Canadians are passing the respect test

Two weeks ago, I was out in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, heading to one of my regular board game meet-ups (it still being possible to engage in such excursions at this point), when I found myself in a state of peckishness. Having some time to spare, and uncertain of whether my hosts would be offering dinner, I stopped at a local dépanneur for a little cuisine au four à microondes. And I’m glad I did, because as my pogo rotated lazily within the oven’s dimly illuminated confines, I witnessed a memorably Canadian scene.

The other customer was half my age, and a little rougher around the edges than your typical board game-club habitué. He slapped something on the counter, I forget what, then looked up at the cashier, who happened to be a bored-looking older woman of East Asian ancestry wearing a protective mask across her nose and mouth. As soon as the customer cast eyes on the woman, he immediately lurched backward — a sort of reflexive “social distancing” avant la lettre. The woman continued to look bored as she rang up the purchase, whereupon the fellow stepped toward the counter — but only to the minimum distance required to tap his bank card.

Once the payment was processed, he asked, “Do you have any … um …” He seemed a little flustered, and the proper term momentarily escaped him. So he resorted to sign language, putting his left hand in a fist, and then pushing the palm of his right hand up and down upon it. Then he remembered: “… hand sanitizer!”

But the bored woman, perhaps not being a native English speaker, still didn’t seem to understand. And so the two stumbled back and forth in a confused way, until the fellow added a hand-scrubbing pantomime to the fist-bopping, at which point the woman immediately got it. She produced the requested bottle from beneath the counter, both of them laughed nervously (but not insincerely), the man pumped and slathered, said goodbye, and left. This denouement left me bursting with national pride: Even when succumbing to some spasm of bigotry, we Canadians tend to be polite about it.

I don’t want to minimize the racism that some Chinese-Canadians have experienced during the COVID-19 crisis. In February, even before government officials told us all to stay home in a state of copiously slathered isolation, some customers were shunning Asian-operated businesses, and one could observe a certain amount of racist chatter on social media.

But for the most part, that’s where the chatter remained. And in fact, it turned out that much of the claimed racism wasn’t actually racist. In late January, the Guardian newspaper tried to justify the claim that Canada’s “Chinese community faces racist abuse” by offering that “nearly 9,000 parents in the York school district — an area north of Toronto — signed a petition demanding students who had travelled to China in the last 17 days be prevented from attending school.” But that petition was circulated at a time when 98.9 per cent (5,997 out of 6,065) confirmed COVID-19 cases had been diagnosed in China. The petitioners’ demand, rooted as it was in the logic of geography, not race, was entirely reasonable.

Emergencies and pandemics can bring out the underlying fissures and bigotries within a society. When Donald Trump calls COVID-19 a “foreign” or “Chinese” virus, he’s tapping into the long line of demagogues who’ve played to the idea that infectious diseases signal the unclean — or even malignant — influence of outsiders. And if Justin Trudeau’s government is going to err on one side or the other, I would prefer it be on the side of pluralism (even if, yes, this can lead to absurdist policies, such as when most forms of otherwise legal entry into Canada were being banned, while illegal crossings in Quebec were still being permitted).

This has been quite the year for Canada, as our economy and much of our infrastructure has been paralyzed twice, in quick succession, by historic one-off events. While the COVID-19 pandemic began on the other side of the world and came to us by plane, the rail blockades were inspired by political grievances originating right here in Canada. That crisis, too, inspired widespread fears of a racist backlash. But though social media was roiled by the usual trolls and bigots during this period, there was no real violence of any kind.

Media critics of the law-and-order position were so desperate to find evidence of bad motives, in fact, that they were reduced to demonizing community members in Alberta who dismantled a ramshackle barricade that non-Indigenous protesters had set up on local railway tracks. This is what passed for “vigilantism” in Canada at the height of a campaign that activists themselves described as being directed at vindicating the rights of a single, identifiable ethnic minority.

Racism against Chinese people exists in Canada. Racism against Indigenous people exists, too. But this year, not quite a quarter done yet, already has taught us that it takes more than a paralyzed economy or a deadly global pandemic to set Canadians against each other in any kind of substantial way. Don’t be deceived by the mere physical rituals of social distancing. On the deeper and more important level of respect, tolerance and trust, most Canadians are acquitting themselves commendably.

EVEN WHEN SUCCUMBING TO BIGOTRY, WE CANADIANS TEND TO BE POLITE ABOUT IT.