While the recent racial event in Grandin was a negative blemish on our city, it did have one positive aspect by its occurrence.
After nearly four years of silence and invisibility, our elected NDP MLA, Trevor Horne, finally surfaced.
His emergence was highlighted by holding a public forum regarding the racist threat that caused a local family to depart from their current home, a wise decision considering their children were threatened with physical violence.
The logic of holding a forum, however, is questionable, as one assumes the vast majority of all attendees will be opposed to racism. If so, then the process is in danger of “preaching to the converted.” However, I do not want to sound too negative, as the forum did give us an opportunity to see our current MLA, even if no one could remember what he looked like!
True racism is an ugly, disgusting human belief that condemns specific racial groups for no other reason than they are simply different in some meaningless way, and likely (although not always) in a minority.
Personally, for a long time I have been surprised that the Indigenous population of Canada is so incredibly tolerant and patient with the various federal and provincial governments they have been forced to negotiate with for the last 150 years.
Every treaty negotiated with Indigenous leaders has been broken and violated, and virtually every promise made to these leaders was ultimately useless. Even now, while our fool of a prime minister lavishes benefits, without end, on people entering our country illegally, countless residents on First Nations do not even have the benefit of clean drinking water.
The history of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people has been a clinic on how to use racism for “fun and profit,” and it remains the ugliest of all possible stains on Canada’s record for supporting human rights (rights that apparently do not apply to Indigenous people).
Unfortunately, over the last few years, the socialist mobs in both Canada and the U.S. have spent so much time labelling everyone, and everything, as “racist” that the word has lost all meaning.
You know the routine. If you don’t like the same muffins that I do, then I must be a “racist”.
If I disagree with any of your opinions, it’s all due to the fact that I’m a “racist”.
If anyone in St. Albert can explain to me why bran muffins are racist, but blueberry ones are not, I would appreciate being educated on this difference. It’s stupid, pointless, false, and eventually destroys the real meaning of racism; which is a tragedy, as true racism is a vile and evil attitude that really does need to be confronted.
Brian McLeod is a St. Albert resident.
