One of the big talks of the interwebs so far in 2015 is that Macleans Magazine has declared Winnipeg the "most racist city in Canada".
The story starts off with this:
“Oh Goddd how long are aboriginal people going to use what happened as a crutch to suck more money out of Canadians?” Winnipeg teacher Brad Badiuk wrote on Facebook last month. “They have contributed NOTHING to the development of Canada. Just standing with their hand out. Get to work, tear the treaties and shut the FK up already. Why am I on the hook for their cultural support?”Why doesn't Macleans notice that every single word Badiuk wrote in this post is correct? The Red Indian hasn't contributed to the society we see before us. In the 20,000 years hanging around this continent they have failed to domesticate animals (domesticated dogs were brought over and later abandoned), failed to discover bronze, failed to build roads or cities or civilization. They figured out the bow and arrow only a couple-three thousand years behind the curve, I guess they could have "contributed" that. Beyond that, though, the Red Indian is getting handouts to the tune of $13 Billion dollars a year. Meanwhile, the squalor that they live in is a direct result of these treaties: by "tearing them up" as Badiuk suggests the Red Indian would become just another person in the country. They'd be in as much of a funk as Mongolians are in Canada. As Cory Morgan noted, the treaties themselves demand that the Red Indian shuts the fuck up and remains loyal to Her Majesty without causing any fuss. Meanwhile, the cultural support question looms over everything. Their culture is inferior. You literally cannot point to a single area where it isn't. Why are we promoting it, and why is money being taken away from Brad Badiuk's school system for it?
These are valid questions. Author Nancy Macdonald didn't even pretend to try to answer them.
Badiuk’s comments came to light the day Rinelle Harper—the shy 16-year-old indigenous girl left for dead in the city’s Assiniboine River after a brutal sexual assault—spoke publicly for the first time after her recovery. She called for an inquiry to help explain why so many indigenous girls and women are being murdered in Winnipeg, and elsewhere in Canada.Speaking of chicks asking questions without anybody answering, we know why Indian women get assaulted and murdered. We know why Rinelle Harper was assaulted: Justin Hudson is a criminal. He's also, if you hadn't noticed, an Indian himself. He's a violent killer, as way too many of his race is. He's also, you may have also noticed, an inconveniently invalid example of "out of control racism in Winnipeg". A violent Red Indian and his likely Indian accomplice savagely assaulting a young girl. Not much there to support Macdonald's narrative.
Her next example at first fares a little better...15-year-old Tina Fontaine was murdered in the city core, and her killer(s) remain at large. However, as you dig, again the narrative starts to waver. Tina had run away from home, and was possibly caught up in a high-risk lifestyle. Another teenaged prostitute dying is certainly a tragedy, but hookers are at high risk of dying. That's a pretty solid fact, and again has nothing to do with "racism".
Does Macdonald have any anecdotes to support her case?
Nunavummiuq musician Tanya Tagaq, last year’s Polaris Music Prize winner, who complained that while out to lunch in downtown Winnipeg where she was performing with the city’s ballet this fall, “a man started following me calling me a ‘sexy little Indian’ and asking to f–k.”So now the "racism problem" is that somebody thinks Tanya Tagaq is hot and clumsily tries to pick her up? Even if you buy this as a "rape culture" or "sexism" problem, you're still way off-base trying to pin this one on "racism".
an inquest issued its findings in the death of Brian Sinclair, an indigenous 45-year-old who died from an entirely treatable infection after being ignored for 34 hours in a city ER.At least it looks like Macdonald is trying. Of course, up to 23,000 adults, not all of whom are presumably Indian, are dying in Canadian hospitals and blacks in Toronto can push their own "our person died" sob story narrative if they wanted to. For that matter, Albertans of all colours and creeds could pass along this same story. Sorry Macdonald, but Sinclair isn't much of a case either.
Does Macdonald have a single example of actual racism for her article? Or is she just equipped with a Santa-sized bag of cases of Indians who have had bad things happen to them. She finally has a sort-of-valid point to make in all this.
They came in the wake of a civic election dominated by race relations after a racist rant by a frontrunner’s wife went viral: “I’m really tired of getting harassed by the drunken native guys” downtown, Gord Steeves’s wife, Lori, wrote on Facebook. “We all donate enough money to keep their sorry asses on welfare, so shut the f–k up and don’t ask me for another handout!” The former city councilor and long-serving, centrist politician didn’t bother apologizing.Again, Lori Steeves said things that were inconvenient. Kindly point to a part of what she said that was wrong, with the trivial exception that welfare doesn't come from donations but rather from forcible taxation of the productive class -- a group that doesn't include many Red Indians. Channeling a little Ebenezer Scrooge (who is much misrepresented, of course), she asks why handouts are being demanded while her taxes are going to fund programs that are supposed to be helping. And this is the best Macdonald has to offer?
Next she can attack "racist tweets" from the prairie city:
In poll after poll, Manitoba and Saskatchewan report the highest levels of racism in the country, often by a wide margin.
One in three Prairie residents believe that “many racial stereotypes are accurate,” for example, higher than anywhere else in Canada. In Alberta, just 23 per cent do, according to polling by the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration (CIIM). And 52 per cent of Prairie residents agree that Aboriginals’ economic problems are “mainly their fault.” Nationally, the figure drops to 36 per cent.
Manitoba and Saskatchewan also report the highest number of racist incidents, according to polling conducted by the Association for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. In the last year, nine in 10 Manitobans reported hearing a negative comment about an indigenous person. That’s compared with six in 10 in New Brunswick, according to that poll.
Macdonald is about to stumble on a point, by the way. It isn't the one she intended, and she didn't notice it, but I'm wondering if any of you did. I did, before I even got to this part of the article.
Generally, when groups interact, there is a correlating drop in prejudice as understanding grows, says Jack Jedwab, executive vice-president of the Association for Canadian Studies. But in Manitoba, where 17 per cent of the population is Aboriginal—the highest proportion among provinces, and four times the national average—and where 62 per cent reported “some contact” with indigenous people in the last year, the opposite appears to be true.Have you hazarded a guess yet? Do you want to know the dirty little secret? Years ago, Preston Manning noted that unlike himself Jean Chretien was the least popular in his home province, the province that presumably knew him best. A similar case occurs with the Red Indian. By falling back on their backwards culture, and exhibiting the worst traits of their race, the Red Indian has guaranteed that they are the least popular where people know them best.
Want to know the best way to have a positive opinion of a Red Indian? Easy, be in a place where you don't have to be anywhere near them. You don't have to smell their alcohol-laced breath. You don't have to hear their hilariously mongoloid voices. If you don't have to deal with them, you don't see what all the fuss is about.
But in Winnipeg, even more than Edmonton or Saskatoon or Regina, you do have to deal with them. They demand more and more and more from you, while they get smaller and smaller and smaller. Their value to the society at large, the society created around them, gets more and more diminished. The more you see insane articles like this, and fewer and fewer cases of "Idle No More" protesters being less idle, the worse it will get.
"Victim shaming" isn't popular, but longtime readers of this blog should know that when the shoe fits it needs to be worn.
“I know you,” a shopper told Falcon-Ouellette, approaching him shortly after he arrived at the mall. “You’re that guy running for mayor. You’re an Indian,” he said, pointing a finger at Falcon-Ouellette. “I don’t want to shake your hand. You Indians are the problem with the city. You’re all lazy. You’re drunks. The social problems we have in the city are all related to you.”I understand that Robert Falcon-Ouelette would be personally slighted by comments like this. But then to hang around with Idle No More fleabaggers and not expect that the same people that movement attacks (while coveting their wealth, their achievement, the fruits of their productivity) will fight back is insane.
Winnipeg might well have a racism problem. The problem, though, isn't with the whites of Winnipeg. If you don't believe me, just look at what happened to Rinelle Harper.
And which race is responsible for it.
