Is Racial Diversity Good for Canada?
by Jared Taylor
Last November, Prof. David Divine of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, agreed to meet Jared Taylor in a debate on whether racial diversity is a strength or a weakness. Late in December, he backed out of his agreement, claiming he had been unaware of Mr. Taylor's background, and was now unwilling to let him speak. AR secured a venue in Halifax, where Jared Taylor planned to give the following talk on Jan. 16, the day after Prof. Divine gave his.
On Jan. 16, before Mr. Taylor could even be introduced, 20 or 30 demonstrators filed into the room, and began shouting and beating on pots and pans. This went on for perhaps 20 minutes until a group of perhaps six men surrounded Mr. Taylor at the podium and, linking arms, forced him from the room. Demonstrators also destroyed copies of American Renaissance that Mr. Taylor had prepared for distribution.
These are the remarks Mr. Taylor had planned to give.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. As I believe you all know, this meeting became necessary after Professor David Divine of Dalhousie University backed out of an agreement to have a public debate with me on the question: "Racial Diversity: North America's Strength or Weakness." On December 21, he announced that after looking into my background, he decided to turn the debate into a monologue, in other words, to have a discussion about diversity in which diversity of opinions was not allowed. The place and time had been set. The university had even designed a spiffy poster advertising the debate. But no, a debate with me "would not be a useful way to explore the topic."
A poster that was never used.
Prof. Divine said that as part of his monologue he would be kind enough to summarize my views for the audience — and then explain why they are wrong. How he proposed to summarize my views without hearing them is a mystery to me, but that makes his job a bit easier, doesn't it? Rather than face a real opponent, he wanted to set up a straw man to knock down.
I contacted him early this month to tell him I was coming to Halifax anyway. I urged him to stick to his agreement and debate me. I pointed out that if my ideas are wrong he should have no trouble refuting them. He refused to meet me. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe Prof. Divine is a coward. I think he is afraid to face a serious opponent in a serious debate on the subject of what amounts to the state religion of Canada: the assertion that multiculturalism and racial diversity are great strengths for a country.
And I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that an assertion — a belief — is all it is. How, exactly, is racial diversity a strength for Canada or any other country? Does it raise per capita GNP? Does it improve crop yields? Does it lower crime rates? Does it reduce green house gasses? Does it lower taxes?
No, it doesn't do any of those things. I'm not sure I have ever heard its boosters say specifically what it does. I will tell you what racial diversity does: It results in conflict, tension, and hostility. At its worst, racial diversity can lead to race riots, racially-motivated murder and assault. At its best, when communities of different races try to live together they simply leave each other alone. The result is relatively peaceful voluntary segregation. Except for a few bohemians, people of different races do not often mingle naturally and happily.
Think honestly about your own lives. How racially diverse are your dinner parties, your ski outings, your church services, your backyard barbecues? If racial diversity were a strength, people would be drawn to it naturally. They would mix spontaneously with people unlike themselves. And yet, they do not. They do not because racial diversity is not a strength. It is a source of tension and conflict. People may submit to racial diversity in their public lives but turn their backs on it in their private lives.
Now, you probably think that every major Canadian institution from the federal government on down takes the view that racial diversity is a great strength for Canada. In fact, they all agree with me. They all assert most emphatically that racial diversity is not a source of strength but a source of conflict. The only difference is that instead of the word "conflict," they use the word "racism." Whatever "racism" may be, they all agree that it is a very bad thing, and that Canadian society is riddled with it.
Now, if there were no racial diversity in Canada, there could be no racial discrimination, could there? So please remember this: Whenever people complain about racism, bigotry, hatred, racial profiling, discrimination, they are not talking about the joys and benefits of racial diversity. They are admitting that it is a source of tension and suffering.
To repeat, your government and institutions agree with me, not with Prof. Divine. That is why every province and territory has two major bureaucracies that fight racism: a Human Rights Commission and a Human Rights Tribunal. Then there is the federal Human Rights Commission — 200 people work for it full-time — the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the National Anti-Racism Council of Canada, and dozens more city and local bureaucracies fighting racism. Every university has an office for fighting racism.
And that's not enough. The Canadian UNESCO Commission wants to establish a Canadian Coalition of Municipalities Against Racism. Saint Paul University in Ottawa wants what it calls a National Justice Initiative Against Racism and Hate. In 2005, the federal government launched Canada's Action Plan Against Racism, which was to spend $56 million over the next five years combating racism. You have Parliamentary Committees on Visible Minorities and Standing Committees on Multiculturalism. It's hard to keep up with all the bureaucrats whose job it is to sniff out racism and eradicate it. None of this would be necessary were there no racial diversity in Canada.
How bad is the race problem? The Ontario Human Rights Commission says "Racial discrimination and racism" are "pervasive and continuing." The Canadian Race Relations Foundation says "racism is serious and pervasive." The Canadian Commission for UNESCO says racism "imperils democracy." The federal Human Rights Commission says "hate and, in particular, its manifestation on the Internet pose a serious threat to the social fabric of Canadian society."
How can racial diversity be a strength if it gives rise to something that "imperils democracy" that "poses a serious threat to the social fabric of Canadian society?" This question deserves an answer, ladies and gentlemen, but because Prof. Divine is afraid to debate me, I'm afraid it will not get one. In fact, I suspect Prof. Divine is afraid to debate me because he knows this question has no answer.
Let's go back to Ontario, where there is the most racial diversity in Canada, and where we should therefore find the most strength. Try a search on the web site for the government of Ontario on the word "racism" and see how many hits you get. I got 4,852 when I tried it in December. And I didn't even try "discrimination," "bigotry," or "hatred," or any number of other promising terms.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission hears 700 to 800 racial discrimination cases every year. Each case takes an average of a little over a year to finish, and the commission is so overworked it has a backlog, despite its $13 million annual budget and staff of 130. And remember: Although the Ontario commission may be the busiest, every province and territory has one, and there is one for the federal government, too.
Right here in Nova Scotia, the Human Rights Commission sponsors a forum every year that "examines the challenges being faced by different racial groups in maintaining and defining their identities in an increasingly complex world." It also sponsors a series of breakfasts called "Champions of the Workplace," where employers "discuss successes and challenges related to managing inclusion within their workforces." If diversity is such a strength I wonder why it has to be "managed," why there are "challenges," and why it takes "champions of the workplace" to make it work. The Nova Scotia commission also offers "workshops on issues surrounding diversity, discrimination, race relations, and harassment." Why does something that is a great strength require workshops?
In Nova Scotia you have an entire ministry devoted to blacks — whom it calls African-Nova Scotians. Why do you need that ministry if racial diversity is a strength?
The city of Halifax itself is abuzz with worries about racism. Just search the Dalhousie University web site for "racism" and you will get hundreds and hundreds of hits. Here are some of the results I got:
Racism within the health care system; Racism in the criminal justice system; The racism inherent in white civilization; Racism in Shakespeare's The Tempest; Everyday racism in medical school; The systemic racism that is prevalent in Nova Scotia; Contemporary Representations of Racism in Children's Books; Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights; Racism and Science Fiction; Thinking More Creatively About Racism and How to Tackle It; Systemic racism affects every aspect of our daily lives; Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System. By golly, its everywhere. And this is just a tiny sample of the stuff that's on the Dalhousie site.
Dahousie even has what's called a Black Student Advising Center. It offers diversity and sensitivity training. It sponsors a special graduation ceremony for black students. It issues a bi-weekly paper called AfricVoice. The paper's motto is "Informing, Inspiring, Empowering," and each issue starts with an African proverb. "Stop profiling our young Black brothers as being drug dealers and pimps ..." says the Nov. 10 issue from last year. The center even gives black students something called "The Black Student Advising Center Survival Guide."
Survival guide? Why is all this special hand-holding necessary if racial diversity is a strength?
The city of Halifax recently had a classic demonstration of the disadvantages of racial diversity. The local paper, the Chronicle Herald, reports that Education Minister Karen Casey just fired the entire Halifax School Board. Why? According to the paper's Dec. 20th issue, "Ms. Casey's decision came after a recent shouting match among about a half-dozen members that involved accusations of racism. 'Collectively, they are not able to work together in the best interest of students,' she said."
So it appears that racism is a very considerable scourge in Canada, but it is reassuring to know that commissions and tribunals and study groups and associations and foundations are beavering away night and day fighting it. They'll soon have it under control, right? Well, maybe not. A recent survey by Statistics Canada found that, nearly 50 percent of blacks say they have suffered from discrimination or unfair treatment, as have 33 percent of South Asians and Chinese. (No report by StatCan on whether any whites suffer from racism.) A 2003 report on immigrants living in West Central Toronto found that 68 percent had suffered just from housing discrimination, let alone any other kind of discrimination.
In 2004 the Dominion Institute did a big poll and found that 65 percent of Canadians said that over the past five years there has been no change in the level of racism in their communities. Thirteen percent said racism had decreased but 17 percent said there was more of it than five years ago. Is Canada losing the fight against racism? That would seem to be the message of this survey, which was, ironically enough, taken to mark International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
And then there is the report York University wrote for the city of Toronto in 2000 about race, housing, and poverty. "There are huge levels of inequality," explained the author Michael Ornstein, "and they are very strongly correlated with ethnoracial characteristics."
Carol Tator, a Toronto-based academic seems to think you are losing the fight, too. The Dec. 24 issue of your local paper, the Chronicle Herald, quotes her as saying, "The problem of racial profiling in Canada both historically and currently is a national crisis across this country."
And it is not as though the fight against racism only just got started. You have been battling it longer than we have in America. The first modern anti-racist legislation in Canada was Ontario's Racial Discrimination Act of 1944. We didn't have anything like that at the state or federal level in 1944. Ontario banned racial discrimination in employment in 1951, and by 1960 every province had passed similar bans. We didn't get a national ban until 1964. You have comprehensive anti-racism legislation at provincial and federal levels — you've had it for decades. You even have a Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, part of whose job is to fight discrimination. And yet the battle still rages.
Let us accept, for a moment, the lefty view of all this, namely that racism — whatever that may be — is a moral failing that afflicts only whites. Non-whites — every man, woman and child — are noble, unoffending sufferers, whose sole aim is to be accepted as the loyal Canadians they are. Parenthetically, this seems to be the view of all your human rights commissions, too, but no matter. If this view is correct, it means whites are a uniquely defective people who break out in helpless spasms of racism whenever they encounter non-whites.
But if that is true, why must whites — and their non-white victims — be put through the ordeal of racial diversity? If, after decades of combating racism whites are still hopelessly racist, what is gained by an immigration policy that brings in yet more non-whites only to make them suffer at the hands of whites, and that degrades whites by bringing out the worst in them? Toronto used to be virtually all-white. There couldn't have been much racial discrimination. Now, all official sources agree that Toronto is a hive of racial discrimination. How has racial diversity therefore been a strength for Toronto or for Canada?
This, therefore, is one problem with racial diversity. The races don't seem to get along very well. Just look at all this agonizing and hand-wringing over racism. You may choose to blame all the problems exclusively on wicked white people, but why pretend racial diversity is a strength?
There is a second aspect of racial diversity on which Canada is strangely silent. Have the non-whites who are coming and who are increasing racial diversity improved the country? I realize this is a taboo question, but let us ask it anyway.
One of the unpleasant consequences of racial diversity is that whites, at any rate, have to be very careful about how they talk. In 2005 the chief economist of CIBC World Markets Jeff Rubin was spanked and sent for sensitivity training when he wrote that oil prices would double by 2010 because "this time around there won't be any tap that some appeased mullah or sheik can suddenly turn back on." Writing about "sheiks" apparently upset the Islamic lobby.
But I think the "Kemosabe" case was more interesting. As you will recall, that is what Tonto called the Lone Ranger in the TV series. Well, right here in Nova Scotia, your Human Rights Commission worked itself into a lather when a Mi'kmaq lady named Dorothy Moore said her boss called her Kemosabe. He called everyone Kemosabe, but she took offense. The commission appointed a board of inquiry to look into the complaint. It watched a bunch of Lone Ranger reruns and concluded in Feb. 2004, that first, Kemosabe is not an insult, and that Ms. Moore hadn't clearly shown she was offended by being called Kemosabe.
The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission was determined that "Kemosabe" be found racist and demeaning. It appealed the board of inquiry's decision to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal. The court agreed with the board, namely that Miss Moore hadn't proven the word was an insult, but the human rights commission still would not give up. It took the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada! The Supreme Court had better things to do than watch reruns of "The Lone Ranger," and refused to take the case.
"We're disappointed," said Mayann Francis, head of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. "We thought this case might help establish clearer guidelines for dealing with discrimination and the cultural differences one finds in a diverse workplace."
Ladies and gentlemen. If this is the sort of thing you get from a "diverse workplace" who needs it?
The Supreme Court did, however, take up the question of whether Sikh students can wear ceremonial daggers to school. The Montreal school board didn't want students running around with knives, but the Supreme Court said they could, as a matter of religious freedom.
The Supreme Court does not yet appear to be involved, but back in 2005 your federal Justice Department helped fund a year-long, $150,000 study of polygamy. Last year it announced its recommendations. It said there are already so many polygamous Muslims in the country that Canada should get rid of its laws banning polygamy. Go with the flow. Make bigamy legal.
Do bigamists and kids with daggers make Canada a better place? Or are we even allowed to ask questions like that? Without diversity, these questions would not arise.
Let's return for a moment to the subject of speaking freely. Let's talk abut white flight. There was a 2004 Toronto Star article about a new Statistics Canada report on the appearance of visible minority neighborhoods in Canada's big cities. Whites used to live in these places but they have moved out. According to the Toronto Star, StatCan could not bring itself to use the term "white flight," and wrote only about "rapid replacement."
Well, someone apparently wasn't told about how we are now supposed to talk. That same year, 2004, Toronto city councilman from Scarborough Mike Del Grande told his local paper that "a lot of white people are moving out" of his ward. Another councilman immediately jumped on Mr. Del Grande: "To hear someone say white people are leaving and Chinese are coming in can be nothing other than a racist comment," said Joe Mihevc. Poor Mr. Del Grande had to apologize: "I should have said many older residents of the community (are moving out)," he said. "I didn't say it in a politically correct way."
Now, what is going on when a city councilman says something that is obviously true, is accused of racism, and is forced to say he should have spoken in code rather than speak clearly? You can't even describe what is going on before your very eyes, much less talk about why whites are leaving and whether they might even be justified in leaving. This doesn't sound like a strength to me.
The vice principal of Queens University unbosomed what strikes me as a significant truth about Canada. Recently he was quoted as saying, "Our Canadian culture has been squeamish about gathering race-based statistics because no one wants to see ethnic makeup reduced to numbers on a page. But unless you get this kind of information, you don't really know if you have a problem."
Well, yes. How do you even begin to assess whether racial diversity is a strength or a weakness unless you gather the information. Do different groups have different rates of illegitimacy? School failure? Poverty? If they do, does it make sense to add to those groups through immigration? Take crime data. I understand Canada does not keep records of racial differences in crime rates. Too squeamish, I suppose. And yet everyone knows some groups commit more crime than others. Your newspapers talk about it indirectly.
This is from the Canadian Press of December 24, 2005:
Cities like Vancouver and Toronto have been rocked by a wave of gang violence in recent years. Almost 100 men in rival Indo-Canadian gangs in Vancouver have been murdered since 1994, often execution-style, over drug deals gone bad. Toronto's gang violence, on the other hand, often involving gun-wielding young black men, has escalated to the point that a coalition of African-Canadians recently called on Prime Minister Paul Martin to declare the issue a national crisis.
Of the more than 70 murders in the Toronto area so far this year, a large portion of them have involved gang members — as many as 30 in the black community and many others among Asian, Latino and Tamil gangs, said Tony Warr, Toronto's deputy police chief.
Here's the Globe and Mail of Oct. 17, 2005, telling us that on a per capita basis Winnipeg has become the murder capital of Canada. "Most of the victims of violent crime are aboriginals, Third World immigrants, gang members, homeless people or transients. Winnipeg's West End ... has long been in thrall to a gang known as the Mad Cowz, made up mostly of young African immigrants, many in their teens."
In the Vancouver paper The Province, issue of Oct. 21, 2005, we read, "A violent ethnic war between Filipino and Vietnamese youths in the Lower Mainland will likely escalate, Vancouver police said yesterday."
Here is a March 16, 2006 story in the Calgary Sun, with the headline: "Feared Gang Hits Calgary." A gang of white people? No. It is MS 13 from El Salvador.
In 2005, black violence got so bad in Toronto that one councilman, Michael Thompson, urged the police to pull over young blacks randomly and see if they were armed. Mr. Thompson said this wasn't racial profiling, but that "the police now have got to take measures — drastic measures." There was criticism of this, of course, but Mr. Thompson was not hounded out of polite society as you might suspect. He is black and thus enjoys the benefits of protective coloring.
Now, as we saw, Canada is too squeamish to collect crime statistics by race, but the United States is not. We know, for example, that blacks commit robbery and murder at approximately eight to ten times the white rate, that Hispanics commit these crimes at three to four times the white rate. Hispanics are 19 times more likely than whites to be in youth gangs, and blacks are 18 times more likely. I would suspect there are equally striking racial differences in Canada, but no one knows because the government doesn't want to know.
We find yet another interesting diversity issue in the case of Toronto's now-defunct zero-tolerance policy on crimes in schools. Students were committing so much robbery, drug dealing, sexual assault, and weapons violations that in 2000 the province passed the Safe Schools Act, requiring that any student guilty of these offences be expelled or suspended. Just four years later the province had to drop the policy. Why? Non-whites were being expelled and suspended all out of proportion to their numbers. More than 1,000 children under the age of seven had been suspended — for things like robbery, weapons possession and drug dealing — and the majority were black. So Toronto had to junk the zero-tolerance policy.
This story illuminates two things: First, we learn that non-whites were the major source of the problem; you did not have a rash of crimes like this when the schools were overwhelmingly white. Second, a sensible, non-discriminatory solution had to be ditched because non-whites were getting more of their share of the punishment. Here, racial diversity both caused the problem and made it impossible to apply an obvious solution.
While we're on the subject of Toronto schools, in 2005, a black school board member proposed setting up an all-black school. Lloyd McKell, who had the title of executive officer of student and community equity, said all-black schools might be a necessary way to fight high dropout and expulsion rates.
Just last April right here in Halifax, a black educator named Wade Smith said integrated schools were doing such a poor job with blacks that he thought Halifax needs a school just for blacks. I thought segregation was supposed to be bad for blacks. Now, it turns out integration is bad for blacks. Racial diversity seems to be very tricky business, indeed.
Back to Toronto, in 2005, a coalition of 22 black community groups — but let's stop right there. A coalition of 22 black community groups? Twenty-two race based associations? What do they all do? Why are they needed? Why are they racially exclusive? How many more are there that are not part of this coalition? Are they all glorying in the strengths of racial diversity? Anyway, a Toronto Star article begins like this: "A Toronto coalition of 22 black community groups disgusted by gun murders in the city wants a separate set of rules and institutions for blacks — from a government department to a diversion program for minor crimes."
The article then quotes Zanana Akande, a former principal and an Ontario cabinet minister in Bob Rae's NDP government. She says: "Blacks have now reached the point of such disgust, such frustration, such a feeling of rejection ... that well-trained, well-qualified, capable people have given up and said, 'You know what? Maybe we should have our own [institutions]'."
The article continues: "Margaret Parsons, executive director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic went further, saying Canada's vaunted policy of multi-culturalism has blinded authorities to systemic racism against blacks, even as they adopt policies of inclusion and integration."
The white man just can't get it right. Here he is, adopting policies of inclusion and integration, but they only blind him to systemic racism against blacks. And we are still supposed to believe racial diversity is a strength?
Outright segregation makes white people nervous so, according to the Toronto Star of last July 19, blacks will have to settle for a new "Africentric" curriculum that is supposed to boost black pride and improve grades. There is even going to be Africentric math, with a unit on racial profiling. Does anyone think that will really improve grades?
Of course, now you have a bit of a problem with Muslims, too. In a July 25, 2006 article from the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, we get another revealing headline: "Study: Conflict Likely Between Canada, Its Muslim Citizens."
But maybe that shouldn't be surprising. Last summer police arrested a group of young Muslims — "homegrown terrorists" you have been calling them — who were going to storm the Canadian Parliament, hold politicians hostage, and maybe even behead the prime minister. According to the Globe and Mail of last June 29, the wives of the four main conspirators shared "among other things, their passion for holy war, disgust at virtually every aspect of non-Muslim society and a hatred of Canada." Maybe we shouldn't be surprised if Canadians don't care for this.
At the same time, so many of Toronto's Muslims were taking their children out of classes that were supposed to teach them the right attitude toward homosexuals that Ontario's prime minister got involved. In 2004, Dalton McGuinty issued a personal plea to Muslim parents to let their children take these classes. Diversity seems to be tricky for all sorts of reasons.
So far, I haven't said anything about Canada's oldest experiment with racial diversity, which is relations between whites and aboriginals. If diversity is a strength, this one should be well developed because it has been around the longest. Somehow, it doesn't seem that way. It was news even in the United States when Indians took over the town of Caledonia, Ontario, which they claimed was on their land, and chased out the white man. McLeans magazine warns of more to come. An article from just last December 27 begins like this: "Canada should brace for more dramatic displays of aboriginal defiance in 2007, warn native leaders who say the First Nations frustrations that boiled over in a small Ontario town this year may well be a tipping point for decades of simmering aboriginal anger." Decades of simmering aboriginal anger. It sounds like another source of strength gone bad.
On the very day of the cite>McLeans article, the Mohawk Nation News wrote: "Don't get any ideas that we will become Canadians. No way! We can and will handle our own affairs. So get out of our way while the going is good. Canada, you know, everything belongs to us. We're getting it all back."
So what are we to conclude from all this? Ladies and gentlemen, let us face facts squarely. Racial diversity in Canada, just as it is in America, is an ordeal. Sometimes, a difficult, agonizing ordeal. It is a source of resentment, guilt-mongering, and endless charges of racism.
If it were a strength, non-white groups would not set up countless race-based organizations to protect and advance their interests. If it were a strength, no one would need diversity managers or sensitivity training. If it were a strength, Canadians would not naturally separate on racial lines.
Take a look around the world. Wherever people are killing each other most diligently, they are killing each other because of diversity. The Tutsis and Hutus slaughtered each other because of ethnic differences. The Tamils and Sinhalese slaughter each other in Sri Lanka because of religious and ethnic differences. Arabs and blacks slaughter each other in Darfur because of racial and religious reasons. Arabs and Israelis slaughter each other because of ethnic and religious differences.
The Soviet Union broke up because of racial and ethnic differences. So did Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Zimbabwe is expelling white farmers only because they are white.
Diversity of the kind Canada is promoting is one of the most obviously divisive forces on the planet. To keep jabbering, as Canadians are supposed to do, that diversity is strength is like repeating the three official government slogans from George Orwell's 1984. Let me remind you what they were:
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
"Diversity is strength" fits right in, doesn't it?
And to add to the Orwellian atmosphere, I must point out that Canada has laws against free speech that touch on this very subject. All I have done this evening is quote government sources and read newspaper articles, and yet several people warned me that for giving this talk I could be arrested for "inciting racial hatred." Others said that as an American I could be turned away at the border for the same reason.
Isn't this exactly what desperate, totalitarian regimes do? Promote lies and then punish people who speak the truth?
We are living in dangerous times, ladies and gentlemen. If your government will lie to you about this, what will it lie about next? If it forbids dissent on this subject, what will it forbid next?
With your immigration and multi-culturalist policies you are dicing with the future of your country. If there is even a small chance that by replacing European Canadians with Third-World Canadians you will end up with a Third-World country, do you not owe it to your children and grandchildren to think seriously about the demographic future of your country?
There are those who would prefer that you never think about this. That you remain ignorant of any dissenting argument about race. It was in order to keep you ignorant that I was shut out of yesterday's event. But as Orwell warned, just as freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength
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