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WHITE: Depth of division that spurred protests shocking

I didn't fully realize how lucky I was to live this experience until many years later.

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As a white male growing up in Canada, I’ve lived a relatively sheltered existence. Even still, I’ve tasted the bitter poison of hate on occasion, so I can truly only imagine what it must be like to deal with it on a daily basis.

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I studied at a very diverse high school in Winnipeg. I had more friends who were visible minorities than white. My parents taught me to respect all people regardless of race and base my decisions on their character and the way they treated me.

I didn’t fully realize how lucky I was to live this experience until many years later. I was telling a friend about how many friends I had in my teens from all around the world, and he said he didn’t see a non-white person until he was 17. He had no idea how to deal with this lack of experience when he first went to university. He made poor decisions that likely scarred those he directed his wrath upon.

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My first true taste of racism was when I was the city editor at the Winnipeg Sun back in the early 2000s. I was speaking with then-Manitoba band chief Terry Nelson about our coverage of a court case. Long story short, he called me a f***ing cracker. When I corrected him to say I was actually Métis, he doubled down.

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“Oh, even worse, you’re a f***ing half-breed.”

Ouch.

I worked very hard to approach all of my story development and editing with finesse and nuance to ensure balance and equal representation. To be slurred in this manner by a leader in the Aboriginal community was shocking and it took me time to recover.

Realistically, it’s one of the few times that I was targeted because of my race.

There was the time, that same year, where I was faced with it again, but with a twist.

My wife and I were on an Amtrak train going from Boston to New York. We were filled with anticipation as it was our first time going to Manhattan. We had visions of Broadway and Central Park dancing in our heads as we got comfortable among the clack-clacking of the wheels on the rails.

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In front of us were seated an African American man and his adorable toddler. The dad was tending to his work while the young lad was exploring the train car with his eyes. He peered through the seats and spied us. We smiled and said hello, and he smiled back but got a little shy, as toddlers do.

A minute later, as clear as can be, he said with a grin: “I hate white people!”

His dad reacted with shock and told him “we don’t say that.”

I knew there was nothing we could say or do at that moment and I actually thought to myself, “I get it, kid.” But I was deeply wounded. He was too young to even know what he was saying, which also meant he was likely parroting what he heard in the home, which made me even sadder. Even though I’d always worked hard to check my privilege and treat everyone with respect, I realized I could not say a word or react at all. My experience did not mean anything in that context. His experience was his truth.

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What I’ve dealt with is spittle in the ocean of what African Americans have had to face, and continue to face. It’s now in the open again thanks to the Trump white supremacy social media bandwagon.

With the United States devolving their cultural harmony this year to times reminiscent of the late ’60s, I have felt equally helpless and hopeless among the continued horrors of deaths in police custody, direct targeting of journalists and a president pouring premium fuel on the flames through his social media accounts.

I had to remove the Twitter app from my phone. I couldn’t take the scrolling horrors showing police brutality against protestors and media, and some actually supporting that behaviour. I’m lucky, I can delete Twitter and it goes away.

I do not have the answers, and I’m too sad and scared right now to seek them out.

jowhite@postmedia.com

twitter.com/johnkwhite

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