‘We also have work to do in Canada’

Trudeau acknowledges racial unrest in U.S., calls for understanding

WASHINGTON—America’s anger, frustration and discord boiled over in Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Friday at a remarkable moment in the history of the United States.

After more than two months of pandemic-induced, self-imposed exile, protesters in Minneapolis — some wearing face masks not to conceal their identities, but to ward off COVID-19 — laid waste to city streets after the police killing Monday of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man.

A police station was among the structures that went up in flames overnight after staff abandoned the premises of Precinct 3, which was subsequently overrun by protesters.

All of it prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, unbidden, to do something he rarely does: comment publicly on another country’s domestic affairs.

“Anti-Black racism, racism, is real; it’s in the United States, but it’s also in Canada,” Trudeau said Friday as he wrapped up his daily briefing outside his home at Rideau Cottage in Ottawa.

More than once he used the term “anti-Black racism,” a specific phrase that Black communities have long advocated for in order to distinguish the express injustices Black people face in Canada and around the world from other forms of discrimination.

“We need as a society to stand together, to stand up against discrimination, to be there for each other in respect, but also understand that we have work to do as well in Canada in our systems that we need to work forward on,” Trudeau said.

“I call on all Canadians — whether it’s anti-Black racism or anti-Asian racism or racism discrimination of any type — to stand together in solidarity, to be there for each other and know just how deeply people are being affected by what we see on the news these past few days.”

Racial unrest, often sparked by deadly police action against Black Americans, is nothing new in the U.S. But in a polarized country near the end of Donald Trump’s fractious and controversial first term, the conflict feels like a new low-water mark.

“This is a moment where we don’t feel like we’re sort of northern Americans, that we’re kind of like the Americans, because this comes from a place that does not compute for us, and that we don’t share,” said Chris Sands, a Canada-U.S. scholar and head of the Canada Institute at the Washingtonbased Wilson Center. “Moments like this are always profound — and profound for the way in which they set us apart.”