Check out this link regarding Dr. Rick Mehta of Acadia University, a psychology prof there.
In this long post, I’ll give some information about my family history and so-called lived experience in Canada so people know where I’m coming from when it comes to issues related to racism, sexism, etc., and WHY I have been so outspoken of late – and also why I have adopted the positions that I have taken (e.g., standing by Cornwallis and Senator Beyak).
My grandfather was stoned to death outside of his own home during the separation of India for the “crime” of being a government employee. My grandmother blamed my mother for my grandfather’s murder and did what she could to make my mother’s life miserable. In turn, my mother directed her anger about how she was treated onto my older brother – until she realized that what she was doing was wrong. She then overcompensated by spoiling me when I was a child and that created its own problems. For example, I spent a good part of my childhood looking down on people who were poor and blamed them for their situation without giving any consideration to the greater societal context (e.g., did the people I was insulting even have access to drinking water, education, etc.) I also had a difficult time finding work after graduating from university because I was too spoiled from having had everything given to me, and to had to learn the hard way life’s lessons about the importance of hard work and how to find a job.
Other incidents that have shaped me as a human being stem from my own direct experiences with racism in my childhood (this paragraph) and observing how my mother was treated when she was trying to succeed in the workplace as a woman with brown skin (next paragraph). During the 1970s, there was a lot of tension between the English and French; because I was a first generation Canadian, I was accepted by neither group. That resulted in me not being allowed on certain streets, being beaten up routinely (in part because of my skin colour, although I imagine that being socially awkward and overweight played a role in being a target of bullies), my family receiving crank phone calls at all hours of the day and night, having total strangers scream at my family and me to “go back to your country”, and routinely coming home to have to clean eggs that were thrown at our home. After the 1980 referendum, my experience as a first generation Canadian has kept getting better. Until Justin Trudeau became prime minister and started dividing our country, I had little reason to even think about my ethnicity or skin colour; I was simply a proud Canadian.
With regard to the issue of sexism, It pained me to have to hear stories of what my mother had to endure due to racism and/or sexism. I’ll give two examples. She was unceremoniously fired over the phone when she called in to miss work because my brother and I were ill with the measles. She also had to watch as people who were junior to her in the workplace quickly rise through the ranks (one person ended up becoming her boss) – not because of qualifications or work ethic, but because they were connected to “the old boys club”.
I like to think that these and other experiences have shaped who I am as a person, how I treat other people in general, and – more importantly – why I’ve tried to structure my classes as a functional hierarchy and democracy. My hope has always been that students would take what I did implicitly and would adopt it into their lives after they’re no longer students in my classes (e.g., how they treat other people, what qualities they look for in politicians when it comes to elections, etc.).
In term of India’s history, it’s true that the British insisted that India and Pakistan become two separate countries, and that this resulted in much bloodshed; I know this because it affected my mother directly and affected me indirectly. However, I believe that a greater good was served as a result of this decision. India is now an economic powerhouse. I highly doubt this would have happened if the British hadn’t insisted on having India separate into two countries. I believe that the situation would have been a lot worse and would have made the conflicts in the Middle East look like world peace in comparison. It might seem counterintuitive (and some might argue that my position is “racist”), but I believe that the British used their greater and advanced knowledge of civilization and democracy to do what was best for the people of India. I’m not saying that the British were perfect or angels, but if they were evil people hell-bent on genocide, I believe they would have found a way to have accomplished that goal many years ago.
For this reason, I see colonization very differently from the FN advocacy groups and openly challenge some of the narratives that are dominant at university campuses (e.g., the decolonization initiatives) – especially when they’re done under the premise that they can’t be scrutinized (e.g., any attempts to ask questions or offer different perspectives are countered with charges of “racism”, “cultural genocide”, being “pro-colonialsim”, etc.) and when the past is used for endless demands for financial compensation. This explains why I have been very skeptical of the so-called “Truth” and “Reconciliation” report on the residential schools and why I am standing with Cornwallis (I believe that the activists are trying to rewrite history).
I’ll bring my thoughts to a close by saying that respect is a two-way street. At what point are we going to start playing by the same rules when it comes to issues such as race, gender, etc.? We can continue to along with with divides us, which will help us continue to magnify the polarization we’re seeing in society today and the path to civil unrest; if I’m correct, we’re on a path to WWIII and this will consist of civil unrest in the liberal democracies. In the past, evil has persisted not because the citizens had adopted the views of fascism or communism (the term “social justice” is in vogue at the moment), but because the good people did nothing. Applying the lessons of the past to the present, this explains why the voices of reason must start to speak out.
If my reading of history is correct, the voices of reason outnumber the far left to the point of being able to minimize their impact. Once the far left is neutralized, there will be little reason for the far right to advocate for itself. From there, we will finally have a context in which we will finally be able to have the difficult conversations to address both the good and dark sides of our history, and to finally address modern social problems. The simplistic “settler/colonizer” = evil (or “genocidal”), “patriarchy”, “systemic racism”, “systemic sexism” approaches to our history and complex social problems is only worsening problems that can potentially be about as close as humanly possible to being solved or nipped in the bud.
Musings of a medical heretic 