Responding To "Suppressing Dissent" - A Guest Post

This morning I received a comprehensive commentary from BM, who was responding to my post Suppressing Dissent, which expressed criticism of the visit by Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins' visit to the Donald Trump White House. If you missed it, you may wish to read it before enjoying BM's post below.

Following his comments, I reproduce my response. As always, I welcome a diversity of views:

This is about the most ridiculous post I've seen here. It's outright stupid. And mean-spirited to boot.

Immersed as we are in US culture, apparently Canadians think we are Americans. That is the only explanation I can come up with that eplains the moaning that Crosby should have snubbed the White House visit to in effect tell Trump off.

In what strange reality do you live? Seriously. Crosby, like any foreigner earning a living overseas remains in that foreign country at the forebearance of its government. He has no "right" to be there. And anyone with a thinking brain would realize that he has no right to insert himself in that foreign country's domestic affairs. Unless he wishes to commit career suicide.

The fuzzy thinking I've been exposed to in the media and now here on this matter is to me beyond belief. I'll say it again, neither we or Crosby are American. Therefore, he did what was necessary which was to sidestep the issue. Does Trudeau do any better?

To project your hopes and aspirations onto Crosby is ridiculous, and carries not one penny's worth of logical weight. To compound your profound disappointment, you slyly and snidely suggest he didn't stand up like the man you wish him to be because he is susceptible to concussion. That, I'm afraid, is contemptible.

Then we get the usual mishmash of snobby Upper Canadian finger-pointing about the way Nova Scotia was some 90 or more years ago. Yessir, we're all dumb racist hayseeds down here. We've got a lot to answer for, to be sure, about the way we have and still do treat blacks, but that requires no preachy lectures from Ontario pseudo intellectuals. Is Ontario blame free on its treatment of the indigenous population, or the current way blacks are treated in the GTA? I think not.

There is even a factual error about Africville. The "government" did not move Africville, the City of Halifax did. It has issued an apology to former Africville residents redolent of the same half-hearted and certainly not heartfelt apologies that Harper and Trudeau have given to indigenous people. Not good enough. We can and should do better.

The Coloured Hockey League's existence came back to light in 2012 locally. I'd never heard of it myself, and can think of no reason that Crosby growing up in Cole Harbour, a newish Dartmouth suburb should have either. Is it the responsibility of sentient citizens to continually check the historical record for signs of past societal sins and having found one, immediately do abject penance?

Furthermore, with the more recent ramp-up on the Coloured Hockey League, it comes to light that many prominent black citizens here missed the 2012 announcements when a book on the matter was published. On CBC Radio and TV, we have seen such people interviewed who were as ignorant of the CHL as anyone else, but glad to see it come to light again. What chance did Crosby have of knowing this story as he grew up, or me for that matter? Maybe we're both concussed.

I can detail what I and others did for the black community near the town I lived in here in NS way back in the early 1960s. With no internet, not a soul was running around brimming with knowledge of past injustices province-wide. We acted on what we saw, and we prevailed against prejudice.

This business of judging past history by today's standards without a thought to interpretation is surely the curse of the modern age. To compound the ignorance with the ruminations and innuendo you present here is poor work indeed.

My Response:

Clearly, my post struck a nerve here, BM, and you are certainly not alone in thinking that Crosby in particular, and Canadians in general, have no business opining on American politics. Former CBC News executive producer Mark Bulgutch penned an opinion piece in the Star on the weekend suggesting Canadians should restrict our observations and actions to our own backyard.

Again, because there really is no precedent for the kind of lunacy we are currently witnessing south of the border, I maintain that everyone has, at the very least, a moral obligation not to lend even a scintilla of legitimacy to such a dysfunctional administration.

Because I always welcome diverse views and opinions, I am taking the liberty, BM, of featuring your commentary as a guest post.

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.