Undressing Trudeau, Canada and Racism

I hope one day we can dress up as who the hell we want. It may be ten or twenty years. It may be beyond my lifetime, but I hope one day we can attend fancy dress or themed parties dressed as whom we want. I hope, because it will mean we’ve progressed as a society. Today is not that day and it’s questionable whether it was in 2001. 

Questionable, because as much as we want to remove the vignette of seeing the world through 2019, it’s almost impossible, it’s too easy to distort memory to think those times were better or, worse. What we (white people) have learned since the advent of Black Lives Matter is that we live in an inherently racist society. It’s systemic, what may have once seemed innocent or just ignorant is deeply rooted, coded into us and our society from birth so as a white person we could not tell or understand. And so it was in 2001.

Would I have dressed with black face back then for a themed party (Justin Trudeau and I are of the same generation)? Probably not. I’m sure I would have felt uncomfortable, that something was wrong. Outside of been a child dressing up in adult clothes, most memorably in my grandfather’s apartment, generally I haven’t done a lot of that kind of thing.

Which is to say, I’m not Justin Trudeau. But could I imagine doing so? Yes. If I’m in to drama, in to dressing up, having done it before when I was younger, sort of my schtick, then yes. If in the midst of dressing up, I feel awkward and question what I’m doing, but my friends encourage me, then yes, I would overcome those doubts. If part of my culture included iconic films I watched when I was a kid/teen where white people dressed in black face, then the chances are great. A beloved film? Beloved actors? Yes.

Eighteen years earlier, Trading Places, a film that everyone loves to this day, a film that brilliantly skewers white privilege and tackles racism head on, has this moment. Dan Ackroyd. On the train. Awkward? Not half. But in essence here lies the confusion for anyone who thought themselves progressive, because right in this film, that wears an anti-racist message on its sleeve and its heart, is this racist moment and we are unable to discern it is one. 

Six years earlier, there was another film, beloved actors that Trudeau would have grown up with as a kid, seen the reruns on TV or a video rental; Silver Streak. Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor. If you’ve seen the film, you know the scene. There’s no overt anti-racist message in this film, but there is a black guy and a white guy having a laugh, getting on, working together. To a white South African kid, age eight, nine or ten, that’s powerful.

Granted, it’s only the first step, and Richard Pryor’s character, no matter how much we loved him would have been littered with racial stereotypes that were either reinforcing or setting a baseline of racism. I would have told you once I had zero cultural reference for that scene because it was American and this wasn’t present in my young life. It’s true and it’s not because I would have absorbed somewhere, somehow, negative images and not from just being a white kid in apartheid South Africa. 

A friend called me last night, not about the Trudeau scandal, but we did get there. She loved Diana Ross when she was younger, so she dressed up and painted her face black – and more than once. It was fun and it came from a place of love. A place of love. The thing is, my friend has brown skin. She made her skin more black. Where does she stand? 

What does the white kid who loves Black Panther do? No parent in their right mind would paint their kid’s face black but you could understand why the kid might want to paint their face.

We live in a world of binary on steroids. There is no space for reason or critical thinking.  If there are a thousand steps for a white person to take to truly grasp the racism and privilege of the world we live in, not one of us is there. Period. 

Which brings me to…

The mofo columnists, opinion makers, and politicians who are caught in the fomo on castigating Trudeau. Particularly those white middle-aged ones (in fact you don’t have to be middle-aged). It’s grotesque. They’re behaving as if Trudeau did this last weekend (actually everyone is). It’s just too easy to resist pointing out Trudeau is a fraud, a hypocrite. 

The thing is, where is Trudeau on his way to the thousandth step? 

He’s closer than I am.

And a darn sight closer than those right wing opinion makers, who, if their skin crawls at the sight of these pictures, should at a minimum, have deep reservations about the Conservative Party and the leader they want to put in power. 

They’ve appointed a former director of a hate-filled intolerant media outlet to run their election campaign. They have a leader who can’t turn up to a Pride event, but can be on a show in 2017 of someone who espouses white genocide conspiracy theories and not long after was fired from said media outlet for associating with white supremacists. 

These same critics and anyone who agreed or joined in mocking Justin Trudeau for embracing and celebrating Indian culture with heart last year were being racist, are being racist and are enabling racism by ignoring what exists in our political spectrum and society. It’s easy for them to state the obvious but they don’t engage in the issues we face because the white people aren’t interested. Yes, J’accuse. 

OR maybe they were just jealous because Trudeau looks comfortable to their awkwardness when they do the same thing.

These are the people who didn’t dress up when they were younger, except maybe as white fairies, white angels, or white wizards — or in some cases, permanently as old white gits. 

We should be concerned, too many people are not taking the first step to tolerance but are leaping to the hundredth step of racism and this story is being used for this purpose by undermining the message of tolerance and inclusivity Trudeau, or at least his selfie, at one point represented.

In 2015 the Conservatives invoked anti-immigrant and racist ideas in their campaign. It failed. Canadians turned away. There was someone who represented their values and hopes better. 

Arguably it should have been the leader to the left of Trudeau, who swung to the centre but stuck to his principles against a niqab ban in Quebec. It cost his party a crap load of seats. But it was Trudeau who carried the aspirational message. In terms of carrying a cultural and societal shift, that is significant. And so it becomes critical for those who oppose Trudeau to denigrate him. Stick the knife in, make sure the picture is in black and white, and enhance.

Destroy the messenger and what he represents becomes invalid. 

The beauty of multiculturalism is we can learn, share, and embrace other cultures. Yes, this is overly simplistic. We can discover new food and clothes, and learn new ways of celebrating life, all essential in overcoming our fears of the other.  

For now though, I’m going to balk and stick to the safety of my Footloose acid wash jeans.  

Canada has lost its marbles, its PM and is so short of stones, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are sending shipments. Clearly, the country is short of premium weed.

*If you click fb like, you are anonymous to me but probably not to fb ;)