Mother files Quebec human rights complaint
Her 15-year-old son targeted in racist video
MONTREAL — The mother of a 15-year-old Montreal-area boy who was the target of a widely circulated racist video is filing a human rights complaint against the alleged perpetrators and asking that blackface be declared a hateful symbol, she announced Thursday.
The video shows two girls, believed to be local high school students, singing and dancing in blackface as they direct a stream of slurs and insults toward Black people.
The mother, who is not being named to protect her son’s identity, told reporters the video includes her son’s name and violates his rights to equality, dignity and respect.
“It was a hateful act made by two young women against my child, who is a teenager, and there needs to be consequences so this is addressed correctly,” she told reporters, adding “and ideally this is the last time we see blackface.”
The woman said her son, who stood nearby as she spoke, had been frustrated and confused by the video but wanted to stand up for himself and help to prevent future incidents.
The complaint is expected to be filed to the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission in the coming days by a local group, the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations. It will include a claim for several thousand dollars in damages as well as mandatory anti-racism training for the alleged perpetrators.
Fo Niemi, the centre’s executive director, says the complainants will also seek a ruling that will declare blackface a “symbol involving discrimination,” which is prohibited under the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
If upheld, it could mean that donning blackface could eventually be seen as a civil rights violation and an illegal symbol of racism and hate, which would subject those who use it to prosecution.
The woman said she was shocked by the video, which was made by two girls whom she describes as acquaintances of her son.
“Not only was my son’s name mentioned in it, the N-word was used repeatedly, blackface was used throughout and there’s several different negative stereotypes that were just hard to take,” she said.
Neither she nor her son has received an apology from the girls or their families, she said.
Montreal police investigated the video but said last week the girls would not face criminal charges. A police spokesperson said that, while the content was racist, it did not incite hatred, which would be key to laying charges.
It’s also unclear what consequences the girls will face.
John Rennie High School in Pointe-Claire, a suburb west of Montreal, promised it was taking the incident “very seriously” but declined to say whether the girls had been expelled.
“The registration status of each student remains a private matter which cannot be disclosed publicly,” the school wrote on its website.
Both Niemi and the mother said they were not satisfied with the school board’s response, and they could eventually name the board in the complaint if it doesn’t take concrete action to address the situation.
ATLANTA — As part of the plan to restart its season next month, the NBA is preparing to test hundreds of players, coaches and others for the coronavirus each night inside a “basketball bubble” — a space at the Disney complex near Orlando, Fla., with extra protection against the disease.
Test results will be expected back the next morning, before the day’s practices and games begin. That sort of rapid turnaround is the gold standard for tracking a highly contagious disease that is on the rise again in parts of the country. Yet a survey by The Associated Press of selected U.S. states shows the benchmark is rarely met for the general public.
Having access to quick test results will play an important role in resuming sporting events, keeping businesses and factories open, and returning to school in the fall. But The Associated Press survey found it sometimes still takes days for results to be returned, despite an increase in the availability of testing across the country.
The situation is even worse in many hot spots around the world, including South Africa, where results have sometimes taken up to 12 days.
Judy Clinco, owner of Catalina In-Home Services in Tucson, Ariz., has had to test about 30 of her 110 staffers, who provide care and assistance to seniors in their homes. They are not able to visit clients until the results are back, which typically takes a week to 10 days.
As many as seven employees have been sidelined at once, Clinco said.
“During that time, the caregiver is not working. We are subsidizing their wages, and it’s a financial burden to the company,” she said. “It leaves us with one less caregiver to be on assignment, and that leaves us short-staffed.”
Public health experts say testing delays present a major hurdle to reducing infections and tracking those who have been in close contact with a person who is positive for the virus.
That’s why researchers are working to develop rapid tests that can be cheaply produced, self-administered and provide immediate, reliable results. For now, most tests to diagnose COVID-19 require laboratory processing, which means a built-in delay.
Guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that states, as they lift final virus restrictions, have a turnaround time of less than two days.
But it’s unclear whether states have access to detailed data showing whether they are meeting the CDC standard, including how long it takes to process tests at independent labs. Labs track their own turnaround times, but the CDC said data such as how long it takes for a test to get to a lab and for a provider to receive the result and notify the patient are not tracked. That makes it difficult to determine a “meaningful average” of what patients are experiencing in each state.
In the absence of publicly available federal data, The Associated Press earlier this month surveyed nine states that were experiencing a 14-day uptick in new positive cases, plus New York, which has had the most COVID-19 cases.
The state lab in New York was taking up to three days to report results to patients. California officials said the statewide turnaround time was 48 to 72 hours, depending on the lab. In Utah, anecdotal information suggested that results took 24 to 72 hours.
Most of the 10 states surveyed said they did not have data on turnaround times for commercial labs in their state, creating another information gap. Health experts said this was not unusual, that state health departments have not typically been responsible for tracking individual laboratory turnaround times.
“It’s a good question of who should be responsible for tracking this information and providing it back to the public,” said Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious diseases with the Association of Public Health Laboratories.