The remark in question went as follows:
Another solution is the FINAL solution. Either learn to get along and get on with your lives or go away - forever.
My response to this, which I more than half expect the CBC will not publish, was as follows:
This remark essentially says "conform or submit to ethnic cleansing, Nazi-Style". And a disproportionate number of "agrees". How depressing. Racism appears to be alive and well in Canada.
No matter how angry you are at the local Tamil community for disrupting your roadways, no matter how little you want to get involved in a foreign civil war, it is never okay to make a blatantly racist remark like this.
I'm shocked that this remark made it through on a moderated board where they pre-screen comments. Am I supposed to believe that someone working for the CBC doesn't actually know what the Final Solution is?
It's the last sentence that I think will disallow its posting on the site; CBC does not like to be criticized. Still, I think it is important to make criticisms when appropriate, whether anyone sees it or not.
I believe in people's right to have an opinion, and I believe in free speech. However, the rules for posting on that site clearly state that racist remarks will not be allowed, and freedom of speech does not equal a license to spout hatred. I wouldn't object to these people posting their hatred on their own damn sites, but if they've agreed to abide by the rule of not posting racism, it becomes the moderator's job to ensure it doesn't go up.
There are many other racist remarks posted every single day; indeed, racist remarks go up every hour of every day on the CBC. Now, I know that the disclaimer says the CBC doesn't endorse any of these opinions, but I'm troubled by the fact that they allow so many of them to go up when it's a violation of the terms of service every registered member has to agree to before posting comments.
Read some of the remarks in this article. The University of Saskatchewan refused the donation of a scholarship because it deemed the terms of the scholarship to violate the Human Rights Code- in other words, stipulating that the scholarship could go to anyone except an aboriginal was racist.
Most of these comments are not blatantly racist enough to make me feel that the CBC would be obligated to remove them, but the nasty odour of racial intolerance still hovers around most of the remarks, as if someone has silently passed gas in a crowded elevator. In spite of the posters' claims that the university's decision is "reverse racism", you know that the real reason they're protesting the decision just stinks.
A scholarship meant to help a disadvantaged group of people hurts nobody, but a scholarship intended for the sole purpose of excluding another hurts everyone.
Those are but two examples; but there are hundreds more. Several dozen every day. I won't even start about some of the things I read in the articles about Omar Khadr, and as much as I think it's very likely that Ruby Dhalla is guilty of mistreating her employees, far too many people are assuming her guilt on the basis of her heritage. A lot of the comments in the articles about her are misdirected towards her appearance in a Bollywood film or coming from a country with a caste system, rather than actual evidence of wrongdoing.
CBC is irresponsible for allowing the worst of the racist comments on their site to be posted (like my first example above), but we can't forget that the comments themselves were made by the Canadian public. Nor can we excuse the number of "agreed" votes on each of them.
When did it become socially acceptable in Canada to be a racist, so long as you were hating on Natives, Arabs or South Asians?
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