bc human rights crybunal

my partner recently filed a case with the bc human rights tribunal against her former employer for not taking action when she was working with a scary, angry, violent, racist, sexist man. we'll call him "darth". according to the bc human rights coalition, she doesn't have a case because the man never said anything derogatory specifically to jane,even though darth had made various comments about asian women and jane is an asian woman. darth even referred to himself as a racist. of course he denied all of this when jane's boss asked darth about these claims and the boss told jane he therefore had to take her complaint -- ahem -- "with a grain of salt"! (aka did nothing about it.)

and the "human rights" people, with all of this evidence, say jane doesn't really have a case. they use that old liberal language of "a person who happens to be X": they described jane as "a woman who happens to be asian." i raised a stink about this at the orientation and told them that jane doesn't happen to be asian; her parents are asian and that made it pretty much a certainty that she would also be asian, by simple genetics, not mere happenstance. a person gets hit by bus by happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. a person does not become asian by a similarly chance process.

even though jane documented three incidents when darth asserted his racism, the human rights people dismissed these comments by saying "oh, well, maybe he was just angry and venting", and "well, he was commenting about asian drivers, not you"!

i'm dead serious.

i couldn't believe what i was hearing...according to their guidelines, in order for the tribunal to make a finding of discrimination, the behaviour has to be levelled specifically at the person making the complaint, meaning that if, for example, you worked with a neo-nazi who was outspoken about her or his hatred of jews, you would not have a case against this person if you were not a jew, even if you found your co-worker's behaviour viscerally offensive and intolerable.

the tribunal's guideline could also be understood to mean that even if this neo-nazi were expressing a hatred of jews in general, or of other jews and you yourself were jewish, you would not be able to establish a case since your co-worker did not make his statements specifically about you.

the guideline also ironically prevents those of us who want to address discrimination from access to legal remedies, based on race, gender, class, or other defining feature: in the example of the outspoken neo-nazi co-worker, if you were not a jew, you would have no legal capacity to engage the tribunal to protect you from your co-worker's racism on the basis that you are not a member of the targeted group.

by refusing to allow allies to file claims, the tribunal helps perpetuate the discrimination it seeks to eliminate. one of the problems inherent in discrimination is precisely that its targets are isolated and victimized. by vitiating the critical role of allies in the struggle for social equality, the tribunal's position further isolates targets of discrimination by placing the onus of action exclusively upon them.

needless to say, targets of discrimination are usually in the most disadvantageous position to defend themselves. imagine a new immigrant whose first language is not english, trying to assert herself in a new job she probably desperately needs, researching her rights in her spare time, looking into whether agencies like the tribunal exist, and then navigating its significant procedural hurdles successfully. fat chance. like jane, many people lose their jobs or homes in their struggle to address discrimination. this fear is palpable in targets of discrimination, making them the least likely people to file a tribunal claim, assuming, of course, that they even knew of its existence, itself an exceedingly unlikely prospect -- jane was born and raised in canada and only found out about the tribunal during her campaign to address her exposure to darth's sexism and racism.

for a legal representative, the tribunal people assigned jane the same man who denied that she was a target of racism and sexism during her orientation session. jane phoned them and said she didn't feel comfortable with him, but did not say why. a representative from the tribunal
told her summarily, without any sensitivity or curiosity, let alone respect for her discomfort, "he is perfectly capable of doing the job." finito. they never paused to ask her why she felt uncomfortable with this man. it nicely underlined the whole distorted mechanics of the place and their lack of recognition of even the most basic elements of discrimination such as privilege and domination.

with friends like that, who needs enemies?