The post Resources For White Allies Seeking Ways To Combat Racism appeared first on Kirsten Doyle.
]]>Here, I am gathering some resources for white people who are seeking ways to support anti-racism.
We’ll start off with a Facebook post. The images of the post can be viewed below.
Next, someone came up with this great visual of a reading list. Click on the image to expand it and see the titles.
The next resource is a handy guide for people who have posted their outrage on social media but want to take real action. See the images below.
Whether you are a Black person or POC, or a white ally looking for ways to help, I invite you to send me any further resources that I have not listed here or in the description of the YouTube video.
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]]>The post 10 Tips For Staying Sane During A Global Pandemic appeared first on Kirsten Doyle.
]]>No matter how difficult life was to begin with, the current pandemic has, for most of us, made it even harder. Families are financially strapped, kids are missing their school friends, and parents everywhere are united in their chorus of, “If I have to cook one more meal…”
What follows is my list of pandemic survival tips. If you have any to add, drop them in the comments. Lord knows we all need all the help and advice we can get.
Being housebound during a pandemic has a way of making you even busier than usual. Not only do you still have your usual work and household responsibilities, now you’re doing everything remotely and trying to manage the kids’ emergency remote learning. Everyone is suddenly home all the time, which means 100% of the family’s meals have to be catered from your very own kitchen.
It’s a lot to handle. The constant busy-ness is overwhelming, and it can do a real number on your mental health. So take time for yourself without feeling guilty about it. Read the book. Watch an episode of that TV show you’ve been meaning to binge-watch. Take an extra-long shower just so you can be alone for a few minutes more.
During the first week of quarantine, I think I only made it out of my pyjamas once. I mean, it’s not like I had anywhere to go. After that first week, though, I realized that not getting dressed was amplifying my anxiety.
I’m not saying I wear business suits every day. Leggings and T-shirts are fine, and if my hair is combed and my teeth are brushed I’m good to go. What I’m wearing is far less important than the psychological impact of actually getting properly prepared for a productive day.
You know those silly little things that get under your skin? Like family members leaving empty milk cartons in the fridge or the cat shedding all over your clean black pants? With so much stress going on, do yourself a favour and just let those things go. Sure, mention the milk carton to your kids and gently get the cat off your pants, but try not to get upset about it. Stress about even the smallest things can take up a lot of space in our heads, and right now, we all have bigger things to be worrying about, like how to get groceries without contracting a potentially life-threatening virus.
It’s all very well deciding not to sweat the small stuff, but what about the big stuff? This pandemic is forcing a lot of people to change their plans. And we’re not talking about rescheduling a weekend barbecue. We’re talking about huge, life-changing plans, like going to college or buying a house.
At first glance, you may think big plans are set in stone. But if those plans were made before the world turned upside down, you may need to reconsider them, or at least think about how you will execute them. This may mean postponing college for a year, or holding off on a cross-country relocation. It might be a huge let down, but releasing yourself from the obligation to go through with big plans that no longer work can be immensely liberating.
The search string “COVID-19” returns almost four billion results on Google. The problem is that most of what you read on the Internet is pure crap. Of course, social media is teeming with people who aren’t going to let facts get in the way of some good sensationalism, and what results is a sea of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and “stories” that serve no purpose other than to instil fear.
You’ll thank yourself later if you filter the information you are receiving, block or temporarily mute the questionable sources, and actively seek out credible sources that can state the facts without the hype.
This pandemic has made the world seem very large. With travel bans and lockdowns in place, my family in South Africa is physically inaccessible to me for the first time since I moved to Canada almost twenty years ago.
Fortunately, one thing the pandemic has not taken away from us is the Internet. We are able to instantly check in with loved ones, no matter how far away they are. I cannot imagine what this would have been like, say, in the 1970s, when the only forms of trans-Atlantic communication were snail mail and ridiculously expensive landlines.
Yes, I know. It feels as if we’re going to be stuck at home forever, and that feeling only magnifies every time we see social media posts about neighbours having parties, or people going to the beach in their droves. But as confined as we’re feeling, this pandemic will end eventually, and we should have something to look forward to when it does. Whether it’s a haircut or a holiday, put something in your calendar that you can be excited about.
You’ve heard the saying: opinions are like a$$holes – everyone has one. And opinions are certainly abounding on social media. Facebook these days has all the makings of a Survivor-like reality show. It has the drama, the judging, the tears, the backstabbing, the people getting together in cliques to bully other people – the only thing it doesn’t have is immunity idols and a million dollar prize.
If you want to stay sane, step back from this particular reality show. Say your piece if you need to – but remember that social media channels come with very handy mute features that may save you from falling down the rabbit hole of futile arguments.
Let’s make no bones about it. This pandemic sucks. The world is filled with the tragedy of people of all ages dying without a loved one by their side. I feel the humanity of this crisis intensely. There are days when the collective societal grief threatens to overtake me.
I know I’m not alone in this. And if you are feeling sad, frustrated, angry, frightened or all of the above, that’s OK. Have a good cry, and talk about how you feel with someone you trust. Or if you want to do things the way Arthur Dent did in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series, allow yourself a regular early morning yell of horror.
This crisis is awful. Already we are saying things like, “more deaths than Vietnam”. Our collective consciousness has been deeply impacted. When we’re telling stories of the pandemic twenty or thirty years from now, the hurt and the sadness will come through in our voices.
But this too shall pass. It will. Right now, while we are in the thick of it, it’s hard to see our way clear. But we just have to keep on making our way through the weeds, and eventually, we will emerge on the other side. At that point, we will take some time to mourn our dead and nurse our sick back to health. And then we will hopefully take the lessons we are learning from this and use them to build a future that is better and stronger.
We just have to have faith that we will get there.
Image by Omni Matryx from Pixabay
By Kirsten Doyle
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]]>Trustee elections have been given scant coverage in the past, with most people voting for incumbents or candidates who could afford to generate name recognition by paying for multiple mail outs of full-page glossy brochures. In most prior elections, about 15% of people who have cast a ballot did not vote for any trustee candidate at all.
I had hopes that this election would be different. Since taking office at the end of June, the Ontario provincial government has made several controversial moves that have targeted the education system. These include reverting to a 20-year-old sex ed curriculum that does not address topics like consent and online safety, taking away $100 million that had been earmarked for school repair and renewal projects, canceling a revised curriculum that would have boosted Indigenous content, and pushing for a blanket ban on cellphones in classrooms in spite of evidence that these tools can boost learning, especially in schools that do not have easy access to technology.
I hoped that with education taking such a hit, media and community organizations would be concerned enough to give trustee candidates a forum where they could talk about their platforms. Now more than ever before, we need strong voices in the school boards to speak up for our students and their families, and to rage against the machine of political ruthlessness. Voters needed the opportunity to make an informed decision about who they were sending to the school boards.
And yet the media was almost completely silent about the trustee elections. Coverage about who was running where and who stood for what did not include trustee candidates. In the ward I was running in, neither of the two all-candidate debates included those running for trustee. The only forum we were given was a meet-and-greet space at a city council candidate debate – and that only happened because I contacted the organizers and requested it.
This is not to say that people didn’t care. Many did, judging by the number of emails I received from voters wanting to know my position on certain issues. But in the end, we got to Election Day with thousands of people not even knowing what a trustee does. When all was said and done, about one-fifth of people who voted in my ward did not cast a vote for a trustee.
This is not intended to be a rant about the fact that I did not win the election. I would be writing pretty much the same thing if I had. Regardless of the outcome, I believe that the media has a responsibility to give more airtime to the trustee elections, and I believe that the organizers of all-candidate debates have a responsibility to include the trustee candidates. Knowledge is power, and by ignoring this important element of the municipal elections, we are taking away the power of voters to make an informed choice at the polls.
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]]>The post On My Soap Box: Have Some Respect For The Parkland Kids appeared first on Kirsten Doyle.
]]>Over the weekend, we saw the young people of America – indeed, the world – come together in a spectacular way to protest gun violence in schools. Several kids gave speeches asking for sensible gun laws so that their schools can be safe.
Some of the things I have seen in social media and on the news in the days since then have, quite frankly, sickened me.
Right-wing conservatives have been flinging around a Photoshopped image of Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez ripping up the constitution. In reality, she was ripping up a target poster, but the image was doctored to fit the narrative of the gun lobby.
Twitter users have been posting an image of a young woman – who they claim to be Emma Gonzalez – vandalizing a truck belonging to a Second Amendment supporter. It takes less than half a minute on Google to learn that this image is actually a decade-old picture of Britney Spears on a rampage. And yet the President of the United States himself has shared this lie on Twitter.
David Hogg, another survivor of the Parkland shooting, has been the target of countless hoaxes and fake stories. Depending on which lie you read, he is a crisis actor (he isn’t), he was not at school at the time of the shooting (he was), and he doesn’t even attend that particular school (he does).
And here’s my personal favourite: former GOP senator Rick Santorum stated that kids should not be calling for changes to the gun laws. They should be learning CPR “instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem.”
Listen. These are kids who have survived a terrifying ordeal in which their friends died. Children, folks. They are children. To put the solution of such a horrendous problem on their shoulders is despicable. They should be looking to someone else – the grownups of the world – to solve the problem. Why? BECAUSE IT’S OUR JOB TO PROTECT THE KIDS IN OUR COMMUNITIES.
What these young people are asking for isn’t even unreasonable. It’s not like they’re asking for a trip to moon. Here’s the sum total of what they want, in just one sentence: they want to be able to go to school without having their brains blown out.
The protection of their lives is such a basic request, and yet people are responding by mocking them, spreading lies about them, implying that they are to blame, and even threatening violence against them.
And. That. Is. Sick.
It is sick.
And if you are okay with that, then I really do not want to know you. And I say that without any apology whatsoever.
By Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit: CoraDove. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
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]]>With that decision made, all I had to do to kick off my weekly Soap Box was look for something that would rile me up.
Cue the #WalkUpNotOut movement.
#WalkUpNotOut arose in response to the US national school walkout led by kids who are understandably fed up with their schools being shot up. The call to action takes various forms, but the general gist is this:
Instead of staging a walk-out to protest the fact that the lack of sensible gun laws makes schools inherently unsafe, students should walk up to some kid in their class who is bullied or ostracized, and be nice to them. This is based on the idea that the perpetrators of school shootings are kids who are bullied to the point where they finally snap and pull out an assault weapon.
Look. I’m not arguing with the validity of teaching kids to be kind to one another. On the contrary, that should be an inherent part of life. If I ever caught my son being a bully, he would be in the most unbelievable amount of trouble. Fortunately, I don’t have that problem, because empathy is one of his dominant character traits. He is the kid who defends those who are being picked on. He is a staunch advocate for his autistic brother – indeed, for anyone who is in any way “different”.
So, yes. Let’s teach our kids to be kind. Let’s encourage them to stand up for others, not only on #WalkUpNotOut day, but every single day.
I am fully in support of that.
What I am not in support of is blaming the victims of gun violence for not being nice enough to the people who killed them. If some kid is angry enough, desperate enough or just plain evil enough to pull out a gun and murder people, he or she is probably not going to be deterred by a friendly conversation in the cafeteria.
Yes, kids are responsible for not behaving like jerks to other kids. But in no way, shape or form are they responsible for preventing mass murder in their schools. Why? Because they are kids, and keeping them safe at school is the job of adults. It’s up to the grown-ups to ensure that adequate mental health services are provided, that bullies are appropriately dealt with, and that killing machines are not readily available to those who are unhinged enough to use them.
I am fed up with the victim-blaming that I have been seeing. I am tired of seeing social media posts that say, “These kids who are marching for gun legislation can’t even be bothered to stop bullying their peers.” I mean, that’s a pretty sweeping statement. It’s reasonable to assume that the protesters include a broad spectrum of students, from the bullies to the bullied and everyone in between.
Every single child has the right to go to school with a reasonable expectation that they will not be shot in their classroom before the day is out. Every child – and yes, that includes the bullies.
So let’s teach our kids to be kind and decent human beings. But let us not take away their right to expect a safe educational environment. To the kids who are speaking out, keep it up. Make your voices heard, long, loud and clear.
This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit: Jeffrey Bary. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
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]]>The post Stop Equating White Nationalists With Black Lives Matter appeared first on Kirsten Doyle.
]]>Stop it. Just stop.
For you to draw any equivalency whatsoever between the two is disgraceful, disrespectful, and insulting. I really shouldn’t have to explain the difference, but here it is, just in case you really are that stupid.
The phrase “Black lives matter” contains a silent “too”. BLM has never said that only Black lives matter. Black people are not trying to claim superiority over other people. What they are trying to claim is equality. They want the right to go out and buy Skittles without being murdered. They want to be able to follow police instructions without being shot. They want to be able to live from day to day without taking a bullet in the spine.
So stop it with your “all lives matter” crap. We white people in North America do not have to specifically state that our lives matter. It’s just kind of given.
Black people have to say it. They have to have an entire movement that exists for the sole purpose of reminding white people that their lives have value, and that they should be treated with the same dignity and respect as everyone else.
Now, let’s take a look at the so-called “alt-right” movement (and by the way, where did the phrase “alt-right” even come from? When did we stop referring to them as “Nazis”?).
Unlike the BLM protesters, the alt-right folks are not peacefully marching for their right to simply survive. They are showing up with torches and Swastikas and “Heil Hitler” salutes, loudly shouting for their “right” to claim superiority over everyone else.
Their message is clear: Black lives don’t matter.
Their survival is not threatened. They don’t wake up every morning wondering if they will still be alive to go to bed that night. They are simply pathetic excuses for human beings who want to assert their white privilege in the worst possible way. And when people – real, actual people with hearts and souls – push back, the alt-right people claim that they are the victims in all of this.
“Poor us, all we’re trying to do is assert our right to free speech and you’re trying to take our rights away because of our beliefs.”
No, nobody is trying to take your rights away. You, on the other hand, are trying to take away the rights of others.
“Everyone’s criticizing Trump, but Obama never condemned the BLM shootings of police officers in Dallas,” they cry, as they wave their Swastikas and their Confederate flags (and their tiki torches, which is a little bizarre).
First of all, there was no BLM shooting of police officers in Dallas. That incident was carried out by a lone gunman operating independently of BLM, during what had been a peaceful BLM protest. Secondly, Barack Obama did speak out against that tragedy. Thirdly, Obama is not the President right now, and he’s not the one defending Nazis and blaming the true victims.
And my personal favourite: “Just because my beliefs are different to yours, that doesn’t make me a bigot.”
Actually, if your belief is that black people are inferior to you and don’t have the same rights, it totally makes you a bigot.
The white supremacists/white nationalists/Nazis/alt-right appear to have forgotten which side of World War II America was fighting on. They make loud noises about respecting veterans, but through their actions, they are betraying every single soldier who fought against the Nazis.
If you are condoning the actions of the white nationalists in Charlottesville, and if you are in support of a President who insists that “all sides are to blame”, then you are on the same side as the monsters who were responsible for this:
I hope you’re proud.
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]]>The post Running After My Mojo appeared first on Kirsten Doyle.
]]>Looking back, I realized that my mojo had started to fade just before Christmas, when I discovered to my dismay that I had outgrown my very large sports bra. In spite of a workout regimen that included running, swimming and strength training, I was gaining weight. I mentally checked out of the idea of exercise. I mean, what was the point?
Disgusted with my body, I threw in the towel. Now the time has come for me to pick it up again. Apart from the fact that the sight of towels lying around drives me demented, there are a few reasons.
I can’t run for autism if I don’t run. It was the opportunity to do something for the autism community that got me off the couch almost eight years ago. Since then, I have run over forty races, including eight autism fundraising half-marathons, inspired by my own son with autism. If that’s not enough to keep me motivated, nothing will. And I wouldn’t be invited to participate in cool stuff like this video:
I kind of have a couple of races coming up. Six weeks from now I’ll be running the St. Paddy’s Day 5K with my eleven-year-old son, the same kid who ran the Zoo Run in 29 minutes and asked, when I showed up at the finish line six minutes later, what had taken me so long. Three months after that, I will be running a half-marathon on the Toronto Islands. I don’t have time to be wussing around complaining that my sports bra doesn’t fit.
I need to give myself a break. I am a 47-year-old woman in the throes of perimenopause. My estrogen levels are more volatile than the current state of American politics. My body is doing weird things, like gaining weight when it shouldn’t and burning up when it’s minus a gazillion degrees. My doctor assures me that this is all perfectly normal. Now is not the time for me to hating on my body.
Life is too short for excuses. Being too tired is not a reason to forego running. Neither is being short of time, or averse to poor weather conditions. If I really want to run, I will find a way to run, even if it means hitting up the lab rat machine at the gym. The only valid reason to not run, as far as I’m concerned, is if I have a broken leg or a punctured lung.
Running suits my goal-oriented personality. Some people are motivated by processes. Others are motivated by the results. I definitely fall into the latter category. The process of running a half-marathon is, to be frank, a bit torturous. By the time I hit my customary 18K wall, my legs are an agonized knot and sweat is pooling in all kinds of uncomfy places and making me chafe. But when I see the marker for the final kilometre and hear the finish line crowds, I get an energy kick out of nowhere, and I am able to sprint across the finish line. My final kilometre of a half-marathon is always my fastest. As I clutch my finisher’s medal and wrap my foil blanket around my shivering shoulders, I feel like I’m on top of the world. That moment makes all of the pain worthwhile.
So what does all of this mean? I’m going to compile a training schedule, order a bigger sports bra, and go out in search of my mojo. Sooner or later, I will find it. All I have to do is keep on running.
By Kirsten Doyle.
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]]>The post Mental Health Awareness: Join The Conversation appeared first on Kirsten Doyle.
]]>The stigma associated with mental illness is very real, and the only way to overcome it is by talking about it. In an effort to participate in a much-needed global discussion on the issue – a discussion that really needs to be ongoing – I asked some of my friends why mental health awareness matters to them. Their responses are below, shared with their permission, on condition of anonymity.
“Mental health awareness matters to me because I feel that my PTSD makes me defective, and of less value than my mentally healthy peers. I sometimes feel alone even when I am among people, and that bubble of isolation can be terrifying.”
“Mental health awareness matters to me because it is so grossly misunderstood by so many people through ignorance on their part.”
“Mental health awareness matters to me because it is a silent and misunderstood illness – one that nobody talks about because it is still taboo. Take the fear away for those of us who suffer in silence because no one wants to help.”
“Mental health awareness matters to me because nobody should be made to feel inferior, weak or ashamed for having a mental illness. You would never tell a diabetic that he can produce enough insulin if he’d only try hard enough! Anti-depressants are not “happy pills”. They are medications that can regulate brain chemistry so that a person can function. Having a mental illness does not mean that you are in any way inferior to anyone else – in fact, many people with mental illnesses have lived extremely successful lives. It is important to remove the stigma from these diagnoses so that more people can admit to having a mental illness, can be helped to live their best lives, and can mentor others who have the same challenges. The best thing I ever did for my family was to check myself in to a Psychiatric hospital for six weeks to get to the root of the depression that I’d been living with since I was 18 years old. I will probably need to take anti-depressants for the rest of my life, but it’s a small price to pay for living a “normal” life. I hold a full-time job and have a great relationship with my husband and children. It took years of therapy and “trial and error” to find the correct dosage and meds for me, but I’m proud of the person I am now. I consider myself a Depression Survivor. That’s why I’m willing to share my story with the world.”
“Mental health awareness matters to me because I’d go more crazy if I thought it was only me.”
“Mental health awareness matters to me because my fourteen-year-old son was a pallbearer for a fourteen-year-old friend eleven days before Christmas, and that’s horrific.”
“As someone who does struggle with depression, mental health awareness means it’s becoming more okay for me to admit that I am not okay. But there are still caveats to that which need to go away. It’s still a stigma for me to admit, particularly in the high-stress, cut-throat industry I am in, that I struggle sometimes to even get out of bed. That a shower feels like a victory. That I get home at night from a day of wearing a happy, hyper-competent mask, and collapse with barely enough energy to get a meal on the table. So while mental health awareness for me makes it easier to talk about my issues among friends, I’m hoping that those conversations begin to permeate corporate Canada and that the mental health of employees is taken seriously.”
“Mental health awareness matters to me because my mother was severely mentally ill, and it caused the children in our neighbourhood to fear her and harass us about our mother being a “witch” (to be fair, she did consider herself a “good” witch and wasn’t afraid to burn her candles in the back pasture at night).”
“Mental health awareness matters to me because I have been diagnosed bipolar, and both the boys are autistic, and the more awareness there is, the less damning a diagnosis is.”
Bell
January 25, 2017 is Bell Let’s Talk day in support of mental health initiatives. Join the global discussion today – Bell Canada will donate 5c to mental health initiatives for every post on Twitter or Instagram that includes the #BellLetsTalk hashtag.
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]]>The post The Dangers Of “Wait And See” In The Age Of Trump appeared first on Kirsten Doyle.
]]>Donald Trump is now the President of the United States. Very few people thought this would actually happen, including, I would venture to say, Mr. Trump himself. I think most of the world held onto an unrealistic hope, right up until the ninety ninth hour, that something would happen to prevent or delay him from taking the oath of office.
But it is a done deal, and now the world in general, and Americans in particular, have to adjust to this uncomfortable new reality.
There are people who are happy about Trump’s presidency, of course. They are the ones who are telling everyone else that “Trump is the President and you should respect him.” Ironically, many of these same people spent eight years saying unspeakably awful things about Barack Obama. They are the people who, having specifically voted for Trump “because he’s not a politician”, then went on to assert that Meryl Streep is unqualified to express her political opinions because she’s not a politician.
They are the people who are now saying that Americans should “give Trump a chance” and “we’ll just have to wait and see what happens”.
No.
If America waits and sees what happens, by the time they wake up and realize that this was a very bad idea, it will be too late.
People will find themselves penniless because they can no longer afford their mortgage payments. Unemployment will climb as laid-off workers wonder what happened to all of the jobs that Trump promised. The ninety-nine percent will be poorer because their taxes have been hiked to pay for a wall. There will be fewer social services and more people who need them.
Women and girls will be dying from unsafe abortions as a result of their reproductive rights being taken away (in case you’re wondering, banning abortions does not actually stop abortions – it merely drives women to seek dangerous alternatives).
Sexual assault will be on the rise because the man who now holds the highest office in America boasted about groping women without their consent, and his supporters dismissed this as “locker room talk”.
Not only will ISIS be alive and well, it will actually be stronger than it is now because of all of the hatred being directed toward American Muslims. More young men and women will die in wars as Trump imposes his special brand of bullying on the rest of the world. When black men and women are killed by police officers without provocation, authorities and the media will demonize the victim instead of bringing the perpetrator to justice.
I could go on and talk about the education system, health care, people with disabilities, climate change and a whole host of other things, but I don’t have the time to write it and you don’t have the time to read it. I assure you that none of it is good.
While you are waiting and seeing, America – while you are giving Trump a chance – bad things will be happening, and one day you will open your eyes and see the damage that has been done.
“Wait and see” is the most dangerous thing you could be doing right now. Whether you voted for Trump or not, you should hold your new president accountable for the wellbeing of your country. You need to make it known that you will not tolerate an erosion of your rights and freedoms. You need to give Trump the message that while he embarks on his mission to “make America great again”, he needs to make it great for all Americans, not just the rich white men.
Those who are protesting against Trump’s hateful rhetoric, I applaud you. Fight for your rights, don’t give up, and make your voice heard. Those who support Trump, join the fight. Make sure the man you put into the White House is held to the standards of integrity and humanity that have thus far been conspicuous in their absence.
Because if you don’t, Donald Trump will destroy your America too.
By Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit: Dave Newman. This picture has a Creative Commons attribution license.
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]]>I’m going to start this letter with a disclaimer: I am not an American. I am a Canadian citizen who voted for Justin Trudeau in the last federal election. That should give you an idea of which way I lean politically. If you were to look up the phrase “bleeding heart liberal” in a dictionary, you’d probably see a picture of me.
I have been quite vocal in expressing my opinions about (choke choke cough) US president-elect Donald Trump. Several of you have criticized me for this, basically saying that as a non-American, I do not have the right to an opinion about an issue that does not affect me. I believe that I’m entitled to have an opinion about anything I like, and I also believe it is disingenuous to state that this election does not affect anyone outside of the US borders.
But that is not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the fact that many of you – most of you, in fact – have made a point of stating that you do not condone racism, misogyny or xenophobia while refusing to speak out against Trump’s racism, misogyny and xenophobia. Whenever there has been a report of Trump insulting women, making fun of the disabled, proposing a ban on an entire group of people, or condoning sexual assault, your overwhelming response has been, “But Hillary!”
In essence, you have been defending the words and actions of a racist, misogynistic and xenophobic bully by ignoring those words and actions, and instead focusing on the words and actions of someone else.
For those of you who are going to argue with me over the meaning of the word “defending”, let me throw out the analogy of grade-schoolers, who are actually held to a higher standard than Donald Trump has been.
Let’s say Billy the fifth-grader is called into the principal’s office for grabbing a girl’s boob and then boasting about it to his friends. His parents are called, but instead of taking Billy to task for what he’s done, they say to the principal, “He shouldn’t get any consequences. What about Johnny? There are rumours that he grabbed a girl’s boob twice.”
In this fictional scenario, Billy’s parents did not actually say that they condoned Billy’s behaviour. But they did defend him by deflecting criticism to someone else. It doesn’t matter if Johnny grabbed a girl’s boob ten times. That doesn’t make what Billy did OK.
It’s the same with Donald Trump. If you cried out, “But Hillary!” instead of just saying that the guy was wrong to say and do the things he did, then you did defend him. And even if Hillary is the second coming of Attila the Hun, that doesn’t make what Trump says and does any less deplorable.
If you did not speak out against Trump’s statement that Mexicans are rapists and murderers (but he’s sure some of them are “nice people”), then you have contributed to a culture in which it is OK to judge people simply because of where they were born. If you dismissed the Trump tapes as “locker room talk” or deflected the discussion by talking about Bill Clinton, then you are a part of the rape culture that is pervasive in society. And if you are speaking out against the anti-Trump protests but saying nothing about the fact that the Ku Klux Klan is planning a parade to celebrate Trump’s victory, then you are complicit in racism and all of the ugliness that goes with it.
Maybe you don’t intend to be a part of all of these social ills. Maybe your actions – or your lack thereof – are rooted in thoughts that are deep in your subconscious. If that is the case, this might be a good time for you to look deep into your soul and decide what you want to do to help bring about real change and equality for everyone.
Sincerely,
Your Canadian neighbour
Original article by Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit: frankieleon. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
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