Time will tell if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s apology for wearing blackface will be accepted by Canadians.
But we do know he has not accepted similar apologies from his fellow Liberals facing charges of racism.
Ask Karen Wang.
Her pleas for a second chance were not accepted by Trudeau or the Liberal Party who pushed her out of the Burnaby South by election earlier this year that later elected NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.
Wang lost her political life, stellar reputation in the community and affiliation with the Liberal Party of Canada thanks to a WeChat post.
Written in Mandarin and posted by a campaign volunteer, translated into English the post read “if we can increase the voting rate, as the only Chinese candidate in this riding, if I can garner 16,000 votes I will easily win the by-election, control the election race and make history! My opponent in this by election is the NDP candidate Singh of Indian descent!”
She was excoriated from coast to coast.
Not only from Trudeau, but from the same strategists and commentators who have been working so hard to pull him out of the fryer in the past 24 hours.
“Recent online comments by Karen Wang are not aligned with the values of the Liberal Party of Canada,” the Liberals said on January 17th.
“She will not represent the Liberal Party in the Burnaby South by election.”
But feeling the words were poorly translated, the 43-year-old mother and day care centre operator appealed directly to Trudeau for a lifeline.
“I would like the party to reconsider me for a second chance to run for the byelection,” she wrote in a letter.
“On my WeChat post in Chinese I said that my opponent was of Indian descent. I meant no disrespect by that comment. As far as I am concerned it was merely a statement of fact. I did not mean it as a racial comment.”
She said he realized a “mistake” but she had no intention of being intolerant.
“I want a second chance,” she told me at the time.
“Knowing I am not racist, I was hoping they would give me the benefit of the doubt.”
They didn’t.
Zero tolerance. Zero forgiveness.
Said Trudeau himself: “The statement made by our former candidate in Burnaby South was unacceptable and was not representative of the kinds of politics I put forward, certainly the kind of politics that our team focus on. One understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths as a country. Those statements were not in keeping with what the Liberal Party stands for and certainly that is why the individual is no longer a part of our team.”
Had Karen Wang dressed up in blackface in the past, perhaps Trudeau would have given her the same consideration he has given himself?
He and his smug group of double-standard hypocrites left that woman for political roadkill when they knew it was more of a lost-in-translation moment from a candidate just trying to win for them.
It devastated Wang, who had reporters trying to get her kids to dish dirt on her and saw the town librarian chase her out of the parking lot as a racist as she tried to defend herself with reporters.
With a new baby, she has so far not weighed in this latest episode, but at the time this was a body blow to immigrant women feeling “abused” by Trudeau.
“It really hurt me,” said Wang.
“The Prime Minister knows I am a good woman who loves this country’s diversity, and is an example of the Canadian dream.”
And now Wang knows that when he was holding her to that standard, he himself had a long background of not holding himself to it.
When he’s on his apology tour for the rest of this election campaign — if he has one ounce of decency — Trudeau should take a minute and offer one to the woman he threw under the bus.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
