GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Wente's latest column....

She highlights another horrible human rights decision in Canada...
In March, 2005, Constable Michael Shaw was on patrol in the Bridle Path, an ultra-affluent Toronto neighbourhood he knew well. He was showing a female trainee the ropes. Down the street, he spotted an unfamiliar letter-carrier delivering the mail. He asked him for ID, ran his name through the computer, thanked him for his trouble and verified with a regular postie that the new guy was a fill-in. The letter-carrier was not insulted, detained or charged with any crime.

Innocuous? Not to Ronald Phipps, the fill-in letter-carrier. He is black. The cop is white. Mr. Phipps decided he'd been a victim of racial profiling, and took his case to the Human Rights Tribunal. In a ruling last month, the adjudicator agreed.

The decision makes for scary reading, because it says someone can be found guilty just for making someone else feel bad. “There is no need to establish an intention or motivation to discriminate,” it says. “[T]he focus of the enquiry is on the effect of the respondent's action on the complainant.”

According to the tribunal, “unconscious” discrimination is no different from “conscious” discrimination. And the onus is on the accused to prove he's innocent. “Once a prima facie case of discrimination has been established, the burden shifts to the respondent to provide a rational explanation which is not discriminatory. ... The respondent must offer an explanation which is credible on all the evidence.”

Community policing is a big deal in Toronto these days. Its essence is getting to know the people in the neighbourhood. Mr. Phipps was a stranger there. But the adjudicator didn't buy Constable Shaw's rationale. A white cop had stopped an African-Canadian in an affluent neighbourhood, and “on a balance of probabilities,” that made the cop guilty of discrimination.

No one can deny that black men continue to be unfairly singled out because of skin colour. According to one survey, two-thirds of African-American men say they've experienced racial profiling at some time. The only surprise is that the figure isn't higher.

But condemning a police officer as a racist for exercising judgment on the job is not how to improve race relations. As Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair has pointed out, the tribunal has set a standard nobody, however fair-minded, can meet. “You can have the best of intentions and be totally without bias, but none of that matters if someone wants to believe you are biased.”

By his own account, Mr. Phipps has suffered grievously since the incident in 2005. He told the Toronto Star he has trouble sleeping, has lost weight and is “teased mercilessly” by co-workers. He wants financial compensation (unspecified) for his pain and suffering, and, for good measure, has also brought a discrimination claim over the same incident against the police chief and the entire force. (It will be heard in September.)

According to human-rights commissioner Barbara Hall, the case sends a message that “systemic discrimination ... requires hard work to get rid of.” But it sends another message: The tribunal is an easy mark.

7 Comments:

Blogger Patsplace said...

I have seen the enemy and it is the HRC!!

12:48 AM  
Blogger Kit said...

Barbara Hall is a threat to all free thinking people.
She is the "Delores Umbridge" brought to life. She should be ashamed.

4:30 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is getting absolutely absurd.

Yet our wonderful government DOES NOTHING!

10:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This entire trend in western culture is so discouraging, and ironically it's producing a real decline in race relations.

For the past 30 years, things were getting better. Not "perfect" of course - but "better." Increasingly, black and white coworkers would go out to lunch together. Here in the US, more and more elected officials were black (and not just those representing black communities either.) More and more heads of major corporations were black.

Unfortunately, that trend is starting to change. The coverage of the Gates/Cambridge/Obama debacle makes you question whether black and white populations function in the same universe.

As a white person, I'm beginning to wonder if it's really prudent to even get to know a black person. First of all, he may hate me simply because I'm white. (If I hated him because he was black I'd be rightfully called a racist.) Or I may say something inadvertently that offends him and brands me a racist in his mind.

Very depressing. Very depressing.

11:43 AM  
Blogger Rightchik said...

Today at www.steynonline.com, Mark Steyn is donating half of all proceeds from his online store to a defense fund for Ezra Levant. If you want to help this Canadian hero - go buy a book or coffee mug or tshirt or all three!

12:54 PM  
Blogger Rose21 said...

One likely repercussion is that police will hesitate to approach black men in white neighborhoods -- leaving the door open to real criminal activity. Easier to ignore potential criminal activity than to risk this kind of human rights hassle. This decision is really diabolical.

4:52 PM  
Anonymous Dumbass White Guy said...

Rose21?

It's called FIDO.

F*ck
It
Drive
On

DaWG
A resident of America's Hat.©

7:21 PM  

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