Why Do Some Refugees Matter More to Canadians?

Kamal Al-Solaylee is an associate professor at the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto and the author of a book I very much admire, “Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone).” My interview with him earlier this year on the situation in Yemen was incredibly thought-provoking. Canada’s collective generosity is often impossible to understand, but it’s important that we try. Our country has proven time and time again that it can respond compassionately to the plight of refugees and asylum seekers; our reaction to the what is taking place in the Horn of Africa should be no exception. Here’s an excerpt from his recent piece on the subject in the Walrus:

Images of starving or dead children since the start of the war in Yemen—or South Sudan, for that matter—have yet to prompt Canadians into action in the same numbers and with a similar dedication. No “mobs of do-gooders,” as the Toronto Star described Canadians who hounded then immigration minister John McCallum in 2015 to help Syrian refugees, have turned up for the Yemenis.

“I believe Canadians feel that we were so incredibly generous…that we can rest on our laurels,” says Senator Ratna Omidvar on the phone from her office in Ottawa. The founder of Lifeline Syria, a non-profit that helps Toronto-area residents offer private sponsorships to Syrian refugees, she believes that the current focus on the Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar, and the uncertainty of asylum seekers crossing the US-Canada border, may have diverted Canadians’ attention from the situation in Yemen. She also doesn’t rule out residual racism as a factor in how we decide who we’ll bring over and who we’ll leave behind. “Syrians could be mistaken for anyone,” she says, describing differences in how people from Syria and Yemen may be perceived. “A brown child or a black child is unlikely to get the same [response].”

In his book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom argues that empathy is “a spotlight focusing on certain people in the here and now.” He adds that “spotlights only illuminate what they are pointed at, so empathy reflects our biases.” Those outside our immediate world and gaze can’t rely on our collective empathy, even if their need is as great as in those places where we do shine a spotlight. Yemen’s location on the southern tip of the Arabian penninsula, and, in broad historical terms, its political and social isolation from power centres in Europe and North America, mean that only the very geopolitically engaged or those who devote themselves to humanitarian aid will—absent circumstances like a photo that makes the front pages or a politician who chooses to focus on it—likely notice the country or its people. “Change starts with people knowing about the situation,” says Omidvar, who believes that Yemenis suffer because they lack a champion in Canada.

Read the full article on the Walrus’ website.