Is Equity Equitable Part II: Canadian Colour Coding

 Please read this article. Read the whole thing. Don't just skim or scan, read this please. I'll wait.

I thought I had sufficiently vented with Is Equity Equitable Part I, but I guess there's more that needs to be said. Peter Shawn Taylor says a lot of it in the above article and he says it in a well-polished, well-researched, literary way that brings me back to my days of reading the classics while labouring through my BA in literature. You see, during those days (from 1987-the first full year of Employment Equity-to 1994) even though I was from a rock bottom SES, single parent family the Canadian government still found a way to screw me out of financial assistance I desperately needed. That's how I managed to cram a 4-year degree into 8 years. (Grade 13 in Ontario in 1986 counted as year one) Who knows, maybe being white and male was already being held against me. As Taylor writes, "No other country in the world divides itself along racial lines as we do in Canada." 

To show how ignorant and frankly STOOOOPID our national policies are, federal legislation defines "visible minorities" as "persons, other than Aboriginal people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour." To get an idea of how ignorant words like "Caucasian," "race," and "white" are I urge you, I BEG of you, please read my former post about erasing the word race. Only 20 have and I think it should be mandatory knowledge for everyone in Canada! The video at the beginning is gone now, but skip over that part to the shocking origins of this outdated, imprecise, and racist terminology. We like to think of ourselves as a smart country here in Canada, but as long as we maintain any federal laws that include such hillbilly lingo, we're just a country of hockey goons. 

But back to the first article, Taylor came to the same conclusion I did in my last post, "It's time to abolish this outdated, imprecise, and subtly racist idea." The surprising race-based data show Canadian born Japanese men taking home $1750 a week while white men earn $1530. In fact, Chinese, Korean, and South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, etc) males also earned more than whites. For white women, the stats are even more surprising. There's a handy graph that shows it all in the link at the beginning of this post. White men get an average income of 79,000 a year. White women get 58,000 a year. I have never had a year approaching either. I've never made 30 grand. So white women, white men, and a whole pile of "visible minorities" are out-earning me. PSSST, these figures are from stats compiled from the 2016 Canadian census. Imagine how things have changed in the 7 years since, every one of which (I think) set a new immigration record! 

Meanwhile, here's me disqualifying myself from yet another job by either admitting to my shameful white, male condition, or refusing to:

What's a white fella to do? I mean I suppose I COULD just write that since groups designated under the Employment Equity Act are now an overwhelming majority in the labour market of Canada, as a white male I qualify as a visible minority but I'm sure that would give the application reviewer, who statistically is not a white male, a good chuckle while she/he is eliminating me from qualification. 

Can you see how if these laws and the Canadian governmental blocking of employers just hiring the best person for the job ever really had a spirit of justice and equality, the results are empirically divisive? If you can't, or aren't ready to abandon this well-entrenched Canadian mentality yet, let me borrow one last time from Peter Shawn Taylor who is a white male who resorted to the words of a person with a more trustworthy skin tone... sigh... see what we've done to white dudes? 

This is a quote from Martin Luthor King Jr. who strongly opposed race-based job quotas: "It is my opinion that many white workers whose economic condition is not too far removed from the economic condition of his black brother will find it difficult to accept... special consideration to the Negro in the context of unemployment, joblessness, etc. and does not take into sufficient account their (own) plight."

I have a dream myself. I dream that one day I will be able to speak of an opinion or fact, and maybe my children and their children too can state opinions or facts without their fellow Canadians judging their words against the socially indoctrinated Canadian colour coding that exists in our unliberated minds. I dream that I can safely say what is on my mind without referencing the words of those with skin of a darker hue. I dream that Canada will stop being a country that discriminates more than most based on skin colour and not content of character. 

MLK Jr., PST, and me - we're all still waiting for that simple concept of fairness to become the law.