September 17, 2012
To the Editor,
AS THE Winnipeg Free Press reported "Winnipeg police are asking for the public’s help in tracking down the perpetrators of anti-Semitic posters that were put up around the downtown Friday." We should not be surprised by this sort of behaviour. Winnipeg and Manitoba still have many narrow minded folks that have no idea about how to handle diversity issues. We live in a bubble thinking all is just great but antisemitic behavior is up in Manitoba and Canada as a whole. This is just not behaviour that is directed towards those who are Jewish but it includes Muslims and all visible minorities.
I teach a Workplace Diversity course at Brandon University in the Department of Business. It is the only such course at any University in Western Canada. Students have little understanding of other cultures and community and are open to learning about the customs of other communities; they have for the most grown up in a Wonder Bread environment.
Learning to accept and celebrate our differences is how we like to think of Canada but in many communities of our province intolerance is alive and well. We tolerate intolerance too much in this province and have lost the act of social activism for those that are the victims of discriminatory behaviour. Everyone will give lip service to this or that hate crime/incident, but few will do anything about discriminatory behaviour in our communities. We all must become community engaged when dehumanizing abusive behaviour is directed to any one group in our community.
Learning to welcome people with differences into our community is something many of us still need to learn. When I walk the streets of Brandon I hear the most awful hateful remarks about new immigrants that have come to live in our community. I also hear this in the streets of Winnipeg concerning aboriginal peoples. We must not allow social or cultural indolence to ever raise its head in our communities. The solution is social and legal activism to ensure that when this nasty behaviour challenges our society values, we react swiftly and responsibly to say this is antisocial behaviour and individuals behaving in this fashion will be dealt with by our justice system.
Assoc. Professor Alan Levy BA, MIR,LLM
Human Resources, Labour Relations & Dispute Resolution
Department of Business Administration
Faculty of Arts
Brandon University