Quebec radio shrink sparks complaints of racism
CTV.ca News Staff
Psychiatrist and popular Quebec radio host Dr. Pierre Mailloux is defending his on-air comments about the intelligence of black people, after groups called for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to investigate his contentious remarks.
On his French-language program Sunday, broadcast by radio station CKAC, Mailloux suggested the artificial selection inherent to slavery left black and Native North Americans with an intellectual deficit.
"Those blacks who were too intelligent, too tricky, they were slaughtered," Mailloux said. "It's the consequence of an artificial selection. They can run faster, they're stronger, but their IQs are consistently lower."
Asked in an interview with French-language station RDI if he was racist, Mailloux replied:
"No, I'm not a racist at all. I have black people who are friends.... I'm no racist."
The Black Coalition of Quebec and the Saint-Jean Baptiste Society are leading the fight to get Mailloux off the air.
"It's outrageous; it's racist; and unacceptable in a society like ours," Black Coalition of Quebec head Dan Philip told CTV News.
Philip and Jean Dorion of the Saint-Jean Baptiste Society said they want the CRTC to investigate, and that the commission should threaten broadcasters with yanking their licences if they allow the airing of such offensive comments.
In his response to complaints from these groups, Mailloux said he understands his remarks may have insulted some, but that "we must remain open to studies of human groups and behaviours."
Mailloux then added that people should not be so easily upset and that reacting emotionally to data culled from scientific studies "prevents us from seeing reality."
According to Canadian Press, the radio host, known to Quebecers as Doc Mailloux, said he based his comments on American studies, but was unable to name them.
This is not the first time Mailloux has come under fire for making controversial comments.
On February 10, 2005, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), responding to a listener complaint, determined that "the host is entitled to espouse his chauvinistic intolerance until such time as his disrespect leaks into individual races and nationalities."
The CBSC was referring to comments Mailloux made on immigration, when he referred to the Sikhs as "a gang of bozos" (translation).
The panel ruled that, in doing so, Mailloux and the station had breached the Human Rights Clause of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Code of Ethics.
On June 23 of this year, the CRTC released a similar ruling on comments Mailloux made in two separate broadcasts.
In the first statement from 2003, he said (translated):
"Blacks were born less intelligent than whites, and that accounts for their poverty and high unemployment rate."
In the second broadcast from 2004, Mailloux said (translated) that "(Janet)Jackson, like her brother Michael, exhibits unacceptable conduct, and this is typical of African or Black people, who do not know how to behave even though they left Africa many years ago."
Having reviewed the segments of the two broadcasts at issue, the Commission ruled that the comments made "infringe the Radio Regulations, 1986, which prohibit the broadcasting of abusive comments."
The Commission also found that the broadcasts by Astral, then-owner of CKAC, "contravene the objectives of the Broadcasting Policy for Canada articulated in the Broadcasting Act, including stipulations that the programming should be of high standard."
