Double Standards for Racism in Canada

This afternoon Roy Green interviewed the allegedly "racist" mother of an 8 year-old girl in Winnipeg. You can listen to it here at 34:00.

Here's the letter I sent to him afterwards:

Roy,

Great interview! It was very honest radio and I appreciate that. While that woman & I would probably never be close friends, I do believe she has a valid point regarding political correctness and double-standards aplenty.

Let me share a quick story with you: Three and a half years ago I founded a non-profit organization in Vancouver that refurbishes used computers and gives them for free to less fortunate families throughout British Columbia. In our first year of existence we had a young man join our team of volunteers. He was a high-school student. He and his family had moved to Canada from China about 10 years prior.

This young fellow was one of our techs, responsible for doing the actual refurbishing. Since he didn't drive, I had all sorts of other volunteers dropping off to his home computers needing work and picking up refurbished machines.

One day he called me up and had a very serious tone. I asked him what the matter was. He hesitated and then said, "I need for you to stop sending [a certain volunteer] over to my home any more. My parents insist upon it." The fellow he was referring to happened to be a dark-skinned man from Sri Lanka. I thought about it for a second and responded, "Is it just this particular fellow or all darker skinned people?" He quietly said, "All of them."

Roy, tell me honestly, do you think that any Child Service Agency in this country would ever dare to take away such a child from his Asian parents?

Robert W.

The Nuttiness of Harry Belafonte

• Harry Belafonte: Great singer.
• Harry Belafonte: Naive political whack job.

When will entertainers learn that they'd be better off keeping their mouths shut about topics they know little to nothing about. In this BBC interview he continues to slag Condoleeza Rice, a woman who has a long, distinguished career of public service. She is where she is because she's smart and determined. She also happens to be black.

But Belafonte refuses to acknowledge any of her accomplishments because she happens to have different political views than he does. If Belafonte were white he'd quickly be labeled a bigot and rightly so. But because he's black and has strident anti-capitalist views, he gets a pass.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he's a big fan of Cuba's dictator, Fidel Castro. Strangely enough though, he hasn't moved there and continues to enjoy making money in America. In my mind, that makes him a hypocrite.