By: Linda Diebel Canada, Published on Sat Jul 21 2007

'Ghetto dude' email sent by mistake: provinceEvon Reid couldn't believe his eyes yesterday morning when he opened an email from the Ontario government's cabinet office where he'd applied for a position.

Evon Reid couldn't believe his eyes yesterday morning when he opened an email from the Ontario government's cabinet office where he'd applied for a position.

"This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before," said the email to the University of Toronto honours student from the very person handling his job application.That was it. One stark sentence.

"Ghetto dude? It means I'm black. It's very insulting," Reid told the Star yesterday. "It's still pretty shocking to me."

As he sees it, the email explains why he hasn't gotten a followup interview for a job as a media analyst. He applied July 3 but missed a July 10 call from Aileen Siu in the cabinet office.

Although he called her back and sent followup emails, there was no response. Until yesterday's email.

"Based on my resumé I deserved to be called, but I was not worthy of being called back once they heard my mother's voice and my voice," said Reid, 22. "She has a Jamaican accent and it's about the way I talk. There's a nuance."

And so he asks: "Is it standard policy in the (Dalton) McGuinty cabinet office not to hire any ghetto dudes?"

The email was never intended for Reid, according to Siu, who learned she had sent it to him only when the Star telephoned yesterday.

An acting team leader in cabinet office hiring, she said she was "multi-tasking" Thursday when she hit the wrong button and copied Reid on an email she was sending to a job-search colleague.

"It wasn't directed at Evon at all. That was internal ... It didn't have anything to do with any of the applicants," said Siu, 26, and a recent U of T political science graduate.She insisted the email didn't refer to anyone "outside my circle of friends."

Siu acknowledged the term is negative but said, "I don't even know what nationality he is, right?" She added she's of Asian descent and doesn't want anyone to think she makes racially based judgments.

Reached on vacation in the Maritimes, Craig Sumi, manager of Siu's department, last night referred to her as "an unclassified, part-time employee ... low level.""I don't know where you're going with this," he said.

Evon Reid

However, he termed the email "totally inappropriate ... a complete error in judgment" and said he'd left a message of apology late yesterday on Reid's voice mail.According to Siu, Reid is still a candidate for the position he sees as "a dream job for any political science student/political junkie such as myself."

He had been instantly intrigued by the job posting on the U of T website as a foot in the door at Queen's Park.

"A very challenging and interesting position which is a critical part of day-to-day media monitoring and analysis for the Government of Ontario," said the posting.

The work would be "for use by senior levels of government ... (applicant must) write high-level summaries of important issues and events ... (working in) the most technologically advanced and comprehensive media operation in Canada."

Reid thought he'd be a good candidate. His resumé appears stellar:A summer course in international management strategies at the University of Hong Kong; one credit short of an honours degree in political science at U of T; completed project on paradigm shifts in United States foreign policy; working on another to evaluate the effects of electoral reform on public policy.

Extensive job experience; Get Reel Festival organizer; founder of Canadian International Peace project (at U of T's Scarborough campus); participant in Forum for Young Canadians on Parliament Hill; etc., etc.

In a reference letter, an executive with White Oaks Conference Resort called Reid "truly a valuable asset to our company ... a trustworthy, dependable young man that takes initiative in work that has to be done."

Reid saw another reason for the email. "I'm from Malvern," in Scarborough, he said. "The community I live in has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in Canada. I'd hate to think that this (memo) accounts for that."

By NEIL MacFARQUHARNovember 28, 2007

To Muslim Girls, Scouts Offer a Chance to Fit InMINNEAPOLIS — Sometimes when Asma Haidara, a 12-year-old Somali immigrant, wants to shop at Target or ride the Minneapolis light-rail system, she puts her Girl Scout sash over her everyday clothes, which usually include a long skirt worn over pants as well as a swirling head scarf.

She has discovered that the trademark green sash — with its American flag, troop number (3009) and colorful merit badges — reduces the number of glowering looks she draws from people otherwise bothered by her traditional Muslim dress.

“When you say you are a girl scout, they say, ‘Oh, my daughter is a girl scout, too,’ and then they don’t think of you as a person from another planet,” said Asma, a slight, serious girl with a bright smile. “They are more comfortable about sitting next to me on the train.”

Scattered Muslim communities across the United States are forming Girl Scout troops as a sort of assimilation tool to help girls who often feel alienated from the mainstream culture, and to give Muslims a neighborly aura. Boy Scout troops are organized with the same inspiration, but often the leap for girls is greater because many come from conservative cultures that frown upon their participating in public physical activity.

By teaching girls to roast hot dogs or fix a flat bicycle tire, Farheen Hakeem, one troop leader here, strives to help them escape the perception of many non-Muslims that they are different.

Scouting is a way of celebrating being American without being any less Muslim, Ms. Hakeem said.

“I don’t want them to see themselves as Muslim girls doing this ‘Look at us, we are trying to be American,’ ” she said. “No, no, no, they are American. It is not an issue of trying.”

The exact number of Muslim girl scouts is unknown, especially since, organizers say, most Muslim scouts belong to predominantly non-Muslim troops. Minneapolis is something of an exception, because a few years ago the Girl Scout Council here surveyed its shrinking enrollment and established special outreach coordinators for various minorities. Some 280 Muslim girls have joined about 10 predominantly Muslim troops here, said Hodan Farah, who until September was the Scout coordinator for the Islamic community.

Nationally, the Boy Scouts of America count about 1,500 youths in 100 clubs of either Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts sponsored by Islamic organizations, said Gregg Shields, a spokesman for the organization.

The Girl Scouts’ national organization, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., has become flexible in recent years about the old trappings associated with suburban, white, middle-class Christian scouting. Many troops have done

Farheen Hakeem, right, with a predominantly Muslim Girl Scout troop she leads in Minneapolis.

away with traditions like saying grace before dinner at camp, and even the Girl Scout Promise can be retooled as needed.

“On my honor I will try to serve Allah and my country, to help people and live by the Girl Scout law,” eight girls from predominantly Muslim Troop 3119 in Minneapolis recited on one recent rainy Sunday before setting off for a cookout in a local park.

Some differences were readily apparent, of course. At the cookout, Ms. Hakeem, a former Green Party candidate for mayor, negotiated briefly with one sixth grader, Asha Gardaad, who was fasting for the holy month of Ramadan.

“If you break your fast, will your mother get mad at me?” Ms. Hakeem asked. Asha shook her head emphatically no.

The troop leader distributed supplies: hot dogs followed by s’mores for dessert. All was halal — that is, in adherence with the dietary requirements of Islamic law — with the hot dogs made of beef rather than pork.

It was Asha’s first s’more. “It’s delicious!” she exclaimed, licking sticky goop off her fingers as thunder crashed outside the park shelter with its roaring fire. “It’s a good way to break my fast!”

Women trying to organize Girl Scout troops in Muslim communities often face resistance from parents, particularly immigrants from an Islamic culture like that of Somalia, where tradition dictates that girls do housework after school.

In Nashville, where Ellisha King of Catholic Charities helps run a Girl Scout troop on a shoestring to assist Somali children with acculturation, most parents vetoed a camping trip, for example. They figured years spent as refugees in tents was enough camping, Ms. King recalled.

But a more common concern among parents is that the Girl Scouts will somehow dilute Islamic traditions.

“They are afraid you are going to become a blue-eyed, blond-haired Barbie doll,” said Asma, the girl who at times makes her sash everyday attire. Asma noted that her mother had asked whether she was joining some Christian cabal. “She was afraid that if we hang out with Americans too much,” the young immigrant said, “it will change our culture or who we are.”

Troop leaders win over parents by explaining that various activities incorporate Muslim traditions. In Minneapolis, for instance, Ms. Hakeem helped develop the Khadija Club, named for the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, which exposes older girls to the history of prominent Muslim women.

Suboohi Khan, 10, won her Bismallah (in the name of God) ribbon by writing 4 of God’s 99 names in Arabic calligraphy and decorating them, as well as memorizing the Koran’s last verse, used for protection against gossips and goblins. Otherwise, she said, her favorite badge involved learning “how to make body glitter and to see which colors look good on us” and “how to clean up our nails.”

Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. does not issue religious badges, but endorses those established by independent groups. Gulafshan K. Alavi started one such group, the Islamic Committee on Girl Scouting, in Stamford, Conn., in 1990. The demand for information about Muslim badges, Mrs. Alavi said, has grown to the point where this year she had the pamphlet listing her club’s requirements printed rather than sending out a photocopied flier. She also shipped up to 400 patches awarded to girls who study Ramadan traditions, she said, the most ever.

Predominantly Muslim troops do accept non-Muslim members. In Minneapolis, Alexis Eastlund, 10, said other friends sometimes pestered her about belonging to a mostly Muslim troop, although she has known many of its members half her life.

“I never really thought of them as different,” Alexis said. “But other girls think that it is weird that I am Christian and hang out with a bunch of Muslim girls. I explain to them that they are the same except they have to wear a hijab on their heads.”

Ms. Farah, who served as an outreach coordinator in Minneapolis and remains active in the Scouts, said she used the organization as a platform to try to ease tensions in the community. Scraps between African-American and Somali girls prompted her to start a research project demonstrating to them that their ancestors all came from roughly the same place.

Ms. Hakeem, the troop leader, said she tried to find projects to improve the girls’ self-esteem, like going through the Eddie Bauer catalog to cut out long skirts and other items that adhere to Islamic dress codes.

All in all, scouting gives the girls a rare sense of belonging, troop leaders and members say.

“It is kind of cool to say that you are a girl scout,” Asma said. “It is good to have something to associate yourself with other Americans. I don’t want people to think that I am a hermit, that I live in a cave, isolated and afraid of change. I like to be part of society. I like being able to say that I am a girl scout just like any other normal girl.”

INGRID PERITZMONTREALPublished Thursday, Apr. 18 2002

Police on guard as boy wearing kirpan returns to face insultsUnder police escort and a rain of insults from hostile parents, a 12-year-old Sikh boy made a court-ordered return to his school in Montreal yesterday in a controversy that has tested the limits of religious tolerance in Quebec.

Gurbaj Singh went back to Sainte Catherine Labouré primary school with the object that sparked his ejection -- a 10-centimetre-long kirpan, the ceremonial dagger of the Sikhs.

The boy's return to class in a quiet neighbourhood in the suburb of LaSalle was not a peaceful affair. As he entered under police protection, a group of parents shouted at the slightly built boy.

"They were shouting in French so I didn't understand what they were saying," the boy's father, Balvir Singh Multani, said afterward. "But I could read in their faces that they were not good things."

The boy's presence at the school prompted about 30 parents to yank their children from school in protest, insisting that a kirpan is a dangerous weapon.

"It's not accepted on a plane -- why would it be at school?" asked one of the parents, Réal Nadeau, who said he will keep his two children home for as long as the kirpan is in the school.

"It's a question of security."

The emotional debate over the wearing of the kirpan has raged for years across Canada but has arrived only recently in Quebec, where the Sikh community is small compared to those in British Columbia and Ontario.

Devout Sikhs wear the kirpan around the clock, even while sleeping, and consider it a symbol of their faith. Most school boards have found accommodation with their Sikh students.

For example, the Peel Board of Education in Ontario was ordered in 1990 to permit Sikh staff and students to wear kirpans -- provided that they are no more than seven inches (about 18 centimetres) long including the sheath and that they are secured to make removal difficult.

Yesterday's conflict, at a Montreal school with a large and varied immigrant population, was met with consternation by Sikh groups. Anne Lowthian, executive director of the Ottawa-based World Sikh Organization, said it was reminiscent of the forced integration of black students in the U.S. South in the 1960s.

"A Quebec school is showing hostility toward an individual who, under the law, has every right to be there," Ms. Lowthian said. "It's a knee-jerk, emotional reaction that pits people against people. And it's based on ignorance."

Gurbaj's ordeal began last fall when his kirpan slipped off and fell to the ground as he was playing in the schoolyard. A parent spotted it and complained. Until then, the boy had worn the dagger but nobody knew.

School principal Danielle Descoteaux confiscated the kirpan immediately and told the boy to leave it at home.

"I had to ensure the rules of security of the school were respected," Ms. Descoteaux said yesterday. The same rules forbid penknives and even snowballs.

"It was the object [that was the problem] and not the representation of a religious object."

The school had proposed that the boy return to school with a plastic replica of his kirpan, or that he wear the symbol as a pendant around his neck. But the family refused, offering to keep the kirpan beneath the boy's shirt, sewn into a cloth sheath, at all times.

That proposal was rejected, prompting the boy's family to challenge the case in court on the basis of religious freedom. Civil-rights lawyer Julius Grey argued that the kirpan was no more dangerous than a geometry compass.

The controversy has kept the boy home -- at times with a tutor supplied by the school -- for three months. But in a temporary injunction granted on Tuesday, Mr. Justice Claude Tellier of Quebec Superior Court ordered that the boy could return to class because the kirpan does not jeopardize anyone's safety.

"I just want to send my son to school, I want him to speak French," said the boy's father, Mr. Multani, who works in a shoe factory and arrived in Canada in 1996. "Our aim is to live and let live. I am peace-loving and I think my boy's classmates are peace loving too."

But one parent said the conflict is a symptom of the failure of the boy's family to integrate into Quebec's increasingly secular society.

"It may be a religious symbol, but it's still a weapon," said Solange Lambert as she arrived to pick up her Grade 1 daughter yesterday after class. She said religious groups "can do what they want at home and in their churches -- but not at school. . . . When [immigrants]arrive here, there are certain laws they should respect."

As for the boy at the centre of the controversy, he appeared to emerge from yesterday's fracas fairly unmoved. At the end of classes, as two police officers watched from a van across the street, Gurbaj stood in the schoolyard, surrounded by classmates.

It felt good to return to school, he said with a broad smile.

Still, his troubles aren't over. The injunction lasts only until May 16, when both sides return to court to debate whether the kirpan is a security threat.

By MIREYA NAVARROMarch 31, 2008

Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed RaceJenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.

“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.

“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”

Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.

They recalled the friends, as in Ms. Bratter’s case, who thought they were not black enough. Or the people who challenged them to label themselves by innocently asking, “What are you?” Or the relatives of different races who can sometimes be insensitive to one another.

“I think Barack Obama is going to bring these deeply American stories to the forefront,” said Esther John, 56, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington, who identifies herself as African-American, American Indian and white.

“Maybe we’ll get a little bit further in the dialogue on race,” Ms. John said. “The guilt factor may be lowered a little bit because Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”

Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Mr. Obama, with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is “too black” or “not black enough,” as the candidate himself brought up in his speech on March 18, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories.

“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,” said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”

The old categories are weakening, however, as immigration and the advancing age of marriage in the United States fuel a steady rise in the number of interracial marriages. The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the Census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races, a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or about 3 percent of the population.

Many people still stick to a one-race label, even if they are of mixed descent, researchers say, sometimes because of strong identification with one racial group, and occasionally because of a conscious effort not to dilute the numbers of the group they most identify with.

In interviews, people of mixed race said their decision about how to identify themselves was deeply personal, not political; it is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity.

James McBride, 50, who described growing up in a Brooklyn housing project with his white mother in a memoir, “The Color of Water,” said that, like Mr. Obama, he identified himself primarily as a black man of mixed race. As a child whose father was black, he said: “I really wanted to be like all the other black kids. It was the larger group around me.” And through life, because of his brown skin, society has imposed its own label. “If cops see me, they see a black man sitting in a car,” he said.

But being proud to call himself African-American, Mr. McBride said, does not negate his connection to his “Jewish part,” his mother’s heritage. Asked which part of him was dominant, he said, “It’s like grabbing Jell-O.”

“But what difference does it make?” he added. “When you’re mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is.”

Mr. McBride and other mixed-race Americans said they took pride that Mr. Obama was presenting his biracial identity as an asset for the presidency. Even if he calls himself black, and has made a central element of his campaign biography the quest to claim that identity after his father left him, Mr. Obama is seen as giving equal weight in his story to his white mother and grandparents.

“He’s really having to play the field and know his audience really well,” said Phillip Handy, 21, a junior at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., whose mother is white and father is black. “In the end, when I hear his message, I don’t think he’s bailing out on any of us.”

While many mixed-race people say they see their heritage as a plus, they also say they often face pressure from others who want to pigeonhole them. Mr. McBride said his books invariably were shelved in the African-American sections of bookstores. “Why can’t I be a white author?” he said. “I’m half white.”

Shafia Zaloom, 36, a teacher in San Francisco who is Asian and white, said she was often asked if her two children, who look like her white husband, were adopted. “Sometimes, when I’m at the playground, people think I’m the nanny,” she said.

Ms. Zaloom, who gets her looks from her Chinese mother, said she had been on the receiving end of insensitive racial remarks and gestures about Asians. But she fully identifies as mixed race.

“It’s really unfair to expect people to choose,” she said. “It’s like asking to be loyal to one parent or the other.”

Although still small, the mixed-race population is increasingly visible among the young. The 2000 Census found that 41 percent of the mixed-race population was under 18. Multiracial advocacy groups like the Mavin Foundation in Seattle say that mixed race people now find themselves better reflected in books, in college courses, in school brochures and in teacher’s training in public schools than they did in the past. Carmen Van Kerckhove, a diversity consultant who runs a blog on race and popular culture, racialicious.com, said she doubted that the uproar that greeted Tiger Woods when he described himself as “Cablinasian” (for heritage that includes Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian) in 1997 would be as strong today.

“When you’re multiracial, you can be several things at the same time,” said Ms. Van Kerckhove, 30, who is white and Asian and has endorsed Mr. Obama on her blog for moving the race debate away from “who’s black and who’s white, or who’s a victim and who’s an oppressor.”

Unfortunately, Ms. Van Kerckhove added, suspicions persist about the motivation of people who identify themselves as mixed race. Many people, she said, wonder, “Are multiracial people trying to be multiracial as a way to escape racism?”

The mixed-race terrain is full of such bumps and tricky balances. But at least, many multiracial Americans say, they are no longer seen as oddities. Ms. Zaloom expects that her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son will experience a different journey to self-identity than she did. At times while growing up, Ms. Zaloom recalled, she struggled with questions about whether she was white enough or attractive. She rebelled against Chinese language lessons, her mother’s Chinese food and eating with chopsticks.

But when her daughter was born, she named her Mei Lan, like her maternal grandmother, to honor her Chinese roots. Then she named her son Kyle in deference to her paternal Irish side. Her wish for her children, she said, is that they realize that the benefits of a mixed identity outweigh any challenges.

“Ultimately,” she said, the goal is “to not have to check a box.”

By Caroline Wyatt BBC correspondent in Paris Wednesday, 11 February, 2004

French headscarf ban opens riftsAs expected, the French parliament has voted in favour of a new law to ban the wearing of Islamic headscarves in schools.

And despite mass protests by French Muslims in recent weeks, the ban won by a landslide.

It will not just affect Muslim girls - large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps are also banned, as almost certainly are Sikh turbans.

After months of public debate, the vote in parliament was a brief affair.Just five minutes for each party to sum up their position on this controversial new law.Then, the vote itself - passed by 494 votes in favour, with just 36 against.This means that as long as it is approved by the upper house next month, the new law will come into effect in September, banning all obvious religious symbols from schools.President Jacques Chirac's ruling centre-right UMP party has been the driving force behind the law, which is backed by some 70% of French people.

“It's a law for their well-being, they shouldn't take it as something aggressive, they shouldn't take it as a negation of what they are.” Ghislaine Hudson, Headteacher

UMP deputy Jerome Riviere says France's secular nature was being challenged by a small minority of hardline Islamists, and he insists the law is not about suppressing religious freedom."We have to give a political answer to what is a political problem," he said."We don't have a problem with religion in France. We have a problem with the political use by a minority of religion."

Yet others warn that far from uniting the country, this new measure will divide it more than ever.At a small demonstration outside the National Assembly, just under 200 protesters gathered to oppose the new law. Most were young Muslim women, all wearing headscarves.

Risk

As the children of immigrants, they say, they have a dual identity - both French and Muslim - and they blame France for failing to accept its newer citizens.

"It is unjust and I am very angry, angry yes, it's not just, it's a law, a segregation," one woman told me.

Another protester said: "We are very upset especially with this law, we think this is very unfair against the Muslims. But this is not only a threat for Muslims but for whole French community."

Others here say that that feeling of rejection or alienation could even drive some young Muslims into the arms of Islamic fundamentalists.

Green party leader Noel Mamer opposed the new law.

"I think it's a very bad law, a law which takes the risk to make worse the rift between two parts of the French population," he said.

Yet teachers in France are relieved that it will no longer be up to them to arbitrate on disputes over whether Muslim pupils can wear the Islamic headscarf in class.

Personal choice

Ghislaine Hudson, a headteacher who gave evidence to the Stasi commission on secularity, says she understands the concerns surrounding the law, but believes it is the only way to ensure that all pupils are equal in the classroom.

"We have to work with our teachers, we have to work with the students, the families, we have to explain to them that this is a law for their own protection," she said.

And that's a view supported by some French Muslims, some of whom came to France partly because it is a secular state in which religious belief is kept a private matter.

Iranian-born writer Venus Kavoussian says that as an immigrant, she values and respects France's traditions.

"It's important that school stays non politic, non religious - personally I am living in France because it is a secular space," she said.

But others say this will leave some young Muslim girls with little choice but to leave French state schools and seek private education elsewhere - leading to less integration, exactly the opposite of what the French government says it intends.