Instead of dehumanizing people who engage in extremism inspired by hate and white supremacy, we should try to understand their humanity, and the experiences, pain and vulnerability fueling their inclination to violence.
Wakanda, the advanced fictional East African nation in Marvel Studios’ Black Panther film, is the the Black utopia imagined by the African diaspora and its allies since the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And Black Panther is the powerful, intelligent and compassionate Black superhero whose time has arrived.
Last week’s decision by an all-white jury to acquit Gerald Stanley, the killer of Colten Boushie, a young Indigenous man from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, calls for an overhaul of Canada’s settler-based legal system, and an investigation into the racism embedded within Canadian society and police forces.
While many Canadians often associate the continuing rise in white supremacist hate in Canada to US President Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric, the right-wing extremist movement was already “alive and well” in Canada, “with more than 100 active groups and well over 100 reported incidents of right-wing extremist violence in the country between 1980 and 2015.”
Quebec’s recent passage of Bill 62, which bans the wearing of the niqab in Quebec for people seeking access to public services, appeases the political demands of the ultra-right in the province, argues Yasmin Jiwani, a Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University.
Jagmeet Singh, a martial artist, Sikh lawyer, and newly-elected leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), uses love to challenge racism, Islamophobia and white supremacy in Canadian politics and society.
While Facebook professes a commitment to stopping hate, harassment and discrimination, the social media behemoth’s reporting policies and human moderators often punish users of color who speak out against racism or justifiably criticize white people.
Silencing white supremacists on the Internet would only lead to white feelings of persecution, paranoia, white genocide conspiracy theories and acts violence similar to those recently perpetrated by Anders Breivik and Rhodesia-inspired Dylann Roof.
