Looking Deep Within

These days, for various reasons, it is growing increasingly difficult for us, as Canadians, to feel smug about ourselves. There are the bleak indictments in the form of unmarked graves, attacks on Muslims, and people living in fear of such attacks.

What is to be done? In my previous post, entitled How Does Canada Atone? I posted some letters to the editor, one of which struck The Mound as especially useful. He wrote,

Of the options presented by these writers I prefer bringing this to our young people through our schools. We have a lot of miserable people in this country who will resent whatever is done, much as BLM triggered pushback in the US. So, let's not leave it to parents or social media or TV. Let's take this directly to our young people because it is, no matter how dismissive some can be, an important part of our history.

I replied,

I completely agree, Mound. Unlike the U.S., where some crazed right-wingers equate teaching about slavery to teaching kids "to hate America," I think educational initiatives will not only be welcomed, but also provide a necessary antidote to national ignorance, whether willful or otherwise.

By chance, Edward Keenan, The Star's Washington Bureau Chief, wrote a very insightful piece that bears directly on this issue. The Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, lays racism at the feet of the Democrats, and refuses to acknowledge that his country is racist.

“Today, the Democratic party has doubled down on this shameful history by replacing the racism of the past with the racism of critical race theory. They continue to think of race as the primary means of judging a person’s character,” McCarthy said, expressing his support for removing statues of Confederate leaders from the Capitol.

“America is not a racist country,” he said. “It was wrong when it was the segregated lunch counters of Jim Crow, and it was wrong when it was the segregated classrooms of critical race theory.”

Keenan found much to fault with McCarthy's 'logic'.

[T]he academic concept of critical race theory he invoked does not teach that race is a means of judging a person’s character, and does not segregate classrooms — it is a lens for understanding racism as a set of systemic legal structures that persist in U.S. society.

However, as usual, American the right-wing media, mainly Fox, are perverting it so as to stir up even more animus than already exists in that beleaguered country. 

The backlash over critical race theory may be real, fed by over 1,300 Fox News mentions in 3.5 months and leading to outraged protests at school board meetings across the country. But the concept of critical race theory being depicted in these attacks bears little relationship to the academic theory. Quickly put: critical race theory is primarily a graduate-school-level concept that has been around for about four decades and was obscure until conservative activists ramped up anger about it. Actual critical race theory basically says that racism is ingrained in U.S. society and institutions. It is not taught in elementary or high schools, or even often in undergraduate university classes.

And it sounds like the fact of systemic racism will not be taught in U.S. schools anytime soon. There has been 

a wave of bills in Republican states governing what can and cannot be taught in history classes to schoolchildren and even to university students.

Teaching the history of racism in the United States as something that infected the structures of government, not just in slavery but in many other ways that persisted through much of the 20th century, and that persist today, is, they say, unfair to white children who might be taught to be ashamed. What’s more, they say it is, in the words of the Trump administration when he was in the White House, “anti-American”; unpatriotic.

In that denial comes a crucial difference in the Canadian response to revelations of racism here, as we ask

whether patriotism and celebrations of national pride can coexist with a recognition of deeply shameful episodes in a country’s history. The discovery of mass unmarked graves filled with the bodies of Indigenous children on the sites of residential schools has made vivid to many Canadians the evil that those schools represented throughout most of Canada’s history as a country — from their founding in the 1800s right up until the 1990s when the last of the institutions was closed.

Following along from Washington, I’ve seen both in news media and on social media, how reflecting on this has led to waves of people calling to cancel Canada Day celebrations this year. You don’t shoot off fireworks to celebrate your country while people are mourning the deaths of their children who were killed by your country’s government, is the gist of the sentiment I’ve seen.

The recent revelations have prompted a response of humility in the majority of Canadians. The next, absolutely necessary step is to make sure that our school curricula reflect not just the pride of Canadian accomplishments, but also the shame of widespread injustice and evil. 

I believe we do have the national character to reach that step.