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Geoff Johnson: PM’s ‘brownface’ is a distraction — but also a warning

A young Justin Trudeau in “brownface” doesn’t matter to me. Really. I guess we should all be grateful that there is not a team of researchers out there busily dredging up speculative evidence of our own youthful or even more recent indiscretions.
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This photo of Justin Trudeau at a 2001 costume party has sparked an uproar. Geoff Johnson has a message for politicians: If you’re pinning your election hopes on that photo and if that’s all you’ve got to offer, you’ll have to do a lot better than that to reassure me that your vision or the country goes beyond adolescent social media “mean girls” attacks on your political opponents.

A young Justin Trudeau in “brownface” doesn’t matter to me. Really. I guess we should all be grateful that there is not a team of researchers out there busily dredging up speculative evidence of our own youthful or even more recent indiscretions.

Those would be the kind of indiscretions now thankfully behind us and lost in the merciful mists of time. There were the traditional “lampshade on the head” or worse party behaviours recorded and now magnified beyond all recognition through the merciless lens of the changing mores of our politically correct times.

Good thing we are not, 50 years later, running for election.

So no — I don’t care that a youthful Trudeau showed up in brownface at a party during his crazier days, momentarily released from the stifling expectations that must have accompanied being the son of an international icon.

But here’s what does matter and should matter to today’s teenagers — personal surveillance is now a daily fact of life.

As Julian Assange explained: “Society develops a type of self-censorship, with the knowledge that surveillance exists — a self-censorship that is even expressed when people communicate with each other privately.”

I always warn teacher trainees that those Facebook privacy settings, as just one example, do not guarantee privacy.

That’s why Facebook recommends that you monitor and adjust the settings on your page from time to time.

That hilariously funny picture of you pouring beer on your head at a party may not signal lack of judgment to you, but to an employer, who will, rightly or wrongly check your page, it might make the difference between you and the next candidate.

“But they can’t do that,” you say.

Get serious. Employers will check potential employees’ Facebook profiles if they can get access to them. About 56 per cent of employers said they were likely to look at the social-media presence of potential employees before hiring them, according to research into employment practices.

The same applies when young teachers finally land that sought-after job — a job that society holds to a higher standard of personal behaviour.

I’ve told young teachers: “Don’t do anything stupid in your classroom — you’ll be on social media that night, guaranteed.” Every kid has a recording device and the knowledge about how to download it.

The same applies to what teachers themselves post.

So, as Heather Smith, president of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, explains: “Whatever you put on social media, you have to make sure it’s not something you want to see on the front of a newspaper — if it’s not something you want to see publicly posted, it shouldn’t be on there.”

Dr. Jerome Delaney, who teaches legal-education courses at Memorial University of Newfoundland, echoes that advice and repeatedly warns his students of the dangers of social-media posts.

“Sometimes you may say something that may be a little off the cuff, and these things can be misinterpreted by students and parents,” he said. “My advice to [future teachers] would be don’t say anything there, or don’t put up pictures on these things that you wouldn’t be comfortable showing in the classroom — once it’s out there, it doesn’t come back.”

But getting back to the Trudeau “brownface” party act.

Times have changed since my father was such a big Al Jolson fan and the racial humour of Amos and Andy was considered the funniest thing on our 17-inch TV.

Yes, times have changed, and hopefully for the better. Fortunately for me, though, when I first applied for the position of superintendent of schools, nobody produced a picture of four leading educators setting sail at midnight on Shuswap Lake in a two-man inflatable toy dinghy. Nor had anybody found that group picture of “pirate night” at a national educational conference.

So to the folks who are pinning their election hopes on the Trudeau “brownface” party photo, if that’s all you’ve got to offer, you’ll have to do a lot better than that to reassure me that your vision or the country goes beyond adolescent social media “mean girls” attacks on your political opponents.

Leave that to the childish nastiness of the Twitter King south of our border. He apparently has nothing else of value to offer, either.

Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.