Methinks
some Canadian media critics protest too much at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s
three occasions when he wore blackface or brownface, the latter (and most
recent) being in 2001, 18 years ago, while attending a party held at the elite
private school, West Pont Grey Academy, in Vancouver, where he taught. High School drama teachers enjoy centre stage
(his costume considered ‘outstanding’ at the time), though I doubt Mr. Trudeau
would ever have anticipated receiving such world-wide attention for this
particular episode.
Claims that
he lacks ethics, or is a racist or a fraud and should resign, or that we don’t
know the ‘real Trudeau’ are exaggerated.
Missed is the point that possibly, before he entered politics, he lacked
some insight into what being non-white was like, either in Canada, or in the even
world in general. When travelling the globe with his father, former Prime
Minister Pierre Trudeau, he likely only met the prestigious few, not the ones
who have to scramble daily to make a living, so, yes, indeed he benefited from
a privileged background; but he appears to have, like many of us, developed
over time, and he now demonstrates considerable empathy towards marginalized
people: the Indigenous, LGBTQ, Syrian refugees, and of course women. I doubt
that his core values were ever racist, unlike his father who dabbled in an
admiration of Fascism at the hands of his early Jesuit teachers. And let us not forget former Prime Minister
William Lyon Mackenzie King’s recognition of a fellow mystic in Hitler before
WWII.
When is an
apology not enough? I note with dismay, that when federal Green Party Leader
Elizabeth May was recently asked who her hero was, she replied in an immediate
and unfiltered voice: “Jesus Christ” – and then apologized for her remark. If Elizabeth May has to say she’s sorry for
being Christian, what does Justin Trudeau have to say to redeem himself from
his blackface lapses? Is Canadian
society so secular – or cynical - that apologies are no longer acceptable? We have all made mistakes, or done things we
regret, myself included; and in Trudeau’s case I do not see his antics as
intentionally disrespectful towards people of colour. (Disclosure: I spent a year teaching History
in Jamaica at the University of the West Indies in the early 1990’s where the
minimum wage for the average citizen was a paltry US $8.00 daily).
People grow
up, they change over time (as do our social norms), and yet Trudeau was able to
prolong his adolescence – like many in education - precisely because he taught
high school. Trudeau’s maturity probably came with marriage in 2005, and then
with parental responsibilities. The
outpouring of condemnation for Trudeau’s errors in dress (imagine if he had
been pictured in drag three times – what would we be thinking now?) are perhaps
part and parcel of the current admixture known as Canadian multi-ethnic
democracy, another one of our post-colonial moments, an irony since it was Pierre
Trudeau who introduced multiculturalism to the land.
But do we
need to seek resolution for Justin Trudeau’s every apparent contradiction? If we cannot accept that consistency and neat
coherences in life are unrealistic, an unachievable goal, given “the crooked
timber of humanity”, then maybe we should consider emulating instead the
Chinese system, where the average person does not have to think about politics
and lives instead in ready admiration of the leader. As I indicated in my previous blog on the
same subject, man is fallible. Some outraged Canadian critics seem to think
that their political leaders should be infallible – for life. And to make a not too fine point about it,
liberalism is a political philosophy that tends toward contradiction, as it
avoids extremes of Left and Right, which is why the Liberal government can appear
a conundrum, declaring a climate emergency one day and endorsing pipeline
politics the next, but that is perhaps a topic for another blog.
I am more
concerned when a politician does not apologize.
Look to Donald Trump: he is in his third year of office, plans to run
for reelection, and has yet to apologize for any of his countless misogynistic,
racist and other vile remarks and actions. Trump has violated every known norm,
and continues to do so. If we can’t
tolerate Trudeau’s relatively small errors in the past, beware that we replace
him with someone else who is worse for the present. Look to Premier Jason
Kenney, now leader of the United Conservative Party of Alberta (after being in
the federal Cabinet for 10 years), who will not apologize for his actions as a
student in San Francisco (at about 20 or 21 years of age) when he prevented people dying of AIDS from seeing their partners in their final hours,
either in the hospital, or sometimes even at funerals.
Look also to
British Columbia’s former Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell arrested on drunk
driving charges in 2003 while in office but on vacation in Hawaii. Campbell subsequently
asked for forgiveness for his high state of inebriation, succeeded in various reelections,
and now is charged with sexual assault during his role as Canada’s High
Commissioner in London. Look to the
esteemed Doug Ford, Progressive Conservative Premier of Ontario (and likely
aspirant for Andrew Sheer’s job as Leader of the Opposition in Ottawa) who, according
to The Globe and Mail, peddled
hashish in the 1980’s. This is someone
who contributed to the regular impairment of peoples’ minds, and he is now
leader of Canada’s most populated province.
Maybe it is no accident that Doug Ford was chosen leader of his party and
assumed office in the same year the Trudeau government legalized pot: the
electorate has apparently forgiven him, even if he has not publicly come to
terms with it.
Much ink
has been spilled over Trudeau’s blackface. At worst, the prime minister could
be considered a boy king, a tumble-down Trudeau, dwelling at times too much in
the life of a thespian, unlike his father who would eventually become Canada’s
pre-eminent philosopher king. But he is
no racist. Born the eldest son, on
Christmas Day, named Justin by a father who spoke of a “Just Society”, our
current prime minister has had a lot to live up to, and there lies the catch: ideals
inspire, but no person is a ‘blank
slate’ upon which one can work freely and easily. John Stuart Mill learned that
at the hands of his father, much to his detriment. In Canada there will probably
always be “the persistence of the old regime”, of the era before the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms which was introduced in 1982.
Prejudices will persist, but it is incumbent upon Trudeau to rid himself
of the appearance of prejudice.
Trudeau’s
blackface reminds people of Canada’s continued systemic injustices, but we may
have bigger problems at hand. Donald
Trump recently floated the idea of buying Greenland but was rebuffed by the
Danish prime minister. Was he
serious? Does Trump now have continental
ambitions? Has American “manifest
destiny” even abated since Trump’s America First movement? Goldwin Smith, Canada’s first public
intellectual, warned pessimistically well over a century ago that Canada is an
absurd entity bordering on the behemoth we know as the United States. And I agree with the historian Margaret
MacMillan who has suggested some while ago in The Globe and Mail that as the climate crisis worsens, more of our
natural resources will considered be up for grabs, making Canadians and our way
of life more vulnerable to global geo-politics, in particular subject to
American ambitions.
Trudeau’s periodic
episodes with blackface have likely offended numbers of Canadians, but the advent of
the cellphone brings on a confusion of “then” and “now”, as this
all-pervasive form of modern technology contributes to the elimination of our
sense of time. With the cellphone
anyone can be reached at almost any moment, anywhere, helping to erase, as well, our sense
of the past. We gaze at a picture in our
hands of a turbaned Trudeau dressed as Alladin, forgetting even that it was taken
before 9/11, truly a different era. Meanwhile we continue to scan our cellphones for
the next world outrage, as our minds become ever-more mired by constant media and the oppressiveness of the human condition. At least we were distracted by Trudeau.