Les Armstrong's racist FB post

[robdrimmie]

It doesn’t make him racist though, it simply makes him tone deaf and ignorant.

There's this thing going on where being called racist is perceived as a massive insult. We need to stop that.

I'm racist, and willing to bet everyone born and raised in this part of the world at the same time I was is, and before, and almost certainly today. My kids are almost certainly racist.

I don't say that to insult us all, I say it because that's what systemic racism does. We are all living it and acclimatized to a racist society. We don't see all the ways in which we're racist, and that ignorance of our selves makes it really hard to make change.

I view it sort of like acknowledging that you're an addict. Acknowledging that you hold racist beliefs and perform racist actions is the first step towards change. It's the exact same situation with Jagmeet Singh and that Bloc MP. The act of being called racist is perceived as a far greater offence than whatever racist actions we did.

We are all racist. We are all sexist, too, and ableist. Our society programs prejudice into us.