The great American conservative thinker Thomas Sowell once said “the word ‘racism’ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything — and demanding evidence makes you a ‘racist’.”
Sowell is Black but that’s not the point. The point is he’s right.
One example is a recent decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
In a lengthy ruling, it basically accused CBC-Radio Canada of contributing to racism because two of its broadcasters two years ago used the ’N-word’ on radio four times during a discussion — three times in French, once in English.
The CRTC has ordered the CBC to apologize, which it has already done.
It also demanded new rules from the CBC to prevent it from happening again, which the CBC is appealing, arguing that is interfering with its journalistic independence
Reading through the CRTC decision — which two of its commissioners disagreed with — it’s obvious what’s wrong with the ruling.
It ignored the context and intent of the radio discussion.
Radio host Annie Desrochers and columnist Simon Jodoin were discussing a campaign at the time to sanction a Concordia University film studies professor, who had referred in class to the title of a famous Quebec book which contains the N-word, written by Pierre Vallieres in 1968.
Why? Because the class was studying a documentary about Vallieres, a journalist and author.
As CRTC vice-chair Caroline Simard wrote in her dissenting opinion: “Not mentioning the title of the book at the beginning of the interview? The listeners would not have known what it was about.”
The book isn’t racist. Agree or disagree with its argument, it compares the racism experienced by American Blacks during the civil rights movement to the discrimination faced by Quebec francophones at that time by the province’s anglophone elites.
Even the CRTC acknowledged in its decision condemning the CBC that, “the word was not used in a discriminatory manner in the context of the segment, but rather to quote the title of a book that was central to a current issue.”
Despite that, the CRTC ruled against the CBC because it was incapable of distinguishing a discussion about the life and works of a prominent Quebec journalist and author from racists using the “N-Word” to denigrate Blacks.
In doing so, the CRTC relied on sections of the Broadcasting Act that, in the words of dissenting commissioner Joanne Levy, are so vague as to be almost meaningless.
As she wrote, “justification for the majority decision relies on the provision of the Broadcasting Act calling for programming of high quality … a subjective test that defies transparency, fairness and predictability.”
By contrast, she said: “The decision ignores the overriding right to freedom of the press enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, protected by the Broadcasting Act and recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada.”
The great irony is that the CBC two years ago did to Wendy Mesley exactly what the CRTC is doing to it today.
It punished and effectively ended the 38-year career of the award-winning CBC journalist for twice using the N-word not on air, but in editorial discussions about her show that had nothing to do with racist intent.
In one case, she was referring to Vallieres’ book. In the other, she was expressing her anger that a Black CBC journalist had been called the N-word after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
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