Diversity our strength (someone tell the bigots)

Elizabeth Renzetti puncturing the myth of Toronto being welcoming of diversity, following a political panel of visible minority candidates:

It’s not just Toronto, of course. This week’s controversial Maclean’s cover story claiming Winnipeg is the most racist city in Canada highlighted the virulence of anti-aboriginal sentiment in the last municipal elections. As mayoral candidate Robert-Falcon Ouellette told the CBC last summer, “If there’s one person saying it, there’s 1,000 people thinking it.” (It should be noted that the man who was elected mayor, Brian Bowman, is Métis.)

As Ms. Chow said, “We’ve become complacent.” Because Canada’s largest city mostly trots along in peace and prosperity, it’s easy not to notice the bitter undercurrents that the past four years stirred up. Or perhaps to think that they’ve disappeared, along with the brothers who did the stirring. But that would be wishful thinking.

Politics is, of course, a hurly-burly – a brutal, elbows-up game. I don’t think any of the women who were on that panel thought otherwise when they stepped into public life. “I have very thick skin,” Ms. Chow said. “Probably too thick.” What they didn’t expect was the idea that they had no right to be in the game in the first place.

But those are precisely the kinds of candidates who should be playing the game. If we’re presented with more of the same faces touting more of the same platforms, an already apathetic, disillusioned electorate will switch off – in which case everyone loses.

And diversity among municipal elected representatives is proportionately less compared to other levels of government.

Diversity our strength (someone tell the bigots) – The Globe and Mail.