Open Letter re: Rob Ford
blogTO received via Karen Sun an open letter written by Victoria Shen (Co-President of the Toronto Chapter of the Chinese Canadian National Council) in reaction to Toronto city councillor Rob Ford's recent comments. We've decided to publish it here in its entirety.
The comments made by Councillor Rob Ford on Wednesday (March 5, 2008) were appalling and offensive. They were offensive because the term "Oriental" is outdated and derogatory. For those wishing a more thorough analysis of the term, we invite you to review Edward Said's "Orientalism".
Racism is a belief or ideology that members of a race possess characteristics or abilities that make them superior or inferior to other races. So while the term "Asian" may be more socially acceptable, any essentialist generalization about a racial group is racist. This is regardless of whether the generalization is intended to be complimentary or derogatory.
The irrational fear and moral panic that a racial or other minority group is "taking over" has historically led to oppressive and even violent attempts to control such groups. Within Canada's own history, legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Continuous Journey Regulation which operated to block South Asian immigration, and the War Measures Act which authorized the internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII, all radically curtailed the rights and civil liberties of Asian peoples. Such patently discriminatory policies were justified on the basis that they were necessary in the interest of protecting "Canadians", the Canadian economy and national security.
We, at the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTO), are thankful that other City Councillors, the Mayor and the media have recognized that the comments made by Councillor Ford were racist, unacceptable and worthy of censure. But we are not fooled. Politically correct speech does not mean the absence of racism.
The issue for us is not that Councillor Ford has made inappropriate comments, but that a City Councillor can hold beliefs we consider to be racist yet still be elected into office by his constituency and remain in a position of power to formulate public policy.
Despite the diversity of our city, people of colour remain woefully underrepresented in City Council. We ask, why is it that the people of Toronto would rather have racism than people of colour in City Council?
It is not enough to deride and be outraged by racist comments. Words are empty. Sanctions are merely palliative. We challenge those who are genuinely offended by Councillor Ford's comments to run for office at the next Municipal election. It is the only way.
Victoria Shen
Co-President
Chinese Canadian National Council, Toronto Chapter
Photo by 416style.
Comments (29)
Welcome to "Rob Ford is a lunatic," episode 327. How this idiot has lasted this long is beyond me.
This is news? Who cares what people think of each other. What I find cumbersome and woefully oppressive are people that feel they need to nitpick over every detail, it's just so much unnecessary drama. Sticks and stones people, get a grip.
Yes, this is news. A Toronto city councillor making statements like this is despicable, and worthy of our attention, most certainly.
Mac:
It isn't a matter or attitude of sticks and stones. Generally when you are referring a group of people are taking over, it creates a sense of fear among some people that have insecurities. That they look at it as a threat, and begin taking their fustrations on a particular group.
You wouldn't feel the same way, if you have been targeted based on your ethnicity or way you look. For example, if you were gay and someone was to say "Gays are taking over the designing industry." To some people, they would look at it as a threat and really dumb people would act out and hurt people form that group.
Whoa there Toronto, let's simmer down.
First of all, I'm Asian, Oriental, Chinese etc. Whatever. I've read Ford's comments and to be honest, I couldn't care less what he thinks. Asians do work hard, so what? The Asian population in Canada has been growing, so what? Sure he could have put it much more eloquently than he did, but I'd rather a councilor who should choose his words better, than the goons that are sitting on council now. I'm not condoning Ford's comment, but we have much bigger fish to fry sitting on council than Ford.
"We challenge those who are genuinely offended by Councillor Ford's comments to run for office at the next Municipal election. It is the only way."
If anyone does decide to take up Victoria Shen's challenge and run against Ford at the next election, drop me a line. After all, he does represent my ward and I'd love to talk to potential candidates about the reasons why he keeps on winning.
So now the word "oriental" is racist, because Victoria Shen attributes negative stereotypes to it?
Or is only when a white guy says "oriental" that it's racist.
We are not fooled indeed.
As a person of Asian heritage who has lived in Toronto and Montreal, I have to say this incident is minor compared to what you get in Quebec.
I'm Chinese and I wasn't offended by his comments. True, he could've used better wording, but he didn't say anything that wasn't really true. Chinese ARE hard working people and we are multiplying like crazy here in Toronto (Canada) so we are taking over... although the way it came out, it can be misconstrued as racist.
I'm fine with 'Oriental', it's the easiest way to describe Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc. and people know to which people you're referring to when you say it. Besides, China/Japan/Korea aren't the only Asians, there are the Russians, Indians, Mongolians, etc. so why the exclusivity?
I am quite shocked that some of my fellow Asians do not see the how problematic Ford's statements are. The biggest issue isn't even the use of Oriental, though we should still be critical about this. Kenny, do you not find such a term euro-centric? It is referring to a group of people from the perspective of Europeans and is very much rooted in colonialism, orientals - people from the east of us. The connotations are very troubling.
The major issue though is as Victoria mentioned, the essentialization of a racialized identity. Firstly, I don't think I need to elaborate, since it's pretty obvious, race is a social construct, it's not based on reality. There is no inherent attribute that can be placed on to any race, negative or positive. To do that is to support the notion that specific characteristics are shared by people of a racialized identity. It's these same sort of processes that can explain institutional discrimination faced by asians and other people of colour in Canada.
Notions of "taking over" is also very much rooted in the North American history of discrimination against Chinese - ie. 'Yellow Peril'. These sort of ideas were what justified the disenfranchisement of Chinese in the late-1800s, the headtax, the exclusion-act, barring Chinese from certain professions etc. And this in itself arose from imperialist and capitalist processes (competition for limited employment by workers of various racialized/non-racialized groups/employers fermenting such views to prevent solidarity).
We must be very critical of such comments. It may just be words, but this is indicative of the very society we live in. Everyone should take some time out to study the history of oppression faced by Chinese in Canada.
Did you guys watch all those athletic Negroes at the ACC playing basketball? Boy, those Negroes sure are good at jumping.
What? I'm sorry, was that racist? Is Negro an outdated and pejorative term? But I was just complimenting them on their athleticism, it was an honest mistake. I'm not being racist, it's true that most basketball players are Negroes or of the Negroid race. That is not a stereotype, it is a fact. Just look at the NBA.
I refuse to apologize.
If Rob Ford said we all had small penises, I would've been really pissed! ;)
Look, we all know it's not the first time he has said something politically incorrect but I have to agree with what Royson James said in Friday's Star.
As ball fumbled at city hall, mayor tackles Ford
Ford refuses to apologize for Asian comments
Don't expect a public apology from Rob Ford over remarks he made about "Oriental people slowly taking over.''Mar 07, 2008 04:30 AM
Royson James
Toronto city councillors spend so much time muddying each other with gutter politics that they miss the leaching away of precious revenue.
Reporter Paul Moloney reveals in today's Star that huge amounts have been lost at city hall because finance officials sat on development fees ? $42 million last year ? instead of placing them in an interest-bearing account.
The interest revenue would have topped $1.5 million last year, enough to keep skating rinks, recreation centres and libraries open, even in tight financial times.
"With that kind of money you could ice a lot of rinks ? even in the summer," said Councillor Brian Ashton.
The revelation about money management is studiously hidden in an impenetrable report approved at city council this week. So obtuse is the finance document, most councillors probably still don't know what it is they approved.
It took steady rookie Adrian Heaps, struggling to remain unencumbered by the partisan alliances that mark city council, to discover the lost opportunity and get it fixed.
But while Mayor David Miller and his backers were busy yesterday lambasting one council adversary for an obvious faux pas, they might have spent the time looking for more millions presumably buried in the $8.2 billion budget.
Miller lit into Councillor Rob Ford yesterday ? smashing the gadfly with a rhetorical bazooka because Ford made ham-fisted comments about "workaholic Orientals," comments some found offensive.
During council debate Wednesday about store openings on statutory holidays, Ford bolstered his pro-shopping views by pointing to what he said was the legendary working habits of Asians.
Meaning it as a compliment, no doubt, Ford said: "Go to the Orient ... go to Hong Kong, okay... you want to see workaholics? Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out ... that's why they're successful in life ... I'm telling you, Oriental people, they're slowly taking over ... They're hard, hard, workers."
Now, it's politically incorrect and archaic to say Oriental instead of Asian; and to say "they're slowly taking over" is a no-no to most clear-thinking individuals, much less a city councillor in diverse Toronto.
But was Ford being malicious or racist? Unlikely.
When Ford intends to harm, he's usually excruciatingly impolitic and direct ? a trait that inexplicably endears him to some constituents, but earns him disrepute elsewhere.
Remember his "waste of skin" put-down of one colleague? Or the slur against an Italian councillor? His drunkenness and profanity at a Maple Leaf hockey game required a public apology. In other words, you don't have to go looking for reasons to slam the guy.
However yesterday, some councillors, including the mayor, couldn't resist. After all, Ford can't resist pointing out their wasteful spending habits.
"Outrageous and absolutely unacceptable," was how Miller described Ford's comments, a day later. "It's wrong. An elected official should know better. He has to start by profusely apologizing. It's unacceptable in this city."
It is understandable that the majority of councillors hate Ford and salivate at the prospect of finding something to discredit the man. But piling on needlessly when the maverick meant no harm is misplaced anger.
Of course, the boorish Ford and his supporters only added fuel to the fire yesterday when humility would have been the appropriate response. He can't help himself. Wish that council could help us by looking after our (millions of) loonies.
Royson James usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Email: rjames@thestar.ca
It may be true that this was not intended to offend. But it just shows the level of insensitivity Ford has once again shown to issues of racialization and racism. You guys need to understand it is not an issue of compliment or criticism, it's an issue of essentialization. Please take a more nuanced historical approach to understanding this, it's the other side of the same coin. This is the sort of behaviour that leads to genocide, and segregation, and maintains current institutional racism.
Rob Ford should apologize. It becomes much more than an 'honest mistake' when it's linked to century-old systems of oppression.
"Racism is a belief or ideology that members of a race possess characteristics or abilities that make them superior or inferior to other races."
I guess i'm a racist then.
I think that there are certainly physical and mental/behavioural differences between races that developed during the ice age when humans subdivided into different breeding groups due to environmental constraints to population exchange. During this time there was limited gene flow between the different breeding groups (ie. races) and perhaps introgression from neanderthals or other archaic humans.
The ice age is over, mass transportation is here and humans seem to be evolving more quickly (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/104/52/20753) and there is most certainly a more exchange of gene flow between the races.
I think that the physical differences seen between modern human races (breeding groups) occurred after the switch to an agrarian lifestyle within the last 10, 000 years. This is supported by genetic analysis of skin colour, hair colour/texture and other physical traits that indicates these mutations are relatively recent (in evolutionary terms)and the going theory is that local agrarian diets forced much of these changes.
I do not believe that a single race is superior but there are some characteristics that may be different on average between the races resulting in superior characteristics but not superior races (the idea of a superior race/species is preposterous in evolutionary terms).
I believe that you should take individuals you meet as the individuals they are and that the differences in racial characteristics are "on average".
I also believe people should be free to marry, have sex, raise a family with another adult from any race.
I have no hangups about marrying, having children, raising a family with a female of any race - black,white, Indian, native American, yellow (i guess if we are allowed to label people, white, black and whatnot but can't use the term oriental i have to use yellow because Asian is too broad)
If i have offspring, having my future offspring "race-mix" would not be an issue as race is not something i worry about.
I do not believe that laws should specifically target a Canadian citizens race as in south Africa, the US until the civil rights movement etc, Nazi Germany etc.
I do not believe that citizenship should be awarded according to someone's race (ie. only European Caucasians can be full citizens).
I am not white. I am brown.
Yet, I'm a racist for believing evolution would have selected different mental as well as physical traits for different races because of the limited gene flow that has occurred since the beginning of the last ice age.
I should have also added that most of the mental/behavioural differences between races that developed during the past 10, 000 years as well.
Ms. Shen: The issue for us is not that Councillor Ford has made inappropriate comments, but that a City Councillor can hold beliefs we consider to be racist yet still be elected into office by his constituency and remain in a position of power to formulate public policy.
Matt: Welcome to "Rob Ford is a lunatic," episode 327. How this idiot has lasted this long is beyond me.
Right, because the folks in Rexdale who vote him in are purely white-bred.
Honestly, folks, it couldn't be because he works his ass off. It couldn't be that he's the only one who gives a damn about how taxpayer dollars are spent. It couldn't be because he's active coaching football in the community.
Just because he doesn't fit in to your farcically fantasy world of everyone living arm in arm, and actually speaks his mind, as opposed to this politically correct crap that has crippled this city, doesn't mean you should go around jumping on him every time he screws up. Your messiah, David Miller, once said all our cops are in jail. Do I need to remind you of that again? Didn't think so.
Speaking of which, has anyone heard a councillor who is Asian actually raise a stink about this whole issue? What's that, it's only privileged white upper-middle class councillors who are close allies of the Mayor that are raising a stink?
For those of us who don't believe this is a real city, this has further fueled that ammunition. We should be so lucky if Rob Ford runs for and becomes Mayor in 2 1/2 years. It would provide some hope for this sorry excuse of a city.
Ford suffers from a dialectic deficiency, not racism. Give him a break and teach him how he can improve his communication skills.
Toronto is the most tolerant and multi-cultural city in the universe. If the world 'Oriental' something my kind hearted 95 year old immigrant grandmother would say because she's out of touch with the most PC terms offends us then we are really at the forefront of humanitarian progression.
I've never heard so much crap in my life.
HEY TORONTO!! YOUR CITY IS FALLING APART AT THE SEAMS BECAUSE OF THE IDIOTS RUNNING IT!! PAY ATTENTION TO THAT INSTEAD OF SOME WELL MEANING, ALBEIT "POLITICALLY INCORRECT" COMMENTS FROM A COUNCILOR WHO ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT YOUR CITY!
DUH! This is the dumbest city in Canada...it's denizens are truly pathetic
Orientals are Lazy, Blacks are terrible drivers, Whites are Liars, Natives are good in Math, Eskimos are great athletes. Middle Easterners are great pilots.
How does the above sound? Am I a racist?
I am just trying to prove a point. No one race/ethnicity is better or worse. There is good in all. There is bad in all.
I am just slightly offended at his statement(only the "taking over" part). But I honestly dont care if he apologizes or not, because if he doesnt, then there's nothing anyone can really do about it, except maybe NOT vote for him if he runs for anything ever again. Plus if he doesnt apologize, it'll just prove how much of an ignorant fatass he is.
For everyone creating sterotypes and saying that he's not being racist, I'd like to point out that there's no reason for him to even make the statement. It's impolite. And BECAUSE HE IS REFUSING TO APOLOGIZE, MEANS THAT HE DOES NOT TAKE THAT STATEMENT BACK, AND IT'S TELLING ME THAT HE MEANS WHAT HE SAID AND IS JUST SIMPLY BEING RACIST.
If he'd just lug his fat ass out of his house and say a simple "sorry" then I'm sure everything will be fine. >_>
Because he's a middle-aged white male who picked the wrong word out of an outdated academic lexicon, he's obviously ignorant and racist?. The whole debate over Oriental being an ethnocentric term is employed so callously. "White", "black" can be argued as ethnocentric, likewise with pretty much any racial term, even on a historical basis. We're all effin racists (?). Isolating Rob Ford's sound byte from his other speeches is like me quoting Victoria Shen from her article:
"We ask, why is it that the people of Toronto would rather have racism than people of colour in City Council?"
and saying she is implying "whites" are racist and all "people of colour" aren't. People of colour? What a racist term! But still better than "Coloured people"! Well, at least until we find a another term-de-jour. I think "Asians" is a terribly racist and unthoughtful term, and so is "white"! What is politically acceptable? But I digress.
So my non-point is... we could all do a lil "better"? Shen could have written a less crappy peice of rhetoric. Rob Ford could have consulted Shen (ohhhh the allinclusive voice for the Chinese) before giving his lil speech. And I, could have a drink to wash this stick-up-my-ass out.
Sorry but I do not know one asian person that was offended by Rob's comments. Complete joke..its like calling an italian, mediterranean, and being offended.
Get over it people and worry about your family, paying your mortgage off and enjoying life, other then worrying about what others say or do......
like hime or not, Rob is probably the most hardest working guy in city counsel. Honestly, who in their right mind puts up a hissy fit over something so damn trivial as "oriental" or "asian" grow up all of you pc touchy feely whining jackasses and quit making issues out of nothing!! Jerks
I agree with john. Shut the hell up and start protesting why the hell we pay so much bloody tax and get "blank" all in return. Not why someone said "Oriental" or "Asian". This kind of bs shifts focus away from the real issues. That's their plan you idiots. We keep electing socialist losers in Toronto who mismanage our money and THIS is what people care about? Idiots.
Dear Adam,
This is to point out to you and the majority of City Councillors that voted to consider the Word Oriental as being RACIST and Offensive to review your websites and the city 's Official Website. The following is taken from The City's Official Website.
According to the vote this morning the city must apoligize to all Asians for describing them as Oriental in Official Documents.
I request that the Speaker apoligizes on behalf of the city for using RACIST LANGUAGE IN ITS OFFICIAL WEBSITE AND LITERATURE.
Go to city of toronto website and key in Oriental in Seach area and you will get all city docoments that contain the word Oriental.
Does anybody know what Rod Ford thinks about lesbains? I'm sure Sue Ann Levy would like to know. : )
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