Response to Racism

Carrie M. Best a Black editor of The Clarion, a well known Black newspaper that was part of the New Glasgow community wrote a letter to the community of why we should stick up for the Blacks and the incidents that take place in their community and within their country,

Carrie Best

“It is sometimes said that those who seek to serve are ‘looking for trouble.’ There are some who think it better to follow the line of the least resistance, no matter how great the injury. Looking for trouble? How much better off the world would be if men of good will would look for trouble, find it, and while it is merely a cub, drag it out into the open, before it becomes the ferocious lion. Racial and Religious hatred is trouble of the gravest kind. It is a vicious, smoldering and insidious kind of trouble, born of fear and ignorance. It often lays dormant for years until some would be Hitler, Bilbo or Rankin emerges to fan the flame into an uncontrollable catastrophe. It is heartening to know how many trouble shooters have come to the aid of The Clarion since the disgraceful Roseland incident. They are convinced, as are we, that it is infinitely wiser to look for trouble than to have trouble looking for them” (Backhouse 1999, 248).

People continue to ignore race altogether allowing for racism to never end. People believe that they are not racist if they ignore race completely. When a racial incident happens for example, Viola’s incident at the theater, people merely take in what happened as racist and continue with their lives by ignoring the racial discrimination that takes place in our society. This Racial Liberalism continues to happen today in the 21^st century. As we see today, the case with Michael Brown, a Black man shot to death for no necessary reason. People put blame on radicalized minorities to ensure that they are not a racist individual. As Mills states, “Just as the white citizenry increasingly insist that the surest way of bringing about a raceless society is to ignore race and that those (largely people of colour) who still claim to see race are themselves the real racists”, proves that people will go out of their way to make sure that there actions seem not to be racist when actually they are brutally are.  Racism has not yet diminished as we see brutal deaths and public humiliation of black individuals who are left uncared for by the white citizens of North America. Viola Desmond was a victim of direct racism when she was dragged out of the Roseland Theater and humiliated by white individuals. 

Backhouse, Constance. 1999. Colour-Coded, A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.