Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Biodun Iginla, BBC News
Showing posts with label racial discrimination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racial discrimination. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

BREAKING AND UPDATE: Canada's Trudeau apologizes for dressing up in brown face, election chances could suffer

September 19, 2019  07H:28  GMT/ZULU
OTTAWA - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized on Wednesday for wearing brown face make-up in 2001 after an embarrassing picture emerged less than five weeks before an election in which he faces a tough fight.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologizes for wearing brownface makeup in 2001, to reporters on the Liberal party leaderÕs election campaign jet in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in a still image from video September 18, 2019. CBC via REUTERS
The image of a 29-year-old Trudeau with his face in dark make-up is a major challenge for a leader who often speaks about the need to fight racial discrimination and who has three prominent ministers of Indian descent in his cabinet.
“I should have known better then, but I didn’t and I did it and I’m deeply sorry,” Trudeau, 47, told reporters on his campaign plane in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after Time magazine published the image.

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Time said the image was provided by Vancouver businessman Michael Adamson earlier this month. Adamson was part of the West Point Grey Academy community where Trudeau, then 29, worked at the time, the magazine said. The picture was in the Vancouver private school’s yearbook.
“I dressed up in an Aladdin costume and put make-up on. I shouldn’t have done it,” a grim-faced Trudeau said in comments carried live on Canadian television.
The picture shows him wearing a turban and a white robe, with his face covered in dark makeup.
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“This picture runs completely contrary to the image of tolerance the prime minister has so scrupulously cultivated. It can’t be good for him or his party,” said Darrell Bricker, chief executive officer of polling firm Ipsos Public Affairs.
Canada has an official policy of multiculturalism and about one in five Canadians were born overseas, according to Statistics Canada.
NECK-AND-NECK
Donning dark make-up is particularly sensitive in the United States, given its long history of slavery. In February, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam resisted calls to step down over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook.
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Trudeau, questioned by reporters, also admitted he had dressed up in make-up when at high school and performed “Day O”, a traditional Jamaican song about people loading bananas onto boats.
Trudeau is locked in a neck-and-neck battle with Conservative leader Andrew Scheer ahead of the Oct. 21 federal election.
Scheer said he was “extremely shocked and disappointed” by the photo.
“Wearing brown face is an act of open mockery and racism. What Canadians saw this evening is someone with a complete lack of judgment and integrity and someone who’s not fit to govern this country,” he told reporters in Quebec.
Slideshow (4 Images)
Trudeau has seen his once sky-high popularity hurt by a series of missteps, including a ruling last month by a top watchdog that he had breached ethics rules by pressuring the former justice minister to ensure a major construction firm avoid a corruption trial.
Trudeau brushed off suggestions he might quit.
“I am going to be asking Canadians to forgive me for what I did ... it was a dumb thing to do. I’m disappointed in myself. I’m pissed off with myself for having done it,” he said.
The ruling Liberals are competing for left-of-center votes with the New Democrats of Jagmeet Singh, a practising Sikh, who is the first person from ethnic minority descent to lead a major party in Canada.
“The people who see this image are going to think about all the times in their life that they were made fun of, that they were hurt, that they were hit, that they were insulted, that they were made to feel less because of who they are,” a visibly upset Singh told reporters.
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Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Headscarves: Defining discrimination--an analysis

by Isabelle Roussel and Biodun Iginla, Political Analysts, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Luxembourg

Employers may sometimes ban staff from wearing headscarves

The European Court of Justice rules that a ban is not discriminatory if it meets certain conditions


EMPLOYERS are entitled to forbid their Muslim staff from wearing headscarves as long as it is part of a consistent practice of banning the display of religious or ideological symbols, and not a one-off action aimed at satisfying the demands of a particular client.
That was the main thrust of a decision issued today by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), a Luxembourg-based tribunal whose job it is to interpret and uphold the laws of the European Union. “An internal rule…which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination,” the court said.      

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The ECJ judges were looking into the cases of a Belgian woman who was fired from her job as a receptionist at a security company after she started wearing a headscarf, and of a French IT consultant who was told to remove her scarf after a client complained, and then dismissed when she declined.
In both cases, the ECJ suggested that national courts needed to investigate further to establish whether the women had been discriminated against. In the Belgian case, the court recommended working out if there might have been a simpler solution such as transferring the employee to a role where she was not in contact with the public. Regarding the French consultant, it considered it necessary to establish whether the disciplinary action was purely a response to the client’s whim (which appeared to be the case and would be insufficient grounds for a dismissal) or a legitimate consequence of a broader policy. Taken as a whole, today’s decision upheld the right of employers to enforce ideological neutrality in the workplace as long as it was done fairly and consistently.
This marks a contrast with the thinking of America’s Supreme Court, which in 2015 vindicated a Muslim woman who had been turned down for a job by the clothing chain Abercrombie and Fitch on the grounds that her headscarf was out of step with the look the company was promoting. Since 1964, American civil-rights legislation has told employers to provide “reasonable accommodation” of their workers’ religious needs, unless it would be unbearably burdensome to do so. Today's decision also reflected a more secularist spirit than did one by the European Court of Human Rights in 2013, which upheld the right of a Christian woman to wear a discreet cross with her British Airways uniform.  
Today’s judgement might look like a careful, Solomonic piece of jurisprudence designed to take the sting out of a contentious issue by steering a course down the middle. But so charged is the political atmosphere in Europe these days that it is likely to have the very opposite effect.
The decision was instantly deplored by Islamic and some other religious groups, as well as some secular human-rights campaigners including Amnesty International, for legitimising discrimination. No less speedily, it was welcomed by some of the resurgent forces on Europe’s cultural and political right, including Germany’s anti-immigrant "Alternative for Germany" party.
The ruling does indeed appear to be good news for Marine Le Pen, the French presidential candidate who would like to see all conspicuous religious symbols removed from public spaces. It should also please the right-wing standard-bearer in this week’s Dutch elections, Geert Wilders, who has listed the headscarf as one of the many manifestations of Islam that he would like to see much less of. Francois Fillon, the centre-right (and culturally conservative) candidate in the French presidential race, was among the first public figures to welcome the ruling.
A more liberal-minded and middle-of-the-road defence of the decision came from Britain's National Secular Society, whose campaigns director Stephen Evans said that for bosses, "religous and political neutrality is a perfectly reasonable aim." Meanwhile intense Muslim unhappiness over the ruling was articulated by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a London-based lobby group, where a spokeswoman said: “This gives legal cover to what is essentially an ongoing hate campaign to make Muslims second-class citizens in Europe. It will only increase feelings of marginalisation and disenfranchisement in Muslim communities.”
The ECJ's ruling is a call to apply a single, transparent rule to people of all creeds and cultures. But religious and cultural symbols seem to be an area where nobody can agree on what "neutrality" really means. 
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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

US Supreme Court appears in favour of headscarf claim

by Suzanne Gould and Biodun Iginla, BBC News, Washington

 59 minutes ago

A majority of US Supreme Court justices appear to be supportive of an argument that Abercrombie & Fitch discriminated against a Muslim teenager.
Samantha Elauf argued she was denied a job because her headscarf conflicted with the company's dress code.
Abercrombie disputes the allegation, arguing Ms Elauf did not ask specifically for a religious exemption.
Questions from some of the justices were in favour of Ms Elauf, but their final decision will be made in May.
The clothing retailer has since changed its policy on headscarves but continues to fight the case in court.
In a statement on Wednesday, the firm said it had a "longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion" and had "granted numerous religious accommodations when requested, including hijabs".
US law requires that employers must "reasonably accommodate" an employee's religious beliefs, as long as it does not provide an undue hardship to the business.
The US high court seeks to answer the question of whether a prospective employee must explicitly ask for a religious exemption.

The suit, which is being brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), argues that Ms Elauf was denied the job because her headscarf clashed with Abercrombie's "East Coast" style.
The company states that store employees should not wear anything that clashes with the brand's aesthetic, including head coverings and black clothes.
During arguments on Wednesday, liberal and some conservative justices aggressively questioned the company's lawyer.
Justice Samuel Alito, considered part of the court's conservative wing, said there was no reason not to hire her unless the firm assumed she would always wear a headscarf to work because of her religion.
He added employers could avoid such situations by asking prospective employees if they are able to abide by work rules.
Ms Elauf applied for a sales job at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, store in 2008.
The woman who conducted the interview was impressed with Ms Elauf but was concerned about her headscarf. After consulting with a supervisor, she decided not to hire her.

The EEOC was initially successful in winning its case, and a jury awarded Ms Elauf $20,000 (£12,900) in damages.

What is Abercrombie & Fitch 'Look policy'?
  • natural looking make-up and no fingernail polish,
  • slender figure
  • tight denim
  • no black clothing
  • long hair for women
More: What is the Abercrombie look?
However, a higher court threw out that ruling, noting that Ms Elauf never specified that she would need a religious exemption in her job interview, even though she was wearing her headscarf during the process.
"An employer cannot be liable for failing to accommodate a religious conflict unless it knows that the religious conflict exists," wrote Abercrombie's lawyers in court documents.
Ms Elauf's case is backed by a broad collection of religious groups - as well as gay and lesbian rights organisations.
Hijab controversies
France - The European Court of Human Rights upheld the country's ban on the niqab - the fully covering face veil. The court's ruled ban - and the resulting 150-euro fine - "was not expressly based on the religious connotation of the clothing in question but solely on the fact that it concealed the face".
UK - There is no ban in the UK on face-covering veils but schools are allowed to decide their own dress code after a 2007 directive which followed several high-profile court cases.
In January 2010, then Schools Secretary Ed Balls said it was "not British" to tell people what to wear in the street after the UK Independence Party called for all face-covering Muslim veils to be banned.
Turkey - A ban on all headscarves at universities was quietly lifted in 2010, and in 2013, the country lifted a ban on women wearing headscarves in the country's state institutions - with the exception of the judiciary, military and police - ending a decades-old restriction.
More: The Islamic veil across Europe
A legal brief on behalf of Orthodox Jews filed in the case argues that requiring job applicants to explicitly voice the need for religion-related special treatment makes them less likely to be hired without given cause.
Large state organisations as well as the US Chamber of Commerce are supporting Abercrombie & Fitch's case over concerns the court could set a precedent that would make them subject to more discrimination claims.
The retailer settled two other discrimination cases related to hijabs in 2013 and paid $40m to black, Hispanic and Asian-American college students a decade ago over discrimination in its hiring practices.
Since then, the firm has increased its sale assoc

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Friday, January 23, 2015

McDonald's sued for racial discrimination in Virginia


22 January 2015 Last updated at 17:05 ET

by Rochelle van Amber and Biodun Iginla, BBC Newsbeat Online

McDonalds arches The suit is part of ongoing efforts by labour organisers to hold McDonald's accountable for franchisees

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Ten former McDonald's workers have sued it in the Virginia federal court for racial and sexual discrimination.
The suit alleges that some employees were fired from one franchise because there were "too many black people".
It is being backed by a group campaigning for better wages for fast-food workers and the local Virginia National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
McDonald's has not yet commented specifically on the suit.
McDonalds issued a general statement, saying: "McDonald's has a long-standing history of embracing the diversity of employees, independent franchisees, customers and suppliers, and discrimination is completely inconsistent with our values.
"McDonald's and our independent owner-operators share a commitment to the well-being and fair treatment of all people who work in McDonald's restaurants."
Ongoing effort The suit is part of a continuing effort on the part of labour organisers to hold McDonald's responsible for the behaviour of its franchisees.
McDonald's and other restaurant groups have argued that it should not be held responsible for the behaviour and labour practices of franchisees.
However, their position has been weakened by the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
It ruled that McDonalds "could be held jointly liable for labour and wage violations by its franchise operators" in July.
Fair pay respect for our rights for all workers sign The suit is supported by unions and labour organisers who have been campaigning for better wages
Since then, current and former employees have filed lawsuits against many McDonald's franchises and the larger corporation alleging wage theft and other illegal practices.
'Too dark' In the lawsuit filed in Virginia on Thursday, which is not part of the NLRB's larger activity, 10 former employees - nine of whom are African-American and one of whom is Hispanic - allege that they were subject to "rampant racial and sexual harassment" by supervisors at three restaurants run by McDonald's franchisee Michael Simon.
Mr Simon became franchise operator of the three restaurants in late 2013, when the majority of the employees at the restaurants were African-American.
Soon after, the suit alleges Mr Simon instituted a plan to hire more white employees, with supervisors allegedly telling employees that the restaurants were "too dark" and they needed to hire new employees to "get the ghetto out of the store".
Subsequently, in mid-2014, a large number of white employees were hired and several of the African-American employees who are part of the suit were fired.
The fired workers alleged that when they attempted to contact McDonald's corporate office, there was no response.
McDonald's is due to report its fourth-quarter earnings before US markets open on Friday.

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