Is the U.S. ready for a Canadian president?
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
That headline makes no sense right? Well it does once you find out that some folks are using the term “Canadian” as code for “black.”
From Foreign Policy’s blog:
Earlier this month, an e-mail that had been circulating since 2003, written by a Houston assistant district attorney Mike Trent, resurfaced. The e-mail was short, only about 100 words, and was sent to the entire office. It started out by praising a junior prosecutor for a job well done. Then the message continued:
He overcame a subversively good defense by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing.”
If you’re wondering why Canadians were on a Texas jury when only U.S. citizens are allowed to serve, well, there weren’t any. Other members of the D.A.’s office who got the memo were wondering the same thing themselves. They looked at an online database of racial slurs and found that “Canadian” was a term used to mask more openly racist terms. Trent claims that he was unaware of the meaning, overheard someone saying that there were Canadians on the jury, took that literally, and just repeated it in his e-mail.
(via Shakesville via Jess)
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
it’s not even Sunday, or, the death of “Canadian” jokes for me. « I wanna love You better whatever it takes . . . on 31 Jan 2008 at 8:34 pm
[...] a bi-national organization, we often do joke about Canadians (ACTUAL Canadians) for real . . . but reading this tonight stopped me in my tracks. And that posting led me to this lying lawyer (sorry, is that redundant?!) [...]
Because Blatant Slurs Aren’t Good Enough at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture on 10 Jul 2008 at 6:00 am
[...] In the meantime, racism has migrated into this weird “gotcha!” strategy where people use slurs and epithets either (1) openly, by claiming they are ironic, or (2) covertly, subbing an innocuous word for what they really want to say. Like Canadian. [...]