Life As Performance Art 188

Monday, I listened to the all-candidates English debate on the radio for this current federal election, and with predictable results. Of course, so much of the conversation was so contentious, the candidates, with the exception of Jagmeet Singh (NDP) and Elizabeth May (Green) so ill-mannered, negative and (dare I day?), mutually abusive, that I really wanted to shut it off after the first five minutes. I didn't, and soldiered on listening for the next two hours to the mean-spirited squabbling of all six candidates (Junior, Andrew and the French whack job of the pee-pee party being all equally the most abominable), all of them competing to become our next prime minister. At least I was near the bathroom, in case I needed to throw up. Each candidate had a stock one-liner that set my teeth on edge. Even Jagmeet and Elizabeth, the two I am most inclined to favour. Being particularly concerned about the potentials for abuse, I was not pleased with Jagmeet's way of declaring that every progressive candidate would be in favour of dying with dignity (euphemism for mercy-killing), as if it is simply assumed that, as though we were all members of a well-integrated religious cult, that we are all going to be on the same page about absolutely every fine point of secular dogma, from choice to euthanasia to how we perceive and welcome transpeople (spoiler alert: I accept and welcome transmen and transwomen. However, do not expect me to believe that they are real men or real women, and yes, it is possible to hold both opinions without paradox or contradiction while using all the appropriate pronouns!) Very few self-avowed progressives seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that not every progressive voter is going to swallow the same entire omnibus of progressive causes. I have known people entirely in favour of universal child care, and maintaining the abolition of the death penalty, and a secure social safety net for all, while remaining firmly opposed to abortion ("choice" is the politically-correct euphemism, by the way, and if you must know, I completely respect a woman's right to decide what she is going to do with her body, and this supersedes any discomfort that I might have around the ethics of abortion). Similarly, anyone who is really progressive would be expected to swallow the Kool Aid about government-sanctioned mercy killing. I accept that in some really extreme cases that it might be okay to consent to a dying or incurably ill person's desire to end their life, but the potential for abusing this measure, especially for the poor and disabled, needs to be given its due diligence, and so far no one is biting, and, no, people suffering from mental health issues should not even be considered for assisted dying. Slippery slope, you guys! But what really killed whatever remaining love I still had for the Green Party was Elizabeth May's oh so politically correct and very stupid, fatuous and racist comment about every single person who has white skin being privileged. This is the same absolute festering crap that the CBC dishes out to us every single day. This assumption that being caucasian, all by it's little own self, already gives us an inborn privilege and, hey presto, we are the lucky ones. Well, I have a thing or two to say about this nonsense. I will begin with a conversation I had with a friend today who is, like me, racially caucasian, and like me, is also pretty generally indifferent about race or racialization. He mentioned that guilt is a privilege of the already-privileged, hence the masochistic pleasure so many well-off Canadian middle class white folk seem to take in flagellating themselves over their presumed good fortune and citizenship in heaven because of their race and oh how unfortunate and how cruel and unjust that people of colour are not so entitled and favoured as they are. But that kind of thinking so reeks with the stench of noblesse-oblige that it isn't even worth dignifying with any further comment. The people who operate and staff the CBC, as with all prestigious media outlets, are completely out of touch with poor and low income Canadians of any race. This is because all the people who work there are themselves children of privilege, even if they happen to represent so-called visible minorities. They have all come from nice well-off families, benefited from nice progressive university educations and have graduated into nice privileged lives and professions. They don't have a clue how the rest of us live, and in their naive arrogance have an apparent expectation that the rest of the world is going to be like them, or somehow has to be like them, or we simply do not exist. We are to them a demographic, a category. We have no existence for them as persons. Only those whose lives and struggles fit within their narrow matrices are going to be allowed existence. I have tried over and over to communicate to those idiots at the CBC and elsewhere about the many poor, disadvantaged people who live and sleep on the pavement, or in low-barrier shelters, live with chronic poverty and underemployment, have to live in social housing, like me, and have to struggle to survive every single day of their working lives. If they were black or aboriginal, they would be the darlings of the media. But because they are white? Well, people like me should not exist. We have not enjoyed secure non-dysfunctional families, we have not been able to make it to, or through university, and because we never enjoyed decent professional or meaningful social connections, we have always had to struggle between low paid and unsuitable employment. No one writes or talks about us. We have no voice. I offered the Globe and Mail that I could write a column on their pages about the experience of low income Canadians, but no one would even dignify my inquiry with a reply, not because I'm a lousy writer (it is very clear that I am not), but because they don't want people like me to have a voice. They don't care. They are so ignorant and insulated from our existence, that they would prefer to keep it that way. Hard truths are very uncomfortable, especially to the privileged. A lot of us may be white, but that isn't the point. This isn't about race, and it doesn't make us special, but we are human beings, despite our lack of colour. I have worked in homeless, housing and mental health and addiction services for most of the last four decades of my working life, and you know something, Gentle Reader? Most of the people I have supported and cared for, are either white or aboriginal. Especially, way too many are aboriginal. Very few Asians or South Asians, perhaps a smattering of Latinos. If white people are doing so well because of white privilege, then why are Asians and South Asians also doing equally well or better? No one has any answers, and I certainly do not begrudge them their success, especially given the horrid and wretched treatment their forebears had to endure under the white colonialist majority in another and much less gentle and less kind era. The educated and well employed white middle class only falls back on that useless politically correct myth of white privilege, without troubling to really examine it, or challenge any of its tenets, while swallowing all the hogswallop of angry blacks and indigenous people who want to blame it all on white people. Well, white people are largely to blame, but we are not and should not accept this status as whipping boy, because this just creates its own dynamic of racism and further entrenches the divide and the stigma that fosters the divide. And imputing white guilt on people who can't even keep a roof over their heads is not the solution. There must be a better way. Unfortunately, I cannot reasonably expect that anyone is going to listen to what I have to say, because, not fitting their convenient little categories, to them, I do not exist. Being poor, they are not going to listen to me. They never do, never have and likely never will. So then, maybe it's a ghost, or a genie that has just written this blog.