Last month, a student at
Canada’s McGill University was compelled to apologize for sharing a
fairly recognizable gif of President Obama kicking down the door
after a White House press conference that originated from a video
bit on the Tonight Show. Brian Farnan, a member of the student
government, sent the gif as part of a weekly e-mail in October
about midterm frustrations, and got hit with an “equity complaint”
for racial insensitivity. One of the remedies for such a complaint,
as the university’s newspaper reports, is a public apology,
which is what Farnan did, leading to widespread criticism that’s
causing the university to say it’s reviewing its equity policies,
which stress confidentiality for the accuser. Legal Insurrection
picks up the apology via Facebook:
Oppression, as outlined in SSMU’s Equity Policy, means
the exercise of power by a group of people over another group of
people with specific consideration of cultural, historical and
living legacies. The image in question was an extension of the
cultural, historical and living legacy surrounding people of
color—particularly young men—being portrayed as violent in
contemporary culture and media. By using this particular image
of President Obama, I unknowingly perpetuated this living legacy
and subsequently allowed a medium of SSMU’s communication to become
the site of a microaggression; for this, I am deeply
sorry.”
Setting aside for a moment the transparent use of a term like
“microaggression” to impose onerous restrictions on speech, the
public apology is completely oblivious to President Obama’s actual
aggressions, such as the kill list drone program, which may have
killed more than a thousand civilians alone, using kill lists and
policies that actually
consider any military-age males (young men of color!) in a
target zone as “militants,” including, for example, the 16-year-old
American son of Anwar al-Awlaki killed in a US drone strike. Obama
certainly has a “living legacy” of violence, one that’s an
extension of the historical legacy of violent US foreign policies
prosecuted by American presidents, not just Bush’s but nearly all
of the 42 presidents that preceded Obama, something you probably
didn’t hear trumpeted on President’s Day.
The policy that produced such a tone-deaf apology is also a an
extension, a natural product of a country with particularly heavy
restrictions on free speech for a democracy. Last year, for
example, Ontario’s human rights tribunal
dismissed a complaint against the heteronormativity of
A&W’s “Burger Family” not because it’s problematic for a
government to be involved in accepting or acting on such
complaints, but because it was filed by a man posing as a “radical
lesbian feminist.” Stephen Harper, now Canada’s prime minister,
once called Canada’s system of speech-restricting human rights
tribunals “totalitarian.” As prime minister, however, he admits
that there’s a problem but also that he has no idea what the
solution should be. Maclean’s
suggested repealing Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights
Act, which deals with material that could “expose a person or
persons to hatred” by creating a “conciliatory” system exempt from
due process that nevertheless levies fines and penalties.
Depressingly for Canadians interested in free speech, repeal even
of that section would still leave a bevy of other laws on the book
that regulate and restrict speech north of the border.
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