Skip to content →

Tag: Racism

The colour line in the U.S. presidential election

OCTOBER 15, 2012 – In the run-up to the November 2 presidential election in the United States, polls are indicating an almost evenly divided electorate. As of this writing, support for President Barack Obama was standing just above 46%, support for Republican challenger Mitt Romney just above 47% (RealClearPolitics). Given these figures, imagine entering a room of 200 randomly chosen U.S. voters, with people sitting at tables by party-affiliation, but with no table signs to indicate which party-table was which. To avoid a night of tea-party polemics, you might reasonably wish to find a table of Obama supporters, and you…

2 Comments

Behind Bolivia’s nationalization of Canadian mine

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012 – For the Financial Post, the actions of the Bolivian government in nationalizing a Canadian mine this summer, confirmed the country’s status as an “outlaw nation” (Grace, 2012). But for less biased observers, the reality was a little different. Responding to pressure from local indigenous communities the Bolivian government confirmed, August 2, that it would expropriate the operations of a Canadian-owned mining project. This represents in the short term, the success of local social movements in putting an end to violence created by the tactics of the corporation, and in the long term, one small step towards…

3 Comments

Golf’s colour line

The golfer, Eldrick “Tiger” Woods is back in the news, after winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational tournament on the Professional Golf Association (PGA) tour. This was his first PGA tour victory in 2-1/2 years. In that period of time, Woods has been in the news, not for his golf, but for his personal life. He is not the first successful PGA professional to from time to time have his personal life trump his golf game. John Daly comes to mind. But Daly is white, and Woods is black. The different colour of their skin has resulted in their personal “indiscretions”…

2 Comments

Focus on Tiger Woods – The Issue is Racism

December 11, 2010 (Last in a series of articles, “Reflections on 2010”) • Eldrick “Tiger” Woods might have lost his top spot in golf rankings in 2010, but he kept his place at the top of search engines around the world, coming in, for instance, at seven out of 10 for the year on searches carried out by Yahoo Canada.[1] Of course what drove this was not his golf game. For the first time since 1995, Woods did not win a tournament, let alone a major. The year 2010 saw his record 623-week reign as the world’s number one ranked…

2 Comments

Dudley Laws – 1934-2011

MARCH 30, 2011 – The passing of Dudley Laws is a blow to all supporters of justice and equality in Toronto. His life and accomplishments will be an ongoing inspiration to all those today, who seek to build a world without racism and oppression. I first encountered in Dudley in 1988 after the police shooting of Lester Donaldson, an African-Canadian suffering from depression, and partially paralyzed as the result of an earlier police shooting April 11 that year. August 9, in his Lauder Ave. home, he was killed by a bullet from the gun of Constable David Deviney. His wife…

Comments closed

The Gutter Press and the ‘War on Terror’

Letter to the Editor submitted to The Globe and Mail June 26, 2008 • George Bush is white. Stephen Harper is white. Tony Blair is white. So, I will now write about white terrorism as a plague covering the planet, given that several hundred thousand in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a result of the military actions of these white men, are dead, maimed and/or traumatized. I will use the term “honky.” Were I to do this, of course, and submitted it as an article to the very respected The Globe and Mail, it would be rejected as being inflammatory, crude…

Comments closed

‘I wouldn’t call it radical – I’d call it being Black in America’

Old sermons by Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor, have caused a storm of outrage to sweep through the presidential campaign in the United States. It is really a storm of hypocrisy. The outrage should be saved for the conditions faced by African Americans, conditions that remain appalling long after the end of slavery and Jim Crow. In one of the sermons, Wright says: “The government gives them [African Americans] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing…

One Comment

Government, police, racism to blame in Dudley George’s death

JUNE 1, 2007 – When Justice Sidney Linden finally tabled his long-awaited report into the death of Dudley George, there was applause in the courtroom from family and supporters of the slain indigenous activist. Twelve years ago, on September 6, 1995, a bullet from the gun of Ontario Provincial Police officer, Kenneth Deane, ended unarmed George’s life. He was only 38. Deane was found criminally negligent in George’s death, but didn’t serve a day in jail, getting two years less a day community service.[1] Linden’s report concluded that George’s death resulted from: Ottawa’s long-term neglect of indigenous land claims; the provincial…

Comments closed