The Shotgun Blog
« Andrew Coyne on the Conservative Party of Canada | Main | Danielle Smith releases platform on democratic reform »
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Of Pride and Prejudice
There are some advantages to living in this brave new digital world. For instance, it is no longer such a safe world for thugs. David Samuel White, Adam David Huber and Robert William Rodgers learned this lesson the hard way when on July 3rd they were caught on digital camera assaulting Jay Philips while hurling racist taunts at him.
Jay Philips, whose mother is white and father was black, is familiar with being singled out for discrimination. But his father also taught him to stand up to bullies and that is exactly what he did despite being outnumbered three to one.
The three young hooligans eventually sped off in a truck and later that same evening attacked a young Caucasian man showing that their hatred and need for violence knows no racial bounds.
The video of their attack on Jay Philips, which was posted on YouTube, was certainly an eye opener for Courtenay BC’s predominantly white community.
The community responded admirably and residents organized a rally in support of Jay Philips and to speak out against hatred and violence.
A thousand people attended the July 9th event and speakers included Mayor Greg Phelps, Comox Pastor Maggie Enright, Wendledi Speck of the Native Friendship Centre as well as Jay Philips.
Jay Philips father, who passed away in December of 2008, had taught his son to not be racist, stand up for himself and “not to take shit from anyone.”
That is a lesson we as parents should instill in all our children. I certainly have in both my son and my daughter.
As a government relations consultants I have worked with quite a number of First Nations and Indian Bands. In 2000, I did some work with then Okanagan Indian Band Chief Dan Wilson.
I remember being horrified as he told me of how as a young man his father had been beaten to death on the streets of Vernon. It seems some of the local white lads had taken an exception to the fact that Dan’s father was a gifted athlete and had routinely bettered them in local baseball tournaments.
The one witness to the attack was a mildly retarded man whose testimony was dismissed by the judge. This was small town BC in the 1960s.
We’ve certainly come a long way since then but of course racism and discrimination still exist in many forms within Canada. I remember meeting a couple who had moved to Canada from Bulgaria. They had lived for a couple of years in Vancouver and then relocated to Victoria when the wife landed a job with the BC government.
They had invited me over for a beer and I asked them how they liked Victoria compared to Vancouver. I was expecting an answer along the lines of, it rains less here, or life is more slowly paced than Vancouver. Instead the jaw dropping comment the husband made was, “it’s really nice there’s a lot less Asians living here than in Vancouver.”
So even as we welcome people from around the world to live in Canada, the challenge will be for both long term residents and newcomers to learn to live in peaceful co-existence with one another.
Nowhere is that going to be more challenging than with regards to religion. At the school my son attends a couple of his friends were starting to fight over religion. One kid had parents who are devout Christians and the other devout Muslims. My son deftly solved the problem by explaining to both of them that all organized religion is equally ridiculous and full of arbitrary rules and mythology and the only thing more ridiculous was getting into a fight about it.
Thus my son was able to get the two of them to stop fighting and be friends again. Perhaps this is also an area where Canada has something to offer the world; by demonstrating that a healthy dose of skepticism towards all religious zealotry allows for much greater tolerance and peaceful co-existence amongst those of disparate faiths.
Posted by Mike Geoghegan on July 14, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
Very interesting post, Mike. You start off by condemning discrimination, and then at the end, make it perfectly clear that you consider religious people foolish. Perhaps you are not as tolerant as you like to think. Secular humanism has its zealots and mythologies too, you know.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-07-14 11:14:13 AM
The three hooligans attacked both a mixed race kid and later a white kid, but under present laws the two crimes would be treated differently even though the end result for the victim is the same. If we are seeking to promote "racism" and hatred, this is a good way to do it. The three should be charged and punished appropriately for their crime regardless of the colour of the victim or their colour, because that it what it is.
As for the immigrants' statement about Asians, who cares? There are probably more Asians that feel the same way about them. As long as neither seek to do violence to the other, it is very possible that one day they may revise their opinion.
I also think your son lucky that both the other boys did not pound him for his comments which were insulting to both of them. However, I suspect that their disagreement was deeper and religious differences were just the excuse they needed. Rather like a married couple getting into big fights over the toilet seat being up or down or the cap on the toothpaste. The problem is elsewhere.
Posted by: Alain | 2009-07-14 11:22:16 AM
Shane, Alain, bang on.
Posted by: TM | 2009-07-14 1:41:11 PM
No the problem was with regards to conflict over differing religious dogma and once that was rightfully put in perspective the conflict ended.
As for my son getting pounded, not likely as he has been blessed at age 13 with being 6 feet tall and he is also a star offensive lineman on his football team who is able to routinely flatten kids older than him.
Posted by: Mike Geoghegan | 2009-07-14 5:55:04 PM
Long standing dogmas can be the source of serious conflicts. They tend to resist other moral doctrines and therebye generate conflict. Far better are the infidels, who offer no systemic resistance beyond what their individual understanding can individually validate.
Peace through capitulation.
Posted by: Timothy Shaw-Zak | 2009-07-14 6:21:46 PM
"No the problem was with regards to conflict over differing religious dogma and once that was rightfully put in perspective the conflict ended."
Apparently your idea of putting religion in its proper perspective is to dismiss all of it as stupid, childish fables? You're a little dogmatic yourself, Mike. The only difference is that you are your own god.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-07-14 8:38:14 PM
Is there a correlation between being a government consultant and believing you can succesfully resolve everyone's differences by pointing out how ridiculous they are?
There's just something in there that doesn't compute properly.
Posted by: The original JC | 2009-07-14 9:11:53 PM
I am happy to respond to comments that do not rely on gross misrepresentations of what I actually wrote. The comment about me being my own God was good as I do appreciate a clever turn of phrase, so thank you for that.
Posted by: Mike Geoghegan | 2009-07-14 9:52:31 PM
We are all Children of God. We are Sons of God. We are Daughters of God. We have free will. We will freely fight each other. We know our Brothers and Sisters in God better than We know ourselves. That is why We seek some weapon or defence. We charge boldly into the fray or hunker down until the fray goes away. We seek shelter in the present, try to ignore the past, and worry that our future will be skewed or destroyed by our God-given siblings. We compete with and against our Brothers and Sisters to maintain a perceived status, or to gain an advantage, or to not become irrelevant. So will We continue to behave, forever under the eye of a suspiring God.
Posted by: dewp | 2009-07-14 10:57:12 PM
Post a comment