Evidence? Who needs evidence?

Not two exemplars of Ontario's Great and Good when dealing with a controversial social issue, according to the Ottawa Citizen's Dan Gardner. Mr Gardner writes that when the claim is made that racism is "getting worse"...

...No one will bother to actually look at the evidence offered in support of the claim.

So it was when the Roots of Youth Violence report was released last week. "Racism is becoming more serious and entrenched (in Canada) than it was in the past," claimed Roy McMurtry [more here from Mr McMurtry], former attorney general and chief justice of Ontario, and Alvin Curling, former MPP.

This is an extraordinary claim. And as Carl Sagan once observed, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

So what evidence did McMurtry and Curling provide?

"In connecting with a new generation of youth through this review, and hearing from front-line service providers and community leaders in more direct and intense ways than we had in recent years," McMurtry and Curling write, "the startling degree to which racism continues to plague this province was driven home to us."

In other words, they talked to people who told them, presumably, of their experiences and perceptions. That's a valid way to proceed. Journalists do it all the time. But as evidence of something as big as the claim the authors are making, it is of limited value.

[...]

Of course it's important to acknowledge that racism is very difficult to quantify and measure. It's not like counting widgets.

But this is an explosive subject. As McMurtry and Curling quite rightly note, it can be profoundly damaging to think you won't get a fair shake in life because of the colour of your skin. But what is a young black man to think when the esteemed authors of a major report declare that racism is worse than in the past? Can we blame him if he takes this as proof that he won't get a fair shake in life because of the colour of his skin?

McMurtry and Curling had a responsibility to restrain their rhetoric, to go no further than the evidence. They failed their responsibility...

Read the whole column to see the "evidence" fully demolished. More from Jonathan Kay of the National Post.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at November 21, 2008 11:48 PM