[For those looking for the CBC’s argument that white people aren't protected by Canadian Human Rights Law, see the original document here.]
In June of 2020 the CBC announced that it would start capitalizing the word “Black” when referring to Black people, but would continue to write “white” with a lowercase “w”. The result of the policy-change is that the CBC now capitalizes the names of all racial groups (eg “Black”, “Asian”, “Indigenous”) with the exception of “white” people. This is an insult which establishes a clear racial hierarchy in the mind of the public and delegitimizes the identity of White/European Canadians.
In response to the policy, SWC has:
1. Contacted the Standards Editor of the CBC;
2. Contacted The Canadian Radio and Television Commission;
3. Filed a Freedom of Information request to look at the CBC’s internal communications about the issue;
4. Compiled a petition with over 1,000 signatures (which we encourage you to sign—you can do so anonymously);
We also filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) seeking that the CBC apply a racially neutral policy by either lowercasing or uppercasing both racial descriptors or, alternatively, to use ‘European-Canadian’ and ‘African-Canadian’ as racial descriptors—Here’s our video announcing the complaint. That complaint has now been dismissed.
Following the advice of our lawyers, we have decided not to appeal the decision to the courts, however, we are currently exploring relaunching the case with new facts.
To be clear, our complaint did not go to trial. It was dismissed before trial on the grounds of being “trivial” under the definition of the Canadian Human Rights Act, section 41. The Commissioner decided that our complaint was not serious enough, arguing that the CBC’s policy did not cause harm against White people.
Below is our analysis of and the CBC’s legal arguments and the Commission’s published decision.
(To hear an analysis of our correspondence with the CBC, petitioning them to change the policy, see here)
Analysis
The CBC appealed to an anti-White conspiracy theory to argue that White people are not protected by human rights law.
The Canadian Human Rights Act protects Canadians from discrimination on the basis of numerous characteristics. Three of those characteristics are “race”, “colour”, and “ethnic or national origin”. Our complaint was based on all three. However, in its arguments for why our complaint should be dismissed, the CBC strawmanned our complaint as based only on the grounds of “colour” and ignored the other two characteristics. As the CBC’s lawyers wrote:
The Complainant alleges that the CBC’s journalistic decision to capitalize “Black” but leave “white” lowercase … is discriminatory on the protected characteristic of colour.
After wrongly characterizing our complaint, the CBC then went on to cite a long quote from a 2013 case in front of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission in the attempt to argue that White people are not protected from colour-based discrimination.
The Nova Scotian case was one in which a light-skinned Black woman complained of abuse from other Black people at the Black Educators’ Association. The tribunal judge in that Nova Scotian case wrote the following:
It is generally accepted in the human rights context that “colour” refers to visible “skin colour”. As discussed in some of the evidence at this hearing, the making of distinctions among people on the basis of “colour” has come to us directly from our shared heritage of the slavery relationships which were created and maintained by dominant “white” populations. Even today, in the absence of legal slavery and in the absence of legal designations as to racial purity, colourism survives as the concept of classifying people on the basis of their apparent “colour” or “shade” in a continuum away from “white” and towards some other definable hue. It is suggested by colourist thinking that the closer one’s skin tone is to that of a pure white, the better access one will have to the jobs and accommodation and opportunities available to actual “white” people. (emphasis ours)
The narrative that’s being appealed to—that White people “created” colourism—sounds very similar to the anti-White, pseudo-academic conspiracy theory that, sometime during the 1800s, ‘White people invented race’ to justify slavery and colonialism. Here is not the place to exhaustively dispel the myth, but White people did not invent race, racism or colourism. Political and social distinctions on the basis of skin colour and other physical characteristics have existed all around-the-world since as long as records exist.
For example, the word “ethiopian” comes from Greek, meaning “burnt face”, and it was used by ancient Greeks to refer to Black people. The word is used twice in Homer’s Iliad and three times in the Odyssey, which are two of the oldest complete texts in the western world, both of which were written in the 8th century BC. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote in his Bibliotheca Historica that ethiopians are “black-skinned”, “flat-nosed” and “wooly-haired” as compared to the people of southern India who are not so flat-nosed or so wooly-haired. Herodotus refers to the hair of Ethiopians as “the wooliest of all mankind.” Aristotle attributes the wooly hair of Ethiopians to the extreme heat in their region and wrote that their curly hair is a sign of cowardice.
And we could go on and on with examples from ancient Egypt, India, Japan, and China. In sum, White people did not invent race; we did not invent racism; and we did not invent the idea of categorizing or assessing people on the basis of their skin-colour or any other physical characteristic. The idea that White people invented these things is the result of bad-faith pseudo-scholarship which is aimed at justifying and rationalizing contempt for White people, and in this instance, it was used to argue that White people are not, or should not, be protected by human rights law.
Referencing the above quote from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, the CBC then argued that “this decision underscores that the Complaint before the Commission does not meet the requirements of the Act since being ‘white’ does not, in the human rights context, mean that a person has the protected characteristic of ‘colour’”. They later go on to say that
[t]he Complainant in the present matter identifies as “white”, which, as per the above authorities, is not a characteristic that attracts the protection of human rights legislation, including that of the Act. CBC submits that, on this basis alone, the Complaint must be dismissed. [our emphasis]
First of all, even if the cited conspiracy theory were true, it’s unclear how, logically, it connects to the CBC’s conclusion that White people are not protected by human rights law. The CBC seems to be arguing that White people created a “colourist” social system, therefore, white people cannot be discriminated against on the basis of their colour, and therefore they should not be protected by human rights law.
Not even the cited Nova Scotian tribunal reached this conclusion—the argument is entirely the work of the CBC. As stated, the Nova Scotian case was one in which a White-looking Black woman complained of discrimination on the basis of the fact that she looked White—and she won. Thus, in contradiction of the CBC’s contrived conclusion, discrimination on the basis of having “white” skin actually is protected by human rights law, and the conclusion of the Nova Scotian case was another reiteration of that obvious point.
So, to summarize the argument:
1. the CBC began by mischaracterizing our complaint as predicated on the grounds only of colour, when, in fact, it was also predicted on race and national origin.
2. they then appeal to a fake conspiracy theory about “colourism”.
3. they then point to this conspiracy theory in order to make the illogical argument that, ‘White people invented colour-based discrimination’, and therefore, White people are not protected from colour-based discrimination.
4. the conclusion they arrive at is inconsistent with the very precedent that they use to make their point.
We filed this case with the intention of winning it, of overturning a degrading policy, and forcing the CBC to affirm the identity of White people. However, a secondary purpose of the complaint was, at the very least, to create the circumstances that would give the CBC and CHRC the opportunity to either prove or disprove themselves, and here is an example where the CBC has absolutely discredited itself. That we were able to elicit this indefensible argument from the CBC, in-and-of-itself, made filing this case worthwhile.
2. The Commissioner uncritically followed the CBC’s lead, characterizing our complaint as rooted only on the grounds of “colour”.
As stated, the CBC mischaracterized our complaint as being only on the basis of colour. However, the Commissioner in the case seemed to simply do as she was told, also characterizing our complaint as discrimination only on the basis of colour, and not also on the basis of race and ethnic origin. She began her opinion as follows:
“[the Complainant] filed a Complaint with the Commission on September 17, 2020, alleging discrimination on the basis of colour with respect to the provision of a service against the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation....” (emphasis ours)
As we’ll explain below, this mischaracterization is significant given the context of the complaint, which deals with the question of which words should or should not receive capital letters. But it is also significant simply because it shows that the Commissioner failed to give our complaint fair and proper consideration.
Relying on this false characterization, the Commissioner went on to write the most significant paragraph in the decision:
The [CBC]’s policy does not single out or target the Complainant for adverse treatment. Rather, the policy speaks to grammatical rules as they apply to the words used to refer to a racial group. There is no support, apart from the Complainant’s personal opinion, for the proposition that these grammar rules adversely differentiate the Complainant from others. (emphasis ours)
Contained in these sentences are the central issues of the case. Below, we will dissect them.
3. The Commissioner states the CBC’s policy does not ‘single out and target’ White people.
As any objective observer can see, if you compare “Black”, “Indigenous”, “Asian” and “white” it is patently clear someone is being ‘singled out’ and ‘targeted’. Those who are “Black”, “Asian” and “Indigenous” are symbolically being given a higher status than those who are “white”. Further, in our communications preceding the trial, the CBC, in fact, stated this directly when they provided their reasons as to why “Black” people receive a capital letter while White people do not, such as:
“To acknowledge the distinctiveness of shared Black history and Black culture…”
“We have seen no compelling evidence of a comparable shared ‘white history’ or ‘white culture’...”
“[A] white person’s reference to ‘white’ does not mirror a Black person’s reference to Black history, Black culture, etc…”
“[T]he ugliness of malignant intolerance associated with white nationalists and other vocal champions of a capital “W.’”
4. The Commissioner may have predicated her conclusion on the unspoken assumption that White people are not a race.
The confusion surrounding whether or not “Black” and “white” should be capitalized comes down to the question of whether “black” and “White” refer to racial groups or skin colours, and thus, whether they are common words or proper words.
Common words refer to generic categories, and they are always written with lowercase letters (eg. red, dog, fast, beautiful, car, ugly, slow, green, nation, large, etc.). Proper words are names—names of specific entities within those broader, generic categories, and those are always written with capital letters (eg, Canada, Canadian, Canadians, George Orwell, Orwellian, Franz Kafka, Kafkaesque, etc).
What’s confusing about the word “black” is that it exists in both common and proper forms. When “black” is used to refer to a colour (e.g. the black cat; the black sky etc.) it is a common word and written in lower case. However, when used to refer to the “Black race”, the word does not refer to a colour. When used to refer to a racial or national group, “Black” is a name, therefore it is a proper word, and therefore it should be capitalized.
And the same is also true of the word “White” when referring to “White people”, because “White people” are also a race.
In light of these grammar principles, consider the Commissioner’s wording: CBC’s policy simply “speaks to grammatical rules as they apply to the words used to refer to a racial group”. The question of grammar rules as they apply to races is certainly relevant here, but her statement does not address the crux of the issue: the name of one racial group has been capitalized, while the name of another racial group has not.
If she wanted to defend this discriminatory policy by appealing to grammar rules then she should have offered some rationale as to why it is grammatically correct to capitalize the name of the “Black race” but not the “White race”—and yet she never does. How could she dismiss our complaint with her simple statement about grammar without addressing this obvious inconsistency?
One explanation could be that the Commissioner was operating on the unspoken assumption that “white” is just a colour, and not a racial group. Indeed, this interpretation is consistent with the fact that, following the CBC, she misconstrued our complaint as one alleging colour-based discrimination rather than racial discrimination. If she approached our complaint as if it dealt with how the CBC refers to “white” skin colour (which, because it is a common word, is never capitalized) as opposed to the name of “Black race” (which, because it is proper word, should always capitalized)—then do her words makes sense: the policy simply “speaks to grammatical rules as they apply to the words used to refer to a racial group”. She doesn’t address the question of why the “White” race is not also capitalized because, in her mind, no one has suggested that “white” is the name racial group—only a colour.
If this interpretation of the Commissioner’s thinking is correct, it is further consistent with the above mentioned arguments provided by CBC’s editors who argued that “Black” identity is more “distinct” than “White” identity; that “White” identity is less cohesive; and that the belief in the existence of a “White race” is characterized by “ugliness”, etc. In sum, the CBC appears to take the position that “White people” are, in fact, not a people—or race, or a nation, or any legitimate identity at all—but that “Black people” are—and it appears that the Commissioner may have assumed the same position without explicitly stating it.
This is precisely the problem with the CBC’s policy—it affirms identity of Black people and other groups, but delegitimizes the identity of “white people”. The fact that our racial group is the only group who does not receive a capital letter promotes the idea that ‘white people are not a race’, that “white” is not a legitimate identity and ‘white people people don’t exist’. If that assumption is extended to the legal context then that means that, in the eyes of the law, White people are not protected from race-based discrimination—because, as a race, ‘we don’t exist’.
5. The Commissioner neglected to explain her rationale
It’s impossible to know for sure, however, if the Commissioner was operating on the assumption that White people are not a race because she neglected to explain herself. In that regard alone, there has been a miscarriage of due process. We shouldn’t have to guess at what she might have been thinking. She should have said something to the effect that ‘grammatically, its ok to capitalize one racial group but not the other because (...)’. Or, she might have stated that ‘assuming white is just a colour, you can’t racially discriminate against it’.
6. The Commissioner ignored various forms of evidence that the CBC’s policy adversely impacts White people
The Commissioner wrote that “there is no support, apart from the Complainant’s personal opinion, for the proposition that these grammar rules adversely differentiate the Complainant from others”. (emphasis ours). In one fell swoop, the Commissioner dismissed our argument that the CBC’s policy was dehumanizing and degrading.
Our position was substantiated with a battery of articles and commentary from bipartisan US news and opinion outlets as well as cultural references of lowercase lettering being intentionally used to demean and show disrespect i.e. Antifa’s lowercasing of law enforcement agencies. We also cited over a half-dozen articles from psychology journals detailing the effects that imposed collective shame can have on group self-esteem. We further provided the results of our above-mentioned petition (which you can sign anonymously ) showing that over 1,500 people wanted the policy reversed. In addition, we provided as an exhibit over 50 complaints received by the CBC over the decision. None of this was acknowledged.
Conclusion
Many people have resigned themselves to the belief that ‘there is no point’ in attempting to address the concerns of White people through the courts, because they see those institutions to be hopelessly corrupt. Part of the objective of our legal work is to assess that theory: To its proponents, our questions are ‘why do you believe that? upon what data does this theory rest? what information can you point to to support the position?’ Our primary aim is to peacefully and legally secure our human rights, however, if it is true that our courts are as corrupt some believe them to be, then we must make a sincere effort to reform them, and in order to reform them we must first compile a body of data to empirically demonstrate the alleged corruption. This case has provided some data points which are consistent with that theory, and our ongoing and future cases will provide further clarity to the picture.
Next steps
As mentioned, we are currently exploring relaunching the case under different facts. If that fails, it will pave the way for and further legitimize social pressure tactics such as poster campaigns, banner-drops, etc. Regardless of how we proceed, however, please sign our petition, as it will be one of our most powerful instruments in this ongoing fight.
SIGN THE PETITION!
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