10.17.2014 12:52 PM

John Tory doesn’t think white people have an easier time of it

And the Torontoist is on to him, in a blistering (but belated) editorial:

Let us now turn to John Tory, whose campaign has been a massive disappointment. John Tory’s candidacy was meant to be premised on the idea that he was a man of substance—and, more importantly, of principle. After all, the argument went, John Tory is the man who lost the 2007 election due to his unpopular but principled stance on religious schooling. There are two problems with this. The first, of course, is that it was an astonishingly bad idea—an expensive, misguided solution to a problem that Quebec already dealt with simply by abolishing their own separate school boards, because a secular government should not be paying for religious schools. The second problem is that Tory’s “principled” stance was, in fact, a misguided attempt to drum up political support from religious voters, and when it backfired he was unwilling to look like a flip-flopper by acknowledging that the idea was unpopular both with the right and the left.

Recently Tory has come under fire for claiming that white privilege does not exist. We do not have here the space to enumerate all the ways in which this position is both absurd and false. What we do have space to point out is that John Tory is a rich man’s son who got his first job because Ted Rogers was a family friend and who, after being called to the bar, was made partner at the elite law firm that his grandfather founded and that had the Tory name on its letterhead. [It is disturbing that Tory is willing] to dismiss out of hand the abuses, disadvantages, and prejudices that hundreds of thousands of Torontonians suffer every day.

16 Comments

  1. David says:

    Oh come on! Everybody’s beginning to learn that Asians do better at school than everbody else and black kids can’t get into college because they get laid before everybody else.

  2. Maria J. says:

    White Privilege?

    Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, by sex, race, and ethnicity, U.S:

    952: Asian male
    845: White male
    779: Asian female
    669:White female
    621: Black male
    582: Black female
    569: Latino male
    509: Latino female

    (mirrored in Canada.)

    In terms of money – arguably the most telling marker of high-status individuals and groups vs. low-status, the above chart places Asian males at the top, Latino females at the bottom. Arguably then, the discourse would be properly framed Asian privilege – and, with most Latino-Hispanic females self-identify as “white” – vs. white disenfranchisement. Indeed, this is the emergent and ascendant global- international trend: Asians who view the Americas as a future colony, specifically the Chinese Communist Party whose ideology is intrinsically Han Chinese supremacist, with “鬼佬 – gweilo” “barbarians” slotted in as servile consumers, wage-slaves, concubines, etc. This is the primary driver as to why Olivia Chow’s base of support has collapsed. The narrative does not correspond to actual social realities.

    • Warren says:

      You sound a little bit crazy.

    • sezme says:

      I don’t know if these (US department of Labor?) numbers really are mirrored in Canada, but for the sake of argument, let’s say they are.

      Now, are you saying that these four groups (Asian, White, Black, Latino) get this variance of pay for equal effort? Do you argue that it’s equally easy for members of these four groups to obtain well-paying jobs?

      Income level is not by any stretch the only measure of “privilege”. Privilege is generally accepted to mean the ease of getting to a relatively higher status. This is why nobody (except you) talks about Asian privilege. Because leveraging hard work and education to get somewhere is not privilege. The Jewish people of North America didn’t get where they are by privilege either. They like the Asians succeeded (collectively) by overcoming tremendous obstacles, obstacles that are still even higher for certain other groups to (again collectively) overcome.

      And your last paragraph about the Communist Party of China’s policies with regard to Olivia Chow’s campaign is indeed, a lot crazy.

  3. Ron says:

    Fair enough. But we need to remember that Dug “Nimby” Ford inherited his position too. And Hizzoner, having chosen politics as a career, still gets paid by Deco even though he “worked” at City Hall.

    • Matt says:

      Both Rob and Doug donated their salaries to charity, and only used about 0.5% of their office budgets.

      • W the K - No, not Warren says:

        God, I despise that talking point.

        Two things. One, Rob and Doug say they donate their salaries to charity. To my knowledge they’ve never shown that they’ve donated their salaries directly to charity. Two, so what? They still get paid. With tax dollars. I don’t care, and it really isn’t my business, what they do with it. They are getting paid a salary and benefits for public service. In my world, if you get paid a full time salary you damn well better put in full time hours.

        • Matt says:

          Tell that to your hero currently leading the federal Liberals.

          • W the K - No, not Warren says:

            You don’t know who my heroes are. You don’t know me.

            Another bizarrely oblique talking point that someone else actually said to me in reply to the atrocious Ford administration. “Ya, but what about Trudeau,” as though that had something to do with the price of quinoa at the auto plant in Mawa. When Trudeau runs for mayor of Toronto I’ll make sure to tell him.. whatever it is you want me to tell him.

            Y’know Matt, I read your stuff here and it is often compelling, thought provoking, and worthy of discussion. You’re capable of better.

        • Just Askin' says:

          How do you figure that someone isn’t working because they aren’t at their office? Elected officials typically attend community events during evenings and weekends, which are part of their work week. We all know Rob Ford spends a lot of his time visiting constituents and helping them with their problems. The big difference with Ford is that he doesn’t publish his schedule so the media doesn’t know where he is and thus cannot accurately track his working hours.

          BTW…here’s a classic story about Toronto’s Mayor. Of course, nobody cared about this story, except maybe Adam Vaughan:
          http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-mayor-threatens-cbc-reporter-1.174086

          • W the K - No, not Warren says:

            I don’t. I didn’t say someone had to be “at their office.” I said they had to put in the time. And I absolutely agree with you on the evening and weekend obligations of councillors. I see it all the time. And true, Ford’s lack of an itinerary meant no one could verify where he was and what he was doing. So while the Fords may say they spend a lot of time problem solving for individual constituents, that, like so many things they say, probably isn’t so. And even if it was, in Rob’s case, it’s a gross mis-allocation of time for the mayor of the largest city in the country.

            And thanks for the Mel anecdote. The good old days…

          • Just Askin' says:

            I have heard personal anecdotes from Torontonians who called Rob Ford asking for help. He called them back and made arrangements to visit them. After making an appointment, Ford showed up, without media or fanfare (but with City staff) to help. Perhaps it’s a bit eccentric for the Mayor of a large municipality to provide that personal touch to constituents, but he really did spend a lot of time on those sorts of activities.

            If Ford had published his schedule, the Toronto media would have turned every constituent visit into a circus, making constituents feel uncomfortable, and criticizing Ford’s use of City resources. Instead of allowing that to happen, he took the criticism for keeping his schedule private. Good for him.

      • rww says:

        that’s because they only did 0.5% of their job

  4. Sean says:

    “John Tory is a rich man’s son who got his first job because Ted Rogers was a family friend and who, after being called to the bar, was made partner at the elite law firm that his grandfather founded and that had the Tory name on its letterhead. [It is disturbing that Tory is willing] to dismiss out of hand the abuses, disadvantages, and prejudices that hundreds of thousands of Torontonians suffer every day.”

    My problem with this argument is that the above scenario is not nessisarily exclusively about “White Privilage”. It is more about “old boyism” which exists in every society. Rich parents and their rich friends ensuring that their rich kids go to big schools and get the *paid to do nothing jobs* after graduating.

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