Yancy’s text “Flipping the Script” explains how racialized individuals know white people so well. People of colour confront whiteness in their everyday lives all the time. Yancy highlights the presence of white people engaging in racist practices impacting their lives. It made me think of “the outsider within” perspective. Black feminist thinkers have theorized the idea of Black women living on the edge, looking in from the outside and out from the inside. Black women’s ideas have been at the intersection of anti-racism movements and feminist movements, placing them on the edge. It allows them to have a different perspective and see what’s real.
Yancy and Ahmed’s ideas are similar. Black people can see the reality of whiteness because they have a “raced positional knowledge” (8). Their experience of racism in their everyday lives allows them to see whiteness and how race works. In contrast, white people are too much in the system and cannot see it: they live in an alternate, fantasy world of colourblindness. Baldwin’s idea of innocence in his letter might be related to this. White people are “innocent” because they do not see the world as it is (20). “They have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it” encompasses how white people cannot and do not want to understand by themselves how races work and the horrors resulting from it (19). This idea, however, is not an excuse for white people to be racist because they don’t know about racialization or to expect people of colour to teach them.
Anna Katabi
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In what sense could racialized folks "know" white people so well? -
The good immigrantAccording to Muhammedi, Prime Ministers Pearson and Pierre Trudeau had a specific type of person in mind when thinking about good immigrants. In the postwar economic boom, businesses asked the government to enforce liberal immigration policies to meet the market’s demands. Immigrants had to be ready to work as soon as possible when they arrived in Canada. The implementation of the point system in 1967 was a result of these demands. Prospective migrants’s evaluation is based on human and social capital. The criteria are age, education, training, occupational skills in demand, whether they speak English or French, whether they have relatives in Canada, arranged employment and employment opportunities in the area of destination, and finally, the personal assessment made by the immigration officer. These criteria respond to Canadian labour’s needs. It made me think of a personal anecdote. My dad told me that he wanted to immigrate to Canada when he was younger and be a physician there. However, after he had done the whole process, they told him that he could immigrate if he signed a sort of contract promising he wouldn’t practice medicine there. It showcases how immigration in Canada is regulated to the market’s needs. You could be highly qualified but still unable to migrate because of Canada’s labour needs. Furthermore, these criteria discriminate against people coming from the ‘developing’ world. The point system allowed more diversity but the emphasis on skills and education was also a form of discrimination. It is still the case today. Allowing immigration for humanitarian reasons comes after the needs of the labour market. Therefore, the ideal immigrant does not live off social services, has a job which enhances the Canadian economy, and does not ‘take’ Canadian jobs away.