ROTHENBURGER: Why I’m willing to accept Justin Trudeau’s apology

But I accept his apology based on what I’ll call the balance of plausibilities. I believe he misunderstood what he was doing some 20 years ago when he dressed up like Aladdin of Arabian Nights and Harry Belafonte singing the iconic Banana Boat Song. For the latter, he’d have been better off dressing as one of the Muppets, who recorded a version of it with Belafonte.

Turns out he didn’t even get Aladdin right. The original Aladdin was Chinese, not Persian. (I had to look this up.) But blame Walt Disney for the confusion. Before Disney appropriated the story, there were what were called yellowface controversies as non-Asians played the lead role.

The newest video — which looks like it was taped before the Aladdin pix were taken — is still a bit of a mystery but it’s all part of Trudeau’s ignorant phase.

Ignorant, I mean, of the fact it was unacceptable.

Before rushing to condemn, however, we as individuals should think back to the 1990s and early 2000s and whether we had personal awareness of the blackface/ brownface issue. I’ll bet not. Then we should think about whether we were any more aware of it a few days ago, before the Trudeau story hit the fan.

It’s entirely plausible and, I think, likely, that Trudeau was not intentionally being offensive to people with dark skin. He didn’t know that what he was doing was racist.

When I was 10 years old, kids would take some pennies to the corner store and buy “n***** toes,” a licorice treat. The term was applied to Brazil nuts as well but the licorice under the candy counter is what I remember best. There was another one called “n***** babies,” shaped like — a baby.

It makes me cringe when I think about it now, just as it does when I remember the old rhyme that included the line, “Catch a n***** by the toe.” (It’s now “Catch a tiger by the toe.”) We sang “Ten Little Indians” in school. Children’s songs and folk songs are rife with racist origins.

In 2019, even using the “N” word to illustrate a point from the distant past makes me squirm. But nobody thought about it then, nobody thought it was racist. In our all-white, predominantly Christian community, we had no experience or understanding of people of colour, or what they faced.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that we Canadians awakened to the offensiveness of some of the terms we’d grown up with and took the “N” word out of our vocabulary.

Brownface/ blackface took longer. I don’t think we’d caught up by the 1990s or by 2001. In the U.S., the NAACP started calling it out in the 1950s, but as a country our history of racism is different, and our awareness has progressed at a different pace.

The blackface/ brownface issue has morphed over the years. It’s now more about cultural appropriation. We’re careful about Hallowe’en costumes. Black actors now play white historical characters, giving rise to the question, shouldn’t white actors be allowed to impersonate black or indigenous characters? By extension, shouldn’t it be OK for white people to dress up for a costume party as Aladdin, Harry Belafonte or Michael Jackson for that matter (OK, Michael Jackson is a whole other discussion)?

These are debates that have gone way beyond the truly cringe-worthy era of American jazz singer Al Jolson putting on blackface and singing “Mammy” in the 1940s, which was overt mockery. I don’t believe what Trudeau did was mockery, even though it was dumb.

Immediacy plays a role in this. Cultural sensitivities change. Time changes how we look at things; time changes who we are. There’s no evidence that Trudeau was ever a bigot, not in his 20s at an Arabian Nights-themed school gala, and not today. He’s a prime minister who has espoused inclusion.

It’s easy to be self-righteous. Easy for Andrew Scheer, who refuses to acknowledge his dismal record on same-sex rights, proclaims on one hand that candidates should be forgiven for past mistakes, then sanctimoniously preaches that Trudeau is unfit to govern.

Let’s not under-play it, though. Trudeau has embarrassed himself, his party, and — as you’ll know if you watch late-night television — our country. It’s enough to make Liberal candidates cancel their roadside placard-waving parties and hide for a few days.

The upside of this sad situation is that it has dramatically raised awareness of the brownface/ blackface issue. If we didn’t know about it at the beginning of the week, we certainly do now. And we know it’s not OK.

Saying “sorry” is a very Canadian thing. So is forgiveness. I choose Canadian.

I’m very firmly in the “undecided” camp of voters. If I don’t vote for Trudeau, it won’t be because of his brownface controversy. There are a lot of other things to worry about.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and newspaper editor. He publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER: Why I’m willing to accept Justin Trudeau’s apology

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