Column trivialized Floyd’s death

Re: Deirdre Pike (June 6)

I write to you today as a regular Spectator reader and concerned Hamiltonian. I am also white. Deirdre Pike’s column from June 6 is deeply harmful.

Ms. Pike’s flippant reference to Adolf Hitler’s “treatment” of gay people in the current context of rising white supremacy is deeply disconcerting. More troubling, though, is Ms. Pike’s disrespectful concluding reference to the length of time it took a police officer to kill George Floyd: 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Extending the benefit of the doubt, I can expect that Ms. Pike’s intention is to lessen anti-Black racism, but by trivializing George Floyd’s death, the impact is quite different. This piece of writing dishonours and dehumanizes him. This harms us all. This man’s life, his blackness, his humanity, are not fodder for such attempts at literary devices.

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to at least take this piece down from the Spectator’s website as a gesture of good faith that your newspaper is committed to ending white supremacy.

C.A. Klassen, Hamilton