December 4, 2006

I have experienced a lot of racism in my life. Sadly for the verve and hotness of this column, it has not been directed at me but at other people by racists who, for some reason, think I'll be sympathetic to their nasty maggoty little remarks.

My reaction to racists confiding in me always had three distinct phases:

First, my jaw would drop and I would make a noise with my upper palate that came out as "Gnnnk." This was a poor substitute for an elegant condemnation of the racist remark.

In the second phase, I would lie awake at night thinking: "I should have said …"

The final act would be me puzzling over why people tell me their dark thoughts. Am I sending off "I-hate-multiculturalism" vibes?

The unflattering answer to this question is that people confide in me because I have big brown eyes and an air of female sympathy. In other words, I'm a sap, and thus attract personal confessions from no-hopers.

Enough about my problems: Here's the way things stand.

Any time I get idealistic, I turn to a passage in a great novel about workplace despair. In Refusal Shoes , by a Canadian named Tony Saint, the hero works at Immigration at Heathrow. His job runs on hate:

"Arabs hate Jews. But you have to remember that the Mad Mullahs hate everybody else in the Middle East … The Japanese hate the Koreans, think they're no better than the Chinese, who hate them back just as much … Albanians hate Serbs, who hate Turks, who hate Russians, who hate Croats, who hate Greeks, who hate Macedonians, who hate Albanians. Norwegians hate Swedes. Really. Belgians hate each other. People from Portsmouth hate people from Southampton. In the real world, hatred is the only thing we do have in common."

Fine, but don't say it out loud.

Jesse Jackson's right … no more n-word. For nowadays, there is a foul-smelling modern tendency for people to voice racist thoughts they used to conceal out of, what's the word, decency. This trend has been fed by the coarse, shouty discourse of American TV — particularly Fox News — the belligerence that comes with age, the craving for notoriety (in particular, standup comics hungry for notice) and, well, booze.

It must cease. There's a public, legal way to fight big-landscape racism. But what do you do about the people next door?

You say: "That's not nice and I won't listen to that kind of talk." I like that young white woman who said "Oh my god" as Michael "Kramer" Richards praised lynching; the audience members who walked out; and the fine human who filmed the thing.

I like Sacha Baron Cohen, who at Cambridge studied the distinguished role of American Jews in the fight against segregation in the 1960s, and then, in the movie Borat, invited white southerners to reveal their true natures.

I give you Heather's Little Book of Racists. Here are some encounters I've had and my advice, after years of writhing on the pillow, on how I (or you) should have dealt with them:

1. Problem: It is 1977. I am from a small town and have never met a Jewish person. I may not even have heard of them. I arrive at the University of Toronto and hear a WASP student say, "All the Jewish kids stick together." I mentally say to him, "Well, if all the other students are like you, I would too."

Solution: Say this out loud.

2. Problem: I am at a Christmas gathering in a neighbourhood that has a decades-old history of anti-Semitism. We are discussing the death of a CBC-TV host, a wonderful, humane guy I always found sexy when I was a kid (it's my older-men thing). "He had that ugly Jewish face," a woman says loudly. Gnnnnk, I think. The moment passes. We are on to hockey. I am frantic to redeem myself morally. "Can I just say something?" I say. "Speaking of attractive Jewish faces … " I am drowned out.

Solution: "Morton Shulman was really hot. I loved that man." Yeah, say that. Do not, I repeat not, mention the woman's Polish origins. That would be racist. Or nation-ist. Historicist, possibly.

3. Problem: My husband and I are in a lawyer's office, redoing our wills to move with the times, i.e. plug-pulling, daftitude, children's theoretical starter marriages. We chat with the lawyer about universities. "Don't send your kids to ---- U, " the lawyer says. "Mine went there and he came home in shock. "Dad, I was the only white person in the class." My husband goes all British. That means he gets even more polite, while giving me that "Let's get out fast" look I normally see at 10 p.m. at parties just before the "Why do you so linger over the dregs of the evening?" discussion. As for me, I get mad.

Solution: Get mad. I got an apology and a refund. Still don't have a redrafted will though.

4. My ex-boss's wife says she won't let her daughter shop downtown. "I hate those black gangs." "I don't," I respond. Better than Gnnnk, but leaves both of us bewildered.

Solution: Inform her that her husband is sleeping with the head of marketing.

5. My neighbour tells a friend that she won't visit the Marais in Paris (which is the coolest neighbourhood extant, esp. now that Saint Germain-des-Pres is clotted with Starbucks) because it has a Jewish district. Friend repeats this. Seize up inside. Recall with great pain walking through this Jewish "district" many times, noting its pathetic size. The French didn't just hand over their Jews to the Nazis, but said they had extras. Here, take some kids.

I gnash my teeth. I seethe. I build and pay for a new fence. It may be taller than city regulations, but who's counting?

Solution: Move house. Such statements are unforgivable. The faces of small, shivering children at the transit camp at Drancy haunt your dreams. You can't tolerate that kind of vengeful retroactive racism. This is Canada. There are limits.