press conference

December 17, 2007

press conference

Coming together under the banner “rejecting intolerance in Quebec”, over twenty Montreal groups united to oppose racism, sexism, and xenophobia. At a press conference held on November 20, they explained that the premise on which the commission is based is racist. “Using the term ‘accommodation’, where the Quebecois identity is monolithically defined as that of the white settler, and the action of allowing the expression of religious or faith-based identity of the ‘newcomer’ is an ‘accommodation’, implies a hierarchy of identities. Further, calling this accommodation ‘reasonable’ implies a hierarchy of reason where the reason used by the white settler sets the limits of the so-called debate,” explained Nazila Bettache from No One Is Illegal-Montreal (far right). “This is representative of the systemic racism that prevails.”