Silly Little Country

Racism

In what appears to be a rather stupid behaviour (the alternative is that someone hacked his site), a Liberal organizer in Ontario used his blog to publicize what he considered to be jokes, one of which was to put photos of a Toronto NDP candidate for a federal seat, Olivia Chow, side-by-side with a picture of a Chow-Chow dog, and the joint caption 'Separated at Birth?'.
Is this racism? I suppose it depends on what was going on in his mind, but it looks more like species-ism to me. It's a pretty broad brush that gets used with the notion of 'racism' today, it seems; I note that people expressing reservations about Islam are often called 'racists' in response, which bespeaks a serious lack of understanding on the part of those using the term.
Jack Layton, Chow's husband, and the leader of her party, cites what he considers to be a justification of such a characterization in this case, with:

Layton noted that Europeans who controlled portions of China in the past used to hang signs that read "no dogs or Chinese allowed," and said no Chinese person familiar with their history will ever forget those signs.

"This is no joke, and I think it's a culture of arrogance that has set in . . . and the election will have to deal with it," he said. "It reminds us that insults flow from arrogance. There is far too much of this in today's Liberal party."

I rather agree with Layton's second paragraph, but the assertion in the first paragraph is an interesting one. A quick Google search brings up some very interesting discussions of the claim about the 'no dogs or Chinese' sign, which can be summarized as: there is widely spread through Asia the notion that Huangpu Park in Shanghai had a sign at the entrance that said "no dogs or Chinese allowed" (and in fact such a sign appears in a Bruce Lee movie, "Fists of Fury"); there is NO solid evidence extant at all that this is true. So let it join the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, etc. And be careful - I do not doubt for a second that there were parks that denied entry to Chinese, and to dogs, and likely to several other categories, and that some of the exclusions were utterly racist in character. The point is the short catchphrase.

The web site in question included quite a bit of stupid abuse, against Layton too, and Stephen Harper. My own guess is that it is all of a category and Chow's surname fed the 'fertile' mind thinking up what he thought to be jokes, rather than any actual racism. It helps nobody to have accusations of 'racism' flying around for no very good reason.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:52 AM