Shafia murder trial reveals Negligence and Failure of Child Protection authorities

I don't think my conception is particularly pessimistic. Essentially, we're talking about apathy, here, so I'm looking for what explanation affords the path of least resistance. I don't see why a fear of accusations of racism would weigh heavier on the mind than simply the appeal of doing nothing in a difficult or demanding situation. For me, the otherness and cultivated insulation of the Sharias offers a much more feasible barrier to action than hand-wringing, although I take your point about the "list of alternative causes growing in their mind." I'm not talking about pointed racism here--on the contrary, it's just the kind of easy exclusion that is part and parcel of liberal society.

Yeah, I also think the whole discussion about "were they trying to be politically correct" is a distraction.

First of all, I think that any time a white person in a position of authority is dealing with people of colour, it is ALWAYS a good thing for the white person to ask themselves, "Am I being racist?  Is there an appearance of racism here?  If there is, should I rethink what I'm doing here?"  Every white person should check themselves for racism when they're in a position of power over people of colour because we live in a racist society.

This case, however, is about incompetence, not political correctness.  This is a case where the CAS and the police ignored blatant, obvious physical evidence of abuse, and interviewed the victims in front of the abuser, making it impossible for them to come forward.  That has nothing to do with whether the police or CAS worker involved were worried about being "racist".  This was just clear incompetence in gathering their data, which then put them in a position of not having the evidence they needed to establish abuse.

So really, the question about whether the police and CAS were worried about being "politically correct" is moot.  The question to ask in this case is why they were so fucking incompetent in the very basics of investigative work and collecting evidence.

The family lived in St-Léonard, a northeastern district (formerly a suburb before the megacity mergers) directly east of where I live. There are some wealthier houses (mostly owned by well-established Italian families) but the majority of the district is composed of duplexes (often with a granny flat) and very ordinary apartment blocks; it is a postwar working-class area overall, historically a mix of Italian immigrants and francophone Québécois - nowadays there are large communities from the Maghreb (North Africa), Haiti and various Latin American countries as well as the original Italian and Francophone St-Léonard residents. There is no significant Afghan or South Asian presence there as far as I know. Shafia was in the process of building a palatial residence in Brossard, on the South Shore, where there are many South Asians (and even more East and Southeast Asians) and a significant, though not very large, Afghan community.

Actually, honour killings are certainly not unknown in Sicily and Calabria, though they are becoming rarer there than before, and the families of those origins have been in Montréal for a couple of generations now.

In any event, it is a horrible failure of youth protection (although the eldest daughter was no longer a minor at the time of the killings). And the middle-aged first-wife-in-a (clandestine) polygamous marriage, without proper immigrant status and terrified of deportation back to Afghanistan, just fell through every kind of crack. Terrible.

Michelle, at least one of the people at the school who were trying to help the girls, Math teacher Fatiha Boualia, was also of a Muslim background (it is a Maghrebi name and there are many Maghrebi families, and teachers, in that area, as well as a fair number of Haitian teachers, social workers etc). The people trying to help weren't necessarily "white", leaving aside the fact that southern Italians like Ms. Enea are pretty much the same colour as many North Africans, in such cases "colour" is really a cultural construct (like who is Amerindian in many communities in more northerly Québec, or in many Latin American countries to the south).

Edited to add: lagatta, great to see you! :)

I wasn't talking about the people at the school - I said the police and the CAS.  The school did the right thing by letting the authorities know.

I have no idea whether the police officer or the CAS worker was white.  I was responding to the speculation in this thread that they didn't intervene because they were afraid of being considered "racist".  I said that in the case of white people working with families of colour, it's a good thing for white people to check in with themselves about any racist assumptions they might have or be making.  But that ultimately, you have to collect your evidence properly and act on it no matter who it is.

I wasn't assuming that the authorities were white.  It was other people in this thread who were assuming that the police and CAS worker were afraid of not being "politically correct".  I was responding to that concern.

As a matter of fact, Gaian, there was a police who expressed concern that her co-workers might not be taking the case seriously. She was told (in front of the laughing others) that she was the subject of a police officer's fantasy involving Pickton and some details too disgusting to repeat here. She is currently on sick leave from the RCMP and involved in a very serious lawsuit with the organization.

So no, I don't think that my thoughts on the matter represent "the very core of racist thought." 

ETA. Cross-posted with Michelle:

That's about the long and short of what's going on here.

God, why can't it stop?

Timebandit asked about "cultural insensitivity" fears. It was just a question, but based on sheerest speculation - there's nothing in the voluminous media reports of the trial so far to bear that out.

Then Tommy ran away with it: "I think Timebandit's question about missplaced cultural senstitivities may be the first one I'd ask."

Then Gaian picked it up: "I'll bet that's it."

Then, of course, others had no choice but to counter these baseless gossipy speculations.

Meanwhile, four women and girls are brutally murdered because of the oldest motive in the world (unless the trial winds up in a surprise verdict): patriarchal woman-hating control freakery. It has f***-all to do with race (how the hell did we get into a discussion of what colour the teachers are, with respect to lagatta and others??????). It has f***-all to do with religion. It has everything to do with culture. And this most ancient of cultural evils, from which not a single human society that I've heard of has proven to be immune, will persist until equality of women is achieved in every facet of life.

Racist against an organization? I guess I don't follow.

Yeah - its reception in this thread by some babblers, who read things into the news reports that haven't been reported yet. We're talking about Montréal here. The notion that the police ignored cries for help because they were afraid of being accused of racial profiling or stereotyping is, unfortunately, too ludicrous to countenance. As for the social worker(s), they said it was "mandatory" to involve the parents. Is that true, or false? If it's true (I have no idea), then there's something horribly wrong with the rules governing their work - but what does that have to do with racialization??

Who said culture was "distinct"? My point is that there are cultural habits which transcend race or religion. Lots of them. Let me give you some examples:

(a) A society which has slavery, and cuturally and juridically regards slaves as sub-human.

(b) A society which has rich and poor, and whose daily discourse mocks and disrespects the poor.

(c) A society which has owners of the means of production who employ workers, and where workers are looked down upon in every way - literary, artistic, daily behaviour, courts, police, etc.

(d) A society where men are dominant in every aspect of life and where women are subordinate.

Ok, CF, now the quiz: For each of the above:

1. What race are they?

2. What colour are they?

3. What religion are they?

Let me know if you still don't understand what I'm talking about.

Sometimes what seems obvious turns out, upon reflection, to be false. Culture doesn't subsume race. Culture doesn't subsume religion. What does that even mean? Two people can't share the same culture if they're of different colour? Or if they self-identify differently as to race? How does the culture of misogyny "subsume" any race or religion? Or are you using culture in some other sense?

Well, those particular musings are based on sheer speculation for which I haven't seen an iota of support in any report. Why not muse, instead, that our society is woefully bereft of effective support structures when it comes to women and children at risk? That happens to be true and verifiable. But I sensed some suggestion here that if the victims had been white, some police or social workers would have been more diligent in pursuing their complaints, because they wouldn't need to fear the politically correct bullies.

What I mean is that culture is ordinary and enormous--it means that race, religion, gender norms, masculinity, etc. are human products, social products, finally, cultural products. It means we decide how these categories are defined, wielded and experienced. It means that when we talk about "culture," we need to consider all its constituent, interlocking, overlapping, even oppositional parts.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the culture of misogyny"--do they have a monthly journal?--it's much clearer to just say "misogyny," which manifests itself in a myriad of ways not limited to religion, government, media, state organizations (coercive and benevolent), family structures, etc. Culture is how all of that happens, and what stories we tell ourselves to explain or define it.

Religious and Cultural Appropriation in the Newspaper and the Courtroom