[Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters

[Ray Saintonge]

On 09/30/11 10:59 AM, Sue Gardner wrote:
> On 30 September 2011 09:15, Milos Rancic<millosh at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 16:24, Risker<risker.wp at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> Milos, I believe this is exactly the kind of post that Sue was talking about
>>> in her blog. It is aggressive, it is alienating, and it is intimidating to
>>> others who may have useful and progressive ideas but are repeatedly seeing
>>> the opinions of others dismissed because they're women/not women or from the
>>> US/not from the US. The implication of your post is "if you're a woman from
>>> the US, your opinion is invalid.
> I just want to point out quickly that I am not American, and my
> position on all these issues is actually a very Canadian one. Ray and
> Risker and other Canadians will recognize this.
>
> Canada doesn't really feel itself to have a fixed national identity.
> We makes jokes about the fact that that IS our identity -- that we are
> continually renegotiating and stretching the boundaries of what it
> means to be Canadian. We believe our culture is the aggregation and
> accumulation of all the views and experiences and attitudes of our
> citizenry. Each wave of immigration --the French and the British, the
> Chinese, the Italians, the Indians, the Jamaicans, and so forth-- has
> influenced what Canada is, and how it understands itself.
>
> That's what I'm used to, as a Canadian -- it's normal for me to listen
> to minorities and find ways to incorporate their perspectives into
> mine.
>
The Canadian lack of identity is an important part of Canadian identity, 
and we have no difficulty laughing at it.  The "I am Canadian" ad by 
Molsen's beer had a lot of Canadians saying, "YES, that's it." William 
Shatner's description of Canadianism at the last Winter Olympics showed 
how much we can laugh at ourselves.  An American talking that way about 
his country could risk a lynching. Many of us have embraced 
multiculturalism as essential element of building a mosaic; this is in 
great contrast to a melting pot that mixes scraps of paints of many 
colours into a single uniformally dull pallor.

Listening to minorities is important. Incorporating their views avoids 
the Tyranny of which De Tocqueville so eloquently wrote. As Wikipedians 
we do not always do that well.  If there is one mentality that must be 
abandoned on the road to enlightenment it is that of winners and losers.

Ray