Stockwell Day puts white privilege on display
In about five minutes on TV, Stockwell Day made himself the Canadian symbol of what is called white male privilege, which typically renders the afflicted clueless to boiling social currents around them.
His insistence that Canadian racism isn’t much of a problem also turned out to be very expensive.
Day soon “resigned” from the board of Telus, which paid him $258,000 last year as a company director.
He quit as a strategic adviser for Mcmillan LLP, a big law firm; compensation unknown.
Day also lost his place as panellist on the CBC’S Power & Politics.
Some people might feel sorry for Day. I do not. He has become, since the days when he was Alberta’s treasurer and a Stephen Harper minister, a comfortable member of Canada’s senior post-political elite.
These people share a high level of self-satisfaction and prosperity based on connections from their political lives.
One gig leads to another and before long they’ve got a swelling list of appointments, honours, memberships and entitlements. Day, for instance, owned Telus stock valued at $2.3 million in 2019.
For some, the higher they climb, the more disconnected they become.
Day demonstrated that vividly on the CBC Power & Politics panel when he declared “Canadians aren’t racist.” Asked how he could know that, he said he just does.
He resented any suggestion that our problem (“a few idiot racists,” he said) should even be mentioned in the same breath as American racism.
Day said African-americans are killed more often by black cops than white cops. Bizarrely, he added: “Should I have gone through school and been mocked because I had glasses and was called four-eyes and because of the occupation of my parents?”
Day was on the panel with two women, including one of colour who has worked with families victimized by police violence in Montreal.
Emilie Nicolas, a Le Devoir columnist, talked about how people abused and even shot by police never get any psychological support or a call of condolence.
Day came next. In a moment calling for empathy, he launched a clumsy rant, the gist of which was that Canada has a vanishingly small racism problem.
Day looked quite pleased with himself when he finally finished. But very soon, he was apologizing.
“By feedback from many in the Black and other communities, I realize my comments in debate on Power and Politics were insensitive and hurtful,” he said on Twitter. “I ask forgiveness for wrongly equating my experiences to theirs. I commit to them my unending efforts to fight racism in all its forms.”
That obviously wasn’t enough for Telus. The company has many young wireless customers who could be offended, and then it’s hello Rogers.
The law firm put out a disapproving tweet.
“At Mcmillan LLP, we believe that systemic racism is real and that it can only be addressed when each of us — as individuals and organizations — commits to meaningful change.
“Yesterday, Stockwell Day made comments during a televised interview that run counter to this view. Today, he offered his resignation as a strategic adviser at our firm and it was accepted.”
In another sign of the times, noted local plutocrat and tweeter W. Brett Wilson was taken to task for saying Mayor Naheed Nenshi played “the race card” to win the 2017 election.
Nenshi promptly pointed out that he won in every ward but two, not just in neighbourhoods with greater diversity. And Wilson’s own Mount Royal area ward returned the biggest numbers of all.
The hottest zinger came when Calgary actor Andrew Phung, who stars on Kim’s Convenience, said he will no longer appear at or host any events supported by Wilson.
By early evening Thursday, Wilson too was regretful. He told Nenshi that his original tweet was “thoughtless and inflammatory … I apologize without reservation.”
The critics are reacting to white privilege. It’s a term that can confuse some older people, especially men. Here’s what I take it to mean after grappling with the issue, often in painful self-recognition.
Too many white people say: If there is a problem it’s not mine because I’ve never done or said anything racist.
This can absolve us of responsibility. We don’t give empathetic thought to how it feels to be questioned for no reason but one’s colour. Or to fear that a police car tagging along behind might threaten much more than a ticket.
And often we haven’t accepted — or have even considered — the fact that being white confers a sense of social freedom, comfort and security many others do not enjoy.
That’s the white privilege that rightly incenses many. We are challenged to recognize it, lose the defensiveness, and join the fight.
Stockwell Day walked unblinking into this buzzsaw. Belated recognition of what he’d done failed to save him from a very costly lesson.