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25
Feb
2022
Thursday February 24, 2022
Oliver is a peaceful little town of 5,000, nestled in the south end of the Okanagan Valley. Earlier this month, though, an apparently racist incident outside the high school made headlines. While a “Freedom” rally went on outside the school, a young mother was caught haranguing a student. The video clip where she directed profanity and racial slurs at a high school girl has since gone viral.
She has been fined. She has apologized. The regional newspaper has published her letter expressing regret.
Even so, one sentence in that letter caught my attention: “My intent was never to cause anyone any harm.”
Right there is the problem with prejudice. We -- speaking generally here -- seem to assume that prejudice has to have some kind of ill intent.
The essence of prejudice, in fact, is the failure of the persons expressing prejudice to recognize that their words and actions HAVE any ill intent, that they may cause harm -- or pain, or humiliation -- to someone else.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Prejudice, victims
Sunday February 20, 2022
I usually build my Sharp Edges columns around a current news item. The Rev. Kenneth Bagnell died in February. That’s the end of the hard news for this column. The rest is rumination.
Readers of my age may remember Bagnell as the editor of Imperial Oil’s award-winning periodical, The Review. And before that as a columnist for the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. And before that as Managing Editor of The United Church Observer magazine
Ken was my immediate predecessor at The Observer. When I first went there in 1968, I lived in his shadow.
But this column is not a eulogy for Ken. It’s about mentors.
I look back on my life as a succession of mentors.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: mentors, Bagnell