Events of the past week have crystalized a number of feelings inside me, and rather than do another “Fuck Canada Day” post (see my post on July 1, 2009) I thought I’d do something that I’ve meant to do for a long time.

I seem to need containment these days, or my blogs will just be a long scream of inarticulate anger. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just doesn’t make very interesting reading.

Canada’s anthem.

Those of us born here are taught it in school. Those who come here from elsewhere learn it. Or else.  Those who are Aboriginal are probably offended by the whole thing. As is anyone who calls themselves an ally.

O Canada, our home and native land

Many people have taken this line to pieces, most popularly, “our home ON native land”. But I still have a problem with this. Who is “our”? Anglos? The broader category “white folks”? Are white folks still the centre of the fucking universe? For fuck’s sake. And “home”, such a loaded term. Ward Churchill talked about colonization in a very personal way. Someone comes to your house, sits down and then says “Hey I live here now. Get the fuck out.” And when you protest you’re either taken out of your home, or killed. Or both.

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Toronto Star article, June 18, 2010

Her death sent shock waves through the city — and across the world — prompting heated debate on the hijab, the challenges of integration for newcomers, and whether her death was Toronto’s first crime of honour or a horrible case of domestic violence.

….

Media in Toronto and around the world immediately reported and continues to report that Aqsa was killed because she refused to wear the hijab. But it was much more complicated than that.

You know, if one were to never pay attention to feminists, including Muslim feminists, one would be rather perplexed about the horror, fear and isolation that Aqsa had in the last moments of her life, being killed by her father and brother. Nobody in any of the regular state intervention machines (her school, CAS, the police) did much of anything to help her, to listen to her about what she needed.

And since her murder (why the media keeps calling it her “death” is beyond me) the white establishment has been desperately trying to “understand”, from the mealy-center of the Toronto Star to the hard-core right of the Globe and Mail.

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I’ve wanted to write about this for a while, and then this article written by Eugenia Tsao  inspired me:

Smug Toronto Seethes as Tamils “Go Too Far”

“Tamil protests a test of our tolerance,” the Toronto Star pronounced, while the Globe and Mail chided the demonstrators for squandering public support with their disruptive tactics (“Tamils earn goodwill—then lose it,”  May 20).

“Ours, you see, is a tolerant society” Canadians smugly confide to visiting Americans. And while the line between tolerance and mere endurance is a slender one, few would deny Canadians’ infatuation with cultural diversity. We like to lunch on sushi and samosas, sport henna tattoos, practice yoga, wear paisley embroidery, listen to reggae, and hang feathered dreamcatchers from our rearview mirrors. We proudly subscribe to magazines like National Geographic for the exotic, high-contrast photography and romanticized verbal portraiture. We love falling asleep on the subway to a velvet medley of diasporic languages, and nothing delights us more than consuming enormous sandwiches filled with things like prosciutto and chorizo.

But we cannot eat acts of non-violent civil disobedience or wear political grievances, you see, and this confuses us.

Tsao is so right on. In fact, whenever I hear certain liberal multi-culti white folks in Toronto yammer on and on about cultural diversity, it’s almost always immediately followed up with some bull about how great it is that in Toronto they can have samples of cuisines from around the world.

Of course that is something that I, too, value about living in Toronto, however, to simply eat the other is not enough. Consuming culture (metaphorically) and food (literally) without a political understanding of struggles, power and colonialism, is just reiterating imperial power relations all over again.

Back to Tsao:

Rather than forcing the natives to dance for us at the crack of a whip, we expect them to do so voluntarily, citing our need for unending cultural enrichment and enlightenment, or their need to evince gratitude for our generous foreign policies. Rather than accusing them of high treason when they dare to publicize historical injustices in inconvenient—and unentertaining—ways, we cluck our tongues and accuse them of strategic imprudence. “Can’t you see you’re just alienating your audience?” we hiss, annoyed, mouths full of falafel and tandoori chicken.

Hot damn, I love this woman.