in the order; the masters and soldiers
race is the European race. Can each one do what he must do and everything will
go all right. We aspire, not to the equality, but to domination. The race of
foreign country should become a country of serfs, agricultural day labourers or
industrial workers. It is not to remove inequalities among humans, but to
amplify them and make it a law.’(Ernest
Renan).
How
to resolve the current social situation is also presented in colonial and
racist terms, with biological and/or culturalist explanations given such as
those by the prominent intellectual Alain Finkielkraut and others, who have
spoken of a lack of hard work, and unfamiliarity with ‘Republican values’ or
‘modernity’.
In
November 2005, during the urban riots, a government minister declared that the
‘young people living on the poor estates’ are not employed because of their
‘social misbehavior’, which behavior is supposedly caused by their parents’
polygamy!
The
recent declarations by Bruce Hortefeux (Interior Minister) to the young Arab
activist from his own party (UMP) are not far from those of Georges Frèche
(Parti Socialiste) or what Alain Finkielkraut said about France’s national
football team, or the claims of Manuals Valls (Parti Socialiste) that ‘there
are many foreigners here’. In any case, they constitute a serious infringement
on the dignity of Arab and Black people.
The
most distressing aspect of this situation lies in the unanimous way in which
leading politicians, including those from Arab or Black communities (Fadela
Amara, Rama Yade) and by a minority of the Muslim community have allowed such
declarations to become commonplace, and have supported them, directly or
indirectly. Indignation varies according to the group concerned.
In
addition to official speeches and statements in private, the systemization and
the institutionalization of racism can also been read through the theme of
‘integration’, which is very present in public policy. This theme stems from
slavery and colonialism. Not only does it undermine the equality of citizens to
serve the cultural designs of the nation, but it also supposes that immigrants
or their children cannot become full citizens unless they renounce what was
known as their ‘personal status’, i.e. their identity. That is why in official
speeches we expect to hear sentences or words like: ‘Islam is ill-suited to
modernity’, ‘secularism’, ‘lack of efforts to integrate’, ‘women needing to be
emancipated through the law on religious symbols’, ‘the need to adapt the penal
measures to the new populations’; and like during colonization itself,
stereotypes such as the ‘violent heterosexuality of Blacks and Arabs’,
‘barbaric peoples’, ‘urban territories to conquer or re-conquer’, etc. All this
is the continuation of the agenda of the civilizing mission.
Conclusion
Underlining
that slavery and colonization lie behind some forms of discrimination and
racism in France
against Blacks and Arabs is not to deny the existence of other forms of racism
and discrimination, which are rooted in history and other social processes. I
am not arguing that all Blacks and Arabs in France are experiencing the same
situation as their ancestors. Certainly, the prefix ‘post’ marks a filiation or
link. But, it also means that we are now in a different era. The main question
which must be asked is: ‘who is allowed to assign names to whom, why and how’?
This is the perspective from which I would like to pursue the debate.
·
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http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2012/06/13/racial-profiling-france-us-pt-2/

Racial Profiling in
France
and U.S.,
(Pt.2)
June 13, 2012 • Trica
Danielle Keaton • criminal justice, Europe, racial profiling
In Part 1 of
this post, I wrote about the similarities between the police practice of racial
profiling in France and the U.S., emphasizing that different constructs of race
in both countries, nonetheless, produce the same outcome, again racial
profiling.
Though discredited
by science, race as inherent inferiority and superiority has
been central to the socio-economic organization of the U.S. The four
horsemen of racial inequality—education, incarceration, health, and wealth—are
living legacies of race-making in the U.S. and so is racial profiling.

(Image source)
“There’s a long
history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law
enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact,” said President Obama in
2009 after theprofiling and arrest of Harvard
Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
And the stop-and-frisk of
innocent, predominately Black and Latino New Yorkers is also a fact, numbering
over 4 million by some estimates since 2002. The experiences of New York University Professor Manthia Diawara
illustrates how racial profiling cuts across social class. Professor Diawara was
stopped and humiliated by the police while riding in a taxi, not in the U.S. but Paris,
France.
Stop-and-frisk
laws in the US
are not necessarily illegal, but the lawsuit against the
New York Police Department’s use of this tactic challenges its legality.
Similarly, stop-and-searches in France
are not illegal, but racial profiling is. It should not be forgotten that
racial profiling led to the 2005 revolts in France, following the deaths of 17
year old Zyed Benna and 15 year old Bouna Traoré who mistook a transformer in a
power station as a safe haven and were horribly electrocuted when fleeing from
a police control.
Ultimately, the
Trayvon Martin tragedy and these examples are only the surface of a more
pervasive and malignant, international problem in countries where blackness and
stigmatized difference are major triggers of racial bias associated with
pathology and crime. Will passing the “End Racial Profiling Act of 2011” in the U.S. make a
difference when perception drives profiling? Hard to say. But Civil Rights
history shows that behavior can be legislated where beliefs cannot. In France,
however, where no such model exists, the anti-profiling lawsuit and Hollande’s
reforms were largely made possible by grassroots activists, using non-traditional
methods, including a damning Hip
Hop focused public awareness series by the NGO, “Stop
le contrôle au faciès.”
(image source)
Are
stops-and-searches racially motivated in a race-blind France? OSJI
lawyer Lanna Hollosums it up best:
“The claimants are all black or North
African men who were stopped by police because of what they look like rather
than what they did. This is racial, or ethnic profiling, constituting
discrimination which is illegal according to the French Constitution and
international law.”
Similarly, Trayvon Martin and countless others in the U.S. have been
stopped for what they looked like not for what they did.

~ Trica Danielle Keaton, PhD,
Associate Professor, African American & Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt
Unviersity, is the author, of several books, most recently the co-edited
volume, Black France / France Noire: The
History and Politics of Blackness (Duke University Press, 2012).
This volume includes a preface by Christiane Taubira, who was recently
named Minister of Justice by President Hollande. With thanks to Mamadou
Diouf, Roy Jensen and Stephen Steinberg for their encouragement and
invaluable comments on an earlier drafts of this work.
Tags: France, NYCLU, racial profiling, stop-and-frisk
Comments
1.                             Stephen Steinberg
June 13, 2012 at 5:05 pm • Log in to Reply
Trica Danielle Keaton provides a valuable international
perspective on the stop-and-frisk policies in the U.S. that are a flagrant violation
of elementary civil rights. Yet these practices have passed judicial review of
the courts on the transparently fraudulent claim that police have reasonable
cause, in each instance, to conduct a search. For example, police claim they
are acting on a report of a crime by somebody “who fits your description” or is
otherwise deemed to be “suspicious.”
For over a decade, sociologist Harry Levine has carried on a
lonely crusade against this outrageous policy, and finally, his arsenal of
facts have received prominent coverage in the New York Times and other liberal
media. For example, in New York City,
that fabled bastion of racial tolerance, there have been nearly 700,000
searches over the past year, 87 percent of which have been of Blacks and
Latinos. Never mind that 95 percent of these searches do not result in an
arrest.
For example:http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/stop_and_frisk/index.htmland http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/opinion/the-scars-of-stop-and-frisk.html
Obviously, Mayor Bloomberg bears personal responsibility for
this contemptible policy. However, Trica’s eye-opening piece forces us to see
this practice within the context of the historic oppression of peoples of
African descent that continues down to the present, even among nations that
purport to be democracies for the rest of the world to emulate.
2.                             Joe
June 13, 2012 at 9:28 pm • Log in to Reply
Trica, thanks for the second part too. Clearly, a key issue here
is to problematize the central villains in both France
and the US
— elite whites, usually white men, who control the legal, political, and policing
systems. Notice how almost all of this discussion/research/reporting never does
not call out as such these elite white men with power who are acting out of
more than racial bias, but indeed a broad white racial framing of society — a
framing with racist images, stereotypes, narratives, emotions, ideologies, and
inclinations to discriminate. A framing designed to serve white interests,
again and again…. The key question is why these controlling white (male)
oppressors are not targeted with constant discussion in and out of policy and
academic research circles as the principal ‘problem’ of policing and much other
everyday white racism in all Western societies. Until they are the focus and
challenged by large scale, organized civil rights movements, these profiling
oppressions will not change — as Stephen Steinberg clearly implies in regard to
the white man in control in NYC , Bloomberg.

Mot injuste: France deploys new, worrying tactic
against racism
May 17, 2013 by Lara Vergnaud in Europe.
1
Comment
§
§
§
§
§                                                                                       3
Just words? AFP PHOTO / PATRICK KOVARIK
On
the eve of the Constitutional Court’s Friday ruling upholding
a controversial gay marriage law, France adopted a less
media-saturated measure to (allegedly) combat discrimination. Late Thursday,
the National Assembly adopted a bill sponsored
by the far-left Left Front coalition to omit the words race and racial from the text of all French laws. (In France, the
terms have stronger connotations than their English equivalents, as they are
also used to designate animal breeds, and harbors strong associations with the
Holocaust.)
The bill is très Gallic: in the 1990s, French lawmakers
fought against the influence of English by legally eradicating words like
“email” and “weekend.” (It worked out as well as you might expect.) And the
collection of data on ethnicity was banned until 2010. Today, it’s still rare
to see questions on race or ethnicity on any official documents (age and
marital status, on the other hand, are fair game during job interviews).
But semantics can’t resolve France’s
domestic tensions. Case in point: a recent World Values Survey – dissected by the Washington
Post’s Max Fisher — asked respondents who they least would want as neighbors.
Among U.S. respondents, less
than 5% answered, “people of a different race” compared to 22.7% in France, which
Fisher names as “one of the least racially tolerant countries on the
continent.” The timing of this bill that hopes to eradicate discrimination
via state-sponsored semantic game-playing is ironic: it comes on the heels of
accusations from France’s
regional language campaigners (speakers of Basque, Catalan, Alsatian, Corsican,
Breton and Occitan) of systematic discrimination and an plea to UNESCO to grant
these linguistic minorities (who number about 5 million) “cultural asylum.”
Their grievances are not new — in
fact, they predate the Middle Ages — and the French government has long
resisted officially recognizing a plurality of languages (be they of foreign or domestic origin). They do, however, highlight a
fact that will prove hard for the Left Front and other advocates of
domestic-policy-via-lexicography to digest: France’s internal social divisions
run too deep to be addressed by these methods. There’s little question the bill
is aimed at least in part at quieting racial tensions in France’s urban
centers, at the fringes of which many large African immigrant communities have
been ghettoized. Until French policy-makers address the actual causes of this
ghettoization — which have far more to do with cultural/linguistic Puritanism
than with the legislative use of the word “race” — look for explosions of
discontent, like 2012′s riots in northern France, to remain a living
possibility.

http://blogs.blouinnews.com/blouinbeatworld/2013/05/17/mot-injuste-france-deploys-new-worrying-tactic-against-racism/

“Racist!” Much More Than an Alinsky Tactic
BY NICHOLE HUNGERFORD
POSTED ON MARCH 30 2010 1:00 PM
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* Print This Post
Writing for the
New York Times Saturday,
columnist Frank Rich parrots the reverberations of theinsular Manhattan liberal
echo-chamber by
claiming that he — who has never been to a tea party, never had a conversation
with a tea partier, exudes deep disdain for the “parochial” brood, etc. — has
somehow tapped into the secret inner machinations of the movement. That is, these
folks, who he claims are so generally stupid they “don’t recognize their own
small scale mimicry of Kristallnacht” (by the way, it takes a special caliber
of columnist to point out baseless references to Nazis and in the same sentence
use a Nazi comparison himself. Mr. Rich, Bravo!) nonetheless, these people are
so intimately tuned into the latest demographic information from the Population
Reference Bureau that they are bunkering down for the Great Minority Takeover.
The Tea Party movement is not about government, you fools! It’s about racist
whites mobilizing against a future where minorities are far too numerous. In
short, the drug warriors, the poverty warriors, none of the legions of various
social battle fronts have anything on the frothing, tribalistic race
warrior.
This narrative is ubiquitous both in
television and print media. When conservatives encounter it, it is typically
waved off as a sophisticated “Alinsky tactic” to shut down of debate. While this is
true, the depth of this phenomenon has not been sufficiently characterized. Few
reference the exploitation of racial tension as a method to bring down the
“establishment” popular among New Left radicals. To various degrees, this
practice persists up to the present and widely influences the cultural Left. It
is highly effective at impugning both mainstream and conservative America and, in
fact, is as easy as one-two-”racist!”
Once in the heart of the 1960s New Left, our
Editor-in-chief David Horowitz witnessed first hand the marriage of radicalism
and race. During his tenure at Ramparts, one of the most widely
circulated leftist publications, the marxist, militant Black Panthers became a darling of the New Left.
Frequently trumpeted as the “vanguard” of revolution, the Black Panthers
rejected the nonviolent, integrationist message of Martin Luther King Jr. and
instead, aligned with radicals with whom they shared obvious political affinities.
Horowitz recounts (Radical Son):
When [Huey] Newton
founded the Panthers in 1966, he was a young street felon attending Oakland’s Merritt
College. On campus, he
came into contact with [Bob] Sheer and other white student radicals, and became
familiar with their theories that criminals like him were “primitive rebels”
who intuitively grasped the socialist idea that property is theft.
…Newton became a leader of the new
generation of activists, who were turning their backs on the nonviolent,
integrationism of Martin Luther King…led by Stokeley Carmichael and the Black
Muslim leader Malcolm X, they identified themselves as “black” and called for
“Black Power,” reserving the word Negro for “Uncle Toms,” among whom they
included Martin Luther King (whom the Panthers referred to as Martin Luther
Coon).
Leftist radicals were particularly attracted
to groups like the Black Panthers because of their propensity for violent
rebellion and mystique as oppressed victims of capitalism par excellence.
While no one would publicly say so, it was
the Panthers’ violent image that provided their real attraction to the New
Left. Blacks would seek liberation, Malcolm said, through the ‘ballot or the
bullet,’ but no radical believed the System could be changed by peaceful means.
…The quest for authenticity preoccupied
white radicals like myself who made up the bulk of the Movement, and was the
key to the Pathers’ charisma. In a seminal article titled “The White Negro,”
Norman Mailer had cast America’s
blacks as Rousseau’s “nobel savages,” representatives of humanity in its
pristine state. These were the “oppressed” of the radical imagination. The
Panthers’ roots in the ghetto were the primal symbol of social injustice. Their
will to violence was the mark of their revolutionary spirit.
Thus, sparked a conflagration against
“racist Amerika,” popular on college campuses and among some of the most
influential New Left activists. It was simultaneously an indictment of the
capitalistic-centered status quo, and one of its many perceived injustices,
namely, societal racism. Yet, in its selective alliance with the black
revolutionary movement, the merger was never so much in the spirit of racial equality,
but in galvanizing the uprising of the “oppressed victims of capitalism,” those
willing and able to bring down “the System” from within.
This sentiment has never left the Left which
continues to view minorities as “the oppressed.” Ethnic interest groups are
frequently courted by leftists, if they aren’t already operated by them.
Even as recent as this month, mass campus protests on March 4th (primarily in California)
were orchestrated and/or sponsored by a cornucopia of a Who’s Who in radical organizations. Faced with
tuition hikes and budget cuts, protests were widely couched in terms of racial
discrimination. Posters depicted the familiar clenched fist of socialist
uprising with messages like, “Protect Your ¡Education!” to incite Latino
students to the cause.
During the event, Latinos and “students of
color” protested in respective contingencies to underscore the racial element
of budgetary cuts (presumably, because they would disproportionately affect
poorer minority students). The protest was primarily in the name of public
education, but incorporated protests against “systemic racism” (endemic in a
place like Berkeley, CA). An unfortunate incident, a so-called “Compton Cookout” held by UC San Diego frats
during Black History Month (incredibly offensive even by fraternity standards)
inflamed students within the UC system. Thus, race and socialist demands — Free
Education! Education is a RIGHT, and the like — melded freely and poured out
onto the streets of Berkeley.
Rancor over “UC racism” added convenient fervor to an event organized under the
more pedestrian pretext of fiscal tightening.
We have all become students of color now,
declared one professor of urban studies at the event.
Conflating economics with race is a perfect
way to confer the status of a morally unassailable argument. Racism is a
thoroughly indefensible position. By characterizing the status quo as racist
and claiming that “progress” is toward socialism, then clearly, if you’re not
with socialism, you’re with the racists. Nobody said it was logical, but this
is essentially what the argument is. The key to its success, why so many
perfectly mainstream people cannot help but be sympathetic to it, is that in
our country racial inequalities often tract economic inequalities. So, if
you’re not correcting the economics, you are thereby not correcting the racial
disparities, which everyone has an interest in seeing changed.
Liberals and conservatives will depart on
how to address this issue. Liberals are more “direct relief” types and champion
like policies. Conservatives believe such relief generally does more harm than
good and will never truly solve the problem because it only assuages the
symptoms. On the other hand, leftists believe that the whole structure is
fundamentally unjust and must be transformed into something more closely
resembling the socialism of Western Europe, Scandinavia
and beyond. But this will never happen unless the oppressed are spurred to
action. Like class warfare, exploiting racial tensions continues to be an
effective cudgel against moderates and conservatives in its capacity to
demonize the opposition and incite ethnic minorities. Different elements of the
Left will employ it for different reasons, some just to impugn the Right, some
actually believe that racism is enormously more prevalent and see it
everywhere, but the history behind the “Racist!” phenomenon is illuminating for
more reasons than one: Fomenting racial divisiveness for political gain is a
long standing tradition which permeates the cultural Left. Where it exists, it
must be identified as a reprehensible, as much as an intimidating practice as
it is.
___
Nichole Hungerford is Social Media Director
and Contributor to Smart Girl Nation. You can follow her work at Obama Porn or via Twitter @ObamaPorn.

http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/30/racist-much-more-than-an-alinsky-tactic/

NEW LABOUR NEW FASCISM NEW RACISM

© by Rob Ager 2009

2) EU TACTICS AND
MOTIVES

Corruption in the EU and
Financial Cost to the Member States
The creation of a European Union has been long in the making and
has occurred
in an incremental form.
According to this
document by the
Brugesgroup, "Membership of the European Union costs Britain £60.1
billion per annum gross or £50.6 billion net." The document then calculates "That
is the equivalent for every man, women and child in Britain of £1,002 per annum gross or
£843 net. Or the equivalent for every tax-payer in Britain of £1,939 per annum gross or
£1,632 net."
According to chief-exec of the Tax-payer's Alliance Matthew Elliot
and management consultant David Craig the EU costs Britain £118 billion per year.
This oficial document explains the UK as providing
12.2% of the EU's total budget "after abatement" in 2006. This is
calculated in the same document as a net contribution of £2.8 billion from a
gross contribution of £12 billion, but this is contrasted in the appendix in
that the UK
government's own account holds the net contribution figure as £3.9 billion. The
report offers several "probable causes" for the difference of
balance. In other words they don't have a definitive explanation as to why
there is a difference of over £1 billion between the two accounts.
This particular uncertainty regarding UK financial contributions to the EU
budget is something I picked up of my own accord, but I'm a mere layman on the
subject of finance. So if you want a much more detailed and authoritative
source on questionable EU financial accounts then try reading Marta
Andreasen's book Brussels Laid Bare. Marta was the EU's Chief
Accountant back in 2002 and decided to blow the whistle on their accounting
practices. Here are some quotes from chapters 2 and 3 of Brussels Laid Bare:
"Numbers in the computerized reports came in from day to day.
Some of the accounts came in on spreadsheets on which anyone can make changes -
and thus if these were manipulated, leave no electronic trail. Some of the accounting
did not even incorporate double-entry book-keeping - a system invented by the
Italians in the 16th century - in which the two effects of every financial
transaction are recorded: first where the money comes from or goes to and,
secondly, what is the item or service that is being paid for or received ...
Scarily, thousands of payments were being made out of the budget every week -
for serious sums of money ... I asked for a list of all those who could -
electronically - authorize such payments. But this was not forthcoming -
ever." p14-15
"One of the first things I found out was that the opening
balance for the EU accounts for 2001 didn't match the closing balance for the
2000 accounts. There was a gap of almost 200 million euros." p15
"I was amazed to discover that in the Commission there was NO
central register of the recipients of all funds paid out." p16
"Incredibly, nobody appeared to be worried about the control
of the other 90 percent of "indirect payments" - where the Commission
paid funds to a local agency or ministry in one of the member states, who then
passed on the money to the final beneficiary." p16
"When I finished no one uttered a word and Maison simply
moved on to another subject: The future of the EU budget and a new Financial
Regulation (EU accounting law) ... This proposed eliminating the existing
"Validity of discharge for payment." In a word, this meant that
payments could be processed directly to the bank by different directorates -
without my staff checking the supporting documents to establish that the
payment was for the right amount, for the approved purpose and was going to the
right person." p20-21
"Maison made it clear that not only did he not want me
interfering in any of his plans for "reform" embodied in the new
Financial Regulation, but that he wanted me to be the one to present it to the
Council of Ministers. If there was any gunfire, I would be the one in the front
line!" - p26
"At the end of my speech, Maison commented that this was the
first time that the Commission has a Chief Accountant who was a qualified
accountant." p31
"Any proposals I made for new computer systems - even those
needed on the gounds of direct necessity - were waved away on account of
'budget limitations'." p31
"According to my research, I could see that at the end of
2001 the under-expenditure was 15 billion euros - 10 billion euros more than
the 5 billion figure the Commissioner appeared to be reading from her reports.
... she had already been in the job, and presumably followed the budget, for two
years, and yet didn't appear to have noticed that ten billion euros had gone
walkabout. ... Shreyer's cabinet had instructed the Accounting Services to send
reports directly to them via e-mail - so no one could be sure that the
Commissioner had got to see the figures actually produced by our department. To
me it was fairly obvious that the figures and reports were pretty well cooked
before they ever reached the Commissioner's desk." p33
Another whistleblowing incident in the EU was that of MEP Paul Van Buitenan, which led to the
resignation of the entire EU Commission in 1999. Again financial corruption was
the issue at hand. The opening summary in this house of commons report on the event states "The
implications for the EU of the mass resignation are potentially serious, and
the Commission’s credibility, as it continues to represent the EU in
international fora, risks being seriously undermined as a result of the
Committee’s report into its activities and failures." Here's a more recent incident of Van Buitenan battling to expose EU corruption,
in which fraud investigators at OLAF (European Anti-Fraud Office) were
found to be travelling with the very EU officials who they're responsible for
investigating.
Again in 2006, the EU accounts were unsatisfactory. The EU website admits "the
report mentions weak internal controls for the majority of EU expenditure, and
a high incidence of errors in the underlying transactions." The page offers a link to the Annual
Report in question.
According to the figures listed on Wikipedia, based upon the
Open Europe (a think tank for EU reform) estimates for EU-27 budget for
2007-2013 in euros, Britain
will put 103 billion euros into the EU but will only get back 47 billion –
that’s a loss of 56 billion euros from the UK economy. So we put twice as much
money into the EU as we take out – surely that’s a bad investment. From the
same list of EU member state contributions, I calculated that the EU will take
in a total of 839.5 billion euros for the period of 2007-2013 and gives back
only 777 billion to the countries that contributed. Where does the remaining
62.5 billion go?
Those of you who are pro-EU and who have heard my Liverpool accent on my videos may be thinking "Why
isn't this guy grateful for the £800 million boost to his city's economy resulting from its selection as European Capital
of Culture?" Those
of you asking that question have probably not come across the financial figures
listed in the previous paragraph. If Britain
didn't have 56 billion euros worth of its money disappearing into the EU
accounts over a period of five years, never to be seen again on our shores,
then the UK
government could give several times the £800 million investment to every one of
its major cities in the same period. The European Capital of Culture award is a
propaganda stunt that not only hides the fact that Britain is making massive
financial losses to the EU on a regular basis, but the scheme is also used to
force multiculturalism on the city as a pre-condition of the investment ...
political / economic bribery, EU style. It is not about celebrating Liverpool's existing culture, but transforming it
according to the wishes of the EU and New Labour. The EU has been doing this on
a systematic basis with cities across Europe since 1985. Forced multiculturalism
and its true purposes will be further explored in chapter four of this article.
Several revealing factors about the EU-27 budget for 2007-2013 can
be found in the following Choropleth map.
The countires are colour coded according to their ratio of financial
contributions and returns relating to the EU budget. At the dark red end of the
scale countries like Sweden
and Germany get back far
less from the EU budget than they pay in (notice that the UK is in the
red), while at the light blue end are countries which get back far more than
they contribute.
It seems the EU Commissioners were savvy enough to give Ireland a marginal return on its investments
being that they knew Ireland,
under the requirements of its own constitution, would have to hold a referendum
on the Lisbon Treaty. If Ireland
was Given as bad a financial deal by the EU as the rest of Britain, a
"no" vote would have been even more forthcoming.
Specifically, notice that money is being sucked away from central
Europe and given to eastern Europe: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece - and over on
the Western coast, Portugal. Why the very deliberate Eastern transference of
money? To answer this we simply need to look at the order in which member states joined the EU.
I've colour coded the country names according to their codes on the choropleth
map above.
* 1952 - Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands
* 1973 - Ireland, Denmark, United Kingdom
* 1981 - Greece
* 1986 - Portugal, Spain
* 1995 - Finland, Sweden, Austria
* 2004 - Cyprus, Malta, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Latvia, Estoria, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovenia
* 2007 - Romania, Bulgaria
The general patterns are simple.
1. The longer your country has been a member of the EU the less it
gets back for its money (apart from the curious example of Luxembourg,
which has the greatest return on its investment of all EU member states).
2. Taxpayer's money from longstanding, western and central European
states is being used to bribe new countries on the eastern flank into EU
"integration" ("control" is a more appropriate word).
3. The EU as a whole is becoming an ever larger superstate, ever
expanding into Asia. Notice in the order in which member states joined the EU charts that several more countries are
negotiating to join.
Regarding these patterns some important question arise.
1. Will there ever come a point at which the longstanding member
states get back as much as they pay in? ... Or will their contributions always
be used to enlargen the territorial boundaries of the EU?
2. After 2013 will the newer Eastern EU member states, by then under
full EU bureaucratic control, find that they also get back far less for their
money? Will their contributions be transferred to other potential member
states, as ours are now?
3. Why are there a few exceptional longstanding member states that
still get back far more than they put in (Luxembourg,
Belgium, Greece)?
The third question is relatively straightforward to answer. The
majority of EU institutions (Commission, European Council, Council of Ministers,
Economic and Social Committee, Comittee of the Regions, Court of Justice, Court
of Audit, European Investment Bank), are based in Belgium and Luxembourg so naturally these two countries, and
hence the EU bureaucracy, will always be favourited for investment (scroll back up to the map and notice how Luxembourg has been colour
coded in black, which makes its outstanding investment returns less visible -
the creator of the map is anonymous). Greece is a different story. Although
an EU member since 1981, Greece
is situated along the South Eastern flank of Europe
with several neighbouring countries that are not yet EU members. Investment in Greece will
help facilitate south eastern expansion.
The overall transference of wealth from richer member states to
poorer member states on the Eastern front could be argued as a humanitarian
endeavour, but if it was truly humanitarian then EU membership wouldn't be
required.
Back to the UK relationship with the EU, membership means our country
is left open for citizens across Europe to flood in,
despite the fact that Britain is already one of the most densely populated
countries in Europe (see map below).
The monetary figures offered so far (a loss of 56 billion euros
from the UK
to the EU budget for the period of 2007-2013) don't even take into account the
cost to the British welfare system caused by an influx of immigrants who are
unable to support themselves. Although the official figures still hold that over 92.1% of the
British population are white, I have witnessed first hand during my work in
homeless hostels over the past five years, an increasing ratio of UK residents
needing housing and welfare benefits, who are not British born. Many of them
speak little or no English and as such are not useful to the British economy.
Not only that, but according to this telegraph article British tax payers pay child benefit
for over 50,000 non-UK residents. At the moment these financial burdens can
only be stopped by the UK
withdrawing from its EU member status.
Note: for those of you who are inclined to take the above
paragraph as a racist statement - read on. I will shatter that inclination and
demonstrate that I'm far more interested in REAL equality than either the EU
bureaucrats or the New Labour party leadership.

Decision-Making in the
EU
Let's now explore how decisions are made in the EU and to what
degree the politicans you vote for are able to influence those decisions. In Britain, as
with other EU member states, we have national elections where we vote in our
own national leaders. However, we also have European Parliamentary Elections,
in which we vote politicans into seats in the EU. Naturally we vote for whoever
we believe will represent our interests, but what actually happens is that once
elected, the MEPs no longer represent their own national parties. They become
members of European Political Parties, or in shortEuroparties. Here is a breakdown of the
current Europarties and their share of seatshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_political_group.
These Europarties are funded directly by the EU.
So when you vote to send your local New Labour or Conservative candidate to the
EU parliament, you don't really know which Europarty you are supporting. For
example, were you aware that Britain's
member of the EU Council, Gordon Brown, is a member of the second largest party
in the EU parliament - the Party of
European Socialists? The largest party, with twice as many seats, is
the European
People's Party. This puts the UK representation as a whole, in a
minority position.
Another factor is that no matter who you elect as an MEP their
purse strings within the EU parliament are controlled by the EU Budget. A
parliament within which all parties are depending upon the same funding source
is hardly democratic because it places far too much influence in the hands of
those dishing out the funds, in this case the EU Council. If certain
Europarties are going strongly against the wishes of the EU council (or being
'Euroskeptic') then they could easily find their party affected by strategic
funding cuts.
Europarties are under strict financial regulations, but as Marta
Andreasen revealed, the EU Council doesn't necessarily follow its own financial
rules. Consider that only a tiny fraction of the financial contribution from EU
member states is reinvested in these Europarties - the total budget for all Europarties in 2008 was only 10.6 million euro out of a total
EU budget of 116 billion euro for the same year. That's approx 0.01%
of the total EU budget (one ten thousandth) or one twentieth of the 200 million
euro that went missing from the EU budget between its 2000 - 2001 financial
accounts. No wonder the Europarties and MEPs find it so hard to influence the
EU Council.
Britainhas 72 MEPs out of a
total of 785 in the European Parliament, although it had 78 MEPs prior to the
most recent election. The UK Office of the European Parliament states;
"The
last elections took place on Thursday 4 June 2009, when the UK's 72 MEPs
were chosen. The newly-elected MEPs take their seats in the new Parliament on
Tuesday 14 July 2009. The number of MEPs has been reduced from 78 as a result
of the enlargement of the EU."
So the more countries join the EU, the less influence individual
member states have.
The EU tries hard to present itself as a democratic organization,
but the processes through which laws are passed in the EU Parliament can hardly
be called democratic. The Europarties are not allowed to draft proposals for
new European laws. They are only allowed to vote on the ones put forward by the EU Commission. On that
basis laws are only proposed in the EU parliament that serve the interests of
the EU Commission. Here it is in the EU's own words
"The Commission has a monopoly of legislative initiative in
all the areas which are subject to the codecision procedure. In accordance with
the Treaty establishing the European Community (EC Treaty), only the Commission
may put forward legislative proposals. ... The Commission has the ‘right of
initiative’. In other words, the Commission alone is responsible for drawing up
proposals for new European legislation, which it presents to Parliament and the
Council. These proposals must aim to defend the interests of the Union and its citizens, not those of specific countries
or industries."
So let's clarify who exactly the EU Commission and EU Council are
and how their members are appointed. The EU Council basically consists of the
heads of states from each EU member country, with prime minister Gordon Brown
currently representing the UK.
Regarding the EU Commission, in the EU's own words.
"The
term ‘Commission’ is used in two senses. First, it refers to the team of men
and women – one from each EU country – appointed to run the institution and
take its decisions. Secondly, the term ‘Commission’ refers to the institution
itself and to its staff. ... They have all held political positions in their
countries of origin and many have been government ministers, but as Members of
the Commission they are committed to acting in the interests of the Union as a whole and not taking instructions from
national governments. ... The day-to-day running of the Commission is done by
its administrative officials, experts, translators, interpreters and
secretarial staff. There are approximately 23 000 of these European civil
servants. That may sound a lot, but in fact it is fewer than the number of
staff employed by a typical medium-sized city council in Europe.
The ‘seat’ of the Commission is in Brussels (Belgium), but it also has offices in Luxembourg,
representations in all EU countries and delegations in many capital cities
around the world."
So whenever we hear the term "EU Commission" or "Commission of the EU" or "the Commission", it could mean
the 27 appointies from the members states (the EU Council), the 23,000 EU Civil
Servants or any combination of the two. The 23,000 EU Civil Servants are
appointed by the European
Personnel Selection Office (EPSO). Some of them are permanent staff
and some are contracted.

Protection Against
Foreign Threats (Eastern and Western)
Those of you reading this who are pro-EU (if
you have endured reading this far) may currently be thinking one or more
of the following regarding my stance on the EU ...
1.     "He's a right wing nationalist."
2.     "He's ignoring environmental issues, on which EU
membership creates more global consensus and action."
3.     "He's ignoring the importance of an integrated European
defence strategy, in the event of aggression from an increasingly strong China or an economically recovering Russia."
4.     "He's ignoring that we need a European Union to stop
European countries from fighting each other."
Any "right wing nationalist" concerns will be thoroughly addressed
in chapter four of this article.
The environmental issues are a complex subject that are beyond the
immediate scope of this article, but one point I will make on the subject is
that there is not yet a scientific concensus regarding the presence, severity,
cause or effect of "global warming / climate change" [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. The people who are claiming that there is
scientific concensus are predominently politicians seeking new tax laws and
politically funded / filtered science groups [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. When the politicans tell you that we
don't have time to wait for consensus because we must act now for the good of all
... remember that those same arguments were also used by the same media / think
tank / political networks to push the war on terror and invasion of Iraq ...
and look where that got us. It's commonly referred to as "alarmism" [1] [2] [3] [4].
The issue of preventing wars, both within Europe and globally, I
would like to address immediately by referring you to a 1997 book called The Grand Chessboard by US foreign policy guru and
presidential policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The tagline on the book cover sums up
its content fairly well "American Primacy And Its Geostrategic
Imperitives". It's basically a book about how the US establishment can dominate the world by
dominating Asia. The smooth-talking Brzezinski
tries his utmost to make imperialism sound a noble cause, but regardless the
book is revealing on many issues and contains some quite shocking statements,
(eg, "America
is also too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of
American power, especially its capacity for military intimidation." p35), but the following quotes
relating to the European Union are of interest for our subject here:
"Europe is America's
essential geopolitical bridgehead on the Eurasian continent. America's geostrategic stake in Europe is enormous. Unlike America's
links with Japan,
the Atlantic alliance entrenches American political influence and military
power directly on the European mainland. At this stage of American-European
relations, with the allied European nations still highly dependent on U.S.
security protection, any expansion in the scope of Europe becomes automatically
an expansion in the scope of direct U.S. influence as well." p59
"An America
that truly desires a united and hence a more independent Europe will have to
throw its weight behind those European forces that are genuinely committed to Europe's political and economic integration. Such a
strategy will also mean junking the last vestiges of the once-hallowed
U.S.-U.K. special relationship." p50 (This reads almost like an announcement that the U.S. will disown Britain if it doesn't join the EU)
"The politcal elites of two leading European nations - France and Germany
- remain largely committed to the goal of shaping and defining a Europe that
would truly be Europe. ... But each is
committed to a somewhat different vision and design, and neither is strong
enough to prevail by itself. This condition creates for the United States a
special opportunity for decisive intervention. It necessitates American
engagement on behalf of Europe's unity, for
otherwise unification could grind to a halt and then gradually even be
undone." p60 (Brzezinski doesn't
state what kind of "American engagement" this will consist of)
(Regarding
possible French leadership of the EU) "Even Germany could perhaps be seduced into
acceptance of a united, but independent (of America) Europe, but only if in
fact it felt France was in fact a global power and could thus provide Europe
with the security that Germany cannot but America does." p64-65. (This also explains the logic
behind the following two statements)
"In the short run, tactical opposition to French policy and
support for German leadership is justified." p72
"America
must work particularly closely with Germany
in promoting the eastward expansion of Europe.
American-German cooperation and joint leadership reagarding this issue are
essential. ... Combined American-German pressure will be especially needed to
obtain the required unanimous agreement of all NATO members, but no NATO member
will be able to deny it if America and Germany jointly press for it." p 79-80
"Tacit American support made it possible for France and Germany
to push the process of Europe's unification
forward." p65 (the author doesn't
state in what form this "support" took place)
"The central issue for America is how to construct a Europe
that is based on the Franco-German connection, a Europe that is viable, remains
linked to the United States, and that widens the scope of the cooperative
democratic international system on which the effective exercize of American
global primacy so much depends."p71 (notice the contradiction between this call
for a "democratic international system" and Brzezinski's statement from page
35 that "America
is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad".)
"It is conceivable that at some point a truly united and
powerful European Union could become a global political rival to the United States.
It could certainly become a difficult economic-technological competitor, while
its geopolitical interests in the middle-east and elsewhere could significantly
diverge from those of America.
But, in fact, such a powerful and politically single-minded Europe
is not likely in the foreseeable future." p75
"America's central geostrategic goal in Europe can be summed
up quite simply: It is to consolidate through a more genuine transatlantic
partnership the U.S. bridgehead on the Eurasian continent so that an
enlargening Europe can become a more viable springboard for projecting into
Eurasia the international democratic and cooperative order." p86 (a "springboard for American interference"
would be a more honest term)

These comments could be more easily dismissed if they weren't
being written by one of America's
most influential policy advisers. Among other things, Brzezinski was a
co-founder of The Trilateral Commission in 1972, national security advisor to
Jimmy Carter for four years, co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory
Task Force in 1988, and he's been very politically active through other policy
think tank groups such as the Atlantic Council and CFR.
So in addition to the forced superstate "integration"
from bureacratic players within the EU, we have the spectre of arm-twisting
coersion from the U.S.
political establishment. Brzezinski and friends want to use the EU as a
dependent / secondary global superpower, which will in turn extend U.S.
imperialist policy across the Eurasian landmass. U.S.
military occupation of Afghanistan
and Iraq
are other, more prominent, examples of their global domination agenda. Is it
possible that a United Europe would then be strategically pitted into
destructive wars against China
and Russia
for domination of the entire Asian continent?
Regarding the need to fend off rising tyrannical Eastern
superstates, which has been the base justification for aggressive U.S. foreign
policy since WW2, I would like to recommend to you a series of books by Antony C. Sutton:
The Best Enemy Money Can Buy (1986) - This book explains how the Soviet military might was built
up during the cold war by covert support from U.S. banks and manufacturers, and
how Congress deliberately avoided using the Trading With The Enemy Act to put a
stop to it. This continued in spite of the Soviets providing assistance to America's
Vietcong opponents in the Vietnam war.
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976) - Sutton details how U.S. companies helped Hitler attain
power and build up the Nazi military might and how this support continued during
WW2.
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974) - In this book Sutton details how communism in Russia was
covertly supported by the Wall Street establishment from its inception.
Each of these books is packed with documented evidence, such as
sales receipts from treasonous weapon contracts and quotes from congressional
investigative reports, and I'm yet to find a political writer who so strongly
evidences his arguments. With the three books mentioned Sutton establishes a
consistent pattern - the U.S.
establishment has a habit of knowingly providing weapons, technology, financial
support, and even loaning specialist personnel, to countries that the American
public believe they are at war with. Basically, its a grand scale protection
racket. In order to justify aggressive international policies, domestic
tyranny, and a sky-high "defence" budget, the power-hungry U.S.
establishment consistently needs to convince its population (and the world at
large) that it is doing a good deed by fighting powerful "enemies".
Other sources have independently reached similar conclusions to
those of Antony Sutton, such as these documents published on this EU
Facts page (being that the original documents are in German I'm
unable to assure you of their translation accuracy and authenticity) and the findings of investigative
journalist John Buchanan, which were then reported on by The New Hampshire Gazette, The Guardian and,
surprisingly FOX News. Buchanan's revealing documents on
the subject can also be viewed at History
News Network.
Regarding the more modern "threat" of communist China, the aforementioned Antony Sutton
explained how the US
assisted the rise of Communism in China and helped build the country
into the superpower it is today. In 1986 he summed up "By
about the year 2000 Communisrt China
will be a 'superpower' built by American technology and skill."(p181, America's Secret
Establishment).
If the U.S.
establishment really wanted to stop Communism, terrorism or fascism then it
could achieve a great deal by clamping down on its own covert support for such
enemies. This would be much easier than going to war time and time again.
The Brzezinski book, mentioned earlier, raises a key factor that
inadvertently supports Sutton's take on all this: "The
European era in world politics came to a final end in the course of World War
II, the first truly global war." (p5, The Grand Chessboard).
WW2 significantly weakened most of the world's most powerful nations, which
allowed the U.S.
to economically emerge as the undisputed global superpower. Cross reference
this factor with the information in Sutton's bookWall Street and the Rise of Hitler. The question begs to be
asked ... Did corrupt players within the U.S. aid the Nazi war effort
deliberately to bring about the mutual weakening of all its global competitors?
That would put the blood of over 60 million WWII deaths on their hands.
Try reading the aforementioned Antony Sutton books and then ask
yourself whether you want a European Union that the war mongering U.S.
establishment has its claws in.

EU Think Tank Networks
To appreciate the determination of the EU bureaucracy in creating
its desired EU superstate, its important to explore its associated think tank
groups. The membership of these groups are not necessarily EU civil servants,
but more a mixture ofacademic scholars, business tycoons
and politicians. However, what is important about these groups is:
* Their funding sources
* Their specific partnership alliances with other think tanks groups
* The external business and political interests of their individual members
As an example of these important factors, the think tank Bruegel claims to be independent and funded by membership only, yet
it has a funding / partnership alliance with The
German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), which describes itself as "an
American institution with an American Board of Trustees" with "offices in Berlin, Bratislava, Paris, Brussels,
Belgrade, Ankara, and Bucharest." and which also has "received
grants from the European Union". So the think tank Bruegel has
access to EU funds via the GMF, despite claiming to be independent. The Bruegel
site also explains that its board members are elected by Partner Research
Institutions (PRI's), Group of State members and Group of Corporate members. So
it's not independent, it's not funded wholly by membership fees and it's
strongly linked to a US
think tank group with a specific interest in Germany.
The illusion of independence offered by EU think tank groups such
as Bruegel can often be quickly shattered by a read through the partnership and
funding information on their websites.
Other examples of think tank groups that operate an EU - US alliance of funds and membership are the Center for Applied Policy Research, Transatlantic Academy and Transatlantic Trends. A think tank called the International Crisis Group states on its website: "The
International Crisis Group is an independent, multinational, not-for-profit
organisation, based as a legal entity at 1629 K Street NW, Suite 450, Washington
DC 20006,
USA.
International Crisis Group is registered as a not-for-profit organisation in Belgium, at 149 Avenue Louise, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
as a branch of the U.S.
entity with registration number 0872.781.947. This branch constitutes the
international operational headquarters of International Crisis Group." Pay particular attention to the Brussels Forum if you wish to follow EU issues as they
relate to US interests. In its own words: "Brussels Forum is an annual high-level meeting
of the most influential North American and European political, corporate, and
intellectual leaders to address pressing challenges currently facing both sides
of the Atlantic." Here is the forum agenda for their 2010 meeting.
The expansionist motives of the EU are expressed by the European
Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Their firstfounding
principles states: "When
faced by the great powers of today and the rising giants of tomorrow,
individual European countries regard the world as beyond their control. But if
it speaks with one voice, the European Union can help shape the world
order." Compare
that statement with the following article title from the US based
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR):International Institutions and Global Governance: World
Order in the 21st Century. In the CFR's own words: "The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been the leading
independent foreign policy organization in the United States since its founding in
1921." It's
membership history strongly supports that point as it has included several US presidents.
The CFR and ECFR certainly appear to share the same political ideology as well
as their similar names. There is also a German Council on Foreign Relations (GDAP).
There are so many EU related think tank groups that it would take
quite an effort to list them all here, but if you start searching online you
will find them easily because they frequently contain links to each other. They
form a giant pro-EU intellectual web, backed of course by EU funds. What is
unsurprising is that virtually all of the EU think tank groups are in agreement
on just about
every major issue:
* they're convinced of global warming theories (despite the world's scientific community being divided on the subject)
* they support the discredited war on terror (at the very least they do nothing to oppose it)
* they don't speak out against continued occupation of Afghanistan / Iraq or the fabricated WMD lies that got us into the Iraq war to begin with
* they don't speak out against US foreign policy in general or its destruction of its own constitution and bill of rights.
* they spout diversity and equality rhetoric
* they are concerned about the growth of "extremism" (across the board this word has been replacing "terrorism")
* they promote unrestricted immigration between EU member states
* they approve of increasing centralization and EU bureaucratic control over member states
* they seek ways to integrate more Eastern flank nations into the EU
* they support increasing taxation of EU citizens to bring more funds to the EU Commission
There are Euroskeptic think tank groups as well such as Open
Europe, Global
Vision and the Bruges
Group, which ar far less subject to spouting the same group rhetoric
as the Eu's own think tanks.
For more info on EU think tanks try this link. For more on the EU, try the EuroFAQ website. In addition, the following
page from the Open Europe site details the "top 100 examples of EU fraud and waste".

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Racism in France:
The Civilizing Mission of Whiteness
Tony S. Jugé, Ph.D.
PasadenaCity College
Social Sciences Division

iv
To my lovely and precious wife, Tenise
and to my beautiful children, Helen, Aaliyah and Elijah.
v
Race and racism in France
remain difficult topics to address in France. The language
used to refer to discrimination does not really allow for any
in-depth discussion about race.
While it is widely accepted that race should not be understood
biologically, the social realities of
race are all but absent from any national discussions in France. I
contend that this is in part due
to whiteness. France
has shied away from its racist and colonial past. Through a series of openended
surveys followed by interviews, it was revealed that race is
indeed part of the everyday
understandings of how white French individuals construct their
realities. The language used to
explain who is French, how to integrate, and what is racism about
contributes to the reproduction
of a historicist racial state whereby whites maintain their
hegemony. Racism continues to be
understood as an individual problem and very few respondents were
able to talk about the
institutional effects of French social institutions on people of
color. I argue in this research
project that whiteness, a set of privileges awarded to whites
consciously or unconsciously,
contributes to an unnamed hegemonic
oppression that is reproduced at the micro- and macrolevels
and is expressed by whites through the lack of racial awareness.
This unnamed but very
real hegemonic oppression is also represented by the double-consciousness
developed by people
of color. Their social and racial experiences are seldom
acknowledged because the French
discourse about race remains centered on its social nonexistence.
Many of the participants in this
research showed their Eurocentric and white bias through use of
language expressing that being
part of a racial group was not linked to their position in French
society but rather just as physical
attributes carrying no social meanings. They also used many
different terms which had no racial
meanings on the surface but which in the socio-historical and
legal context of French society
meant that being French was equated with white, and foreigners,
immigrants, visible minorities
vi
with people of color. Whiteness, embodied in the racial state,
remains the norm by which people
of color have historically been civilized by, and today’s France is no
exception.
vii
Table of Contents
Chapter One – Introduction Page 1
Personal Experience Page 1
Whiteness and its construction in the U.S. Page 4
Whiteness and its Historical Construction in France Page 13
French Colonies Page 18
Current French Definition of Whiteness Page 21
Research Question Page 25
Chapter Two – Background on Race in France Page 29
Franceand its Racial and Cultural Superiority Page 34
How is Race Talked about in France and how does that Affect
Racial
Inequality? Page 36
How is the Racial Language (or lack thereof) Used to Reproduce
Whiteness in Contemporary France? Page 47
Culture and Race Page 49
Differentialism Page 54
How does France
Reconcile its Call for Integration (with Universal
Values) with its Social Construction of the Other Page 56
Integration (Assimilation) Page 56
How do Individiduals understand Race and its Relevance in French
Social Institutions? Page 59
Racism: an Individual or Institutional Problem? Page 61
Chapter Three – Theory and Methodology Page 63
Literature Review Page 70
viii
Racial Formation Page 70
Racial State Page 72
Internal Colonialism Page 74
Theories of Whiteness Page 78
Theoretical Framework Page 80
Methodology Page 92
Chapter Four – To See and Judge Without Being Seen and Judged Page 99
Who Qualifies as French? Page 99
How Do French People Talk About Race? Page 111
Culture as a Proxy for Race? Page 117
Racism: an Individual or Institutional Problem? Page 125
Racism: Who are the Victims? Page 133
What is “intégration”? Page 143
How do French People Understand Colonialism? How do they See
Its Social Relevance in Today’s Society? Page 149
Chapter Five – The Power of Invisibility Page 158
Unnamed Hegemonic Oppression Page 160
Hegemonic Oppression through Construction of Knowledge Page 167
Formation of “Communities” Defined as an Act of Anti-French
Resistance
Page 169
Chapter Six – Concluding Remarks Page 180
Racism should not be Exclusively Understood as Individual Actions
Page 181
Race IS a Social Construct to be Reckoned With Page 182
People of Color Do Matter in this Struggle Page 187
ix
Whiteness HAS to be Acknowledged Page 189
Whiteness HAS to be Confronted from Within Page 191
Bibliography Page 193
Appendix 1 – Graph 1 – Theoretical Framework Page 207
Appendix 2 – Graph 2 – Unnamed Hegemonic Oppression Page 208
Appendix 3 – Survey Questions (French/English) Page 209
1
Chapter One
Introduction
This assumption that all hues of God whiteness alone is inherently
and obviously
better than brownness and tan leads to curious acts; even the
sweeter souls of the
dominant world as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe
are
continually playing above their actual words an obligato of tune
and tone, saying:
“My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well,
that the curse of
God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be
brave! Do your
work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that into heaven
above, where
all is love, you may, one day, be born – white!”
I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:
“But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?”
Then, always
somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand
that whiteness
is the ownership of the earth forever and even, Amen! (W.E.B. Du Bois, 1920, p.
30)
Personal experience
About fifteen years ago, I became close friend with a young French
black woman whose
identity will remain hidden, but whose friendship has had a long lasting
effect on the
development and the emergence of my current racial consciousness.
She was born in Martinique,
French West Indies, and had lived
in the French metropolitan territory almost all her life. One
day, I became extremely intrigued at one of her statements. This
was the first time I was
confronted, unknowingly at the time, with my whiteness (term that
I would later learn in my
American experience). She stated that she had never seen any
person like her on TV. While she
probably does not remember this particular conversation, I was
shocked, puzzled, surprised by
her comment. What did she mean? How come I never realized this
obvious fact? At the time,
there was no person of color (term used in France to refer
to non-white persons) or very few of
them on television despite a noticeable number of persons in France from the
French West
Indies, from former North and West African colonies, and from Vietnam. There
are no official
2
population figures about those groups because according to French
law it has been illegal to
gather information on the race and/or ethnicity of a person
(Simon, 1998, 2003; Debet, 2007).
Ironically, the French census indirectly categorizes persons as
either French or foreigners based
on the birthplace of their parents and grandparents (Simon, 1998,
2003).
As I listened to her more attentively as she talked about what it
means to be black in
France, as well as being a French citizen, I was oblivious to the fact
that I was white – I could
tell I had a lighter skin complexion than her but being told that
I was white did not mean
anything to me – and I did not understand what the social
construct of race was really about.
Realizing the limited range of my knowledge in this regards, I
would argue that most French
people do not see themselves in racial terms while they
continually racialize others unknowingly.
When I talk about the process of “racializing” in France, I mean
that French people might
describe others based on their skin color, e.g. being noir (black) and the assumed
behaviors and
social relationships that might emerge out of those signifiers, or
based on their possible cultural
behaviors, e.g. les arabes (Arabs). When one person is thought to be a member of those
racial/ethnic groups (usually also based on physical features) it
is assumed that they might all
share the same characteristics, such as religion (being Arab is
often equated as being Muslim,
and therefore as being too culturally different from what it means
to be French), physical
abilities, intelligence, or even sexual behaviors1 (Jobert, 2006). By generalizing that everybody
in one particular socially constructed group (even though culture
might be used instead of race)
shares similar characteristics, the French are racializing the
members of those groups. French
people continue to covertly describe them in a way that
contributes to their perceived “natural”
1 A French TV show host, Pascal Sevran,
recently published a book in which he describes in part some of the
problems that African countries face in relation to starvation. In
a radio interview on December 6, 2006 he
insinuated that black men’s sexual drive leads to death and
starvation. He stated, “And what? That’s the truth!
Africastarves all its
children born there without their parents having the means to feed them. I am
not the only
one to say it. You would have to sterilize half of the planet.” (Var Matin, December 6, 2006)
3
or cultural inferiority. This is what Bonilla-Silva (2003) would
refer to as cultural racism. He
argues that cultural racism is a frame that has replaced
biological racism to explain the position
of minorities in society. The use of cultural arguments over
biological arguments contribute to
the salience of colorblind racism; a racism that does not show its
name but contributes to the
ascription of cultural values to certain groups of color.
I can recall not too long ago a comment being made by a member of
my family when
talking about the French National soccer team. One evening, when
asked if he was going to
watch the soccer game, he replied that he would not because “the
French National soccer team
does not represent me!” What a shock it was for me to hear that!
At the time, the team was
composed of excellent players but what set them apart was the fact
that nine of them were black
and another one of them was the child of Algerian immigrants, and
the last one was white. It is
without saying that they are, of course, all French citizens. Who
qualifies as a French citizen?
How are people of color perceived on French soil? How is French
citizenship acquired? All
those questions and many others are at the heart of race relations
in France.
In order to better
understand the dynamics of race relations/racial oppression in France, I
believe that one can
learn from the U.S.
in regards to ideas, concepts and theories. While those concepts, ideas and
theories cannot always be applied literally to the French case, it
is nonetheless an important step
one can start from. Whiteness (also known as white privilege or
white supremacy) remains, I
believe, an untold story in France; untold does not mean
nonexistent, it only means that it has yet
to be thoroughly examined. The current language used in France to
address issues of race, racism
and discrimination is for the most part inadequate, thus
indirectly contributing to the
reproduction of racial ethnic inequality. When a problem such as
racial ethnic inequality exists
4
and the language (or lack thereof) used to talk about it does not
address or pinpoint at the core
issues, then this problem remains and lead to the reproduction of
a white supremacist system.
Whiteness and its construction in the U.S.
I also remember my first couple of visits in the United States
in 1994 and 1995 when I
was staying with an African-American family. Some of their friends
would see me and state:
“who is this white guy?” I did not know I was white. I remained
oblivious for a period of time.
While I was trying to decipher my identity issues around race, the
social meanings remained
foreign to me. My friends would reply, “Oh Tony! He is not white,
he is French!” That puzzled
me even more. Here I was in the U.S a very racialized country,
still being called French, while I
looked like every other white person around, as if French meant
being special! (This is how I
perceived it at that period of time). I could tell I had white
skin but I could not grasp the
intricacies behind it because I was coming from a place where
being white socially does not even
exist. “French” meant that I was foreign – thus, not like the
other white people, but this social
meaning did enter my mind at the time.
Over the last 10-15 years, whiteness has become one of the most
researched concepts in
Sociology, Ethnic Studies, Legal Studies and Women’s Studies.
However, one should not forget
the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois who in the Souls of Black Folk (1999) introduced the
concept of double-consciousness as well as the problem of the
color line. Du Bois’s double
consciousness is critical in understanding whiteness because it
gets to the heart of how people of
color feel about a society where they are the minorities, about
the appropriate behaviors, beliefs
and values that mainstream white society holds and that people of
color should respect in order
to be valued and respected, and also about how the laws, policies
and legislation contribute to the
5
constant and continuing subordination of people of color. This was
well summarized in Du Bois’
popular quote that “the problem of the twentieth century is the
problem of the color-line” (1999,
p. 17). Since whites are in control of society politically,
economically and socially, they
represent the reference group by which other groups will be
measured against in order to judge
their integration and willing active participation in society. It
also means that people cannot truly
be themselves, as they have to meet certain expectations or be
rejected.
Whiteness, over time, became a necessary factor and element of
participation, equality
and privilege in American society. The laws guaranteed property
rights (Harris, 1993),
citizenship rights (Haney-López, 1996), working privileges
(Roediger, 1999; Nakano Glenn,
2002) and access to wealth in the long term (Oliver & Shapiro,
1997) to those who could claim
or be identified as whites.
Roediger (1999) brought forward some of the arguments made by
W.E.B. Du Bois
(1973) in Black Reconstruction where he analyzes the construction of whiteness
as part of
capitalism, where white workers understood their economic
positions in this society by defining
themselves as “non-slaves” or “not blacks.” By doing so, white
workers took into account their
whiteness and invested themselves in maintaining what would allow
them not to fall lower in the
socio-economic status. In a sense, they were given an incentive to
take advantage of their racial
identity, which in a sense means that they lost track of the class
interests they shared with
workers of color. This would be explained later on by Bonacich
(1972, 1976) split-labor theory
in which she argues that the capitalists used race as a means to
split the working class, which
eventually prevented alliances that might improve the
socio-economic positions of both white
and workers of color.
6
Roediger (1999) argues that the term “worker” has often been
associated with “white
worker” in the nineteenth century, which eventually will be
contrasted by the emergence of
being “Mexican” as an official category in the 1930 census
(Nobles, 2000), which according to
the 1930 Census enumerators’ instructions stated that all Mexican
laborers are of racial mix.
Persons were designated not only as Mexican for being born in
and/or from Mexico
who were
neither black, white, Indian, Japanese or Chinese, but also
through their occupation as laborers.
Being Mexican was automatically associated with being a worker.
Haney-López (1996) argues
that race, in general, and whiteness, in particular, were legal
constructions. Not only does society
create race and whiteness but also the law enforces and rewards
those who are whites. By 1930,
Nobles (2000) argued that science, the law and the census came to
share the same perspective
that the one-drop rule would be the best way to “scientifically”
determine people’s whiteness,
and a way to maintain the political, economic and social
subordination of non-whites. The
category “mulatto” was dropped from the census as an implicit
consequence of using the onedrop
rule to enforce whiteness.
Haney-López (1996) makes a critical distinction between
transparency and whiteness (or
white privilege). “Transparency” represents the invisibility of
those who are
whites. They are not called whites. They have historically been
called Americans and the
Supreme Court has regulated such definitions. What this term means
is that the race of whites
remains invisible while the race of non-whites is continually a
subject of debate. As a result
privilege occurs when those who are unnoticed are the ones by
which everybody else is
measured. This group becomes the yardstick, the measurement
device, and the norm (Dyer,
2002; Halton, 2002). Haney-López (1996) explains that the
construction of whiteness in the law
was a two-step process; first, the courts set up the boundaries as
to who was not white. Second,
7
the courts became engaged in assessing the character of those who
were non-whites to eventually
get to the conclusion that “whiteness exists not only as the
opposite of non-whiteness, but as the
superior opposite.” (p. 28). Whites
do not have to feel privileged because they do not have to
think about it; they do not have to think about what it means to
be the carrier of whiteness
(Haney-Lopez, 1996; McIntosh, 2002).
The superiority associated with whiteness was reinforced by the
status immigrants were
attempting to obtain in order to fully participate in this new
society: “whiteness”. The Supreme
Court ruled on many occasions to decipher who could be considered
white or nor without
defining what whiteness was and therefore who could receive some
of the political, economic
and social goods of American society (Haney-López, 1996).
The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in
1868, guaranteed
citizenship to all people born in the U.S. regardless of race, class and
gender. The Naturalization
Act of 1870 extended naturalization to people of African descent
(Nobles, 2000). Many policies
and legislation ensued to limit naturalization to certain groups,
e.g. such as immigrants from
Japanand India among
many others. However, when immigrants filed suit to seek citizenship,
most of the cases that went to the Supreme Court but one (re Cruz,
23 F.Supp. 774, 1938), were
argued on the grounds that those immigrants were white, and
deserved the right to be called
American (Haney-López, 1996). The Supreme Court would therefore
define whiteness by
deciding who could be white based on different elements: common
knowledge, scientific
evidence, congressional intent, and legal precedent (Haney-Lόpez,
1996). Common knowledge
referred to the popular meanings people had about race in their
daily lives; scientific evidence
was backed up by the so-called science of the time, which
originated from European scholars
such as Linnaeus, Buffon, De Gobineau (1967 [1853-1855]).
Scientific evidence had the
8
advantage to be perceived as objective because of its reliance on
science. Congressional intent
represented policies passed by Congress in regards to race. Legal
precedent meant to rely on
previous court cases in which race had already being discussed. A
combination of those four
elements led to the development of whiteness as a blurry, nebulous
yet very powerful tool to
create social, political and economic hierarchies.
The courts have not only limited access to whiteness to those who
saw the benefits
attached to it but they also constructed whiteness through
citizenship (Haney-López, 1996;
Nakano-Glenn, 2002), access to property (or lack thereof) (Harris,
1993), education, power and
wealth (Oliver & Shapiro, 1997; Conley, 1999). The Federal
Housing Authority (FHA) excluded
people of color when considering future homeowners as suburbia America was
emerging.
Whiteness was not only constructed through citizenship but it was
also subsidized (Oliver &
Shapiro, 1997; Conley, 1999). Irish, Italians and other European
groups who faced
discrimination earlier in the century became white through the
1945 GI Bill. This bill helped
white GIs buy houses in the developing suburbs while GIs of color
were denied those same
rights. The Federal government provided federal funds and
developed policies to ensure white
GIs would gain access to the middle class. On the other hand, GIs
of color were forced to remain
in the inner cities. Gordon would later call being part of white
middle-class America
the ideal
path to assimilation. They were able to assimilate into
white-middle class America.
Immigrants
were encouraged to assimilate in “the middle-class cultural patterns
… of white, Anglo-Saxon”
(Gordon, 1964, p. 72). Being white middle-class Anglo-Saxon has
historically been referred to as
the universal accepted culture or racial group. This quote from
Gordon is critical because it not
only brings race to the forefront when discussing assimilation,
but also social class status,
reinforced through the FHA decisions in 1945, and later on with
redlining and blockbusting in
9
the real estate market industry. While Park (1913, 1950) was
making a pure cultural argument
about assimilation (also referred to as the ethnicity paradigm),
Gordon provided more
information about the true role of race in assimilation theories.
Other research studies have focused more on the level of racial
identity (Perry, 2002;
Gallagher, 1994) among whites to determine their understandings
about what being white might
confer in U.S.
society (Feagin & Vera, 1995; Gallagher, 2003a, 2003b; Fernandez, 1981).
They
might understand that they are white as they look at themselves
and see their lighter skin
complexion, but it is more difficult to decipher if the social
status associated with being white
represents a meaningful known form of privilege or advantage.
Sometimes when one listens to
people talk about his/her whiteness, the meanings behind the words
do not lead to any critical
evaluations. Consider Pat Bucchanan’s statement in 1992 during his
bid for the Republican
nomination to the Presidency:
I think God made all the people good, but if we had to take a
million of
immigrants in, say, Zulus, next year, or Englishmen and put them
in Virginia,
what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less
problems for the
people of Virginia?
There is nothing wrong with sitting down and arguing that
issue, that we are a European country (cited in Haney-Lόpez, 1996,
p. 18)
This statement not only reveals what America represents for some
politicians, but more
importantly it fails to recognize that Immigration and
Naturalization laws have been at the center
of the construction of whiteness and of the normalcy by which America, as a
country, and
Americans as citizens of this country are equated with being
Europeans (or more subtlety
whites). As a result, the racial identity that whites might have
developed remains very superficial
and is usually set in opposition to others’ racial identity.
Whites position themselves as normal,
10
while those who claim to be something other than just Americans
are considered abnormal,
dissenters, people who do not share American values and people who
refuse to assimilate. The
theories of assimilation (Park, 1913; Gordon, 1964; Myrdal, 2002;
Portes & Zhou, 1993) revolve
on the premises that assimilation to the dominant group is the
most appropriate, logical, normal
and going-up-the-social-economic-ladder path that minority groups
and immigrants need to
follow. The dominant group has not always been defined in cultural
terms. Depending on the
historical period, racial attributes have been used as a proxy to
define, maintain and expect
minority groups and immigrants to follow the white cultural
example.
Another important point about whiteness/white privilege/white
supremacy is that it
allows for a discussion that does not necessarily imply that
individual actions can be perceived as
prejudiced. It also implies that white individuals who want to
prevent such occurrences of
prejudices are also the beneficiaries of this system. I consider
myself not just a non-racist
individual but I strive to be the most anti-racist person I can be
by denouncing overt acts of
racism but most importantly trying to denounce the unearned
privileges. Whether I do something
to improve the situation or not, or whether I am not aware of what
is being offered to me in terms
of privileges – such as walking in a store without being monitored
or going to a job interview
without a suit for instance – or not, I am the recipient of such
privileges. The power of whiteness
is that whites do not have to do anything to reap the benefits; it
is also unearned (McIntosh,
2002) which is contrary to American values of hard work, which
eventually creates the illusion
of the American Dream. The focus is therefore put on the
institutions, on the structure of our
society. In other words, the way our society is organized
economically, socially and politically is
in accordance to what Mills (1997) would call a Racial Contract, which primarily benefits
whites, even without their knowledge. Whiteness offers unconscious
benefits to white people.
11
Studying white privilege means focusing on the underlying
assumptions that freedom is not
available to everybody, that equality of opportunity cannot exist
without equality of condition,
and that using merit as a criterion for success represents a
fallacy since merit is contextualized.
Race represents a critical matter in the contextualization of
merit. Freedom, equality of
opportunity and merit are indicators of achievements that cannot
be detached from the racialized
society that the U.S.
represents. Continuing to ignore this simple fact leads us to maintain a
system of unearned privileges (i.e. for whites overwhelmingly),
which contributes to white
supremacy. In other words, by remaining oblivious to whiteness,
systematic racism (Feagin,
2000) remains untouched and the consequences of systematic racism
remain oppressive and
without any solutions. Goldberg (2001) argues for the presence of
a RacialState; it differs
slightly from Mills’ Racial Contract (1997). Goldberg’s Racial
State opposes Mills’
Racial
Contract for a couple reasons: Goldberg sees the formation of a
state, and European states in
particular, as inherently racial or formed on the concept of race.
He disagrees with Mills’
assumption that European states emerged as a result of a social
contract without any
rationalization around race. For Goldberg, race was an integral
part of the formation of the
modern state but Mills’ assumption seems to hide the formation of Europe’s racial identity.
Second, Goldberg contests the idea that individuals only became
political subjects when they all
came together with the development of a social contract. The
social contract, in a sense, was the
result of individuals coming together to create a state. They, as
a result, became political
subjects. Goldberg argues that racial configuration already
operated in social interactions and
formations, and therefore contributed to the complex relationships
operating in the civil society.
Therefore, the racial contract is not the result of mere
individuals coming together but rather as
“a complex product of this [racial discourse] discursive
diffusion, reified by modern state
12
formation.” (p. 38). He argues that racial expression was used
after the fact to rationalize and
decide political and economic goals. However, racial thinking or
discourse framed exploitation
along racial lines leading to the formation of racial states, as
race was already part of social
interactions where Europeans were perceived as superior. The
racial state argument presents
some important theoretical arguments when one wants to evaluate
and understand current issues
of racism in the French model.
Whiteness and its historical construction in France
While I would come to understand the white – French dynamic in the
U.S.
later on, the
French case itself remained to me somewhat of an enigma. When Du
Bois (1973) talked about
whiteness and showed that blacks and other people of color were
held to a different set of
standards, he was not studying whiteness or blackness in isolation
from one another but rather in
relation to each other (Daniels, 2000). This important reference
will guide me in my exploration
of whiteness in France:
how blackness is explored, talked about, referred to implicitly or
explicitly, while whiteness might be hidden even though it is very
much present in the
discussions. It is therefore critical to identify historical events
that reveal the construction of
blackness and whiteness in France. Ndiaye (2006) argues that
whiteness in France
has been
constitutive to the formation of a French collective national
identity in particular ways but not
essentially so different from the U.S.
and Great Britain.
Can one speak of a color line in France
the same way Du Bois (1999) talked about it in the U.S.? Some
historical examples point out
differences and similarities between these two cases. Whiteness
has been constructed in a similar
fashion but with at times different language and different
policies.
13
During the colonial period, being métis meant being the product of
a relationship between
European men and indigenous women. While Europeans does not
explicitly say white, the term
“European” is not used as a cultural representation but rather as
a racial symbol for white and as
a proxy for the cultural endowments that whites might have had. On
the other hand, being
indigenous meant being non-white. Having a French father would
guarantee the child French
citizenship as long as the father would recognize his child. While
some métis in the
colonies
became a buffer class between the Europeans and the indigenous
people, it was not the case
everywhere (Aldrich, 1996). Some suffered greatly after the French
left as they were a remainder
of the French presence in the colonies. Ndiaye (2006) argues that
contrary to the U.S.
model,
there were not enough blacks in France to make the white working
class define itself in racial
terms in opposition to blacks. However, the color line was not
defined in a pure black/white
dichotomy but rather as a direct consequence of race mixing. A
social fear emerged out of the
possibility that the métissage (or race mixing) already occurring in the colonies would spread to
France. As a result the French authorities intervened. As Stovall (2003)
points out, in 1916 the
French authorities in the Senegal created segregated hospitals
to prevent black men from
interacting with white women. Those types of relationships would
be unacceptable on the French
territory. The fear of black men and their “sexual drive” was
illustrated by a comment made by a
French entertainer in December 2006 when he claimed that poverty
in Africa was the result of
the black man’s genital parts.
However, one has to go much further back in French history to
witness the emergence of
whiteness. Some evidence suggests that it happened at the same
time or before it was officially
used in the U.S.
to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens.
14
It has been assumed that race in France was never a significant
factor in social
relationships and interactions. It is also assumed that there have
never been any slaves within the
French metropolitan borders; it is assumed that France was only
involved in the slave trade from
the port of Bordeaux and Nantes,
and that the West Indies was one of the few
places were the
French were actively involved in slavery. That is in part what I
heard since my French education
in high school barely touched on that part of history. I was never
informed of the small presence
of slaves on the French territory (as opposed to the U.S.). Their
numbers were very small. As a
consequence, there was never any real need to develop racial
classification (even though it did
happen briefly in Paris
as mentioned later) except for the métis, which represented the only risk
to the French territory. So the experience of race is largely
historical creating a gap between
colonial France and modern France for understanding the actual
racial complexity of French
society.
So if it is the case that race never really mattered in France (from a
historical perspective)
then can one speak of “whites” the same way being white in the U.S. has been
socially
constructed?
Some French laws actually corroborate the idea that whiteness was
instrumental in
defining a slave from a free man. A version of the one-drop rule
was implemented to measure
one’s blackness and indirectly one’s whiteness. As a result of the
ordinance of 1762, there were
around 159 blacks registered in Paris (Peabody, 1996). While a total of 159 seems
like a very
small number, many were not counted. What is more interesting is
the measurement device used
by French officials to decipher one’s blackness. The following
labels were used to refer to blacks
in France
at that period of time: nègres (negroes), mulattoes, quadroons, savages, Indians,
creoles and meztizos. Some of those terms were used differently
depending on the level of
15
blackness or black ancestry among parents and grandparents. In the
U.S.
it would be called the
one-drop rule. Some other methods were used to trace black blood
several generations back.
While those labels were official labels, they were rarely used in
everyday life. They were
imported from the colonial legal system in particular when heirs
were claiming their estate, and
had to list their slaves, especially French officials who had to
return from the colonies. However,
most of the legislation in metropolitan France was using the term gens de couleurs (people of
color) to refer to any combination of European (= white) and
African (= black) ancestry.
Those labels were not signifiers of their legal status as citizens
or not since most blacks at
the time could gain their freedoms in many different ways. Some
were actually registered as free
blacks (Peabody,
1996). One of the most critical forms of manumissions was through baptism
and converting to Catholicism. Therefore, this became one of the
main reasons why slaves
traveled to France:
to become catholic and free.
By 1777, new legislations (such as the déclaration pour la police des noirs) were enacted
to prevent blacks, mulattoes and other people of color from
entering metropolitan France.
It was
entirely based on skin color. It was in part due to the fact that
the French parliament refused to
use the word “slave” and was therefore constrained to end up using
racial language to protect the
borders of France (Peabody,
1996). Peabody
(1996) argues that the French tried to structure the
relationship between blacks and whites in a similar way they were
trying to structure the
relationships between slavery and freedom. Whiteness was already
part of the thought-process of
the time. Being white conferred privileges and advantages that
were not solely based on the
colonizer-slave relationship but were eventually based on a racial
relationship. Blacks had to live
up to different standards in order to be considered human, free
and ultimately citizens. Lipsitz
(1998) argues that this particular process was centered in the U.S
and arguably in France
too,
16
around that fact that blackness became synonymous with slavery and
whiteness with freedom,
and eventually contributed to pit people of color against one
another, and in the French case
between Indians and blacks as who should really be called a slave
or a negro.
The Declaration pour la Police des Noirs (1776-1777) was different from the Edit of
1716 and the Declaration of 1738 in the sense that all the legal
actions that resulted from this law
were based solely on skin color, and not on the slave status. The
word “noir” (black)
started to
replace the word “nègre” (negro), which allowed the politicians of the time to get away
from the
difficult legal status that was conveyed in the word “nègre” as possibly meaning
either free
blacks or slaves. The term negro conveyed different meanings
because it was at times associated
with being African and at other times with skin complexion.
Therefore, the use of the term
“black” allowed one to stay away from the historical ambiguity of
the term “negro”. The
ambiguity was revealed, for instance, in the case of Francisque, a
slave who went to court to
change “employers” because he felt maltreated by his original one.
The main question asked by
his lawyers was about his status as a “negro”. If he was a “negro”,
was he subject to the laws of
1716 and 1738, which required employers (more like slave masters)
to register their slaves
(indirectly also by categorizing them through skin colors), and
therefore liable for the well being
of their employees. Francisque was born in India and traveled to France with his employer before
going to court.
At the same period of time in Paris,
about 8% of registered blacks were from India, while
the other ones were from the West Indies.
In 1757, Francisque and his brother went to court to be
able to work for another employer in part because of the alleged
maltreatment they were
receiving. The courts ruled in their favor after some of the
arguments made by their lawyers such
17
as “as everybody knows, Indian blacks, completely unlike the
negroes of Africa, are ordinarily
good domestics; consequently they had no difficulty finding a new
position” (Peabody,
1996, p.
58). This brings a very important point in the definition of Man
in the development of
Enlightment classification. Being considered a Man meant being a
European male, while those
who were from a strong state system like China or India,
and those who were from Africa and
Indigenous America
could not fully be considered Man and therefore deserving of all rights
(Trouillot, 1995). As Indian blacks, the laws of 1716 and 1738 did
not apply to Francisque
because it only applied to “negro slaves.” The question of the
time was to determine whether
negroes were negroes because of their skin color or because they
were from Africa. What is
critical here is not so much the case itself but the way the
lawyers argued their case and how they
constructed blackness. Francisque’s legal representatives
(themselves white) constructed slave
status by opposing the civilization of the Indians against the
barbarian nature of Africans.
However, instead of just focusing on the barbarity of the
Africans, they wanted to demonstrate
(as a two-step process) that Indians had the same intellectual
civilized behavior as Europeans. By
doing so, they equated blackness with savagery, stupidity and
evilness and whiteness (indirectly)
with intelligence and advanced civilized capacities.
People of color were slowly referred to less and less by their
slave status but more and
more by their racial background. The 1777 Declaration pour la Police des Noirs was in reality
put into effect to further prevent any new arrivals, continuing
registration of blacks and also the
marriage between whites and blacks, mulattoes and other people of
color. When signed into law,
this legislation did not differentiate between blacks having
gained their freedom, those who had
some wealth as well as different skin tones.
18
French Colonies
By 1685, legislation was enacted to regulate the relationships
between slaves and
their masters. The legislation was known as the Code Noir (or black code). Slaves
were
became thought of as blacks. This is an important factor to
consider because later in France,
some slaves will challenge their status as slaves on the basis
that they were not black. In order to
gain their freedom some slaves used French laws that required
masters to take care of them but,
despite the fact that the Code Noir, issued by King Louis XIV in 1685, had provisions that
protected slaves, although many planters and managers in the colonies
used torture to discipline
their workers (Dubois & Garrigues, 2006). It is important to
recognize that many groups such as
the Nantais (people from Nantes) were opposed
to the freedom principle discussed in Paris.
As
Pruitt (2007) states,
unlike their Parisian counterparts, the Nantais accepted and
defended the legality
of black slavery both in the colonies and in France itself.
In Nantes, at
least, there
was a place for unfreedom (p. 174)
In the colonies, in general, and in the Caribbean,
in particular, some local free people of
color were treated as full citizens as early as 1600s, but they
started to be more and more
discriminated against because of their African ancestry. After the
French revolution, they began
to press for equal rights. However, at the same time poor whites,
referred to by slaves as petits
blancs (little whites), started to
have more grievances especially as their dreams to become
wealthy were growing. Despite having great resentment for the
royal regime and wealthy whites,
they demanded more opportunities especially as they compared
themselves to more wealthy
mixed-race families who they perceived as less than because of
their African ancestry (Dubois &
Garrigues, 2006). They felt that those wealthy people of color
were unfairly privileged.
19
Whiteness became the principal, predominant, central common bond
between poor and wealthy
whites even though they probably had more common interests in
terms of their true social
position with those families of color. This is similar to the same
way Du Bois (1998) explained
in Black Reconstruction that white workers had more interests in
maintaining the slave system in
place than uniting with slaves/people of color. White workers had
psychological wages
(Roediger, 1999) in perpetuating this oppressive structure. White
workers had interests in
perpetuating this oppressive structure because they were faced a
dependency on wage labor
inherent in a capitalist structure. Therefore, they used their
whiteness to differentiate their wage
labor from bondage labor. Their dependency on wage labor forced
them to construct black labor
as the “other” and locate themselves as legitimate labor force
under the capitalist work ethic
ideology. White workers occupied the ranks of “free white labor”
and therefore should not be
mistaken for slaves (Roediger, 1999).
By 1790 a Colonial Committee was formed to study the political
representation of free
people of color. However, this committee never mentioned race in
its report entitled
“Instructions of March 28.” Two important consequences emerged.
Planters in the colonies felt
like their cause was recognized because race was not addressed and
therefore that people of color
could not participate in elections. Since race was not mentioned
in the report, planters equated
race with people of color. Planters were not thought of as being
part of a racial group. They were
just normal. Planters believed that they could therefore do what
they could as they wish.
However, on the other hand, people of color felt like the report
was actually inclusive since they
were not openly talked about, and therefore they would be able to
participate in elections
(Dubois & Garrigues, 2006). Interestingly, the most
disenchanted were the poor whites who
demanded strict enforcement of laws discriminating against people
of color. By 1791, the
20
National Assembly granted full citizenship to free “men of color
whose mothers and fathers had
both been free and who owned sufficient property” (Dubois &
Garrigues, 2006, p. 22). White
colonials in France
and in the colonies became infuriated. However, it became hard for free
people of color to get their newly acquired rights enforced.
Dubois & Garrigues (2006) argue
that the Haitian revolution became a turning point for France to
define itself with a white identity
in opposition to the Haitian self-proclaimed black identity
nationhood.
In the nineteenth century, politicians debated the morality of
colonialism (Aldrich, 1996).
Despite those debates, a number of laws, such as the codes de l’indigénat, were passed as early
as 1834 in Algeria
followed by similar regulations later on in Cochinchina, New Caledonia,
Senegaland Tahiti
to control the behaviors and activities of indigenous people.
Hartkopf Schloss (2007) describes the formation and policing of a
white racial identity
during the 1831 slave uprising in Martinique, and also in
metropolitan France.
One’s whiteness
was dependent on one’s gender. White masculinity and white
femininity could not de threatened
by enslaved Africans and mulatto population. The increasing number
of people of color on the
island was perceived as a threat to white elite. There was also
heightened fear that white women
were vulnerable to free men of color and that they needed
protection from both slaves and
“semicivilized men of color” (Hartkopf Schloss, 1997, p. 226).
Current French Definition of Whiteness
It is important to recognize that those laws are not in place
anymore but that the
collective memory and the social imagination of who belongs and
who does not is reproduced
through the language used to describe each of those groups. For
instance, Fassin (2006b)
recounts a story in 1996 highlighting unknowingly (because he
never used the actual concept of
21
whiteness to describe the details of this story) how whiteness is
part of our everyday French
language and how we construct race without even mentioning it. A
teenager was murdered that
year and the leader of the National Front (Jean-Marie Le Pen)
quickly commented in the news
how it was a racist crime committed by a Moroccan individual
against a French person. The only
hint he had to come up with such a description of the alleged
murdered was his name and what
he looked like. This young man was of a slightly darker complexion
than what a “French” person
is supposed to look like. In reality, the alleged murderer and the
victim were both French
citizens.
The words being used to describe “true” French citizens illustrate
the insidious presence
of race. Racial differences, through arbitrarily constructed
physical differences, become the
social marker of normality and abnormality. Being white means
being a “normal” French person
while being of a darker skin complexion means having race as a
marker for an “abnormal”
presence on French soil. Other terms are currently being used to
refer to “genuine” French
individuals (we will come back later about the perceived natural
differences along culture) such
as français de souche (French with French roots), français de France (French from France). In
reality, those statements are no more than statements about one’s
whiteness and perceived
necessary attributes necessary to be called French; those
statements reveal that a French person is
commonly thought of as being white (Fassin, D., 2006a; Fassin, E.,
2006b). The French
government (Bébéar, 2004) as well as some 1500 corporations
(Bébéar & Sabeg, 2004) have
now accepted the term “visible minorities” (as of March 1, 2007)
in order to talk about diversity,
but other words such “second generation”, or people issu de l’immigration (who are the product
of immigration) are used to uncover the lack of authenticity of
one’s frenchness (or whiteness). It
is critical to understand the construction of the term “visible
minorities” in the context of white
22
privilege. Since race (as a social signifier) currently has very
little legitimacy and ground for
debate in France, politicians – understanding that racial
discrimination is a now social fact (in
part as a result of the pressure coming from anti-racist
organizations) – have developed a strategy
to enumerate victims of racial discrimination by creating
(following the Canadian example) the
term “visible minorities.” This term has the legal and political
advantage not to make any
mention or references to race (and therefore to circumvent the
currently illegal practice of
collecting data along race, religion, and ethnicity that could be
used against the members of
society identifying as such). However, this term has been used in Canada to
specifically refer to
“people other than indigenous people, who are not part of the
white race, or do not have white
skin” (Bébéar, 2004).
A 2004 report conducted on behalf of the French Prime Minister,
Jean-Pierre Rafarrin, to
address the diversity and discrimination in the work place, the
term “visible minorities” started
being used to refer to what the authors call “fellow-countrymen of
foreign origins.” The author,
Claude Bébéar, argues that this term was chosen in order to comply
with the 1978 law that
prohibits the collection of data such race or national origins.
Terms such as white, black or any
terms, which would identify somebody by his/her “race” or
“origins,” would have been illegal.
In that sense, using “race” (as a social marker) could not be
considered as a way to measure
discrimination.
To avoid such references to race, this 2004 report (Rapport
Bébéar) came up with the
term “visible minorities” which remains a highly racialized term
that has the benefits (at least to
French officials) to not bring race to the forefront of the
discussion while maintaining its
existence (with no name). Whiteness is present but not
acknowledged. What is even more
interesting in this report is the way in which words are used
interchangeably to talk about visible
23
minorities. They are either referred to as fellow-countrymen of
foreign origin or as immigrants,
maghrébins, blacks and Asians who are
of French nationals. If race was truly not an issue or
something that would not need to be addressed then the members of
those groups would all be
called French nationals. In another part of this report, the
unemployment rates of college
graduates are compared along the following categories: citizen of
French stock, foreigners from
the European Union, naturalized French and foreigners from outside
the European Union
(Bébéar, 2004). The question is not so much that there are
meaningless in themselves but rather
the way they are constructed. How far back should one go in
somebody’s ancestry to be
considered French of non-foreign origins? What about can there be
a conflation between
foreigners from and outside the European Union with naturalized
French? In a sense, the way
Francedeals with the question remains problematic because it seems that
there is no ending to it.
The only thing that one can really point out is that some are
whites or of European origins while
others are not. Whiteness is once again present and represents the
non-possibility for those who
do have access to it to be considered French (in the non-legal
sense of the word). Those words,
which like any other words have important social meanings,
represent the complex but socially
real and salient presence of race, racial categories as well as
whiteness as social markers in the
French imagination and more importantly in the policies relating
to immigration, assimilation,
access to jobs and housing.
Having presented some socio-historical evidence about the
construction and presence of
whiteness in France,
the next step is to inquire about the possibility that whiteness continues to
be a salient characteristic of French society. Is whiteness
constructed the same way as in the
past?
24
Research question
Contrary to what some might think, I am not trying to portray the
French as racist. I want
to use this research to highlight the problems behind some of the
so-called discrimination laws
by showing that the way French society talks about race is
inconsistent with the current
advertised solution to discrimination. The so-called solution
might actually be part of the
problem. There seems to be a real disconnect or disjuncture
between the call to end
discrimination, the language used to enforce it, and the policies.
The goal of this dissertation
project is to try to apply one particular American-centric
contention (i.e. whiteness) onto the
French case. The purpose of this dissertation is therefore to
research and understand how the
construction of whiteness affects contemporary issues of race and
racial discrimination in
France. This particular issue of whiteness is linked with race
especially in relation to other
contemporary events such as colonialism, current policies around
citizenship, immigration and
law enforcement (Jugé & Perez, 2006). The central questions
for this dissertation is: How is
whiteness made invisible in France? How does whiteness
contribute to the social construction of
race (or lack thereof)? More specific guiding
questions related to this theme are: How is race
talked about in France
and how does it affect racial inequality? How do French people
understand race and its social relevance in French social
institutions? How is the racial language
(or lack thereof) used to reproduce whiteness in France? How
does France
reconcile its call for
integration (with universal values) with its social construction
of the “other?”
This dissertation is organized as follows: Chapter Two will review
the socio-historical
literature on issues of race and whiteness in France.
Whiteness represents the center of this
research. The applicability of this concept in a different
environment has historically been
25
shown. The construction of blackness was founded on the
assumptions that whites were the
normal group and the yardstick by which slaves, people of color
would be measured against.
Blackness and whiteness are therefore disassociated (Dyer, 2002;
Hooks, 2002). It is therefore
critical to assess the historical meaning of race in France, and how
past policies, ideas and
behaviors have shaped the contemporary meaning of race. The
language used to address
discriminatory practices in the law as well as the language (in
politics and in the media)
revolving around issues of immigration will be looked at in order
to determine the frame used to
ignore or reproduce racial hierarchy in France. In a sense, it is also
important to look at the
impacts of culture, integration and racial imagery in French
society, and some of the
consequences these factors might have on people of color.
Chapter Three addresses some of the theoretical and methodological
underpinnings of
this research. I will address how race has been explained
theoretically and how Americancentricism
can be applied to the French context. Omi and Winant’s Racial
Formation Theory
(1986) represents an important starting point to explain how race
has been constructed,
destroyed, changed for political, economic and social reasons.
Race is not only the product of
group dynamics through the formation of identities and laws but
also through individual use in
dealings with social relations. This theory has been theorized
further in the World is a
Ghetto by
Winant (2002). The author focused on the European case and France was
addressed very
succinctly. However, there is a lot to take from internal
colonialism perspective especially when
the majority of the people of color in France are from former French
colonies. The link between
colonialism and internal colonialism is made even more clear here
when on analyzes the
political, economic and social position of immigrants from former
colonies in France.
However,
one of the arguments present in Blauner’s theory of Internal
Colonialism (Almaguer, 1971, 1975;
26
Blauner, 1969, 1972) cannot completely be applied in the sense
that there is very little racial
and/or ethnic nationalism in France; however, it might be
developing as a result of difficult
integration in French society. The theory of the Racial State
developed by Goldberg (2001) also
helps us decipher how race have permeated French political life.
The racial state becomes the
agent of change by which racial formation is facilitated. Laws,
policies and the definition of
proper social behaviors around race and racism facilitate the
imposition of racial hegemony;
while it remains subtle in France, it is nonetheless existent.
Once the theoretical part is complete,
I will move towards the methodology used to compile the data
necessary for this empirical
research. Some of the advantages as well as potential drawbacks
will be addressed.
The following section will consist of the data. The respondents’
answers will be analyzed
in detail. However, because of the nature of the research method,
the responses will help us infer
certain tendencies about how the French deal with race and how
whiteness might be an integral
part of their thought-process. It would also be unfair, based
solely on this research, to argue that
the French are racist. However, it can tell us a lot about how
some individuals talk about race (or
its nonexistence) and racial discrimination (or its lack thereof),
as well as the possible solutions.
Solutions might also reveal more about the state of minds of those
respondents because it will go
at the heart of what they think the problem might be. When people
are asked to answer questions
on a topic as sensitive as race (especially in the French
context), people might feel reluctant,
offended or surprised, and their answers might be vague. However,
when the respondents
somewhat detach themselves from any responsibility by providing
solutions away from their
personal actions, it might reveal some of the internal (not yet
revealed) feelings about those
issues of race and racial discrimination.
27
Chapter Four will address the results on my survey and the
interviews conducted after the
survey. Some general trends will be examined around the meaning of
what it means to be
French, about respondents’ interpretation of race, about the role
of culture in how respondents
analyze social problems in France, whether racism is perceived
as an individual or institutional
problem, about the perception of who really face the most problems
racially speaking, as well as
the meaning of integration and who should integrate, and finally
the link there might exist with
colonialism
The last sections will be a discussion of the results followed by
a conclusion that will
include some recommendations for future research in this matter.
I would also like to thank all of those without whom I would not
have never matured
intellectually, without whom my mind would have never been
challenged, without whom my life
would definitely not be what it is today, and without whom I would
have never got the individual
and institutional support necessary to function under white
supremacy: (in alphabetical
order)
Adalberto Aguirre, Ph.D.; Edna Bonacich, Ph.D.; Scott Brooks,
Ph.D.; Christopher Chase-Dunn,
Ph.D.; Ronald Hughes, Ph.D.; Augustine Kposowa, Ph.D.; Alfredo
Mirandé, Ph.D.; Michael P.
Perez, Ph.D.; Dylan Rodriguez, Ph.D.; Julie Stokes, Ph.D.
I also need to acknowledge my fellow graduate students and
comrades at U.C. Riverside
with whom I have struggled over the last six years; their support
and friendship have been
extremely critical in my personal and intellectual development: (in alphabetical order) Sabrina
Alimahomed, Jesse Diaz, Erika Gutierrez, Linda Kim, Jose Lopez,
Juan Pitones, Christine Petit,
Shigueru Tsuha, and Jake Wilson. I also want to give a special
thank you to Anna Wire who
helped me navigate the administrative maze of U.C. Riverside and
whose friendship has been
much appreciated.
28
A special thank you to Efrosenya Lubisich, Ph.D., Julie Kiotas,
Ph.D., Lauren Arenson,
Ph.D. for reviewing, providing feedback and editing the earliest
drafts of my dissertation and to
all my other colleagues and students at Pasadena City
College for encouraging me
to finish.
Thank you also to Gladdys Laventure-Darival without whom this
project would never
been possible because without you, I would have never realized I
was white.
And I cannot forget the impact Aimé Céeaire and his writings have
had on the
development on my intellectual growth. I am deeply saddened by his
recent death on April 17,
2008. Discourse on
Colonialism remains the most influential reading I have ever
made. Aimé
Césaire is still to me the perfect embodiment of humanity that I
try to mimic everyday.
Et pour finir un grand merci à mes parents pour leur soutien. Cela
fait chaud au coeur.
To all of you, thank you again!
29
Chapter Two
Background on Race in France
Franceand its racial/racist past
More than just talking about race or racism, the purpose of this
dissertation is to
understand how France
refers to and/or socially constructs race, racism, racial discrimination,
equality, and the solutions implemented to buffer society from
racism. Those solutions can also
provide information about how the problems are being understood by
French society.
Some of the answers might be found in the image France portrays
of itself to the rest of
the world as an open-minded, racist-free society (while this might
have changed with the rise of
the extreme right) who welcomed black American soldiers, artists
and singers right after World
War I, and also as the defender of Human Rights. The République Française (French Republic)
is perceived to be the guardian of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity) for
all its citizens, and any forms of racism, discrimination or
oppression would be sanctioned by
l’État (the State). L’état becomes therefore the
institution that would maintain equal access to
resources, and would ensure that all forms of discrimination would
be outlawed and punished.
This assumes that l’état is always neutral and does not reproduce any negative,
discriminatory, or
racist behaviors, feelings, attitudes as policies are being
enacted and enforced.
However, can one then talk about FranSSe (to refer to its Neo-Nazi
past with
the collaboration of the Vichy
government) symbolically to refer to the real racial problems that
have plagued French society for centuries the same way
Bonilla-Silva talks about AmeriKKKa
to refer to the racist foundations of the U.S.? This way
of spelling “FranSSe” was actually used
by a French rap artist to denounce the neo-colonial politics of
the French government, and also to
30
demonstrate how a segment of the French population feels alienated
and discriminated against
(AFP, 2006). It is without saying that this resulted in
controversies, and the actual problem(s)
illustrated or voiced by those artists remained unexplored or not
discussed. Those lyrics actually
led to a French député (the equivalent of the U.S. representatives in Congress) to
write a law that
would prevent any perceived attack on French social institutions
and to what he called anti-white
racism (Assemblée Nationale, No 2957, 2006).
Despite the real racial problems that exist in France, France has not followed the same
racial and racist trajectory as the United States. While the history of France has been
deeply
involved in slavery and colonialism, most French individuals who
might engage, knowingly or
unknowingly, in racist behaviors, do so without understanding the
social and historical meanings
behind their actions. This is similar to some of the arguments
made by Bonilla-Silva about white
Americans when he talks about racism without racists (2003).
However, this seemingly
excusable ignorance continues to haunt people of color in France. French
citizens as well as their
political representatives are reproducing language, thoughts,
legal actions that were used during
the colonial period. The language has obviously changed but the
meanings behind those words
seem to continually perpetuate as well as consciously and
unconsciously produce images of the
“other”, the one that is not really worth being called French.
The main difference between France and the U.S. really has
to do with the openly
discriminatory policies that permeated American society while France never
had such
policies on its metropolitan territory, except during the Vichy government in 1943
under German
occupation. In that sense, instead of talking about racism without
racists like Bonilla-Silva, one
should probably talk about France as a place where you have racism without race (Chebel
d’Appollonia, 1998).
31
In that spirit of racism without race, this dissertation will not be an attempt to make a link
between contemporary France and its historical past but
rather to show that this link is
reproduced continually through a set of symbols, laws, and the
perceived open-mindedness of
French social institutions. In actuality, French social
institutions continue to make things worse
by continually denying the salient presence of race as a
socio-historical construct. France
has a
long history of colonialism. Culture, as well as race, was used as
a justification for the treatment
of those who were perceived as inferior (Chebel d’Appollonia,
1998). From the onset of the
French revolution in 1789 with the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen, members of
French colonies and slaves were not included in the proclamation
of equality for all (Aldrich,
1996). Some of the French colonial assumptions revolve around the
superiority of the French
civilization compared to the non-European cultures. It was
understood that Europeans were
superior culturally and biologically; that modern science, the
revolution, the capitalist economic
structure of European countries as well as white skin gave them
the right to raise the inferior
peoples – Indochinese, black Africans, and Maghrébins – to a
higher level of civilization that
came to be known as the mission
civilisatrice or the civilizing mission. Aldrich (1996) argues
that it became a “moral mandate for expansion” (p. 92).
The use of the colonies for economic expansion, development of new
markets and use of
labor was coupled with the right of Europeans (understood as
culturally superior
but also as having white skin) to conquer inferior populations. As
a result of this cultural and
economic expansion, debates arose around the way France would
deal with the inferior peoples.
The debate mostly revolved around the choices France was made
between carrying out a strict
assimilation or francisation (Frenchification) of the indigenous peoples or using the
indigenous
structures to establish their economic and cultural goals. The
rights superior races had over
32
inferior races were rarely questioned and almost became a natural
consequence of colonialism
(Bancel & Blanchard, 2005). This current attempt at
“frenchifiying” those who are not
“naturally” French provides important elements about who qualifies
under such a system, and
those who want to impose such requirements in order to fully reap
the benefits of being born in a
country.
In the mid 1880s, Prime Minister Jules Ferry was quoted as saying
that it was the duty of
the superior races to bring civilization, medicine, education and
morals and this was part of the
humanitarian side of colonialism. His argument was centered on the
fact that France
could not
stand for equality while Africans were receiving severe
punishments and were living cruel lives
as a result of their inferior cultures and the iron cage of their
civilization. It was therefore the
duty of France
to intervene and to bring them civilization. This call for colonialism to
“civilize”
inferior races operated around what Bancel and Blanchard (2005)
called an “epistemological
rupture” (p.37) where colonialism is a natural consequence of the
formation of the République.
The colonizing République creates a distinction between whites and the extra-European
populations as a form of discrimination in order to apply the
universal principles of the
République. While a lot of political
debates emerged in the late 1800s, Aldrich (1996) argues that
the French population was more concerned about unemployment and wages
and remained fairly
unaware of what was taking place in the colonies, yet the colonies
were a remedy to these ills.
From the 1880s to the 1920s, France’s colonial policy started
using, among other tactics,
a more overt racial policy. The goal was to exaggerate the
cultural differences across groups in
order to control them economically, politically and socially.
While it became easier to control
opposing ethnic groups, France eventually wanted to remove
the differences that existed between
the colonies and the métropole. While it was expected of all colonized people who were granted
33
civil rights to behave as a French person, the rights associated
with citizenship did not apply to
most of the indigenous masses even though they had to fulfill
their duties as French citizen.
Francewas trying to establish
little Frances
while turning “Africans, Asians and islanders into
French men and women of a different colour” (Aldrich, 1996,
p.110). Racial inequality became a
fundamental factor in the imposition of the republican model, yet
it was cast as an inequality of
citizenship. Civilization was the main requirement. The racial
essentialization of populations,
which was at the origin of the civilizing mission, eventually
disappeared from political speeches
and arguments from political proponents of on-going colonialism
because the goal became
obvious: to civilize the racially inferior peoples (Bancel &
Blanchard, 2005).
This civilizing effort was eventually met with skepticism,
opposition and disgust. The
novelist Anatole France stated in 1906 that “Whites do not
communicate with blacks or yellow
people except to enserf or massacre them. The people whom we know
as barbarians only know
us through our own crimes” (cited in Aldrich, 1996, p. 112). This
quote provides some critical
aspect of how race played a major part in French colonial thought.
While culture remained the
way to bring indigenous people up, race was understood as being
the main reason for their
inferiority.
The 1930s were marked by a slow decline in openly racist ideas but
was instead replaced
by a more subtle, nonetheless racially charged, form of
condescending paternalism (Aldrich,
1996; Reynaud Paligot, 2006). Reynaud Paligot (2006) points out
the paternalistic colonial train
of thought that was centered on the idea that the duty of the
mother nation was to educate its
colonies the same way a mother raises her child, and to ensure her
development to adulthood. It
was thought that helping the colonies on their way to civilization
was as difficult as raising a
child.
34
During that same period, colonialism came to be understood as a
more humane and
modernizing endeavor and the indigenous peoples became to be known
for having qualities that
could benefit the French empire. Despite some political opposition,
some 25,000 Algerians
known as évolués (which could be translated as educated and sophisticated like the
French; a
group of people who had been ‘Frenchified’) were granted French
citizenship. While having
citizenship was critical for one’s position in the colonies, being
white retained some sort of
assurance for one’s status of dominance, especially if you were a petit blanc (or poor white)
(Aldrich, 1996).
Franceand its racial and cultural superiority
The justification for French and European superiority was rooted
in emerging scientific
racism. Earlier texts suggest that Europeans began using the Bible
as a justification for their
innate superiority (Mohawk, 1992). Eventually, the contact with
other cultures made them
believe that certain practices, not encountered in Europe, were the product of unnatural behaviors
that hinted at the inferiority of certain groups, e.g. Muslims
were associated with strange sexual
traditions and practicing castration. Those behaviors were
supposedly widespread outside Europe
and were used as an example to demonstrate the natural civilized
characteristic of the Europeans
(Aldrich, 1996).
One of the leading researchers in the matter of race in France was
Arthur de Gobineau
(1967) who published in the 1850s his Essay on the Inequality of Races. The
technological
advances of the Europeans prompted “scholars” like De Gobineau to
start rationalizing
Europeans’ perceived biological superiority. Those ideas became
widely adopted and eventually
provided more incentives to expand French imperialism and the
civilizing mission. De Gobineau
35
(1967) stated, “any true civilization comes from the white race.
This is what history teaches us”
(p. 187). This idea was publicized and reproduced in numerous
books and articles earlier in the
twentieth century and it was argued that the needs to expand as
well as the vocation of the
colonizer were naturally manifested in the colonial policies of
the Third République (Reynaud
Paligot, 2006).
Gobineau’s book, Essay on the
Inequality of Races, among others, provided
some of the
opinions and feelings people eventually used when talking about
blacks and Africans. For
example, Blacks were thought to be sexually powerful, which
contributed to their animalistic
traits, but the color of their skins was a representation of
darkness and evil in the thinking of
white Europeans. In 1922, Lévy-Bruhl, a philosopher, published a
best-seller describing the
differences between the way the civilized and the primitives
think, and he eventually ended up
reproducing popular ideas that the primitives were not capable of
abstract thinking and
conceptualization. He also argued, following missionaries’ ideas,
that the way primitive children
learn is similar to the way civilized children learn, but that it
eventually slows down and stops
(Reynaud Paligot, 2006). The Minister of the Colonies between 1920
and 1924 and from 1932 to
1933, Albert Sarraut, observed that the cultural characteristics
of what makes a black person
(lazy, indolent, and distrustful) are hereditary. As a consequence,
the civilizing mission becomes
a necessity that the good-willing superior French would undertake
(Girardet, 1972). Jules Ferry
thought those inferior races were still at the stage of childhood.
Therefore, it was the duty of the
superior race to bring to the inferior civilizations intellectual,
economic and moral development
that they would not have encountered without the tutoring of the
superior race (Girardet, 1972;
Reynaud Paligot, 2006). As a result the implication was evident
that inferior races were thought
not to be able to develop themselves by themselves to a level of
civility already attained by the
36
superior civilizations. Ferry, who was Minister of Public
Instruction (a.k.a. education) from 1879
to 1880, thought that inferior peoples had the capacity to
assimilate and to progress in the social
hierarchy. He therefore believed that they could progress to the
level of the civilized without
nonetheless asserting that it would lead to equality among human
races (Reynaud Paligot, 2006).
More recently, one can have a sense of how colonized peoples were
treated and perceived
in Fanon’s books Black Skin, White
Masks (1967) and The Wretched of the Earth (1963).
The
critical insider perception of the treatment of colonized peoples
gives us a more comprehensive
sense of the alienation and dehumanization felt by those
populations, but also a sense of the
entitlement and affirmed superiority expressed by the colonizers.
How is race talked about in France and how does that effect
racial inequality?
Universality is a central aspect of what France stands
for. Differences are not
welcome because they represent a threat to the type of equality
the République wants to represent
(Kastoryano, 2002). Eventually this universality is supposed to be
neutral. However as Bancel
and Blanchard (2005) argue, this universality is represented
historically by political figures. The
neutral universal man as found in political circles, the media,
and intellectual and economic
thinktanks is a “white man from the middle and upper social
classes” (p.34).
One can also consider the evolution of racist thought in the
French political arena. Let’s
just compare the following three quotes to examine how race,
racism and racial thought represent
important factors used to explain certain political decisions in
each conjecture.
First, the King’s representative to the Admiralty, Comte Guillaume
Poncet de La Grave,
argued in 1762, that having blacks in France would disfigure the French
nation:
37
The introduction of too great a quantity of negroes in France –
whether in the
quality of slaves, or in any other respect – is a dangerous
consequence. We will
soon see the French nation disfigured if a similar abuse is
tolerated. Moreover, the
negroes are, in general, dangerous men. Almost none of those to
whom you have
rendered freedom have refrained from abusing it, … [they] have
been carried to
excesses dangerous for society (Peabody, 1996, p.74).
Poncet de la Grave was one of the main instigators of the Déclaration pour la Police des
Noirs in 1776. Statistics
gathered out of the registries of the time show that this perception was a
lot more personal than an actual reality since there was, in 1762,
a very small proportion of
blacks in comparison to the total population of Paris (Peabody, 1996).
Second, President General De Gaulle, who was known for his courage
during
World War II and was also recognized as a powerful head of state
who stood up against the
power of the U.S after the war, was quoted as stating:
We are, before considering anything else, a white racial European
people with a
Greek and Latin cultural background and of Christian beliefs (…)
Try to integrate
oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a while, they will
separate once again.
Arabs are Arabs. French are French. You think that the French
nation can absorb
ten million of Muslims, who tomorrow, might become twenty million
et the day
after tomorrow forty million? If we were to go forward with the
integration
process, if all the Arabs and Berbères from Algeria were
considered French, how
would you prevent them from coming and settling down in the French
metropolitan area, where the standard of living is so much higher?
My village
would not be called Colombey-the-two-churches
(Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises),
38
but Colombey-the-two-Mosques (Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées)! (quoted
in
Stora, 1999).
Tournoux (1967) argued that President De Gaulle was not too
thrilled of the idea that by
the end of the French empire with the passage of the 1946
constitution, millions of people of
color would be given local autonomy and access to the French
parliament for representation.
They constituted in a sort new French citizens, future voters and
possible future elected officials
as part of the newly formed French union, and not as part of the
French empire. He was quoted
saying that he did see “how 45 million French people could absorb
10 million of infidels”
[Muslims] (Tournoux, 1967, p. 307). He could not foresee millions
of Arabs becoming the equal
of whites. Some of those feelings were due to the increasing birth
rate among Arabs and the idea
that with integration, France
would not be France
anymore.
During another interview De Gaulle went one step further in
showing his disgust for
Blacks and for what they represented in his eyes:
You know, that is enough now to talk about your nègres. You are getting me mad,
we only see them. You have me welcome them, you have me invite
them from
breakfast. I am surrounded by nègres here… And then, it does not
even matter!
Leave me alone with your nègres: I don’t want to see any of them over the next
two months, is that understood? Not a meeting over the nest two
months. It is
really not because of time constraints, but despite that it is
fairly boring, it gives a
really bad image outside [France]. You see some nègres everyday at l’Élysée
(official Presidential house). And then I can assure you that it
does not even
matter (Interviews with Jacques Foccart, November 8, 1968; quoted
in Foccart,
1997)
39
Third, one of the most recent quotes from President Chirac, when
he was still Mayor of
Parisin 2002, revealed some of the most blatantly prejudiced feelings
he had for people of color:
What is the most urgent: to save the identity of French people or
to accept all
those, using political arguments, who would like to come and get
on welfare, and
to use our hospitals and our universities? Our problem is not the
foreigners, it is
more the overdose of foreigners. Maybe it is true that the
foreigners are more
numerous than before the war, but they are different, and it makes
a difference. It
is certain that having Spaniards, Polish, and Portuguese working
on our soil,
create fewer problems than having Muslims and blacks. How do you
expect a
French worker and his wife, both working and, making 2150 dollars
a month, and
who see as his next door neighbor, a family composed of a father,
his three or four
wives, and about twenty of his kids, making 7150 dollars from
welfare, without of
course, working . . . and if you add the noise and the smell; well
this French
worker becomes crazy. And it is not racist to say that.
Those quotes not only show the historical basis for racist thought
in political
life, but they also reveal who the foreigners, the others are –
the ones that bring France
down. It
is not those who do not behave as good French citizens, or those
who have committed treason
against the French nation but rather France’s racial subjects who are not
perceived to be
“naturally” inclined to benefit France. They could be citizens,
legal residents, but they are not
because their racial identity presents a problem. The racial
characteristics remain heavily rooted
in the anti-immigrant mindset.
Immigration has been a major source of conflict in France over the
last twenty-five years.
Francehas seen the rise of the extreme right and the repositioning of
the moderate left party (the
40
socialist party) and the right political party (the different
parties that emerged out of the post
World War II Gaullist party) around critical issues of
immigration, citizenship, culture,
communities vs. French nationalism, labor, the European Union but
very seldom around the
issues of race and racism per se. While the aforementioned issues are important to research,
French scholars, sociologists, as well as other authors have shied
away from questioning race as
a social construct.
However, some authors such as Kelman (2005a, 2005b) have tried to
bring up the issue
of race but it rarely makes it to the national debate. He argues
that the French tend to address
Blacks in France
as if they were still all rooted to the motherland, Africa,
and that they should all
know about their African ancestry. His argument revolves around
the idea that the French have
in a sense essentialized French Blacks as just being Africans.
Instead of being treated as French
citizens, the French continually address them as Africans, because
of their skin color. There are
not hyphenated identity in France as it exists in the U.S; one
is not known as black-French or
African-French, just African. Kelman argues that France is a
multiracial society but it does not
mean that blacks and whites should fall into the traps of constant
identity politics, which would
lead to not seeing men. Kelman’s arguments depart from black
Americans whom he disagrees
with when it comes to constantly looking at the past to help us
understand today and tomorrow.
While he firmly rejects colonialism and the institution of
slavery, he argues that those events
should only be studied to prevent their reoccurrences and that
they should not be used to always
make blacks the victims and whites the oppressors. However, he
realizes that race (as a social
construct), being black, does not currently equal fair treatment
and complete equality. In a sense,
while he claims that a black person should be treated as a French
citizen (not as a former
African) he also maintains that race continues to represent a
significant factor in our society.
41
Similarly Sagot-Duvauroux (2004) goes to the heart of the problems
encountered by
young black men and women who, despite being born in France, are
still referred to as children
of immigrants. His analysis of how black youth are still expected
to know they are Africans first
and foremost creates ambivalence in the way they identify
themselves. While France
can cite an
ancient history that the U.S.cannot claim, it contributes to the
idea that there has been a clear
continuity in French history while all U.S. citizens were at point
immigrants. This continuity of
French history needs to be debunked in order to allow those young
black men and women to be
considered fully French. One of Sagot-Duvauroux’s main arguments
is that the language used
everyday by French people continues to create and reproduce a
sense of superiority rooted
knowingly or unknowingly in the historical relationship between France and its
former colonies.
Consequently, Black youth have a difficult time dealing with it.
While blackness remains visible
and meaningful in the French mind, la blanchitude (whiteness) remains
invisible and
meaningless, or so we think. Blackness is racialized and
associated with crimes and lack of
morals. Black people continually have to prove their frenchness
because politicians and many in
the general population have not accepted them as French. It comes
from the idea that because
their parents were born somewhere else and might be passing on
important cultural values to
them it prevents these same young people from being considered
French. In reality, they are
struggling to balance their real frenchhood and their parental
cultural values. It is assumed that
they might not be able to understand what it means to be French.
One of the major contentions in France is that since race is not
biological, it should not
even be addressed as a social construct for fear of creating more
tensions and reinvigorating race
as a biological construct. Rightly so, France refuses to see race as
something fixed or as an
essential concept; however, it also sees race as purely
ideological construct that the French state
42
combats everyday through a set of legislation. Using Omi &
Winant’s points in Racial
Formation (1994), race is neither an
essence nor is it a reified concept with no real meaning.
The concept of racism in France has often been associated
with discrimination based on
the biological notion of race, particularly in the law. It has
also been extensively studied
regarding anti-Semitism, religious issues, and cultural
differences but very rarely on the basis of
race as the perception and assumptions associated with certain
human bodies (socially not
biologically). Taguieff (1995) points that while
anti-discrimination laws address race, the
language used around this concept remains very unclear and vague
in its use, e.g. biological
construct or social construct. Chebel d’Appollonia (1998) also
questions the meaning of race
being used from 1948 in the Declaration of Human Rights to the
most recent anti-racist pieces of
legislation in France.
How can France
claim that race does not exist but still mentions it in its
anti-discrimination laws? Contrary to Tagueiff (1995) who is not
sure on the definition of race in
the law, whether race is meant in a social or biological sense,
Chebel d’Appollonia (1998) argues
that it is a way of reproducing race from a biological standpoint.
Chebel d’Appollonia (1998)
argues that belonging or not belonging to a race should not be a
factor of discrimination, but no
clear definition is given of the word race.
On one hand, while race is mentioned as something that should not
be taken into account;
this is based on what I call a reactive mechanism that relies on
the assumption that race does not
exist biologically but in the case that somebody would
discriminate against another individual
based on this old obsolete idea the laws would sanction that
behavior. On the other hand, when
new legislations are thought of in order to deal with race or to
present a proactive mechanism,
race (as a social construct based on the experiences of people of
color in our society) is not
considered an adequate factor to integrate in the legal language,
which could explain the timidity
43
by the institutions to engage in a French style affirmative action
(la discrimination positive).
This irony is also represented in this project of law introduced
in November 2004 to remove the
word “race” from the French constitution as the biological meaning
of such was irrational, and
that the constitution was actually legitimizing its use by naming
it (Assemblée Nationale, No
1918, 2004). Ironically, the term visible minority, used after a Canadian
definition (see
introduction), has been adopted by the French government to refer
to those who are not
considered whites. It seems like a bad attempt to show that race
(as a social construct) matters
without admitting to it?
However, Perret (2004) analyzes the 1881 law of non-discrimination
with the freedom of
information in the French press. Her understanding of the law as
well as her analysis of more
current cases reveals that written documents can be considered
racist when the author insists on
the ethnicity of a person or a group to devalue his/her honor or
to provoke. It is therefore
possible to talk about black, African and Maghrebian communities
as invaders incompatible with
the Christian and French culture as a form of racist discourse
engendering hate. Individuals can
be found guilty of either racial defamation, racial insult or
racial provocation. However, a key
point is that the group being targeted has to be identifiable.
Perret (2004) insists on the fact that
those groups have to be determined enough that it is possible to
talk about them as an objective
entity. While this law provides tools to combat racially
insensitive remarks in the press, it is not
applied consistently because of difficult procedural litigation.
Moreover, when an infraction has
been condemned, enforcement of the law and applications of
sanctions remain rare.
While European anti-discrimination policy in the 21st century has made references
44
to race, France
has refused to integrate this concept into its own anti-discrimination policies
(Guiraudon, 2004). France
is continually rejecting, circumventing and distancing itself from such
a social concept (Calvès, 2002). Therefore, the struggle for
racial equality (while it is not thought
of in those terms), or more commonly understood as
non-discriminatory ideals, revolves around
the French republican idea of equality through sameness, or though
the access and duties
associated with French citizenship.
Mbembe (2005) argues that France’s incapacity to deal with
race revolves around the old
(still being defended) idea that France is an exception, and that the
universal idea of the
République will welcome everybody and
will solve every problem associated with
discrimination. However, this notion seems to be overstated since France has
never tried to
engage in a postcolonial debate, and therefore still considers
others, and people of color, as the
wretched of the earth. Sagot-Duvauroux (2004) talks about his
marriage to a black woman from
Maliand the way people would talk about their son. While it would
seem almost natural to
people around him and would not pose any threat to them if he was
to claim that his son is black,
the same could not be said for his wife if she was to claim that
her son was white. Sagot-
Duvauroux (2004) argues that people might claim there is nothing
wrong with being black, so
why isn’t she claiming his blackness? While there might not be
intentional malignity in this
statement, it is nonetheless problematic in the sense that for her
to claim her son’s whiteness
would be an attempt to become equal, and of course, everybody
knows that it is not possible.
This in a sense represents an informal one drop-rule in France. Fanon
(1967) would reiterate that
point by arguing that the colonizer wants the colonized to
progress to the level of the colonizer,
the colonizer, however, would not allow this to happen.
45
While Weil (2005) agrees that most individuals of color are victim
of discrimination, he
does not see “la discrimination
positive” (affirmative action in French) as a solution
for France.
However, others have argued for the compilation of statistics on
what is called in France
“visible
minorities.” Kelman (2005b) argues in favor of la discrimination positive that
could only be
achieved by adopting methods for collecting the data. Simon &
Stave-Debauge (2004) focus on
the incoherence of the anti-discrimination laws in France. The
references to ethnicity and race
are rejected in favor of well-established and less embarrassing
characteristics, which make the
analysis of social discrimination more complicated. Using “race”
as an objective indicator of
discrimination would therefore imply that it already exists, and
since it is not believed to be the
case, then using statistics to objectively demonstrate the
existence of discriminations would only
make things worse.
Terms such as “immigrants” or “foreigners” are currently used to
depict visible
minorities and other groups who face social problems and /or whose
integration is perceived as
problematic. While the official definition of “foreigner” is any
person living in France
who does
not have French citizenship, and the official definition of
“immigrant” is any person who live in
Francewho born foreigner in a foreign country (Haut Conseil à
l’Intégration, 1992; Insee, 1999),
those terms are vague and usually misused. The terms “immigrants”
and “foreigners” might be
used to talk about children of immigrants, who themselves were
born in France
and who have
never experienced issues of migration (Simon et al, 2004).
How is the racial language (or lack thereof) used to reproduce
whiteness in contemporary
France?
46
Maurin (2004), in an interesting study of the French ghettos,
talks about the segregation
of the French and the foreigners, without clarifying what he means
by foreigners. Some
references to some ethnic and religious identities are mentioned
but the problem really seems
more cultural than racial. A main part of the problem in the way
discrimination is talked about
has to do with the lack of understanding of the words and phrases
being used everyday. This is
the case in particular when a French person claims to not see that
his/her friend is black anymore
as a way of proving his/her colorblindness. However, claiming not
to see somebody as black
does not mean it was not the case before one met that person, and
that it might still be the case
with other black people that a person does not know personally. It
is almost like stating that
before we were friends, I saw the black person (and all the
stereotypical images that comes with
it) in you but now you are not black. This type of question would
be perceived as absurd if a
black person were to say to his/her friend that he/she does not
see you as a white person
anymore.
In his socio-historical study of French citizenship, Weil (2004)
addresses laws and
political decisions that were based on racist ideologies. However,
in doing so, he mixes ethnicity,
race and religion. While it provides very critical information
about the development of what it
means to be French, his analysis about the use of race to
determine access to citizenship and the
other goods in society remains superficial in this regard. Weil
(2005) goes on to claim his
opposition to any statistical analysis, which would be linked to
race, origins or other social
factors. This argument stems from the legacy of the Vichy government in 1943
who compiled
statistics about Jews in order to control their population.
Therefore, it is considered an aberration
to gather statistics on people, which could be considered like a
lighting rode to the formation of
communities, which is said to be contrary to the French tradition
(Lévy, 2005). Collecting ethnic
47
data would go against French Republican values of universality.
That type of data would
reinforce the formation of communities and would diminish the
possibility of integration since
certain ethnic identities would remain anchored in French social
institutions. Since there is no
language to address race and racial discrimination, addressing
racial privileges that whites still
enjoy daily remain a foreign idea in the collective mind. However,
it does not mean that racial
discrimination does not exist nor does it mean that whites do not
reap the benefits of their
whiteness.
Another very convincing way to convey an image about the others is by only referring to
them with epithets while never naming them openly. This is
particularly true when politicians
talk about immigration and the impact it is said to have on French
social institutions, economy
and security issues. Last March for example, a few weeks before
the 1st round of the 2007
Presidential Elections, a few individuals were stopped by the
police in the subway for not
carrying the appropriate transportation tickets on them. After an
altercation with the police, other
people started rebelling against law enforcement officers. As a
result, a few youth were detained
and charged with fairly minor crimes, which could have nonetheless
carried out a few months in
jail.
This particular incident is critical in the way politicians and
the media picked up on this
incident and how those youth were depicted. As soon as the event
was reported, the Minister of
Interior announced that the main suspect in this altercation with
the police was a young man
from the Congo,
who was described as having come to France 10 years ago illegally and at
that
time had 22 crimes on his record (Cornevin, 2007). Thirteen other
persons were arrested in
relation to this incident but there was no mention of where they
were from and how their
criminal record became public (Daccord, 2007). It is also important
to put this event in
48
perspective. This young black man became the symbol of the problem
of immigration, of
immigrants who enter the country illegally and who do not respect
French laws. Most
newspapers described him as a man from the Congo who had entered France 10 years ago
illegally, and who was depicted as a violent offender with a
profound hate for law enforcement
authorities (Cornevin, 2007). His blackness, his immigration
status, his foreign nationality were
linked to crimes, and how France has to protect its borders,
enforce its laws in a stricter manner
and ensure the integration of those do not know what it means to
behave as a French person.
However, the next day his attorney revealed that he had come 10
years ago as a result of family
reunification and he was in process of picking his legal papers
the following week. It was also
revealed that he had only 7 minor infractions on his record. After
this event, issues of national
identity, immigration and insecurity became central themes during
the last three weeks of the
Presidential campaign (Domenach, 2007).
Culture and race
Silverman (1992) argues that the “idea of a common and
trans-historical culture defining
the French nation has been a powerful means of racializing the
“French people” (p. 8). While
Silverman’s point provides important historical arguments to
understand the current situation,
race, as a social construct, remains, nonetheless, a foreign
concept for French people. However,
it becomes difficult to explain racialization without the use of
racial language, and this is why
culture has become one of the most critical arguments used in the
debates revolving around
integration, immigration and citizenship. Can they integrate? How should they integrate? While it
seems clear that immigrants are expected to integrate in French
society and its universal values,
the universal values are rarely discussed? After all, if you are
really French, you should know!
49
Culture represents the socially transmitted set of ideas,
traditions, customs, and language passed
on from generation to generation. Like in any other culture, there
are dominant ideas and
traditions as well as regional differences within the same
territory. It would be difficult to argue
that there are not any cultural differences at all in France from Paris
to Marseille to Toulouse
(such as the accent people have in those regions), to the more
rural areas where life is centered
around agriculture. Despite those obvious undeniable differences,
no one would contest the fact
people living in all those areas are French. Language is also a
source of unification across those
regions. While the French have been extremely active in
maintaining French as the main
language of the land (Toubon Law in 1992) because of the fear that
its use is being threatened by
the English language in many French social institutions. This Law
also put an end to the
teachings of Regional languages such as le Breton, le Corse, le Tahitien, le Catalan and
l’Occitan in schools, which were
authorized in 1951 with the Deixonne Law. While French is
now the only official language of the land, it is possible to
think some people might continue to
speak those regional languages or dialects in their homes. They
are nonetheless still considered
French citizens.
The next important question about culture is centered on those who
are not legally French
and who could gain French citizenship by integrating into French
society. Since French
citizenship is not awarded automatically based on soil rights,
those who are in France
as non-
French citizens would need to identify with the French culture,
speak the language and
understand their duties and responsibilities as future French
citizens. Sagot-Duvauroux (2004)
argues that young men and women that are referred to as children
of immigrants have a lot of
difficulty identifying with their parents’ culture and language
because they are born, raised and
socialized in France.
While they did not choose to be born in France, Frenchness fell on them the
50
same way it fell on children of French citizens. They are seen as
a foreign body that cannot
assimilate to French culture. They would eventually have to prove
themselves to be worthy of
French citizenship. What happens to French citizens who do not
understand the culture or do not
speak the language? Is their citizenship repealed? By requiring
those young men and women to
integrate, are we assuming that there is a clash of civilization
(Hajjat, 2005)?
On the other hand, my children by being born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens because of soil
rights, but also French according to blood rights. They are now
two and four years old, they have
spent a total combined time of one month and half in France,
understand what I say in French but
do not speak French well, and they are French citizens. My wife
could also become a French
citizen if she were to prove that she can carry a simple
conversation in French. As a result, our
oldest daughter (my wife’s biological daughter from a previous
relationship) who is ten could
then become a French citizen without having to prove that she
speaks French or without ever
going to France.
We would just need to request it before she turns eighteen years old.
What is assumed here is that being French, culturally speaking, is
either something
inherent (blood right) for some and has to be learnt for others
(for those who do not have French
parents). However, those who are being asked to learn to be French
have done so at the same
pace as those who became French citizens as birth. Both have been
raised and socialized in
French schools, taught how to speak French correctly, have taken
pleasure in participating in the
athletic, artistic and social scenes in France. The only
difference one is considered French, the
other has to prove it.
It is therefore necessary to look at the historical meaning of the
civilizing mission during
the colonial period. The civilizing mission aimed at transforming
culturally, socially,
economically and politically people who were deemed inferior by
the French colonizers. While
51
some would argue that the civilizing mission has been abandoned
with the end of colonial
imperialism, some would suggest some of the international NGOs
still operate within the same
altruist and modernizing paradigm (Brauman, 2005). One could
probably analyze the operation
led by a few activists in Chad who wanted to rescue around one
hundred children from Darfur
(Prier, 2007) as an example of 21st century civilizing mission. However, in December
2007 Chad
courts found the members of this organization (Arche de Noë) guilty by of kidnapping
children
who were not from Sudan. This apparently altruistic operation
reproduces images of white
European colonizers trying to rescue, with emotion and heartfelt
sympathy, black children who
were caught in the incivility of African countries. This operation
was apparently solely organized
by white French citizens who decided what was best for these
children while they were, in
reality, kidnapping them.
It can be also argued that those who are the most impacted by the
idea of integration are
the children of those who emigrated from France’s former colonies
in the 1950s-1960s for labor
reasons. It is therefore not a stretch to think that those
populations who were not equal during
colonialism and could not gain citizenship (one could talk about
the Décret Crémieux in 1870 in
Algeria where about 370,00 Algerians Jews were awarded French
citizenship automatically
while Algerian Muslims relegated to the status of natives) or were
perceived as continually
inferior culturally despite their efforts to change (Fanon, 1967)
are the descendants of those
colonized populations that politicians and many French individuals
refer to as visible minorities,
children of immigrants and so on.
Reynaud Paligot (2006) argues that the colonial policies did not
include those who were
considered indigènes (natives pejoratively speaking) and she points out the universal
law of unity
and equality applied in France since the French revolution was not
extended to them because of
52
race. Race became an integral part of colonial law. The indigènes of the colonies could not
get
automatic French citizenship by being born on French soil
according to the 1889 law. Other
scholars, such as the economist Leroy-Beaulieu, defined
colonialism as an investment for a
future [economic] supremacy (Girardet, 1972) and contested the
loss of power by whites, who
were considered the real French and the most intelligent, in the
French Antilles where he argued
that blacks were not capable to rule over whites nor could they
rule themselves, and thought that
it was foolish to have an inferior race rule a superior race. His
son stated, in 1904, that “today’s
blacks are inferior, really inferior to whites” (Reynaud Paligot,
2006, p. 260)
Culture becomes a proxy for race and racism because culture is more
acceptable than race
(Hajjat, 2005). A cultural hierarchy was produced. Bonilla-Silva
(2003) refers to this practice as
cultural racism, where different populations are racialized (it is
understood that you can
determine one’s culture through one’s external physical
characteristics) and defined through their
culture, which appears and is continually perceived as inferior
without claiming biological
inferiority.
Culture becomes the reason why they should integrate. Scholars
such as Taguieff (1988)
have made very powerful arguments about what the new right
represents and how while this
political movement does not use any racial language, they advocate
for cultural differentialist
ideas.
Differentialism
French scholars such as Pierre-André Taguieff (1988) refined the
concept of
differentialism to address the new right wing racism (a modern
form of national-socialism that is
a nationalistic, non-Marxist, anti-imperialist, non-egalitarian
and culturally homogeneous
53
racism). Interestingly, this new form of racism revolves around
the rejection of integration or
assimilation. Integration should not be forced because groups
should be able to maintain their
culture. The new right wing looks at liberalism as problematic.
Instead of talking about racial
superiority, they are developing a differential cultural
assertiveness (which claimed to be nonracist)
that both Europeans and people of the Third World should relish.
However, these politics
of exclusionism are based on the principles that “humans by nature
are bearers of culture and
distinct cultures are incommensurable” (Spektorowski, 2000, p.
298) which means that equality
is not desirable because there isn’t any quality that can be
compared to in each of those cultures.
They have replaced the discourse in inequality by the hierarchy of
preferences and feelings.
There is just an “objective” difference between ethnic groups
(Chebel d’Appollonia, 1998). The
development of the Third World (against the imperialist forces)
will benefit the ethnically-closed
homogeneous development of Europe. In a sense, by asserting the
right to innate cultural
differences, they are maintaining the impossibility of coexistence
between Europeans and others.
It is a Social Darwinist approach in which people are constrained
by their different cultures
(Spektorowski, 2000). Members of ethnic groups are free to choose
their differences (Chebel
d’Appollonia, 1998).
However, Taguieff, himself, has been caught falling into the
racial arguments by talking
of anti-white racism. He was quoted saying at a conference that
“racist people are not all ‘petits
blancs.’ Victims of discrimination
can also be racist and anti-Semite. There are as many forms of
racism as there are social groups” (quoted in Fassin, 2006b, p.
122). Those types of arguments
are already used by Americans opposing affirmative action
policies. Their arguments call an end
to any form of discrimination (Martinot, 2003). As Martinot (2003)
argues, a double-bind occurs.
The dominant group does believe in restoring historical wrongs by
creating new forms of
54
discrimination, and the minority groups who have been the
historical recipients of discrimination
rely and depend on the dominant group to enforce
anti-discrimination policies and provide equal
opportunities. However, nothing really changes because of the
contradictory expectations of
those groups, and it results in the status quo. In other words,
the system of privilege has
historically benefited, knowingly or unknowingly, and remains in
place. Whiteness remains and
it is made more invisible, because race is not assumed to have any
social relevance.
The colorblind idea of race is revealed here arguing that race
should have no place in
French society, but in order to prove this point, whiteness is
highlighted and the only worth
mentioning when one talks of racism.
How does France reconcile its call for integration (with universal
values) with its social
construction of the “other?”
While the question of racism, in Europe and in France in
particular, tends to be discussed
in terms of individual prejudice that can be solved through
understanding and interactions
(Lentin, 2004), it nonetheless affects racial minorities usually
referred to as either “foreigners” or
“immigrants” as a whole. One should not presuppose that this
racism is only due to the Front
National (or National Front) and its
very overt anti-immigrant/pro-French ideologies that are
perceived as racist. While it has a lot of truth to it, the
conclusion that only members of the Front
National share those ideas and no
other political party share historical responsibility in this
regards would be misleading. In reality, as Lentin (2004) shows,
racism and the European notion
of universalism are indivisible. While Europeans and the French
specifically believe that racism
is an individual aberration, the key making people equal is by
creating equality based on a moral
55
basis. However, one can only understand the universal notion of
mankind when compared to the
pervasive notion of racism. So in order to create the universal
man, one has to create the inferior
and the superior through the use of race.
Integration (assimilation)
When the French call for integration in the French nation and its
values towards equality,
it posits itself as the defender of human rights as defended by
being French means (or being a
white man). It also represents the refutation of the concept of
race as science that leads to the use
of culture to talk about inequalities, and the necessity for
others to integrate the nation under the
call of universalism. Since 1955 (Blanchard, 2005), France has
been advocating the idea of
integration for extra-European immigrants (can be inferred as
non-whites). The idea behind
integration appears as the model that extra-European immigrants
have to follow in order to be
part of French society. In a sense, immigrants have to show their
desire to belong to the French
nation and therefore take part in the duties associated with being
French. However, it seems that
since it was constructed in particular to integrate extra-European
immigrants, this concept of
integration is not just a pro-French stance that all immigrants
have to follow but rather a concept
that applies to members of former colonies. In that regard,
non-white immigrants coming from
former colonies still need to be civilized.
The concept of integration à la French is based on the
egalitarian values of the
République. Inequality will disappear
when everybody becomes part of the nation, in the sea of
sameness, no one can be left out. “Others” have to show their
commitment to duties and the role
associated with French citizenship. It, therefore, means that you
have to understand the universal
56
value of Frenchness, which was historically constructed in the
paternalistic enterprise of
colonialism (Jugé & Perez, 2006).
The call for integration was very important in the 1950s when the
struggle for a “French
Algeria” started and represented a symbol of transition between
the semi-colonial Algeria to the
new, more humane, more just and more fraternal Algeria. The call
for integration represented a
synthesis of three main issues: maintaining French sovereignty,
the promotion of Muslims to an
equal civic status and an effort to continue economic and social
progress. This idea of integration
was presented as a myth to the Algerian population in contrast
with the call for independence
(Girardet, 1972). This myth that would have integrated the
Algerian population in the French
Algeria in order to bring people together for the economic and
social development of the nation
of France resembles the current call for integration. Integration
in France represents the respect
of France and the understanding that certain duties come with
becoming French (Weil, 2004b).
Corcuff (2003) argues that the “integration” paradigm became
centered on what he calls a
“national-racial” rift where the conflict shifted from social
class issues to structural relationships
between the nationals and the foreigners. Moreover, the conflict
became cultural (Hajjat (2005)
would say racialized) and the real problem was thought to be now
an immigration problem and
not a so much economic problem.
The call for integration remains very problematic for those who
are in France and who
have been raised and socialized in France. How does one become
French? French citizenship is
not awarded through soil automatically but rather through blood.
What does that really mean? Is
Frenchness something transmitted biologically from one generation
to another? At this point of
my life, I have already witnessed this very truth. My two children
have been awarded French
citizenship right after I made the declaration of birth at the
French consulate in Los Angeles.
57
Thanks to my citizenship, which was also verified through my
parents’ citizenship, I was able to
allow my children to have dual citizenship. Why are my children,
whom I love so deeply,
awarded French citizenship while they currently speak only a few
words of French, while they
have only spent a couple months in France, while they do not
understand what the French culture
entails yet and who might in the future define themselves more as
Americans than French? They
were awarded this right without ever proving themselves. On the
other hand, young boys and
girls, young men and women born in France from parents who have
immigrated in France over
the last four decades for economic reasons cannot claim French
citizenship right at birth. They
can request it (depending on a few other legal requirements)
between the ages of 16 and 21
(Weil, 2004a) but it can be denied if they have committed delinquent
crimes (Sagot-Duvauroux,
2004).
The result of that naturalization process which is supposedly
aimed at making sure that
those children of immigrants (not French yet) understand the
culture, the language, the duties
associated with being French might lead to four different forms of
identity (Sagot-Duvauroux,
2004): Frenchness, French citizenship, self-identity and what
others see of you. Sagot-
Duvauroux (2004) insightfully argues that Frenchness is something that you do
not control,
something that is the result of your everyday experiences, which
develop through daily
encounters with other French in schools, in the media, through
language and the cultural
meanings that come along with it. Frenchness is not something one merits
but rather a state of
mind that one develops as one lives his/her life; it is something
that just falls on you.
How do individuals understand race and its social relevance in
French social institutions?
58
Research conducted by French sociologist Wieviorka (1992)
addresses how French
citizens feel about race, racism and discrimination. Across the
country, many ideas emerged
about who are the others, and the problems they might be creating.
One of the most interesting
findings in Wiervorka’s research is the lack of understanding of
what race represents. The
researcher, as well as the interviewees, makes little mention
about race. They address racism by
talking about “foreigners”, “immigrants”, or the “others”. While
there are a few references to
whites and blacks, the analysis revolves mostly around the fears
of the respondents, and they do
not express them other than by those vague terms.
In this regard, the notions of race and racism are understood by
the French in general
from a personal direct lived experience. Racism is perceived as a
major affront to the universal
idea of mankind, and therefore those who engage in those types of
actions can only be
individuals who might have psychological problems (Lentin, 2004)
who need to be re-educated
culturally. This understanding of racism posits the idea that
racism is apolitical and that the state
has had no involvement in the development of racism. Individual
respondents and anti-racist
organizations (supported by the state) continue to make racism a
personal problem. They cannot
fathom the possible existence of structural discrimination. It
tends to be linked to bad politicians
or bad people, but racism cannot be possibly rooted in the
institutions, and the political,
economic and social agendas of the state. In his studies of the
level of racism in French society,
Wieviorka’s (1992) research revolves around the fact that racism
(in individuals) emerges as the
result of social conditions. By understanding the feelings of the
respondents, he is able to draw a
portrayal of what makes French people racist. However, his
research tends to suggest that racism
remains an individual issue. There is no real analysis of
systematic and structural discrimination.
59
Racism is now also understood in basic cultural terms, which would
suggest that groups
are only struggling to preserve and maintain their cultural
authenticity but from this perspective
it also assumed that there is a real homogeneity in those groups.
While Lentin (2004) finds this
definition of racism as purely cultural problematic because it
overlooked the true racialization
and racial hierarchy in society, others like Taguieff (1988) argue
that it is a new form of racism,
especially post-World War II.
Balibar and Wallerstein (1991) refer to a new form of racism that
emerged in France in
particular with the decolonization movement, with new migration
movements. They argues that
similar to the U.S the new racism revolves around a racism whereby
cultural differences
represent the true incompatibility of people’s lifestyles. This is
what Taguieff (1988) calls
differentialist racism. Anti-racism is argued to be a new form of
racism because biological races
do not exist, and therefore racism as the formation of a
biological hierarchy is nonsense.
However, it is perceived that people are just members of
historical cultures (i.e. you cannot
dissociate yourself from any cultures; you are a passive
recipient), which turns “diversity” on its
head. However, one of the major arguments is that to prevent
racism we need to avoid abstract
anti-racism (Balibar & Wallerstein, 1991).
Racism: an individual or institutional problem?
Taguieff’s quote (above) goes to the heart of what is considered
the most serious form of
racism: individuals to individuals. When he is quoted as talking
about anti-white racism that
most usual victims of discrimination also perpetuate, he is mainly
addressing individual actions.
Scholars, politicians and the law have, for the most part, defined
racism as actions perpetuated by
individual actors. While people of color are the “usual’ victims
of racism, it is argued that anti60
white racism is just as bad. I will not argue that it does not
exist at the individual level and/or that
it is not bad. However, when one focuses too much on the
individual actions, one omits the
insidious effects of policies and institutions. Moreover, the
roles of powerful individuals in
charge of those political, economic and social institutions and
their power to influence, shape and
legitimize a social public discourse that will reproduce hegemonic
ideologies remain too often
unexamined and/or not historically contextualized.
While there is some serious legal problem in trying to bring
justice to racist and
discriminatory acts, in part due to the problem of language
referring to racial discrimination,
little has been written about the institutional practices that are
reproduced everyday through
policies and discourse. While it is obvious, not everybody is
racist, knowingly or unknowingly,
little attention is paid to the immigration laws, integration and
safety prevention legislation as a
tool of discrimination. It is often hidden behind the idea of the
French exception of Liberté,
Égalité, Fraternité, of the French nationality,
of the conservation of the French culture.
61
Chapter Three
Theory & Methodology
It is necessary, therefore, in planning our movements, in guiding
our future
development, that at times we rise above the pressing, but smaller
questions of
separate schools and cars, wage-discrimination and lynch law, to
survey the
whole questions of race in human philosophy and to lay, on a basis
of broad
knowledge and careful insight, those large lines of policy and
higher ideals which
may form our guiding lines and boundaries in the practical
difficulties of every
day. (W.E.B. Du Bois, 1897, p.2)
Question of objectivity
It would be extremely problematic to strictly adopt and apply
concepts developed in
American universities to describe American society and use them to
the French case. Some of
the concepts and ideas developed in one particular society might
not always have the same
meanings. Therefore, a strict application of a concept developed
without providing cultural
context to French society would lead to anachronistic
interpretation.
However, while a strict application of such concepts would be
difficult it does not
preclude the fact that French scholars like me have to reconcile
their academic knowledge with
their personal experiences. Therefore, I am in a unique position
of being able to apply my skills
and abilities as a scholar whose graduate education was acquired
for the most part in the U.S. to
interpret the social experiences in France regarding race/racism
by providing new words and
explanations not yet used in the French context without reifying
those same concepts. In this
regards, I am able to both step out and analyze important social
experiences while at the same
time using my social location and experience as an insider to
provide new meanings. My
experience around race in France was not the result of my
education in the U.S; however, my
62
graduate education in the U.S. has provided me with some tools to
be able to decipher and
analyze issues revolving around race and racism in France.
Objectivity lies in the methods and the detachment that scholars
should apply to the
research study. However, the dominant paradigm tends to give
credence only to the objective
non-personal experience in order for research to be valid. In the
Chicano sociology tradition,
scholars are also actors that describe and talk about their
experiences but remain nonetheless
critical. In this research study, I represent the Insider/Outsider
which means that my personal
experiences should not be denigrated and the expertise that I have
developed as a scholar in an
American university should also help me find answers to some of
the confusing experiences that
I, as well as other French people, experience when dealing with
issues of race/racial
discrimination in France. Merton (1972) regarded the insider
position alone as problematic
because it might limit some of the work a researcher might
accomplish while being within. Some
emotional and/or political interests might prevent the researcher
from being completely
“objective” and also because those who might claim insider
knowledge are often members of
non-homogenous groups, such as women who might be stratified
around race and class (Griffith,
1998). However, there is a definite complex relationship between
the social location of the
researcher and the individual and the collective historical
experience of that researcher in that
environment, which can lead to a better understanding of social
events. Can a French person (as
an outsider) who just landed in the U.S. understand better the
problems of racial oppression in
the U.S. than African-Americans, Chicana/os, Asian Americans (all
insiders) even though they
might be stratified differently around class, geographical areas
and historical relationships with
the dominant group? Despite that stratification, the insider seems
to occupy a position of
epistemological privilege. It also demands some type of training
to understand what to study and
63
how to study it. In a sense, one might call this a position of
expertise, detachment or an outsider.
My insider knowledge of France and French people (by mastering
language and meanings alone)
gives me access to them. I also understand that I have to
negotiate my position as an outsider
because of my occupation as a sociologist and the possible
pre-conceived ideas some French
people might have about them. In the tradition of Chicano
sociology (Mirandé, 1978: 1982), too
much emphasis has been put on “objectivity.” Mirandé (1978)
states, “the cult of objectivity has
become a shield that hides the cultural myopia of the social
scientist” (p. 302). So by the position
as an insider (my Frenchness) that I occupy I would like to
present a “broader and more
humanizing perspective that is sensitive to the needs and concerns
of socially disadvantaged
groups” (Mirandé, 1978, p. 305). However, my insider presence as a
white French person might
also prevent me from understanding people of color. Therefore, I
believe that the combination of
insider (Frenchness) coupled with my outsider (scholar educated in
the U.S) will allow me to
bring forward issues that other French scholars might not see
because the knowledge they have
developed have come from the same institutions that reproduce
racial hierarchy in France.
Therefore, by using my insider/outsider presence, I can help
decipher and identify how people of
color are being treated and whether they are being subjected to
racial oppression through the
eyes of white French people, who might not always understand how
their view of French society
impacts French people of color.
Feminists of color as well as scholars of color more generally
have been extremely
effective at arguing against the idea of the
always-objective-outsider by proposing to look more
closely at the experiences of those who are under study, by
listening more carefully to the voices
of subjects of our research through standpoint epistemology (Harding,
1991). How does one
become aware of his/her own experiences? Can one then be
objective?
64
I am an insider in this research because of my French upbringing
and my relations to the
problem at hand. How did I see myself? Was I just French? Why
didn’t I develop a racial
consciousness the same way my friend from Martinique did? This
research represents the
introspective analysis that I have sought for a long period of
time. While I am an insider, I do
believe that my analysis can be objective. I mean objective in the sense that it is
important to
understand the meanings of action and words through the subjects
themselves. I am not anti-
French and I am not seeking “evidence” to show that the French are
racist. Rather, I want to find
answers to the questions that emerged as I became closely linked
to my friend from Martinique.
The answers can be positive or negative so it is important to
examine closely some of the reasons
and explanations to my internal troubles and to my friend’s own
feelings of alienation, which
still seem to remain unexamined. It is therefore critical to learn
how my friend developed the
interpretations she has about her own environment and how I missed
on interpretations. The
disparity in her interpretation and my view of the environments we
lived in came from our social
actions and experiences that have been constructed in different
ways. The main question is why
this divide is so wide.
Coupled with my education in the U.S, I am also an outsider to
what is currently being
researched and talked about in France. I am an outsider in the
sense that most of my newly
acquired knowledge, conceptual ideas and theoretical
understandings about race relations come
from American academia even though I started reading a lot more
books and articles from
French people of color (such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire),
who have produced a wealth of
ideas and experiences not readily referred to by mainstream
society and academia. I have
developed a scholarly expertise, which allows me to step away from
my personal experiences,
but at the same time, allows me to understand first hand how
whiteness might be constructed in
65
France. Harding (1991) talked about “traitors social locations” as
the places where people who
have privilege, like me, can undermine this form of privilege in
order to politically understand
the position of those who are not as privileged, and to find a way
to challenge the institutions that
grant such privileges (Kurks, 2005). The ultimate goal is to
eventually get to see and examine (it
is more difficult to experience) the world through the eyes of
subordinated groups.
I can foresee criticisms coming from social constructionist that
might argue that I am
constructing categories, groups, relationships that do not exist
in France. I will try to answer this
concern later but some of the experiences that led me to this
point as a scholar can be answered
by theoretical points. This does not mean that I am creating
social signifiers that do not exist in
the French context, but rather that I am highlighting or
uncovering what is being thought, what is
being used to determine people’s access to power and resources and
what makes somebody
French in the legal and non-legal ways.
While I hope to use personal experiences to answer important
questions, it does not mean
that those experiences should be generalized to all French. What
it means is that my experiences
as well as the data collected during this research project will
help me infer important points about
how race/racism and racial formation have been historically
constructed in France. It is also
critical for me to show that I am not treating race as a “thing,”
or reifying race. Following
Bonilla-Silva’s points in a response to the criticisms (Loveman,
1999) he received for his use of
“race” in his theories, he argues that “race is a way of otherizing, of excluding” (1999, p.
903),
but most importantly that race refers to a set of social relations
that is always being contested
(Omi & Winant, 1994).
Race is socially real even though it is not experienced the same
way in each and every
society; it also does not mean that every single individual who
has been ascribed to a racial
66
group will be political, economically and socially impacted in the
same manner by this ascribed
status. Hanchard (1994) states that race functions “as a shuttle
between socially constructed
meanings and practices, between subjective and lived, material
reality” (1994, p.4). In relation to
my own experience, I never had any racial identity as a white
person in France until I was
confronted with the blackness of my close friend, Charlotte.
Blackness had been ascribed to her,
and it became a signifier for her position as well as her fellow
black counterparts in the political,
economic and social realms of French society. It also means that
while I did not have any
awareness or [racial] consciousness like the one she has developed
over the years, it does not
imply that I was not directly or indirectly ascribed whiteness as
a status.
As Bonilla-Silva explains “consciousness thus cannot be taken as
the factor determining
whether races have a social existence.” (1997, p. 900). Some have
argued that race can only exist
if people are conscious of their ascribed status (Loveman, 1999),
and have called for the end of
race as a social factor in favor of ethnicity, where people might
be more in touch with their
cultural identity (Loveman, 1999; Jenkins, 1994). The debate
revolves around the meanings of
social groups theoretically defined by Weber (1990) as conscious
and behaving as a group versus
a more Marxist understanding of the class-in-itself versus
class-for-itself dichotomy (Bonilla-
Silva, 1999). In summary, I am not creating race where it does not
exist or reifying it; rather I am
highlighting how race (as an explanation for social relations) has
been used knowingly or
unknowingly to allocate power, privilege and wealth.
The position I occupy as a French insider coupled with my training
as a sociologist
allows me to provide important insight and knowledge to the field
of racial oppression (the term
“race relations” implies a peaceful relationships between groups).
Therefore, having tried to
foresee some of the future possible criticisms, I cannot think of
a better project than this one to
67
explain the many questions I have asked myself over the years on
issues of race, or lack thereof,
relations in France before I became a sociologist. Was I asleep or
was I conditioned to not look
at racial problems in France? I hope that this research will also
help me auto-reflect on my
personal experiences.
If my friend from Martinique was telling me about some of the
racial issues that she was
faced with, one can also imagine that she was not the only one.
Therefore, if that was the case,
why was nothing concrete done to alleviate her and others from the
pain they might have felt at
times? How can she talk about racial issues while France sees it
as a non-issue? Does that
contribute to the organization of French society? If yes, then
what are the consequences?
I know that with this research I might be criticized for using an
American-centric view of
race relations (Wacquant, 1997). I, however, think that while not
every single theory developed
by white American scholars and American theorists of color can be
applied universally in every
single other society, some can be applicable to the French case. I
make no excuse for the
experiences I have gained across the two countries, and as a
sociologist that would like to remain
objective, I also have to admit that objectivity lies very often
in what academia defines as
objectivity.
Literature review
Many French scholars and others might argue that the current
problem in France might be
more cultural (Taguieff, 1994) and/or economic than racial.
However, Lipsitz (1998) argues that
focusing on culture has distracted us from really understanding
the social structure, and therefore
has resulted in inadequate explanations for understanding race and
racial discrimination.
Consequently, the solutions remain also deficient and focused on
the wrong assumptions.
68
Racial formation
Omi and Winant (1994) define racial formation as “the
socio-historical process by which
racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and
destroyed” (p. 55). This process is
historical, political and economic. It is also important to notice
that they define race as a
“concept, which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and
interests by referring to different
types of human bodies” (p. 55). Since there is nothing biological
about race, those physical
characteristics used to determine which human bodies will be the
recipients of privilege or
oppression is arbitrarily adopted by a society according to
political and economic agendas.
Winant (2001) in his application of racial formation to the global
sense briefly talks about
France and points out Taguieff’s (1994) research on the rise of
the new right racism or
differentialist ideas. He uses Taguieff’s argument as an example
for the applicability of this
theory to France. Part of the reason why he uses Taguieff’s
research as a starting point is because
this research definitely responds to the particularities of French
society but I also believe that
since he might not speak French himself and/or have any real first
hand experiences in France,
he relies, rightly so, on a legitimate scholarly source.
Talking about bodies or physical attributes to determine one’s
talent would send us back
years. Therefore, culture becomes the unit of analysis while race
(invisible signifier in France)
continues to haunt people of color’s lives in France. However,
Winant (2001) contradicts himself
by selecting the rise of differentialism as a perfect example of
racial formation in France. The
use of differentialist racism as an example is not bad in itself
but rather the focus put on culture
is problematic. While Omi and Winant (1994) define racial
formation as a socio-historical
process whereby different human bodies are affected, Taguieff
(1994) makes little references to
69
those different human bodies since culture is the primary reason
for the emergence of this new
racism. It is however possible to envision the use of racial
formation and Taguieff’s analysis of
differentialism as an example for such formation of culture is
understood as a proxy for race.
While Taguieff’s focus on culture is critical, it is even more
critical to show that those so-called
inherent cultural differences that the new right wants to focus on
might be used as a proxy for the
differences that might come with different bodies.
Omi and Winant (1994) also differentiate between macro- and
micro-level of racial
formation. This is a very useful tool as these two perspectives
are linked through our everyday
interactions and the formation of identities, which are also
sanctioned through our economic,
political and cultural institutions necessary to maintain a sense
of collectivity. Race is therefore
an individual experience as well as a collective understanding of
social relations. Our individual
consciousness and identities are shaped by larger structural
meanings. Race therefore becomes
an organizing principle of social relations (Omi & Winant,
1994).
Racial state
Goldberg (2006) argues that race is central to the development of
the nation-state. He
criticizes Omi and Winant’s (1994) approach to the racial state
because race and the state should
be understood as conceptually interdependent. Race and the state
are not discrete concepts; they
mold one another constantly. The modern state and the racial state
cannot exist with the
existence of the other. The modern state is not only based on exclusions
but most importantly on
the internalization of those exclusions. Goldberg (2006) explains
that “exclusions become
internal to the possibility of inclusions, the latter predicated
upon the realization of the former”
(pp. 9-10). This means that race becomes a factor in the process
by which one can belong to a
70
society or not, an object of subordination or a citizen.
Goldberg’s (2006) major point in The
Racial State is to examine how racially
homogeneous societies are promoted and how racial
definitions contribute to this homogeneity. Goldberg (2006)
defines the racial state as “as a set of
projects and practices, social conditions and institutions, states
of being and affairs, rules and
principles, statements and imperatives” (p. 5), which contributes
to racial exclusion. In contrast,
Omi and Winant (1994) believe that “race must be understood as
occupying various levels of
centrality in different state institutions and at different
historical moments” (p. 83) and as a result
the state becomes a racial state. Goldberg presents a more complex
view of the state, which is
more than just “an autonomous political realm” (p. 6) and more
than just a reflection of the
political and economic conditions of a particular society.
Goldberg (2006) is also very critical of Mills’ (1997) Racial Contract as he argues that it
is founded on questionable assumptions. One questionable
assumption is that two contracts
emerged out of the formation of European states; which would imply
that a race-neutral state
existed. This assumption, according to Goldberg, hides Europe’s
racial identity or makes it
invisible. He also criticizes Mills for assuming that individuals
really took part in the social
contract that founded modern states, and that the outcome of those
agreements represents the
current structure. He is skeptic about the idea that people really
agreed to such a racial state; it
was for him more the result of the slow and complex development of
the modern state. It is not
the result of a social or racial contract but rather the
deep-seated belief that some are incapable of
providing for themselves or meet their civilized needs; therefore,
the state is there to provide
these necessities. It is rooted not in the contract but in the
natural idea of modernity given to
civilized Europeans. In that sense, the internalized belief of
superiority is reinforced in the everchanging
definition of race, its visibility and/or invisibility.
71
The naturalist conception of the state, as it was argued in the 17th century, has been
eventually replaced by what Goldberg (2006) calls the historicist
or progressivist state. The racial
rule present in the progressivist state is the result of the
assumed superior development of
Europeans. It can be witnessed in the example of colonialism,
which was at times used as a way
to protect colonized women from their colonized men. France was to
bring protection to women
and civilization to the men. This idea has been ushered more
recently in the events surrounding
the veil. The French government prevented young women practicing
Islam from wearing the veil
in public schools because it violated the separation of church and
state, but also to ensure that the
veil (perceived as a symbol of oppression for women) would not
represent a symbol of women’s
subordination. While the naturalist used biology to assert
non-whites’ inferiority, the historicist
proclaims that whites have been able to shape their history while
non-whites have a backward
and/or underdeveloped agency, which necessitates the help of the
superior agent or colonizer.
Goldberg (2006) summarizes this thought by saying that “such
agency [non-whites’] has to be
promoted by developing their potential for self-determination,
saving natives from (pre)
historical selves, the effects of their underdeveloped or
uncivilized conditions” (p. 89).
Internal colonialism
Inspired by Frantz Fanon (1963, 1967), Kwame Nkrumah (1965) and
anti-colonial
activists, the theory of internal colonialism refers to the state
of racial oppression experienced by
people of color within the society they live in. Several scholars
have attempted to develop a
theory that would describe such oppression. Barrera (1979) defines
internal colonialism as,
a structured relationship of domination and subordination which
are defined along
ethnic and/or racial lines when the relationship is established or
maintained to
72
serve the interests of all or part of the dominant group...in
which the dominant and
subordinate populations intermingle (p. 193).
The root of the problem is the capitalist system, which requires a
reserve army of
labor to maintain the constant extraction of profit necessary for
the ruling class to
maintain its economic, political and social domination and power.
The formation of a
secondary labor market contributes to the state of subordination
that people of color find
themselves in. Others such as Johnson (1972) defined an internal
colony as,
a society within a society based upon racial, linguistic and/or
marked cultural
differences as well as differences of social class. It is subject
to political and
administrative control by the dominant classes and institutions of
the metropolis.
Defined in this way, internal colonies can exist on a geographical
basis or on a
racial or cultural basis in ethnically or culturally dual or
plural societies. (p.66)
As Bohmer (1999) stated “white people are considered the norm and
black people are
considered different, unfamiliar and not quite equal.” In this
theory, the state contributes to the
reproduction of the capitalist system and at the same prevents any
expression of selfdetermination
through the co-optation of subordinated groups in social programs.
In this theory
integration is not the solution. The key is to create a
consciousness around the level of
oppression those populations are facing in the ghettos (Bohmer,
1999).
Blauner (1969, 1972) came up with four components of internal
colonialism: forced
involuntary entry, an attack on the cultural and social
organizations of those who are colonized
which is not the result of “natural” processes but a intentional
destruction of those means and
ways cherished by the colonized people, an oppressive relationship
between the colonized people
and the dominant ethnic group managing their lives, and racism as
the belief that colonized
73
people have inferior characteristics which is reasoned to explain
the necessary oppressive
treatment they receive.
On the one hand, the internal colonialism theory provides critical
references to the
importance of race and racism in explaining the political,
economic and social positions of
people of color in a society. It puts race and racism at the
forefront of the debate about inequality
and the under-representation of people of color in the political,
economic and social institutions.
On the other hand, some have pointed out the deficiencies in how
the internal colony
actually works. Numerous works (Barrera et al, 1972; Almaguer,
1971; Blauner, 1969, 1972)
have pointed out what the internal colony actually means for a
capitalist society but it does not
comprehensively address the mechanisms of such a system. Can
tokenism be the main
explanation for the slow emergence of middle-class minorities?
Bohmer (1998) also points out
the lack of comprehensive analysis of the role of the state. Can
the positions of people of color
within a country be really similar to the relationships
industrialized capitalist nations have with
poor nations controlled through neo-colonialism?
Internal colonialism theory can be applied with limits to France.
Most of the people of
color living in France today have some types of connection with
France's former colonies. Their
situations as well as the ones of their children represent a life
of political alienation, economic
despair and oppression, and social exclusion (Maurin, 2004).
However, in a different way from
the U.S members of those internal colonies, the cités (French
"ghettoes"), have not developed the
same type of racial consciousness. While it is not to the same
degree, a new consciousness has
emerged. Members of the cités are torn between the culture presented by their parents for which
they only understand basic ideas and also their understanding that
they are French because they
have been socialized in that social environment. Sagot-Duvauroux
(2004) shows that as a result
74
of this difficult tension, they develop a new identity, a French black (not noir) identity. He
argues that this blackitude is the outcome of a purely French problem that emerged from, in
and
for the French society to solve the rupture felt by the black
youth with Africa and the whitedominated
society. This black youth is confronted with four different
factors: Frenchness, French
citizenship, self-identity and identity defined by the other. This
Frenchness is not something you
choose, but rather something you have been socialized into, built,
and culturally raised and
educated with. Frenchness is something that falls on you.
Citizenship, on the other hand,
represents the equal political status in one society, but this has
not always been the case for those
who have been racialized. Belonging to a large community or nation
like France was not always
easy. Even today, French citizens of Guadeloupe and Martinique
have to follow the cultural
example presented by France, as a member of the European Union.
The third factor and fourth
factor are linked through the development of this blacktitude, an identity that is at
the margin of
the communities the black youth is confronted with: the one that
his/her parents present to
him/her but that he/she has trouble completely understanding and
the rejection by French society
to see him/her as his/her child (Sagot-Duvauroux, 2004). This also
explains the Beur identity
developed. As Wadman (1997) states, the term Beur was used to “describe a
generation that
came into being at a junction of two national/cultural identities
(French and Arab) but was not
containable by either of them” (p. 85). Their existence is based on the exclusion they face from
both groups. Those identities are created in the particular
socio-historical context of France.
Theories of whiteness
Du Bois (1999) in his Souls of Black Folk discussed the notion of the color line. The
color line signifies the type of experiences one will receive
based on the social meanings of race
in a particular place. Being African American, Du Bois (1999)
developed a double consciousness
75
that led him to live a life of two tales. He saw himself in “a world which yields him no true selfconsciousness,
but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the
other world” (p. 3),
meaning that being black in a white dominated society presents
completely different experiences,
interactions, feelings than one would have being among other
African Americans who share
similar life experiences, values and understandings about life,
and about being part of an
oppressed group. The flip side of his experiences represents what
whites experience in that same
society. As members of the dominant group, they do not have to
develop that double
consciousness because society is set up for them and their needs.
They have the privilege not to
have to think about what it means to be white (McIntosh, 2002).
Privilege, as an unearned benefit, can be understood as a form of
disapprobation for those
in the dominant group who refuse it (Kruks, 2005) but also an
“unfair advantage, preferential
situation or systematic ‘headstart’ in the pursuit of social
values (whether they may be money,
power, position, learning and whatnot” (Blauner, 1969, p. 22).
Blauner (1969) also talks about
racial privilege as not being just an economic matter but as,
a matter of status also. Jefferson Davis understood this when he
said that Negro
slavery raises white men to the same general level, that it
dignifies and exalts
every white man by the presence of a lower race” (p. 22).
However, since privilege is granted to some and not others, it
nonetheless
represents a special social status usually acquired at birth or
through certain legal means. That
ascribed social status will affect the life chances of those who
were not able to have access to this
special resource. Being privileged can also be explained as the
power to define what knowledge
is and what is true. Therefore, it is not surprising to see people
of color as well as women calling
for a more objective understanding of their positions in society.
The outsider is usually the one
76
who has the privilege to define what is despite the obvious
different experiences by those groups
(Kruks, 2005).
White privilege in France seems to be even more difficult for the
dominant group to
acknowledge because as Kruks (2005) states, “the struggle against
it [privilege] become cast
as… an epistemological project” (p. 181). The dominant group in
France would have to
recognize both the importance of race as well as whiteness and the
forms of domination it
confers to those who benefit from it. As a result the
beneficiaries of whiteness do not realize
what it represents but those who cannot access this privilege
understand and experiences the
problems linked to a life without privilege.
Following De Beauvoir’s ideas (1955), Kruks (2005) argues that one
“becomes” French
and white in two different ways. It starts with ascription at
birth and it is then negotiated through
self-production by lived experiences. As a result, those who are
born in France from non-French
parents and are ascribed a status of foreigners are producing
different identities. The struggle
revolves around this sense of frenchood they have developed
through socialization and the
refusal from the institutions to grant then the legal status of
French citizen. They do not have
access to the same privileges as those who are born in France from
“French” parents. Should it
be held against them that their parents came to work in France
(labor commodities without any
real political representation) and that they are being socialized
in two different environments? A
private one where their parents expect them to be part of their
culture and a public one put forth
by the French institutions where they will develop their French
identities through the media, the
schools and with their relationships with the state, through the
police for instance.
77
As a result of these shortcomings, this research aims to combine
the following
approaches: (1) racial formation, (2) the racial state, (3)
internal colonialism, and (4) theories of
whiteness. My intent is to provide an analysis that reflects the
cultural manifestations of racism
within the unequal political, economic and social structure of
French contemporary society in
order to further understand how the macro and micro dimensions
of racism as they unfold. The
historicist approach of the racial state provides the most
important backbone to this argument.
While racial formation, internal colonialism and whiteness
provide critical elements to
understand the racial situation in France, they have to be
understood within the larger historicist
framework of the racial state.
Theoretical framework
This empirical project will attempt to demonstrate that the
concept of whiteness can be
applied and used when researching and studying race and racism in
France, especially at the
micro-level.
It is also critical to realize that a race is central and
persistent aspect of French society.
There is an assumption (Friedman, 1962; Sowell, 1984) as
industrial societies develop that race
and ethnicity will become irrelevant. The solutions to those
racial and ethnic problems are often
thought as a matter of better communication and understanding
among people especially on the
part of those “ignorant” people who foster and reproduce negative attitudes
and stereotypes of
people of color, but “systematic inequality and systematic
injustice are built in the way nature of
stratified societies” (Blauner, 1969, p. 22). The colonial period
fueled racial hatred and as
societies move away from this old global organization, one should
not assume that the period has
had not long-lasting consequences. The postcolonial period has not
eliminated or restored the ills
78
of the global colonial past. In a postcolonial period, the “post”
in post-colonialism represents the
decolonizing nature of the colonizer but also and most importantly
a new period of colonization
(O’Brien, 1994), and whiteness serves and continues to serve as a
tool to re-colonize the former
members of colonies. However, as Blauner (1969) states,
in a racial or colonial capitalist society where the racially
oppressed are a
numerical minority, how can racism be overcome when the majority
of the
population gain from it and presumably will defend those
privileges as national
and objective interests? (p. 44)
Therefore the solution for the colonizer is different from a
classic form of colonialism
because in this case you cannot expel the colonizer.
The main idea is not to paint French whites as racist but rather
to understand and explain
their incapability to see race (as a social construct) as a major
element of the problem of racism
in France, and whiteness as a determining factor in French
thoughts (micro-level), which are
translated in policies (macro-level) that are not anachronistic
but rather consistent with the way
the state has historically and racially constructed being French.
While the racial discourse remains nonexistent in France, the
universal mission of the
République continues to deal with
“others” in racial terms, while the dominant group (i.e. white)
remains unnamed or invisible. The idea of common French identity
(as opposed to
multicultural/multiracial identities) is based on the universal
notion of non-differentiation or
neutrality which is nonetheless representative of the dominant
group, i.e. “the neutral one is a
white man from the middle or upper classes” (Bancel &
Blanchard, 2005, p.40).
[INSERT GRAPH 1 HERE]
79
As shown in graph 1, the historicist or progressivist framework of
the racial state is
represented by an intricate relationship between the micro and the
macro demands of civility.
Those demands of civility are imposed by a historical white
supremacist state that includes laws
developed to protect the French nation from intruders or
non-French people, to economically
benefit those who fit in the fabric of French society but also
with use of language which
contributes to the definition of who is French, who belongs and
who deserves goods and
resources offered by this nation. Those laws and daily
interactions implicitly reproduce racial
meanings and racial ascription. Therefore despite a clear attempt
not to address race, to make
French society colorblind and raceless, the racial state
contributes to make race a determining
factor for political, economic, and civil participation in French
society. It is not because race is
not overtly discussed that social relationships are not
racialized. These social relationships are
racialized because of the historical meanings ascribed to those
who are not white, and they are
therefore less likely to be given equal status within this
historicist racial state. They have to
continually prove themselves to be fully accepted.
From a historicist state perspective, racial superiority is rooted
in the historical
development of people through their (or lack thereof) agency. The
development of modern states
reinforces the so-called superiority of whites over non-whites. So
when people of color and
immigrants enter a racial state they are faced with life choices
dictated by that historical sense of
superiority. They are therefore expected to change in order to
become equal. The promise of
citizenship, already attributed indirectly to Europeans in certain
local elections, is possible
through a metamorphosis that could lead them to become equal.
However, the historical civilized
mission is reinforced by their difficulty or impossibility to
access whiteness, which has become
80
the key to equality in the political and civil society. They are
reminded everyday through
political, legal, economic, cultural and micro-level interactions
that being non-white is a
reflection of their inferiority, non-equal, subordinate,
oppressive and underdeveloped status. This
semi-colonized position represents their everyday lives.
According to Blauner’s (1969, 1972) definition of colonized
people, people of color in
France occupy a position of semi-colonized. They have entered the
country voluntary and freely
even though they might have been pushed out for political and
economic reasons, and they are
colonized because they are relegated to low-skilled jobs (Meurs,
Pailhé & Simon, 2005;
Observatoire des Inégalités, 2006) and their culture is under
attack. However, Blauner talks
about the position of the Irish as a colonized people before they
immigrated to the U.S they
nonetheless chose freely to come to the U.S. and to Australia. I
would suggest that while
immigrants came to France freely and now occupy a semi-colonial
position; their case is more
complex because they were already colonized in their home country
by the same nation that is
colonizing them today. One of the goals of the civilizing mission
was to present the grandeur of
the French civilization and empire. Some of those immigrants
therefore migrated to enjoy the
benefits of being part of French society. As a result of this
psychological colonization and the
economic destruction of their country (Césaire, 1965) they
migrated to France for better
economic opportunities. However, as they migrate into France and
start working, they are recolonized
because they are still holding on to what is considered backwards,
underdeveloped and
uncivilized by French standards. Bahbha (1990, 1994) reports that
colonial legacy represents
more than migration patterns. The social relocation of immigrants
and their children is dictated
by cultural and social norms presented as normal by French
society.
81
Therefore, internal colonialism has to be rooted within a
historicist framework of the state
whereby the policies of assimilation in France frame people of
color and immigrants as subjects
to be civilized. Their ultimate development will be measured and
achieved through the
acquisition of French citizenship (or the promise to have access
to it and be equal).
The current social and organizational position of semi-colonized
people is not the
“natural” result of contact and acculturation (using Blauner’s
argument). It is rather the political
processes of cultural transformation, destruction and alienation
of people of color’s way of life.
This is where the connection between the theory of internal
colonialism and racial formation can
be made. The position of racially oppressed people is the result
of political and economic
agendas, which at times have called for immigration in order to
meet economic expansion, and at
other times, they are perceived as those who cannot and/ or refuse
to integrate into French
society. The definition of race as a non-fixed, mutable concept
allows us to point out to the way
those groups are racialized, perceived as culturally inferior, as
non-French and as cheap labor.
Blauner (1972) states that “cultural exploitation further
political control, which serves to
maintain economic subordination (p. 33). While Taguieff’s research
on differentialism is eye
opening, I question his lack of emphasis on race and his
over-emphasis on culture. However,
Blauner (1972) captures the real idea behind the use of culture to
further oppress others as he
says that “racism can be defined as a propensity to categorize
people who are culturally different
in terms of noncultural traits” (p. 112). While culture is
important, it is used as a proxy to
identify racially visible groups. How can you be scared of
children of Algerian immigrants, and
all the cultural baggage that comes with it, if you cannot
identify them when you interact with
them. It takes subjectively selected physical characteristics to
determine who is, in the French
mind, really French or a child of Algerian immigrants. Those
subjectively selected physical
82
characteristics are the product of the micro- and
micro-interactions developed through the
historicist racial state. Culture becomes the excuse as to why
they cannot integrate, why they do
not progress economically, why they are denied housing, while in
reality race precedes cultures
in determining who will get access to economic mobility and social
capital.
Not only French society perceives people of color’s culture as the
problem but the legal
order (racial state) administers the lives of those subordinate
groups. They have to follow certain
rules to be eligible for French citizenship, to receive welfare
benefits and eventually vote. This
same system does not apply to European immigrants as they share
the general political,
economic and cultural ideals. Extra—Europeans, even those born in
France, do not qualify for
such benefits. Similar to the classic colonial example their lives
are being controlled by the
colonizer. It is interesting to notice that while France colonized
a large part of the world, those
who were affected by French colonizers are still thought today as
too distant from the
French/European model. The civilizing mission either failed or is
still in place in order to control
colonized people. I will opt for the latter.
However, Omi and Winant (1994) argue that racial formation takes
place both at the
micro and macro levels. Young men and women born in France from
immigrant parents struggle
to meet the expectations placed on them by the French
institutions. They are expected to become
French and understand the duties that come with it. However, those
expectations remain rooted
in the model of the civilizing mission model that hoped to
civilized people of color in their
colonies. Therefore, at the macro-level they feel pressured by the
way the racial state defines
them. Since the definition of race changes depending on the
political agendas, the racial state
should therefore not be understood as a static thing but rather
“as a political force fashioning and
fashioned by economic, legal, and cultural forces (forces of
production, of sociolegality, and of
83
cultural representation)” (Goldberg, 2006, p.109). In other words,
the racial state defines racial
populations, regulates the political, economic, and social
relationships between the dominant
white group and people of color. Whiteness represents this unnamed
but known understanding
that classifies you as French or not, culturally and politically.
While you might be mistaken for
another European it is not as problematic because Europe has been
built in different ways but all
have in common that civilized ability to create and transform
history positively. If you do not
appear European, or as extra-European, as visible minorities, as
foreigners, as immigrants, as
children of immigrants, as Arabs, as Blacks, as Asians and so on
your allegiance to France might
be questioned. You cannot claim Frenchness (even if born in
France) the same way a white
French person can because you represent hybridity, heterogeneity
and strangeness that might be
held against you as you proceed through the social imperatives of
life.
The racial state also governs the positions of people of color in
society because they have
been historically defined, perceived and treated as inferior.
Integration could only occur if
minorities can adapt to the cultural and structural society but
will eventually depend on how the
dominant group absorbs them (Park, 1950). Finally, the racial
state manages the economic
opportunities people of color. One could mention the current
proposed policy by the Sarkozy
administration to regulate immigration purely on economic needs
primarily and not on the
reunification of the family as it used to be. Their economic
positions are also regulated by the
micro-level expectations as to who can perform a job the best. The
notion of meritocracy is also
rooted in the historical dimensions of civilization.
Using some of Onana’s (2007) words, I would say that whiteness [or
lack thereof] is
experienced daily as a form of unnamed hegemonic oppression. This
unnamed [but well felt]
oppression is experienced by the lack of access to what everybody
has historically defined as
84
normal, as French, as civilized. While policies are preventing
many from gaining access to
equality, they remained invisible [at least their problems; they
are not taken seriously; they are
not being heard] or they expected to change to a point where there
is no guarantee that change
will bring about a sense of relief, a sense of humanity.
Whiteness serves as the norm to
“help” people of color define themselves, show
their true love for France, become immersed in the French culture
and eventually become
integrated.
[INSERT GRAPH 2 HERE]
As shown in graph 2, the unnamed hegemonic
oppression is manifested at the micro level
by the assumptions made by white French individuals about people
of color. Using their own
norms, values and beliefs, those individuals are using themselves
as a yardstick to assess others.
The language they might use, the cultural behavioral of how a
French person should be like, the
assumptions made about somebody else based on historical
assumptions, the construction of
images provide the framework by which people of color will be
evaluated. As Van Djik (1992)
argues, micro-level realities of racism reinforce the macro-level
structures of dominance in
regards to group membership, neighborhoods, and institutions.
Those different occurrences lead
to a series of problems people of color might encounter in their
everyday lives. They might
constantly be subject to scrutiny to decipher whether or not they
are really as French as they
claim. In a sense, historical assumptions made about them precede
any evaluations, and if they
don’t fit the proper image of what being French means they will
have to demonstrate their
allegiance to French society. While race is not overtly, and might
be replaced by culture, cultural
85
assumptions made about people of color are made particularly
because of the fact that they don’t
physically appear French. When such cultural assumptions exist,
they are then expected to
integrate, or in other words culturally change to the French mold.
If in any of those cases, they are not defined as successful
according to mainstream
society, the blame is to be found in their lack of effort and
their refusal to be part of this nation,
which eventually serves as a reminder that they are not good enough
to be treated as equal under
white supremacy.
At the micro-level, people of color already feel French at heart
but socially alienated in
their interactions with the white French population that still
perceives them as foreigners, as
children of immigrants, as Africans but rarely as French people
(culturally speaking) with French
citizenship (legally speaking). Reading Sagot-Duvouroux (2004) was
amazing from the
standpoint that I recognize myself in his writings. As a white
French man who spent time in
Mali, he developed a meaning for his whiteness, blanchitude, because of his contact
with blacks.
This identity development did not take place in France. I went
through the same mental
development in contact with my black female friend from Martinique
in France and later on with
my interactions with people of color in the U.S.
This acknowledgment of our whiteness was possible through the
contact but also through
the time taken to listen to the voices and experiences of people
of color.
By acknowledging our whiteness, I think it is important to
understand that it does not
mean that it was not there before. Rather, whiteness ruled over
our experiences with people of
color without us even having to think about it. The contact or
integration hypothesis widely
shared in different societies has limits. Interacting with people
of color does not guarantee any
better life choices for people of color if members of the dominant
group do not genuinely listen
86
to their plight. This idea may seem fairly radical or even revolutionary
since the racial state has
shaped policies and has socialized individuals to claim their
historical superiority through the
acknowledgement of their civilized ways that the “others” have not
mastered yet.
Goldberg (2006) believes that sameness is perceived as being a
value embodied in the
homogeneous character of European States. Heterogeneity represents
a threat, a danger to the
modern state. In other words, by defining others (the external)
through race, it is also implied
that the internal is racially defined. While it might not be
explicitly stated when one says that
Blacks and Arabs cannot be true French, it is implied that only
whites or Europeans can be. The
state becomes the guarantor of that homogeneity which is
eventually laid out in the different
projects and institutions dealing with the danger of
heterogeneity. However, I see, here, a need to
interject Omi & Winant’s (1994) racial formation for their
definition of race as a never-fixed
concept, which gives the racial state (in Goldberg’s view) a more
profound meaning. While the
racial state might represent a set of projects, institutions,
imperatives and so on, reproduced at the
micro and macro level, the use of race (or its changing social
definition) allows the racial state to
fend away any attempts at challenging this so-called internalized
homogeneity. As a result,
people of color struggle to show their allegiance to France. Their
physical appearance is often
equated with inferior cultures as it can be witnessed in the
everyday language and behavioral
expectations of white citizens. People of color see no validation
for their historical and cultural
lineages (usually thought as non-French and/or non-Europeans). The
construction of media
images reproducing stereotypes contribute to the lack of
representation as do legal matters that
prevent many from feeling French and from being protected against
racial discrimination.
People of color are faced with this unnamed hegemonic oppression that is
reproduced at
the micro-level everyday and gives them very little chance to be
completely accepted. When they
87
speak up and voice their discontent they are seen as disgraceful
to the French nation. When they
do not come forward with their struggle, they remain invisible or
only relevant when “riots”
explode and they become associated once again with uncivilized
characteristics. As long as white
supremacy constructs equality as being white, people of color will
be rejected. This rejection will
not be argued to be the result of white supremacy since it is
unnamed but rather by the so-called
“lack of effort” of “others.” This can only serve as a proof that
many people of color are not
capable of being brought to civility. However, race continues to
be ignored because French
people do not perceive this conceptual idea as critical to the
solution of the problem. Under white
supremacy, colorblindness fosters this unnamed hegemonic
oppression that cannot bring about
positive solutions. Race has to be acknowledged, faced, and dealt
with before we can wrap our
mind around this idea of racial equality. By refusing to
acknowledge race, and therefore the
power of whiteness, the status quo remains and the historicist
racial remains in place.
According to Goldberg (2006), as liberalism expanded (as described
by Mill and De
Tocqueville) race only became important in its denial. Goldberg
states,
the erasure in the name of non-racialism rubs out at once the
history of racist
invisibility, domination, and exploitation, replacing the memory
of an infantilized
past with the denial of responsibility for radically unequal and
only superficially
deracialized presents. Racelessness is the legacy (p. 70).
Frenchhood and whiteness thus become synonymous. One ought not to
think about being
French as a matter of race but rather as a matter of duties and
civic actions that will link to the
French nation. However, not everyone born in France becomes French
right away. The historical
lineage of one person (ancestors born abroad for instance) might
prevent that person from feeling
French right away. Whiteness within this historicist framework of
the state represents the
88
yardstick by which “others” will acquire French citizenship and
become a French national. In
that sense, even a French person of color might be questioned
about his/her status. Can they truly
be French? Do they have what it takes culturally to be French? How
do they show their
allegiance to the nation? Since a white German individual might
not be physically
distinguishable from a white French person, he/she already has an
advantage in trying to fit in
France and integrate. His/her physical features are not held
against him/her nor his/her culture
since he/she can pass as French/white.
White privilege can be reproduced by a racial state that itself
states and engages in
fighting racism without acknowledging its own wrong doing because
the racial state in place is
thought to be a normal historical organization of the political
and civil society. It therefore does
not appear to be a question of race anymore (racelessness is at
play) but instead it is measured
through citizenship (political or social) which is an extension of
white privilege historically
speaking.
Methodology
Since Winant’s Racial Formation theory is difficult to apply
because France never openly
created racial classifications, a way to show that it nevertheless
can be useful to study the French
case would be by gathering statements of how French people
understand issues of race and
racism at the micro-level. This would allow for a better
description of the meaning of the laws
passed in France.
Therefore, to accomplish such a task, I have developed an online
questionnaire
about racism (see appendix for full questionnaire). This
questionnaire has been advertised in
different media outlets where readers and participants all have an
equal chance to answer. By
89
gathering responses on a detailed online questionnaire about race
and by interviewing
respondents in-depth about their views on race and racism, I will
be able gauge how the French
construct have racialized identities of the “other” or the
foreigner by denying that race matters.
This sample of French respondents affiliated with different
political groups will provide answers
about attitudes about racism in France regarding how they see
themselves, how race is perceived,
if their idealistic non-racial perceptions of themselves match the
non-racial perception of the
other or the foreigner, who is responsible for racism in France
and how they understand
integration (word used in France to talk about assimilation).
I expect to find convergent views around race regardless of
political ideologies while
views about racism (and its causes) will dramatically vary. At the
difference with Wieviorka
(1992) who only studied individual responses to draw a portrayal
of popular racism, I intend to
link those comments to the institutions to demonstrate that the
construction of whiteness,
exemplified in individual comments, represents the backbone of
French covert racialized society.
It is important to recognize that up until now no French scholar
has really attempted to bring
understanding about some of the words and meanings used around the
problems of race and
racism. It is therefore difficult to really develop a
questionnaire about racism if we do not first
decipher the true meanings behind the words used on a daily basis.
One could imagine contacting
one of the French national polling institutes and asking them to
develop a survey about race and
racism. However, the problem they would encounter would be about
the language to be used in
this questionnaire. Unless this survey is just about knowing if
French people are racist, only
basic questions could be asked. This research will represent an
attempt to uncover the meanings
behind some of those feelings. Recent polls have highlighted
different feelings about the level of
discrimination in France (BVA, 2003; CSA / Le Parisien /
Aujourd’hui en France / I-Tele, 2006),
90
about the victims of discrimination (Zappi, 2001), the evolution
and perception of what extreme
right ideas represent and how they have now become part of
mainstream French society
(Courtois, 2000), about the role of colonialism in the current
political, economic and social
events in France (CSA / Le Parisien / Aujourd’hui en France
Modernité On-Off, 2006). Those
polls only present superficial understandings of the social
reality of discrimination in France. It is
therefore necessary through in-depth research combining surveys
and interviews to dig deeper in
the racial or non-racial meanings of such polls.
Moreover, quantitative research methods used for the study of race
inequality
present inherent flaws because “statistics is a system of
estimation based on uncertainty… and
the social concept of race affects how we interpret racial
statistics” (Zuberi 2001). The
researcher’s own bias about race will affect his/her
interpretation of race and racial data.
However, it takes more than a yes or a no answer to really
understand what respondents want to
convey. What is a foreigner? Is that the same thing as an
extra-European? Who is French?
(While Weil (2004) has already answered that question from a
socio-legal perspective, do people
define it the same way?) What is integration? Is it the same as
assimilation? Are there true
differences between the political left and the political right
when it comes to issues of race and
racism? What is a visible minority? All those questions demand a
real effort to decipher how
French people deal with the issues of race and racism.
This methodology derives inspiration from the critical race
theorists who place race at the
center of their analysis. The social construction of race and the
reproduction of race overtly and
covertly can be uncovered by listening to the voices of the
subjects. While this method is usually
used to help bring forward the voices of those who are being
oppressed, I believe that my
position as an insider/outsider will allow for the interpretation
of the dominant hegemonic voices
91
within a context of white supremacy developed through the
historicist racial state. Critical Race
Theorists, according to Solórzano (1998), advocate the
intersectionality of race and racism, the
challenge to dominant ideology, the commitment to social justice,
the centrality of experiential
knowledge and the interdisciplinary perspective (Fernandez 2002).
Smith-Maddox and
Solórzano (2002) therefore call for researchers to investigate a
problem by asking difficult
questions of why and how. Scratching the surface and only asking
people if they are racist or not
does nothing to challenge the status quo or what seems so obvious.
Some of the advantages about this internet research method are
that the respondents will
more than likely be people who are intrigued by the topic of
racism and might want to see what it
is about, which also means that any political affiliations can be
represented. It is not access to the
internet that might make them more interested in the topic, but
accessing the internet in the
privacy of one’s home might foster or facilitate a more neutral or
non-pressured environment. I
would also add that this method does present the advantage of
allowing any social expression
about this topic to be represented without having the feeling that
one is being judged.
It also means that those who answer might be people that can be
either very politically
involved and feel strongly about their ideas, as well as people
interested in the news but who are
disillusioned by political parties. This method also allows for
reaching a large number of people
all across the country and not just in Paris and its surroundings.
However, there are some obvious
drawbacks to this research in the sense that it might not be
completely representative of the
population since not everybody has access to the Internet.
However, this sample could be read as
a stratified sample around factors of age, sex, and political
affiliations.
While it has become more and more popular, the Internet has not
yet reached the same
saturation in France that it has in the U.S. (about 58% of the
French population or about 30
92
million people use the Internet as of June 2007 according to
Médiamétrie (2007) compared to
roughly 71% in July 2007 in the U.S. (Nielsen-Ratings, 2007)).
Therefore, the opinions and
feelings of some might be left unheard. It might also mean that a
younger population might be
reached. However, this method will allow for gathering critical
information about how French
people (males and females), from different socioeconomic
backgrounds, different occupations,
and political affiliations interpret issues linked to racism and
how they construct race. The
numerous responses that I gather from this online questionnaire
will provide explanations about
what the policies enacted to fight discrimination, to prevent
immigration and to enforce the laws
of the République really mean.
A series of more in-depth interviews was then carried out in order
to understand the white
French mind as it regards to race, racism and the construction of
frenchhood. I contacted about
55 people for follow-up interviews and I was able to complete interviews
with about 25
participants from January 2007 to April 2007.
All the answers to the survey and to the follow-up interviews
remain confidential and the
anonymity of the respondents will be respected as agreed with the
Institutional Review Board at
the University of California, Riverside.
I expect to demonstrate that a color-blind approach to society
does not mean that
foreigners are not perceived in racial terms through the use of
other factors that eventually
essentialize others along racial lines (or quasi-racial lines). I
expect to see strong national
sentiments about what France represents and the Republican (not in
the U.S meaning, but in the
sense of what the French République represents) ideal of integration, which will also be
expressed in the possibility or not for some populations
(Europeans versus extra-Europeans; i.e.
whites versus non-whites) to really integrate. There is a high
likelihood that Italians, Germans
93
and other European immigrants will be defined as closer culturally
to France and therefore more
likely to integrate than extra-European immigrants.
I suspect that the negative history of slavery and colonialism
will not really be part of the
collective memory of the French which would also mean that the way
people of color have been
treated in the past will continue to influence how French people
and their leaders think about
foreigners. This will have an impact on the way policies are
written.
Through this research, I am filling an important gap not studied
in depth yet by social
scientists. I am more interested in the understanding of the non
use of race in France than
focusing on the different forms of racism. Many researchers have
focused on the rhetoric of
politicians; they have spent considerable amount time studying the
effects of the National Front,
while ignoring the insidious effect of whiteness and its
invisibility. They have not focused as
much time on the larger population, regardless of political
affiliation. It is therefore not an
attempt to blame some individuals for their comments (racist or
not) but rather to decipher the
double meanings, the undertones, and assumptions that while
seemingly innocent reveal a deep
structural racial and racist problem in France. Individuals live
in an environment and tend to
reproduce discourses, ideas, images that they have been exposed
to, that they have internalized
and which in turn will be reinforced through interactions and
perceptions about the “other.” It is
therefore more than just a contemporary approach to discrimination
in France but rather an
examination of the construction of whiteness as a socio-historical
concept that is reproduced
everyday in daily interactions, and which might lead to greater
social problems.
94
Chapter Four
To see and judge without being seen and judged
Am I black or Am I American? (W.E.B.
DuBois, 1999, p. 45)
To start the analysis of my data, I feel the need to reiterate
that my goal is not to prove or
demonstrate that French people are racist but rather to inquire
and find out if through the use
language, daily interactions and private actions, French people
contribute to the reproduction of
an invisible system of oppression, a system where whiteness is the
norm and a system in which
race cannot be talked about for fear of awakening deep conflicting
values.
Who qualifies as French?
One important key to this research revolves around the way
frenchness is defined, how
you becomes French, and who can be worth of being French.
Many of the respondents answered like Michel, a 60 year-old
retired man who said that a
French person is “somebody who has a French nationality2,” or along the lines of “an individual
who has a French nationality, as well as the rights and duties
that come with it3” according to
Jean, a 18 year-old student. This official legal definition for
being French is noted by many of
the respondents along what the law states, but also according to
whether or not you are born in
France, whether you already have citizenship or not, whether you
speak French or not, whether
you live in France or not, or whether your parents were French (or
even born in France) even
though it might also depend on the numbers of French ancestors you
have.
2 Quelqu'un qui a la nationalité
française.
3 Un français est un individu qui
dispose de la nationalité française, ainsi que des droits et des devoirs qui en
découlent.
95
Being French also means to respect the laws as well to engage in
the civic duties, which
come along with being French. The main question, however, revolves
around the definition of
civic duties, of the respect of laws, of how many generations you
have to account for to be
considered a genuine French person and whether or not somebody
behaves like one (also a code
word for “do you look like one”?). While many cite legal
definition or socially acceptable
definitions of what it means to be French, many others do not
share those visions. Before getting
into some of those particular differences, it is also important to
note how non-white French
citizens define what it means to be French. For instance, as Pierre,
one of the non-white men (a
22 year-old student) I interviewed, said,
According to the racist/racialist vision of the world, I am
‘yellow’ and lastly
‘French’ from foreign ancestry, which I contest because I see
myself as French, I
am French, and I am from France, I was born in the suburbs of
Paris, I live
French, I think French, I dream French, I f*** in French4.
He contests the widespread idea that French people are white.
While he is not white,
since he is labeled as ‘yellow’ his Frenchness is contested,
questioned and debated. Can he really
be from here and belong here? He questions the racist idea that
being French means being white,
but more interestingly, he also questions the racialist idea that
race matters. For him, to refute
those racist and racialist ideas also suggests that he has heard,
experienced and felt the idea that
race shapes social interactions even though he refuses to be
defined by it. This idea is surprising
in a sense but not overtly astounding. It is surprising in the
sense that racial thinking is usually
not thought to be part of the French social fabric.
4 Selon la vision raciste/racialiste du
monde je suis un "jaune", un "chinois" et en dernier lieu
un "français
d'origine étrangère", ce que je conteste car je me considère
français, je suis français, je suis originaire de France,
je suis né en banlieue parisienne, je vis français, je pense
français, je rêve français, je b**** en français
96
One can therefore wonder about the different perceptions whites
and people of color have
about race in France, but I will examine this later. On the other
hand, this is not astounding in the
sense that race has shaped social interactions for a long period
of time but while it remains fairly
unnoticed, unheard and more importantly not deemed critical enough
to be addressed by the
larger society (this issue will be addressed in more details
later), it can be felt by this person
while he refuses to be defined by it.
It is confirmed by this 33 year-old black French woman, Jeanine,
who states that the real,
not official, definition of being French applied in France refer
to “whites whatever their
origins5.” There is an interesting difference between those who are French
citizens and of color
compared to those who identify themselves just as French or white.
People of color acknowledge
that being French is a privilege reserved to those are white and
cannot be obtained easily from
those who do not fit this profile. A certain dichotomy exists
between people of color and whites
about what being French really means. This was demonstrated in
Sagot-Duvauroux’s book
(2004) who showed that young black men born, raised and socialized
as French in France from
West African immigrant parents struggle to identify themselves as
French because society
contests their legitimate presence in France and their allegiance
to France. This also exemplified
in a different way in Lamont’s (2000) research about French
workers and how white French
workers tend to have more hostility towards North-African workers.
She described the attitudes
of white French workers towards their North-African counterparts
and showed that many of
them hold negative feelings towards them. Interestingly, what
Lamont does not address is the
actual perception of white French citizens about those immigrants
in terms of their legal presence
in France. While her interviews with North-Africans workers did
not include any French
citizens, she is not clear about the way White French workers she
interviewed viewed their
5 Des blancs quelque soient leur origine
97
North-Africans colleagues as just immigrants or as French
citizens. Basically, it seemed to be
assumed in her research that white French workers viewed their
North-African counterparts as
just immigrants and not as citizens. While she addresses the fact
that many immigrants have
come to France since the 1950s to fill labor demands, her
interviews took place in the mid-1990s,
which could mean that some of the children of those original
immigrants have become French
citizens since. However, the way she describes her interviews and
the responses provided to her
seems to reveal that indeed white French workers do not see these
North African counterparts as
real French. Their values, morality and work ethic remain under
scrutiny. It seems to be assumed
that the White workers do not see them as real French citizens,
and that the deciding factor is
their racial/ethnic background. Their North African background
almost disqualifies them as
genuine French citizens. Culture as a proxy for race will be
addressed later in more details.
However, while they are judging on cultural values, they are
indeed attributing cultural
values to phenotype features. In another research, Lamont and her
colleagues (2002) interview
some North African immigrant men who live in France about the way
they construct anti-racist
struggle. They found out that there exists a stark contrast
between the values held by French
workers about the République and their desire to bring equality and those men who argued that
French people have the privilege to be racist because their [the
North African immigrants]
positions are always scrutinized as they are always being told
they are not home. While white
French workers tend to express some moral superiority compared to
those who are better off
because they define themselves as more caring, North African
workers define themselves in
more cultural and religious terms while also taking into account
their structural realities that
shape their social lives.
98
While I do not want to go into details about Lamont’s research, it
then posits the question
about their children who are born, raised and socialized in France
as French citizens. Do they
feel the same treatment? How are they perceived? While
Sagot-Duvauroux (2004) provide some
insights about their conditions, some of the respondents in my
survey, such as, Jacques, this
young 27 year-old man who identifies himself as both white and
Kabyle states that those who are
French are “those who claim to be as such and who have neither
black skin nor from any north
African or African origins6.” As Sagot-Duvauroux explains, being black or
being white in France
is more than skin deep. Those identities represent a
socio-historical conflict embedded in a white
supremacist notion that white is normal and, here, therefore
French. I do not have any details
about Jacques’ background; however, it is interesting to notice
that he defines himself as white
and Kabyle. Some authors have addressed what they call the Kabyle
myth. Macey (1996) argues
that the Kabyle myth has been historically constructed to show how
Islam was an aggressive
religion, which indirectly and incorrectly depicted Muslim as
Arabs. Ruedy (1992) condenses the
myth or the misrepresentation of the Kabyle “as attached to his
ancestral soil, was industrious,
practical, curious, democratic, expansive, and far less religious
than the Arab, who was soft,
lazy, slow-witted, introspective, and given to dreaming and
fanaticism” (p. 91). The construction
of the Kabyle myth was developed to differentiate the Kabyle from
the Arab population and
demonstrate that the Kalybes embodied the virtues of the French.
The Kabyle-Arab dichotomy
actually represented a more complex dichotomy between the
European-non-European dichotomy
(Lorcin, 1995). As Macey (1996) argues, “the Kabyle myth is one of
the means whereby a
cultural-linguistic difference was transmuted into a racial
difference” (p. 546).
6 Tous ceux qui se réclament comme tel
et qui n'ont ni la peau noire, ni d'origines nord-africaines ou africaines
99
Some of the racialist perspective about frenchness can be seen
through the
following quote from one of the respondent who refused to identify
himself/herself in
terms of gender, arguing that a French person,
should master the language and the judeo-christian culture. If he
cannot claim any
ancestry, it means that this person cannot exclusively be French.
You then have to
make a difference between European roots and extra-European ones7
While race is not overtly part of this participant’s discourse,
certain assumptions are
being made about who can be considered French. Your ancestry
dictates your affiliation and
your allegiance to the French nation. While this ancestry might
not be easy to identify through
your parents, it appears that this individual recognizes a need to
differentiate between the fact
that a person with European roots might be more likely to be
French than an extra-European
person, even though historically speaking a member of former
colonies might be more likely to
speak the language and share French values. This dichotomy between
being (Indo)-European and
extra-European hides a very obvious racial discourse about
somebody’s French authenticity. For
instance, Paul, this 20 year-old man who find himself on the right
of the political spectrum states
that a French person is,
a person proud of his/her heritage and who is a descendent of
great peoples that
emerged out of the great Indo-European migrations that brought
them to Europe.
French people who are from other races are those who have denied
their culture,
their identity, to embrace the French one, even more than a
citizen of French
7 Il devrait maîtriser la lange et la
culture judéo-chrétienne. S'il ne peut prétendre à une filiation ancestrale,
c'est
que l'individu n'est pas exclusivement français. Il faut alors faire
la différence entre les souches européennes et
extra européenne
100
stock, and it is okay as long as they remain only 5 to 10% of the
overall
population.8
So, according to Paul, one’s frenchness might be acquired through
legitimate
means but you might remain a foreigner in the eyes of the ‘real’
French. To be French
also means to deny your culture, as if you were to keep it that
would prevent your
integration in the French fabric of society. However, despite
people becoming French by
embracing French culture, identity and so on, having more than 5
-10% of them would be
problematic.
While some people would argue that the definition of frenchness
being equated with
being white as an idea mostly shared among voters of the National
Front (extreme right party)
has some truth to it, as it is exemplified with the following
22-year old man, Stéphane, who
states openly that a foreigner is either black or Arab and a
French person is white. It can also be
seen through the statement made by another 22 year-old man, Yannick,
who defines a foreigner
as “a person who does not belong in the white race and who is not
Christian even through those
individuals are allowed to become citizens9”. He then goes on to define a French person by
arguing that “for politicians, it is somebody that has a national
identity card but for me it is
represents much more10.” However, people who share other political
views than the National
Front do also reproduce similar beliefs about one’s Frenchness.
8 Une personne fière de sont héritage et
qui décent des grand peuples issues des migrations indo-européenne
arrivées en Europe. Les français issuent d'autre races sont ceux
qui ont renié leur culture, leur identité, pour
embrasser celle de la France, encore plus qu'un Français de
souche, et cela reste acceptable s'ils demeurent moins
de 5% à 10% de la population totale.
9 Une personne qui n'est pas de race
blanche et qui n'est pas de confession chrétienne bien qu'à titre exceptionnel
ces personnes puissent devenir des nationaux.
10 Pour les hommes politiques, c'est une
personne qui a la carte d'identité. Pour moi, c'est bien plus que çà.
101
Whiteness, as a requirement for frenchness, is also present in the
comment made by
Cédric, a 40 year-old businessman who shares political ideas with
the Green Party, who says that
those who are foreigner (and therefore not French) are those “who
are not visible in the dominant
culture, such as blacks and Arabs for instance11.” He is quick to state this statement does not
represent his own feelings but rather the way he perceives how
people of color are treated in
French society. They are not given the same chance to define what
French society is. It is clear
here that whiteness is the yardstick necessary to become French.
This previous statement is somewhat echoed by Robert, a 30
year-old military man, on to
the right politically, who argues that a French person is “a
person who was born on the French
national territory even though this can debated because of the
current melting pot12.” What this
man is saying is that you can be French by birth but one’s
frenchness can really be questioned if
you don’t look like you are French. The fact that he mentions the
“current melting pot” refers to
the uneasiness some have in regards to the racial and cultural
diversity, which exists in France at
the present time.
Josianne, a 45 year-old Socialist woman states that a French
person refers to the “political
and legal idea13” of somebody that would qualify as French under the law, but she
also says that
a foreigner in France is a “non-European14.” One could read into that since the borders
are open
to people in Europe, only Europeans could be considered possibly
French, and non-European
foreigners, but it seems to be more complex than that when she
argues,
11 Quelqu’un qui n'est pas visible dans
la culture dominante: ex: un black, un arabe
12 Il s'agit d'une personne née sur le
territoire national de la France bien que cela soit discutable compte tenu du
melting pot actuel
13 Notion purement administrative
14 Un non européen
102
I am not racist because I condemn any forms of discrimination
based on race or
ethnic origins; however, Islam is a totalitarian religion that is
incompatible with
democratic principles and should be outlawed in
Europe.15
So when she says that foreigners are non-Europeans, she seems to
refer in particular to
those who practice a totalitarian religion that should not exist
in Europe. While she claims to be
non-racist, one can wonder about how she judges and deals with
individual Muslims. It seems
that her non-racist attitude is compromised by her overall
definition of Islam and, therefore about
those who practice it, without making any individual differences.
She is, in a nutshell,
essentializing all Muslims as non-compatible with democratic
principles, and French ideals. She
is racializing Muslims, and most likely Arabs. Whiteness here
represents more than just skin
complexion, it is also exemplified through the type of culture, or
religious affiliation (i.e.
Christian); all others cannot be considered French.
On the other hand, this notion of frenchness being equated with
whiteness is also shared
by other individuals who tend to be affiliated with the left.
Eric, a 20 year-old man who is
politically close to the Radical Left Party (Parti Radical de
Gauche) defines a French person as
“an individual whose presence is not the result of immigration
(country X towards France)16.”
While this statement remains fairly vague as to whether he is
talking about one country in
particular or not, and when this immigration took place, he later
states that a citizen of French
stock (Français de souche) is “a French person who could find his family roots in the
middle-
15 Je ne suis pas raciste car je condamne
toute discrimination basée sur la race ou l'origine ethnique par contre
l'islam est une religion totalitaire incompatible avec la
démocratie et doit être interdite en Europe
16 Un individu issu de l'immigration
(pays X vers France)
103
ages in France17.” His statement implies that to be a true French one has to have
several
generations in France, and has established his/her frenchness
prior to contemporary waves of
immigration. This exclusion includes a large number of population
and it also implies that some
are not real French, or French by political and legal
requirements.
Frenchness also appears to depend on whether one’s presence is the
result of past
immigration and has an aptitude for learning the French culture
and living it everyday. Marie, a
18 year-old woman from the Socialist Party states that a French
person has to have the necessary
legal documents to qualify as such and that to be integrated means
that one has to “know how to
behave according to the traditions of the country even when they
are imposed18.“ This sentiment
is echoed indirectly through the statement of Christophe, an 18
year-old man from the extreme
left who defines a French person as,
a person born in France and who lives in France or an immigrant,
who is not
being sought after for felony charges (unless his/her own ideas
represent a danger
to himself/herself in his/her country of origin) and who is
willing to integrate19
While this young man brings the soil right (being born on a
certain soil might be
given automatic citizenship, e.g. the U.S. for instance), to
determine one’s frenchness, it is also
interesting to note that the first thing that he says after the
word ‘immigrant’ is linked to the idea
of potential criminal charges. One’s frenchness is set to be
determined by one’s ability to
conform and to behave according to what French society has placed
as normal and civilized.
17 Un français qui trouverait ses racines
familiales dans la France du moyen âge
18 Savoir se comporter comme la tradition
du pays l'oblige, avec ses contraintes
19 C'est une personne né et résidant en
France ou une personne immigrée, n'étant pas recherchée pour délit grave
(sauf si ses idées présentent un danger pour sa personne dans pays
d'origine) et manifestant une volonté
d'intégration
104
Integration seems to be the main factor that will determine one’s
allegiance to France, while
those who are born in France and who resides in France are not to
be questioned.
It is therefore not surprising to see frenchness defined not just
along racial lines but
through cultural lines as Taguieff (1988) and Wieviorka (1996)
have argued. Some are too
culturally different to be French. Silverman (1992) is quoted
arguing that “idea of a common and
trans-historical culture defining the French nation has been a
powerful means of racializing the
French people” (p. 8). While some question the compatibility of
foreign culture with being
French such as this young man, Nicolas, who states,
I am against the naturalization process; you are of a nationality
or you are not; in
France, more and more adolescents show their passion and adopt
Japanese
tradition, but that does not make them Japanese. Other than for
the material,
financial, legal interests or other, I do not see what would push
a foreigner to
become something that he/she is not. The comparison might be
pejorative but a
dog that behaves like a cat remains a dog, this is a question of
essence, you do not
become a national just because you wish it. Can you verify
honestly a person’s
good faith that defines himself/herself as French (or as a
nationality other than
his/her own)?20
According to Nicolas, one’s frenchness is something natural. The
legal and social process
of acquiring French citizenship will remain a legal action but
will not be met with any real social
meanings because culture is essential, it is immutable; in other
words, it is rooted in your cultural
20 Je ne suis pas pour la naturalisation,
on est d'une nationalité, où on ne l'est pas ; en France, de plus en plus
d'adolescents vouent une passion et adoptent les us et coutumes
japonaises, ça ne fait pas d'eux des Japonais.
Hormis l'intérêt matériel, financier, légal ou autre, je ne vois
pas ce qui pousserait un étranger à vouloir devenir
ce qu'il n'est pas. La comparaison peut être péjorative, mais un
chien qui se comporte comme un chat restera un
chien, c'est une question d'être dans son essence, on ne devient
pas d'une nationalité parce qu'on le souhaite.
Peut-on vraiment vérifier la bonne fois d'une personne qui se
considère comme français (ou d'une nationalité
autre que la sienne)?
105
DNA. The essentialization of a group will lead to the
racialization of that same group where one
can recognize your every characteristic and personal traits by
just looking at you, and the legal
process cannot hide who you really are. His distaste for the
naturalization process goes as far
comparing dogs and cats to show that being French is clearly
incompatible with any other
“species” because they are too different. Taguieff (1994) has
addressed these types of arguments.
He highlighted the ideas of certain segments of French society who
have favored a cultural
differentialist proposition when it comes to immigration. The main
ideas revolve around the
incompatibility of cultures and of the immutability of one’s
culture. Without bringing any openly
racist arguments, they have argued that certain groups should stay
in their home countries
because it would be to their interests to assert their cultural
values, but not here! In other words,
we support your struggle for self-determination as long as it is
not taking place in France. Our
culture is too different from yours and it is in the interests of
all of us to not live in the same
areas.
On a last interesting note, Gilbert, a 35 year-old man defines a
French person as
“someone who is a member of either the Socialist Party or the
Communist Party21.” Frenchness
is just being defined as being politically affiliated with a
leftist party.
How do French people talk about race?
I would like to start this section by a quote from a French Arab
25 year-old
Socialist man (Norredine) who defines being white as “living better
before anything else.
Of all the whites that I know, they do not realize that, but most
of them come from higher social
classes than me. However, for me, white represents so many things
that we cannot really define
21 C'est quelqu'un qui a sa carte du PS
ou du PC
106
it. Or as I said before that helps me define myself as Arab.22” This young man demonstrates that
in his life being white represents a certain higher social
standing that he is not able to relate to.
He is defining himself in contrast to what it means to be white,
which makes white being the
norm. While it is not surprising to see a person of color defining
whiteness as such, some of the
following statements divulge that whites do not have the same
perception of what their whiteness
represents in French society.
One of the most interesting facets of this research was to
determine what the concept of
“race” represents in French people’s minds. From scholars
themselves shying away from race as
a social construct (Weil, 2004a; Taguieff, 1994) to the law, where
racism is defined as a way to
prevent discrimination based on race (its definition in the law
remains vague) among other
factors, to politicians who denounce racism but refuse to admit
that race is socially important,
while at the same moment creating implied racial categories like
“visible minorities,” race seems
to represent the forbidden word that nobody wants to acknowledge
while understanding some of
the effects it has on society. I think it is important to
recognize that race is not addressed socially
speaking because it does not have any relevance for the dominant
group, because they do not
have to think about it. This is the social privilege inherited by
whites (McIntosh, 2002; Wildman,
2002). Since race does not exist in a vacuum but in relationship
with others, the dominant group
does not have to think about its privileges, and since the
dominant racial group controls the
development of knowledge, race does not enter the realm of
realities. As we will see later, their
realm of reality revolves around how whites are the ones being
victimized by most of the
discrimination existing in France.
22 Cela veut dire d'abord mieux vivre. De
tous les Blancs que je connaisse, ils ne s'en rendent pas compte, mais la
plupart est issu de classes sociales supérieures à la mienne. Mais
pour moi, il y a un côté où Blanc représente
tellement de choses qu'on ne peut pas lui donner une définition.
Ou, comme je disais plus haut, cela me sert à me
positionner en tant qu'Arabe
107
While some of respondents to the survey decry the use of race
because as Martin says
“there are no human races23” or according to Jacques, a 59 year-old work
retired man who is
close to a leftist party, says that “I am among those who think
that the notion of race is a myth,
for me, there are people with varying history and different
culture, and diversity is an asset for
mankind.24” Other participants actually define themselves as white,
Caucasian, as a citizen of
French stock, European, Indo-European when asked about which
racial group they belong to.
About 64% of the respondents (out of 272 answers) described
themselves as such. The second
largest group was made of those who believe races exist (other
than the human race); they
represented roughly 14% of the respondents. This is a significant
finding because of the
persistent notion in France that race should not be addressed and
should not be part of the social
discourse. I would here suggest that while most respondents define
themselves racially in one
way or another it does not necessarily mean that they understand
the social meanings behind
those identities.
When probed about what it meant to be white in France, many
answered in a similar way
as Bertrand, a 40 year-old white-collar worker who shares
political ideas with center-right
political parties. Bertrand states that to be white means that “I
have to be careful to put sun cream
on when I am in the sun, and that I have to be careful when I
travel in places where anti-white
racism exists (such as Guadeloupe).25” While there is no doubt that Bertrand probably
needs sun
cream in the sun, he does not talk about how he got the money to
buy this sun cream. Jerome, a
23 Les races humaines n'existent pas
24 Je fais parti de ceux qui pensent que
la notion de 'race' est une fumisterie, pour moi, il y a des peuples, avec
une histoire et une culture différente et la diversité est un
atout pour l'humanité.
25 Que je dois faire attention à me
mettre de la crème solaire quand je vais au soleil, et que je dois faire
attention
quand je voyage en des lieux où existe le racisme anti-blanc
(comme en Guadeloupe)
108
50 year-old physician states that being white means “it is just a
color among others26.” Those
statements clearly reveal that being white does not represent a
conscious social marker that could
bring any privileges to those individuals. For Bertrand, it also
represents a possibility of being
harassed in a place where whites might not be welcome. Despite the
fact that he acknowledges
the irrelevance of skin complexion from a social perspective since
he talks about sun cream, he
nevertheless comes around to provide some social context to it:
race is only meaningful when it
is used against him. This idea that being white represents a
handicap was present a few times in
the survey and in my interviews. Most white participants did not
acknowledge their privilege but
instead affirmed their victimization as whites at the hand of
people of color. The following
respondent, Didier, a 30 year-old man states that being white
means “to be the recipient of racist
comments from people of color. It means having white skin and
being of French origin or from
any other white country for a certain number of years.27” A couple things jump out of this
comment. First, it is the victimization of whites by people of
color, and second the fact that being
white means being French. Those two comments demonstrate the
complex contradiction behind
some of the perceptions whites have of their environments. While
one can acknowledge that
some individual whites have had some negative experiences with
some individuals of color, the
socio-historical oppression of people of color by whites would
contradict this notion of antiwhite
racism. Second, by saying that French are white, they acknowledge
indirectly that people
of color are the ones who will be required to prove their
allegiance to France, and will therefore
be the recipients of scrutiny by the “genuine” French individuals.
This is what Van Djik (1992)
would call denial of racism. In his data, he finds that most
racist comments were accompanied
26 Ce n’est qu’une couleur parmi d’autres
27 Subir les propos racistes des gens de
couleur. Cela signifie avoir la peau blanche et être d'origine française ou
autre pays blancs depuis de nombreuses années.
109
with disclaimers or denials. On one interesting note, he argues
that it is easier for whites to point
out to a specific negative characteristic of a person of color
because they might find some
justification to it while a more general negative attitude towards
racial/ethnic minorities might be
more revealing of one’s prejudice or racism. Van Djik (1992)
states “denials of racism often turn
into counteraccusations of intolerant and intolerable anti-racism”
(p. 90). In this regards, the last
few quotes by Bertand and Didier are revealing of deep-seating
form of racism as they might
very general comments about others by stating that being white if
facing anti-white racism from
people of color.
On another note, some whites are aware of the privileges that
whiteness confers to them.
Isabelle, a 20 year-old woman, who says that “whites are in
general more privileged; they live in
industrialized countries, with the comfort that comes with it. I
feel reassured when with whites
because people of color scare me.28” While she talks about privileges, she talks
about it mostly
from a socio-economic perspective in the sense that the standard
of living in European countries
might be higher than the ones where people of color live. She,
therefore, acknowledges privilege
from a global perspective but not from a French domestic
perspective. Being white in France
does not seem to represent anything in particular in her eyes. The
second part of her statement
also reveals some much deep-seated anguish about what people of
color represents; they are
dangerous and we (i.e. whites) need to interact with them with
caution. In another question
where she is being asked about racial discrimination in the
workplace and in housing, she
continues saying,
yes [it exists], according to news reports, but I know that Africans
do not respect
the places they rent and they ransack them because they are dirty.
In regards to
28 Les blancs sont en général mieux
favorisés, ils vivent dans des pays industrialisés, avec le confort qui va
avec.
Je suis rassurée avec les blancs car les gens de couleur me font
peur
110
hiring practices, I find it [racial discrimination] unacceptable
but maybe people
are scared that it will become more difficult to find jobs for
whites first.29
So while she might agree, acknowledge and disapprove of racial
discrimination
problems, she nonetheless argues that it might be justified since
they are known for ransacking
their places, and because they are dirty. I can’t help to think
about former President Chirac’s
quote when he stated on June 19, 1991 that:
What is the most urgent: to save the identity of French people or
to accept all
those, using political arguments, who would like to come and get
on welfare, and
to use our hospitals and our universities? . . . Our problem is
not the foreigners, it
is more the overdose of foreigners. Maybe it is true that the
foreigners are more
numerous than before the war, but they are different, and it makes
a difference. It
is certain that having Spaniards, Polish, and Portuguese working
on our soil,
create fewer problems than having Muslims and blacks. How do you
expect a
French worker and his wife, both working and, making 2150 dollars
a month, and
who see as his next door neighbor, a family composed of a father,
his three or four
wives, and about twenty of his kids, making 7150 dollars from
welfare, without of
course, working . . . and if you add the noise and the smell; well
this French
worker becomes crazy. And it is not racist to say that30 (INA, 1991)
29 Oui d'après les enquêtes télévisées,
mais je sais que les africains ne respectent pas le logement qu'ils louent et
ils le saccagent car ils sont sales. Pour l'embauche je trouve
cela inacceptable mais peut être qu'on a peur car ça
devient difficile de trouver du travail déjà pour les blancs
30 Notre problème, ce n’est pas les
étrangers, c’est qu’il y a overdose. C’est peut-être vrai qu’il n’y a pas plus
d’étrangers qu’avant la guerre, mais ce n’est pas les mêmes et ça
fait une différence. Il est certain que d’avoir des
Espagnols, des Polonais et des Portugais travaillant chez nous, ça
pose moins de problèmes que d’avoir des
musulmans et des Noirs [. . .] Comment voulez-vous que le
travailleur français qui travaille avec sa femme et qui,
ensemble, gagnent environ 15000 francs, et qui voit sur le palier
à côté de son HLM, entassée, une famille avec
un père de famille, trois ou quatre épouses, et une vingtaine de
gosses, et qui gagne 50000 francs de prestations
sociales, sans naturellement travailler . . . si vous ajoutez le
bruit et l’odeur, hé bien le travailleur français sur le
palier devient fou. Et ce n’est pas être raciste que de dire
cela...
111
This idea of blacks being dirty seems to have entered the
collective memory and
consciousness as it is now being reproduced by people who claim to
be non-racist. Moreover, the
blame-the-victim ideology is present in this quote as poverty
seems to be the result of their
wrongdoing.
Culture as a proxy for race?
Since race is not being acknowledged openly one can then look at
the issue of culture. I
would like to point out to one respondent in particular who saw
himself as a culturalist and not as
a racist. Joel is a 43 year-old professor in the suburbs of Paris.
He is also the chair of a
department in the Business division in his university. He shares
many ideas with the Left Radical
Party (Parti Radical de
Gauche). He is married with a black woman who is
originally from
Cameroon. His culturalist perspective is expressed in the
following statement:
There is no need to suspect in principle an Arab of dishonesty;
but on
another side (and my spouse who I talked about earlier could
attest of that) there
is an undeniable overrepresentation of Arabs among delinquents,
compared to
their social global presence. But it is not because they are
Arabs, this is because (I
am over-simplifying) they are poor (this is the culturalism I
mention later). This is
a vicious circle of course: in a large part, they are poor because
they are Arabs
and because they are denied access to jobs. Okay, this is a fact.
However, once we
have acknowledged this fact, what do we do? Should we continue to
favor family
reunification, to close our eyes on illegal immigration and
therefore to sustain this
problem? Or should we say “let’s stop and think, let’s take
measures to help the
integration of immigrants already here (even if it means
affirmation action
112
policies, even though the idea of it pains me), but we stop the
arrival of new
immigrants?31
While this professor is sympathetic to radical left ideas, his
culturalist approach to French
society and immigrants resemble culturalist approach of the right
wing but without being as
explicit. While he acknowledges that Arabs face social problems
that might lead them to engage
in criminal activities, he dismisses quickly this idea by saying
that bringing more immigrants
would create more problems. So it is not Arabs who are the
problems, but the social problems
they face (such as hiring discrimination), but consequently, we
need to stop their arrivals because
they might continue to contribute to delinquency. So instead of
focusing on the discrimination
they face, the precarious jobs they might get, he emphasizes that
Arabs and their families should
not be reunited.
The other issue about his statement is that he assumes that most
Arabs might be facing
those issues and therefore getting into trouble. So is the problem
the culture or Arabs themselves
and what they bring culturally? Under the cover of culture, this
man reproduces images of
cultural inferiority that might be the problem in the first place.
This is reinforced by one of his
first statements that there is an overrepresentation of Arabs
among delinquents, and his wife can
attest of it. First, under the cover of culturalism, race is very
much present. Since France does not
keep statistics about the origins and racial background of people,
how is that idea being
reproduced? Assuming that it is true that most of the delinquents
are of Arabic origins, why
31 Il n'y a pas de sens à soupçonner par
principe un Arabe de malhonnêteté ; mais d'un autre côté (et ma
compagne, évoquée ci-dessus, peut l'attester de visu) il y a une
incontestable surreprésentation des Arabes parmi
les délinquants, comparativement à leur présence sociale globale.
Mais ce n'est pas parce qu'ils sont Arabes, c'est
parce qu'ils sont (en simplifiant) pauvres (c'est le
"culturalisme" que j'évoque en plus tard). Cercle vicieux, bien
sûr : dans une large mesure, ils sont pauvres parce qu'ils sont
Arabes et qu'on ne veut pas leur donner de bons
emplois. Bon, ça c'est le constat. Une fois que ce constat est fait,
qu'est-ce qu'on fait ? Continue-t-on à favoriser
le regroupement familial, à fermer les yeux sur l'immigration
clandestine, et donc à proroger le problème ? Où
dit-on "on arrête, on réfléchit, on prend des mesures pour
favoriser l'insertion des immigrés existants (si
nécessaire par la discrimination positive, quoique l'idée me soit
pénible), mais on limite l'arrivée de migrants
supplémentaires"?
113
mention about their Arabic origins and not about their French
background? It is assumed here
that those delinquents are not French citizens (just children of
immigrants) and therefore are
more likely to engage in those types of behaviors because they do
not share French cultural
values, or the ones necessary for them to be integrated (i.e.
values that would prevent them from
engaging in criminal activities). In following statements, this
professor tries to develop his ideas
further by precising that being “culturalist” is different from
being racist. He states that,
One simple example: in many cities in black Africa, making music
as well as
listening to music is shared, it is part of the community, and
most people
appreciate when a neighbor plays on his CD player the latest album
from such and
such artist that he allows, through his window, the neighborhood
to enjoy; if I am
in black Africa, I am not going to go in the street and say ‘I am
bothered by it,
lower the volume down’; however, when an African ignore or
continue to ignore
that you do not do that in France, and turn his stereo all the way
up, with his
windows wide open, that irritates me. But I would like to insist
that it is only
statistically important to notice that this will be questioned
most often with
immigrant populations: the dominant factor is probably your social
environment,
and this is why I use the word ‘culturalism.’ There are certain
aspects of the
culture, of popular ways of life that drives me insane and it
happens, that in
today’s French society, with its inequalities, that type of
culture reinforced by the
misunderstanding of France’s social environment, is often found
(but not
exclusively) in immigrants’ households. I can say it more directly
even if it hurts:
I get along much better with a black college professor than a
white man on
welfare, but it happens that there are a lot more white college
professors and black
114
men on welfare. One more detail about ‘culturalism:’ I like the
French language,
and I am saddened when I teach upper-level division classes to see
foreign
students who come get a French diploma in France and do not care
one bit about
being able to express themselves in a semi-correct manner, without
even realizing
that they working conceptual ideas for which they do not have the
basic
foundations32
There are many interesting points being made in this quote, which
bring forward some
more profound internal contradictions. First, he acknowledges that
culture in black Africa is
different from France’s culture. He admits that each country has
its own cultural understandings
about listening to music but that in France, those behaviors would
be unacceptable. Therefore,
when a person is playing loud music in France, he assumes that
statistically speaking, the person
is probably an immigrant from Africa, and this behavior is due to
his lack of understanding of the
French culture. This is a very important point because first,
there is an assumption that being
black means that you are African, and second that this person is
probably not a French citizen
because he is not white, and being black would mean not having an
understanding of French
culture. Kelman (2005a, 2005b) has discussed this issue in details
in a couple of his books. He
32 Un exemple simple : dans beaucoup de
villes d'Afrique noire, la pratique musicale, y compris de l'écoute
musicale, est très partagée, voire communautaire, et la plupart
des gens apprécient qu'un voisin mette sur son
lecteur CD le dernier disque de tel ou tel artiste dont il fait,
par la fenêtre, profiter le voisinage ; si je suis en
Afrique noire, je ne vais pas aller dans la rue et dire "ça
me gêne, baissez le volume" ; par contre, quand un
Africain ignore ou feint d'ignorer que cela ne se fait pas en
France, et fait hurler sa chaîne toutes fenêtres
ouvertes, ça m'exaspère. Mais j'insiste sur le fait que ce n'est
que statistiquement que la question se posera plus
souvent avec des personnes d'origine immigrée : le facteur
dominant est sans doute l'appartenance sociale, d'où
mon mot de "culturalisme" : il y a des aspects de la
culture, des modes de vie "populaires" qui me hérissent, et il se
trouve que, dans la société française d'aujourd'hui, avec ses
inégalités, il est fréquent que ce type de culture,
renforcée par la méconnaissance du "terrain" français,
se trouve souvent (mais non exclusivement, il s'en faut)
chez des immigrés. Pour le dire encore plus vite voire brutalement
: je m'entendrai beaucoup mieux avec un
professeur d'université noir qu'avec un RMIste blanc, mais il se
trouve qu'il y a nettement plus de professeurs
d'université blancs et de RMIstes noirs. Encore un détail sur ce
"culturalisme" : j'aime la langue française, et je
suis attristé, lorsque j'enseigne en 3ème année de licence, de
voir des étudiants étrangers qui, clairement,
viennent chercher un diplôme en France en se contrefichant de
s'exprimer d'une manière ne serait-ce
qu'approximativement correcte, sans même être conscient qu'ils
cherchent à travailler sur un matériau
conceptuel sans en posséder l'outil de base.
115
contests the widely accepted idea that blacks are just Africans
and therefore not from France, and
indirectly do not understand what it means to be French culturally
speaking. He talks of the
inability, even among open-minded well-intentioned white French,
to question the cultural
belonging of blacks in France, as they are always perceived as
Africans first. White French
society expects them to always be in touch with their African
roots, which indirectly create
uneasiness about accepting them as full Frenchmen and women. This
leads to what Sagot-
Duvauroux (2004) described as some forms of retrenchment of young
black men and women
born and raised in France, but who are rejected by white French
society because they do not fit
the profile of being French. Their frenchness being questioned
they, in consequence, developed a
blackattitude, which is in between being
French and being “noir” (a French version of the U.S.
racial identity formation).
Second, this professor tries to show he shares many common points
with other black
individuals sharing his educational background than a white man
from a lower socio-economic
status. I find this comment really interesting because he is not
talking about Africans anymore
but he argues that a black person with the same education would be
somebody with whom he
would have a good relationship. While he makes a socio-economic
distinction, he nonetheless
makes a racial distinction. He could have said that he gets along
better with a black colleague
than with a black welfare recipient, which would make his point
even stronger in terms of
education and culture but he does introduce race, and I suspect to
prove that he just want to
appear non-racist while emphasizing cultural commonality.
Third, he talks about his experience as a college professor and
how disappointed he is
with the level of fluency among foreign students. I find myself
confused between the different
terms he uses to depict non-French persons. He first talks about
them as being Africans, then he
116
talks about those who are black and educated and he continues by
referring to foreign students as
having problems speaking French. Are the foreign students just
coming to France temporarily
there to study, which could explain some of the struggle they face
about expressing themselves
in French, or is he talking about students coming from immigrant
groups who have been living in
France for a while? After inquiring and probing him about this
particular issue, he explains that
he was talking about student coming from abroad otherwise he would
have used the term
“immigrants,” which is interesting in two ways. He understands
that some do not speak proper
French because they just came from another country, but he uses
this argument in the same
discussion as those who live here and turn their radio on and just
don’t understand French
culture. Second, he refers to other students living in France whose
parents might be immigrants
as just immigrants without knowing first hand if they are French
citizens or not. They are
automatically immigrants and therefore non-French.
His following statement regarding his “culturalist” attitude
depicts a more complex set of
explanations that contribute to the reproduction of whiteness in
France. He states,
the notion (wrongly named) of ‘culturalism”, I don’t apply it to
others but to
myself. When I think (and I do think about it because I am also
subject to
oversimplifications) that ‘this Arab gets on my nerves’, I correct
myself by
thinking that ‘it is stupid to say ‘this Arab’” but I say it
because (and this comes
from a conditioned reflex, which is wrong, and it is the result of
objective
observation, but not as much) what he does and what gets on my
nerves is linked
to certain cultural traits that are mostly found among people with
certain type of
physiognomy, with the origins of their nationalities or from their
parents’ etc…
designated as ‘Arabs”, but there are a lot of Arabs who do not
have that particular
117
unnerving trait while many citizens of French stock do have it.
You are free to
think that this form of ‘culturalism’ is hidden rationalization
for a real form of
racism but I do believe it. Recently, a young Arabic man opened a
pizzeria in the
first floor of my building; before he opened, he talked to the
inhabitants of the
building regarding the new store front in the building, and
informed us of the
different nuisances and what he would do to reduce them etc… and
this person
has all my respect; but when the white owner of a cheap restaurant
turns his jukebox
all the way up in the next door building, I would not have minded
giving him
what he deserves33
This professor exemplifies a perfect example of the use of culture
as proxy for race.
Through some of his explanations, he demonstrates the impact of
society on his thinking and
how he perceives his environment. While he argues that he should
not be thinking about
somebody being “Arab” when he has a bad interaction, he
nonetheless attributes another
person’s bad action by how they look. He has a particular telling
moment, when despite his
regrets of talking about the individual he dealt with as “Arab”,
he justifies his action by saying
that most of those cultural traits are found among people who tend
to look Arab along with their
non-French origins. When he concedes that some citizens of French
stock might engage in the
same type of behaviors, he does not say that it represents one of
their cultural traits. In other
33 La notion (mal nommée) de
"culturalisme", je ne l'applique pas à d'autres, mais à moi-même.
Quand je pense
(et il m'arrive de le penser car je ne suis pas à l'abri des
simplifications) "cet Arabe m'énerve", je fais juste après le
correctif : "c'est idiot de dire "cet Arabe", mais
si je le dis, c'est parce que (et cela relève en partie du réflexe
conditionné, ce qui est mal, et en partie de l'observation
objective, ce qui l'est moins) ce qu'il fait et qui m'énerve
est lié à certains traits culturels qui se trouvent plus
fréquemment chez des gens que leur physionomie, leur
nationalité d'origine ou celle de leurs parents, etc., désignent
comme "Arabes" - mais il y a beaucoup d'"Arabes"
qui n'ont pas ce trait énervant, alors qu'il y a nombre de Français
"de souche" qui l'ont". Vous êtes libre de penser
que ce "culturalisme" est une rationalisation cache-sexe
d'un vrai racisme, moi je ne crois pas. Récemment un
jeune homme d'origine arabe a ouvert une pizzeria en bas de mon
immeuble ; il a préalablement consulté les
occupants sur le changement de la façade, informé sur les
éventuelles nuisances et les mesures prises pour les
éviter, etc., et cette personne a toute mon estime ; mais
lorsqu'un gargotier "bien blanc" mettait à fond son jukebox
dans le café de l'immeuble voisin, je l'aurais volontiers réduit
en compote.
118
words, when you deal with an Arab-looking person there might be a
good chance that certain
cultural traits (they also tend to go against French cultural
values) might come out, that they are
probably not French citizens (he seems to continuously develop a
dichotomy between a genuine
French person and the one that is not), and that even when a
citizen of French stock (i.e. white)
does something bad it seems like it is more like an exception than
the rule. The fact that he
provides the example of the new pizzeria’s Arab-owner in his
building as an example that they
are not all bad seems to suggest that it is also more of the
exception than the rule. He has
developed a certain perception of society, which seems to blame
bad behavior, on how a person
looks, but he also tries to be careful not to over-generalize. One
could wonder whether his
attention to not over-generalize is a product of self-censorship
as he is just editing himself as he
goes or whether he is genuinely not interested in casting all
Arabs as sharing identical cultural
values and behaviors.
This example raises interesting implications. First, the groups
that are mostly targeted as
trouble-makers are those who are said to have negative cultural
values, and they can be pointed
out because of their “visibility.” Therefore, cultural differences
provide the space for the
dominant group to depict those who do not follow the rules while
at the same time appearing
normal, morally right and proving one’s allegiance to French
culture. However, under the
cultural operation of uncovering bad elements, racial profiling
represents the foundation for the
identification of those culturally non-integrated elements. If a
member of those groups behaves
in a non-deviant way, he/she ends up an example of a “normal”
persons among those “abnormal”
groups.
Second, this represents a perfect example of whiteness where
minority groups are the
subjects of constant scrutiny while the dominant group (unnamed
most of the time) remains
119
unexamined. While he mentions a couple of examples about white
French individuals engaging
in negative behaviors, he does not group them with the rest of the
white French population. They
represent an anomaly in this “normal” dominant group.
Racism: an individual or institutional problem?
According to recent polls, about 33% of French were openly
declaring themselves as
racist in 2005 up 9% from 2004 (CSA, 2005b). However, there is an
historical perception of
France as being an open-minded country that opened its arms to
blacks after WWI and a place
where everybody is treated the same according to the Republican
values of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity. With my survey and my interviews, I wanted to find out
how French people define
racism, and therefore how they would envision a solution to the
problem. If it is an individual
problem then some form of re-education or rehabilitation would be
necessary for some
individuals, but if racism is defined as something more
institutional, then how would they picture
any changes to this social problem?
Joséphine, a 19 year-old administrative assistant, who lives in
the south of France and
shares many ideas with the Socialist Party believes that
institutional racism is not a problem of
the past. She states, “I am fearful that it is the case! We still
have many people who have dealt
with the colonies where indigenous peoples (as we used to say at
the time) were sub-humans;
among those people, some are in the political elite and are of
old-age and are among those
mentioned earlier. There is still institutional racism34.” Moreover, when asked how she would
define racism she first says that racism is “the lack of respect
given to somebody based on
34 Je le crains! Nous avons encore
beaucoup de gens qui ont connus les colonies, ou l'on traitait les 'indigènes'
comme on disait à l'époque comme des sous hommes. Parmi ces gens,
il y a la classe politique dont beaucoup
sont âgés et font parti des gens décrits plus haut. il y a encore
un racisme d'état
120
his/her skin complexion, his/her origins, to deny hiring for a job
and to deny access to housing
(public or privately-owned)35.” She provides an answer that is consistent
with the
institutionalization of discrimination in a society. She is not
focusing on individuals but rather on
the trends that contribute to this societal ill. She also provides
a wider perspective on racism as
she adds that racism is today,
more than skin complexion but this is the thing everybody can see.
Therefore,
everybody regardless of one’s origins will suffer from it at one
point in one’s
life…but racism encompasses other angles: today religions are more
and more
targeted especially Islam. To live in certain neighborhoods, to
have a certain last
name or first name that reminds one of your African origins, to be
denied a job
because the place where you live has a bad reputation is another
form of racism36.
Many of the points she makes here have been discussed by Maurin
(2004) in his research
on the suburbs of Paris and the perception associated with living
in those neighborhoods. The
place where one lives precedes them; certain groups are being
defined by the location, the
attributes of that location, the negative perception of those
attributes which eventually lead
individuals from those areas to face constant animosity. In other
words, many of them are victim
of statistical discrimination (Wilson, 1996; McGuire et al, 2007).
They are being defined by the
group they belong to and not by their individuality, that in turn,
makes it harder for them to prove
that they are worth being hired or being given a chance to
succeed.
35 Manquer de respect à la personne en
utilisant sa couleur ou ses origines, exclure d'un recrutement pour un
poste de travail, pour l'attribution d'un logement (social ou
privé)
36 Le racisme est plus que juste la
couleur de peau, mais c'est la chose qui se voit le plus donc toute personne
quelque soit ses origines aura à souffrir de sa couleur de peau à
un moment ou à un autre de sa vie..... Mais le
racisme revêts d'autres angles : - aujourd'hui les religions sont
de plus en plus pointées du doigt surtout la
religion musulmane. Vivre dans certains quartiers, porter un nom
ou un prénom à consonance africaine,
arabe...et se voir refuser un emploi parce que ce quartier à une
mauvaise étiquette c'est aussi une forme de
racisme
121
However, Joséphine’s case does not represent the majority of the
individuals who filled
out my questionnaire and took part in my interviews. What I mean
is that everybody understood
that racism referred to the unequal treatment of people because of
their external physical
characteristics. However, when asked who was responsible for
racism, many of the responses
hinted at individual behaviors or were more evasive in terms of
being willing to identify the
oppressor. The reasons for the existence of racism in French
society were extremely vague at
times ranging from “French people are too conservative37” to it is due to “the fear of the other
and changes that might occur38” to “the economy and the media reinforce those
beliefs39” to
more political statements such as “massive extra-European
immigration; the voluntary blindness
of politicians; white ethnomasochism, well represented by a
leftist and radical-leftist
education40.” This last statement is really intriguing in the sense that
racism is not only blamed
on leftist politicians but that racism is constructed by the
invasion faced by white nationalists
who seem to construct race as equal to the nation they live in
along with the inherent cultural
values developed there, and by the inability for French people to
step up and defend what is
theirs in the face of that invasion.
This type of ideology is usually refered to as ethnomasochism,
which is said to represent
the crumbling of French values and history by favoring political
decisions that will lead France
to its downfall. I will address later the construction of the
victim(s) of discrimination, but I want
to show here that this individual has very definite attitudes
regarding racism. Fernand is a 22
37 Les français sont conservateurs
38 La peur de l'étranger et des
changements.
39 L'économie et les medias qui
entretiennent ces faits.
40 L'immigration extra- européenne de
masse. - L'aveuglement sûrement volontaire des politiques. - L'ethno
masochisme des blancs, bien représenté par une éducation de gauche
voire d'extrême gauche
122
year-old man who shares some of the National Front ideas. Earlier
in his interview, he admits
that a foreigner is “an extra-European. I have nothing against
intra-European immigration, we
have a common culture, which does not create any form of
acculturation phenomenon or mixed
relationships as with extra-European immigration,41” and as a result of the extra-European
immigration, racism might be necessary to “preserve one’s genetic
heritage.42” According to
Fernand, racism is just the natural response to waves of
immigrants who have changed the face
of this country. He actually argues,
racism is the ultimate taboo in France…I think we have demonized a
legitimate
ethnocentric feeling that I would recognize to any people as a
form of
ethnomasochism after WWII…I think the sense of belonging to one’s
race is a
legitimate feeling, that one needs to defend one’s primary
heritage, or even
primate, that the love and the defense of one’s fellows is not a
shame.43
Some of Fernand’s comments are very similar to De Gobineau’s
arguments from 1800. A
clear dichotomy is made between indo-Europeans, e.g. whites, and
extra-Europeans, e.g. nonwhites.
Being indo-European means more than white, it also represents a
European culture that
despite different languages has a common genetic component to it.
Fernand also admits that
some form of institutional racism exists in France but in the
opposite direction from the way
others have talked about it. In other words, racism is a positive
factor if it means defending
France and its genuine values. However, he sees the present form
of institutional racism as
41 Un extra-Européen, je n'ai rien contre
l'immigration intra-européenne, nous avons une culture commune, cela
ne crée pas de phénomène d'acculturation et de métissage comme
l'immigration extra-européenne.
42 La préservation de son héritage
génétique
43 Le racisme est le tabou ultime en
France. Je pense que l'on a diabolisé un sentiment ethnocentrique légitime
que je reconnais à tout peuple en un ethno-masochisme après la
Seconde Guerre mondiale j'estime que
l'attachement à sa race est un sentiment légitime, que l'on se
doit de défendre ce qui constitue son patrimoine
objectif primaire, voire primitif, que l'amour des siens et leur
défense n'est pas honteux
123
a form of institutional anti-racism, which leads to the cult of
non race. Today, you
have to be mixed to be a modern citizen. Ethnic minorities (while
they will soon
become the majority) are constantly helped out, despite the
population’s
opposition. Everything is done to promote at the institutional
level a melting pot
and those who refuse to go along with it are punished by law. The
state has
created a dogma, whose goal is to modify our society, to destroy
differences
around the identities of people. The superior race is today the
mixed individual or
the foreigner, and the inferior one that we make feel guilty
because of his
oppressive history is the white man.44
This is a very interesting quote. This young man tries to turn the
fight against racism on
its head. For him, the current policies aimed at promoting
sameness are an infringement on his
right to affirm his frenchness, and therefore, an attempt to
prevent his right not to tolerate those
who are not real French. His other problem with the current
institutionalization of decreasing
differences between peoples is an attempt to discredit the white
man, which represents for him an
anachronistic view of France’s history since whites have been the
dominant group (socially,
politically and economically speaking) for ages and now it is
about to be surpassed by ethnic
minority groups. In a sense, the real problem of racism is the
institutionalization of the values of
minority groups on his genetic right to remain French without
having to accept any changes.
While a few respondents (and we should not discount their position
in society) shared
Fernand’s values and attitudes about what racism represents that
the state is not standing up for
44 C’est une forme d'anti-racisme d'Etat,
finalement le culte de la non race. Aujourd'hui il faut être métissé pour
être un citoyen moderne. Les minorités ethniques (certes bientôt
elles seront en majorité) sont de façon constante
mise en avant, malgré les réticences de la population. Tout est
mis en oeuvre au niveau institutionnel pour
promouvoir le melting pot et les gens qui s'y refusent sont
pénalement condamnés ! L'Etat a érigé un dogme
selon lequel le but de notre société est de se modifier, de
détruire les frontières identitaires entre les gens, éliminer
les différences. La race supérieure aujourd'hui c'est le métisse
ou l'étranger et l'inférieur que l'on culpabilise de
son histoire d'oppresseur, c'est le Blanc.
124
real white French and is being discriminatory against people like
him, and while a few others did
share the type of institutionalization presented by Joséphine,
most other respondents did not see
institutional discrimination as something that would really exist
in French society. However, a
few respondents pointed out that while the laws are not racist,
some of the politicians tend to be.
This is what Albert, a 28 year-old engineer, says regarding the
absence of institutional
discrimination, “I rather think that there are people who work for
the state that are racists.45”
Others argues that racism is just a feeling that changes as time
passes and the laws are
reflective of those feelings because they do not change everyday.
Interestingly, some said that it
was part of human nature to be racist and therefore we should not
be surprised to see racist acts
occurring in society.
Jérémy, a 26 year-old financial consultant, argues,
if systematic discrimination occurs because of one person’s
cultural characteristic,
which does not go against the respect of human life, then yes we
can talk about
institutionalization of racism. However, besides the veil
controversy, I do not
think that there exists any form of institutional racism in France46.
This is a remarkable answer in the sense that this respondent,
while presenting a possible
example of systematic racism, would nevertheless acknowledge the
non-systematic nature of
racism in France. I think it also reveals something much deeper.
Even when presented with
actual examples some respondents cannot fathom the existence of systematic
racism because
they are not confronted directly with it. This is revealed
indirectly in some of his other answers.
He acknowledged that those who are the most victims of racism are
people coming from French
45 Je pense plutôt qu'il existe des personnes
travaillant pour l'Etat et qui sont racistes.
46 Si une discrimination systématique
s'opère sur le fait qu'un individu du fait d'un élément de sa culture, qui
n'est pas contraire au respect des droits de l'être humain, alors
oui, on peut parler de racisme d'Etat. Pour
autant, mise à part l'histoire du voile, je ne pense pas qu'il y
ait de racisme d'Etat en France.
125
Caribbean Islands, people from the Maghreb, from West Africa and
Romanians, because of
assumptions made about them and because of the lack of
understanding of their different cultures
by the rest of the population. He does not realize that if
assumptions about one’s culture are
being made, it is because they can be easily identified through
certain external physical
characteristics. When asked about what it meant for him to be
white, he just said that having
certain types of body reactions (i.e. sunburns) when in the sun.
This, of course, means that laws
like the 1993 Pasqua Law giving law enforcement agencies the right
to objectively check
somebody’s ID to check if one’s presence in France is legitimate
would apply the same way to
any type of populations in France (i.e. racial profiling has not
really entered the collective mind).
Alain, a 39 year-old white-collar employee, does not think such
systematic discrimination
exists. He says, “I do not think [it exists]. I think that the
behaviors of certain groups and the
formation of communities forces institutions to become
[discriminatory]47.” According to Alain,
there is no systematic racism, or maybe there is some but only as
a way to control those who do
not know how to behave and who are a result of the formation of
communities undermining what
France is.
On the other hand, some really see racism as an individual act.
Jean-Philippe, a 33 yearold
man states, in a sense, that racism is an individual problem and
we should not ask the
government to intervene. The solution to racism is “everybody’s
role but unfortunately we live in
a country in which people are asking for a hand and therefore everybody
relies, as always, on the
state, let’s think48.” Basically, if everybody were doing their share to check their
behaviors and
47 Je ne pense pas. Je pense que
l'expérience sur le comportement de certains groupes et le communautarisme
pousse les institutions à le devenir.
48 C'est le rôle de chacun mais
malheureusement on vit dans des pays d'assisté et donc on compte toujours sur
l'état, réfléchissons.
126
attitudes, then we would not have racism. He is also presenting a
very individualistic perspective
where governmental intervention is not necessary and should be
discouraged.
While not everybody is as explicit as Jean-Philippe, many just
construct racism as
negative feelings toward certain individuals and we just need to
have a strong public relations
campaign to re-educate people who have those feelings, and by
reinforcing the idea of equality
and sameness in our schools. The idea of sameness represents one
of the Republican values
under which the integration (assimilation) comes. Many have argued
that achieving equality or
sameness through the integration is contradictory (Todorov, 1994;
Silverman; 1992; Jugé &
Perez, 2006) as it is based on the inequality of people before
they can become equal.
Racism: who are the victims?
While racism was for the most part understood from an individual
perspective, the
victims of racism were not always the ones I expected. While I
expected a lot of denial about
racism in France, I was extremely surprised by the number of
respondents who expressed their
anger regarding what they call anti-white racism. Let’s be sure to
state that according to some of
the statistics gathered by certain agencies over the last few
years, racial and ethnic minorities
represent a very small number of the French population (Boëldieu
& Borrel; 2000; Daguet &
Thave, 1996). However, it seems that, while other research (Cediey
& Foroni, 2006) suggests
that systematic hiring and housing discrimination towards blacks
and Arabs exists, many
respondents felt that the government was passing laws that are
discriminatory to whites. When
asked about whether there is discrimination in hiring and in
housing, Géraldine, a 25 year-old
female teacher, states,
127
yes, but once again it is against either French people or those
who are Caucasian.
Immigrants, even undocumented, will get a spot before you because
this is what is
ordered. Certain business owners are reprimanded or have to go to
court if they do
not hire foreigners. This is ironic when this business owner is
supposed to make
sure everything is going well in his business49.
This young woman is obviously alluding to the idea of the French
version of affirmative
action, called in France discrimination
positive (positive discrimination). The term “positive
discrimination” does carry some negative connotation but it has
not even been put in place yet.
Some companies are voluntarily changing some of their hiring
procedures in order to have a
more diverse working population. Addecco and L’Oréal were found
guilty of discrimination by
engaging in unfair hiring practices aimed at seeking white
applicants only (Ortiz, 2007).
However, the idea of instituting French affirmative policies
creates paranoid reactions in which
the dominant group now feels oppressed.
This is also expressed by a 27 year-old man, Gérard, who works for
the state.
When asked about the existence of discrimination in housing, he
replied,
yes, in Paris city hall. Afro-Maghreb individuals have de facto
priorities.
Otherwise how would you explain the Parisian population be so
racially mixed?
How would you explain that the only whites who live there are in
the well-off
neighborhoods, while in the popular neighborhoods or middle-class
ones, whites
49 Oui, encore une fois envers les gens
soit français soit d'origines caucasiennes. Les personnes immigrées, voire
sans papiers auront une place avant vous car ce sont les ordres
qui sont donnés. Certain patron on des
remontrance ou se voient mettre au tribunal si il n'embauche pas
des étrangers. Un comble pour un patron qui
doit vérifier la bonne marche avant tout de sa boutique.
128
are less and less numerous because of the social housing policy.
Moreover, Afro-
Maghreb people have priorities in the public sector, especially in
the police50.
This young man provides a very detailed description of the
perception of why some
groups are living in certain areas of Paris compared to others.
While he answers his own question
indirectly, it does not come to his mind that the present
arrangement overall benefits whites over
people of color. Anyway, he does resent the fact that those groups
are given priorities in housing.
While as an employee of the state, he might have a privileged
position to witness those trends,
one can question the openly discriminatory policy that the state
would have in place to ensure
that people of color have their housing needs fulfilled before
whites. This would go against
French Republican values.
This anti-white perception seems to be really be anchored in some
people’s minds.
Despite the small percentage of people of color in France (Sofres
/ Le Cran, 2007), they seem to
be causing a lot of problems to the white French – they are
accused of taking everybody’s jobs,
given preferential treatment in housing and in hiring, and to be
anti-French and anti-white. In
other words, they are behaving in such a way because politicians
and the laws apparently
facilitate those types of behaviors and do not condemn them for
their anti-white racist acts.
Some of those feelings are demonstrated in this very long quote by
Gérard (who was already
quoted above) who mentioned very specific examples of anti-white
racism. When asked about
anti-examples, he declared,
yes, I have a few examples. My wife who is European but not French
had to
suffer that type of racism several times. Many times, when she
goes buy some
50 Oui, à la mairie de paris, les afros
magrébins sont prioritaires de fait. Sinon comment expliquer que la
population parisienne soit aussi métissée? Comment expliquer que
les seuls blancs qui y habitent sont dans des
quartiers bourgeois, alors que dans les quartiers populaires ou de
classe moyenne, les blancs sont de moins en
moins nombreux du fait de cette politique de logement social. De
même, les afros magrébins sont prioritaires
dans la fonction publique, notamment dans la police
129
bread at the next-door bakery, which is owned by a Maghrébin, the
customers
who are of African or North-African origins, even though they
arrived after her,
were served along with her, with no explanations. In the bus,
while there were
many people there, she was verbally assaulted by a North-African
man and an
African woman under the pretext that she was not moving fast
enough even
though she was pregnant (I should clarify that according to her,
there was an older
Maghrébine woman in front of her as well as an African woman, she
was not
about to push them either). How can you explain such behavior? For
my part, I
was insulted a few times as “dirty whitie” or “fucking Frenchie”
while I was
assaulted. When I tried to file suit for racist comments, the
police officer
explained to me that the court could not interpret the law against
discrimination in
this direction. I called several numbers where people deal with
discrimination and
I was denied any consideration under the pretext that it was not a
case of racism
(even though the insults were rather explicit!) Moreover, here is
a more general
case of anti-white racism: have you ever been to the French
courthouses to see
who are the perpetuators of those assaults and who are the
victims? You will see
that there are a number of white victims and a large of number of
Afro-Maghreb
perpetuators. Once again, how do you explain this if it is not
some form of covert
racism? One more example in the criminal justice system: last
year, five young
men of Afro-Maghreb origins from the ghetto burned a church. The
prosecutor
was quick to declare before the court before the investigation was
over that it was
an anti-white form of racism. The perpetuators were put on
probation. However,
when some young white men who burned a Mosque were sentenced to
jail and
130
racist allegations became part of the case (and I agree with it).
If you want another
example, I want to remind of the protest of high school and
college students
against the CPE [a law that would made jobs more precarious for
young people]
when a horde of young people coming from the ghettoes
(Afro-Maghreb for the
most part) targeted young white high school students. The
philosopher
Finkielkraut actually broke a media taboo by denouncing this type
of racism. An
example regarding jobs to change topics: a friend of my wife, who
is Russian
applied as a cashier in a grocery store in our neighborhood
following up on an ad.
The owner, a North-African woman, clearly told her that the store
was not
looking to hire Russians. On top of that, all the cashiers are all
either African or of
Maghreb descent. The only white women are old secretaries. As for
me, I already
said it, when I was looking for a job as a security officer and
the ads would read
“looking for Arab or black security officers in a grocery store
and for special
events.” To conclude, it is always good to recall that in the
police, even though it
is seen as a racist institution, recruiters have been told since
the days of Jean-
Pierre Chevènement [former minister of France] and his “community police”
that
the priority was to have a more representative police force by
recruiting the youth
coming out of the ghettos. What it means is that if I had tried to
apply as a police
officer, I would have had a lesser chance because I am white. This
time another
example but regarding cultural issues: Martine Aubry, Mayor of the
city of Lille,
financed this year a certain number of Muslim festivals. However,
this year, for
the second Christmas in a row, she prevented many small business
owners from
displaying crèches in the main avenue of the city. 51
51 Oui, j'en ai plusieurs. Ma femme qui
est de souche européenne mais non française a eu à subir à de nombreuses
131
Gérard addressed many issues but it seems that they represent an
excuse for many of the
things he and his wife have not been to accomplish in life. He
pointed to specific examples in
which it is not clear whether being white was really the main
problem. He does not provide any
substantial reasons for what happened to his wife. She is
basically essentializing those people as
being anti-white. He is quick to show what the youth from the
ghettoes are doing but fails to
really address what the white youth are doing. He also mentions,
in passing, the name of a
philosopher who did come out against anti-white racism.
Finkielkraut (2005) denounced the idea
of anti-white racism by arguing that if it is okay for minorities
to blame France for colonial
issues and to blame the West for slavery, the causality should
also be addressed to minorities
reprises ce racisme. Plusieurs fois, lorsqu'elle allait acheter du
pain à la boulangerie d'à côté, tenu par un
maghrébin, les clients d'origine africaines ou nord africaines
pourtant arrivés après elles ont été servis avec elle,
sans explication. Dans le bus, transportant pourtant plusieurs
personnes, elle s'est faite agresser verbalement par
un nord africain et une africaine sous prétexte qu'elle ne
libérait pas assez vite le passage, alors qu'elle était
enceinte (je précise d'après ses dires, qu'une personne âgée
maghrébine se trouvait devant elle, ainsi qu'une
femme africaine, elle n'allait pas non plus les pousser). Comment
expliquer un tel comportement? Pour ma part,
je me suis déjà fait traiter quelques fois de "sale
toubab", "enculé de céfran" lors d'agressions. Lorsque j'ai
voulu
porter plainte pour propos racistes, l'officier de police
judiciaire m'a expliqué que le parquet n'acceptait pas
d'interpréter la loi contre le racisme dans ce sens. J'ai
téléphoné au numéro contre les discriminations et on a
refusé de considérer mon cas sous prétexte que ce n'était pas du
racisme (pourtant les insultes était explicites!)
D'ailleurs, un exemple plus général de racisme anti-blanc: êtes
vous allé dans les tribunaux pénaux français pour
voir qui sont les auteurs d'agressions et qui sont les victimes?
Vous verrez qu'il existe une forte représentativité
de victimes blanches, alors qu'à l'inverse, il y a une forte
représentativité d'auteurs afro maghrébins. Encore une
fois comment expliquer cela si ce n'est pas par un effet de racisme
sous jacent? Encore un exemple sur le thème
de la justice: l'année dernière cinq jeunes de banlieue d'origine
afro-maghrébine ont brûlé une église. Le
magistrat s'est empressé devant les journaux avant la fin de
l'enquête de déclarer qu'il ne s'agissait pas d'un acte
raciste anti-blanc. Les auteurs ont pris à peine de la prison avec
sursis. En revanche, les jeunes blancs qui ont
brûlé une mosquée viennent de prendre de la prison ferme avec le
racisme intégré dans l'accusation (ce que
j'approuve d'ailleurs). S'il vous faut encore un exemple, je vous
renvoie à la première manifestation nationale des
étudiants et lycéens contre le CPE ou des hordes entières de
jeunes de banlieues (des afro-maghrébins pour la
plupart) ont pris pour cible des étudiants et lycéens blancs. Le
philosophe Finkielkraut avait d'ailleurs brisé le
tabou médiatique en dénonçant ce racisme. Un exemple sur le thème
de l'emploi pour changer: une amie de ma
femme, de nationalité russe s'était présentée pour un poste de
caissière dans un supermarché de notre quartier,
suite à une petite annonce. La gérante, une nord africaine lui a
dit clairement que le magasin ne cherchait pas de
russes. D'ailleurs, toutes les nouvelles caissières sont soit
africaines, soit maghrébines. Les seules blanches sont
d'anciennes employées de l'ancienne direction. Pour ma part, j'ai
déjà eu l'occasion de lire, lorsque je recherchais
un emploi dans le gardiennage "recherchons vigils reubeus ou
black pour sécurité dans supermarché et
évènementiel". Pour finir, il est toujours bon de savoir dans
le cas de la police, pourtant institution réputée
raciste, que les recruteurs ont eu instruction depuis Jean Pierre
Chevènement et sa fameuse police de proximité
de mettre en priorité les jeunes issus de l'immigration afin d'avoir
une police plus représentative. Cela veut tout
simplement dire que si je tentais d'entrer dans la police, je
serais défavorisé car blanc. Exemple cette fois sur le
thème de la culture: Martine Aubry, maire de Lille a financé cette
année de nombreuses fêtes et cultes
musulmans. Pourtant, cette année, pour le deuxième noël
consécutif, elle a interdit aux commerçants de la rue
centrale d'exposer des crèches...
132
who are engaging in anti-white forms of racism. He added that
those who were born after the
colonial period should not be viewed as victims. This argument
obviously contributes to the idea
that the colonial framework should be done away with in order to
explain some of the situations
applying to racial/ethnic minorities. The anti-white racism contributes
to shifting away from a
colonial discourse by turning racism on its head by saying that
anti-white racism is as bad as
anti-black or anti-Arab racism. It also allows the white dominant
group to ignore the systematic,
historical and collective negative memory transmitted from one
generation to the next about
racialized minorities.
Other respondents are not sure about the type of discrimination
occurring in
France. While they acknowledge certain problems exist, the reasons
behind them are not as clear.
Matthieu is a 28 year-old musician. He is ideologically close to
the party of the current President
of France (Union for a Popular Majority). He remains skeptical of
the real nature of housing and
hiring discrimination trying to look at the different reasons as
to why it might happen in France.
He stated,
yes, some housing discrimination exist, and probably some hiring
discrimination too. The problem comes from the experiences
business owners and
landlords have had with Africans (they are the minorities that
everybody calls
victims) but also due to the colonial past, which perceived the
black and the Arab
as a sub-citizen. However, there is also an integration problem on
the part of the
minorities, that even the second generation does not speak proper
French, they
have inappropriate behaviors for society and the workplace. Whose
fault is it?
133
The state cannot substitute itself to the intelligence of the
parents. But the parents
cannot teach what they do not know52.
Discrimination seems for him to be more a matter of cultural
values. However, some of
his comments reveal similar trends noted earlier in this research.
Africans, blacks and Arabs are
essentialized without really addressing some of the individual
differences within those groups.
Second, it reveals a not so-colorblind society since those are
always the ones being mentioned
(being white in other quotes is also being mentioned but often as
a position of oppression as I
addressed above). Matthieu does make some interesting comments
regarding the perceptions
linked to the colonial period but despite pointing out and
emphasizing the roles of employers and
business owners in discrimination, he focuses more on the lack of
knowledge, cultural values of
the parents of the young people who are victim of discrimination.
It is also as if the educational
system could not help them out despite good intentions, and that
eventually it is about the
parents’ intelligence. In that sense, it is even damning that
culture and the colonial view persists.
Very little is said about the systematic discriminatory practices
that those groups face; it becomes
more of cultural argument (which hides the real racial argument
behind culture).
Romain is a 25 year-old Ph.D. candidate in one of Paris’
universities. He is sympathetic
to the ideas of a right-wing political party called Movement for
France (Mouvement pour la
France). When asked about the type of discrimination occurring in
France, he vehemently denies much of it has to do with racial
discrimination as he
argues,
52 Oui il existe une discrimination au
logement, et sans doute à l'embauche. La faute vient de l'expérience des
propriétaires et employeurs avec des africains (car ce sont ces
minorités qui sont déclarées comme victimes) mais
aussi du passé colonialiste de la France qui peut voir 'le noir ou
l'arabe' comme un sous citoyen. Pourtant il y a
eu aussi un problème d'intégration des minorités - qui fait que
même la seconde génération ne parle pas bien
français, ont des comportements inadaptés à la société et au monde
du travail. A qui la faute? L'Etat ne peut se
substituer à l'intelligence des parents. Mais les parents ne
peuvent enseigner ce qu'ils ne connaissent pas.
134
according to me it is false that foreigners with education are
victims of
segregation during the hiring process. I have dozen of
counter-examples. In the
sectors where employees are representing the company (sales, food
industry,
administrative positions), it is possible there is some
‘segregation’ regarding third
generation immigrant children. But this discrimination can be
explained
sometimes by the lack of comportment from those individuals even
when they are
educated. Discrimination, is according to me, necessary in that
sense. However, in
those sectors, discrimination based on physical characteristics also
exists but
people of foreign origins are not the only victims (obese
individuals, one-eye
people etc…). Regarding housing issues, times are hard for
everybody53.
Most of the discrimination in the workplace is due to the lack of
cultural values even
when one is educated. However, this respondent is quick to notice
that those who do not have
social graces are children of immigrants. Racial discrimination is
here completely ignored, and
the rationale is that it might be necessary for some businesses to
engage in selective
discrimination when their images are at play. Therefore, people of
color might have to suffer a
bit until they learn how to behave. His arguments do not include
any social class issues, as one
could think those coming from lower socio-economic classes might
be less likely to know how
to behave in certain environments because they are exposed to
them. He primarily focuses on
children of immigrants, stripping them of their socialization in
France, their education and
putting the blame solely on the parents. In order not to appear
condescending, he adds that
53 Il est faux à mon sens que les
diplômés étrangers connaissent une ségrégation à l'embauche. J'ai des dizaines
de contre exemple. Dans les secteurs ou l'employé doit représenter
l'entreprise (commerce, restauration,
secrétariat), il peut y avoir une certaine 'ségrégation'
concernant les jeunes 'issus de la troisième génération
d'immigration'. Mais cette discrimination s'explique parfois par
le manque de manière de ces personnes qui
peuvent pourtant être diplômés. La discrimination est dans ce sens
nécessaires à mon sens. Pour autant, dans ces
secteurs, une discrimination due à l'apparence physique existe
aussi mais les personnes d'origines étrangères n'en
sont pas les seules victimes (obèses, borgnes, etc...). Dans le
cas du logement, les temps sont durs pour tout le
monde.
135
people with certain physical problems such as being obese and
being one-eyed is as problematic
or equal to forms of discrimination based on other physical
characteristics. It seems that even
with an education they cannot shake those bad habits they have
learned in their families. This
reminds me of a popular saying in the U.S. that you can take the
kid out of the ghetto but you
cannot take the ghetto out of the kid. It is based on cultural
determinism where race allows one to
determine which cultural group you belong to.
What is “intégration”?
“Intégration” à la French has been one of the major points of contention over the
last
decades or so, and at this day still represents one of the major
elements put forward by the
République in order to achieve Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. The
reason for its contention
revolves around two arguments. One is that if the République is able to bring people in
by
integrating them, then they will be more likely to actively
participate in French society; second it
will guarantee their equal place in society, and third it will
prevent the formation of
communities, or what Anderson (1991) would call “imagined
communities”, that could threaten
the fabric of France by allowing too many cultural differences. On
the other side of the debate,
the problem revolves around the conditions presented to
individuals in order to be integrated, and
second, about the guarantees of equality that will follow if one
does what is expected of him/her.
I should also say that based on what Sagot-Duvauroux (2004) wrote,
those who are already
French at heart still have to prove their allegiance to the
nation; however, they are constantly
questioned about their civic roles in French society. This
argument is exemplified by Romain
(already mentioned earlier) who states,
136
integration only makes sense when one talks about an adult who has
not received
an education in France. This term is meaningless when it is used to
refer to young
people of African origins who have spent all their lives in
France, who have
attended school in France and who have watched French television.54
Romain understands that those young people are French in their
heart even though they
might need the legal documents to prove it. However, Romain’s
conceptualization of integration
is not shared by every one. While today there is a lot of debate
around the notion of integration
(Lévy, 2005), Bouamama (1992) argues that the substantive effect
of integration is the same as
the one of assimilation but under another name. Moving from
assimilation to integration was
supposed to mark a break in the French colonial collective
mentality in 1955. The debate around
the real meaning of integration as opposed to assimilation is
on-going. Integration comes from
the assimilationist tradition of France going as far back to the
1789 French revolution. Hajjat
(2005) defines assimilation as the cultural homogenization of the
nation, or of the community of
citizens. However, this assimilationist tradition is contradictory
to the idea of universalism set up
by the French revolution. The French type of universalism is based
on the exclusion of
“foreigners” from citizenship. Different scholars have called this
practice either a form
“universal chauvinism” (Sayad, 1999) or a form of “abstract
universal” (Khosrokhavar, 1996) to
denounce the use of universalism in effect to enforce ethnocentric
ideas. While there is a definite
political definition of citizenship, there has also been a
historical definition of citizenship based
on culture (if not racially structured) (Hajjat, 2005).
Other respondents remain more neutral about what integration
represents to them. Take
Marcel, for instance. He is an 18 year old student who says that,
54 L'intégration a un sens lorsqu'il
s'agit de parler d'une personne adulte qui n'a pas reçu une éducation en
France. Ce terme n'a aucun sens lorsqu'il est employé au sujet des
'jeunes d'origine africaine' qui ont passé toute
leur enfance en France, sont allés à l'école en France, ont
regardé la Télévision française.
137
integration is the demonstrated will of new immigrants to
integrate themselves, to
melt into the République, or in other words to melt into the public space while at
the same time maintaining their own private behaviors. Integration
is the love of
France and the desire to always see your country grow.55
His attitude towards integration does not preclude any private
behaviors to change. The
only requirement to be integrated is showing your willingness to
participate in French society
and to love your country. This remains a very open requirement
about integration. This open
requirement about integration and this meaning of integration is
not shared by a large number of
respondents. However, this comment also reveals some interesting
dynamics. The newly arrived
immigrant needs to show his/her will to integrate into French
society, however the problem with
this argument is not so much the effort put forward by the
immigrant population but the level of
scrutiny and of acceptance developed by the dominant group. As in
other theories of
Assimilation (Park, 1913; Gordon, 1964) the burden of change is on
the shoulders of the
immigrants but the decision of whether or not one has fully
integrated or assimilated remains in
the hands of the dominant group that assess the integration
effort. One can imagine a society
where immigrants do what they are asked to do but still remain at
the margins of society because
of the eternal non-commitment of this society to see them as
equal. When asked about the
difference between integration and assimilation, Jean-Bertrand, a
22 year-old student, states the
following,
integration means to socialize people in a host society while
guaranteeing the
respect of their culture of origin. Assimilation necessitates an
immigrant to adopt
the culture of the host society. France has typically been a
system of integration
55 L'intégration c'est la volonté de la
part des nouveaux immigrés à s’insérer, se fondre dans la république c'est à
dire la chose publique tout en ayant des pratiques privés qui
leurs sont propre. L'intégration c'est l'amour de la
France et le désir de voir son pays toujours plus grand
138
leading today towards the formation of communities. The waves of
immigration
in the twentieth century, mostly from European immigrants, led to
an assimilation
of Italians, Polish, Portuguese, and this assimilation was very
fast. While those
populations faced some form of racism, you have now have to admit
that they are
completely integrated and do not cause the same problems as
extra-European
immigration today. There is no comparison. Moreover, since Giscard
[former
President of France from 1974 to 1981] everybody has understood
that
assimilation would not be possible for extra-European populations.
From that
point on, integration started, and it is a complete failure
(politicians from the left
and from the right acknowledge that it is today a complete
failure.56
This young man makes a couple of very interesting points. He
defines integration in the
same manner as Marcel (previous quote on page 144) but he is more
detailed about his definition
of assimilation which basically entails abandoning one’s culture
in order to adopt and become
culturally entrenched in the French society. However, his
definition of assimilation resembles
very much the expectations of today’s French society, however,
under the term “integration.”
That is, integration is said to create communities, and is
therefore problematic in the eyes of
French society. Yet if people are able to maintain their cultural
background in the privacy of
their homes then why is it a problem when some people meet
together to share cultural events?
56 L'intégration consiste à socialiser
les gens dans la société d'accueil tout en garantissant le maintien de leur
culture d'origine. L'assimilation veut que lorsqu'un immigré
vient, il se doit d'adopter la culture du pays
d'accueil. La France est typiquement dans un système d'intégration
aujourd'hui, voire progressivement de
communautarisme. Durant les vagues de migration du premier tiers
du XXème siècle, qui concernaient des
populations européennes, on a eu clairement une assimilation des
Italiens, des Polonais, des Portugais,
assimilation souvent très rapide. Cependant il y a aussi à l'époque
des phénomènes de racisme vis à vis de ces
populations, mais force est constater qu'elles sont totalement
intégrées et n'ont jamais posé les problème que
cause l'immigration extra européenne aujourd'hui. C'est sans
commune mesure. D'ailleurs, à partir de Giscard en
France on a vite compris que l'assimilation n'était pas possible
pour les populations extra-européennes. On a
donc mis en oeuvre l'intégration, un échec complet (pour que les
politiciens de gauche comme de droite le
reconnaissent aujourd'hui c'est que c'est vraiment un échec
complet...).
139
Why is it okay for Catholics to meet in churches but seen as an
attempt to resist French
integration when Muslims meet in Mosques? Therefore, since the
formation of communities
represents a threat to the stability of the French République, it is therefore
imperative for people
to only adopt French culture and relinquish their old culture. At
this point, Bouamama (1992)
was right, what is called integration today is more or less the
same thing as assimilation was
yesterday. The second point made by Jean-Bertrand touches on some
of the problems I addressed
earlier, which is the invisibility of whiteness. When he refers to
Italians, Portuguese and Polish,
he is mostly talking about white European immigrants, who despite
a few problems of
discrimination, eventually assimilated into French society. He is
also quick to point out that
extra-European (i.e. non-white) populations are the ones who not
only do not want to assimilate
or integrate but also create social problems in our society. Their
otherness is not only rooted in
their external physical characteristics but also in their culture
(religion, traditions and so on),
which seems to be contrary to the white French tradition. In
consequence, their presence and
behaviors are condemned and deciphered as a will to stand up
against the French Republican
model of equality. Jean-Claude, a 27 year-old Kabyle software
programmer expresses some of
those contradictions as follows,
integration and segregation are two sides of the same coin. Often,
politicians of
European origins (Italians, Hungarian, Spanish, Polish, German,
Portuguese, and
others) say to French individuals from French Caribbean
territories that they have
to integrate for instance, and this makes absolutely no sense,
despite that this has
been a topic of discussion for decades now. The discourse about
integration is
only a smokescreen, a bad alibi that the collective conscience has
been using for
decades to exclude ethnic groups and casting them in disgrace.
Integration is a
140
national joke, a politically correct phrase aimed at hiding a
deep-seating racism in
French society.57
Jean-Claude seems to be well aware of the contradiction of
integration. It is interesting to
notice that integration, from his own understanding, represents a
misleading rite of passage
towards your acceptance in French society used in reality to hide
a more ugly truth: exclusion on
the basis of equality.
How do French people understand colonialism? How do they see its
social relevance in today’s
society?
While colonialism officially ended more than three decades ago,
behaviors, discourses
and attitudes might at times remind us that this period of history
might not be rooted in the past
as one might think. French people seem to be unaware of the extent
of the oppression felt by
people around the world under the French colonial rule. Marcus, a
30 year-old man, argues
“France built roads, trains, and schools during the colonial
period. We can therefore talk about
the past if we do not feel guilty,58” and Jeanine, a 18 year-old female student
states “I do not
know enough about this period of time to say much on this topic
but I don’t see any reasons why
57 L'intégration et la ségrégation sont
les deux faces d'une même pièce. Il arrive très souvent que des hommes
politiques d'origines européennes (italiennes, hongroises,
espagnoles, polonaises, allemandes, portugaises ou
autres) disent à des français noirs des Dom Tom par exemple qu'ils
doivent s'intégrer', ceci n'a absolument aucun
sens, mais malgré cela ce discours est d'actualité depuis des
décennies. Le discours au sujet de l'intégration n'est
qu'un paravent, un mauvais alibi que la conscience populaire
utilise depuis des décennies pour exclure des
catégories ethniques de personnes en jetant l'opprobre sur elles.
'L'intégration' est une blague nationale, une
expression politiquement correcte destinée à dissimuler un racisme
installé dans les profondeurs de la société
française.
58 La France a construit des routes, des
trains, des écoles... lors de la colonisation. On peut donc parler du passé
si on ne fait pas que de la culpabilisation.
141
we should talk about it now.59” Those two statements reveal two important
points; first, the idea
that colonialism was not a bad endeavor and the French were
engaged in morally right missions,
and second, that contemporary France might not have and should not
have to face up to some of
the atrocities perpetuated during the colonial period, and since
it is the past and there is no need
to reassess those problems from a contemporary perspective. French
colonial legacy remains a
major source of contention in France. One should note that those
ideas might be representative of
the official view of history that the French government wanted to
impose on its historians. It is
therefore not surprising to see that the French National assembly
and the Senate adopted a law on
Feb 23, 2005 stating the following (translation is mine):
University research programs will recognize the history of the
French presence
overseas presence, particularly in North Africa, the place it
deserves. School
programs will acknowledge above all the positive role [emphasis is mine] of the
French overseas presence, particularly in North Africa, and will
recognize the
history and sacrifices of the combatants of the French army
originating from these
territories the distinguished place they are entitled to.
Cooperation to connect the
oral and written sources available in France and abroad is
encouraged.60
It was eventually repealed after prompting a large number of
discontent and protest.
Nonetheless, France’s past continues to haunt its current
immigration policies. It is therefore
important to show that the past civilizing mission that the French carried out
during the colonial
59 Je ne connais pas assez ce moment de
l'histoire pour m'exprimer, mais je ne vois pas pourquoi on en
reparlerait maintenant...
60 Les programmes de recherche
universitaire accordent à l’histoire de la présence française outre-mer,
notamment en Afrique du Nord, la place qu’elle mérite. Les
programmes scolaires reconnaissent en particulier le
rôle positif de la présence française outre-mer, notamment en
Afrique du Nord, et accordent à l’histoire et aux
sacrifices des combattants de l’armée française issus de ces
territoires la place éminente à laquelle ils ont droit. La
coopération permettant la mise en relation des sources orales et
écrites disponibles en France et à l’étranger est
encouragée
142
period remains an important aspect of the République and of the cultural value
attached to
frenchness, e.g. whiteness. While the racial discourse remains
overtly inexistent, the universal
mission of the République continues to deal with “others” in racial terms, while the
dominant
group (i.e. white) remains unnamed or invisible. The idea of
common French identity (as
opposed to multicultural identities) is based on the universal
notion of non-differentiation or
neutrality which is nonetheless representative of the dominant
group, i.e. “the neutral one is a
white man from the middle or upper classes” (Bancel &
Blanchard, 2005, p.40). Interestingly, on
November 30, 2005 a poll revealed that 64% of the French were in
favor of this law (CSA-Le
Figaro, 2005a). Jean-Luc, a 30 year-old lawyer, expressed this
positive aspect of colonialism as
follows,
yes, France was a colonizer. France has often exploited peoples.
But it was with
good conscience, because its desire was to bring ‘THE’
civilization, as they used
to say at the time. My grandparents were colonizers and they often
told me stories
about how we built everything there: roads, hospitals, schools,
vaccination
campaigns, literacy programs, patience and complete
dedication of missionaries, teachers and so on…61
The positive aspect of colonialism could be opposed to some of
Aimé Césaire (1955)
most direct attack on colonialism as he stated in Discourse on
Colonialism that,
they talk about progress, about ‘achievement’, diseases cured,
improved standards
of living…I am talking about natural economies that have been
disrupted –
harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigenous
population – about
61 Oui, la France a colonisé. La France a
souvent exploités des peuples. Mais elle le faisait avec bonne
conscience, car elle désirait apporter 'LA' civilisation, comme on
dît à l'époque. Mes grands-parents étaient
colons, et m'ont souvent raconté qu' l'on a tout construit, là-bas
: routes, hôpitaux, écoles, campagnes de
vaccination, d'alphabétisation, patience et dévouement infini des
missionnaires, des professeurs, etc.
143
food crops destroyed, malnutrition introduced, agricultural
development oriented
solely towards the benefit of the metropolitan countries (p.
42-43)
Apparently, even the newly elected French President, Nicolas
Sarkozy (2007), still has
trouble dealing with colonialism and its consequences on the
African continent. As he visited
several African countries during summer 2007, he somewhat
recognized what France
participated in during the colonial period but was therefore quick
to say in one of his speeches
that.
Africa’s tragedy is that the African has not entered history
enough. The African
peasant, who for thousands of years, has lived with the seasons,
and whose ideal
is to be in harmony with nature, only knows the eternal renewal of
regular beat
through the repetition of the same gestures and the same words...
Africa’s
challenge is to learn how to make itself the heir of everything
that is universal in
all human civilizations… It is to acquire science and the modern
techniques as the
product of all human intelligence.62
This discourse is very reminiscent of the paternalism of the
French colonizers of the 17th,
18th and 19th centuries. It could have been written at that period of time, very
few people would
have really noticed it. Sarkozy, through this discourse was made
in Dakar, reproduces some of
the old beliefs about Africans (I.e. blacks) and Europeans (i.e.
whites, or French here). While he
acknowledged some of the problems created by colonialism in the
first few sentences of his
speech, he then turned to the African youth and challenged them to
embrace modernity. Three
important elements therefore emerge as a result of this argument.
First, Africans are not modern
62 Le drame de l’Afrique, c’est que
l’homme africain n’est pas assez entré dans l’histoire. Le paysan africain, qui
depuis des millénaires, vit avec les saisons, dont l’idéal de vie
est d’être en harmonie avec la nature, ne connaît
que l’éternel recommencement du temps rythmé par la répétition
sans fin des mêmes gestes et des mêmes
paroles…Le défi de l’Afrique, c’est d’apprendre à se sentir
l’héritière de tout ce qu’il y a d’universel dans toutes
les civilisations humaines…C’est de s’approprier la science et la
technique modernes comme le produit de toute
l’intelligence humaine
144
people and they need to do more to enter history and human
civilizations by distancing
themselves from nature. He mentioned several times in his speech
the idea that Africa has to
“learn,” and why not learning from those who know best, Europeans!
Second, Europeans are the
carriers of science and modern techniques and this is what makes
them modern. They are the
modern Men! (Trouillot, 1995). Third, this ethnocentric view of
Africa contributes to the image
of inferiority of Africans and blacks, and the need and necessity
for them to progress. This seems
to represent the modern version of the civilizing mission under
the cover of whiteness
Those comments made on the African continent do enter the
collective memory. They
represent the official position of France about Africa, and those
comments, as they are presented
in the media and dispersed in the general population, become some
sort of truth. As white French
people face blacks, Arabs and other non-European groups, a certain
assumption remains about
the cultural, political and economic superiority of Europeans, and
whites over those we can
identify through their external physical characteristics, i.e.
people of color. Sarkozy’s comments
also attracted international attention as the United Nations’
Special Rapporteur on contemporary

forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related

intolerance, Doudou Diène,
accused President Sarkozy of contributing to a dynamic leading to
a legitimization of racism; he
was referring in particular to the July 2, 2007 speech President
Sarkozy gave in Africa as well as
to the DNA testing necessary for family reunification, which was
part of the immigration reform
law of October 2007. He vehemently condemned the comments directed
at Africa and its need to
enter history, and compared those comments to those made in racist
discourses in the 17th, 18th
and 19th centuries (Bolopion, 2007).
Many of the respondents in this research study do share some of
the ideas of President
Sarkozy. They share this idea that France has helped more than it
destroyed, that it was in a sense
145
necessary for those “peoples” to be civilized, otherwise they
would have never progressed and
unfortunately, and that France is not appreciated for those
efforts. For instance, Martin, a 24
year-old student states in a sarcastic way, “we are very mean
people who built schools and
hospitals in under-developed countries. We should let them starve,
that would have caused fewer
problems63”or Fabien, a 22 year-old state employee, who argues that,
“colonialism helped underdeveloped
countries get out of their misery and helped them become modern
countries. It is
therefore not important to talk about it. Slavery is part of the
greatness of the empire64”, and
Jean-Jacques, a 25 year-old graphic designer, continues with a
similar argument, “the role of
France was to build clinics, roads, schools, in other words to
extract the wealth of those peoples
who were unable to do it by themselves. Yes, we need to continue
to talk about it [colonialism]
in this manner65”, and finally, Marco, a 21 year-old cook and a member of the
Socialist party,
who says that France has “absolutely no responsibility; if the
colonizers had not gone in those
countries, they would still be at the stone age, you just need to
see what they have done with
what we left them with.66”
It is like a child who breaks his toy. France graciously (out of
the generosity of the
French civilizing mission) gave them the tool necessary to help
them develop (because they
could not do it by themselves), and they now have the audacity to
complain while they are the
63 Nous sommes des méchants ayant crée
des écoles et des hôpitaux dans des pays sous-développés. On aurait
mieux fait de les laisser mourir de faims, ça nous aurait posé
moins de problème.
64 Le colonialisme a sorti des pays
sous-développés de leur misère et en a fait des pays modernes. Il n'est pas
important d'en parler. L’esclavage est parti de la grandeur d'un
empire.
65 Le rôle de la France est d'avoir
construit des dispensaires, des routes, des hôpitaux, des écoles, en bref
d'avoir
développé la richesse de peuples incapables de le faire par
eux-mêmes. Oui il faut en parler mais de cette façon.
66 Aucune responsabilité, si les colons
n'avait pas été dans ces pays ils en seraient encore a l'age de pierre, il
suffit
de regarder ce qu'il ont fait des restes de civilisation que l'on
leurs a laissé !
146
ones who do not have the intellectual capacities (that French
people have) to maintain this tool
for their own benefit.
On the other hand, some are now talking about the colonization of
France by
former colonized peoples as Pierre-Philippe, a 23 year-old student
close to the right-wing
political party MPF (Movement for France), who states,
when I talk about the colonization of France, it is of course
exaggerated. It is not
the wish of the people, and the ambition is not to exploit the
country. People who
come in our country seek a better life than the one they have in
their countries, we
cannot fault them for trying to live with decency! My complaints
are not aimed at
the immigrants themselves, but at our political establishment and
its deplorable
handling of this phenomenon. However, it is true that many foreign
heads of
states, Arabs in particular, rejoice from it and would like to see
a colonization,
which actually started in the 1970s with European-Arab agreements.67
While this young man does not direct his frustration at the
immigrants themselves, he
nonetheless criticizes those migration patterns. Later during the
interview, he reveals some deepseated
negative feelings for those populations, as he would state that to
civilize members of
former colonies would mean,
to have them adapt to our civilization, which is very difficult
for people who, for
example, come a village in Mali, where the birth rate is close to
10 and where the
majority of people is illiterate. For those who have lived in
France for the twenty
67 Quand je parle de colonisation en
France, c'est bien entendu très extrapolé: ce n'est pas un voeux des
population, et n'a pas les mêmes ambitions d'exploitation du pays.
Les gens qui viennent chez nous y trouvent
une vie meilleure que dans leur pays, nous n'allons quand même pas
leur reprocher de vouloir vivre décemment!
Mes reproches ne s'adressent pas aux immigrés en tant que
personnes, mais à notre classe politique et sa gestion
déplorable de ce phénomène. Toutefois, il est certain que de
nombreux dirigeants étrangers, Arabes notamment,
se réjouissent de ce phénomène et souhaite une
"colonisation". Phénomène amorcé dès les accords Araboeuropéens
des années 70...
147
years, and do not speak French, and live in a 3 bedroom apartment
with 10
people, along with the three wives of the head of the household,
who feeds
everybody with a job as a janitor, and the rest coming from
welfare benefits…
Let’s focus first on those who are already in France before
welcoming more.68
Many of the responses from the survey and from the interviews are
in concordance with
the theoretical claims made earlier. The definition of one’s
frenchness is expressed by certain
traits and characteristics that lead one to believe and think that
whites living in France are not to
be questioned about their nationalism or patriotism while people
of color are described along
cultural lines and against a larger group whose presence in France
is continually questioned. The
interviews reveal a set of non-overt racial standards used to
present what France is currently
about. Looking non-French, e.g. non-white, almost automatically
means that one’s presence and
desire to participate in French social institutions is to be
suspected. In a sense, their “visible”
physical characteristics serve as a reminder that they represent a
threat to sameness and French
homogeneity. As a result, people of color are confronted in their
daily lives with the expectation
to behave as a French person, and if they deviate from those
expectations by speaking another
language or by engaging in other cultural behaviors, they are used
as an example for the entire
group that they refuse to integrate.
However, the most surprising element of this research is the level
of racial consciousness
exerted by white French people. They are aware that they are
white. While they might say
“white”, the meanings associated with it remain very vague and
superficial, which in turns makes
it more difficult to really understand racial problems in French
society. They end up perceiving
68 Adapter à notre civilisation, ce qui
est très difficile pour des personnes venant, par exemple, d'un village
malien, où le taux de natalité frôle la dizaine et où les
analphabètes sont en majorité. Des personnes sont en
France depuis 20 ans, ne parlent pas un mot de français, et vivent
à 10 dans un 3 pièces, en comptant les 3
femmes du chef de famille, qui nourrit tout le monde avec un
emploi de "technicien de surface", le reste
provenant des aides sociales... Occupons nous d'abord des
personnes déjà en France, avant d'en accueillir
d'autres.
148
their position as “white” as a handicap that contributes to the
obliviousness about discrimination.
While racial categories are carefully negotiated at the
micro-level, it seems difficult for French
people to engage in a conversation about race as a social
construct. It seems to be the result of
the fact that discrimination, racism and other forms of prejudices
are understood solely at the
individual level with little comprehension of the institutional
aspect of discrimination developed
through the law, politics, media, imagery and social understanding
of the construction of
frenchness. Culture, however, seems to be more meaningful for most
of the respondents, and
issues revolving around religion (and Islam), civic behaviors,
language and daily interactions
with others. However, the racialization of culture is often
indirectly talked about but there is little
understanding on how the European-extra-European (or
Indo-European-extra-European)
dichotomy around cultural lines reproduces a clear white-non-white
dichotomy whereby French
people of color (by birth, or through legal and administrative
proceedings) are caught in the
middle. The definition of frenchness seems to be deeply rooted in
whiteness, encompassing
physical traits, culture and political status, and is reinforced
by the universal idea of integration,
whose goal was to bring equality, but has in reality been
contradictory, and reinforced inequality.
Under this unnamed hegemonic
oppressive system, integration represents
the tip of the iceberg.
149
Chapter Five
The power of Invisibility
Some of these knowledges have been kept from us— entry into some
professions
and academia denied us. Because we are not allowed to enter
discourse, because
we are often disqualified and excluded from it, because what
passes for theory
these days is forbidden territory for us, it is vital that we
occupy theorizing space,
that we not allow white men and women solely to occupy it. By
bringing in our
own approaches and methodologies, we transform that theorizing
space.
(Anzaldúa, 1990, p. xxv)
Based on the analysis of my data, I would define white privilege
as the conscious or
unconscious, but nevertheless harmful and racist, set of
individual actions and structural policies
designed to reinforce the power and resources held by those who
are white – whether they
acknowledge it or not, or even want to deny it – within a larger
social historical context. A
privilege is something that is earned through conformity of
society. If one is not in compliance
with whatever society needs of him or her, then one is not
considered privileged. Being
privileged also allows the individual to choose whether he or she
would want to struggle with
whatever is considered the norm.
Being white is not defined exactly the same way in each and every
society across the
globe because of the particular historical context. However, it is
important to notice that being
white is also within a larger historical context being able to
define others, e.g. people of color, in
a way that clearly delineate that they appear as different,
backwards, uncivilized and not worthy
to share the same political, economic and social place in society.
This is where one can draw a
distinction between citizenship as a set of rights or as a symbol
of allegiance to a nation or a
community. If you are not worthy of getting a set of rights, then
your allegiance to a nation will
continually be put into question.
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You are also white by the characteristics used to define another
person as a person of
color, which can range from skin complexion to hair texture.
However, each society defines
whiteness in a particular way. For instance, it is said that money
whitens in Brazil (Taylor,
2005). While some individuals were able to “pass” as white
(Harris, 1993) during Jim Crow
segregation for instance, it remains that those who have been
defined as having European
physical features who will be most likely to be considered white,
and therefore most likely to
“belong” politically, socially and economically, and less likely
to face problems of racial
discrimination. This is possible because white Europeans invented
the concept of race.
In that sense, you do not have to define yourself as white per se to be white because the
focus remains on those who cannot meet the standards defined and
developed within this white
supremacist historical context. It is does not mean that one is
not white, and that there are not any
privileges linked to this social position, but rather that the
invisibility of whiteness represents the
standard that is understood by all but only spoken by those who
cannot reach that social position.
Therefore, being white is being able to pass as “normal,” being
able to comment about others and
being able to maintain a system in place that will represent the
cultural values and norms while at
the same time ignoring the historical impact of whiteness on
people of color. This larger
historical context can be facilitated through the use of race in
the open to remind us of the socalled
superiority of one group (U.S. example) or through the denial of
race as a social factor,
which allows its social relevance to be hidden (French case).
Revealing its social power [race]
would highlight the unequal treatment people of color feel under
this system. This is what I call
unnamed hegemonic oppression.
Unnamed Hegemonic Oppression
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This unnamed hegemonic oppression is reproduced by the Republican
call of universality
and equality. Under such a paradigm, other perspectives, cultural
expressions, and experiences
are presented as an attempt to break down the French social
fabric. White is safe and white is
freedom from being judged by your skin color first, and your
humanity second. Thus, being
white naturally has privileges, because being white comes from
having positive and not negative
stereotypes against your skin color. I define this unnamed hegemonic oppression as the
overtly
non-racial set of beliefs, policies and daily actions and
interactions normalized by whiteness (as
invisible racial system of hierarchy), which contribute to the
social, political, economic
inequality and psychological impact that people of color have to
deal with on a daily basis.
White individuals, both consciously or unconsciously, contribute
to this unnamed hegemonic
oppression through their daily
interactions with other whites and people of color, and social and
economic policies as well as use of language.
The unwillingness or unconscious non-identification of whites “as
white” makes the
problem more difficult to address and, therefore, more difficult
to solve. As the Philosopher
Finkielkrault (2005) and others debated on a televised show in May
2005 whether or not antiwhite
racism exists, I could not help but notice that when anti-white
racism was being discussed,
it was always as a reflection of what young people of color were
saying, while when issues of
discrimination in the workplace or in housing affecting minorities
were addressed, whites were
never mentioned as the perpetuators. It was as if ‘it just
happened, and it was bad’ but the
perpetuator remained invisible. Racism just happens but very few
individuals are held
accountable because it would become a reflection of the larger
society. When some are held
accountable (Perrier, 2008; Brafman, 2008; AFP, 2008), it appears
to only be a reflection of
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those bad individuals or corporations but no national discussion
emerges to address the severity
of the problem of racial discrimination, and its significance in
French social institutions.
When the term anti-French is thrown out as a reflection of the
attitudes of some young
children of immigrants (rarely talked about as French citizens) as
a way to state their anger and
emotional relationship with a country that does not recognize them
as French, the “anti-French”
expression is a way to convey the notion of anti-white racism
without ever stating the obvious. If
blacks and Arabs have to be held accountable for their anti-white
racism (which I think
represents a cover for not addressing the real issue of normality
embedded in whiteness), then
whites as “white”, not as invisible beings, should be talked
about. It can be addressed from a
micro-perspective in which daily interactions reproduce negative
perceptions toward “others” of
color, but also from an institutional (not just legal) perspective
where the law, education,
housing, hiring practices and other cultural entities are examined
in order to understand the
weight put on people of color so they can attain the goal of integration,
that appears feasible on
the surface but unattainable in reality. Hooks (2002) has another
reason why whiteness should be
examined, which is to “subvert the liberal belief in a universal
subjectivity (we are all just
people)” (p. 21). Since many whites do not want to admit to the
privileges of whiteness, they
instead believe that if they hold true to the idea of universal
subjectivity, then racism will just go
away. Unfortunately, race relations are ingrained in French
society and cannot be so easily
changed. By focusing on whiteness, one shifts the angle of
analysis toward white privilege to
understand that it must be given up in order to end racism.
The unreal expectations are rooted in the historicist racial state
through whiteness, as the
unnamed hegemonic system of oppression. How can France claim to have a society based on
equality when people of color face a double-consciousness
(Sagot-Duvauroux, 2004), when their
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presence in France is questioned while the presence of whites is
not (because they are assumed to
be normal and to be “real” French). Whites do not have that double
consciousness because they
are the privileged group. Using Du Bois’ (1999) phrase, “Am I
black or am I American?” (p. 45)
could be transposed to the French case of “Am I black, African,
Arab or Am I French?”
Whiteness creates psychological (Fanon, 1967), social, economic
and political dilemmas for
people of color that white French do not have to be confronted
with these issue. This type of
thinking is represented in the interviews and comments made by the
respondents who
participated in my survey and interviews when stating that being
white means having to put sun
cream to prevent sunburns. They do not think nor do they have to
think about the social meaning
of whiteness because they construct themselves as normal, as
French while those who appear
different are evaluated on a different basis. While some
respondents have identified themselves
as white – which was a very surprising finding –, this identity
remains a very superficial factor in
explaining a social reality. The few persons of color interviewed
in this research depicted or
showed the dilemmas they face in trying to fit in as French while
being consistently judged on
other social factors, such as race.
The collective imagination, historical memory or consciousness of
French people does
not posit whites as problematic but this is exactly what it does
to people of color. Their state of
being is deconstructed, observed, analyzed, criticized and
demonized to eventually conclude that
they do not really have any allegiance to the nation while they
are an integral part of French
society. In the meantime, lovers of justice and equality (white
liberals) fail to listen to people of
color’s voices, and ignore their plight – which is being
themselves and dealing with the struggles
they face being themselves – as mere complaints that could be
easily fixed is people of color
were to conform and forego their self. After all, the white
dominant group knows best what it
154
means to be normal in this society; therefore people of color just
need to conform. Consequently,
it creates identity crises. While whites might mention some form
of anti-white racism (one of the
few times whites ever acknowledge their whiteness in France as a source
of meaning to explain
their position in French society), their identification as French
is never contested in part because
this is the way it has been constructed, white = French! Having a
French identity also means not
having the need for introspection.
On the other hand, people of color in France are French, want to
be French but might
doubt at times their French identity because under this unnamed hegemonic oppression they
might not look French. The Pasqua Law of 1993 is a perfect example
of how law enforcement
agencies can continually racially profile because they are given
the authority to “objectively”
asked people who do not look French their ID documents. It could
actually be argued that this
racial identity as blacks or Arabs is the by-product of the way
their frenchness has been
contested. In a perfect world, one would not want to be black or
Arab if one was automatically
accepted and treated as French or as an integral part of this
society.
Colorblindness is not the only issue. The denial of whiteness as a
social issue is more
than a colorblind issue. Even if people were to talk about race as
a social matter, the denial of
whiteness would still persist. The social historical context of
the historicist state has created this
perpetual numbness to racial issues. This is particularly
revealing in the lack of appreciation for
the effects of colonialism on people of color, and the lack of
understanding of how colonialism
was racially constructed and forced upon.
Colonialism and slavery are rarely discussed (Adamson, 2006).
Post-colonial Great
Britain has been subjected to critical and in-depth research while
France has made a point to
forget and numb its population from its historical
responsibilities under the République call of
155
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. As a
result whiteness persists under an unnamed hegemonic
system
where people of color remain in a precarious situation trying to
choose between being French
and acting as such while facing possible discrimination or finding
another identity that will be
meaningful to them. In that case, people of color are continually
being seen as unwilling to
integrate. People of color find themselves in a double-bind.
Either they accept to become what is
expected of them and still face rejection, or develop an opposite
identity as a result of their
experiences but still remain outcast. In Fanon’s words, it means
“turn white or disappear,”
(Fanon, 1967, p. 184) and whiteness remains an unreachable goal.
This era of colorblindness is, however, particularly useful in the
reproduction of this
unnamed hegemonic oppressive system in two ways. First, race does not exist, and second, it
allows for a discussion about cultural differentialism. Culture
has not replaced race in the
everyday language, but culture has replaced race in the formation
of hierarchies between groups;
it has reinforced differences that are used to be based on
physical characteristics while they are
now embodied in culture. Culture has become a proxy for race.
Lentin’s (2005) research
demonstrates that human differences are now explained away from
racial categories in favor of
cultural distinctions that are essentialized. She argues that the
passage from race to culture has
developed since 1945 after the Holocaust by anti-racist scholars
who wanted to point out the
positive aspects of cultural differences while at the same time
allowing for “primitive” cultures
to progress. However, Lenting (2005) goes on saying that this
shift from race to culture did not
expunge the ranking of human groups established under an openly
racist system.
In a sense, this was revealed in President Sarkozy’s speech in
July 2007 (Sarkozy, 2007).
The speech he gave in Africa embodies one of the major problems
around the historical French
position on colonialism. He admits the havoc created by French
colonial policies but he is quick
156
to mention that it is over and that France is the friend of and
not the enemy of Africans.
However, a few lines later, he artistically condemns African
countries for not embracing
modernity, for being too close to nature, or in other words too
primitive. This type of discourse is
very reminiscent of the colonial period when the French did not
claim superiority openly but just
wanted to civilize the world. Embrace modernity or you will be
condemned to remain in that
inferior position for a long time. These ideas are very
paternalistic and in a sense, the call for
integration resembles this paternalistic call. In other words, the République is asking all those
who are not “naturally” French to change their cultural behaviors,
ways of thinking to the
modern civilized French way otherwise you will remain excluded.
French equates white, which
also means modernity while African equates black and therefore
backwardness. The unnamed
hegemonic oppression is revealed here through
the assumption that Africans, blacks, Arabs and
other people of color have to be educated and therefore learn to
be French. The call for
integration is a call for civilizing those who are not white,
while whites never have to prove their
frenchness.
Without explicitly using a racial language, Sarkozy (2007) locates
Africans as being
behind or backwards in terms of their cultural development and
their abilities on the international
scene. This is what Van Djik (1995) would call denial of racism:
by engaging in not only selfglorification
(presenting France as a great place for everybody) but also in the
imposition a fair
framework within which France can continue to be great (it is
necessary to engage in
immigration reforms because it is necessary), the French are not
found to be guilty of anything.
He explained that this combination of self-glorification and
fairness is an attempt to blur the lines
between humanism and realism (caring but being realistic about the
situation about immigration
for instance). One should be against racism because it is immoral
but some policies need to be
157
passed to protect our nation even if it means engaging in
discriminatory actions; one is not racist,
one is just realistic about the current situation.
Another aspect of white privilege is more than just possessing
more status than somebody
else or more than just being in a position of power, it is also
about not having to know about
other people and their experiences because you have THE choice to
ignore their problems. By
having the choice to ignore others, one can therefore frame what
is important in a society (it, of
course, goes hand-in-hand with a position of domination) or
hegemony. Therefore, when
“legitimate” knowledge is created, it only encompasses the
experiences of the dominant white
group; other experiences are not noticed and have a difficult time
to enter the realm of
appropriate knowledge. This can be noticed through standpoint
theories of knowledge developed
by feminists and people of color (Collins, 1990; Hartstock, 1987;
Smith, 1980) who are able to
provide a unique aspect of their oppressions but which knowledge
is continually contested by
mainstream society.
Hegemonic Oppression through Construction of Knowledge
The dominant group remains for the most part oblivious to those
oppressions in part
because they do not have to know and worry about these
experiences. The plights of oppressed
groups remain invisible to the dominant group because it is not
part of their realm of thinking or
“what one should know!” If integration is known as the official
policy for immigrants and people
of color to follow in order to be accepted, any other opinions,
perspectives and commentaries are
relegated to anti-French radical ideologies aimed at threatening
the French Republican values.
Under this hegemonic system of
oppression, being critical about the way institutions
function is
equated with contempt and exclusionary thinking.
158
Some of the consequences are that whites might be more likely to
contest this new
knowledge than acknowledged its relevance. This is mainly due to
the fact this new knowledge is
constructed mostly in opposition to the dominant framework, -
racism only exists among bad
individuals, otherwise everything is fine! There seems to be a
real numbness about how the
values and the policies being put forward really hurt people of
color. Therefore, the dominant
group engages in the production of counter-knowledge by finding
answers elsewhere and
possibly by continuing to look at people of color as the main
problem (i.e. blaming the victim or
anti-white racism). For instance, some of the interviewees brought
up anti-white racism as an
important aspect of French society. Anti-white racism is
constructed in a way that allows the
dominant group to ignore its responsibility, to ignore the
knowledge produced by oppressed
groups, and to reaffirm its domination by developing new hegemonic
discourses where race, in
the case of France, only matters when people of color are engaging
in bad behaviors. I would
suggest that the idea of reverse discrimination in the U.S. was a
way to counter the arguments
brought by people of color in order to reaffirm whites’ racial
domination. Anti-white racism in
France reaffirms whites’ social domination by enabling whites to
control the debate and the
language about racism. As long as this debate continues, the real
victims of racism remain
alienated and hurt. This anti-white or reverse discrimination
argument represents a component of
white supremacy against the people who do not want to strive to
the level attained by whites. In a
sense, it is a way of taking issues with the belief that “normal”
(spoken) or “supremacist”
(unspoken) racial hierarchy and oppression will be compromised or
“muddied” by including
other racial groups in the fabric of French society. Therefore, by
focusing on the anti-white
racism element, whites continue to perpetuate a system in which
other voices will be silenced as
being anti-French, and not deserving to be part of this nation.
Anti-white racism becomes one of
159
the most salient, if not most important, forms of white supremacy
and racism. Under this
unnamed hegemonic oppression, people
of color can speak out but they will be tuned out by the
mainstream claim of anti-white racism.
Another very interesting point coming out of my survey and
interviews is the dimension
of integration. The fact that integration has so many meanings in
the minds of French individuals
reveals the vagueness of this idea. Integration is usually used by
white French people to refer to
the lack of effort being put forward by blacks and Arabs to be
part of the French society, and the
need for them to not only learn the values of France but also to
abandon their original cultural
ways, whether it is in the public space or in their private
locations. One point seems unclear
though: how do you measure one’s integration? If speaking French
is important, most
immigrants and their children meet this qualification – even
though one could imagine that
recent older immigrants would have a harder time to master a new
language – however the
expectation is for them to speak French both in public and in
private spaces. Second, French
cultural values have to be learned; this is, however, a more
delicate issue. While certain cultural
values exist nationally they also vary from region to region. How
is a child born in France from
immigrant parents supposed to prove his/her frenchness when he/she
has been socialized in
French schools? Unless there is something terribly wrong about the
French education system,
those young people are socialized to be as French as anybody else.
However, it seems that they
are still being judged based on their outward physical
appearances. This precedes them and it
forces them to always be aware of their surroundings and the
behaviors they put forward, e.g.
double consciousness. This double consciousness is not expressed
among white French – except
maybe when they argue that being white means having to put more
sun cream on their skins
when in the sun.
160
Formation of “Communities” Defined as an Act of Anti-French
Resistance
Many of the opinions expressed by respondents reveal the fear they
feel when they
perceive another “community” is taking over France, and trying to
redefine what France means
to them. There is little attempt at empathy for those respondents
to put themselves in the shoes of
people of color in France. By defining themselves as normal and
French, they are defining
“others” as not part of the French community even though it is not
explicitly stated. Being
French is being part of a community (Lévy, 2005), but being black
or Arab goes against the
ideals of the République. As Tatum (1997, 2007) explains, different communities are not
bad as
long as they provide a meaningful place for marginalized populations,
and those communities are
a way to bring people of color together out of the alienation they
might feel in mainstream white
society. However, communities can be problematic if they are based
solely on separation and
lead already marginalized groups to remain ostracized. One of the
major points of contention is
the idea of what is called “community withdrawal” (my translation
for the French word
communautarisme). The formation of
communities is defined in French social institutions as a
refusal to integrate French society. It can be explained by Tatum
(1997) as the result of
psychological development processes in response to stress and
racism. Allying yourself with
somebody who shares a similar struggle can help you cope with the
pain felt by racism (Tatum,
1997).
The term communautarisme is very difficult to translate because it denotes many
different ideas unique to the French context. There is often a
pejorative comparison made with
the racial/ethnic communities in the U.S. For the most part, it
defines a negative attitude of
mainstream society toward the existence of racial, ethnic, sexual
communities. There is seldom
161
positive meanings associated with this term, which I think reveals
a deep-seated problem of
language. Part of this unnamed hegemonic
oppression is the development of this anti-community
ideology unique to France, which decries any cultural values
celebrated in France that might be
considered different from French cultural values.
The term “community” carries negative meanings in France because
it is usually used to
depict something that is different or goes against mainstream
perspective. Part of my critical race
theory training would describe this phenomenon as the hegemonic
construction of knowledge
only legitimized by what white French mainstream society wants to
be without ever paying
attention to the meanings people of color attribute to this word.
The development of communities
is, according to Lévy (2005), not the product of the actual
emergence of communities (as an
ideological goal to reach) but rather the emergence of the
ideology of community withdrawal (as
defined by mainstream society) coupled with the already existing
communities. Those
communities exist but it is the result of the demands of labor in
the 50-60’s and the fact that
many of those same jobs are now gone and represent what many would
call the French ghettos
(Maurin, 2004). People are still there. Therefore, communities
exist because of economic issues
but to state that their existence is a form of refusal to
integrate is to mystify and blame the victim.
In terms of ideological communities, it is more difficult to
demonstrate that they truly exist
because there are very few organizations, which are formed on the
basis of race and ethnicity
(one of them will be examined in the next few pages). However,
this ideology of community
withdrawal brings those non-white communities to light, and it is
from this point that they
become demonized. These non-white communities are represented as
places of anti-French
cultural values where integration is resisted. It is also
interesting to note that in one part of Paris,
there is a large community of 35,000 French citizens of Asian
descent concentrated in a few
162
buildings. They have been there for generations but rarely are
they being talked about as a
community despite signs both in French and in their specific Asian
languages, despite the fact
that they continue to celebrate certain events that are not
particular “French.” They represent in
a sense what whites do not want to see happen to blacks and Arabs
in certain places around
Paris. They also epitomize a community that maintains cultural
values and languages specific to
certain countries where parents and grandparents came from,
without being viewed as anti-
French. A community does not mean lack of frenchness or allegiance
to France. There seems to
be a similar depiction of Asians in France as there is in the
U.S., that they care about working,
education and that they don’t make waves. As one of my interviewer
stated, we never hear about
Chinese people. I would suggest that in reality they are used as a
way to show that there is
something particular symptomatic to blacks and Arabs. They might
also be the French model
minority even though they face discrimination themselves.
Part of the debate about the meaning of communities is the role
played by mainstream
anti-racist organization such as SOS Racisme and LICRA. However,
it is important to address
the true meaning of these organizations. While they might be
deeply engaged in the fight against
racism, they are very close to the same political parties that
contribute to the formation and
reproduction of this racial state. As Pierre, a young man who
identifies himself as anti-capitalist,
stated during the interview,
SOS Racisme is movement organized by the Socialist Party to
transform the
march towards equality.69
In a sense, his argument is that some political parties have
hijacked the fight against
racism by bringing other issues to the forefront, and by
developing a new fight against racism
without focusing on the issues people of color really care for.
69 SOS racisme fut un mouvement organisé
par le PS pour transformer la marche pour l'égalité
163
Being French is never perceived as being part of a large community
because it is normal
and it is taken for granted, but the existence of ethnic and
racial communities are a danger to
French society because they are visible and challenge whiteness as
a normal state of being. Lévy
(2005) makes a very important point when he quotes a white French
feminist scholar (Vianès)
who advocates for the integration of members of those communities
into French republican
values. Vianès is quoted as saying that belonging to a community
means to wish to acquire
special rights, affirmative action benefits and privileges that
others, non-white French people, do
not have or do not benefit from. This definition of a community is
not surprising coming from a
privileged scholar rooted in mainstream culture. She does not
understand that the “privileges”
she has because she posits herself as a member of the “normal”
group or the referent group, and
therefore, does not have to think about what she represents in the
eyes of oppressed racial and
ethnic groups. Part of the problem she faces is that she does not
recognize their experiences and
voices as valid because race is not part of the language of
oppression in France. She cannot
fathom the idea that she actually has the privileges that she
decries other communities want to
access. People of color are therefore constructed as separatists
unwilling to adopt French
“normal” cultural values. She does not recognize them as French
and ascribe them that label of
anti-French community builders. Vianès does not make a distinction
between racial/ethnic
identity formation as the result of struggles, and the need to
bring those struggles forward in the
public sphere versus separatism aimed at threatening French social
institutions. In a sense, the
lack of integration is always constructed as a threat to French
social institutions and never as a
means to be recognized as a people within those same institutions.
It is also important to
recognize that discrimination also operates through the use of
language whereby the white
dominant group intimidates, inferiorizes, and excludes people of
color (Van Djik, 1993). People
164
of color’s racial/ethnic backgrounds remain the major obstacle to
their integration in French
society, not their willingness to become French. Their willingness
to be part of this French
society that constantly rejects them is a testimony to their
desire to be fully part of French
culture, but not at the detriment of their beings. The social
cognition of whites about members of
minority groups supports the discriminatory forces and the
sustainability of a discursive
framework in which discriminatory acts are justifiable. While it
might not appear as such to
whites, the way they speak about members of minority groups
contribute to the reproduction of
shared social feelings, attitudes and opinions, which reinforces
their social dominance (Van Djik,
1993).
As long as whiteness remains this invisible yardstick that
regulates private and public
actions, overt and covert practices, societal and individual
actions, the racial state will continue
to ostracize people of color in France for their refusal to see
whiteness as the rule and the need
for them to fully accept and change, even if change means
destruction of self.
The lack of identity recognition by white mainstream society
reveals a critical refusal to
take into account another’s social and cultural capital. The
social capital people of color have
developed through their communities is not acknowledged as being reliable and/or valid. Instead
of acknowledging the real presence of systematic racism in France,
one hears more about the
emergence of a form of anti-white racism. The discourse of
oppression is therefore shifting from
the experiences of people of color to what whites perceive as more
important: the threat to their
non-overtly-admitted-but-nevertheless-important privileges. While
people of color want to be
considered French (Kelman, 2005a, 2005b; Sagot-Duvauroux, 2004),
their skin color ascribes
them a culture – whether one identifies with it or not – but one’s
social position in French society
demands a denial of that culture – which one’s skin will not let
one do. They want to be
165
recognized as French but not without having their struggles along
race and culture be heard and
addressed. The newly formed group, Le Cran – which stands for the
Representative Council of
Black Associations – while facing controversies by the very idea
of its creation, was founded to
address some of the problems faced specifically by blacks in
France. French black voices are
now institutionalized through this organization. In an article
published in May 2007, the French
sociologist Esther Benbassa (2007) questions the emergence of
identity organizations, which are
trying to bring recognition to the plights of their commununities.
She, in other words, questions
the formation of Le Cran, as being defined too narrowly around problems encountered by
visible
minorities. I have the impression that Benbassa is against the
emergence of identity politics
revolving around what French society call visible minorities. By
refuting this idea, she also
rejects the invention of visible minorities by French social
institutions, whether it is by using the
term “visible minorities” itself or by constructing a colorblind
society in which people of color
are at a clear disadvantage. Benbassa disavows the market of
memories in particular when she
argues that nobody can be solely defined by one’s negritude, one’s
femininity, one’s working
condition and so on.
I think there are a couple problems with this perspective. While
she is right that nobody
can cohesively define oneself by any one particularity, it
nonetheless does not mean that
individuals do not feel the need to express their concerns
regarding one particular issue. For a
woman to be a feminist does not make her less French, nor a black
man advocating for better
treatment and recognition of blacks in France make him less
French. I think there is this idea that
being French overrules every other single particularity. Césaire,
through négritude, dealt with the
idea that the more one is defined as black, the more human one
becomes. Using a Hegelian idea,
the need for blacks to be recognized as blacks is critical for
their entering humanity. Not only can
166
they define themselves as human but it also benefits the white
dominant group to also be more
human. This idea is also reinforced by Camus (1971) when he
states,
if men cannot refer to common values, which they all separately
recognize, then
man is incomprehensible to man. The rebel demands that these
values should be
clearly recognized as part of himself because he knows or suspects
that, without
them, crime and disorder would reign in the world. An act of
rebellion seems to
him like a demand for clarity and unity. The most elementary
rebellion,
paradoxically, expresses an aspiration to order (p. 29).
Popeau (2002) argues that Césaire’s definition of négritude was a form of rebellion
against colonialism and a justified way to negate the oppressive
nature of assimilation, which as
a result would legitimize his presence as a black man in the
world. It was also a way to contest
the European definition of universality and humanism. He stated,
“my conception of the
universal is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich
with all the particulars there are, the
deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all”
(Césaire, 1957).
Second, by questioning the existence of those groups or
organizations, Benbassa (2007)
is diminishing the impact of their experiences as they live them,
and discounting any possibility
that those voices matter in the social fabric of France. If they
are there, why do they exist? It
seems to be another attempt to relegate their experiences as
illegitimate claims.
Yosso (2005) addresses community cultural
wealth in a recent theoretical piece. Using a
Critical Race Theory approach, Yosso (2005) argues that mainstream
knowledge as it is
developed, oppresses and silences people of color. However, she
also suggests that there should
be an alternative to Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory and as a
result develops a community
cultural wealth theory. She challenges Bourdieu’s assessment that
some communities are
167
culturally wealthy, e.g. white middle-class, while others are
culturally poor or deficient, e.g.
communities of color. While Bourdieu’s argument is a critique of how
mainstream white middleclass
environment, ideas, experiences and education benefits from how a
society is structured, it
is nonetheless created with this same white middle-class as
normative. According to Bourdieu,
cultural capital is “an accumulation of knowledge… valued by the
privilege group” (Yosso,
2005, p. 76). As a result, communities of color are always
compared to this standard
unsuccessfully trying to live up those expectations.
Yosso (2005) challenges the idea of white middle-class as culturally
wealthy and
theorizes about the formation of community cultural wealth
identifying six forms of capital
emerging out of the lives of people of color: aspirational capital
which refers to “the ability to
maintain hopes and dreams for the future” (p. 77), linguistic
capital as “the intellectual and social
skills attained through communication (p. 78), resistant capital
as “those knowledges and skills
fostered through oppositional behavior that challenges inequality”
(p. 80), navigational capital as
the “skills of maneuvering through social institutions” (p. 80),
social capital as the “networks of
people and community resources” (p. 79), and familial capital as
“cultural knowledges nurtured
among kin” (p. 79). The key point of her theory is to confront the
normality of whiteness, the
standard set up by white supremacy, and to bring forward the
social experiences of people of
color into the open as valid sources of knowledge. However, it
remains extremely difficult to
accomplish in the French context when whiteness is invisible and
made more invisible each day
race is ignored. The racial experiences of people of color are
continually constructed as radical
and as anti-French because rooted in communities negatively defined by
French social
institutions under this unnamed hegemonic
oppression.
168
In a sense, the experiences of people of color cannot be taken
seriously by mainstream
French society for two reasons. First, their “community”
experiences are illegitimate because of
the very nature of those communities, and because of the
anti-French sentiment associated with
them, which together represent an attack of the notion of
universality preached by French social
institutions. Since anti-French is defined as anti-white, people
of color are faced with two issues:
they cannot be seen as equal French citizens, and their
racial/ethnic communities are seen as a
problem – this is very ironic since the very presence of race is
not acknowledged. As a result, the
very knowledge created out of their racial experiences, of their
communities, and daily struggles
remain illegitimate. One key point that I want emphasize to make
sure I am not misunderstood is
the fact race is real; real in the daily social experiences of
people of color. It is also very real for
whites but it goes unnoticed. Since blackness cannot exist without
whiteness (Dalton, 2002) the
experiences of people of color, as real as they experience them,
struggle with them and feel about
them, cannot exist without whiteness as a system whereby race
locates people in different strata,
creates hierarchies and reproduces ideas and beliefs about those
who do not benefit from this
social arrangement.
As a consequence, their social and racial experiences do not exist
because of the nonrecognition
of race as a real and salient social phenomenon. Those experiences
remain
illegitimate within a historicist racial state. One’s Frenchness,
through whiteness, remains the
only position of legitimacy one can use to challenge French social
institutions. Since race is
perceived as a sticky issue and also because it only exists when
whites feel oppressed by it (antiwhite
racism), the racial experiences of people of color remain
unacknowledged or only rooted
in the negative individual interactions they might, at times,
face. After all, racism is only
169
understood in extraordinary terms – a few bad apples might engage
in racist acts - but rarely does
one address how ordinary or embedded racism is in French social
institutions.
170
Chapter Six
Concluding Remarks
Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact
that, it so exists
for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged (Hegel, 1977, p 111)
The colonial relationship. . . chained the colonizer and the
colonized into an
implacable dependence, molded their respective characters, and
dictated their
conduct (Memmi, 1991, p. ix)
Knowing the color of the sky is far more important than counting
clouds. Or to
put it in another way, the most radical art is not protest but
works that take us to
another place, envision way of seeing, perhaps a different way of
feeling (Kelley,
2002, p. 11)
I think it is important that at the end of a research project,
recommendations be
enunciated. While working on this dissertation, many friends,
colleagues and family members
hinted at the fact that too often sociology remains very
theoretical, which for the most part only
contributes to the intellectual enrichment of other
“intellectuals” within the field of sociology.
Taking into account one of the most important ideas from the Chicano
Sociology paradigm
developed by Professor Alfredo Mirandé, sociology should be used
to challenge the status quo. I,
therefore, expect through this research to raise some eyebrows, to
challenge what French white
people have taken granted for too long, and to put them in a very
delicate and uncomfortable
position that I hope will push them to reassess their positions
and the privileges they have
enjoyed through whiteness for so long. They can also decide to
reproduce whiteness by
completely ignoring this research, which would only reinforce the
points I have made so far.
Therefore, I have five important recommendations that I hope will
lead to real social change in
French social institutions, in micro-level interactions and in the
larger French society.
Racism should not be understood exclusively as individual actions
171
Using the words of historian Robin D.G. Kelley (2003), racism is
not about ignorance, it
is about knowledge. Racism cannot be defined as not knowing. He defines racism as the
systems
of knowledge used to reproduce racial hierarchy. This powerful
idea carries important
implications in the study of race relations, racial oppression and
eventually solutions to those
problems. If racism is not ignorance but rather a system of
knowledge whereby some people are
assigned negative characteristics, it means that those ideas
remain unchallenged but are
reproduced through socialization to make them appear as normal. By
acknowledging that racism
is knowledge, it becomes much more difficult not to challenge the
status quo. When one is said
to be ignorant, one might just dismiss or not pay much attention
to bigots and decide not to
associate with them anymore. However, when racism is a system of
knowledge, one has to
contemplate and become critical in the role one plays in the
formation and reproduction of that
type of knowledge. Nobody really wants to be known as racist but
many of us reproduce those
same ideas that we despise. To understand how this type of
knowledge is created and what it
means, one has to acknowledge the very systematic nature of this
knowledge that one individual,
alone, cannot reproduce and create. We are the racial inequality
we are all the witnesses of. It is
therefore imperative to not solely understand racism as a bad act
by one bad person but rather as
a system.
This system of knowledge, reproduced through religion, philosophy,
history and many
others academic realms represents the historicist racial state
whereby whiteness is reproduced as
the only normative and acceptable form of knowledge. Whites have
to understand what they
participate into, what knowledge they create and how it eventually
benefits them without even
realizing it, because it is so normal! The scope of this idea is
much larger than this dissertation
but it falls right into the historicist notion of the racial state
in which individual behaviors as well
172
as policies, appearing to be colorblind or neutral, have actually
the effects of creating a system of
knowledge in which people can truly feel good about themselves and
their place in society
because what they are doing or saying is constructed as
legitimate.
It is, therefore, imperative to situate the debate about race and
racism along political,
economic and social lines. Colonialism was an economic enterprise through
which race became
the justification for the unequal treatment that people of color
endure in their home countries,
and which has been re-organized within the global economy to
reproduce the same very old
beliefs. Today, colonialism has taken on slightly different forms.
While social institutions are not
openly discriminatory, they are nonetheless reproducing the same
logic of exclusion. The
historicist racial state has reproduced micro-level behaviors and
systematic expectations that are
rooted in the racist form of paternalism expressed during the
colonial period. While people of
color are not called indigènes anymore, they are nonetheless still treated as such. We need to
move away from this French/non-French dichotomy that obscures some
of the obvious racial
realities people of color face in France, and highlight the deep
racial tensions (not just ethnic or
religious tensions) that divide this country.
Race IS a social construct to be reckoned with
It is acceptable for scholars studying French social institutions
to refer and talk about race
openly as long as it is an expression of the social ills felt by
those who are the most affected.
Race is lived, experienced everyday as a social matter. I am not
reifying race. It is very much
part of our reality even though we want to blind ourselves about
its social relevance. When
addressing the recognition of race as a critical social factor in
France, it is equally as important to
make sure that the ethno-racial categories used to understand the
problem of discrimination are
173
not borrowed from the U.S. but are rather the product of the
French context. The social-historical
construction of race in France is particular to its history; while
there are some important global
relevance to race and white supremacy (Mills, 1997), one should
not impose categories on
French society borrowed from somewhere else. Also as Simon and
Clément (2006) have noted,
while there exists some disparities between self-identity and
ascribed identities, it remains more
than ever critical to take them into account to address
discrimination in France headfirst. Part of
their discussion also revolved around the uneasiness for blacks
and Arabs to be referred as
“blacks” and “Arabs” while whites not as much. Interestingly,
Simon and Clément’s (2006)
report do not mention the different way in which whites might
define themselves. However, they
found that whites were still more favorable to that nomenclature
than Arabs, and just slightly
more than blacks.
Those findings are not incompatible with the findings presented in
this dissertation about
developing French ethno-racial categories to measure
discrimination, nor is it incompatible with
the notion of double consciousness and whiteness argued earlier in
this dissertation. I would
argue that Arabs might feel uneasy about such categorization if
those categories are used to
continue to demonize and portray them as non-French. Not being
counted as blacks or Arabs
does not also mean that they are not aware of the treatment they
face everyday in French society,
and therefore would concur with the development of a double
consciousness. I think the fear of
being categorized comes from the idea that the fact that those
ethno-racial categories, while
widely used in the privacy of daily interactions, are not openly
talked about in a positive way in
the public domain (media, politics, movies). There might be a fear
that being seen as openly
Arab would reinforce some of the arguments made by those who are
in favor of integration and
who see the emergence of communities as problematic. Those
publicly accepted identity markers
174
might continue to convey pejorative meanings, and people of color
might not want to still be
perceived as just black or Arabs. I think the inclusion of a
“white” category would definitely
raise some form of consciousness for some, and could lead to a
better discussion about who is
oppressed and who contributes to this oppressive system. I doubt
that when whites start
understanding what it means to be white in French society, one
would truly continue to say that
being white (as noted in my interviews) would only mean having to
put some sun cream on when
in the sun. The social position of whites would be reassessed and
discussed in accordance with
the issues of discrimination. The frame of analysis would switch
from a victimization of people
of color in France to a reality check about those who control the
institutions, e.g. whites, the
language about discrimination, and the meanings attached to
behaviors and attitudes. That would
result in putting the French racial state on trial.
Those types of reports (Simon & Clément, 2006) are critical
because they raise important
questions and bring forward even more elaborate discussions about
the social reality of race in
France. For instance, the social construction of those
ethno-racial categories à la French would
probably have to include more than just physical characteristics.
Simon and Clément (2006)
mentioned geographical origins, birthplaces, mixed or multiracial
identities and so on which
would be particular to the French case. I can already hear critics
say that I am engaging in
racialization and that I, myself, contribute to the problem. I
could answer that racialization has
been in place for decades but whites have not had the courage to
tackle the problem of
discrimination.
Let’s take for example one of the most recognized anti-racist
organizations in France:
SOS Racisme. While they have reached a
certain level of legitimacy they have also advocated for
the implementation of the French Republican values of equality.
However, as I mentioned
175
before, this paradigm of equality operates within an unnamed hegemonic oppressive system and
their actions contribute to the reproduction of this system even
though they are trying to undo
racism in France. Part of their fight lately has been to prevent
the gathering of statistics regarding
people of color. They oppose this database because they don’t want
people to be categorized
based on the color of their skins, based on their ethnic origins,
based on religion, and they don’t
want people’s identities to be reduced to one colonial history or
to the Vichy government.
I think it is not impossible to talk about race without making it
your primary identity.
However, race does represent a set of experiences that is specific
to certain populations. While
race might not be a primary identifier, it represents, if not just
an identity, a lived oral history
from where pain, happiness, struggles, successes can emerge, and
might not be substituted solely
with a French identity, even though they are French. While this
refusal to gather statistics is
indeed very interesting and combats any form of essentialization
and racialization, it operates
within this unnamed hegemonic oppressive
system that already racializes and essentializes
different populations. SOS Racisme, itself, takes part of this process by using terms such as
“visible minorities” and/or “extra-European” surnames. Members of SOS Racisme advocate for
the “testing” method, which aims at identifying actual acts of
discrimination. While it does
provide some results, it also has some obvious drawbacks. This
method only points out to the
individual acts and does not take into account institutional
actions. While they might be able to
talk about institutional discrimination, they have little evidence
in terms of data that something is
taking place. In many of their reports, they, nonetheless, use the
terms “black, blanc, beur”, e.g.
black, white, Arab and people of foreign origins (outside the
European Union), e.g. non-white.
While they want to appear to operate within a framework that goes
against the formation of
identities around race and ethnicity, they nonetheless reproduce
the same language used by
176
whites under a white supremacist system. While they condemn the
use of race and ethnicity as
sources of experiences and as primary or secondary sources of
identity, they do not operate
within a colorblind approach.
Members of SOS Racisme are also against the formation of communities revolving
around racial/ethnic identities. I do think that there is a
disconnect with the fact there is
discrimination affecting people of color in France and the refusal
to acknowledge their collective
experiences because they believe in the sanctity of French
Republican values of equality with the
state being the insurance of such equality. In a sense, they
operate within a paradoxical approach
where they understand that discrimination affects certain
populations based on race and
ethnicity, and they demand the institutionalization of their
organizations while at the same time
decrying the use of racial/ethnic statistics and the formation of
communities around racial/ethnic
experiences. One would think that they should challenge the whole
race issue completely to be
consistent with their beliefs. As a result, people of color would
have an automatic right to be part
of French society without having to be defined by race. It is not
that simple and race still
represents an added burden to the life of people of color. After
all, racial/ethnic communities in
the U.S. do not see themselves as less than Americans, and
actually ask for their recognition as
equal American citizens as whites. In this regards, people of
color in France organizing
themselves around the formation of communities is not incompatible
with their allegiance to the
French nation.
However, the way SOS Racisme operates, and the political ties linked to this organization
prevent true anti-racist actions because they have been co-opted
by a political system rooted in a
historicist racial state with whiteness being its engine.
177
People of color DO matter in this struggle
It is also important to take into account the voices of people of
color, the way they
identify themselves and their everyday struggles. Essed (1991)
developed a methodology, which
uncovers systematic racism by focusing primarily on the day-to-day
realities of racism as
experienced by people of color and women. It focuses on what she
calls everyday racism, and
which has received little attention in mainstream academia.
Through qualitative research, one
could uncover the everyday complexities of racism not just as an
expression of unequal treatment
but also as an extremely valuable force to deconstruct the effects
of systematic oppression people
of color and women.
Therefore, it is most appropriate to pay attention to the meaning
and decision for blacks
in France to voice their presence. I am referring to the fairly
new organization called Le Cran,
which represents blacks living in France. While there has been tremendous
amount of
controversy around it, especially from other black individuals who
do not want to be seen as
“black”, I think it is a start. Members of the Le Cran are not to be considered
victims but rather
agents of change. In order to recognize people of color as agents
of change, one has to listen to
all the voices coming from the different lived experiences. While SOS Racisme calls for a nonracial/
ethnic approach to the question of discrimination, others like Le Cran, calls for the
recognition of blacks in France, and in order to fight
discrimination, discriminatory acts have to
be made visible. One major difference between Le Cran and SOS Racisme is their respective
position on the existence of communities. SOS Racisme denounces such communities organized
around racial/ethnic identities and call for the métissage of France, while Le Cran, according to
Ferdinand Ezembe, President of the
Eduction and Cultural Commission of the organization (Kongo,
2007), believes that,
178
everybody is part of a community. However, it is forbidden to say
it. This is the
real problem. There are white communities in France; nobody
criticizes them. As
soon as blacks get together to defend a social cause, even if it
is the right thing to
do, then they are accused of forming communities70
Le Cran is aware of the racial
dynamics that impact whites and blacks in France, and can
admit of the presence of a white community, or several of them,
while SOS Racisme remains
anchored in the invisibility of race and ethnicity (contradictory
statement if one wants to fight
against racial/ethnic discrimination) to defend its project of
racial/ethnic unity through the
métissage of France.
People of color make sense of their daily realities and they
should be taken into account
without reducing their voices to mere complaints. Part of the
acknowledgement of their voices is
for the white dominant group to recognize the social, historical,
political and economic feeling of
uneasiness of people of color in France.
Whiteness HAS to be acknowledged
All of the preceding recommendations made above cannot be fully
accomplished if
whiteness is not acknowledged. I see this point as crucial to the
solvency of such a large
problem. One has to challenge the system of knowledge but also
acknowledge what whiteness
represents.
When one talks about blacks, Arabs and essentializes them as being
the problems of what
the French République faces, one is also ignoring the invisible
but salient presence of whites.
Being white is more than just being non-black or non-Arab in the
French model. Being white
70 Tout le monde est communautariste.
Mais l’on interdit à certains de le faire. C’est ça le vrai problème. Il existe
bien des communautés blanches en France. Personne n’en parle ;
personne ne les critique. Dès que les Noirs se
mettent ensemble pour défendre une cause, aussi juste soit-elle,
on les accuse d’être communautaristes.
179
means not having to think about what it means to be black and
Arab, and never having to face
constant scrutiny about one’s allegiance to France. Therefore, it
is important to address the social
and historical construction of whiteness and the logic of
integration before we move forward.
Being white is more than being French it is also having the
privilege of not having to think about
it feels to be considered non-French. One’s blackness does not
exist by itself; it exists in
opposition to whiteness. I am not French because you are American.
I am not Muslim because
you are Christian. However, I am black because you are white.
Blackness and whiteness signifies
critical social markers widely adopted by different populations.
However, if one exhibits a social
marker in one area, it is hard to explain the non-existence of the
other, e.g. whiteness.
I can foresee some criticisms suggesting I blame everything on
white people. I am not
saying that French white people are racist but rather that they
contribute to the problem by not
understanding the language they use, the institutions they
participate in and how their daily
actions have a devastating impact on people of color in France. By
acknowledging their
whiteness, fair-minded people, lovers of justice and moral people
would realize that their
whiteness gives them a decisive edge. However, in the current
state of affairs, their whiteness
remains an untold story in the collective mind. To truly tackle
discrimination in France, one has
to look at the causes and the problem of not acknowledging one’s
whiteness. Winant (2004)
states,
the contemporary crisis of whiteness – in its dualistic
allegiances to privilege and
equality, to color-consciousness and color-blindness, to formally
equal justice and
to substantive social justice – can be discerned in the
contradictory character of
white identity today (p. 5).
180
This white identity is expressed in France through the frame of
French Republican
values. While Bonilla-Silva’s (2003) four frames (abstract
liberalism, naturalization, cultural
racism and minimization of racism) could be more or less applied
to the French case, they are
located in the historicist racial state and in the contradictory
French Republican values of
equality. Out of the four frames of colorblind racism, the
naturalization frame is the one the less
likely to be found in France since race does not exist, racial
segregation and other forms of racial
hierarchy are not expressed as something natural. Part of the lack
of the racial understanding
about those racial issues is the unnamed hegemonic domination of
whiteness as natural. So it is
not racial inequality that is understood as natural but rather the
non-acknowledgment of
whiteness as an oppressive invisible racial system embedded in the
racial state.
The problem of the French République is the problem of the denial of the color-line.
Under the premises of equality, this denial of the color line
reproduces what the République is
actually trying to prevent: racial inequality. However,
acknowledging it is not enough; one has to
engage in social change.
Whiteness HAS to be confronted from within
Since the voices of color are unheard despite their daily
struggles, it is therefore
necessary for whites to become race traitors or new abolitionists
(Winant, 2001). This step is
probably the one that will be the most difficult to achieve. For a
person to confront whiteness,
his/her own privileges, one has to acknowledge it and be willing
to fight for a truly better
society. It also means to confront social institutions and the way
they operate, to make other
people feel uncomfortable about their actions, words and
behaviors.
181
It is obviously not easy to do – and I am not trying to contradict
myself and stay away
from my responsibilities as a white man - but one also has to take
into account the larger social,
political and economic framework from which we operate. For
instance, I am willing, trying and
challenging whiteness. However, as a non-tenured faculty member,
one has to take into account
the risks associated with standing with what is right. I truly and
genuinely feel to need to
intervene – and I am also aware of the privilege I have not to act
if I feel my career is on the line.
This dissertation only represents a starting point for more
in-depth understanding of
whiteness in France. One could imagine focusing more on the
different ways whiteness has been
conceptualized in other studies (Garner, 2006) and point out the
particularity of the French
construction of whiteness. Garner (2006) points out five different
characteristics of whiteness:
whiteness as malevolent absence as “an invisible perspective,
dominant and normative space
against which difference is measured” (p. 259), whiteness with
content as the “maintenance and
policing of the colour line (p. 260), whiteness as a set of norms,
whiteness as resources, and
finally whiteness as contingent hierarchy where “one dimension of
whiteness is its dialectic
relationship with non-white otherness” (p. 264). At first sight, I
would argue that those five
concepts are found in France but some important overlaps exist
among them. For instance, I
would argue that whiteness, based on this research, has been
exemplified by its absence in the
collective and individual imagination but this is what makes it so
salient. While whiteness in this
form might lead to a non-racial identity based on race, it is at
the core of the French universal
identity advertised in French social institutions as well as in
individual interactions.
To conclude, it would be interesting in future research to study
the application of the term
“black” – and not “noir” – not only in the French black community,
even though Sagot-
Davouroux (2004) addresses this issue, but most importantly, how
mainstream white society uses
182
this word. Its use in conversations seems to be used as a way to
express what blacks go through
in France but without really acknowledging their plight. The term “black”
in France conveys
some kind of exoticism in the mouths of whites, which does not
express any real empathy.
Saying the term “noir” seems to carry different meanings that
whites tend to have problems
addressing or acknowledging. It seems to be another way of putting
the problems that blacks face
in France onto somebody’s shoulders and another way to shy from
France historical participation
and responsibility in this historicist unnamed hegemonic oppression.
183
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197
APPENDIX 1
GRAPH 1 – THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Whiteness
- Control of
immigration
- Protection of
nation
- Law enforcement
- Economic policies
- Who belongs?
- Everyday
interactions
- Language
- Definition of
“others”
- Who appears French?
Historicist or Progressivist Framework
of the Racial State
Civilizing mission
of people of color/
immigrants
Political participation Civil participation
- Access to
citizenship
- Voting power
- “Communautarism”
- Job discrimination
- Lower paying job
- Housing segregation
Macro-level
Micro-level
- Agency
- Cultural
affirmation
- Frenchhood
- Discrimination
Economic participation
- Racelessness/Colorblindness
- Sameness
- Homogeneity
198
APPENDIX 2
GRAPH 2 – UNNAMED HEGEMONIC OPPRESSION
Micro-level
Unnamed Hegemonic Oppression
How are people
of color
defined?
How can they prove
their allegiance to
France?
Culture as
proxy of
race?
What is
integration?
Whiteness as the
norm
Language
Behavior/expectations
Historical Assumptions
Media/images
Legal matters
Discrimination (job/housing)
“Lack of effort” will lead to rejection
Proof of uncivilized characteristics
under white supremacy
199
APPENDIX 3
SURVEY QUESTIONS (FRENCH/ENGLISH)
1. Quelle est votre profession ?
What is your occupation?
2. Quel est votre âge ?
What is your age?
3. Quel est votre salaire annuel ?
What is your annual income?
4. De quelle origine êtes-vous ?
Where are you from?
5. Quels journaux lisez-vous ?
What newspapers do you read?
6. Quelle est votre affiliation politique?
What is your political affiliation?
7. À quelle catégorie raciale appartenez-vous ?
What is your racial group?
8. Selon vous, qu’est-ce qu’une race?
According to you, what is a race?
9. Qu’est-ce qu’un étranger en France?
What makes somebody a foreigner in France?
10. Qu’est-ce qu’un « bougnoule »?
What makes somebody a XX?
11. Qu’est-ce qu’un Français?
What makes somebody French?
12. Qu’est ce qu’un “Français de souche?
What makes somebody a native French?
13. Selon vous pourquoi certains disent que l’équipe de France de
football ne les représente
pas. Qu’essayaient-ils d’expliquer ?
According to you, why are some people saying that the French
national team of Soccer does not
represent them. What were they trying to explain?
200
14. Selon vous, qu’est-ce que le racisme? Comment définiriez-vous
le racisme ?
According to you, what is racism? How would you define racism?
15. Quelles sont les principales raisons de l’existence du racisme
en France ?
What are the main reasons for the problem of racism in France?
16. Selon certains intellectuels, le racisme est un sérieux
problème en France? Qu'en pensezvous?
According to certain intellectuals, racism is a serious issue in
France. What you think about it?
17. Qui est responsable du racisme en France? Qui est a l’origine
du racisme en France ?
Who is responsible for racism in France? Who is at the source of
the problem of racism in
France?
18. Selon vous, pensez-vous que la France soit raciste ? Les
français sont-ils racistes ?
According to you, is France a racist country? Are the French
racists?
19. Selon vous, existe-t-il de la discrimination raciale à
l’embauche et dans le logement ?
Comment est-ce possible ?
Do you think that there is some racial discrimination in the
workplace and in housing? How is
that possible?
20. Selon vous, quelles sont les principales victimes de la
discrimination raciale en France et
pourquoi ?
According to you, who are the main victims of racial
discrimination in France and why?
21. Selon vous, quelles sont les conséquences de la discrimination
raciale vécue par
l’individu?
According to you, what are the consequences of racial
discrimination experienced by the
individual?
22. Selon vous, quelles sont les conséquences de la discrimination
raciale vécue par des
groupes ?
According to you, what are the consequences of racial discrimination
experienced by groups?
23. Selon vous, quel est le rôle du gouvernement pour empêcher la
discrimination raciale de
s’étendre ?
What do you think is the role of the government to prevent racial
discrimination?
24. Que pensez-vous des associations anti-racistes en France ?
Lesquelles connaissez-vous ?
What are your feelings about anti-racist organizations in France?
Which ones do you know?
25. Qu’est-ce qu’un « petit blanc » ?
Who is considered a little white in France?
26. Qu’est-ce que cela signifie pour vous d’être blanc ?
What does it mean for you to be white?
201
27. Qu’est-ce que cela signifie pour vous de dire que les blancs
ont un avantage sur les
personnes de couleur dans notre société ?
What does it mean for you to say that whites have an advantage
over people of color in our
society?
28. Qu'est ce que le terme racisme anti-blanc signifie pour vous?
What does the concept of anti-white racism mean for you?
29. À quoi pensez-vous lorsque quelqu’un parle des banlieues ?
What comes to your mind when somebody mentions the French ghettos?
30. Quelles sont les différences entre les immigrés européens
(i.e. portugais) et les immigrés
des pays africains ou du Maghreb ?
What are the differences between European immigrants (i.e.
Portuguese) and immigrants from
North Africa and from West Africa?
31. Il y a eu beaucoup de discours et de débats sur l’intégration
en France ces dernières
années. Qu’est-ce que l’intégration signifie pour vous ?
There have been a lot of speeches and debates around the issue of
integration/assimilation in
France over the last few years. What does integration/assimilation
mean to you?
32. Selon vous, quels sont les groupes qui doivent s’intégrer en
France, et pourquoi ?
According to you, who are the groups who should integrate in
France and why?
33. Selon Que pensez-vous de l’idée qu’il existe un racisme d’état
(i.e. racisme ancré dans les
institutions françaises) ?
What do you make of the idea that there exists institutional
racism?
34. Pourquoi y-a-t-il plus de noirs (Antilles, pays africains) et
de maghrébins dans les
banlieues ?
Why do think there is a higher number of blacks and Arabs in the
ghettos than in other areas?
35. Les problèmes du chômage, de l’insécurité et de la précarité
sociale représentent des
sujets brûlants en France. Selon vous, quelles sont les causes de
ces problèmes ?
Unemployment, precarious social conditions and insecurity in
France remain burning topics in
France. According to you, what are the causes of those problems?
36. Pensez-vous qu’il existe un lien entre la précarité sociale et
la discrimination raciale en
France ? Comment ce lien est-il possible ?
Do you think there is a link between precarious social conditions
and racial discrimination in
France? How is that link possible?
37. Qu’est-ce que cela signifie pour vous d’avoir des personnes de
couleur dans des positions
de pouvoir (politique, économique, télévision etc.…) ?
202
What does it mean for you to see people of color in position of
power in politics, the economy or
even the media?
38. Quelles sont les raisons pour le manque de personnes de
couleurs au pouvoir ou à la
télévision ?
What are the reasons what there isn’t any person of color in
positions of power or in the media?
39. Pourquoi existe-t-il un manque de débats et de discussions sur
le racisme en France ?
Why is there a lack of discussions and debates around the problem
of racism in France?
40. Que pensez-vous de l’idée que le manque de discussions sur le
racisme en France est dû
en partie du fait que ceux qui sont au pouvoir (politique,
économique, sociale) ne sont pas
confrontés au racisme ?
What do you make of the idea that the lack of discussions and
debates around the problem of
racism in France might be due to the fact that those in power are
not personally impacted by
racism?
41. Que pensez-vous du fait que les Européens (allemands, italiens
etc.) installés en France
puissent voter aux élections locales alors que les immigres
africains et maghrébins
installés en France depuis 20-30 ans ne puissent toujours pas
voter ?
What do you make of the fact that Europeans (Germans, Italians
etc…) who settled down in
France can vote in local elections while African and Arab
immigrants who have lived in France
for more than 20 years still cannot vote?
42. La loi Pasqua de 1993 autorise la police à vérifier «
objectivement » le titre de séjour des
étrangers ? Qui sont les étrangers en question ? Que pensez-vous
de cette loi ?
The 1993 Pasqua law gave law enforcement authorities the right to
objectively check the
residency of foreigners? Who are those foreigners? What do you
think about this law?
43. Quelle est la responsabilité de la France pour son rôle dans
le colonialisme et dans
l’esclavage ? Est-ce vraiment important d’en parler aujourd’hui ?
What is France’s responsibility in the past institutions of
colonialism and slavery? Is it really
important to talk about it nowadays?
44. Que savez-vous du colonialisme et de l’esclavage?
What do you know about colonialism and slavery?
45. Quelle est la responsabilité de la France pour son rôle dans le
colonialisme et dans
l’esclavage ? Est-ce vraiment important d’en parler aujourd’hui ?
What is France’s
responsibility in the past institutions of colonialism and slavery? Is it
really
important to talk about it nowadays?
46. Que pensez-vous du fait que la France a officiellement reconnu son
rôle dans la traite des
noirs - esclavage ?
What do you think about the fact that France has just recently recognized
its roles in the slave
trade?
203
47. Que pensez-vous des déclarations de Nicolas Sarkozy utilisant
des mots comme
"racailles" et "nettoyer au Karcher" pour
parler des banlieues?
What do you make of the recent comments made by the interior
minister Nicolas Sarkozy using
words like « racailles » or « cleaning with a Karcher » when
talking about the French ghettos ?
48. Avant d'être élu Président de la République en 1995, Jacques
Chirac, alors Maire de
Paris, déclara en 1991 que "notre problème, ce n'est pas les
étrangers, c'est qu'il y a
overdose. C'est peut-être vrai qu'il n'y a pas plus d'étrangers
qu'avant la guerre, mais ce
n'est pas les mêmes et ça fait une différence. Il est certain que
d'avoir des Espagnols, des
Polonais et des Portugais travaillant chez nous, ça pose moins de
problèmes que d'avoir
des musulmans et des Noirs [...] Comment voulez-vous que le
travailleur français qui
travaille avec sa femme et qui, ensemble, gagnent environ 15000
francs, et qui voit sur le
palier à côté de son HLM, entassée, une famille avec un père de
famille, trois ou quatre
épouses, et une vingtaine de gosses, et qui gagne 50000 francs de
prestations sociales,
sans naturellement travailler... si vous ajoutez le bruit et
l'odeur, hé bien le travailleur
français sur le palier devient fou. Et ce n'est pas être raciste
que de dire cela... ". Que
pensez-vous de cette déclaration?
Before becoming President of France in 1995, Jacques Chirac, at
the time Mayor of Paris, made
the following statement in 1991: « our problem are not the
foreigners but rather their numbers. It
might be true that we have more foreigners than before the war but
there are not the same and
that makes a difference. It is obvious that having Spaniards,
Portuguese, and Polish immigrants
working here create fewer problems than having blacks and Arabs.
How do you expect a French
worker and his wife who together make around $2500 a month to
react when their next door
neighbor is a family composed a man and his three or four wives
with about twenty kids and
making $10000 a month on welfare without of course working… and if
you had the noise and
the smell then the French worker becomes insane. And it is not
racist to say that » What do you
make of this statement?
49. Que pensez-vous de ce questionnaire sur le racisme ? Quelles
les questions que j’aurai du
demander et j’ai omis ?
What do you think about this survey about racism? What are the
questions I should have asked
and did not ask them?
50. Seriez-vous d’accord d’être contacté pour un entretien
confidentiel plus approfondi ? si
oui laissez vos coordonnées (téléphone, adresse email)
Would you be willing to be contacted for a more in-depth
interview? If yes, please leave your
contact information (phone number, email)

Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive

in 2010 witii funding from

Tine Law Foundation of Ontario & tine Ontario Council of University Libraries

http://www.archive.org/details/reportracismontOOcomm

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Report of

the Commission on Systemic Racism

in the Ontario Criminal justice System

December 1995

a-* • m.

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Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System

Commissioners: Margaret Gittens (Co-Chair), David Cole(Co-Chair), Toni Williams,
Sri-Guggan Sri-Skanda-Rajah, Moy Tarn, Ed Ratusliny.

® Queen's Printer for Ontario, 1995

Ce document est aussi disponible en fran(jais

ISBN 0-7778-4718-3

Editor: Eric Mills

Cover Design: M.A. Korsik

Ontarto

COMMISSION ON SYSTEMIC
RACISM IN THE ONTARIO
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

December 19, 1995

COMMISSION SUR LE RACISME
SYSTEMIQUE DANS LE SYSTEME
DE JUSTICE PENALE EN ONTARIO

Margaret Gittens

Co-Chair

Copresidente

David Cole

Co-Chair

Copr^sident

Commissioners
Commissaires

• Toni Williams

• Moy Tam

• Ed Ratushny

• Sri-Guggan

Sri-Skanda-Rajah

The Honourable H.N.R. Jackman

Lieutenant Governor of Ontario

Suite 131

Main Legislative Building

Queen's Park

M7A lAl

Your Excellency:

Pursuant to our appointment by Order in Council 2909/92 dated October 1992, we are
pleased to submit to you our Final Report on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal
Justice System.

The Commission appreciates the time, energy and hard work contributed by hundreds of
people across the province, as well as the contribution of people nationally and
internationally.

Yours ve

DiwidjP. Cole
Co-Chair

C/l^

0^t^^\

Moy Tam
Commissioner

Ed Ratushny
Commissioner

Margaret Gittens
Co-Chair

Toni Williams
Conmiissioner

Sri^Gn^gan Sri-Skanda-Rajah
Commissioner

180 Dundas St. W., 22nd floor, Toronto ON
Tel.; (416) 327-6800 Fax: (416) 327-6798

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Tel.: (416) 327-6800 T6\ec. : (416) 327-6798

Sans frais: 1-800-463-8803

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®

Acknowledgements

The final report of the Commission reflects the contributions of hundreds of people
across the Province of Ontario. Our work was invaluably enhanced by the
contributions of formal presenters, participants in focus groups and other community
meetings, and many others who took the time to write or telephone the Commission
throughout the life of our mandate. We also express our appreciation for the formal
and informal co-operation we received from officials in several government
ministries and other organizations, including the police and judiciary. We are
grateful for the assistance of academics and consultants who showed keen interest in
our work, and willingly offered advice and numerous suggestions.

We wish to acknowledge and thank all our staff for their dedication and
commitment, often against the backdrop of extremely limited time frames.
Commissioner Toni Williams deserves tremendous credit for agreeing to accept the
task of writing the Report. Her insight, analysis and creative conceptualization of
this multifaceted mandate deserves recognition. We must also recognize the
invaluable contribution of our Executive Coordinator, Valerie Holder, who in a quiet
unassuming way capably managed multiple assignments, solved technical problems,
kept track of research papers and documents and mastered new challenges as they
arose, all in good humour.

We express thanks to the youth, women and men behind bars who spoke to us in
less than elegant circumstances and shared their experiences, knowledge, insight and
suggestions with us. We thank the superintendents, correctional officers and staff of
federal and provincial penal institutions for their co-operation during visits to these
facilities and to other requests that we made.

Our work was enhanced by the contributions of individuals, activists and people
from diverse communities and we thank them. We also express our appreciation for
the co-operation we received from the Ministers and staff of the three related
Ministries of Attorney General, Solicitor General and Corrections, and Community
and Social Services. We also acknowledge the contributions of Chiefs of police and
members of Police Associations.

Finally, to all those who related their experiences time and time again because they
had a hope and vision of a more just and equal society, we hope this report begins
that process of change.

Contents

Executive Summary '

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

Chapter 2 Racism in Justice: Perceptions H

Perceptions of racial inequality 12

Metro Toronto residents' perceptions 13

What Metro Toronto residents think about

judges 14

Summary of the Metro Toronto residents survey . 1 7

Judges' and lawyers' perceptions 18

What crown attorneys think 19

What defence counsel think 24

What judges think 29

Summary of judges' and lawyers' perceptions ... 34

Conclusion 35

Chapter 3 Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 40

Racialization: the driving force of racial

inequality 39

Signs of racial difference 41

Meanings of racial difference 42

How racialization produces racial inequality 45

How people instill racialization into systems 46

How decision-making inserts

racialization into systems 50

Inherent bias in standards 50

Transmitted bias in decision-making 51

How service delivery may support

racialization 52

Operating norms and racialization 54

Passive toleration 54

Disregard 55

Collusive toleration 55

Systemic racism: summary of the process

definition 56

Recognizing and eliminating systemic racism 56

Conclusion 59

Chapter 4 Prison Admissions 65

Introduction 66

Findings about racial inequality in prison

admissions 67

A note of caution 67

Summary of findings 69

Prison admissions over time: The growth of racial

inequality 70

Trends in admissions of black and white men ... 71
Trends in admissions of black

and white women 75

Trends in black and white admissions on drug

trafficking/importing charges 78

Comment on the growth of
racial inequality in

. admissions 81

Prison admissions in 1992/93: The

details of racial inequality 84

Youth admissions 84

Youth admissions by sex and race 84

Youth admissions by reason for

admission and race 85

Adult admission totals: an

overview 87

Adult admissions by sex and race 87

Adult admissions by
reason for
admission and

race 87

Adult admission rates: A more precise measure . . 88

Admission rates by race 89

Admission rates by race and sex 89

Admission rates before

and after trial 90

Admission rates by specific charges 90

Other variables 92

Comment on the findings 95

Understanding over-representation 95

Social and economic inequality 98

Differential enforcement 99

Decisions that produce imprisonment:

an overview 101

Entry into the criminal justice process 101

Police discretion to charge 101

Imprisonment before trial 102

Processing charges 103

Court resolutions 103

Conclusion 104

Chapter 5 Imprisonment Before Trial 113

Regulating imprisonment before trial 115

Reasons for limiting pre-trial

imprisonment 115

Principles for limiting pre-trial

imprisonment 116

Legal justifications for imprisonment

before trial 117

Racial inequality in the use of pre-trial

imprisonment: findings 119

Lawyers' perceptions of racial bias 119

Introduction to the major study 120

Basic finding: racial inequality in bail

decisions 123

Nature of the charge: the special case of

drugs 126

Prior contact with the criminal justice

system 128

Criminal record 128

Aspects not disclosing
significant

differences 128

Existence and length of criminal record . . 129

Currency of record 134

Offence "track record" 135

Previous prison sentence 137

Bail status at the time of charge 137

Serving sentence in the

community 137

Ties to the community 139

Employment status 139

Fixed address 140

Single status 141

Discrimination in detention decisions:

the overall picture 142

Summary of findings 143

Moving forward: analysis and recommendations 146

Arrest and police detention 147

Conditional release by the police 149

"Show cause" reports 151

Preparation for bail hearings 153

Judicial detention 155

Bail rules: the reverse onus exceptions 155

Crown counsel discretion 158

Undue emphasis on immigration status 159

Undue emphasis on other "ties

to the community" 160

Leadership in preventing unfair detention 162

Refugee claimants and the

reverse onus presumption 162

Unattainable bails 163

Conduct restrictions 164

Bail variation procedures 166

Bail justices' discretion 167

Objective indicators of risk 168

Bail supervision programs 169

Access to interpreters 172

Representation at bail hearings 173

Chapter 6 Charge Management 179

Selecting and processing charges 181

Police discretion to lay charges 182

Findings about police charging

discretion 182

Crown attorney discretion to review

charges 189

Findings about the review of charges. 190

Discretion to avoid court proceedings 193

Accused persons' access to legal services 195

Access to emergency legal services 196

Access to basic legal advice 198

Access to legal representation 200

Pre-trial resolution - plea bargaining 204

Negotiating on a level playing field: full

disclosure 206

Attendance at pre-trial conferences 207

Plea comprehension inquiries 209

Victims and charge management 211

Mandatory charging 211

Justice services for victims and

witnesses 212

Chapter 7 Court Dynamics 221

Uses of foreignness in Ontario criminal courts 224

Basic findings about references to

foreignness 224

Explanations of references to

foreignness 227

"Bad apple" cases 227

"Hidden agenda" cases 234

"Apparently benign" uses of foreignness 238

Experiences of exclusion 239

Court proceedings 239

Interpreter services 243

Competence 244

Impartiality 246

Accountability for mistakes 246

Criminal justice personnel and effective

interpretation 247

The image of white justice 249

Under-representation of racialized persons

among judges and lawyers 249

Under-representation of

racialized persons on

juries 250

Citizenship qualification 251

Sources for the jury pool 252

Challenges to equality: oaths and affirmations 253

Chapter 8 Imprisonment After Conviction 261

Overview of sentencing 263

Sentencing outcomes: our major study 265

Introduction and scope 265

Differential imprisonment rates 266

Seriousness of offences 266

Seriousness of offence type 268

Specific charges: the sub-
sample 269

Characteristics of the criminal incident . . . 269

Summary 270

Criminal history 270

Number of previous

convictions 271

Previous prison terms 271

Clean time 272

Criminal justice supervision 273

Criminal justice variables 274

The plea 274

Crown election 274

Imprisonment before trial 275

Social factors 275

Direct and indirect racial discrimination 277

Disparity in prison terms 278

Differential imprisonment: conclusions 280

Recommendations 281

Judicial discretion at sentencing 282

Guideline judgments 282

Credit for pre-sentence custody 283

References to deportation 284

Judicial education 285

Crown attorney discretion at sentencing 287

Pre-sentence and pre-disposition reports 289

A broader view 291

Chapter 9 Racism Behind Bars Revisited 299

The context of prison discipline and control 300

Law and policy 300

reverse onus presumption 162

Unattainable bails 163

Conduct restrictions 164

Bail variation procedures 166

Bail justices' discretion 167

Objective indicators of risk 168

Bail supervision programs 169

Access to interpreters 172

Representation at bail hearings 173

Chapter 6 Charge Management 179

Selecting and processing charges 181

Police discretion to lay charges 182

Findings about police charging

discretion 182

Crown attorney discretion to review

charges 189

Findings about the review of charges. 190

Discretion to avoid court proceedings 193

Accused persons' access to legal services 195

Access to emergency legal services 196

Access to basic legal advice 198

Access to legal representation 200

Pre-trial resolution - plea bargaining 204

Negotiating on a level playing field: full

disclosure 206

Attendance at pre-trial conferences 207

Plea comprehension inquiries 209

Victims and charge management 211

Mandatory charging 211

Justice services for victims and

witnesses 212

Chapter 7 Court Dynamics 221

Uses of foreignness in Ontario criminal courts 224

Basic findings about references to

foreignness 224

Explanations of references to

foreignness 227

"Bad apple" cases 227

"Hidden agenda" cases 234

"Apparently benign" uses of foreignness 238

Experiences of exclusion 239

Court proceedings 239

Interpreter services 243

Competence 244

Impartiality 246

Accountability for mistakes 246

Criminal justice personnel and effective

interpretation 247

The image of white justice 249

Under-representation of raciaHzed persons

among judges and lawyers 249

Under-representation of

raciaHzed persons on

juries 250

Citizenship quahfication 251

Sources for the jury pool 252

Challenges to equality: oaths and affirmations 253

Chapter 8 Imprisonment After Conviction 261

Overview of sentencing 263

Sentencing outcomes: our major study 265

Introduction and scope 265

Differential imprisonment rates 266

Seriousness of offences 266

Seriousness of offence type 268

Specific charges: the sub-
sample 269

Characteristics of the criminal incident . . . 269

Summary 270

Criminal history 270

Number of previous

convictions 271

Previous prison terms 271

Clean time 272

Criminal justice supervision 273

Criminal justice variables 274

The plea 274

Crown election 274

Imprisonment before trial 275

Social factors 275

Direct and indirect racial discrimination 277

Disparity in prison terms 278

Differential imprisonment: conclusions 280

Recommendations 281

Judicial discretion at sentencing 282

Guideline judgments 282

Credit for pre-sentence custody 283

References to deportation 284

Judicial education 285

Crown attorney discretion at sentencing 287

Pre-sentence and pre-disposition reports 289

A broader view 291

Chapter 9 Racism Behind Bars Revisited 299

The context of prison discipline and control 300

Law and policy 300

Institutional context 302

Prison discipline: misconduct 303

Enforcing the rules 305

Reporting discretion 306

Processing misconduct reports 308

Superintendent's interview 309

Punishments 310

Conclusion 311

Misconducts in practice: differential

enforcement 311

Policing discretion 312

Penalty discretion 313

Conclusion 314

Use of force by prison staff 314

Discretionary release from prison 316

Temporary absence program 316

Linguistic barriers 317

Inconsistent procedures 318

Case management and access 319

Parole 322

Preparation for parole 323

Parole hearings 324

Public accountability 326

Anti-Racism Co-ordinator 326

Community advisory committees 327

Correctional legal clinic 329

Chapter 10 Community Policing 335

Perceptions of inequality in policing 339

Findings 339

Integrating racial equality into policing services 341

Accounting to the community 343

Racial inequality in police stops 349

Frequency of reported stops 352

Perceived fairness of police stops 356

Implications of findings 357

Community policing and school discipline 360

Community policing and mall security 365

Chapter 11 Systemic Responses to Police Shootings 377

Investigation and charges 379

The criminal trial 384

Coroners' inquests 387

Chapter 12 An equality strategy for justice 391

Working for justice 391

Anti-racism training 392

Equality in employment and

appointments 396

Representation 396

Equality in workplaces 399

Participation in policy-making 401

Monitoring outcomes 403

Chapter 13 Looking Forward 409

Recommendations 415

Chapter 5 Imprisonment Before Trial 415

Chapter 6 Charge Management 420

Chapter 7 Court Dynamics 423

Chapter 8 Imprisonment After Conviction 425

Chapter 9 Racism Behind Bars Revisited 427

Chapter 10 Community Policing 428

Chapter 1 1 Systemic Responses to Police

Shootings 431

Chapter 12 An equality strategy for justice 432

Appendix A Terms of Reference 435

Appendix B Background Papers 437

Appendix C Consultations and Public Forums 439

Appendix D Submissions 443

Executive Summary

The Commission was established in 1992 to inquire into and make recommendations
about the extent to which criminal justice practices, procedures and policies in
Ontario reflect systemic racism. As directed by our Tenns of Reference, "anti-black
racism" was a focal point of the Commission's inquiry, and the experiences and
vulnerabilities of all racial minority communities were also recognized.

The inquiry examined practices, procedures and policies in the three major
components of the criminal justice system: the police, courts and correctional
institutions. Professionals involved in the administration of justice and members of
the public were consulted extensively by such means as interviews, public meetings,
focus group sessions, written and oral submissions, and public hearings across the
province. The Commission also conducted empirical studies of perceptions,
experiences with and outcomes of the criminal justice process.

Racism In Justice: Perceptions

Many Ontarians believe that racial minority people are treated worse than white
people in the criminal justice system. A major survey conducted in Metropolitan
Toronto found that more than five in ten (58%) black residents, three in ten (31%)
Chinese residents and more than three in ten (36%) white residents believe judges
do not treat black people the same as white people. More than eight in ten of those
who perceive differential treatment believe judges treat black people worse than
white people.

Perceptions that judges discriminate against Chinese people were less common but
still significant. Four in ten (40%) black residents, close to three in ten (27%)
Chinese residents and about two in ten (18%) white residents believe judges do not
treat Chinese people the same as white people. Eight in ten of those who perceive
differential treatment believe judges treat Chinese people worse than white people.

Surveys of judges and lawyers indicate substantial variation in views about racial
discrimination in the criminal justice system. While many judges and lawyers reject
- some flatly - even the possibility that systemic racism might be a genuine
problem in Ontario's criminal courts, others acknowledge differential treatment
within the system based on race as well as class or poverty. Four in ten (40%)
defence counsel and three in ten (33%) provincial division judges appointed since
1989 perceive differential treatment of white and racial minority people in the

ii Executive Summary

criminal justice system. About one in ten crown attorneys (13%), general division
judges (10%) and provincial division judges appointed before 1989 (10%)) also
perceive unequal treatment by race.

Racism In Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism

Racism has a long history in Canada. It was fundamental to relationships between
Canada's First Nations and the European colonizers. Racism has shaped immigration
to this country and settlement within it. It has led to denials of basic civil and
political rights to Canadian citizens, excluded adults from jobs and children from
schools, limited opportunities to acquire property, and barred people from hotels,
bars, theatres and other recreational facilities. In these ways racism has restricted the
opportunities and deformed the lives of some Canadian residents, while directly
benefiting others.

Though many Canadians throughout history have accepted racism, others have
campaigned and protested against the fundamental denial of humanity that it
represents. These efforts have had significant results. While the law once permitted
or promoted unequal treatment because of race, today it generally prohibits such
discrimination. Equality is now a fundamental right.

Despite these formal changes, racism continues in practices that affect the lives and
opportunities of people in Ontario. The current challenge is to grapple with this
systemic dimension of racism.

Systemic racism means the social processes that produce racial inequality in
decisions about people and in the treatment they receive. It is revealed by specific
consequences, incidents and acts that indicate differential decisions or unequal
treatment, but it is the underlying processes that make such events "systemic." One
key process is racialization, the other is the social system.

Racialization in Canada consists of classifications of people into racial groups by
reference to signs of origin - such as skin colour, hair texture and place of birth -
and judgments based on these signs about their character, skills, talents and capacity
to belong in this country. These social constructions of races as different and
unequal have historically justified economic exploitation of other societies by
European imperial powers. Imperial elites organized societies they colonized using
racialized classifications and judgments, which they incorporated into the religious,
educational, cultural and political practices of their own societies.

Once accepted by a society, judgments about races being different and unequal may
be adopted, established and perpetuated by social systems. Social systems are ways
of organizing action in order to accomplish tasks. They are made up of personnel
and policies, decision-making procedures and operating norms for managing their
work. Racialization is introduced into social systems through the decisions and
actions of system personnel. However, it is often impossible to identify those
responsible for introducing or perpetuating racialization because its transmission and

Executive Summary iii

acceptance are often cumulative and diffuse. Racialization within a system has an
adverse impact upon racial ized persons, but may pass unrecognized by those who do
not experience its effects.

Racialization may be tolerated by the policies, procedures and norms of a system. It
may be transmitted within particular systems or among different systems. These
processes of introducing, perpetuating, tolerating and transmitting racialization
within social systems constitute systemic racism.

Prison Admissions

Isolating people from society and confining them in prisons is the harshest action
that the Canadian criminal justice system can take. The principle that everyone is
equally protected against unfair or unjust imprisonment and the principle of restraint
are fundamental to the state's authority to take this action. But practices do not
always live up to principles when officials are granted broad discretion.

A major study of admissions to Ontario prisons indicates that for the period studied,
the majority of prisoners are white, but that black men, women, and male youths are
massively over-represented. Aboriginal men, women and youths are also over-
represented in provincial prisons, but not to the same extent as black people.
Members of other racialized groups are generally not over-represented.

The over-representation of black people reflects a dramatic increase in their
admissions to prison between 1986/87 and 1992/93. By the end of these six years,
black adults were admitted to prison at over five times the rate of white adults,
proportionate to their representation in Ontario's population.

Although many more black men than black women are in jail, black women are
more over-represented among prison admissions than black men. Whereas black
men were admitted to prison at a rate just over five times that of white men in
1992/93, the admission rate for black women was almost seven times that of white
women.

The over-representation of black adults is much worse among those imprisoned
before trial than among sentenced admissions. While white people were imprisoned
before trial at about the same rate as after sentence (approximately 329 per 100 000
persons in the population before trial, and 334 after sentence), the pre-trial
admission rate of black people was twice their sentenced admission rate
(approximately 2,136 per 100 000 before trial, and 1,051 after sentence).

The most dramatic differences in admission rates of white and black adults involve
pre-trial imprisonment for highly discretionary charges. In 1992/93 the black pre-
trial admission rate for drug trafficking/importing charges was 27 times higher than
the white rate; for drug possession charges, the black pre-trial admission rate was 15
times higher, and for obstructing justice charges, the black pre-trial admission rate
was 13 times higher.

iv Executive Summary

These data cannot be rationalized by racial or cultural propensities to commit
offences. Nor can they be explained as a product of a criminal justice system
composed of overtly or covertly racist officials.

However, racialization in Canadian society is a recognized fact both inside and
outside the criminal justice system. Wherever broad discretion exists, racialization
can influence decisions and produce racial inequality in outcomes. Such discretion is
evident at several stages of the process that results in imprisonment before trial or
after conviction.

Imprisonment Before Trial

The discretionary powers of officials who deal with accused persons before trial
provide considerable scope for racialization to influence detention decisions.
Racialization may influence police decisions about whether to release accused
persons, and may affect the bail process through information the police supply to
crown attorneys. Racialized decisions may also be promoted by criteria used to
predict whether an accused will fail to appear at trial or is "substantially likely" to
commit a criminal offence before trial.

A major study of detention decisions about black and white accused charged with
the same offences indicates that white accused were more likely to be released by
the police and less likely to be detained after a bail hearing. White accused were
treated more favourably even though they were more likely than black accused to
have a criminal record and to have a more serious record.

Detailed analysis of these data revealed no evidence of differential treatment for
some types of charges laid against white and black accused, but substantial
differences for other charges. Differential treatment was most pronounced for
accused charged with drug offences. Within this sub-sample, white accused (60%)
were twice as likely as black accused (30%) to be released by the police. Black
accused (31%) were three times more likely than white accused (10%) to be refused
bail and ordered detained.

Further analysis of the drug charge sample indicates separate patterns of
discrimination at the police and court stages of pre-trial detention. Across the sample
as a whole, the results of differential treatment evident at the police stage were
subsequently transmitted into the court process. Police decisions to detain black
accused at a higher rate than white accused meant that the bail courts saw a
significantly higher proportion of black accused. Thus, even similar rates of denying
bail at court resulted in larger proportions of black accused being jailed before trial.

Employment status (as described by the police) accounted for some of the racial
inequality in imprisonment before trial, both for the sample as a whole and for the
drug charge sample. But it does not fully explain the findings. Other ties to the
community considered at bail court, such as fixed address and single status, also fail
to account for the differential outcomes.

Executive Summary v

The data disclose distinct and legally unjustifiable differences in detention decisions
about black and white accused across the sample as a whole and for some specific
offences. The conclusion is inescapable: some black accused who were imprisoned
before trial would not have been jailed if they had been white, and some white
accused who were freed before trial would have been detained had they been black.

In light of these findings, the Commission makes 13 major recommendations to
address differential treatment in the bail process. The Commission recommends
training programs and operating guidelines based on the principle of restraint in
exercising powers to detain. The police should be required to explain their decisions
to detain people, and should receive explicit direction about preparing reports on
accused persons for bail hearings. The Crown Policy Manual should be amended to
help crown attorneys address the problem, and education for judges should
emphasize avoidance of discriminatory assumptions and practices. Persons in police
custody should be assisted in preparing for bail hearings to ensure that they are not
detained because the bail court lacks crucial information about them.

Charge Management

Charge management is the complex administrative system for processing criminal
charges outside trial courts. It includes decisions about laying and reviewing
charges, diversion of cases away from court proceedings, plea negotiations and other
resolutions before charges are tried, and criminal justice services for accused
persons and victims. Discretion is the essence of charge management. Access to
high-quality services is necessary to ensure that people do not experience the charge
management system as discriminatory.

During the early stages of criminal proceedings, police, crown attorneys and defence
counsel often made rapid decisions, based on limited information and hidden from
public scrutiny. Racialized assumptions and stereotypes may influence these
decisions in various ways, some quite subtle. Decision-makers engaged in their daily
routines may not recognize any such bias unless they are constantly alert to the risk.

Commission research disclosed widespread perceptions and many experiences of
racial discrimination in police charging. A Commission study comparing outcomes
of crown attorney decisions to proceed summarily or by indictment indicates small
but statistically significant differences favouring white accused.

Inadequate access and low participation rates of racialized people in diversion
programs are serious concerns. Some defence and duty counsel say these problems
reflect arbitrary guidelines and unwillingness by crown attorneys to divert charges.
Others blame the police for failing to tell eligible accused persons from racialized
communities how to apply for diversion programs.

Racialized Ontarians have serious concerns about access to legal aid services.
Services need to be expanded and publicized so that all Ontarians know about the
legal aid system and understand their rights to apply for assistance.

vi Executive Summary

Deep distrust of plea negotiations was among the most recurrent themes of the
Commission's public consultations. Three aspects of this system are of particular
concern. First, many unrepresented accused who may be offered a resolution in
return for a guilty plea have little understanding of the case against them or how the
evidence may affect the resolution proposal. Second, represented accused persons
are generally excluded from discussions about resolving the charges without a
contested trial, which creates suspicion about the agreements that lawyers present to
their clients. Third, even after apparently accepting an agreement, many accused
persons from racialized communities do not understand its implications.

The dominant issue of systemic racism raised by victims concerned mandatory
charging policies in family violence cases. These policies are intended to reduce or
eliminate police discretion to handle family violence informally and crown attorney
discretion to withdraw charges or otherwise abandon prosecutions. They require
charges to be laid and prosecutions to proceed even against the wishes of the victim.

There are two conflicting views about whether these policies protect women from
racialized communities. One is that mandatory charging may be driving family
abuse underground. Women who require protection but are unwilling to pursue
criminal prosecution may not call for police protection from violence. The second is
that directives to charge and prosecute are still not treated as mandatory by the
police and crown attorneys when the victim is from a racialized community.

The Commission makes 17 major recommendations to structure the exercise of
discretion and improve the charge management process. They include alternatives to
police charging, expanding the scope of diversion programs, reforms to legal aid
services, greater openness in resolution discussions, more flexibility in the
prosecution of violent offences within families, and expansion of services for
victim/witnesses.

Court Dynamics

Many Ontarians perceive courts as unfairly biased against black or other racialized
people. Toleration of practices that may contribute to such perceptions is a
significant problem because Ontario legal tradition has long held that public
confidence is fundamental to an effective criminal justice system. Nowhere is this
confidence more important than in the courts, where the system's commitment to
equality is most visible.

Commission studies indicate that some judges, justices of the peace and lawyers
frequently refer in open court to the foreign origins or ethnic backgrounds of the
accused, and sometimes also of victims or other witnesses. Some references were
obviously intended to be benign, and in a few instances were linked to a legally
relevant issue. More often, it was hard to discern any legitimate purpose;
occasionally, foreignness was explicitly mentioned as a reason for a harsh decision
about an accused person. The tendency for some judicial officers and lawyers to act
as if a person's origin matters to the criminal justice system results in a sense of

Executive Summary vii

exclusion among members of racialized communities and iaci< of confidence that the
system treats everyone equally.

Communication barriers also cause black and other racialized participants in court
proceedings to feel excluded. Under-representation of black and other racialized
persons among jurors, judges and lawyers creates a sense of exclusion by conveying
an image of the criminal justice system as a white institution.

The Commission makes 12 major recommendations to modify courtroom practices
and dynamics that contribute to the appearance of racial injustice. These include
procedures to restrict references to race, foreign origins or immigration status;
reforms to complaints mechanisms; improvements to in-court interpretation services;
and measures to ensure more representative juries.

Imprisonment After Conviction

Sentencing is highly discretionary, with considerable scope for disparate outcomes.
Differences in how the facts of a case come before judges, how judges view those
facts, the goals and principles of sentencing and the role of courts in passing
sentence may all contribute to disparities.

Racialized judgments and assumptions may also contribute to differential sentencing.
They may directly influence the decisions of sentencing judges, or may be
transmitted from decisions made at earlier stages of the criminal justice process.

A major study of imprisonment decisions for the same offences indicates that white
persons found guilty were less likely than black persons to be sentenced to prison.
White people were sentenced more leniently than black people found guilty, even
though they were more likely to have a criminal record and to have a more serious
record. The differential was most pronounced among those convicted of a drug
offence. Within this sub-sample, 55% of black but only 36% of white convicted
persons were sentenced to prison.

Detailed analysis revealed no significant differences in the incidents that led to the
charges. Employment status and differences in criminal justice variables such as
imprisonment before trial accounted for some of the racial inequality in
incarceration rates. But a significant (though small) differential in incarceration rates
remains, which is not due to gravity of charge, record, plea, crown election, pre-trial
detention, unemployment or other social factor. The most likely explanation for this
differential is racial discrimination at sentencing.

The average prison terms of black prisoners in this study were significantly shorter
than those of white prisoners. This is consistent with differential incarceration rates
producing imprisonment of convicted black persons whose offences and records
would not have led to imprisonment had they been white. Another reason may be
that because black accused are more likely to have been imprisoned before their

viii Executive Summary

trials, they are more likely than white accused to receive discretionary "credit" for
their pre-trial detention.

The Commission makes six major recommendations to address differential outcomes
in sentencing. These include a call for restraint in the use of prison sentences,
education for judges on the practical implications of imprisonment, providing more
information on programs for serving sentence in the community, and reforms giving
crown attorneys more guidance on sentence submissions.

Racism Behind Bars Revisited

The treatment of black and other racialized prisoners was the subject of the
Commission's Interim Report, Racism Behind Bars. This report showed that racism
may operate as an indirect means of controlling prisoners and made 10 major
recommendations to reduce overt and systemic racism in Ontario prisons.

Racialized judgments and assumptions may also influence direct mechanisms of
control in prisons, such as the discretion of authorities to impose punishments, and
to limit access to benefits, such as discretionary release programs.

An exploratory Commission study indicates racial differences exist in the application
of institutional discipline. The data suggest trends indicating over-representation of
black men, women and male youths among prisoners charged with misconducts.
They also indicate that black prisoners were more likely than white prisoners to be
charged with the types of misconducts over which correctional officers exercise
greater subjective judgment. Black prisoners were less likely than white prisoners to
be disciplined when the discretionary powers of correctional officers are limited by
the need to show objective proof.

Discretionary release programs, such as temporary absence and parole, allow
convicted prisoners to begin supervised reintegration into the wider community
while serving sentence. Exploratory studies indicate that prisoners from racialized
and linguistic minority communities are more likely to obtain equal access to these
programs if institutions adopt a proactive "case management" model rather than a
reactive, ad hoc approach.

The Commission makes seven major recommendations to supplement those in the
Interim Report. These include measures to enhance openness and public
accountability of prison practices, review of the discipline process to foster greater
restraint and consistency in their application, and establishment of a case
management system to advise and counsel every prisoner about available prison
services and programs.

Executive Summary ix

Community Policing

Community policing is based on a piiilosophy of partnership between the police and
the community, emphasizing peacekeeping, problem-solving and crime prevention.
Many Ontario police services have recently adopted policies that reflect this
philosophy. However, members of black and other racialized communities,
particularly women and youths, feel excluded from co-operative partnerships with
the police and fear that racial equality is not on the community policing agenda.

Perceptions that the police discriminate against black and other racialized people are
widespread. A Commission survey shows that 74% of black, 54% of Chinese and
47% of white Metropolitan Toronto residents believe that the police do not treat
black people the same as white people. About nine in ten of those who perceive
differential treatment believe the police treat black people worse than white people,
and more than seven in ten think it occurs about half the time or more.

Perceptions of discrimination against Chinese people are less common but still
significant. In Metropolitan Toronto, 48% of black, 42% of Chinese and 24% of
white residents think the police do not treat Chinese people the same as white
people. Eight in ten of those who perceive differential treatment believe the police
treat Chinese people worse than white people, and more than half think such
differential treatment occurs about half the time or more.

How the police exercise their discretion to stop and question people contributes
significantly to lack of confidence in equal treatment. Black Metro residents (28%)
are much more likely than white (18%) or Chinese residents (15%) to report having
been stopped by the police in the previous two years. Black residents (17%) are also
more likely than white (8%) or Chinese (5%) residents to report multiple stops in
the previous two years.

Black men are particularly vulnerable to being stopped by the police. About 43% of
black male residents, but only 25% of white and 19% of Chinese male residents
report being stopped by the police in the previous two years. Significantly more
black men (29%) than white (12%) or Chinese (7%) report two or more police stops
in the previous two years.

The Commission makes nine major recommendations designed to improve the
governance and delivery of community policing in Ontario. These include local
community committees to establish policing objectives that refiect community needs,
action plans to secure equality in policing, guidelines for the exercise of police
discretion to stop and question people, and enhancing the complaints system to
promote systemic monitoring of police practices.

X Executive Summary

Systemic Responses To Police Shootings

Since 1978, 16 black civilians have been shot - 10 fatally - by on-duty police
officers in Ontario. The number of shootings and their circumstances have
convinced many black Ontarians that they are disproportionately vulnerable to police
violence. These concerns have spurred strong opinions about how the criminal
justice system should respond to police shootings of black and other racialized
people. One key demand is that any death or serious injury caused by the police be
closely scrutinized by an open and fair process designed to determine if the use of
force was justified. A crucial element of such a process is that it should explicitly
examine the contribution, if any, of systemic racism to the death or injury.

The criminal trial process deals only with strictly circumscribed issues in a strictly
circumscribed manner. Thus expectations that the criminal trials will provide a
forum for examination of systemic racism are unrealistic. Nevertheless, criminal
prosecutions should continue to be invoked to enhance accountability for improper
use of force.

Unlike a criminal trial, a coroner's inquest has a broader capacity to canvass the role
of systemic racism in police killings of black civilians. The Commission
recommends that legally trained persons serve as coroners for cases involving police
shootings and that these coroners rely exclusively on independent investigators and
special crown attorneys. The Commission also recommends that the Ontario Civilian
Commission on Police Services be provided with adequate resources to investigate
systemic racism in police shooting cases.

An Equality Strategy for Justice

Specific reforms need the support of a framework for securing racial equality in the
administration of justice. This framework has four key elements: anti-racism training
of justice personnel; employment of racialized persons in the administration of
justice; participation of racialized persons in the development of justice policies; and
monitoring of practices for evidence of racial inequality. The Commission makes
five broad recommendations to achieve these goals.

Looking Forward

The elimination of systemic racism from Ontario's criminal justice system requires
collective action from all of its members. Above all an aggressive commitment is
needed to secure racial equality. This will require integrating principles of inclusion,
responsiveness, and accountability into all aspects of the criminal justice system,
together with an overriding commitment to restraint when invoking judicial
sanctions. Only by working in partnership with the community can an accountable
system reduce the risk of inadvertent acceptance of racial inequality.

Executive Summary xi

monitoring of practices for evidence of racial inequality. The Commission makes
five broad recommendations to achieve these goals.

Looking Forward

The elimination of systemic racism from Ontario's criminal justice system requires
collective action from all of its members. Above all an aggressive commitment is
needed to secure racial equality. This will require integrating principles of inclusion,
responsiveness, and accountability into all aspects of the criminal justice system,
together with an overriding commitment to restraint when invoking judicial
sanctions. Only by working in partnership with the community can an accountable
system reduce the risk of inadvertent acceptance of racial inequality.

XI

Chapter 1
Introduction

The Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System was
estabhshed by the Govemment of Ontario, in October 1992, to inquire into and
make recommendations about the extent to which criminal justice practices,
procedures and policies reflect systemic racism. We were directed to concentrate on
urban centres in Ontario, to "utilize anti-black racism as a focal point for ...
analysis," to recognize 'the various experiences and vulnerabilities of all racial
minorit>' communities, including racial minority women" and to "pay particular
attention to the impact of systemic racism on racial minority youth.'""

As required by the Terms of Reference, the Commission prepared an interim report.
Racism Behind Bars, released in February, 1994, which dealt with some aspects of
the treatment of racial minority adults and youths in Ontario prisons. Other terms
direct the Commission to investigate: the exercise ofydiscretion at important
decision-making points, community policing policies and their implementation,
systemic responses to allegedly criminal conduct by justice officials in relation to
racial minority victims, preventing systemic racism through employment practices,
policy-making and participation of racial minorities in reform processes, and access
to justice services by racial minorities. This Report presents our findings and
recommendations .

The appointment of the Commission was recommended by Stephen Lewis in his
June 1992 report to the Premier of Ontario, which was a response to civil
disturbances in Metropolitan Toronto during May 1992. His report on experiences of
racism in this province reiterated what black and other racial minority Ontarians
have been saying for many years.'' They believe the criminal justice system treats
them worse than white people.

See Appendi.x A.

A 1983 federal govemment study concluded that perceptions of unfair treatment in the criminal justice system were
widespread among visible minority Canadians It stated, "Currently, one of the results of the latent and overt racism
in Canada is a distrust on the part of visible minorities regarding the legal apparatus. Police, lawyers, judges and
correctional stiifT are felt to be antagonistic towards visible minorities." Canada, Minister of State Multiculturalism,
Race Relations and the Law (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1983), p. 29.

1

2 Introduction

Over the past two decades, a lack of confidence in the Ontario criminal justice
system has been articulated particularly strongly by members of black communities.
Fears have been aroused by several police killings and woundings of black persons
since 1978, and sustained by the apparent inability of the system to examine how far
racism contributed to these tragedies. A sense of injustice has been intensified by
the lack of any systemic response to repeated experiences of arbitrary and
humiliating encounters with the police. Feelings of exclusion from the system have
been reinforced by under-representation of black and other racial minority
communities among justice officials. There are strongly held perceptions that black
and other racial minority people are often unfairly charged, unjustly denied bail,
unnecessarily prosecuted, wrongly convicted, harshly sentenced and mistreated in
prisons.

In addition to expressing their fears and concerns, black Ontarians have worked for
change. They have organized with members of other racial minority communities
and social justice groups to build community pressure for reforms, especially to
policing. These efforts have led to several major inquiries into police practices, the
most recent of which have focused on improving police relationships with racial
minority communities.' Until the establishment of this Commission, however, no
public inquiry has investigated concerns about systemic racism throughout the
criminal justice system in Ontario.

Similar developments have occurred in other jurisdictions, where an initial focus on
police treatment of racial minority or indigenous peoples has gradually expanded to
encompass practices in other parts of the complex criminal justice system. Canadian
examples include the Donald Marshall Inquiry (Nova Scotia), '^ the Cawsey Inquiry
(Alberta)' and the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry (Manitoba)." Internationally, the New
Zealand government has investigated "institutional racism" in the criminal justice
system in relation to Maori people' and government bodies in the United Kingdom
have sponsored research into the treatment of ethnic minorities in its courts and
prisons.^ Over the last ten years, courts across the United States have established
commissions to study racial and ethnic bias in their practices. ^

A common feature of these inquiries is an emphasis on "systemic" or "institutional"
racism as opposed to individual or overt racism. They have generally assumed that
the vast majority of professionals in the criminal justice system under examination
do not consciously intend to treat racial minority people worse than white people.
Nevertheless they have recognized that even a criminal justice system staffed with
well-intentioned professionals may operate in subtle and unfair ways that have
adverse impacts on racial minority and indigenous peoples. These inquiries have
therefore attempted to identify discriminatory practices with the object of
eliminating them.

This Report takes the same approach. The Commission assumed that persons with
explicitly hostile attitudes towards racial minority people would constitute no more

Introduction 3

than a tiny minority of professionals within the criminal justice system. Any attempt
to investigate them would not only fall outside our mandate, but also would fail to
identify the underiying reasons why members of racial minority communities report
lack of confidence in the administration of criminal justice.

As directed by the Terms of Reference we recognized that "throughout society and
its institutions patterns and practices develop which, although they may not be
intended to disadvantage any group, can have the effect of disadvantaging or
permitting discrimination against some segments of society." In so far as such
patterns and practices cause racial minority people to experience worse treatment
than white people a system may be said to reflect systemic racism. Thus the
Commission's task involves the identification of such patterns and practices and the
development of recommendations to eliminate them.

Equality is a fundamental right in Canada, guaranteed by the constitution and
protected by federal and provincial human rights codes. The Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms states that -

Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal
protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimuiation and, in particular,
without discrimination based on race ....**

The Ontario Human Rights Code declares that -

Every person has a right to equal treatment ... without discrimination because of

The right to equality places two key demands on the criminal justice system. First, it
must not perpetuate bias against members of groups that "have experienced arbitrary
exclusions or burdens based not on their actual individual capacities, but on
stereotypical characteristics ascribed to them because they are attributed to the group
of which the individuals are a member."'" Second, equality requires the criminal
justice system to adapt to diversity within the community it serves. A system that
provides only uniform treatment, in effect, treats people unequally by ignoring the
needs of those who do not fit into its mould.

A system that claims equality as a fundamental value lacks credibility if the public
is not convinced that the system is committed to achieving it. In democratic
societies, justice systems depend heavily on public confidence that they demonstrate
and affirm important social values. While lack of credibility does not prevent
criminal sanctions from being administered, it may cause them to be perceived as no
more than oppression. Identifying and responding to such perceptions should
therefore be among the highest priorities of the criminal justice system.

The Commission consulted extensively, as required by our mandate. We spoke with
representatives of every part of the criminal justice system and- community

4 Introduction

organizations that deal with justice issues. We held focus groups and structured
interviews on specific areas of concern with policy-makers, lawyers, justices of the
peace, police officers, members of the private security industry, interpreters,
community members, prisoners and correctional staff. We also conducted public
hearings and invited submissions from across the province. These consultations were
supplemented and enhanced by large-scale surveys of crown attorneys, defence
counsel and judges, and smaller surveys of other representatives of the justice
system. Residents of Metropolitan Toronto, Ontario's largest and most diverse city,
were also surveyed.

The Commission conducted research to determine whether the criminal justice
system produced different results for white and racial minority people. Our initial
studies, such as the analysis of prison admissions, attempted to determine whether
evidence consistent with differential treatment exists. Subsequent empirical studies,
such as the major studies of bail and sentencing, made detailed comparisons of the
exercise of discretion affecting black and white persons charged with the same
offences. Additional research included systematic analysis of files, review of laws,
policies and procedures, and research of Canadian and international literature related
to the treatment of racial minorities in criminal justice systems.

This Report is divided into three parts. The first four chapters, "Setting the Scene,"
introduce the key issues that dominated the Commission's inquiry. We make no
recommendations in this part, but simply present basic findings. Chapter 2 focuses
on perceptions of racial inequality in the criminal justice system. It documents
findings about the extent to which black, white and Chinese residents of
Metropolitan Toronto believe judges treat people unequally. It also presents the
responses from surveys of defence counsel, crown attorneys, general and provincial
division judges about systemic racism in the administration of justice.

Chapter 3 attempts to establish a common understanding of systemic racism. The
chapter spells out the elements of systemic racism, explores its historic roots and
discusses different ways of recognizing it in social institutions.

Chapter 4 examines adult and youth admissions to Ontario prisons. Imprisonment,
the harshest treatment that our criminal justice system imposes, is the major focus of
our research into the exercise of discretion. The chapter documents white and racial
minority representation in prison admissions and identifies recent and disturbing
trends.

The second part of the Report, "Examining Practices," (chapters 5 to 9), analyzes
existing practices at different stages of the process and presents specific
recommendations. Chapter 5 concerns imprisonment before trial and the bail system.
It presents a major Commission study comparing pre-trial detention for white and
black persons charged with the same offences and findings from several smaller
studies.

Introduction 5

Chapter 6 deals with "Charge Management," by which we mean the complex system
of decision-making about laying and reviewing charges, diversion of charges away
from court proceedings, "plea-bargaining," and criminal justice services for accused
persons and victim/witnesses. Chapter 7 reports on practices that cause people to
perceive or experience racial injustice in Ontario criminal courts. Chapter 8
examines sentencing discretion and documents findings from a major study of
sentences imposed on white and black persons charged with the same offences.
Chapter 9 returns to the theme of the Commission's Interim Report, the treatment of
racial minority prisoners.

The third part of this Report, "Moving Forward," focuses on broadly based,
systemic policies and programs to address racial inequality in order to enhance
confidence in the criminal justice system. Chapter 10 considers how a community
policing system might respond effectively to public concerns about systemic racism
in poHcing. Chapter 11 addresses community concerns about a series of police
shootings of black civilians in recent years. Chapter 12 makes recommendations that
apply to various phases of the administration of criminal justice.

The concluding chapter articulates a direction for the future. It sets out the four key
principles of action that underpin equality in the criminal justice system: restraint in
the use of the criminal law, inclusiveness, responsiveness and accountabihty.

6 Introduction

Endnotes

1.

Cardinal Gerald Emmett Carter, Police Report to the Civic Authorities of Metropolitan
Toronto and its Citizens (Toronto, [Catholic] Archdiocese of Toronto, 1979); Canadian
Association of Chiefs of Police, Proceedings of the Symposium on Policing in
Multicultural/Multiracial Urban Communities, Oct. 14-16, 1984, Vancouver (Ottawa:
Secretary of State and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police Research Foundation,
1984); Metro Toronto Task Force on Human Relations, Now is Not Too Late (Toronto:
Council of Metropolitan Toronto, 1977), chair, Walter Pitman; Province of Ontario, Race
Relations and Policing Task Force, Report of the Race Relations and Policing Task Force,
chair, Clare Lewis (Toronto: Task Force, 1989); Kathryn E. Asbury. Building Police
Community Partnerships with Culturally, Racially and Linguistically Diverse Populations in
Metropolitan Toronto (Toronto: Council on Race Relations and Policing, 1992); Province of
Ontario, Report of the Task Force on the Racial and Ethnic Implications of Police Hiring,
Training, Promotion and Career Development, chair, Reva Gerstein (Toronto: Ministry of
the Solicitor General, 1980); The Liaison Group on Law Enforcement and Race Relations,
Changing Attitudes for the Eighties, proceedings of a seminar on police/commimity relations
(Toronto: The Liaison Group, 1980); Multiculturalism and Citizenship Canada, Federal
Report on Policing in a Multicultural Society: October 1989 (Ottawa: Secretary of State for
Multiculturalism and Citizenship, 1989); Joseph R. Manyoni and Michael Petrimik, Race
Relations and Crime Prevention in Canadian Cities (Ottawa: Federation of Canadian
Municipalities, 1989).

Province of Nova Scotia, Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr. Prosecution
(Halifax: 1989)

Province of Alberta, Report of the Task Force on the Criminal Justice System and its
Impact on the Indian and Metis People of Alberta, chair, R.W. Cawsey ("Cawsey Report")
(Edmonton: March, 1991).

Province of Manitoba, Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba, Public Inquiry
into the Administration of Justice and Aboriginal People (Winnipeg: 1991).

New Zealand, Department of Justice, The Maori and the Criminal Justice System A New
Perspective: He Whaipaanga Hou (Wellington: Department of Justice, 1988).

Roger Hood, Race and Sentencing (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992); Ros Burnett and
Graham Farrell, Reported and Unreported Racial Incidents in Prisons, Occasional Paper No.
14, Centre for Criminological Research, University of Oxford, (Oxford: Centre for
Criminological Research, University of Oxford, 1994).

See, for example, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Commission to Study Racial and
Ethnic Bias in the Courts, Equal Justice: Eliminating the Barriers (Boston: Supreme Judicial
Court, 1994); California Judicial Council, Advisor>' Conunittee on Racial and Etlmic Bias in
the Courts, 1991-1992 Public Hearings on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the California State
Court System (San Francisco: Judicial Council, 1993), and Fairness in the California State
Courts: A Survey of the Public, Attorneys and Court Personnel (San Francisco: Judicial
Council, 1994); New York State Judicial Commission, Report of the New York State Judicial
Commission on Minorities (Albany: Judicial Commission, 1991); Florida Racial and Ethnic

9.

Introduction 7

Bias Commission, Report and Recommendations of the Florida Racial and Ethnic Bias
Commission (Florida Supreme Court, 1991); Michigan Supreme Court Task Force on
Racial/Etlmic Issues in tlie Courts, Final Report of the hfichigan Supreme Court Task Force
on Racial/Ethnic Issues in the Courts (Lansing: Department of Management and Budget,
1 989); New Jersey Supreme Court Task Force on Minority Concerns, Final Report, Jime
1992 (New Jersey: Supreme Court, 1992).

Canadian Charier of Rights and Freedoms, s. 15(1).

R.S.O. 1990, c.H-19, s. (1).

'°- R. V. CM. (1995) 98 C,C.C.(3d) 481 (Ont. C.A.) at 485 per Abella J. A.

PART I

Setting the Scene

Chapter 2 Racism in Justice: Perceptions

Chapter 3 Racism in Justice: Understanding

Systemic Racism

Chapter 4 Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions

Chapter 2

Racism in justice: Perceptions

Our justice system can survive, only so long as it continues to have
the confidence of the public it is designed to serve .... That
confidence, however, must be earned and not assumed ...'

- The Honourable Charles L. Dubin, Chief Justice of Ontario

Do Ontario residents think there is racism in the criminal justice system? The
Commission conducted consultations and surveys to answer this question. At the
most general level, we asked Ontarians to write or call us, and to share their views
at public forums held in urban centres throughout the province. We also hosted or
sponsored a large number of consultations with members of the public, lawyers,
police officers, justices of the peace, probation officers, government policy-makers,
prison workers and managers, members of Ontario's board of parole, academic
experts, equity workers and representatives of community organizations involved in
the criminal justice system.

These consultations produced rich and vital information about people's beliefs and
experiences. They alerted us to the complexities of our task, highlighted important
differences in perspectives and gave us a better understanding of problems and
possible solutions.

At the same time we realized that these methods, when used to research inequality
and discrimination, are often controversial. They may be criticized as too selective
or biased. They are said to result in over-representation of the views of those most
interested in the issues and under-representation of what the average person thinks.
Critics frequently dismiss their findings as anecdotal and unscientific. We do not
accept this dismissal of personal testimony, but we do recognize that this type of
research has limits.^

To avoid fruitless debates about how many people really think racism is a problem
in Ontario's criminal justice system, and because we recognize that it is useful to
look at this question from different research perspectives, we conducted and
commissioned several opinion surveys. Each deals with several themes, resulting in
data that will appear in subsequent chapters. Here we present findings about what

11

12 SETTING THE SCENE

people inside and outside the justice system think generally about racial and other
forms of discrimination in Ontario's criminal justice system.

First, we describe the survey results of Metro Toronto residents' views on whether
judges treat people equally. We focused on judges because of their special role in
criminal justice. To many people, judges are the criminal justice system. They are
taken to epitomize its values and to stand for the system's commitments to integrity
and impartiality. People have high expectations of judges and want to think well of
them:

The black accused sees the judge as standing between him and the oppressive
power of the state. He ... expects the judge to be neutral and impartial .... [and]
expects the trial judge to exercise discretion without fear or prejudice.^

Second, we present findings from the Commission's surveys of Ontario's trial
judges and criminal lawyers. We asked these legal professionals about specific
concerns that people had drawn to our attention, and also encouraged general
comment on the issues raised by our inquiry.

After briefly describing the roles of the different legal professionals, we report the
perceptions by those surveyed of differential treatment and systemic discrimination,
illustrated by selections from their direct comments. In presenting these comments,
our goals are to represent fairly what we were told and to provide opportunities for
lawyers and judges to speak directly to those they may see as their critics, as well as
to one another. Though we organize the comments under themes, the Commission
makes no attempt, at this stage, to analyze individual remarks. Later in the Report
we return to some of these perceptions in discussing specific aspects of the
administration of criminal justice.

Perceptions of racial inequality

In essence, our surveys of the general population and legal professionals show -

• widespread perceptions among black, Chinese and white Torontonians that
judges do not treat people equally.

• widespread perceptions among black, Chinese and white Torontonians that
judges discriminate on the basis of race.

• much more widespread perceptions among black than among white or Chinese
Torontonians that judges discriminate on a variety of grounds, and specifically
because of race.

substantial variation among justice professionals in their perceptions of racial
discrimination in Ontario's courts.

• strong resistance by some judges and lawyers to any suggestion of racial
discrimination in Ontario's criminal courts.

Racism in Justice: Perception 13

Metro Toronto residents' perceptions

To find out what members of the general pubHc think about discrimination in
Ontario's justice system, the Commission asi<ed an independent research body, Yortc
University's Institute for Social Research, to survey adults from three significant
groups in Metro Toronto. In addition to perceptions, the survey asked respondents
about their experiences with some aspects of the criminal justice system. Reference
will be made to these in subsequent chapters. The survey was carried out by
telephone interviews, in English or Chinese, with randomly selected individuals who
identified themselves as black, Chinese or white.'

The survey focuses on Metro Toronto rather than all of Ontario because of the high
concentration of racial minority people living there. Canadian census estimates for
1991 indicate that racial minority communities now comprise 29% of the population
of Metro Toronto, as compared to 14% of the population of Ontario as a whole.
Moreover, over half of Ontario's black (54%) and Chinese (61%) populations live
within Metro Toronto."

Black residents were selected because our Terms of Reference direct the
Commission to focus on anti-black racism and because black people are the largest
racial minority group in Ontario. Chinese residents were selected because they make
up the second-largest racial minority group in Ontario. White residents were selected
to provide a comparison of their opinions and experiences with those of members of
racial minorit>' groups.

Ideally, the Commission would have surveyed opinion among all racial minority
populations in Toronto, but resource limitations prevented us from pursuing a more
comprehensive project. In order to make statistically accurate generalizations, we
needed a minimum of 400 respondents from each group surveyed.^ Confronted with
the cost estimates of finding a sufficient number of respondents from smaller racial
minority communities, the Commission decided to restrict our study to three groups.

Interviews were completed with 417 black, 405 Chinese and 435 white residents (all
self-identified), for a total of 1,257 people. General demographic characteristics of
people in the sample - such as income, age and education - are consistent with the
most recent census data, which indicates that the sample is representative of black,
Chinese and white Metro Toronto residents. Since the survey randomly sampled
more than 400 people in each of the selected racial groups, the findings or estimates
for each group are said to be accurate, plus or minus five percent, 95 times in 100.

t

Random digit dialling was used to select the households, so that all members of the black, Chinese and white
communities in Metro Toronto had an equal chance of being chosen for interview.

Using data from the 1991 Canadian census, we estimated that it would take approximately 5,700 random telephone
calls to fmd 400 black people, and 5,000 calls to find 400 Chinese people. Locating the same number of South
Asian people would have required 6,700 calls, and identifying 400 VieUiamese respondents would have required
50,000 calls.

14 SETTING THE SCENE

In this chapter we present findings about perceptions of unequal treatment by
judges. This aspect of the survey addresses three general questions:

• How extensive are perceptions of unequal treatment in Ontario's criminal justice
system?

• Do these perceptions vary amongst racial minority and white communities?

• Are some racial minority communities perceived as more likely to receive
discriminatory treatment than others?

Although racism is the key subject of this Report, our Terms of Reference also
direct us to pay special attention to women and youth. Therefore, we also asked
about perceptions of differential treatment by judges because of age and gender. In
addition, because many judges and lawyers had suggested that income is the real
explanation for what might appear to be racial discrimination in the criminal justice
system, we asked about perceptions of differential treatment due to income.

What Metro Toronto residents think about judges

We asked the residents surveyed if they think, in general, that judges treat people in
the different comparison groups the same. Those who responded negatively were
then asked if they think one group is treated better or worse than another, and how
frequently they think differential treatment occurs. As a whole, our findings show
that a large proportion of the Metro Toronto population think Ontario's criminal
court judges do not treat everyone the same. For each comparison, at least one-
quarter of the people in the sample perceive differential treatment.

People who think judges do not treat people equally believe -

Young people are treated worse than older people.

Poor people are treated worse than wealthy people.

Men are treated worse than women.

Black people are treated worse than white people.

Chinese people are treated worse than white people.

People who do not speak English are treated worse than people who do speak
English.

When comparing judges' treatment of black people and white people -

• More than five in ten (52%) black respondents, three in ten (31%) Chinese
respondents and more than three in ten (36%) white respondents believe judges
do not treat black people the same as white people.

• Among those in each group who perceive differential treatment of black and
white people, at least eight in ten - 87% of black, 85% of Chinese and 80% of

Racism in Justice: Perception 15

white respondents - believe judges treat black people worse or much worse than
white people.

Figure 2-1 : Belief that Ontario criminal
court judges do not treat everyone the same

Young v. old ^H

■■

■■

^^^^Hsa

Poor V. wealthy ^H

■■

■1

^^H46

Men V. women ^^H

■■

■1

M"

Black V. white ^^H

■1

^H

■ 40

English v. non-English -^H

IH

■1

36

Chinese v. white ^H

■p

I28

10

20 30 40 50

Percent of respondents

60

When those who believe judges do not treat white and black people the same
were asked how frequently they think differential treatment occurs -

• 58% of black, 36% of Chinese and 43% of white respondents think judges
"often" treat black people differently than white people.

• Another 30% of black, 25% of Chinese and 28% of white respondents think
differential treatment of white and black people occurs "about half the time."

• 10% of black, 31% of Chinese and 26% of white respondents think differential
treatment of white and black people is rare (occurring "once in a while" or
"almost never").

When comparing judges' treatment of Chinese people and white people -

• Four in ten (40%) black respondents, close to three in ten (27%) Chinese
respondents and about two in ten (18%) white respondents believe judges do not
treat Chinese people the same as white people.

• Among those in each group who perceive differential treatment of Chinese and
white people, eight in ten - 81% of black, 80%) of Chinese and 79% of white

16 SETTING THE SCENE

respondents - believe judges treat Chinese people worse or much worse than
white people.

When those who believe judges do not treat white and Chinese people the same
were asked how frequently they think differential treatment occurs -

• 35% of black, 29% of Chinese and 28% of white respondents think judges
"often" treat Chinese people differently than white people.

• Another 39% of black, 31% of Chinese and 37% of white respondents think
differential treatment of white and Chinese people occurs "about half the time."

• 23% of black, 35% of Chinese and 33% of white respondents think differential
treatment of white and Chinese people is rare (occurring "once in a while" or
"almost never").

Figure 2-2: Belief that Ontario criminal court judges
do not treat everyone the same, by race of respondents

Young V. old

Poor V. wealthy

Men V. women

Black V. white

English v. non-English

Chinese v. white

_

■^^

IF

1

J 39

^■59

^

^^W

\ !31

^^

■ 54

^

flF"

■ «"

1 130

52

-»

!^

1 i31

]37

1

■ 40

64

■Black
□White
aChinese

r ' r

127

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Percent of respondents

Of the three groups in our sample, black residents are consistently more likely to
perceive differential treatment than either white or Chinese residents. As Figure 2-2
indicates, black residents are more likely than white or Chinese residents to perceive
discrimination because of age, sex, wealth and language.

Black residents are also more likely than white or Chinese residents to think
discrimination occurs frequently and results in a substantial difference in treatment.

Racism injustice: Perception 17

For example. 59% of black respondents, compared with 31% of Chinese and 46% of
white respondents, think judges do not treat poor people the same as wealthy people.
Of those who think Judges do not treat wealthy and poor people the same, 51% of
black respondents, compared with 26% of Chinese and 30% of white respondents,
think discrimination occurs "often"; 30% of black respondents but only 7% of
Chinese and 13% of white respondents said judges treat poor people "much worse"
than rich people.

Summary of the Metro Toronto residents survey

What should we make of these perceptions of inequality in the criminal justice
system? Generally, the survey shows that a significant proportion of Metro Toronto
residents do not believe the justice system in practice treats everjone equally.
Beliefs that judges discriminate on the basis of race are strongest among black
respondents, but significant proportions of the city's white and Chinese communities
share this view.

Second, the survey shows that respondents of all three groups are more likely to
perceive discrimination against black people than against Chinese people. This
finding suggests people perceive a hierarchy of discrimination.'

Third, the extent to which black Metro residents perceive bias based on age, wealth,
gender and language - as well as race - indicates a widespread lack of confidence
in the fairness of the criminal justice system within this community. These data
clearly show that a majority of black residents perceive racial bias in the criminal
justice system,^ and many members of Metro Toronto's black communities are also
convinced that other forms of bias exist.

Since these findings deal with perceptions, they do not measure racial differences in
the daily practices of the criminal justice system and their consequences. But
findings of opinion are no less important than data about differential outcomes.
What people think about the criminal justice system matters because the justice
system, more than many other institutions, depends on the confidence of the
community. This evidence, that many people lack confidence in the justice system,
is a reason for grave concern and a call for action.

This hierarchy is similar to the hierarchy of prejudice documented by many researchers. Studies in both Canada and
the United States show that white people generally view black people as less "acceptable" than members of other
ethnic groups. See, for example, Jeffrey G. Reitz, The Illusion of Difference: Realities of Ethnicity in Canada and
the United States (Toronto: CD Howe Institute, 1994).

The study confirms findings reported in Stephen Lewis' report to the Premier of Ontario (June 9, 1992), p. 3, and
implied in The Report of the Race Relations and Policing Task Force, Clare Lewis, chair (1989), pp. 12-14.

18 SETTING THE SCENE

Judges' and lawyers' perceptions

We separately surveyed crown attorneys, defence counsel and judges concerning
several issues, producing data that we present throughout the report. Here we focus
on what judges and lawyers think about racial discrimination in the criminal justice
system.

.ludges and lawyers have strong personal and professional interests in the
Commission's work. As actors in the system, they may feel that any problems we
find reflect on them personally. Few people enjoy public criticism of an institution
they identify with, however constructively such criticism is intended. Criticism that
centres on racism is particularly hard to accept. Atrocities such as the European
enslavement of African people, the Holocaust against European Jews, South Africa's
former policy of apartheid, the destruction of Aboriginal societies throughout the
world, and activities of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan commonly come to mind
when people think of racism.

The Commission's inquiry focuses on different expressions of racism - those that
may be unintended and that are implicit in practices rather than explicit in motives
(see Chapter 3). Even so, it would not be surprising if judges and lawyers find it
hard to accept that the criminal justice system may reflect systemic racism. In a
British context, Mr. Justice Henry Brooke made the point effectively when he said,

... [F]air-minded people are so very easily offended at the very slightest
suggestion that they have behaved in a way which other equally fair-minded
people might describe as racist.'

In addition, judges and lawyers have a strong interest in maintaining public
confidence in the system. That people believe the justice system to be fair and
impartial is essential to its integrity. As the recent report of the Martin Committee
notes, "without integrity, no system of justice, no matter how ingeniously designed
and lavishly funded, can function."^ Perceptions of discrimination and other forms of
unfairness, no less than racist practices - however unintended - are simply
incompatible with this notion of integrity. As a senior police official told the
Commission,

"While the justice system is wrapped up in procedure, substantive law and a
valued history of independence, the only true test of its integrity is its credibility
within the community it serves." (emphasis in original)

Judges and lawyers also have a particular interest in the Commission's work
because they will be held responsible for many of the problems we have found, and
will be expected to implement changes that may flow from our recommendations.
Finally, as people whose professional lives are spent in Ontario's courts, judges and
lawyers are well placed to identify some types of subtle practices that may be less
visible to those outside the system. By encouraging them to respond to our questions
frankly, privately and anonymously, we hoped to gain access to this rich source of
information.

Racism in Justice: Perception 19

For all these reasons the Commission felt it was important to understand how judges
and lawyers see the problems, to learn of any insights they might have about these
issues, and to find out how open to change they are.

What crown attorneys think

Crown attorneys are lawyers who act for the state in the criminal justice process.
Through the Ministry of the Attorney General, the Province of Ontario employs
more than 500 full-time crown attorneys and sometimes hires additional lawyers in
private practice to do this work for a daily fee. Ontario's full-time and part-time
crown attorneys deal with Criminal Code offences, while lawyers hired by the
federal government are responsible for the prosecution of drug charges and other
offences contained in federal laws apart from the Criminal Code.

As lawyers for the state, crown attorneys "are granted a broad and generous area of
unfettered discretion,"' which they exercise within a framework of legal rules and
Ministry policy. This discretion influences many aspects of the criminal prosecution
process. Crown attorneys may, for example, screen charges to decide which should
proceed to trial, seek to have an accused detained before trial or establish conditions
for release, discuss with defence counsel the pleas, facts and sentences to be jointly
presented in court, and suggest appropriate sentences for convicted persons.

When exercising their many discretionary powers, crown attorneys face complex and
conflicting demands. As "effective advocates" for "the active denunciation of
criminal wrongdoing,"* they must "prosecute vigorously those accused of crime"'
and "discharge [their] duties with industry, skill and vigour."'" By contrast, as
"public officer[s] engaged in the administration of justice,"" their role "excludes any
notion of winning and losing."'^ A crown attorney's duty "is not so much to obtain
a conviction as to assist the judge and the jury in ensuring that the fullest possible
justice is done. His [or her] conduct before the court must always be characterized
by moderation and impartiality." " It is difficult - some have suggested almost
impossible - for crown attorneys to fulfil both of these roles simultaneously. '''
Vigorous advocacy appears to conflict with impartialit)'. Though the expectations are
stated clearly, the implications for practice are professionally challenging.

We asked crown attorneys if they think that, "in general, racial minorities are treated
the same as white people" in Ontario's criminal court system.*

• The vast majority - three in four (74%) - agree, or strongly agree, that the
courts generally treat white and racial minority people the same.

• Only one in eight (13%) disagrees.

Survey questionnaires were mailed to 483 provincial crown attorneys. After extracting one incomplete response, a
sample size of 193 was left, a 40 percent response rate. Our Technical Volume contatns further details and a copy of
the questionnaire. See Appendix B.

20 SETTING THE SCENE

We also asked crown attorneys about the extent of such discrimination.

• Most - three in five (61%) - thinly "discrimination exists, but only in a few
areas and only with certain individuals."

• A minority - about one in five (18%) - think "there is no discrimination against
racial minorities in the Ontario criminal court system."

• Fewer than one in ten (7%) think "discrimination against racial minorities is
widespread, but subtle and hard to detect."

• Only 1% think "discrimination against racial minorities is widespread and easy
to observe."

Many crown attorneys responded to our invitation to offer their personal comments
on racism in the criminal justice system. As might be expected from the answers
summarized above, most said that, in general, racism is not a problem in Ontario's
courts. These crown attorneys wrote about -

• the good faith, education and professionalism of individuals who work for
justice:

"Duty and honour are two concepts I sincerely believe are not foreign to the
performance of one's function as a professional involved in our criminal justice
system, whether you are a judge, counsel, support staff or police officer. Each
of these positions are populated in the 1990s by the best-educated people ever.
Therefore I find it hard to believe that while incidents of racism may occur ...
they are anything more than rare."

"My impression of the criminal justice system is that it is not systemically
racist, based upon my understanding of the term. Neither is the justice system
rife with racists. By and large, it would appear that most of the participants in
the criminal justice system are individuals committed to the fair and impartial
application of the criminal law."

"Racism in the justice system is far less than in the general population. This is
perhaps attributable to the fact that by and large the system is populated by
intelligent and well-educated individuals. I am not aware of a single situation [in
which] a minority accused was dealt with unfairly by the system simply because
he/she was a member of that minority group."

"While I think it is a given that most people in society and therefore in the
criminal justice system have certain biases, I think that only in a fraction of
those cases are those biases actually reflected in the treatment of individuals. In
fact, I think most officers of the courts probably bend over backwards not to let
any biases they may have negatively influence their conduct, and are conscious
that it appear that justice is being done."

"While some individuals in the criminal justice system no doubt harbour racist
views to some extent, I have never seen an accused, witness or complainant

Racism in Justice: Perception 21

receive less courteous treatment or a less fair hearing solely because he or she is
a member of a racial minority."

"There are very few racists in the justice system. Most judges, crowns and
defence lawyers work very hard to do a good job. The level of dedication is
extraordinarily high [among] all involved. Mistakes are made, but for the most
part all persons involved in the system are remarkably decent, caring people."

the lack of opportunity for racism to influence key decisions in the
treatment of accused persons:

"Many plea negotiations take place without the crown being aware of the
accused's race or place of origin. Such issues are irrelevant. Crowns making
these decisions will often never ... see the accused."

"When decisions are made in the bail court, there is simply no time at all to
consider anything other than the offence and the offender's antecedents. The
colour of a person's skin is never a factor."

"Prosecutorial decisions are almost exclusively based on 'paper' that reveals no
racial make-up."

the influence of factors other than race itself, particularly class or poverty,
on the treatment of accused persons:

"Criminal activity is strongly correlated to class, and visible minorities,
particularly first-generation blacks, are largely poor in relation to the rest of the
population. They are accordingly over-represented in the criminal courts. Before
concluding that there is racism in the court system, it is very important to
compare your minority group stat[istics] with a similarly situated white group in
terms of all socio-economic data, family background and criminal antecedents."

"Generally, persons of low socio-economic background have greater problems in
the system than those of higher socio-economic background. People who have
been in Canada longer, speak English better, have family, jobs [or] property are
all treated better than those who do not. However, new Canadians with family
and community supports and jobs are also well treated .... New immigrants who
commit criminal offences are not well looked-upon. White and other long-term
welfare recipients with [criminal] records are also not well treated. There is bias
in the system. It is not always racially motivated."

"While I do not have the benefit of statistical data, and my observation and
views are based upon my own experience and information obtained fi-om others,
it would appear that racial minority accused are not discriminated against on the
basis of race but because they are disadvantaged, as whites are, when it comes
to issues like bail by the fact that they perhaps more frequently lack family
support, strong community ties and stable employment. These disadvantages
would appear not to be race-based, but rather a function of the length of time
the accused has been resident in the community and his or her employability."

22 SETTING THE SCENE

'■Race has rarely if ever been an issue in courtrooms .... The true difficuhies our
middle-class courts have are in dealing with or understanding poverty and non-
Canadian cultures. The colour of skin is not an issue, or this misdefmes the
issue."

Some crown attorneys who think there is no racism in the justice system expressed
strong disagreement with the Commission's mandate and work. They maintained
that people who believe there is s>stemic racism in the criminal justice process -

• do not understand the justice system:

"The idea that there is widespread racism in the administration of justice is
patently false. These ideas result from an ill-informed, politically correct
minority who, I believe, have no experience in the criminal justice system."

"Whining about supposed discrimination is a waste of time. The suggestion of
discrimination is unfounded."

• are making "excuses":

"Since time immemorial, persons accused of crime have utilized whatever
means necessary to divert attention from the charges they are facing, and in
these days of 'political correctness,' bureaucrats have allowed, nay encouraged,
the view of the forest to be artificially obscured by the trees."

"The accusation of 'racism' is often used as the last refuge of the scoundrel."

"It is far too easy in our society to cry 'racism' and not address the real reason
for which one is in trouble with the law."

• are following a misguided or illegitimate political agenda:

"You are creating racism by falsely accusing people of being racist. Racial
minorities should receive training in Canadianism. You are creating expectations
that people who come to Canada have a right to their own piece of their old
country in Canada. This creates and perpetuates racism."

"From what I have observed, I do not see that racism is as great a problem in
the justice system as [do] the media and some individuals and self-serving
interest groups."

"Those who are the most vocal in the criticism of the judicial system are the
ones most likely to ensure that what racism there is will continue and perhaps
increase. These are the persons whose living and standing in the community are
dependent on finding racism everywhere, for without this spotlight they are
nothing."

• have so intimidated judges that the more serious problem today is
discrimination against white persons:

Racism in Justice: Perception 23

"In our jurisdiction there is 'reverse' discrimination ... A white person will get a
jail sentence for an offence and a racial minority will not, because the court is
afraid if the person is jailed the court will appear racist."

Other crown attorneys, however, are convinced that racism is a genuine problem in
the justice system. They talked about -

• the subtlety of racism:

"Overt examples of racism in the criminal justice system are rare. It is the subtle
examples that are rampant."

"With respect to the trial process itself, I have found that racist elements tend to
be very subtle."

"The only large group of racial minority clients we have here is [from] an
Indian Reserve. The witnesses are not abused, but they are treated with
condescension - they are on average less likely to be believed."

"There are racist comments by police officers ... [but these are] not in my
experience limited to race. Comments about women or gay people also come up
.... The defence, crowns and court personnel are too aware to voice similar
views, but give messages more subtly."

• the individuals and offlcials responsible for racism in the justice system:

"Regional directors of crown attorneys set the tone for the office. Wliere they
fail to establish that racism in whatever form (comments, behaviour, exercise of
discretion) will not be tolerated, you see an increase in an atmosphere of
intolerance."

"Judicial conduct needs to be better scrutinized. Where judges or [justices of the
peace] make inappropriate comments, etc., the matter should be dealt with. At
present, although certain individuals are notorious, nothing is done by the
system. By tolerating their behaviour it is condoned, continues and increases."

"The legal profession and the criminal justice system take their lead from the
judges, who rule the courtroom. At both the provincial and general division
levels, but particularly the provincial division, the bench is saturated with elitist,
racist and sexist individuals .... Accused persons, victims and witnesses are daily
subjected to humiliation and degradation at the hands of such judges .... Until
the courtroom becomes an impartial arena, no amount of education or
infringement of crown discretion will address the existing racist and sexist
biases within the system."

"As a woman and a member of a religious minority ... I have experienced some
very glaring examples of overt racism and sexism from judges .... But these
individuals are the minority - most people are very aware of the special needs
of minority persons and are not racist. In particular, I have found that the police

24 SETTING THE SCENE

go out of their way to treat [minority] accused persons fairly in most cases.
Most racist behaviour, unfortunately, stems from the bench."

"It is my general impression that the alleged racist bias of police officers is in
fact exaggerated. It is my general impression that the alleged racist bias of
certain defence counsel is underrated. By far the most likely of all court 'people'
to utter racist comments are a minority of vocal defence counsel. The Law
Societ>' should be sensitized to this problem."

"1 have heard defence counsel go on in an extremely racist fashion, and it
disgusts me because these people are their clients."

What defence counsel think

Defence counsel are independent professionals who act for persons charged with
criminal offences. Their main discretionary powers include negotiations with crown
attorneys about pleas, facts and sentences; development of trial strategy; and
gathering and presenting information about the accused that might influence
sentencing.

In exercising these discretions, defence counsel are guided by the law and practice,
clients" wishes, and their professional obligations to serve the client and the court
simultaneously. Their duty to the client is -

to raise fearlessly every issue, advance every argument, and ask every question,
however distasteful, which the lawyer thinks will help the client's case; and to
endeavour to obtain for the client the benefit of every remedy and defence
authorized by the law.'"

As these words suggest, defence counsel are largely free, and expected, to advocate
vigorously on behalf of their clients. But as lawyers, they are also "officers of the
court concerned with the administration of justice." In this role, the lawyer is said to
have -

... an overriding duty to the court, to the standards of [the] profession and to the
public, which may and often does conflict with [the] client's wishes or with
what the client thinks are his [or her] personal interests.'*

We asked defence counsel if they think that, "in general. Black and other Racial
minorities are treated the same as White people [in] the court system in Ontario."*

• Five in ten (50%) defence counsel agree that black and other racial minorities
are treated the same as white people;

• Four in ten (40%) defence counsel disagree.

We reached defence counsel through the Criminal L^awyers Association, a voluntary' association of defence lawyers.
At our request the Association labelled envelopes and mailed questionnaires to SCO lawyers on its membership list.
Extracting five incomplete responses left a sample size of 343, a response rate of about 43 percent. See our
Technical Volume for further details and a copy of the questionnaire.

Racism in Justice: Perception 25

This question, like many others, prompted different patterns of responses from
lawyers with substantial racial minority clienteles (40 percent or more of their
clients) compared with those from lawyers with a smaller proportion of racial
minority clients.

• Five in ten (52%) lawyers with larger racial minority clienteles think that black
and other racial minority people are not treated the same as white people,
compared with three in ten (34%) defence counsel with smaller racial minority
clienteles.

• Four in ten (38%) lawyers with larger racial minority clienteles think black and
other racial minority people are treated the same as white people, compared with
six in ten (56%) defence counsel with smaller racial minority clienteles.

Like the crown attorneys who responded, many defence counsel used the survey as
an opportunity to offer written comments. Drawing on their experience of the
administration of criminal justice, some said they do not see any racism in
Ontario's courts:

"I have never witnessed any racially motivated differences in how discretion is
exercised. All have depended on the facts and passed [sic] records - not the
individual."

"In 1 7 years of practice representing members of both the majority and ...
minorities as you have defined them, I have never once seen any racially
motivated exercise of discretion by either the crown's office or court personnel."

"My experience has been that accused persons regardless of the[ir] race, ethnic
origin or background are treated fairly and equally by all in the administration
of justice."

"Complaints of racial minorities that they have received discriminatory
treatment, in my personal experience, have inevitably been the product of
dissatisfaction with being caught and suffering the penalty - just another reason
to use to cause the justice system to 'back off their case a touch or completely

"The courts today are sensitive to the needs of all accused and particularly to
the perceptions the minorities have of their treatment. I ... see little evidence to
indicate minorities are subjected to prejudice, bias or slurs of any kind. The
system ought to be proud of this general appearance of fairness and respect for
all who come before the courts."

"So far as judicial proceedings are concerned, I believe there is no evidence of
systemic racism in the Ontario criminal justice system."

"This Commission is virtually a waste of time and money, as I perceive there to
be no racism ethnically in the judicial process. The only obvious prejudice that
exists is against white Anglo-Saxon males."

26 SETTING THE SCENE

"My observation: you are investigating a non-existent problem. My prediction:
you will recommend an elaborate set of measures to deal with the [non-existent]
problem."

Other lawyers clearly had different experiences with the administration of criminal
justice. They talked about -

• subtle biases against racial minority clients:

"The system - from police through to crowns - has targeted minorities with a
broad brush. More difficulty arises for defence counsel in presenting the 'human
being' to them when the client is a member of a racial minority."

"One never discusses racism but- it is clear that issues such as credibility, guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt, and innocent till proven guilty become unclear if
your client is black or yellow. The problem is not only police- and crown-
related."

"The problem is not that judges are overtly discourteous to non-white
participants. The problem is that they are less likely to believe them. Again the
relevant factors are intangible: the empathy and identification factors are
lacking."

"Very little of the real racism is blatant. Racial minorities know they are treated
unfairly. But the unfair treatment is not consistent throughout the province."

• the exercise of discretion:

"The ubiquitous exercise of so many discretions - which permeate the system
from arrest through incarceration - permit the free play of racial stereotyping
and prejudice in so subtle a manner as to make it elusive .... Ontarians must be
persuaded of the subtle forms of racism as opposed to thinking of racism as
gross and exaggerated displays by extremists."

"There is a bias with some judges against racial minorities when it comes to
judicial interim release [bail]. They take that long look at the accused in the
dock and, in the final analysis, it comes down to an [exercise] of discretion
based on submissions and intuition. Too often, 1 feel, intuition is a cover for
institutionalized discrimination. I have even heard judges give voice to that
discrimination in a way which was supposed to be humorous."

"Assumptions are made by police, crowns and judges that certain racial
minorities are more likely to be guilty of certain categories of offences, and
discretion is exercised or restricted accordingly."

Racism in Justice: Perception 27

stereotyping of persons from racial and ethnic minority communities:

"Comments often flow from crowns and police officers re various communities
and stereotypes - e.g., Jamaicans, Portuguese."

"Judges are more likely to stereotype minority accused in the questions,
comments and findings of fact than to make overt comments, although they do
that as well."

racist conduct behind closed doors:

"Pressure placed on defence counsel in back-room dealings provides cover for
racist attitudes of the judiciary. If more were done in open court, either a judge
would have less opportunity to give effect to the racism or it would become
apparent on the record."

"I am often appalled that judges, crowns, police officers and even defence
counsel assume they are speaking to someone who agrees with their racist point
of view."

"Police attitudes are the worst. Many officers with racist attitudes have learned
over the last few years to 'conceal' this unless among people they consider to
share similar views. It's very instructive to share a coffee with a few officers
and to pretend to be 'one of the boys' and then listen to the racial invectives
spewing forth. It's harder to detect now, but the mindset has changed very
little."

the responsibilities of police officers, judges and to a lesser extent crown
attorneys and defence counsel for racism in the criminal justice system:

"In many cases I have had, I am sure the police would not have charged the
person if the person was white. It seems to me that the police are more willing
to resolve disputes (assaults, theft, threatening) [without] charges being laid if
the person is white. I often think my clients should enter a guilty plea to being
black, as that is really why they are in court. To me, it is the racism of the
police in exercising their discretion which must be examined. Giving blacks
criminal records seems to be the goal of too many police officers."

"The biggest problem with racial discrimination in the criminal justice system
lies in the original laying of the charge - i.e., the police. They seem to pride
themselves on being experts about the 'way of life' of particular races and areas
of the city. They typically do not use discretion in laying charges, particularly
with Jamaicans, Afro-Americans and Portuguese."

"Any racism that exists in the courts is, in my view, mostly related to the
manner in which police investigate and arrest members of the community, the
charges they lay and the police recommendations for the detention of the
accused and/or bail conditions to be requested if accused is released. More and
more racial minority accused advise counsel they have been hassled and at times
abused for no reason, they have been searched illegally, [or] they have been

28 SETTING THE SCENE

denied their rights to retain and instruct counsel without delay; and a sizeable
number insist that the police have planted drugs on them. I realize that some
allegations of maltreatment by police could well be fabricated, but the
allegations occur in patterns with the same officers, and [are] so similar in detail
that it is difficult to discount the majority of these claims."

"In general the police treat my minority clients differently. The police single out
minority accused. The police lay charges. The police suggest conditions upon
release that are impossible for an accused to meet, or [recommend] no release.
The police fabricate circumstances on the synopsis' to aggravate a possible
release situation. The police show up at more minority bail hearings to give
'valuable' evidence. The same officers attend at pre-trials and often hinder
possible resolution. More of my visible minority clients are beaten by the
police. A large number of my visible minority young offenders and their
families are less educated and less aware of their rights. The police take
advantage of this ignorance."

"If there is significant discrimination against minorities, it is worst against
blacks. Police have a perception of the black community as a criminal sub-
culture ... Mercenary, high-volume legal aid defence counsel are even less likely
to be concerned for the rights of black clients if those rights get in the way of
expediency and a fast buck."

"Judges seem to me the worst offenders. Perhaps part of it is that, burdened
with a multi-trial list, they have no patience or courtesy to spare for those who
have difficulty making themselves understood. While many (crowns and judges)
are pretty even-handed with respect to complainants, there is less tolerance for
minority defence (as opposed to crown) witnesses and far less for minority
accused. Maybe this is just part of the general contempt for the accused and
his/her witness that I find almost commonplace in the courtroom .... (regardless
of race)."

"Most judges do not see colour, but some do. Get rid of the bigots! Better
appointments, based on merit not race, etc., is the way to go. Good judges treat
each person the same."

"Generally speaking, I do not see any racist behaviours by judges and court
staff On the other hand, I do see racist attitudes and behaviour by police on a
routine basis. Judges often become irritated with West Indian witnesses because
the judges are unable to understand the accent. It would be a good idea to
introduce programs to educate justice system personnel to West Indian culture ...
Police probably reflect racist attitudes in society .... The police seem to be the
main problem with racist behaviour and attitudes."

Several defence lawyers perceived systemic biases in the justice system and the
vulnerability of racial minority accused to these biases, but said disadvantageous
treatment is mostly or really due to reasons other than race:

The synopsis is a written summary of the case and the baclcground of the accused, prepared by the police
Immediately after arrest. It is intended to assist the crown attorney who will conduct the bail hearing.

Racism in Justice: Perception 29

"I think racism plays only a small part ... The greater problem is class. Those on
welfare, [the] unemployed, [the] underemployed or [those] on government
benefits fare poorly."

"Discretion seems largely to depend on economic factors - poor accused,
whether or not they are minorities, seem to be treated alike - increased police
suspicion and surveillance, more charges, less discretion. Middle-class or high-
income minorities tend to be treated as well as middle-class whites. Discretion
and much of the other aspects correlate more closely with economic factors than
race, although some may confuse hostility towards the former for hostility to the
latter."

"The differences seem to me very much 'systemic' - that white accused are able
to show more often than racial minorities those things (wealth, employment,
drug rehabilitation, family support, community support, etc.) which impel
crowns, police and judges to extend bail or sentencing leniency. Class biases
overlap with racial biases."

"I do not think the issue is the bias of the individuals who work in the system.
The bias [is] in the system .... In other words, a white or black from the
'projects' gets a bad shake in court, not because he is white or black, but
because he is from the projects."

"There is a strong tendency for crowns and police to develop racial/ethnic
animosities. I suppose the nature of the job attracts certain authority types and
that the pressure leads to frustration. The end result is that lower S.E.S. [socio-
economic status] groups are condescended towards. Wealthy, white anglos are
better treated. Poor, uneducated immigrants are at the lowest end. I think race is
not as big a factor as income level and language skills."

"Poor people are ... disproportionately black, and poor people are often before
the criminal courts. The reasons involve cultural issues as well as some level of
systemic racism, both in our society and in the police. I see systemic racism less
in our courts than elsewhere in our society."

"Class and income play a part in determining who comes before the courts. That
should be the subject of consideration. One cannot point to a percentage of
'minority' accused and say this is racism. The issue is more complex. Social
structure must be addressed."

What judges think

Ontario's criminal trial judges are former lawyers called to a provincial bar for at
least ten years before their appointments. As judges they may be members of the
General Division or the Provincial Division of the Ontario Court of Justice. Judges
who sit in the General Division are federally appointed, while appointments to the
Provincial Division are Ontario's responsibility.

Judges may participate in pre-trial meetings with crown attorneys and defence
lawyers at which agreements are sometimes made about which issues will be
contested in court. They are responsible for ensuring that trials are fair, for

30 SETTING THE SCENE

convicting or acquitting accused persons, and sentencing people convicted of
criminal offences. In fulfilling these roles they exercise discretion.

Although these general functions are the same for all trial judges, there are
important differences in the roles of general and provincial division judges in
Ontario's criminal justice system. For example, only provincial division judges
conduct preliminary inquiries. They also conduct trials without juries, while general
division judges may conduct trials with or without juries. In addition, provincial
division judges conduct trials of youths aged 12 to 17 charged with any criminal
offence. By contrast, general division judges try only youths aged over 14 charged
with very serious offences, and only if a judge has decided that the accused should
be tried as an adult.

We asked judges if they think "in general racial minorities are treated the same as
white people in Ontario's court system."'

• The majority of provincial division judges - about three in five (64%) - and
general division judges - three in four (72%) - agree that the courts generally
treat white and racial minority people the same.

• One in five (19%) provincial division judges and one in ten (10%) general
division judges disagree.

We also asked judges if they think "systemic discrimination is a serious problem in
[Ontario's] criminal justice system."

• One in four (25%) provincial division judges, but fewer than one in ten (7%)
general division judges, agree that systemic discrimination is a serious problem
in the criminal justice system.

• About five in ten (45%) provincial division judges and three in four (76%)
general division judges disagree.

These questions, like many others in the survey, prompted different patterns of
responses from provincial division judges appointed before and after important
changes were made to the appointment procedures. The new process, intended to
eliminate any suggestion of patronage:'^ includes people who are not lawyers, judges
or politicians in selecting new judges; affirms the merit principle as the main
qualification for appointment; introduces clear, public criteria for evaluating
candidates; and considers diversity as a factor. Using as our dividing point 1989, the
year in which the changes were introduced, we found -

The survey was mailed to every general division judge on a mailing list given to the Commission by the office of
the Chief Justice - 253 names in total. Responses were received from 137, a response rate of 54 percent. Of the 265
surveys mailed to provi.icial division judges, on a mailing list given to the Cotrmission by the office of the Chief
Judge, 121 were returned - about 46 percent. Our Technical Volume contains further details and a copy of the
questionnaire. See Appendix B.

Racism in Justice: Perception 31

Judges appointed under the new system are much more Hkely than their longer-
serving colleagues to think there are racial differences in how people are treated
in the courts. One in three (33%) of the more recent appointments, compared
with one in ten (10%) of the longer-serving judges, disagree that white and
racial minority people are treated the same.

Judges appointed under the new system are much more likely to think there is
systemic racism in the criminal justice system than their longer-serving
colleagues. Close to two in five (37%) recently appointed judges, but fewer than
one in five (16%) longer-serving judges, agree that "systemic discrimination is a
serious problem in the criminal justice system."

Judges' comments raise similar themes to those of crown attorneys and defence
counsel. The dominant view, especially among general division judges, is that
concerns about racism or any other form of discrimination in Ontario's courts have
no basis in fact. Judges said -

• there is no evidence of discrimination in the courts:

"Counsel, prosecutors [and] court personnel tend to treat users of the justice
system alike. 1 have seen no evidence of unequal treatment over a 33-year
career as a lawyer and a judge."

"I strongly disagree with those who allege there is systemic discrimination and
racism in the court system in Ontario. There will always be anecdotal statements
to this effect, but the hard evidence is exactly to the contrary. My extensive
experience is that judges, lawyers and court personnel treat all people coming
into conflict with the law in the same way."

"My experience is that the court is colour-blind. For the most part I can
honestly say that minority parties have been treated no differently than any
other by judges, juries, courts staff, lawyers, etc."

"In 21 years as a judge, I have seen no racial discrimination in the courts nor in
the verdict[s] of juries .... My experience, and that of judges I have talked to, is
that racial discrimination does not exist in the courts."

"I have seen absolutely no evidence of any distinction between the way in
which what you call 'racial minority' persons are treated, and the treatment
given to what you call 'whites'."

racial minority individuals tend to receive better treatment than white
individuals in Ontario's courts:

"99% of judges, counsel and court staff bend over backwards to be fair and not
to appear racist. [They] often give non-whites more courtesy and consideration
than whites."

32 SETTING THE SCENE

"The fact is that certain racial minorities are given consideration that takes into
account, in a way beneficial to the [racial minority] accused, the disadvantage
generally experienced by that group."

"The individual needs of individuals are being addressed, and frequently I see
greater efforts by court staff and crowns to accommodate the needs of those
who don't appear to understand the process than would be made for an 'average'
person. This means frequently that poorer or less-skilled or more recently
arrived persons get better treatment, and frequently the beneficiaries are
members of a 'racial minority.' If it didn't work that way in my Court, I'd make
it work that way!"

"My general experience is that ... both judges and juries give members of racial
minorities leniency as opposed to similarly placed accused from non-racial
minority segments of the population. In effect they over-compensate for the
perception that they may be prejudiced."

"Most courts now are trying to be very careful not to be biased - possibly even
leaning over the other way, which is equally unfair."

"In the area where I preside, it is relatively rare to see an Oriental or black
person in court. When they are present, the court staff and counsel appear to me
to be more accommodating to them than to white persons."

allegations of racism are excuses for criminality:

"Too many ethnic groups cry racism! And totally ignore the fact that their
particular group is in fact committing a disproportionate number of serious
crimes in a particular area."

"The perception of unfair or unequal treatment of racial minorities is due to the
disproportionate numbers who are brought into the system. The factors which
bring them before the system are economic, social and cultural. Deal with the
root causes and stop pointing the finger of blame at the people who are
seriously trying to enforce the law .... Our courts attempt to serve with
scrupulous fairness."

allegations of racism - and the work of this Commission - reflect a
misguided political agenda, rather than a genuine problem in Ontario's
justice system:

"I do not agree that minority persons are badly treated in the provincial courts.
As part of their defence 'posture,' minority persons frequently attempt to skew
the case into racial lines. The socialist government has unfortunately encouraged
this stratagem. The fault is not so much with the minority witnesses so much as
it is in [members of] the left-liberal establishment [who] to perpetuate their own
importance as 'activists' encourage the very idea of racial inequality in the
courtroom. The vast majority of players in the system bend over backwards to
be fair and just to minorities as a matter of patriotism and personal decency."

Racism in Justice: Perception 33

"This entire exercise is driven by an overreaction to a small segment of the
population who would complain about the conditions in heaven. Not to say we
should be complacent or over self-congratulatory; but come on - is it [so] bad
that we should throw so much tax money away on yet another commission,
study and survey? Wake up and smell the coffee!"

"The very existence of this Commission, its mandate and terms of reference,
promotes rather than discourages racism .... Any recommendations which
require us to look at and deal with apparent difference[s] will further promote
racism."

"! anticipate that the Commission, driven by the force of political correctness,
will find that racism is rampant in the justice system .... a conclusion that will
not be based on hard evidence but, like Stephen Lewis' letter, on anecdote and
unsubstantiated complaint. Failing all else the Commission will find invisible
racism - visible only to the Commissioners."

By contrast, some judges said racism and other foims of discrimination are a reality
in the administration of justice:

"If it's not discrimination against colour, it's discrimination against the poor, the
underprivileged and the weak. We go to great lengths to try to justify our
positions, yet we all suffer from the same common denominator - prejudice -
and we're not prepared, as a society, to do anything about it."

"1 am of the view that there exists systemic racism in the Ontario court system.
While many might disagree, awareness programs for those involved in the
administration of justice would likely help eliminate the unconscious
discrimination. I'm sure many of us, from court personnel to judge, discriminate
without being aware of it. Stereotyping is a strong influence we surely suffer
without knowing. To a certain extent the more we are exposed to these
minorities, the more we can understand."

"My experience has been that we are all - whites, blacks. Oriental, etc. - racist
to some degree. We are all more comfortable, other things being equal, with
people who are like ourselves. I witnessed black and Oriental (Asian) racism
when 1 worked in an African country when I was younger. I have certainly seen
white racism in its more negative forms. Consequently any training which helps
to sensitize us to the 'other' and his or her fear and biases or perceived biases
cannot but help us to avoid misconceptions and problems in dealing with races
different from our own. Talking about these problems is a good thing even if it
is sometimes unpleasant."

"If most of the faces you see are black, there is a temptation to think there is a
problem with that community. This would explain the attitude of some judges
and crowns. The problem is the police. The police are homogeneous, closed
[and] resistant to change ... Not all police are racist but a substantial portion are.
There are lots of influences on judges and prosecutors to reduce racist attitudes

34 SETTING THE SCENE

Summary of judges' and lawyers' perceptions

These findings make two important points. First, tliere is substantial variation among
justice professionals in their perceptions of racial discrimination in Ontario's
criminal courts. Significant proportions of defence lawyers and recently appointed
judges of the provincial division think the criminal justice system does not treat
white and racial minority accused the same. However, only about one in ten crown
attorneys, general division judges and provincial division judges appointed before
1989 share this view.

Figure 2-3: Percent of judges and lawyers who think

white and racial minority accused are not treated the

same in Ontario Criminal courts

General div. judges

^

10

P. judges: pre-1 989

Crown attorneys -
P. judges: post-1989
Def: < 40% rm clients
Def: > 40% rm clients
C

^M

10

^^^^|l3

^H^^HJI^^^^^I 33

^HHHH^^^^^I 34

^^^^^HH^^^^^^^^^^^H 52

10 20 30 40 50 60

Percent of respondents

P. judges: pre-1 989 - provincial division judges, pre-1 989 appointments

P. judges: post-1989 - provincial division judges, post-1989 appointments

Def: > 40% rm clients - defence counsel with more tfian 40 percent racial minority clientele

That judges and lawyers by no means speak with one voice shows that these justice
professionals are not a homogeneous group. Though they may have a common
interest in how the justice system is perceived, they have different views about the
extent to which racial discrimination permeates Ontario's criminal justice system
today.

Second, as the quotations from the surveys illustrate, many justice professionals
reject - some flatly - even the possibility that systemic racism might be a genuine
problem in Ontario's criminal courts. For some, the rejection of racial bias is but a
part of their belief that the criminal justice system treats everyone the same. Others,
however, acknowledge differential treatment based on class or poverty even as they
reject the suggestion of racial discrimination.

Racism in Justice: Perception 35

Many of the survey comments suggest that class or income bias, though it may be
regretted, is inherent in Canadian society and may be transmitted into the court
system through the workings of other social institutions, such as the education
system and labour markets. Class or income bias is not perceived to be caused by or
the fault of justice professionals, nor is it necessarily influenced by dislike of poor
people. Since the existence of class or income bias is not thought to reflect badly on
individual judges or lawyers, it may be easier for justice professionals to
acknowledge this problem without feeling personally responsible for it.

By contrast, many of the survey comments tend to treat any suggestion of racial bias
in the court system as an attack on the personal integrity of the respondents. This
response suggests that racial bias is understood to mean deliberately unfair
decisions, made by specific individuals and motivated by negative judgments about
races. There seems to be an attitude that somehow the legal system is immune from
the consequences of racial inequality in Canadian society. Even when judges and
lawyers are confident that their own conduct in the daily administration of criminal
justice is beyond reproach, they seem to feel implicated when the integrity of the
justice process is challenged. This narrow view - that any racial bias in the courts
must reflect deliberate wrongdoing - has led to indignant denials of a general social
or cultural problem that is endemic in Canadian society.

It is important to understand adverse consequences of racism even when they do not
result from unfair motives. These more subtle forms of racism require greater effort
to identify and eliminate. Co-operation and initiative from those most directly
involved in the criminal justice system will be crucial to achieving the perception as
well as the reality of true equality in Ontario's criminal justice system.

Conclusion

The Commission's findings show the importance of restoring public confidence in
the criminal justice system's commitment to equality. We must not rest content that
many residents of Ontario's largest and most racially diverse city appear to agree
with a participant at one of the Commission's public forums who said:

"We have two systems of justice within the criminal justice system. One is for
the majority group in our society - people who have money, connections, etc. -
and the other is for the racial minorities."

Much criticism has been levelled against some members of Ontario's black
communities for articulating concerns about racism within the system. These
individuals have been dismissed as unrepresentative and described as speaking only
for themselves. The Commission's findings show that a large proportion of black
Torontonians - who comprise just over half of all black Ontarians - appear to have
little confidence that the criminal justice system delivers justice equally. Many white
and Chinese Torontonians share this view.

36 SETTING THE SCENE

The Commission's findings also show that justice system officials are divided over
whether the criminal justice system delivers equal justice to residents of Ontario.
The findings suggest that a substantial proportion of all respondents feel that
discrimination is common.

These findings should not be dismissed as attacks on the criminal justice system by
those who do not understand it. They are a call to respond to the concerns raised,
and to use available resources to improve and deliver what is now seen as only a
promise of equality.

Racism in Justice: Perception 37

Endnotes

Hon. Charles L. Dubin, Chief Justice of Ontario, "The Future of Our Profession and of Our
Justice System," The Law Society Gazette vol. 28 (1994), pp. 203^.

Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, sixth edition (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing
Company, 1992).

^ Castor F. Williams, "Sentencing - Blacks in Nova Scotia," prepared for the Nova Scotia
Judicial Education Seminar, Feb. 20-22, 1992 (on file), pp. 7-8.

Statistics Canada 1991 census, special tabulation for the Commission (manuscript on file).

' Mr. Justice Henry Brooke, "The Administration of Justice in a Multicultural Society," Kapila
Lecture by the chaimian of the Ethnic Minorities Advisory Committee, Judicial Studies
Board, United Kingdom, Nov. 18, 1993 (manuscript on file).

'' Province of Ontario, Attorney General's Advisory Committee on Charge Screening,
Disclosure and Resolution Discussions, Report, chair G.A. Martin, {"Martin Report)
(Toronto: Queen's Printer for Ontario, 1993), p. 26.

'' John Clement, former Attorney General of Ontario, in a 1975 speech, quoted in Phillip C.
Stenning, Appearing for the Crown (Cowansville, Que.: Brown Legal Publications Inc.,
1986), p. 311.

^ Martin Report (note 6), p. 32.

Province of Nova Scotia, Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr. Prosecution,
Findings and Recommendations, report vol. 1 (Halifax: 1989), p. 241.

'" R. V. Scnnon and Mizrahi (1980) 52 C.C.C. (2d) 276 at 289 (Ont. C.A.) per Zuber J.A., cited
in Martin Report (note 5), p. 3 1 .

" Ibid.

'^ Boucher v. The Queen (1959) 1 10 C.C.C. 263, per Rand J. at 270.

'^ Ibid., per Taschereau J. at 267 (translation).

''' J. A. Sutherland, "The Role of Crown Counsel: Advocate or Minister of Justice?" (LL.M.
thesis. University of Toronto, 1990).

'^ Commentary to Rule 10 of the Law Society of Upper Canada, Professional Conduct

Handbook (Toronto: Law Society, 1978), para. 2, adapted from Rondel v. Worsley [1969] 1
AC 191 at 227-228, cited in Martin Report, p. 30.

Rondel v. Worsley, ibid.

" Attorney General Ian Scott, Ontario Legislature Debates 6835 (Dec 15, 1988).

Chapter 3

Racism in Justice: Understanding

Systemic Racism

This chapter introduces the understanding of systemic racism on which the
Commission bases its Report. We spell out the elements of systemic racism in some
detail because our consultations and submissions revealed widespread confusion
among Ontarians about this fundamental aspect of our mandate, and also because of
the denial and defensiveness evident in some responses to Commission surveys (see
Chapter 2). Our definition of systemic racism attempts to establish a common
understanding of the nature of the issues being addressed.

In order to do justice to the complexities of systemic racism, our definition relies on
terms that may be unfamiliar to many people. We use these terms because they
allow us to describe systemic racism in a comprehensive and precise manner.

By systemic racism we mean the social production of racial inequality in decisions
about people and in the treatment they receive. Racial inequality is neither natural
nor inherent in humanity. On the contrary, it is the result of a society's arrangement
of economic, cultural and political life. It is produced by the combination of:

• social constructions of races as real, different and unequal (racialization);

• the norms, processes and service delivery of a social system (structure), and

• the actions and decisions of people who work for social systems (personnel).

The discussion begins with racialization, the driving force of racial inequality. Next
we show how the elements of operating norms, decision-making processes and ways
of delivering services may incorporate racialization in systemic practices and may
support, transmit or tolerate it. We also examine the role of the personnel within this
structure and how they affect its processes. Finally, we briefly describe some ways
of recognizing systemic racism.

39

40 SETTING THE SCENE

Racialization: the driving force of racial inequality

Racialization is the process by which societies construct races as real, different and
unequal in ways that matter to economic, political and social life. ' It involves -

selecting some human characteristics as meaningful signs of racial difference;
sorting people into races on the basis of variations in these characteristics;

• attributing personality traits, behaviours and social characteristics to people
classified as members of particular races; and

• acting as if race indicates socially significant differences among people.

Through these processes of selection, sorting, attribution and action, racialization
creates, sustains and promotes the idea of race - humanity's "most dangerous
myth."^ Races are a product of, or created by, racialization. Without racialization
they would not exist.

Race is a myth because it is impossible to sort humanity into distinct racial groups
using any scientific standard. ^ Variations among human beings do not form regular
patterns that allow objective classification of people into different races. Whatever
criteria are used to assign people to a racial category - such as skin colour, hair
form, nose shape or height - the evidence shows, conclusively, that similarities
among many people placed in different racial groups are greater than among
members of the same groups. Moreover, supposed indications of race neither cause
a person to behave in predictable ways, nor do they reveal anything about the
person's character. The very idea of race is a myth, both because racial categories
have no basis in fact and because these socially constructed categories do not
explain skills, talents, personalities or behaviours of individuals.

To recognize that race is a myth is not to deny the power of racialization. Even
though science cannot offer any coherent basis for dividing humanity into races, the
systems adopted by societies may reflect or incorporate racialized judgments.
Sometimes racialization is explicit, official and supported by law. The former
apartheid regime in South Africa, the regulation of Aboriginal peoples by Canada's

Indian Act, the laws of Nazi
Germany, the wartime internment
of Japanese Canadians, and the
denial of civil rights to black
Americans in the southern United
States are all examples in recent
history of openly racialized
systems.

This minute from a 1951 meeting of a committee
responsible for approving immigration applications
to Canada shows hew officials may make fine
distinctions based on inherited physical
characteristics;

[T]he Committee noted that while from her
photograph ... [she] has characteristics
of the negroid group, available evidence
indicates her negro origin steins solely
from her great -grandmother. The Committee
approved . . . admission.

(Departmental Advisory Committee on Irani grati on. Minutes.
36th meeting. Aug. 20. 1951. cited in Satzewich. Racism and
Foreign Labour (note 1).)

Racialization also can be active
where it is not part of the law and
even where laws attempt to

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 41

The following quotdlions illustrate hew
Canadians in the 19th century used place of
origin to label some Europeans as undesirable:

The United States are welcome to the
Hungarians. Poles. Italians and others
of that class: they are. as a rule,
wretchedly poor, make very poor
settlers and bring with them many of
the vices and socialistic tendencies
which have caused such trouble to
their hosts already. Renewed efforts
should ... be made by our government
to induce more of the hardy German and
Norwegian races to remain here.

(cited in Berger.
147.)

The Sense of Power: (note 18) p.

... [T]he Irish papists come in swarms
on the whole to do us evil . . . .[The
Irish] increase taxation for the poor.
They render necessary a strong police.

(George Brown, editor. The Globe. 1866. cited in
Robert F. Harney, ed.. Gathering Place: Peoples and
Neighbourhoods of Toronto. 1834-1945 (Toronto:
Mult'cultjral History Society of Ontario. 1985).)

prohibit it. Racialization can still
have powerful effects where it is only
an implicit an(i unofficial feature of
the system.''

Where racialization is implicit and
unofficial, it is revealecd by what
people do and how institutions
function. Routine decisions and
actions may indicate that people
perceive races as real and take racial
labels seriously. Their conduct may
reveal assumptions that people they
place in the same racial category
share experiences, attributes and
characteristics. They may treat race as
a meaningful sign of difference, a
reason for their decisions or an
explanation of inequalities in their
world. Racialization is active in any

social system in which people act and institutions operate as if race represents real

and significant differences among some human beings.

Signs of racial difference

Racialization, like any other process that relies on classification, needs a sign of
difference to sort people into categories. Notions of "origin" do this work, setting
the boundaries between different races and defining group membership. Signs of
origin indicate who should be categorized into which racial group.

Inherited physical characteristics are the main signs of origin used to determine
racial group membership. But some aspects of physical appearance are not used.
Hair texture is relevant, but foot size is not. Skin colour matters, but not eye colour.
The shape of the nose counts, but not the size of the ears.'

Inherited physical characteristics are not the only signs of origin. Ethnicity, culture
and place of birth are also used to create racial groups. Traditionally, these signs of
origin have been used to racialize people of European origins or appearance. But
such judgments about which ethnicities, cultures and places of birth count as signs
of racial difference and which ones indicate sameness have varied over time and in
different regions. While some of these racial categories remain socially significant,
others are at present inconsequential.

Ethnicity, culture and place of birth are taking on new roles in modem racialization
processes. Pseudo-scientific and racist theories that claim inherited physical
characteristics account for character, capacity and behaviour have been completely
discredited;* accordingly, racialization by appearance is much less acceptable in

42 SETTING THE SCENE

public or in polite society than before. This shift in what people feel able to say
does not stop them racializing others, but it does affect their vocabulary. Hence, less
is said about skin colour, hair texture and shape of noses, but more is said about
ethnicity, place of birth and culture as signs of origin.

[A Canadian immigration official says] Canadians uncompromisingly reject a
race-based immigration policy, but are clearly imcomfortable with the shift from
European to Tliird World source coimtries .... A belief tliat Canada is accepting
too many immigrants from ethnic minorities appears to be hardening.'

All racialized societies use signs of origin to indicate racial difference, but they do
not always formally classify everyone into racial groups. The "Negro schools laws"
of Ontario and Nova Scotia, for example, created separate education systems for
black children. "* But the laws did not refer to the signs of origin of other children or
attempt to classify them into distinct racial groups. From the perspective of these
laws, other Canadian children were not racialized.

Such uneven uses of signs of origin are particularly common in societies where
racialization is mainly implicit and unofficial. In these societies the cultural
traditions of the dominant group set the standards from which other racial categories
are distinguished. Members of the dominant group often do not think of themselves
in racial terms; they apply racial labels only to people who are "different."' For
example, many white Canadians do not ordinarily think of themselves as members
of the white race, but they identify black, Asian, South Asian and Aboriginal
Canadians as racially different from an unstated norm. In other words, whiteness is
invisible but the signs of origin of other races are not.

Meanings of racial difference

Why are racial differences significant? Racialization attaches meanings to racial
differences stemming from the historical origins of the racialization and the purposes
for which it is used. These meanings of racial difference, like the signs of racial
difference, may change over time and vary from place to place. But the judgments
and assumptions tend to take the same form whatever the era or place, and much of
their historical content lives on in contemporary social systems.

Judgments and assumptions about racial differences generally take the form of
hierarchical or graded comparisons. In Canada these meanings are based on
perceived relationships between the skills, characters and capacities of white people
and those of people defined as racially different. Sometimes the comparison is
explicit. For example, a 1989 study found that one in six of "elite" Canadians and
almost two in six Canadians in general believe that "races are naturally unequal." '°
Clearly, this question required respondents to compare racial groups and at least
implicitly suggested ranking them according to the perceived capacities of their
members.

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 43

Often, however, the comparison is unstated. But even then, the meaning of racial
difference involves judgments about the characteristics or qualities of differing
groups. Thus white people who do not think of themselves as belonging to a racial
group may judge others as different by reference to a standard that is implicitly
white.

The dominant meanings of racial differences in Canada arise from two important
systems: imperialism and immigration. In both systems these meanings have
functioned to rationalize unequal treatment of human beings.

European empires of the 16th and 17th centuries used racial difference to justify
exploitation of the people, lands and resources of other societies. * In this process the
elites of England, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands defined members of
the societies they exploited as inferior, savage and strange, and themselves as
superior, civilized and normal. They made these meanings socially significant by
organizing societies they colonized on the basis of these meanings. The imperial
powers also used these meanings to justify enslaving African peoples and
transporting them to the Americas.

As well as justifying economic exploitation, these meanings of racial difference
were incorporated into European imperial societies through religion (predominantly
Christianity), education, culture and politics. By imposing elements of their domestic
systems on the societies they colonized, the European imperial powers spread the
meanings of racial difference.

Today, these meanings are well established in many societies, including Canada.
They may result in racial inequality in social systems and be expressed in racist
incidents. As recently as 1989 a federal government report concluded that "racism
and racial discrimination are facts of life in Canada," after finding -

... clear evidence that a significant number of Canadians have racist attitudes or,
as one poll concluded, 'are racist in their hearts." Such attitudes have resulted in
actions ranging from name-calling and threatening gestures to writing hate
propaganda directed at a specific racial group, damagmg property or physical
violence."

In 1993 the Ontaiio Court of Appeal, after an extensive review of the evidence,
concluded that "racism, and in particular, anti-black racism is a part of our
community's psyche."'^

First Nations people of Canada experienced the full force of imperial colonization.
The elites of Britain and France seized their lands, defined them as inferior and
made them adapt what were called their "uncivilized" cultural practices and

Other imperial traditions have also constnicted people as diileienl to justify exploitation, but the European imperial
tradition is the most relevant to the meanings of racial differences in Canada.

44 SETTING THE SCENE

"inefficient" economic arrangements to
European standards.'"

Britain and France also brought Afiican
slaves to Canada (but slavery was never
practiced on a large scale in this
country, for economic reasons).''' Some
white Canadians protested against
slavery, campaigned vigorously for its
abolition and assisted American slaves
who escaped from the United States.'^
However, many others believed that
African people were inferior to
European people."' This belief continued
to be expressed publicly after the United
States officially ended slavery, by
Canadians who thought black Americans
caused problems for white Americans
and who were determined that Canada
should be a white country. For example,
a 1906 editorial in Saturday Night
magazine said -

This will only be a white
man's country if we make it
so. It was once ranged by red
men, but we took it from
them, and it is ours, if we can
keep it .... Tlie Chinese ... are
an inferior race of men like
the Africans who were
brought over in thousands to
the southem states and now
constitute a serious and
permanent danger to the
neighbouring republic. '^

Comparing Canada to the United States,
Sir George Robert Parkin, the author of
school texts and principal of Upper
Canada College in the early 20th
century, stated, more simply: "What a
mercy it is to be free from this frightfixl
black problem."'*

These comments illustrate Canadian judgments
of some racialized people as incompatible
with Canadian society:

[T]he native of India is not a
person suited to this country ...
accustomed as many of them are to
the conditions of a tropical
climate, and possessing manners and
customs so unlike our own people,
their inability to readily adapt
themselves to surroundings entirely
different could not do other than
entail an amount of privation and
suffering which renders a
discontinuance of such immigration
most desirable in the interests of
the Indians themselves.

(Mackenzie King. House of Commons. Sessional Paper
No. 360. 1908:7-8. cited in Bolaria and Li. RdCidl
Oppressjon in Canada (note 13). p. 171.)

As long as immigration from the
Orient was confined to a few odd
Chinamen a year, who were content to
do work distasteful to a white man.
no particular objections were
raised. It was when the Japanese and
Hindus started pouring in ... by the
thousands that the trouble arose
.... The Orientals cannot be
assimilated.

(J.S. Woodsworth. social reformer, leader of the Co-
operative Commonwealth Federation [predecessor of
the New Democratic Party] and author in Strangers
t/ithin Our Gates (1909: Toronto: University of
Toronto Press. 1972). pp. 142-155.)

It has been our longstanding
practice to deal favourably with
British subjects of the white race
from the British West Indies .... On
the other hand, apart from limited
domestic movement, no encouragement
is given to persons of coloured race

('Memo' from the Director. Immigration Branch, to
Deputy Minister. Department of Citizenship and
Immigration. March 10. 1958. cited in Satzewich.
Racism and Foreign Labour (note 1). p. 126.)

[Canadians] ... are telling the
Commons immigration committee ...
that if there have to be immigrants,
they should be trained immigrants
from Europe. That's not racism. Mr.
Oostrom said. Rather. Canadians are
merely seeking 'people who can
adjust to this climate. '

("Phone-Ins. Polls Bristle With Anti -Immigrant
Feelings." The Globe and Mail. Toronto. March 6.
1987. quoting John Oostrom. a Progressive
Conservative member of the House of Commons

Immigration systems, like imperial systems, may judge racial groups as inferior or
superior, normal or strange, civilized or savage. The Saturday Night editorial quoted
above, for example, was mostly a forthright response to a proposal to increase the

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 45

number of Chinese men immigrating. As well as describing Chinese people as "an
inferior race," the magazine said, "We can get Chinese labour (but) these people
will not possess value as citizens, and when once fastened to the country will retard
its development."

These immigration systems use race to measure compatibility and fit with the
receiving society. Thus an important meaning of racial difference in these systems is
the perceived capacity to belong.

This meaning of racial difference is important in Canada. Since the middle of the
19th century, it has shaped the recruitment of labour from other countries that
Canada has needed to grow and prosper. Some racialized people have been excluded
because of their origins and others permitted entry only if they took undesirable and
low-paid jobs,'^

Emphasis on compatibility with (white) Canadian identity for the purposes of
immigration has in turn influenced the meanings attached to racial differences
among residents of Canada. Many white-skinned people are not racialized as white
or ethnic, or as members of a different culture. Their signs of origin are invisible
because they are defined by their skin colour as "Canadian." TTiese Canadians have
the comfort of leading their everyday lives without being faced with expressed or
implicit questions about their origins or whether they belong in this country.

By contrast, constructions of other Canadians as "foreign" and judgments that they
are incompatible persist long after migration to this country. Descendants of early
black, Asian and South Asian settlers, whose only home is Canada, may find they
are considered as outsiders, treated as strangers and presumed not to understand
"Canadian ways."*

How racialization produces racial inequality

Racialization may produce racial inequality in social systems, which are organized
processes for delivering services. Institutions such as the police, courts and prisons
are systems, as are community organizations, govemments and corporations. These
systems may be divided into smaller systems and they may combine to form larger
ones. Each Ontario prison, for example, is a sub-system of the entire prison system,
which in turn is part of the criminal justice system. From a broader perspective,
every organized process in a society is a sub-system of the societal system and may
also be part of a global system.

Systems consist of people, their attitudes and beliefs (personnel); values, procedures,
policies and informal rules (operating norms); ways of making decisions; and
methods of delivering services. These elements continually affect one another over

See Chapter 7 for examples in the criminal courts.

46 SETTING THE SCENE

time and together comprise a perceived whole. The totality of a system's norms and
processes and the actions of its personnel comprises its systemic practices.

Racialization in any element of a system or sub-system has the capacity to instill
racialization into systemic practices, that is, to support or transmit racialization
within the system. Unless constant vigilance is maintained, elements of a system
may also spread unnoticed racialization into its practices. Furthermore, racialization
in any system or sub-system may be transmitted to any others that are related.

How people instill racialization into systems

People instill racialization into social systems when they act as if races are real,
different and unequal. They may act in this way because they are personally hostile
towards members of racialized groups and the system does not stop them from
expressing this hostility. Manifestations of such hostilit>' are commonly described as
overt racism.

People who are not personally hostile to racialized people may also act as if races
are real, different and unequal. They may do so because such conduct brings
rewards, makes life easier, helps them fit in with their colleagues, or is expedient.
They also may be simply unaware that they are acting in this manner. If their
conduct explicitly relies on racial categories, it may also be called overt racism. If
not, it may be known as covert, subtle or implicit racism. WTiile these categories
may be confusing, identifying the underlying basis for racist conduct is necessary to
be able to select appropriate remedies.

Findings presented in the Commission's Interim Report^" illustrate different
underlying reasons for the same racist conduct. We found that many correctional
officers routinely use racist language in dealing with black or other racialized
prisoners and colleagues. For some officers, this abusive language clearly manifests
intense hostility toward black or other racialized people.

Other correctional workers who use racist language in dealing with black or other
racialized prisoners do not appear to be driven by personal hostility. Some of them
told the Commission about their own conduct and that of their colleagues, and were
troubled by it. Yet they continued to act in this way. Why?

It appears that some correctional officers use racially abusive language because
"everyone else does it," or to prove themselves. For others, racially abusing
prisoners is a means of demonstrating contempt for criminals. Finally, officers may
use racial abuse to intimidate and control; in effect, to demonstrate their power over
prisoners.

Some people deny that these uses of racially abusive language are racist. They say
that the abusive language is not motivated by hatred or animosity toward black or
other racialized people; or that correctional officers sometimes also insult white
prisoners, using general terms of abuse or by referring to personal characteristics of

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 47

these prisoners. Lack of racist motive and an apparent "equality of insults" are thus
taken to prove the absence of racism.

But these arguments prove nothing of the sort. First, as the Supreme Court of
Canada has stated, impact - not motive or intent - is the proper test of unequal
treatment. Speaking specifically of discrimination prohibited by the Ontario Human
Rights Code, Mr. Justice William Mclntyre explained why the test for unequal
treatment should not be intent or motive:

... [To] hold that intent is a required element of discrimination under tlie Code
would seem to me to place a virtually insuperable barrier in the way of a
complainant seeking a remedy. It would be exU-emely difficult in most
circumstances to prove motive, and motive would be easy to cloak in the
formation of rules which, though imposing equal standards, could create ...
injustice and discrimination ...^'

Second, insulting white prisoners to show toughness, because they are criminals or
to demonstrate power may indicate that some correctional officers are equally
unprofessional to all under their control. But it does not mean that racially abusive
language used for these purposes is the same as the insults directed at non-racialized
prisoners. Racially abusive language adds another dimension, arising from the
history and contemporary reality of racialization. When white people in positions of
power insult black or other racialized individuals in racially abusive terms, their
words reflect society's judgments about the superiority of white people and
inferiority of others. Racist language has this effect whether or not it is intended,
because these judgments are built into the meaning of the words. Consequently,
racial abuse both insults the targeted prisoner and expresses a history of general
contempt for the prisoner's racial group.

Correctional officers who use racially abusive language obviously transmit
racialization into prison systems, resulting in overtly racist incidents. As we have
shown, however, these incidents may have a variety of causes. Personal hostility
towards black or other racialized people may be one factor, lack of professionalism
another, and desire for control a third. Each results in racialization in a system,
recognizable by explicitly racist incidents.

However, identifying the different factors at work is critical to finding appropriate
remedies. If, for example, correctional officers use racially abusive language because
they lack professionalism or specific skills for managing prisoners, then teaching
them about other cultures or that racist language is wrong is unlikely to change their
behaviour. They may already know it is wrong. More promising remedies would be
careful monitoring of officers' conduct, rewards for those who speak out against
racial abuse, and skills development among officers who engage in it. By contrast,
officers who use abusive language because "everyone else does it" may well benefit
fi-om anti-racism training that demonstrates the harm such behaviour causes.

48 SETTING THE SCENE

Officers who feel strong animosity toward black or other racialized people may or
may not be capable of changing their behaviour. Officers capable of changing would
likely benefit from remedial training, but the content and structure of an anti-racism
program effective for them is likely quite different from one intended for the
thoughtlessly unprofessional.

In some cases people may transmit racialization into a system because they are
uninformed or thoughtless, or have consciously learned or subconsciously absorbed
stereotypes of racial difference. A black justice of the peace reported a shocking
example of such a stereotypical judgment by his mentor, a white justice of the
peace:

We worked together pretty well and he was a fine teacher. One day, we were
having lunch and he told me I was the first Black person he had ever worked
with .... [H]e learned a lot fi-om me, he said, because before he got to know me,
he always thought that all Blacks were no good and now he knows better and is
more careful. "I don't assume tliey are all criminals now," [he told me].^^

Mr. Justice Henry Brooke of Britain calls the injustices that may result from lack of
awareness, thoughtlessness and stereotypical assumptions the "three great risks of
ignorance":

The risk of creating offence and hurt through ignorance of important things
which are very personal to people. The risk of doing injustice, of getting things
badly wrong, through ignorance of important things about people's cultures, or
about body language, or about the danger of other communications breakdowns.
And the risk of doing injustice through ignorance of the potency of sub-
conscious discrimination.^'

An incident during a 1993 trial of a well-known member of Toronto's black
communities illustrates these risks of ignorance. Among many black people
attending the trial, some wore head coverings according to their cultural and
spiritual traditions. Immediately af^er entering the courtroom, the trial judge directed
a black man and a black woman sitting in the audience to remove their head
coverings or leave the courtroom. He refused to hear submissions from them or
from counsel in relation to the religious nature of the head coverings. Neither the
crown attorney nor defence counsel had suggested that the head coverings would
interfere with the faimess of the trial. Nor did anyone suggest that these spectators
had been or would be disruptive. The two spectators left the courtroom, deeply
insulted by the judge's behaviour.*

A few days later, without hearing any evidence on the cultural or religious
significance of the head coverings, and without allowing the excluded spectators to
make submissions, the judge released written reasons for his order. ^^ He said:

The two spectators visited Jie Commission immediately after leaving the courtroom and told us of the anger and
distress the judge's actions had caused them.

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 49

Body cloUiing must not, in the view of the judge, be likely to attract attention
away from proceedings. Nor should head coverings ....

In the British. European, Chinese, Japanese and many oUier Asian cultures and
probably other group traditions, uncovering one's head is a particular mark of
respect It is not necessarily religious.

Flamboyance is often a hallmark of those who insist on their right to avoid Uiis
tradition. Tliat is, by definition, intrusive.

Some head coverings, by their shape, colour and design, are obvious and easily
recognizable as signalling to Uie eye an adherent of a well-established and
recognizable race, culture, national or religious community; one of those
communities which are clearly within tlie purview of the Charter

There are, as well, many self-proclaimed and unrecognized forms of religion or
cuhs claiming to be religious which have occurred ... throughout history. They
come and go. Often, to attract attention and new adherents, bizarre, intrusive or
simply impolite attire is worn. These religions may exist ... but the Charter does
not guarantee some right to enter and remain in a courtroom where the result is
disruptive. A public trial does not include offensive or intrusive costumes.

These reasons suggest that the judge neither understood nor respected the cultural
and reUgious traditions of the two spectators. This ignorance of something important
and personal to the black spectators caused offence, hurt and embarrassment. It also
resulted m unequal treatment because these spectators were excluded from the
courtroom unless they removed their head coverings, while the judge indicated that
other people wearing head coverings would be allowed to remain in court.

The judge might well have made the same order and said similar things about white
spectators. But for a white judge to characterize the clothing of white spectators as
"offensive or intrusive costumes" and as "bizarre, intrusive or simply impolite attire"
does not have the same effect as so characterizing clothing reflectnig cultural
traditions of black spectators. When white authority figures make such remarks
about an expression of black persons' traditions, it suggests the system they
represent lacks respect for those traditions or is ignorant of them. Because ignorance
and disrespect are common features of historical and contemporary racialization,
such remarks are understood as judgments about the strangeness and inferiority of
the black persons' "self-proclaimed and unrecognized" culture.

In addition to illustrating the risks of ignorance, this example shows how people
may transmit racialization into systems in very specific ways. This judge clearly did
not consider all racialized people as different from, and unworthy of the same
respect as, white people. Indeed, he notes that "Chinese, Japanese and many other
Asian cultures" have the same tradition as what he calls "British" and "European"
cultures. Thus, on this issue, Asian people are not constructed as racially different.
(Though the judge does not mention those black cultures that treat uncovering one's
head as a "mark of respect," he would presumably also view them as normal and

50 SETTING THE SCENE

reasonable.) All cultures in which the wearing of head coverings is a mark of
respect are constructed as different, but only some are judged unacceptable or
bizarre. By treating the black spectators' head coverings as examples of strangeness,
the judge introduced a highly specific form of racialization into the system he
represents.

How decision-making inserts racialization into systems

Decision-making inserts racialization into systems when the standards or criteria for
making decisions reflect or permit bias against racialized people. Standards and
criteria are part of a system's operating norms and may be formal and explicit in
laws, policies and procedures. Or they may be informal, arising from accepted ways
of doing things. Informal standards are particularly significant to decision-makers
when the formal norms grant them considerable discretion.

Racialized bias in decision-making results in racial inequality in treatment and
outcomes. These inequalities may in turn promote racialization in the system where
bias occurs and in related systems. This occurs when people see the disparities as
proof that races are real, different and unequal - rather than as a product of the
system's decision-making.

Inherent bias in standards

Standards may be inherently biased against racialized people. This direct bias exists
where standards treat something explicitly linked to a person's origin as relevant to
the decision. It may be inherent in formal operating norms, for example, when
immigration systems demand higher skills of black or other racialized people who
apply for entry than of non-racialized people. ^^ Bias may also be inherent in
informal criteria. For example, the law gives judges broad discretion over what
happens in court. In the incident described above, the judge applied an informal
standard that the head coverings of some cultural traditions, but not those of others,
are permitted in courtrooms.

Standards may also be inherently biased if they use apparentiy neutral criteria that
penalize racialized people. The discrimination that results from such standards is
generally called indirect. A good example is the height and weight standards once
used in selecting poUce officers. Until the 1980s these standards prevented many
people of Asian origin - and most women of any origin - from working as police
officers. Racial origin or sex was not specified in the employment qualifications, but
the standard excluded large numbers of people who were otherwise qualified.

Another example, presented in more detail in Chapter 5, is the use of employment
status as a factor in bail decisions. Black accused in the Commission's study were
more likely than white accused to be unemployed,* and more likely to be imprisoned

This is not surprising. There is considerable evidence of anti-black discrimination in labour systems, and census data
for 1991 show generally tnat black people are more likely to be unemployed than people of British or French
origins.

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 51

before trial. The data indicate that some of the racial disparity in pre-trial
imprisonment is due to judges and justices of the peace using employment status
when making bail decisions.

Transmitted bias in decision-making

Social systems use sequential or complex processes to make decisions. By this we
mean that accomplishing the system's purposes requires several decisions made at
different stages by different system personnel. Choices or decisions made at one
stage of the process affect other decisions made in the system. Consequently,
racialization in one part of the system is highly likely, unless precautions are taken,
to be transmitted into others.

This type of bias is a serious risk in the criminal justice system, which is complex
and involves sequential decisions. Each stage of the process depends on choices
made in other parts of the system. Judges, for example, can impose penalties only
on people who come before them for sentencing. People who appear before judges
are neither a comprehensive sample of Canadians who commit crimes, nor a random
sample of offenders. Who appears before a judge for sentencing depends on earlier
decisions of members of the public, police officers, lawyers, justices of the peace,
and sometimes other judges.

Racialization in these earlier decisions may affect the racial composition of those
who appear before judges for sentencing. Racialization may also influence how
justice officials present information to judges about offenders and offences. For
example, for many offences crown attorneys can choose whether to prosecute
summarily or by indictment. This decision, known as "crown election," has
important consequences throughout the criminal justice process, and may influence
the sentence imposed. Charges prosecuted by indictment are treated as more serious
than those on which the crown proceeds summarily, a difference reflected in much
higher maximum sentences.

Crown attorneys consider many factors when deciding how to proceed. Though race
is not obviously relevant, one of the Commission's major studies found a difference
in crown elections for black and white males charged with the same offences that
we could not explain by any legally relevant factor (see Chapter 6). One important
consequence of this difference is that judges are more likely to have a harsher range
of sentences available upon conviction, and to impose stiffer terms, when sentencing
black males than white males. Thus even judges who apply fair and reasonable
standards - and who do not believe races are real, different and unequal - may find
that their judgments reflect bias transmitted from racialized decisions made by
crown attorneys.

Transmitted biases pose challenging problems for those whose role is affected by
decisions made elsewhere in the system. However, these decision-makers can often
minimize if not entirely neutralize transmitted bias. Active, visible and continuous
commitment by judges to restraint in sentencing, for example, could reduce the risk

52 SETTING THE SCENE

that a racialized offender is sentenced to prison while a white person convicted of
the same offence and with a similar criminal record is not (see Chapter 8).

More generally, judges could block transmission of bias into their sentencing
decisions by vigilance. They could learn to watch for subtle instances of
racialization in submissions of lawyers and evidence of witnesses. Justice Brooke
has described how a young EngUsh judge changed his sentencing practices: "He told
me that he is now so well aware of the risks ... that before he passes sentence on a
black defendant he always carries out the mental check of asking himself whether he
would have passed the same sentence on a white defendant."^*

How service delivery may support racialization

Whether a social system supports racialization or does not accept that racialized
people are equal to white people may be revealed in the organization or delivery of
its services. Any apparent acceptance of racialization may significantly diminish
public confidence that the system treats people equally. Nearly always, systems used
by substantial numbers of black or other racialized people but staffed almost
exclusively by white people give the appearance of supporting racialization.

In the criminal courts of Metro Toronto and other major urban centres, most lawyers
and judges are white, but large proportions of accused persons and other court users
are from Aboriginal, black or other racialized communities. In Northern Ontario,
mainly white lawyers and judges administer criminal justice to Aboriginal people.
This contrast between users and officials presents a stark image, which is perceived
as white justice imposed on Aboriginal, black and other racialized people.

The criminal justice system may be able to show that it does not explicitly exclude
Aboriginal, black or other racialized people from employment, and that it maintains
no obvious barriers to hiring them. But this would not be enough to reassure users
that the criminal justice system repudiates racialization. A system that is unable to
persuade its users that it rejects racialization, risks being perceived as endorsing it.

A senior police officer, speaking at a public forum in Ottawa, gave the Commission
a subtle example of how service delivery can contribute to perceptions that a system
supports racialization:

"In the recent prosecution of a police officer accused of shooting a black
person, the judge ordered the doors of the coiulroom locked during the jury
address by both counsel. The result was that 14 black persons - interested
enough in the proceedings to come to court in mid-week - were left outside,
shut out of the trial but also shut out of a system which decides its own
convenience is paramount to the legitimate rights of the community members.
Obviously, the concentration of the jury is important, but so too are the
legitimate needs of tlie community ... Even if the action is supportable, the lack
of explanation and complete absence of concern for the impact is deplorable."

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 53

This incident involved a routine decision during jury trials. Judges normally order
the doors locked during their own addresses to juries in order to avoid interruptions
that might diminish the concentration of jury members. They generally extend the
order to cover lawyers' final statements to the jury, if a crown attorney or defence
counsel requests it.* As far as the criminal justice system is concerned, the judge's
decision did not suggest a conscious intention to exclude black people. Nor did it
suggest disrespect for or hostility toward them.

Nonetheless, the consequences of the decision, particularly the failure to
communicate the reasons for barring entry, were damaging. The order sent a vivid
message to this white observer, a knowledgeable criminal justice professional, that
black people were "shut out" from justice. The black members of the public,
unfamiliar with court processes, likely would have experienced the exclusion even
more keenly.

This trial, of a white police officer who had shot an unarmed black man during a
raid on a house used by reggae musicians, was a significant event to black
Ontarians. Many of them viewed the shooting itself as an exclusion from justice and
saw the court process as a test of whether the justice system demonstrates equal
concern for all Canadians. To them, the exclusion of black spectators from the
lawyers' addresses to the jury - without warning, explanation or apology - would
powerfully represent a lack of respect for black people and suggest that the system
supports their racialization.

This example also shows that the racist impact of an act does not necessarily depend
on comparing the treatment of black people and white people. In this case it would
not have mattered if white people were also barred from the court, because the
relative advantages of white and black spectators were not at issue. Rather, the
concem was the relationship between the justice system, represented by the judge,
and black Ontarians, represented by those locked out of the court.

How could the risk that locking the doors would have a racist impact have been
reduced? First, the judge could have told spectators throughout the trial that
although they were generally free to enter and leave the courtroom during the
proceedings, the doors might be locked during addresses to the jury. A brief
explanation of the reason would have done much to allay suspicion. Second,
information about limitations on public access to courtrooms could have been posted
throughout the courthouse to help spectators anticipate events. Finally, a court
official could have been stationed at the locked door to explain to the public why
entry was prohibited. Though people shut out of the court might still have felt
frustrated, they would have been less likely to experience their exclusion as
suggesting disrespect for them.

The trial transcript shows that the defence lawyer requested the judge's order, after he> was distracted by jurors'
looking at spectators entering the court during his address.

54 SETTING THE SCENE

This example shows how an apparently innocuous and routine decision could leave
people with a strong sense of exclusion. It demonstrates the importance of criminal
justice system officials being conscious of the experiences of racialized people and
anticipating their needs and perceptions in carrying out the everyday business of the
courts. It was encouraging that this example was brought to our attention by a white
police officer who seemed to have an understanding of both the practical and
symbolic consequences of this incident for members of racialized communities.

Operating norms and racialization

Systems manage personnel, decision-making and service delivery through law,
internal procedures and policies, and through what Richard Ericson calls "recipe
rules." These informal rules are the often unspoken understandings about how the
day-to-day work of the institution is conducted. "^^ Together, the various rules,
procedures and policies comprise a complex and dynamic culture that
simultaneously influences and is influenced by individuals who work in the system.

Operating norms that set out inherently biased standards for decision-making
directly transmit racialization into a system. They may also encourage further
racialization in the system by promoting stereotypes and assumptions that races are
real, different and unequal. For example a 1992 "race relations" audit of the Metro
Toronto Police concluded -

The Force has done a reasonable job of ensuring that those who are recruited do
not display an overt bias which would make them unsuitable to be a police
officer. What is apparent is that a change occurs after joining the Force. There
was significant evidence that many police officers ... develop strong feelings and
beliefs as to attributes of individuals, based on factors such as appearance and
racial backgrounds .... [TJhese ... attitudes can and do produce a bias in
behaviour which results in unequal treatment of individuals of different cultural
or racial backgrounds....

[Wjhat is evident here is not so much a symptom of personal belief as evidence
of a developed culture and value system within the organization.^*

Operating norms may tolerate racialization in systemic practices. There are three
main forms of toleration: passive toleration, disregard, and collusive toleration.

Passive toleration

Passive toleration of racialization reflects lack of awareness that it infests the
system. This exists when people responsible for the work of an institution fail to see
evidence of racism in its practices. Passive toleration may persist because practices
are not monitored, so no one officially recognizes that inherent or transmitted biases
are affecting decisions.

The Commission found, for example, that black men charged with some offences
are less likely to be granted bail than white men charged with the same offences,
even after their criminal records and other relevant factors are taken into account

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 55

(see Chapter 5). This finding indicates systemic toleration of racial discrimination in
the bail process. The toleration is passive because decision-makers and system
managers may not know the extent to which practices result in discrimination
because decisions to grant bail are not monitored.

Disregard

More active toleration of racialization - disregard - exists when an institution knows
about racism in its practices, but its operating norms do not produce an effective
response. Sometimes disregard results from a system's operating norms not treating
racial equality as a priority. People may know of racist incidents but ignore them
because they think such events happen only on a small scale, or are isolated
incidents. Several lawyers who responded to the Commission's surveys, for example,
said systemic racism is not a problem in the criminal justice system because racist
judges and lawyers are a small minority (see Chapter 2).

Disregard may also occur if decision-makers lack a clear idea about how to
eliminate systemic racism, and the operating norms do not encourage development
of the necessary expertise. Again, the result is that evidence of racism is known but
ignored. A crown attomey who responded to the Commission's survey described the
systemic problem this type of toleration poses: "At present, although certain
individuals [judges] are notorious, nothing is done by the system. By tolerating their
behaviour it is condoned, continues and increases." Even if the problem is created
by "a small minority," the failure to deal effectively with them constitutes a
systemic problem for the criminal justice system.

Collusive toleration

The third form of institutional toleration of racism, collusion, occurs when operating
norms encourage practices based on racialized standards. This form of systemic
racism is active in the sense that the institution promotes the rules or norms. It is
also explicit in the sense that the norms or rules are clearly acknowledged as
acceptable.

In Canada today, hov/ever, the offending norm is rarely motivated by racial hostility.
A rule may have been adopted for an apparently legitimate reason, but one of its
consequences is discrimination against racialized people. The essence of collusive
toleration is not the intention behind the rule, but the practice it promotes.

Until recently the dominant practice in Ontario courts, for example, had been to
prefer a Christian oath for witnesses to bind themselves to tell the truth.* This
practice linked one dimension of how courts treat people to religion, one
characteristic of origin. Although everyone must promise to tell the truth in court,
the oath procedure biased their choice about how they do so.

Recent changes to the Canada Evidence Act |S.C. 1994, c. 44, s. 88| have removed the formal preference for a
religious oath. See Chapter 7 for fuller discussion of this issue.

56 SETTING THE SCENE

Beyond the issue of choice, the traditional preference for a reUgious oath,
particularly a Christian oath, was an important symbol. Making the holy book of
Christianity, but not those of other faiths, available in courts suggested that the
justice system viewed the spiritual tradition of Christian Canadians as normal and
more acceptable than those of all other Canadians. In effect, the justice system
operated as if professing a religion was the norm, and as if Christianity was the only
faith worthy of respect. Differential treatment in this example was explicit and
promoted by the justice system. It thus reflected collusive toleration of racialization
in its systemic practices.

Systemic racism: summary of the process definition

Systemic racism is a complex social process. It reveals itself in specific incidents,
acts and consequences, but it is the. underlying process that makes these events
"systemic." This process in turn consists of other social processes. One of them is
racialization, the other is the system.

To summarize, the starting point of this analysis of systemic racism is the process of
racialization. Racialization in Canada consists of classification of people by
reference to signs of origin and judgments about the character, skills, talents and
capacity to belong in Canada that signs of origin represent.

Social systems - ways of organizing activities and accomplishing tasks - involve
processes that do not inherently contain or perpetuate racialization. However, they
may do so by incorporating it into their operating norms and decision-making and
by tolerating it in service delivery.

Both the introduction and perpetuation of racialization in these social systems occur
through their personnel. However, it is often impossible to identify any one or more
persons responsible for introducing racialization because the classifications and
judgments are built into the system's operating norms. This process of adopting and
perpetuating racialization within these social systems constitutes systemic racism.

System personnel, the means by which a social system applies and transmits
racialization, are also the only people who can eliminate it and protect the system
against its retum. While the staff and officials of a system cannot be expected to
succeed on their own, they have to be committed to making racialization intolerable
if they want to bring about real, effective and permanent change.

Recognizing and eliminating systemic racism

Systemic racism is revealed by incidents, acts and consequences, and is recognized
by its impact on racialized people. Elimination of systemic racism is a three-stage
process that begins with detecting its impact. Next, systemic practices must be
investigated to find out how racialization is being inserted, transmitted and
supported. Then appropriate reforms may be developed and implemented.

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 57

Tlie Commission found the greatest confusion in this process at the stage of
estabhshing impact. There are tvvo main approaches to recognizing racism by its
impact. One emphasizes the experiences of raciahzed people. The other compares
the outcomes of decisions affecting racialized and non-racialized people.'^

In the experience-based approach, perceptions of exclusion and injustice that
racialized people may have as a result of how they are treated are cmcial to
recognizing racist impact.^" These perceptions may be recounted by them or an
observer. A good example of observed experience is the incident noted above in
which a senior police officer described the impact of an order to lock the courtroom
doors during a portion of the trial of a white police officer charged with shooting a
black man.

Experiences of members of racialized groups provide important insights into racism
and say much about the impact of systemic practices. As such, they are a valuable
tool in recognizing racism. Like other methods, however, experience has limits.

People experience the same events or practices differently. Thus a decision to
believe the experiences of one person or group immediately poses the question of
why the experiences of other people or other groups are less valid. Experience, even
if presented with sincerity, coherence and balance, may fail to convince those who
simply believe in another version of the truth. Even within a particular group,
experiences may vary widely. For example, the comments of judges and lawyers
reported in Chapter 2 illustrate radically different experiences about the extent to
which systemic racism is a problem in the Ontario criminal justice system.

A second limitation of relying on experience to recognize racism is that gaining
access to experience is difficult. Contrary to what some people think, racialized
people are often reluctant to relate their experiences of racism. Few enjoy publicly
recounting incidents in which they felt humiliated, and the impact of racism is for
many among the more degrading, if only too common, experiences of their lives. As
one Ontarian told the Commission at a public forum in Kingston,

"The problem with [experience] is that you put the person who is being
victimized in a position of being re-victimized by having to tell their story. On
the one hand there is great virtue in telling stories, but there has to be sensitivity
in how those stories are gathered and ... respect [for] the voice and the position
from which people are telling tliose stories."

As this oral submission also notes, sceptical responses to experiences of racism tend
to make people more reluctant to talk about its impact.

"People tell their stories at great risk, at great emotional pain, at great cost.
There has to be sensitivity to that. Part of [sensitivity] is believing the stories
that are told. If people are put in the position of theu- stories being called into
question or being evaluated as to whether or not that is in fact a racist incident,
you are not going to get [openness]."

58 SETTING THE SCENE

As an alternative to experience, impact tests for racism may compare the results of
systemic practices on racialized and non-racialized people. Such comparisons look
for suspect patterns in standards used to make decisions, or in the way that
standards are applied. Both may lead to differential outcomes or impact.

Comparative approaches often use statistical (quantitative) methods to identify
patterns. These methods can be used to process large quantities of information, and
the studies can be easily replicated. Thus, statistical comparisons are often seen as
more objective and reliable than other ways of establishing systemic racism.

On the other hand, as researcher Marian FitzCrerald points out, "we must look
sceptically at the privileged status currently given to quantitative methods." These
methods also have their limits. FitzGerald warns that over-reliance on quantitative
measurement may lead people to think too narrowly about racism. As she states,

[0]nce we try to reduce [racism] to a set of discrete, measurable components we
have already lost its essence. What is racial ... is not only multifaceted, it arises
and manifests itself differently in different places at different times for different
groups .... It is not a "thing" of itself but is produced variously by a wide range
of interactions between combinations of factors .... [W]hat produces a racial
result for one group in one situation at one time may comprise none of the
elements which produce a racial result for another group in a different situation
at another time or in a different place.^'

A narrow approach risks missing or misunderstanding relationships between
racialization and other factors that may influence systemic practices, including other
social divisions. For example, some lawyers and judges who acknowledge
differential outcomes by race told the Commission that class or poverty is the real
explanation for these differences in the criminal justice system's treatment of white
and racial minority people (see Chapter 2).

These comments show the difficulties that arise from viewing racism in isolation
from other social factors.* Many black and other racialized accused are more likely
than white accused to be unemployed or to have low incomes. ^^ Consequently, a
standard that treats employment status or income as a necessary factor in criminal
justice decisions is likely to result in disparate outcomes for white and racialized
people.

Such a standard has a racist impact even though it is not motivated by racial
hostility. The systemic racism involved may be indirect, and it may be transmitted
from racialization in labour systems. Nevertheless, the bias would be a real problem
that the criminal justice system must address if it is to combat systemic racism in its
own practices.

They also raise the question of why class or poverty in general affects the treatment of accused and convicted
people.

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 59

A narrow approach may also miss the influence of combinations of factors on
decision-makers. For example, a judge may treat employed white and black men
who own property the same. However, factors such as unemployment, youth and
residence locations may result in a different outcome. Thus a young unemployed
black man who lives in a public housing location considered undesirable may be
treated more harshly than a white man in equivalent circumstances. In other words,
outcomes may not always be influenced by race alone, but by race in combination
with other factors.

Conclusion

Racism has a long history in Canada. It was fundamental to relationships between
Canada's First Nations and the European colonizers. It has shaped immigration to
this country and settlement within it. Racism has led to denials of basic civil and
political rights to Canadian citizens, excluded adults from jobs and children from
schools, limited opportunities to acquire property, and barred people from hotels,
bars, theatres and other recreational facilities. In these ways, racism has restricted
the opportunities and futures of some Canadians and benefited others. "

Though many Canadians throughout history have accepted racism, others have
vigorously resisted it. They have lobbied, campaigned and protested against the
fundamental denial of humanity that racism represents. These efforts have had
significant results. While the law once promoted or permitted unequal treatment
because of race, today it generally prohibits such discrimination. Equality is now
guaranteed by our Constitution.

Despite these important achievements, racism is still entrenched in Canadian society.
The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba,''* the Donald Marshall Inquiry in Nova
Scotia,'^ The Cawsey Report in Alberta,^* the Interim Report of this Commission"
and many other studies make the same point: racism in Canadian society continues
to shape the lives of Aboriginal, black and other racialized people.

The current challenge is for Canadians to grapple with racism's systemic dimensions.
The analysis in this chapter of the process of systemic racism provides the
framework for our analysis of Ontario's criminal justice system in the chapters
which follow.

60 SETTING THE SCENE

Endnotes

' For research on how beliefs about "race" are socially constructed, see generally: Stuart Hall,
Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke and Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging
the State and Law and Order (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978); Paul Gilroy, There Ain't No
Black in the Union Jack (London: Hutclunson, 1987); Jan Nederveen Pieterse, White on
Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1992); Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History
(London: Verso, 1992); Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in
Feminism and History (New York: Routledge, 1992).

For discussion of tlie concept of racialization, see generally: Robert Miles, Racism (London:
Routledge. 1988); Vic Satzewich, Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour: Farm
Labour Migration to Canada since 1945 (London: Routledge, 1991); Stephen Small,
Racialized Barriers: The Black Experience in the United States and England in the 1980s
(London: Routledge, 1994); Michael Keith, Race, Riots and Policing: Lore and Disorder in
a Multi-Racist Society (London: UCL Press, 1993).

For useful Canadian discussion of how to understand racism, see Carl E. James, Seeing
Ourselves: Exploring Race, Ethnicity & Culture (Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing,
Inc., 1995); Frances Henry, Carol Tator, Winston Mattis and Tim Rees, The Colour of
Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society (Toronto: Harcourt Brace and Company, Canada,
1995).

^' Ashley Montagu, Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (Cleveland: World
Publishing, 1964).

3.

6.

7.

See generally, Montagu, Man 's Most Dangerous Myth (note 2); Montagu, The Concept of
Race (New York: Collier, 1964); Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York:
WW. Norton, 1981).

See Henry et al. Colour of Democracy (note 1), for numerous examples of the power of
racialization in modem Canada.

Miles, Racism (note 1).

Gould, Mismeasure of Man, and Montagu, Concept of Race (both note 3).

Canadian Press news wire [Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 9, 1993].

The original provision for segregated schools in Ontario was An Act for the Better
Establishment and Maintenance of Public Schools in Upper Canada, S.C., 1849, 12 Vict., c.
83, ss 69-71. By 1960, the legislation was called the Separate Schools Act R.S.O. 1960, c.
368. This legislation was abolished in 1964 after Professor Harry Arthurs published a note
criticizing it: "Civil Liberties and Public Schools: Segregation of Negro Students," Canadian
Bar Review 41 (1963), p. 453.

See generally: Peggy Mcintosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," Peace
and Freedom 11 (1989); Philomena Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism: An

10.

11.

13.

15.

16.

17.

19.

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 61

Interdisciplinary Theory (NewbiiT)' Park. Calif.: Sage, 1991); Ware, Beyond the Pale (note
1); and Hall. White. Male and Middle Class (note 1).

Cited in Hcnn' et al., Colour of Democracy (note 1). p. 87.

Multiculturalisni and Citizenship Canada, Eliminating Racial Discrimination in Canada
(Ottawa: Supply and Senices 1989), p. 7.

R. V. Parks (1994) 84 C.C.C. (3rd) 353 at 369.

See generally: Ron G. Bourgeault. 'Race and Class under Mercantilism: Indigenous People
in Nineteenth-Century Canada," and James Frideres, "Institutional Structures and Economic
Deprivation: Native People in Canada," in B. Singh Solaria and Peter S. Li. eds.. Racial
Oppression in Canada, second edition (Toronto: Garamond, 1988); D. Raunet, Without
Surrender, Without Consent: A History of Nishga Land Claims (Vancouver: Douglas and
Mclntyre. 1984); Thomas Berger, A Long and Terrible Shadow: White Values. Native Rights
in the Americas 1942-1992 (Vancouver: Douglas and Mclntyre, 1992); Boyce Richardson.
People of Terra Nullius: Betrayal and Rebirth in Aboriginal Canada (Vancouver: Douglas
and Mclntyre. 1993); Gail Kellough, "From Colonialism to Economic Imperialism: The
Experience of tlie Canadian Indian," in J. Harp and J. Hofley. eds.. Structural Inequality in
Canada (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice Hall, 1980).

See generally: Mr. Justice William Riddell, "The Slave in Upper Canada," Journal of Negro
History 4 (1919), p. 372; Riddell, "Interesting Notes on Great Britain and Canada with
Respect to the Negro," Journal of Negro History 13 (1928), p. 185; M. Trudel, L'esclavage
au Canada franqais: Histoire et conditions de I 'escla\'age (Quebec: Les presses de
rUniversite Laval, 1960).

See examples in Daniel G. Hill, The Freedom-Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada (Agincourt:
Book Society of Canada, 1981).

See generally, Robin Winks. Blacks in Canada (New Haven, Comi.: Yale University Press,
1971).

Saturday Night. Oct. 27, 1906, p. 1 (editorial).

Cited in Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the ideas of Canadian Imperialism
1867-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), p. 228.

Bolaria and Li, Racial Oppression in Canada (note 13); Satzewich, Racism and Foreign
Labour (note 1); Roxana Ng, "Sexism, Racism, Canadian Nationalism," in Himani Bannerji,
ed.. Returning the Gaze: Essays on Racism, Feminism, and Politics (Toronto: Sister Vision
Press, 1993); Ng, "Managing Female Immigration: A Case of Institutionalized Sexism and
Racism," Canadian Women Studies 12 (1992), p. 20; Agnes Calliste, "Sleeping Car Porters
in Canada: An Ethnically Submerged Labour Market," Canadian Ethnic Studies 19 (1987),
p. 1; Calliste, "Race, Gender and Canadian Immigration Policy: Blacks from the Caribbean,
1900-1932," Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue d'etudes canadiens 28 (1993), p. 131;
Calliste, "Women of "Exceptional Merit': Immigration of Caribbean Nurses to Canada,"
Canadian Journal of Women and the Law / Revue femmes et droit 6 (1993), p. 85.

62 SETTING THE SCENE

^° Province of Ontario, Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice
System, Racism Behind Bars: The Treatment of Black and Racial Minority Prisoners in
Ontario Prisons (interim report) (Toronto: Queen's Printer, 1994).

Ontario Human Rights Commission v. Simpson-Sears Ltd. [1985] 2 SCR. 536 at 549.

Quoted in Equal Opportunities Consultants, "A Community Consultation on the Perceptions
of Racial Minorities," 1990 (manuscript on file), p. 36.

Mr. Justice Henry Brooke, "The Administration of Justice in a Multicultural Society," Kapila
Lecture by the chairman of the Ethnic Minorities Advisory Committee, Judicial Studies
Board, United Kingdom, Nov. 18, 1993, (manuscript on file), p. 8.

R. v. Laws, "Ruling on Dress Code," luu-eported, Nov. 15, 1993.

Calliste, "Women of 'Exceptional Merit'" (note 19).

Justice Brooke, "The Administration of Justice" (note 23), p. 19. Also quoted in Chapter 8.

Richard V. Ericson, "Rules for Police Deviance," in Clifford D. Shearing, ed..
Organizational Police Deviance: Its Structure and Control (Toronto; Butterworths, 1981).

Metropolitan Toronto Auditor, Review of Race Relations Practices of the Metropolitan
Toronto Police Force, September 1992, pp. 14-15.

See generally: Marian FitzGerald, "'Racism': Establishing the Phenomenon," in Dee Cook
and Barbara Hudson, eds.. Racism and Criminology (London: Sage Publications, 1993), p.
56.

See Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism (note 9).

FitzGerald, "'Racism': Establishing the Phenomenon" (note 29).

See Chapter 4, as well as unemployment statistics for "visible minorities" reported in
Canadian Social Trends (Ottawa: Statistics Canada) June 1995.

See generally: Mr. Justice Walter S. Tamopolsky, "Discrimination and the Law in Canada,"
in Tamopolsky, J. Whitman, M. Ouellette, eds.. Discrimination in the Law and the
Administration of Justice / La discrimination dans le droit et I 'administration de la Justice,
Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice / Institut canadien d'administration de la
justice (Montreal: Editions Th6mis, 1993).

^*' Province of Manitoba, Public Inquiry into the Administration of Justice and Aboriginal
People, Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba (Winnipeg, 1991).

^* Province of Nova Scotia, Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr. Prosecution, Report
(Halifax, 1989).

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

32.

33.

Racism in Justice: Understanding Systemic Racism 63

Province of Alberta, Task Force on the Criminal Justice System and its Impact on the Indian
and Metis People of Alberta, Report, chair R.W. Cawsey ("Cawsev Report"). (Edmonton
March 1991).

Racism Behind Bars (note 20).

Chapter 4
Prison Admissions

fSJociety has spent millions of dollars over the years to create and
maintain the proven failure of prisons. Incarceration has failed in its
two essential purposes - correcting the offender and providing
permanent protection to society.

- MacGuigan Report'

After presenting perceptions and understandings of racism in the criminal justice
system, we now turn to evidence of racial inequality in practices. The Commission's
Terms of Reference ask us to examine how far the exercise of discretion at
important decision-making points adversely affects racial minorities. In fulfilling this
mandate we concentrated on imprisonment before trial and after conviction.

We decided to emphasize imprisonment because isolating people from society and
confining them is the harshest action that the Canadian state can take. Fundamental
to the state's authority to take this action is the ideal that everyone is equally
protected against unfair or unjust imprisonment. But practices do not always live up
to ideals, particularly in highly discretionary systems - such as the criminal justice
system - where general criteria govern the choices made.

This chapter documents our main findings about admissions to Ontario prisons. It
shows that black men and women and male youths are massively over-represented
among prison admissions, an over-representation that has increased dramatically in
recent years and that is much worse among pre-trial admissions than sentenced
prisoners. After presenting these findings, we summarize possible explanations for
them, and outline the key stages of the criminal justice system where discretionary
choices could result in racial inequality in imprisonment. Later in the Report, we
examine these choices in more detail and document the extent to which criminal
justice practices do produce racial inequality in imprisonment before trial (Chapter
5) and after conviction (Chapter 8).

65

66 SETTING THE SCENE

Introduction

Persons who are imprisoned before being tried are held in provincial jails and
detention centres. Ontario is also responsible for housing almost all young offenders
sentenced to imprisonment* and adults sentenced to prison terms under two years.
(Adults sentenced to imprisonment for two years or longer serve their time in
federal prisons.)

Most people admitted to Ontario prisons are charged with or convicted of non-
violent offences. Crimes against property dominate the provincial imprisonment
statistics for both pre-trial and sentenced admissions. Drug charges and offences
against the administration of justice, such as failure to appear in court and
obstructing justice, also produce significant numbers of prisoners.

The low proportion of violent offences among sentenced admissions is particularly
well documented. In 1990/91,^ for example, more than 80 percent of sentenced
prisoners were convicted of non-violent offences. In fact, almost 25 percent of all
sentenced prisoners were imprisoned for nothing more than non-payment of fines.
As might be expected from these statistics, few sentenced offenders receive the
maximum provincial prison sentence of two years less a day. Over the last ten years,
for example, the average sentence length has been consistently about 80 days.

This pattern of imprisoning non-violent offenders suggests that imprisonment is
over-used. Imprisonment is extremely costly and inefficient at rehabilitating people.
In fact, considerable evidence suggests that imprisonment makes people more, not
less, likely to commit future offences. The futility of Canada's sentencing practices
has been subject to frequent criticism. According to -

• Mr. Justice Vancise, J. A.:

[Historically] ... imprisonment was based on either religious objectives [or] the
provision of work and training, and, more recently, deterrence and rehabilitation.
It is ... clear ... that imprisonment has failed to achieve any of these objectives
in any meaningful way ..}

• the Prevost Commission:

At the very heart of our convictions about punishment is our absolute
confidence that drastic penalties remain the most efficient way to bring the
guilty to respect the law. However the vast majority of inmates are recidivists.
Thus our prisons generate their own clientele.'

• the MacGuigan Report:

t

Young offenders aged 14 or older may be ordered tried as adults for some very serious crimes. If convicted, they
may serve some or all of their time in a federal penitentiary or adult provincial prison. All other custodial sentences
served by young offenders are served in provincial institutions, in which they are kept separate from adults.

Provincial statistics are drawn from annual reports covering Ontario's fiscal year, which runs from April 1 to March
31.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 67

Most of those in prison are not dangerous. However, cruel lock-ups, isolation,
[and] the injustices and harassment deliberately inllicted on prisoners unable to
light back, make non-violent inmates violent, and those already dangerous more
dangerous/

the Law Reforni Commission of Canada:

The need for restraint can be viewed as an echo of the belief that incarceration
is a breeding ground for crime. If imprisonment is realized to be, at best, a
partial failure, it is only logical to recommend that it be used with extreme
moderation.^

• the LeDain Commission:

Perhaps the chief objection of imprisonment is that it tends to achieve the
opposite of the result which it purports to seek. Instead of curing offenders of
criminal inclinations it tends to reinforce them."

• the federal Ministry of the SoMcitor General:

[Gjrowing evidence exists that, as educational centres, our prisons have been
most effective in educating less experienced, less hardened offenders to be more
difficult and professional criminals.'

Judges Lilies and Stuart:

Canada incarcerates at a rate that is third highest in the westernized world ...
[A]s the incidence of both crime and incarceration is not going down, it is
obvious that incarceration does not have the general deterrent effect that we
imagine .... The majority of admissions to jail are non-violent offenders who do
not need to be incarcerated to protect the public .... A large proportion of
persons are incarcerated because there are no appropriate places or programs for
them.*

Mr. Justice Wood, J. A.:

[W]e send too many people to jail in this country. Every royal commission on
sentencing in the last 159 years, and there have been many, has come to the
same conclusion.'

These quotations acknowledge that our criminal justice system's costly emphasis on
imprisonment has failed to reduce crime. Our findings of racial inequality in prison
admissions provide another reason for Justice system officials to promote restraint in
the use of incarceration and to support alternatives.

Findings about racial inequality in prison

admissions

A note of caution

The Commission urges caution in interpreting data that the Ministry of the Solicitor
General and Correctional Services made available to us. For several reasons the
numbers presented are, at best, estimates of the racial make-up of Ontario's prison

68 SETTING THE SCENE

populations.' Although they are the most complete data available, and they do give a
general idea of racial inequalities in prison admissions^ at various stages of the
criminal justice process, it is essential to understand their limitations.

The first problem is that since the Ministry did not collect these data for systematic
analysis, standard research conventions were not used in their collection. For
example, a uniform practice was not used in the identification of prisoners by race.
We were told that a correctional officer in each prison's Admissions and Discharge
Unit usually makes such identification. However, we were also told that sometimes
incoming prisoners are asked to self-report their racial origins.*

Thus we do not know which data measure correctional officers' perceptions of race,
and which data use the prisoners' self-identification. This distinction is important
because self-identification and another person's observation of race tend to produce
different results. In particular, classification by an observer carries a serious risk of
error. Therefore, some groups may constitute a larger proportion of prison
populations than the data suggest, while others may be smaller.

Another limitation arises from the working conditions of admissions and discharge
officers. Often, especially in large urban detention centres, officers work quickly and
under pressure. Since information about race apparently has little operational value
to prison authorities, careful identification of prisoners' race is unlikely to be a high
priority for admitting officers.^ A relatively high proportion of prisoners are
probably either not racially classified or are given designations that would be
different if the officers had more time. We have no means of assessing the extent of
this potential limitation.

A recent change in the ministry classification system makes investigations of trends
over time difficult. Three of the groups are the same - white. Aboriginal and
Oriental. However, the initial "black or brown" category was divided into "black"

More detailed informalion about the methodology and findings of this study are available in our Technical Volume.
See Appendix B.

These data are based on admissions, not persons. An individual imprisoned more than once in a year is counted as a
separate admission on each entry into the prison system.

Ministry policy, we understand, assumes that correctional officers ask prisoners to self-identify race according to
prescribed categories. Our description of practice is based on what we learned from correctional officers in the
prisons.

The Ministry has been collecting this information for many years and storing it on computer. Until approached by
the Commission, however. Ministry staff told us they had not attempted to aggregate, process or publish it.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 69

and "East Indian" under the new systein, and a new category of "Arabs" was
added."

This change in classification makes investigation of trends over time difficult. In
order to investigate admission trends before and after June 1991 (specifically, from
1986/87 to 1992/93), we used the five earlier categories and collapsed the post-June
1991 categories of "black" and "East Indian" into one. However, because we know
that the vast majority of these admissions were described as black in 1991/92 and
1992/93, we report the changes over time as increases in admissions of black
people.

Finally, the Commission emphasizes that these data do not measure participation in
crime. Nor do they even approximately measure punishment, since they do not
include non-prison sentences such as probation or fines.^ They measure only prison
admissions before trial and after conviction. As such they raise, but do not answer,
the question of how prisoners came to be admitted to the institutions.

In spite of the limitations, the data present a picture of prison admissions that cannot
be ignored. Even if all of these obstacles are taken into account, the results are
overwhelming. While the precise numbers may be open to challenge, their general
thrust is irrefutable.

Summary of findings

Ontario prison data show that over the six-year period from 1986/87 to 1992/93 -

• The number of prisoners described as black admitted to Ontario prisons
increased 204%, while the number of white prisoners admitted increased 23%.

• Black admissions to prisons serving the Metro Toronto area for drug
trafficking/importing^ charges increased by several thousand percent. White
admissions to the same prisons for drug trafficking/importing also increased, in
some prisons by large percentages, but nowhere near as much as the growth in
black admissions.

Data from 1992/93 show that among total admissions -

t

The category "Other/Unknown" continues under the new system, but because of the other changes it may be used
differently. For example, under the old system many people of "Arab" heritage were probably classified as
"Other/Unknown"; under the new system, they are placed in a separate category.

The Ministry does not collect post-sentence data about the race of people who are fined or given community-based
penalties.

"Trafficking/importing" is the category the Ministry used in collecting these data, and includes the offence of
possession for the purposes of trafficking. To the best of our knowledge, it is not possible to separate the different
charges in the data for this category of admissions

70 SETTING THE SCENE

• Both men and women described as black or Aboriginal are over-represented
relative to their proportions in the provincial population, while those described
as Asian, East Indian or Arab are under-represented.

• Although many more black and Aboriginal men are in jail than black and
Aboriginal women, women described as black or Aboriginal are more over-
represented among prison admissions than are men described as black or
Aboriginal.

Data from 1992/93 on remand* and sentenced admissions show that -

• People described as black, Asian, South Asian and Arab are admitted to prison
at much higher rates before trial than after conviction, while people described as
white or Aboriginal are admitted to prison before trial at about the same rates as
after conviction. (As noted above, people described as Asian, South Asian and
Arab are not over-represented among total admissions.)

Data from 1992/93 on the offences leading to admission to prison show that -

• Persons described as black are most over-represented among prisoners charged
with drug offences, obstructing justice and weapons possession.

• Persons described as black are most under-represented among prisoners charged
with impaired driving offences.

Prison admissions over time:
The growth of racial inequality

Statistics Canada's profile of ethnic groups reports 158,140 black residents in
Ontario in 1986.'" By 1991, the black population consisted of 215,775 residents," an
increase of 36.4% while the population of the province as a whole grew by 10.8%.
Thus between 1986 and 1991, the Ontario black population grew from 2.4% to 3.1%
of the province's total population.^

The growth in black admissions to Ontario prisons over a similar period was much
higher. There were 4,205 black admissions in 1986/87, and three times that number
(12,765) in 1992/93. The more recent statistic shows that black people account for

"A remand is an adjournment of a case when the court fixes the time and place of the next hearing." (I. Bing,
Criminal Procedure and Sentencing in the Magistrate's Court (3rd ed.) (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1994), p. 37.)
If the accused has not yet had a bail hearing or has been ordered detained in custody pending trial, he or she is
described as a "prisoner on remand."

The sub-categories used to estimate the black population include only persons identified as "Black," "Ghanaian
Black," "African Black n.i.e" and "Black - multiple origins" on the census form. At the Commission's request.
Statistics Canada generated a detailed profile of Ontario's black population in 1991, using the more comprehensive
"employment equity" categories. This method produced an estimate of 310,965 for the 1991 black population of
Ontario. We used the lower estimate to calculate the change, however, because it used the same criteria as the
narrower 1986 classification.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 71

15% of prison admissions while they constitute only about 3% of the province's
population.

This six-year-period also saw a significant rise in white admissions to Ontario
prisons, from 49,555 in 1986/87 to 60,929 in 1992/93. But this 23% increase is
smaller than the overall rise in total admissions (40%) and pales in comparison with
the 204% growth in black admissions.* Thus, despite the increase in white
admissions, the percentage of white people among prison admissions dropped from
84% in 1986/87 to 73% in 1992/93.

Table 4-1: Adult admissions to Ontario prisons, 1986/87 and 1992/93

1986/87

1992/93

Change between
1986/87 & 1992/93

%

Number

%

Number

% change

Number

White

83.4%

49,555

73.1%

60,929

+ 23.0%

+ 11,374

Black/brown'

7.1%

4,205

15.3%

12,765

+ 203.6%

+ 8,560

Asian

0.9%

549

2.0%

1,686

+ 207.1%

+ 1,137

Aboriginal

8.3%

4,958

5.9%

4,921

-0.7%

-37

Other/unknown-

0.3%

162

3.7%

3,100

+ 1,813.6%

+ 2,938

Total

100.0%

59,429

100.0

83,401

+ 40,3%

+ 23,972

Source: Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services

1 . These are the original racial categories from the 1986/87 database. In order to make comparisons, the
"Black/brown" category for 1992/93 includes people classified as either "Black" or "East Indian."

2. In 1992/93 the "Other/unknown" category' includes people who were classified as either "Arab" or
"Other" (categories not used in 1986/87).

Trends in admissions of black and white men

The disparity between white and black admissions over the six-year period is even
more striking when we focus on prisons which serve the Metro Toronto area. We
analyzed -

• Metropolitan Toronto West Detention Centre: In 1986/87, about 75% of male
admissions were white and about 11% were black. In 1992/93, white admissions
amount to less than 60% and black admissions more than 30% (Figure 4- la).

• Toronto Jail: In 1986/87, over 73% of admissions were white and about 13%
were black. In 1992/93, white admissions amount to 54% and black admissions
32% (Figure 4-lb).

Table 4-1 shows an even larger (207%) growth in admissions described as Asian, but the 1986/87 base was
relatively small. Persons described as Asians were not overrepresented among 1992/93 admissions.

72 SETTING THE SCENE

• Metropolitan Toronto East Detention Centre: In 1986/87, over 70% of
admissions were white and about 13% were black. In 1992/93, white admissions
amount to about 61% and black admissions 28% (Figure 4-lc).

• Mimico Correctional Centre: In 1986/87, almost 80% of admissions were white
and less than 10% were black. In 1992/93, white admissions amount to about
61% and black admissions 31% (Figure 4-ld).

• Maplehurst Correctional Centre: In 1986/87, 90% of admissions were white and
less than 10% were black. In 1992/93, white admissions amount to about 57%
and black admissions almost 40% (Figure 4-le).

• Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre: In 1986/87, about 82% of male
admissions were white and about 3% were black. In 1992/93, white admissions
still amount to about 82%, but black admissions have risen to about 9% (Figure 4-
If).

Figure 4-1 a: Black and white male admissions to Metropolitan Toronto West Detention Centre,

1986/87 to 1992/93

c

<D
Q.

1987/88 1989/90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 1990/91 1992/93

Year

Sounx: Minlatiy ol the SoUcttor GenenI anj Ccfreclional Services

gwhite
-{-Black

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 73

Figure 4-1 b: Black and white male admissions to Toronto Jail,
1986/87 to 1992/93

40
30
20
10

i "&-^

1987/88 1989/90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 1990/91 1992/93

Year

Source: Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services

OVhIte
•fBlack

Figure 4-1 c: Black and white male admissions to Metropolitan Toronto East Detention Centre,

1986/8710 1992/93

100

90

80

S 70

§ 60

°- 50

40

30

20

10

1987/88 1989/90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 199Q/91 1992/93

Year

Source: Ministry of the Sallcttor General and CarreakrialSeivlcet

Eywilte
4-Black

74 SETTING THE SCENE

Figure 4-1 d: Black and white male admissions to Mimicx) Correctional Centre,

1986/87 to 1992/93

c

8

Q.

1987/88 1989/90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 1990/91 1992/93

Year

Source: Ministry of the Solicitor General and ConecUonal Services

E^ite
-t-Black

Figure 4-1 e: Black and white male admissions to Maplehurst Correctional Centre,

1986/87 to 1992/93

c

8

1987/88 1989/90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 1990/91 1992/93

Year

Source: Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Sen/Ices

F^hlte
l+Black

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 75

Figure 4-1 f: Black and white male admissions to Hamllton-Wentworth Detention Centre

1986/87 to 199^/93

100

H 70

§ 60

o

0- 50

40

30

20

10

..(irrffl:

:33]^'

i I +

1987/88 1983/90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 1990/91 199?/93

Year

Sotraa: Ulnlsty of the Sc/ldtor Oaneial and ConscHonal S»vlcoi

OftftiHe
+Blad<

Trends in admissions of black and white women

Admissions of white women to the two major provincial prisons where women are
held rose over the six-year period. In 1992/93, Metropolitan Toronto West Detention
Centre (women) admitted 52% more white women than in 1986/87. At Vanier Centre
for Women, the increase in white female admissions was 59%.' Increases in black
female admissions, however, are much larger. In 1992/93, Metro West admitted
148% more black women than in 1986/87; at Vanier, the increase was 630% (Figure
4-2).

The two prisons differ in the proportions of black and white women admitted.

These percenuge changes are greater than for white male admissions at any of the selected prisons for men, which
suggests that the rate of imprisonment of white women is growing faster. Another possibility with regard to
sentenced prisoners is that more white men may have been sentenced to prison terms in federal institutions in
1992/93. In that case, what looks like a relatively small increase in admissions of white men to provincial
institutions could have been supplemented by larger increases in admissions of white men to federal prisons. Further
research is necessary on this and other possibilities.

76 SETTING THE SCENE

Figure 4-2: Increase in female admissions to selected Ontario prisons,
1986/87 to 1992/93, by racial group

Percent increase

■

630

aWhite
■Black

200-

148

100-

52

H

59

Metro West Vanier

Source: Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services

Figure 4-3a: Black and white female admissions to Metropolitan Toronto West Detention Centre,

1986/87 to 1992/93

Q.

1987/88 1989/90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 1990/91 1992/93

Year

Souice: UtiMry ol the ScUdtv General and ConecUon^ Senioes

igwtjite
l+Black

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 77

Metropolitan Toronto West Detention Centre (women): The proportions of
white women among admissions to this prison show only minor fluctuations over
the six-year period. In 1986/87, 60% of admissions were white; in 1992/93, 62%.
By contrast, the percentage of black women among admissions shows a steady
increase, from 18% of the total in 1986/87 to almost 30% in 1992/93 (Figure 4-
3a). These findings suggest that in this prison black women are not replacing
white women but women from another racialized group.

Vanier Centre for Women: The proportions of white women among admissions
to this prison appear to decline over the six-year period. In 1986/87, more than
70% of admissions were white; in 1992/93, less than 60%. There is, however, a
significant spike in 1991/92: white admissions jumped from 62% to 75% of the
total, before declining the next year to a low of 58%. The percentage of black
women among total admissions rose in each year since 1986/87, except 1991/92.
Over the six-year-period, black women have gone from 9% of total admissions to
over 30% (Figure 4-3b). These data suggest that black women are replacing white
women at Vanier.

8

a.

Figure 4-3b: Black and white female admissions to Vanier Centre for Women,

1986/87 to 199?/93

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10

gwhite
-l-Black

1987/88 1989/90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 1990/91 199^/93

Year

S<xn«: Uktiatry of m« Solkiitor Qtrmal and Cornalonal Sarvtcm

78 SETTING THE SCENE

Figure 4-4: Increase in admissions for drug trafficking/importing
to selected Ontario prisons, 1986/87 to 1992/93

Toronto Jail

^

790

1 204

Metro East -^^^^^^_

^^^^ 2,914

286

□White
■Black

3,890

Vanler

5,200

1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000

500 1,500 2,500 3,500 4,500 5,500

Percent increase

Source: Ministry of the solicitor Gerteral and Correctional Services

Trends in black and white admissions on drug
trafficking/importing charges

The reported increases in black and white admissions cover a range of charges, but
one category dominates: drug trafficking/importing.' Changes in black and white
admissions for these charges at four of the Toronto-area men's prisons and at Vanier
Centre for Women are summarized in Figure 4-4. Increases from 1986/87 to 1992/93
in the numbers of white prisoners admitted for drug trafficking/importing ranged from
25% at Maplehurst to 667% at Vanier. These increases in white admissions are large
at most of the prisons but appear minor when compared with changes in admissions of
black prisoners on the same charges. The Toronto Jail, with a 790% increase in the
number of black admissions, showed the smallest change. At Metro East the increase
is 2,914%, at Maplehurst 3,300%, and at Metro West (men) 3,890%. The biggest
increase is at Vanier, which in 1992/93 admitted 5,200% more black women
convicted of trafficking/ importing drugs than in 1986/87.^

This category, used by the Ministry, does not separate importing from trafficking charges. Other research that we
conducted, however, indicates that charges of trafficking and possession for the purposes of trafficking are far more
common against men than importing charges. Women are more fikely to be charged with importing drugs.

In part, the percentage increase is in the thousands because of the small numbers involved. In 1986/87, only one
black woman was admitted to Vanier Centre for Women on this charge. In 1992/93, 53 black women were admitted
for drug trafficking/importing. More details about the number of admissions are in the Technical Volume. See
Appendix B.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 79

These changes are reflected in the proportions of black and white prisoners admitted
on drug trafficking/importing charges in each prison. The data show that in all five
prisons most 1986/87 traffic king/ importing admissions were white, but by 1992/93 the
majority are black.

• Toronto Jail: 31% of drug trafficking/importing admissions in 1986/87 were
black and 68% white. In 1992/93, 62% of admissions in this category are black
and 30% white (Figure 4-5a).

• Metropolitan Toronto West Detention Centre (men): 11% of drug
trafficking/importing admissions in 1986/87 were black and 86% white. In
1992/93, 56% of admissions in this category are black and 42% white (Figure 4-
5b).

Figure 4-5a: Black arxl white admissions to Toronto Jail for drug trafficking/importing,

1986/8710 199^93

100
90
80
70
60

a. 50

40
30
20
10

1987/88 198W90 1991/92

1986/87 1988/89 1990/91 1992/93

Year

SaroKhllnllrfi/tmSoBcltorQtnenlindCaTactai^Savlom

gwhite
-l-Black

Metropolitan Toronto East Detention Centre: 13% of drug trafficking/importing
admissions in 1986/87 were black and 86% white. In 1992/93, 56% of admissions
in this category are black and 39% white (Figure 4-5c).

80 SETTING THE SCENE

Figure 4-5b: Black and white admissions to Metropoiitan Toronto West Detention Centre
for dnjg traffiddng^mporting, 1 986/87 to 1 99?/93

100

90

80
£ 70

1 ^
<2 50

40

30

20

10

Cff I III

r\ 1 ^ 1

^^^ ^"^S-~_ ■

\

H-

gWhite
+Black

"^

tIv ^ y^ i

; Y] \,^ \

V \ \ ■ \

- \ ■ ■

SounxUhlt

1987/86 1989^ 1991/92

1966/87 1988/69 199(V91 1992/93

Year

vyaltvScllduiGvianlanlCoenalonaSSanioat

Rgure 4-5c: Biack and white admissions to Metropoiitan Toronto East IDetention Centre
for dmg trafflcWng/importJng, 1 986/87 to 1 99?/93

100

90

80

e 70

\ ^

O- 50

40
30
20
10
n

^yvhtte
-l-Black

-1

; / '^-mr-.^^

]

^^^^^^^

^Y^^^^^r^^

SoutoKUMm

1967/88 1969/90 1991/92

1966/87 19nfV89 199G/91 1992/93

Year

ly or M SoUur OinM/ imf Conwttint/ Svvlon

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 81

• Maplehurst Correctional Centre: 7% of drug trafficking/importing admissions in
1986/87 were black and 93% white. In 1992/93, 68% of these admissions are
black and 30% white (Figure 4-5d).

• Vanier Centre for Women: 14% of drug trafficking/importing admissions in
1986/87 were black and 86% white. In 1992/93, 53% of admissions are black and
47% white (Figure 4-5e).

^
£

Figure 4-5d: Black and white admissions to Maplehurst Correctional Centre
for drug trafficking/importing, 1986/87 to 199^93

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10

gMiitB

-l-Black

1987/88 198W90 1991/92

1986/87 198^89 1990/91 1992/93

Year

Source: MlrMrycflheSollcllcraenaral and CorracllontlSemcai

Comment on the growth of racial inequality in admissions

These prison admission trends are shocking. Over only six years, the admission of
black persons to prison increased dramatically, especially for drug-related offences.
What explains these remarkable trends?

Two general factors are evident: expansion of prisons and changes in criminal justice
practices. During the 1980s, the province embarked on a large prison expansion
program. By 1992, Ontario's prison capacity was 30% higher than in 1985.
Meanwhile, Quebec and British Columbia maintained their prison capacities at 1985
levels. In 1992, Ontario's officially recorded crime rate was about the same as
Quebec's, but the Imprisonment rate was one-third higher.'^ Between 1985 and 1992,
British Columbia experienced a much higher population growth than Ontario and
higher crime rates, but in 1992 Ontario's imprisonment rate was one-third higher.

Expansion of Ontario's prisons is clearly associated with overall increases in prison
admissions. Why, though, have admissions of black women and men grown so much

82 SETTING THE SCENE

Figure 4-5e: Black and white admissions to Vanier Centre for Women
for drug trafficking/importing, 198^87 to 199^93

E

<D
0.

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10

+Black

1987/88 198S^ 1991/92

1986^87 1988/89 1990/91 199^/93

Year

Souroe: UMttry ol Ihe SoBcKor Qenenl »ni CorvcUcnal Servloet

faster than admissions of white women and men? At least part of the answer is that
the so-called "war on drugs" has different impacts on white and black people.

From the mid-1980s, Canada has followed the United States in emphasizing law
enforcement as a primary strategy to control drug use.' As in the U.S., one strategy
has been to attempt to reduce the supply of drugs by convicting and imprisoning large
numbers of suppliers and users. Intensive police operations attack street-level trading
and the couriers who bring drugs across Canada's borders to distributors. Such
policing is supported by vigorous prosecution, and efforts to imprison convicted
offenders no matter how small the amount of drugs involved.^

This emphasis on convictions and imprisonment also serves other important purposes.
Convictions and prison sentences can be counted and publicized to reassure the public

In 1987, the federal government established "Canada's Drug Strategy," which planned to spend some $210 million
in new ftinds on the entire field of substance abuse over five years (See Health and Welfare Canada, Canada 's Drug
Strategy: Phase II (Ottawa; Supply and Services Canada, 1992)). Seventy percent of this money was allocated to
measures to reduce the demand for drugs, such as education, treatment and rehabilitation. Recent research indicates,
however, that the traditional prohibition approach continued to dominate Canadian drug policy over that period:
Patricia G. Erickson, "Recent Trends in Canadian Drug Policy: The Decline and Resurgence of Prohibitionism" 121
Daedalus - Journal of the American Arts and Sciences (1992), p. 239; Benedikt Fischer, "'Maps' and 'Moves'"
(1994) 5 International Journal of Drug Policy 70.

For example, the Ontario Court of Appeal has generally supported significant prison terms for trafficking, in the
absence of extenuating circumstances. See the review of Canadian case law in Clayton C. Ruby, Sentencing , fourth
edition (Toronto: Butterworths, 1994), pp. 683-713.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 83

responding to concerns about drug use and drug dealing. But because of the
organization of drug distribution, this response tends to focus on relatively minor
offenders and offences.

Drug distribution is organized in a classic pyramid fashion. A few individuals at the
top invest heavily to protect themselves against exposure. At the bottom are street
dealers and couriers, who are easy to recruit and replace. Though law enforcement
against those at the top of the pyramid may greatly reduce the supply of certain drugs,
this is costly, time-consuming, difficult and seldom successful. Enforcement against
street dealers and couriers is much easier and brings quick success in the form of
convictions and imprisonment. But since individual street dealers and couriers
typically handle relatively small quantities of drugs and are easily replaced,
enforcement directed at them may have little or no effect on the supply of drugs. '^
(Even enforcement against persons at the top of the pyramid may be remarkably
unsuccessful in achieving any permanent reduction in the availability of certain drugs.)

How does this "war on drugs" produce racial inequalities in imprisonment? Neither
patterns of drug use nor control over drug supply explain our findings. No evidence
shows that black people are more likely to use drugs than others or that they are over-
represented among those who profit most from drug use. Events of the last few years
do show, however, that intensive policing of low-income areas in which black people
live produces arrests of a large and disproportionate number of black male street
dealers. Similarly, intensive policing of airline travellers produces arrests of a smaller,
but still disproportionate, number of black female couriers. Once the police have done
this work, the practices and decisions of crown prosecutors, justices of the peace and
judges operate as a conveyor belt to prison. '"'

The futility of using heavy law enforcement against minor suppliers and couriers to
control drug use is well documented.'^ Experts in drug policy are clear: law
enforcement directed at small-scale traders and couriers has an insignificant impact on
drug use. It is a waste of resources. Many police officers, lawyers and some judges
(including some we consulted) acknowledge this.' They know that effective drug
policies emphasize treatment and prevention of abuse. Such strategies focus resources
on existing and potential drug users, not petty suppliers. Without a local demand for
drugs, street trading would disappear and small-scale couriers would not be recruited.

It is clear from our findings that in Ontario, as in many parts of the United States,'*
one effect of the "war on drugs," intended or not, has been the increase in
imprisonment of black people. This is an intolerable consequence of a policy that
experts recently described as "mistaken, harmful and at times absurd."" We return to
the racial inequalities produced by the "war on drugs" in Chapters 5 and 8, where we

A recent study by the Addiction Research Foundation documents considerable concern among some judges and
lawyers about the futility of such law enforcement Patricia G. Erickson and J. Cohen, Alcohol and Other Drugs in
the Criminal Justice System: Perceptions of Justice System Personnel (preliminary report) (Toronto: Addiction
Research Foundation, forthcoming).

84 SETTING THE SCENE

also show how the exercise of discretion produces disproportionate imprisonment of
black people.

The particular strategies selected in the so-called "war on drugs" account for much of
the growth of racial inequality in prison admissions between 1986/87 and 1992/93.
However, not all of this inequality is due to drug charges. To find out more about the
patterns of racial inequality among admissions, the Commission analyzed data for
1992/93, tlie first year of our mandate, in more detail.

Prison admissions in 1992/93:
The details of racial inequality

Youth admissions

The Commission's Terms of Reference mandate "particular attention to the impact of
systemic racism on racial minority youth." Unfortunately, lack of data defeated our
attempts to focus on youth admissions to prison. We encountered two problems.

First, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the government agency
responsible for incarceration of young people aged 12 to 15, does not keep
information about their race. Consequently, we have no means of monitoring the
population of young people in instiuitions run by that Ministry.

Second, although information about prison admissions of youths aged 16 and 17 is
available, we were unable to obtain accurate demographic estimates for this age
group. The age categories used by Statistics Canada in census estimates are not the
same as the age group used for youths under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the
Solicitor General and Correctional Services. Consequently, we cannot calculate rates
of admission by race or charges, but only suggest the general relationships between
the youth population and prison admissions. These general findings show significant
racial differentials in prison admissions of youths aged 16 and 17.

Youth admissions by sex and race

In 1992/93 a total of 4,705 youths aged 16 and 17 were admitted to prisons run by
what was then the Ministry of Correctional Services. Of these admissions, 4,369
(93%) are male. Prisoners described as white dominate both male and female
admissions, amountmg to 72% of male, 71 % of female and 72% of total youth
admissions in this age group.

At 13%, prisoners described as black are the second largest group of admissions. The
representation of black young women among young female admissions is strikingly
low at 1.5%, in stark contrast to the findings about adult admissions reported below.

Of 16- and 17-year-old admissions, 7% are described as Aboriginal. Young
Aboriginal women make up 22% of female youth admissions, while only 6% of male
youth admissions are young Aboriginal men.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 85

Youths classified as Asian, East Indian and Arab together represent 4% of female,
5% of male and 5% of total youth admissions.

Table 4-2: Admissions of youths aged 16 and 17 to Ontario prisons, by sex and

race, 1992/93

White

Black

Aboriginal

Asian

East Indian

Arab

Female

Male

70.8%

1.5%

22.0%

2.4%

0.3%

0.9%

Other/unknown

Total percent*

Total number of admissions

2.1%

71.9%

13.3%

6.3%

3.0%

1.3%

0.8%

3.3%

100.0%

336

99.9%

4,369

Source: Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services.
* Percentage estimates may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Total

71.8%

12.5%

7.5%

3.0%

1.3%

0.8%

3.2%

100.1%

a

4,705

Youth admissions by reason for admission and race

Youths aged 16 and 17 are more likely than adults to be held in prison before trial.
Of the 4,705 admissions in 1992/93, 70% are on remand, 19% are sentenced, and
11% are held for other reasons (Figure 4-6).

Table 4-3 shows that youths described as white are a higher proportion of sentenced
(76%) than remanded (70%) admissions, while for youths described as black the
reverse is true. Black youths represent 13% of remanded and 10% of sentenced
admissions in 1992/93. There is little difference between proportions of admissions of
youths described as Aboriginal on remand and after sentencing.

86 SETTING THE SCENE

Figure 4-6: Admissions of youths aged 16 and 17 and adults to Ontario prisons,
by reason for admission, 1992/93

80

70

60

I 50
a. 40

30

20

10

70

19

aYouth
■Adults

Remanded Sentenced Other reasons

Source: Ministry a/ Itte Solicitor General ana Correctional Services

Table 4-3: Admissions of youths aged 16 and 17 to Ontario prisons, by race and

reason for admission, 1992/93

Remanded

Sentenced

Other
reason

Total

White

70.4%

76.0%

73.4%

71.8%

Black

13.1%

10.0%

13.1%

12.5%

Aboriginal

7.4%

7.7%

7.2%

7.5%

Asian

3.4%

2.2%

1.6%

3.0%

East Indian

1.4%

0.7%

1.2%

1.3%

Arab

0.9%

0.7%

0.2%

0.8%

Other/unknown

3.3%

2.8%

3.2%

3.2%

Total percent*

99.9%

100.1%

99.9%

100.1%

Total number of admissions

3,289

919

497

4,705

Source: Onlario Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services
* Percentage estimates may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 87

Adult admission totals: an overview
Adult admissions by sex and race

Of the 83,401 adult admissions to Ontario's prisons in 1992/93, 76,403 (92%) are
male. Among both male and female admissions, prisoners described as white are by
far the dominant racial group. They make up ahnost three-quarters of male admissions
and just over two-thirds of female admissions. Of the total admissions for both sexes,
73% are white.

Broken down by sex as well as race, the data show that adult prisoners described as
black are a higher proportion of female admissions (17%) than of male admissions
(13%). A similar pattern is true of prisoners described as Aboriginal: 9% of female
admissions compared with 6% of male admissions. Three other racial groups included
in the 1992/93 data - Arab, East Indian and Asian - make up small proportions of
male, female and total adult admissions.

Table 4-4: Adult admissions to Ontario prisons, by sex and race, 1992/93

Female

Male

Total

White

67.4%

73.6%

73.1%

Black

17.1%

13.4%

13.7%

Aboriginal

9.2%

5.6%

5.9%

Asian

2.0%

2.0%

2.0%

East Indian

1.0%

1.6%

1.6%

Arab

0.3%

0.8%

0.7%

Other/unknown

3.1%

3.0%

3.0%

Total percent*

100. 1 %

100.0%

100.0%

Total number of admissions

6,998

76,403

83,401

Source: Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services
* Percentage estimates may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Adult admissions by reason for admission and race

People are held in prison for a variety of reasons. The vast majority are awaiting
criminal trials or serving sentences, while others are held for reasons such as non-
payment of fines, immigration processing and breaches of parole conditions. Of the
83,401 adult admissions in 1992/93, 41,195 (49%) are in custody awaiting further
processing of charges and 36,188 (43%) are sentenced. Only 6,018 admissions (7%)
are for other reasons.

88 SETTING THE SCENE

As shown in Table 4-5, white prisoners make up 80% of adult admissions after
sentencing. Though still the largest group, white admissions are only 69% of
admissions on remand. Their representation among admissions for other reasons, at
62%, is also noticeably lower than among the sentenced population.

By contrast, persons described as black make up a higher proportion of remanded
(16%) than sentenced (9%) admissions and about one-quarter of the "other" category.
Persons described as Aboriginal amount to 6% of both remanded and sentenced
admissions, but only 3% of those admitted for other reasons.

Table 4-5: Adult admissions to Ontario prisons, by race and reason for

admission, 1992/93

Remanded

Sentenced

Other
reason

Total

White

68.9%

79.9%

61.5%

73.1%

Black

16.1%

9.0%

25.8%

13.7%

Aboriginal

6.0%

6.3%

2.8%

5.9%

Asian

2.9%

1.0%

2.1%

2.0%

East Indian

2.0%

1.1%

1.8%

1.6%

Arab

0.9%

0.4%

1.4%

0.7%

Other/unknown

3.2%

2.3%

4.6%

3.0%

Total percent

100.0%

100.0%

100.0%

100.0

%

Total number of admissions

41,195

36,188

6,018

83,401

Source: Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services

Adult admission rates: A more precise measure

Analysis of admission rates - the number of admissions per 100,000 community
members in Ontario - provides a more vivid and accurate picture of racial disparities
than simple totals.'* Unfortunately, here we once again encountered problems of data
collection.

Ontario's prison system and the federal census use different methods of classification
and different categories. The Ministry uses race and includes a category for white
people. The census, by contrast, uses the concept of ethnicity. Instead of a "white"
category there is a variety of European national or regional affiliations: British,

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 89

Scottish, Italian, Portuguese and so on. Statistics Canada can estimate "visible
minority" populations from the census data, but has no specific estimate of Ontario's
"white" population. To obtain the number of persons in this group, we therefore
subtracted estimates for identified visible minority populations from the province's
total population.

Admission rates by race

Figure 4-7 shows adult prison admission rates for the six racial designations used by
the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. Behind the total
admission rate of 827 per 100,000 Ontarians is considerable variation among the
groups. In particular, while adults described as black are admined at five times the
rate of adults described as white, and adults described as Aboriginal at almost three
times, those described as Asian are admitted at half the rate of white adults.

Figure 4-7: Total adult prison admission rate to Ontario prisons.
1992/93, by racial group

3,686

500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3.500 4,000

Admissions per 100.000 members of racial group

Source: Umstry at IheSokitar General and CorraaionalSeivkxa

Admission rates by race and sex

Prison admission rates of women show greater racial inequality than admission rates
of men. Whereas black men are admitted to prison at a rate just over five times that
of white men in 1992/93, die admission rate for black women is almost seven times
that of white women. Similarly, the admission rate for Aboriginal women was almost

90 SETTING THE SCENE

five times that of white women, while Aboriginal men are admitted at less than three
times the rate of white men.'

Admission rates before and after trial

Analysis of these rates by type of admission and racial group reveals two striking
patterns: the rate of pre-trial admission is significantly higher than the rate after
sentence for all racialized groups except Aboriginal people. White people, though,
are, imprisoned before trial at about the same rate as after sentence. Particularly
noteworthy is the dramatic difference between the pre-trial and sentenced admission
rates of adult prisoners described as Asian (Figure 4-8).

Table 4-6: 1992/93 Adult prison admission rates, by sex and race

Male

prison admissions

per 100,000

Female

prison admissions

per 100,000

Total

1,542.5

136.4

White

1,326.4

107.3

Black

6,976.6

730.7

Aboriginal

3,600.9

502.7

Asian

669.9

55.5

East Indian

842.0

48.3

Arab

845.3

39.5

Source: Ontario Ministiy of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services

Admission rates by specific charges

Behind the overall ratio of five to one in black to white adult admission rates is
considerable variation among charges. For example, in 1992/93, the black admission
rate for drinking and driving offences (34 per 100,000) is half of the white rate. By
contrast, the 1992/93 black admission rate for obstructing justice (112 per 100,000) is
ten times higher than the white admission rate (11 per 100,000).

For each of four charges - trafficking/ importing drugs, possession of illegal drugs,
obstructing justice and weapons possession - black admission rates are more than nine
times greater than white admission rates. As Figure 4-9 shows, the inequality in
admission rates for trafficking/importing drugs is by far the largest among the four
offence categories. The ratio of black-to-white admission rates on this charge is 22:1.

The precise ratios are 5.3 to I for black men to white men; 6.8 to 1 for black women to white women; 4.7 to I for
Aboriginal women to white women; and 2.7 to 1 for Aboriginal men to white men.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 91

Figure 4-8: Remand and sentenced adult admission rates to Ontario prisons,
1 992/93, by racial/ethnic group

2,136

H \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ 1

400 800 1,200 1,600 2,000 2,400

200 600 1,000 1,400 1,800 2,200

Admissions per 100,000 members of racial group

Source: Ministry of the Solicitor Gerteral and Correctional Sen/Ices

Figure 4-9: Black and white adult admission rates to Ontario correctional
institutions, 1 992/93, by selected criminal offences

Obstruction of justice

Weapons offences

Daig possession

Drug trafficking*

11

1^Hl12

h2i

188

192

□White
■Black

100 200300400500600 700 800
50 150 250 350 450 550 650 750

Admissions per 1 00,000 black or white people

* Includes drug trafflckinfl/lmportlng
Source: umiatry ol ttM Solicitor General anO Coirecbonal Service

92 SETTING THE SCENE

Racial differentials in admissions are larger at the pre-trial stage (remand) than after
conviction. With regard to -

• drug trafficking/importing charges, black remand rates are 27 times higher than
white remand rates in 1992/93. The admission rate ratio for convicted persons,
though still very high, drops to 13:1.

• drug possession charges, black remand rates are 15 times higher than white
remand rates. The admission rate ratio for convicted persons, though still high,
drops to 7:1.

• obstructing justice charges, black remand rates are 13 times higher than white
remand rates. The admission rate ratio for convicted persons, though still high,
drops to 7:1.

• weapons charges, black remand rates are 9 times higher than white remand rates.
The admission rate ratio for convicted persons is about the same at 8: 1.

Other variables

Differences other than race likely account for some of the inequality in prison
admissions. Age, unemployment and poverty, for example, are all known to be
associated with the offences that are policed, prosecuted and punished most vigorously
in Ontario and similar jurisdictions.* And black and Aboriginal Ontarians are younger,
poorer and more likely to be unemployed than those of British ethnicity.

In the 1991 census, for example, 57% of black males and 65% of Aboriginal males
are under 30 years of age, compared with 46% of males of British ethnicity and 45%
of all Ontario males. Unemployment rates show dramatic differences by ethnicity,
especially among young males. In 1991, for example, 26% of black males compared
with 15% of British and 17% of all males in Metro Toronto aged 15 to 24 are
unemployed (Figure 4-10). A similar pattern exists for women in the same age group,
as Figure 4-11 shows. In 1991, 20% of black and 16% of Aboriginal, compared with
1 1 % of British and 13% of all young women in Metro, cannot find work.

Black men and women in Metro, as well as Aboriginal men and women, are also
considerably poorer than men and women of British ethnicity, and their incomes are
lower than the average for Metro residents.

Examination of census estimates also suggests that the category "Asian" used in
Ministry of Correctional Services admissions statistics may mask important variations.
In Toronto, for example, the 1991 census shows 28% of Vietnamese men aged 15 to
24 as unemployed, compared with 14% of men in the same age group who identify
themselves as Japanese. Yet prisoners from both communities would be classified in
prison admissions data as Asian. Consequently, low numbers of admissions from
Asian communities that are relatively wealtiiy and established could obscure disturbing

See the discussion of differential enforcement below.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 93

Figure 4-10: Unemployment rate by racial/ethnic group
males aged 1 5 to 24 years in Metro Toronto, 1 991

Black

Latin American

South-East Asian

Chinese

West Asian/Arab

Aboriginal

South Asian

Total population

British

French

Filipino

Source: Statistics Canada ■

H^^^^IH^^^^^^^H^H^H 26.1

■^^^^■^^^^^^^^^■^■■24.1

^^^^^H^^^^^^^H^^^I 22.7

^^^^■^^^^^^■^^H 19.8

^^■■^^^^^^^^^Bl 19.7

M^^^^^^^^^^^^M ^^'3

HHIriH^^^^^^^H 18.1

^ 14.3

|12.9

■ 1 1 1 ,

5.0

1391 Census

10.0

Perce

15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0
nt unemployed

■ 1

Figure 4
female

West Asian/Arab |

Black 1

South-East Asian j

South Asian j

Aboriginal |

Latin American j

Chinese j

Total population j

British 1

French j

Filipino 1

0.0

Source: StaUsUcs Canada ■ C

-1 1 : Unemployment rate, by racial/ethnic group,
}s aged 15 to 24 years in Metro Toronto, 1991

^^■iri^^l^^^^^^^^P 22.1

^■■■^^^^^^^^■■■20.2

^^^■^^^^^^^^■■20.1

mi6.4
H15.9

mi5.7

^^^1

12.7
1

^^1 11.

^9.9

|8.5

5.0

■ensiaCviada

10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0
Percent unemployed

94 SETTING THE SCENE

Figure 4-1 2: Mean personal
males aged 1 5 years and

incx)me by racial/ethnic group,
over in Metro Toronto, 1 991

South-East Asian

Latin American

Black

Filipino

South Asian -

West Asian/Arab

Chinese

Aboriginal

Total population

French

British

■
■

^H

^HJH $25.8

Hi

m^^HI $27.0

$0

Source: Slattsdcs Canada ■

.0 $5.0
1991 Census

$10.0 $15.0 $20.0 $25.0 $30.0 $35.0 $40.0 $45.0

Mean income (thousands of dollars)

Figure 4-13: Mean personal incom
females aged 1 5 years and over

e, by racial/ethnic group,
in Metro Toronto, 1991

1 $14.9

Latin American

South-East Asian

West Asian/Arab

South Asian

Black

Chinese

Filipino

Aboriginal

Total population

French

British

I

^^H

$0

Source. Stattsdca CanaOa

.0 $4.0 $8.0 $12.0 $16.0 $20.0 $24.0 $28.0

Mean income (thousands of dollars)

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 95

patterns in tlie admission of prisoners from poorer, less established Asian
communities.'

Since we are unable to assess accurately the "ethnicity" of prisoners, we cannot be
sure that these conditions apply in Ontario. Nonetheless, we note this possibility
because the Commission has found serious and growing concerns within tlie
Vietnamese community that large numbers of Vietnamese male youtlis and adults are
being admitted to Ontario's prisons.

Comment on the findings

These findings clearly demonstrate that black people are vastly over-represented where
the criminal justice system has its harshest impact - imprisonment. While the precise
numbers may be open to debate, the Commission believes tlie patterns of inequality
they reveal are reliable.

These findings about 1992/93 admissions pose the general question of why black
people, like Aboriginal people, are so over-represented among admissions to Ontario's
prisons. They also raise two very specific questions. Why are pre-trial admission rates
for black and other racialized people so much higher than sentenced admission rates,
when corresponding rates for white and Aboriginal people are the same? And why are
black and Aboriginal women even more over-represented than black or Aboriginal
men among prison admissions?

Taken alone, these findings do not explain racial inequalities in prison admissions, nor
do they suggest solutions. Without a clear understanding of the problems, there can be
little confidence that solutions will be effective.

Understanding over-representation

Why are black people over-represented among prison admissions? What explains the
dramatic increase in the imprisonment of black women and men since 1986/87? Why
is there such a large difference in imprisonment rates of black and white people for
some offences and much smaller differences, or even under-representation of black
people, for other offences?

A superficial answer might be that the data "prove" that black people are inherently
criminal. This explanation does not fit the facts. Equally superficial - and equally
unconvincing - is the conclusion that all white police officers, lawyers and judges are
blatantly racist and deliberately criminalize black people.

A similar point has been made in Britain. There, "Asian" indicates groups that might identify themselves as "South
Asian/East Indian" In Canada. In Britain this group is dominated by people of Indian ethnicity whose wealth and
employment status are similar to those of white people. British people of Pakistani and Bengali ethnicity are
considerably poorer, younger and less likely to have secure jobs. Analyses of British prison data have concluded that
"Asians" are not over-represented among prisoners. More detailed recent studies, however, suggest that British
people of Bengali and Pakistani heritage are over-represented among "Asian" prisoners, and may be over-
represented in the prison population as a whole (Marian FitzGerald, "'Racism': Establishing the Phenomenon" in
Racism and Criminology Dee Cook and Barbara Hudson, eds , (London: Sage, 1993). )

96 SETTING THE SCENE

Consider the superficial view that race determines criminal behaviour, and that racial
inequality in prison admissions merely reflects black people's inherent criminality.
How could race cause people to commit criminal offences? Is the answer in biology -
could a gene related to dark skin, curly hair and broad noses cause people to commit
crimes? Would this gene lead black people to specialize in drug trafficking? Does a
gene cause white people to drive after drinking alcohol? Does pale skin and straight
hair, or a gene related to these characteristics, prevent people from obstructing
justice?

Consider also the dramatic increase in prison admissions of black people. How could
a biological link between race and crime explain this? Surely the genetic make-up of
black Ontarians did not suddenly change during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Most important, if biology causes criminality, why are only a small percentage of
black Ontarians in conflict with the law? Even if each prison admission represented
one individual (which is not the case),' 96 percent of black people were not admitted
to prison in 1992/93. If a "race gene" caused black people to commit crimes, then
most of Ontario's black residents, and few or no white Ontarians, would be in jail.

Such questions are absurd, as is the belief that biology explains criminal behaviour.
There is no such thing as a criminality gene, nor, more fundamentally, is there any
scientific evidence of a race gene. As Stephen Jay Gould states:

Intense studies ... have detected not a single "race gene" - that is a gene present
in all members of one group and none of another. Frequencies vary, often
considerably, among groups, but all human races are much of a muchness ....
[T]he great preponderance of human variation occurs within groups, not in the
differences between them ....

Human groups do vary strikingly in a few highly visible characteristics (skin
colour, hair form) - and these external differences may fool us into thinking that
overall divergence must be great. But we know now that our usual metaphor of
superficiality - skin deep - is literally accurate. "

Clearly then, the dark skins and curly hair of black people do not cause criminal
behaviour. Nor does some other genetic difference lead black people to commit
crimes. Since biology is not destiny, the explanation of racial inequalities in prison
admissions must lie elsewhere.

Some people who rightly reject biological explanations of criminal activity find
cultural ones persuasive. Recognizing that racial appearance cannot determine
behaviour, they may think, nonetheless, that culture does. Are cultural propensities to
criminality, violence or lack of respect for law and authority the reasons for racial
differentials in admissions to Ontario's prisons?

See Footnote t on page 68.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 97

If all or some black cultures are inherently criminal, but white cultures are not, why
are tlie vast majority of prison admissions people from white cultures? Why are most
black people (like most white people) not in conflict with *he law? If black culture
causes criminality, what explains the relatively low proportions of black admissions in
1986/87 and tlie massive increase since tlien?

Finally, how do cultural explanations of criminality account for what John Pitts calls
"one of the few things we know with any certainty about the relationship between
race and crime" - the evidence, documented in many countries, that crime rates
amiong immigrants are lower than among persons born in Lhe country?'" Crime rates
among descendants of immigrants, however, tend to be the same as or higher than
crime rates of the dominant culture.^' If culture explains crime, why are members of
the immigrant generation, who presumably have the allegedly criminal tendencies of
an "alien" culmre in its strongest form, less likely to commit offences than their
children and grandchildren raised in the culture of the new society?

The answer, of course, is that cultural characteristics do not explain the evidence. As
Pitts states.

Crime rates are neither a simple product of the proclivities of individuals nor of
the cultural penchant of particular ethnic groups but, rather, a product of the
chances, choices and solutions available within the milieu they enter. The rise in
crime rate among the second and subsequent generations of an immigrant group
is a product of ... [the] process whereby people make an accommodation with,
and establish ways of being within, a new social environment. In the process
some "incoming" young people will adopt the strategies and behaviours of the
established social group [where they live]."^

Cultures may be real and enriching forces in people's lives, but they are not "timeless
and inexorable determinants of behaviour."--' They do not, in other words, dictate
what people do. Culture cannot cause people to commit crimes or account for racial
inequalities in prison admissions. Far from explaining anytliing, beliefs that some
cultures are inherently violent, criminal, anti-social or disrespectful of law are
stereotypes that racialize others. They promote constructions of races as real, different
and unequal, and allow people to act as if such constructions were true.

Cultural characteristics of specific racialized groups or minority groups in general
clearly cannot explain racial differentials in prison admissions. So how do we explain
these differentials in Ontario prisons? In jurisdictions where disproportionate
imprisonment of black people has been openly recognized for years, research suggests
two general explanations, which may overlap. One explanation emphasizes the
influence of social and economic inequality on behaviour; the other points to
differential enforcement of the criminal law, including racial discrimination in the
administration of justice.

98 SETTING THE SCENE

Social and economic inequality

Some studies of differential imprisonment emphasize failures to integrate black and
other racialized people into the wider society. They draw on evidence of
disproportionately high rates of unemployment and dead-end jobs among racialized
people, particularly young adults. They also cite poor housing conditions and lack of
educational opportunities. These studies make the important point that social and
economic opportunities are racialized. That is, members of racialized groups are much
more likely than members of non-racial ized groups to have limited opportunities.
Since people with limited social and economic opportunities are most likely to be
policed, prosecuted and punished as criminals,^'' racialized people are more likely than
white people to be in conflict with the law. Thus they are over-represented at all
stages of the criminal justice process, including prisons.

Three important elements of this explanation are worth emphasizing. First, those who
adopt it may generally accept that racialized people are over-represented in prison
populations, at least in part, because of greater participation in some criminal
activities." They do not accept, however, diat biology or culture is the reason for
higher rates of participation. Nor do tliey always see racism in the wider society as
the only contributing factor.

According to tiiis view, the social and economic conditions of people's lives are
crucial to their participation in criminal activity. The criminality rate should be the
same for racialized and non-racialized people where these conditions are the same. If,
on the other hand, opportunities are unequally distributed, members of the socially
disadvantaged groups are likely to commit a higher proportion of crimes than others.
If a higher proportion of a particular racialized group has limited opportunities,
compared with otlier groups, then tlie average crime rate for this group is likely to be
higher.

Second, according to this approach sub-groups with similar life opportunities - in
racialized and non-racialized communities alike - are likely to display similar levels of
criminality. Young, unemployed white men living in areas of social stress and
economic deprivation, for example, would be likely to commit crimes as their young,
male, unemployed black neighbours. Conversely, as Pitts noted of the British context,
"... the amount of street crime perpetrated by 28-year-old, male, British Afro-
Caribbean chartered accountants is the same as that perpetrated by 28-year-old, male,
British Caucasian chartered accountants, namely 0.0 per cent."^^ The point is that any
difference in street crime rates of British Afro-Caribbean men and British Caucasian
men arises because fewer of the former have opportunities for economic advancement.

Finally, this viewpoint does not imply that lack of opportunities or social inequality
causes individuals - whether white or racialized - to commit crimes. It does say,
rather, that people with limited life-chances may be more likely to view some forms
of criminal activity as more attractive or exciting than their other choices. ^^ They may
see crime as a means to acquire material goods otherwise unobtainable. They may fail
to respect the rules of a society that excludes them from its benefits. They may feel

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 99

they have much to gain and little to lose from criminal activity. Crime may make
them feel powerful. It may add excitement to, or provide a means of escape from
otherwise dreary lives. Crime, in short, may be a rational choice.

Experts who make tliese observations do not, of course, excuse or condone the actions
of any individual who harms others. They recognize that crime is a serious social
problem, hurting immediate victims and the families and friends of victims and
perpetrators. They know that fear of crime may severely restrict people's lives. But
since imprisonment does not appear to deter or in any otlier way significantly to
reduce crime, it is important to develop strategies likely to work ratlier than to
continue with those known to fail. More emphasis on or investment in crime
prevention, as opposed to punishment, is their answer.

Differential enforcement

Other explanations of racialized patterns in prison admissions also stress social and
economic conditions, but from a different perspective. These conditions are seen as
explanations of who is caught, not who commits crimes. ^^ Enforcement practices,
rather than offending behaviours, are key.

People who hold this view argue that involvement in criminal activity is not limited to
an identifiable group of anti-social and marginal individuals. Criminality is instead a
widespread social phenomenon in which many ordinary and apparently respectable
people participate. Drawing on studies of employers, employees, taxpayers, retailers
and service suppliers, police officers, university students, youths and drug users, and
women and children abused by men, these experts conclude that with regard to crime
"everybody does it" at least occasionally."

If criminal activity is indeed widespread among the population, the explanation for
racial inequality in prison admissions cannot be attributed mainly to disproportionate
involvement in crime. Studies in Canada and elsewhere consistently show, for
example, that more than 90 percent of young men say they have committed criminal
offences.^" This indicates that variations in offending rates by race or economic class
may be small. Variations in enforcement practices likely make the difference.

Law enforcement is not the only possible response to crime, nor is it always
desirable. Many studies suggest that law enforcement is costly, blunt and not very
effective in reducing crime.'' Since law enforcement resources are finite, priorities
must be established and variations in enforcement practices are inevitable. The critical
question is what criteria are used to decide which offenders and which offences the
criminal justice system should select.

Formal and informal selection criteria are used in law enforcement. Experts suggest
that these criteria make black and other racialized people particularly vulnerable. They
point, first, to poverty. Study after study shows that offences by those at the bottom
of social and economic hierarchies are more likely to be policed, prosecuted and
punished severely than offences committed by wealthier people.'^ The implication is

100 SETTING THE SCENE

clear: a society that allows racialization to influence people's economic opportunities
is likely to produce racial inequality in its prison populations.

Even if criminal activity is widespread, patterns of offending behaviour differ
according to the opportunities available. Those with access to other people's money
through their employment or profession, for example, are much more likely to
embezzle funds than to sell drugs on a street corner. They are also less likely to be
caught. Crimes committed in the privacy of corporate offices tend to be more difficult
to detect and prosecute than street crimes because of their low visibility, and because
the law generally shelters these private spaces from state officials.

Enforcement practices clearly vary with the seriousness of offences committed, and
also with factors such as whether and how offences are reported, ease of identification
and apprehension, and likelihood of conviction. Racialization in the wider society may
also influence law enforcement practices. The criminal justice system requires police
officers, lawyers, justices of the peace and judges to make judgments about
individuals and their behaviour. Though the law provides a general framework for
these judgments, it seldom specifies fixed rules that dictate outcomes. Instead, the law
sets out broad standards that allow considerable scope for interpretation of the
standards, the individual and the (alleged) offence.

For example, when deciding if someone should be imprisoned before trial, judges or
justices of the peace are expected to predict whether the accused, if released, will fail
to appear for trial or is substantially likely to commit a criminal offence before the
trial. Rarely does a judge or justice of the peace have much information about the
accused relevant to such a prediction.' Consequently their decisions must draw more
heavily on intuition and what lawyers responding to our survey describe as
"empathy." This in turn increases subjectivity in decision-making. It creates
conditions under which lack of familiarity with racialized communities may lead a
decision- maker to rely subconsciously on stereotypes.

Because the processes leading to discretionary choices in the criminal justice system
are subtle and complex, studies of racial discrimination in this system use an approach
that is now well established in human rights law. They begin with evidence of adverse
impact - such as our findings of racial disproportion in prison admissions - and
investigate how far legitimate non-discriminatory factors explain the adverse impact.
Racial inequalities that remain after these factors have been taken into account are
then treated as evidence of racial discrimination that is tolerated by the criminal justice
system.

Using this approach, studies in many jurisdictions have documented direct and indirect
discrimination that results in over-representation of black or other racialized people in
prisons." Later in this Report we document the Commission's findings that racial

A significant body of evidence suggests that the factors they consider are not good predictors of failure to appear or
offending before trial. See Chapter S.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 101

discrimination in policing, bail hearings and sentencing decisions affects Ontario
prison admissions. The remainder of this chapter presents a brief overview of the
various stages where the exercise of discretionary authority may be susceptible to the
introduction of racialization.

Decisions that produce imprisonment: an overview

The criminal justice process involves a great deal of interaction among different
people with different roles. Decisions made at one stage affect those made later. It is
essential to view the system as a whole. Imprisonment is always ordered by a
particular judge or justice of tiie peace, but that decision results from the cumulative
choices made by police officers, crown attorneys, defence counsel and probation
officers.

Entry into the criminal justice process

In general, accused persons are drawn into the criminal justice system in two ways.
Reports of crime may come from victims or observers. In addition, accused persons
may be identified by proactive policing.

Victims are an important source of information about violent offences and property
crimes. Their decision about whether to report a crime is crucial. Surveys in Canada
and elsewhere show that large proportions of individuals harmed by criminal offences
do not report them to the police.^'*

These surveys raise the question of whether racialization influences people in
selectively reporting offences. As yet, no Canadian data deal with this question, and
evidence from other jurisdictions is mixed. Some studies indicate racial inequalities
result from victim reporting;" others do not show such patterns. ^^

Offences may also be identified through planned and systematic police work. Police
may seek evidence of specific offences or focus their attention on specific geographic
areas or particular communities. Police may also initiate encounters, such as stopping
vehicles and people on the street during routine patrols. Whether or not it is planned,
such proactive policing is highly discretionary.

Much evidence from other jurisdictions indicates that this type of policing
disproportionately pulls black people into the criminal justice system." Officers
working on "gut feelings" or popular stereotypes may stop black people more than
others, and may question them more aggressivelj Hostile encounters may not only
uncover offences but also produce them.

Police discretion to charge

Once the police have information identifying a person with an alleged criminal
offence, they must decide whedier to charge the suspect. Police officers are not
legally or professionally obligated to lay charges, even if they believe they have

102 SETTING THE SCENE

enough grounds (evidence) to meet the test. They may instead do notliing, simply
caution suspects, or advise victims how to lay charges themselves.

The scope of police officers' discretion in laying charges is extremely broad. For
example, an 18-year-old who shoves another and runs off witli the other's baseball
cap could be charged with robbery (punishable by up to life imprisonment), theft (two
years), assault (five years) or possession of stolen property (two years). As an
alternative to laying charges, the police could instead talk with the teenager, perhaps
in the presence of family members. This range of choices provides considerable scope
for police officers' personal attitudes, perceptions and stereotypes to influence their
decision. Even when an officer is acting with conscious fairness and objectivity, subtle
influences may arise such as, in this example, whether the teenager comes from what
the officer perceives to be a "good" or "stable" family. This assessment might lead to
the conclusion that a black youth should be subjected to the criminal justice process,
whereas a white youth could be dealt with adequately in the home.

Studies of the extent to which racialization influences police discretion over charging
tend to concentrate on outcomes because police interpretations of alleged criminal
incidents and tlieir classification are not open to scrutiny. Formal records of officers'
conclusions on whether and what to charge are available and may be studied, but the
process by which officers arrive at these conclusions is not always obvious. Evidence
from some jurisdictions, such as Britain, clearly shows that police discretion not to
charge has racialized outcomes, at least with regard to youths. Canadian studies
document class and other biases in police practices, particularly in their processing of
Aboriginal people.^*

Imprisonment before trial

Once a charge is laid, the next critical set of decisions concern whether to hold
accused persons in prison or to seek other controls on them during the period before
trial. Criminal Code provisions suggest that once the accused have been processed by
police and told of their duty to appear in court to answer the charges against them, the
vast majority of accused persons should be set free.

However, a judge or justice of the peace may order imprisonment before trial if it is
necessary to ensure that the accused person will attend court for trial. The accused
may also be detained if it is necessary to protect the public. The decision to detain or
free the accused takes into account the seriousness of the charges and the accused's
criminal record as well as criteria such as "ties to the community,"^' employment
status and mental health.

Racialization may influence police decisions about whether to release accused persons,
and may affect the bail process through information the police supply to crown
attorneys. Racialization may also be introduced through the criteria used to predict
whether the accused will fail to appear at trial or is "substantially likely" to commit a
criminal offence before trial. There is little Canadian research on imprisonment before
trial. Some studies conducted in other jurisdictions have found evidence that

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 103

racialization influences pre-trial release decisions;^" others are inconclusive.'" Chapter
5 reports our findings that racial inequalities do appear in the outcomes of bail
decisions.

Processing charges

Once charges have been laid, crown attorneys assume responsibility for how they are
processed. Crown attorneys have a professional duty to scrutinize charges and decide
whether some or all should be withdrawn because of lack of evidence or because
prosecution would not be in the public interest. They may also engage in resolution
discussions with defence counsel to see if charges can be disposed of without a
contested trial. This may also be an important step for the exercise of crown
discretion.

Since crown attorneys make these decisions mostly on the basis of written material
rather than interaction with accused persons, there seems to be little scope for
racialization to influence their choices. Nonetheless, research in other jurisdictions
suggests that the possibility cannot be dismissed.''^ Much of the information available
to crown attorneys is supplied by police officers who have met tlie accused and may
have formed racialized judgments. For example, clues to accused persons' racial
origin may be recorded on paper. Their names, countries of birth and physical
descriptions are all normally included in the information available to crown attorneys.
Moreover, some residential areas are identified with racialized communities, so that
even an address may be taken to mdicate the race of an accused. The exercise of
crown discretion is discussed later in tliis Report (see chapters 5, 6 and 7).

Court resolutions

Even if charges have been resolved through plea discussions, the accused person still
appears in court. This appearance is a public announcement of the conviction and
sentence. If the crown attorney and defence counsel have agreed on sentence before
the court appearance, they present their agreement to the judge. Judges always have
discretion to decide on an appropriate sentence, but they generally accept joint
proposals. Consequently, in cases with a guilty plea, potential for racial inequality in
sentencing may arise from the resolution discussions that led to the plea and from
judges' responses to sentencing proposals.

An accused who contests the charge(s) appears in court for a trial at which verdicts
and any punishment are determined. These are adversarial processes in which crown
attorneys and defence lawyers compete to influence decision-makers (judges and
juries). If there is any possibility that decision-makers may be swayed by racialization,
one side or the other may use it (see Chapter 7).

This risk has been raised concerning jury trials of white police officers charged with
shooting black persons.''^ It has also been addressed concerning jury tt-ials of black
and other racialized accused. In R. v. Parks, the Ontario Court of Appeal specifically
acknowledged that anti-black racism may influence potential jurors in criminal trials."*^

1 04 SETTING THE SCENE

Sentencing is highly discretionary. The Criminal Code sets out maximum sentences
for each offence, but offers judges Httle further guidance about the appropriate penalty
for a typical offender who commits a routine offence. Although appellate decisions
provide a framework for sentencing, the trial judge retains a broad discretion to
determine sentence.

Concerns about inconsistency in sentencing decisions in Canada and other jurisdictions
are long-standing. Research has identified "extraordinary discrepancies in almost all
aspects of sentencing""^ and noted diat "disparity between courts in sentencing
practices ... is an established fact. '"'^ In tiiis connection the prison admissions data
presented earlier in diis chapter raises the question of how far the disparity reflects
racialization in the criminal justice system.

There are clearly strong and widespread perceptions that judges discriminate against
accused people from racialized groups.' Evidence concerning sentencing practices in
Canada and other jurisdictions is mixed. Many studies show racial inequalities in
sentencing practices;''^ others do not or are inconclusive."*^ In Chapter 8 we report the
Commission's findings that racial inequalities do appear in sentencing decisions.

Conclusion

There can be few more significant interventions by the public into the private
than imprisoning someone ... the decision to imprison a person, to take away
their capacity to act in private society and to subject them constantly and totally
to the supervision of the state, stands therefore in need of particularly clear
justification by law.'"

Imprisonment is society's most vivid and extreme form of exclusion. The dramatic
findings presented in this chapter show that black women, men and youth in Ontario
disproportionately experience imprisonment, and that this massive inequality in
Ontario prison admissions is a relatively recent occurrence. Ontario simply must not
continue to admit black people to prisons at the current rates. ^

These findings simply cannot be rationalized by suggesting that black people are
inherently more criminal than others. Nor can they be rationalized as reflecting a
criminal justice system consisting of officials who are driven by racial hatred.
However, racialization in Canadian society is a recognized fact both inside and outside

See Chapter 2 for perceptions of judges' general treatment of people.

Late in our mandate we became aware of a recent report, for the federal and provincial Ministries of the Solicitor
General, analyzing remand populations in six southern Ontario detention centres. In total, 304 randomly selected
adult male remand prisoners were interviewed in early 1994. The study showed revealed that 49% of adult male
remand prisoners in the sample self-identified as "Caucasian," 31% as black and 20% as "other racial
minority/unknown." [Barklay Resources, "Awaiting Trial; Accused persons remanded to Custody," August 1995
(unpublished).] In other words, this study indicates that the patterns of gross over-representation are continuing.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 105

the criminal justice system. Wherever broad discretion exists, racialization can
influence decisions and produce racial inequality.

The criminal justice system operates through a series of highly discretionary decision-
making stages. Discretion is exercised in subtle, complex and interactive ways which
leave considerable scope for racialization to influence practices and decisions, and for
bias to be transmitted from one stage of the process to others.

In the remainder of this Report we document evidence of the influence of racialization
on criminal justice practices, and evidence diat this influence is tolerated - evidence of
systemic racism. We also make recommendations for securing racial equality in the
criminal justice system.

106 SETTING THE SCENE

Endnotes

Canada, House of Commons, Report to Parliament by the Sub-Committee on the Penitentiary
System in Canada, chair, Mark MacGuigan ("MacGuigan Report") (Ottawa: 1977), p. 35.

^ Vancise J.A., in R. v. McGinn (1989) 49 C.C.C. (3d) 137 (Sask C.A.) at 152 (dissenting).

Province of Quebec, Commission of Enquiry into the Administration of Justice on Criminal
and Penal Matters, Crime, Justice and Society (Quebec: Quebec Official Publisher, 1969), p.
48.

'' MacGuigan Report (note 1), p. 16.

^ Law Reform Commission of Canada,. The Criminal Law in Canadian Society (Ottawa:
Supply and Services, 1982), p. 44.

* Canada, Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, Final Report (majority),
chair Gerald LeDain ("LeDain Report") (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1973), pp. 58-9.

Solicitor General of Canada, A Summary and Analysis of Some Major Inquiries on
Corrections - 1938 to 1977 (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1977).

* Heino Lilies and Barry Stuart, "The Role of the Community in Sentencing," Justice Report 8
(1992), p. 2.

' R V. Pettigrew (1990) 56 C.C.C. (3d) 390 (B.C.C.A.) at 401.

10.

12.

13.

Statistics Canada, Profile of Ethnic Groups (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services
Canada, 1989), catalogue no. 93-154.

Statistics Canada, Ethnic Origins: The Nation (Ottawa: Ministry of Industry, Science, and
Technology, 1993), catalogue no. 93-315.

Data provided by Andy Birkenmayer, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (manuscript on
file).

Royal Canadian Mounted Police, National Drug Intelligence Estimate 1987/88 (Ottawa,
1988); D. Owen Carrigan, Crime and Punishment in Canada: A History (Toronto:
McLelland & Stewart, 1991), cited by McLachlin J. (dissenting) in R. v. Pearson (1992) 77
C.C.C. (3d) 124.

See generally: Canadian Bar Association, National Criminal Justice Section, "Submission on
Bill C-7," May, 1994; Addiction Research Foundation, "Bill C-7 and Canadian Policy,"
submission to the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Bill C-7, May 9, 1994 (Toronto); City of
Toronto, Department of Public Health, "Submission to Sub-Committee on Bill C-7 of the
Standing Committee on Health," May 24, 1994; American Bar Association, Report of an Ad
Hoc Committee of the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association (January
1992); Alfred Blumstein, "Making Rationality Relevant: The American Society of
Criminology 1992 Presidential Address," Criminology vol. 31, no. 1 (1993), p. 1; Committee
on Drugs and The Law, "A Wiser Course: Ending Drug Prohibition," The Record 49 (1994),

16.

17.

18

19.

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 107

p. 521; William J. Chambliss, "Policing the Ghetto Underclass: The Politics of Law and Law
Enforcement," Social Problems 41 (1994), p. 177.

See generally: S. Wisotsky, "Exposing the War on Cocaine: The Futility and Destructiveness
of Prohibition." Wisconsin Law Review (1983), p. 1305; Wisotsky, Breaking the Impasse in
the War on Drugs (Wesport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986); LeDain Report (note 6); Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, National Intelligence Drug Estimate. 1984-85 (Ottawa: Supply
and Services, 1985); Patricia G. Erickson, E.M. Adiaf G.F. Murray and R.G. Smart, The
Steel Drug: Cocaine in Perspective, second edition (New York: Lexington Books, 1994).

Alfred Blumstein, "Making Rationality Relevant" (note 14); Michael Tonry, "Racial
Disproportion in US Prisons," B.J. Crim. 34 (1994), p. 97.

World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice
Research Institute (UNICJRI), Cocaine Project Report (March 1995).

Tonry, "Racial Disproportion" (note 16).

Stephen Jay Gould, "Human Equality," in 77?^ Flamingo's Smile: Reflections on Natural
History (New York: Norton Books, 1985), p. 196.

\^°yjohn Pitts, "Thereotyping: Anti-Racism, Criminology and Black Young People," in Dee
Cook and Barbara Hudson, eds.. Racism and Criminology (London: Sage Publications
1993), p. 113.

21.

22.

23.

24.,

J.R. Lambert, Crime, Police and Race Relations: A Study in Birmingham (London: Oxford
University Press, 1970); C. Shaw and H. Mackay, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1942); David Thomas, "Criminality Among the Foreign
Bom: An Analysis of the Federal Prison Population" (Ottawa: Immigration Policy Branch,
Employment and Immigration Canada, April, 1992).

Pitts, "Thereotyping" (note 20), p. 113.

Ibid., p. 111.

See generally: Mike Brogden, Tony Jefferson and Sandra Walklate, Introducing Policework
(London: Unwin, 1988); Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison:
Ideology, Class and Criminal Justice, third edition (New York: Macmillan, 1990); Dee Cook
and Pat Carlen, "Fiddling Tax and Benefits: Inculpating the Poor, Exculpating the Rich," in
Pat Carlen and Dee Cook, eds., Paying for Crime (Milton Keynes, U.K.: Open University
Press, 1989); John Braithwaite, Inequality, Crime and Public Policy (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1979); Inez Dootjes, Patricia Erickson and Richard Fox, "Defence Counsel in
Juvenile Court: A Variety of Roles," Canadian Journal of Criminology and Corrections 14
(1972), p. 132; Bernard Schissel, Social Dimensions of Canadian Youth Justice (Toronto:
Oxford, 1993); Pitts, "Thereotyping" (note 20); James B. Jacobs, "Macrosociology and
Imprisonment," in David F. Greenberg, ed.. Corrections and Punishment (Beverly Hills,
Calif: Sage, 1977); Alfred Blumstein, J. Cohen, J. Roth and C. Visher, eds.. Criminal
Careers and Career Criminals (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986); Austin
T. Turk Criminality and the Legal Order (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969).

108 SETTING THE SCENE

25.

26,

28.

29,

30.)

Brogden, Jefferson and Walklate, Introducing Policework (note 24); Pitts, "Thereotyping"
(note 20); Edward Boldt, L. Hursh, S. Johnson, and M. Taylor, "Presentence Reports and the
Incarceration of Natives," Canadian Journal of Criminology 25 (1983), p. 269; Robert
Reiner, "Race and Criminal Justice," New Community 16 (1989), p. 5; W.J. Sabol, "Racially
Disproportionate Prison Populations in the United States: An Overview of Historical Patterns
and Review of Contemporary Issues," Contemporary Crises 13 (1989), p. 405.

Pitts, "Thereotyping" (note 20).

TTiomas Gabor, Everybody Does It: Crime by the Public (Toronto, University of Toronto
Press, 1994); E.M. Adlaf, R.G. Smart, G. Walsh and F. Ivis, "Is the Association Between
Drug Use and Delinquency Weai<ening?" Addiction 89 (1994), p. 1675; D. Nagin, David P.
Farrington and T. Moffit, "Life Course Trajectories of Different Types of Offenders,"
Criminology 33 (1995), p. Ill; Patricia Erickson, "Youthful Involvement in Illicit Street
Drug Markets: Avenues for Prosperity or Roads to Crime?" in B. Galaway and J. Hudson,
eds.. Youth in Transition to Adulthood: Research and Policy Implications (Toronto:
Thompson Educational Publishing, forthcoming).

Reiman, Rich Gel Richer (note 24).

See studies cited in Gabor, Everybody Does It (note 27).

Marc LeBlanc and Marcel Frechette, Male Criminal Activity from Childhood Through Youth:
Multilevel and Developmental Perspectives (New York: Springer- Verlag 1989); Marc
LeBlanc, "Delinquency as an Epiphenomenon of Adolescence," in R. Corrado, Marc
LeBlanc and J. Trepanier, eds., Current Issues in Juvenile Justice (Toronto: Butterworths,
1983); David P. Farrington, Juvenile Justice in England and Canada. (Ottawa: Solicitor
General, 1979).

Diana R. Gordon, The Justice Juggernaut: Fighting Street Crime, Controlling Citizens (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991); Nils Christie, Crime Control as Industry
(London: Routledge, 1993); Thomas Mathieson, Prison on Trial: A Critical Assessment
(London: Sage, 1990); John Braithwaite, Crime, Shame, and Reintegration, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), Kathryn Barnard, Carol Tennenhouse and Mark
Krasnick, "The September Study - A Look at Sentencing and Recidivism: A Study Paper
Prepared for the Law Reform Commission of Canada" (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1976);
Law Refonn Commission of Canada, Our Criminal Law (Ottawa: Supply and Services,
1 977); Canada, House of Commons, Crime Prevention in Canada: Toward a National
Strategy, 12th report of the Standing Committee on Justice, chair. Bob Homer M.P. (Ottawa:
Queen's Printer, 1993).

Brogden, Jefferson and Walklate, Introducing Policework (note 24); Cook and Carlen,
"Fiddling '^.x and Benefits" (note 24); Blumstein et al.. Criminal Careers (note 24); Gordon,
Justice Juggernaut (note 31).

^€i,

ee generally: Schissel, Social Dimensions (note 24); Roger G. Hood with Graca Cordovil,
Race and Sentencing: A Study in the Crown Court - A Report for the Commission for Racial
Equality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Darnell F. Hawkins, "Trends in Black- White
Imprisonment: Changing Conceptions of Race or Changing Conceptions of Social Control,"
Crime and Social Justice 24 (1985), p. 187; Barbara A. Hudson, "Discrimination and
Disparity: The Influence of Race on Sentencing," New Community 16 (1989), p. 23; Marian

34.

35.

36.

37

38

39

40

Racism in Justice: Prison Admissions 109

FitzGerald, "F.thnic Minorities and the Criminal Justice System," research study no. 20 for
United Kingdom, Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (London: HMSO 1993) pn
41^4.

Anthony Doob and Rosemary Gaertner "Trends in Criminal Victimization: 1988-1993,"
Juristat (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1994), catalogue no. 85-002, vol. 14 no. 13; P. Mayhew
and N.A. Maung. Sur\-e\'ing Crime: Findings from the 1992 Briiish Crime Survey, Home
Office Research and Statistics Department, research findings no. 2 (London: HMSO, 1992);
J.J.M. Van Dijk and P. Mayhew, Criminal Victimization in the Internationalized World: Key
Findings of the 19H9 and 1992 Intentional Crime Sun'eys (The Hague, Netherlands: Ministry
of Justice, Directorate for Crime Prevention, 1992).

Rabindra Shah and Ken Pease, "Crime, Race and Reporting to the Police," Howard Journal
of Criminal Justice 31 (1992), p. 192; Philip Stevens and Carole Willis, Race. Crime and
Arrests, Home Office Research Study no. 58 (London: HMSO, 1979).

Shah and Pease, ibid.

David J. Smith, "Race, Crime and Criminal Justice," in Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan and
Robert Reiner, eds.. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (Oxford: Oxford University Press
1994), pp. 1064-7.

See generally: Clifford D. Shearing, ed.. Organizational Police Deviance: Its Structure and
Control (Toronto: Butterworths, 1981) ; Richard V. Ericson, Reproducing Order: A Study of
Police Patrol Work (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); Schissel, Social
Dimensions (:<ote 24); John H. Hylton "Some Attitudes Towards Natives in a Prairie City,"
Canadian Journal of Criminology 23 (1981), p. 357; R.M. Bienvenue and A.H. Latif,
"Arrests, Dispositions and Recidivism: A Comparison of Indians and Whites," Canadian
Journal of Criminology and Corrections 16 (1974), p. 105.

See, for example. Re Powers and The Queen (1973) 9 C.C.C.(2d) 533 at 541 for a list of
factors generally considered "ties to the community."

MacLeod (1990) unpublished study cited in Fitzgerald, "Ethnic Minorities" (note 33); Andy
Shallice and Paul Gordon, Black People. White Justice^ Race and the Criminal Justice
System (London: Runnymede Trust, 1990); Hood, Race and Sentencing (note 33).

l. Brown and R. Hullin, "Contested Bail Applications -The Treatment of Ethnic Minority
and White Offenders," Criminal Law Review (1993), p. 107; Monica A. Walker, "The Court
Disposal and Remands of White, Afro-Caribbean and Asian Men (London 1983)" British
Journal of Criminology 29 (1989), p. 353.

See generally: Mark Curriden, "Selective Prosecution," American Bar Association Journal 78
(1992), p. 54; Elizabeth L. Earle, "Banishing the Thirteenth Juror: An Approach to the
Identification of Prosecutorial Racism," Columbia Law Review 92 (1992), p. 1212; Dwight
L. Greene, "Abusive Prosecutors: Gender, Race and Class Discretion and the Prosecution of
Drug-Addicted Mothers," Buffalo Law Review 39 (1991), p. 737; Tracey L. McCain, "The
Interplay of Editorial and Prosecutorial Discretion in the Perpetuation of Racism in the
Criminal Justice System," Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems 25 (1992), p. 601;
Michael McConville, Andrew Sanders and Roger Leng, The Case for the Prosecution: Police
Suspects and the Construction of Criminality (London, U.K.: Routledge, 1991).

110 SETTING THE SCENE

43.

44.

45.

( 47. I

48.

49.

R. V. Lines, April 26, 1993, unreported, Ont. Ct. (Gen. Div.), per Hawkins J.

R. V. Parks (1993) 84 C.C.C. (3rd) 353 at 369.

J.V. Decore, "Criminal Sentencing; The Role of the Canadian Courts of Appeal and the
Concept of Uniformity," Criminal La^' Quarterly 6 (1964), pp. 324-380.

John L.J. Edwards, "The Advent of English (Not French) Criminal Law and Procedure into
Canada - A Close Call in 1774," Criminal Law Quarterly 26 (1984), pp. 464-482.

See, for example. Hood, Race and Sentencing (note 33); Schissel, Social Dimensions (note
24); Marjorie Zatz, "Race, Ethnicity and Determinate Sentencing: A New Dimension to an
Old Controversy," Criminology 22 (1984), p. 147; Zatz, "Pleas, Priors and Prison:
Racial/Ethnic Differences in Sentencing," Social Science Research 14 (1985), p. 169; Zatz,
"The Changing Forms of Racism / Ethnic Biases in Sentencing," Journal of Research in
Crime and Delinquency 24 (1987), p. 69.

Boldt et al., "Presentence Reports" (note 25); I. Brown and R. Hullin, "A Study of
Sentencing in the Leeds Magistrates Courts: The Treatment of Ethnic Minority and White
Offenders," British Journal of Criminology (1992), p. 41; Wilbanks, Myth of a Racist System
(note 33). For studies that suggest discrimination is virtually irrelevant to over-representation
of black persons in U.S. prisons, see Alfred Blumstein, "On the Racial Disprcportionality of
United States' Prison Populations," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 73 (1982), p.
1259; William Wilbanks, The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System (Monterey, Calif.:
Brooks/Cole, 1987).

Stephen Livingstone and Tim Owen, Prison Law: Text & Materials (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1993), p. 288.

PART II

Examining Practices

Chapter 5 Imprisonment before Trial

Chapter 6 Charge Management

Chapter 7 Court Dynamics

Chapter 8 Imprisonment after Conviction

Chapter 9 Racism Behind Bars Revisited

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Chapter 5

Imprisonment Before Trial

Fairness requires that [pre-trial] detention should be used as a last
resort .... Unjustified detention shows disregard for human rights.'

This chapter focuses on the decisions that result in imprisonment of accused people
before their trials. At this stage of the process, the criminal justice system is
imprisoning persons whom it considers innocent, and who may yet be acquitted or
have the charges against them withdrawn. Yet, historically and currently the
criminal justice system tends to treat this decision-making with much less precision
or concern than the criminal trial.

Excessive detention of untried accused was documented in Martin Friedland's 1965
study of Toronto courts," and subsequent Criminal Code amendments were intended
to reduce imprisonment of untried persons. Nevertheless, every year in Ontario tens
of thousands of untried accused spend time behind bars. In 1992/93, for example,
41,195 (49%) of a total of 83,405 admissions to Ontario prisons were unsentenced
prisoners, of whom the vast majority had not been tried.* By 1993/94, these remand
admissions (46,151) amounted to 54% of total admissions (86,022)' to provincial
prisons.^

Our preliminary consultations revealed serious and persistent concerns that systemic
racism makes black and many other racialized accused in Ontario especially
vulnerable to imprisonment before trial. Some lawyers recounted incidents of harsh
treatment of black and other racialized clients in the bail process. Many others
described subtle biases in the exercise of discretion. They and other community
members also expressed concerns about inadequacies in justice services -
particularly interpreter services - that contribute to the unnecessary imprisonment of
racialized accused.

t

Accused people may be remanded into custody at any sUge before they are sentenced. Tlius data on remand
admissions includes for example, people who have been convicted but are ordered into custody pending a sentencing
hearing. Most remand admissions, however, are of untried persons.

The federal-provincial Barklay Report notes that in November 1994 the number of adult remand prisoners in six
Ontario institutions was 9.2 percent higher than the same month in the previous year, a pattern that "continues a
trend that began several years ago." ("Awaiting Trial" [note 24], p.4.)

113

114 EXAMINING PRACTICES

The prison admissions data documented in the previous chapter are consistent with
these allegations about the use of imprisonment before trial. In 1992/93, for
example, the remand admission rates for people classified as black. South Asian,
Asian or Arab were at least twice as high as their sentenced admission rates.* (In
other words, for every member of these groups sentenced to prison, at least two
members of the group were jailed on remand.) By contrast, for people classified as
white or Aboriginal, the remand and sentenced admission rates were virtually
identical (for every white or Aboriginal person sentenced to prison, one member of
the group was jailed on remand). This peculiar finding - that people who are not
white or Aboriginal were much more likely to be admitted to prison while presumed
innocent than they are after guilt was established - warranted further investigation.

The research used a variety of methods, including statistical analysis, file and
transcript reviews, interviews and opinion surveys, analysis of case law and
legislation, and court observation. For the most part we summarize our findings and
conclusions in the course of discussing specific issues. But the findings of our major
statistical study are documented in considerable detail because it is the most
comprehensive Canadian research conducted to date on racial differences in pre-trial
imprisonment decisions.

We begin with an overview of: the rationale for imprisonment before trial and the
problems it poses; the principles of restraint, fairness, equality and accountability
that should generally govern pre-trial imprisonment; and legal justifications for
ordering it. We then document our findings about the exercise of discretion. Here
we focus on our major study, which compares the results of police and court release
decisions for black and white adult males charged with the same offences. This
study shows that across the entire sample and for some specific offences -

• black accused are more likely than white accused to be imprisoned before trial.

• little of the difference in the use of imprisonment for black and white accused is
explained by factors said to be relevant to imprisonment decisions.

• imprisonment decisions are significantly influenced by the race of the accused.

• reliance on employment status in court release decisions contributes significantly
to differential imprisonment of black accused.

After presenting these findings, we return to the legal and other operating norms of
the pre-trial detention process with recommendations to ensure that the criminal
justice system no longer tolerates racial inequality in deciding whether to imprison
accused persons before trial.

See Chapter 4, Figure 4-10.

Imprisonment before Trial 1 15

Regulating imprisonment before trial

[T]he presumption of innocence is an animating principle throughout the criminal
justice process .... The starting point for any proposed deprivation of life, liberty or
security of the person ... charged with ... an offence must be that the person is
innocent.''

Canadian law generally allows the state to imprison people as punishment for
committing a crime, to force compliance with court orders and to control them until
specific legal processes are completed. In a democratic society it is fundamentally
wrong to imprison people before trials as punishment, or for oblique purposes such
as to force them to plead guilty, or to assist officials in investigations.

Control, by contrast, is viewed as a legitimate reason for imprisoning some accused
people before trial. This use of imprisonment, sometimes known as "detention" or
"custody," is to ensure the accused person attends trial or prevent offending before
trial. But strict limitations on the use of imprisonment for this purpose are essential.

Reasons for limiting pre-trial imprisonment

Imprisonment before trial is a substantial interference with liberty, and deliberately
inflicts suffering on people who are legally presumed innocent. Moreover,
imprisonment is generally a harsher experience for untried accused than for
convicted persons in Ontario institutions. All accused held before trial are kept
under maximum-security conditions whether they are charged with possession of
drugs, theft, obstructing justice or murder. Jails and detention centres housing
remand prisoners are usually overcrowded, resulting in poor living conditions, a
virtual absence of privacy and heightened anxiety. As Judge Stortini noted in 1992,
these institutions can offer little useful or productive activity to untried prisoners:'
"local jails are considered maximum [security] holding facilities. There are no or
very little rehabilitative programs for people. Local jails ... warehouse people."^

Beyond their immediate suffering, untried prisoners are considerably disadvantaged
throughout the criminal justice process. Imprisonment before trial intensifies
pressures on them to plead guilty, hampers their preparations for trial, and may
affect how they are perceived in court. Several studies in different jurisdictions have
shown that imprisoned accused who plead not guilty are less likely to be acquitted
at trial than those who are not detained before trial; and that whatever the plea, they
are much more likely to receive a prison sentence if convicted.^ These studies
recognize that the differential is often largely explained by the courts relying on
similar factors during bail, trial and sentencing proceedings. But they also suggest

Ironically, the lack of services is often justified on the basis that prison programs are an aspect of punishment and as
such should not be used for those presumed innocent. The consequence of this policy for the untried prisoner is, at
best, intense boredom; at worst, emotional and psychological damage. See for example, R. v. Bennell [1993] O.J.
No. 892.

1 1 6 EXAMINING PRACTICES

that part of the difference at trial and sentencing is due to the earlier detention
decision.

The negative consequences of imprisoning untried accused may continue well after
the trial. It is extremely expensive to "warehouse" people, and doing so may breed
anger, bitterness and alienation from society. Pre-trial imprisonment may be
especially harsh and embittering for the innocent accused person, because the
experience "leaves a stigma even if [the accused] is eventually found innocent. This
kind of social dislocation may strengthen his belief that there is no place for him in
the normal community."' Imprisonment before trial also results in many untried
prisoners adjusting to the authoritarian and often violent regimes in which they are
held by developing precisely the types of anti-social attitudes and behaviours that
the criminal justice system wants to deter. The Canadian Committee on Corrections
in 1 969 warned of the dangers of imprisoning untried first offenders except where
absolutely necessary:

The period following his first arrest is a crucial one for the first offender. If he is
unwisely dealt with, he may come to see society as an enemy and to assume that his
future lies with the criminal element. If he is released while awaiting trial he may
continue his positive family and social relationships; if he is held in jail he will
more readily identify himself with the criminal element.*

Principles for limiting pre-trial imprisonment

Four key principles are the basis for limiting the use of imprisonment before trial.
Each stems from the fundamental value that "society is not warranted in inflicting
greater harm on a person ... than is absolutely necessary for the protection of
society."'

• Restraint "requires that detention be used as a last resort."'" This principle
means, generally, that pre-trial imprisonment should be an exceptional event. No
one should be imprisoned before trial unless the state demonstrates a specific,
compelling reason for detention and shows that no less intrusive method of
control is available.

Fairness requires that every individual whom the state seeks to imprison before
trial understands the specific and compelling reason for this action and is given a
full opportunity to challenge the state's position. It also means that decisions
must be made by unbiased officials and based on clear, known criteria. If the
state fails to show a compelling reason for imprisonment, decision-makers must
not make freedom conditional on financial or other conditions that the accused
cannot meet.

• Accountability requires that the use of imprisonment to control accused persons
is open to public scrutiny and to challenge by persons subject to it. Also, there
must be opportunities to correct mistakes that result in unjustified detention
before trial, and remedies for individuals who are harmed by it.

Imprisonment before Trial 1 1 7

• Equality requires that all accused at risk of pre-trial imprisonment are treated
with the same respect as individuals and with concern for their specific interests.
Obviously, social constructions of racialized groups as "unequal," "undesirable"
or "criminal" must not be allowed to influence imprisonment decisions. Equal
respect also requires the justice system to ensure that all accused have access to
the services needed to defend themselves against the threat of imprisonment
before trial.

Legal justifications for imprisonment before trial

Detention before trial begins when the police exercise the power of arrest, one of
several methods of initiating criminal proceedings. Arrest is the only method that
allows the police to hold individuals and, if they decide to lay charges, to
recommend imprisonment. By contrast, criminal proceedings launched by summons
do not involve any detention, and those commenced by an appearance notice may
involve only a brief "investigative detention" when the police make contact with the
accused.

After arrest, detention of an accused must be justified at two or more distinct stages
of the criminal justice process. The first stage is controlled entirely by the police
(police detention). It should end as soon as possible, normally within 24 hours after
arrest.' By the end of this period, an arrested person must be either released or taken
before a justice for a hearing on judicial interim release or "bail."^ At this second
stage, justices of the peace or judges (bail justices) decide whether imprisonment is
necessary, based on information and reasons presented to them by lawyers for the
state (crown attorneys)* and the accused (defence or duty counsel).

In some instances, a police decision to hold an accused person after arrest is
automatic. Police have no authority to release a person charged with an indictable
offence for which the maximum penalty is more than five years imprisonment, but
must take the accused to a bail hearing. All other legal detentions or imprisonment
of accused people involve discretionary judgments that detention is necessary to
achieve specific purposes. These judgments are based on predictions about how an
accused person would behave if set free before trial.

When making representations or deciding on release, the police, crown attorneys and
justices are expected to use available information to predict what the accused would

Section 503(1 )(b) of the Criminal Code permits the police to detain an accused for longer than 24 hours if a justice
is not available within that period. In that case, the accused must be taken before a justice as soon as possible.

Though "bail" technically is a sum of money posted as a surety to guarantee attendance at trial, it is commonly used
to refer to the hearings at which release or detention decisions are made (bail hearings). And it is sometimes used to
mean the system for making these decisions (the bail system).

At most bail hearings in Ontario, the state is represented by lawyers (known as crown attorneys) employed or
retained part-time by the provincial government. Bail hearings - and prosecutions - for some offences, such as drug
charges, are conducted by federally employed or retained lawyers, generally known as crown prosecutors or agents

1 1 8 EXAMINING PRACTICES

do if freed until trial. Unsurprisingly, the basic justifications for imprisonment and
hence the predictions to be made at the two stages of the process are similar. But
there are important differences in how the law structures decision-making.

The Criminal Code sets out three purposes for discretionary police detention, but
gives no direction about the order in which the police should consider them, their
relative importance or what information is relevant. It simply states that the police
may detain an accused if the officer in charge has reasonable grounds to believe
detention is necessary to ensure that the accused attends court or to promote the
public interest in preventing crime or investigating the alleged offence.

Justices at bail hearings use similar criteria: ensuring attendance at court and
protection of the public. But the Criminal Code explicitly requires them to focus
separately on each justification for imprisonment and directs them to consider the
reasons in sequence. Thus a justice deciding whether to imprison an untried accused
must first hear evidence about the risk that the accused will fail to appear at trial
and rule on this "primary ground." Only after the justice decides that the risk of
flight is not significant enough to justify imprisonment does the "secondary ground"
become relevant. At this point the focus shifts to any evidence that the accused is
substantially likely to offend or interfere with justice before trial.*

The Criminal Code gives general guidance to justices, but not to the police, about
the information they may consider when deciding whether to imprison untried
accused. Section 5 1 8 emphasizes three categories of prior contact with the criminal
justice system: criminal record, previous breach of a bail order, and outstanding
charges. A fourth factor is the "strength of the evidence against the accused."

In addition, judges have developed case law that identifies other factors as relevant
to decisions on pre-trial imprisonment. Rulings have established that evidence of an
accused's "ties to the community" is highly significant to assessing the risk of flight
(the primary ground). Though community ties is a vague concept, it is generally
taken to include "residence, fixed place of abode, employment or occupation, marital
and family status ... proximity of close friends and relatives, character witnesses and
personal history.""

With respect to the secondary ground - to prevent crimes or interference with the
administration of justice -judges have mostly emphasized the accused's previous
criminal history, if any, and the nature of the offence. Thus the time since the last
offence (currency of record) may be a significant factor, as may previous violent
offences or violence used in the incident that resulted in the charge.

Until 1992, justices could also base their decisions on a third criterion - public interest. In that year the Supreme
Court of Canada said "public interest" was too vague and that reliance on it to imprison accused persons would
contravene the fundamental right not to be denied reasonable bail. (R v. Morales (1992) 77 C.C.C. (3d) 91).

Imprisonment before Trial 1 19

Racial inequality in the use of pre-trial
imprisonment: findings
Lawyers' perceptions of racial bias

Many defence and duty counsel perceive differential treatment in the bail system.
For example, our survey of defence counsel shows that 67% of lawyers with
substantial (40% or more) racial minority clienteles think that racial minority people
charged with drug trafficking are more likely to be detained before trial than white
people charged with the same offence. Large proportions of these lawyers also
perceive differential treatment of racial minority and white people charged with
armed robbery (50%), drug possession (41%), aggravated assault (39%) and sexual
assault (37%).

Lawyers commented that differential treatment at bail arises because -

"White accused are able to show more often than racial minorities those things
(wealth, employment, drug rehabilitation, family support, community support, etc.)
which impel crowns, police and judges to extend bail leniency. Class biases overlap
with racial biases."

"Assumptions are made by police, crowns and judges that certain racial minorities
are more likely to be guilty of certain categories of offences, and discretion at bail is
exercised or restricted accordingly."

"The worst, i.e., most widespread problem [of systemic racism] is at the bail stage
because police recommendations weigh so heavily and reflect nothing more than
whether they like the guy or not - other things (e.g., seriousness of offence) being
equal."

Consultations, submissions and survey comments* produced many examples of
unjust discretionary imprisonment of accused from racialized communities,
including:

"I had one terrified 18 year-old-young black man up for a show cause [bail hearing].
He'd never been in trouble before, was illiterate and completely at a loss to
understand the court process. I had him seen by the Bail Program. He was approved
and therefore, ought to have been released right away - he was only charged with
possession of a stolen bicycle. The Crown requested and received three additional
days to verify his identity. The implicit motivation behind this three-day remand
request was that they were incredulous that the black boy didn't have a record. I was
disgusted .... My client had already been detained for two days (over the weekend).
It should have been ample time for the police and Crown to 'investigate' his
identity."

Crown attorneys and judges who responded to surveys tended not to perceive racial bias at the bail stage. Those
who did perceive bias simply recorded an opinion without giving examples.

120 EXAMINING PRACTICES

"I had a bail hearing with a Vietnamese youth client who was charged as a minor
player on an extortion offence. The Crown was agreeable to release until finding out
that the accused was Vietnamese. The Crown then immediately asked for a detention
order because it was assumed to be a 'gang' incident."

Other defence lawyers do not agree that racial minority and white persons are
treated differently in the bail system. They, like the vast majority of crown attorneys
we surveyed, think race has no impact on pre-trial detention. These lawyers made
comments such as: "I have never seen race enter into discretion in the pre-trial
process" and "in the vast majority of cases, at the pre-trial stage, the crown does not
even know the race of the accused."

Unsurprisingly, many crown attorneys surveyed by the Commission were adamant
that they are not influenced by an accused's race. Often their comments emphasized
the lack of opportunity for a crown attorney even to think about race. They pointed
out that their decisions are usually based on file documents and that the pace of
their work makes it impossible for anyone to discriminate deliberately. For example,
one crown attorney stated that "my position on bail is usually made before I've seen
the accused ... I don't know their racial background." Several commented that
"sometimes it is so busy in court that we hardly notice the accused."

As these examples show, strong perceptions of differential treatment articulated by
many lawyers are matched by insistent denials from others. Thus the Commission
considered it particularly important to conduct research into the outcomes of pre-
trial release and detention decisions.

Introduction to the major study

To investigate the exercise of discretion in the remand process, the Commission
conducted a statistical study of imprisonment decisions for samples of black and
white persons charged with any of five offence types: drug charges, sexual assaults,'
bail violations, serious non-sexual assaults^ and robbery. We commissioned the
Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics to gather the data, and Professors Anthony
Doob of the University of Toronto and Julian Roberts of the University of Ottawa to
analyze them.*

The sample, 821 adult males described by the police as black and 832 adult males
described by the police as white, was drawn from Metro Toronto Police files (which
included crown briefs) for 1989/90. About half of each group was aged 27 or

t

The Criminal Code has three levels of sexual assault offences: "sexual assault," "aggravated sexual assault causing
bodily hanii" and "aggravated sexual assault" The sample was drawn from all 1989/90 sexual assault charges, but
all of the charges in the sample we could identify specifically are of the first type (level I offences).

This category consists of aggravated assault, assault bodily harm and assault peace officer charges.

Details of this study can be found in our Technical Volume. See Appendix B.

Imprisonment before Trial 121

younger. Metro Toronto was selected to ensure that the samples - particularly the
black sample - would be large enough for meaningful analysis. This type of study
requires approximately equal numbers of black and white accused for each of the
five offence types. It would not have been difficult to find sufficient white accused
in the police files of any major urban centre. But Metro Toronto, because it has the
highest concentration of black residents of any Ontario police jurisdiction, seemed
more likely than most to yield an adequate sample of black accused persons for the
period covered by the study.* As Table 5-1 shows, each offence category contains
similar numbers and proportions of black and white accused persons.

The study period, 1989/90, was selected for two reasons. First, the Commission
intended to use the same samples to analyze sentencing decisions and wanted to be
certain that processing of the charges was complete. When the data were collected
(fall 1993), 1989/90 was the most recent year for which we could feel confident that
virtually all court proceedings were completed. Second, 1989/90 was the mid-point
of a period with an astounding and disproportionate rise in the admission of black
persons to Ontario prisons, particularly to prisons serving the Metro Toronto area.^

Table 5-1: Number and proportion of accused persons in each offence category in

sample, by race.

White

charged

Black

charged

Proportion of total sample

sample

sample

White

Black

%

number

%

number

%

%

Drugs

25

204

27

221

12

13

Sexual assault

14

116

14

118

7

7

Bail violations

20

167

15

125

10

8

Serious assault

23

191

26

210

12

13

Robbery

19

154

18

147

9

9

Total

101*

832

100

821

50

50

Total exceeds 100 due to rounding.

Obviously, a study based on samples in one jurisdiction of persons charged with one
of five offence types cannot explain total prison admissions for 1989/90.

Even in Metropolitan Toronto, there were not enough ofTcnces in every category during the year to use random
samples. We could obtain a large enough sample for some ofTence types only by including all persons charged
within the category.

See Chapter 4 for details.

1 22 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Nevertheless, it may shed Hght on whether the exercise of discretion contributes to
differential imprisonment rates.

The Commission collected a large amount of data on the personal characteristics of
accused in the sample, including their criminal histories, if any. This permitted the
exercise of discretion to be examined in three stages. First we compared outcomes
for black and white accused at both stages of the remand process: police detention
and bail hearings. Because this analysis clearly revealed racial differences across the
five charges and for some specific offences, we then turned to other characteristics
of the accused. We conducted separate, detailed analyses of criminal history and ties
to the community, as described by the police, to see if these factors might account
for differential rates of imprisonment. Finally, we analyzed the overall impact of all
the recorded characteristics of the accused to see if race significantly influenced the
results when previous criminal histories and ties to the community were taken into
account.

The Commission's decision to use matched samples of persons charged with the
same offences has strengths and weaknesses. Its main strength is that it largely
eliminates the possibility that any difference in imprisonment outcomes is due to
different patterns of (alleged) offending." Since the matched samples of black and
white accused compare virtually the same numbers of people charged with each
offence, the analysis could focus specifically on the exercise of discretionary powers
that produce imprisonment before trial. This approach meant, in short, that we could
answer a simple question fairly easily: do the data indicate that black accused are
imprisoned before trial while white persons accused of similar offences are not?

This approach also allowed us to test for variations across a limited range of
offences. The prison admissions data confirmed our preliminary consultations, which
suggested that racial inequality in pre-trial detention decisions is pronounced for
some offences, but less evident for others (see Chapter 4). Such results could be
explained by different patterns of alleged offending or differences in police charging
practices. Another explanation is that racial bias in the remand process involves a
complex and subtle response to combinations of the accused's race and specific
offences. (These explanations are obviously not mutually exclusive.)

Subtle and complex forms of racial bias in the exercise of discretion are central to
the Commission's mandate. By selecting samples of black and white persons charged
with a small range of offence types, we were able both to test for differential
treatment, and also to see if it appeared consistently across a (limited) range of
offences or was mostly related to specific charges.

The main limitation of our approach is that we do not know the extent to which the
same patterns would appear in imprisonment decisions about persons charged with
offences other than those in the sample. We do not know, for example, if

But see discussion of the drug charges below.

Imprisonment before Trial 123

comparisons of black and white persons charged with common assault or with theft
over $1,000* would have shown larger differences, smaller differences or no
difference in outcomes.

Another limitation is that the analyses of the total sample weight each offence type
equally rather than by reference to its frequency among all recorded crimes. This
provides a reasonable way to analyze these data without distorting comparisons of
black and white samples in this study. However, the differential outcomes found in
the total sample should not be generalized to all criminal offences.

The study is also limited by the restriction of the sample to adult males. Initially, the
Commission wanted to examine remand decisions for black adult women and male
youths, and for accused from other racialized communities. In each case we came
across the same problem: the number of persons from these groups imprisoned
before trial in any one year is small compared with the numbers of white and black
adult men. Consequently, to obtain large enough samples for the analyses we would
have had to collect data over a longer term and at much greater cost.

Restricting the samples to black and white adult males means that the study does not
tell us the extent to which systemic racism affects remand decisions regarding black
women or youths, or accused from other racialized groups. This limitation, together
with the restrictions on the sample due to age and offence types, means the research
documents racial bias in pre-trial imprisonment decisions but does not determine its
extent.

Basic finding: racial inequality in bail decisions

Across the sample as a whole, 26% of accused were detained after a bail hearing.
Some of those detained were not subsequently convicted of the offence charged. The
data show that 18% - close to one in five - of all accused who were not found
guilty at trial had been denied bail. This experience was significantly more common
for black accused than white accused: among those who were not convicted, 21% of
black accused compared with 14% of white accused had been imprisoned before
their trials.

Analysis of the outcomes of police and bail court decisions for the entire sample
shows that white accused (29%) were significantly more likely than black accused
(18%) to be released by the police. Black accused (30%) were significantly more
likely than white accused (23%) to be refused bail and imprisoned before their trials
(Figure 5-1).

The limitation for this offence has recently been raised to $5,000 by S.C. 1992, c.44.

1 24 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Figure 5-1 : Release and imprisonment outcomes, by race, total sample

60 -r
50

H 40

<D

0- 30

20

10

48

29

18

■1

■Black accused
□White accused

23

Police release Court release Detained to trial

Comparisons of detention decisions for specific offences show -

• dramatic differences for white and black adult males charged with drug offences.

• significant differences for white and black adult males charged with serious non-
sexual assaults.

• no statistically significant differences for white and black adult males accused
charged with sexual assaults, bail violations and robberies.

Figure 5-2a, which represents the entire drug charge sample, shows that, overall,
white accused (60%) were twice as likely as black accused (30%) to be released by
the police. Black accused (31%) were three times more likely to be refused bail and
ordered detained than white accused (10%). Figure 5-2b represents only that portion
of the drug charge sample held for a bail hearing. It shows that 44% of these black
accused, compared with 27% of the white accused, were refused bail and imprisoned
before trial.

The differences in release outcomes for black and white accused charged with
serious non-sexual assault were also significant, but not as large as in the drug
cases. Figure 5-3 shows that over a third (37%) of white accused facing serious non-
sexual assault charges were released by the police, but only a quarter (24%) of the
black accused were released at that stage. Of those not released by the police, 84%
of white accused, and 73% of black accused were granted bail at court. Because of
the relatively small numbers, however, this difference was not statistically
significant.

Imprisonment before Trial 125

Figure 5-2a: Release and imprisonment outcomes, by race, drug charge sample

70

60

Black accused
□White accused

30 31

10

Police release Court release Detained to trial

Figure 5-2b: Bail hearing outcomes, by race, drug charge sample

80

c

8

73

■Black accused
□White accused

Court release

27

Detained to trial

These findings are highly suggestive. But without more analysis, it would be
premature to infer from them direct racial bias in detention decisions. What appears
to be a clear relationship between race and imprisonment could be masking other
legally relevant differences between white and black accused. Findings of such other

1 26 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Figure 5-3: Release and imprisonment outcomes, by race, serious assault sample

60
50

£ 40

8

53

37

■Black accused
djWhite accused

10

Police release Court release Detained to trial

differences would not necessarily disprove that systemic racism influences pre-trial
imprisonment decisions, but would shift the focus of concern to potential sources of
indirect bias in the remand process.

To look for other factors that might account for the racially unequal results, we
analyzed four characteristics across all offences:

• previous criminal history,

• employment status,

• fixed address, and
"marital" status.

We also looked more closely at the nature of the charges laid in the drug offence
sample.

Nature of the charge: the special case of drugs

Since this study matches samples of black and white persons charged with the same
types of offences, it largely eliminates the significance of "nature of the charge" as a
reason for differences in bail outcomes. Drug charges, however, are special under
the law. Simple possession charges under the Narcotic Control Act, and all drug
charges (including trafficking) under the Food and Drugs Act, are governed by the
standard bail procedure. This procedure presumes that an accused person detained
by the police will be released after a bail hearing, and requires a crown attorney to
"show cause" for imprisonment. By contrast, trafficking, possession for the purposes

Imprisonment before Trial 127

"show cause" for imprisonment. By contrast, trafficking, possession for the purposes
of trafficking and importing charges under the Narcotic Control Act are "reverse
onus" offences, which means that the bail process is based on a presumption of
detention (see below).

This difference in operating norms is significant to release outcomes because
persons charged with reverse onus offences cannot be released by the police and
must make the case for release at the bail hearing. Therefore, if a higher proportion
of black accused than white accused in the sample were charged with a reverse onus
drug offence, then some or all of the difference in outcomes might be due to the
nature of the charge. Such a finding would not allay concerns about systemic
racism, but might suggest that the main problem lies with the law that establishes
reverse onus offences, or with charging decisions rather than detention decisions.

A small supplementary study conducted by the Commission based on later data
supports the possibility that differences in the drug charges laid against black and
white accused may contribute significantly to differential imprisonment before trial.
This study of charges laid by 5 District Drug Squad of the Metropolitan Toronto
Police in 1992 shows that among those charged with drug offences, white accused
(41%) were more likely than black accused (21%) to be charged with simple
possession. Black accused (79%) were more likely than white accused (59%) to be
charged with the more serious charges of possession for the purposes of trafficking
or another trafficking offence (under the Narcotic Control Act). Analysis of police
release decisions for this sample show that black accused were significantly less
likely to be released.'

The data in the major study, however, do not generally suggest that differences in
the nature of the charge explain the differential outcomes. Analysis of the drug
charge sample indicates three important facts:

• Regardless of race, accused who were charged with a reverse onus offence were
more likely to be detained pending trial than those who were charged with other
offences. This finding suggests that the nature of the charge affects the results of
bail decisions for drug offences.

• No statistically significant difference was found in the proportions of black and
white accused who were recorded as charged with a reverse onus offence. This
finding suggests that the differential outcomes seen in Figures 5-2a and 5-2b
were not due to differential charging. But we cannot be sure of this conclusion
because of the incompleteness of the record.

The data on file do not include the specific charge laid against 68% of black
accused and 53% of white accused.

Black and white accused in this sample also differed in that black accused were more likely to be described by the
police as unemployed than white accused. White and black accused were equally likely to have a criminal record,
and to have ties to the community such as a fixed address.

1 28 EXAMINING PRACTICES

It is fruitless to speculate about differences in charging patterns in the absence of
adequate evidence. But available evidence does not suggest that black accused in
this sample are significantly more likely than the white accused to be facing a
reverse onus charge." Thus, on this evidence there is no reason to believe that the
racial inequality in detention decisions for those charged with drug offences is due
to differences in the type of charge laid.

Prior contact with the criminal justice system
Criminal record

"Criminal record" is a complex concept that can be measured in different ways. We
selected six key aspects of criminal records as criteria for comparing black and
white accused:

number of previous convictions for any criminal offences

time since the last conviction - "currency of record"

number of previous convictions for violent offences

number of previous convictions for the same offence as the current charge -
offence "track record"

most serious previous conviction

length of jail sentence(s) for previous conviction(s)

We first considered whether each aspect appeared to influence the detention
decision, regardless of race, and then compared its patterns in the records of black
and white accused. Where we found differences, we considered whether that specific
aspect of criminal record would account for the disparity in imprisonment.

Aspects not disclosing significant differences

One aspect of criminal record - previous conviction for a violent offence - proved
to be significant to detention decisions, regardless of race. However, black and white
accused in the sample were equally unlikely to have such a conviction on their
records. About two-thirds of the total sample had no previous conviction for a
violent offence.

Another characteristic - most serious previous conviction - appeared in different
patterns on the records of white and black accused, but the relevance of the patterns
to detention decisions was unclear. Of those with a criminal record, white accused

We compensated for the missing data by sorting the sample into two groups: "known to be charged willi" a
trafficking (or importing) offence (reverse onus) and "not known to be charged" with a trafficking or importing
offence. All accused whose specific charges were missing were placed in the latter category (along with everyone
charged with simple possession). Because the results of release decisions for the two categories reveal a clear and
significant difference, most of the unknowns were likely facing standard onus charges similar to others in that group.
Otherwise, their presence in the "not known to be trafficking" group should have meant that the outcomes for the
"known" and "not known" groups should have been more similar.

Imprisonment before Trial 129

were more likely than black accused to have a robbery or break-and-enter conviction
as their most serious previous offence. The records of black accused were more
likely than those of white accused to include common assault, another violent
offence apart from robbery, or a "victimless" offence as the most serious previous
conviction.

The previous convictions for violent offences of black accused might be expected to
make pre-trial imprisonment on the current charge more likely, but the previous
robbery convictions of white accused would also have made them vulnerable to
imprisonment on the current charge. Similarly, the data show that, regardless of
race, accused whose most serious previous offence was "victimless" were less likely
to be detained on the current charge than accused whose most serious prior
conviction was break-and-enter. This difference suggests that black accused would
be less likely than white accused to be ordered detained before trial. Given that the
patterns of previous offences appear to be comparable, it is unlikely that differences
in "most serious previous conviction" factor explains the basic findings of unequal
outcomes.

Existence and length of criminal record

As would be expected, existence and length of a criminal record were strongly
related to imprisonment before trial. The data for the entire sample show that
regardless of race, accused without a criminal record were less likely to be
imprisoned (12%) before trial than accused with records of one to five previous
convictions (27%) or records of six or more previous convictions (45%).

But across the sample as a whole, black accused (40%) were more likely than white
accused (35%) to have no previous convictions, and black accused (26%) were less
likely than white accused (33%) to have a record of six or more previous
convictions. Though the differences are not large, they are statistically significant.

Analyses of previous records for each offence type shows -

• no difference in the existence of a record or number of previous convictions of
white and black persons charged with drug offences, sexual assaults or serious
non-sexual assaults. This finding means that the number of previous convictions
does not explain the harsher outcomes for black persons charged with drug
offences and serious non-sexual assaults that we document above.

• a small but statistically significant difference in the number of previous
convictions of white and black persons charged with robbery. Black accused
(27%) were more likely than white accused (23%) to have no previous
convictions, and they were less likely (35%) than white accused (49%) to have
six or more previous convictions.

• substantial differences in the number of previous convictions of white and black
persons charged with bail violation. Black persons charged with this offence
(35%) were much more likely than white accused (17%) to have no previous

1 30 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Figure 5-4: Number of prior convictions, by race, total sample

50

§ 30

■Black accused
□White accused

35

33

32

None prior 1 to 5 prior 6 or more prior

criminal convictions; and black accused (25%) were much less likely than white
accused (43%) to have six or more previous convictions. These findings are
interesting because although many more white accused than black accused had
records and had lengthy records, white accused (35%) were not significantly
more likely than black accused (34%) to be imprisoned before trial.

These striking findings - that black accused were less likely than white accused to
have any criminal record or to have a lengthy criminal record - led us to compare
release decisions about accused with the same type of record or lack of record. This
analysis shows that the most dramatic differences in outcomes occur for accused
without any previous convictions. As Figure 5-5 demonstrates, across the sample as
a whole, white accused without a criminal record (45%) were almost twice as likely
to be released by the police as black accused without a record (24%). Black accused
with no previous convictions (15%) were twice as likely to be denied bail and
imprisoned before trial as white accused with no convictions (8%).

The same pattern recurs among white and black accused with one to five previous
convictions, although the difference is smaller.* The pattern persists among accused

The police released 24% of white accused, but only 18% of black accused who had a record of one to five previous
convictions. Release on bail was denied to 23% of white accused but to 31% of black accused who had such a
record.

Imprisonment before Trial 131

Figure 5-5: Release and imprisonment outcomes, by race,
for accused with no criminal record, total sample

70
60

50

c

g 40

45

47

■Black accused
□White accused

Police release Court release Detained to trial

with six or more convictions. '

Analysis by specific charge of black and white accused with no previous convictions
shows -

• no racial difference in detention decisions for persons charged with sexual
assaults, bail violations or robberies.

• a distinct racial difference in detention decisions for persons charged with
serious non-sexual assaults. As Figure 5-6 shows, only 31% of black accused but
54% of white accused were released by the police. While 3% of white accused
without previous convictions were denied bail and detained, 10% of black
accused were denied bail and detained.

• a substantial racial difference in detention decisions for persons charged with
drug offences. As Figure 5-7 shows, 72% of white accused who had no previous
convictions but only 37% of black accused without previous convictions were
released by the police. Bail was denied to 3% of white accused compared with
16% of black accused.

While accused (16%) were almost twice as likely as black accused (9%) to be released by the police. Release on
bail was denied to 51% of black accused but to only 41% of white accused with six or more previous convictions.

132 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Figure 5-6: Release and imprisonment outcomes,
by race, for accused witii no aiminal record, serious non-sexual assault sample

(D

a.

70
60
50

40

54

43

■Black accused
□White accused

10

Police release Court release Detained to trial

Figure 5-7: Release and imprisonnnent outcomes,
by race, for accused with no criminal record, drug charge sample

80 -r

60

Q.

72

■Black accused
□White accused

25

16

Police release Court release Detained to trial

Imprisonment before Trial 133

Among accused with records of one to five previous convictions, the data show -

• no significant racial differences in detention decisions for those charged with
sexual assaults, bail violations, serious non-sexual assaults or robberies.

• a substantial difference in detention decisions for white and black persons
charged with drug offences. As Figure 5-8 shows, 51% of white accused and
37% of black accused were detained by the police, and 28% of black accused
but only 10% of white accused were denied bail.

Figure 5-8: Release and imprisonment outcomes,
by race, for accused with 1 to 5 prior convictions, drug charge sample

60

20

10

50

-

51

1

40
30

37

39

■Black accused
:Whlte accused

10

Police release Court release Detained to trial

Among accused with six or more previous convictions, the data show:

• no racial differences in detention decisions for persons charged with sexual
assaults, bail violations, serious non-sexual assaults or robberies.

• a substantial racial difference in detention decisions for accused charged with
drug offences. As Figure 5-9 shows, white accused (60%) were four times more
likely than black accused (15%) to be released by the police, and black accused
(49%) were more than twice as likely as white accused (19%) to be denied bail.

1 34 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Figure 5-9: Release and imprisonment outcomes,
by race, for accused with 6 or more prior convictions, drug charge sample

Q.

70
60
50
40
30
20
10

60

■Black accused
□White accused

21

19

Police release Court release Detained to trial

Currency of record

Decision-makers are likely to consider "currency of record," or the time since the
last conviction, especially when trying to predict if an accused is likely to commit
an offence before trial. Thus it was not surprising to find in the sample that,
regardless of race, the time since the last conviction was significant to bail
decisions. Accused with a conviction within the previous three months were much
less likely to be released by the police, and more likely to be ordered detained after
a bail hearing, than accused with a substantial period of "clean time."

Comparison of white and black accused shows that of those with at least one
previous conviction, black accused (25%) were more likely than white accused
(15%) to have been convicted within the previous three months. Conversely, white
accused were more likely to have been last convicted more than two years before
the current charge (Figure 5-10).

Comparisons by offence type show -

• no statistically significant difference in the currency of record for white and
black persons charged with sexual assault, robbery or bail violation.

• significant differences in currency of record for white and black persons charged
with serious non-sexual assaults and drug offences. As Figure 5- 11 a shows, 28%
of black but only 8% of white accused charged with serious non-sexual assault
who had a criminal record had been convicted within three months of the current
charge. Figure 5-1 lb shows that 27% of black but 15% of white accused

Imprisonment before Trial 135

Figure 5-10: Time since last conviction, by race,
total sample of accused with a criminal record

3 months or less

4 to 1 2 months >

13 to 24 months

25 to 48 months

More than 48 months

■Black accused
□White accused

5 10 15 20 25 30
Percent

charged with drug offences who had a criminal record had been convicted within
the previous three months.

Offence "track record"

The number of previous convictions for the same or a similar offence as the current
charge (offence "track record") may be used to assess the risk that the accused
would commit an offence before trial. Analysis of the data confirms that regardless
of race, offence track record had a significant influence on detention decisions.
Accused with no previous convictions for the same offence as the current charge
were more likely to be released by the police and much less likely to be denied bail
and detained than those with such a previous conviction.

Comparison of the offence track records of white and black accused shows -

• no statistically significant difference across the total sample. About 15% of both
groups had a previous conviction for a similar offence to current charge.

no statistically significant difference between white and black accused charged
with sexual assault, bail violation, serious non-sexual assault or robbery. The
proportions of accused with a prior conviction for a similar offence ranged from
5% (sexual assault) to 23% (bail violation).

a difference between black and white accused charged with drug offences.
Neither sample had extensive records, but black accused facing this type of

1 36 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Figure 5-1 la: Time since last conviction, by race,
for accused with a criminal record facing serious assault charges

3 months or less

4 to 12 months

13 to 24 months

25 to 48 months

More than 48 months

■Black accused
□White accused

5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Percent

Figure 5-1 1 b: Time since last conviction, by race,
for accused with a criminal record facing drug charges

3 months or less

4 to 12 months

13 to 24 months

25 to 48 months

More than 48 months

■Black accused
□White accused

10 20 30

Percent

charge (25%) were more likely than white accused (15%) to have a previous
conviction for a drug offence.

Imprisonment before Trial 137

Previous prison sentence

Criminal records that include prison sentences are likely to be viewed as more
serious than records without prison sentences. Thus it is not surprising to find that,
regardless of race, accused who had served a prior prison sentence were less likely
to be released by the police and more likely to be denied bail than those who did
not have such a record.

Comparison of the two samples reveals distinct patterns. About the same proportion
of each group had not served a prison sentence, and the two groups were equally
likely to have served a sentence of one to three years. White accused (14%) were
twice as likely as black accused (7%) to have received a long sentence (three years
or more). By contrast, white accused (20%) were less likely than black accused
(25%) to have a prison term of one year or less as the longest sentence on their
records.

Bail status at the time of charge

Bail status at the time of charge is very significant to pre-trial detention decisions.
Persons charged with committing a serious (indictable) offence while free awaiting
trial for an indictable offence or a breach of a previous bail order cannot be released
by the police, and at the bail hearing they must overcome a presumption of
detention. In addition, the Criminal Code specifically identifies bail status at the
time of charge as a relevant factor in bail decisions.

These data confirm that bail status has a strong influence on the decisions of police
officers and justices, regardless of race. While only 9% of those charged while on
bail were released by the police, 31% of those not on bail were released at this
point. Release was denied to 38% of those charged while on bail, but to only 20%
of accused who were not on bail when charged.

Comparison of the bail status of white and black accused shows that -

across the sample as a whole, black accused were slightly more likely than white
accused to be on bail at the time of the current charge.

• black and white persons charged with sexual assaults, robbery and, of course,
bail violations were equally likely to be on bail at the time of the alleged
offence.

• black persons charged with drug offences (Figure 5-12) and serious non-sexual
assaults (Figure 5-13) were almost twice as likely as white accused facing the
same charges to be on bail at the time of charge.

Serving sentence in the community

The data show that accused who were serving a sentence in the community - on
probation, parole or mandatory supervision - at the time of being charged were
more likely to be detained than those who were not serving such a sentence. But
since only 3% of white accused and 1% of black accused were recorded as serving

1 38 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Figure 5-1 2: Bail status at time of charge, by race, drug charge sample

100 -r

80

83

Percent

1

67

■■■

^^^^H

■Black accused

40

33

H

□White accused

20-

17

H

On bail Not on bail

~

Figure 5-1 3: Bail status at time of charge, by race, serious non-sexual assault

sample

100

80

2 60-

Q.

84

16

■Black accused
□White accused

On bail

Not on bail

Imprisonment before Trial 139

such a sentence at the time of the new charge, this factor does not account for the
differential outcomes.

Ties to the community
Employment status

As we show in Chapter 2, many lawyers and judges recognize that income, poverty
and economic class are significant to criminal justice decisions such as bail. Some
of them suggested that apparent racial differences in outcomes of the criminal
justice process are in reality reflections of racial inequalities in income or
employment status.

Our study produced several important findings about relationships among
unemployment, race and pre-trial release for these accused. Regardless of race,
however, a large number of accused were recorded by police as unemployed.
According to the records, 48 percent of the total sample did not have a job when
they were charged.

As Figure 5-14 shows, unemployment had a strong influence on detention decisions.
Employed accused (30%) were more than twice as likely as unemployed accused
(13%) to be released by the police, and unemployed accused (38%) were more than
twice as likely as employed accused (17%) to be detained after a bail hearing.

Figure 5-14: Release and imprisonment outcomes,
by employment status, total sample

60

50

c 40

8

(D

°- 30

20
10

53

49

38

13

17

GD Employed
uUnemployed

Police release Court release Detained to trial

1 40 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Comparison of the employment status of black and white accused shows -

• a statistically significant racial difference in unemployment rates across the
sample as a whole. The police had recorded 44% of white accused and 53% of
black accused as unemployed.

• no statistically significant racial differences in the unemployment rates of
accused persons charged with robbery, sexual assaults and serious non-sexual
assaults.

• substantial differences in the unemployment rates of white and black persons
charged with drug offences and bail violations. Almost two-thirds (64%) of the
black persons charged with drug offences were described by the police as
unemployed, compared with 43% of the white accused. The police had recorded
39% of white and 59% of black persons charged with bail violations as
unemployed.

The patterns of pre-trial imprisonment decisions for unemployed white and black
accused were similar. Most were not released by the police, and a high proportion of
both groups were denied release at the bail hearing.

The patterns of release decisions for employed white and black accused were
different. Figure 5-15 illustrates two important findings. First, employed white
accused (36%) were much more likely than employed black accused (23%) to be
released by the police. Second, employed black accused (40%) were more likely
than white accused (29%) to be required to find a surety as a condition of obtaining
freedom before trial.

Fixed address

The criminal justice system usually views "fixed address" as an indication of an
accused's "ties to the community," which in turn is an important factor in assessing
risk of flight before trial.

Regardless of race, whether an accused person had a fixed address had a large
impact on release decisions in our sample. As Figure 5-16 shows, accused with a
fixed address (29%) were ten times as likely to be released by the police than those
without a fixed address (3%). Also, accused without a fixed address (51%) were 2.5
times as likely to be denied bail than accused with a fixed address (21%).

Comparison of black and white accused in the sample reveals -

• no statistically significant racial difference in the proportions of the accused with
a fixed address across the sample as a whole. About four-fifths of both groups
had a fixed address at the time of charge.

• no statistically significant racial difference in the proportions of accused with a
fixed address among those charged with drug offences, sexual assaults, bail
violations and robberies.

Imprisonment before Trial 141

Figure

5-15

Re
by

jlease and impr
race, employed

isonmen
sample

36

to

utcomes,

Pnline mlRri<;n

I

H

■

H||23

Bail - no suretv -

1

B

I

|.

^19

■Black accused
□White accused

1

H

■

H40

Suretv bail

29

nptflinpH tn trial

I

m

■

|.

16

J

c

»

10

20 30
Percent

— 1

40

— 1
50

a distinct racial difference in the proportions of accused with a fixed address
among those charged with serious non-sexual assaults. The police recorded no
fixed address for 12% of white and for 22% of black persons charged with
serious non-sexual assaults.

Single status

Single status may also influence bail decisions, inasmuch as these accused are seen
as less "tied to the community" than accused who live with a partner of the other
sex. We found that this personal characteristic did influence bail decisions,
regardless of race. Only 22% of single accused were released by the police, while
30% of those recorded with partners were released at this stage. Moreover, single
accused (30%) were twice as likely as those with partners (15%) to be denied bail.

About four-fifths of both samples of black and white accused were single.

Detention outcomes for single white and black accused showed a clear racial
difference. While 27% of single white accused were released by the police, only
17% of single black accused were released at this point. Release on bail was
denied to 33% of single black accused and 26% of single white accused.

142 EXAMINING PRACTICES

Figure 5-16: Release and imprisonment outcomes,

by fixed address, total sample

60 -r

4-^

c

50-
40-
30

50

51

29

46

H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

unread,

Jun 29, 2014, 8:40:52 PM6/29/14

RACISM IN BELGIUM

Belgian
Anti-Racism Law

From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Belgian
Anti-Racism Law, in full, the Law
of July 30, 1981 on the punishment of certain acts inspired by racism or
xenophobia, is a law against hate speech and discrimination passed by the Federal
Parliament of Belgium in
1981 which made certain acts motivated by racism or xenophobia illegal.
It is also known as the Moureaux
Law, as it was proposed to the Parliament by Justice Minister Philippe Moureaux.
Contents
  [hide]
·                                 1 Historical context
·                                 2 Content of the law
·                                 3 Evolution of the legislation
·                                 4 Condemnations based on the Law of July 30, 1981
·                                 5 Notes and sources
·                                 6 See also
Historical context[edit]
The first Belgian law proposal against racism was
introduced in the wake of the signature by Belgium [1] of
the 1965Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination at the
Chamber of deputies by the Socialist MP Ernest
Glinne on December 1,
1966 at the request of the MRAX (Movement against racism, antisemitism and
xenophobia, Belgian equivalent of the French MRAP) which had prepared the proposal. The law
proposal was introduced twice in 1966-1967 an again twice in 1968-1969.[2][3][4]
On July 20, 1980 a terrorist attack against Jewish
children took place in Antwerp (Lamorinièrestraat),[5] then
a French-Algerian man was killed on December 4 in Brussels by members of the
extreme right wing Front de la
jeunesse,[6] and
a large antiracist demonstration took place in Brussels. The Justice Minister
took the opportunity of this public mood to introduce the law project before
the Parliament without consulting the Prime Minister, and only a few right-wing
MPs opposed it, according to him "the far right, some right-wing liberals
and a group of Flemish Christian Democrats MPs who had closed links with the
South African apartheid regime".[7]
Content of the law[edit]
Among others, the following acts were made illegal by the
Anti-Racism Law:
·                    Incitement to
discrimination, hatred or violence against a person on account of race, colour,
origin or national or ethnic descent, in the circumstances given in Article 444
of the Belgian Penal Code;
·                    Incitement to
discrimination, segregation, hatred or violence against a group, community or
its members on account of race, colour, origin or national or ethnic descent,
in the circumstances given in Article 444 of the Belgian Penal Code; and
·                    Announcing the intention
to commit any of the aforementioned offences, in the circumstances given in
Article 444 of the Belgian Penal Code.
The circumstances given in Article 444 of the Belgian
Penal Code are as follows: either in public meetings or places; or in the
presence of several people, in a place that is not public but accessible to a
number of people who are entitled to meet or visit there; or in any place in
the presence of the offended person and in front of witnesses; or through
documents, printed or otherwise, illustrations or symbols that have been
displayed, distributed, sold, offered for sale, or publicly exhibited; or finally
by documents that have not been made public but which have been sent or
communicated to several people.
Evolution of the legislation[edit]
Main: Law of July 30, 1981 on the punishment of certain
acts inspired by racism or xenophobia, published in the Moniteur Belge (M.B.) of August 8, 1981
Further related legislation:[8]
1.     Law of February 15, 1993 creating a Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (M.B. February 19, 1993)
2.     Law of April 12, 1994 modifying the Law of July 30, 1981 (M.B. May 14,
1994)
3.     Law of March 23, 1995 tending to repress negation, minimization,
justification or approbation of the genocide committed by the German
National-Socialist regime during the Second World War (Belgian
Holocaust denial law)
4.     Law of May 7, 1999 modifying the law of July 30, 1981 and the law of March
23, 1995 (M.B. June 25, 1999)
5.     Law of June 26, 2000 concerning the introduction of euro in the legislation
pertaining to matters referred to in article 78 of the Constitution (M.B. July
29, 2000)
6.     Law of January 20, 2003 concerning the reinforcement of legislation against
racism (M.B. February 12, 2003 and erratum May 14, 2003)
7.     Law of January 23, 2003 concerning the matching of legal dispositions in
force with the July 10, 1996 law abolishing death penalty and modifying
criminal penalties (M.B. March 13, 2003)
8.     Law of May 10, 2007 modifying the July 30, 1981 law (M.B. May 30, 2007,
addendum June 5, 2007)
Condemnations based on the Law of July 30, 1981[edit]
Main article: Vlaams Blok § Court of
Cassation ruling (2004)
Wim Elbers, a higher police officer who was also a
municipal councillor for the far rightist Vlaams Blok since
1994 in Brussels,
was condemned on December 22, 1999 to a 2,500 Euro fine and six months
imprisonment (suspended sentence) for propagating hate mails on usenet.[9]
The Vlaams Blok itself, through three of its linked
associations (Nationalistische Omroep Stichting, Nationalistisch Vormingsinstituut and Vlaamse
Concentratie), was condemned on April 21, 2004 by the Ghent Court of Appeal.
Each association was condemned to a fine of 12,394,67 Euro. The civil parties
were the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism and the Human
Rights League. The judgment was confirmed on November 9, 2004 by the Court of
Cassation, and the party shortly after reorganised itself as the Vlaams Belang.[10]
Notes and sources[edit]
1.                            Jump up^ Belgiumsigned it on August 17, 1967 and ratified
it on August 7, 1975 (status); see also Declarations and Reservations by Belgium
2.                            Jump up^ A
l’occasion du 30ème anniversaire de la « loi Moureaux »,
MRAX, 30 July 2011
3.                            Jump up^ Session of December 1, 1966, Belgian House of
representatives
4.                            Jump up^ Full chronology (in French):Avant
la loi antiraciste… (Historique 1966-1981), RésistanceS
5.                            Jump up^ "Een eeuw in beeld. 1980", Gazet van Antwerpen
6.                            Jump up^ René Haquin, "Années 1980. Nos années de plomb", Le Soir, 7 November 2005
7.                            Jump up^ Véronique Lamquin, Moureaux : « Le politique n’ose plus aller à
contre-courant », Le Soir, 31 July 2011
8.                            Jump up^ Belgian
legislation, Belgian Justice Ministry website
9.                            Jump up^ Full text of the condemnation (in French)
10.                       Jump up^ Erk, Jan (May 2005). "From Vlaams Blok
to Vlaams Belang: The Belgian Far-Right Renames Itself". West European
Politics28 (3): 493–502. doi:10.1080/01402380500085681.
See also[edit]
·                    List of
anti-discrimination acts
·                    Hate speech
·                    Hate crime

===================================================

Pages 111 - 140Article suivant
·
·                                 http://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-droit-penal-2002-1-page-111.htm
·
1. Introduction
1
This contribution briefly presents the normative and procedural
framework that determines the position of victims of acts of racism and racial
discrimination in Belgium.
First, we introduce the position of the victim in criminal proceedings in
general while looking specifically at possibilities for the victim to obtain
reparation. A victim can do so through tort proceedings before the criminal
courts ( constitution de partie
civile), tort proceedings before the civil courts or request
compensation under the 1985 Victims Compensation Act. The next section
introduces the criminal legislation against racism, primarily the Act of 30
July 1981 on the punishment of certain acts motivated by racism or xenophobia.
Finally, we introduce in somewhat more detail the jurisprudence under the 1981
Act as far as its civil aspects are concerned and briefly touch upon the more
general draft antidiscrimination legislation.
2. The Position Of The Victim In Criminal Proceedings In General
2
Like many other
countries, Belgium
has shown an increased interest in the protection of victims of crime in the
past two decades. Especially after 1996, the position of the victim in the
criminal procedure system has received large public and political attention.
Victims in countries, which like Belgium, apply the partie
civile system[1]  For an overview of the Belgian criminal procedure,... [1] , are
perhaps better off than victims of crimes in countries where no such procedure
exists. In Belgium, this is particularly true since the passing of the Law of
12 March 1998[2]  Law of 12 March 1998 on the amelioration of the
criminal... [2] which
increased the rights of the victim in criminal proceedings to the point where
some commentators state that “[In] a few
years, the position of victims in Belgium has improved to the extent that it
ranks among the best in Europe”[3]  BRIENEN, M.E.I. and HOEGEN, E.H., Victims of Crime... [3] . Earlier,
the need had already been felt to improve the position of victims in cases
where they cannot be compensated through thepartie
civile system. Like
elsewhere, this need was especially felt in those cases where the offender was
financially unable to compensate the victim, and in unresolved cases (suspect
could not be identified, has deceased, etc.). In 1985, a new compensation
scheme was created for victims of violent crimes that adopts the principles of
the 1983 European Convention on the compensation of victims of violent crimes.
3
This part of the
article briefly describes the compensation schemes that are available to
victims of crimes in Belgium.
These comprehend the procedure that is available for crime victims in general,
not only victims of violent crimes, as well as the compensation scheme that was
introduced by the Victims Compensation Act of 1985. This is relevant to the
position of victims of racist offences as they necessarily fall into one or
both of these categories.
2.1. The “ordinary” compensation scheme
for crime victims.
4
Most crimes are at
the same time a criminal offence and a civil wrong, and can hence give rise to
two possible proceedings, tort proceedings before the criminal courts, and tort
proceedings before the civil courts.
2.1.1. Tort proceedings before the
criminal courts.
5
Belgiumhas adopted the
French partie civile system. The victim of a crime can
bring a civil action before the competent criminal court, in which case the
court decides about both the criminal aspects of the case (i.e. conviction and
sentence) and the civil aspects (i.e. the compensation of the victim). Fines
and compensation are not mutually exclusive as in some other countries. In Belgium, the
judge who has convicted the defendant on the criminal charges, will usually
also award compensation to the victim.
6
Compensation of the
victim will, however, only be granted if the procedural and substantive
conditions for such compensation are fulfilled. The procedural condition is
that the victim must have decided to become a party to the criminal proceedings
by “constituting himself” as a civil party. This procedure is calledconstitution de partie civile - burgerlijke partijstelling. It means
that a judge will never decide ex officio to compensate the victim, he will
only do so on the victim’s request. The substantive condition is that the
victim’s claim must satisfy the conditions of art. 1382 of the Civil Code (see
below).
7
This procedure is
available to all victims, not only to victims of violent crimes. This means
that victims of racist offences can use this procedure, as well as certain
institutions and organisations (see further below, 4.1.1).
a)
Legal basis
8
Art. 3 of the
Preliminary Title to the Code of Criminal Procedure (which, in Belgium, is
still the original Napoleonic Criminal Procedure Code (CPP) of 1808) stipulates
that the action for the compensation of the damages caused by the crime lies with
those who have suffered the damage.
9
The conditions for
the exercise of the civil action are further set out in art. 1382 of the Civil
Code (1804): (a) the victim must have sustained damage (material or moral) (b)
as a result of a fault, committed by another person and (c) there must be
causal link between fault and damage.
b)
Persons who are entitled to bring the action civile
10
The constitution
de partie civile is
only open to the actual victim of the crime, or to his relatives, not to
persons who have been indirectly damaged by the offence (art. 3 Preliminary
Title CCP). The actio popularis does not exist under Belgian law.
Recently, however, an increasing number of derogations from this rule have been
created, where special legislation grants certain associations or institutions
the right to use the mechanism of the constitution de partie civile in particular criminal cases[4]  Violations of the Act of 30 July 1981 on the
punishment... [4] . The action
civile can also be
brought by those who, by virtue of a legal or a contractual obligation, have
compensated the victim. For example, the insurance company which has
indemnified the victim of a road traffic accident, may act as a civil party
against the person who caused the accident.
11
The person who
wants to bring an action civile must qualify for this action under the
general principles, i.e. he or she should have a legal capacity to act, he or
she should have an interest in the action, and the interest should be
legitimate.
c)
Persons against whom the action civile can be brought.
12
The action
civile can be
brought, not only against the defendant in a criminal trial, but also against
those who are civilly responsible for him or her.
13
The civil action
can be brought against persons who, according to the rules of criminal law, are
criminally irresponsible, e.g. for reasons of insanity. In those cases, the
amount of the compensation, however, is different (art. 1386bis Civil Code, see
2.1.6.).
d)
Procedure.
14
The procedure is
different depending on whether or not the public prosecutor has decided to
prosecute the alleged author of the crime. If the prosecutor has initiated
criminal proceedings, the constitution de partie civile will have the effect of the victim
becoming a party to proceedings which are already pending. He or she will be
involved in those proceedings, even, to some extent, during the investigative
stage. The advantage for the victim is that this way of proceeding is very cheap.
If he loses his case, he will not have to pay the costs of the proceedings,
which are born by the state, started the case.
15
If, however, the
public prosecutor has decided not to prosecute, or is still considering his
position, the victim may, by constituting himself or herselfpartie civile, actually seize the
judge. This is a fundamental difference with the victim’s mere complaint[5]  The Law of 12 March 1998 introduced a new form of
complaint... [5] , which
is little more than a denunciation of the crime : a complaint does not
have any procedural consequences, it does not seize a court of law and the
public prosecutor is free not to proceed with the case. In case of a constitution
de partie civile, however, the case can only be closed with a
formal judicial decision, either by the judicial council or by the trial court.
16
In the latter
hypothesis, there are two ways for the victim to constitute himself or herself partie
civile. He or she can either summon the defendant directly before
the trial court ( citation
directe-rechtstreekse dagvaarding), or seize the investigating
judge (art. 63 CCP)[6]  The seizing of the investigating judge by the
victim... [6] .
Because, in both cases, the victim must bear the cost of the proceedings, in
case of an acquittal or a dismissal, a citation directe will be appropriate only if the victim
has enough evidence to obtain a conviction; otherwise, the wiser course is to
seize the investigating judge, who will then be obliged to search for the
evidence.
17
In case the civil
action is brought before the criminal court, the rules of evidence will be
those that are applicable in criminal proceedings. This means that the
defendant will be presumed innocent until his guilt has been established beyond
reasonable doubt. The onus of proof lies with the public prosecutor who, in the
criminal trial, is the master of the proceedings. If, on the contrary, the case
is brought before the civil court, the proceedings will have to be led by the
victim and it will be up to the victim to establish his or her case ( actori incumbit probatio).
18
The Law of 12 March
1998 considerably extended the rights of the victim who has constituted him or
herself partie civile during the pre-trial investigation.
Most importantly, the partie civile was granted the right to consult the
files of the investigation which are of interest to their case (art. 61ter
CCP). The investigating judge can refuse to grant access if this could harm the
investigation, endanger persons or seriously jeopardize their privacy. Refusal
is also possible if the constitution de partie civile seems to be inadmissible or if the
victim fails to show any legitimate motives to consult the files. The
investigating judge can also choose only to refuse access to certain parts of
the files. The decisions of the investigating judge can be appealed by the partie
civile. In this case, the court of indictment ( kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling/ chambre des
mises en accusation) will review the decision. The victim who has
constituted himself or herself partie civile also has the right to ask the
investigating judge to perform additional investigating measures (art.
61quinquies CCP), specifying the content of and the reason for these measures.
The investigating judge can refuse to perform these measures if he deems them
unnecessary to establish the truth or detrimental to the investigation. Again,
an appeal is possible before the court of indictment. Finally, if the
investigation takes more than one year, thepartie
civile has the right
to bring the case before the court of indictment for scrutiny (art. 136 CCP).
The court has the possibility to ‘purge’any irregularities from the
investigation. The partie civile is also heard during the committal
proceedings which are conducted before the judicial council ( raadkamer/ chambre du conseil).
19
It may be important
for the victim of the crime to be a party in the criminal proceedings : it
will allow him to appeal a dismissal or acquittal, and, in so doing to
safeguard his interests in a case from a subsequent trial before the civil
courts. In case of such a subsequent trial, the civil court will be bound by
the decision of the criminal court, and therefore it is in the victim’s
interest to prevent an acquittal (see further infra, 2.1.2.).
e)
Time limit.
20
Both civil and
criminal actions must be brought within a certain time-limit, after which they
are barred by the statute of limitations. Civil actions arising from a crime
are governed by the same statute of limitations that applies to civil actions
arising from a tort : five years from the day following the one when the
victim acquired knowledge of (the increase in) the damage and of the identity
of the person responsible (art. 26 Preliminary Title of the CCP and art.
2262bis Civil Code). If the civil action has not been brought within this
delay, it will be barred by the statute of limitations. It must however be
noted that the civil action can never be barred by the statute of limitations
before the criminal action. Depending on the gravity of the criminal offence,
this will occur after a period of 6 months, 5 years or 10 years (these terms
can be stretched to double their length). In any case, the civil action will be
proscribed after 20 years following the day on which the damage has occurred.
f)
Damage covered by the compensation claim under art. 1382 CC .
21
The amount of the
compensation is determined by the general principles of the Civil Code (art.
1382), which means that the victim must be fully compensated for the damage
sustained as a consequence of the crime. This includes both physical (corporeal
and mental) and emotional damage.
22
If, however, the
person against whom the civil action is brought is mentally insane, the author
of the damage is only liable to pay a “fair and just” or equitable ( équitable - billijk) compensation (art. 1386bis
CC), not the full compensation. This means that the judge will not only look at
the actual damage, but also to the personal circumstances of both the author of
the damage and the victim.
g)
Assessment of the compensation.
23
The criteria for
assessing the damage arising from a crime are the same as when assessing the
damage arising from a civil wrong. There is extensive case law on this subject[7]  See generally FAGNART, J.L. and BOGAERT, R., La
réparation... [7] . Courts,
when assessing the damage, take into account the specific elements of the case
under consideration. Elements in this assessment are the victim’s estimated
inability to work (permanent or temporary), his age, sex, life expectancy, etc.
The amount of the compensation is assessed as a lump sum, to be paid at once,
but the court may award an interim amount, in case the injuries cannot be fully
assessed at the moment of the decision. In that case, the remainder of the
injuries are assessed later.
2.1.2. Tort proceedings before the civil
courts.
24
The victim may also
choose to bring his claim for damages before a civil court. If the criminal
proceedings are still pending (or are started after the civil court has been
seized), the civil court must suspend its decision until the criminal court has
returned its verdict (art. 4 Preliminary Title CCP). The decision of the
criminal court is binding for the civil judge : according to the maxim le
criminel tient le civil en état, the decision of the criminal court
has priority over the decision of the civil court. This means that in practice,
in the case of an acquittal of the accused by a criminal court, the chances of
the victim obtaining compensation in civil proceedings are very faint. The
rules relating to the persons who can bring the action, the persons against
whom the action can be brought, and the amount of the compensation are identical
to those described above in relation to the tort proceedings before the
criminal courts.
25
In some cases, the
victim has no other choice than to bring its compensation claim before the
civil court, e.g. when the “public action” (i.e. prosecution by the public
prosecutor) is, for various reasons, no longer possible, for example because
the defendant is deceased, or because of a settlement out of court (art. 216bis
CCP (compound fine) and art. 216ter (mediation)). In the latter case, the
victim who has not been fully compensated has no other choice than to bring his
claim before the civil judge. To facilitate these proceedings, the law clearly
states that the acceptation of the out-of-court settlement by the defendant
constitutes an irrefutable presumption of guilt in the compensation
proceedings. Since Belgian law allows settlements out of court for most crimes,
including the most serious ones, e.g. acts of violence, this procedure may be
of importance to victims of racist discrimination.
2.2. “Financial help” for victims of
violent crimes under the 1985 victims compensation act.
26
Aspecial
compensation scheme for victims of violent crimes was introduced in the
mid-eighties, by the Victims Compensation Act of 1 August 1985. The purpose of
this act is to award a “financial help” -not a full compensation- to victims
who cannot obtain compensation through the above-described channels, either
because the author of the crime is unknown or insolvent, or because the victim
cannot benefit from another compensation scheme (social security, private
insurances, etc.). Compensation under this act has a subsidiary
nature: it will only be available if other means to obtain
compensation have failed.
27
For the purposes of
the application of this Act, a Compensation Fund has been established. This
Fund is paid from a budget, scheduled within the general budget of the Ministry
of Justice. In addition, the 1985 Act has introduced an “obligatory solidarity
contribution” that is levied on convicted offenders : convicted offenders,
regardless of the crime for which they were convicted (only minor offences
(contraventions) are excluded), are obliged to pay a fixed amount of money,
2000 Belgian franks (±50 EURO), into the Fund.
28
The compensation
that is given by the Fund is a “financial help,” not a full compensation such
as the compensation that is given in tort proceedings. Whereas the latter
covers the full damage that the victim has suffered as a consequence of the
offence (both material (physical and mental) and emotional damages (cfr.
supra), the compensation given by the Fund is assessed “naar billijkheid - en équité”, and is
not more than a “fair and just compensation.” Another difference is that the
proceedings under the 1985 Act are of an administrative nature, whereas the
tort proceedings described above are conducted before the ordinary courts.
Whereas the tort proceedings are directed towards those who are personally or
civilly responsible for the damage, the proceedings under the 1985 Act are
based on a claim for compensation which is addressed to an administrative
tribunal, called “Commission for help to victims of intentional acts of
violence.” In the proceedings before this tribunal, the Minister of Justice
acts as the respondent party. However, it was the clear intention of the
drafters of the act that there should be no recognition of civil liability of
the Belgian State. Accordingly, the focus of the
proceedings is not on the liability of the party that has caused the injuries,
but on the “help” that should be given to those who have suffered injuries from
crimes of violence and have not obtained compensation under other schemes.
29
Of course, this
compensation mechanism is only relevant to victims of racist crimes in as far
as they are at the same time victims of intentional acts of violence.
3. The Belgian Criminal Legislation Against Racism
3.1 Act of 30 July 1981 on the
punishment of certain acts motivated by racism or xenophobia. 3.1.1. Incitement
or intention to discrimination, hatred, violence.
30
Proposals for
legislation on the punishment of incitement to racial hatred and anti-Semitism
were introduced as early as 1960[8]  For an overview of the legislative history,
see : CENTRE... [8] .
However, it was not until 1981 that the Act on the punishment of certain acts
motivated by racism or xenophobia entered into force, implementing the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination of 7 March 1966 Belgium
had ratified in 1975. This Act was drastically amended in 1994[9]  Law of 31 March 1994. The application of the 1981
Act... [9] . In
1995, another Act was adopted, specifically addressing the denial of the
Holocaust[10]  Act of 23 March, 1995 on punishing the denial,
minimisation... [10] . The Law
of 31 March 1994 introduced a definition of ‘discrimination’ that was largely
based on the definition found in article 1,1 of the International Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination :
31
Art. 1 By
“discrimination” in this Act is meant any form of distinction, exclusion,
restriction or preference, whose purpose or whose result is or could be to
destroy, compromise or limit the equal recognition, enjoyment or exercise of
human rights and the fundamental freedoms on a political, economic, social or
cultural level, or in any other area of social life.
The following shall
be punished by a prison sentence of one month to one year[11]  The penalties were substantially raised by the
amendment... [11] and
by a fine of fifty francs to one thousand francs, or by one of these
punishments alone :
1) Whoever incites
discrimination, hatred, or violence against a person on account of his race[12]  The term ‘race’ is generally understood to mean an... [12] ,
colour, descent, origin[13]  This was included to combat anti-Semitism. It is
to... [13] ,
or nationality in the circumstances given in article 444 of the Penal Code[14]  Art. 444 Penal Code describes the circumstances in... [14] .
2) Whoever incites
discrimination, segregation, hatred, or violence against a group, community, or
the members of it on account of the race, colour, descent, origin, or
nationality of its members, or some of them, in the circumstances given in
article 444 of the Penal Code.
3) Whoever
announces his intention towards discrimination, hatred or violence, against a
person on account of his race, colour, descent, origin, or nationality in the
circumstances given in article 444 of the Penal Code.
4) Whoever
announces his intention towards discrimination, hatred, violence, or
segregation against a group, community, or the members of it on account of the
race, colour, descent, origin, or nationality of its members, or some of them,
in the circumstances given in article 444 of the Penal Code.
32
The requirement
that the offences be committed in the circumstances given in article 444 of the
Penal Code, make the punishability of the offences subject to a condition of
publicity. Hence, racist insults contained in a letter addressed to one
particular person, cannot be punished under this Act[15]  Tribunal correctionnel de Liège, 16 September
1993,... [15] .
33
Two types of
incitement to discrimination can be punished : the incitement of other
persons to commit discrimination and the public announcement of one’s own
intention to discriminate[16]  CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE... [16] . This
means that ‘simple’ racist insults are not covered by the Belgian legislation
on the punishment of racist behaviour. These can still be prosecuted according
to the general dispositions of the Penal Code concerning, for instance,
defamation (art. 443 et seq.) or insults (art. 448/ art. 561, 7)[17]  Cour d’Appel de Liège, 4 June 1992, cited in
CENTRE... [17] . Also,
the fact of expressing opinions showing a racist bias and contempt for
foreigners, is not punishable as such. The Court of Appeal in Brussels decided that a plea for the return
of foreigners to their country was not necessarily a racist offence[18]  Cour d’Appel de Bruxelles, 4 September 1987, cited... [18] :
34
“the return of
certain groups of persons to their country of origin does not, in itself,
constitute racism, if it is not arbitrarily motivated and if the means used to
that end do not foster hate and contempt “ (“ que le renvoi dans leur pays
d’origine de certaines catégories de personnes n’est, en soi, pas constitutif
de racisme, à condition que la motivation ne soit pas arbitraire et que les
moyens utilisés à cette fin n’attisent pas la haine et le mépris”).
35
In another case, a
person was convicted for declaring in public that “they should put all
immigrants on a boat or put a bomb under their beds[19]  Tribunal correctionnel d’Anvers, 14 March 1996,
cited... [19] ”,
another for shouting “it stinks, stinking Iranian, dirty Iranian, Saddam’s mob,
dirty drug pusher, go back to Iran”[20]  Tribunal correctionnel de Courtrai, 19 August
1998,... [20] .
Similarly, convictions were secured in, inter alia, the following cases :
- shouting “dirty
Jew, go back to your country” in the middle of a meeting of the town council[21]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles, 20 April
1983,... [21] - making
the Hitler salute while taking the oath in the town council[22]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles, 15 July 1996,... [22] . The
judge stated that
36
“explicit and
voluntary reference to the fascist ideology that praised the supremacy of one
race over others and which has undertaken the extermination of said races,
entails in itself incitement to hatred, discrimination, violence or segregation
as punished by the Law of 30 July 1981” (“que la référence explicite et
volontaire à l’idéologie fasciste qui a prôné la suprématie d’une race par
rapport à d’autres et a poursuivi l’extermination desdites races implique en
soi l’incitation à la haine, la discrimination, la violence ou la ségrégation
qui sont sanctionnés par la loi du 30 juillet 1981”).
37
- calling persons
of North-African origin ‘ratons’(dirty
Arabs)[23]  Tribunal correctionnel de Charleroi, 23 December
1987,... [23] -
publicly insulting a woman of Moroccan descent, as well as the entire Moroccan
community[24]  Tribunal correctionnel d’Audenaarde, 23 October
1995,... [24] -
shouting in a restaurant : “make sure that monkey doesn’t touch my food,
or I’ll bash your head in” and “I can’t stand those blackies”[25]  Tribunal correctionnel de Turnhout, 5 January
1999,... [25] -
insulting a black waitress calling her “blackie” and saying “I reckon that
nigger doesn’t like to work”[26]  Tribunal correctionnel de Turnhout, 18 December
1998,... [26] -
refusing to be helped by a doctor of African descent in a hospital[27]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles, 30 June 1997,... [27] - almost
systematically insulting Turkish neighbours in the presence of third persons[28]  Tribunal correctionnel de Marche-en-Famenne, 19
June... [28] -
insulting the opposing party after a traffic accident, calling him “black
scoundrel” and “black monkey”[29]  Tribunal correctionnel de Louvain, 8 February
1999,... [29] -
wilfully humiliating a person of Serbian descent, even after the arrival of the
police[30]  Tribunal correctionnel de Furnes, 20 October 2000,... [30]On the other hand, in
a case of a quarrel between neighbours, the expression “dirty nigger, return to
your country” wasn’t deemed punishable, as, according to the judge, both
parties were to blame for the escalation[31]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles, 23 December
1983,... [31] .
38
The punishment of
the offences described by article 1 of the Act of 30 July 1981 requires proof
of the intention of the offender to bring about certain reactions. This
intention need not be focused on certain precise acts, the intention to bring
about a general kind of behaviour is sufficient[32]  Cour de Cassation, 19 May 1993, cited in CENTRE
POUR... [32] . It can
be noted that some of the judgements mentioned above seem to create a confusion
between ‘normal’ (racist) insults and those inciting to discrimination and
other racist behaviour, thus taking the special criminal law beyond its scope.
This is probably a consequence of the fact that there is no special
incrimination for racist insults carrying higher penalties, tempting
embarrassed judges to apply an article that was not intended for this purpose[33]  BATSELE, D., DAURMONT, O. and HANOTIAU, M., La
lutte... [33] .
Aprospective government proposal would create the possibility to consider the
racist motive as an aggravating circumstance to the insult (see infra, 3.1.7).
3.1.2. Supplying or offering of services
or goods.
39
Contrary to article
1, which incriminates the expression of the intention to discriminate or the
incitement to it, article 2 punishes the actual perpetration of discriminatory
acts. With this article, the legislator aimed at guaranteeing the right of
access to all places and services intended for public use, regardless of the
free or commercial character of the services or goods in question. Where the
Act in its original form included a requirement of publicity, this was regarded
as an unnecessary impediment and subsequently abolished in 1994.
40
Art. 2 : Whoever,
in supplying or offering to supply a service, a good or the enjoyment of it,
commits discrimination against a person on account of his race, colour,
descent, origin, or nationality shall be punished by a prison sentence of one
month to one year and by a fine of fifty francs to one thousand francs, or by
one of these punishments alone.
The same
punishments shall apply when the discrimination is committed against a group, a
community or the members of it, on account of the race, colour, descent,
origin, or nationality of its members, or some of them.
41
The inclusion of
“supplying a good or the enjoyment of it” allows for the punishment of racist
behaviour consisting in, for instance, the refusal to let certain persons rent
a house. The major obstacle to obtain a conviction in this sort of cases will
however still be the gathering of solid evidence.
42
A persistent
problem has been formed by the refusal of managers of pubs, dances etc. to
grant persons of (visibly) foreign origin access to their premises or to serve
them. A landlord was convicted for refusing to serve drinks to a person on
racist grounds, since there were no reasons pertaining to his attire, his
behaviour or other factors that would have jeopardized the keeping of “a
certain standing” in the pub[34]  Cour d’Appel de Liège, 11 March 1988, cited in
CENTRE... [34] .
Interestingly, the court accepted the testimony of a third person on a second
refusal that was ‘provoked’by the claimant, considering this action not to
constitute a provocation, but simply a means of gathering evidence[35]  Similarly, video recordings were allowed as
evidence... [35] .
Similarly, the refusal to serve five Sikhs led to a conviction, even if the
defendants claimed that their behaviour was not so much inspired by racism as
by the negative reactions of the Belgian customers[36]  Tribunal correctionnel de Hasselt, 27 March 1995,
as...[36] . If one
of the selection criteria to be granted access to a dance consists in being
able to show a Belgian identity card, this amounts to a violation of the Act of
1981[37]  Tribunal correctionnel de Termonde, 21 October
1986,... [37] .
Convictions have also been obtained in the case where a person of Turkish
origin was refused access to a dance, while his Belgian girlfriend was allowed
in, the accused being unable to advance any objective reasons for their
behaviour[38]  Tribunal correctionnel de Hasselt, 21 November
1996,... [38] . In
another case, the judge considered that the “concept of the establishment” the
manager of a discotheque claimed to uphold by refusing entry to certain
persons, consisted precisely in refusing access to foreigners[39]  Tribunal correctionnel d’Anvers, 26 June 1998,
cited... [39].
43
An acquittal was
granted where a supplementary investigation established the number of immigrant
clients regularly present and employees of foreign origin in a certain
establishment, as well as the fact that the plaintiff had been blacklisted[40]  Cour d’Appel d’Anvers, 18 April 1997, cited in
CENTRE... [40] . A woman
running a business of moped rental on the Belgian coast was also acquitted for
refusing to rent a bike to a young Turk who suddenly started to speak Turkish
with his friend[41]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruges, 25 September
1995,... [41] . The
judge considered that :
44
“The reason why the
rent was refused is not the fact of speaking Turkish in itself, but the concern
which took possession of the defendant. This concern was inspired by the value
of the motorcycle on one hand and the sudden uncertainty about the precise
motives of the prospective tenant on the other. Such fear is of course
subjective and maybe unfounded, but cannot be viewed as a deliberate form of
discrimination.” (“De reden dat niet verhuurd werd is immers niet het Turks
praten op zich, maar wel de ongerustheid die zich dan van betichte meester
maakte. Een ongerustheid die ingegeven werd door enerzijds de waarde van de te
verhuren moto en anderzijds de plots ontstane onzekerheid omtrent de precieze
bedoelingen van de kandidaat-huurder. Dergelijke vrees is uiteraard subjectief
en was misschien ongegrond, maar kan
niet als een opzettelijke vorm van discriminatie aanzien worden.”)
3.1.3.
Labour relations
45
While the Belgian
legislator, fearful of “reverse discrimination,” specifically refused to
include discrimination in professional settings in the original Act of 1981[42]  TULKENS, F., “Egalité et discriminations en droit
pénal... [42] , an
article 2bis was introduced in 1994 to address discrimination in labour
relations.
46
Art. 2bis : Whoever,
in placing people in employment, providing professional training, offering
jobs, recruitment, the performance of contracts of employment, or the dismissal
of employees, commits discrimination against a person on account of his race,
colour, descent, origin, or nationality shall be punished by the punishments
given in article 2.
The employer shall
bear civil liability for the payment of the fines that his employees or
representatives are ordered to pay.
47
Discrimination
against “groups” was not included in this article, which leads to fear that
certain acts of discrimination would not be punishable, i.e. collectively
dismissing the foreign workers first in times of mass redundancies[43]  STOKX, R., “De vernieuwingen aan de Racismewet :
meer... [43] . A
proposal to amend the legislation on racism currently under preparation by the
government would rectify this oversight. For the application of this article,
the representative professional organisations have received the competence to
act in law, that is, to constitute themselves ‘partie civile’(See infra, 4.1.1).
48
Even if article
2bis did not yet exist at the time, a judgement of the Labour Court of Ghent
should be mentioned in this respect[44]  Cour du Travail de Gand, 24 Janvier 1985, cited in... [44] . An
employer, not known for racist or anti-Semite sympathies, dismissed an employee
who was wrongly considered to be Jewish by an unknown blackmailer. This latter
person threatened the factory and the family of the employer unless the
supposedly Jewish person was sacked. Hence, the Court estimated that the
dismissal was motivated by these threats and not by racist motives and that the
legislation on racism could not be applied.
3.1.4. Membership of racist groups or
associations.
49
While the Act of 30
July 1981 does not provide for the dissolution of groups or associations of
racist creed, it allows to punish their members on an individual basis.
50
Art. 3 : Whoever
belongs to a group or association that clearly and repeatedly practices or
advocates discrimination or segregation in the circumstances given in the
article 444 of the Penal Code, or who lends his assistance to any such group or
association, shall be punished by a prison sentence of one month to one year
and by a fine of fifty francs to one thousand francs, or by one of these
punishments alone.
51
To fall within the
terms of the law, the group has to function during a certain time and show some
structure and durability[45]  CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE... [45] . Members
of racist groups or associations are presumed to know and share the ideology of
the organisation. Since the discrimination or segregation has to be practised
or advocated “clearly and repeatedly” and in the circumstances of publicity
given in art. 444 Penal Code for it to fall within the scope of the law, it can
safely be assumed that a member who voluntary joined this organisation cannot
deny in good faith that he was unaware of the real goals of this group.
Therefore, it is not necessary to be an active member of the organisation, as
long as one is aware of its objectives. Not only members, but also those who
lend their assistance to such groups can be punished. There is no doubt that
those who give material support to the organisation can be punished on the
basis of this article. The incrimination also extends to persons accepting to
give a speech, though it would appear difficult to maintain that this would
include the authors of speeches that disapprove of racial discrimination.
52
Charges on the
basis of article 3 of the 1981 Act have often confronted courts with the need
to consider evidence from different kinds of publications. Some have concluded
that this amounted to the examination of a press crime, which benefit from a
special régime in Belgium,
and declared themselves incompetent, while others came to the opposite
conclusion (see further below, 3.2).
53
While the criminal
responsibility of corporations was introduced in the Belgian criminal
legislation in 1999[46]  Law of 4 May 1999. [46] , the
dissolution of corporations by the Court can only be ordered if it has been
established that the corporation was founded with the specific intent of
committing the offences of which it has been convicted or has deliberately been
averted from its statutory purpose (art. 35,1 Penal Code). Fines or
confiscation can be pronounced for offences intrinsically linked to the
realisation of the objectives of the legal person, committed for the protection
of its interests or on its account (art. 5 and 7bis PC).
3.1.5. Public officials
54
Although the
Belgian Penal Code already punishes the arbitrary infringement by public
officials on the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution (art. 151
PC), the legislators chose to incorporate a specific incrimination in the
legislation against racial discrimination :
55
Art. 4 : Any
civil servant or public official, any bearer or agent of public authority or
public power, who in the exercise of his duties commits discrimination against
a person on account of his race, colour, descent, origin or nationality, or who
arbitrarily denies any person the exercise of a right or liberty that he may
claim, shall be punished by a prison sentence of two months to two years.
The same
punishments shall apply when the facts are perpetrated against a group, a
community or the members of it on account of the race, colour, descent, origin,
or nationality of its members or some of them.
If the accused
shows that he acted on the orders of his superiors, in matters that come under
their authority and in which he was in a subordinate position with respect to
them, the punishments shall only be applied to the superiors who gave the
orders. If civil servants or public officials are accused of having ordered,
allowed or facilitated the above-mentioned arbitrary acts, and if they claim
that their signature was obtained unawares, they shall be required in such a
case to stop the act and to denounce the guilty party, otherwise proceedings
shall be taken against him personally.
If one of the
above-mentioned arbitrary acts is committed by means of the false signature of
a public official, the perpetrators of the forgery and those who made
fraudulent or malicious use of it shall be punished by ten to fifteen years of
hard labour.
56
It was the
intention of the legislators to include all those who work for the public
administration, with no distinction as to the nature of their employment,
position, grade or other factors. Private persons charged with public services
seem, however, to be excluded[47]  BATSELE, D., DAURMONT, O. and HANOTIAU, M., o.c., ... [47] . The
notion of “arbitrary” denial of the exercise of rights or liberties is likewise
broad and, according to the parliamentary documents, includes behaviour
inspired by whim, ill will, over zealousness, misconception of one’s duties,
occupational disability, egocentrism or ideological conceptions. Moreover, the
protection of art. 4 concerns all rights and liberties the victim can validly
claim, while the general rule found in art. 151 PC only extends to the “rights
and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution”. The will of the legislators to
severely curb racist discrimination by public officials is also witnessed by
the substantially higher penalties with the exclusion of fines in favour of
prison sentences. The use of the false signature of a public official is an
aggravating circumstance.
57
By analogy with the
general principles of criminal law, the official who committed the offence due
to an order of a hierarchical superior that was apparently legal, will be
excused and the superior will be punished instead (art. 4,3). For this excuse
to be applicable, it is required that the order be given in a hierarchical
relation, that the superior was in fact competent to give such an order and
that the order was not manifestly illegal (in which case the subordinate would
have to disobey).
58
A few rather well
publicised cases on racial discrimination by public officers concerned acts
committed by Belgian paratroopers during a UN ‘peace-keeping’ mission in Somalia. In one
case, the Court Marshall could not establish if the acts (swinging a Somali
child over a bonfire) had been motivated by racist feelings and acquitted the
accused[48]  Cour militaire de Bruxelles, 17 December 1997,
cited... [48] . In
another case, however, a sergeant was convicted on the basis of article 4 for
forcing a Muslim child to eat pork, thus violating the child’s religious rights
and personal integrity[49]  Cour militaire de Bruxelles, 7 Mai 1998, cited in
CENTRE... [49] .
3.1.6. Associations to act in law
59
Article 5 of the
Act of 30 July 1980 grants the right to act in law ( in rechte optreden/ester en justice) to certain
institutions and associations in all legal disputes that the application of
this Act gives rise to, when their statutory aims are compromised. Most
importantly, this creates the possibility to use the mechanism of the constitution
de partie civile (see
supra, 2.1.1) and thus to set the wheels of justice in motion. This particular
legal disposition will be discussed more extensively below (4.1.1).
3.1.7. Proposals for new legislation.
60
The government is
currently preparing a proposal to be presented to parliament that would amend
the 1981 Act once again. As has already been mentioned, this initiative would
amend art. 1,2,2bis and 4, replacing the notion of ‘race’ by ‘socalled race’
and including discrimination vis-à-vis groups in the workplace in the act.
61
A proposed article
5ter would create a new aggravating circumstance, allowing the judges to double
the penalties if a racist motive is involved in certain criminal behavior. This
would be regarded as an aggravating circumstance for such offences as indecent
assault, rape, manslaughter, assault and battery, non-assistance of persons in
danger, abduction and sequestration of minors, insults, violation of a grave
and damaging real estate.
62
Other prospective
legislation is currently before parliament. The Bill on the Fight against
Discrimination[50]  This can be retrieved on www. antiracisme. be. [50] would
introduce a comprehensive act concerning direct and indirect discrimination
based on gender, race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, sexual
orientation, marital status, birth, age, belief or philosophy, present or
future medical condition, handicaps or physical characteristics. Incitement to
discrimination on any of these grounds would be punishable, as well as
announcing one’s intention to do so. These motives would also constitute
aggravating circumstances for the offences already mentioned in the previous
paragraph.
3.2. Limitations on the freedom of
expression. 3.2.2. The special regime for racist press crimes.
63
Since 1831, Belgium has
known a particular regime for the punishment of socalled “press-crimes”. For
historical reasons, these were granted the privilege of trial by jury, together
with political crimes (and later also the most serious common offences)[51]  See VAN DEN WYNGAERT, C. (ed.), o.c., 2 and 11-12. [51] . This
means that these crimes can only be judged by the assize court ( Hofvan Assisen/ Cour d’Assises) which
comprises twelve lay judges who have to decide on the question of guilt. The
assize procedure is cumbersome, expensive and slow and the public ministry
tries to submit few cases as possible to the jury. This is usually not a
problem with common offences that can be submitted to the normal criminal
courts using a technique known as “correctionalisation.”[52]  See VAN DEN WYNGAERT, C. (ed.), o.c., 32-33. [52] Political
and press-crimes, however, have been exclusively assigned to the assize court
by the Constitution (art. 150).
64
This reluctance to
use jury trial has caused a quasi-immunity for press-crimes in Belgium for at
least half a century. One notable exception occurred when, in 1994, members of
the Party of the “Forces Nouvelles”
were brought before the Assize Court of Mons for violations of the Act of 30
July 1981. They were eventually convicted, not for press crimes, but for
membership in a racist association[53]  Cour d’Assises de Mons, 28 June 1994, cited in
CENTRE... [53] . This
case was, however, the exception that confirms the rule. The existence of a
press-crime would usually secure a quasi-impunity for the accused, the criminal
courts declaring themselves incompetent. It can be noted that some courts used
a subterfuge to judge cases that could be considered press-crimes, reasoning
that the court did not examine the publications, but only used them as evidence
to establish whether a group or association had a racist character[54]  Cour d’Appel de Liège, 26 March 1997, cited in
CENTRE... [54] . In any
case, the special regime for press-crimes granted factual impunity to a large
number of offences.
65
The solution that
was chosen to solve this problem resulted in an amendment to the Constitution,
explicitly removing racist press-crimes from the protection afforded
press-crimes.
66
Article 150 of the
Belgian Constitution reads as follows :
67
The jury is
established for all criminal matters, in addition to issues of political and
press offences, except for press offences that are inspired by racism or
xenophobia[55]  As amended by the law of 7 May 1999, published 29
May... [55] .
68
This amendment created
a distinction between ‘normal’press-crimes and racist press-crimes, the first
still benefiting from the protection mechanism instituted in 1831, the latter
now being judged by the normal criminal courts together with other common
offences. This situation has been met with some criticism by several
commentators who would have preferred a comprehensive reform of the role of the
jury concerning press crimes[56]  See the references in BATSELÉ, D., “Racisme et
liberté... [56] . The
first relevant judgement after this amendment is interesting[57]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles, 22 December
1999,... [57] .
Amilitant of the party “Vlaams Blok” was convicted for distributing racist
messages on the Internet in newsgroups. Oddly, the Court estimated that this
amounted to a press-crime, while the new media have traditionally been excluded
from the protection of the regime for press-crimes according to the case-law of
the Cour de Cassation. This qualification was, in any case,
not relevant any more to decide on the competence of the Court after the
amendment of art. 150 in 1999.
69
3.2.1. Act of 23
March, 1995 on punishing the denial, minimisation justification or approval of
the genocide perpetrated by the German National Socialist Regime during the Second
World War.
70
In 1995,
legislation was adopted to punish revisionism. Belgium was in fact rather late
in doing this compared to the surrounding countries and was fast becoming a
destination of choice for revisionist authors and their products[58]  BLERO, B., “La répression légale du révisionnisme”,... [58] . The
punishable behaviour consists in the public denial, gross minimisation,
justification or approval of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against
the Jewish and Gypsy peoples :
71
Article 1. Whoever,
in the circumstances given in article 444 of the Penal Code denies, grossly
minimises, attempts to justify, or approves the genocide committed by the
German National Socialist Regime during the Second World War shall be punished
by a prison sentence of eight days to one year, and by a fine of twenty six
francs to five thousand francs.
For the application
of the previous paragraph, the term genocide is meant in the sense of article 2
of the International Treaty of 9 December 1948 on preventing and combating
genocide.
In the event of
repetitions, the guilty party may in addition have his civic rights suspended
in accordance with article 33 of the Penal Code.
Art. 2. In
the event of a conviction on account of a violation under this Act, it may be
ordered that the judgement, in its entirety or an excerpt of it, is published
in one or more newspapers, and is displayed, to the charge of the guilty party.
(...)
Art. 4. The
Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, as well as any
association that at the time of the facts had had a legal personality for at
least five years, and which, on the grounds of its statutes, has the objective
of defending moral interests and the honour of the resistance or the deported,
may act in law in all legal disputes arising from the application of this Act.
72
Evidently, the
application of this Act has been greatly facilitated by the amendment to art.
150 of the Constitution. In November 2000, a man was convicted for distributing
to libraries in Brussels the review “Final Conflict”, which published, amongst
others, a revisionist article[59]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles, 7 November
2000,... [59] . The
Court also reminded the librarians of their duty to make certain they don’t
sell illegal publications.
4. Reparation For Victims Of Acts Of Racism And Racial
Discrimination
73
Similarly to other
crimes which constitute at the same time a criminal offence and a civil wrong,
acts of racism under the 1981 Act can give rise to two possible
proceedings : tort proceedings before criminal courts and before civil
courts (cf. supra, 2).
4.1. Reparation proceedings before
criminal courts
4.1.1. Persons and entities entitled to
bring a civil claim
74
As explained above,
victims can bring a civil action before a criminal court, which will then
decide on both the criminal and the civil aspects of the case. The 1981 Act has
created an additional category of civil claimants. Under article 5 of the
Law :
75
“Any public utility institution and any
associations that, on the days of the fact, had been incorporated for at least
five years, with the exception of the Centre for Equal Opportunities and
Combating Racism which is not bound by such a period, and whose statutory
objective is to defend human rights or to combat discrimination, may act in law
in all legal disputes that the Application of this Act gives rise to, when
their statutory aims are compromised”.
76
As our survey of
jurisprudence will show, several associations have made use of this provision
to constitute themselves partie civile and have been awarded moral damages in
court.
77
For the application
of article 2 of the 1981 Act, which deals with discrimination in the area of
employment (including job offers, professional training, recruitment, dismissal
of employees), article 5 of the Act also allows representative employee and
employer organisations, representative professional organisations and
representative organisations of the self-employed to act in law ( ester en justice).
78
The Centre for
Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (hereafter : the Centre) was
specifically created to promote equal opportunity policies and practices and to
combat all forms of racial discrimination and related forms of intolerance. The
tasks of the centre, which is independent but reports to the Prime Minister on
a yearly basis, include the monitoring of the application of the 1981 Act. To
do so, the Centre is qualified to take any legal dispute that falls under the
application of the 1981 Act to court[60]  Article 3, para. 4 of the Act of February 15,1993
pertaining... [60] .
79
Generally, as
reported above, under Belgian legislation, it is not possible for victim
organisations or other public interest groups to participate in judicial
proceedings by way of an actio popularis. The 1981 Act was the first notable
exception to this rule. Advocates of the provision under Article 5 referred to
the general reluctance and fear on behalf of the victims to initiate
proceedings on their own. Others opposed this technique since it would erode
the public prosecutor’s monopoly in safeguarding the public interest[61]  See also C. VAN DEN WYNGAERT, Strafrecht and
Strafprocesrecht.... [61] . There
is one precondition to the involvement of the Centre or other associations as
civil claimants : their claim will be admissible only if it demonstrates
that it has obtained the consent of the direct victims[62]  Article 5, in fine. Nevertheless, it seems wrong
to... [62] .
4.1.2. Jurisprudence
80
This analysis can
by no means claim to cover all relevant jurisprudence. It is primarily based on
the jurisprudence published by the Centre, both in its May 1999 publication[63]  CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE... [63] and on
its website[64]  http :// www. antiracisme. be/ [64] , updated
until early 2001.
a)
General observations
81
Compared to the
total number of cases brought before the criminal courts (see above), civil
claims are brought in a large majority of cases. In most of them, the victim,
together with one or more associations, constitutes itself partie
civile. For the year 1999, the Centre constituted itself partie
civile in 18 cases
(in about the same number of cases, the Centre filed a complaint without constitution
de partie civile).
82
In the case of
associations constituting themselves partie civile, the admissibility
depends on three elements : their statutory objective, a period of five
years of legal existence (this condition does not apply to the Centre) and the
consent of the direct victim. In the jurisprudence under analysis, no admissibility
problems seem to have arisen regarding the participation of associations in the
proceedings. The associations that have participated include generalist
antiracism movements, such as the MRAX ( Mouvement contre le racisme, l’antisémitisme et la xénophobie)
as well as specific interest groups with a more narrowly defined statutory
mandate, such as the coordinating committee of Jewish movements ( Comité de coordination des organisations juives de
Belgique, CCOJB).
83
In the case[65]  Chambre des mises en accusation de Liège, 28 March... [65] of
natural persons constituting themselves partie civile, admissibility issues
have arisen. In a case against candidates on the list of a party ( Parti des Forces Nouvelles - PFN )
which advocates discrimination between European and non-European immigrants,
162 persons had constituted themselves partie civile. Among them were
non-European immigrants, European immigrants and Belgian nationals. As far as
the two latter categories of persons are concerned, the court of indictment (“chambre des mises en accusation”, “kamer van inbeschuldigingstelling”)
found that they did not have real and personal damage which would justify their constitution
de partie civile:
“one may nevertheless raise questions with regard
to the personal and real damage from which the civil claimants claim to have
suffered in order to justify their legal action” (“Qu’on peut néanmoins s’interroger dès à present
sur le préjudice personnel et actuel que les parties civiles prétendent subir
pour justifier de leur constitution”)
84
The court of
indictment adds that, given their European or Belgian nationality, non of them
is directly targeted by the PFN programme. The fact that the criminal offences
hurt them in their humanist and democratic convictions, does not suffice.
85
“Que le motif évoqué, à savoir que les infractions
les heurtent dans leur conviction humaniste et démocratique, ne paraît pas
rencontrer le prescrit de la loi. ”
86
In the same case,
the Criminal court[66]  Tribunal correctionnel de Liège, 22 June 1993,
cited... [66] confirms
the ruling of the Court of Indictment, in saying that the legal claim to obtain
reparation should be reserved only to those parties who have themselves been
hurt in their personal interests.
87
The mere reference
to their active commitment for human rights and mutual respect does not
suffice. In case the motive behind the civil claim can be reduced to an
interest in the upholding of the law and the prosecution of persons committing
a criminal offence, the claim should be rejected since these interests are
taken care of by the public prosecution department :
88
“Attendu que
l’action en réparation n’appartient qu’à une personne lésée dans
un intérêt qui lui
est particulier;
89
Attendu que
l’action civile doit être rejetée lorsque le seul motif de son internement se
réduit à un intérêt à la répression de l’infraction; Attendu qu’en l’espèce les
parties civiles personnes physiques ne justifient pas, par la seule référence à
leur souci de combat pour les droits de l’homme et pour le respect d’autrui,
l’existence d’un intérêt propre qui a pu être lésé par agissements des
inculpés; Qu’en l’absence d’un préjudice personnel subi par ces parties
civiles, leurs actions ne sont pas fondées, la défense de leurs intérêts ayant
été suffisamment prise en charge par le Ministère Public”
b)
The nature of the damage
90
In some cases, the
acts constituting a criminal offence under the 1981 Act constitute at the same
time other criminal offences, for instance resulting in physical suffering or
impairment, of which the damage is relatively easily verifiable and measurable,
for instance through medical certificates.
91
However, under the
1981 Act itself, the damage incurred by the victims is in many cases not easily
objectively verifiable. Courts have nevertheless tried to define the damage
(primarily moral damage) which results from the criminal acts.
92
In a case[67]  Tribunal correctionnel de Hasselt, 27 March 1995,
cited... [67] against a
pub owner who refused to serve five people of Pakistani origin and ordered them
to leave the pub, the Court, in assessing the moral damage of the victims,
noted that :
“the infringement of the mental integrity of people
who are refugees or who are hoping to find a better life or a more comfortable
way of living, and who are time and time again experiencing exclusion, must be
extremely painful” (“overwegende
dat de aantasting van de psychische integriteit van mensen die op de vlucht
zijn of op zoek naar een beter leven of materiële welstand, doch steeds moeten
ervaren te worden uitgesloten, zeer pijnlijk is”)
93
In the same case,
the Court also defined the moral damage suffered by the Centre. Referring to
the latter’s statutory objective, the Court noted that :
94
“the acts of the accused despised the objectives of
the civil claimant and rendered the realisation of these objectives more
difficult, as a result of which the civil claimant has suffered a personal
damage due to the injury caused to her legitimate interests;
the reparation of
the damage of the civil claimant is intended to draw the attention of the
accused to the fact that their behaviour is contrary to the objectives of the
civil claimant;
that the
compensation which they should pay is rather symbolic” (“dat door de daden van beklaagden de doelstellingen
van de burgerlijke partij werden misprezen en de realisatie van deze
doelstellingen werd bemoeilijkt, zodat de burgerlijke partij hierdoor een
persoonlijke schade lijdt omdat haar rechtmatige belangen werden geschaad;
dat het herstel van
de schade van de burgerlijke partij tot doel heeft en hierin bestaat namelijk
de aandacht van beklaagden te trekken dat hun handelen in strijd is met de
doelstellingen van de burgerlijke partij;
dat de door
beklaagden te betalen vergoeding dan ook eerder symbolisch is”)
95
The Court rejected
the Centre’s claim for material damages, noting that its administrative costs
were incurred as a result of the activities it was supposed to conduct in line
with its statutory objectives.
96
In a case[66]  Tribunal correctionnel de Liège, 22 June 1993,
cited... [66] against
an accused who physically assaulted a person of Kurdish origin, while telling
him publicly to go back home, the Court distinguished two types of moral
damages. On the one hand, moral damages were awarded for pain and suffering during
a period of temporary inability to work. On the other hand, moral damages were
awarded for “lost satisfaction and loss
of enjoyment of life”[67]  Tribunal correctionnel de Hasselt, 27 March 1995,
cited... [67] (“genoegenschade
en verlies aan levensvreugde”). The Court noted that the events :
97
“must have strongly shocked and morally hurt the
civil claimant. Nobody in a democratic society needs to walk down the streets
while fearing for his physical integrity simply because of his opinion or
colour” (“de burgerlijk
partij toch zwaar geschokt en moreel moet aangetast hebben. Niemand hoort in
een democratische rechtsstaat met vrees voor zijn fysieke integriteit over
straat te lopen louter omwille van zijn opinie of huidskleur”)
c)
The nature of reparation and the amount of compensation
98
In almost all
cases, the court reduces the rights of the civil parties to a monetary
compensation, the amount of which widely varies, as will be demonstrated below.
In some rare occasions, some other elements of the right to reparation are also
taken into account. In a case against a politician who insulted a Jewish member
of the municipality council of Brussels
during a public hearing of the council, the Court found that :
99
“it is important that the reparation of the damage
caused by the insult takes place sufficiently timely” (“il importe que la réparation du prejudice
engendrer par l’injure ait lieu à un moment où elle possède encore un caractère
d’actualité”)
100
Not only did the
Court stress the element of time, it also argued that punishment is needed to
repair the harm. In doing so, the Court acted in line with the notion of
reparation which has been developed by the Special Rapporteurs of the
Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and the
Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations. In their draft Basic
Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation, they distinguish
between (a) restitution, (b) compensation, (c) rehabilitation and (d)
satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition, the latter category including “judicial or administrative sanctions against
persons responsible for the violations”[68]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruges, 30 June 1997,
cited... [68] . The
Court noted that :
101
“only a rapid trial and condemnation of the accused
before a criminal judicial instance is able to repair the damage caused to the
claimant” (“seule une
comparution et une condamnation rapide du cite devant les juridictions
répressives seront de nature à apporter au requérant la réparation de son
dommage”)
102
The amounts awarded
to compensate moral damages vary importantly. In a majority of cases[69]  Loss of enjoyment of life is also an element in
the... [69] , the
monetary compensation, both for the direct victim and for the association which
constituted itself partie civile, is purely symbolic and
limited to one Belgian Franc[70]  See UN Doc. E/CN. 4/2000/62 of 18 January 2000 [70] The
amounts awarded generally range from 1,000 to 100,000 Belgian Francs. The
latter amount has, in different cases, been awarded to both direct victims and
associations. Generally, when, in the same case, both the direct victim and an
association intervene as civil claimants, the amount awarded to the direct
victim is superior to the amount awarded to the association.
103
For instance, in
the above-mentioned case[71]  See, for instance, Cour d’Appel de Bruxelles, 8
novembre... [71] of a
racist attack against a person of Kurdish origin, the Court awarded a total of
18,000 BF to the direct victim for moral damages, and 1,000 BF to the Centre
(instead of the 10,000 BF it had claimed). Exceptionally, the amount awarded to
an association exceeds the amount awarded to the direct victims. For instance,
in a case against the owner of a dance hall who repeatedly refused access to
three visitors of Moroccan origin, the Centre was awarded 70,000 BF (20.000 BF
for material damage and 50.000
104
BF for moral
damage), while the three direct victims were awarded either 20,000 or 30,000 BF
as moral damages, depending on the number of times they were refused access. On
appeal[72]  One Euro equals 40,3399 Belgian Francs. [72] , the
amount awarded to the Centre for moral damages was reduced to 1 BF. The claim
for compensation of material damage was rejected, the Court considering that
the administrative costs to the Centre were incurred as a result of the
activities it was supposed to conduct in line with its statutory objectives
(cf. supra).
105
In a case against a
political activist who was convicted of the electronic distribution of racist
messages through the Internet, the Court, in first instance, awarded 100.000 BF
to the Centre as moral damages. In doing so, the Court took into account “the hateful relentlessness” (“l’acharnement haineux”) systematically
targeted against the director of the Centre. On appeal, the amount of damages
was reduced to 1 BF, since the Court in first instance could not consider the
said relentlessness to be part of the criminal offence[75]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles, 22 December
1999... [75] .
106
In several cases,
in addition to financial compensation, the Court also ordered publication of
the judgment in one or more widely spread newspapers. In some cases, however,
civil claimants’ requests to publish the judgment have been rejected, primarily
because of arguments related to public order and peace. In a case[76]  Tribunal correctionnel de Charleroi, 23 December
1987,... [76] against
people publicly insulting persons because of their North African origin, the
judge refused to order the publication of the judgment, noting that the 1981
Act does not explicitly provide for this sanction and because of the young age
of the convict. In a case[77]  Tribunal correctionnel de Namur, 23 September
1993,... [77] against
members of ASSAULT, convicted under article 3 for belonging or lending
assistance to a group or association that clearly and repeatedly practices or
advocates discrimination or segregation, the judge refused to order the
publication of the judgment because of “the
risk of heated passions” (“le
risque d’attiser les passions”). In the above-mentioned case[78]  See footnote number 65. [78]against Parti
des Forces Nouvelles members,
the Court did not order publication because of the period of time lapsed since
the events and because of public peace (“eu
égard à l’ancienneté des faits et à la paix publique”).
4.2. Reparation proceedings before civil courts
4.2.1.
Introduction
107
In line with the
general legislation on torts, victims of acts of racism and racial
discrimination may choose to bring a claim for damages before a civil court. As
mentioned above, in case the criminal proceedings are still pending (or get
started during the civil proceedings), the procedure before the civil court
will be suspended until the criminal court has rendered its judgment.
108
One of the main
differences between both procedures is related to the burden of proof. The
civil procedure offers both (1) disadvantages and (2) possible advantages to
the alleged victim :
(1) In both the
criminal procedure and the civil procedure, the victim must prove his or her
damage and the causal link with the acts committed. However, in the criminal
proceedings, the proof of tort stems automatically from the judicial finding
that a criminal offence has been committed. On the contrary, in the civil
procedure, the alleged victim will also need to prove the tort.
109
(2) In the criminal
procedure, the rights of the accused obviously include a presumption of
innocence (Article 6, para. 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights). In a
case[79]  Tribunal correctionnel de Bruges, 25 September
1995,... [79] against
the owner of a bike rental shop who refused to rent a motorbike to a person of
Turkish origin, after the latter started communicating with another person in
Turkish, the Court found that the prosecutor did not prove that the refusal was
based on discrimination rather than on the owner’s fear that the motorbike
might not be returned to the shop. The Court noted that “in the particular case, there is doubt which
should be interpreted to the advantage of the accused” (“dat er terzake twijfel is die in het voordeel van
de betichte moet uitgelegd worden”)[80]  See also the text accompanying note 41. [80] . The
difficulties related to the burden of proof of the racist motivation behind
some apparently racist acts is mentioned as one of the main difficulties to
implement the 1981 Act and, as a consequence, as one the arguments for the
above-mentioned current legislative initiative, which we will further develop
below insofar as the aspect of reparation is concerned. The Bill includes a
reversed burden of proof in the context of civil proceedings.
4.2.2. The Bill on the Fight against
Discrimination
110
It was indicated
above how current legislative initiatives seek, inter
alia, to strengthen the criminal legal aspects of the Belgian
legislation against racism and racial discrimination. The Bill on the Fight
against Discrimination also provides for additional powers of the presidents of
the Civil courts ( rechtbank van
eerste aanleg/ tribunal de première instance), casu
quo the Labour courts
( arbeidsrechtbank/ tribunal
du travail) and Commercial courts ( handelsrechtbank/ tribunal de commerce),
in the case of discrimination on the basis of gender, socalled race, colour,
descent, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, civil status, birth,
age, physical disability, religion, etcetera[81]  As mentioned above, the Bill includes a range of
discrimination... [81] .
111
At the initiative
of the public prosecutor, or of the victim of the discrimination, or of the
Centre or other associations which meet the conditions under Article 12 of the
Bill[82]  These conditions are identical to the ones under
the... [82] , the
president of the Court can formally register the commission of the acts which
are contrary to the law and order their cessation (Article 10, para. 1). The
president can also order the publication of his decision, if the publication
can contribute to the cessation of the acts (Article 10, para. 2). The summary
procedure (“comme en référé”)
will apply to this request (Article 13, para. 2); the Bill also allows the
president of the Court to impose “une
astreinte” (an amount to be paid in case of non-compliance with a
judicial order) which the author of the discrimination should pay in case the
discriminatory behaviour continues, irrespective of the compensation which the
victim may claim. In its advice on the Bill, the Council of State questions the
possibility of the president imposing the payment of damages in the context of
summary proceedings, which are in fact designed to cease the wrongful behaviour
as quickly as possible and which therefore hardly allow for sufficient time to
prove the damage and the causal link. At the time of writing, it is unclear
whether the legislator will incorporate these concerns in a new version of the
Bill.
112
As far as civil
proceedings are concerned, the Bill, in Article 10, reverses the burden of
proof. When the victim or the Centre or one of the other associations submit
information, such as statistical data or situation tests (“test de situation”) - for the
establishment of which the alleged victim will be able to call upon the
services of a bailiff (“huissier de
justice”) -, which indicates that there is reason to believe that
direct or indirect discrimination is taking place, then the defendant needs to
prove that this is not the case.
Notes
[*]
Christine Van den
Wyngaert is a professor of criminal law and procedure and of international and
comparative criminal law at the University of Antwerp. She is a
member of the Board of Directors of the AIDP. Stef Vandeginste and Ignace Van
Daele are research assistants at the University of Antwerp
[1]
For an overview of
the Belgian criminal procedure, see : VAN DEN WYNGAERT, C. (ed.), Criminal
Procedure Systems in the European Community, London, Butterworths, 1993,1-49.
[2]
Law of 12 March
1998 on the amelioration of the criminal procedure which made drastic
amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure (henceforth CPP).
[3]
BRIENEN, M.E.I. and
HOEGEN, E.H., Victims of Crime in 22 European Criminal Justice
Systems : The Implementation of Recommendation (85) 11 of the Council of
Europe on the Position of the Victim in the Framework of Criminal Law and
Procedure, Dissertation University of Tilburg/ Nijmegen, Wolf Legal
Productions, 2000,160.
[4]
Violations of the
Act of 30 July 1981 on the punishment of certain acts motivated by racism or
xenophobia can give rise to constitution de partie civile by associations with legal personality
that have existed for at least five years and whose statutory purpose is the
protection of human rights or the fight against racism, see below, 4.1.1. The
Act of 23 March, 1995 on punishing the denial, minimisation justification or
approval of the genocide perpetrated by the German National Socialist Regime
during the Second World War, contains a comparable provision in its art. 4.
Other examples of this trend can be found in the Law on the trade in human
beings and child pornography (1995) and the Law on combating violence between
partners (1997).
[5]
The Law of 12 March
1998 introduced a new form of complaint which grants certain limited rights to
the victim (art. 5bis CCP). If a victim makes a formal declaration at the
offices of the Public Ministry, he or she is granted the quality of “aggrieved
person” ( benadeelde persoon/
personne lésée). Once this formal quality has been obtained, the
victim has the right to be assisted or represented by a lawyer, the right to
add documents to the files of the investigation and the right to be informed
about the outcome of the investigation (i.e. if the Public Ministry decides to
drop the case or, alternatively, bring the suspect to trial or transfer the
investigation to an investigating judge). If the investigation and trial are
subject to the so-called “accelerated procedure” ( comparution immédiate/ onmiddellijke verschijning),
the victim moreover has the right to consult the files of the investigation
(art. 216quinquies, §2 CCP).
[6]
The seizing of the
investigating judge by the victim is not allowed for the least serious offences
( overtredingen/ contraventions)
and in the case of the aforementioned “accelerated procedure” as introduced by
the Law of 28 March 2000.
[7]
See generally
FAGNART, J.L. and BOGAERT, R., La réparation du dommage corporel en droit commun,
Brussels,
Larcier, 1994,498p.
[8]
For an overview of
the legislative history, see : CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA
LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, La loi du 30 juillet 1981 tendant à réprimer
certains actes inspirés par la racisme ou la xénophobie. Jurisprudence,
Bruxelles, 1999,3-5.
[9]
Law of 31 March
1994. The application of the 1981 Act had proved to be deceiving. The 1994
amendment not only increased the penalties and rationalised the definitions of
the incriminations, but also made racial discrimination in the workplace
punishable. The Law of 7 May 1999 introduced an article 5bis, providing the
possibility to deprive persons convicted of violations of the Act of certain
civil or political rights such as the right to hold certain offices or to be
elected (see art. 31 PC).
[10]
Act of 23 March,
1995 on punishing the denial, minimisation justification or approval of the
genocide perpetrated by the German National Socialist Regime during the Second
World War, see below, 3.2.1.
[11]
The penalties were
substantially raised by the amendment of 1994. The fact that these offences now
carry a maximum penalty of 1 year means that they are ‘arrestable offences’ and
that detention on remand is theoretically possible. It is also to be noted that
in Belgium
the fines mentioned in the legislation, have to be multiplied by a factor of
(at this moment) 200.
[12]
The term ‘race’ is
generally understood to mean an ethnic group which differentiates itself from
others by an entirety of physical and hereditary characteristics representing
variations among the species (CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ETLA LUTTE
CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 5, note 11). Aprospective
government proposal to amend the 1981 Act would replace the term ‘race’ by
‘so-called race’ to stress the fact that the notion of ‘race’does not
correspond to any scientific reality.
[13]
This was included
to combat anti-Semitism. It is to be noted that the Law doesn’t only protect
foreigners, but also those of foreign descent who acquired the Belgian
nationality. Religion and language, both traditionally controversial political
issues in Belgium,
have deliberately been excluded from the scope of the 1981 Act.
[14]
Art. 444 Penal Code
describes the circumstances in which the offence of defamation can be
committed, i.e. “(...) either in public meetings or places; or in the presence
of several people, in a place that is not public but accessible to a number of
people who are entitled to meet or visit there; or in any place in the presence
of the offended person and in front of witnesses; or through documents, printed
or otherwise, illustrations or symbols that have been displayed, distributed,
sold, offered for sale, or publicly exhibited; or finally by documents that
have not been made public but which have been sent or communicated to several
people”.
[15]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Liège, 16 September 1993, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., (148) 154.
[16]
CENTRE POUR
L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c.,
9.
[17]
Cour d’Appel de
Liège, 4 June 1992, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 138.
[18]
Cour d’Appel de
Bruxelles, 4 September 1987, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA
LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., (99) 101.
[19]
Tribunal
correctionnel d’Anvers, 14 March 1996, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 191.
[20]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Courtrai, 19 August 1998, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 304. Confirmed by Cour d’Appel
de Gand, 16 September 1999, wwww. antiracisme.
be.
[21]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruxelles, 20 April 1983, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 84.
[22]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruxelles, 15 July 1996, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 200.
[23]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Charleroi, 23 December 1987, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE
DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 103.
[24]
Tribunal
correctionnel d’Audenaarde, 23 October 1995, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 180.
[25]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Turnhout, 5 January 1999, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 331.
[26]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Turnhout, 18 December 1998, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 322.
[27]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruxelles, 30 June 1997, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 246.
[28]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Marche-en-Famenne, 19 June 1998, cited in CENTRE POUR
L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c.,
291.
[29]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Louvain, 8 February 1999, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 335.
[30]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Furnes, 20 October 2000, www. antiracisme. be.
[31]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruxelles, 23 December 1983, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE
DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 89.
[32]
Cour de Cassation,
19 May 1993, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE
RACISME, o.c., 144.
[33]
BATSELE, D.,
DAURMONT, O. and HANOTIAU, M., La lutte contre le racisme et la xénophobie,
Brussels,
Nemesis, 1992,24-26.
[34]
Cour d’Appel de
Liège, 11 March 1988, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 108.
[35]
Similarly, video recordings
were allowed as evidence in a case about a discotheque. (Tribunal Correctionnel
de Hasselt, 10 May 2000, www. racisme. be)
[36]
Tribunal correctionnel
de Hasselt, 27 March 1995, as confirmed by Cour d’Appel d’Anvers, 17 November
1995, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ETLA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c.,
182.
[37]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Termonde, 21 October 1986, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 97.
[38]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Hasselt, 21 November 1996, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 212. The Court accepts that
doorkeepers perform “preventative controls” to keep order in the establishment
and guarantee the security of the customers. These are considered “objective
reasons” justifying a refusal to entry. (Tribunal correctionnel de Hasselt, 10
May 2000, www. racisme. be)
[39]
Tribunal
correctionnel d’Anvers, 26 June 1998, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., ( 297) 299. Confirmed by
Cour d’Appel d’Anvers, 25 April 2000, www. racisme. be.
[40]
Cour d’Appel
d’Anvers, 18 April 1997, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 240.
[41]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruges, 25 September 1995, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., (177) 179.
[42]
TULKENS, F.,
“Egalité et discriminations en droit pénal belge”, Revue
Internationale de Droit Pénal 1986,
(63) 81-82.
[43]
STOKX, R., “De
vernieuwingen aan de Racismewet : meer dan een laagje vernis ?”,Panopticon 1994, (503) 508.
[44]
Cour du Travail de
Gand, 24 Janvier 1985, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 91.
[45]
CENTRE POUR
L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c.,
30-31.
[46]
Law of 4 May 1999.
[47]
BATSELE, D.,
DAURMONT, O. and HANOTIAU, M., o.c., 73.
[48]
Cour militaire de
Bruxelles, 17 December 1997, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA
LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., (252) 255-257.
[49]
Cour militaire de
Bruxelles, 7 Mai 1998, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., (279) 285.
[50]
This can be
retrieved on www. antiracisme. be.
[51]
See VAN DEN
WYNGAERT, C. (ed.), o.c., 2 and 11-12.
[52]
See VAN DEN
WYNGAERT, C. (ed.), o.c., 32-33.
[53]
Cour d’Assises de
Mons, 28 June 1994, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 168.
[54]
Cour d’Appel de
Liège, 26 March 1997, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE
CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 221, contra Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruxelles, 6 September 1994, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE
DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 171.
[55]
As amended by the
law of 7 May 1999, published 29 May 1999.
[56]
See the references
in BATSELÉ, D., “Racisme et liberté d’expression. Examen de législation et de
jurisprudence belges”, Revue Trimestrielle des Droits de l’Homme 2001, (321) 329-331.
[57]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruxelles, 22 December 1999, wwww. antiracisme.
be.Confirmed by Cour d’Appel de Bruxelles, 27 June 2000, www. antiracisme.
be.
[58]
BLERO, B., “La
répression légale du révisionnisme”, Journal des Tribunaux 1996, (333) 334.
[59]
Tribunal correctionnel
de Bruxelles, 7 November 2000, www. antiracisme. be.
[60]
Article 3, para. 4
of the Act of February 15,1993 pertaining to the foundation of a Centre for
Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism.
[61]
See also C. VAN DEN
WYNGAERT, Strafrecht and Strafprocesrecht. In hoofdlijnen,
Antwerpen-Apeldoorn, Maklu, 1998,613-617.
[62]
Article 5, in
fine. Nevertheless, it seems wrong to interpret Article 5 in
fine, as saying that the direct victim is transferring the exercise
of its own legal right to the association (contra : CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE
DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, La loi du 30 juillet 1981 tendant à réprimer
certains actes inspirés par la racisme ou la xénophobie. Jurisprudence,
Bruxelles, 1999,35). In fact, in most cases, direct victims are acting
alongside the associations as civil claimants.
[63]
CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE
DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, La loi du 30 juillet 1981 tendant à réprimer
certains actes inspirés par la racisme ou la xénophobie. Jurisprudence,
Bruxelles, 1999,392p.
[64]
http :// www. antiracisme. be/
[65]
Chambre des mises
en accusation de Liège, 28 March 1991, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 112-125.
[66]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Liège, 22 June 1993, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., (221) 235.
[67]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Hasselt, 27 March 1995, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., (182) 185-189.
[68]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruges, 30 June 1997, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 242.
[69]
Loss of enjoyment
of life is also an element in the concept of proyecto de vida (“life project”), which the
Inter-American Court on Human Rights developed in its 1998 reparation judgment
in Loayza Tamayo v. Peru (see, in more detail, SHELTON, D.,Remedies in international human rights law,
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999,229-231).
[70]
See UN Doc. E/CN.
4/2000/62 of 18 January 2000
[71]
See, for instance,
Cour d’Appel de Bruxelles, 8 novembre 1991, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 131-137.
[72]
One Euro equals
40,3399 Belgian Francs.
[73]
See footnote number
68.
[74]
Cour d’Appel
d’Anvers, 25 April 2000, www. antiracisme. be.
[75]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruxelles, 22 December 1999 and Cour d’Appel de Bruxelles, 27
June 2000, www. antiracisme. be.
[76]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Charleroi, 23 December 1987, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE
DES CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 103-105.
[77]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Namur, 23 September 1993, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ET LA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 157-167.
[78]
See footnote number
65.
[79]
Tribunal
correctionnel de Bruges, 25 September 1995, cited in CENTRE POUR L’EGALITE DES
CHANCES ETLA LUTTE CONTRE LE RACISME, o.c., 177-179.
[80]
See also the text
accompanying note 41.
[81]
As mentioned above,
the Bill includes a range of discrimination grounds which is much wider than
the 1981 Act.
[82]
These conditions
are identical to the ones under the 1981 Act, including the need to act with
the consent of the direct victim.
Plan de l'article
1.                           1.
Introduction
2.                           2.
The Position Of The Victim In Criminal Proceedings In General
3.
1.                                           2.1.
The “ordinary” compensation scheme for crime victims.
2.                                           2.1.1.
Tort proceedings before the criminal courts.
3.
4.                                           2.1.2.
Tort proceedings before the civil courts.
5.                                           2.2.
“Financial help” for victims of violent crimes under the 1985 victims
compensation act.
4.                           3.
The Belgian Criminal Legislation Against Racism
5.
1.                                           3.1
Act of 30 July 1981 on the punishment of certain acts motivated by racism or
xenophobia. 3.1.1. Incitement or intention to discrimination, hatred, violence.
2.                                           3.1.2.
Supplying or offering of services or goods.
3.                                           3.1.3.
Labour relations
4.                                           3.1.4.
Membership of racist groups or associations.
5.                                           3.1.5.
Public officials
6.                                           3.1.6.
Associations to act in law
7.                                           3.1.7.
Proposals for new legislation.
8.                                           3.2.
Limitations on the freedom of expression. 3.2.2. The special regime for racist
press crimes.
6.                           4.
Reparation For Victims Of Acts Of Racism And Racial Discrimination
7.
1.                                           4.1.
Reparation proceedings before criminal courts
2.                                           4.1.1.
Persons and entities entitled to bring a civil claim
3.                                           4.1.2.
Jurisprudence
4.
5.                                           4.2.
Reparation proceedings before civil courts
6.                                           4.2.1.
Introduction
7.                                           4.2.2.
The Bill on the Fight against Discrimination
Pour citer cet article
Van den Wyngaert Christine et
al., « The position of victims of acts of racism and racial
discrimination in belgium », Revue internationale de droit pénal 1/ 2002 (Vol. 73), p. 111-140
URL : www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-droit-penal-2002-1-page-111.htm.
DOI : 10.3917/ridp.073.0111

===========================================================
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SEARCH
Belgian
Paper Apologizes Over Racist Images of Obama Used in Satire
By ROBERT MACKEY
MARCH 24, 2014 7:53
PM 30 Comments
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Last Updated,
Tuesday, 10:34 a.m. | One of Belgium’s
leading newspapers, De Morgen,
apologized on Monday to readers offended by a satirical feature published two
days earlier that used racist images of President Obama to mock his strained
relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
The editors of the left-leaning Flemish
daily explained that the premise of their “admittedly tasteless joke” was that
the Russian president had been asked to submit an article about Mr. Obama but
sent instead two racist caricatures — one photograph captioned to suggest
that the first African-American president of the United States was a drug
dealer, and a second that was digitally altered to give the president and
Michelle Obama the features of apes.
In an editorial published on Monday under
the headline, “Is De Morgen Racist?” the newspaper, with
roots in the country’s socialist movement, essentially absolved itself of the
charge, suggesting that regular readers aware of its stance against racism
understood that the offensive images — published as part of a special section
on the American president ahead of his visit to Belgium this week — were intended to satirize
how racists think.
Some readers, including the Nigerian-born writer Chika Unigwe, who has lived in Belgium, argued
that publishing the images revealed an unacknowledged racism in Belgian
society, even from the editors of one of the country’s avowedly “progressive”
newspapers.
According to a partial translation of the Morgen editorial from the
Belgian state broadcaster VRT, the editors argued that their mistake was in
assuming that the context of the images, in a regular satirical section of the
paper, would make it clear to readers that no offense was intended, but when
the images circulated online that context was lost. When “you consider the
fragment apart from its context, which is a properly worked out satirical
section, then you don’t see the joke but just a picture evoking sheer racism,”
the editors wrote. “That was a risk we didn’t consider enough beforehand.”
“We wrongly assumed,” they added, “that
racism is no longer acceptable, and that in this way it could be the subject of
a joke.” The editors went on to suggest that they had overlooked the fact that
the racist trope of comparing Africans and their descendants to apes is still
common.
Absolving themselves of the charge of harboring
racist intentions, the editors concluded with an apology to anyone who was
offended. “In this case, we plead guilty of bad taste,” they said. “We continue
to be on the side of those that are battling any form of racism.”
The newspaper also suggested that the
backlash to its failed satire was stronger outside Belgium
because racism is more of a problem in other countries, including in the Netherlands,
where the news site Joop published a copy of the full-page satire, showing the
fictional Putin op-ed article beneath a stream of fictional tweets from Mr.
Obama in Flemish.
Ms. Unigwe was unimpressed by the apology
and noted that a sidebar on the satirist responsible for the section, Marc Van
Springel, said that he was shocked by the response.
In a Twitter conversation with another
critic, who suggested that the paper’s apology was obscured by the editorial’s
“pseudo-analysis” of satire and racism, the Morgen journalist Bart Eeckhout
acknowledged in blunt terms that the editors were wrong to publish
the images, but insisted that anti-racism was a cause close to their hearts.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/belgian-paper-apologizes-over-racist-images-of-obama-used-in-satire/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

=========================
Racism in Belgium’s
labour market, says European network
by Alan
Hope,
Recent articles: Bosch in Tienen announces 400 job losses, Rail union to strike on 30 June, Bite: O sole mio
SUMMARY
A report just released
by the European Network Against Racism concludes that Belgium’s
labour market suffers under racism and xenophobia
“Continuing inequality”
The Belgian labour market is based on
“ethnostratification”, according to the European Network Against Racism (ENAR),
meaning that racial and ethnic origin play a major role in determining a
person’s employment prospects.

The network found Belgium
to be a source of “continuing inequality and an undeniable hierarchy of
socio-economic positions”. The least likely to benefit from employment
opportunities in Europe, according to the network, are those of Maghreb origin
from North Africa. In Belgium, that
translates to those of Moroccan background.
Black Africans are the group with the second-worst job prospects
in Belgium, followed by
those from Italy and Eastern Europe.
According to the report, the same hierarchy comes into play at all
levels of employment, from access to jobs up to the risk of redundancy. The
report also notes that the same inequalities will come into play regardless of
economic factors. “Racism structures the world of employment and work,” the
report concludes.
The ENAR report makes a number of recommendations: ethnic quotas
in government jobs, based on what is called “inclusive neutrality”; positive
discrimination; opening government jobs up to non-citizens, in particular from
outside of Europe; and reforms to public
holidays to remove religious connotations.
Photo by Ingimage
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Hope

·                                 Racist Satire of Obamas Hits a Nerve in Belgium - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/world/europe/belgium-satire-racism-obama.... - Similarto Racist Satire of Obamas
Hits a Nerve in Belgium - NYTimes.com
Mar 26, 2014 ... Antiracism groups said that a Belgian newspaper's images depicting the
president and his wife as apes pointed to a normalization of hateful ...
·                                 Belgian Paper Apologizes Over Racist Images of ...
thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/belgian-paper-apologizes... - Similarto Belgian Paper Apologizes
Over Racist Images of ...
Mar 24, 2014 ... Last Updated, Tuesday, 10:34 a.m. |
One of Belgium's leading newspapers, De Morgen,
apologized on Monday to readers offended by a ...
[ More results from thelede.blogs.nytimes.com ]
·                                 Category:Racism in Belgium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Racism_in_Belgium - Similarto Category:Racism in
Belgium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pages in category "Racism
in Belgium". The following 3 pages are in this category, out of 3
total. This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more).
·                                 Belgium Is Shocked America Thinks It's Racist for Its Racist ...
www.thewire.com/politics/2014/03/belgium-is-outraged-america-thinks-... - Similarto Belgium Is Shocked
America Thinks It's Racist for Its Racist ...
Mar 26, 2014 ... Belgium's papers are indignant and confused over
a New York
magazine post that called their giant Obama-plays-basketball cookie and racist ...
·                                 Belgium is an insular country. It lives like
history happens ...
africasacountry.com/belgium-is-an-insular-country-it-lives-like-hist... - Similarto Belgium is an insular
country. It lives like history happens ...
Mar 26, 2014 ... The media outcry outside Belgium at De Morgen's misguided racist satire (and the apology from De
Morgen) is already a start. The act of ...
·                                 Belgium Gifting Obama a Racist Caricature Cookie -- NYMag
nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/belgium-obama-racist-caricatur... - Similarto Belgium Gifting Obama a Racist Caricature
Cookie -- NYMag
Mar 25, 2014 ... last week someone told me I was
"writing too much on racism
in #Belgium."
In today's paper, POTUS and wife as apes: pic.twitter.com/ ...
·                                 Racism in
Belgium's labour market, says European network ...
www.flanderstoday.eu/current-affairs/racism-belgiums-labour-market-s... - Similarto Racism in
Belgium's labour market, says European network ...
Mar 18, 2014 ... A report just released by the European
Network Against Racism concludes that Belgium's labour market suffers under racism and xenophobia ...
·                                 Belgian Newspaper Accused Of Racism For Picture Of Obama And ...
www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/24/newspaper-obama-ape-belgian-satire... - Similarto Belgian Newspaper
Accused Of Racism For Picture Of Obama And ...
Mar 24, 2014 ... A Belgian newspaper is under fire for an image
it printed showing ... The progressive newspaper De Morgen is being accused of racism for the ...
·                                 Fight against racism and discrimination - Policy ... - ...
diplomatie.belgium.be/en/policy/policy_areas/human_rights/specific_i... - Similarto Fight against racism and
discrimination - Policy ... - ...
At the national level,
the Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and
Opposition to Racismhas a
remit to combat discrimination in all its various forms.
·                                 Belgium heads EU racism league - News - The Independent
www.independent.co.uk/news/belgium-heads-eu-racism-league-1289695.ht... - Similarto Belgium heads EU racism league - News -
The Independent
Dec 20, 1997 ... Belgium is tops, Britain
languishes in the grey zone, and Luxembourg gets nul point. Imre
Karacs looks at a survey on Euro-racism.
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Belgiumheads EU racism league
IMRE
KARACS

Saturday 20 December 1997

Belgiumis tops, Britain languishes
in the grey zone, and Luxembourg
gets nul point. Imre Karacs looks at a survey on Euro-racism.

Sixteen thousand people across the 15 EU
countries were asked in a survey to pass judgement on themselves. The results,
presented yesterday by the European Commission, show, in the report's words,
"a worrying level of racism and xenophobia in member-states".
The dubious distinction of first place goes to Belgium, home
of the Commission. According to the study, ordered by Eurocrats to mark the
passing of "European Year Against Racism", 22 per cent of Belgians
professed to be "very racist" and 33 per cent "quite
racist".
Britainweighs in at equal
seventh with Germany,
with 8 per cent self- confessed "very racist" and 24 per cent
"quite racist". A further 33 per cent of Britons considered
themselves "a little racist". Only in Luxembourg
and Portugal
do a majority feel "not at all racist".
Padraig Flynn, the EU commissioner presenting the report,
expressed "extreme concern" at the "shocking statistics",
but was also able to draw some comfort from the findings. While unemployment
was described as the main cause of intolerance, several countries with very
high jobless rates appeared to be relatively untainted by racism, whilst more
prosperous neighbours were hostile out of all proportion.
"The survey shows the complexity of the phenomenon of
racism," the report said. "Feelings of racism co-exist with a strong
belief in the democratic system and respect for fundamental social rights and
freedoms".
There is, nevertheless, a disquieting link between the various
countries' position in the chart and the recent performance of the extreme
right. In Belgium,
where love-thy-neighbour politics went out of fashion years ago, parties
preaching xenophobia have been making headway, especially among the Flemish
community.
France, the silver medallist, regularly comes up with a strong
vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National. And a quarter of the Austrian
electorate - in third place - put their trust in Jorg Haider's Freedom Party in
the last elections. Mr Haider's dislike of foreigners and his high regard for
some of Hitler's "achievements" is common knowledge.
Fourth-placed Denmark
would at first sight appear to buck the trend. Less than 5 per cent of the
country's population are immigrants. Danes are prosperous and by tradition
tolerant to newcomers. But in last month's local elections, the xenophobic
Danish People Party achieved a breakthrough, thanks in large part to
anti-immigrant sentiments whipped up by the tabloid press. With more immigrants
still coming, the party appears to have a bright future.
Germany, on the other hand,
is showing the opposite trend, at least in the west. After their successes in
the early Nineties, extreme right-wing parties are declining, and racist
attacks have abated.
Sentiments in the east make barely a blip on the national
statistics, but the evidence from east German schools suggests that the racist
tide there is again on the rise.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/belgium-heads-eu-racism-league-1289695.html
=================================================

=======================
Is
Belgium
a racist country? Also Russia?
Just curious. But more so about Belgium. I'm
planning to visit the country later on this year and I was wondering if it
could possibly be a pleasant or unpleasant experience for a ...show more
Best AnswerAsker's Choice
· Positivemindattitude answered 6 years ago
·
NO, Belgians are not racists.
One example : ALL our kings married foreigners!

As long as you abide by the rules, by the laws, respect our traditions and that
you behave correctly, nobody will bother you and your skin colour will have
absolutely no importance.

I am a Belgian but also an expatriate since a very, very long time and I am
always astonished - when I come back home - to see how Belgians really
intereact with foreigners. If they like you, you will have no problem at all.
They may even take you under their wing and show you around or point out places
of interests to see or visit. If they don't like you, they'll just ignore you.
Belgians mind their own business so they won't take time to trouble other
people.
We are a very open-minded people : we like to meet new people, interact with
foreigners, help them out when needed. Belgium
is a very cosmopolitan country, especially Brussels as it is where most foreigners work
(eurocrats).
You certainly will have no problem in Liège. The only problem you may encounter
- because Liège is situated in the French speaking part of Belgium - is a
language barrier if you only speak English. If you need some info, ask the
younger people for help as they will be more likely to understand English and
answer your questions.

I do not know about Russia
but from the TV documentaries, you are right, in some parts they are very
agressif towards black people especially towards the ones studying in
universities over there. I basically think that this attitude is mainly due to
jealousy because the locals there can't afford to go to university and do not
understand the hows & whys strangers can manage and get help when they
can't.
But, let's not generalize. There are bad and good people everywhere but no need
to risk your life if you do not have to go there. Never heard of tourists being
killed due to the colour of their skin, though.

Hope this helps.

I wish you a very pleasant stay in our beautiful country and wish for you to
meet lots of interesting people.

Edit :
Of course there are racists everywhere in the world but - generally speaking -
those are a very small minority in Belgium and, as I mentioned before,
if you behave and act normally and properly you shouldn't have any problem in
Liège or, for that matter, in any other Belgian town.
Source:
a proud Belgian
Asker's rating & comment
Great
perspective! It's nice hearing it from an actual Belgian. Thank you and I will
enjoy my experience for sure.
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Other Answers (12)
Rated Highest
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sweety answered 6 years ago
well i'am a belgian and i'm not a
racist, if your a tourist the are generally nice to you but some people are
racist like in every country, but i hope you don't meet one like that
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ahmad answered 7 months ago
Dear!! Belgians ARE RACIST!! do
not doubt this fact! I am an Iranian, living in Leuven
for 2 years and have faced racism time and again! They checked my bag 3 times
upon leaving the shops in front of many others in the queue, the bus drivers do
not wait for you or check my ticket as if its not mine, they dont like
subletting their rooms to non european students, and... dont come to belgium plz! (I
have no experience with the french speakers but dont expect them to be much
different!)
they never talk to non-dutch speakers, even when u r sitting with them they
ignore you and speak in Dutch, they laugh at foreign traditions and cultures,
when walking in the malls or pavements or standing in the bus they never give
space to others to pass by as if they dont see you or ...
I have tried my best to make friends with them and be positive about them, but
its a waste of time! you can never develop any kind of connection with the
Flemish people!
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ALFONSO answered 8 months ago
yes they are .i experience it
every day even if I'm not black ! sorry its ugly truth
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Dr. House answered 6 years ago
Perhaps al you answerers who claim
that Belgium is not a racistic country should visit Antwerp suburbs like
Borgerhout and Hoboken, with a majority of Marrocans, pay a visit to the
headquarters of the ultra extremist party "Eigen Volk eerst" or visit
the Brussels center for illegal immigrants "Le Petit Chateau" and the
Congolese suburb.
Belgium is certainly not the most racistic country on earth but lets not put
halos on our heads and lets not forget that until some years ago you could see
signs at the entrance of the Belgian discos reading "Interdit aux Nord
Africains" (Forbidden for North Africans).
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mark k answered 6 years ago
You've had a couple of people
address the question of racism in Belgium,
or lack thereof, so perhaps I'll contribute a bit about Russia.
Racism certainly does exist in Russia,
and unlike the idealistic thoughts of "no racist countries" from one
of the answerer's, reality doesn't usually meet our hopes. Anyhow, there have
already been more than 160 hate attacks on minorities this year in Russia,
including more than 40 that have resulted in death. The reasons are both racism
and nationalism, plus authorities turning a blind eye. The police are often
racist and usually quite poorly educated.
As a black person you could visit Russia and have a great time. The
odds of a racial attack would be quite small, but higher than most other places
in the west. These attacks are not limited to bad areas late at night either.
They have also occurred just outside of busy metro stations in the middle of
the day. The term for a black person in Russia sounds like ni**er, but is
not meant in an insulting way, it's just the term used.
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Dimitris answered 5 months ago
Actually i indeed that Flammish
region of Belgium is the
most racism and xenophobic place in europe
since i have visited more than 20 countries. I feel a racism behaviour every
week since i arrived in Belgium
2 months and unfortunately i live in Flemish region since my job is located
here. i dont work for any belgian organisation if i was working for belgian
company and not for international company i would leave the next day after
arriving here. I am sorry for this mail but this is the truth. Of course they
are nice people like everywhere and i dont want to generalise it. By writting
this answer i want to apologise to the nice people Flemish but i feel very
different just passing the border to Germany.
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Bwitched answered 7 months ago
Belgians are the most rasists and
xenophobe people of Europe!
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jahü answered 6 years ago
I've always wanted to travel to Belgium! (I
don't know why, though)

About Russia,
the last couple of years I've heard in the news how Putin is encouraging
Russian nationalism, working to restore "Russian pride" and rattling
the Russian sabres. (The average Russian has had a very difficult time since
the fall of the USSR).
This has had the unfortunate side-effect of the rise in hate crimes against
non-Russian minorities someone else here mentioned.
Source(s):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/667749...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point...
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Entwined answered 6 years ago
My dad used to live in Belgium and
I've spent a lot of time there. It is very multi-cultural and multi-ethnic.
Because of Belgium's
former west African colonies, there are a lot of people from a west African
background, and there are also a lot of people of north African heritage. There
is a sizable east Asian community and a south Asian community.

In short, it's just like any other city in western Europe: multi-cultural,
multi-ethnic, and very tolerant and liberal.

The only problem I ever had there was one of frustration. Wanting to practise
my French, it was not much help when half the population of Brussels seemed to try to address me in
Arabic!

It's a really nice country, actually. You'll have no problems whatsoever.

As\far as Russia
goes, I don't have any personal experience of it so I won't say anything. All I
will say is that I don't really think there is such a thing as "a racist
country". I've been all over the world and where ever you go, almost
everyone is groovy and friendly and interesting.
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·
Richard B answered 6 years ago
I don't know about Russia, but I do know that Belgium is not
a racist country. I hope you have a wonderful time there. You also might want
to visit Brussels and Antwerp. You can get to both places by train.
The prices are good. The trains run on time to the minute. And don't forget to
sample the outstanding Belgian chocolate (best in the world), some Belgian beer
(yum yum) and of course waffles. I visited Belgium 2 years ago and definitely
want to go back many times.
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Chrissy answered 6 years ago
My expierences in Europe were more
of a "if you are from america
we don't really like you too much, but we love your things like levis and ralph
lauren." Of course, I was there during the whole "iraq war"
start... so it could have cooled down/been different before. Also, I was there
for about 5 months attending school in Germany. But all the
"touristy" things I did, no one seemed to care who/what I was... Of
course, anyone I met who spent time in america seemed to love me. As far
as color, I'm not a minority so I don't really know about that... sorry.

If you are just going for a short time I think that it wouldn't matter and that
you would have a great time(I did when I went with friends to other
coutries/places).

1.
o                                                        Racial Profiling
o                                                        Discussion on Racism
o                                                        Racism Videos
o                                                        YWCA Against Racism
Search Results
1.                             Belgian Anti-Racism Law -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Anti-Racism_Law
o
o
Wikipedia
The Belgian Anti-Racism Law, in full, the Law of
July 30, 1981 on the punishment of certain acts inspired by racism or xenophobia, is a law
against hate speech ...
2.                             Fight against racism and discrimination - Belgium.be
diplomatie.belgium.be
› ... › Human rights › Specific issues
o
o
Belgium
1965 saw the adoption of the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms ofRacial Discrimination (ICERD). This
instrument, which Belgium ratified ...
3.                             Overview of the Belgian antidiscrimination legislation ...
www.diversitybelgium.be/overview-belgian-antidiscrimination-legislation
o
o
In the course of 2008, the Belgian Communities and Regions
have produced ... 1) 30 July, 1981: criminalizing certain acts inspired by racism or xenophobia, ...
4.                             Racism in Belgium's labour
market, says European network ...
www.flanderstoday.eu/.../racism-belgiums-labour-market-says-european-...
o
o
by
Alan Hope - Mar 18, 2014 - A report just released
by the European Network AgainstRacism concludes that Belgium's labour market suffers
under racism and xenophobia ...
5.                             Belgium | www.non-discrimination.net
www.non-discrimination.net/countries/belgium
o
o
Belgium - The new independent
Inter-federal Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism and Discrimination is
fully operational since 15 March ...
6.                              [PDF]
Belgium: Discrimination on the
basis of race and national ...
www.equalrightstrust.org/.../Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Belgium%20-...
o
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This document outlines legislation in Belgium that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race and national origin in
the provision of goods and services.
7.                             Are the Belgians racist? -
Expatica
www.expatica.com
› Home › News › Dutch News
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Half of those polled blame the growing
crime rate on the presence of the foreigners inBelgium. International Day for

the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

8.                             Mass wedding held against racism
in Belgium - Wikinews ...
en.wikinews.org/.../Mass_wedding_held_against_racism_in_Be...
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Wikinews
Mar 22, 2007 - But then someone gave
him the idea to react with a positive signal against racial discrimination. Together with local
NGOs and the Center for ...
9.                             Belgium is an insular country. It lives like history happens ...
africasacountry.com/belgium-is-an-insular-country-it-lives-like-history-h...
o
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Mar 26, 2014 - When I was a city
councillor in Turnhout, Belgium,
a colleague, ....Racism is in the eye of the
offended party, not the person committing the act.
10.                        The position of victims of acts of racism and racial ... - Cairn
www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-droit-penal-2002-1-page-111.htm
o
by C Van den Wyngaert - ‎2002 - ‎Related articles
The position of victims of acts of
racism and racial discrimination
in belgium ..... 3.1 Act of 30 July
1981 on the punishment of certain acts motivated by racism or ...

Fight against racism and discrimination
A brief
introduction to fighting racism and discrimination
One of the fundamental principles underlying human rights is
that of equality between human beings. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (UDHR) proclaims that “All human beings are born free and equal
in dignity and rights”. The corollary of the principle of
equality is that of non-discrimination. Discrimination
occurs when people in the same situation are treated differently for no
objective reason.
Unfortunately, many factors still give rise to discrimination in
the modern world, including people’s ethnic, national or social origins, their
religion, language, gender. political leanings, sexual orientation, age, state
of health and so forth. Forms of discriminations based on claims of ‘race’,
i.e. racism, remain among the most widespread
today. Now that globalisation has made our societies more multicultural,
the risks of discrimination have also increased. Consequently, it is crucial to
promote respect and tolerance if we are to guarantee everyone a
harmonious life in diversity. Specific legal standards
have been adopted in an effort to promote these values and combat racism.
International
and regional instruments
The two UN pacts of 1996 continuing the development of
human rights' protection and the UDHRdating from 1948 both contain
provisions stipulating that the rights they list must be applied totally free
of discrimination. However, other specific instruments have also been devised
to combat the most widespread forms of discrimination.
1965 saw the adoption of the International Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). This instrument, which Belgium ratified in 1999, was adopted in
response to various racist policies, like those conducted by Nazi Germany or
the apartheid regime in South Africa. It prohibits any racially
distinction based on ‘race’, colour, ethnic or national origin and is designed
to prevent and punish racist talk or racist acts. It also paves the way for the
adoption of positive discriminatory measures.
Since women also fall victim to numerous forms of discrimination, a Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms ofDiscrimination
against Women (CEDAW)
was adopted in 1979 (see the page on Gender and Women’s Rights).
In the Council of Europe,
Protocol No. 12 to
the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), adopted in 2000, prohibits any
form of discrimination by a public authority on any ground. There is also an
Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, which was adopted in 2003
concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic naturecommitted
through computer systems. The European
Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), established in 1993, is an
independent monitoring mechanism which examines the measures taken in Member
States to combat racist phenomena and also the effectiveness of such measures.
ECRI regularly visits the Member States (it paid Belgium a visit in 2008) to analyse
the situation in situ and duly publishes reports and recommendations.
Action by Belgium and the
European Union
Fighting racism and all forms of discriminations throughout the
world is one of Belgium’s priorities.
At the national level, the Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and
Opposition to Racism has a remit to combat discrimination in all its various
forms. Internationally, Belgium
is one of the main sponsors of a biannual resolution on the UN’s International Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Belgium also plays a major role in the UN
conferences against racism held
in Durban in 2001 and Geneva in 2009. These conferences enabled the
adoption of final documents reasserting the importance of combating racism at
the international level. These same documents also set out the specific issues
arising in this domain and proposed some possible lines of action to take.
These documents formed the basis for the adoption of Belgium’s National Action Plan
Against Racism in 2004.
Within the European Union, the fight against racism and
discrimination is one of the top priorities for the European Union’s Fundamental
Rights Agency (FRA).
This public institution publishes reports on the real-life situation within the
EU and analyses the available measures for combating the phenomenon of
discrimination. The issue is also central to the bilateral relations that Belgium and the
European Union maintain with third countries.
For more information, see the following websites:
International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
The UN’s World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia and Related Intolerance

The Council of Europe’s European Commission Against Racism and
Intolerance

The European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency
Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism

http://diplomatie.belgium.be/en/policy/policy_areas/human_rights/specific_issues/fight_against_racism_and_discrimination/

Mass
wedding held against racism in Belgium
Thursday, March 22, 2007
' class=thumbimage
srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_4.jpg/225px-Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_4.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_4.jpg/300px-Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_4.jpg 2x"
data-file-width=1692 data-file-height=2964 v:shapes="_x0000_i1048">
On January 2nd,
Wouter Van Bellingen became the first black registrar in Belgium.
When Wouter Van Bellingen became the first black registrar in Belgium, he knew there would be negative
reactions, but he admitted that he didn't expect them to be "so direct, so
soon." In February, three couples refused to pledge their wedding vows in
front of the first black alderman of the city of Sint-Niklaas, because of the colour of
his skin. After the racist incident, Van Bellingen told himself:
"If people don't want to marry, then that's not my problem, it's the
problem of those people."
But then someone gave him the idea to react
with a positive signal against racial discrimination. Together with local NGOs
and the Center for Equal Opportunities and against Racial Discrimination, he
decided to organise a multicultural group marriage happening to, as mayor of
Sint-Niklaas Freddy Willockx describes it, "forge this stupid racist behaviour
into an unparallelled positive signal against racism and for tolerance."
Contents
  [hide]
·                                 1 A positive signal against racism
·                                 2 It started small
·                                 3 The couples
·                                 4 Multicultural activities during the event
·                                 5 The 5 challenges
·                                 6 The event in pictures
·                                 7 Related news
A positive signal against racism
Wouter Van
Bellingen with on his left side mayor Freddy Willockx.
Mayor Willockx told the press about when he
first heard about the 3 couples: "I was angry and ashamed that there were
such people." He elaborated: "We are not a racist city. 400 meters
from here is a center for immigrants, which was installed without contestation
from the city council, in spite of fruitless attempts from an intolerant party
to set people up against installation of the center."
When asked about the role of the far-right
political party Vlaams Belang, Van Bellingen told
Wikinews: "It's true that a climate of fear has been created, but to blame
it on a single party would be too easy. It's the responsibility of all
parties." Van Bellingen wants to be the councilor of civilian affairs for
all citizens, "not just for those who voted for me."
Although Van Bellingen too denies Sint-Niklaas is a racist
city, he is often reminded of the colour of his skin. Mayor Willockx gave the
example of an incident last Friday, when someone refused to serve him a plate
of mussels, because the person mistook the deputy for a waiter.
It started small
A spokeswoman for the organising committee
told the press that it all started with a "nice little idea" to have
a mass wedding event on March 21, the U.N.-declared International Day for the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination. However, they were "really surprised
that the event became something huge."
Couples who wanted to renew their vows or
pledge them for the first time could register on the event website. Stijn De
Maeyer, a volunteer working on the registrations, told Wikinews that they had
to close the online registration when some 692 couples had registered, because
of logistic limitations. On the evening itself, he estimated that 1 out of 3
couples who showed up hadn't registered beforehand. There were couples from the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and even a couple from Norway.
Some of the Belgian couples were immigrants from Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Kosovo,
according to De Maeyer.
The couples
' class=thumbimage
srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_7.jpg/225px-Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_7.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_7.jpg/300px-Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_7.jpg 2x"
data-file-width=2000 data-file-height=3008 v:shapes="_x0000_i1050">
Kiss in front of
the City Hall of Sint-Niklaas.
While singer Axl Peleman, who demonstrated
his concern about racial discrimination in Flanderson the 0110 concerts last October, opened the podium, the
couples began to register on the city's Market Square.
The symbolic wedding pledge was open to
anyone, from any culture, age, or sexual preference. For Van Bellingen,
"Every person who lives in Flanders is
Flemish, it doesn't matter if you live here for a month or for
generations."
The couples were from all ages and all
layers of society. Some came in their original wedding costume or dress, to
relive the moment of their marriage. Even a group of children from a local primary
school came to vow eternal fidelity to a classmate.
One duo queuing for the registration were
two undercover reporters from the Dutch television, who wanted to become
"the two first heterosexual men to be wed by a black registrar in Belgium".
At the end of the evening, they threw their wedding bouquet off the main stage,
shouting: "Whoever catches this, is not a racist."
Multicultural activities during the event
Drummers from the
group "The African Stage".
Van Bellingen
enjoys some of the Arab tea.
Several organisations promoting diversity
provided free soup and Arab mint tea to warm the attendees in the rain and
cold. Ahmed Hanouch from the sociocultural youth organisation Hidâya told
Wikinews: "As new Belgians, we all are looked at differently from time to
time. Then we get the feeling we are second-class citizens. The solution is to
be open-minded about cultures, like during this event."
For Ahmed, an event like this one would be
welcome each year. Van Bellingen however told the press: "At the end of
the evening, I will drink a pint, and get on with my life."
On the main stage, several performers from
the collective "The African Stage" entertained the growing crowd.
Speeches, songs and dancing strengthened the message of diversity that the
organisation wanted to send.
Several comedy acts followed, such as
"Joeri", a Flemish television character. To warm up the crowd to say
"I do", he set the example for registrar Van Bellingen by wedding a
special couple; who lived in Sint-Niklaas
with their children and who are both deaf. Joeri was assisted by an interpreter
for the deaf, who was present all day at the request of Van Bellingen, whose
father became deaf some years before he died.
The 5 challenges
style='background-position-x:0%;background-position-y:100%' class=thumbimage
srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_18.jpg/225px-Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_18.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_18.jpg/300px-Sint-Niklaas_gaat_vreemd_18.jpg 2x"
data-file-width=2000 data-file-height=3008 v:shapes="_x0000_i1055">
This Turkish man
and his Roma colleague pose in front of a cake with a black and white hand
shaking, a symbol for the event.
From left to
right: the interpreter for the deaf, the deaf couple, Joeri and host Dimitri
Leue, known in Flanders from the culture
project W@=D@ .
Wouter and his
wife.
The culmination of the event came when Van
Bellingen held a final speech on the stage, and then started with the symbolic
wedding ceremony. He built up the excitement during his speech, explaining that
"excitement is important in a relationship."
The ceremony was planned for about 8 p.m.,
but was postponed to allow as many as possible of the couples that turned up to
register. Van Bellingen then joined in holy matrimony well over 700 couples. He
then demonstrated to the couples how to kiss the bride, by kissing his own
wife, with whom he has 2 children. The next challenge, a big group hug on the Market Square,
wasn't a problem after the kisses.
At that moment, the Flemish radio station
Radio 2 took over and started a live DJ set, playing the songs the couples had
voted for. The number one wedding dance wasn't Bryan Adams or Clouseau, but Ik hou van u (I love you) by Noordkaap, a song that already proved
popular in 2005 when it was reworked for the celebration of the 175th
anniversary of the state of Belgium.
For the final challenge, those who like
international food could select from the wedding buffet, with desserts provided
by local communities such as the Turkish,
Syrian, Moroccon and
Roma societies, by organisations such as the Red Cross immigration center. There were also
desserts from Mexico, Chile and from the Hare Krishna. Together with a wedding cake for 750
people, the organisation hoped to provide for enough desserts for all present,
and to end the wedding party in beauty.
The event in pictures

Are the Belgians racist?
"I'm not a racist, but ..." is the title of a poll
commissioned by the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism.
EU threatens to withdraw from UN racism conference
Row over Belgian football racism
Vlaams Belang supremo files complaint against YouTube
FN party chairman quits over racist video
The majority of those polled accept
that we live in a multicultural society, but many have problems with certain
aspects of multiculturalism.

More than half of the 1,392 Belgians polled said that they never had contact
with people from a different ethnic origin. This group claim neither positive
nor negative experiences with foreigners.

People living in the city come into more frequent contact with other cultures
and are more positive and open to multiculturalism. The director of the Centre
for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism Jozef De Witte points out that
this is very positive.

"The most remarkable conclusion (of the poll) is that Belgians are more
tolerant of ethnic minorities the more they come into contact with them."
Further, 55 percent of those polled said that they think the presence of
different cultures in Belgium
enriches society.

Two out of three Belgians polled said that people from all races are equal. One
third thinks that some races are more talented than others.

The poll confirms a number of clichés. More than a third of Belgians think that
people of an ethnic minority get unemployment benefits easier than Belgians.
Half of those polled blame the growing crime rate on the presence of the
foreigners in Belgium.

International Day

for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was
established in 1966, following the massacre of young students peacefully
protesting against apartheid laws in South Africa.

Proclaiming the International Day, the United Nations General Assembly called
upon the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms
of racial discrimination.
website
flandersnews.be/Expatica

8
reactions to this article
andy posted: 2012-01-03
19:00:23
the problem
with belgians is they dont know what racism means,as far as the majority of
belgians go its a matter of they are not racist as long as the people think,act
and dress the same as me. the system itself has a lot to blame for that
though,i have had a lorry driver drive me off the road when driving a foreign
car and when police were called they asked,what do u expect us to do?,i have
actual recordings of a doctor saying that belgium is sick of foreigners coming
here expecting help and the best thing would be to ,,,go home,though the
department in belgium for anti discrimination advised us to get a lawyer they
themself decided it was not in anyones intrest to follow through with a
prosecution?basically belgium is the country that hosts the european union so
would hate to be accused of such blatant racism but please note,bulgaria has
just been admitted to the european community,prostitutes can work legally there
but engineers cant? and who says the good old days of pimping are over.
paul posted: 2012-01-30
12:23:25
Yup, a funny
bunch all right. I was regularly hooted at by truck drivers for no apparent
reason (must've been my UK
plates). My wife went into a bank and they were nice as pie until she spoke
English, at which point they got nasty and accused her of pushing in front of
the queue. I was openly hated by one of my Belgian colleagues who would
complain loudly about me from the other side of the desk (he didn't know I
understood Flemish) and yet still smile at me and shake my hand every morning.
I was told by a Belgian that all Belgian's are two-faced, which was interesting
coming from a local. Was glad to leave and hope never to return. Some genuinely
nice people there, but the country is too weird for my tastes.
andy posted: 2012-02-05
18:03:03
well jusy an
update on the last posting,being a foreigner in Belgium gets even worse,due to
increased crime in this time of economic depression we have been asked by our
local police to request visitors to our home to park their foreign registered
cars in the centre of town and to walk to our home in order to ease the worries
of neighbours in the street who feel ill at ease?. I know its hard to believe
but over the christmas and new year period we actually had family and friends
visit which has led to a visit from our landlords and the local police,non due
to noise,parking,or any other disturbances,only that the belgian mentality is
such it worries about such things but for the actual police to get involved and
make such requests is beyond belief,specially in this day and age,i wonder what
would happen if the police in the UK or anywhere else did as such?
Vik posted: 2012-11-16 12:27:02
Yes its
unfortunate, i have faced racism and comments on being a brown. Its funny how
people talk about you in local language and thinking you do not understand a
thing.

Thankfully leaving the country soon. But i did meet some nice people too - but
was rare.
WeDontHateYou posted: 2013-07-30
14:32:30
I'm Belgian and
I think everyone is unique, despite what country he or she lives in. I think
everyone has qualities and should have the same chances in society. There are
some flaws in the system but that's not the people who uses the flaws their
fault. It's the system or government's fault. If I don't smile or look at you
on the street it's because I'm already thinking what I'm going to have for
dinner or I think of family and freinds.. Or I'm just tired from work and want
to be left alone.. We're quite introvert you know. No hard feelings... It's our
culture. We don't hate you. :-) On the contrary. Tell me about your culture,
and I'll gladly listen to you. Just, make an appointment first, lol. By the
way, "are THE Belgians racist" is indirectly aimed at me, which is
stereotypical generalization... it makes me wonder who's the real racist... :-(
Abhishek posted: 2013-12-18
15:10:01
I live in Belgium for 3
years
Wendy posted: 2014-03-27
23:43:01
After living in
Belgium for 4 years, having
lived in Zwitzerland, Netherlands
and England
before, I have to say I cannot wait to leave and it is long overdue. I feel
very dissapointed in the Belgium
people as human beings. Extremely selfish, money driven, highly cynical,
un-human people. With exceptions of course. Incapable of expressing positive
genuine emotions, even towards loved ones and friends. The attitude in regards
to emigrants, I would not call it Racism simply because they even hate white
people of other nationalities. I would call it extremist Nationalism, passed
down long and heavy through generations, even affecting the children. They have
no respect for other cultures as human beings, and view them as simple
"allowed" into the country to basically do the jobs that they do not
want to do, "GOOD WORKERS"... or im sure you reader can find another
word to fill in that blank. There is something extremely un-human about Belgium. And
mind you I was and still am, granted a little affected by these 4 years, but
still am a very positive and kind person. But their behaviour is simple
unacceptable. And Zwart Piet should be banned by the human rights. It is NOT
humourous/entertaining. It is a disrespectful, disgraceful, display that
reflects perfectly the Belgium
collective mentality.
JohnBeton posted: 2014-05-14
13:54:58
Sad to hear
that, Wendy, I'm a Belgian and the Belgian mentality is quite two-faced. Nice
in your face but you never know what they really think until their own
"friendliness" is about to force them into doing something their real
mind doesn't want to do. One thing though, do not hate on Zwarte Piet, quite
sick of non-Dutch or non-Belgians dissing this tradition. It's based on an
ancient Bishop who did exist and did free slaves. However, these days nobody
sees Zwarte Piet as a black human but as a magical being that just happens to
be black. Not a damn thing racist about it. You wouldn't call elves/gnomes
racist expression against people with dwarfism would you? Want to ban gnomes
from the world?
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8

http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/dutch-news/Are-the-Belgians-racist__50941.html

Years ago, Karel De Gucht, the present
European Commissioner for Trade, referred to Kofi Annan, then Secretary General
of the UN on TV as an “Évolué” which was the term colonial Belgians used to
refer to the Congolese who had “evolved” and become more westernized
(i.e. “civilized”). “Évolués” had to do exams to show how “civilized” they had
become and got certificates if they passed. De Gucht meant of course that Annan
was not your “typical African.” Was there an outrage? No. “De Gucht was not
being disparaging. He was praising Kofi Annan,” was the usual response.
In
2007, when Barack Obama was running for US president, there was a question
about him on Canvascrack, a popular national TV quiz show. The question was the
technical term for a child of mixed parentage. The phrasing was a lot more
offensive than I have suggested (Obama is the son of a N**** from Kenya and a
white mother, etcetera). The answer was “Mulato.” I expected someone in the
audience to stand up and call the quiz master to order. No one did. The show
went on as normal. I wrote a piece denouncing it. Not only was the question
wrong, but of all things to ask on Obama, it had to be that? I got a few
comments from well meaning Belgians who told me that “mulato” and the “N word”
are not as historically charged in Belgium as in other parts of the
world and are therefore not offensive terms. I was told not to be too quick in
seeing offense. And a friend of the quizmaster told me what a lovely person he
really was.
When I was a city councillor in Turnhout,
Belgium, a colleague, upset at our Mayor’s expectation that we toe the
line said, “we are not all N****s that we just nod. We are thinking
humans!” The colleague who said this, I must admit, is one of the nicest people
I know. He always gave me rides to meetings and so on but once he said that, it
became obvious to me that he did not think we were equals. I mentioned this in
an article I wrote a while ago and again, I got mails from people telling me
about how it was not a racist thing to say, that it has been in use for a long
time and that really there is a historical context for this. In the 60s, cars
had bobbing black heads, and I shouldn’t be quick to take offense. And did not
I say my colleague was a nice man?
When
the leading Belgian newspaper De Morgen, which styles itself as progressive,
published an image of Obama and his wife as chimps and passed it off as satire, they did
not expect a backlash. They assumed that their readers would laugh and move on,
and it would be business as usual. This assumption was rooted in two facts:
The
first is that as a block, black people in Belgium have no political or
economic voice and are therefore of very little consequence. They were not high
on De Morgen’s consideration list when they published
that article. There are no black newscasters (to my knowledge); very few black
journalists (certain none in De Morgen as
far as I know); my children were never taught by black teachers; I never saw a
black bank clerk. There might be a black police man in Brussels,
I have never seen any anywhere in Belgium. In fact, when Turnhout got
its first black cab driver (about five years ago), we rejoiced.
The
second fact is that there is a certain level of racial dementia in Belgium. There
is an inability to judge what is racially offensive and what is not. Belgium has
never confronted its colonial past and has therefore never moved on from it.
There is a statue celebrating Leopold despite the atrocities he committed in
the Congo. Zwarte
Piet (with the black face, red lips and the kinky wig, reminiscent of the
golliwog, so popular in neighboring Netherlands that even the Prime Minister gets into blackface)
is considered a national treasure in Belgium.
Employers
can say (and have said) “I do not want a black worker” without much fear of
punishment. (Here’s a
variation on that excuse.) The black immigrant is still expected to be grateful
for the chance to live in Belgium
and eat at the “Massa’s
table” and not ruffle feathers.
Things
will only change when Belgium
realizes that no country is an island, that there are consequences for actions
and that yes, the world has moved on. The media outcry outside Belgiumat De
Morgen’s misguided racist satire (and the apology from De
Morgen) is already a start. The act of apologizing is a big step in
the right direction (if only because as far as I know, this is the first time a
Belgian media outlet has ever acknowledged, much less apologized for being
offensive) even if the apology itself leaves a lot to be desired.
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Comment navigation
← Older Comments
1.                             Jessica on March
27, 2014 at 4:42 pm said:
Reply ↓
I’m
glad the rest of the world is starting to take notice of Belgium. I
doubt their viewpoints of ‘outsiders’ will change much though. I lived there
for 18 years as an immigrant. I learned the language fluently, worked, and even
made some good friends. However, contrary to the US where I’m from, I observed no
possibility of self criticism or insight in most Flemish people I encountered,
almost universally. The only reaction to any objective observation was met with
hostility, defensiveness, or some kind of attack on my character or country of
origin. Racism is in the eye of the offended party, not the person committing
the act. You can talk till you’re blue in the face about Zwarte Piet’s soot, it
won’t change how others experience your actions. The question to truly ask is
why the opinions of Americans, or Belgians of color, or even the president of
the free world don’t mean anything to the average Flemish person? I’m very
offended at what was done to my president in De Morgen and by Radio 1 and I
refuse to believe those in charge were too stupid to know any better, why
shouldn’t my feelings count enough for the Flemish to care about it? Is it maybe
because I am not seen as equal to them? To all the commenters who can’t see the
harm, what you’re really admitting is that you believe you are worth more as a
human being than those who are offended. That IS racism and it is apparently
very deep. The comments about this topic (and Sinterklaas) around the web only
prove this point. If you keep fighting so hard for your right to be racists,
that’s exactly what you’ll be called.
2.                             qwesi.gh on March
27, 2014 at 9:39 pm said:
Reply ↓
The
only language many Europeans understand is violence. Unfortunately, somehow , i
feel our over-dependence on them gives them this urge. Africa
has been too silent and accepting.
3.                             Edwin on March
28, 2014 at 2:44 am said:
Reply ↓
I am
from Belgium.
And I can tell you Belgians are not like this at all. Do not insult an entire
country for interpretations of words from individuals. Thank you.
o                Johan on May
21, 2014 at 10:09 am said:
Reply ↓
Wierd article.
Edwin: you’re being a anti-belgium racist mate. I am pretty sure I can find a
lot of quotes from lots of different countries / people / politicians /
tv-presenters / etc from everywhere in the world allowing me to conclude
whatever I want and generalise an entire population of a collection of those
events. This is exactly what happens when you start generalising / becoming a
racist. And what you seem to dislike from others doing to you, is actually the
same thing you are doing to others.
4.                             gus on March
28, 2014 at 5:13 am said:
Reply ↓
Well
well…, although I also cannot tolerate the images that were published in ‘de
Morgen’, putting the ‘racist idiots’ stamp on a whole country is simply too
generalising… it’s not because some idiots say or do things that these facts
apply to a whole country.
Please
check your facts…
You
could also have written about the manner the politics have dealt with the
racist politic party ‘vlaams blok’, they were simply ruled out by manner of
blocking them off in what was called a ‘cordon sanitaire’, meaning all politic
parties simply refused talking with them;
The
‘zwarte piet’ affaire you describe is not what it looks like at all: the REAL
story / legend is this: a catholic saint comes every year (6th december)
bringing gifts to all children, he walks over the roofs of the houses on a
horse, an drops the presents through the chimney. To be able to do this job, he
has the help of boys who climb through the chimney, because the chimneys are
covered with coal, the boys faces are black… thus: this is not a racist
picturing of black people, but simply a ‘piece of theatre’. The zwarte piet’ is
not a racist stereotype, it’s a white boy that goes down a chimney and gets his
face dirty… It’s is not Al Jolson, it’s Oliver twist….
You
could also have written about the way the belgian citizens have conducted
during World War II, hiding and helping thousands of jew people with disregard
of their own lives.
You
could also wave written about the brave boys who where the only ones to have
stopped a train going to the Auswitch camps, rescuing hundreds of jews going to
a certain death…
You
could also have written about the fact that our prime minister is a/ coming
from immigrant family and b/ is gay.
Racism
is a bad thing, it’s all over the place. Don’t just point the finger and judge
ALL people. That’s racist too…
5.                             Laza on March
28, 2014 at 6:12 am said:
Reply ↓
I
live and work in the UK.
Recently I worked in Belgium
for a year commuting bank and forth regularly.
After working in Belgium
for a few months, I started to notice how casual racism is ingrained in the
society. Some of my colleagues who are brilliant and lovely in all other ways
would make casual racist comments completely unaware that these comments are
offensive and wrong. Sometimes even in meetings followed with a laughter. I
sometimes I wondered whether my colleagues genuinely thought they were superior
to other races or they just simply got used to making casual racist remarks…
Slowly,
I started to notice that in Belgium
I struggled to find couples of different races like you would in the UK, for
example. Also other than official get together like school, work and transport
you would struggle to find people of different races doing social activities
together… like say… a group of young friends from different races having a
drink at the bar, or friends from different races having lunch at a restaurant.
This
is really shocking when you imagine the number of international organisations
having headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.
It
felt to me as if the world moved on and left Belgium behind.
6.                             Dani on March
28, 2014 at 8:07 am said:
Reply ↓
You
seem to forget that in Belgium,
immigration from non-European countries like Morocco
only started 50 years ago, and most immigrants from black Africa
only arrived during the last 10-15 years. Because of this, they often don’t
speak the local language yet and have very little affinity with European
culture. Before this rather recent immigration wave, Belgium was almost
exclusively white, unlike the US where different races have been living
together for centuries and share the same language and culture.
If you say there are very few black people in public positions like
newscasters, bank clerks etc…. this has often more to do with the fact that
they’re so new here rather than with race. Turkish and Moroccan people, who
have been living here for a generation longer than most black Africans, are
often working as politicians, journalists and are speaking the local language
fluently since the younger generation grew up here. Besides, have you ever
heard about Wouter Van Bellingen (Flemish politician) or Sandrine Van
Handenhoven (newscaster)? Both are black, but one was adopted by a Belgian
family and the other was born in Belgium. Sandrine’s mother
(Congolese) was even prosecuted and put in prison by a Congolese judge because
she wanted to marry a white man, something like that would be unthinkable in Belgium.
So I’m truly sorry for you if you feel offended by certain things you’ve seen
or heard in the press, but just be careful before calling a whole country like
Belgium racist or backward, cause then you’re doing the same thing you don’t
want people to do to you (classifying people and judging a whole group)
Besides, I also think that the Obama cartoon was very offensive, personally I’m
a big fan of Barack Obama. But then again, when Bush was in power, there were
also cartoons published in progressive news papers where his facial expressions
where compared to those of a chimp…
I personally think you’re overreacting about a lot of things and putting them
out of context in order to create a very negative atmosphere about Belgians,
which is not very nice.
7.                             Dani on March
28, 2014 at 8:15 am said:
Reply ↓
Besides,
I agree that Leopold II did horrible things in Congo and should not be remembered
in a positive way. On this, I’m sure most Belgians would agree, as his crimes
have been exposed in the media more than once.
Employers in Belgium
are not allowed to refuse job candidates based on ethnicity or they will face
legal charges. Only, it’s sometimes very hard to prove if a racist boss refuses
to hire a candidate only because of the skin color, they could easily give
another false reason. But things like this happen everywhere!
8.                             Pepijn on March
28, 2014 at 8:57 am said:
Reply ↓
The
Anglo-Saxons and their fake political correctness. Please get a life.
By
the way in Belgium
foreigners can vote, which is not the case in many western countries. Not a
very racist thing to have in place.
9.                             Jim on March
28, 2014 at 1:56 pm said:
Reply ↓
Maybe
you should crawl out of your little box, and look at it all – from a non racist
perspective.
10.                        Ptrice van de Walle on March
28, 2014 at 3:18 pm said:
Reply ↓
The
lack of understanding in Belgium
about how racism works always surprises me. The picture in De Morgen, even as
an attack/joke directed towards Putin, is highly offensive. How people can try
to justify that I don’t know.
o                Dani on March
28, 2014 at 5:34 pm said:
Reply ↓
I agree that the
picture was offensive and the paper apologized for it afterwards, but can you
explain to me why a picture of Obama compared to a chimp is racist but a
picture of Bush compared to a chimp is not racist? If you think one is racist
but the other is not, doesn’t that mean you’re the one who’s implying that
black people look more like monkeys than white people?
§Ste on March 28, 2014 at 6:18 pm said:
@Dani: The reason is
because black people have been portrayed as/called apes and monkeys as a way to
make them seem less than human for centuries, while whites haven’t been. The
thinking that blacks were not quite people was used by colonialists to justify
slavery – and is used by some non-blacks to justify continued discrimination
against blacks. This has not happened to whites as a race, to my knowledge. The
false equivalency often comes up as a feeble argument in questions like, “If
there’s an International Women’s Day, why not have an International Men’s Day?”
The reason, of one thinks even a little, is that every other day is
International Men’s Day: men earn more than women for the same jobs, outstrip
women in positions exponentially (despite females being the majority in most
countries), and have not had their accomplishments ignored throughout history
(as women have). A little critical thinking is necessary here…
§Ptrice van de Walle on March 29, 2014 at 4:16 am said:
I agree with Dani.
This is all about cultural communications. Fans around the football fields of Europe make monkey noises and ape gestures and throw
bananas onto the field. I have never heard of a white player thinking that it
was directed at him. Monkey gestures, noises and thrown bananas are thus
explicitly understood by white players to not be directed towards them. The
fans also know that as do the black players.
Using Dani’s gender example: the words “master” and “mistress” originally meant
the same thing, albeit one was for the lady of the manor the other for the man
of the manor. Today “mistress” has a sexual connotation. It’s just words and
their meanings that change over time depending on how people use them. To hide
behind that and use these loaded (and racist) symbols is very dangerous and De
Morgen should have known better.
Another example: Throwing a shoe at Bush was a huge symbol and insult in the
Muslim world. But it was not taken seriously by Bush, his entourage and the
western media (other than as a petty act of aggression).
§Johan on May 21, 2014 at 10:22 am said:
I agree with you
Dani 100%. Sometimes a joke about people can become racism just because someone
wants to interprete it that way. If you feel everybody is equal, then there’s
no issue to have some fun / make a joke with / about your neighbour. E.g. the
way someone speaks funny english, e.g. some french people. I e.g. have been
asked if there’s electricity/light in my country. Sometimes a joke is intended
to be funny, nothing else. But sometimes some people really want to see racism,
especially when they assume ALL people from belgium are racists.
11.                        Maarten Frans Julia
Coertjens-Magazin on March
30, 2014 at 4:42 pm said:
Reply ↓
Quite
true, throughout our education system people from southern continents were always
portrayed as ‘poor’, ‘uneducated/stupid’. And in need of help, those ‘arme
zwartjes’. So never as equals. Oh, and our development organisations used to
organise those classes in school. Maybe time for Belgium and the wider development
sector to reflect on their contribution to today’s racism.
12.                        Monday Midnite on April
11, 2014 at 1:42 am said:
Reply ↓
The
war against the despicable and gruesome evil called RACISM that still
continuously thrives in almost every nook and cranny of the globe will not be
won via the parochial prism of unfounded generalization. Wise to always keep in
mind that generalization in itself, is, in most cases, extremely deceptive and
possesses a highly potent and contagiously venomous sting that’s capable of
paralyzing all senses of rational and objectivity.
Trivializing
and shrouding the realistically demoralizing impact of racism on black folks
under the guise of linguistic and cultural misunderstanding as some have
laughably attempted to do in their comments here will not contribute an ounce
of gun powder to the ammunition depot of the war against racism either.
As
an outspoken, sensitive, uncompromising, injustice despising and equity loving
black man who has shared most of his life between the United States and
Belgium, the indelible physical and psychological scars of racism that I’ve had
to bear over several decades on both sides of the isle, and the excruciating
pain of the fresh emotional racial wounds I suffered as recent as last month,
are heart-wrenching and visibly towering.
But
does that mean that I should discard with my sense of objectivity and yield to
temporary amnesia when it comes to accurately distinguishing between sunshine
and rain? Should my agonizing pain automatically obliterate my fundamental
educational ability to separate the wheat from the chaff? We must always
endeavor to call a spade a spade, let the truth be the truth, and never allow
our eagerness to unleash years of internalized and accumulative racial torments
we’ve suffered to cloud our faculty of sound judgment.
Even
under the blazing and scotching sun, we should never forget the cool breeze
that soothes us intermittently.
Yes,
there’s no iota of doubt in my mind that the depiction of the most powerful
couple on the face of the earth as apes by De Morgen was horrible, deplorable
and it irked me to the bone….still does….in a way none of my white sisters and
brothers will ever truly comprehend….coz, as the authentic lyrics of Bob Marley
affirms, “who feels it knows it.” But to categorically condemn ALL BELGIANS as
racists on account of the insensitive and uncivilized action of one print media
is not only blatantly preposterous and a gross violation of the rule of
fairness, but also dangerously counter-productive.
Is
there racism in Belgium?
ABSOLUTELY. Are ALL Belgians Racists? ABSOLUTELY NOT. And anyone who thinks
otherwise definitely need to get his or her head examined.
13.                        Mr_K on April
20, 2014 at 4:33 pm said:
Reply ↓
Belgiumis a racist country
and every black man who has worked there will tell you that. I will not piss
there any day . Racists Bigots. They stole from Africa
and stood by when Rwandans butchered each other. Mate, move to the UK . At least
we have rights here and most of the things Belgians consider not racists will
be unlawful in this country.
o                Johan on May
21, 2014 at 10:12 am said:
Reply ↓
Mr K. Calling an
entire state something, e.g. racist bigots, is racism.
o                Johan on May
21, 2014 at 10:13 am said:
Reply ↓
Oops… now I feel a
huge amount of racist / angry / insultant comments coming my way

http://africasacountry.com/belgium-is-an-insular-country-it-lives-like-history-happens-outside-of-it/

Finlandand belgium are the most racist countries on earth.

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GunboatDiplomat
36 POSTED: 28 June 2010 9:41 am
Infamous Scribbler
Posts: 697
Joined: 23 Mar 2009 Therumancer:
See, I'm one of those guys who feels that a big problem we're dealing with is that minorities in the US, and by this I don't mean just Blacks though they are the most visable and vocal group, basically have a hatred for society and the majority (ie whites) crammed down their throat pretty much with their mother's milk. They come up in a culture that glorifies crime, violence, hatred, and yes racism. It presents conformity and education as bad things, with death being preferable to fitting in and falling into the rut most people exist in. Any bit of power a person can get, or is given, needs to be waved in someone's face in the most obnoxious fashion possible, and if someone doesn't have any power... well that's what guns are for, and if you yourself get gunned down dying is better than the alternative....
...Rather it's minority cultures bringing a lot of this upon themselves through their own attitudes and behavior....
...Basically if you have 80% (or whatever the last estimate was) of a given population acting like thugs....
Holy crap, I vote for whatever country you're from as being the most racist. The 'analysis' and sentiment being expressed here would be seen by most european sociologists as being blatantly racist mainly because it is compeletely blind to the current institutional racism of the state in the US and its deep deep roots which is, err, blindingly obvious to most of the rest of the world.
Also for a 'sociologist' I love the way you quantify 'thuggish' behaviour. Real scientific.
I also think Ireland should be WAY further up that list - although I'm only basing this on personal anecdotal evidence - immigrants* being regularly spat at, racist ephithets being shouted at, stones being thrown at - all of which have been really comon sights on the streets of dublin the past few years. Plus I'm sure the whole sectarian thing in the north would really skew the figures for the island as a whole.
*I once talked to a young french woman who was abused on a bus - when I commented her being 'mediteranean looking' may have been a factor she retorted 'but I'm white!' Not white enough for Dublin apparently...

Therumancer
37 POSTED: 28 June 2010 11:45 am
Citation Needed
Posts: 10554
Joined: 28 Nov 2007 GunboatDiplomat:

Therumancer:
See, I'm one of those guys who feels that a big problem we're dealing with is that minorities in the US, and by this I don't mean just Blacks though they are the most visable and vocal group, basically have a hatred for society and the majority (ie whites) crammed down their throat pretty much with their mother's milk. They come up in a culture that glorifies crime, violence, hatred, and yes racism. It presents conformity and education as bad things, with death being preferable to fitting in and falling into the rut most people exist in. Any bit of power a person can get, or is given, needs to be waved in someone's face in the most obnoxious fashion possible, and if someone doesn't have any power... well that's what guns are for, and if you yourself get gunned down dying is better than the alternative....
...Rather it's minority cultures bringing a lot of this upon themselves through their own attitudes and behavior....
...Basically if you have 80% (or whatever the last estimate was) of a given population acting like thugs....
Holy crap, I vote for whatever country you're from as being the most racist. The 'analysis' and sentiment being expressed here would be seen by most european sociologists as being blatantly racist mainly because it is compeletely blind to the current institutional racism of the state in the US and its deep deep roots which is, err, blindingly obvious to most of the rest of the world.
Also for a 'sociologist' I love the way you quantify 'thuggish' behaviour. Real scientific.
I also think Ireland should be WAY further up that list - although I'm only basing this on personal anecdotal evidence - immigrants* being regularly spat at, racist ephithets being shouted at, stones being thrown at - all of which have been really comon sights on the streets of dublin the past few years. Plus I'm sure the whole sectarian thing in the north would really skew the figures for the island as a whole.
*I once talked to a young french woman who was abused on a bus - when I commented her being 'mediteranean looking' may have been a factor she retorted 'but I'm white!' Not white enough for Dublin apparently...
Well, I'd argue the European sociologists would be ignoring their own science to make a national statement rather than get to the facts. I say this because Europeans especially those from the UK frequently talk about "Chavs" and the problem they represent, using a lot of the same arguements and statistics. The problem basically being a self perpetuating sub culture that is difficult to single out and target because of other moral policies within society. Heck, I've even seem polls here with people calling Chavs the lowest form of human life and saying they should be rubbed out, met with a massive cheering section from Europeans and oftentimes explanations about what exactly a "Chav" is.
The only real differance is that in the US the subculture I'm talking about draws lines along race on it's own. Things like rap and hip-hop music also perpetuate this division, and the lifestyle itself. Believe it or not the majority of that music you hear on radio stations in sandbox crime games is not made up just for those games, but popular music that was liscenced for use.
I suppose to some extent it might also be a lack of awareness, just as a lot of people in the US don't really know what a "Chav" is, a lot of Europeans probably don't have the same kinds of issues the US does. I for example don't see much "gangsta rap" coming in from overseas.
Nor do I hear about European recording artists argueing about who is more of a "real criminal". In the US we've literally had rap entertainers comparing their prison records and busts to prove who was more of a thug/criminal/lifestyler. Guys like 50 Cent have made having attempted assinations against them by rival criminals a big part of their marketing appeal. One of the things that actually seemed to help the career of Shawn "Puffy" Combs (Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, etc...) was him having been in a gun fight in a nightclub when he was dating Jennifer Lopez, leading to big arguements about what role she played, and if she was responsible for throwing the gun used out a car window. This case didn't go anywhere, but this is the kind of stuff that perpetuates the subculture, and sells CDs.

The only real differance is that in the US the subculture I'm talking
about draws lines along race on it's own. Things like rap and hip-hop music
also perpetuate this division, and the lifestyle itself. Believe it or not
the majority of that music you hear on radio stations in sandbox crime games
is not made up just for those games, but popular music that was liscenced for
use.
A sociologist - of any nationality - would do a lot more than observe current culture. They'd also ask why the culture is that way.
It's hardly a stretch to think that a black subculture based around criminality exists because blacks have for so long been treated as criminals by wider society, or taken to crime as it presented the best opportunity for them to thrive. If you treat people as outcasts, there's a good chance they may behave like outcasts.
The argument might go that slavery and racism has left black society an enduring legacy of lower opportunities: poverty, worse education, slum-dwelling. Endemic and sometimes institutionalised racism and injustice has made many feel like despised outsiders in their own country, which has left them little motivation to trust, like or admire their own country, the country's institutions, or the race who they may consider have oppressed them and still do.
Considering these elements, it would at best be a skin-deep sociological analysis to write off the race as the authors of their own downfall. Individuals and societies have deep roots. At worst, it's certainly an act of racism to dismiss any potential faults of one's own race to heap all the blame on the other.

Arsen
40   POSTED: 28 June 2010 12:36 pm
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Joined: 26 Nov 2008 Why is it that everytime people want to be theirselves and have their own kind living in their own lands, nations, etc... people automatically throw out the racial tirades? Seriously... somebody give me a genuine remark on this.

GunboatDiplomat
41   POSTED: 28 June 2010 12:38 pm
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anyone who calls ANY of this stuff racist has no clue, or is trying to play semantics games based on a politically correct re-definition. To be a racist you must believe that one ethnicity is superior, or inferior to another on an inherant level. If I was to say that Blacks were genetically pre-disposed towards violence and crime and nothing could change that, then it would be a racist statement. In this case however I'm talking about behaviors and cultures that perpetuate them.
Nonsense, you don't have to promote eugenics to promote racism. You present a derogatory caricature of 'black culture' in america as promoting and being full of gangsters and thugs with no interest in self improvement and thus responsible for their own oppression. In reality the history of black culture in america is full of contradictions, of beauty and ugliness, pain and joy, creativity and ignorance - like any culture - with an exceptionally long and proud history of struggle against oppression.
So your views are not eugenics - just one step away - but your caricature IS racist.
For any european reading this who would like to know more I suggest starting with the autobiography of malcolm x.

FlameUnquenchable
42   POSTED: 28 June 2010 12:39 pm
Pulitzer Laureate
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Therumancer:

GunboatDiplomat:

Heck, some of the "rap music" I've heard seems to largely be one
group of rappers more or less insulting other groups based on who is more
"real".
Also sometime look up "Gang Dossiers" (search words) and it can be a real eye opener if somehow your unaware of this.
Also let me be blunt about something else, anyone who calls ANY of this stuff racist has no clue, or is trying to play semantics games based on a politically correct re-definition. To be a racist you must believe that one ethnicity is superior, or inferior to another on an inherant level. If I was to say that Blacks were genetically pre-disposed towards violence and crime and nothing could change that, then it would be a racist statement. In this case however I'm talking about behaviors and cultures that perpetuate them. I very much believe that things can be changed, where if I was a racist I would believe that it wouldn't be possible do to the intristic traits of the minorities we're looking at. Or simply put if "most European sociologists" would call me a racist, it would mean that they are arguably incompetant and have no idea what racism actually is.
I've been trying to say this for years, and I've been called a racist many times, which is completely untrue. It is obviously about culture and what a group teaches their children which modifies thier behavior.
I've been around many minorities in my life, a lot of my friends were black, hispanic, and asian. I've had people in each of those communities complain about "the man" in one way or another, and when I ask who "the man" is, it's white people. White people as a whole are keepign every minority down? I have heard first hand parents telling their children, and teachers telling their students (I went to a school where I was one of only 2 white kids in the school) that they were never going to make any true progress because white people would keep them down.
I routinely hear minority leaders tell those who listen to them that they won't get anywhere, because the majority will keep them down. I really, really hate that attitude. I tell people all the time, you can do whatever you want, if you want to. F other people who tell you that you're going to be nothing, I defy someone to try and keep me from something I really want. It angers me to no end when people buy into the self pity "I can't do anything" attitude, maybe because I'm a pain in the ass, hopelessly obstinate, and when peole tell me I can't do something it drives me that much harder to prove them wrong...
Edit: Got interrupted mid post and forgot to add my concluding point, that many seclusionist cultures existing, trying to insulate themselves from mainstream society. White cultures that many people refer to as 'hillbillies' in the Smokey Mountains are one such society, Amish and Menonite societies are another (mainly white from what I've seen). They don't like the mainstream culture so they stay away from it and seclude themselves and their families. Some of my indian relatives in Oklahoma do the same thing. Many of those isular communities are poor, not because of their inability, but because of their thinking that limits what they are willing to do to succeed.

GunboatDiplomat
43 POSTED: 28 June 2010 7:11 pm
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Posts: 697
Joined: 23 Mar 2009 FlameUnquenchable:
I tell people all the time, you can do whatever you want, if you want to.
The quintessential american dream.
Everybody who is rich and successful in america built themselves up out of nothing. EVERYONE can do it if only they have the will.
Think about this. Under the current system there are only so many jobs available in the boardrooms, the judiciary or the medical board. Theres a fuck of a lot more jobs available to clean the toilets and the floors.
Nonetheless the american dream persists partly becuase it contains a grain of truth - an indivdual can make it against the odds - especially if hes willing to do whatever it takes and fuck over anyone who gets in his way. Can a majority of people make it? Of course not, there isn't the room. Someones gotta clean out the pool, collect the trash, work in the sweatshops, mine the iron ore and of course those who subsist in desperation are there to act as deterrant against those workers - those 'losers' who dare to challenge the established order.
But an indivudual can make it. Look at Barack obama! If he can make it as president then what right does some kid from the ghetto have to complain about racism just becuase he was born into poverty and is kept there by an oppressive system?
What right indeed?

FlameUnquenchable
44 POSTED: 28 June 2010 7:47 pm
Pulitzer Laureate
Posts: 735
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 GunboatDiplomat:

FlameUnquenchable:
I tell people all the time, you can do whatever you want, if you want to.
Clipped.
What right indeed?
There is no right to success. Success is earned, there is only the right to have a chance at success. Your attitude promotes the pessimism that is killing people in this country. Nowhere in your sensationalist argument did you present a counter to my statement, anyone can do anything they want to.
Maybe you don't have the determination, maybe you don't have the drive, or the skill, or the need to make more of yourself, but don't stand here telling others that they can't, and that the system won't let them. I for one will stand against that kind of fatalistic diatribe until the day I die, and against those who perpetuate it.
I know plenty of people that came from nothing and made it, they may not be CEO's of mega corporations, or richer than god but that's not what I said either. Not everyone aspires to be the top, some only aspire to have a small little business they can call their own, or a house on a hill with a dog and some kids and get by on their 40 hrs a week, and maybe save a little something to pass on to their kids, or make enough to put them through college.
The American dream is alive and well, and realized everyday by people all over this country. Just because you may not see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and that people can't pull themselves up out of the situation they're in and make something of themselves. This is the kind of thinking that dissuades people from having hope, and that's something I consider completely useless.

GunboatDiplomat
45 POSTED: 28 June 2010 9:31 pm
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The American dream is alive and well, and realized everyday by people all over this country.
It sure is: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26776283/

Therumancer
46 POSTED: 28 June 2010 11:24 pm
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Therumancer:
anyone who calls ANY of this stuff racist has no clue, or is trying
to play semantics games based on a politically correct re-definition. To be a
racist you must believe that one ethnicity is superior, or inferior to another
on an inherant level. If I was to say that Blacks were genetically pre-disposed
towards violence and crime and nothing could change that, then it would be a
racist statement. In this case however I'm talking about behaviors and cultures
that perpetuate them.
Nonsense, you don't have to promote eugenics to
promote racism. You present a derogatory caricature of 'black culture' in america as
promoting and being full of gangsters and thugs with no interest in self
improvement and thus responsible for their own oppression. In reality the
history of black culture in america
is full of contradictions, of beauty and ugliness, pain and joy, creativity and
ignorance - like any culture - with an exceptionally long and proud history of
struggle against oppression.
So your views are not eugenics - just one step
away - but your caricature IS racist.
For any european reading this who would like to
know more I suggest starting with the autobiography of malcolm x.
Not even remotely so. Also Eugenics is a whole field of science,
and has little to do with racism, people have used it both to try and prove
racism, and also ultimatly to disprove it by showing that there are no genetic
differances between people of differant ethnicities. You might want to do some
checking on that, since as a field it ultimatly represents the biggest
verifyable arguement against racism.
Racism is exactly what I said though, you need to believe in the
intristic superiority or inferiority of one group of people compared to
another. Anything else is just political BS.
Now you *CAN* say that I'm a bigot, and there is some truth to
that. A bigot being someone who is willing to identify and single out groups of
people for special treatment. Either saying "this group of people is a
problem, and needs to be dealt with" or "this group of people is
special, and deserves more than everyone else". Bigotry being a harder
animal to deal when when backed up by facts and actual experiences as opposed
simply to rhetoric.
As far as the specific arguements being made, truthfully you'll
find that it's not only whites that point to these problems. I frequently
referance Bill Cosby as he was able to articulate things I had been unable to.
There are also many other black leaders that will point out problems with black
culture and how it's digging it's own grave so to speak.

See, arguements CAN be made about how blacks were treated in previous
generations, but as far as a mainstream phenomena in the US goes it died
decades ago. Right now blacks, and other minorities as well, have tons of
oppertunities availible to them. As many, or more, than the majority has. They
key element however is that those oppertunities are meaningless if they are not
willing to embrace them, and that is the key problem with the existing culture.
It teaches that it's better to be the thuggish criminal that was stereotyped
decades ago than it is to "sell out" and join with the rest of
society. To the black culture education is seen in most cases as being akin to
"selling out", and you frequently hear referances to blacks calling
each other "not black enough" based on whether or not they try and
fit into society on it's terms.
The nature of the problem is simply that with the civil liberties
battle won, there is no great enemy anymore. As people like Martin Luthor King
Jr. pointed out, the actual civil liberties battles and "counter
culture" opposition was the EASY part. Right now a lot of the problems you
see is a group of people who need an enemy, and if one does not exist they need
to create one. It's also a political phenomena because by invoking racial
issues it's possible to sway minority groups so minority leaders, for all they
speak out against many of the messages of the culture(s) in general, also try
and perpetuate a feeling of paranoia so the people are much easier to control
and get to vote in a specific fashion (and then that influance can be sold or
traded, I've read a number of things over the years about the political
reality, and how minority leaders have little personal motivation to actually
improve conditions since the battle is worth more than a victory for them
personally).
I will also point out that I was not quoting specific statistics,
but giving general numbers. When it comes to talking about how many black men
are in prison or have a prison record for example, it's important to note that
few people who argue things from either perspective argue that reality. The
very fact that you (and other respondes I've got) do, seems to imply your
responding due to moral outrage due to the way you've beedn taught, rather any
any real information on the subject. See for those who are educated about the
facts, the usual response is to try and engage someone like me on the
possibility that there are so many blacks in prison due to institutional
racism. Basically that most of those guys are innocent, or were unfairly
convicted. A point usually leading towards arguements that blacks, and other
minorities, need to have a special free-hand with the law to prevent
discrimination. This is closely followed by claims that the culture(s) in
question are a backlash to institutional racism.
See, I've debated (not argued) this kind of thing with some people
who were very well informed about the subject, and actually learned quite a bit
as a result, though I still hold to my overall position. In general I feel that
you probably want to debate your current position for reasons having to do with
your morality, not because of any real facts. That's fine, a lot of people are
like that. However if your going to engage in debate you should at least learn
the issues and how things play out. Saying "OMG, that's racist and untrue"
doesn't work in cases like this. What's more while I was speaking in
generalities there, your very arguement amounts to shooting yourself in the
foot if at some point you wanted to try and argue the point of the system being
biased against minorities (in general, or blacks specifically).
At any rate, I'm sure we'll have to agree to disagree, but this is
really how it is, and that is why the problems are so difficult to address.
To be honest my advice would be to actually ignore the rhetoric of
people like "Malcom X" whose statements are arguably part of the
problem, rather than part of the solution. While I do not agree with his
statements on everything, I actually recommend people looking towards what guys
like Bill Cosby have written on the subject. Mr. Cosby has a PHD in education
and is dealing with things as they exist now, as opposed to being a decades old
rabble rouser.

To put it simply the solution to the issue is to get minorities, blacks and
otherwise, to embrace the oppertunities that are afforded. That means
addressing the inherant subcultures that prevent these oppertunities from being
taken as a big part of the problem. You need to get it to the point where
education is not viewed as selling out. Then you won't see people ravaging
schools to make some kind of point, and actively demeaning those who try and
better themselves in a constructive problem..... and yeah, I said
"ravaging schools". You constantly hear about how schools in
minority-heavy areas are always underequipped or in poor shape, despite
mountains of donations constantly being made. Sending books and computers to
poor minority kids in the inner city is a favorite tax write off, and bit of
celebrity posturing. The problem being is that the "students" wind up
defacing, stealing, or destroying all of that stuff themselves because of how
they are taught to regard it. Years ago I was doing some reading about how 100
computers donated by Microsoft were tracked via windows and found to be in
private hands... with the current owners having bought them from the back of
cars or hole-in the wall computer shops seeing as they were immediatly stolen
from the schools by gangs and sold on the streets.
At any rate, no real point in argueing it, this also should serve
as an answer to a couple of similar posts I got. I said my bit, you've said
yours. I'm sure people can make their own desicians.

Yennick
47 POSTED: 29 June 2010 1:05 am
Beat Writer
Posts: 129
Joined: 21 Jun 2010 What I see in the OP's link is a poll. I've long since felt that
you really can't trust polls too much. Perhaps it just shows that Finland and Belgium are more honest about their
racism and more willing to be truthful about their feelings.
I'm not as optimistic as others that so many people who claim to
not be bothered by the other race truly aren't. I think a lot of people
nowdays, asides from the raving bigots who don't care what others think about
them, are more educated and aware about race. Still, just being educated about
and acknowledging that it's not popular to distrust or hate people based on
race doesn't get rid of the problem of racism.
There's a lot of subtle or even subconscious ways that racism
still rears it's head in our societies and communities. There are plenty of
white people who feel guilty about racial stereotypes they hold but they often
can't stop them from influencing them deep down. A lot of those people would likely
let some of that latent hatred and fear be known if they ever felt like they
were pushed into a corner.
That's one of the big reasons why I feel like free speech and
human dialogue is a good tactic to keep up. People who try to litigate against
"hate speech" are merely repressing the people who hold hateful
opinions from talking about it. This doesn't create a society where racism is
addressed or dealt with. It merely creates a society where people are forced to
bottle up their hatred and let it fester beneath the surface. I'd say that's a
lot more dangerous than having an open group of racists free to speak their
mind.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/report_belgium.html

anti-Semitism in the European Union:
Belgium
(Updated December 2003)

________________________________

Return to Anti-Semitism
in the EU: Table of Contents

________________________________

Within the Belgian population (10.3 million; 55% Flemish,
33% Walloon) Jews represent a minority of some 35,000, most of whom live in Antwerp and Brussels.
In recent years racism has been on the increase, both in terms of
discrimination against immigrants in general and against Arabs in particular.
The Eurobarometer 2000 compiled by the EUMC came to the conclusion that the
attitudes towards ethnic and religious minorities in Belgium show a more negative set of
views than the EU average. Although racially motivated attacks from extreme
right-wing groups, resurgent since the 1990s, are in the first instance
directed against foreigners, running parallel to this is a strong increase in
anti-Semitic tendencies. In particular since the beginning of the “al-Aqsa
Intifada” in the autumn of 2000, the number of violent actions against Jews and
Jewish institutions has increased, with the suspected perpetrators mainly from
Muslim and Arab communities, especially from those of Maghreb origin which
itself is most vulnerable to xenophobia . But right-wing extremist groups also
used the situation for an “Anti-Zionist”
campaign. In addition, a certain influence was exerted by legal proceedings
started in June 2001, based on a law passed in Belgium in 1993 that also enables
criminal prosecution of crimes committed in foreign countries. Survivors of the
massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982 used this law to
undertake legal proceedings against the then Defence Minister of Israel Ariel
Sharon for crimes against humanity. An Israeli inquiry had found that Sharon was indirectly
responsible, prompting his resignation. The attempted prosecution itself, but
also the delaying of a decision over many months, caused an international stir,
not the least because Belgium
assumed the EU Presidency on 1 July 2001 and had the request seriously
examined. On 26 June 2002 the court dismissed the charges.
On 30 May, Reuters reported that a confidential Senate Report,
based on evidence from the State Security Service, stated that Belgium is a
recruiting ground for Islamic militants. Apparently, the Saudi-backed Salafi
Movement has created some sort of religious “state within Belgium.”
1. Physical acts of violence
According to the current report of the American Lawyers Committee
for Human Rights, since 11 September 2001 around 2000 anti-Semitic incidents
have taken place, whereby no distinction has been made between violent attacks and
other forms. Already on 5December 2001, the Chief Rabbi of Brussels,
Albert Gigi, was physically assaulted by a group of youths in Anderlecht (Brussels). After shouting
at him and his companion “dirty Jew” in Arab, they followed them into the
subway and one of them kicked the Rabbi in the face, breaking his glasses.
After the first graffiti appeared on Jewish shops in February 2002, demanding
“Death to the Jews”, the synagogue in the Anderlecht
district of Brussels was severely damaged by two Molotov cocktails in the night
of 31 March / 1 April. In the following weeks the attacks increased: on 17
April unknown persons set fire to a Jewish bookshop in Brussels and on the
following day the front window of a kosher restaurant were shattered by an air
rifle; during the night of 20 – 21 April 18 shots were fired at the façade of
the synagogue in Charleroi. During a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Antwerp on 1 April, which
took place near a Jewish area and in which ca. 2000 persons took part, front
windows were shattered and an Israeli flag burnt.
Between 15 May and 15 June 2002 the following attacks or violent
acts against Jews have been recorded. Compared with the attacks the month
before, the number of incidents was relatively low.
19 May: a group of Jewish youngsters aged 13 were threatened by a
group of Arab youths at the City
Park. One of them menaced
the Jewish youngsters with a mock rifle. The police intervened and arrested the
youth.
25 May: a group of adolescent immigrants (around the age of 13)
vandalized the restaurant of the Maccabi Soccer Club belonging to the Jewish
community of Antwerp.
They spread anti-Jewish slogans across the club walls, destroyed doors, windows
and furniture. The youngsters were caught by the police. After interrogation
and an interview with their parents, they were released.
28 May: a shop on the Frankrijklei, a major avenue in Antwerp, was smeared with
the following slogans: “Kill the juif. Laat ze lijden (let them suffer), fuck Belgium”.
The Antwerp
police have also gathered evidence of damage to bus stops, shops or public
buildings. In most cases these were graffiti of the SS insignia, the swastika
and the Star of David.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
Newspapers
reported the following incidents:
• On 19 April unknown persons smeared a Jewish shop in Brussels with slogans
such as “Dirty Jew” and “We will burn you”.
• In the second half of May an anonymous letter of anti-Semitic
and revisionist character was sent to a survivor of the concentration camps
after this person had published an article in a widely circulated public
newsletter.
• In the second half of May 2002 an article of highly anti-Semitic
nature was published in a free journal published in the Charleroi region.
• On 3 June an anti-Semitic letter, originating in France, was sent to an individual in Belgium.
• Racist and anti-Semitic slogans continue to belong to the
repertoire of many football fans.
Internet
Websites of Belgian origin with racist and anti-Semitic texts have
increasingly gone online in recent times. The Centre for Equal Opportunity and
Combating Racism was able to identify 82 Belgian sites, which spread such
material. On 6 June a complaint about racism was introduced at the CEOOR
against Dyab Abou Jahjah, President of the Arabian European League (AEL). His
Internet site encourages hatred, discrimination and violence towards the Jewish
community. The complaint concerns a press statement in which the AEL urged
people to join a demonstration in Antwerp
to be held on 8 June 2002. According to the League, this demonstration has to
take place in Antwerp since “the power (there)
is in the hands of a Zionist lobby and extreme right racists” and, furthermore,
because “Antwerp represents the bastion of
Zionism in Europe” and is a city “where
pro-Sharon gangs of Zionists are dictating the rules”. Instead, Antwerp needs to become the “Mecca of pro-Palestinian action”.
On 17 January the far left anti-globalisation website Indymedia Belgium relayed
photographs of three corpses of children who should have fallen victim of the
supposed Israeli practice to use bodies of Palestinians for organ theft.
MediaJoel Kotek, professor at the Free University of Brussels
refers to the one sided reports on Israel in the Belgium media: ”Israel is
portrayed by the Belgian media, notably “Le Soir”, the most widely circulated
French-language newspaper in Belgium, as well as by “Vif l’Express”, its weekly
supplement, as solely responsible for the violence which has shaken the Middle
East for almost two years. Frequently, in their forum pages and in letters to
the editor, Israelis are equated with Nazis and in more extreme publications
anti-Semitic motifs appear in anti-Israel propaganda.”
3. Research studies
The
survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in ten European countries
has collected information on “European Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the
Palestinian-Israel Conflict” between 16 May and 4 June respectively between 9
and 29 September.
European Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israel
Conflict
Statement Belgium Denmark France Germany United Kingdom Spain Italy Austria The
Netherlands

Jews
don´t care what happens to anyone but their own kind 25% 16% 20% 24% 10% 34% 30% 29% 15%
Jews
are more willing to use shady practices to get what they want 18% 13% 16% 21% 11% 33% 27% 28% 9%
Jews
are more loyal to Israel
than to this country 50% 45% 42% 55% 34% 72% 58% 54% 48%
Jews
have too much power in the business world 44% 13% 42% 32% 21% 63% 42% 40% 20%
Percent responding “probably true” to each statement / 500
respondents in each country
Taylor Nelson Sofres, margin of error +/-4.4% at 95% level of
confidence
For Belgium
a clear agreement emerged with anti-Semitic stereotypes. From the four
stereotypical statements presented, 39% of respondents agreed to at least two,
21% with at least three and 6% with all four. Fifty per cent of respondents
agreed with the statement that “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to
this country”, a rate somewhat below the EU-average of 51%, and 38% agreed with
the statement “Jews still talk too much about the Holocaust” (EU-average: 42%).
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice,
violence and aggression
Following
the multi-religious meetings organised since 11 September 2001, the CEOOR
proposed an action plan, the implementation of which is still in the
preparatory phase. However, it has already been decided to create a website
containing a list of associations which subscribe to diversity and mutual
respect and a set of pedagogical tools to improve and foster interculturalism.
There will also be a section on how to make a complaint about racism to the
CEOOR. Finally, there will be an index of key words and concepts, which will be
elaborated and explained in a language understandable by the general public.
5. Reactions by politicians and other
opinion makers
Within
the Belgian legal framework there are two laws dealing with the fight against
anti-Semitism, notably the general anti-racism law of 1981 and the law of the
denial of the Holocaust of March 1995.
• Immediately after the assault on the Brussels Chief Rabbi was
made public in January 2002 and the debate in the Parliament, moderate forces
within the Jewish community in Brussels
organised a meeting with Muslim leaders.
• On 5 April 2002 a Round Table Conference was held on the
initiative of the Belgian Government with representatives from the social
partners, the Jewish and the Muslim communities, the Ligue des droits de
l'Homme (League of Human Rights) and the Centre for Equal Opportunities and
Opposition to Racism. After the attacks on a few synagogues in Antwerp
and Brussels
different communities requested the Round Table Conference. A common
declaration was signed and commitments were made by the different actors to
undertake concrete measures in the near future.
• On 19 April 2002 the Belgian Interior Minister, Antoine
Duquesne, made a joint declaration with his colleagues from France, Spain,
Germany and Great Britain
on “Racism, Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism”. Given the background of
international tension, in particular in the Middle East,
they characterised the racist and xenophobic violence as an offence against
freedom, democracy and human rights and pronounced European-wide preventive
measures and a coordination of the responsible agencies and offices. At the
Interministerial Conference for the Equal Opportunities Policy, which took
place on 17 May 2002, a concrete action plan was introduced and approved by the
Government.

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BELGIUM

STATEMENT BY H.E. Mr. LOUIS MICHEL,
PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN
UNION, VICE PRIME MINISTER AND MINISTER OF
FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF BELGIUM

56th Session of the United Nations General Assembly



New York, 10th November 2001



Unofficial translation
Check against delivery

Mr President,
Mr Secretary General,
Heads of State and Government,
Ministers,
Delegates,
Mr Chairman,
I have the honour today to speak
on behalf of the European Union, which congratulates you on your election,
which testifies to the esteem of the international community for your country
and yourself. I would like also to commend the speed of action and efficiency
you have shown, in the face of the tragic events of 11 September, in adapting
the agenda for the work of this Assembly.
I would like, moreover, to
associate with this tribute the Secretary General of the UN, Mr Kofi Annan.
Mr Secretary General, your
re-election had already drawn attention to the unanimous appreciation of the
Member States for your exceptional qualities as a manager, politician and
humanist. The Nobel Committee paid an even wider tribute by awarding you the
Nobel Prize for Peace. The United Nations themselves, here at your side, were
the recipients of this message of hope, from a world in a state of shock
appealing to the United Nations Organisation to remain at the center of the
international community's action for peace and development.
(Fight against terrorism)
Mr Chairman,
It was the fundamental values
constituting the foundation of the United Nations which were attacked in so
cowardly a fashion right here in New York on 11 September this year, while our
host country, several thousands of its citizens and nationals of over sixty
countries were the victims of a barbaric act of aggression for which no direct
or indirect justification can be accepted.
That attack, by its enormity, has
opened our eyes to the worldwide threat that terrorism has become. It is our
open, democratic, tolerant and multicultural societies which have been attacked
through the United States.
The terrorist threat must be hunted down in each of our countries, in our
various regional organizations and, at world level, through the United Nations.
The European Union has most
categorically condemned the 11 September attacks, and the fight against
terrorism is more than ever one of our priority objectives. The Union has
declared its total solidarity with the United States. It has reaffirmed its
unreserved support for the military action undertaken in the name of legitimate
defense and in conformity with the United Nations Charter and Resolution 1368
of the United Nations Security Council.
On 21 September, an Extraordinary
European Council adopted an action plan for an unprecedented campaign against
terrorism. The plan contains a number of specific measures intended to enhance
judicial and police cooperation, including in particular the introduction of a
European arrest warrant. It also includes measures to put an end to the
financing of terrorism and to improve air security. The European Council also
acknowledged that the fight against terrorism requires greater participation by
the Union in the efforts of the international
community to prevent and stabilize regional conflicts. By developing the Common
Foreign and Security Policy and bringing the European Security and Defense
Policy into operation as soon as possible, the Union
will be at its most effective.
At world level too, a fresh
impetus needs to be given to the fight against terrorism, and the United
Nations naturally has a central role to play in the development of a
coordinated and diversified strategy. We warmly welcome the major steps which
have already been taken to that end.
The most remarkable was the
adoption of Resolution 1373 by the Security Council on 28 September. The
European Union and its Member
States are already
committed to rapid enactment of the measures needed for its implementation. We
call upon all countries to cooperate actively with the follow up system set up
by the Security Council, and we reiterate our readiness to provide aid in doing
so to any countries which may have technical difficulties in meeting its
requirements.
It is also essential that all
States ratify without delay the twelve Conventions concerning the fight against
terrorism and apply all their provisions. The United Nations Convention on the
Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism is a decisive aspect of international
action and needs to be speedily signed and ratified.
Lastly, the European Union
welcomes the recent progress made in negotiating a General Convention on international
terrorism, on the basis of the draft submitted by India. The remaining difficulties
must now be dealt with as soon as possible so that this instrument can be put
up for signing early next year.
(Promotion and protection of
human rights and democracy)
Mr Chairman,
The efforts we are making to
combat terrorism must form part of overall endeavours to build a better world,
a world in which human dignity is sacrosanct, in which human rights and
fundamental freedoms are fully respected.
The promotion and protection of
human rights and an attachment to the principles of democracy and the rule of
law are essential components of the European Union's Common Foreign and
Security Policy and of its development cooperation and external relations. The
European Union will actively pursue its work on consolidating human rights and
fundamental freedoms, with insistence in particular on the universal,
indivisible and interdependent character of all human rights. It will continue
to support the efforts made by the Secretary General to integrate human rights
into United Nations activities, at all levels and in all fora, and to cooperate
with all UN human rights mechanisms.
(Establishment of the
International Criminal Court)
The European Union welcomes the
imminent realization of the much awaited establishment of the International
Criminal Court. The Union sees this as being
of prime importance and urges all States which have not yet done so to accede
to the Rome Statute as soon as possible. More than ever, we need a universal
and permanent court capable of sanctioning the most serious violations of
international humanitarian law and human rights and thus contributing to peace
and security in the world. It is vital that the United Nations give effective
support to the establishment of the Court.
(Protection and promotion of the
rights of the child)
Following the tragedy of 11
September, the Special Session of the General Assembly on the ten year review
of the World Summit for Children had to be postponed. However, until it is held
we need to keep up the momentum developed in the preparatory discussions. We
must continue to integrate the specific dimension of the child into our actions
and strive to ensure that every child's life is free from terror, the horrors
of war, abuse and exploitation, hunger and poverty.
(Full realization by women of
their human rights)
The European Union is resolved to
continue the fight against all forms of discrimination and violence against
women and to ensure that all countries take strong measures to apply the
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Women must be able to enjoy their human rights in full, on an equal footing
with men. Girls must have the same opportunities as boys, in particular in
education and access to social services. The European Union insists that there
must be equal rights to property, credit facilities and social services,
including reproductive health services. It is in the interest of everyone that
women should be able to participate fully at all levels in economic and
political life.
The Union
stresses the importance of implementing Security Council Resolution 1325 and
the special attention which must be given to the participation and full
association of women on an equal footing in all endeavours to maintain and
promote peace and security.
(Fight against racism)
We must also vigorously pursue
our essential fight against the racist excesses, discriminatory tendencies and
intolerance which are daily realities throughout the world. The World
Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance has
shown us the way. It has also enabled us to advance discussion on the causes
and origins of racism and to acquire a new perception of our past. What matters
now is the will to close the darkest chapters of our history so that we can
build a new relationship based on mutual respect, solidarity and partnership.
(Humanitarian action)
Mr Chairman,
The terrible humanitarian crisis
in Afghanistan
holds the attention of the international community every bit as much as the
political, diplomatic, military and economic aspects of the situation in that
country. It is the first time that the international community has adopted such
a global approach in an armed conflict. We are convinced that it is the best,
if not the only, means to plan an effective way out of the crisis. The
coordination of aid efforts, chiefly on the ground and as part of the range of
actions undertaken by the United Nations, remains essential.
Emergency humanitarian aid to Afghanistan constitutes an absolute priority of
the Union, which has undertaken to mobilize an
aid package of over EUR 320 million without delay. The Union expresses its
concern at the difficulties regarding access and the convoying of humanitarian
aid in Afghanistan.
It supports the efforts of the United Nations. Specialized Agencies, the
ICRC and all the humanitarian organizations in seeking practical and flexible
solutions. It also calls on the countries of the region to facilitate by all
possible means humanitarian operations to deal with new influxes of Afghan
refugees.
The European Union recognizes the
vital role of the UN in seeking a peace plan for Afghanistan. It intends to support
the initiatives of the Secretary?General and of his Special Representative and
to make a constructive contribution to them, both with regard to the pursuit of
an internal political solution and to a plan for rebuilding the country. The
Union also stresses the importance of the regional dimension of stabilization
in Afghanistan.
We must make contributions that
are sufficient to ensure that the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs functions efficiently. The European Union attaches particular
importance to the provision of aid to persons displaced within their countries.
We therefore welcome the fact that a unit has been established within the
Secretariat to cater for their specific needs. Following the recent attacks
against humanitarian aid personnel, the European Union can only call once again
for a strengthening of the arrangements, particularly those of a legal and
financial nature, for guaranteeing the safety and security of humanitarian aid
workers and UN workers in general.
(Promotion of disarmament and
non-proliferation)

Mr Chairman,
More than ever, disarmament and
non proliferation form the cornerstones of any peace and security structure and
must therefore be subject to binding multilateral norms. It is against this
background that we wish to strengthen non proliferation regimes, promote the rapid
entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and strengthen
the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. We must also combat the
proliferation of ballistic missiles and the illicit trade in light weapons and
continue to work for the complete elimination of antipersonnel mines.
(Peacekeeping arid maintenance of
security)
With regard to peacekeeping, the
United Nations has shown in the past year that it was better equipped and
better organized than in recent times. By way of example, I should like to
mention the operations in East Timor, Eritrea and Sierra Leone. Thus some progress has
already been made, on the ground, in implementing the recommendations of the
Brahimi report. However, much remains to be done, and the European Union will
continue to give active support to improving peacekeeping capabilities and
advocate that the Organization receive the resources necessary to enable it
effectively to discharge its increasingly complex responsibilities.
In order to resolve differences
of opinion, consolidate peace and prevent a resurgence of conflicts, a
comprehensive, long term approach is required. The European Union, which is
currently establishing its own military and civil crisis management capability,
is actively engaged in strengthening its cooperation with the United Nations
and other international organizations in the area of conflict prevention,
crisis management, humanitarian aid, post conflict reconstruction and long term
development.
The Balkans, a region so close to
our countries, remains at the center of the European Union's external action.
We resolutely maintain our commitment to contribute there to building an area
of security, prosperity and democracy where multi ethnic societies are free to
flourish. While the progress made has been remarkable and encouraging, the
situation in many cases remains fragile. The international community must
remain vigilant and not let extremists, of whatever kind, use violence to
destroy the stabilization work carried out.
The European Union remains
gravely concerned by the situation in the Middle East
and continues to act on a daily basis, in conjunction with other States, to
persuade the parties to put an end to the infernal cycle of violence. Everyone
must realize that there is no alternative to the peace process. The
recommendations of the report of the Fact Finding Committee ("Mitchell
Report") should be implemented without delay and efforts concentrated on
urgently opening up the prospect of a peaceful solution.
The European Union finds the status
quo in Cyprus
unacceptable. We would express our disappointment at the unjustified decision
of the Turkish side to decline the Secretary General's invitation to pursue
negotiations. We continue to support the Secretary General's endeavours to
arrive at a comprehensive and lasting settlement of the Cyprus question
in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions.
The scale of the dramas witnessed
on the African continent calls for resolute action on our part, at all levels,
aimed at tackling the direct and structural causes of the conflicts. Conflicts
in Africa have become increasingly complex and
their cross border effects more and more destructive. The crises in the Great
Lakes region of West Africa, as well as in Zimbabwe and the Horn of Africa,
call for increased vigilance on the part of our organization.
These crises also show the need
for an international approach that is comprehensive and integrated. We gave an
enthusiastic welcome to the launch of the new African initiative at the Lusaka
Summit. The European Union expressed its willingness to respond and has already
entered into a dialogue at the highest level with the African Union.
(Fight against poverty and
promotion of sustainable development)
Mr Chairman,
Together, at the Millennium
Summit, we pledged to achieve a set of development objectives. It is an
ambitious project which involves, inter olio, good governance in each country
and at international level.
The Union
underlines the need for a strengthened partnership between rich countries and
poor countries to achieve the development objectives of the Millennium
Declaration. That partnership entails obligations and joint but varied efforts
on the part of all countries.
Firstly, we must make every
effort to eradicate poverty. New, concrete commitments were made at the 3rd
Conference on the Least Developed Countries in Brussels last May. The European Union
committed itself to untying aid, to opening up its markets by means of the
"Everything but arms" initiative and to the full financing of the
HIPC initiative. It is now a question of finalizing the follow up mechanisms of
the Programme of Action. The European Union will also continue to give priority
to the development of Africa.
Two major international
conferences will present us with the opportunity to take up the challenges and
achieve the principal objectives of the Millennium Declaration. At the
Financing for Development Conference to be held next March in Monterrey, Mexico,
we shall attach importance to improving cooperation between all the development
actors, using resources more effectively and mobilizing them better.
At the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg
in October 2002, we wish to promote the sustainable use and management and the
protection of the natural resources which underlie social and economic
development. We also wish to integrate actions aimed at the environment and
poverty, make globalization serve the needs of sustainable development and
promote better ways of managing public affairs and participation. The European
Union would like to explore with its partners the scope for achieving a Global
Pact on Sustainable Development at the Summit.
This Pact should contain commitments both from governments and from the other
actors. A Global Pact should lead to concrete action to improve the
implementation of sustainable development policies.
We hope that the UN Member States
will without delay undertake to be represented in Monterrey
and Johannesburg
at the highest political level.
The Convention on Climate Change
was one of the major results of the 1992 Earth Summit. We welcome the progress
made in Bonn and in Marrakesh and we undertake to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol rapidly.
We have also just reached an
intergovernmental consensus at the highest level on the strategy that needs to
be followed to halt the appalling global AIDS pandemic. That is a major step
forward, but the urgent and dramatic nature of the problem require us to be
more ambitious. We will actively contribute to the creation of a new global Fund
to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and we will play an active role in
all the other processes that emerged from last June's Special Session so that
the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS is put into practice by means of
concrete measures.
Of the other challenges, the
demographic changes that lie ahead are of particular interest to the European
Union. The Second World Assembly on Ageing to be held in Madrid in April 2002 will be an opportunity
for us to work together to build a society for all ages.
Mr Chairman,
The Millennium Summit, the prime
objective of which was to strengthen and give new impetus to the United
Nations, allowed us to tackle, at the highest level, the major challenges
facing the global community. We must now turn our attention to the process of
following up the Declaration of the Heads of State and Government, with all due
regard for the lofty and balanced aims of that cardinal text. For that we need
to call on reliable data, the existing follow up machinery and processes and
the concerted efforts of the various actors in the international community who
can help us to achieve the objectives set.
We must also continue reforming
the United Nations system as a whole, including the specialist institutions and
the Operational Funds and Programs. The strengthening of the Security Council
and its comprehensive reform in all its aspects should be pursued with
determination. If we want a Security Council capable of responding even more
effectively to the major challenges of the moment, we should intensify our
efforts.
Mr Chairman,
Mr Secretary General,
Heads of State and Government,
Ministers,
Delegates,
Looking beyond the tremendous and
growing complexity of our actions in the world, our debate should highlight
this basic truth: if we want to build a world made more peaceful by respect for
the law, solidarity and tolerance, we need to strengthen our cohesion in the
face of the new challenges that have been thrown down, but also to step up our
efforts to promote human rights, eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable
development.
In this forum of the United
Nations we set against the messengers of destruction our common ideal, which
will be stronger than hatred and divisions among mankind. That edifice, whose
foundations are set in our spirits and our hearts, will be unassailable.

Thank you for your attention


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Jul 2, 2014, 8:25:22 PM7/2/14

Remarks upon Signing the
Civil Rights Bill (July 2, 1964)
Lyndon Baines Johnson
The President notes the
discrepancies between the freedoms outlined in the Constitution and the reality of life in America before praising the Civil
Rights Bill for outlawing such differences. Johnson also sets out his plan for
enforcing the law and asks citizens to remove injustices in all communities.
This transcript contains the
published text of the speech, not the actual words spoken. There may be some
differences between the transcript and the audio/video content.
My fellow
Americans:

I am about to sign into law the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. I want to take this occasion to talk to you about
what that law means to every American.

One hundred and eighty-eight years ago this week a small band of valiant men
began a long struggle for freedom. They pledged their lives, their fortunes,
and their sacred honor not only to found a nation, but to forge an ideal of
freedom—not only for political independence, but for personal liberty—not only
to eliminate foreign rule, but to establish the rule of justice in the affairs of men.

That struggle was a turning point in our history. Today in far corners of
distant continents, the ideals of those American patriots still shape the
struggles of men who hunger for freedom.

This is a proud triumph. Yet those who founded our country knew that freedom
would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its
meaning. From the minutemen at Concord to the soldiers in Viet-Nam, each
generation has been equal to that trust.

Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom.
Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening
opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue
the unending search for justice within our own borders.

We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal
treatment.

We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights.

We believe that all men are entitled
to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those
blessings—not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their
skin.

The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man.
We can understand—without rancor or hatred—how this all happened.

But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic,
forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And
the law I will sign tonight forbids it.

That law is the product of months of the most careful debate and discussion. It
was proposed more than one year ago by our late
and beloved President John F. Kennedy. It received the bipartisan support
of more than two-thirds of the Members of both the House and the Senate. An
overwhelming majority of Republicans as well as Democrats voted for it.

It has received the thoughtful support
of tens of thousands of civic and religious leaders in all parts of
this Nation. And it is supported by the great majority of the American people.

The purpose of the law is simple.

It does not restrict the freedom of any American, so long as he respects the
rights of others.

It does not give special treatment to any citizen.

It does say the only limit to a man's hope for happiness, and for the future of
his children, shall be his own ability.

It does say that there are those who are equal before God shall now also be
equal in the polling booths, in the classrooms, in the factories, and in
hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, and other places that provide service to
the public.

I am taking steps to implement the law under my constitutional obligation to
"take care that the laws are faithfully executed."

First, I will send to the Senate my nomination of LeRoy Collins to be Director
of the Community Relations Service. Governor Collins will bring the experience
of a long career of distinguished public service to the task of helping communities solve problems of human relations through reason and commonsense.

Second, I shall appoint an advisory committee of distinguished Americans to
assist Governor Collins in his assignment.

Third, I am sending Congress a request for supplemental appropriations to pay
for necessary costs of implementing the law, and asking for immediate action.

Fourth, already today in a meeting of my Cabinet this afternoon I directed the
agencies of this Government to fully discharge the new responsibilities imposed
upon them by the law and to do it without delay, and to keep me personally
informed of their progress.

Fifth, I am asking appropriate officials to meet with representative groups to
promote greater understanding of the law and to achieve a spirit of compliance.

We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful
spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end
divisions—divisions which have all lasted too long. Its purpose is national,
not regional.

Its purpose is to promote a more abiding commitment to freedom, a more constant
pursuit of justice, and a deeper respect for human dignity.

We will achieve these goals because most Americans are law-abiding citizens who
want to do what is right.

This is why the Civil Rights Act
relies first on voluntary compliance, then on the efforts of local
communities and States to secure the rights of citizens. It provides for the
national authority to step in only when others cannot or will not do the job.

This Civil Rights Act is a challenge
to all of us to go to work in our communities and our States, in our
homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our
beloved country.

So
tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business
and professional man, every workingman, every housewife—I urge every
American—to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people—and
to bring peace to our land.

My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail.

Let us close the springs of racial
poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside
irrelevant differences and make our
Nation whole. Let us hasten that day when our unmeasured strength and
our unbounded
spirit will be free to do the great works ordained for this Nation by
the just and wise God who is the Father of us all.

Thank you and good night.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Long titleAn act to enforce the constitutional right
to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United
States of America to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute
suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public
education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent
discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes.
Enacted by the 88th United States Congress
EffectiveJuly 2, 1964
Citations
Public Law88-352
Stat.78 Stat. 241
Codification
Title(s) amended42
Legislative history
* Introduced in the House as H.R. 7152 by Emanuel Celler (D–NY) on June 20, 1963
* Committee consideration by: Judiciary
* Passed the House on February 10, 1964[1] (290–130)
* Passed the Senate on June 19, 1964[2] (73–27) with amendment
* House agreed to Senate amendment on July 2, 1964[3] (289–126)
* Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964
Major amendments
Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972,[4] Civil Rights Act of 1991
United States Supreme Court cases
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States
Katzenbach v. McClung
Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education
Griggs v. Duke Power Co.
Ricci v. DeStefano
* v
* t
* e
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States[5] that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.[6] It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (known as "public accommodations").
Powers given to enforce the act were initially weak, but were
supplemented during later years. Congress asserted its authority to
legislate under several different parts of the United States Constitution, principally its power to regulate interstate commerce under Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment. The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, at the White House.
Contents
* 1 Origins
* 2 Legislative history
* 2.1 House of Representatives
* 2.2 Johnson's appeal to Congress
* 2.3 Passage in the Senate
* 2.4 Vote totals
* 2.4.1 By party
* 2.4.2 By party and region
* 3 Women's rights
* 4 Desegregation
* 5 Political repercussions
* 6 Major features
* 6.1 Title I
* 6.2 Title II
* 6.3 Title III
* 6.4 Title IV
* 6.5 Title V
* 6.6 Title VI
* 6.7 Title VII
* 6.8 Title VIII
* 6.9 Title IX
* 6.10 Title X
* 6.11 Title XI
* 7 Continued resistance
* 8 Subsequent court rulings
* 9 Influence
* 10 See also
* 10.1 Other civil rights legislation
* 10.2 Court cases
* 11 References
* 12 Further reading
* 13 External links
Origins

First page of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

John F. Kennedy addresses the nation about Civil Rights on June 11, 1963
The bill was called for by President John F. Kennedy in his civil rights speech of June 11, 1963,[7] in which he asked for legislation "giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants,
theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments", as well as
"greater protection for the right to vote". Kennedy delivered this
speech following a series of protests from the African-American community, the most notable being the Birmingham campaign (sometimes referred to as the "Childrens' Crusade") in which students
and children endured attacks by police dogs and high pressure fire hoses during their protests against segregation.
Emulating the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Kennedy's civil rights bill included provisions to ban discrimination in public accommodations, and to enable the U.S. Attorney General to join in lawsuits against state governments which operated segregated school systems, among other provisions. However, it did not include a
number of provisions deemed essential by civil rights leaders including
protection against police brutality, ending discrimination in private
employment, or granting the Justice Department power to initiate
desegregation or job discrimination lawsuits.[8]

Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Among the guests behind him is Martin Luther King, Jr.
Legislative history
House of Representatives
On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy met with the Republican leaders
to discuss the legislation before his television address to the nation
that evening. Two days later, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield both voiced support for the president's bill, except for provisions
guaranteeing equal access to places of public accommodations. This led
to several Republican Congressmen drafting a compromise bill to be
considered. On June 19, the president sent his bill to Congress as it
was originally written, saying legislative action was "imperative".[9][10] The president's bill went first to the House of Representatives, where it was referred to the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Emmanuel Celler, a Democrat from New York. After a series of hearings on the bill, Celler's committee strengthened the act, adding provisions to ban racial discrimination in employment,
providing greater protection to black voters, eliminating segregation in all publicly owned facilities (not just schools), and strengthening the anti-segregation clauses regarding public facilities such as lunch
counters. They also added authorization for the Attorney General to file lawsuits to protect individuals against the deprivation of any rights
secured by the Constitution or U.S. law. In essence, this was the
controversial "Title III" that had been removed from the 1957 and 1960 Acts. Civil rights organizations pressed hard for this provision
because it could be used to protect peaceful protesters and black voters from police brutality and suppression of free speech rights.
Kennedy called the congressional leaders to the White House in late
October, 1963 to line up the necessary votes in the House for passage.[11] The bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee in November 1963, and referred to the Rules Committee, whose chairman, Howard W. Smith, a Democrat and avid segregationist from Virginia, indicated his intention to keep the bill bottled up indefinitely.
Johnson's appeal to Congress
The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, changed the political situation. Kennedy's successor as president, Lyndon Johnson, made use of his experience in legislative politics, along with the bully pulpit he wielded as president, in support of the bill. In his first address to a joint session of Congress on November 27, 1963, Johnson told the legislators, "No memorial
oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which
he fought so long."[12]
Judiciary Committee chairman Celler filed a petition to discharge the bill from the Rules Committee; it required the support of a
majority of House members to move the bill to the floor. Initially
Celler had a difficult time acquiring the signatures necessary, because
even many congressmen who supported the civil rights bill itself were
cautious about violating normal House procedure with the discharge
petition. By the time of the 1963 winter recess, 50 signatures were
still needed.

The record of the roll call vote kept by the House Clerk on final passage of the bill.
After the return of Congress from its winter recess, however, it was apparent that public opinion in the North favored the bill and that the petition would acquire the
necessary signatures. To avert the humiliation of a successful discharge petition, Chairman Smith relented and allowed the bill to pass through
the Rules Committee.
Passage in the Senate

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X at the United States Capitol on March 26, 1964. Both men had come to hear the Senate debate on the
bill. This was the only time the two men ever met; their meeting lasted
only one minute.[13]
Johnson, who wanted the bill passed as soon as possible, ensured that the bill would be quickly considered by the Senate. Normally, the bill would have been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator James O. Eastland, Democrat from Mississippi. Given Eastland's firm opposition, it seemed impossible that the bill would reach the Senate floor. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield took a novel approach to prevent the bill from being relegated to
Judiciary Committee limbo. Having initially waived a second reading of
the bill, which would have led to it being immediately referred to
Judiciary, Mansfield gave the bill a second reading on February 26,
1964, and then proposed, in the absence of precedent for instances when a second reading did not immediately follow the first, that the bill
bypass the Judiciary Committee and immediately be sent to the Senate
floor for debate.
When the bill came before the full Senate for debate on March 30,
1964, the "Southern Bloc" of 18 southern Democratic Senators and one
Republican Senator led by Richard Russell (D-GA) launched a filibuster to prevent its passage.[14] Said Russell: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states."[15]
The most fervent opposition to the bill came from Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC): "This so-called Civil Rights Proposals, which the President has sent to Capitol Hill for enactment into law, are unconstitutional,
unnecessary, unwise and extend beyond the realm of reason. This is the
worst civil-rights package ever presented to the Congress and is
reminiscent of the Reconstruction proposals and actions of the radical Republican Congress."[16]
After 54 days of filibuster, Senators Everett Dirksen (R-IL), Thomas Kuchel (R-CA), Hubert Humphrey (D-MN), and Mike Mansfield (D-MT) introduced a substitute bill that they hoped would attract
enough Republican swing votes to end the filibuster. The compromise bill was weaker than the House version in regard to government power to
regulate the conduct of private business, but it was not so weak as to
cause the House to reconsider the legislation.[17]
On the morning of June 10, 1964, Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) completed a filibustering address that he had begun 14 hours
and 13 minutes earlier opposing the legislation. Until then, the measure had occupied the Senate for 57 working days, including six Saturdays. A day earlier, Democratic Whip Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the bill's
manager, concluded he had the 67 votes required at that time to end the
debate and end the filibuster. With six wavering senators providing a
four-vote victory margin, the final tally stood at 71 to 29. Never in
history had the Senate been able to muster enough votes to cut off a
filibuster on a civil rights bill. And only once in the 37 years since
1927 had it agreed to cloture for any measure.[18]
"Remarks upon Signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964"

Public statement by Lyndon B. Johnson of July 2, 1964 about the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
________________________________

"Remarks upon Signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964"
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________________________________

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On June 19, the substitute (compromise) bill passed the Senate by a vote of 73–27, and quickly passed through the House-Senate conference committee, which adopted the Senate version of the bill. The conference bill was
passed by both houses of Congress, and was signed into law by President
Johnson on July 2, 1964.[19]
Vote totals
Totals are in "Yea–Nay" format:
* The original House version: 290–130 (69–31%).
* Cloture in the Senate: 71–29 (71–29%).
* The Senate version: 73–27 (73–27%).
* The Senate version, as voted on by the House: 289–126 (70–30%).
By party
The original House version:[20]
* Democratic Party: 152–96 (61–39%)
* Republican Party: 138–34 (80–20%)
Cloture in the Senate:[21]
* Democratic Party: 44–23 (66–34%)
* Republican Party: 27–6 (82–18%)
The Senate version:[20]
* Democratic Party: 46–21 (69–31%)
* Republican Party: 27–6 (82–18%)
The Senate version, voted on by the House:[20]
* Democratic Party: 153–91 (63–37%)
* Republican Party: 136–35 (80–20%)
By party and region
Note: "Southern", as used in this section, refers to members of Congress from the eleven states that made up the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. "Northern" refers to members from the other 39 states, regardless of the geographic location of those states.
The original House version:
* Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
* Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
* Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94–6%)
* Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85–15%)
The Senate version:
* Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%) (only Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
* Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%) (John Tower of Texas)
* Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%) (only Robert Byrd of West Virginia voted against)
* Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)
Women's rights

Engrossing copy of H.R. 7152, which added sex to the categories of which the bill prohibited discrimination, as passed by the House of
Representatives.[22]
Just one year prior, the same Congress had passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibited wage differentials based on sex. The prohibition on sex discrimination was added to the Civil Rights Act by Howard W. Smith, a powerful Virginia Democrat who chaired the House Rules Committee and
who strongly opposed the legislation. Smith's amendment was passed by a
teller vote of 168 to 133. Historians debate Smith's motivation, whether it was a cynical attempt to defeat the bill by someone opposed to both civil rights for blacks and women, or an
attempt to support their rights by broadening the bill to include women.[23][24][25][26] Smith expected that Republicans, who had included equal rights for women in their party's platform since 1944, would probably vote for the
amendment. Historians speculate that Smith was trying to embarrass
northern Democrats who opposed civil rights for women because the clause was opposed by labor unions. Representative Carl Elliott of Alabama later claimed, "Smith didn't give a damn about women's
rights...he was trying to knock off votes either then or down the line
because there was always a hard core of men who didn't favor women's
rights,"[27] and the Congressional Record records that Smith was greeted by laughter when he introduced the amendment.[28]
Smith asserted that he was not joking; he sincerely supported the amendment and, indeed, along with Rep. Martha Griffiths,[29] he was the chief spokesperson for the amendment.[28] For twenty years Smith had sponsored the Equal Rights Amendment (with
no linkage to racial issues) in the House because he believed in it. He
for decades had been close to the National Woman's Party and its leader Alice Paul, who was also the leader in winning the right to vote for women in 1920, the author of the first Equal Rights Amendment, and a chief supporter
of equal rights proposals since then. She and other feminists had worked with Smith since 1945 trying to find a way to include sex as a
protected civil rights category. Now was the moment.[30] Griffiths argued that the new law would protect black women but not
white women, and that was unfair to white women. Furthermore, she argued that the laws "protecting" women from unpleasant jobs were actually
designed to enable men to monopolize those jobs, and that was unfair to
women who were not allowed to try out for those jobs.[31] The amendment passed with the votes of Republicans and Southern
Democrats. The final law passed with the votes of Republicans and
Northern Democrats. Thus, as Justice William Rehnquist explained in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, "The prohibition against discrimination based on sex was added to Title VII at the last minute on the floor of the House of Representatives...
the bill quickly passed as amended, and we are left with little
legislative history to guide us in interpreting the Act's prohibition
against discrimination based on 'sex.'"[32]
Desegregation
One of the most "damaging" arguments by the bill's opponents was that once passed, the bill would require forced busing to achieve certain racial quotas in schools.[33] Proponents of the bill, such as Emanuel Celler and Jacob Javits, said that the bill would not authorize such measures. Leading sponsor Hubert Humphrey wrote two amendments specifically designed to outlaw busing.[33] Humphrey said "if the bill were to compel it, it would be a violation
[of the Constitution], because it would be handling the matter on the
basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race."[33] While Javits said any government official who sought to use the bill
for busing purposes "would be making a fool of himself," two years later the Department of Health, Education and Welfare said that Southern school districts would be required to meet mathematical ratios of students by busing.[33]
Political repercussions
See also: Realigning election

President Johnson speaks to a television camera at the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
The bill divided and engendered a long-term change in the
demographics of both parties. President Johnson realized that supporting this bill would risk losing the South's overwhelming support of the
Democratic Party. Both Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Vice President Johnson had pushed for the introduction of the civil rights legislation. Johnson told Kennedy aide Ted Sorensen that "I know the risks are great and we might lose the South, but those sorts of states may be lost anyway."[34] Senator Richard Russell, Jr. later warned President Johnson that his strong support for the civil
rights bill "will not only cost you the South, it will cost you the
election".[35] Johnson, however, went on to win the 1964 election by one of the
biggest landslides in American history. The South, which had five states swing Republican in 1964, became a stronghold of the Republican party
by the 1990s.[36]
Although majorities in both parties voted for the bill, there were notable exceptions. Though he opposed forced segregation,[37] Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona voted against the bill, remarking, "You can't legislate
morality." Goldwater had supported previous attempts to pass civil
rights legislation in 1957 and 1960 as well as the 24th Amendment outlawing the poll tax. He stated that the reason for his opposition to the 1964 bill was Title II, which in his opinion violated individual liberty and states' rights. Most Democrats from the Southern states opposed the bill and led an unsuccessful 83-day filibuster, including Senators Albert Gore, Sr. (D-TN) and J. William Fulbright (D-AR), as well as Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who personally filibustered for 14 hours straight.
Major features
(The full text of the Act is available online.)
Title I
Barred unequal application of voter registration requirements.
Title I did not eliminate literacy tests, which were one of the main methods used to exclude Black voters, other
racial minorities, and poor Whites in the South, nor did it address
economic retaliation, police repression, or physical violence against
nonwhite voters. While the Act did require that voting rules and
procedures be applied equally to all races, it did not abolish the
concept of voter "qualification", that is to say, it accepted the idea
that citizens do not have an automatic right to vote but rather might
have to meet some standard beyond citizenship.[38][39] It was the Voting Rights Act, enacted one year later in 1965, that directly addressed and eliminated most voting qualifications beyond citizenship.
Title II
Outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion or national
origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public
accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; exempted private clubs
without defining the term "private".[40]
Title III
Prohibited state and municipal governments from denying access to
public facilities on grounds of race, color, religion or national
origin.
Title IV
Encouraged the desegregation of public schools and authorized the U.S. Attorney General to file suits to enforce said act.
Title V
Expanded the Civil Rights Commission established by the earlier Civil Rights Act of 1957 with additional powers, rules and procedures.
Title VI
Prevents discrimination by government agencies that receive federal
funds. If an agency is found in violation of Title VI, that agency may
lose its federal funding.
General
This title declares it to be the policy of the United States that
discrimination on the ground of race, color, or national origin shall
not occur in connection with programs and activities receiving Federal
financial assistance and authorizes and directs the appropriate Federal
departments and agencies to take action to carry out this policy. This
title is not intended to apply to foreign assistance programs. Section
601 – This section states the general principle that no person in the
United States shall be excluded from participation in or otherwise
discriminated against on the ground of race, color, or national origin
under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
Section 602 directs each Federal agency administering a program of
Federal financial assistance by way of grant, contract, or loan to take
action pursuant to rule, regulation, or order of general applicability
to effectuate the principle of section 601 in a manner consistent with
the achievement of the objectives of the statute authorizing the
assistance. In seeking the effect compliance with its requirements
imposed under this section, an agency is authorized to terminate or to
refuse to grant or to continue assistance under a program to any
recipient as to whom there has been an express finding pursuant to a
hearing of a failure to comply with the requirements under that program, and it may also employ any other means authorized by law. However, each agency is directed first to seek compliance with its requirements by
voluntary means.
Section 603 provides that any agency action taken pursuant to section 602 shall be subject to such judicial review as would be available for
similar actions by that agency on other grounds. Where the agency action consists of terminating or refusing to grant or to continue financial
assistance because of a finding of a failure of the recipient to comply
with the agency's requirements imposed under section 602, and the agency action would not otherwise be subject to judicial review under existing law, judicial review shall nevertheless be available to any person
aggrieved as provided in section 10 of the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. § 1009). The section also states explicitly that in the latter situation such
agency action shall not be deemed committed to unreviewable agency
discretion within the meaning of section 10. The purpose of this
provision is to obviate the possible argument that although section 603
provides for review in accordance with section 10, section 10 itself has an exception for action "committed to agency discretion," which might
otherwise be carried over into section 603. It is not the purpose of
this provision of section 603, however, otherwise to alter the scope of
judicial review as presently provided in section 10(e) of the
Administrative Procedure Act.
Title VII
Title VII of the Act, codified as Subchapter VI of Chapter 21 of title 42 of the United States Code, prohibits discrimination by covered employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin (see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2[41]). Title VII applies to and covers an employer "who has fifteen (15) or
more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar
weeks in the current or preceding calendar year" as written in the
Definitions section under 42 U.S.C. §2000e(b). Title VII also prohibits discrimination against an individual because
of his or her association with another individual of a particular race,
color, religion, sex, or national origin, such as by an interracial
marriage.[42] The EEO Title VII has also been supplemented with legislation prohibiting pregnancy, age, and disability discrimination (See Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, Age Discrimination in Employment Act,[43] Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990).
In very narrowly defined situations, an employer is permitted to
discriminate on the basis of a protected trait where the trait is a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) reasonably necessary to the
normal operation of that particular business or enterprise. To prove the bona fide occupational qualifications defense, an employer must prove three elements: a direct relationship
between the protected trait and the ability to perform the duties of the job, the BFOQ relates to the "essence" or "central mission of the
employer's business", and there is no less-restrictive or reasonable
alternative (United Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, Inc., 499 U.S. 187 (1991) 111 S.Ct. 1196). The Bona Fide Occupational Qualification
exception is an extremely narrow exception to the general prohibition of discrimination based on protected traits (Dothard v. Rawlinson, 433 U.S. 321 (1977) 97 S.Ct. 2720). An employer or customer's preference for an
individual of a particular religion is not sufficient to establish a
Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Kamehameha School — Bishop Estate, 990 F.2d 458 (9th Cir. 1993)).
Title VII allows for any employer, labor organization, joint
labor-management committee, or employment agency to bypass the "unlawful employment practice" for any person involved with the Communist Party of the United States or of any other organization required to register as a Communist-action or Communist-front organization by final order of the Subversive
Activities Control Board pursuant to the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950.[44]
There are partial and whole exceptions to Title VII for four types of employers:
* Federal government; (Comment: The proscriptions against employment
discrimination under Title VII are now applicable to the federal
government under 42 U.S.C. Section 2000e-16)
* Federally recognized Native American tribes
* Religious groups performing work connected to the group's activities, including associated education institutions;
* Bona fide nonprofit private membership organizations.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as well as certain state fair employment practices agencies (FEPAs) enforce Title VII (see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-4[41]). The EEOC and state FEPAs investigate, mediate, and may file lawsuits on behalf of employees. Where a state law is contradicted by a federal
law, it is overridden.[45] Every state, except Arkansas and Mississippi, maintains a state FEPA (see EEOC and state FEPA directory ). Title VII also provides that an individual can bring a private
lawsuit. An individual must file a complaint of discrimination with the
EEOC within 180 days of learning of the discrimination or the individual may lose the right to file a lawsuit. Title VII only applies to
employers who employ 15 or more employees for 20 or more weeks in the
current or preceding calendar year (42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b)).
In the late 1970s courts began holding that sexual harassment is also prohibited under the Act. Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal is a notable Title VII case relating to sexual harassment that was decided in favor of the plaintiffs. In 1986 the Supreme Court held in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57 (1986), that sexual harassment is sex discrimination and is prohibited by Title VII. Same-sex sexual harassment has also been held in a unanimous decision written by Justice Scalia to be prohibited by Title VII (Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U.S. 75 (1998), 118 S.Ct. 998).
In 2012, the EEOC ruled that employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity or transgender status is prohibited under Title VII.[46]
Title VIII
Required compilation of voter-registration and voting data in geographic areas specified by the Commission on Civil Rights.
Title IX
Title IX made it easier to move civil rights cases from state courts with segregationist judges and all-white juries to federal court. This was of crucial importance to civil rights activists who could not get a fair trial in state courts.
Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should not be confused with Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities.
Title X
Established the Community Relations Service, tasked with assisting in community disputes involving claims of discrimination.
Title XI
Title XI gives a defendant accused of certain categories of criminal
contempt in a matter arising under title II, III, IV, V, VI, or VII of
the Act the right to a jury trial. If convicted, the defendant can be
fined an amount not to exceed $1,000 or imprisoned for not more than six months.
Continued resistance
There were white business owners who claimed that Congress did not
have the constitutional authority to ban segregation in public
accommodations. For example, Moreton Rolleston, the owner of a motel in
Atlanta, Georgia, said he should not be forced to serve black travelers, saying, "the fundamental question…is whether or not Congress has the
power to take away the liberty of an individual to run his business as
he sees fit in the selection and choice of his customers".[47] Rolleston claimed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a breach of the Fourteenth Amendment and also the violated the Fifth and Thirteenth
Amendments by depriving him of "liberty and property without due
process".[47] In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the Supreme Court held that Congress drew its authority from the Constitution's Commerce Clause, rejecting Rolleston's claims.
Subsequent court rulings
The Constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was, at the
time, in some dispute as it applied to the private sector. In the
landmark Civil Rights Cases the United States Supreme Court had ruled that Congress did not have
the power to prohibit discrimination in the private sector, thus
stripping the Civil Rights Act of 1875 of much of its ability to protect civil rights.[48] The Supreme Court has subsequently struck down parts of civil rights
laws on the grounds that the Fourteenth Amendment does not give Congress the power to prohibit private sector discrimination.[citation needed]
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the legal justification for
voiding the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was part of a larger trend by
members of the United States Supreme Court to invalidate most government regulations of the private sector, except when dealing with laws
designed to protect traditional public morality.
In the 1930s, during the New Deal, the majority of the Supreme Court
justices gradually shifted their legal theory to allow for greater
government regulation of the private sector under the commerce clause,
thus paving the way for the Federal government to enact civil rights
laws prohibiting both public and private sector discrimination on the
basis of the commerce clause.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, the Supreme Court
upheld the law's application to the private sector, on the grounds that
Congress has the power to regulate commerce between the States. The
landmark case Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States established the constitutionality of the law, but it did not settle all of the legal questions surrounding the law.
In a 1971 Supreme Court case regarding the gender provisions of the
Act, the Court ruled that a company could not discriminate against a
potential female employee because she had a preschool-age child unless
they did the same with potential male employees.[26] A federal court overruled an Ohio state law that barred women from obtaining jobs which required the
ability to lift 25 pounds and required women to take lunch breaks when
men were not required to.[26] In Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, the United States Supreme Court decided that printing separate job
listings for men and women was illegal, which ended that practice among
the country's newspapers. The United States Civil Service Commission ended the practice among federal jobs which designated them "women only" or "men only".[26]
In 1974, the Supreme Court also ruled that the San Francisco school district was violating non-English speaking students' rights
under the 1964 act by placing them in regular classes rather than
providing some sort of accommodation for them.[49]
In 1975, a federal civil rights agency warned a Phoenix, Arizona school that its end-of-year father-son and mother-daughter baseball games were illegal according to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.[26] President Gerald Ford intervened, and the games were allowed to continue.[26]
In 1977, the Supreme Court struck down state minimum height
requirements for police officers as violating the Act; women usually
could not meet these requirements.[26]
Influence
Despite its lack of influence during its time, the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 had considerable impact on later civil rights legislation in the United States. It paved the way for future legislation that was not
limited to African American civil rights. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990—which has been called "the most important piece of federal legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964"[50]—was influenced both by the structure and substance of the previous Civil
Rights Act of 1964. The act was arguably of equal importance, and "draws substantially from the structure of that landmark legislation [Civil
Rights Act of 1964]".[50] The Americans With Disabilities Act paralleled its landmark predecessor structurally, drawing upon many of the same titles and statutes. For
example, "Title I of the ADA, which bans employment discrimination by
private employers on the basis of disability, parallels Title VII of the Act".[50] Similarly, Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, "which
proscribes discrimination on the basis of disability in public
accommodations, tracks Title II of the 1964 Act while expanding upon the list of public accommodations covered."[50] The Americans with Disabilities Act extended "the principle of nondiscrimination to people with disabilities",[50] an idea unsought in the United States before the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. The Act also influenced later civil rights
legislation, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, aiding not only African Americans, but also women.
See also
* African-American Civil Rights Movement
* Affirmative action in the United States
* Bennett Amendment
* Bourke B. Hickenlooper
Other civil rights legislation
* Civil Rights Act of 1866
* Civil Rights Act of 1871
* Civil Rights Act of 1875
* Civil Rights Act of 1957
* Civil Rights Act of 1960
* Civil Rights Act of 1968
* Employment Non-Discrimination Act
* Equal Pay Act of 1963
* Force Act of 1870
* Force Act of 1871
* Lodge Bill
* Reconstruction Acts
* Voting Rights Act of 1965
Court cases
* Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964)
* Katzenbach v. McClung (1964)
* Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971)
* Washington v. Davis (1976)
* Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989)
* Ricci v. DeStefano (2009)
References
1. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/h128
2. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/s409
3. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/h182
4. Milestones In The History of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: 1972 Accessed July 1, 2014
5. Wright, Susan (2005), The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Landmark Antidiscrimination Legislation, The Rosen Publishing Group, ISBN 1-4042-0455-5
6. "Transcript of Civil Rights Act (1964)". Retrieved July 28, 2012.
7. "Radio and television address on civil rights, 11 June 1963". John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. 1963-06-11. Retrieved 2013-11-23.
8. Civil Rights Act Passes in the House ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
9. Loevy, Robert (1997), The Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Passage of the Law that Ended Racial Segregation, State University of New York Press, p. 171. ISBN 0-7914-3362-5
10. Golway, Terry and Krantz, Les (2010), JFK: Day by Day, Running Press, p. 284. ISBN 978-0-7624-3742-9
11. Reeves, Richard (1993), President Kennedy: Profile of Power, pp. 628-631
12. 1963 Year In Review - Part 1: Transition to Johnson
13. Cone, James H. (1991). Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. p. 2. ISBN 0-88344-721-5.
14. "Major Features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964". Congresslink.org. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
15. "Civil Rights Act of 1964". Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
16. 1963 Year In Review – Part 1 – Civil Rights Bill United Press International, 1963
17. Civil Rights Act — Battle in the Senate ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
18. Civil Rights Filibuster Ended – United States Senate
19. Dallek, Robert (2004), Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President, p. 169
20. King, Desmond (1995). Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the US Federal Government. p. 311.
21. Jeong, Gyung-Ho; Gary J. Miller; Itai Sened (2009-03-14). "Closing The Deal: Negotiating Civil Rights Legislation". 67th Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association. p. 29. Retrieved 2009-11-04.
22. http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=6037151
23. Freeman, Jo. "How 'Sex' Got Into Title VII: Persistent Opportunism as a Maker of Public Policy," Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice, Vol. 9, No. 2, March 1991, pp 163–184. online version
24. Rosenberg, Rosalind (2008), Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century, pp. 187-88
25. Gittinger, Ted and Fisher, Allen, LBJ Champions the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Part 2, Prologue Magazine, The National Archives, Summer 2004, Vol. 36, No. 2
("Certainly Smith hoped that such a divisive issue would torpedo the
civil rights bill, if not in the House, then in the Senate.")
26. Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. pp. 245–246, 249. ISBN 0-465-04195-7.
27. Dierenfield, Bruce J. "Conservative Outrage: the Defeat in 1966 of Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 1981 89 (2): p. 194
28. Gold, Michael Evan. A Tale of Two Amendments: The Reasons Congress Added Sex to Title VII and Their Implication for the Issue of Comparable Worth. Faculty Publications — Collective Bargaining, Labor Law, and Labor History. Cornell, 1981 [1]
29. Olson, Lynne (2001), Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement, p. 360
30. Rosenberg, Rosalind (2008), Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century, p. 187 notes that Smith had been working for years with two Virginia feminists on the issue.
31. Harrison, Cynthia (1989), On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues, 1945–1968, p. 179
32. (477 U.S. 57, 63–64)
33. Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. pp. 251–252.
34. Kotz, Nick (2005), Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws that Changed America, p. 61.
35. Branch, Taylor (1998), Pillar of Fire, p. 187.
36. Brownstein, Ronald (May 23, 2009). "For GOP, A Southern Exposure". National Journal. Retrieved July 7, 2010.
37. http://www.thenation.com/article/conservatism-phoenix#axzz2crNUSaxp
38. Voting Rights ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
39. "Major Features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964". CongressLink. The Dirksen Congressional Center. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
40. "Civil Rights Act of 1964 Title II". Wake Forest University.
41. "Civil Rights Act of 1964 – CRA – Title VII – Equal Employment Opportunities – 42 US Code Chapter 21". finduslaw. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
42. Parr v. Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Company, 791 F.2d 888 (11th Cir. 1986).
43. "Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967". Finduslaw.com. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
44. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act/images/act-06.jpg
45. U.S. Department of
Labor Employment and Training Administration. (1999) "Chapter 2: Laws
and Regulations with Implications for Assessments". [2]
46. Rabiner, Stephanie (April 26, 2012). "Transgender Workers Now a Protected Class, EEOC Rules". Reuters. Retrieved April 30, 2012.[dead link]
47. Sandoval-Strausz, A.K. (Spring 2005). "Travelers, Strangers, and Jim Crow: Law, Public Accommodations, and Civil Rights in America". Law and History Review 23 (1): 53–94.
48. "The Civil Rights Act of March 1, 1875", www.gmu.edu.
49. Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. p. 270.
50. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990: Progeny of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 www.jstor.org
Further reading
* Branch, Taylor (1998), Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–65, New York: Simon & Schuster.
* Brauer, Carl M., "Women Activists, Southern Conservatives, and the
Prohibition of Sexual Discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act", 49 Journal of Southern History, February 1983.
* Burstein, Paul (1985), Discrimination, Jobs and Politics: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity in the United States since the New Deal, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Finley, Keith M. (2008), Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938–1965, Baton Rouge: LSU Press.
* Freeman, Jo. "How 'Sex' Got Into Title VII: Persistent Opportunism as a Maker of Public Policy" Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice, Vol. 9, No. 2, March 1991, pp. 163–184. online version
* Graham, Hugh (1990), The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972, New York: Oxford U P.
* Harrison, Cynthia (1988), On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues 1945–1968, Berkeley, CA: U. California Press.
* Jeong, Gyung-Ho, Gary J. Miller, and Itai Sened, "Closing the Deal: Negotiating Civil Rights Legislation", American Political Science Review, 103 (Nov. 2009)
* Loevy, Robert D. (1990), To End All Segregation: The Politics of the Passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
* Loevy, Robert D. ed. (1997), The Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Passage of the Law That Ended Racial Segregation, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
* Loevy, Robert D. "A Brief History of the Civil Rights Act OF 1964," in David C. Kozak and Kenneth N. Ciboski, ed., The American Presidency (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1985), pp. 411–419. online version
* Pedriana, Nicholas, and Stryker, Robin. "The Strength of a Weak
Agency: Enforcement of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the
Expansion of State Capacity, 1965-1971," American Journal of Sociology, Nov 2004, Vol. 110 Issue 3, pp 709–760
* Rodriguez, Daniel B. and Weingast, Barry R. "The Positive Political
Theory of Legislative History: New Perspectives on the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Its Interpretation", University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 151. (2003)
* Rothstein, Mark A., Andria S. Knapp & Lance Liebman, Employment Law: Cases and Materials, Foundation Press (1987).
* Warren, Dan R. (2008), If It Takes All Summer: Martin Luther King, the KKK, and States' Rights in St. Augustine, 1964, Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
* Whalen, Charles and Whalen, Barbara (1985), The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Cabin John, MD: Seven Locks Press.
* Woods, Randall B. (2006), LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, New York: Free Press, ch 22.
* Zimmer, Michael J., Charles A. Sullivan & Richard F. Richards, Cases and Materials on Employment Discrimination, Little, Brown and Company (1982).
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Civil Rights Act of 1964.
* Civil Rights bill.
* Major Features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and A Case History: The 1964 Civil Rights Act as provided by The Dirksen Center
* Text of Civil Rights Act of 1964 – Title VII – 42 US Code Chapter 21 (Employment Discrimination)
* Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, plus background including Civil Rights bill.
* 1963 March on Washington, civil rights including JFK death date.
* Presidency book excerpt, the legislative history of this bill as it became an Act.
* Background facts including enactment date.
* Directory of EEOC offices, addresses, and hours of operation.
* President Lyndon B. Johnson's Radio and Television Remarks Upon Signing the Civil Rights Bill
* Civil Rights Movement Veterans
* 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 curated by Michigan State University's Diversity of Excellence through Artistic Expression
* Civil Rights Act of 1964, Civil Rights Digital Library
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Activists * Ralph Abernathy
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Racism on the rise in Britain



				Racism on the rise in Britain Exclusive: British Social Attitudes survey finds proportion of people in the UK who say they are racially prejudiced has risen since 2001

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Racism in the United Kingdom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: Page is lacking focus and coherence. Please help improve this article if you can. (June 2014)

The United Kingdom, like most countries,^[1] has racism between its ethnic groups. Relations between non-white immigrant groups and indigenous Britons have resulted in cases of race riots and racist murder perpetrated by extremists of all races.

Contents

Race riots

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/The_Upper_Globe_Pub_2006.JPG/220px-The_Upper_Globe_Pub_2006.JPG

Pub damaged in the 2001 Bradford riots between White and Pakistani sectors

There were fierce race riots targeting ethnic minority populations across the United Kingdom in 1919: South Shields,^[2] Glasgow, London's East End, Liverpool, Cardiff, Barry, and Newport.^{[citation needed]} There were further riots targeting immigrant and minority populations in East London and Notting Hill in the 1950s.

In the early 1980s, societal racism, discrimination and poverty — alongside further perceptions of powerlessness and oppressive policing — sparked a series of riots in areas with substantial African-Caribbean populations.^[3] These riots took place in St Pauls in 1980, Brixton, Toxteth and Moss Side in 1981, St Pauls again in 1982, Notting Hill Gate in 1982, Toxteth in 1982, and Handsworth, Brixton and Tottenham in 1985.^[4]

The report identified both "racial discrimination" and an " extreme racial disadvantage" in Britain, concluding that urgent action was needed to prevent these issues becoming an "endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society".^[3] The era saw an increase in attacks on Black people by White people. The Joint Campaign Against Racism committee reported that there had been more than 20,000 attacks on non-indigenous Britons including Britons of Asian origin during 1985.^[5]

In 2001, there have been both the Bradford riots and the Oldham Riots. These riots have followed cases of racism - either the public displays of racist sentiment or, as in the Brixton Riots, racial profiling and alleged harassment by the police force. In 2005, were the Birmingham riots between Asians and Blacks, as a black teenager had been allegedly raped by South Asian men, although no teenager came forward claiming she had been raped.

Racially motivated hate crime

This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (June 2014)

The British Crime Survey reveals that in 2004, 87,000 people from black or minority ethnic communities said they had been a victim of a racially motivated crime. They had suffered 49,000 violent attacks, with 4,000 being wounded. At the same time 92,000 white people said they had also fallen victim of a racially motivated crime. The number of violent attacks against whites reached 77,000, while the number of white people who reported being wounded was five times the number of black and minority ethnic victims at 20,000. Most of the offenders (57%) in the racially motivated crimes identified in the British Crime Survey are not white. White victims said 82% of offenders were not white.

These statistics show that ethnic minorities are overrepresented as perpetrators of racially motivated crime.^[who?] Police and media face difficulties in being perceived to offer support to the far-right by reporting racist crimes towards white people, an ideal which has been criticised by Members of Parliament,.^[who?] As a result, cases of hate crimes against white victims often aren't reported sufficiently, an example being the murder of Ross Parker.^[6][7][8][9]

The issue of Muslim men sexually abusing and exploiting white children has been criticised by some^{[weasel words]} Members of Parliament^[who?], who believe that political correctness prevented police and social workers from taking action.^[10] Although Muslim community leaders have stated that the crimes were racially motivated, some^{[weasel words]} politicians have denied the issue.^[11]

In politics

Since World War I, public expressions of racism have been limited to far-right political parties such as the British National Front in the 1970s, whilst most mainstream politicians have publicly condemned all forms of racism. However some argue that racism remains common, and some many politicians and public figures have been accused of excusing or pandering to racist attitudes in the media, particularly with regard to immigration. There have been growing concerns in recent years about institutional racism in public and private bodies, and the tacit support this gives to crimes resulting from racism.

The Race Relations Act 1965 outlawed public discrimination, and established the Race Relations Board. Further Acts in 1968 and 1976 outlawed discrimination in employment, housing and social services, and replaced the Race Relations Board with Commission for Racial Equality. The Human Rights Act 1998 made organisations in Britain, including public authorities, subject to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Race Relations Act 2000 extends existing legislation for the public sector to the police force, and requires public authorities to promote equality.

Although various anti-discrimination legislation do exist, according to some sources most employers in the UK remain institutionally racist including public bodies such as the police^[12] and particularly the legal professions.^[13][14] The situation with the implementation of Human Rights law is similar. The Terrorism Acts, which came into law in 2000 and 2006, have caused a marked increase in racial profiling and have also been the basis to justify existent trends in discrimination against persons of Muslim origin (or resembling such) by the British police.^{[citation needed]}

There have been tensions over immigration since at least the early 1900s. These were originally engendered by hostility towards Jews along with non-Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe (predominantly from Poland). Britain first began restricting immigration in 1905 under the Aliens Restriction Act. This was the first time that the United Kingdom implemented a policy that was designed to prevent the influx of immigrants. In particular it was aimed at those Jews who had fled persecution in Russia. Before the Act Britain had had a favourable immigration policy, most notably throughout the Victorian Period. However, for the first time policy was enacted to prevent the wholesale entry of foreign migrants. Although the Act was extreme Britain maintained its asylum policy. This meant that any persons who had fled their country due to religious or political persecution could be granted asylum in the United Kingdom. However, such policy was removed in the period before the Second World War to prevent the wholesale entry of Jewish refugees leaving from the Third Reich. Although Britain's policy was restrictive it was one of the leading nations that helped solve the refugee crisis preceding World War Two.

Britain has also had very strong limits on immigration since the early 1960s. Legislation was particularly targeted at members of the Commonwealth of Nations, who had previously been able to migrate to the UK under the British Nationality Act 1948. Conservative MP Enoch Powell made the controversial 1968 Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to Commonwealth immigration to Britain; this resulted in him being swiftly removed from the Shadow Cabinet.

Virtually all legal immigration, except for those claiming refugee status, ended with the Immigration Act 1971; however, free movement for citizens of the European Union was later established by the Immigration Act 1988. Legislation in 1993, 1996 and 1999 gradually decreased the rights and benefits given to those claiming refugee status ("asylum seekers"). 582,000 people came to live in the UK from elsewhere in the world in 2004 according to the Office for National Statistics.

Some commentators^[who?] believe that an amount of racism, from within all communities, has been undocumented within the UK, adducing the many British cities whose populations have a clear racial divide. While these commentators^[who?] believe that race relations have improved immensely over the last thirty years, they still believe that racial segregation remains an important but largely unaddressed problem, although research^[15] has shown that ethnic segregation has reduced within England and Wales between the 1991 Census and 2001 Census.^{[citation needed]}

The United Kingdom has been accused of "sleepwalking toward apartheid" by Trevor Phillips, chair of that country's Commission for Racial Equality. Philips has said that Britain is fragmenting into isolated racial communities: "literal black holes into which no one goes without fear and trepidation and nobody escapes undamaged". Philips believes that racial segregation in Britain is approaching that of the United States. "You can get to the point as they have in the U.S. where things are so divided that there is no turning back."^[16]

The BBC has reported that the latest crime statistics appear to support Phillips' concerns. They show that race-hate crimes increased by almost 600 per cent in London in the month after the July 7 bomb attacks, with 269 more offences allegedly "motivated by religious hatred" reported to the Metropolitan Police, compared to the same period last year.^[16]

Public sector employers in the UK are somewhat less likely to discriminate on grounds of race, as they are required by law to promote equality and make efforts to reduce racial and other discrimination. The private sector, however are subject to little or no functional anti-discrimination regulation and short of self paid litigation, no remedies are available for members of ethnic minorities.^[14] UK employers can also effectively alleviate themselves from any legal duty not to discriminate on the basis of race, by 'outsourcing' recruitment and thus any liability for the employers' racial screening and discriminatory policies to third party recruitment companies.^[17][18]

Racism within the police and prison staff

Police forces in the United Kingdom have been accused^[who?] of institutionalised racism since the late 20th century.^{[citation needed]} During the 2011 London riots, a Metropolitan Police officer, PC Alex MacFarlane,^[19] arrested and attempted to strangle a male of African origin and used racial insults such as 'nigger' and 'black cunt' towards him. The case was referred to UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) who declined bringing charges against the officers involved. The CPS reconsidered their decision after being threatened by the victim's lawyer to escalate the case to a high court. On 31 March 2012, it was announced the victim has presented a taped recording of the recorded abuses from the police.^[20]

The National Black Police Association which allows only African, African-Caribbean and Asian officers as full members has been criticised as a racist organization because of its selective membership criteria based on ethnic origin.^[21][22][23]

Prison guards are almost twice as likely to be reported for racism than inmates in the UK; with racist incidents between prison guards themselves being nearly as high as that between guards and prisoners. The environment has been described as a dangerous breeding ground for racist extremism.^[24]

Racism in Scotland

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/March_George_Sq.jpg/220px-March_George_Sq.jpg

A protest march by the Irish Catholic community in Glasgow, Scotland on 25 June 2006 against racism.

It has been reported that racial minorities are underrepresented in the police force.^[25] In urban areas, tensions between ethnic Scots and Scottish Pakistanis occasionally flare up. Several items of racism in Scotland are reported here.^[26]

In 2005-6, 1,543 victims of racist crime in Scotland were of Pakistani origin, while more than 1,000 victims were classed as being "white British"^[27] although the Scottish Parliament still has no official policy on "white on white" racism in Scotland.

Kriss Donald was a Scottish fifteen-year-old who was kidnapped and murdered in Glasgow in 2004. Five British Pakistani men were later found guilty of racially motivated violence; those convicted of murder were all sentenced to life imprisonment.^[28]

However, there are indications that the Scottish authorities and people are well aware of the problem and are trying to tackle it. Among Scots under 15 years old there is the sign that, "younger white pupils rarely drew on racist discourses."^[29]

In 2009 the murder of an Indian sailor named Kunal Mohanty by a lone Scotsman named Christopher Miller resulted in Miller's conviction as a criminal motivated by racial hatred. Miller's brother gave evidence during the trial and said Miller told him he had "done a Paki".^[30]

As of 11 February 2011 attacks on Muslims in Scotland have contributed to a 20% increase in racist incidents over the past 12 months. Reports say every day in Scotland, 17 people are abused, threatened or violently attacked because of the colour of their skin, ethnicity or nationality. Statistics showed that just under 5,000 incidents of racism were recorded in 2009/10, a slight decrease from racist incidents recorded in 2008/9. ^[31]

From 2004 to 2012 the rate of racist incidents has been around 5,000 incidents per year.^[32] In 2011-12, there were 5,389 racist incidents recorded by the police, which is a 10% increase on the 4,911 racist incidents recorded in 2010-11.^[33]

See also

	*Discrimination portal*
	*United Kingdom portal*

References

1. Berg, Wendt (1 Dec 2013). Racism in the Modern World: Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation. Berghahn Books. p. 1. ISBN 978-1782380856.

2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/roots/2003/10/arabontyne.shtml

3. Q&A: The Scarman Report 27 BBC Online. April 2004. Accessed 6 October 2002.

4. A Different Reality: minority struggle in British cities University of Warwick. Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations. Accessed 6 October 2006
° The 1981 Brixton riots "The Riot not to work collective". "...What has changed since last year's riots". London 1982. Accessed 6 October 2006

5. Law and Order, moral order: The changing rhetoric of the Thatcher government. online. Ian Taylor. Accessed 6 October 2006

6. Alibhai Brown, Yasmin (26 October 2006). "When the victim is white, does anyone care?". London Evening Standard (London: Associated Newspapers Ltd.). Retrieved 30 May 2014. (subscription required (help)).

7. Presenters:Gavin Esler, Martha Kearney , Discussion Panel: Mark Easton, Kelvin MacKenzie, Lee Jasper Interviewee: Davinia Parker (8 October 2006). "Newsnight". Newsnight. BBC. BBC Two.

8. Montague, Brendan (12 November 2006). "The hidden white victims of racism". The Sunday Times (London: News UK). Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 29 July 2011. (subscription required (help)).

9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/oct/22/ukcrime.race

10. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-13879584

11. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-17996245

12. "Racism 'still exists' in police". BBC News. 22 July 2009. Retrieved 22 May 2010.

13. "SRA accused of institutional racism | News". The Lawyer. Retrieved 2012-05-29.

14. "EHRC - Is it easy to bring a racial discrimination case?". Equalityhumanrights.com. 2010-10-01. Retrieved 2012-05-29.

15. [1]^{[dead link]}

16. Freeman, Simon. "Britain urged to wake up to race crisis", The Times, September 22, 2005.

17. "Barriers to employment for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Britain and constraints". Research.dwp.gov.uk. Retrieved 2012-05-29.

18. As in Iteshi v British Telecommunications PLC UKEATPA/0378/11/DM

19. [2], Yahoo News

20. [3], Yahoo News

21. Tory MP addresses National Black Police Association annual conference... and blasts THEM as racist, The Daily Mail

22. MP mix-up as wrong David Davies accuses National Black Police Association of racism, The Guardian

23. MP defends police race criticism, BBC NEWS

24. Roweena Davis; Paul Lewis (2/7/2010). The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/07/complaints-prison-racisim-staff-inmates. Missing or empty |title= (help)

25. "UK | Scotland | Police racism review sets targets". BBC News. 2005-07-15. Retrieved 2012-05-29.

26. "News - Scotsman.com". News.scotsman.com. Retrieved 2012-05-29.

27. Scotsman.com News - Almost 20 race-hate crimes a day in Scotland

28. Kriss attacked 'for being white'

29. "Minority Ethnic Pupils' Experiences Of School In Scotland (MEPESS)". Scotland.gov.uk. Retrieved 2012-05-29.

30. "Race hate murder man found guilty". BBC News. 10 November 2009.

31. "High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 Racist Incidents". http://www.scotland.gov.uk. Retrieved 2013-05-25.

32. "High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 Racist Incidents". http://www.scotland.gov.uk. Retrieved 2013-05-25.

33. "High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 Racist Incidents". http://www.scotland.gov.uk. Retrieved 2013-05-25.

External links

The proportion of Britons who admit to being racially prejudiced has risen since the start of the millennium, raising concerns that growing hostility to immigrants and widespread Islamophobia are setting community relations back 20 years.

New data from NatCen’s authoritative British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey, obtained by the Guardian, shows that after years of increasing tolerance, the percentage of people who describe themselves as prejudiced against those of other races has risen overall since 2001.

The findings come as political leaders struggle to deal with the rise of the UK Independence party, which campaigned on an anti-immigrant, anti-EU platform and has sent shockwaves through the political establishment and put pressure on mainstream parties to toughen their stances on immigration.

In an echo of the voting patterns of Ukip supporters in last week’s European elections, the figures paint a pattern of a nation geographically divided – with London reporting the lowest levels of racial prejudice. Older men in economically deprived areas are most likely to admit to racial prejudice.

Racial prejudice by region

The data is in stark contrast to other indicators of social change such as attitudes to same-sex relationships and sex before marriage. By those measures, the UK has become a more accepting, liberal country.

The shadow justice minister, Sadiq Khan, said the findings should come as a wake-up call. “This is clear evidence that we cannot be complacent about racial prejudice. Where it manifests itself, it blights our society. Those in positions of authority must take their responsibilities seriously. It also falls to us to address the underlying causes.”

Trevor Phillips, former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: “Integration doesn’t happen by accident – you have to work at it. If we want to avoid a slow descent into mutual bigotry, we need to drop the dogma, stop singing kumbaya to each other, weigh the evidence without sentiment, recognise the reality, and work out a programme – both symbolic and practical – to change the reality.”

The data was taken from the BSA survey carried out by NatCen Social Research and includes exclusive figures from the 2013 survey due to be published next month. It shows a broad decline in the proportion of people who said they were either “very or a little prejudiced” against people of other races – from a high of 38% in 1987 to an all-time low of 25% in 2001.

However, in 2002, following the 9/11 attacks in New York and the invasion of Afghanistan, there was a sharp rise in self-reported racial prejudice.

Over the next 12 years that upward trend continued to a high of 38% in 2011. The following year it fell to 26% – which experts say could be due to the positive impact of the London Olympics.

Mo Farah after winning the Olympic men's 5,000m. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images

Campaigners say the new findings are in part a result of a decade that included 9/11 and the subsequent "war on terror", rising inequality and increasing hostility towards immigration – especially from eastern Europe.

Omar Khan, acting director of the Runnymede Trust – Britain’s leading independent race equality thinktank – said the data should be noted by all the main parties.

“This nails the lie that the problem of racism has been overcome in Britain or that somehow when Jeremy Clarkson said the things he did it is some sort of anomaly that does not tap into a wider problem.

“Politicians became too relaxed and thought that all they had to do was let things continue unhindered and that generational change would take over. But this should act as a warning shot to politicians and the public about how we see ourselves.”

Phillips said: “We have moved on from the days of racial hostility but we are still in a state of acute discomfort about racial difference.”

Trevor Phillips. Photograph: David Levene

He said he was doubtful that people's actual views on race fluctuated sharply year on year, and instead thought events had made people more or less comfortable voicing how they really felt. “They are emboldened at certain points to discuss their discomfort. There is far less interpersonal bigotry and abuse. People don’t hate other people because of their colour, as would have been the case 50 years ago. But that is different to saying: ‘Do I feel comfortable in the company of a lot of people who are not like myself?’”

He said the political and media class faced a huge challenge. “Right now we’re in a state of complete denial about why Ukip’s assault on Britain’s elite culture has found an echo, across the political spectrum. This isn’t just a reaction to the financial crisis; and we need to treat people with greater respect than to imply that if only they were better informed and smarter, they would see the error of their ways.”

The BSA survey data shows different levels of prejudice stemming from age, class and gender, with older men in manual jobs most ready to admit to racial prejudice.

Dr Grace Lordan, from the London School of Economics, said her own research based on BSA data going back to 1983 showed a clear correlation between recession and the numbers who self-described as prejudiced. Her research found that the group that recorded the biggest rise was white, professional men between the ages of 35 and 64, highly educated and earning a lot of money. Their attitudes may directly affect others as many will have managerial responsibilities.

All age groups experienced a spike in their racial prejudice after 2002, but those born since 1980 – generation Y – and the baby boomers born between 1940 and 1959 have seen prejudice levels fall since then. By contrast, people born between 1960 and 79 – generation X – and those born before 1939 increasingly identify as prejudiced.

A fascinating picture also emerges in the self-evaluation of men and women. As with almost all indicators of prejudice, this data finds that men are more likely to describe themselves as racially prejudiced than women. However, that gap has closed significantly over the past decade with the number of men admitting prejudice falling from 37% in 2002 to 32% in 2013. Over the same period, the figure for women has risen from 25% to 29%. "We do know that the factors that predict the likelihood of a man or a woman admitting prejudice differ so we should not expect trends over time to be similar,” said Lordan. “For men, the usual socio-economic variables matter more – income, education and being full-time employed. For females the factors that can predict their attitudes are less obvious. We know that females who are in part-time employment are more likely to admit to being prejudiced – perhaps because part-time jobs in the UK have pretty poor conditions.”

Party allegiance also appears to have a bearing on racial prejudice. Conservative supporters have consistently been the most likely to describe themselves as prejudiced against people of other races. However, since 2002, when 42% of Tory supporters said they were very or a little prejudiced (compared with 27% for Labour and 24% for Lib Dems), they have been overtaken by the category classified as “other”. This appears to coincide with the rise of the far-right British National party and then Ukip.

So what has driven the apparent growth in prejudice? Prof Tariq Modood, from Bristol University, said the findings suggested many people were conflating anti-Muslim sentiment and racial animus. “I don’t think there is any doubt that hostility to Muslims and suspicion of Muslims has increased since 9/11, and that is having a knock-on effect on race and levels of racial prejudice.”

Prof Bhikhu Parekh, the Labour peer who in 1998 chaired the groundbreaking Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, said the data revealed a country increasingly ill at ease with itself. “The last few years have been marked by fear of loss of identity,” he said. “There have been new people coming in and new mores. People feel uncomfortable. They lose their bearings. What should they say or do to not be classed as racist?

Bhikhu Parekh. Photograph: David Sillitoe

“People have a feeling that we are losing control of our own society in terms of the EU and the liberal establishment and that they are not in charge of their destiny. They feel they can’t do anything about it.”

But he also argues that the language around race has changed. “The term racism has undergone a change of meaning. It has lost its moral force. We use it today too freely. After the war if you said someone was racist, you had images of Hitler. A racist was someone who hated people. Now it is applied to someone who might say: ‘I love my people and want to keep others at a distance.'”

The BSA survey data shows wide variance in levels of prejudice throughout the UK. In combined figures for 2012-13, 16% of people questioned in inner London admitted to racial prejudice. Outer London and Scotland emerged as the next most tolerant areas, at 26% and 25% respectively. Other regions – including Wales – hovered around the 30% mark. The West Midlands emerged as the place with the highest level of self-reported prejudice at 35% – a difference deemed statistically significant.

The data is in stark contrast to other indicators of social change such as attitudes to same-sex relationships

It echoes the geographical split demonstrated in last week’s elections, when fewer voters in London supported Ukip.

In London, one obvious explanation would be the churning population. Those with shallow roots are least likely to mourn change. Tony Travers of the London School of Economics said: “There is a self-defining image of London as a place that celebrates difference. It wasn’t created by Ken Livingstone but he did build upon it – in the same way as New York self-defined itself – and that approach has been carried on by his successor, Boris Johnson.”

Travers identifies two migratory tribes in the capital – those who come from abroad and those from other parts of the country. Both choose to live in London and thus buy into the narrative. Strong roots are unnecessary. “The word Londoner is an entirely inclusive concept.”

Ken Livingstone. Photograph: Katherine Rose

Livingstone himself believes London’s migratory inflows have prompted hard decisions by those who could not cope with them. “The virulent racists have either moved out or got used to it. Transition is painful. The difference between London and a lot of other places is that London has been through it.”

Neighbouring the Olympic stadium is Stratford indoor market, where West Indian yams sell alongside Polish sausages, cockles and whelks. Belinda Khini, 24 and from Kosovo, tells her very London story while serving customers with eastern European bread and sausage rolls. Her family gravitated to the edge of Essex, but she says her heart is in London. “There are so many different people here. In Essex people say that they can’t stand London and all the different languages, but I love it. Everyone has their own story and their own language. I love the feeling of now knowing what they are saying. In Basildon, if I tell people I am not English, I feel a bit out of place.”

The Olympic Park in Stratford. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA Wire/Press Association Images

In Smethwick, 135 miles north-west of Stratford, relations were not always so harmonious. Fifty years ago the West Midlands town was at the centre of a storm of controversy when a Tory election campaign used the slogan: “If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour.”

Times have changed but the region still has its challenges. The BSA survey shows that the West Midlands has the highest proportion of people – 36% – who say they are a little or very prejudiced against people of other races in the UK.

After London it is the region with the largest non-white population, and according to the Office for National Statistics, it also has one of the highest rates of unemployment and of families living in poverty.

Joy Warmington. Photograph: David Sillitoe

Sitting in the canteen of her office just outside Birmingham city centre, Joy Warmington, chief executive of the equality and rights charity Brap, said that although the region had a huge amount of diversity it was hampered by a lack of integration and pockets of poverty.

“Communities here feel more contained,” said Warmington. “It is partly because of the housing policy and partly because there is not that much to do outside the city centre so people often don’t mix beyond their own communities.”

She said the makeup of prejudice was complicated. There are tensions between black and Asian communities – highlighted by the riots in 2005 and 2011 – as well as between white and non-white groups. “It is about class and deprivation and also the result of very poor management of an ethnically diverse city and region. What we need to do is get better at creating public spaces where people can mix, at serving really diverse communities and addressing some of the underlying problems of poverty and isolation.”

Christine Deeming. Photograph: David Sillitoe

However, some people remain unconvinced. Christine Deeming, 71, is waiting at a bus stop around the corner from the polling station in Smethwick.

“If I got the chance and the money I would leave tomorrow,” she said. “I have been here all my life but, you know, it’s not Great Britain any more is it? … To be honest I feel like the foreigner these days.”

• This article was amended on 30 May 2014. A production error meant the original graphic showing regional variations used figures from NatCen for 2013. The updated version uses regional figures from 2012 and 2013 combined, giving a larger sample size.

Featured comment

It's to be expected. Poverty breeds fear which causes people to look for scapegoats. Whilst we are all fighting amongst ourselves the ruling class continue their lives of luxury at our expense.

ellatynemouth

27 May 2014

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It's to be expected. Poverty breeds fear which causes people to look for scapegoats. Whilst we are all fighting amongst ourselves the ruling class continue their lives of luxury at our expense.

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H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

unread,

Jul 9, 2014, 8:21:49 PM7/9/14

Racism in Britain

Pride and prejudice

Britain is becoming less racist, not more

May 31st 2014 | From the print edition

IS BRITAIN becoming a less tolerant country? Data collected by NatCen, a research institute which runs the annual British Social Attitudes survey, seem to show that racism has increased of late. The Guardian, a newspaper which published the findings on May 28th, reported that hostility to immigrants is “setting community relations back 20 years”. Yet pull apart the data and a different conclusion emerges.

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/20140531_BRC001.png

According to NatCen, the proportion of people who, asked about their opinion of themselves, admit to being “a little” or “very” prejudiced jumped from 26% in 2012 to 30% last year. The year-to-year data are spiky—the figure jumped to 38% in 2011—but a moving average does suggest that self-defined prejudice has risen slightly over the past decade.

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H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

unread,

Jul 16, 2014, 10:18:21 AM7/16/14

The living God is not a Spirit/matter that can be contained and rationalized by the whole of science – science is the fractional decomposition of parts of a gigantic WHOLE – the living God is a TRANSCENDENTAL GOD. The fully developed and fully enlightened person/super-power is not a fractional ENTITY. A healthy brain is most protective of itself, is most sustainable of itself only when that healthy BRAIN first of all feeds all the members/parts of the body before feeding itself; a healthy long-living ROOT of a Tree of Life first of all feeds all the trunk and branches/leaves before it can grow larger/stronger/deeper; a healthy kingdom that is strong and eternal is built by the great leader who invests all his life energies/resources and consciousness that enriches and nourishes every single citizen spiritually and physically before hoarding the wealth and energy of all.

The Energy and Light of God gives life, and love and materials to mankind without end, without boundaries and without predatory/destructive impatience. The Unified Cosmos of God builds an empire where creation and creativity is never ever finite and where life is never drained but rather nourished and empowered. The love and heart of God in a person/superpower permeates all things and people with bliss and peace, with life and expansion, with supply and growth, with harmony and order, with hope and consciousness of equality.

An enlightenment built upon WARS is no civilization at all --- it is very limited in possibilities and invariably comes to terminus. The year 1923 was the third year after the birth of the Second Messiah. In that year God slowly weakened Japan with earth-quakes so Korea could gradually survive the terrors of a strong Satanic Empire next door. By the year 2023, if America does not reduce racism/Satanism, re-define her national and international philosophy of BEING, adjust her foreign policy and streamline her Global purpose of Life/energy, implement fundamental CHANGES within her three arms of ARMS of government with Godism at the CORE of all things and people, then an unfortunate earthquake(s) never seen in four hundred years will weaken her unity, her muscles, her life, her corporations, her resources, her spirit and global influence. Unfortunately, that may come in the midst of a civil or religious war. It(the quake) will tear the land up into three or more pieces and a third of the population will disappear overnight. Waters will drink up more of the land that once was meant to be united under God rather than man-made-laws. The dream of a “New Jerusalem” that was meant to be an example to mankind shall disappear for ever and ever. The Nation destined to be by Abraham Lincoln shall forever never be. The Nation sought for by God before the coming of the messiah shall become like ancient Rome. The nation that was meant by God to enrich all parts of the cosmos; the empire that was meant to conquer the world with peace and love, life and energy, support and development, spirit and consciousness, heart and value shall then die a nation that went out to gather the flesh and materials of the earth in endless utopia-capitalism, racism/Satanism. And to their father the devil, God will give up his bridal empire -- lost to an unconscious and arrogant/ignorant/irresponsible generation of secular rational elitists, racists and Satanists looking like humans – yet heartless demons on the earth, un-repenting, unyielding and un-embracive of God.

Thereafter, they shall never win any international WAR, the tool by which they had lived and divided mankind for over 400 years. An exodus never seen in a thousand years will follow; and her territory shall be abandoned to the wolves. And this judgment shall be the judgment of God for the quality of hearts/sexual organs of men/women on earth. And for 400-1000 years, a nation of the East shall lead mankind unto God’s bosom by the tools/hearts of true peace and service, shinning like the sun and moon equally to all tribes and tongues in a manner never seen in 6000 years of human life before and after Yesu Kristo. Thereafter, men and women of all nations shall learn and live peace and mankind under God, ONE Family Under One Consciousness/LOVE, shall reign in bridal love with God on earth, each couple lasting 120years to 700 years across planets and galaxies.

----- Kum Nelson Bame Bame

Oklahoma earthquakes highlight an inconvenient truth about innovation

By Dominic Basulto July 15

http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/03/Health-Environment-Science/Images/Oil_Drilling_Earthquakes-03c35.jpg

Recent earthquake activity in Oklahoma has created public debate about the risks and rewards of hydraulic fracturing. (Sue Ogrocki/AP)

The current debate that Oklahoma is having over the potential link between hydraulic fracturing and the unprecedented spike in earthquake activity in recent months offers a warning lesson: every innovation comes with tradeoffs. In this case, the reward of cheaper, more bountiful energy promised by hydraulic fracturing appears to be offset by the risk of increased seismic activity. When it comes to innovation, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

While the oil and gas industry rejects any suggestion that fracking might be the root cause of Oklahoma’s earthquake spike, it’s hard to ignore that something very strange is happening in Oklahoma. Over a fifteen-month period from 2010 to 2011, there were 850 earthquakes in Oklahoma – compared to just six in the entire period from 2000 to 2008. Through May of this year, Oklahoma had already experienced 145 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher – an all-time record. As if to punctuate that point, this weekend saw another four earthquakes, all of them magnitude 3.0 or higher, and geological experts warned in May that a “damaging one” – bigger than the 5.6 quake in 2011 — is on the way.

http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/files/2014/07/USGS-Earthquake-data.png

A seismic map showing all magnitude 2.5 or higher earthquakes occurring over the past 30 days. The Oklahoma region stands out. (U.S. Geological Survey)

If you look at a map of seismic activity, the strangeness is only compounded. You would expect earthquakes in regions near fault lines or plate lines – such as California or regions of Mexico and the Caribbean – but why Oklahoma? When a region without any history of earthquakes suddenly becomes afflicted by earthquakes, that’s odd.

There are two natural reactions anytime a statistical anomaly like this happens: (A) look the other way and assume it’s all just a coincidence or (B) attempt to assign blame to a culprit.

In the case of the mysterious Oklahoma earthquakes, a potential culprit has already been identified: hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). In a study released in the journal Science at the beginning of July, a team of researchers found a clear link between Oklahoma’s earthquakes and the “massive wastewater injection” required by fracking. The U.S. Geological Survey agrees, as does the Oklahoma Geological Survey. According to scientists in other states as well, the evidence is mounting that massive injection of toxic wastewater from hydraulic fracturing back into the earth – but not necessarily the process of fracking itself – is responsible for increased seismic activity.

It’s scientist vs. scientist now, as both sides attempt to provide data and statistics showing that there is – or isn’t – any correlation between fracking and the higher incidence of earthquakes. And, in all fairness, regions that are hotbeds of fracking activity – such as North Dakota – don’t appear to be experiencing Oklahoma’s seismic spike.

Fracking, which some probably view as one of the greatest innovations ever, may turn out to have way too many side effects to be worth it. Yes, fracking has brought us the “shale revolution” and has transformed the United States into an energy leader, but at what cost? In the inevitable weighing of risk and reward, the risk of a magnitude 5.5 or higher earthquake now seems too high to ignore.

We typically think of innovations in terms of iPads and smartphones, and assume that innovation is somehow a “risk-less” endeavor. More innovation means more cool stuff for consumers, right? There is no magnitude 5.5 earthquake scenario for the companies of Silicon Valley, only the region of Silicon Valley. Yes, we hear stories about sweatshop conditions in overseas factories where all these wonderful devices are manufactured or bizarre stories of medical problems caused by gadget usage. By and large, though, we’re willing to overlook these risks because they seem to be manageable or (cynically, perhaps) tolerable.

But what about innovations such as hydraulic fracturing? There, the costs appear to be much higher, and mostly because these risks are occurring closer to home. Earthquakes in Oklahoma are events that are real and tangible. If hydraulic fracturing were packaged and sold like a pharmaceutical drug, it would presumably have to come with a strong warning on its label: “Possible side effects may include earthquakes.”

Some states – such as Ohio and Arkansas – have already read the equivalent of these warning labels and decided to take action. Ohio has banned the use of disposal wells near fault lines, while Arkansas has banned the use of drilling wells in a specific region. They have determined that the costs of innovation outweigh the perceived benefits. They’d rather forgo some of the potential economic effects of oil companies in their states to avoid a potential disaster involving human lives.

Ultimately, new innovations are tried in the court of public opinion. We weigh the risks and rewards and determine as a society whether the risks are acceptable. Think of the hue and cry over any product that fails to perform as advertised, and especially the race to recall any product that proves to be a safety or health hazard. While it’s true that all innovations come with tradeoffs, not all innovations are intrinsically the same. Some innovations are judged to be innocent until proven guilty, while others — such as hydraulic fracturing — are judged to be guilty until proven innocent. And so the burden of proof falls on the oil and gas industry to show us that the tradeoffs involved in fracking are worth it.

Dominic Basulto is a futurist and blogger based in New York City.

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The Great Japan Earthquake of 1923

The powerful quake and ensuing tsunami that struck Yokohama and Tokyo traumatized a nation and unleashed historic consequences

By Joshua Hammer

Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe
May 2011

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The first shock hit at 11:58 a.m., emanating from a seismic fault six miles beneath the floor of Sagami Bay, 30 miles south of Tokyo. A 60- by 60-mile segment of the Philippine oceanic plate ruptured and thrust itself against the Eurasian continental plate, releasing a massive burst of tectonic energy. Down at the docks of Yokohama, Japan’s biggest port and its gateway to the West, hundreds of well-wishers were seeing off the Empress of Australia, a 615-foot luxury steamship bound for Vancouver. “The smiles vanished,” remembered Ellis M. Zacharias, then a young U.S. naval officer, who was standing on the pier when the earthquake hit, “and for an appreciable instant everyone stood transfixed” by “the sound of unearthly thunder.” Moments later, a tremendous jolt knocked Zacharias off his feet, and the pier collapsed, spilling cars and people into the water.

The date was September 1, 1923, and the event was the Great Kanto Earthquake, at the time considered the worst natural disaster ever to strike quake-prone Japan. The initial jolt was followed a few minutes later by a 40-foot-high tsunami. A series of towering waves swept away thousands of people. Then came fires, roaring through the wooden houses of Yokohama and Tokyo, the capital, burning everything—and everyone—in their path. The death toll would be about 140,000, including 44,000 who had sought refuge near Tokyo’s Sumida River in the first few hours, only to be immolated by a freak pillar of fire known as a “dragon twist.” The temblor destroyed two of Japan’s largest cities and traumatized the nation; it also whipped up nationalist and racist passions. And the quake may have emboldened right-wing forces at the very moment that the country was poised between military expansion and an embrace of Western democracy, only 18 years before Japan would enter World War II.

The 9.0 earthquake that struck the northeast coast of Honshu this past March is not likely to have such an impact on Japan’s history. Nevertheless, there are parallels. Like the 1923 quake, this one unleashed secondary disasters: a tsunami that washed away dozens of villages; mudslides; fires; and damage to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that emitted radiation into the atmosphere (and constituted the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986). In both instances, the toll was considerable, with estimated deaths in the 2011 quake approaching 30,000 and damage that could go as high as $310 billion. Fuel, food and water were hard to come by weeks after the earthquake, and the Japanese government acknowledged that it had been ill-prepared for a calamity on this scale. Traditional figures offered words of solace: Crown Prince Hirohito 88 years ago; his son, Emperor Akihito, in 2011.

Before the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, Japan was full of optimism. No center symbolized the country’s dynamism more than Yokohama, known as the City of Silk. Founded as Japan’s first “Foreign Settlement” in 1859, five years after U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry forced the shogun to open Japan to the West, Yokohama had grown into a cosmopolitan city of half a million. Attracting entrepreneurs, fugitives, traders, spies and drifters from every corner of the world, the port rose “like a mirage in the desert,” wrote one Japanese novelist. From the waterfront promenade, known as the Bund, to the Bluff, the hillside neighborhood favored by foreign residents, Yokohama was where East met West, and liberal ideas—including democracy, collective bargaining and women’s rights—transfixed those who engaged them. Nobel nominee Junicho Tanizaki, who spent two years in Yokohama writing screenplays, marveled at “a riot of loud Western colors and smells—the odor of cigars, the aroma of chocolate, the fragrance of flowers, the scent of perfume.”

The Great Kanto Earthquake obliterated all of that in a single afternoon. According to survivors, the initial quaking lasted for about 14 seconds—long enough to bring down nearly every building on Yokohama’s watery, unstable ground. The three-story Grand Hotel, an elegant Victorian villa on the seafront that had played host to Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham and William Howard Taft, collapsed, crushing hundreds of guests and employees. Twenty expatriate regulars at the Yokohama United Club, the city’s most popular watering hole, died when the concrete building pancaked. Otis Manchester Poole, a 43-year-old American manager of a trading firm, stepped out of his largely still-intact office near the Bund to face an indelible scene. “Over everything had settled a thick white dust,” he remembered years later, “and through the yellow fog of dust, still in the air, a copper-coloured sun shone upon this silent havoc in sickly reality.” Fanned by high winds, fires from overturned cookstoves and ruptured gas mains spread. Soon, the entire city was ablaze.

Meanwhile, a wall of water surged from the fault zone toward the coast of Honshu. Three hundred people died in Kamakura, the ancient capital, when a 20-foot-high wave washed over the town. “The tidal wave swept out a great section of the village near the beach,” wrote Henry W. Kinney, a Tokyo-based editor for Trans-Pacific magazine. “I saw a thirty-foot sampan [boat] that had been lifted neatly on top of the roof of a prostrated house. Vast portions of the hills facing the ocean had slid into the sea.”

Although the shock waves had weakened by the time they reached through the Kanto region to Tokyo, 17 miles north of Yokohama, many poorer neighborhoods built on unstable ground east of the Sumida River collapsed in seconds. Then, as in Yokohama, fires spread, fueled by flimsy wooden houses and fanned by high winds. The quake destroyed the city’s water mains, paralyzing the fire department. According to one police report, fires had broken out in 83 locations by 12:15. Fifteen minutes later, they had spread to 136. People fled toward the Sumida River, drowning by the hundreds when bridges collapsed. Tens of thousands of working-class Japanese found refuge in an empty patch of ground near the river. The flames closed in from all directions, and then, at 4 p.m., a 300-foot-tall “fire tornado” blazed across the area. Of the 44,000 people who had gathered there, only 300 survived. All told, 45 percent of Tokyo burned before the last embers of the inferno died out on September 3.

As the evening of the quake approached, Kinney observed, “Yokohama, the city of almost half a million souls, had become a vast plain of fire, of red, devouring sheets of flame which played and flickered. Here and there a remnant of a building, a few shattered walls, stood up like rocks above the expanse of flame, unrecognizable....It was as if the very earth were now burning. It presented exactly the aspect of a gigantic Christmas pudding over which the spirits were blazing, devouring nothing. For the city was gone.”

The tragedy prompted countless acts of heroism. Thomas Ryan, a 22-year-old U.S. naval ensign, freed a woman trapped inside the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, then carried the victim—who had suffered two broken legs—to safety, seconds ahead of a fire that engulfed the ruins. Capt. Samuel Robinson, the Canadian skipper of the Empress of Australia, took hundreds of refugees aboard, organized a fire brigade that kept the ship from being incinerated by advancing flames, then steered the crippled vessel to safety in the outer harbor. Then there was Taki Yonemura, chief engineer of the government wireless station in Iwaki, a small town 152 miles northeast of Tokyo. Hours after the earthquake, Yonemura picked up a faint signal from a naval station near Yokohama, relaying word of the catastrophe. Yonemura tapped out a 19-word bulletin—CONFLAGRATION SUBSEQUENT TO SEVERE EARTHQUAKE AT YOKOHAMA AT NOON TODAY. WHOLE CITY ABLAZE WITH NUMEROUS CASUALTIES. ALL TRAFFIC STOPPED—and dispatched it to an RCA receiving station in Hawaii. For the next three days, Yonemura sent a stream of reports that alerted the world to the unfolding tragedy. The radio man “flashed the news across the sea at the speed of sunlight,” reported the New York Times, “to tell of tremendous casualties, buildings leveled by fire, towns swept by tidal waves...disorder by rioters, raging fire and wrecked bridges.”

Yonemura’s bulletins helped to galvanize an international relief effort, led by the United States, that saved thousands from near-certain death or prolonged misery. U.S. naval vessels set sail from China on the evening of September 2, and within a week, dozens of warships packed with relief supplies—rice, canned roast beef, reed mats, gasoline—filled Yokohama Harbor. From Washington, President Calvin Coolidge took the lead in rallying the United States. “An overwhelming disaster has overtaken the people of the friendly nation of Japan,” he declared on September 3. “The cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, and surrounding towns and villages, have been largely if not completely destroyed by earthquake, fire and flood, with a resultant appalling loss of life and destitution and distress, requiring measures of urgent relief.” The American Red Cross, of which Coolidge was the titular head, initiated a national relief drive, raising $12 million for victims.

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GLOBAL RACISM IN PALESTINE/CANAAN.

Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa | 2004 | Peretz, Don | Copyright

PALESTINE

area located on the eastern shore of the mediterranean south of lebanon and northeast of egypt.

The area known as Palestine has taken on different geographic and political connotations over time. The following discussion distinguishes between (a) pre-twentieth-century history of the area; (b) Palestine as a territory under British administration from late 1917 to early 1948; and (c) Palestine as the territory administered by the Palestine National Authority since 1994, also known as the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Pre-Twentieth-Century History

Palestine has since ancient times been a crossroads between Asia, Europe, and Africa. Its climate is arid. The southern half, the Negev, is desert, but in the north there are several fertile areas. The principal water source is the Jordan River, which flows south through Lake Tiberias into the Dead Sea.

Palestine is of central importance to three monotheistic faiths: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. For 1,300 of the past 1,400 years, the land was under Muslim rule. Most European and North American Christians and Jews consider Palestine on both sides of the Jordan to be the Holy Land of the Old Testament of the Bible. Although the British initially designated the area of the Palestine Mandate to extend eastward to Mesopotamia (Iraq), by the early twentieth century most people took the Jordan River to be the eastern border of Palestine.

The earliest inhabitants of Palestine were the Canaanites. The land was conquered by numerous invaders, including (in the fourteenth century b.c.e.) the Hebrews and the Philistines, who gave the country its name. The Israelites, a confederation of Hebrew tribes, established a unified kingdom in the area under David and Solomon (c. 1000–922 b.c.e.), which subsequently split into the kingdoms of Israel in the north and Judaea in the south. From 587 b.c.e., Palestine became a province of the Persian Empire, and was later ruled by Jewish kings as part of the Roman empire. The Romans crushed the Jewish revolts of 66–73 and 132–135 c.e., killing and exiling many Jews, and renaming the area Syria Palaestina.

In 638 c.e. Arabian Muslim armies captured Jerusalem and replaced the Byzantine rulers of the area, which thereafter became known as Filastin. Arab geographers in the tenth century referred to Filastin as one of the provinces of Syria, but by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the term was no longer used.

From the fifteenth century until the end of World War I, the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. Changing provincial and administrative boundaries within the empire blurred Palestine's separate existence. In an attempt to centralize government administration, the Ottoman Empire was divided into new administrative regions under the Vilayet Law of 1864. Under this arrangement the central and largest part of Palestine, as well as Transjordan, became part of the vilayet (province) of Damascus. The northern part of the country, including Acre, Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkarm, was part of the vilayet of Beirut. Jerusalem, Gaza, Hebron, and Beersheba became the sanjak (district) of Jerusalem, which, because of the city's special religious status and because of European interest, was established as an independent unit governed directly from Constantinople (now Istanbul).

By the mid-nineteenth century the population of Palestine was about 500,000, the vast majority of whom were Muslims. The southern half of the country, later called the Negev, was mostly desert, sparsely inhabited by bedoun tribes. Overall, only about a third of Palestine was suitable for cultivation.

By the end of the nineteenth century, a commercial bourgeoisie comprised of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and German Templars played an important role in the incorporation of Palestine's economy into the world economic system. There was a major increase in cultivation of export commodities that included wheat, barley, sesame, olive oil, and oranges. Small-scale industries produced textiles, soap, oil, and religious items.

Palestine as a modern political entity came into existence as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Although the Arabs of the region considered themselves to be a distinctive group, there was no serious conflict between them and the Ottoman Turkish establishment until the early twentieth century. Nineteenth-century Palestinian elites approved of and benefited from the Ottoman reform effort (Tanzimat, from 1839 to 1876), and many of them held influential posts in the ruling establishment in Constantinople. Several served in the parliament; Nablus was reputed to be especially favored by Sultan Abdülhamit II. It was against this backdrop that an Arab "decentralist" movement would emerge before World War I, and within this wider pan-Arab political sentiment the first seeds of a distinct Palestinian nationalism were sown.

Although Jews had been living in Palestine (which they call Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel) for millennia, the first politically motivated Jewish immigration came in 1882. At the time, the Jewish population was about 24,000, mostly comprised of Orthodox Jews unaffiliated with the Zionist movement. They were settled mainly in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. There was little friction between these Jews, the "Old Yishuv," and the indigenous Arab population. However, as the number of Zionist settlements increased, quarrels arose between them and neighboring villages over grazing, crops, and land issues. Between 1886 and World War I, there were several armed clashes that resulted from Jewish settlers purchasing land from absentee Arab owners and subsequently dispossessing the peasant cultivators.

Growing opposition to Zionism and emergence of a new pan-Turkish ideology following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 led to a heightened sense of distinctive Palestinian patriotism. Although most of the Palestinian elite remained loyal to the Ottoman sultan during World War I, a few prominent intellectuals identified with the nascent pan-Arab nationalist movement. During the war, opposition to Ottoman authority increased because of economic disasters (caused by a locust plague, drought, and famine) with which the Ottoman authorities failed to cope, and because of the repressive measures imposed by the Turkish governor, Cemal Paça.

Palestine under British Rule

Before World War I the area that became Palestine was sometimes known as "southern Syria." With the retreat of the Ottoman Army, Palestine was occupied by British forces under General Sir Edmund Allenby in 1917 and 1918, and was placed under a military government administration known as Occupied Enemy Territory Administration South (OETA-S) until 1 July 1920, when the military regime was replaced by a British civil administration. During three decades of British rule, Palestinians further developed their national consciousness and were able to exercise some degree of national-communal political activity.

In London, the British foreign secretary, Arthur J. Balfour, wrote a letter on 2 November 1917 defining His Majesty's Government's new policy favoring the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In April 1918 a Zionist Commission arrived in Jaffa with a mission (despite a local publication ban on the Balfour Declaration) to prepare the Yishuv to enjoy special status and privileges under an expected pro-Zionist British regime that would encourage Jewish immigration, settlement, land purchase, and—eventually—statehood. Rumors about the impending implementation of the Balfour policy alarmed many sectors of the Palestinian population, whose local leadership created, during the first year of the British occupation, a country-wide organization to express its opposition to Zionism. The Muslim-Christian Association (MCA) first appeared in Jaffa early in November 1918, and in Jerusalem later the same month; subsequently it set up branches in various Palestinian towns. The purpose behind creating the MCA was to organize a Palestinian national struggle against the threat of Zionism.

The top leadership of the MCA was drawn largely from the older generation of urban notables who had social standing in Ottoman times. Initially, the
MCA, under former Jerusalem mayor Musa Kazim al-Husayni, did not have much political power, and its significance derived from the fact that it embodied the concept of political cooperation between Muslims and Christians in Palestine. Gradually, however, it became a group of leaders and activists who were able to mobilize important segments of Palestinian society around a program of independence and opposition to Zionism. Their main instruments of political action were petitions submitted to the Palestine government and the organizing of demonstrations and other campaigns on instructions from the Jerusalem secretariat, which was headed by Jamal al-Husayni. Yet the notables who led the MCAs were interested in maintaining friendly relations with the new British masters of the country.

As part of its efforts to promote Palestinian national demands, the MCA was instrumental in convening a country-wide congress in Jerusalem from 27 January to 9 February 1919. Called the first Palestine Arab Congress, it was followed by six more, the last of which was held in 1928. The MCA also initiated the formation of the Arab Executive (AE) Committee that tried to coordinate the national struggle in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Government of Palestine under the Mandate

Following the British takeover, Palestine acquired fixed boundaries, its own government, and a political identity separate from the surrounding countries carved from the Ottoman Empire by Great Britain and France. Its separate identity was given international recognition when Great Britain assumed the Mandate for Palestine under the League of Nations in July 1922. In 1923 the British unilaterally divided the area of the original mandate into Transjordan (east of the Jordan River) and western Palestine, with the Jewish national home provisions of the mandate applying only to the latter territory. The area east of the river became the autonomous emirate (principality) of Transjordan (later the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan) under the Amir Abdullah, son of the sharif of Mecca.

According to the terms of the Mandate for Palestine, Great Britain was ultimately responsible to the League of Nations for governing the country, which was ruled, in effect, like a colony, under a high commissioner (HC) appointed by the British government. The HC was responsible to the Colonial Office in London rather than to the local population and had authority to make all government appointments, laws, rules, and regulations. He was backed by British military forces and police. Most high commissioners were former British colonial officials or army generals. The government of Palestine created its own courts, postal service, police force, customs, railroad and transportation network, and currency backed by the British pound sterling. Until 1948 the inhabitants of the country, both Arabs and Jews, were legally called Palestinians and considered British subjects.

The British attempted to introduce a limited measure of self-government through establishment of advisory and legislative councils during the 1920s and 1930s. The first, set up in October 1920, was a nominated advisory council (AC) pending the establishment of a legislative body. The AC was composed of ten Palestinian officials: four Muslims, three Christians, and three Jewish members of the Yishuv.

In August 1922 the HC, Sir Herbert Louis Samuel, proposed as a first step toward self-government a constitution that called for the replacement of the AC with a legislative council (LC). The proposed LC was to be composed of twenty-three members: eleven appointed British members, including the high commissioner, and twelve elected Palestinian members, incuding eight Muslims, two Christians, and two Jews. However, in order to safeguard the Balfour policy of support for the Jewish national home, the HC would retain a veto power and the council's legislative authority would not extend to such central issues as Jewish immigration and land purchase.

The Jews reluctantly accepted, but the Palestinians rejected the proposed constitution and boycotted the elections for the LC in February 1923. Palestinian leaders argued that participation in the council would be tantamount to acceptance of the British Mandate and Balfour policy, which they feared would lead to their subjugation under a Jewish majority in an eventual state. The poor election turnout caused the HC to shelve the LC proposal and revert to the idea of an advisory council. But Samuel failed to convince Palestinian leaders to sit on a revised AC; nor was his subsequent proposal to establish an "Arab Agency" (to be parallel to the "Jewish Agency" recognized under the mandate) any more successful at winning the cooperation of local politicians. Samuel thereupon abandoned the idea of encouraging popular participation in the governing of Palestine. Although the idea of establishing a LC would be revived in 1928 and again in the early 1930s, the British were unable to win both Arab and Jewish support for their proposals. As a result, Palestine was governed, from 1923 until the end of the Mandate in 1948, by a HC in consultation with an AC composed only of British officials.

Britain's Dual Obligation and Intercommunal Rivalry. The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine incorporated provisions of the Balfour Declaration calling for "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." It also recognized the "historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine," promised support of Zionist objectives, and gave preference to Jewish land acquisition and settlement. Although the mandate (like the Balfour Declaration) made no specific reference to the Arab population as possessing national rights (referring to them as the "existing non-Jewish communities"), it prohibited "discrimination of any kind . . . between the inhabitants of Palestine."

As a result of this dual obligation to both foster the establishment of the Jewish national home and ensure "that the rights and position of other sectors of the population are not prejudiced," British policy was ambivalent, and at first seemed destined to arouse unrealizable expectations on the part of both communities. Initial support for Zionist objectives was indicated in the appointment of Herbert Samuel, an Anglo-Jewish leader sympathetic to Zionism, as the first HC to Palestine (1920–1925). However, opposition by the country's Arab majority to the establishment of a Jewish homeland and to larger imperial interests became a major obstacle to full British cooperation with Zionist leaders who were eager, for their part, to proceed full speed toward their objectives of a Jewish majority and an eventual Jewish state in Palestine.

The dissatisfaction of Palestine's Arab population with Britain's pro-Zionist policy was expressed peacefully in the forms of public demonstrations, protest letters and petitions, and the dispatch of several delegations to London and Geneva. Palestinian leaders, seeking self-determination and the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine, feared Jewish domination (through increasing immigration and land purchases) and the establishment of a Jewish state. Nationalist frustrations led to periodic rioting (April 1920, May 1921, November 1922, August 1929, November 1933) and to a full-scale rebellion known as the Arab Revolt (1936–1939). Local British security forces restored law and order, and the Colonial Office in London issued several policy statements (White Papers) in attempts to redefine or clarify its Palestine policy. But all attempts to bridge the gap between the Arab and Jewish communities were unsuccessful; each community proceeded to develop itself with little, if any, contact with the other. By 1939 Great Britain had retreated from its position on implementing the Balfour provisions of the mandate.

Each community developed its own educational, health, welfare, cultural, political, and labor organizations. Arab schools supported by the Mandatory government's Education Department were conducted in Arabic with their own curriculum. The Yishuv had its own schools, where the language was Hebrew, and its own Hebrew University, founded in 1925. The two communities lived largely separately; contact was only at the peripheries, in government offices, or in a few business enterprises. The Yishuv was mainly urban, concentrated in the coastal region and in the city of Jerusalem, whereas the Arab sector was largely rural, in central Palestine.

By the end of the mandate in 1948, the Palestinian population had doubled, mostly through natural increase, from just over 650,000 (1922 census) to 1.3 million. During the same period the population of the Yishuv increased even more dramatically, largely through immigration, from about 84,000 to approximately 650,000. The increase in the Jewish population from about a tenth to a third of the total population of Palestine was accompanied by extensive expansion of the Yishuv's socioeconomic and politicomilitary infrastructure. The number of rural collectives (kibbutzim), cooperatives (moshavim), and private farms increased several times; the all-Jewish city of Tel Aviv grew from an adjunct of Jaffa to the second largest municipality in the country. Jewish-owned industry dominated the economy. Despite the growth of its rural sector, the Yishuv was 85 percent urban by the end of the mandate, and Jewish-owned land comprised less than 7 percent of the total, although more than a quarter of the cultivated area was Jewish.

The Yishuv developed its own political parties and self-governing institutions that took responsibility for functions not under jurisdiction of the mandatory government, such as courts, education, and social welfare. The British recognized the World Zionist Organization as the official agency to implement establishment of the Jewish national home. Within Palestine the Yishuv elected its elected assembly (Assefat ha-Nivharim), whose national council (Vaʿad Leʾumi) ran the day-to-day affairs of the Jewish community. More than a dozen political parties were divided into four principal categories: labor, general Zionist, Orthodox religious, and Sephardic or Oriental. The strongest political bloc was labor by virtue of its control of the Histadrut, the large labor federation that controlled much of the Yishuv's economy, and of the largest paramilitary group, the Haganah.

Palestinian Political Organization during the Mandate. The Palestinian community was much less centralized and more loosely organized than the Yishuv. The older politicians, representing the traditional elite and notable families who had been closely associated with the Ottoman establishment, had formed the MCA in 1918 and continued to lead the Palestine Arab Congresses by holding positions on the Arab Executive.

With the defeat of Faisal's Arab kingdom by the French in July 1920, Palestinian leaders who had previously been engaged in the struggle for independent "Greater Syria" focused on local problems, primarily the struggle against the British mandate and the Jewish national home. Later that year, the third Palestinian Arab Congress convened in Haifa, elected an AE committee, and sent a delegation to plead the Palestinian cause both at the Colonial Office in London and at the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva. Neither the congresses nor the AE were successful in attaining their objective, and both gradually lost credibility. When its chairman, Musa Kazim al-Husayni, died in 1934, the Arab Executive ceased to exist.

Throughout the mandate period serious rivalry for political office and government favor existed between members of the Nashashibi and Husayni families. The most influential Palestinian leader was al-Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, appointed by the British as mufti of Jerusalem in 1921 and elected president of the Supreme Muslim Council in 1922. By virtue of these positions he commanded extensive financial resources and influence throughout the Palestinian community. Prior to 1936 the mufti pursued a policy of cooperation that aided the High Commissioner in keeping the peace. However, following the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936, al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni became more militantly anti-British. His activities ultimately led the British to seek his arrest, but in mid-1937 he escaped, first to Lebanon, then to Iraq.

Supporters of the mufti, called Councilites (almajlisiyyun), were opposed by "the Opposition" (almuʿaridun) led by the Nashashibi family. Both groups were supported by extensive clan (hamula) networks and client relationships. The Husaynis, the larger network, were considered more militant than the Nashashibis, who were willing to compromise with the British. Even though both factions rejected the Jewish national home, these internal rivalries constituted a weakness vis-à-vis the more cohesive Jewish community.

Following demise of the Arab Executive in 1934, younger and more militant elements became active in local Palestinian politics, leading to the creation of the Palestinian branch of the pan-Arab Independence (Istiqlal) Party headed by Awni Abd al-Hadi, who was joined by Akram Zuʿaytir and Muhammad Izzat Darwaza. The old MCA and AE forces also regrouped into rival Arab political parties, chiefly the Palestine Arab Party, organized by the Husaynis, and the National Defense Party, headed by the Nashashibis. The Palestine Arab Party was founded in March 1935 by Jamal al-Husayni, a relative of alHajj Amin al-Husayni. Many political activists who had previously supported the AE (1920–1934) joined its ranks. Its leaders maintained close contact with the Roman Catholic community through its officers, Alfred Rock and Emile al-Ghuri, and with the activist scouts' movement and workers' societies in Jerusalem and Haifa. The party endorsed the following set of "national demands," which were later endorsed by an umbrella organization representing all major parties: (a) repudiation of the Balfour Declaration; (b) full stoppage of Jewish immigration and land purchases; and (c) the immediate establishment of Palestine as an independent state under Arab control.

The National Defense Party was formed on 2 December 1934 by the supporters of Raghib alNashashibi, the former mayor of Jerusalem. The leaders encompassed most Arab mayors; important politicians from large landowning families; influential middle-class Christians; and the Jaffa branch of the Palestine Arab Workers Society. The party denounced the sale of land to Zionist landholding companies and sought limitations on Jewish immigration. Nonetheless, it was tacitly more cooperative with the British authorities and Zionist leaders, and (unlike the Husaynis) maintained good relations with Amir Abdullah of Transjordan.

General Strike and Revolt, 1936–1939. By April 1936, growing Palestinian concern at the rapid influx of Jewish immigration and the accompanying frustration at British unwillingness to fulfill their national demands led to a general strike against the British authorities and the Yishuv. The strike soon became an uprising, drawing support from the whole Palestinian community and from Arab nationalist circles in the neighboring lands. The Arab Higher Committee (AHC), chaired by the mufti and representing a broad coalition of Arab political organizations, was formed to lead the uprising. Elements of the Palestine Arab Party formed an underground paramilitary force that remained active until suppressed by the British in early 1939.

During a lull in the fighting (1936–1937), the British sent a Royal Commission of Inquiry under William Robert Wellesley, the first Earl Peel, to ascertain the causes of the rebellion and to propose solutions. In July 1937 the Peel Commission recommended a form of radical surgery: the partition of Palestine into a small Jewish coastal state, and a larger Arab state to be joined with Transjordan. The Palestine Arab Party denounced the plan, and the revolt resumed, this time with greater support from nationalist groups in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The National Defense Party, for its part, accepted the Peel Commission concept of territorial partition and was not averse to the idea of linking the Arab portion of Mandatory Palestine to Abdullah's Trans-jordan. The party was criticized by other Palestinian politicians for deviating from the antipartition consensus.

The short-lived unity behind the AHC was broken when the uprising entered its second phase in 1937. The Nashashibi member of the AHC resigned, leaving leadership in the hands of the mufti and his allies. In 1937 the British outlawed the AHC and arrested and deported several of its members. The mufti and several of his associates fled to Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, from which they attempted to keep the rebellion alive. During 1937 and 1938 a number of assassinations took place as the struggle between followers of the Nashashibis and Husaynis turned violent, contributing to a leadership vacuum in the Palestinian community. By 1939 the rebellion petered out as a result of the conflict within the Palestinian community and the massive use of force by the British. In the end, the Palestinians had suffered staggering losses: more than 3,000 dead, 15,000 to 20,000 wounded, and more than 5,000 leaders and fighters in detention.

In their search for a political formula that would reestablish tranquility in Palestine in light of a looming European war, the British convened a roundtable conference of Arab and Zionist representatives at London's St. James's Palace in early 1939. Bickering over who should represent the Palestinians contributed to the ineffectiveness of the small Palestinian delegation (headed by Jamal al-Husayni and George Antonius) that sat through many meetings alongside those of Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. When the conference broke down without reaching consensus, Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald issued a White Paper in May that retracted the Peel Commission's partition recommendation and proposed instead that, over a period of ten years, self-governing institutions would be developed for an eventual independent Palestinian state that would not be dominated by either Arabs or Jews. At the same time, the White Paper restricted Jewish immigration to 75,000 over five years, with any subsequent immigration dependent on Arab approval. Furthermore, the purchase of land by Jews would be limited in some parts of Palestine and forbidden in others. The White Paper thus limited the expansion of the Jewish community and its territorial holdings, but fell short of the Palestinians' demands for total stoppage of immigration and the immediate granting of independence.

During and after World War II. Overshadowed by the necessities of prosecuting the British war effort after 1939, local political activity in Palestine was quiescent, despite the absence of consensus in support of the new White Paper policy. Within the Yishuv, official Zionist policy was to fight the restrictions of the MacDonald White Paper as if there were no war against Germany, while helping in the fight against the Axis powers as if there were no White Paper. Britain was left to pursue its war effort without official Zionist, Arab, or Palestinian endorsement of the provisions in the White Paper.

Faced with these new directions in British policy, attempts were made to revive the AHC, but these were marred by the continuing rift between the Husaynis and Nashashibis and by the absence of many exiled leaders whom the British had prevented from returning to the country. By 1941 the National Defense Party had become inactive, although Raghib al-Nashashibi continued to issue statements in its name. Some leaders of the Palestine Arab Party were able to return to Palestine and reopen the party's offices in April 1944 and to use its connections with the Arab Bank and the local press to regain substantial influence. A Husayni-dominated AHC was organized in 1945, but it was countered by an opposition Arab Higher Front. When Jamal al-Husayni returned in February 1946 he gained control over the AHC as well as the Palestine Arab Party. Later that year the Arab League intervened, and another AHC was set up.

In the struggle following World War II the AHC rejected various British and Anglo-American compromise proposals and, ultimately, the 1947 United Nations (UN) partition proposal. Paramilitary organizations formed to oppose partition were split between the Husayni al-Futuwwa and the opposition al-Najjada. The 29 November 1947 announcement of the UN General Assembly vote recommending partition led to Palestinian attacks on Jewish quarters in Jerusalem, triggering an intermittent "civil war" that lasted from December 1947 to May 1948. The 14 May proclamation of Israel's independence, immediately upon the official termination of the mandate and the withdrawal of British forces and administration, was followed by the invasion of Palestinian territory by the armies of Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. The first Arab–Israel war, which also involved Lebanese forces and volunteers from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, ended in early 1949 with the defeat of the Arab forces and the signing of armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

The fighting of 1948 to 1949 displaced more than 700,000 Palestinians (approximately half the Arab population of Palestine) who had fled or been expelled by Jewish (later Israeli) forces. This fragmentation of Palestinian society and the creation of a huge refugee population became known as alNakba —the catastrophe. For many years, controversy has swirled around the question of responsibility for this massive defeat and for the creation and persistence of the Palestinian refugee problem. Blame has been attributed variously to a deliberate Israeli policy of expulsion; disunity, distrust, and disorganization among Palestinian leaders and their supporters in the neighboring Arab countries; and tactical or strategic errors made by the Palestinian leadership—notably their rejection of the UN partition proposal. Recent archival research has unearthed new evidence for the first explanation, and has drawn attention to a fourth contributing factor: the asymmetry or imbalance of forces—throughout the Mandate period, but especially after 1937—between the Yishuv and the Palestinian community. The former was growing, determined, better armed, and highly disciplined, and had enjoyed British protection during its formative years. The Palestinians, on the other hand, were demoralized, disunited, and without effective leaders, many of whom had been killed or exiled during and after the revolt.

Disappearance and Reemergence of Palestine

With the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in May 1948 and the occupation of the Gaza Strip by Egypt and of the West Bank by Jordan, Palestine ceased to exist as a separate political entity. Yet, during the 1950s, Arab, British, and UN documents continued to refer to the situation "in Palestine" when dealing with Israel, the neighboring Arab states, and areas inhabited by displaced Palestinians. Even without a political territory or government, Palestinians maintained their distinctive national and historic consciousness, and were reluctant to cease identifying with their lost home-land.

Putting their hopes in UN resolutions, the declarations of their own exiled leaders, and the promised support of neighboring Arab regimes, most Palestinians continued to dream of their eventual return to their homes and the establishment of an Arab Palestinian state. As refugees, the Palestinians became the focus of international relief efforts; successive generations of Palestinians were born in exile and in refugee camps of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Yet, political solutions based on the Palestinians' right to return or compensation (UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948) eluded generation after generation of Middle Eastern leaders.

Some Palestinians in exile became active in seeking political and military solutions that would result in their return and the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state. Despairing of the efforts on their behalf of members of the League of Arab States, Palestinians developed their own leadership, known as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Initially created by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964, the PLO's first chairman was Ahmad Shuqayri. After 1968 the PLO became an autonomous umbrella organization under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, bringing together many Palestinian groupings. For the next decade, the PLO adopted "armed struggle" as its primary mode of operation, thereafter developing a diplomatic campaign to restore Palestinians to their homeland by replacing the Jewish Israeli state. The boundaries of the future Palestinian state were declared to be those of the former British mandate.

The PLO's quest for international recognition of Palestinian rights was crowned with its first major success in 1974, when the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3236 in support of the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine" to "self-determination without external interference," to "national independence and sovereignty," and "to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted." The following year, the UN created the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Although they provided only moral support, such declarations and activities added much-needed international legitimacy to the Palestinians' quest for recognition of their right to a homeland during a period when both Israel and the United States were defining the PLO as a terrorist organization unworthy of inclusion in diplomatic discussions.

A decade later, in a further effort to open a dialogue with the United States, and hoping to capitalize diplomatically on the intifada against Israeli occupation that had been sparked in December 1987 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, representatives at the twentieth meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers in November 1988 issued a symbolic declaration of Palestinian independence. At the same time, they formally endorsed the land-for-peace and mutual recognition approaches contained in UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967—a resolution whose text makes no mention of the Palestinians or their rights. Afterward, PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat issued several prepared statements denouncing the use of terrorism by all parties, and implying that the future Palestinian state would exist alongside, rather than in place of, the Jewish state of Israel. Arafat's last step resulted in the opening of a PLO dialogue with the United States.

During the 1991 Madrid Conference and subsequent talks at the U.S. State Department, Palestinian leaders were invited to participate (as part of a joint delegation with Jordanians) for the first time in direct negotiations with Israel. Following the historic mutual recognition between the Israeli government and PLO and the signing of the Oslo Accord in September 1993, a process was begun to provide for phased Israeli withdrawals, beginning in Jericho, from occupied Palestinian territories on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In early 1994 a Palestinian National Authority (or Palestine Authority) was created to administer these areas as further interim negotiations continued for additional Israeli pull-backs and other measures toward a final settlement. The Palestine Authority (PA) thus became an embryo government of a still-to-be-created sovereign Palestinian state. Many disappointments and frustrations prevented the scheduled later stages of negotiation from taking place or bearing fruit. This resulted in an untenable situation marked by violence and repression, most dramatically exploding into the second (alAqsa) intifada in September 2000. In the course of suppressing this Palestinian intifada, the Israel Defense Forces reoccupied, for varying lengths of time, many parts of the territories that had come under the rule of the weakened PA.

see also antonius, george; aqsa intifada, al-; arab–israel war (1948); arafat, yasir; balfour declaration (1917); darwaza, muhammad izzat; gaza strip; husayni, jamal al-; husayni, muhammad amin al-; husayni, musa kazim al-; intifada (1987–1991); israeli settlements; istiqlal party: palestine; london (roundtable) conference (1939); macdonald, malcolm; madrid conference (1991); mandate system; najjada, al-; nakba, al- (1948–1949); nashashibi family; oslo accord (1993); palestine arab revolt (1936–1939); palestine economic corporation; palestine exploration fund; palestine land development company; palestine liberation organization (plo); palestine national charter (1968); palestine national council; palestine national covenant (1964); palestine research center; palestinian arab congresses; palestinian authority; palestinian citizens of israel; palestinians; peel commission report (1937); samuel, herbert louis; shuqayri, ahmad; transjordan frontier force; united nations conciliation commission for palestine (unccp); united nations relief and works agency for palestine refugees in the near east (unrwa); united nations special committee on palestine, 1947 (unscop); vaʿad leʾumi; west bank; white papers on palestine; yishuv; zionism; zionist commission for palestine.

Bibliography

Esco Foundation. Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies. 2 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1947.

Hurewitz, Jacob C. The Struggle for Palestine. Reprint, New York: Schocken Books, 1976.

Ingrams, Doreen. Palestine Papers, 1917–1922: Seeds of Conflict. New York: George Braziller, 1973.

Khalaf, Issa. Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Dis-integration, 1939–1948. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.

Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Khalidi, Walid, ed. From Haven to Conquest. Reprint, Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987.

Kimmerling, Baruch, and Migdal, Joel. The Palestinian People: A History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Lesch, Ann M. Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917–1939: The Frustration of a Nationalist Movement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979.

Mattar, Philip. The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement, revised edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988/1992.

Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Muslih, Muhammad Y. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918–1929. London: Frank Cass, 1974.

Porath, Yehoshua. The Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, 1929–1939. London: Frank Cass, 1977.

Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Updated ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

A Survey of Palestine for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. 2 vols. Reprint, Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991.

don peretz
updated by neil caplan,
muhammad muslih, and
ann m. lesch

H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

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Jul 21, 2014, 2:11:18 AM7/21/14

10,000 Black Palestinians
Struggle with
Racism in Gaza
April 21, 2014 by Daniel
Greenfield 44
Comments
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the
Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is
completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st
century.

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She’s uh… native. Really.
Incidentally that means that some 1%
of Muslims in Gaza are Africans, in part or in whole, and
are fairly recent arrivals, rather than any kind of native residents of the
land.
That’s not
surprising since the “Palestinians” are mainly Arabs from the region who moved
in. That goes triple for the Arab Muslims who usually followed the Christians
and then took over places like Bethlehem and Ramallah.
Al-Monitor
met with political activist Samah al-Rawagh, 33, at her home and asked her
whether she experienced any discrimination due to her skin color. She made
light of the matter. Yet, when her father Ahmad al-Rawagh, 80, recounted
incidents he had experienced involving racism, Samah was shocked. “That’s the
first time I’ve heard such stories from you,” she said.
“I struggled
a lot to overcome the difficulties caused by the color of my skin. I always had
to doubly prove myself at school, at work and in life, because I’m
dark-skinned,” Ahmad said.
He said that
they are originally from Sudan. His ancestors came at the beginning of the 20th
century and lived in Palestine — in a village called Roubin, neighboring Jaffa
— until 1948, when they were forced to migrate to the Gaza Strip. “But I never
felt that I did not belong here. Palestine is the homeland I have always known,
and is a homeland to about 10,000 other dark-skinned people in the Gaza Strip.”
10,000 is a
lot of people proportionately speaking. There are more Afro-Turks and
Afro-Iraqis, but 10,000 Arab Africans in Gaza alone suggests that they came as
part of a massive emigration.
There are no
clear historical sources that speak about the African minority in Gaza, but
there is an oral history passed down by families from one generation to the
next. Journalist Ali Bakhit, 28, said that he learned from his great-uncle
that his family originally comes from Ghana.
“Africans
first entered Palestine during the Islamic conquests, specifically when Caliph
Omar ibn al-Khattab entered Jerusalem, accompanied by a number of Africans.
African communities from Chad, Nigeria, Sudan and Senegal came in the late 19th
century, either for worship or to participate in the resistance,” Bakhit noted
in an interview with Al-Monitor.
So we’re
talking about conqueror settlers settling down. The Africans are the most
obvious ones. But the rest were foreign settlers of a conquering empire as well
displacing the indigenous Jewish inhabitants.
But there’s
also slavery and more recent Ottoman empire building and military colonists.
According to
Gaza Through History, a book by Ibrahim Sakik, wealthy families in the Gaza
Strip participated in the slave trade hundreds of years ago. Another book,
Delighting in the Wealth of Gaza’s History, notes that some of the residents of
the Palestinian village of Berbera were dark-skinned people who came from
Morocco.Al-Monitor asked multiple historians about the African minority, yet
most of them noted that there were no books dealing with their history. “The
majority of families with dark skin in Gaza originate from Sudan and Egypt,
many of them came to work in the Ottoman Empire’s army hundreds of years ago,”
noted Palestinian historian Salim Moubayed, speaking to Al-Monitor by phone.The
“black neighborhood”
Next to the
Rawagh family’s home there is an entire area on Jala Street inhabited by
dark-skinned Gazans. The people and taxi drivers refer to it as the “black
neighborhood” or the “dark-skinned neighborhood.”
Gaza has its
own ghetto.

* Pete • 3 months ago
"African
communities from Chad, Nigeria, Sudan and Senegal came in the late 19th
century, either for worship or to participate in the resistance,” Bakhit noted
in an interview with Al-Monitor."
Resistance
to who? The Muslim Turks?
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Edward
E Pete • 3 months ago
Mass
foreign race immigration did not happen “with mutual consent”.
It was
FORCED.
No White
country was EVER given a vote on whether it wanted to become multiracial.
Foreign
race Assimilation is FORCED in EVERY & ONLY White countries
in employment, law, education, housing, healthcare, sports, policing
etc.
An
“all-White” anything is illegal in White countries. Combine mass
immigration and FORCED assimilation and you have a clear policy of White
geNOcide.
Anti-racist
is a >code< for Anti-White.
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Jazz
Payton Pete • 15 hours ago
This is
HILARIOUS! BLACK PEOPLE INVADING HISTORICALLY BLACK LAND.... Are you all really
that stupid?
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Pete Jazz
Payton • 15 hours ago
Here is
what is really creepy.
The West
African Muslims who came to Gaza over a hundred years ago are still distinct
from other "good" Muslims.
Everything
being equal there would have been more intermarriage.
But there
is not.
Those Arab
Muslims must be too good to marry African Muslims
***
That is almost as creepy and lame as you posting a reply to a comments 3 months
old.
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Pete Jazz
Payton • 15 hours ago
The people
of the Middle East are semitic not black.
The
Semitic people are related to black people just as Semitic peoples are related
to Caucasians.
Are you
saying that Arabs cannot tell the difference between themselves and Senegalese
at a glance?
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SoCalMike • 3 months ago
Once I had
a professor in a class for teachers instruct the class that if you were not
white, you could not possibly be racist and if AND ONLY if you were white by
virtue of being white you were by definition racist regardless of whatever
beliefs or feelings about race you held however non-racist. You were a member
of the "power class" and by definition the R word.
Still blows my mind I dumped money and time on this class but some things you
just have to see for yourself.
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Bamaguje SoCalMike • 3 months ago
You should
have reported the 'prof' to university authorities.
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Dan
Borden Bamaguje • 3 months ago
For
what....so the loon could get special recognition?? On today's college campuses
such idiocy is WELCOMED.
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Yusuf
O. Osman SoCalMike • 6 days ago
Quite
senseless tbh!
I would've countered his nonsensical argument if i were you! :)
I'm Somalian & within our ethnic sphere, there's tribal discrimination
& in the larger-context, A large majority of Somali's have disturbing views
of our neighbouring countrymen! Physical feature wise, People of the horn of
Africa look somehow different than other African people & in our language,
They've coined a term namely called, " Jareer & Madow ", to
describe darker-skinned people or excessively dark Africans, "Jareer"
roughly translates as " Someone with wholly hair " &
"Madow" roughly means, Black & whenever they used it to describe
other non-Somali Africans, It's frequently meant in a negative manner,
derogatory if i may say.
A considerable majority of my people have this false-sense of superiority over
other Africans mainly because, in their eyes, they look better ( soft features,
often thought to be more Caucasian like ) & other factors among, so in
short, Racism isn't an only ' white ' issue, it's a plague that rears its head
in every society world-wide & my example is but merely one of the 100's of
other examples out there!
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Smokey
Grey SoCalMike • 6 days ago
That's not
even a logical statement. Speaks more to the quality of the staff than the
curriculum. As a Soc. major I have never once heard ANY professor make a
comment any where close to that, and I attended the ultra- LIBERAL UNC-Chapel
Hill.
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Janet
Buddle-Price Alleged
Comment • 3 months ago
You are an
idiot. Sometimes when idiots decide to think its best to keep your dumb
thoughts to yourself
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Alleged
Comment Janet
Buddle-Price • 3 months ago
The truth
is sore sometimes. There was nothing wrong with what I said, but there is
something wrong with Greenfield and his cowardice to deduce it to censorship.
Very manly
of him.
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saiah Alleged
Comment • 3 months ago
Seriously??
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Alleged
Comment saiah • 3 months ago
You heard
what Ali said, his family CAME FROM GHANA!! He is African negroid, not
Palestinian!
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De
Doc • 3 months ago
Where
racism is concerned Islam is never an issue per Leftist mindset.
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kilfincelt
• 3 months ago
If anyone
really wants to know about Arabs and racism, I suggest the following: "The
Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa" by John Alembillah Azumah and "The
Veiled Genocide" by Tidiane N'Diaye, a Sengalese Muslim. Unfortunately,
the latter book is only available in French and needs to be translated, but it
is any eye-opener.
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Ali • 3 months ago
Well, I
guess the first paragraph says all about the agenda of the article!
" That’s not surprising since the “Palestinians” are mainly Arabs from the
region who moved in "
First of
all, the discrimination towards Ahmad could have been due to his immigrant
status when their family arrived which his skin color could have been an
indicator of that for others, which could have made such a perception for
people like Ahmad that his skin color is the issue. Even parts of this article
says that ancestors of some of the dark skinned people have come from countries
like Egypt and Morocco which are Muslim Arab countries.
Although any discrimination even if it was for being an immigrant should be
addressed and corrected, at least the daughter of Ahmad as you said was shocked
of hearing that which means things are getting better. However if you really
care about such things, its not a bad idea to write about the current
discrimination against back immigrants inside Israel. Just do a simple youtube
search and you see how black people are cursed attacked on street of Israel at
the present time.
As I said the agenda of this article is obvious, and thats distract the racism
in Israel.
As I said even there is a slightest discrimination it should be addressed, but
what makes the main difference is that if racism is systematic or if it is a
cultural issue. We have Neo Nazi groups here in USA, but does it mean US system
or government is racist? Absolutely not. But there are people who are racist which
need to be corrected. The difference in Israeli case is that the regime, system
and law is racist. Want an example? if an Israeli commits a crime he is sent to
civil court, but for the same crime a Palestinian is sent to military court.
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American
Patriot Ali • 3 months ago
Shut up,
you Islamist and supporter of Islamist Iran and racist groups like Hamas and
Hezbollah. Israel has the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and Arabs
living in Israel have more rights and liberties as Israeli citizens than people
living in other countries in the Middle East. Why don't you denounce the
Islamist dictatorship in Sudan, which has committed genocide against its black
African Christian population? It is because you support all the Islamist
regimes. Learn from facts instead of echoing Islamist lies and propaganda.
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Ali American
Patriot • 3 months ago
To so
called " American Patriot "
First of
all, I should begin with an explanation, why I used " So Called " for
you. I have a great respect for American people, and I believe the real
American Patriots are the ones who act for the interests of US while having the
same respect for others as American value is to create a better world. And what
you were saying was diffidently not in line with that definition.
Regarding
your statements and claims, I should note the followings:
First, if
you had any knowledge about Islamic groups in the region and the world, you
would have known that there are significant differences among them and in that
case you wouldnt have grouped all of them under one single title of Islamist
groups. For example how can you group Hezbollah and Al Qaede under the same
title?
The fact that Hezbollah is fighting against Al Qaede in Syria says how
different Islamic groups are from each other.
With a quick search on google you realize the closest political ally of
Hezbollah inside Lebanon as actually a Christian political party. So how can you
claim they are racist?
That would be also a good idea if you could explain why US is supporting the
side Al Qaede is fighting for?
Its interesting that call yourself " American Patriot" but you dont
even mention Al Qaede. Why? Because then you have to say that it was US which
supported as Mrs. Clinton said in her recent interview.
Regarding
Sudan, I dont know what part of this discussion was about it, or what part of
what I said was about it, so why should I have talked about it?
But thats
ok, as far as my position is concerned, not only I denounce the dictatorship
there, but I go farther and I oppose it in countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Bahrain, etc. The difference between me and you is here. Supporters of Israel
and American government not only dont oppose those dictators, but for decades
have supported them politically and militarily. Why? Because they would act
directly and indirectly in line with Israels goals.
You also
claimed Israel is a liberal democracy which would make any person with the
slightest knowledge of Israel laugh! I dont think if you realized the meaning
of Liberal or Democracy.
As far as
I am concerned a liberal democracy is system in which all citizens are free and
equal, in their rights and have the same opportunities in amount of power in
the system and voting.
How can
Israel be a liberal democracy when all of their politicians call it the
"Jewish State" . By definition, this means people of other religions
are second level citizens with less rights.
How can
someone say Israel is a democracy when an Israeli who commits a crime is sent
to civil courts while a Palestinian is subject to a military court for the same
crime?
How can
you consider Israel a democracy when Christians, Muslims or ... cant get even
close to high positions?
How can
someone consider Israel a democracy when even the car plates for Palestinians
have a different color than Israelis? or when they are subject to different
roads than Israelis? And how this is different from tagging Jews during Nazi
Germany?
At the end
to prevent the confusion I should say I differentiate the policies of a portion
of American politicians than the American values and people. Its why I have a
great respect for Americans. Through history US has fought many civil and human
right fronts and I think they can do the same regarding Israel.
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American
Patriot Ali • 3 months ago
There is
no apartheid in Israel, you Islamist useful idiot. Israel is the only liberal
democracy in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the Middle East
where homosexuals can hold a gay pride parade and not be persecuted. In your
beloved so-called "Palestinian" (and I use the word
"so-called" as well as quotes when I mention the word
"Palestinian" because they are not an ethnicity nor is "Palestine"
a nation-state. "Palestine" is simply another name for the Holy Land
region) territories, as well as other countries in the Middle East (including
your beloved Hezbollah's Lebanon, Assad's Syria and Islamist Iran), anyone
holding a gay pride parade in thrown in jail, stoned to death and/or lynched
from cranes for the "horrible crime" of being homosexual. Women have
full rights and liberties in Israel, while in other Middle East countries
(including your beloved "Palestinian"-ruled jurisdictions) they are
treated like chattel and are regularly stoned to death by Islamist fanatics who
hate women. And Jews are not allowed in many areas of other Middle East
countries. Name me one Islamist leader who wants peace with Israel and the
Jews, you radical Islamist useful idiot? The so-called "Palestinians"
are an invented people. The so-called "nationality" was invented by
the Soviet Union through the KGB and its puppet organization, the PLO, during
the 1960s in order to try and discredit Israel's right to exist.
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American
Patriot Ali • 3 months ago
I already
mentioned about the fact that Arabs living in Israel have more rights and
liberties as Israeli citizens than people living in other countries in the
Middle East. Regarding Hezbollah, the name of that Islamist terror organization
ruling Lebanon means the "Party of God". It is an Islamist militant
organization just like Hamas who has the same goals as Hamas (Hamas' goals are
to destroy Israel and to commit a second Holocaust), and is funded by Islamist
Iran. It is ridiculous that there are radical leftists and other supporters of
Islamist aggression who call Iran democratic, while never mentioning the fact
that Iran's full name is the "Islamic Republic of Iran". Unlike
Israel's full name ("State of Israel"), Iran's full name has a name
of a religion in the title. Furthermore, you don't mention the fact that
Assad's Syria is a brutal dictatorship who has the backing of neo-Communist
Russia, Communist China and Islamist Iran. Not only do those regimes not oppose
the Assad regime, as well as the Islamist dictatorship in Sudan, but they
openly support the Assad dictatorship because of their shared goals of
destroying democracy, imposing a worldwide Communist/Islamist dictatorship and
destroying the West, particularly the United States. Regarding Hezbollah and
Al-Qaeda, another fact about those terrorist organizations is that they are
both funded by (and are affiliated with) the Muslim Brotherhood, whose main
goal is to impose a global Islamist fundamentalist state. Quit being an
apologist for radical leftist/Islamist aggression.
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Guest American
Patriot • 3 months ago
To claim a
status, you have to prove it. Just by repeating
the status you cant prove it! I don’t know which part of the definition of
liberal democracy is hard for you to understand!
A Liberal
Democratic country is a country in which all
citizens have equal rights and equal opportunities. Their human rights are
respected and they are not subject to systematic discrimination.
I already
gave enough reasoning and presented enough proofs
to show how far Israel and a liberal democracy are. The problem sometimes is
not the truth, is the people who cant digest them!
You
mentioned the name of Israel is “ State of Israel ”.
Does that cover up for the fact all Israeli politicians call it the Jewish
State as well? In the recent negotiations with PLO one of the main requests of
Israeli side was that PLO recognize Israel as a Jewish state which is the best
example and sign of systematic discrimination against all other citizens.
You
mentioned Iran and its name to be “ Islamic Republic of
Iran “ and called it non democratic for that reason and the discrimination
against
non Muslims there. Well, great that you mentioned that, because you just proved
my point yourself that calling a country by a specific religion, color or
ethnic group feature is an obvious sign of discrimination against others.
Obviously
Islamic Republic of Iran is not a democratic regime for the same reason, but
the problem is that you consider that reason a sign of not being a democracy in
the case of Iran but in the case of Israel you suddenly change all standards.
Also you
claimed there has never been a Palestinian nation!
Well, at this point its obvious that your goal is not to have an educated
discussion.
Maybe more of trying to make other laugh! Not a bad idea if you explain who
these millions of people living in the occupied area are? As far as we know,
after creation of Israel, Palestinian systematically been pushed out of the
lands and forced to refugee camps and no one has been allowed back, so who are
these millions there? Have they appeared out of nowhere? The demographic data
of people before creation of Israel in that area is well documented and
available and shows Muslim Arabs are the significant majority of the region.
Are you really trying to say the immigration of Zionists to that region didn’t
happen??
Plus you
keep repeating the Arabs don’t have much rights in
other Arab countries as well. Are you trying to blame your support and American
support for the dictators in Arab countries on the people who are subjected to
those dictators? If it wasn’t Israel and American support for such dictators
they would be gone long time ago. So don’t try to project crimes of others on
those people!
You also
mentioned the support of some for Assad in Syria to
make a communist/Islamist regime there. Not a bad idea if you at least search
the definition of terms before stating claims. Communism is in total
contradiction in major aspects with Islamic states . I should note Islamic
states meaning can vary significantly based on interpretations however in non
of them is it can be unified with communism as in communism there is
significant opposition against religious power and ruling system.
In
addition, you said all Islamic groups like Hezbollah and
Al Qaede are all the same as they are all supported by Muslim Brotherhood.
Well,
if you are not familiar with the politics of the region, its OK, but at least
you can do some research before stating such claims. At least you can give some
thoughts about them. Didn’t you really think with yourself that If they are the
same and both supported by the same party why they are fighting against each
other in Syria?
The time
for discrimination based on religion, race or color
is long gone, I wish everyone could realize that!
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Ali American
Patriot • 3 months ago
To claim a
status, you have to prove it. Just by repeating the status you cant prove it! I
don’t know which part of the definition of liberal democracy is hard for you to
understand!
A Liberal
Democratic country is a country in which all
citizens have equal rights and equal opportunities. Their human rights are
respected and they are not subject to systematic discrimination.
I already
gave enough reasoning and presented enough proofs to show how far Israel and a
liberal democracy are. The problem sometimes is
not the truth, is the people who cant digest them!
You
mentioned the name of Israel is “ State of Israel ”.
Does that cover up for the fact all Israeli politicians call it the Jewish
State as well? In the recent negotiations with PLO one of the main requests of
Israeli side was that PLO recognize Israel as a Jewish state which is the best
example and sign of systematic discrimination against all other citizens.
You
mentioned Iran and its name to be “ Islamic Republic of Iran “ and called it
non democratic for that reason and the discrimination against non Muslims
there. Well, great that you mentioned that, because you just proved my point
yourself that calling a country by a specific religion, color or ethnic group
feature is an obvious sign of discrimination against others. Obviously
Islamic Republic of Iran is not a democratic regime for the same reason, but
the problem is that you consider that reason a sign of not being a democracy in
the case of Iran but in the case of Israel you suddenly change all standards.
Also you
claimed there has never been a Palestinian nation!
Well, at this point its obvious that your goal is not to have an educated
discussion.
Maybe more of trying to make other laugh! Not a bad idea if you explain who
these millions of people living in the occupied area are? As far as we know,
after creation of Israel, Palestinian systematically been pushed out of the
lands and forced to refugee camps and no one has been allowed back, so who are
these millions there? Have they appeared out of nowhere? The demographic data
of people before creation of Israel in that area is well documented and
available and shows Muslim Arabs are the significant majority of the region.
Are you really trying to say the immigration of Zionists to that region didn’t
happen??
Plus you
keep repeating the Arabs don’t have much rights in other Arab countries as
well. Are you trying to blame your support and American support for the
dictators in Arab countries on the people who are subjected to those dictators?
If it wasn’t Israel and American support for such dictators they would be gone
long time ago. So don’t try to project crimes of others on
those people!
You also
mentioned the support of some for Assad in Syria to make a communist/Islamist
regime there. Not a bad idea if you at least search the definition of terms
before stating claims. Communism is in total contradiction in major aspects
with Islamic states . I should note Islamic states meaning can vary
significantly based on interpretations however in non of them is it can be
unified with communism as in communism there is significant opposition against
religious power and ruling system.
In
addition, you said all Islamic groups like Hezbollah and Al Qaede are all the
same as they are all supported by Muslim Brotherhood. Well, if you are not
familiar with the politics of the region, its OK, but at least you can do some
research before stating such claims. At least you can give some thoughts about
them. Didn’t you really think with yourself that If they are the same and both
supported by the same political party why they are fighting against each other
in Syria?
The time
for discrimination based on religion, race or color is long gone, I wish
everyone could realize that!
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American
Patriot Ali • 3 months ago
You are
obviously a Communist/Islamist troll paid by neo-Communist Russia and Islamist Iran
to post their propaganda online. I noticed that you didn't call the Assad
regime in Syria a dictatorship. I also believe that you viewed the brutal
dictator of Egypt, Nasser, as a "liberal democrat" because he was a
Communist and a puppet of the Soviet Union. That's your problem. You view all
pro-Western leaders (whether democrats or autocrats) as American/Israeli
"puppet dictators", while viewing all of the
Communist/Baathist/Islamist and anti-Western dictators who are puppets of
neo-Communist Russia, Communist China and Islamist Iran as "democratic
presidents". So, in your world, Assad is a benevolent
"president" loved by his people. You have a political agenda, you
loon. And that agenda is to have the entire world dominated by Communists,
Baathists, Islamists and the destruction of the United States and other
democratic countries. As for the so-called "Palestinians", they are
not a people. They are simply Jordanians living outside of Jordan, which was
part of the Palestine Mandate. Hence, Jordan is a Palestinian state. You also
fail to mention that nearly half a million Jews were expelled from other
countries in the Middle East during the late 1940s. Why aren't there any Jewish
refugees? Because Israel resettled them. The other countries in the region have
never resettled any Arab refugees who left their homes during the 1948 war,
which was started by the Arab states in their goal to destroy Israel. Also,
Israel didn't force any Arab to leave the Holy Land. As a matter of fact, the
Arabs who stayed in Israel became Israeli citizens. You are a
Communist/Islamist/Baathist propagandist. You are a Stalinst/Maoist who
supports Communist/Islamist/Baathist totalitarianism. Learn from facts instead
of repeating Communist/Islamist/Baathist propaganda.
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Ali American
Patriot • 3 months ago
Well, I
guess anyone who is familiar with the general debates would understand that the
main proof for what I said and your lack of reasoning for your claims comes out
of your own comments, as they are mainly curses or personal attacks against me
rather than presenting reasons.
Seems rather than bringing some reasoning against my claims and answering my
claims, you prefer to assign me some words or beliefs and then criticizing
them, as you find bringing reasons conflicting for yourself!
In my past comments I said the regime inside Iran is obviously not a democratic
regime, as well as those other Arab kingdoms. I guess it obviously shows what
my standing towards Syrian regime is.
Syrian regime is not democratic, however has been respective of other religions
and minorities. For that reason, almost all minorities in Syria, specially
Christians are fighting in support of the current regime. Its why at this point
which we are left with bad and worse I prefer the current regime.
I guess the better question would be why you are siding with Al Qaede?
Although I prefer not to answer your personal attacks, I point at one that I
did before as well, only as it shows how wrong your claims are. You called me a
communist Islamist! As I told you before the idea of communism and Islamic
state are at obvious contradictions! Not a bad idea if you search the terms
before using them!
Regarding your claim that Israel didnt force anyone out of their land, well I
dont know what to call all those available videos of Israelis Bulldozing
Palestinian homes! We are not talking about anything that far from history, or
even something finished!
Not a bad idea if you try to answer the contradictions I have already pointed
at!
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American
Patriot Ali • 3 months ago
Stop being
an apologist for misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, racist, bigoted
Islamist "Palestinians", who are an invented people whose leaders
want to finish the job that Nazi Germany started. Why don't you condemn all of
the rocket attacks launched on Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza? Why don't you
condemn all of the Jew-hatred that is so common in Islamist and Baathist
countries? As for Assad's Syria "protecting" the rights of Christians
and minorities, the Kurds would beg to differ. The Kurds are oppressed by both
Assad and the Islamist militants opposing the Syrian dictator. That's why the
Kurds are neutral in the Syrian conflict. What you really want is an Islamic Republic
of Palestine and an Islamic Baathist Republic of Syria where women would be
treated like chattel, where homosexuals would be lynched from cranes for being
homosexuals, and where Jews and people of other beliefs and faiths (as well as
non-religious people) are not allowed in. Name me one so-called
"Palestinian" leader who wants to make peace with Israel and the
Jews. Learn from facts.
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Dan
Borden Ali • 3 months ago
Blacks in
Israel have much better lives than blacks in any islamic sh!thole.
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Gee Ali • 3 months ago
Racism in
Israel? Compared to whom? Israel has never had a single racial law - EVER. Now
tell us which other country can make the same claim, I dare you to name one
that has as good a record as Israel.
The attacks are BY the blacks - who just so happen to be illegal African Muslim
migrants. So you are a racist moronic liar.
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Ali Gee • 3 months ago
I made a
reply to Steven Raff, in which I replied to your comment as well
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Steven
Raff Ali • 3 months ago
Your
example is flawed, the law applies differently to citizens vs non-citezens, be
they Palestinian, Chinese, etc. Sorry, but your point is driven by anti-Israeli
sentiment and not honest evaluation of circumstance. Beyond your closing
comment being flawed, it is merely an attempt to stray from the topic of
prejudice existing in Gaza.... so lets stay on topic.
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Ali Steven
Raff • 3 months ago
Citizens
vs. Non-Citizens? And what makes a citizen?
If the measure is being born in a geographical area, based on the current
system a European Zionist who has come to occupied land last week can be
considered a citizen while a Palestinian whose fathers have been born in the
land is not.
If the measure is where they currently live, all settlers inside West Bank are
considered citizens while people surrounding them not, if and only if they are
Muslim Arabs.
It obviously shows the term "citizen" is used for Zionists while
non-citizen is used for Muslim Arabs.
While you accused me of not being honest, I guess if you were honest you would
have pointed at whose these terms are really used and made for.
Using the term Non- citizen is the exact point that shows how fundamental and
systematic apartheid in Israel is.
It shows that by calling proffered people citizen and the second level people
non-citizens, the system subject them to an entirely different rights and laws.
Gee in another comment had asked which laws are racial? In this case situation
is way more extreme as the entire second level people are subject to en
entirely different law.
In what other country you have seen that even real non citizens and not what
the term is used in Israel or tourists to be subjected to using different
roads? Or to be subjected to use different color car plates ?
You also said I attempted "to stray from the topic of prejudice existing
in Gaza". I dont know if you read my comments really or not? If you had
done so you would have seen that I said the slightest amount of racial
discrimination that exist should addressed be corrected. However I made three
some points.
First, the fact that even the article says the daughter of the interviewee is
shocked that his father has faced such discrimination, which shows almost such
behaviors have vanished there, otherwise she would know about it and not
shocked.
Second, whatever is left if any, is an individual behavioral issue that make a
cultural issue rather than being a systematic racial issue like in Israel.
Third, and most important was the statement I started my first ever comment
with, which was the fact that the whole agenda of the article is to project
what Israelis are accused for on Palestinians. And I gave the example why I
said so. Actually it was the reason I joined this conversation at all. If the
article had only pointed at some discrimination in Gaza with the honest purpose
of showing what is wrong and what should be corrected, most likely I wouldnt
have even joined the conversation as no matter where or how big the discrimination
is, it should be addressed.
But the agenda of the article was a totally different thing
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Steven
Raff Ali • 3 months ago
So
basically, you take the revisionist approach to history and when you don't like
the facts, you simply make stuff up and write ridiculously long paragraphs with
the hope of confusing and deflecting as a means of avoiding retreat. Your
statement about unequal treatment under Israeli law was based upon a half
truth, or a lie... take your pick. You would be better off admitting your
incorrect statement and then moving forward, but you are obviously a backwards
thinker so this will not happen. Beyond that, better than half of the Israeli
population are sephardic or Mizrahi so your rhetoric about Israelis being
European is just another one of your lies... er... half truths... again, take
your pick. I suggest you get an education that extends beyond your bigotry and
then come back. Beyond that, the only place where apartheid exists in the
middle east is in Muslim countries as it is practiced against non-Muslims...
that is a fact, not an opinion... look up the work dhimmi as just one example
of second class citizenry in the Muslim world. Beyond that, any body who claims
to be a palestinian today is not the child of a palestinian because before
1948, Palestinians were Jews, and between 48 and 67, today's Palestinians were
Jordanians, Egyptians, and Saudi... they did not call themselves Palestinian
because the identity did not exist... the letter P is not in the arabic
alphabet so how could they call themselves something which can't even be
spelled in their native language? Just another one of your faulty half
truths...or lies... take your pick.
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Ali Steven
Raff • 3 months ago
Well, I
guess the fact that more than half of your comment is either accusing me of sth
or insulting me
shows how empty handed you are in supporting your claims.
And yes, my comments may get long as I have enough reasoning and logic to
present for my claims. The interesting point is that they get long without
insulting or personal attacks which obviously is another sign that my claims
are self exploratory.
Second, in my example of the European who immigrates to the region clearly
stated a single European
as I was pointing at how discriminatory the laws that applies to people is. I
never said all Jews in that area are from Europe, and I am sure you clearly
know that, but the fact that you had no reasoning or counter claim made you
change what I said to what I didnt so you can respond to what you can!
Regarding your claim that before 1948 Palestinians were Jews, well, sometimes
people have wishes but
not always they are true. I know that even yourself know thats not true, so you
may say that for someone who may end up here and read it, but do you really
think in information age you can state something that contradictory to well
documented history and they believe you?
As a
logical equation, if there was no one but Jews in that land before 1948 and the
fact that Israelis always have pushed Arabs out rather than in, so that mean
there shouldnt be any Arabs there now either! Your claim is wrong at the basic
level of it!
Do you really think saying that because Arabs dont have P in their alphabets
there was no Palestine is a logical reasoning? Seriously?
Plus, I guess I would know Arabic well enough to know about its alphabets! Just
for your information I would say Arabs mainly replace P with B in their written
language as P and B are the same with different amount of dots!
Also, If Arabs use the world Palestine now obviously they could use it before
as well! I think you got to bring some serious reasoning rather than this!
Plus, the presence of Arabs in that land before 1948 has been well documented
by British! Not Arabs!
Not only the Jews were not the only ones there, but even they were not the
majority. If they were the only ones there, what was all thousands of boats and
ships bringing Zionists from all over the world to Palestine? You can still
find videos of them on internet!
Some of those immigrants came to Palestine with Palestinian passports! just
read the book " The son of the general" written by a Jewish Israeli
who has written the story of his family.
I also should point at a fact that I have tried to use Zionist term rather Jew
is most of my comments. Thats for a reason that I dont think if this is a Jew
versus Muslim or Arab issue. The fact is the most traditional Jews are against
Zionism as everyone knows. There are also a lot of honest Jews who respect
human rights and its why they oppose the situation made by Israel.
Only those who try to try to escape from bringing reasons try to project the
conflict as a Jews vs. Muslims issue
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Steven
Raff Ali • 3 months ago
Wrong
again, Im merely pointing out your lack of education and objectivity. thats not
insult, thats reality. You didnt read what I wrote and I didn't make any false
claims about you. You focussed on European immigration so i merely corrected
you. You bring up apartheid but we both know that only Muslim nations practice
it... and that you have no problem with Muslim apartheid shows your blindness,
your hypocrisy, and your bigotry. I suggest you try making your point in an
academic arena if You think you are somehow above me in your knowledge. Beyond
that, you are are a liar once again... most traditional Jews have come to
recognize a need for Israel. Sorry, but your desire to see Israel vanish is not
going to come to fruition. I suggest you become a forward thinker on this
topic. Your lies will not lead to any productivity for either side.
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Ali Steven
Raff • 3 months ago
You have
repeatedly talked about my lack of education regarding this case while you
never presented a counter claim about the statements I made. The sign of lack
of education regarding a case is to make false statements, which then should
make it easy for you to bring counter claims. However you keep repeating that I
have lack of education while not bringing any reasons.
You claim
that I am not educated regarding this issue, while you are the one that distant
from this topic that you even dont know what the name of the country used by
the Palestinians and Arabs!
Also regarding
personal attacks towards me, the interesting point is that even in this comment
that you start by saying that you didnt insult me, the second half of your
comment is only personal attacks! Well, I dont care about that, I only
mentioned it as it was clearly showing you dont have enough reasons to support
your claims and its why you prefer to fill your comment with such things rather
than presenting reasons!
Well, if
you had read me comments you could have seen that I clearly said most of
current Arab regimes are dictator regimes. Unfortunately the like past
comments, instead of criticizing what I said, you keep assigning me what you
wish I believed and then spending criticizing that!!!
Well, not only I have no respects for such regimes, I said in my comments the
direction of the blame is actually towards west in that case. If they are such
regimes, which they are, why do you keep supporting them?
If it wasnt the support of west and mainly US for such regimes they were gone
long time ago. You keep supporting them, politically, financially and
militarily and then try to project the blame on the people of those countries
who are subjected to those regimes.
In addition I should mention a point I left un answered through different
comments here, and it was about Israel to be an apartheid regime. It was said
that only Muslims use that term, however I dont think President Carter is much
of a Muslim!
Also you claimed I desire for Israel to vanish. As I said due to the fact you
dont have enough counter claims against what I really say, you assign me a
claim and then talk about that.
By saying I desire for Israel to vanish, you are saying I desire that Israel
with whatever related to it should be vanished. Thats totally wrong as people
and so many other thing also would be included in that meaning.
The only thing I desire to vanish about Israel is the parts of political system
and structure and law that result in discrimination and apartheid.
I also believe the best measure to see who is truthful towards what he says, is
to ask what you think would be the solution. My experience in such debates says
that when the question of the solution is asked, the true nature of what people
think reveals!
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American
Patriot Ali • 3 months ago
If it
wasn't for neo-Communist Russian, Chinese Communist and Islamist Iranian
support for the Baathist dictatorship of Bashar Assad in Syria, that country
would be democratic. But you support Assad because he is a Communist/Islamist
puppet and because he is anti-Western, just like you support the genocidal
Islamist apartheid dictatorship in Sudan.
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Ali American
Patriot • 3 months ago
I guess at
this point its obvious your intention is not an educated debate as for the
third or fourth time you are assigning me beliefs I never talked about, as you
do about Sudan, so you escape answering what I mentioned and questioned.
Regarding Syria I expressed my opinion clearly that if I have to chose to
support a side at the current situation I chose bad instead worse. However you
should explain how Syria would be a democratic country under Al Qaede ruling ?
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American
Patriot Ali • 3 months ago
I never
said that Syria would be a democratic country under Al Qaeda, you dunce. You
are putting words in my mouth. I stated that the Assad regime would have
collapsed a long time ago had it not been for neo-Communist Russia, Communist
China and Islamist Iran supporting the Assad dictatorship in Syria. In fact,
during the 1990s, Russia under Yeltsin was pro-Western and a US ally. But when
Putin became president in 2000, Russia went back to its Cold War foreign
policy. By the way, 2000 was also the year that Bashar Assad came to power in
Syria, taking over for his father. You always condemn every pro-Western country
while embracing every anti-Western country, just like you embrace the Fourth
Reich of the Middle East, Islamist Iran. There is not much difference in
attitudes between the Third Reich and the government of the Islamic Republic of
Iran and its proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. You simply support anything that
is against the West.
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Steven
Raff Ali • 3 months ago
Are you
retarded? Seriously.. are you? Im not asking to be mean, I really just want to
know so that Ill understand the reason for your demented logic. I gave you
facts but you have given NONE .. none of relevancy anyway. I corrected you
about everything you have said. You made an incorrect suggestion about Jews
Israeli being European, You make false claim about the Palestinian identity
(Gaza and the West Bank were occupied in 48, not 67 so why wait until 67 to
call themselves Palestinian?) and your hypocrisy by suggesting apartheid in
Israel while ignoring apartheid across the Muslim world, and I revealed your
lack of education (which you did not refute by the way) through your reliance
upon revisionist type methods to discuss history. I suggest you get an
education that extends beyond the internet and your bigotry and admit your
desire to see Israel dissolved... and if you truly think Israel is Apartheid, I
DARE YOU to tell me one Arab country that is less apartheid than Israel.. I
DARE YOU! You won't, because you can't.
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Ali Steven
Raff • 3 months ago
Giving me
facts? Well, I guess anyone who reads your comments would see that more than 70
percent of your comments are personal attacks. In the rest you claimed the followings:
First you
started by assigning me a statement I didnt make and tried to criticize that
rather than what I said. While my comment is still available for everyone to
see, you claimed I have said that all Jews have come from Europe and then
answered I am wrong as what you claimed that I have said is only half true,
which means like half of the Zionists only came from Europe!
Also you
claimed before 1948 there was only Jews in Palestine which I answered that has
even basic logical flaw as if before 1948 there was only Jews in the land and
as we know Israel hasnt allowed Arabs back, there shouldnt be any Muslim Arabs
in Israel now either! Which you simply refused to answer.
Also your
own comment contradicts your previous comments! In you last comment you claimed
" Gaza and the West Bank were occupied in 48, not 67 so why wait until 67
to call themselves Palestinian? " which clearly indicates there were
Muslim Arabs before 48 there which also results in contradiction with your own
starting claim that the difference between laws is due to citizenship vs.
non-citizenship, as if we rely on your own last comment we realize Muslim Arabs
have been there before 1948!
The other
claim you said was that there is no Palestine before as Arabs cant pronounce P,
which only showed you distant you are from the topic and made a hint of laugh
to the discussion!
If these are the sort of facts you are talking about, well, I guess you got to
ask someone what the "fact" means!
You also keep saying there is a wide spread apartheid in Arab world, and asked
me if I can name one country which has a better situation than Israel. First of
all, if there was any apartheid in Arab countries, it didnt mean Israel is
allowed to be apartheid as well, but it meant they also have to eliminate it.
But regarding apartheid in Arab world it seems the same as the name of the
Palestine used by Palestinians you didnt know, you dont know the meaning of
apartheid as well! Seems you have confused dictatorship, thanks to western
support, that has caused low human rights level with apartheid! Seems after you
checked what the names of what you refer to are, you have to check on the
meanings of terms as well!
Although I was almost knew about what the result would be, I searched about
existence of apartheid in Arab countries at the current moment. The interesting
point is the only media that claim such things, are all affiliated to Israel
and they all refer to apartheid against Palestinians! And they complain why
Arab countries treat Palestinians whose home lands have been occupied by
Zionists as refugees, and why they dont grant them citizenship.
Well, not a surprise, why wouldnt they say that!
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Steven
Raff Ali • 3 months ago
Yes,
giving you facts and all you can do is rant with opinion and contrived
interpretations of what I said. And again, accurately sizing you up as lacking
formal education is not an insult, its reality. Sorry if the truth insulted
you. So now let me correct your false claims once again. I NEVER accused you of
saying ALL Israeli came from Europe. What you did was imply that the majority
came from Europe, and you were incorrect and you still somehow try and twist
that lie around into me making a false statement about my correction of you
somehow being incorrect even though you acknowledge I am right. You should just
move on.. you lost that round already. Your SECOND false claim is stating that
I said there were only Jews in Israel before 1948. I NEVER SAID THAT and all
can see that what I said was that before 1948, only Jews used the term
"palestinian" to identify themselves. Look it up if you think im
wrong and stop twisting my words around. Im not wrong by the way. YOUR THIRD
false claim is that Israel "hasn't allowed arabs back" Ummmm... sure
they did, they allowed them to return back to their native lands of Egypt and
Jordan just like Egypt and Jordan allowed Jews to return back to their
ancestral land of Israel. I say thats a pretty fair trade, no? Remember, the
expulsions were started by the muslims in 1947, not the other way around and so
it is quite hypocritical of you to even make this point, not to mention
ignorant of history (oops did I just insult you again by pointing out your
ignorance?... sorry) Beyond that, your claim of non-return is not true, some
returned provided they were willing to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist
as a sovereign nation... but those folk are clearly in the minority. Which
brings me to my final comment about apartheid, and you obviously refuse to
answer the question honestly. Israel does not practice apartheid, Only the
Muslim nations surrounding Israel do. In Israel, A Muslim can be a civil servant,
a school teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, and even a supreme court justice and they
are not limited in terms of where they can seek medical services and they are
not placed in a higher tax bracket for being muslim. Can a Jew be any of those
things in the Muslim countries surrounding Israel or experience any of those
liberties? No. And why not? ummmmm because the Muslim world practices apartheid
against jews. (see dhimi as just one example) ... and this brings us back to
the topic of the article, that apartheid-like practice is even seen within the
palestinian muslim community itself as it is practiced against immigrants from
Africa. Thank you, case closed.
PS: I think you need to look up the meaning of the word apartheid... you seem
to be pretty confused on that topic
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American
Patriot Ali • 3 months ago
You forgot
to mention the fact that in Arabic, "Palestine" is
"Falastin", a word which has no meaning in Arabic.
"Falastin" has an "f" sound, not a "b" sound.
Also, the story about the son of an Israeli general is a total lie. You should
learn the story of Walid Shoebat, a former PLO militant turned Israel
supporter. Islamism is the real problem in the Middle East, not Zionism.
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Ali American
Patriot • 3 months ago
Although I
think the discussion about alphabets in Arabic is really not the serious way
for reasoning but as you mentioned I explain more.
I never said Palestine has B sound, I said "Arabs mainly replace P with B
in their written language as P and B are the same with different amount of
dots"
Thats for the words originated in foreign languages like Pizza. However they
wouldnt do that for the word "Palestine" because Palestine is the
name used by English speakers. But as the name of the land has original
references in Arabic already they wouldnt use B for it.
The same is true for so many countries. Example, Chinese dont call China,
China!
About the name in Arabic, its mainly pronounced Felestin, however Falastin is
not wrong either.
Although I never searched about its meaning, having meaning or not doesnt prove
anything. Actually in literature it is totally an accepted rule that names only
be used to refer to something or somebody. You can find similar examples in all
languages.
Regarding the book I mentioned, just by titling something as a " lie"
it doesnt turn to a lie. You got to say why and bring reasons. Miko Peled is a
well known person in media and for almost all of what he claims he provide
references. Just because you dont like what he says doesnt turn what he says to
lies!
Regarding Walid Shoebat, I dont know him. Even if I take your words as granted
hat someone from PLO has changed sides to be a pro Zionism doesnt change
anything. You may ask why the book "The son of the general" is then
related, well because what he talks is about historical events. I didnt mention
him because he is Jewish, but because of the documents he refer to.
Lets say an American official comes and claims Islamic Republic of Iran is a
democratic regime, does it make it a democratic? No, as the reality and all
evidences say otherwise.
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Vesuvius • 3 months ago
So
how is this an article about racism?

UN: Israel must stop discrimination against Arabs,
Palestinians
Committee
slams disproportionate targeting of Palestinians, denial of right of return,
harsher punishments for Arabs.
By Reuters | Mar. 9, 2007 | 12:00 AM

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The UN Committee on the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination said Israel's security measures to ward off suicide
bombings and other attacks must be re-calibrated to avoid discrimination against
Arab Israelis or Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied lands such as the West
Bank.
The committee specified that Israel
should ease roadblocks and other restrictions on Palestinians and put a stop to
settler violence and hate speech.
Its 18 independent experts, who
examined the records of 13 countries at a four-week meeting in Geneva, also
said Israel should cease building a barrier in and around the West Bank and
ensure its various checkpoints and road closures do not reinforce segregation.
In its conclusions, the committee
also voiced concern at an unequal distribution of water resources, a
disproportionate targeting of Palestinians in house demolitions and the
"denial of the right of many Palestinians" to return to their land.
Differing applications of criminal
law between Jews and Arabs had caused "harsher punishments for
Palestinians for the same offence", said the committee, whose
recommendations are not legally binding.
A high number of complaints by Arab
Israelis against police officers are not properly investigated and many Arabs
suffer discriminatory work practices and high unemployment, it said.
Excavations beneath and around the
Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's holiest site in Jerusalem, should also be undertaken in
a way that will "in no way endanger the mosque and impede access to
it", it added.
Israel argues that the UN
committee's remit, to ensure compliance with a 1965 international treaty
against racial discrimination which the Jewish state has ratified, does not
apply to the Palestinian territories it has occupied since 1967. The committee
rejects that position.
Israel's
ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Itzhak Levanon, told the committee
last month it was crucial to understand the pressing security threats faced by
his country.

Netanyahu: Racism against Israeli Arabs and acts of
hooliganism against Palestinians must end
Prime
Minister vows to use every legal means to stop such acts being carried out
'without justification or provocation.'
By Barak Ravid | Jun.
2, 2013 | 1:59 PM |

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday denounced as "racist"
an act of segregation between Jewish and Arab school children at the Superland
amusement park near Tel Aviv.
He also condemned recent vandalism against Palestinian property in the West Bank,
apparently carried out by right-wing activists. In the latest of such
incidents, police on Friday found Palestinian-owned vehicles vandalized and
graffiti sprayed on walls in various areas of the West Bank and at The Church
of the Dormition in Jerusalem.
"I wish to condemn two
phenomena that we have witnessed recently: Racism against Israeli Arabs and
acts of hooliganism against Palestinians, without any provocation or
justification," Netanyahutold his cabinet in Jerusalem.
"We strongly reject these phenomena and will act with all legal means
at our disposal to stop them," he said.
The Superland amusement park said Thursday it would reexamine its policy of
renting out the park on separate days to Jewish and Arab schools, following the
storm that ensued, but added that it had agreed to the separation at the
request of the schools themselves.
The story emerged early last week when Khaled Shakra, who teaches seventh
grade at the Ajial school in Jaffa, called Superland to book tickets for his
class to have an end- of-term fun day. He said a Superland representative
offered him three options, on June 17, 18 or 19.
He asked to reserve 25 spaces for his students on June 18. But when he was
asked to provide the school's details and the representative understood that he
taught at an Arab school, he was put on hold. Another representative got on the
line and told him that the dates he had discussed minutes before were not
available.
A few minutes later he called and introduced himself as Eyal, who was
enquiring on behalf of a Jewish organization. The Superland representative
offered him the same dates that only a moment before had suddenly become
unavailable.
“In June, many different schools want to conduct end-of-year events at
Superland. The management of Superland had received requests, from Jewish and
Arab schools alike, to conduct these events on separate days,” the Rishon
Letzion amusement park said, in a statement. “Only yesterday, for example, two
reservations were received from Arab schools that had requested that the event
would be for Arab schools only, with no schools from the Jewish sector. Similar
requests have come from the Jewish sector.”
According to the park’s management, “These requests are due to the fact that
at issue are high school and junior high school pupils, coming for end-of-year
group events, that are liable to lead to tension and violence between the
different groups of pupils from the different sectors. This is an amusement
park and there is special importance to preserving order and preventing violent
incidents in the park. As a result, Superland’s management took the requests it
received into consideration, and during June 2013 set aside a few separate days
for schools from different sectors.”
However, following the public
criticism, the management said it would reconsider this policy. “The Superland
management is very sensitive to the desires and feelings of all its patrons. As
a result, during the next few days we will reevaluate the decision to
accommodate the schools’ requests to have separate days.”

Israel as a ‘Jewish’ state will legalise
discrimination against Palestinians
Ben White
January 18, 2014Updated: January 18, 2014 11:11 AM

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As the US-led Israeli-Palestinians
peace process heads towards the buffers, one of the core aims and assumptions
of the two decade-long negotiations – preserving a Jewish state in the majority
of Mandate Palestine – has been forced into the spotlight.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas recognises Israel
as a “Jewish state”, a call taken up by other Israeli politicians and lobby
groups internationally, has garnered a lot of attention. But ultimately, it is
the explicit expression of what has been the implicit assumption of talks since
the Oslo process began.
Meanwhile, Israeli foreign minister
Avigdor Lieberman has been pushing his proposal of a land and population swap,
stripping thousands of Palestinians of their current Israeli citizenship, while
incorporating the majority of Jewish settlers currently in West Bank colonies
into Israel “proper”.
Both Mr Netanyahu and even more so
Mr Lieberman’s stances have been seen as obstacles to, or even
intentionally-crafted spoilers of, the peace talks. Yet what has been missed is
the extent that the recognition demand and population swap proposals are
actually consistent with the principles of the negotiations’ “two state
solution” model.
What they all have in common is the
goal of preserving institutionalised Jewish privilege in the majority of
historic Palestine through ethnic separation and exclusion.
Someone like Mr Lieberman may be
advancing an idea outside of the peace process orthodoxy, but the assumptions
are the same as one hears from the likes of former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert,
Labor leaders, and assorted liberal Zionists: how to neutralise the
“demographic threat” posed by Palestinians and secure Israel as a “Jewish and
democratic” state by separating the two peoples as much as possible.
Tzipi Livni and western-based
advocacy groups wince when the Israeli foreign minister talks of a population
swap – but it is part of a continuum that goes back to the Nakba. Mr Netanyahu
and Mr Lieberman’s rhetoric and proposals reflect a consensus shared by Zionist
“centrists” and liberals, as well as the US-led peace process. The differences
are stylistic and tactical.
See, for example, Ms Livni’s
repeated warnings that two states for two peoples is “an imperative” to avoid
the “demographic issue” and “preserve [Israel’s] Jewishness”; that to
“safeguard Israel as a Jewish state”, the land must be divided.
Ms Livni herself even hinted at a
Lieberman-style approach in 2008 when she said that in the event of a
Palestinian state being established, she would tell Palestinian citizens of
Israel that “the national solution for you is elsewhere”.
To put it another way, consider a
recent Labor-proposed bill to prevent the annexation of the West Bank (defeated
in the Knesset) whose text was co-drafted by the so-called peace group One
Voice. The bill – written, remember, by those presented as Israel’s peace camp
– clearly stated that the aim was to “guarantee Israel’s future” as a “Zionist”
state.
Compare that to remarks by Likud MK
Tzipi Hotovely, who stated plainly in August 2013: “I’m a Jewish racist, and
I’m not embarrassed to say I want a Jewish state with a Jewish majority”, and
it is clear that when it comes to the Palestinian question, the Israeli
“moderates” and “extremists” have more that unites them than divides them.
Not only has mainstream coverage of
this issue missed the shared assumptions behind Mr Netanyahu’s demand, Mr
Lieberman’s proposal, and the official peace process, but there has also been a
whitewashing of what Israel “as a Jewish state” really means, and why it is so
objectionable.
For Israel to be a Jewish state,
Palestinian refugees must be denied their right to return and Palestinian
citizens must be discriminated against.
Israel as a Jewish state means
systematic discrimination in land, housing, citizenship rights, education and
freedom of speech, all of which are well documented and occur right now.

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Here is how it was expressed in a
2007 report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel: “Israel carries some
unique characteristics which distinguish it from other western countries,
primarily that of systematic discrimination which is based on national and
ethnic background, dealing with the allocation of state resources and the
creation of public space. This inequality gives control to the Jewish majority
over the Arab-Palestinian minority living in Israel.”
It is worth noting here that while
many place great emphasis on population numbers and majority-minority dynamics,
that is not what makes an ethnocracy or apartheid state – it is about policies
and legislation.
Thus the logic of Haaretz columnist
Chemi Shalev, for example, who wrote earlier this month that “as long as there
is a Jewish majority in Israel, I have no problem with its Jewish character”,
is seriously flawed.
While the arguments of the current
Israeli government are helping people to see the institutionalised racism that
has always existed, there is one significant lacuna that remains: the denial
and disappearance of the Nakba in a discussion on Israel as a Jewish state, and
how it was only through ethnic cleansing that the Jewish majority was
established.
See, for example, a Bloomberg news
agency editorial from January 5 on “The Jewish State Question” that does not
mention the Nakba once. Likewise a piece filed by Jodi Rudoren for The New York
Times on January 1, titled “Sticking Point in Peace Talks: Recognition of a
Jewish State”, which fails to inform readers of the ethnic cleansing that
enabled a Jewish state to be created in the first place.
Writing in a collection of essays on
anti-Semitism published in 2004 (Those Who Forget The Past), British journalist
and commentator Jonathan Freedland, who writes regularly for The Guardian and
The Jewish Chronicle, elaborated refreshingly frankly on the relationship
between the Nakba and Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.
Freedland wrote: “I have long
believed Israel should admit the reality of 1948 – and to defend it all the
same. We needed a home and we had every right to demand it – even if that meant
forcing another people to share [sic] their land with us.”
Freedland acknowledges “four hundred
villages...were emptied” – but says that creating a Jewish state justified this
ethnic cleansing: a “moral necessity ... bought at a horribly high moral
price”. A price, of course, paid by Palestinians.
However, Freedland is a little off
when he claims Palestinians were forced “to share” the land; in fact, most were
violently expelled and excluded, with half the world’s Palestinian population
today outside their homeland.
It is the kind of “sharing”
envisioned by the US-led talks, whereby the colonisation of the majority of
Palestine is accepted and protected, and a “Jewish state” stands forever on the
ruins of destroyed communities and ethnically cleansed cities.
As efforts to partition and
fragment, expel and segregate, under the rubric of a “peace process”, stutter
and stall, we must not shy away from the difficult questions, and, in so doing,
enable a more profound and ultimately more just and sustainable understanding
of “sharing” to emerge.
Ben White is a journalist and
author. A new edition of his book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide is out
in February
www.benwhite.org.uk

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RACISM
AGAINST JEWS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE
A statement by Palestine Solidarity Committee
Palestine Solidarity Committee's
mission is to support independence, security and self-determination for all the
peoples of Israel/Palestine, and to change U.S. policy in the Middle East by
educating Americans in ways that American funds and foreign policy are used to
maintain the Israeli military occupation which violates Palestinian human
rights and generates violence from both sides. We object to the Israeli
government's policies of occupation, apartheid, and dispossession of
Palestinians. In opposing these policies and US support for them, our
objections are directed at the unjust practices of a political regime, not
against the Jewish people of the world.

We reject the false identification of the State of Israel with the Jewish
people of the world.
The identification of Israeli
policies with the religion of Judaism or with the Jewish people is used to
suppress dissent and to create monolithic support for those policies among Jews
and those people who wish to resist anti-Jewish prejudice. The nation of Israel
is a state like any other state, and must be held to the same standards of
human rights universally accepted by the modern community of nations.

We also reject the false identification of Zionism with the Jewish people of
the world.
The Zionist movement which founded
the State of Israel was and is a secular nationalist movement. Many Jews,
including many Israeli Jews, do not subscribe to the principles of the Zionist
movement. Jews are an ethnic group. One may be Jewish without subscribing to the
religion of Judaism, and one may be Jewish without being a Zionist or a
supporter of the State of Israel or its policies.

Criticisms of Zionism or of the State of Israel are not the same as
criticism of the Jewish people of the world.
However, since we reject the Israeli government's identification of
"Israeli" or “Zionist” with "Jew", we must be careful not
to equate these terms ourselves, positively or negatively. We must be rigorous
in our awareness of racist terms and stereotypes that have historically been
applied to Jewish people.

“Anti-Semitic” is the common adjective for prejudice against Jews, but the
terms "anti-Semitism" and "anti-Semitic" can be misleading.
While historically understood to refer to prejudice against Jews, the terms
actually promote an outmoded use of racial categories. Under that terminology,
Arabs are also Semitic people. Since for the moment we are focusing on
prejudice against Jews, we prefer in this context the more precise term
“anti-Jewish".

THERE ARE SEVERAL STEREOTYPES ABOUT JEWS WHICH WE MUST BE CAREFUL TO AVOID:

• There
is no foundation for the myth that Jews are more wealthy, avaricious or
obsessed with wealth than any other individuals, peoples or ethnic groups.

The stereotypical association of Jews with wealth and avarice arose in Europe
during the Middle Ages when it was illegal for Jews to own land or live in
certain parts of European cities or to engage in most of the economic practices
necessary for survival. Because the Christian church at that time barred Christians
from lending money, Jews were encouraged to take up this practice -- and then
scorned for doing so. The myth of Jews hoarding money thus evolved from
discrimination against Jews which allowed them only a few occupations. While a
small number of Jews at that time were engaged in banking and finance, a vastly
greater number were living in impoverished and oppressive conditions,
particularly in the ghettos and shtetls of Eastern Europe.

• There is no evidence of a centralized international conspiracy of Jews to
control banks, media, Congress, or the world in general.

If there is a dominant group in power in the world, it is more likely males of
various European ethnicities and religions who own big multinational
corporations, some of which are wealthier than many countries. The myth of
secret high-level conspiracies of Jews is another malicious falsehood that
began in Europe, spread to Russia and the United States in the 1800s, and has
been used repeatedly to distract populations from the genuine concentrations of
power. This myth culminated in such fabrications as The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, a fake document apparently circulated by Czarist secret
police to stir up racial discontent against Russian Jews in the early twentieth
century.

We find hints of this stereotype in the insistence that US support for Israel
is entirely due to the influence of the so-called "Jewish lobby". The
American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a powerful pro-Israel
lobby, but it is not a Jewish lobby: it does not lobby for the Jewish people of
the world, but for the State of Israel. Furthermore, there are several other
powerful factions that pressure the US government to support the Israeli
government, such as right-wing Christian groups (many of which give funding to
AIPAC) and the Aerospace Industry Association (AIA). The AIA, promoting sales
of weapons and equipment to Israel, donates twice as much to political
campaigns in this country as all the pro-Israel groups combined.

• The historical persecution of Jewish people is not a fabrication.

The notion that victims of oppression are manufacturing their own oppression is
applied to every oppressed people; it has been falsely said about Palestinians
as well. History documents over 2000 years of persecution, expulsion, apartheid
and holocaust levelled against Jewish people by many countries in Europe and
elsewhere, culminating in the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime in
Germany. Individual and institutional prejudice against Jews has an ugly history
in this country as well. This history of persecution in no way justifies the
State of Israel's persecution of non-Jews, but the history itself is not made
up, and persons promoting justice do themselves no service by trying to ignore
or minimize it.

The State of Israel, on the other hand, has systematically invented a history
for itself, just as many nation-states have done, in which it is simultaneously
victim and victor against overwhelming odds. The well-documented truth of the
six million Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust is exploited by some Israelis
to justify the policy of oppression against Palestinians. We have every reason
to reject this practice and the falsehoods of Israeli history, but we must not
let that lead us into underestimating or denigrating the appalling worldwide
history of persecution of Jewish people.

• Judaism is not an incomplete or early form of Christianity.

Judaism is a complete world religion in itself, with many basic distinctions
from Christian doctrine, tenet, and practice. The development of theology and
philosophy in Judaism has continued unabated through the many centuries since
the creation of Christianity two thousand years ago.

Some Christians fundamentalists support Israel not because they support freedom
of religion, but because Jewish presence in Jerusalem plays a key role in the
Christian Armageddon. According to this theology, some chosen Jews will achieve
divine redemption -- but only if they convert to Christianity. Christians who
support Israeli policies because of this are not true allies of the Jewish
people, but simply enemies of Arabs and Muslims on religious grounds.

• There
is no evidence that blood rituals and human sacrifice with Gentile victims have
ever been part of Jewish religious or ethnic practice.

The fiction of Jewish blood-sacrifice against Christians and other non-Jews is
among the most outrageous slanders, and not much in circulation these days.
This myth was just another medieval Euro-Russian way of dehumanizing Jews and
portraying them as a threat to the very "body" of society and
civilization.

Horridly fanciful as this fiction may seem, however, it has been used through
the centuries to stimulate and justify pogroms and purges against Jewish people
in many countries. The wounds from this kind of treatment pass down through
generations, and we must be aware that we can open this wound if we are
insensitive to it.

For example: sometimes reports in this country will emphasize that "Jews
are killing Christians in Bethlehem", as if it is more heinous for
Christians to be murdered by Jews than for anybody to be murdered by anybody
else. In reality, when Israeli soldiers kill Palestinians (Muslim, Christian,
agnostic . . .), they are not doing so because they are Jewish, but because
they are soldiers in the Israeli army and carrying out Israeli policy. Many
Jews around the world abhor these killings and have spoken against the
occupation, forming groups to say "not in my name." Many Israeli
soldiers and reservists have refused to serve in the Israeli army in the West
Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem because they believe they are being ordered to
perform war crimes in the Occupied Territories.

Conclusion:

Palestine Solidarity Committee
rejects all forms of racism, including racism against both Arabs and Jews.
Racism against Arabs is virulent and alive in our society, but racism against
Jews also still exists and requires our diligent attention. Careless or
deliberate employment of anti-Jewish statements in our work compounds the
historical injustice against Jews, wrongly implicates an entire ethnic group in
the crimes against the Palestinians, and discredits our struggle for justice in
the Middle East.

History reminds us over and over that victims may become oppressors when in
power. As more and more people in the United States and Israel are awakening to
the truth of the displacement and apartheid conditions under which Palestinians
are being forced to live, we must remember that our goal is self-determination
for all the peoples of Israel/Palestine, and we must be ever more careful not
to mirror or pass on persecution in our turn. As our work gains momentum, we
have increasing obligation to be vigilant in our refusal to endorse or
participate in racist behaviors or statements against Jews, Israelis, or any
people of the world.

http://www.palestineinformation.org/racism.htm

Racism in Israel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Racism in Israelhas been experienced by both Israeli
Arabs[1] and Israeli
Jews. Israel has broad anti-discrimination laws that prohibit
discrimination by both government and nongovernment entities on the basis of
race, religion, and political beliefs, and prohibits incitement to racism.[2] The Israeli government and many groups within Israel have undertaken efforts to
combat racism. Israel is a state-party to the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and is a
signatory of the Convention against Discrimination
in Education.
Some elements of the Israeli
society have been described as holding discriminatory attitudes towards Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews. Intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is increasingly common in Israel, and social integration is
constantly improving, though disparities persist.
While Ethiopian
Jews have faced some discrimination, scholars suggested that the
situation of the Ethiopian Jews as 'becoming white' is similar to that of some
European immigrants like Poles and Italians who arrived in the United States in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[3]
Racism against Arabs in Israel
has also been claimed in personal attitudes, the media, education, immigration
rights, housing,[4] social life and legal policies.
Contents
* 1 Existence of racism in Israel
* 2 Racism against Arabs
* 2.1 Polls
* 2.2 In the media
* 2.3 Education system
* 2.4 Land ownership
* 2.5 Zionism
* 2.5.1 Law of return controversy
* 2.5.2 Proposed oath of allegiance
* 2.6 Marriage
* 2.7 Religious racism
* 2.8 Incidents
* 2.9 Racism in sports
* 3 Racism against Jews
* 3.1 Polls
* 3.2 Incidents
* 3.3 Leaders
* 4 Racism against other groups
* 5 Arab-Jewish riots
* 6 Between Jewish groups
* 6.1 Sephardi and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern)
* 6.1.1 Yemenite children
* 6.2 Bene Israel (Indian)
* 6.3 Beta Israel
* 6.3.1 Depo Provera prescription controversy
* 7 Black Hebrew Israelite immigration
* 8 Efforts against racism and discrimination
* 8.1 Affirmative action
* 9 Reports addressing racism in Israel
* 10 See also
* 11 References
Existence of racism in Israel
According to Sammy
Smooha, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Haifa, the
answer to the question of whether racism exists in Israel depends on the
definition of racism adopted. If Pierre L. van den Berghe's
view is adopted, that the term racism must be restricted to beliefs that a
given biological race is superior, then ethnocentrism can be found in Israel, but not racism. According to other definitions, racism
is a belief that membership in a certain group, not necessarily genetic or
biological, determines the qualities of individuals. By this definition, racist
views are present in portions of the Israeli population.[5] Smooha adds that some Arab and Jewish writers make accusations of racism, but
they use the term in a very loose way.[5]
A report written by the Israeli
Foreign Ministry describes Israel as a multi-ethnic, multicultural,
multi-religious, and multi-lingual society, which
has a high level of informal segregation patterns. The report states that
groups are not separated by official policy, but that Israel has a number of
different sectors within the society are somewhat segregated and maintain their
strong cultural, religious, ideological, and/or ethnic identity. The report
maintains that in spite of the existing social cleavages and economic
disparities, the political systems and the courts represent strict legal and
civic equality. The Israeli Foreign Ministry describes the country as "Not
a melting pot society, but rather more of a mosaic made up of different
population groups coexisting in the framework of a democratic state"[6]
Racism against Arabs
Vandalized grave.
The graffiti says "death to the Arabs" (מוותלערבים, mavet laArabim) by an unknown.
See also: Anti-Arabism
§ Israel
Racism against Arabs on the part
of the Israeli state and some Israeli Jews has been identified by critics in
personal attitudes, the media, education, immigration rights, housing segregation,
and social life. Nearly all such characterizations have been denied by the
state of Israel. The Or Commission, set up to
explain the October 2000 unrest in many Israeli Arab
communities found,
"The state and generations
of its government failed in a lack of comprehensive and deep handling of the
serious problems created by the existence of a large Arab minority inside the
Jewish state. Government handling of the Arab sector has been primarily
neglectful and discriminatory. The establishment did not show sufficient
sensitivity to the needs of the Arab population, and did not take enough action
in order to allocate state resources in an equal manner. The state did not do
enough or try hard enough to create equality for its Arab citizens or to uproot
discriminatory or unjust phenomenon."[7]
According to the 2004 U.S. State
Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Israel and the
Occupied Territories, the Israeli government had done "little to reduce
institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens."[8] The 2005 US Department of State report
on Israel wrote: "[T]he government generally respected the human rights of
its citizens; however, there were problems in some areas, including...
institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country’s Arab
citizens."[9] The 2010 U.S. State Department Country Report stated that Israeli law prohibits
discrimination on the basis of race, and that government effectively enforced
these prohibitions.[10] Former Likud MK and Minister of Defense Moshe Arens has criticized the
treatment of minorities in Israel, saying that they did not bear the full
obligation of Israeli citizenship, nor were they extended the full privileges
of citizenship.[11]
Israel is a state-party to the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. According
to the 1998 Report of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination found that the Convention "is far from fully implemented in
Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and that the shortfall
contributes very significantly to the dangerous escalation of tension in the
region.". The report positively noted the measures taken by Israel to
prohibit the activities of racist political parties, the amendment of the Equal
Opportunity in Employment Law, prohibiting discrimination in the labour sphere
on the grounds of national ethnic origin, country of origin, beliefs, political
views, political party, affiliation or age, and the Israeli efforts to reduce
and eventually eradicate the economic and educational gap between the Jewish
majority and the Arab minority.[12]
Polls
The Association for Civil
Rights in Israel (ACRI) published reports documenting racism in
Israel, and the 2007 report suggested that anti-Arab racism in the country was
increasing. One analysis of the report summarized it thus: "Over
two-thirds Israeli teens believe Arabs to be less intelligent, uncultured and
violent. Over a third of Israeli teens fear Arabs all together....The report
becomes even grimmer, citing the ACRI's racism poll, taken in March 2007, in
which 50% of Israelis taking part said they would not live in the same building
as Arabs, will not befriend, or let their children befriend Arabs and would not
let Arabs into their homes."[13] The 2008 report from ACRI says the trend of increasing racism is continuing.[14] An Israeli minister charged the poll as biased and not credible.[15] The Israeli government spokesman responded that the Israeli government was
"committed to fighting racism whenever it raises it ugly head and is
committed to full equality to all Israeli citizens, irrespective of ethnicity,
creed or background, as defined by our declaration of independence".[15] Isi Leibler of the Jerusalem Center for Public affairs argues that Israeli Jews
are troubled by "increasingly hostile, even treasonable outbursts by
Israeli Arabs against the state" while it is at war with neighboring
countries,[16]
Another 2007 report, by the
Center Against Racism, also found hostility against Arabs was on the rise.
Among its findings it reported that 75%of Israeli Jews don't approve of Arabs
and Jews sharing apartment buildings; that over half of Jews wouldn't want to
have an Arab boss and that marrying an Arab amounts to "national
treason"; and that 55% of the sample thought Arabs should be kept separate
from Jews in entertainment sites. Half wanted the Israeli government to
encourage Israeli Arabs to emigrate. About 40% believed Arab citizens should
have their voting rights removed.[17]
A March 2010 poll by Tel Aviv
University found that 49.5% of Israeli Jewish high school students believe
Israeli Arabs should not be entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel. 56%
believe Arabs should not be eligible to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.[18]
An October 2010 poll by the Dahaf
polling agency found that 36% of Israeli Jews favor eliminating voting rights
for non-Jews.[19] In recent polling (2003–2009) between 42% and 56% of Israelis agreed that
"Israeli Arabs suffer from discrimination as opposed to Jewish
citizens;" 80% of Israeli Arabs agreed with that statement in 2009.[20]
A 2012 poll revealed widespread
support among Israeli Jews for discrimination against Israeli Arabs.[21]
In the media
Some authors, such as David Hirsi
and Ayala Emmet, have criticized the Israeli media for portraying Arabs
negatively.[22][23] The Israeli media has been described as "racist" in its portrayals of
Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians by Israeli-Arab Nabilia Espanioly [24]
Education system
Jewish and Arab
teachers at Hand in Hand,
a network of bilingual schools that aims to promote coexistence between the
Arab and Jewish populations of Israel
See also: Education in Israel
Israel is a signatory of the Convention against
Discrimination in Education, and ratified it in 1961. The convention
has the status of law in Israeli courts.[25] Israeli Pupils’ Rights Law of 2000 prohibits discrimination of students for
sectarian reasons in admission to or expulsion from educational institutions,
in establishment of separate educational curricula or holding of separate
classes in the same educational institution.[26]
According to a 2001 report by Human Rights Watch, Israel's
school systems for Arab and Jewish children are separate and have unequal
conditions to the disadvantage of the Arab children who make up one quarter of
all students. Israeli law does not prohibit Palestinian Arab parents from
enrolling their children in Jewish schools, but in practice, very few
Palestinian Arab parents do so.[25][27] The report stated that "Government-run Arab schools are a world apart from
government-run Jewish schools. In virtually every respect, Palestinian Arab
children get an education inferior to that of Jewish children, and their
relatively poor performance in school reflects this."[28][29][30] In 1999, in an attempt to close the gap between Arab and Jewish education
sectors, the Education Minister of Israel announced an affirmative action policy
which promised that Arabs would be granted 25% of the education budget,
proportionally more funding than their 18% of the population, and supported the
creation of an Arab academic college.[31]
A 2009 study from the Hebrew
University's School of Education demonstrated that the Israeli
Education Ministry's budget for special assistance to students from low
socioeconomic backgrounds "severely" discriminated against Arabs. The
study found that because there were more needy Arab students, but fewer Arab students
overall, educationally needy Jewish students receive anywhere from 3.8 to 6.9
times as much funding as equally needy Arab students. The Education Ministry
said in response to the report that a decision has already been made to abandon
this allocation method.[32] The Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education notes that the Israeli government
spends an average of $192 per year on each Arab student compared to $1,100 per
Jewish student. The drop-out rate for Arab citizens of Israel is twice as high
as that of their Jewish counterparts (12 percent versus 6 percent). The same
group also notes that there is a 5,000-classroom shortage in the Arab sector.[33][verification
needed]
A 2007 report of the UN Committee
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination noted that separate
sectors are maintained for Jewish and Arab education. It recommended that
Israel should assess the extent to which maintenance of separate Arab and
Jewish sectors "may amount to racial segregation", and that mixed
Arab-Jewish communities and schools, and intercultural education should be
promoted.[34] In a 2008 report, Israel responded that parents are entitled to enroll their
children in the educational institution of their choice, whether the spoken
language is Hebrew, Arabic or bilingual. It also noted that Israel promotes a
variety of programs that promote intercultural cooperation, tolerance and
understanding [27][35]
In Palestine in Israeli School
Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a
professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, describes the depiction of Arabs in Israeli schoolbooks
as racist. She states that their only representation is as ‘refugees, primitive
farmers and terrorists’, claiming that in "hundreds and hundreds" of
books, not one photograph depicted an Arab as a "normal person".[36] Arnon Groiss of the Center for Monitoring
the Impact of Peace criticized these findings. After reviewing the
same books examined by Peled-Ehanan, Groiss concluded that "Peled-Ehanan's
claim regarding this point is clearly false ... This heavily politicized and
thus biased approach distorts the material to produce a picture to her
liking." Groiss further criticized the work of Peled-Elhanan for
stretching the definition of racism to include cases that researchers would
normally categorize as ethnocentrism.[37]
Land ownership
Main article: Israeli Arabs § Property ownership and housing
The Jewish National Fund is a
private organization established in 1901 to buy and develop land in the Land
of Israel for Jewish settlement; land purchases were funded by
donations from world Jewry exclusively for that purpose.[38]
Discrimination has been claimed
regarding ownership and leasing of land in Israel, because approximately 13% of
Israel's land, owned by the Jewish National Fund, is
restricted to Jewish ownership and tenancy, and Arabs are prevented from buying
or leasing that land.[39]
In the early 2000s, several Community settlement in the Negev and the Galilee were accused of barring Arab applicants from
moving in. In 2010, the Knesset passed legislation
that allowed admissions committees to function in smaller communities in the
Galilee and the Negev, while explicitly forbidding committees to bar applicants
based on the basis of race, religion, sex, ethnicity, disability, personal
status, age, parenthood, sexual orientation, country of origin, political
views, or political affiliation.[40][41] Critics, however, say the law gives the privately run admissions committees a
wide latitude over public lands, and believe it will worsen discrimination
against the Arab minority.[42]
Zionism
Chaim
Herzog condemned the Zionism
is racism UN resolution, saying that Zionism is non-discriminatory and non
racist.[43] The resolution was later revoked.
See also: Zionism § Characterization as racist
Some critics of Israel equate Zionism with racism, or describe Zionism itself as racist or discriminatory.[44] In 1975, the United Nations General
Assembly passed Resolution
3379, which concluded that "Zionism is a form of racism and
racial discrimination."[45][46] During debate on the resolution, U.S. ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued
that Zionism "clearly is not a form of racism," defining racism as
"an ideology... which favors discrimination on the grounds of alleged
biological differences."[47] The resolution was based on the UN’s own definition of racial discrimination,
adopted in 1965. According to the International Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, racial discrimination is "any
distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour,
descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of
nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal
footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic,
social, cultural or any other field of public life."[48]
The resolution was revoked by Resolution 46/86 on December 16, 1991. Speaking to the General Assembly, George
H. W. Bush said "...to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight
of Jews in World War II and indeed throughout history."
Supporters of Zionism, such as Chaim
Herzog, argue that the movement is non-discriminatory and contains
no racist aspects.[43]
Law of return controversy
See also: Law of return § Controversy
Some critics have described the Law
of Return, which allows all Jews and persons of some Jewish descent
to immigrate to Israel as racist, as Palestinian refugees are not
eligible for citizenship.[49] Palestinians and advocates for Palestinian refugee rights criticize the Law of Return, which
they compare to the Palestinian claim to a right
of return.[50] These critics consider the Law, as contrasted against the denial of the right
of Palestinian refugees to return, as offensive and as institutionalized ethnic discrimination.[51]
Supporters of the Law argue that
it is consistent with the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Article
I(3) which allows for preferential treatments of some groups for purpose of
immigration, provided there is no discrimination against a specific nationality.[52][53][54]
In addition, proponents of the
law point out that in addition to Israel, several other countries provide
immigration privileges to individuals with ethnic ties to these countries.
Examples include Germany,[55] Serbia, Greece, Japan, Turkey, Ireland, Russia, Italy, Spain, Chile, Poland and Finland[54] (See Right of return and Repatriation
laws.) Some supporters noted that the decision by the Venice
Commission recognized the relationship between ethnic minorities and
their kin-states as legitimate and even desirable, and preference in
immigration and naturalization is mentioned as an example of legitimate
preference.[54]
In response to Arab criticism of
Israel's Law of Return as discriminatory in a 1975 United Nations resolution
debate, Israelis argued that Palestinian Israelis were not subject to any legal
discrimination.[47]
Proposed oath of allegiance
On 10 October 2010 the Israeli
cabinet voted in favor of an amendment to the Citizenship Act requiring all
future non-Jews applying for Israeli citizenship to swear
loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.[56] The bill must still pass a vote in the Knesset in order to become law.[57]
Opinions of the proposed
amendment in Israel were divided. Some commentators defended it because it
reinforces Israel's aspirations as a Jewish and democratic state, as expressed
in its declaration of independence, and as a part of a larger campaign to
secure recognition for Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.
Other commentators condemned the proposal as "racist", since Jews
were exempt from the oath.
In October 2010, over 100 Israeli
artists, writers and intellectuals, demonstrated in Tel-Aviv against the
loyalty oath, among them Hanna Maron, a famous Israeli
actress and theatre personality.[58] During the demonstration, Israeli author Sefi Rachlevsky said "a country
that invades the sacred space of the citizen's conscience, and punishes him for
opinions and beliefs that are not in line with the authorities ... ceases to be
a democracy and becomes a fascist state." Gavriel Solomon, an Israeli
educational psychologist, has compared the law with 1935
Nuremberg racist laws that targeted German Jews.[58][59]
On October 18, following pressure
from his cabinet and the public, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered Justice
Minister Ya'akov Ne'eman to make
amendments which make the loyalty oath universal to both Jewish and non-Jewish naturalized citizens.[60] This inclusion of Jewish immigrants was supported by the Anti-Defamation League.[61]
Marriage
Israel's Citizenship and Entry
into Israel Law bars immigration by family reunification to
couples of an Israeli citizen and a Palestinian resident of the Israeli-occupied territories. Amnesty International says
this mostly affects Arabs.[62][63] The law has been condemned by Amnesty International as
"racial discrimination".[64] The government says the law say it is aimed at preventing terrorist attacks.
Some leaders of the Kadima party support the law in order to preserve the state's Jewish character. Mishael
Cheshin, one of supreme court judges who upheld the law, wrote that
"at a time of war the state could prevent the entry of enemy subjects to
its territory even if they were married to citizens of the state".[65]
Religious racism
Rabbi David Batzri and his son
Yitzhak were investigated by police after they made racist remarks against
Arabs and protested against a mixed Arab-Jewish school in Jerusalem.[66][67] As part of a 2008 plea bargain, Yitzhak was sentenced to community service, and
David issued a declaration saying he was opposed to any racist incitement and
said that he calls for love, brotherhood and friendship.[68]
Dov
Lior, Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat
Arba in the southern West Bank and head of the
"Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria" issued a religious edict
saying "a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail"[69][70][71] and stated that captured Arab terrorists could be used to conduct medical
experiments,[72] and also ruled that Jewish Law forbids employing Arabs or renting homes to them.[73][74] Lior denied holding racist views.[75] In June 2011 the Rabbi was arrested by Israeli police and questioned on
suspicion of inciting violence.[76][77] Both opposition leader Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for
a full judicial investigation of Lior's remarks and said that rabbis were not
above the law.[78]
In October 2010, Ovadia
Yosef, a former Sephardi chief
rabbi, stated that the sole purpose of non-Jews "is to serve
Jews".[79]
On 7 Dec 2010, a group of 50
state-paid rabbis signed a letter instructing Orthodox Jews not to rent or sell
houses to non-Jews. The letter was later endorsed by some 250 other Jewish
religious figures. A hotline was opened for denouncing those Jews who did
intend to rent out to Arabs.[80][81]
On 19 Dec 2010, a rally attended
by 200 people was held in Bat Yam against the "assimilation" of young
Jewish women with Arabs. One of the organizers, Bentzi Gopstein, said that the
motives are not racist: "It is important to explain that the problem is
religious, not racist. If my son were to decide to marry an Arab woman who
converted, I wouldn't have a problem with that. My problem is the assimilation
that the phenomenon causes." One of the protestors called out, "Any
Jewish woman who goes with an Arab should be killed; any Jew who sells his home
to an Arab should be killed." Bat Yam Mayor Shlomo
Lahyani condemned the event, saying "The city of Bat Yam
denounces any racist phenomenon. This is a democratic country,". Nearby,
about 200 residents of Bat Yam held a counter protest, waving signs reading,
"We're fed up with racists" and "Jews and Arabs refuse to be
enemies". Later that month, the wives of 27 rabbis signed a letter calling
on Jewish girls to stay away from Arab men. The document stated: "Don't
date them, don't work where they work and don't perform National Service with
them."[82][83][84]
A senior Catholic spokesman, Fr
Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Custodian of the Holy Land,
has claimed that a lack of police action, and an educational culture in which
Jewish pupils are encouraged to act with "contempt" towards
Christians, has resulted in life becoming increasingly "intolerable"
for many Christians. In 2012, pro-settler extremists attacked a Trappist monastery in the town of Latroun covering walls with anti-Christian graffiti
denouncing Christ as a "monkey", and the 11th century Monastery of the Cross was
daubed with offensive slogans such as "Death to Christians".
According to an article in the Telegraph, Christian leaders feel that the most
important issue that Israel has failed to address is the practice of some
ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools to teach children that it is a religious
obligation to abuse anyone in Holy Orders they encounter in public, "such
that Ultra-Orthodox Jews, including children as young as eight, spit at members
of the clergy on a daily basis."[85] Incidents of spitting on Christian clergymen in Jerusalem have been common
since the 1990s.[86][87] Ruling on the case of a Greek Orthodox priest who had stuck a yeshiva student
who spat near him in 2011, a Jerusalem magistrate wrote, "Day after day,
clergymen endure spitting by members of those fringe groups — a phenomenon
intended to treat other religions with contempt. ... The authorities are not
able to eradicate this phenomenon and they don't catch the spitters, even
though this phenomenon has been going on for years."[88]
Incidents
Racist graffiti
left on a Palestinian girls' school in Hebron. The graffiti is signed
"JDL."
In 2006, a stabbing incident took place when a gang of Russian immigrants chanting racist slogans
stabbed and lightly injured Arab Knesset member Abbas
Zakour, which was part of a "stabbing rampage" and was
described as a "hate crime".[89]
The Mossawa Advocacy Center for
Arab Citizens in Israel reported a tenfold increase in racist incidents against
Arabs in 2008.[90] Jerusalem reported the highest number of racist incidents against Arabs.[90] The report blamed Israeli leaders for the violence, saying "These attacks
are not the hand of fate, but a direct result of incitement against the Arab
citizens of this country by religious, public, and elected officials."[90] The Bedouin claim they face systemic discrimination and have submitted a counter-report to
the United
Nations that disputes the Israeli government's official state report.[91] They claim they are not treated as equal citizens in Israel and that Bedouin
towns are not provided the same level of services or land that Jewish towns of
the same size are, and that they are not given fair access to water.[91] The city of Beersheba refused to recognize a Bedouin holy site, despite a High Court recommendation.[91]
In late 2010, the number of
racist incidents against Arabs increased. The events were described by the
Defense Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, as a "wave of
racism."[92] The most notable ones took place on 20 December 2010, when a group of five
Arabs were driven from an apartment in Tel Aviv after their landlady was
threatened with the torching of her home if she continued to rent out to Arabs,[93] and on 21 December 2010, when a gang of Jewish youths was arrested in Jerusalem
after carrying out a large number of attacks on Arabs. A girl aged 14 would
lure Arab men to the Independence Park, where they were attacked with stones
and bottles and severely beaten. The teens confessed to nationalistic motives.[94] On 31 Oct 2010, a Jewish mob gathered outside of an Arab students' residence in
Safed, chanted "death to the Arabs," hurled rocks and bottles at the
building, shattering glass, and fired a shot at the building before
dissassembling.[95]
On May 2011, two Israeli border
patrolmen were charged with physical abuse against an Arab minor who was
carrying firecrackers. The incident took place in March 2010. The youth was
punched, knocked to the floor, kicked, and had death threats thrown against him
by the officers. At a police station, the 17-years-old male was tricked by a
female police officer into believing he was going to die. After making the
prisoner go down on his knees, she allegedly pointed her pistol at him at
point-blank range. It was not loaded, but the minor did not know this because
his eyes were covered. According to the charges, she counted to 10, with the
teen begging her not to kill him. She allegedly pulled the trigger, saying
"Death to Arabs." [96]
In March 2012, two Arab males of
Beit Zarzir confessed, after being arrested, to damaging a local school for
Arab and Jewish students. They admitted responsibility for having sprayed on
the wall of the school, "Death to Arabs".The school was sprayed twice
in February with the slogans “price tag,” “Death to Arabs, and” “Holocaust to
the Arabs”.[97][98][99][100]
After the murder of 3 Israeli
teenagers were found on June 30th 2014, a Facebook Page created by
an unknown group of Israelis called “The People of Israel Demand Vengeance!” or
“The people of Israel demand revenge!" The page features a myriad of
photos of people holding up signs demanding revenge for the killing of the
teens, and urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order
widespread military action in the West Bank and Gaza. Further racist incitement
within the Facebook campaign depicted a photograph that was posted to the page
with two teenage girls smiling, hugging each other and holding a piece of paper
saying, “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values.” Another post showed an armed
IDF soldier with “Revenge!” in Hebrew inscribed on his chest.The Facebook
Campaign received more than 30,000 likes by the evening of July 3rd 2014. The
campaign has been condemned by a number of Israeli MK's including Justice
Minister Tzipi
Livni and Minister of Agriculture and Yisrael Beiteinu MK Yair
Shamir. The Israeli Defense Forces also vowed to severely punish any
soldier involved with the exchange of racist photographs depicting revenge for
the murdered teens or retributive incitement of Anti-Arabism across Facebook
and other social media sites.[101][102]
Racism in sports
The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.(June 2012)
The first racist
incidents in Israeli soccer took place in the 1970s, when Rifaat Turk joined Hapoel Tel Aviv, and was subjected to
anti-Arab taunts.[103] Under Israeli law, soccer fans can be prosecuted for incitement of racial
hatred.
Racism
in soccer stadiums is a worldwide problem, and Israeli stadiums are
not free from racism.[104] The first racist incidents took place in the 1970s, when the Arab player Rifaat
Turk joined Hapoel Tel Aviv. Turk was
subjected to anti-Arab abuse during nearly every game he played.[103] Arab soccer player Abbas Suan was confronted once
with a sign reading "Abbas Suan, you don't represent us".[105] Under Israeli law, soccer fans can be prosecuted for incitement of racial
hatred. The "New Voices from the Stadium" program, run by the New
Israel Fund (NIF) amasses a "racism index" that is
reported to the media on a weekly basis, and teams have been fined and punished
for the conduct of their fans. According to Steve
Rothman, the NIF San Francisco director, "Things have
definitely improved, particularly in sensitizing people to the existence of
racism in Israeli society."[104] In 2006, Israel joined Football Against Racism
in Europe (FARE), network set up to counter racism in soccer.[106]
After a soccer game in March
2012, in which Beitar Jerusalem defeated a
rival team at Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium,[107] a group of at least a hundred Beitar fans[108][109][110] entered the nearby Malha Mall chanting racist slogans and allegedly attacked
Arab cleaning workers, whom some reports described as Palestinians. The police
were criticized for initially failing to make arrests;[111] it later investigated the incident, issuing restraining orders against 20
soccer fans and questioning several suspects among the cleaning crew seen
waving sticks at the fans.[112]
Racism against Jews
Polls
A 2009 PEW poll,
which included 527 Israeli Arab respondents, showed that 35% of Israeli Arabs
said their opinion of Jews was unfavorable, while 56% said their opinion was
favorable (the figures amongst Israeli Jews on their attitude of themselves
were 94% favorable; 6% unfavorable).[citation
needed]
The 2008 Index of Arab-Jewish
Relations in Israel by the Jewish-Arab Center found that
40.5% of the Arab citizens of Israel denied
the Holocaust, up from 28% in 2006.[113][114] This report also states that "In Arab eyes disbelief in the very happening
of the Shoah is not hate of Jews (embedded in the denial of the Shoah in the
West) but rather a form of protest. Arabs not believing in the event of Shoah
intend to express strong objection to the portrayal of the Jews as the ultimate
victim and to the underrating of the Palestinians as a victim. They deny
Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state that the Shoah gives legitimacy to."[114]
Incidents
Numerous racist attacks against
Jews have taken place throughout Arab localities in the Galilee and in Arab areas of Jerusalem, including murders.
Among the people killed in such attacks was Kristine Luken, an American tourist
stabbed in a forest near Jerusalem after being seen wearing a Star
of David necklace.[115] In Jerusalem, Jews driving through Al-Issawiya have been subjected to ambushes by crowds, as was a repairman who had been
hired by a resident.[116] Emergency services vehicles have also been attacked while passing through the
neighborhood. Jews who travel to the Mount
of Olives also risk violence.[117] Jews who enter or buy property in Arab areas face harassment, and Arabs who
have sold property to Jews have been murdered. In 2010, an Israeli-Jewish
security guard, Kochav Segal Halevi, was forced from his home in the Arab town
of I'billin after a racist crowd gathered at his house, and he received death threats.[118]
In 2008, the slogan "Death
to the Jews" was found spray-painted in Arabic on the cargo hold of an El Al plane.[119]
In 2010, the wall of a synagogue
and a Jewish residence in the mixed Jewish-Arab Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa were spray-painted with swastikas and Palestinian flags.[120]
Leaders
Raed Salah, the
head of the Islamic movement in Israel, was prosecuted in 2010 for incitement to racism
Journalist Ben-Meir described
Arab Knesset members who "talk incessantly about the Palestinian people's
rights, including their own state" but who "refuse to acknowledge
Israel as the state of the Jewish people and deny the very existence of a
Jewish people as a nation with national rights" as racist.[121] Ariel Natan Pasko, a policy analyst, suggested that prominent Arab leaders such
as Arab member of Knesset Ahmad Tibi is racist because
he "turned away from integration" and "wants to build an Arab
university in Nazareth, as well as an Arab hospital in the Galilee."[122] Tibi had been previously accused of racism: in 1997, he said "whoever sells
his house to the Jews has sold his soul to Satan and done a despicable
act".[123]
The head of the Islamic movement in Israel's Northern Branch, was charged with incitement to racism and
to violence. During legal proceedings, the prosecution said that Sheikh
Raed Salah made his inflammatory remarks "with the objective of
inciting racism."[124][125] he also accused Jews of using children's blood to bake bread.[126] He said, ""We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for]
the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children's
blood," he said. "Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him
ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in
with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread."
Racism against other groups
In April 2012,the Swedish
newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported[127] that tens of thousands of refugees and African migrant workers who have come to
Israel in dangerous smuggling routes, live in southern Tel Aviv's Levinsky
Park. SvD reported that some Africans in the park sleep on cardboard boxes
under the stars, others crowd in dark hovels. Also was noted a situation with
African refugees, such as Sudanese from Darfur, Eritreans, Ethiopians and other
African nationalities, who stand in queue to the soup kitchen, organized by
Israeli volunteers. The interior minister reportedly "wants everyone to be
deported".
In May 2012, disgruntlement
toward Africans and calls for deportation and "blacks out" in Tel
Aviv boiled over into death threats, fire bombings, rioting, and property
destruction. Protesters blamed immigrants for worsening crime and the local economy,
some of protesters were seen throwing eggs at African immigrants[128][129]
Arab-Jewish riots
Monument to
Israeli Arab casualties in October 2000 riots, Nazareth
In what became known as the October 2000 events,
Arab-Israelis rioted while protesting Israeli actions in the early stages of
the Second Intifada, attacking
Jewish civilians and Israeli police with live gunfire, molotov cocktails,
stones, and vandalism of Jewish property. One Egged bus was torched on the first day. Arab rioting took place in Umm
al-Fahm, Baqa-Jatt, Sakhnin, Nazareth, Lod, Kafar
Kanna, Mashhad, Arraba, Ramla, Or
Akiva and Nazareth Illit. A Jewish
citizen was killed when his car was stoned, and a synagogue was torched.
Hundreds of Arab residents of Jaffa burned tires, threw rocks, and beat reporters.[130] Throughout the course of the riots, Israeli Police repeatedly opened fire at
Arab riots and demonstrations, killing 13 people, including 12 Arab-Israelis
and one Palestinian from Gaza.
Thousands of Jews counter-rioted
against Arabs in Nazareth, Bat
Yam, Petah Tikva, Tiberias, Tel
Aviv, Acre, Nazareth
Illit, Lod, Rosh
HaAyin, Or Akiva and Jerusalem,
throwing stones at and beating Arabs, vandalizing and torching Arab homes and
property, attacking Arab traffic, and chanting "Death to the Arabs!".[131] An Arab worker was stabbed on his way to work in Rosh
HaAyin. In Jaffa,
a mosque was vandalized, and another was torched in Tiberias.
In Tel
Aviv, Arab restaurant workers were chased from a restaurant, and
their cars set alight.
Sam Lehman-Wilzig, Political
Communications Professor at Bar-Ilan University, said that rioting is rare and
alien to Jewish political society. "The numbers (of riots) are so low
because of our Jewish political culture which encourages protesting, but
seriously discourages violent protest," he said. He argues that the riots
were caused since Israelis felt threatened by the "pressure cooker
syndrome" of fighting not just the Palestinians and Lebanon's Hezbollah
guerrillas, but also the Israeli Arab population.[132]
In 2008, a series of riots broke
out in Acre,
after an Arab motorist and his teenage son drove into a predominantly Jewish
neighborhood during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in
the Jewish religion, to visit relatives. According to police, their car's
windows were down and music was blaring. Police spokesperson Eran Shaked said
that "this was a provocation... we believe he was intoxicated. This was a
deliberate act".[133] Their vehicle was pelted with stones, and they sought refuge in a relative's
home. A Jewish mob chased them, then gathered around the building chanting
"Death to the Arabs!", and attacked police who tried to intervene.[134] An incorrect rumor spread among the Arab residents that the driver had been
killed, prompting calls from local mosques to avenge his death.[135] Arabs rioted in the city center, smashing shop windows, vandalizing vehicles,
and throwing rocks at people going to or from Yom
Kippur prayers,[136][137] chanting Death to the Jews" and "If you come out of your homes, you
will die". Israeli Police forcibly dispersed the rioters with tear gas and
stun grenades. As soon as the Yom Kippur fast ended, about 200 Jewish residents
rioted in Acre's Arab neighborhoods, torching homes, vandalizing property, and
forcing dozens of families to flee. Riots and retaliations by both sides
continued for four days.[135] Haaretz editorialized that that year's "Yom
Kippur will be infamous for the violent, racist outburst by Jews
against Arabs within Israel".
During the course of monitoring
elections in 2009, a Member of the Knesset (MK) replaced another Jewish
election monitor at the Israeli-Arab town of Umm
al-Fahm, who was prevented by police from entering the city because
of threats by local Arabs on his life. As soon as the MK began to perform his
duties, an Israeli-Arab mob rioted outside attacking the guards and shouts of
“Death to the Jews” could be heard. Israeli Police arrested five rioters.[138]
Between Jewish groups
Some Jewish Israelis of Eastern
European descent (Ashkenazi) are described as
viewing themselves as superior to Sefardim, and of maintaining an elite
position in Israel society,[139][140] and some describe the attitudes of Ashkenazi as racist or racism.[141]
Other authorities describe the
discrimination by Ashkenazi as class-based, not race-based.[142][143] For example, the differences between (Mizrahi) Sephardic Jews (N. Africans,
Middle Easterners, Yemenites, etc.) are referred to as Adatiyut [144][145][146][147] community-differences (resulting also in some traditional customary gaps).[148]
Some sources claim that reports
of inter-Jewish discrimination in Israel arise from propaganda published by
Arab sources which ignores the normality and harmony between the communities.[149][150]
Sephardi and
Mizrahi (Middle Eastern)
Poster for Shas, a political party
formed to represent the interests of religiously observant Mizrahi (Middle
Eastern) Jews,[151] featuring Eli
Yishai.
See also: Mizrahi
Jews
Israeli society in general – and Ashkenazi Jews in particular – have been described as holding discriminatory attitudes
towards Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent, known as Mizrahi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and Oriental
Jews.[152] A variety of Mizrahi critics of Israeli policy have cited "past
ill-treatment, including the maabarot, the squalid tent cities into
which Mizrahim were placed upon arrival in Israel; the humiliation of Moroccan
and other Mizrahi Jews when Israeli immigration authorities shaved their heads
and sprayed their bodies with the pesticide DDT; the socialist elite's enforced
secularization; the destruction of traditional family structure, and the
reduced status of the patriarch by years of poverty and sporadic unemployment"
as examples of mistreatment.[153] In September 1997, Israeli Labor Party leader Ehud
Barak made a high-profile apology to Oriental Jews in Netivot stating:
We must admit to ourselves [that] the inner fabric of communal life was
torn. Indeed, sometimes the intimate fabric of family life was torn. Much
suffering was inflicted on the immigrants and that suffering was etched in
their hearts, as well as in the hearts of their children and grandchildren. There
was no malice on the part of those bringing the immigrants here—on the
contrary, there was much goodwill—but pain was inflicted nevertheless. In
acknowledgement of this suffering and pain, and out of identification with the
sufferers and their descendants, I hereby ask forgiveness in my own name and in
the name of the historical Labor movement.[154]
Barak's address also said that
during the 1950s, Mizrahi immigrants were "made to feel that their own
traditions were inferior to those of the dominant Ashkenazi [European-origin]
Israelis [Alex Weingrod's paraphrase]."[155] Several prominent Labor party figures, including Teddy
Kollek and Shimon Peres, distanced
themselves from the apology while agreeing that mistakes were made during the
immigration period.[155]
The cultural differences between
Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews impacted the degree and rate of assimilation into
Israeli society, and sometimes the divide between Eastern European and Middle
Eastern Jews was quite sharp. Segregation, especially in the area of housing,
limited integration possibilities over the years.[156] Intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is increasingly common in Israel,
and by the late 1990s 28% of all Israeli children had multi-ethnic parents (up
from 14% in the 1950s).[157] A 1983 research found that children of inter-ethnic marriages in Israel enjoyed
improved socio-economic status.[158]
Although social integration is
constantly improving, disparities persist. A study conducted by the Israeli
Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), Mizrahi Jews are less likely to pursue
academic studies than Ashkenazi Jews. Israeli-born Ashkenazi are up to twice
more likely to study in a university than Israeli-born Mizrahim.[159] Furthermore, the percentage of Mizrahim who seek a university education remains
low compared to second-generation immigrant groups of Ashkenazi origin, such as
Russians.[160] According to a survey by the Adva Center,[161] the average income of Ashkenazim was 36 percent higher than that of Mizrahim in
2004.[162]
Some claim that the education
system discriminates against Jewish minorities from North Africa and the Middle
East, and one source suggests that "ethnic prejudice against Mizrahi Jews
is a relatively general phenomenon, not limited to the schooling process".[163]
There was a case in 2010, when a Haredi school system, where Sephardi and Mizrahi students were sometimes excluded or
segregated.[164][165] In 2010, the Israeli supreme court sent a strong message against discrimination
in a case involving the Slonim Hassidic sect of the
Ashkenazi, ruling that segregation between Ashkenazi and Sephardi students in a
school is illegal.[166] They argue that they seek "to maintain an equal level of religiosity, not
from racism."[167] Responding to the charges, the Slonim Haredim invited Sephardi girls to school, and added in a statement: “All along, we said
it's not about race, but the High Court went out against our rabbis, and
therefore we went to prison."[168]
Yemenite children
Yemenite Jews en
route from Aden to Israel, during Operation Magic Carpet
See also: Yemenite
Jews
In 1950s, 1,033[169] children of Yemenite immigrant families disappeared. In most instances, the
parents claim that they were told their children were ill and required
hospitalization. Upon later visiting the hospital, it is claimed that the
parents were told that their children had died though no bodies were presented
or graves which have later proven to be empty in many cases were shown to the
parents. Those who believe the theory contend that the Israeli government as
well as other organizations in Israel kidnapped the children and gave them for
adoption. Secular Israeli Jews of European descent were accused of
collaborating in the disappearance of babies of Yemeni Jews and anti religious
motives and Anti-religious coercion were alleged,[170][171][172][173][174][175][176] Some went further to accuse the Israeli authorities of conspiring to kidnap the
Yemeni children due to "racist" motives.[177]
In 2001 a seven-year public
inquiry commission concluded that the accusations that Yemenite children were
kidnapped are not true. The commission has unequivocally rejected claims of a
plot to take children away from Yemenite immigrants. The report determined that
documentation exists for 972 of the 1,033 missing children. Five additional
missing babies were found to be alive. The commission was unable to discover
what happened in another 56 cases. With regard to these unresolved 56 cases,
the commission deemed it "possible" that the children were handed over
for adoption following decisions made by individual local social workers, but
not as part of an official policy.[169]
Bene Israel (Indian)
In 1962, authorities in Israel
were accused by articles in the Indian press of racism in relation to Jews of
Indian ancestry (called Bene Israel).[178][179] In the case that caused the controversy, the Chief Rabbi of Israel ruled that
before registering a marriage between Indian Jews and Jews not belonging to
that community, the registering rabbi should investigate the lineage of the
Indian applicant for possible non-Jewish descent, and in case of doubt, require
the applicant to perform conversion or immersion.[178][179] The alleged discrimination may actually be related to the fact that some
religious authorities believe that the Bene
Israel are not fully Jewish because of inter-marriage during their
long separation.[180]
In 1964 the government of Israel
led by Levi
Eshkol declared that it regards Bene Israel of India as Jews without
exception, who are equal to other Jews in respect of all matters.[178]
Beta Israel
Ethiopian Israeli
soldier
Main article: Beta Israel
Nearly all of the Ethiopian Beta
Israel community, a community of Black Jews, resides in Israel. The
Israeli government has mounted rescue operations, most notably during Operation
Moses (1984) and Operation
Solomon (1991), for their migration when civil war and famine
threatened populations within Ethiopia. Today 81,000 Israelis were born in
Ethiopia, while 38,500 or 32% of the community are native born Israelis.[181]
According to the sociologist
Prof. Uzi Rebhun, it represents an ambitious attempt to deny the significance
of race.[182] Israeli authorities, aware of the situation of most African diaspora
communities in other Western countries, hosted programs to avoid setting in
patterns of discrimination.[182] The Ethiopian Jewish community's internal challenges have been complicated by
limited but real racist attitudes on the part of some elements of Israeli
society and the official establishment.[183] Nevertheless racism was commonly cited as explanation for policies and programs
who failed to meet expectations. Racism was alleged regarding delays in
admitting Ethiopian Jews to Israel under the Law
of return.[182] The delays in admitting Ethiopians may be attributed to religious motivations
rather than racism, since there was debate whether or not Falasha Jews' (Beta
Israel) were Jewish.[184][185]
Racism was also alleged in 2009,
in a case where school children of Ethiopian ancestry were denied admission
into three semi-private religious schools in the town of Petah
Tikva. An Israeli government official criticised the Petah Tikva
Municipality and the semi-private Haredi schools, saying "This concerns
not only the three schools that have, for a long time, been deceiving the
entire educational system. For years, racism has developed here
undeterred". Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef threatened to
fire any school principal from Shas's school system who refused to receive
Ethiopian students. The Israeli Education Ministry decided to pull the funding
from the Lamerhav, Da'at Mevinim and Darkei Noam schools, the three
semi-private institutions that refused to accept the students. Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out
against the rejection of Ethiopian children, calling it "a moral terror
attack."[186][187]
The Anti-Defamation League also
states that Ethiopian Jews are not experiencing racism: "Whatever Israel's
mistakes towards its Ethiopian Jewish community, the cause is not racism."
It explains that "what causes the distress is bureaucratic ineptitude and
a cultural gap between a traditional community and a modern,
technologically-advanced, highly-competitive nation."[188]
In 2012, Israel appointed the
country's first Ethiopian-born ambassador, Beylanesh Zevadia. According to the
foreign minister of Israel, this represents an important milestone in fighting
racism and prejudice.[189]
Depo Provera prescription controversy
In 2010, certain members of the
feminist movement accused Israel of a "sterilization policy" aimed
towards Ethiopian Jews, for allowing the prescription of contraceptive drugs
like Depo-Provera to the community.[190][191] They stated that the Israeli government deliberately gives female Ethiopian
Jews long-lasting contraceptive drugs like Depo-Provera.[190] Jewish agencies involved in immigration said that Ethiopian women were offered
different types of contraceptives and that "all of them participated
voluntarily in family planning".[190] Dr. Yifat Bitton, a member of the Israeli Anti-Discrimination Legal Center
"Tmura" said that 60 percent of the women receiving this
contraceptive are Ethiopian Jews, while Ethiopians made up only 1 percent of
population and "the gap here is just impossible to reconcile in any
logical manner that would somehow resist the claims of racism".[190] Professor Zvi Bentwich, an immunologist and human rights activist from
Tel-Aviv, rejected the claim and said there's no ground to suspect a negative
official policy towards Ethiopian Jews.[190] Israel initially denied this claim,[190] but later admitted to it, and ordered gynaecologists to stop administering the
drugs for women of Ethiopian origin if there is concern that they might not
understand the ramifications of the treatment.[192]
Prof. Sadredin Moosavi of UMass
Dartmouth criticized the allegations, and said that Depo Provera
remains sanctioned by the World Health Organization. He
said that the allegations were spread by The National, an Arab
newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates which he
claimed is biased against Israel. He added, "Why would a racist Israeli
state go the effort to airlift Ethiopian Jews, clearly black and unable to
stroll across the border without help, to Israel in the 1990s and only THEN
attempt to exterminate them with Depo Provera?"[193]
Black Hebrew Israelite immigration
A child of the
Black Hebrew Israelite community, in Dimona, September
2005.
Black Hebrew Israelites are
groups of people mostly of Black African ancestry who
believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites.
They are generally not accepted as Jews by the greater Jewish community. Many choose to
self-identify as Hebrew Israelites or Black Hebrews rather than as Jews.[194][195][196][197]
When the first Black
Hebrews arrived in Israel in 1969, they claimed citizenship under
the Law
of Return, which gives eligible Jews immediate citizenship.[198] The Israeli government ruled in 1973 that the group did not qualify for
automatic citizenship, and the Black Hebrews were denied work
permits and state benefits. The group responded by accusing the
Israeli government of racist discrimination.[199][200]
In 1981, a group of American
civil rights activist led by Bayard
Rustin investigated and concluded that racism was not the cause of
Black Hebrews' situation.[201] In 1990, Illinois legislators helped negotiate an agreement that resolved the
Black Hebrews' legal status in Israel. Members of the group are permitted to
work and have access to housing and social services. In 2003 the agreement was
revised, and the Black Hebrews were granted permanent resident status.[202][203][204]
In his 1992 essay "Blacks
and Jews: The Uncivil War", historian Taylor
Branch wrote that Black Hebrews were initially denied citizenship
due to anti-black sentiment among Israeli Jews (according to mainstream Jewish
religious authorities, members of the Black Hebrew Israelite group are not
Jewish).[205][206] According to historian Dr. Seth Forman the claims that the Black Hebrew
Israelites were denied citizenship because they were black seem baseless,
particularly in light of Israel's airlift of thousands of black Ethiopian Jews
in the early 1990s.[207]
Efforts against
racism and discrimination
Israel has a law that prohibits
incitement to racism.[2]
Israeli protest
in Pardes
Hana against racism, 2010. The sign reads "No to racism".
According to the State
Department, Israel's anti-discrimination law "prohibits
discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status, or sexual orientation. The
law also prohibits discrimination by both government and nongovernment entities
on the basis of race, religion, political beliefs, and age."
Israel is a signatory of the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination treaty since 1966, and has ratified the treaty in 1979.[208] The treaty forbids any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based
on race,
colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the
recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and
fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other
field of public life.
The Anti Defamation League states:
"There is no Israeli ideology, policy or plan to segregate, persecute or
mistreat its Israeli Arab citizens, nor Palestinian Arabs," it goes on in
saying that Israel is a democracy which encourages vibrant debate, which has
a flourishing free press and which shares with other liberal democracies a core
value: the equality of all its citizens before the law.[209]
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign
Affairs states that "Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel with equal
rights" and states that "The only legal distinction between Arab and
Jewish citizens is not one of rights, but rather of civic duty. Since Israel's
establishment, Arab citizens have been exempted from compulsory service in the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF)."[210]
Affirmative action
In response to inequality between
the Jewish and Arab populations, the Israeli government established a committee
to consider, among other issues, policies of affirmative action for housing
Arab citizens.[211] According to Israel advocacy group, Stand With Us, the city of Jerusalem gives Arab residents free professional advice to assist with the housing permit
process and structural regulations, advice which is not available to Jewish
residents on the same terms.[212][213][214]
Reports addressing racism in Israel
* Amnesty International annual reports on Israel – 2010 report, 2009 report, 2008 report, 2007 report
* Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) annual reports – 2009 report, 2008 report, 2007 report
* United States Department of State annual Human Rights reports on Israel – 2009 report, 2008 report, 2007 report, 2006 report, 2005 report, 2004 report
* United Nations CERD – 2007 CERD report, unedited version of 2007 report
* Or Commission – The Official Summation of the Or Commission Report"
See also
* Criticism of Israel
* Human rights in Israel
* Israel and the apartheid analogy
* Neo-Nazism in Israel
* Racism in the Palestinian territories
* Secularism in Israel
References
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Jews want to revoke Arabs' voting rights," Ynet News, October 10,
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roots of violence in the Middle East, Nation Books, 2003, p. 91
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perspectives, Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, Ella Shohat (Eds), U of
Minnesota Press, 1997, p 42-44. Originally published as "Sephardim in
Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims" in 'Social Text,
No. 19/20 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 1–35
§ Israel Yearbook
on Human Rights 1987, Volume 17; Volume 1987 (Yoram Dinstein) p 249
§ Medding, Peter, Sephardic Jewry and Mizrahi Jews, p 128-129
§ Smooha, Sammy,
"Jewish Ethnicity in Israel: Symbolic or Real?", in Jews in
Israel: contemporary social and cultural patterns, Uzi Rebhun (Ed.), UPNE,
2004, p 60-74
§ Khazzoom,
Loolwa, The flying camel: essays on identity by women of North African and
Middle Eastern Jewish heritage, Seal Press, 2003, p 69
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Simona, "Feminist Reflections on the Interplay of Sexism and Racism in
Israel", in Challenging racism and sexism: alternatives to genetic
explanations, Ethel Tobach, Betty Rosoff (Eds), Feminist Press, 1994, p
309-331
§ Hanieh, Adam,
"The Reality Behind Israeli Socialism", in The Palestinian
Struggle, Zionism and Anti-Semitism, Sean Malloy, Doug Lorimer, Doug
Lorimer (Eds), Resistance Books, 2002, p 21-22
§ Lefkowitz,
Daniel, Words and stones: the politics of language and identity in Israel,
p 15
§ Thomas, Amelia, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, p 43
§ Zohar, Zion, Sephardic
and Mizrahi Jewry: from the Golden Age of Spain to modern times, p 324
§ Medding, Peter
Y. Sephardic Jewry and Mizrahi Jews, p 81
153.                        Meyrav Wurmser refers to all of these issues as
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164.                        Ashkenazi Against
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guilty by the Israeli High Court of Justice of racism. Evidence of their crime
can easily be seen by the fact that schools were constructed with separate
entrances and separate classrooms for Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. The
Ashkenazi parents say they need to keep the classrooms segregated because the
families of the Sephardi girls "aren't religious enough."
165.                        Sephardim,
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175.                        Madmoni-Gerber, Shoshana, Israeli media and the
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176.                        See also, regarding media and Yemeni Jews:
Madmoni-Gerber, Shoshana, Israeli media and the framing of internal
conflict: the Yemenite babies affair, Macmillan, 2009
177.                        *Blue-Ribbon Babies and Labors of Love: Race,
Class, and Gender in U.S. Adoption Practice, Christine Ward Gailey
University of Texas Press, 2010
"In Israel, ethno-racial divides have
created a widespread belief, upheld by some birth mother-adult child reunions,
that hundreds of Yemeni infants had been kidnapped for adoption by Israeli
couples. Many Yemeni refugee children had been declared dead or disappeared in
the refugee camps after the migration of some 50,000 Yemeni Jews to Israel in
1948–1949. It appears from a national inquiry in the late 1990s that a network
of doctors and clinics were involved in the adoptions." (page 154)
§ Grenberg, Joel, The Babies from Yemen: An Enduring Mystery", New York Times,
Sept 2, 1997.
"Those who believe the theory contend
that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Yemenite babies who were reported to have
died or to have disappeared after their parents came to Israel were actually
kidnapped and given or sold for adoption to European-born Israelis and American
Jews. The controversy over the Israeli establishment's treatment of the 50,000
Yemenite Jewish immigrants, most of whom were airlifted to Israel in 1949 and
1950, has festered for years. It has stoked deep-seated feelings of resentment
among the country's Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin.
... Other Yemenite Jewish advocates put the numbers at between 1,000 and more
than 2,000. They assert that the European-born Ashkenazic Israeli establishment
looked down at the new immigrants and their traditional ways and felt free to
take their children for adoption by childless European Jewish couples... Mr.
Levitan agreed that there was a patronizing attitude toward the immigrants. In
some cases the Yemenites' religious studies were restricted and their
traditional side-curls were cut to remake them into modern, secular Israelis.
... The concept was absorption through modernization, by inculcating the values
of Western society, Mr. Levitan said. The parents were treated like
primitive people who didn't know what was good for them, who aren't capable of
taking care of their own kids. There was disregard for the parents, an
unwillingness to make the effort to investigate, but not a conspiracy."
§ Shoha, Ella, Taboo
memories, diasporic voices, Duke University Press, 2006,
"..Yemenis .. fell prey to doctors,
nurses, and social workers, most of them on the state payroll. ... The act of
kidnapping was not simply a result of financial interests to increase the
state's revenues, it was also a result of a deeply ingrained belief in the
inferiority of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, seen as careless breeders
with little sense of responsibility... In this intersection of race, gender,
and class, the displaced Jews from Muslim countries became victims of the logic
of progress.." page 349.
§ Madmoni-Gerber,
Shoshana, Israeli media and the framing of internal conflict: the Yemenite
babies affair, Macmillan, 2009 –
This book is about racism against Yemenite
and Mizrahi jews in Israel, focusing on the kidnappings.
§ Gordon, Linda, The
great Arizona orphan abduction, Harvard University Press, 1999, p 310:
"In Israel, Ashkenazi (European)
Jewish women, with the help of doctors, stole babies born to Sephardic Yemeni
Jewish mothers from the hospitals; the mothers were told that the babies had
died. Here is a phenomenon that is racist yet lacks even the kind of racial
justification evident in [the kidnappings in] 1904 Arizona." (page 310)
§ Yuval-Davis,
Nira, Gender & nation, SAGE, 1997,
"Public investigations are taking
place in Israel at the moment concerning accusations that hundreds of Yemeni
Jewish babies were abducted from their mothers who were told they were dead and
they were given for adoption to Ashkenzi middle class families. Breaking up
communities and families and separating children from their parents would often
be central to practices of forced assimilationism. Such policies disempower the
minorities and can reinforce their location in subjugated positionings."
(p 54)
§ Kanaaneh, Rhoda
Ann, Birthing the nation: strategies of Palestinian women in Israel,
University of California Press, 2002,
"[regarding the] disappearance of
Yemenite Jewish babies in the 1950s, whom many Yemenites believe were kidnapped
and given to childless European Jewish parents to adopt, the author suggests
that something similar may have happened to Palestinian children who went
missing during the 1948 war. Here Palestinians and Yemenite Jews are united in
their subjugation to the Ashkenazi Jewish establishment through their lost
children". (page 164).
178.                        Abramov, S. Zalman, Perpetual dilemma: Jewish
religion in the Jewish State, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1976, p.
277-278
179.                        Smooha, Sammy, Israel: pluralism and conflict,
University of California Press, 1978, p. 400-401
180.                        How Do the Issues in
the Conversion Controversy Relate to Israel?. Jcpa.org. Retrieved on
2010-12-16.
181.                        [7] Ha'aretz.
182.                        Rebhun, Uzi, Jews in Israel: contemporary
social and cultural patterns, UPNE, 2004, p. 139-140
183.                        Onolemhemhen Durrenda Nash, The Black Jews of
Ethiopia, Scarecrow Press; Reprint edition 2002, page 40
184.                        . JSTOR 2784774.Missing or empty |title=(help)
185.                        Kemp, Adriana, Israelis in conflict: hegemonies,
identities and challenges, Sussex Academic Press, 2004, p 155
186.                        "Deal reached on Petah Tikva Ethiopian
olim", Jerusalem Post, 31 Aug 2009. http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=153392
187.                        Olmert:
Ethiopian Jews are right to feel discriminated against
188.                        Ethiopian Controversy
In Israel: It's Not Racism. Adl.org. Retrieved on 2010-12-16.
189.                        J’lem
appoints first Ethiopian-born ambassador. Jerusalem
Post, 02/28/2012
190.                        "Israel
accused of dooming Ethiopian baby boom". RT.
24 February 2010. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
191.                        "Israel's
Treatment of Ethiopians Called 'Racist'". headlinesafrica.com.
2010-01-15. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
192.                        Israel
gave birth control to Ethiopian Jews without their consent
193.                        Dartmouth
Professor Strikes Back, by Prof. Sadredin Moosavi, 03/05/10,
194.                        Ben Levy, Sholomo. "The
Black Jewish or Hebrew Israelite Community". Jewish Virtual Library.
Retrieved 2007-12-15.
195.                        Ben-Jochannan, p. 306.
196.                        Johannes P. Schade, ed. (2006). "Black
Hebrews". Encyclopedia of World Religions. Franklin Park, N.J.:
Foreign Media Group. ISBN 1-60136-000-2.
197.                        Bahrampour, Tara (June 26, 2000). "They're
Jewish, With a Gospel Accent". The New York Times. Archived from the
original on April 3, 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-19.
198.                        Michaeli, pp. 73–74.
199.                        Michaeli, p. 74.
200.                        For additional examples of charges of racism in
this incident, see:
§ Black Zion:
African American religious encounters with Judaism, Yvonne
Patricia Chireau, p 74
§ Jet magazine[8]
§ In the
Trenches: Selected Speeches and Writings of an American Jewish Activist, Volume
2, David A. Harris, page 171
§ Culture and
customs of Israel, Rebecca L. Torstrick, page 41
201.                        Shipler, David K. (January 30, 1981). "Israelis
Urged To Act Over Black Hebrew Cult". The New York Times.
Retrieved 2008-05-28.
202.                        "The
Hebrew Israelite Community". Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
September 29, 2006. Retrieved 2008-05-26.
203.                        Kaufman, David (April 16, 2006). "Quest
for a Homeland Gains a World Stage". The New York Times.
Retrieved 2008-05-28.
204.                        In 2009, Elyakim Ben-Israel became the first Black
Hebrew to receive Israeli citizenship. The Israeli government said that more
Black Hebrews may be granted citizenship. Alush, Zvi (February 2, 2009). "First
Black Hebrew Gets Israeli Citizenship". Ynetnews.
Retrieved 2009-02-02.
205.                        Forman, Seth, Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A
Crisis of Liberalism, p. 14-15
206.                        Branch, Taylor "Blacks and Jews: The Uncivil
War", in Bridges and Boundaries: African Americans and American Jews (Salzman, Ed), 1992
207.                        Blacks in the Jewish mind: a crisis of liberalism,
Seth Forman, NYU Press, 1998: p. 15
208.                        International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, United
Nations, New York, 7 March 1966
209.                        The Anti-Israel
Divestment Campaign: Introduction. Adl.org. Retrieved on 2010-12-16.
210.                        Arab
Israelis
211.                        Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2000-02-23). "Israel
Government Action in the Arab Sector – February 2000". www.mfa.gov.il.
Retrieved 2008-06-13. "The Director Generals' Committee was
assigned the responsibility of devising a program of action for the development
and advancement of the Arab sector, and drawing up a cooperation framework
involving the various government ministries. This program will include the
raising of resources and promotion of investment, while applying an affirmative
action policy in the areas of housing, employment, industry, transport,
infrastructures, agriculture, and education in the non-Jewish sector."
212.                        Jerusalem Houses
213.                        "Israel
Government Action in the Arab Sector – Febr". Mfa.gov.il.
Retrieved 2010-05-16.
214.                        "Report
of the Government Ministries- Activities in". Mfa.gov.il. 1998-01-02.
Retrieved 2010-05-16.

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Israeli Banks Guilty of Discrimination Against
Israeli Palestinians
by Richard Silverstein on July
29, 2013
in Mideast
Peace
Most readers of this blog will have read either
from me or other sources about the serial racism that faces Israeli
Palestinians. They face housing shortages, inadequate funding of schools,
poor municipal services, job discrimination, poor health services, etc.
But until lately, little was known about how
Israeli Palestinians fared in the economic marketplace. Haaretz has published an important
article about severe discrimination facing Israeli Palestinians in the
financial sector. The reporter began the report with a transcript of a
phone conversation between an officer of a branch of Bank Mizrahi and another
bank official responsible for recruiting new customers. In the discussion
between the two, the branch officer tells the woman who’s bringing new Israel
Palestinian customers that she should save her breath and not bring them to her
branch. The branch manager and assistant managers do not want these
customers. They will tell any such person that they will not earn any
interest on their accounts for at least six months after opening them.
The Haaretz reporter interviews banking officers
from other banks who review the transcript and interpret it for her: when the
branch refuses to offer a customer interest, they will also refuse to offer
them other critical services like an ATM or credit cards. Any potential
customer, when faced with such obstacles, will go elsewhere rather than face
such curtailed customer service. In essence, Bank Mizrahi’s Kiryat
Shmoneh branch was deliberately turning away potential customers because they
weren’t Jewish.
This, of course, is illegal under Israeli
law. So no bank can phrase their refusal in such a direct way. They
have to justify it by saying, as the branch official does, that they had a bad
financial history with Israeli Palestinians. Once one “took the money and
ran!” The employee doesn’t specify how a customer could do this: unless
she means that they took out a loan and defaulted. But she makes it seem
like an Arab stole into the bank, grabbed money and fled like a bandit.
Which would be characteristic of racist attitudes among of large percentage of
the Israeli Jewish population.
In another passage from the article, a bank
official tells the Haaretz journalist that Palestinians are simply a bad bet
because they pose a greater financial risk than Jews. He magnanimously
clarifies that it’s not a “genetic” fault, but rather due to Arab culture not
having a “culture of payment.” In other words, Palestinians don’t take
their financial obligations as seriously as Jews. He makes clear that
he’s not including all Palestinians under this rubric, but alas, the
chances of repayment of loans made to Palestinians is lower than to Jews, or so
he claims.
Of course, he offers no evidence or statistics to
prove this. It indicates that banking in Israel is not done by reason,
logic or numbers, but based on biased assumptions and ingrained racist
notions. There may be some who brag about the Israeli economic miracle,
the Start-Up Nation, etc. But this article shows what its like down
in the trenches, not in the pages of books boasting of Israel’s prowess in
world business.
The truth is that a nation that offers inferior
services to a large minority of its population solely based on their ethnicity
is not a nation maximizing its economic potential. It is a nation held
back by poisonous ideas that will inhibit growth and economic health.
Monthly account fees among
Israeli banks. Palestinian banks are highlighted on the left side of the graph.
(Haaretz)
Other statistics prove the inferior banking
services available to Palestinians: there is far less competition among banks
for the Palestinian customer. Only two banks serve the sector and neither
are among Israel’s major financial institutions. Until this year, Bank
Mizrahi had no branches in Palestinian communities. Other major Israeli
banks consider the “Arab” sector to be an orphan. They see it as having
little profit potential. Even if it did, they don’t understand the market
and have no interest in learning about it.
There are fewer bank branches in Palestinian
towns. There are fewer branch employees than in the average Jewish branch
and those employees serve more customers. Monthly fees for checking
accounts are almost double those of Jewish customers in major Israeli
banks. The interest spreads in Arab banks are one-third higher than those
of the larger banks serving Jewish clientèle. Service fees for
Palestinian customers are much higher than for Jewish customers (see
graph). Unlike in Jewish communities, banks serving the Palestinian sector
offer no philanthropic support for local projects.
The typically racist Israeli banker, when asked to
explain or defend this says with a straight face that “Arabs” don’t care about
the cost of services. Much more important to them is that they receive
“respect and personal service:”
They want to sit with their banker behind closed
doors and share a cup of coffee. It’s their mentality.
This, he explains, is why Palestinians pay higher
fees, because they demand more personal services than Jewish customers (who bank
by phone or online and presumably incur lower costs for service). What he
neglects is the fact that stiffing Palestinians with high service fees is the
ultimate in disrespecting them.
Another banking consultant discounts the
possibility that discrimination is at play among Israeli banks toward this
market. She says she knows of no “overt policy of discrimination by any
bank.” Of course no bank has such a stated policy. They
don’t need to. In a sophisticated society that is nevertheless racist,
they don’t need written policies that penalize minority customers.
Discrimination is much more discreet and nuanced than that.
The argument that Palestinians pose a higher risk
to banks than Jews is not borne out by statistics. The rate of default
among the Palestinian population is comparable to that of the Jewish
population. Further, the poor financial services offered to Palestinians
create a vicious circle by which they cannot get credit, cannot open new
businesses, cannot amass wealth, which in turn ensures they continuation of the
economic stagnation and poverty with which this sector is afflicted. The
truth is that Israel as a nation doesn’t care about the fate of its
minorities. They fend for themselves. Do the best they can. But
Israeli economic and financial institutions don’t reach out a hand to
help. They don’t do so either out of altruistic or capitalistic
motives.
At a Knesset hearing on the banking sector, one
Jewish MK asked how it was possible that there was this level of poor service
and discrimination against Palestinians. Before he could finish his
question another Jewish MK interrupted him, saying:
As usual, they screw the Arabs.
Parallels to financial sector discrimination in
the U.S. are rife. We certainly have some similar problems. But we
have laws against such racist treatment (a practice known in banking circles as
“redlining”) and punishments meted out to companies that violate them.
There are NGOs who organize “stings” in which they test the responses by bank
personnel to minority customers. Those which fail are shamed when the
results are made public. Congressional legislation also forces banks to
channel some of their profits back into minority communities to support local
NGOs and economic projects. Unfortunately, almost none of this happens in
Israel because racism against Israel’s minorities is much deeper ingrained
there than it is here.
Suggested reading

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/07/29/israeli-banks-guilty-of-discrimination-against-israeli-palestinians/

Human
Rights
Racist measures against Palestinians
in Israel lead to strike call
Jonathan
Cook
The Electronic
Intifada
9 September 2009
The
increasingly harsh political climate in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s right-wing government has prompted the leadership of the country’s
1.3 million Arab citizens to call for the first general strike in
several years.
The
one-day stoppage is due to take place on 1 October, a date heavy with symbolism
because it marks the anniversary of another general strike, in 2000 at the
start of the second Palestinian intifada, when 13 Arab demonstrators were shot
dead by Israeli police.
The Arab
leadership said it was responding to a string of what it called “racist”
government measures that cast the Arab minority, a fifth of the population, as
enemies of the state.
“In recent
months, there has been a parallel situation of racist policies in the
parliament and greater condoning of violence towards Arab citizens by the
police and courts,” said Jafar Farah, the head of Mossawa, an Arab advocacy
group in Israel. “This attitude is feeding down to the streets.”
Confrontations
between the country’s Arab minority and Netanyahu’s coalition, formed in the
spring, surfaced almost immediately over a set of controversial
legal measures.
The
proposed bills outlawed the commemoration of the Nakba, or catastrophe, the
word used by Palestinians for their dispossession in 1948; required citizens to
swear loyalty to Israel as a Zionist state; and banned political demands for
ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Following widespread outcries, the
bills were either watered down or dropped.
But
simmering tensions came to a boil again late last month when the education
minister, Gideon Saar, presented educational reforms to mark the start of the
new school year.
He
confirmed plans to drop the word “Nakba” from Arabic textbooks and announced
his intention to launch classes on Jewish heritage and Zionism. He also said he
would tie future budgets for schools to their success in persuading pupils to
perform military or national service.
Arab
citizens are generally exempted from military service, although officials have
recently been trying to push civilian national service in its place.
Mohammed
Barakeh, an Arab member of the parliament, denounced the linking of budgets to
national service, saying that Saar “must understand that he is the education
minister, not the defense minister.”
The
separate Arab education system is in need of thousands of more classrooms and
is massively underfunded — up to nine times more is spent on a Jewish pupil
than an Arab one, according to surveys. Research published by the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem last month showed that Jewish schools received five
times more than Arab schools for special education classes.
Netanyau,
who accompanied Saar on a tour of schools last week, appeared to give his
approval to the proposed reforms: “We advocate education that stresses values,
Zionism and a love of the land.”
Barakeh
also accused government ministers of competing to promote measures hostile to the
Arab minority. “Anyone seeking fame finds it in racist whims against Arabs —
the ministers of infrastructure, education, transportation, whoever.”
Barakeh
was referring to a raft of recent proposals.
Avigdor
Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu
party, announced last month that training for the diplomatic service would be
open only to candidates who had completed national service.
Of the
foreign ministry’s 980 employees only 15 are Arab, a pattern reflected across the
civil service sector according to Sikkuy, a rights and
coexistence organization.
The
housing minister, Ariel Atias, has demanded communal segregation between Jewish
and Arab citizens and instituted a drive to make the Galilee, where most Arab
citizens live, “more Jewish.”
The
interior minister, Eli Yishai, has approved a wave of house demolitions, most
controversially in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm in Wadi Ara, where a commercial
district has been twice bulldozed in recent weeks.
The
transport minister, Israel Katz, has insisted that road signs include place
names only as they are spelt in Hebrew, thereby erasing the Arabic names of
communities such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Nazareth.
Arab
legislators have come under repeated verbal attack from members of the
government. Last month, the infrastructures minister, Uzi Landau, refused to
meet Taleb al-Sana, the head of the United Arab List party, on parliamentary
business, justifying the decision on the grounds that Arab MPs were “working
constantly here and abroad to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state.”
Shortly
afterwards, al-Sana and his colleague Ahmed Tibi, the deputy speaker of
parliament, attended Fatah’s congress in Bethlehem, prompting Lieberman to
declare: “Our central problem is not the Palestinians, but Ahmed Tibi and his
ilk — they are more dangerous than Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad combined.”
Tibi
responded: “When Lieberman, the foreign minister, says that, ordinary Israelis
understand that he is calling for me to be killed as a terrorist. It is the
most dangerous incitement.”
Israel’s
annual Democracy Index poll, published last month, showed that 53 percent of
Israeli Jews supported moves to encourage Arab citizens to leave.
Farah said
the strike date had been selected to coincide with the anniversary of the
deaths of 13 Arab citizens in October 2000 to highlight both the failure to
prosecute any of the policemen involved and the continuing official condoning
of violence against Arab citizens by police and Jewish citizens.
Some 27
Arab citizens have been killed by the police in unexplained circumstances since
the October deaths, Farah said, with only one conviction. Last week, Shahar
Mizrahi, an undercover officer, was given a 15-month sentence for shooting
Mahmoud Ghanaim in the head from point-blank range. The judge called Mizrahi’s
actions “reckless.”
This week,
in another controversial case, Shai Dromi, a Negev rancher, received six months
community service after shooting dead a Bedouin intruder, Khaled al-Atrash, as
the latter fled.
Farah said
the regard in which Arab citizens were held by the government was illustrated
by a comment from the public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, in June.
During an inspection of police officers working undercover as drug addicts, the
minister praised one for looking like a “real dirty Arab.”
Jonathan
Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan
to Remake the Middle East(Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair(Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A
version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in
Abu Dhabi

http://electronicintifada.net/content/racist-measures-against-palestinians-israel-lead-strike-call/8434

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[PDF] ﺍﳉﻤﻌﻴـﺔ ﺍﻟﻌﺎﻣـﺔ
... climate change, development or the matter of countering racism and
discrimination ... young people from Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine and Cyprus ...
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[PDF] ADVANCE UNEDITED VERSION
... on behalf of the African group), Nigeria and the observer for Palestine. ... observers
took the floor: European Network against Racism; Afro-Swedish ...
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[PDF] General Assembly
... up to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination ... non-member
States represented by observers and Palestine, by representatives ...
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THE PERMANENT MISSION OF
... determination of the people of East Timor, Western Sahara and Palestine must
be a ... to make sure that the monster of fascism and racism should not ...
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General
Assembly Resolutions 51st Session
... HTML, A/RES/51/26 Peaceful Settlement of Question of Palestine. ... HTML,
A/RES/51/79 Measures to Combat Contemporary Forms of Racism. ...
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General
Assembly Resolutions - 53rd Session
... A/RES/53/52 University of Jerusalem "Al-Quds" for Palestine Refugees. ...
A/RES/53/132 Third Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination ...
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[PDF] ANNEX ONE
... well as resolution 3237 (XXIX), which “invites the Palestine Liberation
Organization to ... determined that Zionism* was a form of racism (the resolution ...
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Social, humanitarian and cultural / 3rd Committee - 61st ...
... L.53 - Global efforts for the total elimination of racism, racial discrimination ... of
the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, and Palestine, on behalf of ...
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[PDF] E conomic & Compendium of Recommendations on ...
... 70 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Related Intolerance (Durban, September 2001 ...
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[PDF] FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
... died from neglect or hard labor, or were murdered, because of the Nazis' racism
and loathing ... Why didn't more Jews go to Palestine before the war? ...
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Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly at its 47th ...
... without vote, A/47/658, Second Decade to Combat Racism and Racial ...
A/47/611, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees ...
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55th
Session of the General Assembly
... A/55/570, 17 November 2000, UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in ... A/55/600, 17 November 2000, Elimination of racism and racial ...
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Social, humanitarian and cultural / 3rd Committee - 60th ...

... Malaysia, Mali, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan,
Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Palestine (in accordance ...
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Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly at its 42nd ...
... 1987 131-2-22, A/42/L.33 and Add.1, Question of Palestine. ... 1987 without vote,
A/42/703, Second Decade to Combat Racism and Racial ...
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Transcript of Q&A session after Secretary-General's address at ...
... including the African Americans that you speak for, are protected and are not
victims of racism and xenophobia. From Palestine: Your Excellency ...
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Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly at its 43rd ...
... 1988 123-2-20, A/43/L.50 and Add.1, Question of Palestine. ... ideologies and
practices based on apartheid, racial discrimination and racism, and the ...
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Highlights of the Noon Briefing Friday 19 March
2010
... READINESS FOR PROXIMITY TALKS BETWEEN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE. ...
UN HUMAN RIGHTS CHIEF CALLS FOR RACISM-FREE SOCCER ...
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Highlights of the Noon Briefing Tuesday 20 January
2009
... On the Anti-Racism Review Conference, also known as the Durban Review ...
in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in ...
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UN General Assembly 61st Session - Third Committee list of ...
... A/C.3/61/2 [F] [S] [A] [C] [R] Letter dated 3 October 2006 from the Permanent
Observer of Palestine to the ... Item 65: Elimination of racism and racial ...
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59th General Assembly Session: Fifth Committee ...

... on Human Rights on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination ... dated
8 October 2004 from the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the ...
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UN Webcast: Human Rights Council

... Palestine HE Mr. Mohammad Abu-Koash [English] 3 minutes. ... Special

Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination ...

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[PDF] General Assembly Economic and Social Council

... revoked its infamous resolution of 1975 equating Zionism with racism, it remains ...
written into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and was ...
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59th General Assembly Session: Session documentation

... Treaty - United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in ...

persons and humanitarian questions - Elimination of racism and racial ...
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Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly at its 41st ...
... without vote, A/41/785, Second Decade to Combat Racism and Racial ...
A/41/754, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees ...

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BRIEFING NOTES 10 NOVEMBER 1999
... with statements after the vote by Israel and the observer of Palestine.]. ... L.55);
measures to combat contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination ...
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[PDF] Part 2
... I am going back to Terezin. From there I will go to Palestine or to England. ... 3.
Frieda Menco and Marek Edelman fight against racism and indiffe- ...
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General Assembly Resolutions 30th Session
... 14 October 1974, INVITATION TO THE PALESTINE LIBERATION
ORGANIZATION. ... DECADE FOR ACTION TO COMBAT RACISM AND RACIAL ...
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[PDF] Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly,

sixty-seventh ...
... UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNRWA United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Vol. ...
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UN
Webcast Archives-General Assembly
... 29 November 06, General Assembly: 1. Question of Palestine. 2. The situation
in the Middle East. ... 4. Elimination of racism and racial discrimination. ...
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UN
Webcast Archives-General Assembly
... 29 November 04, General Assembly:1. Question of Palestine (a) Report of ...
proposal submitted by the Chairman 2. Elimination of racism and racial ...
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Global Bytes Archive for 2001

... bring peace to the region." "As long as the fighting and the conflict in Palestine
continue, we ... As a result, new tools to deal with racism are called for. ...
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[MS WORD] X = closed item 29 September 2003
... 19). (a) Elimination of racism and racial discrimination; ... 57/198 [DR III-recorded
vote: 172-4-3] [A/57/555, para.19]) [Observer: Palestine]. ...
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[PDF] Commission on the Status of Women
... 6. World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and
Related Intolerance ... The observer for Palestine also made a statement ...
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Malaysia
... the Palestinian issue, can guarantee lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. ...
Racism constitutes one of the most heinous forms of human rights ...
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[PDF] _____ CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY _____ United Nations ...
... over the lawful use of force, the rejection of racism and violence ... It is a major
source of instability and conflict in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and across ...
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[PDF] Economic and Social Council

... 23 1998/6. World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia and Related Intolerance . . . . . ...
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Press Conference by General Assembly President
... Abbas had outlined an application for Palestine's full membership to ... of a political
declaration entitled “United against Racism, Racial Discrimination ...
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PRESS CONFERENCE BY HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR ...
... conference relating to human rights violations in Palestine, to which ... 2001 United
Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination ...
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Nelson Mandela International Day, July 18, For
Freedom ...
... Some are opposed because of their ideological adherence to racism. ... and their
human rights, including the peoples of Palestine and Western ...
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United Nations News Centre - Remarks to the House
of ...
... sets the stage for a global campaign for justice for victims of racism worldwide ...
and to realize the vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side ...
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Remarks to the House of Representatives in Malta
... sets the stage for a global campaign for justice for victims of racism worldwide ...
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Special Commemorative Meeting - Highlights of 22 October ...
... of the United Nations is intertwined with the question of Palestine. ... notes that
the United Nations has struggled against racism and colonialism ...
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58th General Assembly Session: Session documentation
... Elimination of racism and racial discrimination: comprehensive implementation
of and ... Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in ...
www.un.org/ga/58/documentation/list3.html - 110k
[PDF] STATEMENT BY HE MR. THABO MBEKI PRESIDENT OF THE ...
... necessary conferences to unite the peoples of the world against racism, those
who ... the restoration of the rights of the people of Palestine, within the ...
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View Meetings
... of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the ...

of Complementary Standards in the Field of Racism, Sixth session, 7 ...

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[PDF] UN Daily News
... legacy of Nelson Mandela can guide efforts to end racism, UN says ... began
in March 2011, Yarmouk was home to over 160,000 Palestine refugees. ...
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[PDF] Chapter VI RELATIONS WITH OTHER UNITED NATIONS ...
... Organizations Confer- ence of Action against Apurthc~id and Racism, in which ...
before the Assembly's consideration of the question of Palestine on I ...
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UN General Assembly - President of the 62nd Session - Items ...
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Statements

... sets the stage for a global campaign for justice for victims of racism worldwide ...
and to realize the vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side ...
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sixty-sixth ...
... United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in ... Elimination
of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance: ...
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[PDF] Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly,

sixty-fourth ...
... Organization UNRWA United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East Vol. Volume WIPO ...
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The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach
Programme

... foresight to send their four children to British Mandate Palestine while she ... the
language of those who seek to spread hatred, racism, anti-Semitism ...
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President of the 66th Session - General Assembly
of the ...
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[PDF] COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

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[PDF] Economic and Social Council

... outcome of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination ... Several
countries, including Palestine, Jordan, the Syrian Arab Republic ...
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[PDF] Chapter III RESOLUTIONS AND DECISION ADOPTED BY ...
... instituting a decade for action to combat racism, apartheid and racial
discrimination, as well as General Assembly resolution ... racism., ...
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[PDF] HE Mr. Vuk Jeremić
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[PDF] 1 Merci Monsieur le President [in French], At the outset, I wish ...
... and awareness of the threat posed by genocide, racism and crimes ... resolution
on the Special Information Programme on the question of Palestine. ...
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[PDF] White paper_en-rev
... public, addresses all forms of discrimination and racism particularly anti ... region,
particularly in the framework of Israel-Palestine collaboration and co ...
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[PDF] United Nations General Assembly opens on 13
September ...
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Fifty-seventh
Session of the General Assembly
... of racism and racial discrimination: (a) Elimination of racism and racial ... Fund
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57th
session of the General Assembly - Documents
... Question of Palestine - The situation in the Middle East - Letter dated 24 ...
Programme of Action for the Third Decade to Combat Racism and Racial ...
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United Nations Site Index
... Let's Fight Racism Campaign; Liberia (UN Mission in) (UNMIL); Library, Dag ...
P. Palestine, Question of; Panel of Eminent Persons on Civil Society and ...
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[PDF] integrity and national sovereignty. He stated
that, in carry- ing ...
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pay special attention to situations such as colonialism, racism and alien ...
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General Assembly Resolutions 32nd Session
... 32/10, 7 November 1977, DECADE FOR ACTION TO COMBAT RACISM AND
RACIAL ... A/RES/32/40, 2 December 1977, QUESTION OF PALESTINE. ...
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... W o rld Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and ...
American meeting on the question of Palestine [General Assembly ...
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Fifty-sixth
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... violation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine -
Note by ... of Action for the Third Decade to Combat Racism and World ...
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59th General Assembly Session: Press Kit - Items included in ...
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Elimination of racism and racial discrimination: (a) Elimination of racism and ...
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UN General Assembly - 61st Session - President
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Elimination of racism and racial discrimination: (a) Elimination of racism and ...
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55th
Session of the General Assembly
... Rigths acting as the Prep.Com for the world conference on racism. ... August 2000,
Report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine. ...
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Resolutions of the 68th Session - UN General Assembly
... other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial
discrimination ... IV, Palestine refugees' properties and their revenues. ...
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UN General Assembly - Meeting Summaries
... Tuesday 26 November 10 am, 1.Question of Palestine [36]: report of the ...
resolution (A/68/L.49) [item 18] 2. Elimination of racism, racial discrimination ...
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United Nations Meetings Coverage & Press Releases

... Jewish Museum, Strongly Condemns All Forms of Racism, Intolerance (25 ...
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

... including the African Americans that you speak for, are protected and are not
victims of racism and xenophobia. From Palestine: Your Excellency ...
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UNBIS Guidelines for Analysis of UN Information Resources
... terms that might be linked instead: ANTI-RACISM STRATEGIES, BLACKS ...
followed by the word «Question», eg PALESTINE QUESTION, WESTERN ...
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... Nations Roundtable on Legal Aspects of the Question of Palestine, Geneva,
24 ... of Complementary Standards in the Field of Racism, Sixth session, ...
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59th General Assembly Session: Session documentation

... The situation in the Middle East - Question of Palestine - New Partnership ... and

protection of the rights of children - Elimination of racism and racial ...

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United
Nations Meetings Coverage & Press Releases

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Eliminating Racism, Protecting Human Rights while Countering ...

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UN General Assembly - Resolutions
... of certain practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism,
racial discrimination ... IV, Palestine refugees' properties and their revenues ...
www.un.org/en/ga/62/resolutions.shtml - 156k
United Nations Small Arms Review Conference 2006
... At the World Conference against Racism held in Durban in 2001, he was ... Israel
Practices Affecting the Human rights of the Palestine People and ...
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[PDF] Report of the Secretary-General on the work of the ...

... 137. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
in the Near East (UNRWA) combines humanitarian and developmental ...
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Syria
... The natural and human answer says that they should go back to Palestine. ...
is that the return of the Palestinian refugees alleviates racism in Israel ...
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UN Enable - World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled ...
... by peaceful means and to eliminate all forms of racism and racial ... The United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near ...
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[PDF] The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach
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... Modern-day Racism ... The Legacy of the Survivors: Remembering the Nazi
Persecution of Roma and Sinti — a Key to Fighting Modern-day Racism ...
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[PDF] UNITED NATIONS HANDBOOK 2012-13

... Refugees UNICEF UN Children's Fund UNODC UN Office on Drugs and Crime
UNRWA1 UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in ...
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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Statements

... and lessons of the transatlantic slave trade, we recommit to educating current
and future generations of the dangers of racism and prejudice. ...
www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=7546 - 19k
UN Economic and Social Council
... rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine, 14 (g ... 2002/270,
Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, 14 (g ...
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UN Economic and Social Council
... rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine, 14 (g ... 2004/272,
World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia ...
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[PDF] General Assembly
... Joint Academic Committee between Israel and Palestine to promote ... National
Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI) was ...
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[PDF] International Migration Report 2009: A Global
Assessment

... for Migration UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNRWA
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in ...
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Press_AR
... INCLUDING ON DECOLONIZATION, INFORMATION, PALESTINE REFUGEES. ...
COUNCIL REPORT, ELIMINATING RACISM AMONG ISSUES, AS ...
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Classification Codes - Local - Codes
... HUR 0502 Palestine question Specific human rights issues relating to ... HUR
0601 Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia For periodic reports of ...
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President
of the 58th Session of the General Assembly - News
... sovereignty and to achieve independence in their State, Palestine." By a ... Member
had taken a retrograde step to institutionalize racism and racial ...
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H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

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Aug 11, 2014, 12:35:17 PM8/11/14

GLOBAL RACISM IN ISRAEL

Whereever in history and civilizations, where men have succeeded to deceive others that they have come together to build a very special society based on exclusions, a technologically advanced society, a wealthy society, an automated society, a superpower, over other nations, a superior set of BEINGs over others, etc, it has invariably turned out that these people and their leaders were led by SATAN not by God.

----- Kum Nelson Bame Bame

Whereever, in any continent, any Nation, any corporation, any STATE, any Society, any Club, any government, where there is heightened RACISM, CLASS-ISM, Rational Ceilings/Entitlements, ask and look who owns the majority of the BANKS, the Enterprises, the press, the Multi-national corporations --- there, and they must be the children of the side of Lucifer/Satan on Earth.

----- Kum Nelson Bame Bame

RACISM IN ISRAEL
===============================================
I have been carefully chronicling the racist attacks against non-Jewish African asylum-seekers in Israel for several years. In January 2012, an organization in Israel that aids African asylum-seekers, the African Refugee Development Center, asked me to author on their behalf a report to the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). After receiving the report in text and video form, the UN committee urged the Israeli government to prevent racist attacks against Africans in Israel. The Israeli government ignored the UN's call, and the following month, Israelis firebombed a kindergarten for African children in Tel Aviv, igniting a wave of violence against non-Jewish African people in Israel that is still ongoing. Below are links to the UN reports, in text and video form, social media stories about the recent violence, footage from four years of anti-African rallies, and extended one-on-one interviews about opposition to the presence of Africans in Israel.
http://www.davidsheen.com/racism/

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Donald Sterling's Comments Shed Light on the Underreported Plight of Israel's African Refugees
Posted: 05/02/2014 2:28 pm EDT Updated: 07/02/2014 5:59 am EDT
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The publication of an audio recording that features the white owner of an American basketball team berating his girlfriend for being seen in public with black people has injected new life into a number of important conversations that Americans need to have about race, class and gender relations, among other topics. But one of the most salient sentences in Donald Sterling's diatribe was largely glossed over by the mainstream media; namely, his justifying his own hate by noting that racism is commonplace, and maybe even more extreme, elsewhere: "You go to Israel, the blacks are just treated like dogs."

As the scandal spiraled, this pivotal statement was all but ignored by political pundits, and this was no accident. American media outlets self-police every mention of Israel, for fear of a backlash from the state's vocal supporters in the U.S. This is especially true regarding Israel's treatment of the 50,000 non-Jewish sub-Saharan Africans in the country. For unlike in the case of Israel's protracted conflict with non-Jewish Arabs, which is often framed as a hard-to-understand and harder-to-solve war over territory, here there is no narrative that can convincingly shield the Israeli government from accusations of base racism.

The phenomenon of non-Jewish immigration -- called, simply, "immigration" in the rest of the world -- is new to Israel, having only reached quantities of any significance between 2006 and 2012. During those years, about 60,000 Africans fleeing political persecution, military dictatorships and ethnic cleansing -- mainly from Eritrea and Sudan -- sought asylum in Israel. Every one of them crossed into Israel by foot and immediately surrendered themselves to IDF soldiers patrolling the border, as required by international law: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

While many countries make efforts to limit the number of asylum-seekers breaching their borders, millions have managed to refuge in Africa, Asia, Australia, America, and Europe. The Netanyahu government has sought not to constrain the number of non-Jewish asylum-seekers in Israel, but to reduce their number to zero. Outside of Israel, 70 percent or more of Eritreans and Sudanese are granted refugee status. By contrast, Israel has granted refugee status to only two Eritreans, and it has not granted refugee status to even a single Sudanese.

In a transparent attempt to maintain the appearance that it is not deporting refugees back to more of the horrors that they fled from, the Israeli government's policy is, in the words of former Interior Minister Eli Yishai, to "make their lives miserable," until they give up and agree to self-deport. To that end, it does not permit almost any asylum-seekers to work, so that they have no legal way of providing for their own sustenance. In December, the government began to round African asylum-seekers out of Israeli cities and into a vast desert detention center, for an unlimited period of time, so as to further immiserate them.

What little mention Sterling's Israel references received in the American media focused on his comparison between the white Jews and black Jews that live in the country ["There's white Jews and black Jews" / "Are the black Jews less than the white Jews?" / "A hundred percent"]. By doing so, these statements could be dismissed as not wholly accurate, because while black Jews (almost all of whom are Ethiopian-Israelis) are the darkest-skinned, and therefore, the most disadvantaged and discriminated-against population of Jews in Israel, they still retain all of the privileges of citizenship that follow from their Jewishness.

One of those Ethiopian-Israelis, Member of Knesset Shimon Solomon, was so incensed by the incident that he penned a public letter to the National Basketball Association commissioner, urging him to punish Sterling, signing off as "Sincerely, A Black Jew from Israel." But sadly, like too many of his fellow black Jews in Israel, Solomon is complicit in the government's war on African asylum-seekers. All the members of his Yesh Atid party present at the Knesset plenum voted with the rest of the government to strip African asylum-seekers of their freedom and lock them up in the desert detention center.

A sustained propaganda campaign by top political officials has branded the African asylum-seekers in the eyes of the Israeli people as spreaders of disease, and even as a threat on par with nuclear bombs. Although official police statistics continually demonstrate that Africans have a far lower crime rate than native Israelis, the entire community is tarred in the media as inherently criminal, inflaming grassroots racism. As a result, a January poll revealed that 80 percent of Jews now want the government to physically remove all African asylum-seekers from Israeli population centers.

After a Sderot rabbi boasted that he successfully shut down an African church, convinced locals not to rent apartments to Africans, and patrolled city streets in order to drive the Africans out of town, he was invited by a government faction to repeat his 'successes' in Tel Aviv, and given a budget to do so. After a ruling Likud Party member of Knesset incited a thousand-person anti-African race riot in Tel Aviv by calling Africans a "cancer" -- and then apologizing, not to Africans, but to cancer victims, for comparing them to Africans -- Prime Minister Netanyahu promoted her to head the committee that decides the fate of those same Africans.

None of these facts are hidden from the Israeli public as they are hidden from the American public. Just the opposite: in Hebrew, the government proudly announces each new anti-African measure, since they have broad popular support and can be converted into political capital. Now that Donald Sterling has inadvertently exposed the plight of Israel's African refugees to an American audience, as well, will it lead to increased interest in their welfare and to a wider conversation about the treatment of non-Jews in general in the "Jewish State"?

David Sheen is an independent journalist and filmmaker originally from Toronto, Canada who now lives in Dimona, Israel. He first moved to Israel in 1999 and later went on to work as a reporter and editor at the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.

Follow David Sheen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidsheen
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Immigration Israel Donald Sterling Israel Israel Race Israel Palestine African Immigration Israel Israel Racism
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Whereever, in any continent, any Nation, any corporation, any STATE, any Society, any Club, where there is heightened RACISM, CLASSIM, Rational Ceilings/Entitlements, ask and look who owns the majority of the BANKS, the Enterprises, the Multi-national corporations --- there, and they must be the children of the side of Lucifer/Satan on Earth.

----- Kum Nelson Bame Bame

The New Racism
The New Republic
Posted: 08/10/2014 10:31 pm EDT Updated: 08/10/2014 10:59 pm EDT
Print Article
CIVIL RIGHTS

But the systematic way in which Republican majorities in Southern statehouses are undoing so many of the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement suggests that the end is nigh. Whether it’s by imposing new voter-ID laws, slashing public assistance, refusing Medicaid expansion, or repealing progressive legislation like North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, the GOP-controlled governments of Southern states are behaving in ways that are at times as hostile to the interests of their African American citizens as Jim Crow Democrats were half a century ago.
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Racism in Israel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some elements of the Israeli society have been described as holding discriminatory attitudes towards Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews. Intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is increasingly common in Israel, and social integration is constantly improving, though disparities persist.

While Ethiopian Jews have faced some discrimination, scholars suggested that the situation of the Ethiopian Jews as 'becoming white' is similar to that of some European immigrants like Poles and Italians who arrived in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[3]

Racism against Arabs in Israel has also been claimed in personal attitudes, the media, education, immigration rights, housing,[4] social life and legal policies.

Contents

1 Existence of racism in Israel

    2 Racism against Arabs
        2.1 Polls
        2.2 In the media
        2.3 Education system
        2.4 Land ownership
        2.5 Zionism

2.5.1 Law of return controversy

2.5.2 Proposed oath of allegiance

        2.6 Marriage
        2.7 Religious racism
        2.8 Incidents
        2.9 Racism in sports
    3 Racism against Jews
        3.1 Polls
        3.2 Incidents
        3.3 Leaders

4 Racism against other groups

5 Arab-Jewish riots
6 Between Jewish groups

6.1 Sephardi and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern)

            6.1.1 Yemenite children
        6.2 Bene Israel (Indian)
        6.3 Beta Israel

6.3.1 Depo Provera prescription controversy

7 Black Hebrew Israelite immigration

8 Efforts against racism and discrimination

8.1 Affirmative action

9 Reports addressing racism in Israel

10 See also

11 References

Existence of racism in Israel

According to Sammy Smooha, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Haifa, the answer to the question of whether racism exists in Israel depends on the definition of racism adopted. If Pierre L. van den Berghe's view is adopted, that the term racism must be restricted to beliefs that a given biological race is superior, then ethnocentrism can be found in Israel, but not racism. According to other definitions, racism is a belief that membership in a certain group, not necessarily genetic or biological, determines the qualities of individuals. By this definition, racist views are present in portions of the Israeli population.[5] Smooha adds that some Arab and Jewish writers make accusations of racism, but they use the term in a very loose way.[5]

A report written by the Israeli Foreign Ministry describes Israel as a multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual society, which has a high level of informal segregation patterns. The report states that groups are not separated by official policy, but that Israel has a number of different sectors within the society are somewhat segregated and maintain their strong cultural, religious, ideological, and/or ethnic identity. The report maintains that in spite of the existing social cleavages and economic disparities, the political systems and the courts represent strict legal and civic equality. The Israeli Foreign Ministry describes the country as "Not a melting pot society, but rather more of a mosaic made up of different population groups coexisting in the framework of a democratic state"[6]
Racism against Arabs

Vandalized grave. The graffiti says "death to the Arabs" (מוות לערבים, mavet laArabim) by an unknown.

In 2010 the Israeli cabinet proposed an amendment to the Citizenship Act requiring all future non-Jews applying for Israeli citizenship to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The proposal met harsh criticism, including accusations of racism, and subsequently it was amended to make the loyalty oath universal to both Jewish and non-Jewish naturalized citizens. Even in this new form, the bill did not pass due to lack of majority support in the Israeli parliament.[56][57][58][59][59][60]
Marriage

Israel's Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law bars immigration by family reunification to couples of an Israeli citizen and a Palestinian resident of the Israeli-occupied territories. Amnesty International says this mostly affects Arabs.[61][62] The law has been condemned by Amnesty International as "racial discrimination".[63] The government says the law say it is aimed at preventing terrorist attacks. Some leaders of the Kadima party support the law in order to preserve the state's Jewish character. Mishael Cheshin, one of supreme court judges who upheld the law, wrote that "at a time of war the state could prevent the entry of enemy subjects to its territory even if they were married to citizens of the state".[64]
Religious racism

Rabbi David Batzri and his son Yitzhak were investigated by police after they made racist remarks against Arabs and protested against a mixed Arab-Jewish school in Jerusalem.[65][66] As part of a 2008 plea bargain, Yitzhak was sentenced to community service, and David issued a declaration saying he was opposed to any racist incitement and said that he calls for love, brotherhood and friendship.[67]

Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank and head of the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria" issued a religious edict saying "a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail"[68][69][70] and stated that captured Arab terrorists could be used to conduct medical experiments,[71] and also ruled that Jewish Law forbids employing Arabs or renting homes to them.[72][73] Lior denied holding racist views.[74] In June 2011 the Rabbi was arrested by Israeli police and questioned on suspicion of inciting violence.[75][76] Both opposition leader Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a full judicial investigation of Lior's remarks and said that rabbis were not above the law.[77]

In October 2010, Ovadia Yosef, a former Sephardi chief rabbi, stated that the sole purpose of non-Jews "is to serve Jews".[78]

On 7 Dec 2010, a group of 50 state-paid rabbis signed a letter instructing Orthodox Jews not to rent or sell houses to non-Jews. The letter was later endorsed by some 250 other Jewish religious figures. A hotline was opened for denouncing those Jews who did intend to rent out to Arabs.[79][80]

On 19 Dec 2010, a rally attended by 200 people was held in Bat Yam against the "assimilation" of young Jewish women with Arabs. One of the organizers, Bentzi Gopstein, said that the motives are not racist: "It is important to explain that the problem is religious, not racist. If my son were to decide to marry an Arab woman who converted, I wouldn't have a problem with that. My problem is the assimilation that the phenomenon causes." One of the protestors called out, "Any Jewish woman who goes with an Arab should be killed; any Jew who sells his home to an Arab should be killed." Bat Yam Mayor Shlomo Lahyani condemned the event, saying "The city of Bat Yam denounces any racist phenomenon. This is a democratic country,". Nearby, about 200 residents of Bat Yam held a counter protest, waving signs reading, "We're fed up with racists" and "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies". Later that month, the wives of 27 rabbis signed a letter calling on Jewish girls to stay away from Arab men. The document stated: "Don't date them, don't work where they work and don't perform National Service with them."[81][82][83]

A senior Catholic spokesman, Fr Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Custodian of the Holy Land, has claimed that a lack of police action, and an educational culture in which Jewish pupils are encouraged to act with "contempt" towards Christians, has resulted in life becoming increasingly "intolerable" for many Christians. In 2012, pro-settler extremists attacked a Trappist monastery in the town of Latroun covering walls with anti-Christian graffiti denouncing Christ as a "monkey", and the 11th century Monastery of the Cross was daubed with offensive slogans such as "Death to Christians". According to an article in the Telegraph, Christian leaders feel that the most important issue that Israel has failed to address is the practice of some ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools to teach children that it is a religious obligation to abuse anyone in Holy Orders they encounter in public, "such that Ultra-Orthodox Jews, including children as young as eight, spit at members of the clergy on a daily basis."[84] Incidents of spitting on Christian clergymen in Jerusalem have been common since the 1990s.[85][86] Ruling on the case of a Greek Orthodox priest who had struck a yeshiva student who spat near him in 2011, a Jerusalem magistrate wrote, "Day after day, clergymen endure spitting by members of those fringe groups — a phenomenon intended to treat other religions with contempt. ... The authorities are not able to eradicate this phenomenon and they don't catch the spitters, even though this phenomenon has been going on for years."[87]

Incidents
Racist graffiti left on a Palestinian girls' school in Hebron. The graffiti is signed "JDL."

In 2006, a stabbing incident took place when a gang of Russian immigrants chanting racist slogans stabbed and lightly injured Arab Knesset member Abbas Zakour, which was part of a "stabbing rampage" and was described as a "hate crime".[88]

The Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel reported a tenfold increase in racist incidents against Arabs in 2008.[89] Jerusalem reported the highest number of racist incidents against Arabs.[89] The report blamed Israeli leaders for the violence, saying "These attacks are not the hand of fate, but a direct result of incitement against the Arab citizens of this country by religious, public, and elected officials."[89] The Bedouin claim they face systemic discrimination and have submitted a counter-report to the United Nations that disputes the Israeli government's official state report.[90] They claim they are not treated as equal citizens in Israel and that Bedouin towns are not provided the same level of services or land that Jewish towns of the same size are, and that they are not given fair access to water.[90] The city of Beersheba refused to recognize a Bedouin holy site, despite a High Court recommendation.[90]

In late 2010, the number of racist incidents against Arabs increased. The events were described by the Defense Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, as a "wave of racism."[91] The most notable ones took place on 20 December 2010, when a group of five Arabs were driven from an apartment in Tel Aviv after their landlady was threatened with the torching of her home if she continued to rent out to Arabs,[92] and on 21 December 2010, when a gang of Jewish youths was arrested in Jerusalem after carrying out a large number of attacks on Arabs. A girl aged 14 would lure Arab men to the Independence Park, where they were attacked with stones and bottles and severely beaten. The teens confessed to nationalistic motives.[93] On 31 Oct 2010, a Jewish mob gathered outside of an Arab students' residence in Safed, chanted "death to the Arabs," hurled rocks and bottles at the building, shattering glass, and fired a shot at the building before dissassembling.[94]

On May 2011, two Israeli border patrolmen were charged with physical abuse against an Arab minor who was carrying firecrackers. The incident took place in March 2010. The youth was punched, knocked to the floor, kicked, and had death threats thrown against him by the officers. At a police station, the 17-years-old male was tricked by a female police officer into believing he was going to die. After making the prisoner go down on his knees, she allegedly pointed her pistol at him at point-blank range. It was not loaded, but the minor did not know this because his eyes were covered. According to the charges, she counted to 10, with the teen begging her not to kill him. She allegedly pulled the trigger, saying "Death to Arabs." [95] She was later sentenced to 3 months in prison. [96]

In March 2012, two Arab males of Beit Zarzir confessed, after being arrested, to damaging a local school for Arab and Jewish students. They admitted responsibility for having sprayed on the wall of the school, "Death to Arabs".The school was sprayed twice in February with the slogans “price tag,” “Death to Arabs, and” “Holocaust to the Arabs”.[97][98][99][100]

After the murder of 3 Israeli teenagers were found on June 30, 2014, a Facebook Page created by an unknown group of Israelis called “The People of Israel Demand Vengeance!” or “The people of Israel demand revenge!" The page features a myriad of photos of people holding up signs demanding revenge for the killing of the teens, and urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order widespread military action in the West Bank and Gaza. Further racist incitement within the Facebook campaign depicted a photograph that was posted to the page with two teenage girls smiling, hugging each other and holding a piece of paper saying, “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values.” Another post showed an armed IDF soldier with “Revenge!” in Hebrew inscribed on his chest.The Facebook Campaign received more than 30,000 likes by the evening of July 3, 2014. The campaign has been condemned by a number of Israeli MK's including Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Minister of Agriculture and Yisrael Beiteinu MK Yair Shamir. The Israeli Defense Forces also vowed to severely punish any soldier involved with the exchange of racist photographs depicting revenge for the murdered teens or retributive incitement of Anti-Arabism across Facebook and other social media sites.[101][102]
Racism in sports
Unbalanced scales.svg
The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (June 2012)

Amnesty International annual reports on Israel – 2010 report, 2009 report, 2008 report, 2007 report

Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) annual reports – 2009 report, 2008 report, 2007 report

United States Department of State annual Human Rights reports on Israel – 2009 report, 2008 report, 2007 report, 2006 report, 2005 report, 2004 report

United Nations CERD – 2007 CERD report, unedited version of 2007 report

Or Commission – The Official Summation of the Or Commission Report"

See also

Criticism of Israel
Human rights in Israel

Israel and the apartheid analogy

Neo-Nazism in Israel

Racism in the Palestinian territories

Secularism in Israel

References

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Navot, Suzi, Constitutional law of Israel, p 240

Steven Kaplan, "Can the Ethiopian Change His Skin? The Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) and Racial Discourse", African Affairs, Vol. 98, No. 393 (Oct., 1999), p. 548

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Israel: pluralism and conflict. By Sammy Smooha. p. 400.

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[2], [Academic claims Israeli school textbooks contain bias: 07/08/2011: Harriet Sherwood

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[3]

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Meyrav Wurmser refers to all of these issues as well-known complaints of Mizrahim, which new Post-Zionist critics are now going beyond. Wurmser, Meyrav (Spring 2005). "Post-Zionism and the Sephardi Question". Middle East Quarterly XII (2): 21–35. Retrieved 19 September 2010.

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Ashkenazi Against Sephardi Racism Lives, by Shelomo Alfassa "The haredim were found guilty by the Israeli High Court of Justice of racism. Evidence of their crime can easily be seen by the fact that schools were constructed with separate entrances and separate classrooms for Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. The Ashkenazi parents say they need to keep the classrooms segregated because the families of the Sephardi girls "aren't religious enough."

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See also, regarding media and Yemeni Jews: Madmoni-Gerber, Shoshana, Israeli media and the framing of internal conflict: the Yemenite babies affair, Macmillan, 2009

    *Blue-Ribbon Babies and Labors of Love: Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Adoption Practice, Christine Ward Gailey University of Texas Press, 2010

        "In Israel, ethno-racial divides have created a widespread belief, upheld by some birth mother-adult child reunions, that hundreds of Yemeni infants had been kidnapped for adoption by Israeli couples. Many Yemeni refugee children had been declared dead or disappeared in the refugee camps after the migration of some 50,000 Yemeni Jews to Israel in 1948–1949. It appears from a national inquiry in the late 1990s that a network of doctors and clinics were involved in the adoptions." (page 154)

        Grenberg, Joel, The Babies from Yemen: An Enduring Mystery", New York Times, Sept 2, 1997.

        "Those who believe the theory contend that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Yemenite babies who were reported to have died or to have disappeared after their parents came to Israel were actually kidnapped and given or sold for adoption to European-born Israelis and American Jews. The controversy over the Israeli establishment's treatment of the 50,000 Yemenite Jewish immigrants, most of whom were airlifted to Israel in 1949 and 1950, has festered for years. It has stoked deep-seated feelings of resentment among the country's Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin. ... Other Yemenite Jewish advocates put the numbers at between 1,000 and more than 2,000. They assert that the European-born Ashkenazic Israeli establishment looked down at the new immigrants and their traditional ways and felt free to take their children for adoption by childless European Jewish couples... Mr. Levitan agreed that there was a patronizing attitude toward the immigrants. In some cases the Yemenites' religious studies were restricted and their traditional side-curls were cut to remake them into modern, secular Israelis. ... The concept was absorption through modernization, by inculcating the values of Western society, Mr. Levitan said. The parents were treated like primitive people who didn't know what was good for them, who aren't capable of taking care of their own kids. There was disregard for the parents, an unwillingness to make the effort to investigate, but not a conspiracy."

        Shoha, Ella, Taboo memories, diasporic voices, Duke University Press, 2006,

        "..Yemenis .. fell prey to doctors, nurses, and social workers, most of them on the state payroll. ... The act of kidnapping was not simply a result of financial interests to increase the state's revenues, it was also a result of a deeply ingrained belief in the inferiority of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, seen as careless breeders with little sense of responsibility... In this intersection of race, gender, and class, the displaced Jews from Muslim countries became victims of the logic of progress.." page 349.

        Madmoni-Gerber, Shoshana, Israeli media and the framing of internal conflict: the Yemenite babies affair, Macmillan, 2009 –

        This book is about racism against Yemenite and Mizrahi jews in Israel, focusing on the kidnappings.

        Gordon, Linda, The great Arizona orphan abduction, Harvard University Press, 1999, p 310:

        "In Israel, Ashkenazi (European) Jewish women, with the help of doctors, stole babies born to Sephardic Yemeni Jewish mothers from the hospitals; the mothers were told that the babies had died. Here is a phenomenon that is racist yet lacks even the kind of racial justification evident in [the kidnappings in] 1904 Arizona." (page 310)

        Yuval-Davis, Nira, Gender & nation, SAGE, 1997,

        "Public investigations are taking place in Israel at the moment concerning accusations that hundreds of Yemeni Jewish babies were abducted from their mothers who were told they were dead and they were given for adoption to Ashkenzi middle class families. Breaking up communities and families and separating children from their parents would often be central to practices of forced assimilationism. Such policies disempower the minorities and can reinforce their location in subjugated positionings." (p 54)

        Kanaaneh, Rhoda Ann, Birthing the nation: strategies of Palestinian women in Israel, University of California Press, 2002,

        "[regarding the] disappearance of Yemenite Jewish babies in the 1950s, whom many Yemenites believe were kidnapped and given to childless European Jewish parents to adopt, the author suggests that something similar may have happened to Palestinian children who went missing during the 1948 war. Here Palestinians and Yemenite Jews are united in their subjugation to the Ashkenazi Jewish establishment through their lost children". (page 164).

Abramov, S. Zalman, Perpetual dilemma: Jewish religion in the Jewish State, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1976, p. 277-278

Smooha, Sammy, Israel: pluralism and conflict, University of California Press, 1978, p. 400-401

How Do the Issues in the Conversion Controversy Relate to Israel?. Jcpa.org. Retrieved on 2010-12-16.

[7] Ha'aretz.

Rebhun, Uzi, Jews in Israel: contemporary social and cultural patterns, UPNE, 2004, p. 139-140

Onolemhemhen Durrenda Nash, The Black Jews of Ethiopia, Scarecrow Press; Reprint edition 2002, page 40

. JSTOR 2784774. Missing or empty |title= (help)

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Olmert: Ethiopian Jews are right to feel discriminated against

Ethiopian Controversy In Israel: It's Not Racism. Adl.org. Retrieved on 2010-12-16.

J’lem appoints first Ethiopian-born ambassador. Jerusalem Post, 02/28/2012

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"Israel's Treatment of Ethiopians Called 'Racist'". headlinesafrica.com. 2010-01-15. Retrieved 17 September 2010.

Israel gave birth control to Ethiopian Jews without their consent

Dartmouth Professor Strikes Back, by Prof. Sadredin Moosavi, 03/05/10,

Ben Levy, Sholomo. "The Black Jewish or Hebrew Israelite Community". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2007-12-15.

Ben-Jochannan, p. 306.

Johannes P. Schade, ed. (2006). "Black Hebrews". Encyclopedia of World Religions. Franklin Park, N.J.: Foreign Media Group. ISBN 1-60136-000-2.

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Michaeli, pp. 73–74.
Michaeli, p. 74.

    For additional examples of charges of racism in this incident, see:
        Black Zion: African American religious encounters with Judaism, Yvonne Patricia Chireau, p 74
        Jet magazine [8]
        In the Trenches: Selected Speeches and Writings of an American Jewish Activist, Volume 2, David A. Harris, page 171
        Culture and customs of Israel, Rebecca L. Torstrick, page 41

Shipler, David K. (January 30, 1981). "Israelis Urged To Act Over Black Hebrew Cult". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-28.

"The Hebrew Israelite Community". Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. September 29, 2006. Retrieved 2008-05-26.

Kaufman, David (April 16, 2006). "Quest for a Homeland Gains a World Stage". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-28.

In 2009, Elyakim Ben-Israel became the first Black Hebrew to receive Israeli citizenship. The Israeli government said that more Black Hebrews may be granted citizenship. Alush, Zvi (February 2, 2009). "First Black Hebrew Gets Israeli Citizenship". Ynetnews. Retrieved 2009-02-02.

Forman, Seth, Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism, p. 14-15

Branch, Taylor "Blacks and Jews: The Uncivil War", in Bridges and Boundaries: African Americans and American Jews (Salzman, Ed), 1992

Blacks in the Jewish mind: a crisis of liberalism, Seth Forman, NYU Press, 1998: p. 15

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, United Nations, New York, 7 March 1966

The Anti-Israel Divestment Campaign: Introduction. Adl.org. Retrieved on 2010-12-16.

Arab Israelis

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2000-02-23). "Israel Government Action in the Arab Sector – February 2000". www.mfa.gov.il. Retrieved 2008-06-13. "The Director Generals' Committee was assigned the responsibility of devising a program of action for the development and advancement of the Arab sector, and drawing up a cooperation framework involving the various government ministries. This program will include the raising of resources and promotion of investment, while applying an affirmative action policy in the areas of housing, employment, industry, transport, infrastructures, agriculture, and education in the non-Jewish sector."

Jerusalem Houses

"Israel Government Action in the Arab Sector – Febr". Mfa.gov.il. Retrieved 2010-05-16.

===========================================

Racists Are Rampaging Through Israel

By Philip Kleinfeld Aug 1 2014
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Two girls with a sign that reads "Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values." (Photo from The People of Israel Demand Vengeance/Facebook via)

In Israel, racism and extremism are exploding. It began shortly after the kidnapping of three Israeli boys—Naftali, Gilad and Eyal—in Gush Etzion, that led to the assault in Gaza which has seen over 1,000 killed. A Facebook page calling for the murder of Palestinians went viral. In one photo, a soldier posed broodingly with his gun, the word "vengeance" written on his chest. In another two teenage girls smiled happily with a banner that read: “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values.”

A few days later, at the boys' funeral in Modiin, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu fanned the flames. “May God avenge their blood,” he said to the gathered mourners. “Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created,” he tweeted later.

Bibi got his wish. Over the weeks that followed, videos began to emerge almost daily of right-wing mobs roving across cities from Jerusalem to Beer Sheva, waving Israeli flags and screaming “Death to Arabs!”

Many ended in physical assaults. Last Thursday two Palestinian men were attacked on Jaffer Street in West Jerusalem as they delivered food to a grocery market. The following day two more Palestinians, Amir Shwiki and Samer Mahfouz, were beaten unconscious in the Eastern part of the city by a gang of 30 young Israelis wielding sticks and metal bars.

Pro-Israeli and Pro-Palestine demonstrators clash in Haifa

Nationalistic Israelis have also turned on Israelis who disagree with them. Photographs have even emerged of pro-war protestors dressed in t-shirts with “Good Night Left Side” prints, a slogan usually used by European neo-Nazis. Violence from these groups has reached unprecedented levels. Last week in Haifa, a city usually presented as a model of liberal co-existence, an anti-war rally was attacked by 700 people carrying weapons.

The worst is reserved for Palestinians. Four weeks ago in East Jerusalem, a group of Israeli men, acting in revenge, poured gasoline down the throat of Mohammed Abu Khdeir and burned him alive. For some his death, just like Jamal’s, was an aberration, an act without precedent from some mad fringe of Israel’s far-right. “What have we become?” an Israeli relative of mine asked that evening, shocked that somebody with “Jewish values” could commit such a crime.
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But while the recent spate can be partly seen as a visceral reaction to the tragic killing of the three boys, this kind of violence is not really that new. Take the story of Jamal Julani. He was walking along a street near Zion Square when a group of young Jewish Israelis, one as young as 13, kicked him in the head over and over. "A Jew is a good soul, an Arab is a son of a bitch," overheard one bystander.

There were hundreds standing in Zion Square that evening in September, but nobody, not even a duty officer on the scene chose to intervene. When paramedics did arrive, it took ten minutes of defibrillation and constant CPR to restore the dying boy’s pulse. He had been so badly beaten that police at the scene had assumed he was already dead.

“Abu Khdeir’s murderers are not 'Jewish extremists’” said an editorial in Haaretz, Israel's left-leaning newspaper. “They are the descendants and builders of a culture of hate and vengeance that is nurtured and fertilized by the guides of 'the Jewish state'."
"When you translate it into English you realize how horrific it is, but in the Israeli context there's nothing shocking about it."

Israel has never been the kind of free and open society it has tried so hard to project. Racism did not begin with the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir or the beating and attempted lynching of Jamal Julani. “Zionist doctrine has always pushed society in a very particular direction,” the academic Marcelo Svirsky told me. But it is getting worse. “There is a phenomenon happening right now across Israeli cities that I have not seen before, having lived in Israel for 25 years.”

One of the most striking aspects of this “phenomenon” is how young the people taking part appear to be. Those posting on social media, running amok in lynch mobs, and crashing leftist rallies with sticks, chains, and brass knuckles are, for the most part, young people—many in their mid-20s, some in their teens.

Three weeks ago the activist and journalist David Sheen published an article on Storify called “Terrifying Tweets of Pre-Army Israeli Teens” after he searched the word “Aravim,” Hebrew for Arab, into Twitter. What he found was a harrowing amount of morbid bile presented in the form of grotesque selfies from teenage girls.

Other quotes included "I spit on you, you stinking Arabs," "From the bottom of my heart, I wish for Arabs to be torched," and "Arabs may you be paralyzed & die with great suffering!"

What is going on? For anyone familiar with Israeli politics, the answer should be obvious. In the past month alone the stream of racism coming from politicians and religious authorities has been relentless. Take Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign Minister, who called on Israelis to boycott Palestinians who don't support the war. Or take Ayelet Shaked, the Jewish Home party politician and member of the Knesset (Israel's national legislature) who recently called for the murder of Palestinian mothers. “They should follow their sons,” she said. “Nothing would be more just.”

“Those words the girls said are not in any way strange to the discourse in Israel,” Sheen told me. “When you translate it into English you realize how horrific it is, but in the Israeli context there's nothing shocking about it.”

"Price Tag attacks" on people taking action against settlers have grown in number without the police really trying to stop them. Vigilante patrols led by extreme organizations like the state-funded Lehava have cropped up across the entire country to stop Jews and Arabs from having romantic relationships. Perhaps the biggest victims of this fanaticism have been refugees from sub-Saharan Africa. Locked up in detainment centers, they’ve faced abuse from almost every part of the Israeli establishment. From the hundreds of Rabbis banning Jews from renting apartments to Africans, to politicians like Eli Yishai, the ultra-orthodox Interior Minister who in 2012 said “until I can deport them I’ll lock them up to make their lives miserable.”

“Both governments under Netanyahu have been responsible for inciting racism,” Svirsky said. “They’ve put in place a long list of anti-equality and anti-Palestinian legislation in all areas of life. That’s why it’s become normal in political discourse to express extreme ideas toward Palestinians. The obsession with a state only for Jews has brought Israeli society into a racist abyss.”
"Half of all Jewish Israeli high school students said Arab-Israelis should not receive the same set of rights as Jews."

For Israeli youth, things might have gotten marginally better in 2013 if a proposal by the left-wing Zionist party Meretz to have anti-racist education included in schools hadn’t been voted down by the Knesset. The bill had been submitted by the Arab-Israeli MK Issawi Freij after a theme park in Rishon Letzion admitted renting out its facilities on separate days to Jewish and Arab schools to “avoid conflict.”

Issawi’s fear that racism was growing in Israel’s schools echoed what others had been saying for years. In a recent study by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, half of all Jewish Israeli high school students said Arab-Israelis should not receive the same set of rights as Jews. Of those who identified as religious, half said the now familiar slogan “Death to Arabs” was legitimate.

In 2010 a group of concerned teachers sent a petition to the education ministry explaining precisely these fears. “We cannot remain silent in light of the increasing presence within the walls of schoolhouses of expressions of racism,” they said. “We see ourselves as educators who must issue a warning. The prevalence of racism and cruelty is growing among young people in Israel.”

According to Sheen many Israeli teachers, particularly those who teach civics, have become afraid to even broach the issue of human rights in the classroom. Earlier in the year Adam Verete, a teacher who dared to call the IDF an “immoral army,” was hauled before a tribunal and later fired after a pupil complained about his “extreme leftist” views. “They can't even bring up the topic without inciting in their students rage and racism,” Sheen said.

A soldier poses with "Vengeance" written on his chest (Photo from The People of Israel Demand Vengeance/Facebook via)

Of course, militarism and nationalism have always been part of the Israeli education system—embedded in history books, on maps on the walls, in cartoons of Palestinians on camel backs—but under Netanyahu’s watch, things seem to have gone further. The first major change of the former education minister Gideon Sa’ar, a man who described teachers as “lifelong draftees,” was to enlarge a program designed to inspire even more enthusiasm for the army.

“Service in the IDF is not only an obligation but a privilege and a social value,” Sa’ar said at the time. “The connection between the school system and the IDF will become stronger in the context of the program that I initiated." The budget for civic education, a rare space for critical debate on Israel and its “democratic values,” was cut in favor of an orthodox Jewish studies curriculum. Heritage tours to Hebron were introduced as a way of increasing support for settlements and the idea of Greater Israel. And whatever passing reference to an alternative Palestinian narrative that remained in school textbooks was quickly removed.

“During the 1990s and early 2000s there was some kind of attempt to be more factual,” Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told me. “There was an effort to be more academic and scientific, to speak about Palestinians, even if the ideology was the same. Today it’s back to simplified stories and sheer indoctrination. It’s going backward.”

Right wing Israelis chanting joyfully about how there are "no children left" in Gaza

Though Israel remains a multicultural place, for the most part Palestinians and Israelis live deeply separate lives. Within the 1948 borders just five non-segregated schools are available for young children to meet and learn about one another. Within the occupied territories, physical barriers introduced after the Second Intifada mean contact is almost non-existent.

“There used to be so many more casual opportunities for Israelis and Palestinians to get to know each other,” Sheen said. “Now you have a whole generation—the terrifying-tweets cohort—that has never even known a Palestinian.”

Beyond the physical barriers the mental walls are perhaps even stronger. “I grew up without knowing any Palestinians,” Peled-Elhanan said. “All I had to do was cross to the other side of the city but the thought never occurred to me. This was the kind of education we got—that Palestinians, if they exist at all, exist as an obstacle.”

Israel likes to use its status as the region’s only European-style democracy to fudge criticism of its occupation and siege. Usually this works. There is, particularly in the Jewish diaspora, a monumental gap between how Israel is represented and what is actually happening. But in the present conflict, with over 1,000 dead in Gaza and youngsters pouring through Israel in violent mobs, these delusions may finally be coming undone.

For those who live in Israel and do not support the war or the right-wing government, it is becoming more difficult to voice an opinion, and some people are weighing their options. “Two nights ago there was a big protest in Tel Aviv,” Sheen said. “A long-time leftist was holding up a sign that said ‘flee while you can.’ In conversations I’ve had with hardcore activists, everyone has said they are preparing an escape plan. For people who have children or want to have children, this is no place to raise them.”

@PKleinfeld

http://www.vice.com/read/israeli-racism-gaza-kleinfeld-511
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Racism in Israel
Bob Dreyfuss on December 23, 2013 - 1:15 PM ET

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Then-US Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill, listens to Israel's President Shimon Peres, not seen, during a meeting in Jerusalem. (AP Photo)

Here is a shocking fact from a poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute and reported by the Times of Israel: fully one-third of Israelis say that unlawful, vigilante violence against non-Jewish African immigrants is fine with them.

Equally, 86 percent of Israelis who voted for the right-wing Shas party and 66 percent of Likud voters agree with the statements of far-right Israeli politician Miri Regev that African immigrants, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, are a “cancer” in the Israeli body politic.

The IDI poll analysis says :

    A “cancer” in the body of the nation? More than half (52%) of the Jews agree with the statement of Member of Knesset Miri Regev that the unauthorized Africans living in Israel are a cancer in the body of Israel. Only 19% of the Arab respondents agreed with the statement.

It adds:

    How much support is there for the demonstrations against the presence of Africans by residents of south Tel Aviv? Here we practically found a “national consensus”: an overwhelming majority of 83% of the Jews expressed support for the demonstrations; among the Arabs, the number came to only 25%.

Israel is building refugee camps—let’s not use the loaded term “concentration camps”—for many of the estimated 55,000 Eritrean, Sudanese and other African refugees from civil wars and conflicts who’ve entered Israel, mostly undocumented, over the last decade or so. Reports The Washington Post, “Between 2005 and 2012, African migrants came in a trickle, then a flood, pouring across Israel’s border with Egypt, with a peak of 17,258 in 2011.” The paper adds:

    The newly constructed “open facility” is designed to hold up to 3,300 illegal immigrants. It is not a prison, but not exactly a shelter, either. Residents will be required to answer roll call three times a day. They are not allowed to seek work. The facility is surrounded by a fence topped with spools of razor wire, and the migrants will be locked down at night.

Israeli Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar bluntly links his concerns to the fear of losing the “Jewish” nature of Israel:

    “There are currently around 30 million people moving around Africa, people who have left their home countries and are looking for a place to be. We can all understand that pressure, but if we are too liberal, then we will lose the country. We will lose the only Jewish country that exists.”

Israel is seeking to deport the African migrants to Uganda, an ironic notion, since in the early days of Zionism Uganda was once held out as a long-shot possibility to host the creation of a Jewish state for European Jewish refugees.

Tensions and protests by the migrants, along with anti-African violence by vigilante citizens of Israel, has been on the rise. Reports Al Jazeera:

    Tensions began on Dec. 10, when the Knesset passed an amendment to the Anti-Infiltration Law, which authorized the detention without trial of approximately 55,000 Africans currently living in Israel. On Dec. 12, Israeli prison officials began transferring Africans from the Saharonim prison to the brand-new Holot facility, which is still under construction only a few hundred meters away in southern Israel. Once the first 1,000 beds are filled with Africans from Saharonim, the government plans to move another 2,000 Africans now in Tel Aviv to the detention center.

Needless to say, Israel exists because millions of Jewish refugees, many of whom entered Israel illegally during and after the Holocaust and World War II, built it. Says Al Jazeera:

    Israeli society rejects asylum seekers because they’re new, they’re poor and they’re darker-skinned. But over the decades, successive waves of Jewish immigrants also encountered hostility from native Israelis because of the same prejudices. The asylum seekers from Africa constitute the first large group of immigrants to Israel who are not Jews. That is the real reason the government is trying to drive them out.

Israeli liberals, such as Gideon Levy of Haaretz, the Israeli daily, are aghast at the open racism being exhibited by rightist politicians and much (most?) of the public. He writes:

    Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!



    Israeli public opinion is being shaped by a grotesque Knesset member who has become a joke and a former MK whose party didn’t get enough votes to make it into the legislature. If it weren’t so sad, we’d be laughing until we cried. But now our tears should be over the unbelievable fact that these two marginal characters, these clowns, MK Miri Regev (Likud) and Michael Ben Ari, have, with their hateful incitement, succeeded in dictating the national agenda on the issue of African migrants and asylum seekers. From now on we’ll have to choose: Either you support the refugees, or you support the state (and the longtime residents of south Tel Aviv). Who decided that? Regev and Ben Ari.

In a strong conclusion, Levy says:

    It’s Israel that made the African migrants a problem. That’s what incitement does. Since the border is closed and international conventions bar their deportation, the state should allow those already here to work, to rebuild their lives, and offer them the prospect of becoming citizens through a gradual, careful process. That’s how it’s done in normal countries. Israel is too small, too weak to do this? Nonsense, merely too racist.

Watch Next: Max Blumenthal and David Sheen's report on African migrants in Israel

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/177697/racism-israel

===============================================================

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/11/5880707/price-tag-israeli-settlers

Why Israel’s racist violence problem is getting worse

================================================

Israel's Everyday Racism — and How American Jews Turn a Blind Eye to It
Refocus Anti-Semitism Outrage on Our Own Dirty Laundry
Jews were outraged when Jesse Jackson referred to New York as ‘Hymietown.’ Where’s the anger over Israeli public figures’ rampant racism?
getty images
Jews were outraged when Jesse Jackson referred to New York as ‘Hymietown.’ Where’s the anger over Israeli public figures’ rampant racism?

By Larry Derfner
Published August 12, 2013.

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The Anti-Defamation League and the rest of the American Jewish establishment owe Jesse Jackson a big apology. They put the man through the wringer, they made him apologize in every possible forum for his “Hymie” and “Hymietown” remarks back in 1984. Yet look at the kinds of things Israeli leaders — senior government ministers, chief rabbis — get away with without ever having to apologize, without ever being punished in the slightest.

Just last week, Naftali Bennett, the fresh new face of right-wing Orthodox Judaism, said in a cabinet meeting how he didn’t like these releases of Palestinian prisoners. “If you catch terrorists, you simply have to kill them,” he was quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth as saying. The head of the National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror, told Bennett, “Listen, that’s not legal.” Bennett replied: “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.”

The media, the left and the Arabs made a big deal out of it, nobody else. Bennett defended what he said, and so did countless talkbackers and Facebookers.

Two days later the newly-elected Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, David Lau, was seen on a video telling an audience of yeshiva boys that they shouldn’t watch European basketball games in public.

“What difference does it make,” Lau said, “if the kushim who get paid in Tel Aviv beat the kushim who get paid in Greece?” Kushim, especially when used in a dismissive context like Lau did, is a well-understood derogatory term for blacks.

Again, the media, the left, some Ethiopian Jews and presumably some African refugees were outraged. But Lau defended his words, blaming the media, saying “they made a big deal out of a joke.”

Who else defended his remarks about “kushim”? Bennett: “The media are pouncing on him for a joking, insignificant remark.”

So really — what was so bad about “Hymies” and “Hymietown”? Or the thousand other anti-Semitic or even just possibly anti-Semitic remarks that the ADL and other American Jewish organizations have “pounced on” since then? Israeli public figures say the same kind of garbage, the difference is that they never, ever pay a price for it, in fact they usually manage to play the victim and get away with it, and at worst will be obliged to offer some backhanded apology.

Likud lawmaker Miri Regev is doing fine after having called Sudanese refugees “a cancer on our body” to a crowd of hopped-up south Tel Avivians in May of last year, shortly before the crowd went on a window-smashing mini-pogrom against the Africans in the neighborhood.

Legendary basketball coach Pini Gershon’s career and public stature didn’t suffer at all after he explained his racial theory about blacks to a class of amused army officers in 2000.

“The mocha-colored guys are smarter, but the dark colored ones are just guys off the street,” Gershon said. “They’re dumb like slaves, they do whatever you tell them.”

Nor was there any blowback whatsoever after Bibi Netanyahu bragged in 2007 that the cuts he’d made to child subsidies had brought a “positive” result, which he identified as “the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate.”

Imagine the scandal if an American political leader boasted publicly that his cuts to child subsidies had reduced the “non-Christian” birth rate. Imagine the ADL’s reaction. But in Israel, in 2007, from the mouth of a once-and-future prime minister — nothing.

These are just a few of the more appalling examples of the kind of racist remarks that Israeli politicians, rabbis and celebrities feel free to make. I haven’t even mentioned Avigdor Lieberman and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. As a rule the words are directed at Arabs, now and then against blacks: either Ethiopian Jews, African refugees or athletes.

I’ve lived roughly half my 61 years in the United States, the other half in Israel. There is absolutely no comparison between American tolerance for public displays of racism and Israeli tolerance for it.

I’ve stood in the middle of Israeli crowds chanting “Death to the Arabs.” I’ve sat in a Tel Aviv soccer stadium watching and listening to an entire section of fans erupt in monkey sounds – “Hoo, hoo, hoo!! Hoo, hoo, hoo!! – after a black player on the visiting team scored a goal.

A few liberals and a few do-gooders and a few journalists wring their hands. But the racists in the street, the synagogues, the Knesset and the government go on doing their thing.

Does this mean all Israelis, or even most of them, are racists? No. Does it mean Israeli society, by commission and omission, encourages racism? Oh, yes. To a degree that would be unthinkable in the United States.

And the leaders of the U.S. Jewish establishment, Israel’s most valued, devoted, determined friends, keep pouncing on every untoward or conceivably untoward remark about Jews or the Jewish state. Yes, the ADL will send out a press release about its “concern” over the “inappropriate” remarks made by some relatively minor Israeli figure.

But it never hits hard at the major figures. It said nothing last week about Bennett or Lau. The ADL goes after anti-Semitism with a fist, it goes after Israeli racism with a sigh.

As a matter of fact, the ADL and the entire American Jewish establishment should suspend their campaigns against anti-Semitism indefinitely and take a look at what’s going on in Israel.

When the Jewish state is this riddled with racism, its advocates abroad should be a little less outraged over the offenses of gentiles. They should be a little more humble — and a lot less hypocritical.

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Comments (109)

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+34
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David · 51 weeks ago
A Jewish democratic state is an oxymoron. The way I understand democracy in this century is that the state may make no distinction among its citizens on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and other similar states cannot be democratic. One reason we Jews have survived for so long is that we were not gathered in one place. One reason we Jews have lived well in democratic countries is that we were generally treated equally with non-Jews. Israel satisfied a Jewish longing, but it is not good for long term Jewish survival if most of us gather there. Herzl wanted a state where Jews can be like other peoples. He got it. Now we can be just as bigoted as those who have oppressed us.
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5 replies · active 50 weeks ago
+22
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@ToniKamins · 51 weeks ago
Hear hear!
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5 replies · active 51 weeks ago
+21
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sandbox · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner is right, Israeli leadership needs to speak out more often when racist or ethnic slurs are made.
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1 reply · active 51 weeks ago
+17
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TheBigJ · 51 weeks ago
Speaking as a conservative/libertarian who is pro-Israel, I have to say that I agree with the premise of this article. Israeli society needs to do much more to combat racism and xenophobia within its ranks.
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2 replies · active 51 weeks ago
+11
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dmo65 · 51 weeks ago
Though I generally loathe Derfner, he's got a point here. It's sickening to see Beitar Jerusalem supporters continually get away with racism and violence with only a slap on the wrist, especially when we rightly criticize Italian and Spanish clubs for allowing displays of Antisemitism at their grounds. Arab violence perpetrated against the state of Israel should not excuse acting like an animal.
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Theazcowboy Az · 51 weeks ago
No only does Israel NOT havea Constitution, NO, Bill of Rihgts,' and (of course) NO Borders. So let's quit this 'Only democracy in the Middle East caca when, infact, it's complete lie.
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5 replies · active 51 weeks ago
+9
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bamboobabu · 51 weeks ago
Three cheers for Mr.Defener for exposing the deeply entrenched Israeli racism. Thanks to Forward for publishing his well researched article.
But as he writes most US Jewry turns a blind eye on this phenomenon!
Two wrongs never make it right. To argue that other countries too have their racists is infantile thing to say.
The Jews always harp on that Israel is a light unto other nations.It should practice what it is preaching to the rest of the humanity.
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2 replies · active 51 weeks ago
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Gubbler Chechenova · 51 weeks ago
Israel can get away with stuff like this because Jews control the media in the US and much of Europe. Powerful American Jews in the media give cover to Israel and Jewish interests. Also, goyim are so fearful of Jewish power and so desirous of Jewish funds that they never criticize Israel. So unless FORWARD discusses the root of this problem, it is just full of BS.
Most Jews stick with their own kind. Most goyim in the US and EU are running dogs of Jewish money and power.

Also, paradoxically, Jewish fight against 'racism' has made them more 'racist'. Jews so often cry 'racism' and 'antisemitism' --with full and lopsided blessing of the Jewish-controlled media--that people of all stripes are afraid of criticizing Jews lest they be accused of 'racism' or 'antisemitism' against Jews.
Jewish 'anti-racism' and the cult of Holocaust have made Jews so morally arrogant and bullying, so self-righteous, so morally narcissistic, supremacist, and self-pitying that so many Jews see themselves as perfect victims that never did and never could do any wrong.
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1 reply · active 51 weeks ago
+4
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J.W. · 51 weeks ago
Perhaps you can show me this quote in the Times of London,The Independent or the Guardian.Maybe the N.Y Times, The Washington Post or the L.A.Times.Or any recording or legitimate new source.BTW all the 5 blogs that have this comment are linked to Federica Marsi, He called terrorists sub humans not Arabs or muslims http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/...

The terrorists want to us away from our land, he said, and all means are acceptable, in their eyes. "The murderers do not shy away from butchering babies and old people, or innocent bystanders. We will never be like them.

"Terror is not a pestilence from heaven," he said. "It is the work of humans. Usually, of subhumans. We will defeat them."

"There are supposed men of morals who preach to us, day and night," he added. "But I notice that they are not always quick to denounce our enemies when they spill the blood of innocents."
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2 replies · active 51 weeks ago
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Genelevit · 51 weeks ago
In 2011, the paper (Jerusalem Post) fired its outspoken columnist Larry Derfner for a controversial post in his personal blog in which he wrote that Palestinians have a right to kill Israelis to oppose the occupation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jerusalem_Postht...
So, who is the racist?
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3 replies · active 51 weeks ago
+3
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Joel A. Levitt · 51 weeks ago
Every day, Israel makes me feel a little more ashamed. This has got to stop.
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1 reply · active 51 weeks ago
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Click on link to read full article.
http://cifwatch.com/2010/10/02/gilas-shrapnel-a-s...

Gila’s Shrapnel (A short essay about an Israeli victim of the 2nd Intifada)
Oct 2, 2010

A few days ago marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the 2nd Intifada – armed attacks, suicidebombings, and launching Qassam rockets into Israel, all of which claimed over 1100 Israeli lives, with thousands more wounded. Like most Israelis, I know one of the victims. This essay is my attempt to briefly tell her story.

The suicide bomber who sent hundreds of pieces of shrapnel tearing into Gila Weiss’s body when she blew herself up at a bus stop next to Mahane Yehuda market (The Shuk) in Jerusalem in 2002, was a 21-year-old Palestinian woman disguised to look like she was pregnant.

The bomber, Andaleeb Taqataqah, was recruited by Aksa Martyrs Brigade – controlled by Fatah, which, at the time, was controlled by Yassir Arafat.
Weiss, then 31, was also so badly burned and disfigured by the blast that her roommate was able to identify her only by the nail varnish on her toenails – her feet protected, she noted, by the ”…brown leather Naot brand mini-boots that covered my feet up to right below my ankles”.

Nearly every part of Weiss’s body was pierced by shrapnel – bits and pieces of metal, glass, wood, pebbles, and plastic from objects damaged or destroyed by the blast, as well as, more than likely, pieces of the suicide bomber herself. Despite the many surgeries she had to endure, the doctors weren’t able to locate or remove every last piece, and, to this day, projectiles from that horrible day remain in her body.

The bomb which tore through Weiss was manufactured from three tubes of plastic explosives and a battery, which were placed in a black purse to camouflage it.
On the day of the attack, the terrorist was driven to Abu Dis and from there she took a taxi to Jerusalem and made her way to the Shuk. When the terrorist realized that everyone was being checked at the entrances to the market, she turned around and walked towards the nearby bus stop, opposite HavaBakery. There, she waited a short while, until a bus arrived. When the driver opened the door, and the passengers began getting on and off the bus, she blew herself up – killing 6 people, and injuring a total of 105 (including Weiss).
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Barry Meridian · 51 weeks ago
Remember when the left in 2000 were making excuses for Arafat's terror war by excusing him.
http://honestreporting.com/suha-arafat-the-2000-i...
Suha Arafat: The 2000 Intifada Was Premeditated, Planned by Arafat
DECEMBER 26, 2012
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J.W. · 51 weeks ago
Here's an article from The Harvard Crimson about slick Jesse http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1984/3/5/jesse-...

Here's some more of Jessie's remarks about Jews http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson

Jackson also made other remarks evidencing a negative attitude toward Jews including saying that Richard Nixon was less attentive to poverty in the U.S. because "four out of five [of Nixon's top advisers] are German Jews and their priorities are on Europe and Asia"; that he was "sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust"; and that there are "very few Jewish reporters that have the capacity to be objective about Arab affairs". Shortly after President Jimmy Carter fired U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young for meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization representatives, Jackson and other black leaders began publicly endorsing a Palestinian state, with Jackson calling Israel's prime minister a "terrorist", and then soliciting Arab-American financial support.[37] Jackson has since apologized for some of these remarks, but they badly damaged his presidential campaign, as "Jackson was seen by many conservatives in the United States as hostile to Israel and far too close to Arab governments."[38]
Who are the 4or5 the only one i can think of is Kissinger.
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1 reply · active 51 weeks ago
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Laura Wharton · 51 weeks ago
There is certainly a terribly serious problem with racism in Israel -- but it is due to the ongoing war and current government and has nothing to do with the political system. Israel's political system allowed for a flourishing social-democratic country until 1967/
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1 reply · active 51 weeks ago
+2
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Joel A. Levitt · 51 weeks ago
Every day, Israel makes me feel a little more ashamed. This has got to stop.
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Barry Meridian · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner, Beilin, Peres, Ron Pundak who created and supported the abortive Oslo refuses to apologize for the vast graveyard of murdered Jews for which they are responsible - along with their ally, Yassir Arafat
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Anuvai · 51 weeks ago
Methinks he (Mr Derfner) doth exaggerate too much... Once upon a time, the State of Israel dropped in its army into Ethiopia. The soldiers led thousands of people on foot through hostile territory to the coast of Sudan, where there were picked up by our navy (all quite illegal and very dangerous) and brought to live with us in Israel. On another occasion, when the government of Ethiopia fled town, all the El-Al flights throughout the world were canceled - and the entire fleet of planes was flown to Ethiopia where tens of thousands were flown in a secret and dramatic airlift to Israel. Again, it was illegal and very dangerous - but Israel feels that these people are ours, and hence we were willing to risk the lives of our soldiers in order for these people to come and live with us. Now, Mr Derfner - since you feel that comparison with the USA is somehow relevant - do you think that there would be a set of circumstances in which the USA would send in its army or send a fleet of planes in order to bring to the USA tens of thousands of non-citizens from some third-world country who have been dreaming all their lives that they wish to be in America? I don't think so. Perhaps, you could put just a little bit of balance into your very slanted view of "racial" issues in Israel. You live in Israel. Go visit an absorption center, and then give yourself a pat on the back for being very special.
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+1
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J.W. · 51 weeks ago
Hey Babbalu .Israel an Apartheid State? whenever muslims get a free hand they turn on the infidels in their adobes.Look how Syria when the savages are let loose kill each other but especially Christians .In Egypt while the terrorist scoundrel Brotherhood were in power Christians were murdered and raped,now it's settled down a Little Saudi infidels are 3rd rate citizens and none can enter Mekka unless when Shi'a pilgrims rioted and western commandos were allowed into Mekka to put down the riot.In Iraq Christians are fleeing .What happened before Israel was a state in 1929 the muslims murdered in the most brutal ways the Jews of Hebron.also i think in 1939.How many Jews were left in Ye'Sha after Jordan [i always thought it was river] took it over ?none [with the help of Sir John Glubb [Glubb Pasha] and the Jordan Legion's largely Brit officer Corp. What happened to Jewish graves and Holy sites some were turned into muslim sites other desecrated.I like thumbs down from the extreme anti Israel posters here,most are little weasels who only act like bots.They're fed rhetoric and repeat it.
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Lisa Lange · 51 weeks ago
Everyone has racist thoughts and feelings. The ones who keep it to themselves have class. Israel and Jews everywhere need to show the rest of the world that we are better than the examples illustrated in this story and fight racism/xenophobia wherever it may exist.
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Barry Meridian · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner the reason you were fired from the Jerusalem Post was, basically you became an apologist for Palestinian terrorism in that article you wrote. When you say you don't support Palestinian terrorism, but you can understand it.
This would be like me saying, I didn't support Kahane.
But i could understand what he meant by No Arabs = No Terror.
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Derfner, who writes this about Greta Berlin:
For those who forget about Greta Berlin.
Greta Berlin is one of those Israel haters behind the Flotilla ships to help Hamas fascists in Gaza.

Berlin said this last year. Greta Berlin, the US co-founder of FGM, posted on Twitter in late September that “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews.”

Her tweet appeared on the Free Gaza Twitter account with a link to a video from Eustace Mullins, who declared that Adolf Hitler formed an alliance with Zionists “to force anti- Zionists to accept Zionism.”

Derfner tries to appease this Islamo fascist Greta Berlin by saying this.

“Even if I find some of her terminology about Gaza (‘slow-motion genocide’ and ‘extermination camps’) to be awfully exaggerated and dangerous, I see no evidence that she’s the monster she’s been made out to be. She’s a self-described anti-Zionist, but I see nothing she’s done or said that I, at least, would consider beyond the pale.”

And, concluding by sharing his impression of Berlin, Derfner writes:

“She doesn’t strike me as a person who scares easily, or who would disown something she believes in to stay in anyone’s good graces. If she genuinely believed in crackpot, anti-Semitic ideas, I think she’d say so and stick by it.”

I can see Larry write an article defending
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Rafael Guber · 51 weeks ago
The problem of a selective conscious is real and should be taken seriously regardless of who is doing the saying. e believe God chooses not to abide in a place arrogance. This would be easier to handle if it did not seem that the Forward sometimes appears to have a desk devoted to the faults and foibles of the Orthodox world. Surely Orthodox Jews are human and in life there is always room for improvement. That said consider these cases in point. 1) A Conservative Rabbi in Westchester Country is caught in a bizarre story impersonating a policemen. 2) There is a horrific scandal at the 92nd St Y. Reports of the incidents appeared in other papers but (unless I missed it which would also mean in was buried in the back - not front page news as it would have been had the offender been Orthodox) it did not appear in the Forward. One has to wonder why. Maybe it is time for the Forward to address its own prejudices.
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4 replies · active 51 weeks ago
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@MJ_Goldstein · 51 weeks ago
Good Jews = Those who keep their mouths shut and their wallets open.
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2 replies · active 51 weeks ago
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LukeF33 · 7 weeks ago
Honestly, the "Jewish Daily Forward" is now essentially promoting antisemtiism
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israel73 · 51 weeks ago
Mr. derfener... I came upon this a bit late and was sickened by what you wrote... you were justifiably fired by the JPost a few years ago for writing vile lies that even they couldn't countenance and here you crawl out from under your slug-filled rock to re-appear to write further vile lies. I'm glad to see that Ken Kelso exposed you for what you are. Even you couldn't respond when faced with the truth!! (Kudos to Ken!).
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Genelevit · 51 weeks ago
Naftali Bennett killed many Arabs. So what? That is probably true; he admits it and I don’t see any racism in his statement. My uncle killed a lot of Germans during WWII. Some of them were civilians. Is he a racist too? Since Mr. Derfner himself once claimed that it is OK to kill Israelis he must be also a racist. Just has the different name: the “Jewish anti-semite” racist.
Racism exists everywhere people live. I have a suspicion that the biggest racists on this board are the ones who condemn Israeli racism in the loudest terms. The main difference between democratic society (like Israel) and non-democratic (like Palestinians living under PA or Hamas) is that in non-democratic societies the authority supports racism and gives racists different tools to promote it (It is "a government sponsored racism")
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joe_r · 51 weeks ago
We can't be too surprised at the fruit of Zionism if we look at the roots.
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
http://bbcwatch.org/2013/08/11/the-palestinian-tv...
The Palestinian TV show the BBC will not tell you about
August 11, 2013

As BBC audiences could hardly have failed to notice given Yolande Knell’s intensive coverage of the subject in recent weeks (see here, here and here), the BBC has quite a penchant for reality TV programmes with a Palestinian interest.

However, that affinity apparently does not extend to game shows and in particular not to the latest Palestinian Authority TV Ramadan special in which Palestinians in the street could win $100 for giving the correct answer to quiz questions.

Palestinian Media Watch brings us some examples of the type of questions posed in these official PA TV broadcasts – and the answers deemed ‘correct’.

PA TV reporter: ”On the beach of which Palestinian village did the whale spew out the prophet Jonah? Naturally, it’s a coastal city.”
Man: ”Ashdod.” (Israeli city on the Mediterranean coast)
PA TV reporter: Ashdod is the correct answer… You win $100 from [the sponsor] Jawwal.”

PA TV reporter: ”Which city did [Palestinian writer] Mustafa Dabbagh call ‘The city that fell from Heaven?’”
Man: ”In Palestine or outside of Palestine?”
PA TV reporter: ”In Palestine.”
Man: “Maybe Jaffa?” (Israeli city, part of Tel Aviv)
PA TV reporter: ”Correct answer. Jaffa. You win $100 from [the sponsor] Wataniya Mobile.”

PA TV reporter: ”A lake in Northern Palestine drained by the Israeli occupation. What is the name of the lake?” SONY DSC
Man: ”The Sea of Galilee?” (In north east Israel)
PA TV reporter: ”Think.”
Man: ”The Hula [Lake].” (The Hula Lake is in Northern Israel)
PA TV reporter: ”You’ve earned $100 from the [sponsor] Bank of Palestine.”

PA TV reporter: ”Name the Palestinian village in Northern Safed whose name means ‘beetle’ in the Syriac language, and whose residents are mostly Druze .”
PA TV reporter: ”The correct answer is Hurfeish, the Palestinian village in Northern Safed whose name means ‘beetle’. Congratulations. You win $100
from [the sponsor] Jawwal.” (Hurfeish is a Druze village in Northern Israel)

PA TV reporter: ”What is the highest mountain in Palestine?”
Man: ”Mt. Meron.” (Mt. Meron is in Northern Israel)

Another question presented the border from Eilat in the south to the Golan Heights in the north as “Palestine’s” border with Jordan, likewise ignoring the existence of Israel:

PA TV reporter: ”[Which] country has the longest border with Palestine and what is [the border's] length?”
Man: ”The country is Jordan and [the border is] 586 [km.]“
PA TV reporter: ”Congratulations. You win $100 from [the sponsor] Jawwal.”
(“Palestine” in this measurement includes all of Israel from Eilat until the Golan Heights.)
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_...
Hate speech for kids by the PA
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
July 8, 2013

Hate speech for kids by the PA

Little girls on PA TV reciting that Jews
are the "most evil among creations,
barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs,"
is part of a pattern of demonization by the PA

When then Sen. Hillary Clinton joined Palestinian Media Watch for a press conference in the Senate in 2007, she warned that Palestinian schoolbooks and official media "profoundly poison the minds of these children."

Since then, the PA's poisoning its children with hatred has continued unabated. The video from PA TV that Palestinian Media Watch released yesterday is just one example: PA TV invited two little girls to read a poem, which was based on Islamic traditions and described Jews as the "most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs," condemned to "humiliation and hardship."
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Its laughable what Larry Derfner is saying.
Larry Derfner was fired from the Jerusalem Post for supporting Arab terrorism against Israeli civilians in Eilat in 2011.
Larry Derfner is the same person who refuses to criticize Abbas racist incitement media that glorifies slaughter Israeli civilians.
Its all on Palmediawatch

Like Germans, the Palestinians are indoctrinated with notion that Jews are not human and Islam will destroy them.
Since 2001, there were more than 150 homicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians and another 500 which were stopped by Israeli troops.
The result was 1557 murder victims and 17,000 maimed Israelis for life.
No less than 84% of the Palestinians supported the Mercaz Harav yeshiva massacre in 08 in Jerusalem.
The Arabs slaughter Israeli civilians on buses, shopping centers, disco’s, pizzeria’s, hotels, holocaust survivors celebrating Passover.
Jews are commonly referred to as sons and daughters of pigs and apes.
Streets in Gaza and Ramallah are named after homicide bombers who tear life from the defenseless Jews to implement the Arabs murderous plans.
Only the Palestinians could celebrate the murder of the Fogel family and the decapitation of a 3 month old baby.
The PA continues to teach on its TV shows that Israeli cities across the entire country, including Yafo (Jaffa) and Haifa, are Palestinian cities. The PA a few weeks ago had a TV show that said the Western Wall area will be turned into Arab housing neighborhood and the Jewish presence in Jerusalem will be erased from history.
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Michael Josefson · 51 weeks ago
Jesse Jackson's "Hymietown" comment was entirely misunderstood. He actually was being very warm and fuzzy towards NYC and its Jewish population--and was trying to say that New York is a very "heimische" town. But his Yiddish wasn't that great.
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner somehow wants to turn a blind eye to Fatah Nazism.
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_...
Fatah honors arch-terrorist by proudly listing his 61 murders
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
July 25, 2013

Fatah glorifies terrorist Abdallah Barghouti as “brave prisoner” because he prepared the bombs for suicide terror attacks that:
- “killed 15 Zionists” at Sbarro restaurant
- “killed 11 Zionists” at Moment Café
- “killed 15 Zionists” at Sheffield Night Club
- “killed 9 Zionists” at Hebrew University
- “killed 11 Zionists” at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall

Fatah continues to follow Palestinian Authority policy documented by Palestinian Media Watch of honoring terrorists, among them Abdallah Barghouti.

A picture glorifying 5 of the suicide bombings that Barghouti prepared explosives for and which killed 61 “Zionists” was posted by the administrator of the official Facebook page of the Mobilization and Organization Commission of Fatah. Terrorist Barghouti was honored as the “brave prisoner” and his attacks as “self-sacrificing activity” and “Martyrdom-seeking operations.” “Martyrdom-seeking operations” is the Palestinian euphemism for suicide bombings.

Barghouti is serving 67 life sentences for preparing explosives for terror attacks in which 67 people were murdered – Sbarro restaurant (15 killed, Aug. 9, 2001), Sheffield Club (15 killed, May 7, 2002), Moment Café (11 killed, March 9, 2002), triple attack at Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall (11 killed, Dec. 1, 2001), Hebrew University (9 killed, July 1, 2002), and Bus 4 in Tel Aviv (6 killed, Sept. 19, 2002).

Following PMW’s exposure of the visits this past May by PA TV to the homes of terrorist Barghouti and two other arch terrorists who between them are serving 166 life sentences, PA TV criticized PMW saying they are not terrorists but “heroes” and attacked PMW for calling them “terrorists”.
Click to see further PMW documentation of PA terror glorification.
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@pfeiffermtl · 51 weeks ago
while not condoning the remark in any way, I understood Rabbi Lau's remark to refer to the fact that often sports teams hire non-local players for their sports abilities and in fact many of whom are black . True for many sports except hockey.
I understood the remark to mean what difference does it make if the sports team in Tel Aviv (hiring black, non Israelis) and the Greek team doing the same thing. We are not rooting for local athletes but for imports either way.
Perhaps using the work "Kushi" referring to one of the names for Ethiopia could have been better chosen.

But think of it--baseball hires all sorts of athletes--how many players on the New York Yankees actually are New Yorkers (or from anywhere within 100 miles of NYC?
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner's 972mag is one of the promoters of the Deir Yassin hoax massacre, just like the Jenin massacre hoax in 2002.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/674327...
Deir Yassin: History of a Lie
ZOA
March 9, 1998
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John Dowdle · 51 weeks ago
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the incident during a ceremony at Mount Herzl national cemetery, calling for national union in the fight against terrorism: “We shall not retreat, not surrender, not give in ... Terror is not a blow from above, it is the work of humans, or subhumans. We shall defeat them." Source: http://www.opendemocracy.net/federica-marsi/dange....
Where have we heard use of the term subhuman (untermensch in German) before?
What makes this political stunt even worse is that the 5 Hares boys alleged to be involved in the incident are completely innocent - but, then, when did a sordid politician like Netanyahu ever let truth get in the way?
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J.W. · 51 weeks ago
If U.S. Jews owe Jackson the extortionist an apology then Jackson owes all the U.S. Jews an apology for all the rapes his illegal African bros commit in Tel Aviv.Oh not in rich part but where poor people live.How come when Bosnian or Vietnamese refuges came to Israel no hate was directed against them?

Some of the rapes these Africans commit .It seems like a national pastime of these African residents of S.Tel Aviv http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7kPETQpSb...
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WildJew · 51 weeks ago
I want to comment only on one point for now.

Larry Derfner wrote: “If you catch terrorists, you simply have to kill them,” (Naftali Bennett) was quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth as saying. The head of the National Security Council, Yaakov Amidor, told Bennett, “Listen, that’s not legal.” Bennett replied: “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.”

Derfner: I’ve lived roughly half my 61 years in the United States, the other half in Israel. There is absolutely no comparison between American tolerance for public displays of racism and Israeli tolerance for it.

I’ve stood in the middle of Israeli crowds chanting “Death to the Arabs.....” etc.

I don't know if there is any culture that is free from racism. I have difficulty believing the Jews are the most racist culture / ethnic group on earth; in light of our history and other things.

This chanting of death to the Arabs happens largely after a brutal and bloody terror attack, suicide bombing or massacre of a Jewish family, husband, wife and little children, like the Fogel family was slaughtered in Itamar, Israel, March 2011. The family was slaughtered by Palestinian Arabs. Maybe it racist but let us not be naive. Americans had all kinds of dehumanizing names for the German enemy: the Hun, Heinies, Kraut, Nazi, Boche. I just finished a biography on President Harry S. Truman. Truman called Japanese "Japs" during the war, as did many if not most Americans. They were the enemy.

So Jesse Jackson considers me and every other Jew his mortal enemy. In Jackson's eyes, I am a Hymie. I've been called a k-ke by a neo-Nazi once. Fine. What would you expect? Jackson does not owe me an apology. I know where I stand in Jackson's eyes. Neither do Israelis or Naftali Bennett owe Jesse Jackson an apology.
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Read more: http://forward.com/articles/182171/israels-everyday-racism-and-how-american-jews-tu/#ixzz3A6L4YWhV

Israel's Everyday Racism — and How American Jews Turn a Blind Eye to It
Refocus Anti-Semitism Outrage on Our Own Dirty Laundry
Jews were outraged when Jesse Jackson referred to New York as ‘Hymietown.’ Where’s the anger over Israeli public figures’ rampant racism?
getty images
Jews were outraged when Jesse Jackson referred to New York as ‘Hymietown.’ Where’s the anger over Israeli public figures’ rampant racism?

By Larry Derfner
Published August 12, 2013.

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The Anti-Defamation League and the rest of the American Jewish establishment owe Jesse Jackson a big apology. They put the man through the wringer, they made him apologize in every possible forum for his “Hymie” and “Hymietown” remarks back in 1984. Yet look at the kinds of things Israeli leaders — senior government ministers, chief rabbis — get away with without ever having to apologize, without ever being punished in the slightest.

Just last week, Naftali Bennett, the fresh new face of right-wing Orthodox Judaism, said in a cabinet meeting how he didn’t like these releases of Palestinian prisoners. “If you catch terrorists, you simply have to kill them,” he was quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth as saying. The head of the National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror, told Bennett, “Listen, that’s not legal.” Bennett replied: “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.”

The media, the left and the Arabs made a big deal out of it, nobody else. Bennett defended what he said, and so did countless talkbackers and Facebookers.

Two days later the newly-elected Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, David Lau, was seen on a video telling an audience of yeshiva boys that they shouldn’t watch European basketball games in public.

“What difference does it make,” Lau said, “if the kushim who get paid in Tel Aviv beat the kushim who get paid in Greece?” Kushim, especially when used in a dismissive context like Lau did, is a well-understood derogatory term for blacks.

Again, the media, the left, some Ethiopian Jews and presumably some African refugees were outraged. But Lau defended his words, blaming the media, saying “they made a big deal out of a joke.”

Who else defended his remarks about “kushim”? Bennett: “The media are pouncing on him for a joking, insignificant remark.”

So really — what was so bad about “Hymies” and “Hymietown”? Or the thousand other anti-Semitic or even just possibly anti-Semitic remarks that the ADL and other American Jewish organizations have “pounced on” since then? Israeli public figures say the same kind of garbage, the difference is that they never, ever pay a price for it, in fact they usually manage to play the victim and get away with it, and at worst will be obliged to offer some backhanded apology.

Likud lawmaker Miri Regev is doing fine after having called Sudanese refugees “a cancer on our body” to a crowd of hopped-up south Tel Avivians in May of last year, shortly before the crowd went on a window-smashing mini-pogrom against the Africans in the neighborhood.

Legendary basketball coach Pini Gershon’s career and public stature didn’t suffer at all after he explained his racial theory about blacks to a class of amused army officers in 2000.

“The mocha-colored guys are smarter, but the dark colored ones are just guys off the street,” Gershon said. “They’re dumb like slaves, they do whatever you tell them.”

Nor was there any blowback whatsoever after Bibi Netanyahu bragged in 2007 that the cuts he’d made to child subsidies had brought a “positive” result, which he identified as “the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate.”

Imagine the scandal if an American political leader boasted publicly that his cuts to child subsidies had reduced the “non-Christian” birth rate. Imagine the ADL’s reaction. But in Israel, in 2007, from the mouth of a once-and-future prime minister — nothing.

These are just a few of the more appalling examples of the kind of racist remarks that Israeli politicians, rabbis and celebrities feel free to make. I haven’t even mentioned Avigdor Lieberman and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. As a rule the words are directed at Arabs, now and then against blacks: either Ethiopian Jews, African refugees or athletes.

I’ve lived roughly half my 61 years in the United States, the other half in Israel. There is absolutely no comparison between American tolerance for public displays of racism and Israeli tolerance for it.

I’ve stood in the middle of Israeli crowds chanting “Death to the Arabs.” I’ve sat in a Tel Aviv soccer stadium watching and listening to an entire section of fans erupt in monkey sounds – “Hoo, hoo, hoo!! Hoo, hoo, hoo!! – after a black player on the visiting team scored a goal.

A few liberals and a few do-gooders and a few journalists wring their hands. But the racists in the street, the synagogues, the Knesset and the government go on doing their thing.

Does this mean all Israelis, or even most of them, are racists? No. Does it mean Israeli society, by commission and omission, encourages racism? Oh, yes. To a degree that would be unthinkable in the United States.

And the leaders of the U.S. Jewish establishment, Israel’s most valued, devoted, determined friends, keep pouncing on every untoward or conceivably untoward remark about Jews or the Jewish state. Yes, the ADL will send out a press release about its “concern” over the “inappropriate” remarks made by some relatively minor Israeli figure.

But it never hits hard at the major figures. It said nothing last week about Bennett or Lau. The ADL goes after anti-Semitism with a fist, it goes after Israeli racism with a sigh.

As a matter of fact, the ADL and the entire American Jewish establishment should suspend their campaigns against anti-Semitism indefinitely and take a look at what’s going on in Israel.

When the Jewish state is this riddled with racism, its advocates abroad should be a little less outraged over the offenses of gentiles. They should be a little more humble — and a lot less hypocritical.

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David · 51 weeks ago
A Jewish democratic state is an oxymoron. The way I understand democracy in this century is that the state may make no distinction among its citizens on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and other similar states cannot be democratic. One reason we Jews have survived for so long is that we were not gathered in one place. One reason we Jews have lived well in democratic countries is that we were generally treated equally with non-Jews. Israel satisfied a Jewish longing, but it is not good for long term Jewish survival if most of us gather there. Herzl wanted a state where Jews can be like other peoples. He got it. Now we can be just as bigoted as those who have oppressed us.
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@ToniKamins · 51 weeks ago
Hear hear!
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sandbox · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner is right, Israeli leadership needs to speak out more often when racist or ethnic slurs are made.
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TheBigJ · 51 weeks ago
Speaking as a conservative/libertarian who is pro-Israel, I have to say that I agree with the premise of this article. Israeli society needs to do much more to combat racism and xenophobia within its ranks.
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dmo65 · 51 weeks ago
Though I generally loathe Derfner, he's got a point here. It's sickening to see Beitar Jerusalem supporters continually get away with racism and violence with only a slap on the wrist, especially when we rightly criticize Italian and Spanish clubs for allowing displays of Antisemitism at their grounds. Arab violence perpetrated against the state of Israel should not excuse acting like an animal.
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Theazcowboy Az · 51 weeks ago
No only does Israel NOT havea Constitution, NO, Bill of Rihgts,' and (of course) NO Borders. So let's quit this 'Only democracy in the Middle East caca when, infact, it's complete lie.
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bamboobabu · 51 weeks ago
Three cheers for Mr.Defener for exposing the deeply entrenched Israeli racism. Thanks to Forward for publishing his well researched article.
But as he writes most US Jewry turns a blind eye on this phenomenon!
Two wrongs never make it right. To argue that other countries too have their racists is infantile thing to say.
The Jews always harp on that Israel is a light unto other nations.It should practice what it is preaching to the rest of the humanity.
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Gubbler Chechenova · 51 weeks ago
Israel can get away with stuff like this because Jews control the media in the US and much of Europe. Powerful American Jews in the media give cover to Israel and Jewish interests. Also, goyim are so fearful of Jewish power and so desirous of Jewish funds that they never criticize Israel. So unless FORWARD discusses the root of this problem, it is just full of BS.
Most Jews stick with their own kind. Most goyim in the US and EU are running dogs of Jewish money and power.

Also, paradoxically, Jewish fight against 'racism' has made them more 'racist'. Jews so often cry 'racism' and 'antisemitism' --with full and lopsided blessing of the Jewish-controlled media--that people of all stripes are afraid of criticizing Jews lest they be accused of 'racism' or 'antisemitism' against Jews.
Jewish 'anti-racism' and the cult of Holocaust have made Jews so morally arrogant and bullying, so self-righteous, so morally narcissistic, supremacist, and self-pitying that so many Jews see themselves as perfect victims that never did and never could do any wrong.
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J.W. · 51 weeks ago
Perhaps you can show me this quote in the Times of London,The Independent or the Guardian.Maybe the N.Y Times, The Washington Post or the L.A.Times.Or any recording or legitimate new source.BTW all the 5 blogs that have this comment are linked to Federica Marsi, He called terrorists sub humans not Arabs or muslims http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/...

The terrorists want to us away from our land, he said, and all means are acceptable, in their eyes. "The murderers do not shy away from butchering babies and old people, or innocent bystanders. We will never be like them.

"Terror is not a pestilence from heaven," he said. "It is the work of humans. Usually, of subhumans. We will defeat them."

"There are supposed men of morals who preach to us, day and night," he added. "But I notice that they are not always quick to denounce our enemies when they spill the blood of innocents."
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Genelevit · 51 weeks ago
In 2011, the paper (Jerusalem Post) fired its outspoken columnist Larry Derfner for a controversial post in his personal blog in which he wrote that Palestinians have a right to kill Israelis to oppose the occupation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jerusalem_Postht...
So, who is the racist?
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Joel A. Levitt · 51 weeks ago
Every day, Israel makes me feel a little more ashamed. This has got to stop.
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Click on link to read full article.
http://cifwatch.com/2010/10/02/gilas-shrapnel-a-s...

Gila’s Shrapnel (A short essay about an Israeli victim of the 2nd Intifada)
Oct 2, 2010

A few days ago marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the 2nd Intifada – armed attacks, suicidebombings, and launching Qassam rockets into Israel, all of which claimed over 1100 Israeli lives, with thousands more wounded. Like most Israelis, I know one of the victims. This essay is my attempt to briefly tell her story.

The suicide bomber who sent hundreds of pieces of shrapnel tearing into Gila Weiss’s body when she blew herself up at a bus stop next to Mahane Yehuda market (The Shuk) in Jerusalem in 2002, was a 21-year-old Palestinian woman disguised to look like she was pregnant.

The bomber, Andaleeb Taqataqah, was recruited by Aksa Martyrs Brigade – controlled by Fatah, which, at the time, was controlled by Yassir Arafat.
Weiss, then 31, was also so badly burned and disfigured by the blast that her roommate was able to identify her only by the nail varnish on her toenails – her feet protected, she noted, by the ”…brown leather Naot brand mini-boots that covered my feet up to right below my ankles”.

Nearly every part of Weiss’s body was pierced by shrapnel – bits and pieces of metal, glass, wood, pebbles, and plastic from objects damaged or destroyed by the blast, as well as, more than likely, pieces of the suicide bomber herself. Despite the many surgeries she had to endure, the doctors weren’t able to locate or remove every last piece, and, to this day, projectiles from that horrible day remain in her body.

The bomb which tore through Weiss was manufactured from three tubes of plastic explosives and a battery, which were placed in a black purse to camouflage it.
On the day of the attack, the terrorist was driven to Abu Dis and from there she took a taxi to Jerusalem and made her way to the Shuk. When the terrorist realized that everyone was being checked at the entrances to the market, she turned around and walked towards the nearby bus stop, opposite HavaBakery. There, she waited a short while, until a bus arrived. When the driver opened the door, and the passengers began getting on and off the bus, she blew herself up – killing 6 people, and injuring a total of 105 (including Weiss).
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Barry Meridian · 51 weeks ago
Remember when the left in 2000 were making excuses for Arafat's terror war by excusing him.
http://honestreporting.com/suha-arafat-the-2000-i...
Suha Arafat: The 2000 Intifada Was Premeditated, Planned by Arafat
DECEMBER 26, 2012
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J.W. · 51 weeks ago
Here's an article from The Harvard Crimson about slick Jesse http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1984/3/5/jesse-...

Here's some more of Jessie's remarks about Jews http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson

Jackson also made other remarks evidencing a negative attitude toward Jews including saying that Richard Nixon was less attentive to poverty in the U.S. because "four out of five [of Nixon's top advisers] are German Jews and their priorities are on Europe and Asia"; that he was "sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust"; and that there are "very few Jewish reporters that have the capacity to be objective about Arab affairs". Shortly after President Jimmy Carter fired U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young for meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization representatives, Jackson and other black leaders began publicly endorsing a Palestinian state, with Jackson calling Israel's prime minister a "terrorist", and then soliciting Arab-American financial support.[37] Jackson has since apologized for some of these remarks, but they badly damaged his presidential campaign, as "Jackson was seen by many conservatives in the United States as hostile to Israel and far too close to Arab governments."[38]
Who are the 4or5 the only one i can think of is Kissinger.
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Laura Wharton · 51 weeks ago
There is certainly a terribly serious problem with racism in Israel -- but it is due to the ongoing war and current government and has nothing to do with the political system. Israel's political system allowed for a flourishing social-democratic country until 1967/
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Joel A. Levitt · 51 weeks ago
Every day, Israel makes me feel a little more ashamed. This has got to stop.
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Barry Meridian · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner, Beilin, Peres, Ron Pundak who created and supported the abortive Oslo refuses to apologize for the vast graveyard of murdered Jews for which they are responsible - along with their ally, Yassir Arafat
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Anuvai · 51 weeks ago
Methinks he (Mr Derfner) doth exaggerate too much... Once upon a time, the State of Israel dropped in its army into Ethiopia. The soldiers led thousands of people on foot through hostile territory to the coast of Sudan, where there were picked up by our navy (all quite illegal and very dangerous) and brought to live with us in Israel. On another occasion, when the government of Ethiopia fled town, all the El-Al flights throughout the world were canceled - and the entire fleet of planes was flown to Ethiopia where tens of thousands were flown in a secret and dramatic airlift to Israel. Again, it was illegal and very dangerous - but Israel feels that these people are ours, and hence we were willing to risk the lives of our soldiers in order for these people to come and live with us. Now, Mr Derfner - since you feel that comparison with the USA is somehow relevant - do you think that there would be a set of circumstances in which the USA would send in its army or send a fleet of planes in order to bring to the USA tens of thousands of non-citizens from some third-world country who have been dreaming all their lives that they wish to be in America? I don't think so. Perhaps, you could put just a little bit of balance into your very slanted view of "racial" issues in Israel. You live in Israel. Go visit an absorption center, and then give yourself a pat on the back for being very special.
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J.W. · 51 weeks ago
Hey Babbalu .Israel an Apartheid State? whenever muslims get a free hand they turn on the infidels in their adobes.Look how Syria when the savages are let loose kill each other but especially Christians .In Egypt while the terrorist scoundrel Brotherhood were in power Christians were murdered and raped,now it's settled down a Little Saudi infidels are 3rd rate citizens and none can enter Mekka unless when Shi'a pilgrims rioted and western commandos were allowed into Mekka to put down the riot.In Iraq Christians are fleeing .What happened before Israel was a state in 1929 the muslims murdered in the most brutal ways the Jews of Hebron.also i think in 1939.How many Jews were left in Ye'Sha after Jordan [i always thought it was river] took it over ?none [with the help of Sir John Glubb [Glubb Pasha] and the Jordan Legion's largely Brit officer Corp. What happened to Jewish graves and Holy sites some were turned into muslim sites other desecrated.I like thumbs down from the extreme anti Israel posters here,most are little weasels who only act like bots.They're fed rhetoric and repeat it.
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Lisa Lange · 51 weeks ago
Everyone has racist thoughts and feelings. The ones who keep it to themselves have class. Israel and Jews everywhere need to show the rest of the world that we are better than the examples illustrated in this story and fight racism/xenophobia wherever it may exist.
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Barry Meridian · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner the reason you were fired from the Jerusalem Post was, basically you became an apologist for Palestinian terrorism in that article you wrote. When you say you don't support Palestinian terrorism, but you can understand it.
This would be like me saying, I didn't support Kahane.
But i could understand what he meant by No Arabs = No Terror.
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Derfner, who writes this about Greta Berlin:
For those who forget about Greta Berlin.
Greta Berlin is one of those Israel haters behind the Flotilla ships to help Hamas fascists in Gaza.

Berlin said this last year. Greta Berlin, the US co-founder of FGM, posted on Twitter in late September that “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews.”

Her tweet appeared on the Free Gaza Twitter account with a link to a video from Eustace Mullins, who declared that Adolf Hitler formed an alliance with Zionists “to force anti- Zionists to accept Zionism.”

Derfner tries to appease this Islamo fascist Greta Berlin by saying this.

“Even if I find some of her terminology about Gaza (‘slow-motion genocide’ and ‘extermination camps’) to be awfully exaggerated and dangerous, I see no evidence that she’s the monster she’s been made out to be. She’s a self-described anti-Zionist, but I see nothing she’s done or said that I, at least, would consider beyond the pale.”

And, concluding by sharing his impression of Berlin, Derfner writes:

“She doesn’t strike me as a person who scares easily, or who would disown something she believes in to stay in anyone’s good graces. If she genuinely believed in crackpot, anti-Semitic ideas, I think she’d say so and stick by it.”

I can see Larry write an article defending
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Rafael Guber · 51 weeks ago
The problem of a selective conscious is real and should be taken seriously regardless of who is doing the saying. e believe God chooses not to abide in a place arrogance. This would be easier to handle if it did not seem that the Forward sometimes appears to have a desk devoted to the faults and foibles of the Orthodox world. Surely Orthodox Jews are human and in life there is always room for improvement. That said consider these cases in point. 1) A Conservative Rabbi in Westchester Country is caught in a bizarre story impersonating a policemen. 2) There is a horrific scandal at the 92nd St Y. Reports of the incidents appeared in other papers but (unless I missed it which would also mean in was buried in the back - not front page news as it would have been had the offender been Orthodox) it did not appear in the Forward. One has to wonder why. Maybe it is time for the Forward to address its own prejudices.
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@MJ_Goldstein · 51 weeks ago
Good Jews = Those who keep their mouths shut and their wallets open.
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LukeF33 · 7 weeks ago
Honestly, the "Jewish Daily Forward" is now essentially promoting antisemtiism
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israel73 · 51 weeks ago
Mr. derfener... I came upon this a bit late and was sickened by what you wrote... you were justifiably fired by the JPost a few years ago for writing vile lies that even they couldn't countenance and here you crawl out from under your slug-filled rock to re-appear to write further vile lies. I'm glad to see that Ken Kelso exposed you for what you are. Even you couldn't respond when faced with the truth!! (Kudos to Ken!).
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Genelevit · 51 weeks ago
Naftali Bennett killed many Arabs. So what? That is probably true; he admits it and I don’t see any racism in his statement. My uncle killed a lot of Germans during WWII. Some of them were civilians. Is he a racist too? Since Mr. Derfner himself once claimed that it is OK to kill Israelis he must be also a racist. Just has the different name: the “Jewish anti-semite” racist.
Racism exists everywhere people live. I have a suspicion that the biggest racists on this board are the ones who condemn Israeli racism in the loudest terms. The main difference between democratic society (like Israel) and non-democratic (like Palestinians living under PA or Hamas) is that in non-democratic societies the authority supports racism and gives racists different tools to promote it (It is "a government sponsored racism")
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joe_r · 51 weeks ago
We can't be too surprised at the fruit of Zionism if we look at the roots.
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
http://bbcwatch.org/2013/08/11/the-palestinian-tv...
The Palestinian TV show the BBC will not tell you about
August 11, 2013

As BBC audiences could hardly have failed to notice given Yolande Knell’s intensive coverage of the subject in recent weeks (see here, here and here), the BBC has quite a penchant for reality TV programmes with a Palestinian interest.

However, that affinity apparently does not extend to game shows and in particular not to the latest Palestinian Authority TV Ramadan special in which Palestinians in the street could win $100 for giving the correct answer to quiz questions.

Palestinian Media Watch brings us some examples of the type of questions posed in these official PA TV broadcasts – and the answers deemed ‘correct’.

PA TV reporter: ”On the beach of which Palestinian village did the whale spew out the prophet Jonah? Naturally, it’s a coastal city.”
Man: ”Ashdod.” (Israeli city on the Mediterranean coast)
PA TV reporter: Ashdod is the correct answer… You win $100 from [the sponsor] Jawwal.”

PA TV reporter: ”Which city did [Palestinian writer] Mustafa Dabbagh call ‘The city that fell from Heaven?’”
Man: ”In Palestine or outside of Palestine?”
PA TV reporter: ”In Palestine.”
Man: “Maybe Jaffa?” (Israeli city, part of Tel Aviv)
PA TV reporter: ”Correct answer. Jaffa. You win $100 from [the sponsor] Wataniya Mobile.”

PA TV reporter: ”A lake in Northern Palestine drained by the Israeli occupation. What is the name of the lake?” SONY DSC
Man: ”The Sea of Galilee?” (In north east Israel)
PA TV reporter: ”Think.”
Man: ”The Hula [Lake].” (The Hula Lake is in Northern Israel)
PA TV reporter: ”You’ve earned $100 from the [sponsor] Bank of Palestine.”

PA TV reporter: ”Name the Palestinian village in Northern Safed whose name means ‘beetle’ in the Syriac language, and whose residents are mostly Druze .”
PA TV reporter: ”The correct answer is Hurfeish, the Palestinian village in Northern Safed whose name means ‘beetle’. Congratulations. You win $100
from [the sponsor] Jawwal.” (Hurfeish is a Druze village in Northern Israel)

PA TV reporter: ”What is the highest mountain in Palestine?”
Man: ”Mt. Meron.” (Mt. Meron is in Northern Israel)

Another question presented the border from Eilat in the south to the Golan Heights in the north as “Palestine’s” border with Jordan, likewise ignoring the existence of Israel:

PA TV reporter: ”[Which] country has the longest border with Palestine and what is [the border's] length?”
Man: ”The country is Jordan and [the border is] 586 [km.]“
PA TV reporter: ”Congratulations. You win $100 from [the sponsor] Jawwal.”
(“Palestine” in this measurement includes all of Israel from Eilat until the Golan Heights.)
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_...
Hate speech for kids by the PA
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
July 8, 2013

Hate speech for kids by the PA

Little girls on PA TV reciting that Jews
are the "most evil among creations,
barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs,"
is part of a pattern of demonization by the PA

When then Sen. Hillary Clinton joined Palestinian Media Watch for a press conference in the Senate in 2007, she warned that Palestinian schoolbooks and official media "profoundly poison the minds of these children."

Since then, the PA's poisoning its children with hatred has continued unabated. The video from PA TV that Palestinian Media Watch released yesterday is just one example: PA TV invited two little girls to read a poem, which was based on Islamic traditions and described Jews as the "most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs," condemned to "humiliation and hardship."
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Its laughable what Larry Derfner is saying.
Larry Derfner was fired from the Jerusalem Post for supporting Arab terrorism against Israeli civilians in Eilat in 2011.
Larry Derfner is the same person who refuses to criticize Abbas racist incitement media that glorifies slaughter Israeli civilians.
Its all on Palmediawatch

Like Germans, the Palestinians are indoctrinated with notion that Jews are not human and Islam will destroy them.
Since 2001, there were more than 150 homicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians and another 500 which were stopped by Israeli troops.
The result was 1557 murder victims and 17,000 maimed Israelis for life.
No less than 84% of the Palestinians supported the Mercaz Harav yeshiva massacre in 08 in Jerusalem.
The Arabs slaughter Israeli civilians on buses, shopping centers, disco’s, pizzeria’s, hotels, holocaust survivors celebrating Passover.
Jews are commonly referred to as sons and daughters of pigs and apes.
Streets in Gaza and Ramallah are named after homicide bombers who tear life from the defenseless Jews to implement the Arabs murderous plans.
Only the Palestinians could celebrate the murder of the Fogel family and the decapitation of a 3 month old baby.
The PA continues to teach on its TV shows that Israeli cities across the entire country, including Yafo (Jaffa) and Haifa, are Palestinian cities. The PA a few weeks ago had a TV show that said the Western Wall area will be turned into Arab housing neighborhood and the Jewish presence in Jerusalem will be erased from history.
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Michael Josefson · 51 weeks ago
Jesse Jackson's "Hymietown" comment was entirely misunderstood. He actually was being very warm and fuzzy towards NYC and its Jewish population--and was trying to say that New York is a very "heimische" town. But his Yiddish wasn't that great.
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner somehow wants to turn a blind eye to Fatah Nazism.
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_...
Fatah honors arch-terrorist by proudly listing his 61 murders
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
July 25, 2013

Fatah glorifies terrorist Abdallah Barghouti as “brave prisoner” because he prepared the bombs for suicide terror attacks that:
- “killed 15 Zionists” at Sbarro restaurant
- “killed 11 Zionists” at Moment Café
- “killed 15 Zionists” at Sheffield Night Club
- “killed 9 Zionists” at Hebrew University
- “killed 11 Zionists” at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall

Fatah continues to follow Palestinian Authority policy documented by Palestinian Media Watch of honoring terrorists, among them Abdallah Barghouti.

A picture glorifying 5 of the suicide bombings that Barghouti prepared explosives for and which killed 61 “Zionists” was posted by the administrator of the official Facebook page of the Mobilization and Organization Commission of Fatah. Terrorist Barghouti was honored as the “brave prisoner” and his attacks as “self-sacrificing activity” and “Martyrdom-seeking operations.” “Martyrdom-seeking operations” is the Palestinian euphemism for suicide bombings.

Barghouti is serving 67 life sentences for preparing explosives for terror attacks in which 67 people were murdered – Sbarro restaurant (15 killed, Aug. 9, 2001), Sheffield Club (15 killed, May 7, 2002), Moment Café (11 killed, March 9, 2002), triple attack at Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall (11 killed, Dec. 1, 2001), Hebrew University (9 killed, July 1, 2002), and Bus 4 in Tel Aviv (6 killed, Sept. 19, 2002).

Following PMW’s exposure of the visits this past May by PA TV to the homes of terrorist Barghouti and two other arch terrorists who between them are serving 166 life sentences, PA TV criticized PMW saying they are not terrorists but “heroes” and attacked PMW for calling them “terrorists”.
Click to see further PMW documentation of PA terror glorification.
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@pfeiffermtl · 51 weeks ago
while not condoning the remark in any way, I understood Rabbi Lau's remark to refer to the fact that often sports teams hire non-local players for their sports abilities and in fact many of whom are black . True for many sports except hockey.
I understood the remark to mean what difference does it make if the sports team in Tel Aviv (hiring black, non Israelis) and the Greek team doing the same thing. We are not rooting for local athletes but for imports either way.
Perhaps using the work "Kushi" referring to one of the names for Ethiopia could have been better chosen.

But think of it--baseball hires all sorts of athletes--how many players on the New York Yankees actually are New Yorkers (or from anywhere within 100 miles of NYC?
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Ken Kelso · 51 weeks ago
Larry Derfner's 972mag is one of the promoters of the Deir Yassin hoax massacre, just like the Jenin massacre hoax in 2002.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/674327...
Deir Yassin: History of a Lie
ZOA
March 9, 1998
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John Dowdle · 51 weeks ago
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the incident during a ceremony at Mount Herzl national cemetery, calling for national union in the fight against terrorism: “We shall not retreat, not surrender, not give in ... Terror is not a blow from above, it is the work of humans, or subhumans. We shall defeat them." Source: http://www.opendemocracy.net/federica-marsi/dange....
Where have we heard use of the term subhuman (untermensch in German) before?
What makes this political stunt even worse is that the 5 Hares boys alleged to be involved in the incident are completely innocent - but, then, when did a sordid politician like Netanyahu ever let truth get in the way?
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J.W. · 51 weeks ago
If U.S. Jews owe Jackson the extortionist an apology then Jackson owes all the U.S. Jews an apology for all the rapes his illegal African bros commit in Tel Aviv.Oh not in rich part but where poor people live.How come when Bosnian or Vietnamese refuges came to Israel no hate was directed against them?

Some of the rapes these Africans commit .It seems like a national pastime of these African residents of S.Tel Aviv http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7kPETQpSb...
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WildJew · 51 weeks ago
I want to comment only on one point for now.

Larry Derfner wrote: “If you catch terrorists, you simply have to kill them,” (Naftali Bennett) was quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth as saying. The head of the National Security Council, Yaakov Amidor, told Bennett, “Listen, that’s not legal.” Bennett replied: “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.”

Derfner: I’ve lived roughly half my 61 years in the United States, the other half in Israel. There is absolutely no comparison between American tolerance for public displays of racism and Israeli tolerance for it.

I’ve stood in the middle of Israeli crowds chanting “Death to the Arabs.....” etc.

I don't know if there is any culture that is free from racism. I have difficulty believing the Jews are the most racist culture / ethnic group on earth; in light of our history and other things.

This chanting of death to the Arabs happens largely after a brutal and bloody terror attack, suicide bombing or massacre of a Jewish family, husband, wife and little children, like the Fogel family was slaughtered in Itamar, Israel, March 2011. The family was slaughtered by Palestinian Arabs. Maybe it racist but let us not be naive. Americans had all kinds of dehumanizing names for the German enemy: the Hun, Heinies, Kraut, Nazi, Boche. I just finished a biography on President Harry S. Truman. Truman called Japanese "Japs" during the war, as did many if not most Americans. They were the enemy.

So Jesse Jackson considers me and every other Jew his mortal enemy. In Jackson's eyes, I am a Hymie. I've been called a k-ke by a neo-Nazi once. Fine. What would you expect? Jackson does not owe me an apology. I know where I stand in Jackson's eyes. Neither do Israelis or Naftali Bennett owe Jesse Jackson an apology.
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(Hatem Omar / Maan Images)
Watch the video on Israeli racism The New York Times didn’t want you to see
Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Fri, 10/18/2013 - 12:30
Israel's New Racism: The Persecution of African Migrants in the Holy Land
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A week of racism in Israel - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
www.aljazeera.com/indepth/.../01/20111812130964689.html
Al Jazeera
Jan 8, 2011 - Israeli racism may not be new but it is becoming more open, which ... recently published a story with the provocative headline: 17 per cent of ...
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Video for inside story racism in israel► 10:18► 10:18
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Inside Story Racism in Israel 11 Dec 07 Part 2. MegaNewsbreak ... Racism Report: Africans in Israel by Blue ...
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Inside Story Racism in Israel 11 Dec 07 Part 1. MegaNewsbreak ... Racism Report: Africans in Israel by Blue ...
Inside Story - Racism in Israel - 11 Dec 07 -Part 1 - Video ...
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Apr 18, 2012
Racism towards Arabs is on the rise and we ask whether it is due to the fear factor.
The Life of an American Jew in Racist Marxist Israel
www.biblebelievers.org.au/israel.htm
How an American Ashkenazi Jew in racist, Marxist Israel was persecuted when he ... To fully understand the story I am about to tell, it is important that you ...
Israel's Disgustingly Racist Behavior Towards Ethiopian Jews
thedailybanter.com/.../israels-disgustingly-racist-behavior-towards-ethiop...
Jan 30, 2013 - After learning that Israel admitted it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants ... The 125,000 strong population is subjected to racist abuse from white Israelis, and many are ... This story was debunked months ago. ... Did you know that if you shave a monkey, they're white inside! l hope you found this ...
No Legal Steps Against 'Racist' Theme Park - Inside Israel ...
www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169003
Arutz Sheva
Jun 17, 2013 - The story began when a teacher at an Arab school in Yafo (Jaffa), who planned to bring a group to the amusement park, was told that the day ...
Anti-African Racism in Israel - David Sheen
www.davidsheen.com/racism/
Analysis of the root causes of anti-African racism in Israeli society and the power of the ..... Inside Story asks if Israeli policies are a legitimate stand against ...
Racism and Institutionalised Discrimination: How Israeli ...
www.globalresearch.ca/racism-and-institutionalised...israeli.../5339890
Jun 21, 2013 - Racism and Institutionalised Discrimination: How Israeli Apartheid is Coming Unstuck ... As the story went viral on social media, the park's managers hurriedly ... Bank, are now as likely to attack Arab communities inside Israel.
Israel's New Racism: The Persecution of African Migrants in ...
therealnews.com/idirect.php?i=10892
The Real News
Oct 21, 2013 - About 60000 African migrants have arrived in Israel since 2006, fleeing unrest in their home countries. ... His other book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York ... Latest Stories ...
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“	Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides.	”
—Future US president Calvin Coolidge, 1921.^[53]

“	Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all noncitizen Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided, That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Native American to tribal or other property.	”
—-Indian Citizenship Act of 1924

Global Racism/Satanism, America and the World -- Decline or Progress? #00001

H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

Racism in France

Contents

Racism against Jews

The Dreyfus Affair

The Vichy Regime of 1940-1944

The Vélodrome d’Hiver

Apology from France

Racism against Blacks

The African Slave Trade

Racism against Algerians

Racism against Arabs and Berbers

Racism against Chinese people

Racism against Gypsies

Racism against white French

Consequences of racism

In politics

In legislature

Immigration laws

Secularization Laws

See also

References

Further reading

H.E. KUM Nelson Bame IV

1. UN Rights Report Flays France for Its 'Racist' Immigration ...

2. UN human rights office condemns racist attacks against ...

3. World Conference against Racism - Wikipedia, the free ...

4. France experiencing 'resurgence of racism' - Telegraph

5. UN Anti-Racism Committee Concerned about Roma Rights ...

6. UN body calls attention to growing problem of ... - France 24

7. Europe - UN slams 'racist attacks' on French black politician ...

8. European Commission against Racism and Intolerance ...

9. Racism in France on the rise, says UN - France - RFI

10. Sarkozy's party furious over UN racism report - france - RFI

France has become more racist, say the French

· · One in three French say they are racist: survey - The Local

· 2014 Miss France Hit With Racist Attacks Online - News One

· The Justice Minister and the Banana: How Racist is France ...

· The French Prove Just How Racist They Can Be After ...

Skin Color and Race

Origins of the word "race"

Racism

Definitions of race and species

2. Are African Americans better off in Spain or France? (house, UK ...

3. France - Black public figures sound alarm on 'racist France ...

4. Black France - Special series - Al Jazeera English

5. 'Is France becoming racist?' - The Washington Post

6. Are French people racist towards blacks? - Yahoo Answers

7. Racist France is back, says country's first black newsreader ...

8. In France, Some Ask If Racism Is On The Rise : Parallels ...

9. Is France racist? Abuse shocks nation - CNN.com

10. French blacks skeptical of race neutrality - The New York ...

· Navi Pillay warns against mounting racism in Europe ...

· France - Amnesty International | Working to Protect Human ...

· PressTV - UN raps racist slurs against French minister

· Racial Discrimination: The Record of France

· Racism — Global Issues

· Racism and Discrimination - Human Rights Watch

· UN Commission on Human Rights - Report on racism ...

2. Five steps France must take to tackle racism - The Local

3. Australia's wake up call from the UN: Yes, we're a racist ...

4. ENAR Shadow Report on racism & discrimination in ...

5. Fight against racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia ...

6. French Immigration + Racism vocab flashcards | Quizlet

1. Ayn Rand On Racism - The Individual Is Most Important‎

Search Results

1. JURIST - UN rights expert: racism, xenophobia increasing

2. Pressure mounts on French comic in racism row | i24news ...

3. Headlines for March 19, 2014 | Democracy Now!

4. The Diene Report on Discrimination and Racism in Japan ...

5. Making Racism Respectable: Islamophobia in Sarkozy's ...

6. Ahmadinejad Attacks Israel, U.S. at U.N. Racism ... - Fox News

8. (ENAR) launches its Shadow Report on discrimination - Le ...

9. The Hopeless Racism of French Canadian Culture

· Racism targets 'visible' minorities in France, UN ...

· UN joins soccer players to rid sport of racism - ESPN FC

· Human rights, racism, and the un charter - Race and Ethnicity