We have met the enemy... He is on the internet - by Jon

The big news at Queen's University hit the front page of the Toronto Star last weekend. You can check out the article here.

Twenty-three years on this planet as a Black and Jewish person, including the last few as a "serious" race scholar has taught me one unavoidable fact: trying to talk to people about the links between race and social disadvantage is usually an enormous waste of time. On one side, you have white people who don't want to believe that their skin colour has brought them any kind of advantage. On the other side, you have visible minorities who refuse to believe that their successes and failures are in any way related to their race. Both sides of the same just-world hypothesis.

Of course, then you have to problematize what you mean by visible minority. Are the Chinese in Canada, strong in numbers, economic and political power, a disadvantaged group? What of this "white" category? You can safely group white people in terms of social advantage in relation to vm's, but how do you convince a third-generation Italian-Canadian that they have lots in common with the second generation Greek-Canadian?

And then, you have to add class and socioeconomic status to the mix. A poor urban white kid has a significantly harder time getting to University than does a middle-class suburban black kid, but who makes this comparison anyway? Of course, when you correct for class, the white kid is still ahead, but that's neither here nor there.

What I'm getting at is, this is a very serious debate around a number of issues that people can rarely see past their own prejudices to study. As evidence, I give you the Queen's University Livejournal Community post about the subject.

One final thing... I had a quick look at the personal blog of the person who started this debate. I think their post about Hurricane Katrina reveals a lot about how students around here actually think. They said the following:

There is no reason that Americans should be suffering the way that they are. Babies being raped and dying because of it in the SuperDome? What is this, Rwanda?

Rwanda, indeed.