What Will You Do?

After the recent US elections, some people in Toronto decided that this gave them license to be openly racist.  This disturbed the majority of people who became equally open about their beliefs.

One incident involving an angry young man on a Toronto street car was of course filmed by an onlooker and put on youtube.  Apparently it all started when an older woman asked the young man to turn down the volume on his device.  The young man got angry and another passenger became involved.  The young man started hurling racial slurs and then a group of younger women got involved trying to get the man to calm down and get off the street car.  The young man kept going, invoking the name of the president elect.  The driver also tried to calm the young man down with no success.  He eventually got off of the street car still yelling.  Although this was a disturbing incident for all involved and for those viewing it, what stood out for me was how the young women stood up to the man, protecting the racialized man who became the target.  They did not sit by and watch it happen.

Around the same time, posters showed up in an East end neighbourhood trying to solicit “white people” to join the alt-right movement.  Residents took them down and the police are investigating.  Now a new neighbourhood group called the East End Anti-Racism Collective is organizing an event to celebrate diversity and to speak out against racism and violence.  Their posters which are also on plain white paper say “I heart Diversity”.  Local politicians and the local community association say they will take positive actions to counteract the racist ones.

Poster put up to replace racist one

In the same newspaper that I read about the pro-diversity event, I learned that Toronto has become a model for other countries working at integrating newcomers.  Toronto started to get attention earlier this year when over five thousand Syrian refugees were welcomed by private and government sponsors to the city.  Hundreds of people from The Netherlands, Britain, Sweden and the US have come to learn about the resettlement program.  Montreal is modelling its own Newcomer Office after the one in Toronto. The article in the Toronto Metro News quotes Councillor Joe Mihevc as saying “that most of the countries visiting have been plagued with ‘anti-immigrant sentiments,’ and it’s encouraging that Toronto remains a ‘city of hope even in the middle of all the Trumpism.’”

The shocking results of the US election have many people thinking about what their own response to this outcome can be.  I said the day after the election to some people that I felt that I need to be more respectful, kinder to balance this fear and hate.  A few people told me that that was exactly how they felt. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning that “evil is good people doing nothing.”  That definition which appears counter intuitive when we like to think of evil as something out there, has always challenged me to find a response that feels true to my values.

Some people believe that working in the negative is not very effective, especially when communicating with animals and children.  They don’t understand negatives very well. Saying, “don’t jump on the couch,” makes them first picture jumping on the couch and then trying to picture the opposite.  It is complicated.  Likewise, hating racists will leave us feeling bad.  It’s like taking poison and hoping someone else dies. Instead, I think we have to look inside of ourselves and discover what we would like our world to look like, to sound like, to feel like.  And then as Gandhi said, “be the change we want to see.”  That might look like standing up against injustice and it might also look like creating communities where diversity is celebrated, where we learn from one another and enjoy our differences.

This is not a new idea.  But in the face of overt racism and sexism doing nothing is like tacit approval at best.  Perhaps the sheer ugliness of what is being promoted in the US will shock us out of complacency and draw the goodness out of us into the light of day.  Not only do we have to stand up for our values, but we have to live them, be them. That will be good for us and for the world.