Toronto Star article, June 18, 2010
Her death sent shock waves through the city — and across the world — prompting heated debate on the hijab, the challenges of integration for newcomers, and whether her death was Toronto’s first crime of honour or a horrible case of domestic violence. …. Media in Toronto and around the world immediately reported and continues to report that Aqsa was killed because she refused to wear the hijab. But it was much more complicated than that.
Her death sent shock waves through the city — and across the world — prompting heated debate on the hijab, the challenges of integration for newcomers, and whether her death was Toronto’s first crime of honour or a horrible case of domestic violence.
….
Media in Toronto and around the world immediately reported and continues to report that Aqsa was killed because she refused to wear the hijab. But it was much more complicated than that.
You know, if one were to never pay attention to feminists, including Muslim feminists, one would be rather perplexed about the horror, fear and isolation that Aqsa had in the last moments of her life, being killed by her father and brother. Nobody in any of the regular state intervention machines (her school, CAS, the police) did much of anything to help her, to listen to her about what she needed.
And since her murder (why the media keeps calling it her “death” is beyond me) the white establishment has been desperately trying to “understand”, from the mealy-center of the Toronto Star to the hard-core right of the Globe and Mail.
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Dear god why do I glance at the newspaper headlines, why?
So I’m out and about yesterday, just living my life, happy, and I come upon a Toronto Star newspaper box with the headline above. Full article here.
DO NOT under any circumstances read the comments. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
There’s also a snarky column by Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun (I KNOW), and an equally unhelpful column by Marcus Gee in the Globe and Mail.
A sweeping year-long probe into racism at Ryerson University has found a staggeringly diverse campus where some visible minority students say they feel harassed and excluded, where profs don’t always deal with offensive comments made in class and some non-white staff report a “chill” that shuts them out of the power loop.
A year-long probe, that’s great. Good opportunity to be thorough and non-superficial.
I need to state once again for the record that I HATE the term visible minority. Hate it hate it hate it. Almost as much as I hate the term non-white.
Talk about a chill.
I met Uzma several years ago, at a pan-asian conference in Vancouver. At the time she was the ED of CASSA, Council of Agencies Serving South Asians and I was on the board of CCNC-TO (Chinese Canadian National Council- Toronto Chapter). She was funny, she was smart as hell, and she didn’t put up with any guff.
Uzma recently wrote an article for the Toronto Star entitled “Immigration’s Tough New Face”.
Now, I write a lot of critiques (that’s a nice way to put it) about the corporate media, including the Toronto Star. Here is a rare chance to see me say something nice about the Star. Enjoy this moment. It won’t last long.
I’ve wanted to write about this for a while, and then this article written by Eugenia Tsao inspired me:
Smug Toronto Seethes as Tamils “Go Too Far”
“Tamil protests a test of our tolerance,” the Toronto Star pronounced, while the Globe and Mail chided the demonstrators for squandering public support with their disruptive tactics (“Tamils earn goodwill—then lose it,” May 20).
“Ours, you see, is a tolerant society” Canadians smugly confide to visiting Americans. And while the line between tolerance and mere endurance is a slender one, few would deny Canadians’ infatuation with cultural diversity. We like to lunch on sushi and samosas, sport henna tattoos, practice yoga, wear paisley embroidery, listen to reggae, and hang feathered dreamcatchers from our rearview mirrors. We proudly subscribe to magazines like National Geographic for the exotic, high-contrast photography and romanticized verbal portraiture. We love falling asleep on the subway to a velvet medley of diasporic languages, and nothing delights us more than consuming enormous sandwiches filled with things like prosciutto and chorizo. But we cannot eat acts of non-violent civil disobedience or wear political grievances, you see, and this confuses us.
“Ours, you see, is a tolerant society” Canadians smugly confide to visiting Americans. And while the line between tolerance and mere endurance is a slender one, few would deny Canadians’ infatuation with cultural diversity. We like to lunch on sushi and samosas, sport henna tattoos, practice yoga, wear paisley embroidery, listen to reggae, and hang feathered dreamcatchers from our rearview mirrors. We proudly subscribe to magazines like National Geographic for the exotic, high-contrast photography and romanticized verbal portraiture. We love falling asleep on the subway to a velvet medley of diasporic languages, and nothing delights us more than consuming enormous sandwiches filled with things like prosciutto and chorizo.
But we cannot eat acts of non-violent civil disobedience or wear political grievances, you see, and this confuses us.
Tsao is so right on. In fact, whenever I hear certain liberal multi-culti white folks in Toronto yammer on and on about cultural diversity, it’s almost always immediately followed up with some bull about how great it is that in Toronto they can have samples of cuisines from around the world.
Of course that is something that I, too, value about living in Toronto, however, to simply eat the other is not enough. Consuming culture (metaphorically) and food (literally) without a political understanding of struggles, power and colonialism, is just reiterating imperial power relations all over again.
Back to Tsao:
Rather than forcing the natives to dance for us at the crack of a whip, we expect them to do so voluntarily, citing our need for unending cultural enrichment and enlightenment, or their need to evince gratitude for our generous foreign policies. Rather than accusing them of high treason when they dare to publicize historical injustices in inconvenient—and unentertaining—ways, we cluck our tongues and accuse them of strategic imprudence. “Can’t you see you’re just alienating your audience?” we hiss, annoyed, mouths full of falafel and tandoori chicken.
Hot damn, I love this woman.
Jebus H Cripes on a raft.
I need to warn my readers that after reading this article and the first comment by mistake (My eyes! My eyes!) my brain short-circuited and I needed to whack myself in the head a few times to get the circulation going back to my cranium.
For the love of all that is good and groovy in the world, are you people FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!
Headline: Darker the skin, less you fit Vanessa Kirunda is the last person you’d expect to be looked down on. Poised, articulate, educated and confident, Kirunda, a black woman, can dissect and analyze why Canadians treat her differently.
Okay let’s stop right there.
1. Racism is NOT ABOUT people looking down on you! Although it’s often expressed that way, and worse. Racism is a systemic social problem that systematically [Mr Rogers voice] That’s why we call it “systemic”, can you say “systemic” byos and grils?[/Mr Rogers voice] encourages, allows and approves of violence, social discrimination, pathologizing and negative assumptions about people of colour and Aboriginal people. Racism won’t just go away once white folks just start behaving better. Although, you know, that would be a good fucking place to start you doofuses! And a start would be don’t write moronic articles like this one!
