Multiculturalism, Racism & Horny Young Men: Can You Make the Connection?
Lately there’s an ebbing and flowing panic in mainstream press and public discourse that’s tying together cultural identity, religious freedoms and, well, horny boys ogling women in body suits. Such is the xenophobic paranoia these days that all of these things have become so ridiculously yet often threateningly intertwined.
Ultra-orthodox Jewish leaders at a Montreal synagogue not so long ago had a dust-up with the YMCA next door to it. The “problem” was that women exercising were being seen by young men in their place of worship. The initial mainstream debate centered on whether seeing women on the stairmasters infringed on “religious freedom” rather than on the question of why, these boys who couldn’t stay away from the windows, are different from any other boys of their age, in terms of their sexual curiosity and their apparent lack of need to learn any social responsibility in how they express it.
Apparently linked (in the mainstream press and public conversation) to this “minority rights” issue is that of the young hijab-wearing soccer player who got booted off the pitch in Quebec for her head scarf. It was a discretionary decision of the referee, who said her clearly form-fitting scarf was “unsafe,” and sent her off. Never mind that the international soccer umbrella organization FIFA has no such rule. Never mind that we’ve been through this before with Sikh men and their right to wear turbans. Also never mind that her whole team—hijab-less as they were—walked off the field with her. This 11 year-old “minority” was not going to play ball that day. Even more recently, five young women in Montreal were kicked out of a tae kwon do tournament for the same reason. And yet another young Muslim woman in Montreal, who also covers, is not going to be allowed to continue at her job—her employer fired her when she refused to de-scarf.
At the end of the day, all these events are publicly getting linked together through the general topic of the “problem” of multiculturalism for immigrant “integration” and, more specifically in Quebec, “reasonable accommodation” of so-called minorities. If I have to link these three incidents at all, I would say it’s more of a “majority-rights issue”—that is, that of women’s freedom to work and play without individual men and/or male-dominated organizations getting in our faces, monitoring and controlling what we wear—whether it’s too little, or too much. Since women are the global majority, an anti-racist feminist perspective would bring something interesting to the discussion of these issues.
At the end of the day though, in public discussion, while there’s a sensitivity to the orthodox leaders at the synagogue, the gym-going women’s individual rights and freedoms prevail. But, why not so for the soccer-playing women? Because a racist analysis is prevailing, smuggled in under a concern for the apparent excesses of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism has had different forms throughout the West in the past four decades. Canada has a positive global reputation for having a particularly inclusive, welcoming version of the ideas, policies and practices that define the multicultural reality. Some of this reputation is deserved as the form it took it the 70s and 80s did create some breathing space —emphasis on some — for people of colour from racism. But much of this reputation is part of a national mythology, creating a race relations piece that fits lock-and-key with the apparent Canadian national identity of
a kinder-gentler-peace-keeping-polite-aren’t-we-nice country.
What is this ‘thing’ called multiculturalism these days? From the start, multiculturalism has been just as much about food, dance and apparently living in harmony through these cultural pursuits, as it has been about facilitating business access to global commercial relations. It’s supposed to be something for everyone. It tends though to be, at the end of the day, not so much about bringing the kind and gentle, rainbow of Canadian people together, as it is about specifically categorizing people of colour into designated groups, reifying cultural and social distinctness, and thereby structurally separating a brown “them” (whether they are recent migrants or not) from an implicitly white “us.” Such structural separation includes very material limitations to basic needs such as decent, affordable housing, and sufficient, safe employment.
Currently, 2/3 of Canada’s population growth comes from immigration and it is projected to be the only source by 2030. Yet, the ruling class peddles this fair nation to migrants as the place to come for jobs and the good life knowing full well they’ll be primarily filling part-time, low-waged service jobs. This hypocrisy extends to requiring such landed immigrants to have post-secondary education, professions, high level English or French language skills, and money. Being cheated in the immigration process, then not having sufficient work or adequate housing—I’d call those major systemically imposed barriers to integration. I’d call that very unreasonable and not accommodating at all.
But that’s not the story we’re getting from the mainstream press and many politicians. In parts of white Quebec society, there’s a veritable hysteria around how reasonable the society must be in its accommodation of “minorities”. Yet, that’s the reasonability test for white Catholic Francophones who make up almost the whole 1,350 population of Herouxville and whose City council has banned stoning, female genital mutilation and the hijab?!
The Globe & Mail is also onside with the idea that this ‘thing’ called multiculturalism is to be blamed for allowing immigrants to isolate themselves in “ethnic enclaves”, thereby preventing “them” from integrating with “us”. Further, while playing soccer and doing tae kwon do would seem to be pretty good tests of Canadian-ness, immigrants are still apparently failing to integrate by not attending ball games and other similar social activities. When you are categorized as “them,” I guess you just can’t win.
What if we apply some of these integration standards to “us?” Say, for example, to me. While I’ve got no general issue with other people choosing to do so, I don’t attend over-priced ball games. In fact, I don’t buy tickets for any of those big business money-making activities. Not only is it friggin’ expensive, it just isn’t my thing.
Instead, I hang out in my largely white neighbourhood, doing my own thing. You can find me eating samosas, making mole con pollo, or reading and writing on Saturday nights when well-integrated Canadians are at the theatre, sportsplexes, clubs or wherever they/we are supposed to be to demonstrate being well integrated. I can live as a home-grown white Anglophone with a decent paying job, here in my own urban enclave, somewhat a failure at mainstream social integration. And no one thinks I’m going to blow them up. Or that my reclusive pursuits and occasionally odd social behaviour are a threat to world security. I just have to navigate an increasingly individualized, privatized and profit-driven society that allows fewer & fewer socially-sanctioned options on how & who we are to be. And, while detesting this, I just get to be; I just get to be left alone.
Never mind our historical and ongoing failure to integrate with the diverse societies that were on this land before our ancestors appeared: without a troubling ethnicity and with a pre-approved, dominant Canadian identity, I am inherently integrated. And this has just about everything to do with racism and the flip side of the coin, the perverse social privilege’ I’m given through whiteness. It’s about the ongoing white domination of the running of society, of who gets to just be and who must be forced to figure out some way to ‘integrate’, to become one of ‘us’.
So, much more worrisome to the integrity of Canadian society than this multiculturalism thing is the multi-layered reality of racism. It comes in both generalized and specific forms for people of colour of various (real or perceived) origins. It is deployed on the street, in the press, in the workplace, and through an ever-evolving array of state, market and other institutional practices, policies, regulations and laws. It is the air people of colour and Aboriginal people must breathe; it is the social obstacle course they must traverse.
While many progressive white folks are aware of the social problems of racism and whiteness, we are still marinated in white supremacy, the legacy of the White Canada policy and practice of a hundred years ago. We are inculcated with a potent mix of ideas, images and values about how right whites are to be runnin’ things. This happens through the laws and practices deployed by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and it happens in our union locals and community agencies.
It’s hard for the positive bits of multiculturalism to withstand the creep of the anti-terror hysteria that is seeping into every crack of social life. But, if we want us all to get integrated, it’s probably not the pros and cons of this complex set of ideas and practices we need to focus on primarily anyway. Instead, we need to take serious aim at racism, by stopping the ignoring, silencing, suspicion of terrorism, angry treatment when ‘they’ get ‘our’ jobs, cultural romanticization of people of colour, etcetera. And we need to do this both as individuals and in an organized way, white folks, people of colour and Aboriginal people, continuing the hard work mainly non-white people have been doing for decades.
Sheila Wilmot is an organizer and writer in Toronto.
