Opinion by Murray Mandryk - Leader Post
A member of the Chinese community rallying against racism during the pandemic.
The Saskatchewan-based former leader of a Canadian political party was sentenced to one year in jail after being convicted of a hate crime.
Travis Patron — a 29-year-old Redvers resident and former leader of the now-de-registered federal Canadian Nationalist Party — was previously convicted in Estevan Court of King’s Bench for promoting hatred against an identifiable group as a result of 2021 videos ranting against Jewish people.
“What we need to do, perhaps more than anything, is remove these people, once and for all, from our country,” Patron said, according to a transcript read by a Crown prosecutor in which the former political candidate talks about the “parasitic tribe.”
Such Criminal Code convictions are rare. Sadly, racism in this province is not.
Most racism isn’t quite as blatant as someone announcing it on a video. It’s far more subtle, praying on notions ingrained in people from an early age. We need to do everything within our power to fight this.
So now seems an odd time for us to be rejecting any tools at our disposal that help teachers and parents in schools identify issues at an earlier age.
Through a Leader-Post story by Jeremy Simes, we learned the Education Ministry is discouraging the use of the racism awareness kit developed by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
Officials said the kit wasn’t of “high quality, free from bias as reasonably possible” and identified both a lack of Saskatchewan content and specific examples not put in the proper context.
One example of the latter was the report’s suggestion that the “red ensign” — Canada’s flag before 1965 — has been appropriated by white supremacist groups to message the great value of “old stock” Canadians. The Red Ensign also flies in front of most Royal Canadian Legions in this country.
One gets legitimate concerns raised here. Context is everything in education.
Professional public education administrators don’t have the luxury of ignoring context.
And it would be easy, lazy and unfair to suggest those reviewing the content of the kit were simply taking their marching orders from Education Minister Dustin Duncan and his Saskatchewan Party government that has struggled with race relations issues.
Moreover, any independent perusal of the toolkit might find similar problems with its language and content. (For example, one suspects those seeing the value of pipelines would be troubled with the toolkit’s summary that recent protests in B.C. were simply “Wet’suwet’en solidarity actions and blockades, (where) racist threats against Indigenous land defenders were rampant.”
The anti-hate network, itself, acknowledged it previously had to address loaded language, taking out references to “questionable political parties.”
But it’s about here where we all need to step back a moment, consider what the toolkit is trying to do and why having it at the easy access of teachers is probably better than having it unavailable.
Let us stress that this is just a tool for teachers to identify potential emerging issues — not school curriculum.
We pay and train professional teachers to figure out what’s appropriate and what isn’t. And as NDP education critic Matt Love noted, some resources now being used in government-funded independent private schools l ike the troubled Legacy Christian Academy are far more offensive.
It’s so important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees in the battle against racism.
As also noted by the administrators reviewing the toolkit, it likely doesn’t likely have enough Saskatchewan content delving into our long history that includes residential schools, the Ku Klux Klan and, yes, more recent events with serious racist overtones.
As imperfect as language and context in the Canadian Anti-Hate Network toolkit may be, there’s no denying the racist elements that emerged out of Wet’suwet’en, the Colten Boushie killing, or the “Starlight tours” of the 1980s and ’90s where Saskatoon police were accused of dropping off young Aboriginal men on the outskirts of the city.
Given what we are seeing in court and elsewhere, none of us should lose sight of what this fight is all about.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
And it would be easy, lazy and unfair to suggest those reviewing the content of the kit were simply taking their marching orders from Education Minister Dustin Duncan and his Saskatchewan Party government that has struggled with race relations issues.
Moreover, any independent perusal of the toolkit might find similar problems with its language and content. (For example, one suspects those seeing the value of pipelines would be troubled with the toolkit’s summary that recent protests in B.C. were simply “Wet’suwet’en solidarity actions and blockades, (where) racist threats against Indigenous land defenders were rampant.”
The anti-hate network, itself, acknowledged it previously had to address loaded language, taking out references to “questionable political parties.”
But it’s about here where we all need to step back a moment, consider what the toolkit is trying to do and why having it at the easy access of teachers is probably better than having it unavailable.
Let us stress that this is just a tool for teachers to identify potential emerging issues — not school curriculum.
We pay and train professional teachers to figure out what’s appropriate and what isn’t. And as NDP education critic Matt Love noted, some resources now being used in government-funded independent private schools l ike the troubled Legacy Christian Academy are far more offensive.
It’s so important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees in the battle against racism.
As also noted by the administrators reviewing the toolkit, it likely doesn’t likely have enough Saskatchewan content delving into our long history that includes residential schools, the Ku Klux Klan and, yes, more recent events with serious racist overtones.
As imperfect as language and context in the Canadian Anti-Hate Network toolkit may be, there’s no denying the racist elements that emerged out of Wet’suwet’en, the Colten Boushie killing, or the “Starlight tours” of the 1980s and ’90s where Saskatoon police were accused of dropping off young Aboriginal men on the outskirts of the city.
Given what we are seeing in court and elsewhere, none of us should lose sight of what this fight is all about.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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