Briarpatch Magazine » racism

Going Dutch: Reflections on nation, race and privilege

dave — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:03:53 +0000

**By Sadiqa Khan Briarpatch Magazine August 2008**

i. I stop at a roadside chip truck on a bright November afternoon. The chip truck worker is an older man leaning from an elevated window over a handful of customers.

-A medium fries with mayo, please. -You must be Dutch! Only the Dutch eat 'em that way. -Yeah, I am Dutch. -You know what else they like on their fries? -Peanut sauce. -What? No, mustard! Only the Dutch will ask for mustard. -Oh, really? -But you're not actually Dutch. -Yes, I am. -No, no. Come on, now.

ii. I am volunteering at a festival, working the doors of an event with a fellow volunteer, a tall, friendly man. We are seated at a desk together, searching through a box of name tags for our own names.

-Your name sounds Dutch, I say. -Yes, my parents are Dutch. -I'm from there, too. Do you speak Dutch at all? -No, not really. A bit of German. But I've been to Holland. To a little town in the north called Stadskanaal. -Oh, really. My aunt lives there. I've been to Stadskanaal lots of times. My mom's family is from the north. -Hey, small world! -Yeah. -But you're not Dutch, are you?

iii. I walk into a Dutch vice-consulate office to renew my passport. There are photographs on the wall: Amsterdam's narrow row houses and boats with curved, dark sails. I speak to the secretary, a woman with square-framed glasses on a gold chain.

-Hi, I'm here to renew my passport. -This is the Dutch vice-consulate. -I know. -You need to have a Dutch passport.

iv. At a crowded reception following a graduation ceremony, an acquaintance introduces me to a stylish, white-haired woman.

-This is Sadiqa. She's Dutch, too. -You mean Indonesian! -No, Dutch. The woman turns to my acquaintance. -How can she be Dutch?

I do not know how to divide myself into fractions when it comes to my ethnicity; I cannot say how much of me is my first language, or the food that was common on our family table, or where that food was grown. A genealogist might classify me as half Dutch and half Kenyan, and within the Kenyan half, several eighths and sixteenths Pakistani and Afghani.

Fighting fire with fire: Anti-racist organizing in Alberta

dave — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:58:29 +0000

**By Ava McDougall* Briarpatch Magazine August 2008**

*Author's note: With the exception of Jason Devine and Bonnie Collins, all anti-racist activists quoted in this article have been given pseudonyms. The writer's name has also been changed. The reason for this should be obvious: neo-Nazis are dangerous, and those who organize to stop them put themselves at risk.

Even more dangerous than neo-Nazis, though, is the prospect that the actions of a few extremists could distract attention from the systemic discrimination and violence that indigenous peoples, people of colour and queer people (to name just a few of our society's marginalized groups) encounter every day.

Blatant racism may infuriate or disgust us, but so too should elevated rates of poverty, violence, and poor health among members of oppressed groups-the real-world consequences of systemic racism and discrimination. Neo-Nazi organizing in our communities demands our attention, but so do these more subtle but far more widespread manifestations of racism.

Jason Devine and his fiancée Bonnie Collins live with their four sons, ages three to nine, in a cluttered townhouse on a quiet side street in Calgary. Both Devine and Collins are active members of the Communist Party of Canada and Anti-Racist Action (Calgary). On February 12, 2008, while the boys slept upstairs, Devine heard a crash and saw a flash outside his kitchen window. He knew immediately that someone had thrown a firebomb at his house.

“Racism is a cowering thing:” Ward Churchill on calling things by their rightful name

dave — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:52:28 +0000

jon schledewitz/global aware By Ward Churcill Briarpatch Magazine November 2005 Earlier this year, Indigenous rights activist and scholar Ward Churchill spoke in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Churchill titled his talk A Little Matter of Genocide: Linking US Aggression Abroad to the Domestic Oppression of Indigenous Peoples. At the time, Churchill was at the centre of an enormous controversy back in [...]