I am a French-speaking white Quebecer. I fought for a long time for the sovereignty of Quebec and to defend the French language. Quebec against the English colonizers who defeated us during the Conquest, then oppressed since. Because when it comes to David against Goliath, I naturally take for David. But 19 years ago, I met my husband, and I understood that the roles of David and Goliath are a matter of perspective.
My husband is an Inuk from Labrador. He speaks English and a few words of Inuktitut, which should have been his language — the colonizers were effective in Labrador. His late father, an old trapper, saw with his own eyes what it does to land and water when Hydro-Québec finances a dam like that of Churchill Falls; it’s ugly. Our marriage is intercultural and our experiences are very different. I had to experience the long discomfort of learning what racism really is. Who is David, who is Goliath.
Racism is an embedded power structure in society. This structure ensures the place of the dominant group in a territory, of Goliath. Each person interacts with this structure, undergoes it or feeds it, whether they realize it or not. In fact, the beautiful game of racism as a power structure is to make even well-meaning people contribute to it who have no idea that their attitudes, words or actions are feeding the beast. Generally white people, like me.
I had to become aware of the real mechanisms of racism and unlearn the blind spots that hide when I contribute to it without knowing it. It’s uncomfortable and it requires a humility that I didn’t have. But my husband took care of it. Teasing loved ones is part of Inuit culture. Of the nonsense that I said he turned ridiculous, there were a lot of them—there are still some, by the way. He does it because he loves me.
When a group of Inuit know you and no one is teasing you, they may not like you there. This was not my case, and my husband did a remarkable job of inoculating me with a good dose of humility and the ability to question myself on matters relating to racism and colonialism. It also required a patience that he didn’t owe me.
Let’s be clear: I don’t believe in the need to self-flagellate as someone who enjoys the “privilege” of being treated the way everyone else should be treated. That being said, self-flagellation is generally not what racialized groups ask of us. Rather, they ask us to tolerate the discomfort that comes with questioning ourselves.
It would seem that past remarks by Amira Elghawaby, the special representative for the fight against Islamophobia appointed by Justin Trudeau, have aroused the discomfort of people in Quebec. A discomfort that we find intolerable.
He has torn his shirts over these last few days for the following words: “the majority of Quebecers are [guidés] out of anti-Muslim sentiment. A chance that Mme Elghawaby did not outright say that Quebecers are racist: we would have opened our rib cage completely! But contempt remains a way to dodge the discomfort of questioning.
Because in the era of Bill 21 on the secularism of the state and of François Legault, who avoids the commemoration of the victims of the great mosque of Quebec, the basic question remains: in what blind spots are these attitudes hidden — as long as ordinary than those of power – which feed Islamophobia here? Because, whether we are talking about Aboriginal peoples or Muslim communities facing the rest of Quebec, we must not delude ourselves about who David is and who Goliath is.