Innocent Bystanders

by Navneet Alang

The nightmare that has been Toronto’s political news scene for the past three years seems to have finally reached its awful zenith. With allegations that Mayor Rob Ford may have smoked crack and made homophobic, racist remarks on video, there is no end to the ill effects of this latest head-shaking fiasco: the continued reduction of our municipal political sphere to a never-ending circus; the serious harm done to Toronto’s international image by a man who claims to be raising its business profile; and the simple fact that a city that was finally starting to hit its stride has been seriously set back by its woefully inadequate mayor.

But one more unexpected, negative, and completely unnecessary effect of this mess has been the circulation of a profoundly xenophobic tone about the people who have the video in question. Though the original Gawker piece made precisely no mention of the ethnicity of the video owners, the Toronto Star article mentions the word “Somali” six times, and uses ethnicity as shorthand for easily identifying who ‘these people’ are. This is a problem.

The most obvious issue with the use of the term Somali is one of simple accuracy. If the people in question live here, they are Somali-Canadians, Canadians of Somali descent, or, ya’ know, Torontonians. It’s simply bad form and more than a bit odd that Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan, the writers of the article, would choose to mark these men out as “foreigners” rather than residents of the city.

Of course, it raises the question of why an ethnic descriptor was necessary at all. Some, like Now Magazine’s John Semley and the Star’s Andew Livingstone, have advanced the argument that including ethnicity helps to not only contextualize the story, but lends it credibility. The Somali-Canadian community at Kipling and Dixon in Etobicoke is in some ways like many other ghettoized, low-income communities across the country: drugs and drug trafficking are an undeniable problem. But the idea that ethnicity is a good predictor of behaviour—which after all is essentially the argument Semley and Livingstone are making—is exactly the problem with racial profiling. As a methodology, it’s simply a bad way to talk about individuals, because even if a practice is common amongst a group, there’s no guarantee specific members of that group will repeat the practice—or even identify as part of that group. Saying these men are Somali to link them to drugs is about as useful as pointing out the colour of their clothes.

But perhaps most galling of all is just how frequently it was repeated in the original Star piece, which had the effect of scattering a basic factual and ethical error across local media and the globe, often in unexpected ways. The notion that Ford’s acquaintances are “Somali men” has now ricocheted around the world—showing up on sites like Buzzfeed—and has now circled its way back to Canadian media, like in this troubling column from Christie Blatchford. It’s like a study in stereotypes in miniature: you invoke an inaccurate description, link something seedy to a certain ethnic group, and then watch the associations you made with that group get repeated over and over.

To put it more plainly, when of all people a Gawker writer calls you out on the pernicious effects of your rhetoric, you fucked up. Doolittle and Donovan basically repeated an old-age practice of marking certain people out as weird, threatening ‘others’, using subtle foreignness as a kind of shorthand for that not-so-subtle  Canadian xenophobia. It’s irresponsible, it’s stupid, and they should do what they can to fix their mistake.

What makes this whole mess even more depressing is the circular nature of the prejudice at work. Ford’s voter base from the 2010 election included a great number of minorities who had real, legitimate complaints about being left out of discussions at City Hall, and saw in Ford someone who would stand up for their suburban concerns. But as Desmond Cole brilliantly pointed out, Mayor Ford’s record on race is abysmal, a fact perfectly captured by the constantly contradictory rhetoric of saying he supports minority youth while he refuses to address any of the system issues that plague them. Minority voters were had by the effectiveness of Ford’s campaign team. Now, when the press quite legitimately goes after Ford, they do so in a way that completely gratuitously brings race into the equation. It’s a bit damned if you do, damned if you don’t, isn’t it? And while it is Ford’s transgressions that are obviously the story here, we shouldn’t simply ignore the gross negligence that has allowed a vital community of Torontonians to get caught in the crossfire.

On Being Muslim and “Dark-Skinned” After Boston

Yassine Zaime and Salah Barhoun are both innocent, but worried that this New York Post cover could affect the rest of their lives

By Ali Zafar

#Muslims.

Last Monday’s trending hashtag intensified my suffocating sense of dread, the one that’s ebbed and flowed since Sept. 11, 2001.

Muslims.

That dirty word stripped Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of his white privilege: he had been identified in news reports as a Chechen, terrorist and radical, but never American.

Because he’s Muslim. Like me.

I’d logged off from the 24-hour cycle of the world’s misfortunes that afternoon, deciding to take a breather before my workday started. I always expect something big to be breaking when I show up for my evening newsroom shift, but the news of the Boston Marathon bombings was still a shock. My stomach churned as I looked at graphic images on the newswire: the blood-splattered streets, the volunteers racing to help a man in a wheelchair with a missing leg.

And my heart dropped when I logged onto Twitter and saw #Muslims trending alongside #PrayforBoston. Was it possible that a person who calls himself a Muslim was behind those horrific images? What if his first name was Mohammad? Like mine? What if he had dark hair? Dark skin? Like me?

Anxiety, embarrassment and a shade of fear began bubbling inside me like a violent thunderstorm. Watching the news made it worse.

David Mamet’s Race at Canadian Stage

Jason Priestley, Cara Ricketts and Nigel Shawn Williams in Race.

By Denise Balkissoon

This is a Toronto blog, and here’s my Toronto take on Race: America is weird. After seeing last night’s premiere of David Mamet’s play (starring, yes, Jason Priestley), my main thought was that we really need to do a Canada vs. USA issue of the Ethnic Aisle, and examine how very differently the two countries experience race and ethnicity. The literal black/white dichotomy of American race politics is always curious to me. It’s not surprising that the Atlantic slave trade has such an enduring legacy on just about every single way Americans look at everything. But at the same time it seems strange that a play debuted in 2009 makes just an offhand mention of one immigrant, and barely flicks at the ever-changing, multifaceted view of race and ethnicity that is my Toronto-born view of the topic, and the world.

The Booze Issue

Now, we know what you’re thinking: isn’t it a bit crazy for a blog dedicated to challenging stereotypes about Toronto’s many communities to time a booze issue right near St. Patrick’s Day? It’s a fair question, and one to which the answer is “uh, probably?”.

But what better time to poke at the rituals, assumptions, and differing views that circle around drinking? Like few other things, alcohol shows us what we share and what we don’t. Those of us who indulge often do it and think of it in different ways. Some of us never touch the stuff. How different communities look at alcohol forms a kaleidoscope of opinion.

This week on the Ethnic Aisle, we’re all about booze. From how culture and religion affect our views on drinking, to what a multicultural bar might look like, to the dreaded “Asian Glow”, we’re diving in to the world of liquor.

Sitting down for drinks amongst a mixed group of friends can be an ideal symbol of Toronto’s diversity. Whatever disagreements we have tend to dissolve in the pleasant haze of a good buzz. So in that spirit, we invite you to kick back, pour yourself a drink and savour the many notes of our Booze Issue.

Starting off, let’s confront St. Patrick’s Day head-on with a Dubliner’s Rant by Séamus Conaty. “Patty! Really? Patty? That is either an old WASPy woman’s name or a delightful Jamaican pastry, not Ireland’s main man.”

There’s so much more to Greek alcohol than ouzo. Kat Armstrong gives us a handy primer and a breakdown on drinking etiquette (metaxa is so fancy, like).

“It felt weird to me to be the only sober person in a room full of people who were inebriated.” Bharavi Thanki talks to a young, ambitious Muslim woman about whether her choice not to drink affects her career path.

Kids and Wine Is Just Fine: Kelli Korducki was a child drinker (sort of) and people let her get away with it cause her parents were foreign (maybe).

Navneet Alang and Anshuman Idamsetty would like to know – just What Is a Multicultural Bar? Is it about the crowd, the food, the decor, the music? Must it serve Kingfisher?

Hennessy and Enemies: the Toronto Star had some pretty stupid things to say about the link between hip hop, cognac and last summer’s shooting on Danzig Ave. So Denise Balkissoon has some stupid questions of her own.

Are Asian club nights different than “regular” club nights? Karen K. Ho talks to David Ins, a promoter with Asian-focused party company Epic Nights.

In Irish Pride, Lucas Costello shares an intense, dark memoir of life with an alcoholic Irish dad and a teetotalling Filipino mom.

and Chantal Braganza teaches us all about pulque, the Mexican liquor with the consistency of saliva and the taste of runny sourdough starter. Cheers!

Would a Multicultural Bar Actually Just Be For White People?

Some more thoughts on ‘diverse drinking’…

by Anshuman Idamsetty and Navneet Alang

When we sat down to think about a multicultural bar for the Ethnic Aisle’s Booze Issue, we had one question in mind: how might you create a bar that includes and represents Toronto’s many cultures?

After getting some reaction to the post, however, it seems like we missed another really important question: would it even be a good idea? Because now we’re not so sure, and here’s why

• For example, Pete Evans suggested on Twitter that you can’t really plan these things. What’d actually be preferable would simply be to let the market sort it out; if people want a “Chinese bar” or what-have-you, they’d either start or patronize one. It’s a good point, but it’s a also wise to keep in mind that market-based approaches to diversity – like in housing - have downsides, too.

• Others, like Ethnic Aisle contributor Mike Warren, said that things like music are often a “great divider“. A “fusion” playlist might end up pleasing a tiny fraction of people, and alienating everyone else – and that’d probably extend to decor, seating etc. too.

• In an awesome comment on the original post, “A Panlillo” exploded the whole idea of a multicultural drinking hole. We highly recommend you read the whole thing, but she questioned she questioned the very premise, arguing “How can the execution of this bar not resemble tokenism on drugs?”. It makes sense: If someone wanted a bar where they felt at home, but what they instead got was fusion, wouldn’t they simply be happier with a bar that catered to their idea of ‘home’ in the first place? The commenter had  another very interesting, provocative idea, too: “The ideal clientele, then, the clientele this establishment will unconsciously be aiming at, and whose risk of being offended is least among the lot, comprises of those who are not racially marked: white people, in other words.”  Touche!

In light of these very smart and much-appreciated insights, some more thoughts and questions of our own:

400 Types of Drunkenness: Pulque, the Mexican Moonshine

By Chantal Braganza

I’m not up on my Aztec mythology, but one thing I’ve always remembered are the Centzon Totochtin, 400 rabbits that liked to drink and party and each represented a particular type of intoxication. They were the gods of good times, and their mom, Mayahuel, provided the booze: a thick, milky sap called pulque that was once one of the more popular alcohols in Mexico.

If you tasted it now, this would be hard to believe. It has the consistency of saliva and looks a bit like translucent milk. It bubbles a bit sometimes. It’s made from agave, largely the same kind of plant you get mezcal from, only the sap is uncooked (tequila comes from a specific species only—blue agave). In Mesoamerican times, it was enjoyed only by priests, the pregnant, the elderly and sacrifice victims in need of a pick-me-up. When the Spanish came around and messed things up a bit, everyone started drinking the stuff.

Irish Pride

By Lucas Costello

The first time my dad died, I was five. He was standing at the top of the staircase, proclaiming “the Chinaman kept giving me tequilas.” Then he fell flat on his face. The rest is haze: me in a room reading a Walt Disney activity book with “Kiki”, my Filipina nanny, while my Filipina mother, bawling, called the ambulance, and tall men in uniforms with stripes down their pant legs showed up to save the day.

My father didn’t actually die that night. In the end it was cancer, not directly alcohol-related, that brought him into the black. The years in-between are spotted with memories: him fighting with my mother on a night that she dumped out all of his expensive scotch; me, still a child, waking up to find out that he had driven our TransAm into a ditch. Our big alcoholic-and-son bonding moment was a night in Mexico. My mom took off after Dad refused to not drink x amounts of tequila. He ended up unable to walk, so I helped him back to the hotel room. It was Angela’s Ashes meets Wall Street, with Lionel Richie as the soundtrack. Luckily for all of us, Dad was a gentle drunk; our family didn’t have to deal with the trauma of physical abuse that so often haunts families with alcoholic parents.

You Can Find Them In The Club: Toronto’s East-Asian Scene

By Karen K. Ho

“It’s hard to explain without seeming racist,” laughs David In when asked about the East-Asian party scene in Toronto. The 29-year-old Korean-Canadian is a co-founder of Epic Nights. The entertainment production company produces concerts and other events, but Epic specializes in promoting club nights targeted at young East-Asian students and professionals.

I haven’t been to a nightclub in years, but I still know that clubbing is a massive part of Toronto’s entertainment industry. I also know that East-Asian nights are incredibly popular. What I wanted to figured out was exactly how popular, and how parties focused on East-Asian clubbers might be different than a “regular” club night. So I asked David, and here’s what I learned.

Club gear transcends race. “You’ll have your hipsters and the guys who are all GQ’d, and obviously the douche-bags who are wearing Ed Hardy,” David said. “You know, the True Religion jeans and really flashy standout style.”

East-Asians drink what everyone else drinks. Bottle service orders are dominated by vodka, while bar orders are mostly Jagerbombs and tequila shots.

“Asian Glow” exists. (It’s increased acetaldehyde accumulation, ok?) “Some people will have one sip of beer and they’ll turn red,” David laughs.

Friday night is Asian Night—it’s when club owners are most likely to ask Epic to help them bring in an Asian clientele. “However on Saturday it’s completely different,” he said, noting that the demand for “white” nights goes up. “But those tend to become mixed anyway.”

Hennessy and Enemies: Booze, Brands and “Liquid Bling”

By Denise Balkissoon

Can you read that wine label? Cause this brand causes dictatorships.

There were many things to be upset about after last summer’s shooting on Danzig Avenue: the deaths, of course, plus the youth of the accused shooters, and how easy it seems for firearms to slip through our porous border.

Farther down on the list, but still troubling, was “Henny & Hip Hop,” a story that ran in the Toronto Star about 10 days after the incident. Dotted with lyrics by Mobb Deep and Eminem, the piece informed the reading public that “Hennessy has been part of hip-hop culture for almost 20 years.” It quoted a Brazil-based spokesperson from Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, who emphasized that the company “was not part of the party.” In other words, it was embarrassing and nausea-inducing, and almost a year later, it still bugs me.

Does alcohol make people violent? Unquestionably, yes. But I can’t think of a culture other than hip hop for which a string of brand citations follows every incident. When Vancouver Canucks fans tore their city up after losing the Stanley Cup two years ago, I don’t remember hearing what kind of flat beer they were overcharged for in the Rogers Arena.  An upper-class Scottish chef killed his girlfriend last fall, but the news coverage has yet to inform me about what sorts of fine wines he might have been drinking. At a time when there were many important, heart-wrenching things to consider, “Henny & Hip Hop” was just another piece of Othering tripe letting us know that “in urban culture, [Hennessy] is seen as liquid bling.”

I have some questions of my own about liquor brands and identity, questions that I might have considered stupid if the country’s biggest daily hadn’t opened these floodgates. Let’s start with the most important one, and move on from there.

1. Obviously we all want a world without prejudice or hate. Anheuser-Busch InBev is on track to own every major beer brand in the world. When Corona tastes just like Rolling Rock tastes just like Hoegaarden tastes just like Quilmes, will racism be over?

What is a Multicultural Bar?

by Navneet Alang and Anshuman Idamsetty

Nav: This past summer, I lost a silly bet with my Dad, the details of which are far less important than what was wagered: the loser had to buy the other beer. Strangely though, my Dad has yet to collect on his debt.

Maybe my father is just lazy. Okay, fine, my father is just lazy. But I do wonder if I could entice my old man out more easily were there a bar where we, two South Asian dudes, might feel a bit more ‘at home’.

It got me to thinking: do we need “multicultural” or “ethnic” bars? What would one even look like? Intrigued, I consulted Ethnic Aisle collaborator and friend Anshuman Iddamsetty, and we were soon sitting down in a Bloorcourt pub trying to figure it out. What we came up with were five aspects of a bar we’d need to address: drinks, food, music, seating and decor. As it turned out, though, the more we thought about it, the more complicated things became. Here’s what we visualized:

DRINK: When it comes to booze, familiarity is important. That means any multicultural bar would have to be unusually well-stocked, keeping not only the usual local and popular brews, but among others, Tsingtao, Kingfisher, and Red Stripe. For liquor, you’d need to get more adventurous: next to scotch and gin, you’d need palm wine, Borovička, and arrack in addition to ouzo and grappa—though there is that pesky problem of sourcing these things from both the LCBO and beyond. Whether you wanted to get fancy and experiment with cocktails containing five-spice or coriander, would probably depend on how up- or downmarket you (or your clientèle) wanted to go.

Could it be done? Clearly, an exhaustive list would be impossible, but a decent array of booze from Toronto’s major ethnic groups might be plausible.