Justin Trudeau cannot blame privileged background on Blackface





I would like to offer my view of current revelations on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's "Blackface" routines.

This is my Open Letter to our Prime Minister.

I present this Open Letter as an educated black male who has been intimitely involved in Canadian politics.

How dare you, Mr. Prime Minister, blame "privilege" on "Blackface".

Your father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau was the very champion and architect both of Canada's multiculturalism policies and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Your father fought a tireless struggle to liberate Canada from a racist political prism that Canada was founded by two founding white nations consisting of French and Anglo-Celtic nations which disenfranchised minority groups from being regarded as Canadians.

Your father was so radically forward-thinking on his views on social equality that U.S. political leaders like former President Richard Nixon apparently regarded your father as a "Communist".

And your mother, Margaret Trudeau was similarly forward thinking to the point of being regarded by some as some kind of hippie or "Flower Child".

In fact, a Wikipedia citation specifically refers to your father as having been attracted to your mother's "Flower Child" carefree ways.

And your brother Alexandre, seems to have embraced both your father's political convictions and your mother's care free spirit in his social activism pursuits around the world.

So, having grown up in a home of such apparently forward-thinking parents who have championed the cause of racial minorities along with social justice, how do you get to blame "privilege" and your "upbringing" on Blackface?

I would blame your apparent callous disregard to the homeless and the working poor to your affluent upbringing apparently going to your head.

But, racism cannot be blamed on privilege in general and specifically your social circumstances.

Racism goes across socio-economic backgrounds.  Some of the poorest people can also be some of the most racist.

Blackface boils down to your apparent character flaw.  You have no one else to blame but your own apparent resistance to the values of your parents.

You understood your father's and mother's values which in turn manifested from their own struggles against injustices and "Blackface" was your apparent way of thumbing your nose against what your parents stood for as they sought for.   Am I right?  You wanted to be your "own man" and didn't want to be some "Goodie toosho" like Alexandre, so Blackface was your calling.

At The Canadian, the current Blackface revelation is no surprise to us.

We have reported on more than one occasion how you Mr Prime Minister has systematically overlooked the appointment of a black senator to replace the black senators that had been appointed by former Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper in our article titled Justin Trudeau Excludes Black Males from Canada's Senate.

You, Mr Prime Minister, could be forgiven if Blackface could be blamed on some simple indiscretion in your past which is now all behind you.

But the fact of the matter is that it is apparent in your exclusion of black males from the Senate and other such parliamentary appointments is that your Blackface routine was not indiscretion but an expression of your apparent on-going hatred of black males.  Indeed, "Blackface" has not female counterpart.  Blackface is squarely a de-humanizing attack on black males as "niggers" to be the subject of entertainment by whites.

You, Mr Prime Minister didn't grow up is racial segregationist Halifax, Nova Scotia during the 1950's or living under Jim Crow laws in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States.

And you didn't grow-up in a family who took you to racist minstrel shows which in the nineteenth century depicted "Blackface" which made fun at black males.

You grew up in a household of politically progressive-minded parents with all of your siblings emulating those progressive values in the social milieu of Ottawa and Quebec.

You might arguably have the least excuse of any Canadian to become "Blackface" multiple times.

You had to have gone far out of your so-called privileged background to paint yourself with a blackface not just once but multiple times.

In your government's exclusion of black males from the Senate and other parliamentary areas you sir show that you have not changed your ways.

You systematically ignored extremely qualified black males who applied to become a Senator and in other parliamentary areas, and who were far more qualified that the people who you chose to appoint.

Sometimes the "leopard doesn't change his spots".

Yet, you have seen fit to criticize U.S. President Donald Trump as not emulating progressive values which you apparent pretend to embrace in your own psyche.

It is now apparent why you have downplayed the importance of the the constitutional issues which your father sought to embrace in his pursuit of what he called the "Just Society".

The racism which you extolled in Blackface is symptomatic of your rejection of your father's commitments on both multiculturalism and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Enough with the hypocrisy of your "Sunny Ways" Mr Prime Minister.  As Maclean's magazine once proclaimed, you are an impostor, Mr. Prime Minister.

You should do the honourable thing and resign and leave the Liberal Party to a better defender of the legacy of your father on race relations and multiculturalism along with other forward-thinking values of the Liberal Party that you choose to only pay lip service.


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