Councillor confronts racism’s ugly truths
Longtime city councillor had his eyes opened during a conference in the U.S.
Mike O’donnell is a man of principle and perspective — someone whose opinions I have sought on several occasions when there have been matters of concern.
Considering the troubled times in which we live, I reached out to Mike the other day. I was especially interested in what my longtime friend, a 14-year Regina city councillor who has decided not to seek a fifth term, had to say about the scourge that is racism.
“I will tell you a little story,” began O’donnell, a former teacher/coach who I met when he was the commissioner of the Regina High Schools Athletic Association.
“I was in Charlotte, North
Carolina at a conference. I sat down at a table and one of the people beside me was a lady from a small city in Indiana. When she saw that I was from Canada, she turned to me and explained that she had a school in her area that she represents. The school does not have any books in it — not one book. It is a school in the core area of their city.
“She said, ‘Tell me about the schools in your city that would be in ghettos.’ I explained to her that we have built new schools and that every school in our city is funded for things like books and equipment, exactly in the same way, so no school does without. She was stunned.
“The way I walked away from that was thinking that at a very early age, there is a tiered system in the U.S. where it’s OK to disadvantage these small Black children. The legacy is that they’ll always be disadvantaged, and it seems to be OK (institutionally). That, to me, speaks to what is going on in the U.S. right now. It’s grossly unfair, obviously.
“It’s part of that view of the U.S. where you have to make it on your own. There’s no social safety net. So, for one culture in the U.S., they’ve been disadvantaged for so long. You begin with children. You are, first of all, hurtful, but also horrible when you do that. This was a public school, by the way. I don’t understand.”
Fast forward to 2020, when there is racial tension following the May 25 death of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, while in custody in Minneapolis. A white police officer had a knee on Floyd’s throat in his final minutes.
It is also troubling to consider that Black people are dying of COVID -19 at a disproportionately high rate.
“We see their health system on overload, in a place in particular like New York, which is all privately funded,” O’donnell said. “What are they doing? They’re turning to the government for help.
“When your basis of senior care is for profit and when your basis of health care is for profit, then you are obviously leaving someone out, and it always is those who have less economic means.”
O’donnell has close ties to New York City, where his son Paul resides.
“He’s able to continue to work, so he works from home, but he has had many, many friends lose jobs and have to leave the city,” Mike O’donnell said. “What the future holds is unknown, but it’s obviously going to be quite different.
“He’s being careful from a health point of view, but he needed to go out in the streets (last week) to experience the emotion of the city and the emotion of the people.
“He said that masks were being handed out, hand sanitizer was on every street corner, and everybody was encouraged to keep a distance. He said it was peaceful.”
Recent events in the United States remind O’donnell of his teenage years, which coincided with the civil rights movement and anti-vietnam War protests.
“The call to bring out the national guard and the military just takes you right back to Kent State,” he said in reference to the shootings of 13 Kent State University students, four of whom died, during a peace rally in 1970.
“I can still see the pictures of that and how horrible that was. But it got people not only to demonstrate, but also to start changing some things.
“More change is obviously necessary.”