User talk:Paulista01/Archive 2010

Employment equity (Canada) and Visible minority articles (Changes of April 2010)

Response to edits and comment by Paulista in April 2010:

There are a lot of issues here, and this will necessarily be a lengthy response. You wrote, “....according to the guidelines (Canadian Gov.) white Arabs, white Western Asians (including Israelis) and white Latin Americans are not classified as minority.”

This statement is not accurate if we are talking about people who give one response when asked about racial/ethnic identity. Here is a key sentence cut-and-pasted from the Canadian government website, about how the term visible minorities was defined in the 2006 census:

“In the 2006 Census, persons who marked-in Chinese, South Asian, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, Arab, West Asian, Japanese, or Korean were included in the visible minority population.”[1]

The passage then goes on to describe how respondents were categorized who gave multiple identifiers as their racial/ethnic identity. However, very few respondents give multiple identifiers; the vast majority of census respondents give a single category. The above source says that of those the Census classified as visible minorities, 91.6% used a single descriptor. This webpage also explains how census responses were used to categorize people as visible minorities:[2]

You wrote (my own wording in italics)...“For example, people who are Arabs or Latin Americans may consider themselves to be white, yet the federal government treats Arabs and Latin Americans as members of the visible minority category. This is wrong, if the source confirms it, the source is invalid, it is not agreeing with the main source, the Canadian Government.”

My original statement, in italics, is accurate. I added it to address earlier concerns from Wiki participants similar to your concerns --- namely, who is the Canadian government to brand these groups as non-white? If someone identifies themselves as Arab or Latin American, the Canadian government does indeed categorize them as visible minorities. I would cite the same source here. [3] However, if a person identifies as both Latin American and Spanish (or Portuguese or Dutch or British) on the census form, that person would not be placed in the visible minority category, under 2006 Census rules. But it is accurate to say that if a person identifies as Arab or Latin American, the Canadian government treats them as visible minorities.

I’m not sure where I saw it, but it has been noted that people from the Caucasus region, from which we get the word Caucasian, are categorized as non-Caucasian by the Canadian government under employment equity rules. This defies all logic, yet it is true. You raise the issue of Israelis – they are not categorized as visible minorities even though the people of surrounding countries are visible minorities. There is no underlying logic. Could it be that, faced with this lack of logic, you have attributed a greater degree of rationality than exists in fact (by placing great emphasis on the approximately 8% who identified as visible minority plus a second identifier)?

I think the underlying problem is simply that the visible minority category doesn’t make sense. I can imagine an Arab, or Latin American, or West Asian person saying “I know I am white, therefore this article must be wrong.” The error is with the original concept as defined by the Canadian government, which has been harshly criticized by scholars on both the left and the right as a hodgepodge of ethnic/racial groups that have nothing in common. Critics have suggested that while employment equity was intended to promote liberal ideals, its use of “visible minority” reflects an implicitly racist notion that anyone with non-European roots is non-white/non-Caucasian. (Regarding this last point, I have some citations to sociology articles handy, but I haven't yet put them in either Wiki article.)

The concept of visible minorities implies that there are two key categories -- the "us" who are descended from the historic colonizers of Canada, and the "them". This is very offputting.

I am sympathetic to the argument, made by some, that putting people in ethnic/racial pigeonholes is a bad idea to start with, even if well-intentioned. On top of that, to create a category of minority groups deserving special treatment (versus minority groups not deserving special treatment) makes matters worse. But as much as I dislike the term, “visible minorities” is the phrase used in the Employment Equity Act, and the government has refused to change it despite pressure from many directions. Canadian2006 (talk) 23:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Response to Paulista's comment of 5 May 2010:

Thank you for your response. I certainly want to cooperate in improving the article. As you point out, the legislative definition contradicts the operational definition. If I understand you correctly, we are in agreement that this contradiction between the legislative and operational definitions makes the entire concept of “visible minority” useless – even counterproductive, if some census respondents can’t fill out the forms without contradicting themselves (as you’ve pointed out). In my opinion, the best approach is to shine a spotlight on this contradiction.

The historical root of this is that the creators of the Employment Equity Act were seeking to mimic the US’s affirmative action policies. The US treats Hispanics (another controversial, contrived category) as a group needing special legal protection parallel to that of Black Americans. Canada included Latin Americans because it did not want to appear less progressive than the US.

Instead of using the term “Hispanics,” which is problematic in so many ways, Canada used the term “Latin Americans,” which is problematic in a different way, as you’ve pointed out. The inclusion of West Asians (another controversial phrase) and Arabs is harder for me to explain, except that there is a big dose of Eurocentrism running through all of this. At the time the Act was passed, various ethnic/racial groups were eager to be included because it meant preferential treatment in hiring.

The concept of visible minority has been embedded in the law for a quarter century, and to Canadians, it’s merely part of the landscape. Every country has its idiosyncrasies that strike outsiders as bizarre but which are accepted as “normal” within that country (for example, the US Electoral College or the second amendment to the US Constitution come to mind). I’m not claiming the visible minority category is sensible – just that Canadians are surprisingly accepting of it. No Canadian loses sleep over how to fill out the census form.

You've noted the special census policies for a person who identifies as (for example) Arab+Black versus a person who identifies as Arab+French (the first is VisMin and the latter is not). Keep in mind that this policy began with the 2006 census to accommodate respondents who felt, for whatever reason, that they needed more than one phrase to describe their heritage. If we’d had our discussion prior to 2006, the entire topic would have simpler – and also less accommodating of census respondents. The employment equity forms that are distributed in workplaces still ask employees whether they’re a visible minority, yes or no, and the employer is required to accept the employee's self-identification without questioning it.

There are really two articles to be dealt with here – Employment equity (Canada) and Visible minority. We haven’t yet discussed the visible minority article which overlaps a lot with the e.e. article. Perhaps the visible minority article is the more appropriate place to cover these issues. Here is what I suggest:

(i) In the e.e. article under History, a minor change: I would like to change “The purpose of the act according to the original legislation is...” to “The purpose of the Act, as stated in the legislation itself, is...” (The original Act is the 1986 legislation, whereas you are quoting from the 1995 law which superseded it.)

(ii) In the e.e. article, I have a radical suggestion: Instead of rehashing all these issues in both the e.e. and visible minority articles, let’s deal with it in one article or the other – not both. How about if I remove the entire subsection “Visible minorities” within the e.e. article, and move it to the visible minority article? (I’m referring to the block that begins, “According to the employment (equity) act....” and ends with “...as members of the visible minority category.”) In its place in the e.e. article, I would put this:

Main article: Visible minority

I suggest we then amend the Visible minority article in this manner:

(iii) I’d add a section with the heading “Legislative versus operational definitions” (or “Inconsistency in definitions”) and move your “Visible minorities” section from the e.e. article to the VisMin article, under this new heading.

(iv) After doing the above, the section “Latin Americans, West Asians, and Arabs” could be deleted. That content would now be covered by the block of text moved from the e.e. article to the VisMin article.

(v) Somewhere in the VisMin article, I’d like to briefly mention that this is an example of the concept of “statistext,” which is an artificially contrived census category, with an internal link to the Wiki article titled “Statistext” (yet to be written). (Hispanics in the US, and “West Asians” in Canada would be other examples of statistexts.)

So, what do you think? If you’re more comfortable with email, there is an email link on my user page. Or, this means of communicating is fine, too. Canadian2006 (talk) 20:37, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Cleaning up articles on Brazil

Hello, Paulista. Thank you very much for your kind note in my Talk Page.

There are many problems in many articles regarding Brazil, and, yes, Opinoso has been a major source of these problems. Dubious sources, misinterpreted sources, sources that have nothing to do with the subject of the articles, etc, etc.

Worse than that, he used to be extremely aggressive, insulting, threatening, cheating; and he apparently was able to build up a network of admin contacts, people who know nothing about Brazil and aren't even able to read Portuguese, which has had the result of innocent editors being blocked and persecuted by a mindless bureaucracy.

I hope all this is finished, or at least in its way to an end. Thankfully, his last attempts at reverting others' edits and causing disruption in Brazil-related articles were visible fiascos: an absurd and very evident misinterpretation of a text by Miguel Angel García, an insistence on the unreliability of the Brazilian Census, his inability to understand what MtDNA is, his idea that he can counter actual sources with his experience walking in the streets (even though he obviously never walked in a street in Rio Grande do Sul), his ridiculous and arrogant interpretation of the genetics of skin colour, his repeated and absurd personal attacks, his apparent unawareness about Darcy Ribeiro's writings other than O Povo Brasileiro, his inability to suggest books on a subject he pretends to master, his inability to substantiate his vile accusations against me, all of that, I hope, have helped to show what kind of editor he is.

I think it is necessary to get Brazilian editors back into editing those articles. Opinoso made an excellent job of driving them away, with his indecent personal attacks, his stubborness, his ability to pick a source in Portuguese and translate it into something completely different in English, and then take advantage of non-Portuguese speaking admins to make life miserable to everyone who disagreed with him. This needs to be reversed now, bringing people back here, and establishing a sane environment where different positions can be discussed in a civil way.

Thanks, again, for your kind support! Ninguém (talk) 19:15, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Paulista, I have answered to your last note in my Talk Page, but I believe it would be better if we moved such discussion to the article's Talk Page; would you agree with that? Ninguém (talk) 16:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, no problem.Paulista01 (talk) 18:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Empire of Brazil

Paulista, thank you for your kind words. However, I must disagree with you. Since whites were by far the majority of the people in power (be it as army officers, politicians, scientists, etc...) it is obvious that they ended up being also the majority of the noble titles. However, I can not write there that non-whites were only 1% because there is no book that says that. I need sources, everything I write is backed by a source.You could, at most, add that the non-whites were a minority, although that would be a redundant information and non-sourced.

The Brazilian nobility was different from its Europeans counterparts. You can not compare them with 21th Century nobilities nor with the 7th Century nobilities. What matter is that in 19th Century Europe almost all nobles were hereditary and had a legal superior social status. None of those existed in Brazil. Regards, --Lecen (talk) 18:29, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Italian-Brazilian

Hi Paulista! I found a source for the term "Italian-Brazilian". The book 'A game of mirrors: the changing face of ethno-racial constructs and language in the Americas' clearly defines the term Italian-Brazilian: "Italo-Brasileiro (Italian-Brazilian, Brazilian of Italian ancestry)". Limongi (talk) 19:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco is now a FAC

Hi, I am the same editor who wrote Pedro II of Brazil and I've nominated another article, José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco, as a FAC. It is about a 19th century Brazilian statesman and is closely related to Pedro II's life. If you enjoyed the Emperor's article I believe you might enjoy this one. Thus, I'd like to see your opinion on whether you would support or oppose its nomination. The link: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco/archive1 --Lecen (talk) 12:38, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much!--Lecen (talk) 21:07, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Arent't you confusing him with the Baron of Cotejipe? I know that after Rio Branco left and Caxias became the prime minister (a mere figurehead, in reality, due to his ill health) with Cotejipe as the true head of the cabinet, the latter caused controversies when he helped a bank of a friend during the financial crisis. --Lecen (talk) 15:18, 26 November 2010 (UTC)