White people avoid | The Journal of Montreal

Dear readers Montreal Journal And Quebec newspaperi love you

You regularly send me mind-blowing examples you have collected for me, as you know I want to denounce excessive political correctness.

Every week, I find new examples of positive discrimination in the cultural environment.

Music to their ears

A reader, a musician who is a member of SOCAN, sent me a copy of an email he received last week announcing the awards presented that year.

1- Canadian Black Music Award. The award is intended to celebrate the outstanding contributions of black music creators with Canadian citizenship and was created in response to the high levels of racial tensions that plagued the early 2020s as well as issues related to systemic racism in our societies.

2- Swadeshi Songwriter Award. The award recognizes the artistic excellence of an Indigenous songwriter in Canada and is an important part of the SOCAN Foundation’s efforts to encourage, celebrate and promote Indigenous music creators.

3- The Elles de la Music Awards aims to celebrate and support mid-career Canadian female music creators who are recognized as women and want to take their careers to the next level.

So if you’re not black, not female, not indigenous, bye bye, sayonara, you can’t apply for any award.

On the film/television side, a reader is now sending me this press release from INIS. “Students in the mixte program began their intensive six-month training on Monday, during which they will explore a range of genres and audiovisual formats, from documentaries to fiction series.

This training is supported by Netflix and is dedicated to people with racial discrimination, people who identify with visible minorities and indigenous peoples”.

Finally, another reader informed me that the Canadian Association of Journalists offers mentorship to aspiring journalists who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Coloured/Black, Indigenous and People of Colour). This guidance (aimed at advising them on how to build a wider network of sources) was given to them by Noor Javed, a veiled woman who covers municipal politics in Toronto.

Many things bother me…

Do you need to self-identify as a woman to submit your candidacy for a prize reserved for women?

Is self-identifying as a visible minority enough to benefit from an internship?

Can only a minority woman give professional advice to a minority profession?

What message do you think this sends to young people who dare to be born white?

Live-apart

But where has “living together” gone if organizations and institutions spend their time assigning us an identity? Should we reduce ourselves to one aspect of our personality? And should we lock each of us in our little “community” where we only have contact with members of the same “community”?

Women on one side, men on the other? “BIPOC” on one side, whites on the other?

One final question: If anyone can self-identify with a minority identity to benefit from internships, training, or interesting jobs, why shouldn’t we all take advantage of the opportunity to self-identify as an oppressed minority?