A previous article dealt with the question of racism in America. This week we had allegations of racism right here in Canada. To better understand this concept, please meet Farmer John.
Farmer John lives on the Canadian prairies, right near a campground purchased by the Hell’s Angels. The Angels do some pretty serious partying on Saturday nights and sometimes go into town to cause havoc. They don’t physically shoot anyone or inflict personal harm, but they do steal things and damage some property, and folks around here don’t like it.
As a matter of fact, Farmer John is often afraid and sometimes feels he’s in danger. It’s not that he doesn’t like people who ride motorcycles or get tattoos, but he knows that whenever people from the campground show up, drunk—trouble can get started.
Now let’s substitute Angels with Italians—the kind that were in the mob. Farmer John is friendly with the Grazianos and always buys his salami from Pusateri’s Bar and Grill, but whenever those boys from the mob show up, he gets incredibly anxious (even though they’re all very handsome).
So is Farmer John a racist? Comedian Chris Rock says, “There are two kinds of black people and I’m afraid of the other kind too.” But we don’t call him a racist. So what gives?
Racism
Racism is defined as blanket discrimination against one group by another. For example, in the US under Jim Crow law, black people weren’t allowed to drink from certain fountains. It didn’t matter if you were the smartest, nicest, kindest, or most industrious black person on the planet, you weren’t allowed to drink from those fountains.
The same can be said of the poor treatment of Irish Catholics by the British. For over 400 years, people in Ireland either had to convert to Protestant or weren’t allowed to vote. So the ones who decided to stay the same were denied this right (along with a host of other privileges).
Because of intermarriage, Hutus and Tootsies in Rwanda looked so much alike they brought it down to the width of your nose. And the government had to issue mandatory identity cards to tell people apart. So if you didn’t have the right card on you, you were deemed to be no good. ISIS does the same sort of thing regarding religion and Nazis did it with Jews. (And if you want to get technical, Catholics do it by not allowing women to hold positions of power and Mormons do it when they won’t allow women to count money—all because of boobs.)
Saskatchewan
The incident in Saskatchewan this week was featured as an act of racism, but was it?
Everyone knows there are long existing problems with people on reservations. That between alcohol and other factors not all the kids are well raised. And some of these kids grow up to have real issues that lead them into town to do harm. We also know that folks in the nearby community can easily say hello to one band member in the morning, only to be afraid of another at night.
Reservations have existed in Canada for more than 300 years and members from both sides continually try to resolve these problems. But people aren’t naive about the possibility that things may never work out.
No one will ever dig into the details of this particular case. They won’t read the transcripts, get to know the law, or understand what the jury was told by the judge. That’s because it doesn’t matter. This shooting will go down as a bunch of disorderly drunks from the local reservation going onto Farmer John’s land to cause havoc. And the pulling of this trigger will get etched into stone.
Of course, the newspapers in Toronto will have their say—jumping and screaming like westerners are impersonating the States. But people out here know that what happened occurred on a much deeper level, not something to be labelled by race.
They say you can only poke the bear so many times until something eventually breaks. And it’s no secret that under their breath many people grumbled the word, good. But these same people are now realizing this boy should never have borne the brunt of a cumulative past, and will hopefully take time to reflect. In the meantime, for everyone in Toronto, this farmer’s actions weren’t based in racism.
It’s more like the problem we used to have with Italians.