OPPOSE RACIST CAMPAIGN
AGAINST
IMMIGRANTS
(The
following article is from
the January 1-15,
2008
issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles
can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in
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Resolution
adopted by the Central
Committee, Communist Party of Canada, Dec. 8-9, 2007
The Central
Committee of the Communist
Party of Canada views with grave alarm the recent attempts to whip up
racist and anti-immigrant hatred across the country. Some expressions
of this campaign have emerged recently during the "Reasonable
Accommodation" hearings in Quebec, around the fabricated issue of
voting by veiled Muslim women, and from a few amateur sports officials
who want to ban athletes who wear head coverings for religious reasons.
Racist and
anti-immigrant concepts are increasingly advanced under the guise of
defending secularism and the equality rights of women. In reality, such
positions serve only to isolate and marginalize racialized groups,
including the women of colour who are supposedly to be protected, by
seeking to impose the "superior cultural values" of "mainstream
society" upon such groups.
For example,
no Muslim group has demanded that veiled women be given the right to
vote without revealing their faces (a right which already exists for
those Canadians who vote by mail). But this non-existent "problem" has
been used to obscure the real scandal that the changes to voting
regulations and procedures in recent years (such as the requirement to
show photo ID with a street address) has created a crisis in which as
many as one million Canadians would not be allowed to cast a ballot if
a federal election was held today. Similarly, there is no logical
reason to conclude that a head scarf poses any danger to soccer players
or other athletes, and there are no rules against such head coverings
in most sports, but a few referees and judges have taken it upon
themselves to promote hatred and divisions by arbitrarily ejecting
Muslim athletes from competitions.
In Quebec,
the urgent need for dialogue about racism and sexism has been misused
by some participants during the "Reasonable Accommodation" process to
promote the racist concept that "backward" groups such as Muslims
should adopt the "culture of the (white) majority" and to advance the
false idea that "reason" is the property of the state. Preoccupation
with the "problem" of a small number of veiled women has deflected
attention from the pervasive influence of racism and sexism within the
larger society. The media in English-speaking Canada has seized on
these expressions to spread the false claim that racist ideology is a
problem exclusive to "backward" Quebec. Yet racism remains just as
prevalent outside Quebec; we note the longstanding reality of
Canada-wide police brutality against Aboriginal peoples and immigrants,
and the denial of inherent national rights of Aboriginal peoples, for
example.
The Communist
Party of Canada has a long and proud record of advocating the
separation of church and state, including the position that public
funds should not be used to support private religious school systems.
We stand for policies which advance the goal of greater inclusion and
equality within Canadian society, including promotion of the rights of
oppressed and racialized groups and women. We view the emergence of
racist and anti-immigrant forces as an extremely dangerous development,
which can only divide working people and weaken our collective
resistance to the corporate-driven attack on social programs and
equality rights. Far from advancing equality, attacks on the personal
decisions by some people to wear head coverings or religious symbols
open the door further for the imperialist drive towards war and
repression.
The Communist
Party of Canada urges the labour movement and all progressive and
democratic forces to mount a powerful and united response to this hate
campaign, and to instead demand urgent action to tackle the pressing
problems of poverty, violence, criminalization and racism faced by
racialized groups and women of colour in Canada today.
Found at:
http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint09/OPPOSE_RACIST_CAMPAIGN_AGAINST_IMMIGRANTS.html