Bigots Are Everywhere
It hurts, it really does, to hear that a Canadian has become so fed up, so completely disheartened that he contemplates leaving the country of his birth for a safer haven. That respect for people has fallen to such a new low (or is it just now re-surfacing, at a time when we so love to congratulate ourselves that present-day Canada is truly race-blind and fully egalitarian?) is staggering to contemplate.None other than Oscar Peterson whose home is located in Mississauga, Ontario has revealed he has been subjected to drive-by racial slurs; thugs calling out his name and shouting racial invective. "Bigots are everywhere" he is reported to have remarked. In Canada, in middle-class Mississauga, in Ontario? Why are we so complacent? Why have we been so comfortable with the notion that we had successfully laid that dragon to rest?
Must people of colour be forever destined to fight a rearguard action against racial prejudice? May they never be permitted the comfort and security of full acceptance, equality, among others in our mixed and integrated society? Will we forever be plagued by this virulent disease of racial bigotry? Sadly, although we would dearly love to believe otherwise, each of those purely rhetorical questions is answered in the affirmative.
That this truly odious intolerance continues to raise its ugly head, within a society that prides itself on inclusiveness goes beyond comprehension. I'd like to declare its practise inhuman but unfortunately the tendency toward racial bias is all too human. One despairs at the disheartening conclusion born of miserably-predictable experience. We seem never to be destined to overcome this dreadful impulse to consider others among us as being less worthy than ourselves and those whom we closely resemble.
Mr. Peterson recalls his young school years when he was commonly heckled because he is black. He has, he says, endured more than his share of personal attacks, in Canada, in the United States where he has performed over the years as a world-renowned musician. Until the present time, he said, he has never been targetted for insults in his Mississauga community. But this event has shaken his faith in his country, and he claims he is ready to leave - for the West Indies.
That would be our loss.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 31, 2006
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