Suppressing Dissent

Like countless others, I support those protesting both the wicked legacy and current practice of North American racism. While more egregious perhaps in the United States, Canada's own shameful racist history and practices leave little to be proud of either. For that reason and others, I cannot support the decision of Sidney Crosby and his fellow Canadians to visit the Trump White House as the Stanley Cup champions.

Consider the following:

Sidney Crosby and the rest of the Pittsburgh Penguins view their trip to the White House on Tuesday as the final moment of celebration for a championship season, not some sort of statement about where they stand on President Donald Trump.

"From my side of things, there's absolutely no politics involved," Crosby said Monday. "Hopefully it stays that way. It's a visit we've done in the past. It's been a good experience. It's not about politics, that's for sure."

Perhaps the concussion-prone lad is not thinking straight or is unspeakably naive in thinking that interacting with Donald Trump is like past visits to the White House; in that he is sorely mistaken, as the following clip makes abundantly clear:



And let's face it. Crosby and the others are filtering an increasingly fraught reality through the prism of white privilege, something The Star's Emma Teitel takes him to task for:

Like any white person who shares Crosby’s “side of things” and whose government does not devalue his life on account of the colour of his skin, he has the luxury of regarding politics as a force too far away to complicate his day to day.

It was this luxury that enabled him to smile and shake hands with a U.S. president who recently asserted that “very fine people” existed on both sides of the summertime march in Charlottesville, Va., where neo-Nazis walked unmasked and triumphant down a city street and a 32-year-old woman died at the hands of one of them. (Very fine people indeed.)

Having been born and raised in Nova Scotia compounds the grievousness of Crosby's moral blindness:

Being Black was tough too for the more than 400 hockey players who comprised the Coloured Hockey League in Crosby’s home province of Nova Scotia from 1895 to 1930. CHL players did not have the privilege of political indifference when their league disbanded due to a number of factors, racism included. Later the government would demolish Africville, the African-Canadian village in Halifax, in which many of the league’s members lived and played.

Penguin coach Mike Sullivan is also complicit in this misdeed, despite his stout denials:


Sorry, Mike. You just can't have it both ways.

I shall leave you with a reminder of who ultimately has the real power and now seems intent on abusing it to suppress dissent, and this should come as no surprise to anyone: it is the predominantly white 1% who are committed to maintaining the status quo.



Both Mike Sullivan and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell can talk all they want about respecting their players, but in the end, as always, actions speak far, far louder than words.