Juno News - September 24, 2019Trudeau's excuses for wearing blackface don't add up
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
199.2575
Summary
Justin Trudeau wore blackface at a party fundraiser in 2001, and it s been a few days since the story broke, and there s still no explanation from the Prime Minister as to why he chose to wear blackface. Is it a racist thing to do?
Transcript
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so it's been a few days since the Trudeau blackface stories first dropped and my jaw is still hitting
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the floor from the sheer magnitude of the whole thing so we first learned when the story first
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broke that there was one case of Justin Trudeau wearing blackface at this fundraiser back in 2001
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and you think oh that's kind of rough that's not something you want to be caught doing now I am
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no fan of those sort of gotcha moments where a person did one thing many years ago and we say
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their life should be ruined for it I wrote a column to that effect just the other week I gave some
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commentary to that effect because there were all these stories brewing about candidates a lot of
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conservative candidates a couple liberal a couple green candidates who had said these untoward things
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a number of years ago sometimes when they were teenagers on social media one remark maybe two
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remarks and I said like I don't care what party it is I don't care who it is I don't want to play
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this game because I think people are allowed to be teenagers and say some stupid remark and that
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doesn't mean their life should be ruined but I put a caveat in that column I put a line where I said
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but if we see we've got a repeat offender doing stuff more recently that is actually quite serious
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okay maybe we do have a problem on our hands and look at where we sit with Justin Trudeau now it is not
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just one incident one instance of blackface but at least three and judging by the fact that he refuses
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to answer follow-up questions and my favorite one reporter said can you round to the nearest five
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how many you've done and he couldn't answer that question I mean people are really grilling him on it
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suggesting that there's quite a few more and the current time frame takes us from the first one in
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1994 to the last one in 2001 this is pretty much throughout his 20s he did it multiple times and
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he didn't just he didn't just do a really sort of light slapdash job you know as if he was he was kind
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of drunk and he was just dumb and made the really quick decision oh why don't I go his blackface and
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just quickly put something on I mean you look at these pictures and the knees are covered in one of the
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videos and the other ones the hands are covered and the full ears and neck and really getting in
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the ear folds he put time into this planning commitment effort he clearly went shopping for
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the products in advance to make sure that he was going to do this thing you know right as if he
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actually thought there was oh there was good blackface and I want to be the best blackface
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performer out there tonight I mean yikes and I I'm not in for the gotcha moment I'm not in for
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ruining people's careers but we are in very different territory we are in extremely different
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terrain here I mean have we ever I'm racking my brains here to say have we ever seen an incident
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where there's been something come out on a candidate that has been as bad as this I mean I don't know
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maybe there's a story from from several decades ago that a candidate was actually found to be a
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convicted murderer and nobody knew you know killing a person is a pretty bad thing I can't think of an
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example of that though I I just can't think of it and you know it's funny people are saying well
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now they're going to get even nastier on Andrew Scheer well what are they going to do they're going
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to find that some conservative candidate you know six years ago said oh I don't like this and that
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about this religion okay well you know whatever maybe that's not ideal but it's not being a repeat
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offender throughout your 20s of having a history of doing blackface and these people who are coming
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forward to defend the prime minister or at least rationalize it and downplay it they're saying well
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it it's not back then you know we didn't know what we know now it was something that I didn't think was
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racist at the time but what are you talking about I was a kid in the 90s and I'm 35 now in 1992 Aladdin
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came out and I remember people really liked Aladdin it was really popular with the kids and I remember
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some little girls would dress up as Jasmine the main female character in it and the kit it just
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came with it came with like this little this dress like Jasmine wore and that was it and then you wore
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the dress and if you were a blonde girl with you know very pale white skin you'd say I'm Jasmine
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there was no face makeup that came with it I mean it wasn't that wasn't a thing that people did in the
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90s and I'm talking about children I remember those Halloweens I do not remember seeing anybody doing
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blackface around the time Aladdin came out even though a lot of kids were dressed as Aladdin and
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Jafar at least in the costumes not the blackface and yet here's Trudeau in his 20s doing this when
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kids knew not to do it it's really quite something to watch people try and excuse this try and apologize
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for it I mean this is this is going beyond hypocrisy this is someone who has done something
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that we all knew years before he did it was wrong and yet now he expects to get away with it