Kramer in the Cosmos

I’m sure everyone by now has seen or at least heard about Michael Richards’ racist tirade, in which he went apeshit on a couple of black hecklers during his stand-up routine.

Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. C’mon Kramer, you’re a seasoned stand-up comic. Expect to deal with hecklers at some point. Deal with it. He apologized for it on Letterman, but no apology can atone for that vitriol, never mind all that hate and rage that’s boiling within him. This guy’s career is done, though it wasn’t as if it was going anywhere - as the heckler adroitly pointed out, what’s he done since Seinfeld?

But what Kramer’s sentiments do bring to the fore, I think, is the underlying acrimony that continues to keep black and white America apart. Living in the US, one sees that the socio-economic divisions between blacks and whites is very real and palpable. There is acrimony and bruised feelings on both sides; one side continues to feel aggrieved owing to an ugly historical legacy of slavery, segregation, and disenfranchisement; the other thinks that the once-victimized group has failed to pull itself by the bootstraps, especially given affirmative action, integration, bussing, and all the concessions made since the Civil Rights movement.

One of the great things about Canada is that it is blessedly free of the racial enmity and antagonisms that plague the US and much of the rest of the world (be it blacks/whites, Catholics/Protestants, Sunni/Shi’ia, Arab/Israeli, Tamil/Sinhalese...). When Michael Richards screams "50 years ago you’d have a fork stuck up your ass" – a clear allusion to the lynch mobs of the Jim Crow South – this statement has no resonance in Canada... because 50 years ago there were no black people up here (but for a few in Nova Scotia)!

That is not to say that Canada is a utopian multicultural paradise; there is still tension beneath the surface, albeit far more muted. But there’s also a degree of mixing that goes on. The same is not true in America, where blacks and whites, in many ways, occupy separate worlds; they don’t share the same ghettos or suburbs, but live apart. (I was startled to see white people in the adjacent “rusted tin can” apartment buildings.... until I realized they were Russian and Polish immigrants.) In Canada, blacks and whites actually have relationships and copulate with one another. Visit any ghetto in Toronto and you’ll see white trash girls escorting mulatto babies. I’ve yet to see one here. In fact, I think I’ve seen more mixed people on a bus in Scarborough than in all my time here in Connecticut.

I think racial antagonisms in Canada are not nearly as palpable because we don't have the same ugly historical legacy. The key distinction between Canada and the US is that every person here is or is the descendent of a voluntary migrant. And sure, Canada treated its minorities like shit in its early years, but (and likely owing to climate) at no point did Canada go so far as to bring an entire population against their will and enslave them or subjugate them for centuries. And so while African-Americans have a justified grievance, no community here can legitimately complain of comparable duress. Really, the only group with a justified axe to grind are the natives, but then there are 35 million African-Americans... versus 1 million natives max?

I think the ideal is a colour-blind society, and I prefer Canada's hush-hush pretense in contrast to the US, where race permeates every facet of discussion. The fact that we don't have a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton, the fact that we don't have a powerful race lobbies like the NAACP or La Raza that profess to speak on behalf of aggrieved minorities is, IMO, a good thing. I think these groups do a tremendous disservice - they only exacerbate the tensions and animosities between groups, and provide fuel for closet racists like Richards. I hope it stays that way.