Justifiable Racism

“Is there such a thing?”

Summer 2021

With Covid-19 slowly but surely dissipating—I, once again, reached for my writing laptop.

Cedar & Snow is the book I was born to write.

Long before the words truth and reconciliation were ever written in the same sentence on the pages of a hefty Canadian government report, there were Mary Margaret Crow and Tracy Hooper. Two young girls, forced to grow up in the cold north surrounded by harsh societal truths while trying to reconcile their very separate, yet similar, teenage lives.

To justify growing up racist in the early 80s, Tracy would first start off by pointing a straight extended finger at a popular children’s program. Remember Sesame Street, that one-hour kids’ show that taught children nationwide all about the 123s and the ABCs? Where kids would easily sing along to the catchy teaching tunes while dancing along with Big Bird, or laughing at Oscar’s grouchiness, or giggling at the monster who devoured cookies leaving behind a big mess — all the while trying to catch a glimpse of that allusive Snuffleupagus. Sesame Street’s intention was to teach young kids—to shape the growing minds of the next generation. The program would inadvertently build the foundation for Tracy’s first impressions on how she saw the diverse people around her. As she ate dry, sugary cereal in her pjs—sitting too close to the televisions set—every Saturday morning.

There was a segment in the popular show called “Which one of these things doesn’t belong?” This was when four pictures would be displayed on the small TV screen, which forced Tracy to jump up from her favourite spot on the shag carpet to point out the item that just didn’t belong. This is how Tracy began to see the indigenous people in her hometown—they just didn’t belong. And, they had to have known this, because Tracy had witnessed—with her very own innocent eyes—Indigenous people segregating themselves at the mall, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, at the movie theatre, in the pool halls, in restaurants, and even on the playground at her elementary school.

So, by the time Tracy turned fourteen, she was blind to it. She could not recognize it. The racist disease imbedded deep within her young, impressionable psyche, because for as long as she could remember, her hometown had always been racially divided. The city just was what it was.

When a very pretty, very tall Indigenous girl is dropped into Tracy’s grade eight class, it would be because of Mary that Tracy’s mild disdain for the indigenous people around her would take a sharp violent turn towards hate.

Before you get ahead of the storyline, no, Mary and Tracy did not eventually become good friends, nor did they grow to like each other. I wished that would have happened, but the truth within the subject matter of this story was, in fact, it was the opposite. From the moment this Indigenous girl laid eyes on this pretty spoiled white girl, Mary became angry and then proceeded to take out her anger by beating her up every chance she got. Confused, hurt and angry, Tracy wondered what the hell she had ever done to Mary to make her hate her so much. So, in return, Tracy hated her right back, with every fiber of her being, and not just Mary, but her people as well.

It would be through some divine intervention that the school’s guidance councillor would recognize Tracy’s symptoms and pull her aside. This very intuitive teacher would begin to convince her to actually see Mary for who she really was: a confused, hurt, angry, scared, misplaced Rez kid. Tracy would eventually come to understand that because of the colour of her skin, Mary had inherited the historic injustices that had been handed down by our government, which contributed to the plight of her people.

This hero used her infinite power to change an impressionable young girl’s perspective on an entire race of people. Opening up Tracy’s young mind to want to learn and her heart to want, at the very least, try to understand the long-term effects of generational trauma—which would eventually force Tracy to ask the question: “Who really didn’t belong?”

All it takes is one person to change the world — In Cedar & Snow I wrote about three.

Coming up next: Wait! Back Up. (spoiler alert: Start over? Again?!).