The cause of justice requires us to wage a struggle on many fronts. Struggles against colonialism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia are only some of those fronts. Each struggle is complex and together, they are more complex. This is not to say that they are too complex to be taken on but rather that we need to spend some energy in thinking critically about how to engage them. Too many activists however try to depend on simple stories to understand and discuss the issues that make life so unreasonably difficult for people. We have to be prepared to face up to the complicated nature of the issues and how they often intersect. Rick Sin (2021, forthcoming) states that “… social relations are multifaceted, multilayered, interwoven and inseparable from power relations and social struggles, which assists in understanding the complexities of marginalization. For example, poverty is a class phenomenon but is also often racialized and gendered, increasing the marginalization of Indigenous and Black people who live in poverty.”
I’m going to take just three examples that suggested themselves to me from statements I came across, posted on Facebook, to discuss how we frequently attempt to think of the issues, each one or all of them, as simple, yes/no, good/evil categories. Following that I am going to posit three principles that can begin to help us to become more humane and more effective in our thinking.
Dealing with the John A McDonald Legacy
The issue of how progressives should deal with the legacy of John A. McDonald has emerged as a somewhat contentious subject for us on the Left. On the one hand it has clearly been demonstrated that he is implicated, up to his eyeballs, in two of the signature colonial genocidal atrocities in early Canadian history, the “clearing of the planes’, (Dashuk, 2013) and the creation and the development of residential schools. (Carleton, 2017) On the other hand, he clearly is justly remembered, along with others like Darcy McGee,1 as founding a Canada that prevented the country from being absorbed into the USA. Secondly, because of his “founding policies” the country has grown, in some significant ways, into a very distinct, less individualist and more open country. We are not a country without serious problems of inequality but there are very few Canadians who would trade the issues we have faced in the last forty or fifty years with those of the USA.2
One Facebook comment was in response to a picture of a statue of McDonald which someone has sprayed with some red paint. One of the responses was in the form of an interesting question:
I’m going to take just three examples that suggested themselves to me from statements I came across, posted on Facebook, to discuss how we frequently attempt to think of the issues, each one or all of them, as simple, yes/no, good/evil categories. Following that I am going to posit three principles that can begin to help us to become more humane and more effective in our thinking.
Dealing with the John A McDonald Legacy
The issue of how progressives should deal with the legacy of John A. McDonald has emerged as a somewhat contentious subject for us on the Left. On the one hand it has clearly been demonstrated that he is implicated, up to his eyeballs, in two of the signature colonial genocidal atrocities in early Canadian history, the “clearing of the planes’, (Dashuk, 2013) and the creation and the development of residential schools. (Carleton, 2017) On the other hand, he clearly is justly remembered, along with others like Darcy McGee,1 as founding a Canada that prevented the country from being absorbed into the USA. Secondly, because of his “founding policies” the country has grown, in some significant ways, into a very distinct, less individualist and more open country. We are not a country without serious problems of inequality but there are very few Canadians who would trade the issues we have faced in the last forty or fifty years with those of the USA.2
One Facebook comment was in response to a picture of a statue of McDonald which someone has sprayed with some red paint. One of the responses was in the form of an interesting question:
We know that McDonald’s crimes were so horrific that there really is no redeeming factor for the man. That being said, many historians do believe that if it wasn’t for McDonald and his close friend and colleague George Etienne Cartier Canada would have been absorbed by the United States - any thoughts?
More than one comment criticized the person for even asking the question, pointing out the truth, that McDonald had committed, what would now be termed, “crimes against humanity”. The implication was that it was rather a dumb question and that all we needed to know were his crimes. But what do we do, simply dismiss the part he played in developing Canada as a country which, as pointed out, was founded on a very different philosophy and, while deeply flawed, different culture than the one of the USA, which we have seen play itself out for the last fifty years? Do we simply dismiss the need for justice for our Indigenous brothers and sisters or on the other hand reject our whole history as being irrevocably tainted by the very real “original sin?”.
We’d like it to be simple, good vs evil, but life really is much more complicated. History is like so many aspects of our lives, messy and full of contradictions and confusions. I have come to believe that it is crucial for our survival as a country that we come to grips with, and more broadly for, the advancement of those confusions and contradictions and begin to really think critically so we can organize and build strategies rather than mouth simple platitudes and yell slogans at each other.
Understanding and Dealing with the Climate Crisis
There was a comment on a post on fb that said something to the effect that human beings are “the virus” (it was accompanied by the required polar bear on an obviously shrinking ice flow) in so far as we are responsible for the growing climate change crisis.
I draw my response to that notion from a Facebook post I saw from Toronto activist and social critic, John Clarke on May 9. We need to avoid the notion that the climate crisis is simply the product of some inherent evil in human nature. Inuit people have shared their area of the world with all manner of flora and fauna for countless generations. Would we blame them for the melting of the arctic ice and generally the warming in their homeland?? Are small farmers in Africa responsible for the droughts that are becoming increasingly prevalent? The fact is that the climate crisis flows from the destructive irrationality of a social and economic system, based on the pursuit of short-term profits, that is incapable of developing a sustainable relationship with nature. As Karl Polanyi (2001), following on Marx, has convincingly shown, capitalism has commodified nature as well as human beings. As well, capitalism needs an ever expanding, ever consuming market economy which has plundered the environment for years. Repeating this notion, of humanity as a virus, diverts attention from challenging the system that, in its constant consumption of resources and pollution of the environment, is frying the planet. It directs our anger into a useless exercise in self loathing that achieves nothing. This in turn can lead to the conclusion that the solution is to eliminate as much of this human 'virus' as possible which in turn gives comfort to the deeply racist emphasis on population control focused on poor and oppressed countries. There are those who are only too happy to help deliver that message. We cannot organize to take on and defeat the enemies of the common good by starting from a place of self loathing.
How do we Decolonialize? And who is the We?
I recently came upon this post on Facebook. “You can’t decolonialize without hurting White feelings, you can’t decolonialize without hurting male feelings. We’ve been taking care of their feelings so long, it’s time to take care of ours.” It is one of those statements that taken superficially sounds sensible, but not if we think about it critically. First, we do obviously have to come to terms with the fact that decolonization is no walk in the park. We Whitestream people and males, etc. certainly have to take responsibility for the decolonizing (or the purging of society of the crime of “misogynism”, etc.) of ourselves and society, and racialized people and women have to struggle with decolonializing and shedding the patriarchal mindsets themselves. But this leads to two dangerous tendencies. First, it suggests that somehow if we Whitestream people can get our act together we can solve the problems of colonialism by simply sucking up our egos. Well, we can’t, at least we can’t without dialoguing with oppressed people. Second, it suggests that the oppressed can simply go it alone, get together and affirm their feelings and decolonialize themselves. Would that it was so?! Indeed, there is a strong stream in our colonial, racist societies that suggests something quite similar. “Why can’t Indigenous people (women, LGBT+) just get on with it?” In other words, “Go Fix Yourselves!” and leave us to carry on with our wonderful advanced civilized society. But isn’t that pretty much how we got here in the first place?
So, what are some ways “forward”?
First, let us be clear that it is absurd, and even dangerous, to think that groups each working in their/our own little cocoons are going to change anything. One thing that was identified (though perhaps not sufficiently) in the recent huge protests in the USA against the police murders of black people, was that in those crowds of individuals standing up to vicious state violence, there was a significant white, brown, Indigenous and Asian presence. Like it or not, and I rather like it, we (not including the monied classes of course) are in this together. As the wise old adage has it, “We can hang together or we most certainly hang separately.” So, we can, and must, support each other it the journey.
Second, we must learn, really learn, work at it, to think analytically, i.e., strategically, rather that either reactively or from a position of lofty moral certainty or outrage. We cannot depend on simple answers like “humanity is evil”. We need to learn to ask questions, not only of what is happening and who is causing it, but who benefits from the situation and how the situation got to this point? Then we must ask how they are doing it and how they have been getting away with this crap for so long?
Third, we need to learn to look for, search out and engage potential allies. We are not in this alone, or if we are we might as well admit that we are screwed. We need to develop the skills of dialogue. Not everyone or every group, can be or should be an ally in the search for social justice. One the other hand, even one-time antagonists can become, if not friends, at least allies in a struggle. Rick Sin (2021) again puts it nicely, “In social justice-oriented practice, intersectionality seeks to connect individuals and communities with overlapping and interconnected issues and concerns (forming a ‘common zone of defence’). It also seeks to identify strategic allies who will forge short- and long-term partnerships for social change.” I am a member, reluctant, of the colonial class in Canada and recognize that colonialism is a strategic tool of the monied (capitalist) classes to keep Indigenous people separated, and thus weakened, from other oppressed groups. But thanks to the openness and sophistication of Indigenous leaders and people, I have found myself deeply, and satisfyingly, involved in the struggle against the pernicious colonialism that exists in our country for going on 50 years.
None of this is easy but the journey to create a more just world is bloody complex, looking for simple solutions will only keep us spinning our wheels.
_____________________________________________________
Resources
Carleton, S. (2017). “John A. Macdonald was the real architect of residential schools”. Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/09/john-a-macdonald-was-the-real-architect-of-residential-schools.html. July 9 Daschuk, J. (2013). Clearing the Planes. University of Regina Press.
Polanyi, K. (2001). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time 2nd ed. Edition. Boston: Beacon Press.
Sin, R. (2021) in Lee, B. & Carranza, M. Social Justice Glossary. Toronto: CommonAct Press.
Wilson, DA. (2011). Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Volume 2: The Extreme Moderate, 1857-1868. McGill-Queen's University Press.
1 McGee was a refugee from Ireland fleeing the British who wanted him for his part in the freedom uprisings of 1848. He first went to the USA but soured on the way that country was treating its Irish population. He came to Canada and became deeply involved in the founding because he saw that this country had the potential to be a far more humane and inclusive country in terms of not only Irish Catholic refugees but other populations as well. (Wilson, 2011)
2 The issues of extreme gun violence, the continuing animosity to a national medical program and the explosion of White supremist insurrectionist groups are three of the most obvious.
We’d like it to be simple, good vs evil, but life really is much more complicated. History is like so many aspects of our lives, messy and full of contradictions and confusions. I have come to believe that it is crucial for our survival as a country that we come to grips with, and more broadly for, the advancement of those confusions and contradictions and begin to really think critically so we can organize and build strategies rather than mouth simple platitudes and yell slogans at each other.
Understanding and Dealing with the Climate Crisis
There was a comment on a post on fb that said something to the effect that human beings are “the virus” (it was accompanied by the required polar bear on an obviously shrinking ice flow) in so far as we are responsible for the growing climate change crisis.
I draw my response to that notion from a Facebook post I saw from Toronto activist and social critic, John Clarke on May 9. We need to avoid the notion that the climate crisis is simply the product of some inherent evil in human nature. Inuit people have shared their area of the world with all manner of flora and fauna for countless generations. Would we blame them for the melting of the arctic ice and generally the warming in their homeland?? Are small farmers in Africa responsible for the droughts that are becoming increasingly prevalent? The fact is that the climate crisis flows from the destructive irrationality of a social and economic system, based on the pursuit of short-term profits, that is incapable of developing a sustainable relationship with nature. As Karl Polanyi (2001), following on Marx, has convincingly shown, capitalism has commodified nature as well as human beings. As well, capitalism needs an ever expanding, ever consuming market economy which has plundered the environment for years. Repeating this notion, of humanity as a virus, diverts attention from challenging the system that, in its constant consumption of resources and pollution of the environment, is frying the planet. It directs our anger into a useless exercise in self loathing that achieves nothing. This in turn can lead to the conclusion that the solution is to eliminate as much of this human 'virus' as possible which in turn gives comfort to the deeply racist emphasis on population control focused on poor and oppressed countries. There are those who are only too happy to help deliver that message. We cannot organize to take on and defeat the enemies of the common good by starting from a place of self loathing.
How do we Decolonialize? And who is the We?
I recently came upon this post on Facebook. “You can’t decolonialize without hurting White feelings, you can’t decolonialize without hurting male feelings. We’ve been taking care of their feelings so long, it’s time to take care of ours.” It is one of those statements that taken superficially sounds sensible, but not if we think about it critically. First, we do obviously have to come to terms with the fact that decolonization is no walk in the park. We Whitestream people and males, etc. certainly have to take responsibility for the decolonizing (or the purging of society of the crime of “misogynism”, etc.) of ourselves and society, and racialized people and women have to struggle with decolonializing and shedding the patriarchal mindsets themselves. But this leads to two dangerous tendencies. First, it suggests that somehow if we Whitestream people can get our act together we can solve the problems of colonialism by simply sucking up our egos. Well, we can’t, at least we can’t without dialoguing with oppressed people. Second, it suggests that the oppressed can simply go it alone, get together and affirm their feelings and decolonialize themselves. Would that it was so?! Indeed, there is a strong stream in our colonial, racist societies that suggests something quite similar. “Why can’t Indigenous people (women, LGBT+) just get on with it?” In other words, “Go Fix Yourselves!” and leave us to carry on with our wonderful advanced civilized society. But isn’t that pretty much how we got here in the first place?
So, what are some ways “forward”?
First, let us be clear that it is absurd, and even dangerous, to think that groups each working in their/our own little cocoons are going to change anything. One thing that was identified (though perhaps not sufficiently) in the recent huge protests in the USA against the police murders of black people, was that in those crowds of individuals standing up to vicious state violence, there was a significant white, brown, Indigenous and Asian presence. Like it or not, and I rather like it, we (not including the monied classes of course) are in this together. As the wise old adage has it, “We can hang together or we most certainly hang separately.” So, we can, and must, support each other it the journey.
Second, we must learn, really learn, work at it, to think analytically, i.e., strategically, rather that either reactively or from a position of lofty moral certainty or outrage. We cannot depend on simple answers like “humanity is evil”. We need to learn to ask questions, not only of what is happening and who is causing it, but who benefits from the situation and how the situation got to this point? Then we must ask how they are doing it and how they have been getting away with this crap for so long?
Third, we need to learn to look for, search out and engage potential allies. We are not in this alone, or if we are we might as well admit that we are screwed. We need to develop the skills of dialogue. Not everyone or every group, can be or should be an ally in the search for social justice. One the other hand, even one-time antagonists can become, if not friends, at least allies in a struggle. Rick Sin (2021) again puts it nicely, “In social justice-oriented practice, intersectionality seeks to connect individuals and communities with overlapping and interconnected issues and concerns (forming a ‘common zone of defence’). It also seeks to identify strategic allies who will forge short- and long-term partnerships for social change.” I am a member, reluctant, of the colonial class in Canada and recognize that colonialism is a strategic tool of the monied (capitalist) classes to keep Indigenous people separated, and thus weakened, from other oppressed groups. But thanks to the openness and sophistication of Indigenous leaders and people, I have found myself deeply, and satisfyingly, involved in the struggle against the pernicious colonialism that exists in our country for going on 50 years.
None of this is easy but the journey to create a more just world is bloody complex, looking for simple solutions will only keep us spinning our wheels.
_____________________________________________________
Resources
Carleton, S. (2017). “John A. Macdonald was the real architect of residential schools”. Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/09/john-a-macdonald-was-the-real-architect-of-residential-schools.html. July 9 Daschuk, J. (2013). Clearing the Planes. University of Regina Press.
Polanyi, K. (2001). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time 2nd ed. Edition. Boston: Beacon Press.
Sin, R. (2021) in Lee, B. & Carranza, M. Social Justice Glossary. Toronto: CommonAct Press.
Wilson, DA. (2011). Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Volume 2: The Extreme Moderate, 1857-1868. McGill-Queen's University Press.
1 McGee was a refugee from Ireland fleeing the British who wanted him for his part in the freedom uprisings of 1848. He first went to the USA but soured on the way that country was treating its Irish population. He came to Canada and became deeply involved in the founding because he saw that this country had the potential to be a far more humane and inclusive country in terms of not only Irish Catholic refugees but other populations as well. (Wilson, 2011)
2 The issues of extreme gun violence, the continuing animosity to a national medical program and the explosion of White supremist insurrectionist groups are three of the most obvious.
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