Given the allegations made recently about bland, older, mainly white and exclusively male NDP politicians...

People already know that the more strikes against you the harder life is. Female and black, disabled orphan, etc. People aren't stupid just because they aren't interested in discussing intersectionality. The question is do you have a concrete proposal, if so present it, if not you're wasting my time. I don't need to be lectured. 

Ken Burch wrote:

Pondering wrote:

People already know that the more strikes against you the harder life is. Female and black, disabled orphan, etc. People aren't stupid just because they aren't interested in discussing intersectionality. The question is do you have a concrete proposal, if so present it, if not you're wasting my time. I don't need to be lectured. 

And she had and has TONS of concrete proposals.  It's not as if she was the candidate of cosmic bullshit, and it's not as though people who supported her are uninterested in the practical details of change.

  

I didn't say she didn't have concrete proposals. Nobody is going to pay any attention to concrete proposals after hearing about intersectionality. They already changed the channel. In any case I thought I made it clear the use of the word was an indicator to me of her style. I have also listened to her speaking on youtube.

You mentioned she won the support of her constituents therefore she can reach people but her riding is not typical of most ridings in Canada. 

Ken Burch wrote:

 BTW, the person who won the leadership made virtually no concrete proposals for anything either, and was the last candidate in the race to put out any sort of a campaign platform at all, so why single Niki out on lack of concreteness? 

My point was that the general electorate has a short attention span. I didn't follow the leadership campaigns because I wasn't excited enough about any of them to join although I favored Guy Caron. 

Ken Burch wrote:

 

What Singh needs to do is to incorporate her notions about democratizing the party  

It's up to party members to push for it if enough of them want changes in that regard. I know that is a big issue for Unionist.

Ken Burch wrote:

and democratizing life-if the NDP becomes the party that fights for giving people a real say in the major decisions that affect us, that is going to engage the vast majority of people. 

Just the opposite. Most people don't want to be that involved. They want to elect a government that will make the right decisions on their behalf. Even when they are against the government decisions, like on C-51, they will still vote the same government back in if they think it is in their overall best interests to do so based on the economy. 

From what I was reading in this thread, Niki won around 20% of the vote. Considering the number of candidates that seems pretty decent. She failed to sell her ideas well enough to delegates to convince them to vote for her. Maybe she has some great ideas that nobody else had. If Singh agrees he will pick them up but there is no reason he should favor her specifically. 

I remember another incident that turned me off Niki. She tried to make Trudeau elbowing a feminist issue when it was clearly accidental. Poor political instincts. It helped Trudeau because everyone was arguing about it not being a feminist issue instead of focusing on the fact that Trudeau should never have left his seat and should never have tried to intervene physically. That's what I saw in Mulcair. Poor political instincts. I'm not saying Niki will never get there. She is brilliant and she is young. She isn't done improving. She will likely get better at selling herself. 

I did check out her ideas on democratizing the party: http://www.nikiashton2017.ca/internal-party-democracy-democratie-interne.... If it is something party members want it should come up at the convention.

Pondering wrote:

I remember another incident that turned me off Niki. She tried to make Trudeau elbowing a feminist issue when it was clearly accidental. Poor political instincts. It helped Trudeau because everyone was arguing about it not being a feminist issue instead of focusing on the fact that Trudeau should never have left his seat and should never have tried to intervene physically. That's what I saw in Mulcair. Poor political instincts. I'm not saying Niki will never get there. She is brilliant and she is young. She isn't done improving. She will likely get better at selling herself.

Given that there are so many non-Conservative types who are prepared to excuse and explain away anything Trudeau does short of boiling babies and eating them for breakfast, it would have been very hard to make that stick.

But what was Elbowgate specifically? What happened was that the Prime Minister elbowed someone from the Other Team (which, for the purposes of this discussion, Other Team=Conservatives+NDP). The Other Team said, "the Prime Minister hit me, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" and the Prime Minister said, "but I didn't mean to." Which is exactly how the parties involved would have been expected to behave.

So it looks like my question has been answered. If Niki Ashton uses the word "intersectionality" or over-reacts to one of her colleagues being elbowed, that shows poor judgement and makes her unfit to be a leader. If Wab Kinew was accused of domestic assault, we should overlook that and elect him to lead the Manitoba NDP. So it's not okay for a prospective leader to use big words or over-react but it is okay for a prospective leader to mistreat women? Got it. What a sick, disgusting, pathetic excuse for a political system we have in this country. No wonder people don't come out to vote.

Even worse is that some progressives within our community are defending or apologizing for said system.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Pondering wrote:

People already know that the more strikes against you the harder life is. Female and black, disabled orphan, etc. People aren't stupid just because they aren't interested in discussing intersectionality.

You have no idea how many people think that women and minorities have it easier and how impossible it is for a white man to get a job. You also have no idea how many people on the Prairies think that Native people have it pretty good because of all the "stuff they get for free." You also have no idea how many people complain that refugees coming into Canada have it better than "regular Canadians" because they get free dental care, or how unfair it is to allow immigrants to bring their elderly parents to Canada to collect a pension that Canadian-born taxpayers have to pay for.

Yes, I have heard all of the above with my own ears, especially the stuff about Native people. People actually believe the nonsense I just posted.

I'm a minority, born and raised in Canada, and I can tell you with certainty that I've received more advantages because of my ethnicity than disadvantages. I'm not saying I've never gotten random stink eye, I've even been subjected racial slur or two (though the last one was in 2002 when I was 15 or so), but on balance I've had several significant economic and academic advantages because of my skin color that have been far more impactful than the totality of microaggressions and other discrimination I've experienced. In fact, more than half the jobs I've had, and every job I've been unqualified for at time of hire, I've later discovered (or it was obvious from the start) that my ethnicity helped my application.

Now, I'm certainly not saying that all minorities have it easier - certainly if you're a first generation immigrant language alone will create a huge obstacle, not to mention accreditation and cultural adjustments and many other factors, and every case is different anyway. Frankly, though, speaking of my lived experience and that of the people I know - I've had it easier than even those of my white male friends who were born to significantly wealthier (ie. own a house) families. I'm not saying I've had it easy, mind you. Just a little bit less tough than the young white males I know. So while I won't necessarily say that ethnic minorities have it easier - I'm also not prepared to say that ethnic minorities have it harder. I won't comment on the rest of what you've said because I don't have first hand experience in those areas as the disadvantaged group.

As for intersectionality, I don't think many people have a problem with the theory of intersectionality per se. From an abstract perspective, intersectionality basically argues that you can't divide people along a single identity (eg. ethnicity or gender) and use that alone to predict their outcome. You need to consider the totality of (relevant) variables to do that. Nobody really disputes this. The problem is that people do not agree - and I'd argue they will never agree - on which variables are relevant and of those, to what degree those different variables are relevant. After all, as you point out, they can't even agree on whether certain characterists confer an advantage or disadvantage, never mind the magnitude of such. So when a politician talks about intersectionality and the need to do more for disadvantaged groups, (mostly) everyone agrees with that, but they still won't embrace that politician unless they happend to agree on who the disadvantaged groups are - and they don't.

robbie_dee wrote:

Nikki Ashton did very well in the leadership election. She finished third, but with 17.4% of the vote she was just a couple of percentage points behind the white male anglophone second place finisher (Angus), and she almost doubled-up the white male francophone fourth-place finisher (Caron). Your post says you want to redeem Ashton from allegedly unfair, sex or age-based criticism. Sure, by all means, I would agree Ashton should not be unfairly criticized because she is a woman or because she is (relatively) young. And I am sure there are people out there who did judge Ashton harshly because of her sex or age, as we still live in a prejudiced society. But I would argue that in addition to being wrong, they are decidedly in the minority within the NDP.

The results of the leadership race suggest to me that the NDP membership, on the whole, certainly looked past such criticisms. Ashton was decidedly in the mix throughout the race, she got to be on the same podium as the rest of the contenders and, as mentioned above, her results were certainly consistent if not better than  those received by the other also-rans. The real story of the race, though, was the compelling campaign run by a relatively young man of colour, Jagmeet Singh, who simply crushed all the competitition to get elected on the first ballot and become the first non-white leader of a major national political party. I assume, and would certainly hope, that Jagmeet is trying to listen to all of his former leadership rivals and to see to it that they feel their input is valued and that they and their supporters feel included. Obviously he picked Caron as house leader instead of either Angus or Ashton, but that may have something to do with the fact that Caron is from Quebec and there is a particular urgency for the party in trying to hold onto what's left of the party's support there. Is there reason to believe that Ashton is being uniquely put down or excluded?

I wanted to thank robbie dee for the above. 

This thread is comparing Niki's treatment verses a whole bunch of old white men guilty of sexual misconduct. She wasn't running against them and she didn't lose against them. She lost against Jagmeet Singh and she had a respectable showing. There seems to be zero evidence that she lost because she is female or young. If she had won would it have been valid to say Singh lost because of his turban and skin colour not because she was the better candidate? 

Singh, a man of color wearing a turban, beat out Ashton, Angus and Caron to win the leadership of the party. I don't think being young and female has anything to do with Niki losing. If members of the NDP were voting on criteria like that Singh would never have been chosen. Caron or Angus would have won. 

In other threads there have been suggestions that Singh won because of his similarities to Trudeau. That theory completely discounts Singh's accomplishments and his skill in connecting with people despite his turban and color. 

I ask the same question as robbie dee, Is there reason to believe that Ashton is being uniquely put down or excluded?

Cody87 wrote:

I'm a minority, born and raised in Canada, and I can tell you with certainty that I've received more advantages because of my ethnicity than disadvantages. I'm not saying I've never gotten random stink eye, I've even been subjected racial slur or two (though the last one was in 2002 when I was 15 or so), but on balance I've had several significant economic and academic advantages because of my skin color that have been far more impactful than the totality of microaggressions and other discrimination I've experienced. In fact, more than half the jobs I've had, and every job I've been unqualified for at time of hire, I've later discovered (or it was obvious from the start) that my ethnicity helped my application.

Thank you for sharing your experiences Cody. Out of curiosity, what part of the country do you live in, and what size of community do you live? I'm a white man from the Prairies, and I (as well as many other Prairie dwellers) can assure you that racism is a very big thing in this part of the country. Take a look at the Colten Boushie thread which talks not only about the ridiculousness of the fact that Stanley got off, but also briefly mentions a case of a young Native girl from Saskatchewan who accused 3 white men of sexually assaulting here and she was acquited. Flip those scenarios around and imagine that in both cases the alleged criminals were Native and the victims white, and I can almost guarantee that both cases would have seen convictions. If you're a Native woman in this part of the country, not only are you statistically more likely to experience violence, but your attacker is less likely to be held accountable, especially if you end up dead. The most economically disadvantaged sections of major cities in the Prairies have high concentrations of First Nations people. Many of the people I see holding cardboard signs asking for change in downtown Winnipeg are First Nations. You can also take a look at the thread in the Prairies regional section which describes an incident in Regina of a First Nations person who was kicked out of a Giant Tiger accused the employee of racism. True, Regina's big enough to shop somewhere else (although even that could be a problem if you don't own a car and live in a part of the city that the other stores have abandoned). But it is a sad fact that people will make negative assumptions about First Nations people being more likely to steal, and if you live in a small community and several stores ban you based on this assumption, you have a hard time meeting basic needs. And do not get me started on the shameful way many police officers in this part of the country treat Native people. In 2000, the Saskatoon Police Service was accused of repeatedly dropping Native men off at the edge of the city and forcing them to walk back, and people froze to death as a result. A couple of police officers were actually fired over it. Winnipeg police have been accused of doing the same thing, although there hasn't been one clear-cut case emerge where the police were caught as in Saskatoon. Officially the police will assure you that they are working with the community to improve relations, and there may have been improvements in some areas, but in practice there still is a long way to go.

In spite of all of this, people will still claim that Natives have advantages over whites.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

What's to say that someone who signed up to support one candidate can't be persuaded to support a different candidate for whatever reason?

There's nothing preventing it in principle, but do you think it actually happens in more than a tiny fraction of cases? I mean, if I have enough committment to some candidate to join the party in order to vote for them, what are the chances I will change my mind? I agree it could happen, but I bet it happens in less than 1% of cases.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Quote:

The issue is that some of Ashton's detractors in this babble community were so vicious in their attacks and/or mockery of Ashton that went beyond simple disagreement, and these same people were either silent or willing to overlook the accusations against Kinew as if they were no big deal. Is there any way I can state that more clearly?

Interestingly, rabble.ca (the "parent company" of babble.ca, if you will) elected to publish an op-ed entitled "The smearjob on Wab Kinew shows reconciliation still isn't taken seriously".

If you could point to where these same editorial writers then took issue with Ashton's behaviour and why that made her unfit to lead, your challenge would hold water. As such, it doesn't.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

And speaking of "very different", would you agree that one of those situations was national in scope, and the other regional?  Could that be a factor in non-Manitobans not grabbing the pitchforks and lighting the torches?

Since babblers never comment on political affairs happening in other provinces, I guess this is one point that I'll have to concede.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

There are still basic comprehension issues with some who have read this thread. None of the Ashton supporters in this thread have suggested that the process was unfair or that Singh didn't deserve to win or suggest that this contest be re-run. You can actually check the thread and note that once the results were announced I accepted them. The issue is that some of Ashton's detractors in this babble community were so vicious in their attacks and/or mockery of Ashton that went beyond simple disagreement, and these same people were either silent or willing to overlook the accusations against Kinew as if they were no big deal. Is there any way I can state that more clearly?

For me that worked perfectly. I didn't pay close attention to the leadership race threads so I guess I just didn't read what you did. Also, no connection to the idea that Singh should be taking her advice.