Posted on 01/16/2007 8:25:34 PM PST by nuconvert
59% of Quebecers say they're racist: poll
Monday, January 15, 2007
CBC News
Fifty-nine per cent of Quebecers admit to being racist to some degree, according to a Léger Marketing survey published Monday in Le Journal de Montréal.
In comparison, only 47 per cent of those outside Quebec say they are racist to some degree.
Among Quebecers, most (43 per cent) said they were only mildly racist, while 15 per cent said they were moderately racist and only one per cent responded that they were very racist.
The findings stunned Jean Dorion of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste.
"I do not perceive the Quebec society as being racist," he told Le Journal de Montréal.
The findings come from three surveys in late December and early January. The first two surveys were conducted over the internet, with 2,228 Quebecers taking part, while the third survey interviewed 3,092 people across Canada.
The survey looked at Quebecers' views of a variety of cultural groups.
It found 36 per cent of Quebecers have a bad opinion of Jewish people, while 27 per cent have a poor opinion of blacks. Fifty per cent have a bad opinion of Muslims.
Jean-Marc Léger, president of Leger Marketing, said Quebecers are influenced by the images of Muslims seen after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"The Arab community carries the weight of Sept. 11 and religious extremists," Léger told Le Journal de Montréal. "People were thinking of them when they answered the survey."
Bashir Hussein, who represents Quebec in the Council of Muslim Communities of Canada, said people are also shaped by the media coverage of violence in the Middle East.
"Whatever people read in the newspapers, they form their opinion from," he told CBC News.
Survey methods questioned Jack Jedwab, a Montrealer who has done extensive statistical and demographic work, questions how the survey was structured, especially the sections asking Quebecers if they consider themselves racist.
Quebecers were asked if they consider themselves very racist, moderately racist, slightly racist or not racist at all.
Jedwab said in three out of four answers, respondents end up labelling themselves racist.
If Jedwab were writing the question, he would have made the ratio two questions out of four, asking people if they are very racist, somewhat racist, not racist or not at all racist.
Jedwab, executive director of the Montreal-based Association of Canadian Studies, said it's dangerous to have a survey that shows such a high level of racism.
"It will lead people to say, 'Let's face it, everyone's racist,'" he told CBC News Online. "They'll think it's to be expected. That will minimize the resolve to combat this problem of racism that needs to be addressed."
The Quebec portion of the survey is considered to have a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The one done outside Quebec had a margin of error of 1.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
No mention of how Canadians feel about Hispanics.
And aren't homos always prattling on about "racism" and bigotry towards them? Something tells me that Quebonians would be 100% tolerant towards homosexuals.
Finally, I did't know Jews were their own particular race.
Survey are almost always flawed because they are designed to get a specific result desired by the designer. But you guys all know that.
The real surprise here is not that 60% of Quebecers and 50% of Canadians are racist to some degree, but that that many are willing to admit it.
Thus the solution, clearly, is a Government ban on surveys.
I suspect cultural, religious and ethnic issues are being conflated with racism here.
"I don't care who you are. Unless you're blind, you're a racist to some degree.
We humans are far too visual creatures for it to be any other way, and the mere fact that we tend to associate primarily with those like us simply belies that fact."
Perhaps, but many of us are not as physically attracted to those like us as we are too those who are exotically different. This is particularly notable among the French, both sexes, who have a preference bordering on a fetish for foreign lovers.
Good thing they never asked New England Yankees what they think of les Québecois, or vice versa. Je me souviens.
These are a people who still refer to themselves as "pure laine" (trans - pure wool, i.e. true French bloodline although many are descended from thieves and whores "filles du roi")
Grew up in Northern Quebec. You couldn't win with these folks. Either you were true French or worked to support their social assistance.
"Je me souviens" on the license plate is a horror that goes mostly unappreciated.
Consider a major Montreal metro stop is named after Lionel Groulx (major anti-semite) and Duplesis left his mark everywhere.
And what about Jacques Parizeau's infamous remark that he lost the ability to separate from Canada on the vote of "money and ethnics" - a completely unambiguous remark directed at the Jewish community. (I moved to Ontario a few months later.)
Haha! How funny you wrote that.
You're speaking to a guy who dated a French girl for 2 years and very near married her... ;)
In Europe, if you are French and don't like the Germans, or German and don't like the French, you are likely to be accused of "racism," or in other words, chauvinism.
And given the history between the two countries, there are a lot of Frenchmen who don't like Germans, just as there are a lot of French Canadians who also don't like outsiders.
Trudeau told an audience of UBC students that anyone who didn't like the Quiet Revolution could leave Canada.I heard his speach on CBC radio. If Harper wins a majority government, which seems likely, I may move back for retirement, but it will be to Victoria or a place close by, or perhaps Calgary.
Yes, the froggies are indeed racists and fascisti.They are Right wing nationalists , despite their posturing as Francophone socialist come leftists. They want Liebenshraum, just like the scions of the German National Socialists of 1938. I have written to Harper and told him that he should tell the separatists that they would not be leaving Canada without exercising a necessary military option to do so.
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