An anonymous author (presumably Canadian) has written this piece for Times Higher Education, and it’s clear why he or she doesn’t want their name given. If that was publicized, the person would never be able to get any academic job in Canada. Below are the two job ads from the University of Waterloo to which the anonymous author objects (click to find them). Note that there are two positions in computer science, but both reserved for those who self-identify as “minoritized” people, including Two-spirit people. What are those? The U.S. Indian Health Service defines them this way:
Traditionally, Native American two-spirit people were male, female, and sometimes intersexed individuals who combined activities of both men and women with traits unique to their status as two-spirit people. In most tribes, they were considered neither men nor women; they occupied a distinct, alternative gender status.
I had thought these were simply indigenous people, but they seem to be non-binary indigenous people. So the first position is for people whose sexual identity doesn’t conform to their natal sex (I assumed that “identify as women” meant transwomen, but since “trangender” follows that, it could mean natal females as well. And the other job is for a minority, but a “racialized” minority, which means “not women”and nobody white”. I’m not sure whether Asians count as “members of a racialized minority.” They are in a minority, and they are thought of as a race, so perhaps they would be. Canadians can weigh in here.
Regardless of how you interpret the requirements, it’s clear that these ads are targeted only for “minoritized” individuals. (Women in computer science stubbornly remain a minority, perhaps not because of structural sexism).
And here’s the anonymous article (click to read):
The author wants to apply for these jobs but since he or she (I’m guessing it’s a “he” since women could apply for the first job) simply isn’t qualified. Excerpts:
The intention behind these postings is not malicious; rather, it aims to correct historical injustices. The attempted correction, however, only adds to the injustice of discrimination.
Why is academia so equivocal about making a universal condemnation of discrimination?
The author gives three reasons. First, the ad implicitly aims to correct bias, but underrepresentation of groups in a field, as you should know well know by now, need not automatically imply systemic bias. As the author says, it could reflect “differences in sex or culture” that “influence interests, behaviours or priorities.” I am pretty sure this plays a role in the underrepresentaiton of women in computer science.
Second, such ads, by assuming that the oppression reflects a hierarchy of bigotry, “perpetuates the false and dangerous idea that scars are passed down through generations, as if modern-day French children should cultivate hatred towards Germans because of the world wars.” He/she believes that the ads perpetrate a view of society as an eternal power struggle à la postmodernism. Well, that may be partly correct if underrepresentation reflects lower qualifications based on historical discrimination, but one can still wonder whether that should be rectified by ads like these, which list identity as the first criterion for application (presumably merit will be considered later).
Third, the author claims that “debate is stifled.” I’m not sure what that means, but presumably the mere appearance of these ads justifies discriminatory hiring. As the author notes,
While intellectual and cultural diversity enriches humanity, equality in dignity unites us in a spirit of fraternity. Discrimination violates this moral equality, fosters resentment, undermines social cohesion, instrumentalises individuals and conveys the fatalistic and wrong idea that one’s path is determined by one’s ethnicity or gender. These severe consequences are wishfully thought to be dodged when discrimination is given a different name. But they are not.
Finally, the author tacks on another problem: those who are hired may be under the self-stigma of realizing that they got their job because of racial or sexual identity, not because of merit. This fact is of course the case for many minority hires, but I’m not sure if those hires are constantly tormented with this kind of self-doubt, though I know from testimony that some are. The author favors a “colorblind” approach to hiring, i.e., prize merit over identity.
I agree that the ads are objectionable, and they’d be illegal in the United States. Still, I favor a form of affirmative action, which is gradually taking shape as a belief that when candidates are pretty equally qualified, you can hire (or admit) the minority candidate more than half the time. But even that is now illegal in the U.S., though of course schools will practice it anyway by getting around the “tick a box” prohibition. But no, there should not be jobs completely reserved for people who have a certain race of gender identity
So even gay men can’t apply!
Of course you can: If you are a gay man you can only self identify as a non-binary two-spirit non-man.
Since self-ID trumps eveything, anyone can apply as long as they self-ID into the appropriate category. Someone should do so to show up the hypocrisy.
UWaterloo has been a bastion of DEI wokeness in Canada for some time. But the CRC funding is federal, and whilst UWaterloo might itself make these chairs only available as the author states, the Canadian government itself dictates this discriminatory hiring/funding practice. That’s where we are up here. “Two spirit” is not traditional in any sense at all. It’s a modern term first used in 1990 “coined as primarily a ceremonial term promoting community recognition” that now seems to be part of the indigenous exceptionalism trope that pervades Canada.
self-identify? So anyone can self-identify as anything really. Great!
Tried this in ChatGPT: Write me a job application for positions for applicant that self idenify as two-spirit. I am both a religous jew and an atheist
I even got a proper response. Try it
Anyone know how this is implemented in practice?
If they say “self-identify”, is there a checkbox on the application?
Does the hiring committee grant itself the right to throw out obviously fraudulent applications from people whose facebook profiles make them look like straight males? Could just be out of date! Or do they judge this during interviews… so that you have some time to die your hair blue to bolster your claim to be “non-binary”?
Doesn’t Canada have an equivalent to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission?
Didn’t we used to?
It is explicitly okay in Canada to discriminate against whites, men, etc. in hiring if the goal is “amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups”. That’s codified in Section 15(2) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“Who self-identify as members of a racialized minority.”
So Rachel Dolezal, who self-identifies as Black, would qualify. I said several years ago that trans-race would be the next big thing. It’s here.
Yeah, they may say “self-identify as members of a racialized minority”, but that is definitely *not* what they really want. They want actual racial minorities; they just don’t want to have to do the legwork of verifying the applicant’s race (or to be politically incorrect by questioning it!), so they’re going to take applicants at their word.
A number of high-profile Canadian academics have been demoted/fired recently for being “Pretendians” (i.e., self-identifying as indigenous when they really aren’t). Dolezal would still not be socially acceptable in Canada, especially if she had been pretending to be indigenous.
If they explicitly allow self-identified race in job applications, you can be guaranteed that the Pretendian trend will increase.
There is a strong disincentive to detect Pretendians ahead of time. All of us, native and settler alike, are thrilled when a person who claims to be even partly indigenous achieves public prominence in any field other than activism or indigenous politics. We are so proud of ourselves — see how we are bending the moral arc of reconciliation when those bad old Americans are mired in race politics! — that no one wants to burst the bubble by examining the claim closely, or at all, even though it is easy to do. The federal Indian [Registration] Act of 1879 plus a letter of affiliation from any Band that the candidate thinks will back up her claim does the trick. No need to interrogate white siblings (if you can find them) about Mum’s possible past indiscretions, which the candidate would have taken as a deep insult if you dared. While many indigenous activists don’t like to see their brethren behave as “apples”, most can’t quite come to contradict the happy talk that one of theirs has prevailed against 150 years of dysfunction and despair. Pretendians are usually outed by family members or well-meaning white people, not by the indigenous people they have ingratiated themselves with.
And what’s the harm? For most jobs requiring advanced academic or professional achievement, there will be no qualified true indigenous applicants anyway, two-spirit or otherwise. The Pretendian is not doing a real Indian out of a job, she’s just taking advantage to get a position that she herself is less qualified for than the other white applicants who didn’t pretend. But they couldn’t have applied for the job anyway because it was restricted to Indians. The evil is in the system, not with the scammers who game it.
I like Pretendians (and trans-racialists and fake non-binaries.) They perform a useful service, exposing the venality and mendacity in explicit identity-preference schemes that our Constitution not only permits but encourages…and the law will soon make it dangerous to object to. I’m hoping they are all thoroughly discredited by the time my grandson enters the job market.
Yes, Leslie, yes. Again.
D.A.
NYC
“They want actual racial minorities; they just don’t want to have to do the legwork of verifying the applicant’s race”
My Canadian university has been slow off the mark to hold these targeted racist job searches for new professors. One reason seems to be that senior administrators are anxious to first develop a policy to identify indigenous applicants who qualify as such. My university got burned when we awarded an honourary doctorate to a high-profile pretendian, the lawyer and human rights advocate Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, who was on track to become Canada’s first indigenous Supreme Court judge. She was later unmasked as just another white girl from Niagara Falls and not a Cree woman from Manitoba as she had claimed, and my university had to ask for that doctorate to be returned (to her credit, MET-F did so). So they are in fact keen to do some of the legwork and avoid future embarrassment.
When this sort of stuff happens, think about (1) this :
“Transformation is the red thread running through all the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations’ agenda […]”
Parr, et. al.
“Knowledge-driven actions: transforming higher education for global sustainability”
2022
UNESCO
doi.org/10.54675/YBTV1653
And
2.
The UN is a theosophical cult intent on controlling evolution – on every level – species, cosmic, spiritual, etc. Read the voluminous writing of Robert Muller. James Lindsay just released a podcast with links to the documents.
The importance of “evolution” in Muller’s doctrine cannot be overstated. Humans are described as “seeds”. One section of Muller’s book goes wild with all sorts of “identity”.
So – transformation – evolution – control.
PS : think about that “red thread” when anyone catches that video going ’round lately with the protesters on campus with the string.
I wonder what “racial minorities” are acceptable to them? I assume what they mean is non white but they might also mean non Asian as well. If so they should state it clearly.
To the extent that “gender fluid” means anything at all, everyone is gender fluid.
This stuff is all such nonsense. Somehow our ruling elites are all just repeating nonsense that angsty teenagers were making up on tumblr 15 years ago.
“I favor a form of affirmative action, which is gradually taking shape as a belief that when candidates are pretty equally qualified, you can hire (or admit) the minority candidate more than half the time. But even that is now illegal in the U.S….”
That traditional form of Affirmative Action remains legal as you describe it here. The Students for Fair Admission Case distinguished “Diversity” as a goal that was illegal when applied to race.
This article explains the complications around whether this is legal or not. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/can-job-postings-in-canada-exclude-white-people-short-answer-yes
The problem is one identified by the author: the implicit assumption that any inequities are due to existing bias. But that need not be the case; there may be no existing bias, but either a difference in preferences (which surely accounts for a deficit of one sex or another in some professions) or a lack of qualifications due to cultural factors or biases in the past.
I think the part you’re looking at doesn’t work that way. I think it’s meant to be that you can say you want only women say at a women’s shelter. You have to prove a reason why a man couldn’t also do that job. But as you can see in the article there are various legislative considerations depending on jurisdiction and circumstances so it’s a mess.
I am getting the giggles thinking of a kind of Mrs Doubtfire movie plot involving a straight white male doing what needs to be done to be hired for a position like this. Hi-jinks and awkward comedic moments ensue.
I think Jon Kay at Quilette pulled the mask off the origins of “2 Spirit” as it being utter nonsense. It is held out globally as some vague, stunning and brave unicorn bisexuality or genderwang for Native Americans.
But in fact it came out of the … ear.. of a 1990s LGBT conference where it was just totally made up. And stupidly of course.
2 Spirit alleges all Native American tribes treated “trans” people kindly, y’know, lots of parades, unicorns and rainbows. Great.
BUT… in actual history the various tribes treated same sex or inter-role-play differently. As different as those tribes were in fact. While one was pretty tolerant, another would treat such people as perverts and made them sex slaves and rape meat for their warriors. Not so rainbow in THOSE tribes I guess.
In conclusion, 2S. is a pretty ignorant and racist construct.
D.A.
NYC
I so enjoy the violence, criminality and indefensibility of the actions of “allies” of Palestine. With every face masking campus-swastika keffiyeh, with every cop hit, every retarded demand… they show us who they are.
Shukran, “allies”, shukran, for your honest representation of the entire Pal cause!
D.A.
NYC
I’ve pointed to this before in other threads on Jerry’s site:
About 60 Canadian universities have signed the Scarborough Charter.
https://univcan.ca/media-room/media-releases/scarborough-charter-on-anti-black-racism-and-black-inclusion/
Those universities have committed to hiring hundreds of black and indigenous faculty members through the kinds of targeted job ads highlighted in that THE article.
The Charter was signed in 2021 during the Great Racial Reckoning in the USA and just after the sad fake stories about the discoveries of hundreds of bodies of indigenous children who had been murdered then buried in mass graves on the grounds of former Indian residential schools.
In response to that spasm of white guilt, Canadian universities have been quietly petitioning provincial human rights tribunals for permission to hold race-based job searches to fulfill their Scarborough Charter commitments. The human rights tribunals have happily complied, and these kinds of openly discriminatory job searches have been going on since the middle of 2022. It’s all well known but not much talked about because everyone wants to hire black or indigenous professors, but no one wants to specifically label those professors as having been hired for their racial characteristics rather than for their scholarship. It’s the classic affirmative action paradox, and an open embarrassing secret.
Expectations about the quality of those new faculty members are also embarrassingly low. Many of the job ads feature approximately zero specific qualifications, and often refer to absurdly broad areas of research (e.g. “biology”), because it’s widely known but again rarely acknowledged that there are so few highly qualified black and indigenous scholars in Canada that one can’t be too specific in the ad for fear of getting no black or indigenous applicants.
All the stuff about two-spirit and other entrants in the Oppression Olympics is just gloss on the Scarborough Charter goals. Universities want racial quotas. If they can fulfill those quotas and get a trans or nonbinary perxon too, then that’s a bonus.
Many thanks for that backgrounder.
Here’s an excellent piece about so-called “Two Spirit” cultural practices.
https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/toward-an-end-to-appropriation-of-indigenous-two-spirit-people-in-trans-politics-the-relationship-between-third-gender-roles-and-patriarchy/
The author makes this point:
There are a couple of other problems. First, jobs available only to certain groups, or even the tendency to prefer certain groups, underlines the prejudice that people from those groups just can’t cut it—otherwise why do they need special treatment? And of course people can be accused of being hired for being in the group and not on merit, even if that’s not the case.
In some sense, exclusion is better than saying that certain groups will be preferred though all can apply. First, no need to waste time applying for jobs if one is not in the target group. Second, for those who really are hired not because of merit, in such a case the accusation is harder to rebut; if they are just as good as others, why did they apply to the special-category job. On the other hand, I’ve heard stories from people who were actually good who were encouraged to apply to the special-category job, because that would let the employer hire a “normal” person for another job.
And we all pretend that such hiring practices will make no difference, except for disappointing a few stale, straight, white (cis -yecch!), men.
If we fail to appoint the best qualified candidates for every post, then the quality of the work done by universities will fall. This matters in STEM fields, and strangely, it matters in the softest of humanities as well, for as much as the atmosphere of a university is created by the loudest and pushiest, bringing more aggrieved people into “grievance studies” is hardly going to make the universities better places to study and to mature.