https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-cbc-host-wendy-mesley-apologizes-for-using-a-certain-word-in-2/
De-fund
the Language Police
Some months ago,
retailers downtown demanded more police presence due to
an epidemic of shop-lifting. City Council refused to increase police
funding, so retailers hired private security. Then residents and
businesses called for more policing in other neighbourhoods as well,
when homeless camps arrived and drug-dealing, break-and-entering and
fights became frequent.
Now that demand for
“police visibility” has fallen right off the table. When
news broke of ugly police assaults on Blacks in the U.S., the pieces
on the civic board game were moved. Now we hear “de-fund the
police” in Canada too, some claiming that we are “just as
racist” as the U.S. Calls for increasing police presence were no
longer popular even though shop-lifting had been
increasing. During 2020 – the COVID period – business
break-ins increased by 567%.
"Ethnic minorities” are
not uniquely targeted by the overzealous security industry which replaces police and plainly stalks and spies on all shoppers. Plenty of incidents of
police harassing white people are listed in Canadian Police Complaint files, although discussion has been shaped around the “black lives matter”
theme.
Whatever the
reality of police behaviour, the censorship of discussion is real. Anti-white, anti-government graffiti on walls
are permitted, while their opposite would not be. Print and
broadcast media are running with the censorship ball, fearing to
become targets themselves of popular rage if they don't play the
right game. These media should be platforms for discussion, not shapers of discussion. Case in point: the CBC has dropped Stockwell
Day, a participant in its discussion panels, for expressing the view
that Canada is not, in terms of policy and institutions,
“systemically” racist.
Freedom of opinion
is not wanted on Canada's taxpayer-funded broadcaster. Yet what, we
might ask, is the point of an “open” panel discussion if the
moderator tells the participants ahead of time what they must say?
Are media outlets platforms for free speech, or for authoritarian
dictatorship? If a publicly-funded organ of communication is going to
fall on the anti-free-speech side, it's not doing its job. Should we
de-fund it then? A few days after the Day fuss, the CBC suspended veteran broadcaster Wendy Mesley -- for using “a word”.
Coyly, they refused to identify the word, but never mind, the language
police are happy to throw Mesley to the wolves without specifying the
crime. Guilt is assumed -- like that of a hooded black man when seen on a
city street on a dark night.
To point out that
the CBC is behaving dictatorially (dictating which diction is permitted) in the Stockwell Day example, is not to be a champion of
Stockwell Day, who not surprisingly has detractors (isn't he the guy
who gets his knowledge of science from the Book of Genesis?) The
point is that whatever the public policy of a government may be,
everyone has the right to think
independently.
Canada's
Constitution, government and public institutions protect equality
among ethnic groups: in terms of “system” Canada is not racist.
That doesn't mean private thoughts aren't racist, but these
cannot be forbidden, for they are private. Personal. Free opinion is by
definition idiosyncratic rather than ideological, free-range rather
than herded. Denunciation can't make race-based private thought less
race-based, only more private. Public policy rests on the views of
the majority – the "demos" of democracy – but a
healthy democracy also protects dissenting views. We hear a lot about
“diversity”, but government and media fear diverse opinion.
Few
Canadians defend aggressive, let alone violent, behaviour toward
others and few support non-equality under the law, considering that both repugnant and irrational. One can respect others' rights
without liking them however. One person might have good reason to
despise another. It's a personal feeling. Do we really want to criminalize feeling? Do we want to live in a
nation where citizens have no right to private thoughts? Private
Lives Matter.
We
are entitled to weigh evidence, make observations, develop
hypotheses. In schools they teach “critical thinking”
but they also impart the message that you can only be critical of
white people, politicians, or those you perceive as “privileged”. It's censorship, then, that's systemic.
The root meaning of the word privilege is “having access to
privacy”. Let's strive to make everyone privileged then, by
protecting everyone's right to private opinion. It shouldn't be banned by thought-control
ideologues. The latter shout loudest, while many of humanity's best
ideas have been passed down the ages in whispers. Someone, somewhere,
had disagreed with them, and tried to silence them.
Our
world is riddled with thought-police. A TV News channel asks a
21-year old black man who organizes a rally whether he believes
racism exists, knowing how he will reply (he having organized a rally
to oppose it). He speaks of being profiled by police in a case of
mistaken identity. Some of us have white friends who have been
detained by police in cases of mistaken identity and who, when taking
the police to court, were brushed off by the courts. If a black
person sues police in the present climate, they won't be brushed off,
for officials would fear being called racist.
Maybe, however, some black people don't want to be poster-figures for a movement.
Maybe they too want a private life. They have their own work to do
(as scientists, scholars, explorers, novelists or whatever) which may
have nothing to do with politics. You, Reader, might have a problem
with the idea that “Private Lives Matter” because you presume I express
it as a white person. But am I a white person? You don't know, and
being not “racialized” means you don't need to know, because it
doesn't matter.
What
matters is to let thought itself be free. Police do need to be
restrained in their treatment of citizens. The
language police also need to be restrained. Every dictatorship begins with censorship, but you cannot legislate feelings.
A.J.
