The declarations of the former journalist Amira Elghawaby, appointed to the post of special representative of Canada in charge of the fight against Islamophobia, cause an outcry, with good reason. Among other false news, she referred to the results of a 2007 survey by the firm Léger according to which 59% of Quebecers considered themselves racist. As a journalist, she could have taken a closer look at this poll to find its flaws. But any more or less hidden objective will undoubtedly have prevailed over his work ethic.
The fateful poll of 2007
On January 15, 2007, in the midst of intense debates on reasonable accommodation, after the municipal council of Hérouxville had adopted a code of conduct targeting religious accommodation, the Montreal Journal published a survey conducted by the firm Léger Marketing through two Internet polls, between December 2006 and January 2007, with a shocking title: “59% of Quebecers say they are racist”.
However, like my colleagues Rachad Antonius and Jean-Claude Icart, researchers specializing like me in the sociology of racism, these results immediately struck me as suspect. In the process, we published two articles on this subject, one in The Pressthe other in the review Public Ethics. According to our analysis, several reasons explained these aberrant results: a dubious definition of racism, the aggregation of non-aggregable categories, what we learned about attitudes concerning reasonable accommodation in comparison, and the absence of First Nations.
A dubious definition and contradictory results
The scientific definition of racism consists of this: “An ideology which results in prejudices, practices of discrimination, segregation and violence, involving power relations between social groups, which has a function of stigmatization, legitimization and of domination, and whose logics of inferiorization and differentiation can vary in time and space”.
However, respondents had to react to an incomplete definition: “… at the popular level, all unpleasant behavior, words, gestures or attitudes, however minor they may be with regard to another culture…”. It is unlikely that everyone has grasped the deep meaning of the term “racism” and then judged themselves “racists”. In fact, they had to answer questions (12 to 22) concerning intercultural relations, even ethnocentrism, rather than racism. From the outset, therefore, there was a deficient use of the word racism to express a whole range of delicate attitudes that could be interpreted in different ways.
A second problem was the grouping of sub-categories (strongly racist, moderately racist, weakly racist, not at all racist). Those who said they were strongly racist were merged with those who said they were moderately or weakly racist, hence the famous total of 59%. Now, what exactly did “moderately racist” or “mildly racist” mean?
Another contradictory fact: the vast majority of Quebecers (77%), like the majority of members of “cultural communities” (80%) believed that there are no human “races” more gifted than others ( question 3). And 78% of the members of the so-called “cultural communities” said they felt welcome.
How can these results be explained if 59% of Quebecers were racist?
Other contradictions on reasonable accommodations
It should be noted that the Léger Marketing survey of January 2007 was held in a busy context. Public opinion was heated white-hot by politicians and the media on the issue of reasonable religious accommodation.
In the same survey, Léger therefore saw fit to introduce two questions on this social issue: “Which statement best corresponds to your opinion? 1. All immigrants should respect the laws and regulations of Quebec even if it goes against certain religious beliefs or cultural practices; 2 “It is necessary to adopt accommodations to our laws and regulations so as not to force immigrants to go against their religious beliefs or cultural practices”. The result obtained was the following: “The vast majority of Quebecers (83%) believe that immigrants should respect the laws and regulations of Quebec, even if this goes against certain religious beliefs or cultural practices. Among members of cultural communities, 74% are of the same opinion”.
In conclusion, one can also wonder why the pollster distinguished between “cultural communities” and “Quebecers”, a fundamental question whose political and civic importance is immense. And why the indigenous dimension was then completely evacuated from the survey Le Montreal Journal published in January 2007 a table entitled “Immigration in 5 minutes”, in which the 130,165 members of the “First Nations” were among the “important cultural communities of Quebec” descended from immigration! A hopeless blunder…
We can also wonder if it would not be relevant to conduct surveys on the types of prejudice that fall within the province of Quebec. bashing systemic system that plagues minorities (a prototype being that practiced by Mme Elghawaby), with regard to so-called “native” Quebecers, an undeniable taboo to be faced.