Dear readers of Montreal Journal a you Quebec newspaperI love you.
As you know that I like to denounce the excesses of political correctness, you regularly send me mind-boggling examples that you collect for me.
Every week, I discover new examples of positive discrimination in the cultural milieu.
MUSIC IN THEIR EARS
A reader who is a SOCAN member musician sent me a copy of the email he received last week announcing the awards presented during the year.
1- Canadian Black Music Award. This award is intended to celebrate the outstanding works of black music creators with Canadian citizenship and was created in response to the high-profile racial tensions that plagued early 2020 as well as the issues surrounding systemic racism in our societies.
2- Indigenous Songwriter Award. This award recognizes artistic excellence in the work of an Indigenous songwriter in Canada and is an important part of the SOCAN Foundation’s efforts to encourage, celebrate and promote Indigenous music creators.
3- Elles de la Musique Awards, aim to celebrate and support Canadian mid-career female music creators who identify as women and want to take their careers to the next level.
So if you are not black, not female, not indigenous, bye bye, sayonara, no award you can apply for.
On the cinema/television side, a reader is now sending me this press release from INIS. “Students in the Mixte program began their intensive six-month training on Monday, during which they will explore several genres and audiovisual formats, from documentaries to fiction series.
This training is offered with the support of Netflix, and is reserved for racialized people, people who identify with visible minorities and people from Indigenous peoples”.
Finally, another reader informs me that the Canadian Association of Journalists offers mentoring to emerging journalists BIPOC (this acronym includes Black, Indigenous, People of color/Blacks, Natives and people of color). This mentorship (which aims to give them advice on how to build a wide network of sources) is offered to them by Noor Javed, a veiled woman who covers municipal politics in Toronto.
Several things bother me…
Do you need to self-identify as a woman to submit your candidacy for a prize reserved for women?
Is it enough to self-identify as a visible minority to benefit from an internship?
Only a minority woman can give professional advice to a minority professional?
What message do you think this sends to young men who have dared to be born white?
LIVE-APART
But where has “living together” gone if organizations and institutions spend their time assigning us an identity? To reduce us to a single aspect of our personality? And to lock us each in our little “community” where we are only in contact with members of the same “community”?
Women on one side, men on the other? The “BIPOC” on one side, the Whites on the other?
One last question: if anyone can self-identify with a minority identity to benefit from internships, training or interesting jobs, why don’t we all take the opportunity to self-identify as an oppressed minority?