Do you remember the guest who said on Radio-Canada that she “hated white people”? The radio management and the ombudsman have just ruled on this matter, after receiving 46 complaints from scandalized listeners. According to them… there’s nothing there! Move along, there’s nothing to see. We can make comments based on race, if we do it with “delicacy” and in a certain “context”!
• Read also: Radio-Canada: racist anti-White?
PERMITTED RACISM
On the show Add fuel to the fire on September 17, director Mara Joly (who has a black parent and a white parent) said: “For a long time, I hated white people, but yeah, I mean, I don’t think you can like white people when you live in Africa and I don’t think you can like white people when you’re Afro in France.” Most of the complaints that were lodged against the show specified that “if these remarks had been made against blacks, Muslims, LGBTQ+ or any other minority, it would never have been broadcast”. In her decision, the first director of Ici Première, Sylvie Julien, retorted that at the start of the interview the host “mentioned the personal journey of her guest, with the aim of giving the audience the keys to detect the very personal roots of M’s speechme Joly” and to allow “people listening to understand the pain felt by her guest during her childhood”. So, if we have the “keys”, had a “difficult journey” and felt “childhood pain”, we can say that we hate Jews, blacks or Buddhists ? For his part, ombudsman Pierre Champoux concludes that the interview “complied with Radio-Canada’s journalistic standards and practices.” On the other hand, he deplores that the publication of an extract on Instagram “did not offer enough context to fully understand the meaning of the statement”. So, in his eyes, if we have the right “context”, we can say that we hate an entire human group? “Anyone who listened to the interview in its context, ideally from the start of the show, held, if not all the keys, a sufficiently varied set of keys to understand the source of Mara Joly’s remarks and accept them as such.” So, are they obsessed with keys and keychains at Radio-Canada? Is there a “keyboard” that would allow us to understand anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia?
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The ombudsman continues: “With all respect for those who were shocked by Mara Joly’s comments, I did not sense any call to hatred or anti-White racism, a notion which, by the way, seems to me to be based on very little conclusive data.”
Mr. Champoux considers that Mara Joly made a speech that she “has every right to express, however unpleasant it may be for some people to hear.” Would he say the same thing about someone who said they hated black people?
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TWO WEIGHTS, TWO MEASURES
The ombudsman concludes by saying: “While it is important to address difficult topics like racism or identity issues, it is crucial to do so with sensitivity and context.” Be warned. If you want to say, “I hate gays/women/Jews,” you have to do it “with sensitivity and context.” We really are taken for idiots.
