Youth Prostitution in Winnepeg: The Role of Race and Class

A recent article in the Globe and Mail titled Hundreds of Young Girls Work Winnepeg's Sex Trade reported that girls as young as eight years old work in Winnepeg's sex trade, either as prostitutes or by engaging in "survival sex"--sexual acts performed to obtain food, shelter or other necessities, and in some cases, drugs.

As disturbing as this fact is, perhaps equally disquieting is the fact that seventy percent of the victims are poor Aboriginal girls. At least one person faults class bias and racism for the over representation of Aboriginal girls in the sex industry, and for the relatively muted social outcry in response to this tragedy. Jane Runner, head of New Directions, an agency that helps girls get off the street, suggests, for example, that Internet luring, a more middle class phenomenon wherein adult predators attempt to arrange sexual trysts with minors via the Internet, has caused more widespread outrage because of the identity of the victims.

Youth prostitution is a scourge in Toronto, Vancouver and Alberta as well. Although the most common response is to adopt social service measures or public education schemes, perhaps most controversial is Alberta's approach. In 1999 Alberta adopted the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act, (PChIP), thereby becoming the first jurisdiction in Canada to allow officials to take young prostitutes off the street and place them in safe houses. This legislation also introduced legal penalties for those who procure clients (pimps) or act as clients (johns). It is not clear, however, that the PChIP can be unequivocally declared a success, as there are few objective ways of measuring its full effect.

The problem of child prostitution is certainly not unique to Canada. It is, by many accounts, a global problem in danger of reaching epidemic proportions. As is true in the case of Winnepeg, however, racial and social discrimination figure prominently in the commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls. Research indicates that where societies are historically stratified along racial, ethnic, or caste lines and/or are deeply xenophobic, a large number of clients seek prostitutes who represent the Other: the racial, ethnic, caste or national identities of the prostitutes are often different from the clients. In addition, because of the additional stigma of abusing children, clients' selection of child prostitutes whose social identities differ from the clients allows clients to retain their views of themselves as moral and good.

In view of the way the race and class impact child prostitution in Canada and elsewhere, what is the role of law in ending child prostitution?

The York University Presidency and the U.S. Presidency--Of Historic Firsts and Slate Cleaning

Evelyne Kostanska sent the following issue to the blog:

Mamdouh Shoukri, an Egyptian-born engineer, will become the new president of York University this summer. In doing so he will be the first Muslim appointed as the permanent head of a Canadian university. Read about it in a Toronto Star article titled Muslim President for York University.

"This is Canada. It's a mosaic," Shoukri, 59, was quoted as saying.

Students, both Muslim and non-Muslim, expressed happiness at the appointment. One student,
Adam Hummel of Hillel at York, the centre for Jewish life on campus, indicated that Shoukri's selection was "very Canadian" and expressed hope that Shoukri's appointment would "wipe the slate clean" on the acrimonious tone of Israel-Palestinian debate on campus.

Similar discussions are being conducted in the United States regarding the candidacy of Barack Obama for United States president. Read about it in a New York Times article titled Obama Formally Enters Presidential Race. As some pundits have suggested, if Barack Obama, the son of a white American mother and a Kenyan father, is elected president, this will mean that racism in the United States has come to an end. Many doubt this claim, given the United States long history of racists practices. But what about Canada, and more specifically, what about York University? Does the appointment of of an Egyptrian-born Muslim have the potential to "wipe clean" the history of acrimony on the Israel-Palestinian debate on the York campus? What do historic firsts, like Mamdouh Shoukri and Barack Obama (if he is elected) do for long-standing ethnic, religious or racial controversies in which they represent the historically oppressed Other?

Evelyne Kostanska writes the following in response to the Toronto Star article regarding presidency of Mr. Shoukri:

The election of a new president to head York University is going to re-spark debates that have recently catapulted York into fame. While I applaud York’s appointment of Shoukri, the first Muslim to hold the post of University President, I question whether his election was truly as apolitical and credential-driven as university officials claim. As many of us no doubt recall, over the last few years, York has gained notoriety for student driven Palestinian-Israeli conflict. While students have borne the brunt of blame, York’s administration itself has been attacked. Most commonly, critics assert that instead of allowing for freedom of speech and association, the University, in the name of “safety,” has adopted draconian measures – stifling debate, breaking up peaceful rallies, and suspending students.

In addition, though never explicitly stated, York administrators, and particularly Lorna Marsden, have often been accused of siding with its pro-Israel students in an effort to appease its large Jewish student population. As such, is it really merely coincidence that in an effort to shed its reputation of pro-Jewish bias, the University appoints an Arab leader who subscribes to Islam? Call me cynical, but as a former York undergraduate student, I have witnessed 4 long years of false promises and justifications. Most importantly, I worry that President Shoukri’s skills and accomplishments may be belittled if students view his election as a political ploy meant to appease. Furthermore, as York already suffers from a tense political climate, if students view the appointment as threatening, they may become further divided along ethnic and religious lines.

Finally, I wish to point out an additional danger illustrated by the Toronto Star article where this story is found. The report features a quote by a Hillel member, Adam Hummel, where he states that he hopes Shoukri’s election will “wipe the slate clean” in light of York University’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While such a desire is admirable and no doubt uttered in good faith, I contend that there is a very real danger any time a proposal to erase history is made. As we discussed in relation to racism, “color-blindness” or appeals to forget the past (based on ideas that things “are better now”) serve to erase the voices and history of the oppressed. We have also seen that ideologies such as those of “color-blindness” are a mere screen for more subtle forms of racism. Similarly, many in the Jewish community decry attempts to “move past” the Holocaust, arguing that it is thorough remembrance of atrocities that we avoid their recurrence. Likewise, I would argue that just as we cannot forget the historical realties of racially motivated violence, so too we should avoid wiping clean the history of Palestinian and Israeli relationships in York. There are better ways to move beyond conflict than resorting to “erasing” the past. While the past may be painful, it is not only a learning experience, but more importantly, it is the lived reality of people who do not deserve to be forgotten.

What do you think?

More from Quebec: Ethnic and Religious Behavioural Codes

Danny Auron sent the following issue to the blog:

Recently the town of Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac, Quebec adopted a behavioural code which "forbids stoning women, the donning of burqas, and wearing Sikh ceremonial daggers in school." Read about it in a Toronto Star article titled Quebec Town Spawns Uneasy Debate.

As we learn from the article, there are no foreign-born residents and no visible minorities in Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac. Nonetheless, the measure passed unanimously before the city council. "This should have been done here long ago," said Claude Dumont, Saint-Roch's elected mayor. Saint-Roch is not the only town to adopt such a code; a nearby town, Hérouxville, had previously put into place a similar code of conduct. Mayor Dumont acknowledged that he had little knowledge of immigrant communities and that "we don't live with them side-by-side here like they do in Montreal, but if I've chosen to live here it's because I like the way we live ... and I don't want it to change."

What does it mean when behaviour codes are based more on tradition than on reasoned principles? What does it mean when positive law is used as a means of countermanding behavior that is completely outside of the experience of the drafters and so closely focused on the potential activities of religious, ethnic or racial Others?

Such codes raise obvious Charter concerns. Section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes Canada's multicultural heritage and is generally read to mean that courts should respect multiculturalism when making decisions under the Charter. But beyond that, the drafting of such codes raises more general concerns about relatively non-hierarchical processes of rule-making (like the city council action here). Many may argue that rules which appear to express obvious bias will easily be understood as the doings of persons who are out of step with the norms of equality that most of us embrace. However, when such groups first articulate policy and then translate it into positive law they may give added luster to the law because of the presumed reasonableness of rules reached by local community consensus as opposed to more distant executive fiat. This remains true even where the rules may be used as tools of oppression.

What do you think?