Saturday, August 27, 2011

Toronto's "Diversity" Gatekeeper Has Her Head Up Her Arse

Uzma Shakir is a much-honoured community activist (and rabble rouser) who's in charge of Toronto's Office of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights--an august position, indeed. In that capacity, she's the one who signed off on--who saw nothing untoward about--our local Khomeinists convening an annihilation celebration in a city-owned venue.

No surprise there since she's one of those "diversity"-mongers--the ones who've ingested (and become heavily invested in) the Marxist mumbo jumbo such that they can belch it out ad nauseum. Here she is, for example, in '08 writing about how Toronto sucks because of rich white people (a thought that's not considered racist in her circles because a non-white, non-"hegemon" has expressed it):
A closer look at the communities of the wealthiest city in Canada paints a disturbing picture. Multiple reports show that the middle class is increasingly disappearing and income polarization is growing. A small group of rich people is getting richer while the larger proportion of the population is getting poorer. Even more alarming is that this income disparity is manifested in two critical ways in the city: the spatial and ethnoracial divides. Wealthier white people live in the center of the city surrounded by a sea of poorer ethno-racial communities. Between 1980 and 2000, while the poverty rate for the non-racialized population (i.e., those of white, European or Caucasian heritage) fell by 28 percent, poverty among racialized families rose by 361 percent. This is happening at a time when, on average, immigrant skills and education are higher than the Canadian average.       
Indeed, Torontonians today are virtually all bilingual (if not trilingual or “quadlingual,” as my son calls himself), but they don’t always just speak English and/or French. For many Torontonians, the shores of Africa or fields of Asia shape their history and nostalgia and language more than the landscape of Europe. They are highly educated, skilled and mobile, and internationally experienced, just not in Canada. By 2011, according to the 1999 report Immigration, Labor Force & Age Structure of the Population by Human Resources and Social Development Canada, an incredible 100 percent of net labor market growth is expected to be through immigration, yet today, the systemic non-utilization of this immigrant labor costs the Canadian economy approximately CAN$4.97 billion.
What kind of future are we hoping to build, and what is the role of planning in Canada’s global cities in making that future real? Are we trying to build a future that takes the diverse resources of the globe and hammers them into a mythical Canadian bilingual/bicultural shape? This mythical Canada never really existed except as a colonial construct. The fantasy of bilingual, bicultural Canada never acknowledged Aboriginal peoples’ multiple identities as part of the national lore. Or are we trying to build a future that deconstructs and then reconstructs Canada in the interest of equity? Canada is worth investing in, but we must remember that Canada is not a final product but rather an experiment unfolding where we must all have an equal opportunity to write the national story or else we will perpetuate historical absences while creating new voids well into the future...
"New voids"--ooo, scary. But not nearly as scary as annihilationist-minded Khomeinists getting thumbs up to spew their Zionhass from the city's "diversity" Grand Poobah.

Hey, Mayor Ford, unlike Usma, I can tell the difference between fake fears and real ones. Let me be your gatekeeper!
 
Toronto coat of arms
"DIVERSITY OUR STRENGTH"--our city motto ranks right up there with "Four legs good, two legs bad," and "Arbeit Macht Frei"

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