WHITEWASHING DIVERSITY

Jagmeet Singh is notably excluded from the debate

An ad campaign’s flop shows how visible minorities stay invisible.

A storm erupted on Twitter this week when Zazzle, an online retailer, was caught using photos of white models to sell Black-power T-shirts.

The photos are ludicrous: demure, white women sporting shirts with slogans such as “Unapologetically Black” and “Angry Black Woman.”

According to a story in the U.K.’s Daily Mail, this is mainly a technical screwup — the slogans were digitally emblazoned on some standard picture templates that Zazzle uses to sell T-shirts. In other words, white models weren’t really asked to physically put on the Black-empowerment shirts.

Still, it struck me as a pretty good metaphor for the kind of debate we’re seeing in Canada right now about immigration, refugees and multiculturalism — a bunch of white people yelling slogans at each other about diversity, or the lack of it.

Or, as Conservative MP Michelle Rempel put it this week, when taking a swipe at Maxime Bernier and what he was saying about diversity before he quit the Conservative party: “My colleague has a choice to make: does he want Andrew Scheer to win or Justin Trudeau to win?”

While she might be right that the 2019 election will be an epic battle between the Liberals and one (or two) parties on the right, the New Democrats are conspicuous by their absence from Rempel’s forecast.

As it happens, they are also led by the first visible minority person to hold the leadership of one of the three main political parties in Canada — Jagmeet Singh. He also seems to be left out of this conversation pretty much altogether.

Regardless of what one thinks about the NDP’s or Singh’s chances next year, is it not odd that this big, summerof-2018 battle over immigration and diversity in Canada is taking place without much attention to what this means to those diverse people in this country? In one particular case, the turban-wearing Sikh leader of the NDP?

Singh actually has posted some thoughtful remarks about this dispute on Twitter, the apparent medium of record for fights about diversity these days. Fittingly, the NDP leader aimed many of his remarks not at the white people yelling at each other, but at the actual people they’re yelling about.

“When you are told by some that Canada wants less of you, I understand the isolation you feel,” Singh said in a Twitter thread in reply to Bernier’s early outbursts on the subject of diversity and multiculturalism.

“To those who feel targeted by these comments, I want you to know that you’re very much Canadian, and you strengthen all of us.” Note the use of the word “us.”

Singh’s exclusion from this debate is partly logistical. Many of the arguments were kicked off by events in the two other parties — the Conservatives’ convention this weekend and ongoing leadership drama; a white-power protester at a recent Justin Trudeau appearance.

Nor do I think that it’s simple racism that has relegated the NDP leader to the sidelines, though that has to be part of it.

Frankly, this has evolved (or devolved) into a mainly white people’s argument because that’s the constituency trying to figure out how open it is — or how open it wants to be — to non-white culture in 2018.

Whatever has motivated this latest eruption, whether it’s economic uncertainty or fear of the unknown, let’s call it for what it is. This isn’t a Blackand-white conversation. It’s just white — or shades of white.

Would that be a richer discussion with some more diverse voices? Probably. If we’re not careful, this summer spat over diversity in Canada will start to look as ridiculous as an all-male bunch of politicians deciding how feminist they want the country to be. Or a group of white women models selling Blackpower T-shirts.