The news that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had appeared in “brown face” and, oh heavens, even blackface left prominent pundits white-faced, or at least whiter faced than usual.
On Wednesday evening, Trudeau did the only thing he could at that point. He apologized. “I recognize it was something racist to do,” he said, something he should have, could have, said in 2015, but still. On Thursday afternoon, he added another layer of understanding when he spoke to journalists in Winnipeg. “Darkening your face is always unacceptable ... I didn’t see that from the layers of privilege that I have.”

It’s been pretty priceless — no, the word I’m looking for is annoying — seeing all the hand-wringing around this news development and to see our media decide that *this* is the point the election becomes about racism.
Let’s break it down.
The racist act. The misplaced concern around racism. The exploitative politicization of it.

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Trudeau again apologizes for wearing blackface, admitting privilege comes with ‘massive blind spot’

Colouring a white face brown or black is not OK. We are all agreed on that, all including Trudeau and his Conservative party rival Andrew Scheer. It’s demeaning. It’s racist. If only costume chameleons would recognize that some of us aren’t able to shed our skin colour when convenient. In a whiteness-centred country, brown skin, but particularly black skin, remains a stubborn and loud mark of otherness.
It’s important to note that while “brown face” has contemporary meaning, the historical significance of the offence comes from blackface when white actors in the U.S. and Canada painted their faces black and mimicked caricatures of Black people.
This was no innocent ha-ha mimicry, but one more tool of the white supremacist tool box to cement the position of Black people as unintelligent, overly sexual, savage beings. This is why even if it does not offend all brown-skinned people, “brown face” or blackface today reinforces the contempt, discrimination and physical violence against Black people and must be seen in that context.

In the 1840s, Black Canadians petitioned Toronto City Hall to end this racist practice which was eventually accepted. Blackface was out — only to return a few decades later when Jim Crow laws in the U.S. deepened anti-Black hostility north of the border. (For more, read The Underground Railroad: Next stop, Toronto!)

Federal Politics

Trudeau again apologizes for wearing blackface, admitting privilege comes with ‘massive blind spot’

Hours after his campaign was rocked by revelations that Trudeau appeared in brownface during his time as a teacher, a new video appears to show yet another incident.

By Shree ParadkarRace & Gender Columnist

Thu., Sept. 19, 2019

Trudeau’s past actions also come to light in the context of an election when one of his rivals, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, is a brown-skinned man who wears a turban out of profound respect for his faith. He faces racism from outside and within his own party. Jonathan Richardson, an NDP executive member for Atlantic Canada, who defected to the Greens, said racism was a major reason why they couldn’t find candidates in New Brunswick.
A racialized person being discriminated on the job was news, but not a scandal.
The public discourse on Trudeau’s blackface reduces racism to narrow, specific actions that white people accept as being racist, namely showing up in blackface or uttering a racial slur. Racism also gets cast in shallow terms of a good/bad dichotomy as if “good people” can’t also be racist.

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The journalist Tom Parry said on The Current on Thursday that it was going to be difficult for Trudeau to say “you’re intolerant” to Maxime Bernier’s far-right positions on immigration when these photos exist. As if racism at the level of individual bigotry bears equivalence to systemic racism at the level of policy.

Forgive me, but I find the feverish outrage of those who’ve never faced racism hopelessly misguided and a distraction from wider issues of racism. Showing up in blackface is reprehensible and hurtful, but if people are genuinely concerned about racism, I would much rather see them robustly and consistently challenging our leaders on policies that would materially impact the lives of those in the margins.
Where do they stand on pipelines? What specific policies do they have that would benefit Black families? Where do they stand on complying with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling on First Nations child welfare? What will their policy be on minimum wage? Will they get rid of the Safe Third Country Agreement that allows us to hide behind the grotesque American racism against refugees while having to do nothing on that humanitarian crisis?
The only journalist who made this demand from Trudeau in Winnipeg on Thursday was from Indigenous broadcaster APTN, when she asked about federal plans to address child suicide.
“We have a lot more to do” worked in 2015. Trudeau is going to have to get mighty specific about these plans, and soon.
As for politics, it took nerve for Scheer to call out Trudeau’s racist choice and say, “What Canadians saw this evening is someone with a complete lack of judgment and integrity and someone who’s not fit to govern this country.”
Unlike Singh’s emotional response (“I say you are loved,” he told racialized Canadians), Scheer’s reaction was all political opportunism, no sympathy for the people actually hurting. Meanwhile we still await an apology from the man whose campaign retweeted a known promoter of neo-Nazi ideology, who legitimized a xenophobic Yellow Vest rally and who compared homosexuality to dogs’ tails.

There is also this one other little thing: since when did being racist disqualify anyone from the Canadian prime ministership?
This marks Shree Paradkar’s return to writing columns, after a year researching Education Without Oppression as the Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy. Her final Atkinson articles will be published in the coming days.
Shree Paradkar is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @ShreeParadkar

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Justin Trudeau’s election campaign rocked by multiple past incidents he acknowledges are racist

By Bruce Campion-SmithOttawa Bureau
Alex BallingallOttawa Bureau
Tonda MacCharlesOttawa Bureau

Thu., Sept. 19, 20195 min. read

OTTAWA—Hours after his campaign was rocked by revelations that Justin Trudeau appeared in brownface during his time as a teacher, a new video appears to show yet another incident.

The video posted by Global News shows a brief clip of Trudeau in blackface, wearing a white t-shirt, sticking his tongue out.

Liberal party spokesperson Zita Astravas confirmed to the Star that it’s Trudeau in the video, which she said dates from the early 1990s.

Trudeau was already facing wide condemnation after Time magazine published a photo showing the prime minister, then a teacher, wearing brownface makeup and a turban at a 2001 private school party.

At a hastily called news conference onboard his campaign plane Wednesday night, Trudeau said he didn’t think it was racist at the time, but now acknowledges that it was.

“I regret it deeply,” Trudeau said. “It’s something I shouldn’t have done, many years ago, and I recognize that I shouldn’t have done it.”

He admitted that it wasn’t his first time he had dressed in brownface. “When I was in high school I dressed up at a talent show and sang ‘Day-O,’” Trudeau said, adding quickly, “and put makeup on.”

The incident has garnered international attention, with news coverage by the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, BBC and the Guardian newspaper in the U.K.

It’s not clear that an apology and an appeal for forgiveness will be enough for Trudeau and his campaign for re-election for a second term in what was already a tight race with the Conservatives.

A photo showing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at a 2001 costume party ? his hands and face blackened with makeup ? was published by Time Magazine Wednesday. They say it was published in the yearbook from the West Point Grey Academy, a private school in Vancouver, B.C., where Trudeau worked as a teacher before entering politics.

After saying he was “shocked” by Trudeau’s behaviour Wednesday night, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer admitted Thursday that his campaign team had previously obtained a video of Trudeau in blackface and leaked it to Global News.

Scheer said Trudeau “failed to be honest” Wednesday night when he admitted to two instances of wearing brown or blackface costumes, when three distinct instances had come to light by Thursday morning.

“I think Canadians might have been able to accept Justin Trudeau’s apology if he hadn’t lied about it,” Scheer told reporters at a campaing stop in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec.

“But he was asked specifically if there were other instances, and he said there was only one other incident. And now we know there are at least three (total). An apology based on a lie is not a real apology.”

A high school yearbook photo from Montreal's College Jean-de-Brebeuf shows Justin Trudeau in blackface, wearing bellbottoms, and a loud print jacket.

Scheer was asked if he had ever dressed up in a costume that could offend someone’s ethnicity or religion, he replied simply: “No.”

The Liberal campaign was scrambling Thursday. Trudeau is in Winnipeg but the carefully choreographed campaign schedule was ditched with no immediate events scheduled for him.

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His political rivals spoke out against Trudeau’s actions and the political fallout could worsen as the true impact of the images sinks in among Canadians.

On Thursday night, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh appeared visibly shaken as he spoke to reporters in Mississauga. The first leader of a major federal party who is not white, Singh has written in his memoir about fighting bullies who made racist comments about his brown skin and turban when he was growing up. His voice broke as he spoke about people of colour who may not have been able to fight for themselves like he did, and he said he hoped the sight of a Canadian prime minister in brownface wouldn’t shatter anyone’s sense of belonging in this country.

On Thursday, as news broke of the third instance of Trudeau in brown or blackface, Singh spoke to Newstalk 1010 radio about why such acts are racist.

“There’s a long history of mockery and ridiculing people for the way they look, and the use of brownface or blackface has really clearly been a part of racism,” he said. “It belittles and mocks the existence that someone lives.”

Politically, Singh argued the contrast between Trudeau as Liberal leader — with his public embrace of diversity and social acceptance — and Trudeau “in private” brings up questions about his character and sincerity. He said it will even “be tough” to shake Trudeau’s hand at the next leaders’ debate of the campaign.

Later, during an event at a restaurant in Hamilton, Singh questioned whether Trudeau has changed in the years since he dressed in brown face as a teacher in Vancouver. He pointed to an incident in March, when demonstrators unfurled a banner during a Liberal fundraiser in Toronto in an attempt to bring the prime minister’s attention to the mercury poisoning in Grassy Narrows First Nation. Trudeau sarcastically dismissed them as they were escorted out of the room, calling out: “Thank you very much for your donation tonight. I really appreciate it.” He later apologized.

“That speaks to someone who has not learned,” Singh said Thursday. “If someone is going to mock a community that’s suffering from mercury poisoning, I think Canadians are right to ask the question, is this someone that they want to continue to see as prime minister?”

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said that brownface is an act of “open mockery and racism.”

“It was just as racist in 2001 as it is in 2019. What Canadians saw this evening is someone with a complete lack of judgment and integrity and someone who’s not fit to govern this country,” said Scheer, who is expected to speak further on the topic Thursday morning.

Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, has been under fire himself for his views on immigration, accusing Trudeau of being a “hypocrite.”

“I’m not going to accuse @JustinTrudeau of being a racist. But he’s the master of identity politics and the Libs just spent months accusing everyone of being white supremacists.

He definitely is the biggest hypocrite in the country,” Bernier said on Twitter.

Celina Caesar-Chavannes, a Black MP who resigned from the Liberal caucus alleging Trudeau treated her disrespectfully, posted on Twitter that the photo of the Liberal leader in brownface is inexcusable.

“The privilege continues. There is no excuse for this. Apology is a first step. You should be aware of the history of #blackface and racism in this country and others. Apparently #diversityisyourstrength? Deeply disappointed,” she wrote.

The brownface incident happened at an “Arabian Nights” themed party hosted by West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver, where Trudeau, then 29, was a teacher.

Bruce Campion-Smith is an Ottawa-based reporter covering national politics. Follow him on Twitter: @yowflier Alex Ballingall is an Ottawa-based reporter covering national politics. Follow him on Twitter: @aballinga Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics. Follow her on Twitter: @tondamacc

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