Omari Newton: A requiem for racist Uncle Donny
If you live in Canada, you have probably already heard that Don Cherry, Canada’s most celebrated racist uncle, was fired from Sportsnet on November 11, 2019.
Cherry was fired after a four-decades long career bloviating about traditional Canadian values to the delight of an increasingly small segment of hockey traditionalists on Hockey Night in Canada. Cherry’s undoing came not as a result of making overtly bigoted, xenophobic comments live on air, but from a refusal to take any accountability for the impact of the words he uttered on the November 9 broadcast:
“You people love – you, that come here, whatever it is – you love our way of life. You love our milk and honey. At least you can pay a couple of bucks for poppies or something like that. These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid, uh, the biggest price.”
I’m not going to waste time debating or dissecting the minutiae of his words. I’m not going to squabble over whether or not what he said was racist. The years I’ve spent talking about issues of race online have taught me that this is an exercise in futility. If you want to defend the above – well, as the kids say, “OK, Boomer.”
What I’m interested in are the varied responses to Cherry’s dismissal.
Cherry’s firing has solicited an exasperated sigh of vindication from many of us Canadians who have long been over the man’s bigoted dog whistling. His shtick panders only to the lowest common denominator of “old stock Canadians” living in Cherry’s idyllic, predominantly white, Christian, poppy-wearing, Tim Hortons-drinking hockey towns across Canada. To say that his firing has been polarizing would be an understatement.
The weekend his offensive comments were made, both #FireDonCherry & #IStandWithDonCherry trended on Twitter, highlighting a country that is increasingly divided on issues of politics and social justice. As of Thursday, #CancelTheSocial & #FireJessieAllen were also trending in Canada, after a previously little known daytime talk show host had the audacity to point out that hockey culture is predominantly white, male, poses significant financial barriers to those who aren’t wealthy, and has a reputation for attracting bullies.
Let me say this: a woman reflecting on her personal negative experiences of growing up around hockey players on one episode of a daytime talk show is not comparable to Cherry, a national icon, espousing divisive, dated views that target members of marginalized groups for years on end.
The firing of Don Cherry serves as a national litmus test. Those who pine for a bygone era where old white men were the only ones given a platform, and able to use said platform to spew any half-formed thought that entered their brains, unencumbered by formalities like facts, truth, or accountability, lament the firing of their favorite racist uncle as a sign of cancel culture run amok.
Never mind that this was the millionth offence that indicated a well-established pattern of bigotry. Uncle Donny and his supporters feel that they should be allowed to say whatever they want, whenever they want, without any form of accountability, as though the notion of freedom of speech has ever included a promise of freedom from repercussion.
On the flip side, those of us applauding the long overdue ousting of Cherry see his recent dismissal as an obvious and cynical move by a Canadian media culture that’s excused this man’s bigotry for years. So long as he was making them money, his bigotry was given a pass: first by CBC, our federally funded public broadcaster, and then later by Sportsnet. It was only after the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council was so flooded with complaints about his recent transgression that they had to release a statement explaining how “the rush of complaints about his rant have overwhelmed [their] technical processing capacities” that Sportsnet was finally moved to take action.
It is important to note that, even after the widespread public outcry, the corporation didn’t relieve Cherry of his duties. First, they reached out to him, offering him the chance to apologize or amend his comments. Cherry refused, saying instead that he doesn’t regret a thing. His co-host Ron Maclean issued a seemingly heartfelt apology for not challenging Cherry’s comments live on air, and as of Friday morning, he’s still employed by Sportsnet.
Despite what the old stock Canadians bemoaning the ruthlessness of cancel culture will tell you, the recent push for more empathy and decency from people with large platforms is not about cancellation. It’s about accountability. It’s about growth. It’s about empathy. It’s about people who have historically been denied a large platform using our collective voices to amplify conversations that were once grumbled around breakfast tables, bus stops and yes, in line at Tim Hortons, so that our concerns are now loud enough to reach institutions that were able to ignore us in the past.
Our message is pretty reasonable: Don’t be a dick, but if you do slip up and act like a dick, just listen to the concerns of the people calling you in, apologize, and try to do better next time. That’s really it. Don Cherry was not fired because of his most recent example of discriminatory dog whistling. He was fired because he refused to listen to the concerns of others. People expressed that his words impacted them in a way that hurt them, and like a typical bigot, long protected by a world designed to elevate and support him, Cherry chose to arrogantly focus on the intent of his comments, rather than the impact his words had on less privileged people.
I’ll end with some practical suggestions that can ensure systemic change moving forward. Sportsnet can hire a qualified female reporter to sit in racist Uncle Donny’s old Coach’s Corner seat. How about Canadian icon Hayley Wickenheiser? She’s a four-time Olympic gold medalist, and Canadian Women Team’s all-time leading scorer. She has the knowledge and resume, and comes from one of Canada’s fabled small hockey towns: Shaunavon, Saskatchewan.
Maybe hire one of the hosts of Punjabi Hockey Night in Canada. They love the game and have shared it with countless Canadians from diverse backgrounds.
Better yet, scrap the segment altogether. Use the airtime to promote hockey related human-interest stories or highlights that showcase teams and players from marginalized groups who don’t get enough exposure. Show a tangible commitment to these values of diversity and inclusion that prompted you to release your star xenophobe. Take a page out of the NBA’s playbook, whose numbers have been surging in Canada due to a culture that is inclusive enough to draw in people from all over Canada, and not just the right-leaning small towns across the nation. While Uncle Donny and the traditional Hockey brass may not care to acknowledge it, the “big three” – Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal – account for just about a third of Canada’s population. These cities are also unsurprisingly the nation’s most culturally diverse. These are the “you people” who weren’t here for Cherry or what he has long represented.
Sportsnet has been gifted with a great opportunity. They can start the process of rebranding hockey to better fit with a nation that is increasingly diverse. Or, they can arrogantly cling to a dated, divisive vision of a sport that caters mainly to “old stock Canadians” in small towns, while the NBA continues to post record-breaking numbers as basketball slowly but surely replaces hockey as Canada’s most popular sport.
The old guard should be less worried about being “canceled,” and more concerned with the fact that, pretty soon, the majority of Canadians could care less.
Editor’s note: Omari Newton is a creative force who has made a mark in multiple cities across Canada: in Montreal, where at 19 years old he won accolades for his performance in Athol Fugard’s ‘My Children! My Africa!’ with Black Theatre Workshop, Canada’s oldest Black theatre company; in Ottawa, where his play ‘Sal Capone’ will run in the second half of the National Arts Centre’s 2017-2018 season; and in Vancouver, where he’s straddled the screen and theatre worlds as an in-demand actor (‘Continuum’), producer (‘The Shipment’), playwright (‘Sal Capone’), and teacher. Omari won a 2018 Jessie Award for his performance in ‘The Shipment.’ Social justice issues are important to Omari – he writes about them on his Facebook page, Visible Minority Report – and are central to his work in the arts. Omari writes about social justice issues – and how they intersect with the entertainment industry – for YVR Screen Scene. Omari directed a production of David Harrower’s ‘Blackbird’ that ran at the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival.
Top image courtesy of CBC.ca
