‘Blatantly, It’s Racism’: Comparing What We Practise With What We Preach

People walk along a street in Montreal on July 31, 2021. The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes

News Analysis

Since the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin, there have been several instances of xenophobia against Russians living abroad that have gone largely uncondemned in Canada and other parts of the world.

Last month, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra cancelled concerts by a young Russian pianist, and several prominent orchestras or ballet companies cancelled the performances of classical Russian pieces or Russian artists. As well, the Russian Community Centre in Vancouver was vandalized in early March, and Russian businesses in Canada and the United States have been experiencing backlash.

These incidents are occurring despite the historic lessons of the internment of Japanese-Canadians and Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the recent focus on rooting out “systemic racism” that has dominated public discourse by elected officials and government departments, as well as many news outlets.

Some experts maintain that these incidents and a host of others demonstrate that the values and ideologies being promoted in society today are falling short.

“I remember if people claimed that the virus came from the Wuhan lab, they’d get accused of having xenophobia. Whereas nobody is saying that about Russia, because Ukrainians and Russians are of similar ethnic background, and they’re white, like the white people in Canada,” Rod Clifton, professor emeritus of sociology of education at the University of Manitoba, told The Epoch Times.

Part of the reason for the difference in response, Clifton says, results from the Chinese communist regime’s success in spreading its propaganda that criticism of the regime is the same as being racist against Chinese people. But, he says, it’s also due to the fact that the social policies that are preached by many and implemented by policy-makers as “anti-racism” are in fact racist, because they tip the scales to the benefit of one race or group while disadvantaging or disparaging another.

“Blatantly, it’s racism, but they say it’s correct racism because white people have always been in domination,” he says, pointing out that historically, people of some races have dominated people of other races in different parts of the world “since the beginning of time.”

Pedestrians cross Elgin Street in view of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Clifton says some sociologists have argued that “ethnic propinquity is so deep in people’s souls” that when there are times of high pressure, such as wartime, that sentiment comes out.

“During the Second World War, Japanese people who were our neighbours and farmers, like other people, and we were getting along fine, were pigeonholed. Same with Germans: If you look at the Canadian census, from the mid 1930s the number of Germans in Canada went down, because many Germans were allocating their ethnicity to Yugoslavia or other places, but they were actually of German background,” he says.

However, instead of focusing on reducing the harms that such prejudice may cause, Clifton says the focus and values in society in recent times have shifted to issues such as racial identification and ideas that “white people are always racist against brown people.”

Philip Carl Salzman, professor emeritus of anthropology at McGill University, says this shift in values is because of the prevalence of ideologies that are based on division.

“An ideology that is based on division disregards what we have in common, like human rights. All of these ideologies are based on the idea that there are oppressors and there are victims. And whether that’s based on gender or race, or sexual preference, all of these tend to divide us,” Salzman said in an interview. “[The perpetrators of these ideas] care more about fighting the enemy that they posit in their ideology than they care about the interests of the people that they allegedly support.”

He notes the prevalence of this issue in various sectors of society, including academia, politics, professional sports leagues, and the media.

“The elite culture in North America is to hate the West and to hate the white and to hate the society,” he says.

Difference in Values

Earlier this year, Chamath Palihapitiya, co-owner of the NBA team the Golden State Warriors, said that “nobody cares” about the persecution of the Uyghur ethnic Muslim minority by the Chinese regime. “I’m telling you a very hard ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line,” he said.

Protesters shout slogans as they hold flyers at the Southorn Playground in Hong Kong on Oct. 15, 2019, during a rally in support of NBA basketball Rockets general manager Daryl Morey and against comments made by Lakers superstar LeBron James. Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images

The NBA and other professional leagues such as the NFL have been rife with protests against racial inequality in the United States, with players and coaches kneeling during the American national anthem as a sign of protest, rather than standing in a show of respect. The gesture has been allowed to continue despite the leagues’ rules that require standing for the anthem.

Yet when it comes to those who call for upholding values of human rights and dignity in places like communist China, the NBA has taken a different stance.

In 2019, when Daryl Morey, then-general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, NBA’s chief communication officer issued an official statement apologizing for the “regrettable” tweet, while Rockets’ owner Tilman Fertitta said Morey’s comments didn’t speak for the organization.

Morey’s tweet drew a strong reaction from the Chinese consulate, with the NBA’s Chinese partners cancelling several NBA engagements that would impact the league’s profits. Morey issued a statement to walk back his tweet, saying, “I have always appreciated the significant support our Chinese fans and sponsors have provided.”

Morey was also criticized by NBA star Lebron James, who has championed social justice causes such as Black Lives Matter in the United States. As a result of Morey’s tweet, he said, “So many people could have been harmed, not only financially, but physically, emotionally, spiritually.”

Enes Kanter Freedom, a former NBA player who has been very vocal in denouncing human rights atrocities in China, believes he was removed from the league because of his criticism of China.  Besides his criticism of the NBA’s stance on China, he frequently calls out companies that say they stand for issues such as Black Lives Matter, yet when it comes to countries like China, he said, “they remain silent.”

The Epoch Times contacted the NBA for comment, but didn’t hear back.

Michael Rectenwald, author and a former professor at New York University, says part of the reason for the difference in taking a position on China’s human rights issues versus issues in the United States is financial.

“They are totally beholden to China because of the incredible income that the NBA and other sports leagues receive from the Chinese market,” he said in an interview.

The other part, he says, is ideological.

“There’s a leftist inclination in favour of socialism, communism. So they don’t really care about China’s crimes … because China is a communist country run by a communist party, despite having for-profit production by a few favoured corporations,” he said.

Government’s Selective Focus

When it comes to values-based foreign and domestic policies in Canada, a similar discrepancy can be observed, with the Liberal government focusing on specific areas when it comes to human rights, while ignoring others.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang accompanies Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Aug. 31, 2016. Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began his tenure in 2015 seeking close relations with Beijing—much to the chagrin of human rights activists—even pushing for talks toward crafting a free trade agreement with China. The talks hit a roadblock in 2017—not because Ottawa was voicing concern about forced organ harvesting of Falun Dafa prisoners of conscience, slave labour and genocide of Uyghurs, persecution of Tibetans, or the crackdown on Hong Kong and mainland pro-democracy activists—but because China rejected Canada’s inclusion of progressive clauses on gender and environment in the deal.

Ottawa has maintained its focus on China for business interests, while being careful with its tone, even as Beijing held Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in captivity in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on an extradition request by the United States.

Former Canadian ambassador to China David Mulroney noted the contrast between Trudeau’s tone on China and a country like Russia in remarks the prime minister made in a speech in August 2019. Trudeau said during a talk to the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations that when it comes to China, “we recognize real economic opportunities for Canadians,” while adding that Canada will always “defend Canadians and Canadian interests.” When he spoke about Russia in the same speech, he said Canada opposes Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Mulroney told The Globe and Mail that Trudeau’s remarks were “appropriately blunt” on Russia but he had a different tone on China.

“It is therefore quite jarring to come upon the China section, which opens with bizarrely warm and friendly sentiments, talks about economic opportunities rather than China’s actual economic blackmail of Canada,” he said.

It wasn’t until later in 2020, as China continued its detention of the two Canadians and escalated its crackdown in Hong Kong, that Ottawa adopted a stronger tone on China. Even then, Trudeau and his cabinet abstained from voting on a House of Commons motion in February 2021 to recognize the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Uyghurs as genocide, which passed with the unanimous support of all MPs who voted.

This selective focus can be seen in other areas of Canada’s diplomacy and foreign aid as well.

According to reports by human rights organizations, Saudi Arabia has for years been notorious for its crackdown on rights and persecution of those holding dissenting views or those of minority religions. Yet there was one area that Ottawa was willing to risk upsetting the Saudi regime over: the persecution of women’s rights activists. In 2018, after Saudi Arabia arrested two female activists, then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland sent a tweet objecting to the arrests. In response, Saudi Arabia asked Canada’s ambassador to leave the country and took a host of actions against Canada’s economy. Freeland objected yet again when news emerged of a plan to execute a female political activist in Saudi Arabia a few weeks later.

When it comes to Africa, Global Affairs Canada says it is pursuing a “feminist foreign policy” focused on areas such as “promoting human rights and inclusive governance” and “investing in inclusive and green economic growth and diversifying trade.” In its focus area of “contributing to peace and stability,” the government says it is achieving the goal in part by championing the “women, peace, and security agenda.” As for “supporting poverty reduction efforts,” its policy cites “supporting sexual and reproductive health and rights.”

Female soldiers perform a peacekeeping demonstration during the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Jacqueline O'Neill, Canada's ambassador for women, peace, and security, Jean Baptiste Tine, senior commander of Senegal's Gendarmerie and director of Military Justice, and Sidiki Kaba, Senegal's minister of justice, at the Samba Diery Diallo barracks in Colobane, Senegal, on Feb. 13, 2020. Seyllou/AFP via Getty Images

Ottawa’s aid policies and the values they’re based on have been criticized by some African activists, including Nigerian human rights advocate Obianuju Ekeocha, who said the Canadian government is bringing a “Western-conceived idea or ideal of feminism” to Africa through “a force of money.”

“The only people applauding the Canadian government, the only people excited about what the Canadian government is doing, are the activists—the radical activists in the West. And that’s because the Canadian government is achieving their dream across the African continent,” Ekeocha said last year.

Mark Milke, a policy analyst and author of the book “The Victim Cult: How the Grievance Culture Hurts Everyone and Wrecks Civilizations,” says human rights used to be about issues such as ensuring people have the right to vote, worship freely, and not be subject to torture. But in many Western countries like Canada, that focus has turned to issues such as “equal statistical outcomes,” he says.

“The prime minister and his colleagues are of little help in recognizing real evil around the world, when they focus on mythical injuries such as microaggressions, or equate cultural injury with genocide,” he said in an interview.

“The prime minister ignores human rights violations in Iraq among Christians, ignores actual human rights violations in China vis-a-vis Muslims, and yet focuses on some weird, woke notion that if every group defined by ethnicity is not equal in outcome—income or jobs in the public sector—that somehow that’s discrimination.”

Milke says the issue goes back to a lack of historical depth and “a generation consumed by grievances based on identities.”

“It’s quite clear that if you live in Canada, or the United States, or Great Britain, or New Zealand, or Australia, or France, you live in some of the most prosperous countries with some of the best human rights records in the history of the planet. And yet, people will focus on alleged injustices like microaggressions,” he says.

Shift in Values

Salzman says due to the change in values, he’s not so sure that if people today were faced with an atrocity like the Holocaust, they would behave more righteously than the people at that time, despite the historic lessons.

Stock photo of corporate buildings. Chuttersnap/Unsplash

He says Western societies have gotten to the point that many have lost faith in their own culture, and “they make a virtue out of condemning it.”

“The West, especially the Anglosphere, was triumphant after World War II, and looked like we had every opportunity to build a very strong society. Canada was a serious country. Canada I think had the fourth-largest Navy in the world after World War II. And now it looks like we’ve decided that it’s more important to destroy our society and to destroy other members of the society than to build. Now the United States, Canada, and Europe have gone into huge decline,” he says.

Rectenwald says Western societies are drifting toward what he calls “corporate socialism” or “capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” where the state allows for-profit operation of monopolistic corporations that are in allegiance with “progressive or leftist values” demanded by the government, leading to the elimination of the middle class and the civil society.

“Unless we can really serve the values of free enterprise, liberty for everyone individually and as groups, the right to self-determination, and the right of religious expression, we’re in trouble,” he says.

Clifton says the dramatic changes in the value system in the West started in the mid-20th century in universities due to Marxist ideology dominating academic institutions, and later became more prevalent in society as university graduates moved into various sectors.

“Now they’re in the media and government agencies, and they’re reflecting the same kind of perspective. And they’re pretty intolerant of other perspectives,” he says.

If society continues down this path, “we’re going to fold in upon ourselves,” he says, adding that instead, people should be working toward healing divisions, achieving unity, and upholding their culture.

“We should really be working on how people can cooperate across provinces, across municipalities, across political ideological debates,” he says.