South Asians Are Not Racist

So argues Satya Sharma, everyone’s favourite Marxist associate anthropology professor at the U of Sask, and a man seemingly oblivious to irony.

We last met Professor Sharma when he railed against “corporatization of the university’s decision-making process” as it leads to “declining support for humanities, fine arts, social sciences and the library.”

Today, he attacks the social science of his university colleague:

The story, Thousands of immigrants flock to Saskatoon (SP, May 9), featured an ill-conceived attempt at analysis by Prof. Ken Coates of the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.

I take issue with both the immigration data and Coates’s analysis.

Note that mongers of competing grievances don’t mix well.

This influx of immigrants is exciting news. Saskatchewan was not a hot spot for immigrants during much of the latter half of the 20th century, so why is it so attractive today for newcomers?

The reasons are simple. Canada’s three big cities – Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal – have priced themselves out in terms of real estate value, rent and cost of living for immigrants. There’s also a perception that Saskatchewan’s economy is booming, although many residents might disagree.

If real estate prices were the primary factor, you’d think you’d see immigrants flocking to, say, New Brunswick than Saskatchewan, especially since Saskatchewan’s booming economy is merely a “perception”.

Canada is a land of the Inuit, First Nations and waves of immigrants. The early white settlers from Western Europe consider themselves privileged and have a strong sense of ownership of the country. Their activities and institutions caused much suffering to aboriginal groups through racism, discrimination, disease, war and ill-treatment, causing First Nations numbers to dwindle.

Ah, it’s about “privilege”, the latest buzzword in the ongoing saga to legitimize critical theory to the unwashed. I.e., differences in society are nothing more than psychological constructs in which one sociological group is “perceived” to hold power over another.

Which would have been news to the 19th-century “white settlers from Western Europe” known as “the Irish”.

The aboriginals now are the fastest growing group in Canada, which has made the early immigrant population anxious. We see numerous examples of it, especially in public policy and neglect.

“Early immigrant population” groups (i.e. Whitey) want to keep aboriginals down, you see. Because they are both racist and privileged.

And “anxious”, apparently.

Immigrants from across the globe have been coming to Canada steadily since the 1960s, although the current Conservative government has tightened the rules and made immigration in the family category particularly difficult.

Indeed. Note the severe drop-off of “family class” permanent-resident immigrants after the Conservatives came to power in 2006.

After early racist immigration policies toward non-white groups, governments of all political stripes have realized that Canada cannot survive without immigrants, regardless of colour.

Recent decades have seen an annual inflow of 200,000 to 300,000 immigrants needed to meet Canada’s labour shortage and to contribute to the safety net for the country’s aging population.

These newcomers, mostly non-whites, pose no challenge to the aboriginal population and have not done so at any time in history.

I agree. Even though the off-reserve aboriginal unemployment rate is almost double that of non-aboriginals and many unskilled labour positions previously available to aboriginals are being increasingly taken up by immigrants, immigration of productive workers does benefit us all.

But since the story was simply pointing out a “perception” issue and, as noted above, “perception” matters more than reality, Mr. Sharma shouldn’t be complaining.

The data used in The StarPhoenix, especially concerning South Asians, are totally wrong, but the paper is not to be faulted. The Harper government changed how Statistics Canada collects data, making long-form household surveys no longer mandatory.

“Totally wrong” being a statistical term introduced by Harper’s new-and-improved StatsCan.

These newcomers are highly underrepresented in the data. I have been doing research in Saskatoon’s South Asian community since the early 1980s. Even back in 1984, the city had close to 4,000 South Asians, the majority from India. Among Indians, Hindus were a majority at about 2,200. Their numbers are much higher today, well above 3,000.

If Mr. Sharma is so sure of his data, then why does he need the long-form census?

Within the past decade there has been a significant jump in the ranks of immigrants from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Muslims in Saskatoon number close to 10,000, many coming from Ontario. Many Sikhs, too, have move [sic] to Saskatoon from British Columbia.

Good. Glad to have them. Hope they enjoy our cheap housing.

To attempt an analysis on the basis of wrong data is fraught with difficulty. To make sweeping generalizations on the basis of such data is foolhardy.

Though it’s perfectly fine to make “sweeping generalizations” on how “early white settlers from Western Europe [considered] themselves privileged and [had] a strong sense of ownership of the country.” Especially since there was no long-form census data available at that time to support such an analysis.

I am surprised that as a historian, Coates makes an argument about immigrants vis-a-vis aboriginals that amounts to accusing newcomers of being racist and insensitive toward aboriginals, considering them as competition for employment, and being ignorant of Canada’s policies regarding First Nations. It’s far from portraying the truth.

Would it be racist for this Whitey to suggest that Mr. Sharma should learn how to read more carefully?

In the offending article, Professor Coates actually said, “I’m not suggesting for a second [recent immigrants are] racist or aggressively anti-aboriginal, they just don’t buy into the public policy agenda that says dealing with these historic grievances is in fact an obligation of the current population.”

He’s not saying immigrants are racist; he just doesn’t think they care about First Nations concerns as much as guilt-tripped Whitey. That’s his opinion as a professional social scientist. Prove him wrong.

Oh, and he also said, ”You’ll also notice among First Nations people that’s an area of concern. They’re saying if you have these temporary worker programs, you’re basically taking entry-level jobs from First Nations people who need to get into the workforce. So that’s a potential source of tension and concern.”

In other words, the perception of increased competition for jobs comes from First Nations people, not immigrants. Sharma has it backwards.

Personally, I wouldn’t say that South Asians in general are any more racist than those from other cultures — although this story goes right out and says just that – but this is based on the fact that I haven’t developed many relationships with recently immigrated South Asians other than with those who work with me. My knowledge on those particular cultures is limited.

I will say, however, that I think the concerns of both Professor Coates and Mr. Sharma seem to be overblown. Canada is one of the most tolerant countries on earth. Here, animosities between various cultures are almost entirely held as perceptions (there’s that word again) rather than outright hostility or aggression. When’s the last race riot you’ve seen in Saskatoon, for example?

I just don’t see the value in adjusting governmental policies and initiatives to appease the grievances between aboriginal and immigrant groups (sorry, leadership) while most members of these groups seem to just want to get on with their lives.

Can’t we all just get along?

Changing the Culture

Glenn Reynolds, among others, points out the obvious:

Culture comes before politics. And politics come before law. So, I think that the culture has to change first.

Sounds easier than it is, but it can be done.

Exhibit 1: Astronaut Chris Hadfield almost single-handedly changed the public’s view of the international space program.

Commander Hadfield, currently falling from the sky, was officially in orbit to take care of a few, old spacey research things and keep the Space Station in orbit. You know, boring stuff.

But he and his team decided to take an opportunity to connect with the public in general through cheap, effective social media. His Twitter account has about 870,000 followers, who engaged with him regularly. Many of his videos were posted on YouTube, explaining the interesting and mundane of space travel, making himself an international celebrity.

 

 

In short, he was successful in developing an cultural output relevant to the public, and brought an extraordinary amount of publicity toward his mission and to the space program in general.

Exhibit 2: Environmentalist documentary film maker Robert Stone makes a convincing case for nuclear energy.

I don’t agree with Stone’s premise — that the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a harbinger of catastrophic global warming — but I like the way he presents it.

 

 

I am encouraged by his willingness to challenge his initial skepticism on nuclear energy. Too bad he is blinded by his ideology from taking it a step further by looking skeptically at the environmental movement as a whole. Baby steps, I suppose.

The lesson to learn, however, is that instead of droning on about statistics of his case in a logical and cold manner, he embraces the emotional appeal of his argument and encourages others to do the same. Like Cmdr. Hadfield, he uses sophisticated cultural means to reach us, in order to persuade us of the validity and of their points of view, that not only are they doing the smart thing, but the moral one.

If conservatives or libertarians wanted role models on how to deliver their own messages — through the means of culture — they couldn’t ask for better.

The Hard Case of Rehteah Parsons

From the opinion pages of today’s StarPhoenix:

The very purpose of symbolically blindfolding Lady Justice is to ensure that legal dcisions are made in a passionless and logical manner, i.e., in an environment devoid of emotion.

If Bruce MacKinnon intended to make an ironic statement on how makers of opinion, news and legislation are using the singularly emotional and tragic death of a teenager to promote their agendas, then he nailed it spectacularly.

Unfortunately, my suspicion is that MacKinnion truly feels justice ought to be guided by the emotional response generated by mass media hype and political pandering.

That hard cases make bad laws is as true a legal aphorism as any, and this goes especially for those cases involving children.

No doubt that this case is a hard one. I couldn’t imagine anyone not feeling sympathy for the family and close friends of a teenage child who committed suicide, much less for the reasons alleged. Therefore, it’s completely rational to want to ensure that such a tragedy doesn’t happen again.

What isn’t rational — but nonetheless inevitable — is the reaction against those who might have a more objective response to the event. As is too often the case in incidences of alleged sexual assaults, the truth of what initially happened to Rehteah is obscure and not provable. To point this out, however, is to elicit the sort of response seen in Christie Blatchford’s piece from today.

The lesson, then, is that if your opinion differs than that of the majority, you’d either have to have the balls of Blatch or just keep your mouth shut.

Politicians are particularly sensitive to this trait. This goes especially for experienced ones, as those politicians who speak logically rather than emotionally do not tend to hold office long enough to gain experience.

Still, this is no excuse for politicians of all stripes to fall over themselves in becoming the first to “do something.“

For one thing, despite the furor brought on by Rehteah’s grieving parents, the “cyberbullying” she received after the alleged incident did not kill her; she killed herself as (I’m told) a response to the cyberbullying. There are other means in the criminal code which could have been used — and were considered — in addressing Rehteah’s complaints regarding her harassment.

Another consideration is that the intention of legislation is not the same thing as the outcome. Perhaps anti-cyberbullying (which was not a word, much less than a concept, a couple of years ago) could be prevented through legislation as intended. But what of the unintended consequences, such as the strain on the legal system which would inevitably arise as a result?

My biggest concern is that even if legislation would address future circumstances specific to cases like Rehteah’s, the legal system would be applied to other cases which wouldn’t have merited otherwise. Instead of parents and teachers working with their children to solve their differences (or, better yet, letting the kids solve their issues on their own), you add the strong arm of the law to impose its unyielding will on the actors.

The legal process itself would be punishment enough for a teenager accused of bullying a fellow classmate, regardless of the innocence or veracity of the accused.

The term “bully” is already being abused by people who should know better. Just this week, for example, defenders of Justin Trudeau are accusing Conservatives of “bullying” the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and, apparently, a grown-up.

As Kathy Shaidle implied a while back, “bully” is the new “racist”. It has become a term used to shut others up, the latest progressive cause du jour to which public school kids are encouraged to relate such atrocities as the Holocaust.

(Never mind that the Holocaust occurred precisely because citizens were rendered impotent by the state, who then enforced its own bigoted, monolithic ideology.)

I don’t know if Rehteah was raped or sexually assaulted, or if the boys implicated are telling the truth. No one does for sure, and as a result, many lives have been impacted and the world lost a person far too young.

I do know that the biggest lesson I’ve learned from this episode is to teach my kids to carry themselves in public under the assumption that their actions are being recorded and posted on the internet.  If they are doing something that merits shaming, then chances are someone will use that against them. If all kids applied this lesson, then maybe there would be fewer sexual assaults or false accusations or bullying or what-have-you.

It’s a terrible lesson, but a lesson nonetheless.

To bad this is being lost in the national hysteria.

Where did we go right?

With all due respect to Kathy Shaidle, I didn’t need Steve Sailer to tell me that Richard Florida is full of shit. Saskatoon, for example, has failed Florida’s vaunted 3T criteria for success so miserably that it merely has the best economy in Canada.

Still, I tip my hat to her for letting me know that others are onto Florida’s scam:

Florida himself, in his role as an editor at The Atlantic, admitted last month what his critics, including myself, have said for a decade: that the benefits of appealing to the creative class accrue largely to its members—and do little to make anyone else any better off. The rewards of the “creative class” strategy, he notes, “flow disproportionately to more highly-skilled knowledge, professional and creative workers,” since the wage increases that blue-collar and lower-skilled workers see “disappear when their higher housing costs are taken into account.” His reasonable and fairly brave, if belated, takeaway: “On close inspection, talent clustering provides little in the way of trickle-down benefits.”

It’s really a devastating takedown of the whole creative-class-as-economic-driver myth which has been all too prevalent in our urban chattering classes.

As such, it deserves to be read (deliciously) in full.

(And full props to Shaidle for referencing The Music Man rather than the Lyle Lanley knock-off.)

Letter to the Editor

In her March 12 letter (“Wall setting stage”), Joan Bell indicates an astounding lack of awareness about the ownership of the Crown corporations and about markets in general.

First, we the people do not “own” the Crown corporations; the legal corporate entity known as the Crown owns them. The government manages the companies on the Crown’s behalf, while the people both elect and are forced to fund the government. However, none of us owns a share individually in the enterprises.

I cannot sell my supposed share in these companies, I do not receive a dividend from their earnings, and I certainly cannot use my share to secure a private loan. Therefore, I have no right to be consulted directly over their sale. I can only hope to persuade the government to manage the Crown corporations the way I want them to.

Second, the Crowns were established both to provide theretofore non-existent services to the people of Saskatchewan and to help fund government operations. If the present government is indeed taking money from the Crowns to “balance the books,” the Crowns would then be helping to fund government operations, which is their legitimate purpose. (The fallacy that the free market cannot supply services presently offered by the Crown monopolies is a separate issue.)

Third, even if the current government were really trying to divest the Crowns, they wouldn’t be devaluing the companies. Instead, they would do their utmost to maximize the sale price by ensuring the balance sheets look very attractive to potential investors.

The only ideologically driven policies here are promoted by those economically illiterate, fear-mongering statists who persist in the fiction that we need Crown monopolies in order to survive.

Submitted today, awaiting publication.

 

UPDATE: Published March 15. They took out my “fallacy” line in the fourth paragraph but used the term in the headline. Figures.

Conservatism is good, with or without the labels

In what is probably his best performance on The Source, Ezra Levant defends conservatism. Very, very well.

Watch the whole thing here.

My only quibble is that it’s not specifically “conservatism” that protects the environment but property rights. It’s unfortunate that only conservatives and libertarians seem bent on defending property rights today but note that these rights are not the exclusive natural domain of either group.

Great job, Ezra.

Weekend Homework

Read Amity Shlaes’s Coolidge.

All of it.

Or just watch the following summary of her work:

When you’re done, feel free to pass along your thoughts.

One little, two little, three little racists

Columnist Doug Cuthand, apologist for First Nations unaccountability and corruption, sees racist people.

Who are racist people? Why, anyone who disagrees with Doug Cuthand, that’s who.

Sun Media? Racist.

The National Post? Racist.

(Actually, the entire media is racist, of course, but Sun News and the National Post are doubly racist.)

Ezra Levant? Lorne Gunter? Christie Blatchford? Racist racist racist.

The federal government? Racist.

Department of Aboriginal Affairs? Racist.

The Prime Minister’s Office? Racist.

Did you know a piece of legislation can be racist? You betcha!

Not children’s schoolbooks? Nope, they’re racist too.

The entire provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba too? Yup.

Canadians? Racist.

Society? Racist.

In fact, in my brief search, I found 17 separate accusations of racism in his columns, yet I couldn’t find anyone disagreeing with Cuthand on Aboriginal policy that he didn’t find racist.

I leave it to Cuthand to prove me wrong.

A Tale of Two Papers

Every story in the print media these days seems to leave you wondering what the author left out.

Sometimes, you have to piece through several distinct items over time to get the broader picture.

This past Friday, I read four items from two local papers, each as unremarkable as the next, until you piece them together.

Choose Your Booze

Bob Bymoen, president of the Saskatchewan Government Employees Union, writes in the StarPhoenix:

We assume that people we elect to run our province will make logical decisions.

Bob Bymoen assumes this. “Logical” people don’t.

Yet at a time when underfunding is forcing our universities to cut programs and hospitals to postpone surgeries, the provincial government has decided to give up a substantial source of revenue with a policy that says all new liquor stores will be privately owned.

Apparently, “not taking in potential revenue” = “giving up revenue”.

The government’s rationale is that public funds are better spent on education, health and infrastructure than on building liquor stores. If you think about it for a moment you realize that it doesn’t make sense.

That we require unionized employees to stock liquor onto shelves and ring in tills doesn’t make sense either, but please go on.

Public liquor stores actually make quite a lot of money for the province – $218 million last year. In the past five years, public liquor stores contributed more than $1 billion in net profit – over and above the taxes on alcohol sales. That’s hundreds of millions that can be invested in schools, hospitals, universities or long-term care homes.

Selling liquor stores can be profitable for the government too, particularly if they are already profitable, and don’t forget that private liquor vendors would also have a chance to be profitable. Statists like Boemen conveniently forget to mention that private-sector profits also benefit society — moreso, I might add, because this profit re-investment doesn’t come with the typical redistributionist markup.

Or, for that matter, the 24% year-over-year increase in to liquor-store employee salaries, wages and benefits (see Schedule 2).

Public liquor stores are such a good investment for taxpayers that the TD Bank’s former chief economist Don Drummond warned the Ontario government in a 2012 report against selling them.

If the public liquor-store monopoly were only in place to raise money for the government, then why don’t we just nationalize all profitable industries, like food distribution, oil companies or real estate? (Don’t answer that, Bob.) That way, the government can take all the profits from all the industries and distribute it and take care of us and we would have no worries.

The Wall government claims it will keep our existing public stores, but the experience in other places tells a different story. In the 10 years since British Columbia allowed private liquor retailers, 24 public stores have closed. A recent study shows B.C.’s private stores have the highest liquor prices among the three western provinces.

In other words, the state-owned liquor monopoly is so good at its job that it requires a state-enforced monopoly to survive.

Our elected leaders need to think logically and act in the best interests of Saskatchewan people.

Damn straight.

First, they can start by separating the regulatory function of the SLGA from the purchasing (“upstream”) and distribution (“downstream”) arms. The current system creates an unethical conflict of interest. As with any self-regulating industry (as opposed to market-regulated industries), the incentive among the SEGU guild members and SLGA management, whether they would admit it or not, would be to cover up their fellow employees for any misgivings. This is not to say nefarious goings-on are going on, but current situation can reasonably be perceived as a conflict of interest. If a particular monopoly regulates itself, then why bother having a regulator?

Second on the list is to allow permits to private retailers and to sell off all government-owned stores altogether. I’d suggest making an offer to union members to purchase the government-run stores so as to encourage their support for reform. I would also remove the cap on specialty stores and any remaining limits on store numbers or placement. Not only would this move remove the regulatory conflict of interest but it would spur investment in new stores.

Alberta gets this part right. I used to live on Calgary’s trendy 4th Street SW which features condos, apartments, restaurants, small shops, a couple of pubs. In between 17th and 26th avenues, there were no less than three liquor vendors — an upscale wine merchant and two conventional beer and booze stores featuring more modest fare and markup. Beyond that stretch, there were at least a couple of other liquor (i.e. more than just beer and wine) stores within walking distance, and even a few more located between my downtown office and home. In other words, the stores offered me not only a variety of selection and price, but also convenience.

Also, fewer 0.5%-off sales

As an illustration, a recent report from the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission has shown that the number of liquor vendors since privatization has increased almost 250% while the variety of product has increased from 2,200 to a whopping 17,741.

Meanwhile, Saskatoon features pretty much the same number of liquor stores to which I once had regular access in the entire city. In a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity, Sask Liquor has only built one new store in Saskatoon in the past decade. That Broadway Avenue, Saskatoon’s street most analogous to Calgary’s 4th Ave. with its shops and pubs, walkable blocks and hipster clientele, doesn’t have its own liquor store speaks for itself.

I might also mention that during all my time in Alberta, I never once saw a lineup to get into a liquor store:

You can’t spell “licensed monopoly” without  L-I-N-E-S

Third, what Alberta didn’t get right was with its liquor wholesale purchasing system. In 2006, notable shortages in liquor were caused by issues at the provincial warehouse. While the warehouse is privately operated, wholesale distribution still operates by a government-enforced monopoly, which has resulted in supply bottlenecks and a poorly responsive distribution of product.

If Saskatchewan were to go this route, they must not stop at private liquor stores; they must also get out of the monopolized wholesale purchasing business. Again, it would not only remove the regulatory conflict of interest, it would allow for vendors and distributors to purchase goods in a more efficient manner.

Finally, if this province were to truly attempt to unshackle themselves from the statist/temperance yoke, it would discontinue the practice of segregating booze from other consumable items — in other words, allow for liquor sales in any commercial outlet. You can buy smokes anywhere, lottery tickets too. Both sets of items are prohibited to be sold to minors. If we trust private vendors to check for IDs in this circumstance, then there is no reason they cannot be entrusted to check IDs in selling liquor as well.

Now, I do not believe for a second that the provincial political climate is ready for such a radical change to allow adults to be treated like adults. Therefore, on the point of feasibility, I would be willing to drop the latter recommendation.

I do believe, however, that the good people of Saskatchewan are ready and willing to accept an increased liberalization which would include private-only vendors, the sale of provincial stores, and the dismantling of the provincial wholesale purchasing monopoly. This would result in increased convenience, better selection and more freedoms, not to mention one less area of social policy for Bob Bymoen to bitch about.

Everybody wins!