The Editor,
Re: “Black/brownface is idiotic — and lots of hypocricy to go around” (Opinion, The Tri-City News, Sept. 26).
The Tri-Cities News' editorial on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s black/brownface was forceful in polemics but lacking in perspective.
People grow up, they change over time (as do our social norms), and yet Trudeau was able to prolong his adolescence precisely because he taught high school. I do not see Trudeau’s antics as intentionally disrespectful towards people of colour. And have we already forgotten his considerable present-day empathy towards marginalized people: the Indigenous, LGBTQ, Syrian refugees and, of course, women.
The claim that “there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around” misses the even wider point that consistency and neat coherences in life are unrealistic, an unachievable goal, given, as Immanuel Kant called it, “the crooked timber of humanity.”
In other words, man is fallible. Are we supposed to think of our political leaders as infallible — for life?
Look to former PM Pierre Trudeau, who dabbled in anti-Semitism at the hands of his Jesuit teachers. And let us not forget former prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s recognition — while in office — of a fellow mystic In Hitler before the Second World War.
In Canada there will probably always be “the persistence of the old regime,” of the era before the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which were introduced in 1982. Prejudices will persist, but it is incumbent on Trudeau to rid himself of any perception of prejudice.
Justin Trudeau’s periodic episodes with black/brownface have disappointed numbers of Canadians but the advent of the cellphone contributes to the confusion of then and now. With the cellphone, anyone can be reached at almost any time, anywhere, helping to erase our sense of space as well as our sense of the past. We gaze at a picture of a turbaned Trudeau dressed as Aladdin, forgetting even that it was taken before 9/11, truly a different era. Meanwhile, we continue to scan our phones for the next world outrage as our minds become ever more mired by all news all the time. At least we were distracted by Trudeau.
Joerge Dyrkton, Anmore
