The scandal that shook Université Laval following the publication of a job offer for the recruitment of a biology professor is probably more serious than one might imagine. Let’s remember the case. The university said it was looking for applications “from women, Aboriginal people, people with disabilities and those belonging to visible minorities”, taking care to specify that only applications from people who had “self-identified as a member of these four groups” would be retained. Farewell, white man!
To measure the extent of such discrimination by an institution which, in the same announcement, prides itself on guaranteeing “equal opportunities for all candidates”, it is necessary to examine both the objective pursued, that of encouraging “diversity”, but also the way to achieve it, in this case, that of the Canada Research Chairs program to which the job offer is linked.
Let’s first talk about the objective, that of achieving greater social justice by fostering diversity within educational, cultural, public institutions, etc. The postulate on which this seemingly laudable objective is based is in reality a sophism: one that associates a race, the white, and a sex, the male, with historical privileges. But what may be true for a social group exists only hypothetically on the individual level.
Thus, the candidacy of the daughter with a cozy childhood of a wealthy entrepreneur of Haitian origin would be favored in view of this job offer, while that of the son of a white worker who would have had to resort to loans and grants to succeeding in his studies would be ruled out from the outset. Where, according to the diversity left (or identity left) grid, we would find ourselves repairing an error in the representation of visible minorities in the teaching staff, we would find ourselves, on the contrary, according to a Marxist grid, committing a gross injustice. That of reinforcing the privileges of a bourgeoise to the detriment of the son of a proletarian.
Choose a grid, but which grid?
As we can see, the conclusion regarding the social justice of such hiring varies according to the analysis grid used. The diversity analysis grid is only interested in biology and races. Neither individual merit nor social classes exist for her. Which leads us to this first essential question: where does the prevalence of this grid of analysis over any other grid, such as the Marxist grid, come from? Is this once again the expression of American imperialism (which always ends up contaminating Canada and the rest of the world), where the “diversity grid” was born and where the “Marxist grid” was never fashionable ?
One could also juxtapose the diversity and Marxist grids by using, for example, the perspective of colonialism, which moreover several thinkers of the diversity left do not deprive themselves of. From their point of view, white civilizations, mainly European and American, would be a vast enterprise of colonization of racialized peoples which had been raging for centuries and which forced a historical catch-up calling for initiatives such as that of the Canada Research Chairs. The question that then comes to us spontaneously is this: by what magic can Quebec and its old French stock be associated with this “enterprise” if it really existed?
Those who were once called French Canadians have in fact suffered for a long time from colonialism. White as they are, French-speaking Quebecers of old French stock have waited two centuries to emerge from poverty which, until the Quiet Revolution, made them one of the poorest “ethnic groups” on the continent. Until recently, this lag was further characterized by a lower education rate and a rickety number of university graduates.
An invasive federalism
Even today, the game is far from over. For example, everywhere we deplore the dropout among Quebec boys, which is one of the worst in Canada and afflicts whites like the others. Is the federal program a new way to fight against this scourge?
Now, let’s look at the other aspect of the program, i.e., how it enters universities. It is the fruit of an intrusive, not to say arrogant, federalism. Remember that, as its name suggests, the Canada Research Chairs program is funded by Ottawa. The federal government is thus taking advantage of a situation denounced for generations by almost all provincial politicians in Quebec: the use of its spending power to invade a field of provincial jurisdiction such as education. In this case, Ottawa invites itself into the dance by betting on the relative poverty of Quebec universities always in search of funds and, unfortunately, not very attentive to the motivations of their “generous donors”…
But where the initiative becomes downright despicable is when the federal government relies on an ideology, multiculturalism, whose fundamental foundation is a constitution on which we have grafted a charter of rights, a constitution on which Quebecers have ever joined, to impose an ideology that is suspect to say the least. An ideology which not only will never achieve the social justice objectives it claims, but which, in addition, will commit new injustices. As if undressing Peter to dress Paul had become the quintessence of human progress!