STOP THE STATS GAME

We're not clichés: Nicolas

One peculiar thing about Quebec is that every single person living here thinks of themselves as a minority. And everyone kind of is, to a varying degree, depending on the context.

Another thing that's unique about Quebec is that of all the people who think of themselves as a minority (everyone), the majority of them are actually white people descended from two of the most powerful empires to have invaded and settled in North America.

Francophones and anglophones in Quebec are thus Euro-settlers living on Indigenous land who are comparatively more privileged than any other non-white community in this country and linguistic minorities whose language rights pose very real and legitimate concerns.

However, despite decades of practice having often painful debates around language politics and identities, few of our pundits and political leaders seem to be able to hold space in their hearts and minds of all of those different truths, all at the same time. And that is a third, bewildering fact about this place.

Would it be so hard? Could we actually accept complexity, and even hold it as beautiful?

Could we state that the status of French will always be precarious in North America and that francophone Quebecers hold most of the institutional power in this province and that there is always a potential for that power to be misused, especially against the most marginalized communities on this land?

Is it OK to admit that the economic situation of anglo- Quebecers is really not what it was some 50 years ago and that some of the historical opposition to Bill 101 has been rooted in some classic British arrogance and that most of the anglophones who still love to call home this corner of the British Empire where they are quite exceptionally not the dominant group are necessarily far more humble and easier to live with than your run-of-the-mill diasporic monarchist and that francophone politicians are also well able to tap into a French cultural arrogance of their own despite the somewhat humble beginnings of the French-canadian people and that no, obviously, not everyone who is worried about the French language is a bigot?

Can one show concern for the ways in which accelerating globalization and neo-liberalism is shrinking the political power of all languages that are not English in this Western world and for the scary ways in which the state can articulate “solutions” that are actually clear attacks on individuals and communities' rights and freedoms?

Finally, could we do all of that while acknowledging that for a lot of folks who are neither French nor English and who have actually survived colonialism and intergenerational violence at the hands of either or both, the amount of time and energy that is constantly sucked into the linguistic concerns of the two main settler-colonial groups of this country at the expense of everybody else's battle for human rights can be positively exhausting and that they definitely deserve a bit of a break, from time to time? And that this need for oxygen doesn't make them any less “integrated” or any more of a “threat to the national fabric” or any less empathetic or knowledgeable about the history of language power struggles in Montreal, Quebec and Canada?

Is this too much to ask? Because I, for one, am tired. I am tired of people using the statistics of “mother tongues” and “language spoken at home” instead of “language spoken at work” or “language spoken,” period, as a way to show the potential demise of the French language in Quebec without acknowledging that this choice constructs everyone who is not a native French speaker as an “enemy” of the nation regardless of their actual efforts, behaviours and life choices. Like I am tired of Anglo community groups who include Black and racialized English-speakers in their colourblind statistics to show the need for additional funding of their programming, while the money they get doesn't actually reach such communities. In general, I'm tired of the numbers game in this city. We all need to learn to use demographic data as tools instead of turning them into ideological weapons to be thrown at each other's faces.

One thing that the latest Bloc Québécois' “Bonjour-ho” flop of a campaign has shown is that when we pretend this place is not as complex as it is — that is, with a critical mass of people perfectly able to understand the meaning of “ho” in both French and English — political action goes amiss.

Montrealers are much more than statistics and political clichés. Could we reset the conversation with a promise to respect and honour, for once, all of who are?