Comment 42135

By moylek (registered) - website | Posted June 17, 2010 at 21:54:53

'Nuff Said wires

I was also struck by the somewhat progressive precedent of Linc's win, something that Hamilton loves to celebrate despite (I think) it being an anomaly on a largely Caucasian 164-year political continuum.

Dare I bring simple statistics into this again? That seems to get me downvoted.

Ancaster seems to have been part of five successive federal ridings, with 25ish different individuals sent off to the House of Commons to represent it. One of those 25 was the Right Honourable Lincoln Alexander. In 2009, only one in 50 Hamiltonians was black - and I dare say that there are more black people in Hamilton now than there have ever been.

So in a city with a black population peaking at about 2%, 4% of the West-end MPs have been black.

A question for you, 'Nuff Said : just how many black MPs would you want to see in this riding before you'd say it's "fair" and that Linc was not "anomalous"?

I'd better be clear before I'm misunderstood. I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist: racism exists. We have fewer racists now than we used to, I believe, but we still have racists and people encounter racism. Racism is bad. Xenophobia is bad. People should not be scorned for being of a different colour or ethnicity or nation of origin. Just to be clear.

But before we decry the lack of members of group X in government, on boards, etc., let's review the demographics and see what kind of proportions we might expect at best.

Comment edited by moylek on 2010-06-17 20:58:16

-- Kenneth Moyle Hamilton, Ontario

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