As you know, a Quebecer convicted of drug trafficking has received a lightened sentence because he is black and that blacks, Quebec and Canada are victims of systemic racism.
This judgment – a first in Quebec – has aroused many reactions.
Here are a few questions that I ask myself …
• If a white social assistant and a black dentist were arrested, accused and sentenced to the same crime, would they receive the same sentence? What would weigh the heaviest in the balance when it comes to deciding their sentence: their race or their social class?
• If Lionel Carmant, Normand Brathwaite, Gregory Charles, Pierre-Yves Lord, Mélissa Bédard, Marie-Josée Lord, Dany Laferrière, Corneille, Dominique Anglade, Sophie Fouron, Bruny Surin, Félix Auger-Aliassime and Anthony Kavanagh were condemned, would they also receive a lightened penalty? Or does this provision only aim at the disadvantaged blacks?
Luck Mervil, who has just been found guilty of sexual assault, deserves a light sentence because he is black?
• If I understand correctly, a white man who commits a crime is a criminal, but a black who commits a crime is a victim, right? It was the “white” company that prompted it to break the law? Is it not racist to say that people of black breed have no free will, that they are “predisposed” to commit crimes and that they are not responsible for their acts?
Is that not what racists say: that the behaviors of individuals are determined by the color of their skin? That a person’s breed defines it entirely?
• The statue that traditionally embodies justice has a headband, in order to show that justice is blind and impartial, that it is not based on the race, sex or the social position of the defendants when the time comes to judge them – in short, that everyone is equal to their eyes.
Should we replace your banner with a magnifying glass?
• It is said that blacks are victims of systemic racism, racism that affects all sectors of Quebec society. I therefore imagine that this systemic racism is also present in the justice system. Does this mean that only “racialized” judges should have the right to judge “racialized” defendants?
As long as fighting systemic racism, let’s go all the wayNo? If the whites all have a bias, prohibits white judges from judging blacks!
• It is said that journalists who cover judicial news should never focus on the accused’s race, that the color of their skin and their ethnocultural affiliation have nothing to do with the crime that they have presumed and what to make a link between the two is tendentious. Now, there, we are suddenly told that the breed counts.
So what is it? Does it count or it doesn’t matter?
• Do you really believe that it is by granting less severe sentences to “racialized” condemned people that we will fight prejudices? Something tells me that this justice with variable geometry is likely to feed resentment.
• What do we do with the defendants born of a mixed couple? A white father, a black mother – or vice versa. Which breed prevails over the other?
• By dint of always emphasizing the race of individuals, rather than trying not to see her as much as Martin Luther King wanted (“I dream that my four grandchildren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged on the color of their skin, but on the value of their character”), do we not nourish racism? Do we not make the breed the determining factor to judge someone?
• It is said that this measure (granting lighter sentences to “racialized” condemned) aims to fight the over -representation of blacks in prisons.
Compared to women, men are over -represented in prison institutions. Is it an injustice? If so, what do we do to correct it?
• Knowing that “racialized” criminals mostly make victims in their own community (Italian criminals who threaten the owners of Italian restaurants, the street gangs of Montreal-North who terrorize the black community), is it not discriminatory towards these communities to give light sentences to “racialized” criminals?
“Some remedies hurt more than good,” says the popular saying.
It applies as much to the remedies that we prescribe to cure physical illnesses as to those that are prescribed to cure social evils.
Typically Quebecois!
Last Saturday, I told you that I had to warn someone who had put his cell phone on a speaker and who spoke as if his conversation interested the whole earth.
A reader wrote to tell me that I only had to move if I didn’t want to hear it.
This is a typically Quebec reaction! The problem was not the guy who lacked civics, no, it was me!
Likewise, if you are angry because a Tim Hortons clerk only speaks to you in English, it is not him the problem, it is you who hold at all costs to what he is talking to you in your language!
We’re going to go far with people who think like that …
Babies Beige
In order not to “generate” their babies and protect them from chemical dyes, more and more millennial parents opt for neutral colors (beige, white, brown) when the time comes to paint the room of their baby.
Result: child psychiatrists fear that these “beige babies” lack visual stimulation.
It’s fine, wanting to raise your children in a neutral, sanitized world, which does not shock anyone and which looks like an Ikea catalog: but where is excitement? Pleasure?
Boredom is toxic too, right?
Long live wallpapers with cars, animals and rockets!
Hide these breasts!
In Denmark, we are going to dismantle a mermaid statue, because we judge our chest too imposing. This representation of a woman is sexist, it is said.
And what about all these ancient statues showing men with a flat stomach and large muscles? Aren’t they sexist too?
Quickly, hide these statues of Apollo which fill our museums and replace them with statues of Jean-Paul with a belly, drooping pectorals and skinny calves!
