Institutional Racism In Conservative Ideology

This post has been evolving for quite a long time.  However, in the last few days, a series of pieces have been published which bring together several threads of thought that I have been exploring for the last several years.  

There has long been a degree of bigotry and racism underlying modern day conservative ideologies.  At a glance, it appears to have its roots in the politics of religious literalism and the desire for simple, black-and-white explanations of the world in which we live.  My thinking on this matter has clarified enormously in the last few days.

The first part of this was a very thoughtful analysis published in the Toronto Star:  "The Ideological Roots of Stephen Harper's Vendetta Against Sociology".

Harper’s two disparaging comments about sociology, however, also need to be understood alongside his gutting of the long-form census in 2010. It is widely accepted that this action fundamentally undermined Canada’s ability to understand its own demographics, long-term social trends, and inequalities — in short, its sociology.

So what does Harper have against sociology? First, Harper is clearly trumpeting a standard component of neo-liberal ideology: that there are no social phenomena, only individual incidents. (This ideology traces back to Margaret Thatcher’s famous claim that “there is no such thing as society.”) Neo-liberalism paints all social problems as individual problems. The benefit of this for those who share Harper’s agenda, of course, is that if there are no social problems or solutions, then there is little need for government. Individuals are solely responsible for the problems they face.

If this isn't chilling to you, it certainly should be, because it is a concise explanation of the apparent blindness of the Harper government to the consequences of decisions such as cancelling the long form census and other tools which can be used to inform government policy.

The second and third pieces of this story were published in the Calgary Sun today.  The first being Lorne Gunter's column:  Aboriginal Leaders: Canada's Shame in its Relations With First Nations.

Aboriginal leaders claim the Harper government's decision highlights Canada's "shame" in its relations with First Peoples. They believe it is proof of widespread racism and sexism in the government and in the broader Canadian society as a whole. 

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says the Harper government is "out of touch" and "on the wrong side of history." 

The United Nations - that paragon of sanctimony, hypocrisy and inaction on real human rights abuses around the world - has chimed in. 

And even the country's police chiefs have insisted something must be done. 

So does all this support mean an inquiry really would be a good idea? 

No, it is simply another example of how much our nation's elites (police chiefs included) are seized by political correctness.

It's true that aboriginal women and girls are killed or disappear with greater frequency than non-aboriginal women - nearly three times as much. But the "why" is not as much of a mystery as our chattering classes would have us believe.

Most murdered or disappeared aboriginal women are not the victims of some vast conservative conspiracy or of white racism. They are the victims of the men in their lives.

Most killed or abused aboriginal women are killed or abused by aboriginal men - not callous white cops or violent white johns.

Wait a minute.  Nobody in their right mind is going to believe that a public inquiry is going to identify the guilty culprits.  That isn't the purpose of an inquiry.  The purpose of such an inquiry is to ask much bigger questions.  Questions such as whether the conditions on reservations contribute to domestic violence, and how a man like Picton managed to operate for multiple years, or why aboriginal people are grossly over-represented in Canada's prisons.

Of course, if you take a simplistic, black-and-white view of the world, any murder boils down to "catch the offender and punish them".  Simple, easy and horrendously misguided.   If you don't ask the big picture questions about these situations, you will never fully understand what is going on.  In fact, one is left very much in the dark, with the rather ridiculous assumption that bad people do bad things and that's all there is to it.

Anyone with even a little bit of grounding in reality and common sense will have long ago realized that people respond individual to their circumstances, and collectively to their environment.  Sociology is the study of societies and their behaviours.  The systems within a societal context will influence the individuals living in it.

In Canada, we have over two centuries of relations with the First Nations.  There are enormous problems with these relations, and much of it goes to the differences in what the First Nations understand the treaties to mean and how the Indian Act enacts those same treaties.  I know there are a plethora of other issues to be considered as well, but at its core, the Indian Act is a profoundly flawed piece of legislation which assumes the "superiority" of Colonial-era British society relative to the First Nations and very much embodies a series of structures that to modern eyes arguably impose a degree of structural and system racism which acts against our First Nations.

The overly simplistic rubric of the Harper Government blinds it to these issues.

The second item was a column by Michael Coren:  In The Wake of Tragedy a Sobering Reality

As a Catholic I can tell you with absolute certainty that if countless horrors had been committed by Catholics in the name of Catholicism, I and legions of my co-religionists would protest. I know the same would be true of most other religions and cultures.

Coren's claim that he would protest if countless horrors had been committed in the name of Catholicism is of course completely undermined by his own past utterances on a wide range of matters, not to mention his relative silence with regards to the sex abuse scandal that has plagued his Church for decades now.

But, we are told, these repeated beheadings and murders have nothing to do with most law-abiding, civilized Muslims. Perhaps so, but then it could be argued that neither does a book by Salman Rushdie or a drawing by a Danish cartoonist but that hasn’t stopped endless demonstrations and threats. 

Then there is the reality of the Islamic response. While I am sure that most Muslims are appalled by what happened to James Foley, even a cursory glance at social media reveals thousands of comments defending and justifying what happened, by Muslims on every continent. It might be comforting to believe that Islamist violence and bloodlust is a fringe psychosis, but every survey and all of the anecdotal evidence indicates that a sizeable minority of Muslims support it, an even greater number feel it is in some obscure way justified, and more still refuse to condemn it.

Funny how Coren can see this so clearly in the Muslim faith, and is so quick to call it out while turning a blind eye to the centuries of misdeeds done in the name of Catholicism.

While Coren may well be his own special brand of crazy, his blindness to the systemic racism and bigotry of his position is no different than that of Harper.  The simple, harsh reality is that the ideology they all subscribe to blinds them to the systemic problems they are creating and the very problems which aggravate already awful situations.

The minute you take a position that there "is no such thing as society", it becomes easy to wash one's hands of collective responsibility.  Perhaps the even greater irony of that is that same flight from collective responsibility makes it easier to label entire groups as "other" and criticize them for not meeting whatever arbitrary standard you may set.

I am quite certain that if you were to confront Harper, Gunter or Coren with the implicit bigotry of their positions, they would deny it.  Their very ideological constructs are so limited in their understanding of large, complex systems like societies that they cannot comprehend the idea that their positions foster othering and judgments on incomplete information.

A stage is not only set upon which racism and ethnic bigotry can flourish.  In Harper's Canada, it is not only growing and flourishing, but the flames of ire are being fanned by it.  I can only hope that we are able to replace our current government with one whose perspective encompasses a much broader view of what Canada is, and what it can become.