Canada can’t be too smug
It is not surprising, although it is horrifying, to see the murder of George Floyd and I dare say it will be repeated again this year somewhere in the U.S.
But I find it disheartening when we Canadians display our collective inferiority complex. In Canada, more Indigenous citizens die during police interactions than any other identifiable group (three in Winnipeg alone this year), with little effect to the Canadian consciousness.
There is no racially targeted group that has suffered more at the hands of Canadian legislation and overt racism than the Indigenous community.
When Canadians start to look internally at racism and address our own horrors without looking to the U.S. for some sort of catalyst, when Canadians in the thousands match in unison for justice to Indigenous peoples, I will start to believe that maybe, just maybe, all Canadians will some day be treated equally. Lou Forget, Port Hope, Ont.
We can all agree that George Floyd was murdered.
We can all agree that slavery in the U.S. raged for more than 200 years and that systemic racism continues to adversely and unjustly affect the Black community to this day.
We can all agree that peaceful protest is one of the most basic and sacred rights and benefits in any free and just society. And we can all agree that violence and looting is not an acceptable form of protest.
I hope we will all agree someday that a president who fans the flames of discontent with his fiery rhetoric; who chooses to tear gas and fire rubber bullets into a crowd of peaceful protesters; who steadfastly refuses to seek legitimate ways to address police brutality against the Black community; and who calls people engaged in peaceful protest low-lifes and sons of bitches, just does not get it.
He lacks the moral courage to stand with the oppressed and he lacks the moral conviction to work tirelessly to secure a better future for all. Shame on him. Ernie Coetzee, Toronto
The video footage of riot police firing paint canisters at ordinary, unarmed civilians on their front porches is horrifying. The U.S. is now a police state. We have seen police kill unarmed civilians, fire at reporters doing their jobs, some in their workplaces, and now fire at people standing on their front porches. No one is safe.
And lest we get complacent in Canada, remember our own history with hyper police kettling civilians, arresting hundreds without charge, targeting Black men and ignoring the murders of Indigenous women and girls.
I have never had an unpleasant interaction with our police. But my Black friends, who were repeatedly stopped for no reason, remind me we have our problems, too. Mike Sullivan, Toronto
I heard the phrase “I can’t breathe” throughout my childhood from my severely asthmatic sister. Every time she said it, I felt her pain and helplessness. At 42, she did die of not being able to breathe.
So I can relate to and imagine the suffering of George Floyd.
I see his death as martyrdom for the greater cause of awakening the conscience of some from their shallow bodies. Not being recognized as persons of equal stature, Black people and other minorities live in a perpetual state of struggle to breathe amidst annihilating practices of privileged white people around the globe.
When Floyd was pleading and begging for breath, he wasn’t granted even a moment to catch one peaceful breath. The inhumanity displayed by the white police officer is indescribable.
The rebellion around the U.S. and other parts of world will cause ripples of reactions until the segregators recognize that the divide they created is choking them and realize that they can’t breathe. Samina Irfan, Scarborough Re Hurt feelings pale in comparison to lynchings, Paradkar, 29
As an academic, even in these unusual times, prior to George Floyd, it was not uncommon for me to be part of conversations about institutional racism, systemic discrimination and anti-oppressive practices.
Just before Floyd made headlines, I had been reading up on what Malcolm X stood for. He was talking about institutional racism well before that term became sexy.
He also talked about how it was not the white colour of people that he stood against, rather the collective and dominant attitude of white society that had led to the demoralization and demonization of Blacks over hundreds of years. Mohammad Zubairi, Hamilton
It is what Shree Paradkar does not say that concerns me. She omits the most important strategy to improve social justice: economics.
Martin Luther King asked, “What does it profit a man if he has the right to enter a restaurant, but he can’t afford the food?”
One of the great moments in the social justice movement was President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 nomination acceptance; he said the “economic royalty” have created “economic slavery,” leaving millions poor, unemployed, uneducated, homeless and hungry.
In his 1944 State of the Union speech, Roosevelt proposed an Economic Bill of Rights for those things we all want for our children: a living-wage job, health care, an education, a home and a pension, as a part of a social safety net for the protection from misfortune and old age.
The marginalized are disproportionately deprived of these five essentials. Joseph Polito, Toronto
George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police says a lot about the justice system in the U.S.
In the financial disaster of 2008, where white-collar workers came very close to destroying the global financial system, very few people went to jail and many of the perpetrators of the disaster were actually awarded bonuses that year for their stellar performance.
Floyd paid with his life for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. Charles Campisi, Oakville
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.” — Edmund Burke, 18th-century statesman and philosopher
I cannot help but wonder how many tragedies could have been averted if good men or women had taken actions, instead of just sitting on the sidelines and filming yet another injustice. Michel Trahan, Maria, Que.
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