Reading The Gazette fills me with rage (multi-rant)

The BBQ Pit
1

So I open up yesterday’s Gazette this morning (I’m a busy girl, okay?), and what do I see? The following gems;

A 16 year old girl named Irene Wasseem was expelled from her private school, because she decided to start wearing a hijab. On the first day of school, she was not even allowed to attend her first class. She was promptly intercepted, and swept away somewhere private while her father was called to pick her up. She was not welcome to return until she agreed to stop wearing it. All communications with the school regarding the matter got the same response; a letter reiterating Wasseem’s “choice” : the school or the headscarf.
WTF!?!?! I realize this is their little private club (kind of like the Legion, where Sikhs are not allowed), but how is it hurting them to let Wasseem wear her hijab? And if it’s not about that, if it’s “the principle”, does that really justify denying Wasseem the kind of education she sought out for herself? How the hell can they hold their principles above the best interests of a child who is non-violent and willing to learn?
Her parents better have got their fucking tuition back. I bet Charlemagne College don’t come cheap.
Along with the same story, is a timeline showing landmark cases of students who fought to wear religious items in schools both public and private. In 1995, delegates at a Teacher’s Union meeting passed a resolution urging that skullcaps, turbans and hijabs be banned in PUBLIC schools! ::thinking Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck? Is Quebec a racist province or something?::

Next; a little boy who was born to immigrants who hadn’t been granted status yet was denied a health card despite the fact that he had been born in Canada. He almost died because of a kidney condition. Surgery was scheduled, then 24 hours before the procedure, his parents were informed to pony up a few grand or the surgery would be cancelled. Family and friends had to raise $10,000 for the surgery. This is fucking Canada. No one has to go bankrupt for health care here. If that little innocent baby, whose honest parents are going through the proper legal channels, had died, the regie d’assurance de maladie would have had his blood on their hands. No religious headcoverings in schools. No healthcare for the Canadian-born children of immigrants. Fucking Quebecois xenophobes.

Next item; The Vatican is urging churches to stop using altar girls, fearing that it will lead to female priests. Again, I realize it is their treehouse, but COME ON. I know it looks like my rage contradicts the religious freedom I advocated in the above paragraph, but personally, I think it behooves religions to follow SDMB rules and Not Be Jerks. Wearing a hijab is not being a jerk. Carrying a kirpan is not being a jerk. It is hurting and depriving no one. Denying girls the right to be part of a religious service they have emotional and spiritual investment in, just because their sex chromosomes read XX, and FOR NO OTHER REASON is being a fucking jerk.
Besides, why don’t Catholics want women in the priesthood? Because That’s The Way It’s Always Been? Any SDMBer knows that argument is so fucking lame it has to drag itself around with its hands. Because women aren’t holy/intelligent/chaste enough? Nice misogyny there, buster, when do we burn the witches?
Not only that, but there will be a crackdown on dancing and clapping during services. What happened to “make a joyful noise”? Or does it hurt the priests’ hearing aids? And they wonder why no one wants to be a priest anymore. Hmmm, gee, I don’t know, I’m fucking stumped.

Finally, The Dairy Farmers of Canada released a study saying that drinking milk helps girls lose weight.
Next; Philip Morris says that smoking increases your fertility, and Molson discovers that beer will cure asthma!
Give me a fucking break. If I hear that shit from someone who ISN’T trying to sell milk, maybe I’ll believe it. Otherwise, don’t print it in the fucking paper. It isn’t news, it’s advertising. Also, fuck them for playing on girl’s fears about their body image. GIRLS shouldn’t be preoccupied with losing weight. Besides, some groups of people (some Natives, some Asians) are lactose intolerant. Don’t pretend that milk is for everyone. It isn’t.

I’m putting this here and not in Great Debates because I have no interest in arguing or debate. I just had to get this shit off my chest, because I felt like I was going to explode.

And that’s just section “A”.

2

Gee, you’re kinda all over the place, there.

I assume you’re reading the Montreal Gazette, though. It’s a crappy paper, anyway.

3

Well, you’re forgetting boobies. They’re important too. :smiley:

4

Yeah. Well, it’s either that or The Globe, and my roomies won’t subscribe to The Globe because “it’s boring”, which of course is code for “written at a higher reading level than The Gazette, and more concerned with National issues”. :wink:

5

Right. All Quebecois are xenophobes, and the province has no xenophobes who are not Quebecois.

6

Oh, matt, come on, it does look that way. I don’t really believe that every Quebecois is like that, but it does look very bad. Quebecois public school teachers were advocating banning religious headcoverings from public schools! What message does that send about the values and intentions of the public?

Add this to the fact that the Catholic church was so powerful for such a long time (I know not so much anymore, but the root is still a part of the tree). And we all know that the Church is just so tolerant of other religions (Prayer for the Conversion of the Jews, anyone?).

What I am trying to get across is that it gave me pause to read news stories about public policies that were hostile to non-Canadians and non-Christians. Do you disagree that public policies are an indication of public sentiment?

I never used the word ALL.

7

I don’t draw the same conclusions. Rather, the OP is cursing the overlap between the group of Quebecois and the group of xenophobes. Such an overlap does exist, though it hardly comprises the entire population of the province, or the entire population of xenophobes.

8

Bryan just beautifully clarified what I meant by my “never said all” comment.

9

That’s what you get for reading the paper! Next time, stick to comic books, they’re less depressing.

10

Yikes, matt… turn down the hyper-sensitivity volume about 100 decibels. Methinks you over-reacted, just a tad.

11

I disagree that the Catholic Church can promulgate public policy.

You don’t get to decide what “being a jerk,” is, either on the SDMB or in the Catholic Church. The SDMB is well within its rights to decide, for example, that anyone with a martial art in their user name is subject to immediate banning. They can be arbitrary because it’s their ball and their bat.

They do not, for which we are - most of us, anyway - grateful.

The Catholic Church is also possessed of a rather impressive bat and ball, and they, too, make those rules that seem right to them.

I realize you have every right to complain about the rules you don’t like, no matter who makes them.

I, in turn, have every right to complain about your complaining. And so forth and so on.

  • Rick
12

OK, Québecois here. Let me try to explain why we have a tendency towards xenophobia. For over the last 200 years, it has been drilled into our head that we were in a Us vs Them situation, add to that the fact that the RCC controlled French education for about the same time, spreading myths that glorified our past (anybody remember la race canadienne-française and its holy mission to convert the heathens ? Anybody else bought a little Chinese boy or girl in school ?), discouraged higher education (the ideal was to be a peasant with six years of schooling or less, if you had to have higher education only three options were valued : legal, medical or clerical, anything else you were endangering your soul) and you end up with the situation we find ourselves in today.

Up until at least the 60s, allophones were actively discouraged to go to French school, so few people of my generation were exposed to foreign influences and attitudes while growing up in our splendid isolation. Now adults, the same people are teaching and are generally in charge of the bureaucracy and you expect them to have different attitudes ? One thing that I have noticed over the years though is that the level of xenophobia is decreasing or at least becoming less strident. Every time I see a multi-cultural couple, I gain some hope that the last remnants of the grande noirceur are dying. Hopefully I’ll live long enough to see them disappear.

13

Thank you, detop. You have just posted what my Montreal-born mother (family was Quebecois for two generations before her), has been telling me my entire childhood.
I wasn’t there, so I can’t really put it into words.

14

You’re welcome lola, glad to have been able to provide some confirmation.

15

I too get filled with rage every time I pick up the newspaper. Its kind of a mentally masochistic thing for me to do, something in the paper is going to make me upset/mad. I think the biggest one was finding out that my state was considering charging Illegal Immigrants the same tuition rates as legal residents.

I wonder how other international students will feel about this. Chances are, they’ll probably find a little squat somewhere, and claim they’re illegal immigrants too. As if we don’t have enough people pouring into this country illegally :rolleyes:

16

There is a lack of renewal in some issues. Kirpan and hijab are discussed every year. If some of you Québécois listen to La Tribune du Québec on Radio-Canada, you know how often these topics have been brought up.

Yet… again? What springs to my mind is not xenophobia, rather the the slowliness of us people to solve minor problems like this.

Makes us look “cute” talking about distinct society rolls eyes

17

sigh I know Exile, we just seem to be a people who can’t take “no” for an answer :wink:

BTW, welcome aboard.

18

QUOTE] Originally posted by Kung Fu La
Quebecois public school teachers were advocating banning religious headcoverings from public schools![
[/QUOTE]

I live in Quebec and until a few years ago, my local high school’s policies were still in the dark ages. We weren’t allowed to have “distracting” hairstyles (anything changing colors was frown upon and could lead to expulsion from school until changed back to normal.)

If someone had a hairstyle that was visually distracting (like those little spikes in peoples hairs) teachers would argue that students behind that student had trouble seeing the blackboard and ask them to (or make them) change their hair style.

Hats weren’t allowed. Baseball caps could be confiscated if we wore them inside the school (even if it was just in the cafeteria or in the public corridors). So I guess turbans would probably have been frowned upon just the same. It wouldn’t have been discrimination against whatever ethnic group wears turbans. It would have been discrimination against interesting hairstyles.

But not once during my high school years did I witness someone being discriminated. Everyone was friends with (or enemies with) everyone else without considering race or color.

So I’m always baffled when someone says that we’re xenophobes. I think that Quebec is very open to differences. The problem is that we’re in a period of transition.

All of those rules about hairstyle I’ve just talked about? My sister is two years younger than me and in my same high school. She can change her hair color to blue and drown it in gel if she wants too.

Quebec has a lot of problems, but we’re working on them. As a general rule : the younger someone you talk too in Quebec is, the less likely they are to be a xenophobe. When the people educated by priests and nuns finally die off, we’ll probably be a much more different Quebec than we are now.

But it’ll take some time. My parents are forty and they were schooled by a bunch of priests and nuns!

I apologize for all of the awkward phrases you’ve just muddled through. When I talk about Quebec, I write in English as “someone French writing in English” instead of just writing in English.

19

I really miss that whole siege mentality one gets from living in Québec.

No. Really. :rolleyes:

20

There are countries within countries, such as Paris is to France and… Montréal is to Québec (or Canada, but I’ll use Québec since my propos is cultural). What problems concern Montréal schools cannot be tagged as a representation of the province at large. The more remote you are from the Big Center, the less exposed to the multiculturalism, and the absence of direct experience with other nationalities can explain some xenophobia.

And Montreal is filled with people that were brought up in the suburbs or in rural places, thus are learning to adjust to sharing their space and ideas with people so different that we can’t talk about opposition of positions.

About the kirpan story, they asked white French speaking teenagers going to the same school as the young boy carrying the kirpan under his clothes whether he should be permitted to do so. While some demonstrated tolerance and respect towards his religious requirements, the majority was saying that if HE is allowed to walk around with a knife, “then me too”.

That was roughly 2 years ago on Radio-Canada with Jean Dussault.

What interested me most was where such an opinion was derived from. The need for teenagers to suppress differences among a group? Intolerance of their parents? Lack of personal opinion-forming abilities?

Thanks detop for the welcome. Where do we grab the smiley codes btw?