Nick Noorani Website

The Vision Vancouver mayoral-nomination race demonstrated that when upper middle-class Caucasians get their friends to participate in a party nomination race, it’s called “democracy”.
But when people with darker skin colours do the same, it’s sometimes painted in a more sinister light.
Instead of democracy, you’ll hear people mutter terms like “herding” or “temple politics”.
Nobody will be quoted saying this in 2008, but these are the words some people use in private conversations. This must end.
By Charlie Smith

So too must the racist requirement that members of Vancouver political parties produce photo ID if they want to vote at a nominating meeting.
This sharply elevates the risk of disenfranchising poor, elderly Canadians who don’t have driver’s licences.
Some of those poor, elderly Canadians are grandmothers of Chinese or South Asian descent.
They’ve ridden the bus their entire lives; they’ve worked hard to raise their children and grandchildren; and they’ve endured more than their share of economic racism.
These are some of the people who were pestered for photo ID at the Vision nomination meeting on June 15.
When one candidate for the mayoral nomination is the white-bread Gregor Robertson and the other leading candidate is of Asian descent, Coun. Raymond Louie, there is a risk that the victor could blow his chance of becoming mayor if he doesn’t treat the losing candidate with sufficient respect.
Robertson’s biggest mistake would be to treat Louie as if he is Robertson’s ambassador to Vancouver’s nonwhite communities.
It would be a demeaning role for Louie, who is as well-versed on the issues as anyone in Vancouver politics.
Robertson and his supporters on the Vision Vancouver board had also beware not to parcel out council nominations on the basis of race, either.
Setting racial quotas for council seats–even in the minds of party members when they cast ballots at a nomination meeting–may create a voter backlash against Vision Vancouver in the November election.
If there are six or seven qualified candidates of Chinese descent, then Vision Vancouver should nominate six or seven Chinese Canadian candidates for council.
That’s because there is tremendous diversity within so-called ethnic communities (including, I might add, the white ethnic community).
There are people of Chinese descent who trace their roots back five generations in Canada, and others who just arrived a few weeks ago from China.
There are people of Chinese descent in Vancouver who were born in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Kenya, Peru, India, and many other countries. It is not a homogeneous community.
The same is true of the so-called South Asian community, which traces its roots back to Fiji, the Indian subcontinent, Trinidad, East Africa, and numerous other places in the world.
That’s not to mention the tens of thousands of second-, third-, and fourth-generation Canadians of South Asian descent in this region.
And that doesn’t even address the magnitude of diversity within South Asia between Gujuratis, Bengalis, Tamils, Punjabis, and Maharashtrians, to name just a few different groups.
The reality is that since the early 1990s, civic and provincial parties have been recruiting immigrant candidates to bring in votes from minority communities.
For the NPA, the advantage of having a Daniel Lee on council was that he could raise a great deal of money and he could speak Cantonese for the benefit of the Chinese-language media.
The political parties usually weren’t nearly as interested in second- or third-generation Canadian candidates from minority communities–even though they were often better suited to become politicians–because they couldn’t speak the minority language.
Hence they couldn’t bring in the votes.
It’s why a lightweight immigrant politician like Liberal Sophia Leung was able to defeat the much more impressive New Democrat, fourth-generation Canadian Victor Wong, in Vancouver Kingsway in 1997 and 2000.
Until very recent times, few nonwhite politicians in B.C. transcended the role of ethnic-community ambassador to became major figures of influence within their own parties.
Notable exceptions include Ujjal Dosanjh, Moe Sihota, and Jenny Kwan.
Now that’s changing, thanks to the hard work of politicians like Louie and the increasingly important roles that Canadian-born Chinese are playing in our society.
While Louie may not speak his ancestors’ language with total fluency, he brings many other strengths to the table.
Louie pulled together an impressive array of support from across the spectrum in his first attempt to run for mayor. It was a true rainbow coalition with Louie also reaching out to the gay and lesbian communities.
This was not an instance of a politician of Chinese descent only pulling support from his own community.
In this respect, Louie’s campaign marked a watershed event in Vancouver civic politics, and foreshadows what we might see more of in the future.
This approach will likely have more success in the coming years because of the changing demographic profile of the region.
Gone are the days when left-wing parties in Vancouver can complacently look back at the 2002 election and say, “Hey, we can win without the support of the Indo-Canadian or Chinese communities.”
That kind of thinking denies the reality that there is enormous diversity within so-called “communities”. It’s insulting to people who trace their roots back to China or South Asia.
Even more importantly, that mentality ignores that this will soon become a majority-minority region–which means that no ethnic group, including Caucasians, will comprise more than 50 percent of the population by 2015.
In other words, Robertson and most of his supporters will soon be in the minority across Metro Vancouver.
The winners of future elections will be those who reach out to include people who previously had little connection to municipal politics.
The moment Robertson’s gang embraces this, they’ll have a much greater chance of taking control of Vancouver City Hall in November.
And the first step along that road will be to publicly acknowledge the contribution that Louie has made to making civic politics more inclusive.
The second would be to give him a significant role in shaping party policies in the platform. This is what Jean Chretien did with Paul Martin after their often-bitter leadership contest.
The third step would be to encourage Louie to give a speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade and to other organizations with large Caucasian memberships – and not treat him like his role is merely to bring in votes from dark-skinned people who supported his candidacy.
The fourth step would be for Robertson to acknowledge that Vision Vancouver made a mistake by imposing unfair restrictions on all those grandmothers who joined the party and came out to support Louie’s candidacy.
If Robertson does these things, he will become the odds-on favourite to become the next mayor of Vancouver.
If he fails to do this, there is a very real risk that Louie will be reelected to council and square off against an incumbent mayor by the name of Peter Ladner in the 2011 mayoral election.
http://www.straight.com/article-151011/whiteboy-gregor-robertson-must-avoid-racial-blunders