The Record’s Community Editorial Board member Shama Saleh has an op-ed today in the paper today titled: “Disregarded at best, actively oppressed at worst”. Gee, I wonder what this column will be about, she asks knowingly… (cough) Great. Another article by another eternal victim of some form of discrimination. Strange, but the online title is very different: “Addressing systemic barriers faced by Black communities should be a collective effort”. Way better. In her column she makes some rather astonishing statements. She claims that “A 2019 immigration matters survey, by the Immigration Partnership of Waterloo Region, found that out of 966 responses, 48 per cent had experienced discrimination in workplaces, 36 per cent in restaurants, 36 per cent at community events and 20 per cent when looking for housing.” Really, almost half of the respondents had issues at work and over a third faced problems eating out or at a community event (however that’s defined). I had misgivings about those numbers so I downloaded a copy of the report and, oh wait, can you guess what I found? Ya, Ms Saleh can’t read a simple table correctly. In actual fact, there were 1,090 responses to the survey. Out of this sample, only 966 answered question 20 – have you experienced discrimination in the Region. Out of this group, only 22% or 213 people said yes. It’s within this smaller group what she obtains the specific percentages she states. So, half of the “Yes” respondents said they had issues at work, etc. etc. and not the entire sample population. When she claims that 36% of immigrants experienced discrimination at restaurants, in actual fact (according to the survey), the number is really 36% of 213 out of 1.090 or 7.0%!!! Wow. Of course, the whole report is a bit of a joke since it’s a survey and not a scientific sampling of a given population. But then again, if you can’t read a simple table and understand what it means, who cares that the report is a piece of junk. Ms Saleh also claims in her op-ed that according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission (A Collective Impact: Interim report on the inquiry into racial profiling and racial discrimination of Black persons by the Toronto Police Service) that: “Black women being three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy and have overall worse health outcomes than a white woman.” Huh??? What does a commission regarding the Toronto Police Service have to do with deaths during childbirth? O.K., so I downloaded the report and of course, there wasn’t a single item there about childbirth. What a complete disaster of a column. But being the compassionate person I am, eager to help out a fellow journalist, I decided to contact Ms Saleh about these problems. But how? She didn’t give her email address at the end of the article like most op-eds do, I looked up the organization that she runs called Project UP (Unleash Potential) – also no email address for her. So, I guess these embarrassing errors will just stay there. But who is truly to blame for this nonsense? A twenty-something Saleh should at least be able to read a table in a report – but isn’t there a fact checker or editor at The Record to make sure stupid, easy to (dis)prove stuff like this doesn’t get in print? I guess not. Pathetic. I blame the education system.
