He purported to be taking responsibility, but he called the brownface he wore in that shocking Time Magazine photo “makeup.”
No sir.
Makeup is what people wear to enhance or improve the look of their skin. Makeup is what even I might wear to a wedding this weekend.
Brownface ain’t makeup. Brownface is having a laugh at someone with dark skin.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has confessed to two incidents of such “makeup” wearing — one when he was in high school and sang The Banana Boat song, or Day O, by the great Harry Belafonte; the other of course the ghastly picture of Trudeau, in turban and brownface, that was published late Wednesday by Time Magazine.
In the picture, a dark Trudeau hand is splayed comfortably on the upper chest of whom I presume was a pretty colleague at West Point Grey Academy, the posh private school in Vancouver where Trudeau worked as a teacher.
This picture dates to 2001, when Trudeau was not a kid, but a 29-year-old.
According to Time, the photo was published in the school’s yearbook, The View, and taken at an “Arabian Nights”-themed gala.
Trudeau is the only one in the picture wearing brownface.
The magazine got the picture from a Vancouver businessman who first saw it in July and thought it should be made public.
It seems unlikely to me that Trudeau would have forgotten either the incident or the picture that was taken, especially as over the years, white people wearing blackface came to be recognized as racist and absolutely toxic to politicians.
For instance, some of his staffers, including one who travels with him, are people of colour. One of his principal opponents is NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, a turbaned man of colour who has talked about the discrimination he’s faced.
Everyone should watch this response from Jagmeet Singh. I don't think you can say it better than this pic.twitter.com/FCCXVEGgfD
— Robyn Urback (@RobynUrback) September 19, 2019
How does Trudeau explain to people like this what he was thinking?
And did he come clean with his staff, or those who recruited him to run in the first place? Did they do what is now called “due diligence” and go over his background thoroughly and scan social media?
I am not someone who subscribes to the one-strike-and-you’re-out rule. I agree with what the three party leaders now say about such gaffes (racist or homophobic posts, speeches, etc.), which is that they must be judged on a case-by-case basis. In general, I believe people deserve second and sometimes 15 chances, the 15 reserved for those who do something ridiculous as teenagers and who should be cut some slack.
But this is not how Trudeau has acted to the gaffes and mistakes of others.
When he was informed of alleged misdeeds by two of his MPs, Massimo Pacetti and Scott Andrews, Trudeau temporarily suspended them for “serious personal misconduct.” There never was a real investigation into the complaints, rather a secret review by a lawyer. And then they were permanently expelled from the Liberal caucus.
Even last week, when Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer refused to walk back comments he’d made about how “a single group of people” or one Indigenous group could “hold hostage” a pipeline that would greatly benefit many Indigenous groups, Trudeau was there to soberly shake his head in sadness and “deplore his perspective and the language he used.”
He is always quick to judge others, condemn them, and always with that rich Trudeau smarminess.
In other words, it’s his hypocrisy that is so galling.
And there’s another issue too, is which all parties indulge in but none so regularly or so callously as the Liberals, and that’s the using of immigrant groups as diversity props.
As Sukhi Sandhu, a community activist in Surrey, B.C., and a former vice-president of the B.C. chapter of the federal Liberal party, says furiously, “Immigrants have suffered from many types of institutionalized racism, while contributing to the community.” What they get in return, at least from the Liberals, he says, is exploitation and pandering.
As a leader with the Wake Up Surrey group, which is trying to fight the gun and gang violence rife in the city, Sandhu has been banging on doors in Ottawa for much of the past year to no avail.
“If we want to talk about anything other than diversity and immigration,” he says, “we get nowhere.
“Justin Trudeau is a fake, and for the first time in 30 years, I will not be voting Liberal.”
So, Trudeau can regret what he did, and say (a nice common touch) that he’s “pissed off” at himself, but as he kept talking Wednesday night, it was clear — by the references to brownface as makeup, by several allusions to the picture happening many years ago — that he was cutting himself the slack he has denied to so many others. He’s different, you see. He can judge the rest of us harshly, but not himself.
• Email: [email protected] | Twitter: blatchkiki
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
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