Category: EDI

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Corporations EDI

Anti-woke warriors are targeting the wrong enemy

Those who hate all things “woke” are targeting the wrong enemy. They attack trans people, Justin Trudeau, Black Lives Matter and anything related to diversity, equality and inclusion but they rarely, if ever, mention the entities that have done way more to mess up their lives – and restrict their “freedom”: corporations.

Take truckers for example. In February 2022, a bunch of them angrily occupied downtown Ottawa demanding an end to government COVID19 vaccine mandates. Many had F*&% Trudeau! signs and some of their leaders sought to overthrow the federal government in the name of “freedom”. However, none of them said anything about how the trucking companies they work for restrict their freedom. Why haven’t truckers tried to occupy Ottawa, or any other city, to protest the electronic logging devices (ELDs) federal regulation that came into force in January 2023 with the support of the trucking companies?

ELDs track a driver’s hours of service — the amount of time they can be behind the wheel on any given day. The regulation came into effect in June 2021 but Transport Canada only began enforcing it for certain commercial vehicle drivers, such as long-haul truckers, on Jan. 1, 2023. , ELDs have been required in the United States since 2017.

ELDs are billed as a way to make roads safer by keeping truckers accountable to their allowed hours of service. However, Karen Levy, author of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology and the New Workplace Surveillance says that the most vigorous study on the American rollout of ELDs showed they didn’t lead to any improvement in the most important safety outcomes. In fact, truck crashes didn’t decrease after the mandate began to be enforced—and for small carriers, they actually increased.

Furthermore, ELDs could be a canary in the coal mine for workplace surveillance experts say as they raise questions about what information employers are collecting about their workers. Levy says that the proliferation of ELDs has opened the doors for other monitoring systems that can monitor driving behaviours, like hard braking or swerving, and may include driver-facing cameras that use artificial intelligence to track eye movements and check for signs of drowsiness.

That seems like a way bigger attack on freedom than wearing a mask…

The May 1, 2023 Smart-Trucking.com article The Truck Driver Shortage – The Dirty Truth No One Talks About said, “The shortage of truck drivers is not due to the lack of individuals interested in becoming drivers. There are lots of potential drivers interested in becoming career truck drivers, but once many of them discover: the low pay, the lack of respect, the often poor working conditions, and the demands of the job – they abandon the idea.” These conditions have existed a lot longer than mask mandates so why haven’t we seen massive trucker protests against them? One reason might be that almost all truckers are men…

A quick reminder before proceeding that not all truckers supported the Ottawa occupation. CTV reported in January 2022 that “several trucking groups have also condemned the protests. The Canadian Trucking Alliance says nearly 85 per cent of drivers are fully vaccinated. Just before the convoy was about to kick off, the group said it “strongly disapproves of any protests on public roadways, highways, and bridges.””

The truckers who took part in the occupation were almost all white and it’s white heterosexual men who are leading the attack on all equity groups. Some blame women for their problems and fuel the popularity of men like Andrew Tate. But, as with most movements driven partly by anger, the reasons behind it are much more complex than the reasons offered by the movement’s leaders.

In his January 2023 New Yorker article What’s the Matter with Men?, Idress Kahloon writes, “Many social scientists agree that contemporary American men are mired in malaise, even as they disagree about the causes. In academic performance, boys are well behind girls in elementary school, high school, and college, where the sex ratio is approaching two female undergraduates for every one male. (It was an even split at the start of the nineteen-eighties.) Rage among self-designated “incels” and other elements of the online “manosphere” appears to be steering some impressionable teens toward misogyny. Men are increasingly dropping out of work during their prime working years, overdosing, drinking themselves to death, and generally dying earlier, including by suicide.”

Kahloon cites the work of British American scholar of inequality and social mobility Richard V. Reeves from his latest book, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It. In the book Reeves argues that “the rapid liberation of women and the labor-market shift toward brains and away from brawn [have negatively impacted men]… Reeves sees telltale signs in the way that boys are floundering at school and men are leaving work and failing to perform their paternal obligations. All this, he says, has landed hardest on Black men, whose life prospects have been decimated by decades of mass incarceration, and on men without college degrees, whose wages have fallen in real terms, whose life expectancies have dropped markedly, and whose families are fracturing at astonishing rates.”

In response to these very real and complex issues, people like Andrew Tate simply say “it’s women’s fault”. An April 2023 NewsWeek article quoted Tate promising to “free the modern man from socially induced incarceration.” It also said he has been banned from Twitter twice for arguing that women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted by men. Expressing this and similar views has earned his videos billions of views.

On the gender wage gap, Tate’s view isn’t what you might first think: that it’s justified because men deserve to be paid more. It’s that there isn’t one. It appears (and wouldn’t be surprising) that Tate hasn’t read either Kahloon’s article or Reeves’ book as they say there’s a gender pay gap and provide one very clear reason why. Kahloon writes, “Within occupations, there’s often no wage gap until women have children and reduce their work hours. “For most women, having a child is the economic equivalent of being hit by a meteorite,” Reeves observes. “For most men, it barely makes a dent.”” Tate, and all those like him, ignore these inconvenient, complex realities…probably because they don’t make for good YouTube videos. Tate, of course, doesn’t critique ideas of how to get rid of the wage gap because he doesn’t think one exists.

Kahloon does provide one solution for the wage gap from Harvard labor economist Claudia Goldin who says the gender gap, “…would vanish if long, inflexible work days and weeks weren’t profitable to employers.” As expected, Tate doesn’t critique corporations’ role in maintaining the “non-existent” gender wage gap. 

People like Tate and Jordan Peterson don’t criticize corporations at all. In fact, Peterson indirectly frames corporations as the victims by implicitly including them in his defence of organizations being targeted by what he sees as EDI zealots. As I said in my post Jordan Peterson wants us to shut up about D.I.E., deliver his Amazon packages and DIE, Peterson mistakenly accuses “equity-pushers” of claiming “that if all positions at every level of hierarchy in every organization are not occupied by a proportion of the population that is precisely equivalent to that proportion in the general population that systemic prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) is definitely at play, and that there are perpetrators who should be limited or punished that have or are currently producing that prejudice.” 

The only example I could find of Peterson critiquing corporations was him chastising CEOs for “lining up to kowtow at the D.I.E. altar.” But, similar to his critique of employment equity, what he’s critiquing isn’t really that much of a thing. Evidence shows that, in Canada, corporate EDI efforts have been largely reactive and performative. For example, the Globe and Mail has reported each year on the lack of success of the Black North Initiative which was launched in summer 2020 with the mission to get corporate Canada to Blacken up their C-suites. Little has changed in the C-suites but much has changed in the Black North Initiative’s stated mandate which is now, “..to end anti-Black systemic racism throughout all aspects of our lives by utilizing a business-first mindset.”

Why don’t Tate and Peterson critique those in corporate Canada who helped make men more insecure by causing unionization among men to fall by 16 per cent over the last 40 years according to Statistics Canada? (StatsCan says the percentage of employees who were union members in their main job fell from 38% in 1981 to 29% in 2022.) 

But the more disturbing question is why do so many men uncritically consume Tate and Peterson’s content, much of which is so flawed? Could it be that what Tate and Peterson say allows them to blame anyone but them for their problems? If so, we gotta get far more effective at educating these guys on who to hate.

Categories
EDI

Jordan Peterson wants us to shut up about D.I.E., deliver his Amazon packages and DIE

I attended former University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson’s January 30 talk at the Canadian Tire Centre with what appeared to be about 5000 white people. Peterson has risen to fame doing things like calling “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion”, “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” or DIE. And he hates DIE. I mean he really hates it.

In a January 2022 National Post article Peterson said, “Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity — that radical leftist Trinity — is destroying us. Wondering about the divisiveness that is currently besetting us? Look no farther than DIE. Wondering — more specifically — about the attractiveness of Trump? Look no farther than DIE. When does the left go too far? When they worship at the altar of DIE, and insist that the rest of us, who mostly want to be left alone, do so as well. Enough already. Enough. Enough.”

Peterson believes the current system has some flaws but essentially works on “meritorious selection”. He implies that white people, especially white men, dominate so many places because they have pulled up their boot straps and risen to that level on their own merit. He says things like employment equity (or affirmative action in the US) are misguided and lead to unqualified members of equity seeking groups getting hired because, “there simply is not enough qualified BIPOC people in the pipeline to meet diversity targets quickly enough (BIPOC: black, indigenous and people of colour, for those of you not in the knowing woke).” 

Peterson’s claim that there aren’t enough qualified brown folks demonstrates his poor understanding of Canada’s federal Employment Equity Act. The Act does set EE group hiring targets for federally regulated organizations but those targets are based on the percentage of qualified members of those groups available in the workforce, known as workforce availability. 

So if, for example, a department is looking to hire engineers, and 7 percent of qualified engineers available in the workforce are women, they must try to achieve 7 percent female engineers in their organization. So saying there aren’t enough qualified people to meet the target makes no sense when the target directs organizations to choose only from pools of qualified candidates.

Peterson’s hate of EDI is rooted in two central beliefs: that society should prioritize individual – not group – rights and responsibilities, and that society should be based on equality of opportunity not equality of outcome.

The first belief focuses on “groups” like LGBTQ+ folks or women, asking for rights and Peterson opposing that with really logical sounding (at first) quotes like, “Groups can’t have rights because no group can be held responsible.” So what about things like the Persons case that gave women the right to be legally recognized as persons? Or what about when slavery was abolished and gave Black people the right not to be owned? In both cases it was individual women or Black people who were granted rights because of being part of a group – a critical nuance Peterson misses. 

But what about group responsibility? Peterson is right about not being able to hold groups responsible, but that’s not the point – it’s the individuals who are held responsible. Again, in the case of Black people and employment equity, individuals are held responsible for things like being honest about their qualifications and meeting their job requirements. If they don’t, they get fired (you can’t fire a group).

Peterson’s “equality of outcome” point is partly based on his misunderstanding of workforce availability and the evidence members of equity groups give to demonstrate the existence of systemic discrimination. 

Peterson says organizations like universities are forced to provide equality of outcome by being required to have the same percentage of each equity group at every staff level as the percentage of that equity group in the population. And he says that if the organizations fail to meet that target, equity groups accuse them of systemic discrimination and that’s too simplistic a way to claim systemic discrimination.

First, as explained before, Employment Equity Act hiring targets are based on workforce availability of qualified candidates, not the percentage of that group in the general population. Second, most equity groups’ claims of systemic discrimination are based on decades of empirical data that they had to fight to get collected – not assumptions.

Peterson sees Western society as having some flaws but being the merit based best system in the world that has improved the lives of millions of people. He ignores the fact that two of the “flaws” – slavery and Indigenous genocide – are the foundation of the West’s wealth. He also ignores the glaring evidence of current systemic inequity: all the brown people working in low paying, gig economy jobs at places like Walmart, Amazon and Uber.

Peterson and his followers reflect a disturbing trend. They enjoy lifestyles in a system that causes and/or aggravates problems that disproportionately affect marginalized folks, like climate change or all the systemic issues that led to COVID disproportionately killing racialized people. However, they aggressively resist collective solutions to these problems – especially those led by government – as violations of their freedom. The Ottawa “Freedom Convoy” occupation was an example of this.

Peterson and his supporters just want to be left alone – with occasional interruptions from all the brown, mostly immigrant people – who clean their hotel rooms and deliver their Amazon packages and Uber Eats. And they don’t want to talk at all about their role in contributing to the systemic discrimination that severely limits the choices – and therefore the freedom – of so many racialized people, corralling them into those low paying jobs – and keeping them there.

Categories
EDI Police reform

It’s time to give up on the myth of police reform

On February 23, we got more concrete evidence that trying to reform the police doesn’t work – and never will. Researchers with the Tracking Injustice project released their preliminary data on police-involved killings in Canada revealing there have been more than 700 police use-of-force deaths in Canada since the year 2000. And Black and Indigenous people accounted for 27% of those deaths, although a lack of race statistics means the real percentage could be much higher. So, despite the increased budgets for more training, hiring more officers – especially diverse ones – and expanding community policing, the cops keep killing people, especially Black and Indigenous people.

Police and their supporters keep telling us that the police need to be reformed, not abolished. They say we must be patient because “these things take time” but change will come. Yet, the evidence tells another story.

In May 2022, the Ottawa Police Service released its use-of-force race data showing they use force disproportionately on Black, Middle Eastern and Indigenous people. OPS Deputy Chief Bell presented the use-of-force race data as if they had collected it voluntarily. They didn’t. The Ontario government ordered them to collect it over two years ago just like the Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered them to collect race-based traffic stop data back in 2013. And nine years later the result is the same: the OPS treats Black, Indigenous and Middle Eastern people worse. Nine years of reform – more training, hiring more diverse officers, and expanding community policing – has done little to stop the police from disproportionately harming brown marginalized people.

Last year provided some of the strongest evidence of why the Ottawa Police Service in particular is beyond reform. 

2022 started with the “Freedom Convoy” occupation in Ottawa where the Ottawa police stood around doing nothing for the first three weeks. Then came the resignation of Ottawa’s first Black police chief, Peter Sloly, accompanied by media stories quoting “unnamed” OPS sources using the standard – and very racist – angry Black man narrative accusing Sloly of bullying and volatile behaviour that compromised the force’s ability to cope with the truck protest. Sloly had faced racist resistance from day one after he began making changes to address systemic racism and sexism among other issues. The Ottawa Police Services Board hired Sloy’s replacement, Eric Stubbs, three days before Ottawa’s election, despite calls to postpone the hiring until after the vote. And the Board didn’t just hire any guy to replace Sloly. They hired the guy who led the BC RCMP’s operation to violently remove Wet’suwet’en people protesting a pipeline being built on their land.

So, before diversity at the very top could fundamentally change the Ottawa Police Service – the OPS got rid of the diversity. Yet, the new chief keeps saying diversity and inclusion is one of the OPS’ priorities and that they plan to ensure plenty of diversity among the 25 new officers they plan to hire. But having a more diverse workforce didn’t stop five Black Memphis police officers from beating Tyre Nichols to death in January of this year. The OPS issued a statement condemning those officers supposedly because OPS officers would never be caught on video viciously beating a Black man who later died…well, except for Abdirahman Abdi.

More diverse officers don’t change policing – policing changes them. It changes them even if they work with units with nice, euphemistic names like SCORPION, the Street Crime Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood – or Neighborhood Resource Teams, like the OPS calls its latest “community policing” initiative. It changes them. And we will soon have data that will likely back this up… 

In November, 2022, the Ontario Human Rights Commission welcomed changes Ontario’s Solicitor General had made to police use-of-force reporting form including allowing it to “capture important contextual information about use of force incidents, such a…demographic details about the officer who submitted the report, such as their age, race, and gender identity.” (They also added the capability to collect factors that informed the reporting officer’s perception of the subject’s race, the subject’s perceived age and gender identity, de-escalation options used by the officer and the level of physical control used.) The problem is the word “allow”. If officers aren’t mandated to include their race, they likely won’t.

Another popular reform that people argue will reduce police violence are body cameras – especially after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. In June 2020, Ottawa Police Service Board acting chair Sandy Smallwood, told former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly that the Board had received several emails from members of the public demanding body-worn cameras for police officers and asked Sloly his opinion on them. In a July 2020 Ottawa Citizen article Sloly said research was “mixed at best” on how useful the cameras are at decreasing use of force by officers and that the financial impact of the pandemic on the police force would mean trade-offs would need to be made between any investments in (body-worn cameras) and other OPS and board priorities currently underway. 

Ottawa’s new police chief, Eric Stubbs, acknowledged the conflicting body camera research at the Ottawa Police Services Board’s February 2023 meeting – then the Board and Ottawa City Council approved the budget that includes a body camera pilot project – and everything else the OPS asked for. No trade-offs needed.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that reforms don’t work, some Black folks, including some very high profile ones, continue to advocate for reform.

In February, during Black History Month, George Floyd’s brother Terrence visited Ottawa and spoke at two events. In an interview on the popular Breakfast Club podcast he explained why his Brooklyn, New York-based We Are Floyd Foundation partners with the New York Police Department, “I want to change the narrative….I want to bring the narrative back from my era where you had the police playing basketball with us…you had them understanding our culture and our community…I mean you had the bad apples but the majority…we saw them interact with us.”

There are several problems with brother Floyd’s position. The first is that the narrative he wants to change “back” to is the one the police have been pushing for years – and still are. That is the idea that the problem is only because of “a few bad apples” and that the solution is increasing “community policing”. However, despite increasing police budgets being used to hire more diverse officers (i.e. good apples) and expanded community policing, the police continue to shoot and kill unarmed Black people – including 61 people – and counting – since George Floyd’s murder.

A student who heard Terrence Floyd speak in Ottawa was quoted saying that, “hearing from Black leaders in the community and from Floyd is motivation to continue conversations around equity, diversity and inclusion. Change doesn’t take place overnight, but seeing how the eyes are open towards the issue is beautiful.” This idea that talking is the way to end systemic oppression and that those talks take time to have impact, is core to the idea of reform. And that’s because reform is a way to give the appearance of change without actually making any fundamental change.

That’s what’s led to the explosion of the diversity and inclusion illusion: performative change that looks good – but doesn’t actually change anything.

And the ironic thing is that there is such a huge push back against equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives despite so much of it being performative. Popular anti EDI commentator, Jordan Peterson, got so popular attacking EDI that he left his job as a tenured psychology professor at the University of Toronto to write books and make YouTube videos and do stadium tours promoting his content.

Police love reform because it means more money. More money to hire more diverse officers. More money for training. More money for body cameras and…more money for performative EDI that changes nothing. 

It’s time to give up on the myth of police reform and continue defunding the police and reimagining community safety.

Note: After I posted and shared this post, a fellow abolitionist shared a great article by Critical Resistance distinguishing between reformist reforms which continue or expand the reach of policing, and abolitionist steps that work to chip away and reduce its overall impact. Some of the abolitionist steps include suspending the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation, prioritizing spending on community health, education and affordable housing and decreasing the size of the police force.