Quebec election and "reasonable accommodation"

Some Niqab wearing (veiled) women voters in Quebec did not want to show their faces to the poll officials when they voted in the upcoming election. The decision (since reversed) was to accommodate this request.

Members of No One Is Illegal-Montreal are responding to the xenophobic “debate” in Quebec about “reasonable accomodation” with the following statement:

As racialized and migrant women, we are outraged by the slanderous, xenophobic and racist propaganda that is being expressed in the debate about "reasonable accommodation".We assert our ability, as subjects not objects, to exercise our own capacity to self-determine our lives; we reject the repeatedly paternalistic, and fundamentally misogynist, discourse about the State that will supposedly save us from our own cultures.We assert that such a discourse is both racist and sexist. It is racist, because it perpetuates the idea that our cultures are fundamentally backwards and cruel, in contrast with white Western culture, which is seen as the ultimate achievement of civilization. It is sexist because it derives from ideas that render women childlike, or viewed as simple victims incapable of struggling for their own wellbeing.

LINK: Read entire statement at "No One Is Illegal"