{"id":6279,"date":"2017-08-27T08:59:17","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T12:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wawa-news.com\/?p=6279"},"modified":"2020-08-24T13:34:12","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T17:34:12","slug":"canada-should-do-all-we-can-to-avoid-bitter-racial-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/2017\/08\/27\/canada-should-do-all-we-can-to-avoid-bitter-racial-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada should do all we can to avoid bitter racial politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The car attack on counter-protesters at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina highlights the rising temperature in race relations that is taking place south of the border.\u00a0 The response from President Trump \u2013 assigning blame to both sides \u2013 did little to calm the situation.\u00a0 Instead, the President only ratchetted up the idea that America is increasingly divided on racial lines.\u00a0 There are those who say this could never happen in Canada, but we have to make sure we aren\u2019t just telling ourselves what we want to hear if that is to be the case.
\nThe longer term fallout from the President\u2019s response has been more in line with the moderate reaction one might expect after an incident which took the life of one person and injured nineteen others.\u00a0 It took days, but the President finally condemned the coalition of white supremacists whose \u2018protest\u2019 sparked the attack.\u00a0 Gone from the Whitehouse is controversial \u2018alt right\u2019 figurehead, Steve Bannon whose presence on Trump\u2019s campaign and role as advisor was seen as key to delivering racially charged support.\u00a0 But Bannon has gone right back to fomenting dissent on behalf of Trump through his Breitbart News Service and claims he will restore the Trump presidency which has been taken away from his followers \u2013 which include many white supremacists.<\/p>\n

Here in Canada the alt right has its own news service, Rebel Media, headed by former Sun TV personality, Ezra Levant.\u00a0 Rebel had a journalist covering the rally in Charlottesville who seemed to be mocking the counter-protestors before the car attack took place.\u00a0 That action, coupled with a long history of interpreting news in a racially and religiously charged manner has cost the online media outlet dearly.\u00a0 Sponsors have pulled ads, politicians that were friendly with the outlet are refusing to be interviewed, freelance journalists have publicly distanced themselves, and co-founder\/radio personality, Brian Lily has walked away.\u00a0 Whether the backlash will spell the end of the outlet is unknown, but a lot of editorial opinions were predicting just that over the last week.<\/p>\n

Despite that, there is an appetite for the message Rebel was promoting and this is where Canadians have to be very careful about how we view ourselves.\u00a0 Many are not aware that there are approximately 100 white supremacist groups operating in Canada.\u00a0 We are too quick to equate not having the degree of a racial problem as is found in the United States with not having a problem at all.\u00a0 The facts don\u2019t bear this out and it doesn\u2019t take much to pop the balloon \u2013 which is exactly how we must proceed if we are to build the Canada many of us like to believe exists already.<\/p>\n

Consider the phenomenon of carding in Toronto.\u00a0 Here in the north it may seem unbelievable that people are stopped and asked to produce identification for no other reason than being out in public, but that is the reality that black men face in our biggest city.\u00a0 We have our share of attacks on religious minorities as well.\u00a0 Synagogues and mosques are targets as are individuals.\u00a0 Last winter a shooter killed six people in a Quebec City mosque.\u00a0 We can\u2019t just sweep these events under the carpet and consider ourselves to be doing better than our American cousins.\u00a0 We must confront and challenge ourselves to be what we think we are, or we will slip.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the Charlottesville attack was the President\u2019s response. What has been uplifting is the overwhelming response of condemnation and dismay with the administration.\u00a0 The voices of moderates will have to remain strong to ensure that any gains are not lost to hate and fear.\u00a0 This is just as true in Canada as it is in the United States.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The car attack on counter-protesters at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina highlights the rising temperature in race relations that is taking place south of the border.\u00a0 The …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,216,85],"tags":[349],"class_list":["post-6279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-editorials","category-politics","tag-carol-hughes"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 16:15:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6281,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279\/revisions\/6281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}