Toronto Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam owes people an apology, and if she doesn’t do it, she should be pressured to resign.
Council voted last week to continue funding the Pride parade with $260,000 of taxpayers’ money, despite the parade dis-inviting the city’s uniformed police this year.
Actually, the members of the police department are welcome to march so long as they don’t identify themselves as police.
It is quite a turn of events when Pride wants to put cops in the closet.
Wong-Tam was one of the councillors, along with 26 colleagues, who voted to continue to give tax money to Pride, despite the uniform ban.
She then apparently decided that saying something racist and sexist about it was the appropriate way to go.
She tweeted: “For 7 hours, I listened to mostly straight, white men who’ve never been to Pride talk about what Pride meant to them. I deserve ice cream.”
Really? Can we break down how wrong this is, piece by piece?
Is whether or not to fund Pride something only minority councillors get to vote on?
Does Wong-Tam think only gay, female and non-white councillors should get a say?
Would Pride be the huge success it is if only gay, non-white people attended?
Would Wong-Tam stay silent if I were to criticize her policies and votes — which I regularly do, as policies and votes — by attacking them based on her gender, skin colour and sexual orientation?
She brought all three of those into play.
Based on the history I have seen with Wong-Tam, she would be the first to rise up in fury if I did it.
Of course, I don’t do that.
You are free to disagree with what I say and write, but if you do so based only on my being a straight, white male, you’re behaving like a bigot.
What if during the same debate about Pride, Black Lives Matter and city funding, another councillor said: “For 7 hours, I listened to mostly gay, minority women talk about spending working people’s money. I deserve ice cream.”
How would that go over? What would Wong-Tam say to that?
I think that, justifiably, she would be against it. So why the double standard?
Some people have defended her, arguing gays and minorities have been discriminated against.
Yes, but the object should be to stop bigotry, not take turns.
It’s not her “turn” to sound like a bigot.
I am not arguing whether council made the right decision by funding Pride. That’s a separate debate.
I am arguing the debate we had was driven in part by the double standards that have taken hold in this city when it comes to conversations about race and gender.
One group — the one Wong-Tam belongs to, the one that now includes Pride and Black Lives Matter Toronto — has reserved for itself the right to rise up in outrage whenever it perceives a slight to gays, females and minorities, while feeling entirely comfortable using the same bigoted language against anyone with whom they disagree.
That double standard is why so many otherwise intelligent councillors and media people don’t call out members of Black Lives Matter in Toronto for their racist rants.
What Wong-Tam wrote is bigoted, and she owes city council and the city an apology, or a resignation — or hey, how about this — perhaps she could take some sensitivity training?
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