Doug Cuthand: Time for healthy examination of our racism – Times Colonist

Last week’s cover story in Maclean’s magazine is bound to cause a stir, especially the tag that Canada has a bigger race problem than America.

Canadians have a long, smug history of racism. First they looked south and saw the Jim Crow laws that segregated African-Americans in the deep south, and proudly proclaimed that we didn’t have that sort of thing here. They would point to a lack of segregated lunch counters and the fact that all Canadians could sit anywhere on a bus.

We assumed we were so morally superior.

When the apartheid regime ruled South Africa, Canadians treated that country as the pariah that it was and shook their heads in disgust, never once looking over their shoulder at the racial divide in Canada.

Read More: http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/doug-cuthand-time-for-healthy-examination-of-our-racism-1.1741111