Quebec entrepreneurs in the Journal
While people march downtown against racism, Toula Drimonis fingers the Journal: “Members of ethnic groups routinely top the ranks of Quebec’s and Canada’s self-employed business owners, yet ALL eight entrepreneurs being interviewed here are white francophone men. No racial or gender diversity and not a single editor at the JdM even noticed?” She goes on to explain that this is systemic racism – invisible to the people who benefit from it.
david56 12:46 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
I’m not unsympathetic to this position, but to be clear, it’s racist that the long-time Quebec Inc project doesn’t include minority business owners? Or that the Journal is trumpeting a rebooted Quebec Inc rather than the minority business owners?
Also, I’d like some clarification on where the Italians and Portuguese stand on this spectrum of minorities. Is this an indictment of how closed the francophone business class is? Or is it straight up that these faces aree white and that there’s nobody brown there – they should put a brown face in there to represent? Such tokenism is usually derided as racist among the wokes, but Toula is also coming from a specific background.
NoDarnGoog 14:23 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
David, I’m not sure this jumbled pile of “just asking questions” really gets to anything. That eight white guys is an inadequate representation of what Quebec is in 2020, doesn’t need clarification. (Also Quebec inc and the Journal can both be flawed without contradiction)
There is never likely to be a perfect answer as to what constitutes proper diversity or representation, it’s a moving target. To demand one is reactionary stalling.
Kate 14:24 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
David∞, if you were to take a random sample of small business owners in Quebec, what are the odds all eight would be white francophones de souche? What if your sample was from Montreal?
david88 16:35 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
Quebec Inc. is a longstanding collaboration between industrialists, business leaders, and government to advance Quebec interests at home, in Canada, and abroad. It’s something that both nationalists and liberals are on board for, grew out of nationalizations, and is a fundamental part of the statist corporatist approach that Quebec tends to like to take.
An immigrant shopkeeper is a world removed from this project, and is basically irrelevant to it.
If Toula is saying that Quebec Inc – which is necessarily going to be run in one way – is racist and exclusionary in its operation and/or inclusionary aspects, that’s one thing.
If Toula is saying that Quebec Inc – which is necessarily a statist (or dirisiste in the french) approach to capitalism – is racist and exclusionary in its purpose or function, that’s another thing.
If Toula is saying that the Journal’s decision to focus on Quebec Inc when there are all sorts of immigrant-owned businesses to focus on is racist and exclusionary, that’s yet another thing.
What would the solution even be to the issue she’s raising, if she could clarify it? Minority quotas on company boards, on newspaper pages that report on business development?
I’m not trying to troll, I’m again trying to parse this out. Quebec Inc is a famous and long-running project to give Quebec businesses an advantage and ensure local ownership. Where does the racism come in?
david88 16:59 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
Like, answer me how reporting on this is racist: http://archive.is/CD4lW
(Aside from a Toula-type “well, capitalism is fundamentally racist” type position.)
Kate 17:05 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
David, simply by suggesting that “Quebec” = white guys, implies that that is what “Québec Inc.” is.
Do you feel included? As a (white) anglo woman I sure don’t, and I can’t imagine how it feels if you’re an immigrant of colour trying to run a business around here. The Journal’s “nous” is not an inclusive “nous”.
david88 17:33 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
I mean, I’m sympathetic to that perspective, no question. But I need more.
And as an anglo, I’m an outsider too to this entire ‘francophone CEO with political connections and government backing’ type world.
But I don’t think it’s racism. Without being glib: there are plenty of immigrants in Argentina (for instance) but the idea that an ultra (eg. Toula) Argentine would claim “systematic racism” because the Argentine business class is dominated by longtime Argentine families and figures is just alien there. As it is in Quebec, despite it’s being part of the Canadian federation. The anglo cultural bleed-over (at this point almost totally informed on these issues by the US) is changing that somewhat, but it’s still not all that logical.
And it especially falls apart if you start talking – the way we usually did until this American framing became dominant – about franco/anglo/allo, where allo was a pretty expansive group. Allo was Italians, Greeks, Arabs, the works. It described something real about the operation of Quebec society.
Now that we’ve decided that allo doesn’t matter and it’s about brown/black vs. “white” (per the imported American frame), I’d just like some clarification of how it’s even supposed to work.
In the end, it’s one thing to debate this stuff on an anglo blog filled with high information consuming mostly progressive people, and quite another to actually take stock of how poorly this imported frame describes Quebec society as seen and experienced by the overwhelming majority of Quebecois.
Jack 17:39 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
They are oddly consistent. The Journal’s commentary team has been working very hard to educate their readers on racism in Quebec and how it impacts white people the most, they are the victims.
https://twitter.com/danielthibault/status/1269729478969884675
Spi 17:58 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
To be clear when JdQ/JdM uses the term Quebec Inc. we’re straying away from the traditional use of that term. Traditionally as you said it is reserved for the largest industrialist/business leaders in Qc, the likes of Bombardier, Metro/PJC, Gas Metro, Rona not the small entrepreneurs being featured here.
What Toula is criticizing is that in this series of articles they sought out small entrepreneurs that pivoted during the crisis (frankly some of these stories are not that interesting or exceptional) and that if they cared at all they would have been able to find minority entrepreneurs to include, the fact that they didn’t and or were oblivious to it is what she’s calling systemic racism.
GC 18:06 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
Can we also stop assuming that anyone who isn’t white must be an immigrant?
Kate 18:09 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
GC: good point, thank you for the reminder.
Michael Black 18:26 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
Sme non-whites have been here since time immemorial.
But yes, other non-whites have been here long, so it’s not their parents or grandparents that were immigrants.
JaneyB 21:24 on 2020-06-07 Permalink
It’s nice that people are thinking about racial exclusion right now but I don’t see those articles as systemic racism. They’re standard navel-gazing about the health of entrepreneurial skills among the ‘de souche’, a matter of long obsession since the Quiet Rev. It’s basically ‘Quebec Inc’ comes to the neighbourhood level – eg to the JdM readership. Now that covid is less acute, thoughts turn to the economy. Soon there will be an article about drop-out rates chez les Francos. Every time the Quebec press, even the annoying JdM, obsesses about the ‘de souche’, it is not a slur against everyone else. I think focusing on the SPVM’s membership and its treatment of people of colour/Indigenous would be more productive than this reading of the JdM. Eyes on the prize.