Open for Business: Canadian Politics 2019

Canadaland episode on the event is good.

yet he won’t learn from that mistake too because we built a political system in which the consequences for mistakes are only weighed with caveat of the alternative

a system he promised to change once he took power

Fun to see him dredge that up when he's leading a minority government

Interesting to see Le Devoir's framing and the fairly forgiving responses even from Trudeau's opponents in Quebec: https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/562947/brownface-des-elus-quebecois-a-la-rescousse-de-justin-trudeau

you know under bill C21 Trudeau couldn't even be a teacher in Quebec

Some forgiving responses by Surrey voters in this article too:
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/trudeaus-brownface-mistake-could-cost-him-in-b-c-swing-ridings-expert-says

Everyone in that Le Devoir article is otm except for Legault and his caquistes, who can all go fuck themselves on principle.

Also interesting to hear from Marwah Rizqy (Quebec Liberal Party) and Ruba Ghazal (Québec solidaire), whose families come from Morocco and Palestine, respectively. Basically, both of them agree that he fucked up, but that he's not a racist.

you know under bill C21 Trudeau couldn't even be a teacher in Quebec

lol

Ok, just got it now (slow day).

lol indeed.

Anglo-media pundits really don’t get that 1. Bill 21 comes with a notwithstanding clause so a PM has little to none power to overturn it and 2. a federal hopeful taking the bait as to fight against the bill plays exactly in the hands of Quebec nationalists and that will undoubtedly make the situation worse for religious minorities in Quebec. The whole Bill, the whole artificially created situation has been designed as to invite Quebec-Canada confrontation.

The pundits unwillingness to understand the situation beyond their language barrier but to coast on the virtue signalling is sickening to me.

Canada's PM Justin Trudeau admits he can't remember how often he wore blackface, as row deepens ahead of election https://t.co/hG09CHbPAN

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) September 19, 2019

wow, that's really young to have dementia that bad.

he doesn't recall any of the times he did it

May's answer to Loi 21 was to find jobs elsewhere in Canada for minorities who couldn't do their jobs bc of the law, which is... interesting.

My Canadian friend just sent me this text:

"Al Molson"

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2019/09/trudeaus-popularity-skyrockets-in-quebec-after-revelation-of-brownface-photos/

They've been reading ilx.

It's barely a parody at this point:

https://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/563006/mot-cle-les-excuses-repetees-de-trudeau-suffiront-elles

'Rebuked in the ROC, forgiven in Quebec'

Sad lol at the final paragraph of that Beaverton piece:

“We have confirmed that the subject in question was not an employee of the Quebec government and was wearing makeup,” said Quebec Premier Francois Legault. “Our secular laws are meant to target real people of colour, not fake ones.”

Otoh, here is a completely different take from the francophone press, arguing out that JT should have known better since his father was also the 'father of multiculturalism' and that, as a drama teacher, he should have been aware of the history of blackface. More pertinently imo, though, the author also challenges the argument raised by the pundits in the Le Devoir piece that blackface means something different in Quebec since it has less connection to American cultural history (itself a debatable proposition): she ddiscusses the history of minstrelsy in Quebec and Canada more generally, including Quebecois troupes and even Calixa Lavallée, author of "O Canada".

Here is the piece, sorry: https://www.lapresse.ca/elections-federales/201909/19/01-5242021-il-ny-a-rien-la-.php

En 2001, Justin Trudeau n’était plus un élève du secondaire, mais un enseignant de 29 ans. Et il enseignait… le théâtre ! Il devait bien avoir entendu parler du minstrel show

There's unfortunately less of a causal link there than she'd like.

the history of minstrelsy in Quebec

lasting up to the 1950s, acc. to the piece; Lavallée apparently performed in blackface in an American troupe. xp

https://globalnews.ca/news/5926620/blackface-canada-history/

In a 2005 doctoral thesis, University of Toronto researcher Lorraine Elmire Louise Le Camp documented hundreds of minstrel performances across Canada from the 1840s to 1960s. These include shows mounted by charitable organizations, religious groups, schools and members of the military and law enforcement.

I think this is where I need to confess to my online community that I dressed up as the Iron Sheik for Halloween 1988. It was a different time and I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.

Admittedly, I did not colour my skin, although I did paint on a moustache.

Nobody is arguing that minstrel shows weren’t part of the Quebec cultural landscape, it’s just that even in the 2010s some prominent Quebec comedians argues that painting your face black as nothing to do with minstrelsy. The question really is did Quebec francophone culture took the time to digest the racism of minstrelsy and its consequences and the answer is no obviously not, let’s remember they still call themselves the white n-words of americas.

I dressed up as the Iron Sheik for Halloween 1988

Easiest FP ever.

How do you read Theriault's argument as presented in Le Devoir and quoted below, VHS? I do think he is positing a distance between Quebec's cultural landscape and the practice of performing blackface minstrel shows:

Le sociologue Joseph Yvon Thériault explique ce contraste par l’histoire différente du Québec et du reste du Canada, de même que la proximité culturelle du Canada anglais avec les États-Unis. Le blackface est né au sud de la frontière au XIXe siècle, où les spectacles de minstrels permettaient à des acteurs blancs de se moquer des Afro-Américains avec un accent ridicule ou des comportements enfantins. La société américaine s’est construite autour de l’esclavage et de son abolition et le phénomène du blackface y a été structurant, explique M. Thériault. Au fil des décennies, le Canada et les pays anglo-saxons se sont américanisés. La sensibilité au blackface s’est importée. Mais le Québec s’est davantage construit en miroir à la France, dont le passé colonialiste n’a pas compté le même épisode d’esclavage en terre française qu’aux États-Unis, note M. Thériault. « La notion est moins prégnante » au Québec, dit-il.

My FSL translation:

The sociologist Joseph Yvon Thériault explains the contrast with reference to the different histories of Quebec and the rest of Canada, along with English Canada's cultural proximity to the US. Blackface was born south of the border in the 19th century, where minstrel shows allowed white actors to mock African-Americans with a ridiculous accent and juvenile actions. American society was built around slavery and its abolition and the phenomenon of blackface was one of its structuring elements, explains Mr. Thériault. Over the course of decades, Canada and other Anglo-Saxon countries became Americanized and thus imported a sensitivity to blackface. But Quebec developed more in the image of France, whose colonial past did not include the same kind of history of slavery on French soil as was seen in the US, notes Mr. Thériault. "The idea does not have as much significance", he says.

(Obv, you don't need that, VHS, but some readers might.)

(Or maybe I'm getting something wrong, which you could point out.)

I’ll speak in generalities for the sake of shortness.

I think it’s mostly bullshit, Quebec culture is very aware of many aspects of american culture and most of the time have imported them. After all they are aware enough they compare themselves to slaves as per the moniker I referred to upthread, it’s simply that the only racism Quebec culture and society has ever cared about is the one made against themselves by anglos. + perhaps some aspects of FNIM racism in the margins.

France’s brand of racism is that it does not understand why not everyone does exactly like France’s culture and politics, the Republique values are supposedly unbiased, universal, eternal, so to not subscribe to these sentiments, to not erase your race at the altar of these values, is sin against humanity. I don’t think that sentiment exists in Quebec. I think Quebec’s geographical and cultural isolation made it so they simply didn’t care to download the racism memo that has developed since the 60s, nor did it upload their experience of racism it to the world really, are african americans aware of Quebec’s struggles ? It is important to understand that some quebecers won’t consider themselves ‘white’ as per constructed by recent intersectional thinkers.

None of that explains Trudeau who is the son of famous PM and whose personal experience can’t be understood in those generalities.

I agree that it seems obviously wrong. It's just somewhat incredible to me that a sociologist could make that argument and have it repeated in a respected paper.

Tbf Le Devoir isn't exactly known for its progressive views.

For example, the complete absence of east and south asians (despite large demographics) in Quebec cinema is really because Quebecers are obsessed with telling their own stories as a habit of self-preservation, and if it ignores large swaths of the population then who cares? The priority is self-preservation.

All of that is changing with the narrative of cultural genocide by multiculturalism promoted by Quebecor and les nationalistes identitaires. But I don’t think these two forms of racism, ‘targeted and willful ignorance’ and ‘absolute demographic fear for the future’ are that exclusive to one anothee.

Le Devoir has an old history of violent anti-semitism for which it never apologized. As a newspaper, it is written form of what I described earlier.

I mean, if the gist of the argument is something like 'blackface is always more hurtful in a country with a long traumatic history of slavery than it is in a province that has practiced slavery on a relatively small scale and for a much shorter period of time', it's not wrong per se. But if we're expected to conclude that there's nothing reprehensible about blackface in Quebec or that the Québécois are somehow unaware of basic facts about their southern neighbours' past, that's messed up. I don't think that's what he's saying, though (his line is that 'it's a less entrenched notion') – he just does a very poor job of properly contextualizing and historicizing the practice in Quebec, which is doubly problematic coming from someone in his position.

I hope the quebec dubbing of Eddie Murphy remains a secret amongst card carrying members of L'amérique du nord francophone.

On a slightly unrelated note, I remember reading Tintin au Congo as an eight year-old at the Bibliothèque de Côte-des-Neiges and it was a perfectly normal, educational thing to do at the time.

I mean, if the gist of the argument is something like 'blackface is always more hurtful in a country with a long traumatic history of slavery than it is in a province that has practiced slavery on a relatively small scale and for a much shorter period of time', it's not wrong

I'm not sure why Quebec should be different from English Canada in this regard?

His argument is that English Canada is more Americanized than Quebec. Insofar as much of ROC culture is essentially indistinguishable from American culture (a typical Québécois claim), it more readily parses blackface as inherently racist.

Like Montreal is the first non-american city to have a baseball team and part of it is thanks to Jackie Robinson's one season stay with the Royals, it has the world largest and most beloved jazz festival, it has the brute force of the american film industry exporting films in our cinemas by the thousand, it has a deep understanding of racism towards its own french population, it has the actual minstrelsy history, all the elements are here to clearly understand what blackface is. Not knowing how hurtful blackface is, is a choice. It's not historical circumstances.

Quebec cultural elite can't pretend to be assailed by american and canadian culture and use that excuse to bar religious garments in public service as to self preserve AND suddenly be ignorant of one the most significant aspects of american culture.

On a slightly unrelated note, I remember reading Tintin au Congo as an eight year-old at the Bibliothèque de Côte-des-Neiges and it was a perfectly normal, educational thing to do at the time.

I never read that Tintin when I was a kid (for whatever reason, I didn't like Tintin as a kid) but I did read a lot of Astérix and there was the African character on the pirate ship which was basically the comic book equivalent of black face. I wonder what black kids who read Astérix thought of that character?

Only woke dude on that pirate ship imo

His argument is that English Canada is more Americanized than Quebec. Insofar as much of ROC culture is essentially indistinguishable from American culture (a typical Québécois claim), it more readily parses blackface as inherently racist.

I realize that's the argument. The logical twists required to support it are doing my head in, though.

So much Quebec punditry and social media is about finding excuses for racism and not owning up to the mistakes.

(I’ll soon be done with these rants)

Tbf I think it's fair to say that English Canada occupies a middle ground between Quebec and the US in this regard. It deems blackface highly offensive, but nowhere near as much as in the US (imagine a Dem candidate in Trudeau's shoes right now), and certainly more than in Quebec where it just elicits a collective shrug. So the claim that there are contextual gradations doesn't seem beyond the pale to me. Like I said, what I find unacceptable is the implication that Quebec is ultimately right not to give much of a fuck, which is why we need more articles like Isabelle Hachey's in La Presse.

xp

Tbf I think it's fair

lol I need to stop using 'tbf'.