Tag Archive: bigotry

My latest: this isn’t the face of a Prime Minister

— 09.18.2019 07:42 PM

Blackface.

I’ve been writing about, and researching – and opposing – racism for more than thirty years. And make no mistake: blackface isn’t funny.

It’s racist.

Ask Megyn Kelly. A year ago, the former Fox News star was filming a segment about Halloween costumes and “political correctness.” Someone asked whether it was acceptable for a white person to smear black makeup all over their face and pretend to be black.

Here’s what Kelly said: “But what is racist? Because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween… Back when I was a kid that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”

There was a massive backlash. Kelly apologized. But her show was cancelled not long afterwards.

Just this year, Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, faced demands that she resign because audio of a skit emerged from when she was in college – even though the person in blackface was her then-fiance. Not her.

Ivey still apologized.

Also this year: upscale fashion brand Gucci fired its global head of diversity because he hadn’t stopped a “balaclava jumper” from going on sale. The jumper featured an image that resembled blackface.

In Canada, we’ve experienced blackface backlash, too. Theatre impresario Robert Lepage faced protests when one of his plays apparently contained scenes that recalled blackface. Some University of Montreal students wore blackface to “pay tribute” to champion runner Usain Bolt. The university was forced to apologize for that.

So why is blackface so controversial? Why is what Justin Trudeau has done so wrong?

Because blackface is literally about white people caricaturing black people. It recalls the era when blacks were referred to as “darkies” and “coons.” It was something popularized in minstrel shows to suggest that blacks were inferior to whites. That they were stupider. That they were deserving of derision and mockery.

David Leonard, a professor at Washington State University, and an expert on the manifestations of racism, says this: “It’s an assertion of power and control. It allows a society to routinely and historically imagine African Americans as not fully human. It serves to rationalize violence and segregation.”

Is Justin Trudeau racist?

Well, his appalling treatment of a proud indigenous woman, Jody Wilson-Raybould, didn’t exactly suggest Trudeau was nearly as tolerant as he regularly claims to be. When asked about Donald Trump’s suggestion that four Democratic politicians “go back” to the “crime infested places” they came from, Justin Trudeau refused to say Trump’s racist statements were in fact racist.

Said Trudeau: “Canadians and indeed people around the world know exactly what I think about those particular comments.”

Do we really?

After Canadians have looked at that shocking photo of the Liberal prime minister mocking and denigrating black people – after the embarrassment and shame he has now brought on Canada internationally – it’s hard to know exactly what Justin Trudeau was thinking. Or if he thinks at all.

At the end of this shocking revelation, we are left with one thought: this is not the face of a prime minister.

Like Megyn Kelly, Justin Trudeau’s little show needs to be cancelled, once and for all.

Warren Kinsella is a Sun columnist and author of five award-winning books on racism.


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My latest in the Sun: when they came for the Jews/Sikhs/Muslims, they said nothing

— 06.24.2019 01:29 PM

Silence.

That’s all that could be heard from the federal party leaders, essentially: silence, or something approaching that.

The occasion: the decision of assorted Quebec politicians to pass a law telling religious people what they can wear. Jews, Sikhs, but mainly Muslims.

The law, formerly called Bill 21, was passed last weekend in a special sitting of the so-called National Assembly. It makes it illegal to wear religious symbols at work if you’re a teacher, a bus driver, a cop, a nurse, or even a day care worker. It applies to everyone who gets a stipend from the province, basically.

The law is illegal. It is wildly unconstitutional, for all the reasons you’d expect: it stomps all over freedom of speech, freedom of religion and equality rights. It giddily shreds the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The law is against the law. So, Quebec’s ruling class – who have never been particularly fussy about Jews, Sikhs or Muslims, truth be told – also stipulated that their law would operate “notwithstanding” the Charter.

In Quebec, now, you’ve theoretically got freedom of speech and religion. Except, say, when the chauvinists in the National Assembly say you don’t.

Stick that yarmulke in your pocket, Jew. Remove that turban your faith requires you to wear, Sikh. Put it away.

As history has shown us, freedoms rarely get swept away with dramatic decrees. Instead, we lose freedoms by degrees. In bits and pieces. Fascism typically slips into our lives without a sound, like a snake slithering into the kitchen, unseen.

This week, the snake curled around the ankles of Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh. All of them pretended that the snake was not there.

Justin Trudeau, in his teeny-tiniest mouse voice, suggested that no one should “tell a woman what she can and cannot wear.” That’s all we got from him, pretty much.

Andrew Scheer, for his part, said he “would never present a bill like that at the federal level.” But, he hastily added, he would also leave the whole messy business to the “elected members in Quebec.”

Jagmeet Singh, who now couldn’t get a provincial job in Quebec because he wears a turban himself, said this about the law when it was tabled: “I think it’s hurtful, because I remember what it’s like to grow up and not feel like I belong.”

Words.

But action? Actually, you know, doing something to protect minority rights and religious freedoms in Quebec?

Not on your life. It’s an election year, pal.

During one of the many, many debates Quebec has had about this legislated intolerance – when controversy was raging about the then-Liberal government’s bill that would force women to remove veils when, say, getting on a city bus – Francois Legault, then an Opposition leader, was asked about the crucifix hanging in the National Assembly.

It should stay, he said. “We have a Christian heritage in Quebec,” he said. “I don’t see any problem keeping it.”

That’s when Francois Legault’s veil slipped, as it were. That’s when we got to see who he really represents.

At his very first press conference after the Quebec election, Legault dispensed with any notion that he would be the Premier to all. To the Muslims (with their headscarves), and the Jews (with their kippahs), and the Hindus (with their markings on their faces), Legault’s message was plain: I don’t represent you. I don’t care about you. You are lower-class.

And, now, from our federal leaders: a shrug. Indifference.

Jesus, from that spot He long had above the National Assembly, is (as always) needed. Right about now, Jesus could remind our politicians, federal and provincial, what he said in Matthew 23:3. You know:

“Do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.”


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