This racist country
During Black History Month, it shouldn’t be a crime for anyone, regardless of their skin colour or citizenship, to recognize the racist roots of the United States. That is not a political statement but historical fact and present reality.
The Native American genocide, still officially unrecognized but well chronicled by primary sources. The importing, buying and selling of African Americans as slaves. Segregation.
To this day, a disproportionately high number of blacks are in U.S. jail with longer sentences and several sectors of the American economy would collapse without cheap Hispanic labour.
Gregg Popovich, the head coach of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, said it best this week.
“We live in a racist country that hasn’t figured it out yet and it’s always important to bring attention to it, even if it angers some people,” he said.
“You have to keep it in front of everybody’s nose so they understand it still hasn’t been taken care of and we still have a lot of work to do.”
America has come a long way, particularly in the past 50 years, if a powerful and prominent white man like Popovich is taking that stance and stating it so forcefully. But, as he says, the job is nowhere close to being done.
Canada is no different, of course.
This country is just as racist and just as flawed as its southern neighbour. While Canada has acknowledged its genocide against its Indigenous peoples and has apologized for residential schools, the systemic racism remains, embedded in our laws, our health care, our politics and our culture.
As in the United States, racism in Canada extends to everyone with brown and black skin, not just those with aboriginal ancestry.
For the visibly white populations in both nations, that racist reality defines us to the modern day, both when we refuse to accept it and when we recognize it and do what we can to educate ourselves and be better for our children, our communities and our country.
Popovich’s statement doesn’t mean he’s unpatriotic or is ashamed that he’s a white American man. In the same way, anyone who acknowledges Canada’s racist past and present can still love the country and its people but insist on being better and being part of that effort to be better.
Even when it’s hard to do that. Especially when it’s hard.
And it’s hard when watching the video of the arrest of fitness trainer Jamiel MooreWilliams in Vancouver early Sunday morning.
The former member of a UBC Thunderbirds football team that won the Vanier Cup was Tasered, thrown to the ground and kicked and punched by seven white members of the Vancouver Police Department. His official crime?
Jaywalking at 2:30 in the morning.
His other crime, the one he wasn’t charged for?
Being a six-foot-four, 22-year-old black man.
Moore-Williams gave an emotional interview to CTV Vancouver, where he talked about how he never wept from the hard hits he took on the field during his football career but talking about the pain and the shame he felt at the hands of Vancouver cops reduced him to tears.
Vancouver police said that Moore-Williams fingered the cops in a police car that honked at him when he walked in front of it, refused to identify himself when officers confronted him and put one officer in a headlock as he was being wrestled to the ground.
They charged him with jaywalking and obstruction of justice.
The video, shot by Moore-Williams’ friend on a phone, doesn’t show any of that.
It shows Moore-Williams with his wallet in his hand but the officers tackle him before he can produce identification. It shows kicks and punches by the officers. No retaliation by Moore-Williams, including a headlock, is seen.
Moore-Williams nailed it right on the head in his CTV Vancouver interview.
“I’m a big black male crossing the street and they acted out of fear rather than doing their job. What are they scared of?” What, indeed?
And what is the Vancouver Police Department scared of now?
Loss of morale from disciplining officers who not only abused their authority and assaulted a civilian but, based on the video, clearly told a different story to their superiors? Loss of public faith in the police?
That faith is already eroded by the video and further damaged by the Vancouver Police Department’s unwillingness to accept responsibility for what happened and hold its officers accountable.
This is how racism corrupts society, poisoning trust in important civil institutions like the police and humiliating an accomplished young black man who now has to plead with the world to not see him as a thug but to see him, as Martin Luther King said, not for the colour of his skin but for the content of his character.
Hopefully, the courts will right this particular wrong but that hope is a cautious one.
Coach Popovich says the problem of racism needs to be kept in front of everybody’s nose but sadly some people can’t – or won’t – see even that far, for fear of the personal and social responsibility that comes with it.