Last month, the Bank of Canada released its new $10-banknote featuring an image of Viola Desmond, the iconic Canadian civil rights pioneer who refused to give up her seat in the whites-only section of the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow in 1946, and touched off this country’s modern civil rights era nine years before Rosa...
Reporting While White: When “objectivity” and “neutrality” are inherently biased perspectives
Reading the News While Black: Two recent news stories raise questions about Black representation in the media.
I have never claimed to write “objectively.” That doesn’t mean I write things I believe to be untrue or that are factually wrong, but I am always openly writing from the standpoint of a Black woman. White people, however, believe and are taught that their practices are in fact objective, and that they neutrally present […]
A jury of whose peers?
The jury chose door number three — acquittal. From 4,000 kilometres and six provinces away, I find that incomprehensible. But that, at the end of the day, is not the key issue here.
Let’s start with this. Any jury might have acquitted Gerald Stanley, the 56-year-old white Saskatchewan farmer who shot and killed Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Indigenous man, on Stanley’s farm in August 2016. There are two competing narratives about what happened, and even more about the meaning of what happened. The Crown charged Stanley with second-degree...
Lido Pimienta happened
The Halifax Pop Explosion is vowing to do better in the wake of a racist incident at a concert during its 25th anniversary festival.
“Brown girls to the front! Brown girls to the front!” Lido Pimienta orders into her microphone, bending low so she can meet the faces in her audience, hot pink braids swishing on either side of a resolute face. The 2017 Polaris prize winning Colombian Canadian tour de force is dominating the stage at the Marquee...
I Just Threw Up a Little In My Mouth: Morning File, Saturday, October 21, 2017
1. A note I threw up before I wrote this. It’s true I’ve had the flu for two weeks, I’ve been travelling, my body is run down. I’m sure that had something to do with it. But really, it was because I read through the comments on Tim’s article from yesterday. It’s not that they […]
Survey Says: Morning File, Saturday, October 7, 2017
I’m out of town (again) so this is going to be a short one. 1. Are Canadians Open to Voting for a White Skin Wearing White Man? Most Canadians are open to voting for someone who wears white skin, a new poll finds. An online survey this week found that a majority of respondents would […]
The Police State Strikes Again: Morning File, Saturday, September 9, 2017
1. How the Prison Industrial Complex Screws Workers Elizabeth Chiu has a story on CBC about judges who are becoming frustrated with the length of time it is taking to transport prisoners to the court. Mounting frustrations over delays getting people accused of crimes into courtrooms in Dartmouth, N.S., have prompted one provincial court judge […]
Bar Society says Lyle Howe should be disbarred, ordered to pay $500,000
The bar society argues Howe should now suffer the ultimate legal punishment — not being allowed to practise the profession for which he trained — and also be shackled with a debt he may never be able to repay, in Catch-22 part because he is not allowed to practise his profession.
The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society wants Lyle Howe not only disbarred from practising law for at least five years, but it says he should also have to pay between $450-600,000 of the costs of the disciplinary hearing against him. The society estimates its total cost in the case at $1.1 million — a figure that...
Name? Un-name? How about no name?
Naming controversies raise the question, not so much about why blacks or Indigenous peoples might object to our in-their-faces celebration of their oppressors, but why those of us who are neither black nor aboriginal use up so much oxygen and energy on these debates...
Last Wednesday in Morning File, Tim Bousquet went on a rant. “Stop it,” he wrote. “Stop naming shit after people who are still alive.” The specific object of Tim’s ire that morning was not immediately apparent among the story’s cascading collection of photos of local edifices named after the alive and hopefully well (not to...
Examineradio 125: Rally ‘Round The Statues
Historian Afua Cooper is on the show this week to talk about racism, slavery and Lord Dalhousie, the university’s namesake. She’s the James R. Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dal. She has a few things to say about the statues coming down. Plus, Tim and Terra discuss the latest rally at the Cornwallis […]