LESSONS UNLEARNED
Now we must take sides against those who would make America hate again.
Deplorables, rejoice!
Hell hath no fury like a white man scorned.
Thank you, Donald Trump, for finally putting to rest the illusion that we live in a post-racial world.
In saying a racist, sexist, antiSemitic, homophobic, lying egomaniac could “make America great again,” its voters have shown that ‘greatness’ was just a yearning for times when white supremacy went unchallenged.
While Trump’s trolls flood Twitter in giddy delight Wednesday morning, spare a thought for ‘the other’ Americans; black, Latino, native, Muslim and Sikh (who will be mistaken for Muslims), among a long list of “not-white” people. How terrifying to wake up to the grotesque reality of life in a legitimized cauldron of fear and hate.
Let’s not just lay the blame at the door of disenfranchised, non-college-educated white workers, though.
Blame those privileged Republicans — men and women (53 per cent white women, says CNN) who put their party above their country.
Lay it also at the feet of those far-lefties — hitherto allies in the fight for racial equality — who decided to make everyone feel the burn.
Complacent journalists who gave Trump time on their platforms because his existence got Internet traffic and TV ratings — and it’s all about chasing numbers now — must also be held responsible.
Three days before we solemnly and dutifully say “Lest we forget,” America has shown just how clearly it can forget the lessons of the past.
How does a country that voted in a black president shame itself thus? In 2009, when social psychologist Daniel Effron of London Business School was at Stanford, he and his colleagues published a research paper in the Journal of Social Experimental Psychology titled: Endorsing Obama licenses favouring whites.
Their studies showed moral licensing at work: expressing support for Obama made people feel comfortable expressing politically incorrect views. They felt speaking well of Obama showed their lack of prejudice, “thus reducing their concern with acting prejudiced.”
“Doing good deeds can make people feel like they have earned the right to do even blatantly bad ones,” Effron says.
It takes very little to make people feel licensed, he says. “. . . Simply imagining, ‘I could have done something racist, but I didn’t’ is enough to make people feel licensed to express less racial sensitivity.”
Seven years later, mere expression of politically incorrect views has blown into a collective endorsement of racism. A nation that had stood tall as a global beacon for equality in 2008, and 2012, felt so virtuous, it gave itself the moral permission to swing the other way.
What happens south of the border seeps up here. Trump legitimizes suspicion, tribalism and fear. He also endorses hatred, and, as with love, hatred has no boundaries.
Snug in our own “sunny ways,” let us, at least, not get smug. We failed to see that Europe’s contagion of xenophobia had now touched our continent.
Conservative party leadership hopeful Kelly Leitch called Trump’s victory an “exciting message that needs to be delivered in Canada as well,” in a Facebook post.
Leitch is enjoying her 15 minutes of fame, appealing to bigots, by proposing a test to screen immigrants for “Canadian values.” Perhaps she will now be emboldened to spell out those undefined values as “white Anglo-Saxon values.”
We have seen videos of the man in Edmonton screaming racist slurs at Jesse Lipscombe, a black actor and producer. We’ve seen mosques attacked in the GTA and Peterborough.
Just last week, a man was caught on camera yelling racist slurs on a Calgary train. That city’s transit officials have reported a spike in these events.
Liking anti-racism posts, signing online petitions and tweeting antiracist hashtags is no longer an adequate demonstration of support.
We are going to have to take sides. To rephrase the “You’re with us or against us” sentiment of the previous Republican president that we didn’t take seriously: You will either stand up and protect your fellow citizens or you’re a racist.
Polite silence is not an option any more. Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar.