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Rochelle Wilner |
Frank Dimant |
Prof. Stephen Scheinberg |
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Rochelle Wilner |
Frank Dimant |
Prof. Stephen Scheinberg |
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By Dr. Conrad Winn, President, COMPAS
There is both good news and bad news in a national survey on racism and bigotry, commissioned by B’nai Brith Canada specifically for the purposes of this Audit in order to give a multi-dimensional aspect to consideration of the data reported to the League. (1) This survey also offers some important findings on the attitudes of Canadians to several minority groups in this country, which puts evaluation of antisemitism in the wider context of bias and bigotry in general towards identifiable religious or ethnic groups.
Canadians are no more racist or bigoted than a generation ago, and there are indications of growing inter-group acceptance and even empathy and understanding. However, while empathy and psycho-social health are on the upswing, the core minority characterized by religious or racialist antagonism is not showing any significant decline.
From the perspective of encouraging the inter-group understanding that is essential for healthy democracy, the positive news is that the majority of Canadians who understand the Holocaust and do not blame Jews for their own victimization, is growing. Although the minority susceptible to neo-Nazi thinking is not declining, Canadians as a whole seem more immune than in the past to Ernst Zundel-style messaging about how the Holocaust did not take place or that the death camps were actually resort camps for the privileged.
The worst single item of news from this COMPAS poll across the country is that Asians face a particular challenge in Canada today, especially on the west coast. Anti-Asian sentiment seems to be on the upswing.
A puzzling finding of concern is the continued, apparently greater, antagonism of Quebecers than Canadians as a whole towards African-Canadians, Italians, and especially Jews. A perplexing aspect of Quebecers’ apparent antagonism towards Jews is evidence that such negative feelings do not abate, as they normally do in democratic societies, as education rises. The data suggest that education may even be reinforcing such sentiments.
To gauge inter-group mistrust and racialism, COMPAS utilised the “have too much power” question that has been widely used to measure racism and ethnocentricism in the social sciences for more than 50 years (See title in Table 1). The proportion of respondents who say that a group has too much power is deemed to be antagonistic and racialist while respondents who affirm that a given group has not enough power is deemed empathetic.
Compared to almost a generation ago (1986), Canadians in 2002 show a pattern of approximately stable bigotry alongside rising empathy. In the case of five ethno-racial-religious groups, the proportions saying that the group has too much power has declined or remained the same. For example, 14% today say that Jews have too much power while 5% say that African-Canadians have too much power, compared to 15% and 7% respectively in 1986. The decline in bigotry seems particularly noticeable in the case of Italian-Canadians — 8% today compared to 13% in 1986. The decline in antagonism is all the more remarkable given that the proportions saying that they do not know if a given group has too much power has dropped sharply in the period. Over the same period, empathy has skyrocketed. The increase is as follows:
The one partial exception to the sunnier psychological weather concerns attitudes to Asians. Empathy is certainly up, as it is for all other groups. But antagonism appears to be up as well — from 10% saying Asians had too much power in 1986 to 14% today. Asians are the only group experiencing an apparent rise in racialist antagonism.
Follow-up research could reconfirm that Canadians are actually becoming more antagonistic to Asians, and explore the roots of these apparent sentiments. Two potential explanations come to mind — fallout from 9/11 with anti-Asian feeling rooted in negative feelings about Canadian Muslims, most of whom are from Asia, or problems of social integration that predate 9/11.
The regional analysis of the data suggests the latter explanation because negative feeling about Asians is especially concentrated in British Columbia, while largely absent from Canada’s biggest city, Toronto. In British Columbia, 21% say that Asians have too much power compared to 16% saying that they do not have enough. In Toronto; 10% say that Asians have too much power compared to 32% saying that they do not have enough. Thus, anti-Asian racialists appear to outnumber empathizers in B.C. while they are outnumbered by three to one in Toronto.
Table 1: “I’d like to ask a few questions about ethnic groups in Canada. Would you say that members of the following ethnic groups have too much, just enough, or not enough power in Canada?”
| Too much | Just enough | Not enough | DNK | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | *1986 | 2002 | 1986 | 2002 | 1986 | 2002 | 1986 | |
| Asians | 14 | 10 | 51 | 45 | 22 | 13 | 14 | 33 |
| Jews | 14 | 15 | 56 | 51 | 14 | 6 | 16 | 28 |
| Italians | 8 | 13 | 64 | 55 | 12 | 5 | 16 | 27 |
| Blacks or African-Canadians | 5 | 7 | 44 | 45 | 39 | 21 | 12 | 27 |
| Germans | 4 | 7 | 59 | 54 | 16 | 7 | 22 | 32 |
| Scottish or Scots | 4 | 6 | 60 | 56 | 17 | 7 | 20 | 31 |
*Note: From the book Hate on Trial: The Zundel Affair, The Media, And Public Opinion in Canada by Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn.
It has been shown that attitudes towards the Holocaust are related to attitudes towards contemporary Jews. Almost a generation ago, it was shown that Canadians who somehow held Jews responsible for the Holocaust also harboured invidious feelings about Jews having too much power in Canada. (2)
A similar pattern of attitudes holds today. Most of those who feel that Jews were mostly responsible for the Holocaust also believe that they have too much power in Canada today (58%). The proportion feeling that Jews have too much power today declines to 33% among those who feel that Jews were partly responsible for the Holocaust while virtually disappearing among those who feel that Jews were not at all responsible for the Holocaust (8%).
In practice, the proportion who hold Jews not at all responsible for their own liquidation during the Holocaust appears to be solidifying — up from 60% in 1986 to 75% today, as shown in table 2. The proportion blaming the Holocaust’s victims for their misfortune experienced a nominal decline of 2 percentage points. Whether this represents a long term change is unclear. But, it is reasonably clear that the Canadian public has become more confidently knowledgeable about the Holocaust, with an ever-stronger majority resistant to the idea of blaming the victims.
Table 2: “Thinking back a half century ago to the treatment of the Jews in Europe, before and during World War II, do you think the persecution of the Jews was…”
| 2002 | *1986 | |
|---|---|---|
| Partly or Mostly the fault of the Jews | 15 | 16 |
| Not at all the fault of the Jews | 75 | 60 |
| UNPROMPTED: DNK/Refused | 11 | 23 |
*Note: From the book Hate on Trial: The Zundel Affair, The Media, And Public Opinion in Canada by Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn.
A troubling finding reveals significant cause for concern relating to attitudes in Quebec. Both in 1986 and today, Quebecers and francophones are more likely than others to hold Jews responsible for the Holocaust, and they are especially apt to if they have high school education or less. Today, the proportions of those who hold Jews at least partly responsible for their own genocidal victimization are 15% among Canadians as a whole, 26% among francophones, and 39% among francophones with high school education or less. In 1986, the corresponding proportions were 16%, 25%, and 41%, respectively.
A major factor in the evidence of improved psycho-social health is the role of the young. For example, 7% of those under 30 feel that Jews have too much power compared to 23% of those 60 and over. Meanwhile, 26% of the youngest cohort feel that Jews do not have enough power compared to 11% among the oldest cohort. Comparable cohort-related patterns emerge in attitudes towards the other groups as well. For example, the proportions of those who feel that Asians have too much power are 7% and 21% among the youngest and oldest cohort, respectively, while the corresponding proportions feeling that Asians do not have enough power are 35% and 13%.
Age is a far stronger and more predictable pattern accounting for improved psycho-social health than education. It is as if the entire Canadian society is moving towards a more democratic spirit because of a range of cultural factors including, potentially, the role of the mass media.
As reported earlier, anti-Asian sentiment ought to be a matter of concern on the west coast. In British Columbia, 21% say that Asians have too much power compared to 16% saying that they do not have enough. In Toronto, 10% say that Asians have too much power compared to 32% saying that they do not have enough. Thus, anti-Asian racialists appear to outnumber empathizers in B.C. while they are outnumbered 3:1 in Toronto. Anti-Asian sentiment seems particularly strong outside the lower mainland, but our B.C. sub-samples were too small for us to be certain about this possible pattern.
The anti-Asian animus among Quebecers is roughly average for the country — higher than in Ontario but lower than in British Columbia. Quebecers’ distinctiveness emerges in possible attitudes towards African-Canadians, Italians, and especially Jews, as shown in Table 3:
Table 3: Percent Saying that Each Group Has Too Much Power in Quebec, TROC, Canada, and the Quebec Percent Minus the TROC Percent
| Group | Quebec | TROC | CANADA | [QC - TROC] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jews | 26 | 10 | 14 | 16 |
| Italians | 16 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| African-Canadians | 12 | 3 | 5 | 9 |
| Germans | 8 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Asians | 15 | 12 | 14 | 3 |
| Scots | 5 | 4 | 4 | 1 |
In democratic societies, educational systems normally play an important role in attenuating inter-group antagonism. That was the pattern among francophones and Quebecers in 1986 with anti-Jewish animus abating as education increased. (3) Such a pattern does not emerge in Quebec today. In the case of prejudice against Italians and African-Canadians, there appears to be no relationship between education and prejudice or antagonism. In the case of prejudice against Jews, there is a hint of growing prejudice as education rises. Among Quebecers with high school or less, 20% believe that Jews have too much power. This appears to rise to 29% among those with college education and 30% among those who have university degrees.
Table 4 displays the contrasting apparent influence of education on anti-Judaism in 1986 and 2002. Francophones rather than Quebecers are compared because the 1986 data on francophones are more readily accessible. In both years, the proportion believing that Jews have too much power was higher among francophones than Canadians as a whole. But, in 2002 this prejudiced viewpoint abated among francophones with no more than high school education while it appeared to increase among this group in 1986.
Table 4: Proportions Saying Jews Have Too Much Power in 1986 and 2002 among Canadians, Francophones, and Francophones with No More than High School Education
| Canadians | Francophones | Francophones with no more than high school education | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 14 | 26 | 21 |
| 1986 | 15 | 31 | 40 |
The apparent failure of higher education to lower prejudice in Quebec, and the possibility that it might even contribute to prejudice in the case of Jews, is a matter that ought to elicit attention from those key opinion leaders with a special interest in encouraging a democratic political culture characterized by high levels of inter-group understanding.
If Canada consisted exclusively of women, racialism, prejudice and intolerance would not be a thing of the past, but it would be much less of a problem. There is not one group where women are more prejudiced, i.e., more likely to say that the group has too much power.
The biggest gender gaps are in the case of Jews, Italians, and African-Canadians, about whom women are 6, 5, and 3 percentage points respectively less likely to say that they have too much power. For example, 17% of men say that Jews have too much power compared to 11% of women.
The gender gap increases in the case of antagonistic attitudes towards Jews and Italians in Quebec:
Clearly, these are fascinating results which provide some insight into patterns of prejudice in this country and certainly merit further, more comprehensive follow-up study.