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Category: crommunism

6 Violence isn’t the answer, unless I’m asking the question

  • November 26, 2014
  • by Crommunist
  • · black history · blog · civil rights · critical thinking · crommunism · history · law · police · politics · race · racism

On Monday, a Missouri Grand Jury decided that when a police officer kills an unarmed young person, no crime has been committed as long as the officer can spin a fanciful tale of The Incredible Nigger Hulk. That officer not only need not be locked up, decided the Grand Jury, but he doesn’t even need to see the inside of a courtroom. He doesn’t need to be cross-examined, his story doesn’t have to be questioned, there need be nothing more than the pathetic ghost of a due process that the people of Ferguson have been told to shut up and wait for.

Predictably, the residents of Ferguson weren’t pleased with the result. Peaceful protest and non-peaceful protest filled the streets, shut down traffic, and in the latter case, destroyed many local businesses and other property. In response to the protests (which have, by the way, been called “riots” in the media from day 1, regardless of the predominantly peaceful nature. Until the cops showed up, at least), a chorus of voices has gone up condemning violence and looting. This would be a defensible position from people on the ground in Ferguson, or people who are leading specific civil rights projects relevant to police brutality – in that case, it’s brand management and promotion. Nothing wrong with that.

The problem, in my eyes, is that the “violence solves nothing” crowd has a broad swath of representation from people with absolutely no connection to the issue. It is the ever-present spectre of respectability politics manifesting itself as a treatise about the merits of violent vs. non-violent protest. It is an excuse to remove one’s self from any sense of responsibility or complicity in the situation that has triggered the violence – “well, I agree that things are bad, but that’s no excuse to be violent!”

In response to this sneer disguised as a moral stand, I sent out a couple of tweets: … Continue Reading

10 A second look at “White People on offence”

  • April 8, 2014
  • by Crommunist
  • · crommunism · race · racism

I have had a couple of people take some exception to the central thesis of this morning’s post, specifically the idea that white people by definition cannot experience racism:

white people are far less likely (some would say it is definitionally impossible) to experience racism than are PoC. It seems preposterous to assume that you, a person with no experience in the topic under discussion, would be in a position to lecture someone about that topic.

I want to take a careful look at the above quoted claim, and then attempt to respond to the criticisms in a satisfactory matter.

The easiest way for me to weasel out of the problem is to point out that I specifically use the words “some would say”, passing the burden of a response off to those “some”. I’m sure my critics wouldn’t find such a response particularly satisfactory, and neither do I. However, I do wish to clarify that there are some worthwhile definitions of racism that do not necessarily preclude the possibility of anti-white racism, which includes the one I have previously provided on this site. That definition – racism as the ascribing of group traits to an individual – would not exclude the possibility of white people being on the receiving end. There are lots of examples of white people being assumed to behave/believe a certain way based on their race, sometimes even with violent results.

In my zeal to make my point, I failed to account for these kinds of experiences, and that is a failure on my part. I apologize for that.

Do white people experience racism? … Continue Reading

6 Unsettled: Reflections on patriotism and non-white settler identity

  • November 12, 2013
  • by Crommunist
  • · blog · critical thinking · crommunism · culture · First Nations · privilege · race

Depending on who you ask, I was born in Vancouver, Canada, or I was born on unceded Coast Salish land in the traditional territory of the Musqueam people.

Because there are a host of privileges and responsibilities that accompany someone based on the place and circumstances of their birth, this is not a question of mere semantics. If the land under the city I was born in was never legally ceded to the government of Canada, then there is an argument to be made that I am not Canadian. But because I grew up completely divorced from Musqueam culture and Musqueam heritage, it would be risible for me to claim that my lack of ‘true Canadian-ness’ makes me Musqueam by default.

Which then raises the important question of what/who I am.

Legally speaking, I am Canadian, and I can sleep secure in the knowledge that a land claim that would strip me of my citizenship and its privileges is unlikely to arise or become successful in my lifetime. I am a ‘status Canadian’ – Canadian by the arbitrary act of a system that grants privileges and titles based on little more than a wink-nudge agreement between powerful people. I get to travel the world as a Canadian, I get the protections and rights afforded Canadian citizens, and nobody questions the legal validity of that citizenship (even if they should). But it may, nonetheless, be worth taking a moment to imagine where I fit into a discussion of Indigenous sovereignty, since it’s a topic I follow closely.

My father was born in a British colony that had been bought from the Dutch that had been forcibly stolen from the Carib and Arawak people indigenous to that region of South America. The colony was built by slave labour stolen from people indigenous to the continent of Africa. Owing to the attitudes of the slave traders and owners who settled in that land and established that colony, we may never know where in Africa my father’s ancestry (and mine, by extension) comes from. “Africa” will have to be enough for now; possibly forever.

Because my father was lucky enough to be able to access the British-imported education system and the Roman-imported religious system, he was able to leave the (by then former) British colony he was born in and emigrate to another (by then former) British colony: Canada. A wink-nudge agreement between powerful men in Canada changed the rules for immigration to allow people from certain British colonies to come to other British colonies. Female members of my father’s family had been allowed to immigrate because the powerful men in Canada needed people to work in their homes, and they had made a wink-nudge agreement that the colour of the skin of my aunts and grandmother was no longer a de facto barrier to their being allowed to live in Canada. My father, however, was black and male, so he had to wait. Not enough winks, not enough nudges. Not yet.

But because a certain wink and a certain nudge from certain powerful men happened, my father was able to live and work in the British colony of Canada. A man whose ancestors had been stolen for labour and taken to a place where the land had been stolen was finally deemed acceptable enough, by the shifting standards of the cultural descendants of the slave traders and owners that had taken Africa from him, to contribute paid labour to a place where they had stolen the land of other people. One blanched hand of the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (gods, but does bell hooks know how to coin a phrase) washing the other.

My mother’s family emigrated from Ireland and Germany three generations before her birth. They eventually settled and homesteaded in British Columbia on land that was stolen from indigenous people. Despite the colour of the skin of my mother’s ancestors, they were not considered ‘White’ enough – rather, as castoffs who were only allowed to settle here because there was a need for labour and the Irish were so devastated by famine and racism at the hands of the British that they were willing to flee their homeland for the possibility of a better life. The land my mother’s ancestors lived on was given to them by people who did not belong to it. They were, somewhat paradoxically, allowed to live there because, despite not being ‘White’, they were deemed culturally acceptable enough to be afforded second-class status.

My father’s ancestors, had they wanted and been able to, would not have been allowed to emigrate to Canada and build a farm in those days. Wrong colour, sorry.

My mother was Canadian by birth, like me. My father was Canadian by act of government. Both ‘status Canadians’ – granted rights and access by the magnanimity of winking and nudging powerful men. Both carrying the stigma of their ancestry and familiar history. Both patriotic Canadians, albeit by radically different paths that still had uncanny similarities.

I was born, depending on who you ask, in Vancouver, Canada as a result of the collision of these two lives and histories. In my identity is carried the collective history of multiple continents, multiple thefts of land, and multiple winks and multiple nudges by powerful men. Despite the convoluted historical realities, I am legally Canadian. I am a ‘status Canadian’. I am proud of my country, I am proud of my identity. I am ashamed of my country, and I am confused about my identity.

The land I was born in was stolen from the people who belong to it. But it is still my home. I still belong to this land, because there is no other land on Earth that I could claim as mine. I have no connection to either Ireland or Germany. My father is not indigenous to Guyana, despite belonging to that land in the same way I belong to this. We don’t know where in Africa his ancestors may have called home, and if we did there is enough of Canada and Ireland and Germany in me that I wouldn’t belong there either.

For better and for worse, I am Canadian.

A major crux of the conversation about Indigenous sovereignty in Canada is the gap between ‘settlers’ and Indigenous people. I am a settler. My mother’s family settled here. My father emigrated here by a wink-nudge act of a settler’s government. I was born here, and have no other home, but I am still a settler. I have no difficulty accepting the truth of that appellation – regardless of the fact that I was not in the room when the winks and nudges were exchanged, I still derive my status from the results of the resulting agreements. For better and for worse, I am Canadian. I am a settler.

What complicates this conversation, however, is the confluence of ‘settler’ and ‘White’. In much the way that racism in the United States is plotted on a ‘Black/White’ axis, the struggle for sovereignty here is plotted on axes labeled ‘Indigenous’ and ‘White’*. Looking at the issue from a systemic level, the colonial system that makes Canada possible is white supremacist and white descended, and it is entirely reasonable to recognize it as such. However, the reality of Canada is that it is a country literally built by people who were neither white nor ‘White’. Chinese, Hungarian, Ukranian, Italian, Caribbean, Indian, Japanese, Métis, Indigenous, Aboriginal… Canada owes its existence to the efforts of people who fell outside the social category of ‘White’ (at least at some point).

And into this paradox comes the fact that my father owes his status as a Guyanese and a Canadian to a white supremacist colonizing ideology. Add to this the fact that my mother’s people weren’t white enough to be ‘White’ when they first came here. Victims both of the same settler colonial mentality that makes me a Canadian born on Musqueam land. Born Canadian to an African man and a German/Irish woman.

I was discussing the idea of patriotism with two friends who are African immigrants. They both, as is typical of immigrants, believe that newcomers have a duty to adopt the practices and traditions of the land they have moved to. Not total assimilation, mind you, but rather a recognition that you are a welcomed guest and that you have an obligation to repay the invitation with such courtesy. My father believes the same. I’m sure my maternal great-grandparents did too.

I am a ‘status Canadian’. I am not an immigrant to Canada, but I am a settler. I am not White, but I do derive a great deal of privilege and protection from a white supremacist system that has taken much from Indigenous people. My question to my friends was this: whose practices and traditions should I adopt? As a Canadian by birth, I am not an immigrant and owe no duty of courtesy to my hosts. This is my home. I have no other. According to that model of belonging, I have no obligation to anyone. I am, however, also a settler. I am a (welcomed?) guest living in the territory of Coast Salish people. Do I have a duty to adopt their practices and traditions? Do my immigrant friends also have that obligation? To which nation must they ally themselves?

Inasmuch as I am here because white colonialists stole my father’s ancestors and made them work stolen land, I am a victim of white colonialism. Inasmuch as my mother’s family was here because they were allowed to settle on stolen land, I am a participant in and beneficiary of white colonialism, and part of the same settler system that Indigenous sovereignty protests against. I owe my status to the theft of land from Indigenous people by colonizers and settlers, and in the same token the theft of land and labour makes me a hereditary victim of that same process.

When lines are drawn between ‘Indigenous’ and ‘White’, am I not simply written entirely out of the equation? I am not Indigenous, but I was born here and have no other possible home. I am not White, but I carry with me and in me the products of white settler colonialism. It is not a question of being ‘a bit of both’, as I might consider myself when discussing ‘Black/White’ racism, but of being ‘neither one nor the other’.

As much as I want to add my voice to the chorus of people demanding justice for Indigenous people, I am in a very uncomfortable position. I am nowhere on the ‘Indigenous/White’ axis. I don’t exist on that continuum. I am not an immigrant, which would (in some ways) be easier – if I were, I would have made a voluntary agreement with the nation of Canada. As someone who was born here, I made no such agreement – the agreement was made on my behalf before I was born. I am not White, which would (in some ways) be easier – if I were, I would embrace my own heritage for its flaws and faults and advocate as an ally. I am instead a non-white settler who owes his status and privilege to the same system I protest against, and who represents both criminal and victim in the historical theft of the land and labour of non-white people.

I am still, obviously, working my way through these ideas. I think this kind of reflection also extends to people whose parents are immigrants from European countries, albeit with a different historical context than that of my father’s family. This is definitely not a ‘poor me’ kind of piece – considering the number of problems it is possible to have, a bit of existential jiggery-pokery is a really light burden to bear. This has just been on my mind since I started really tuning in to conversations between my fellow settlers and Indigenous activists and adovcates.

*Obviously it is more complicated than that. There are identities like “Aboriginal” and “Indian” and “Native” and “First Nation” that make any attempt at classification an exercise comprised entirely of smoke and mirrors. And winks. And nudges.

3 All models are wrong; some models are useful

  • October 25, 2013
  • by Crommunist
  • · blog · critical thinking · crommunism · feminism · race

This is a phrase I use often in my work: “All models are wrong; some models are useful”. A meaningful portion of my job involves using statistical methods to create models. Some of those are the kind that one thinks of when you use the phrase “statistical model”, which is often some sort of regression analysis – you take a bunch of variables, apply some kind of mathematical rules to them, and then interpret the results. I’ve made vague reference to this before.

The other kind of model that it’s common for someone in my field to build is referred to properly as a ‘Health State Transition Model’, but colloquially called a ‘Markov Model’, or even more colloquially simply as ‘a model’. In these sorts of models, a matrix or array stands in as a possible state of health that someone can be in, and you describe mathematical rules that govern the likelihood that values held in one ‘state’ might migrate to another ‘state’.

… Continue Reading

3 Secular Woman: Thank You

  • October 11, 2013
  • by Crommunist
  • · blog · crommunism · feminism · freethought community · gender · politics · privilege · secularism

SW Award 2013 Man of the YearI am tremendously honoured, surprised, and deeply flattered to accept Secular Woman’s award for Man of the Year 2013. It is particularly gratifying to be so named, considering the other names put forward as their award recipients. I have always been grateful to anyone who reads or otherwise notices my work toward racial and gender equality, and to be named with such distinction is not something I ever expected.

As the secular community grows, like all political movements it must begin to look inward and reflect on its actions. For those of us whose motivation toward a secular world is grounded in humanist values, we must periodically turn the lens of scrutiny and the tools of inquiry upon ourselves and interrogate whether we are living up to our own values.

Among the foremost of these is the idea of ‘equality’, and what that means to us. To some, equality means nothing more than “treat everyone the same”, a definition that seems laudable at a superficial level but which, upon any amount of honest scrutiny, is deeply flawed. We do not live in a world where a ‘level playing field’ exists. We live in a world in which individuals are treated according to shopworn stereotypes about the social group they belong to; whether that is race, class, sexuality, and of course gender. In many cases, such treatment happens even in the absence of intentional or conscious malice. The forces arrayed against members of minority groups are simply not the same as those arrayed against the majority, and an “equal” response to those forces will only serve to perpetuate these discrepancies. … Continue Reading

8 Don’t Go In There! Talking about Race, Racism, and Race Issues in the time of the Zombie Apocalypse

  • September 11, 2013
  • by Crommunist
  • · anti-racism · blog · crommunism · freethought community · Media · presentation · race · racism · skepticism · Video

Horror films are a wonderful source of escapism, where we can feel the thrill of terror in the relative safety of our living rooms or a crowded movie theatre. One of the all-time classics within the horror genre is the zombie movie: hordes of shuffling, shambling atrocities hell-bent on devouring the flesh of the still-living. One of the iconic images of any good zombie movie is the panic-stricken victim of a zombie bite who is slowly turning from human into monster, as all morality and reason drains from their body while their comrades feverishly debate whether or not to put their erstwhile friend out of hir ‘misery’ courtesy of a well-timed shotgun blast to the face.

Cinema. … Continue Reading

10 Was it Kierkegaard or Dick van Patten who said…

  • August 19, 2013
  • by Crommunist
  • · blog · critical thinking · crommunism · forces of stupid · freethought community

So today I want to talk about labels. I don’t mean those things your passive-aggressive roommate puts on each egg in the carton in the fridge you share (yeah that’s right Gary, I’m talking about you! Eggs are like 20 cents apiece – get over it!). I am talking about the labels we use to describe ourselves and each other. We use labels when we discuss ethnicity, philosophical or political affiliation, religion, gender, you name it and we put a name on it. It’s what we do. … Continue Reading

147 Abused meme roundup: “Witch Hunts”

  • June 20, 2013
  • by Crommunist
  • · blog · critical thinking · crommunism · forces of stupid · freethought community

In light of the recent furore* over CFI’s bafflingly vacuous response to Ron Lindsay’s behaviour, some prominent members of the freethinking community have decided to pull back their participation in an organization that they see as not adequately representing their values. Some have even gone so far as to encourage others to do the same. This is pretty much boilerplate activist behaviour: someone says or does something unacceptable, you don’t patronize or support them anymore. We applauded it when Chick Fil A’s Dan Cathy made homophobic statements and people stopped buying his chicken. We applauded it when Rush Limbaugh said… well, basically the stuff he always says, but this time we paid attention.

And yeah, maybe boycotts don’t always work, and maybe they’re often impractical what with megacorporate ownership of pretty much everything, but they’re a pretty non-controversial method of expressing displeasure with someone or some entity whose actions you strongly disagree with.

Unless, of course, you’re criticizing CFI and Ron Lindsay, in which case it’s a “witch hunt”.

The image of a witch burning

Now, to be sure, this is not the only circumstance under which I’ve seen this comparison dredged, unwillingly, into a place it doesn’t belong. It is, however, a distressingly common circumstance to see people decry any and all criticisms of or actions taken against someone who is on ‘their team’ as a “witch hunt”. Oftentimes they will invoke the ghost of old Joe McCarthy, and generally bloviate about how innocent people are being dragged through the muck by (fill in the blank). … Continue Reading

33 Imagine you had a friend…

  • June 14, 2013
  • by Crommunist
  • · blog · crommunism · freethought community

Imagine, for a moment, that you had a friend.

If you’re like me, you will find this a wildly improbable scenario to entertain, but I implore you to at least give it a try. This doesn’t have to be a close friend, or someone you’ve known for an incredibly long time. Perhaps imagine someone who, if you were having a bunch of people over, you would feel compelled to invite but wouldn’t feel super put-out if they couldn’t make it. Someone whose last name you wouldn’t know if it wasn’t listed on their Facebook profile. Someone who you’ve never hung out with except in the context of a group. Someone who, if you ran into them at a party, you wouldn’t go out of your way to introduce your new boyfriend to.

That level of ‘friend’. Someone you have generally good feelings about, but whose friendship is not exactly indispensable to your life.

Imagine you had a friend… … Continue Reading

6 Lessons to be learned from the Boston tragedy

  • May 28, 2013
  • by Crommunist
  • · blog · critical thinking · crommunism · news · race · racism · religion

I have just returned from a trip to Boston. These posts have been waiting for a while to publish, and this is as good a time as any.

Over the past month*, I have repeatedly found myself in the odd position of defending Islam and Muslims from fellow atheists. As an atheist, I am certainly strongly antagonistic to Islam, as I am to all religions. It is, therefore, unusual and counter-intuitive for me to step up in its defence. After all, the critics and I share a fundamental belief that the world would be a better place if fewer people adhered to Islam. We share the belief that Islam is false, that it holds up dangerous beliefs in such a way as to preclude criticism, and that it is a major contributor to human suffering worldwide.

My departure from the opinions of anti-Islam critics happens when I perceive those criticisms to be grounded not in factual appraisals of the damage caused by Islam, but in a lazy conflation of ‘Islam’, ‘Islamism’, and general distaste about brown foreign types. These criticisms come quickly in response to any circumstance in which Islam is implicated. Even in cases where Islam is not explicitly mentioned, like in the case of so-called “honour killings” where the murderers are most often operating within cultural norms grounded in extreme patriarchial entitlement, Islam gets the credit by diffusion.

In the case of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged bombers in Boston, the anti-Islam screeds began to pour in well in advance of the suspects even being identified, let alone their motivations being known. When the news broke that the bombers did indeed profess Islam, I could almost hear the sound of a million Islamophobic cocks standing immediately to full attention. Finally, some vindication of the facts they had “known all along” – that a random act of terrorism was in fact religiously-motivated by the worst religion in the world, and there was no need to stop stigmatizing any and all people who are Muslim (or ‘Muslim-looking‘), or to examine our own policies and behaviours – it’s because Muslims. Full stop. … Continue Reading

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