The news that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had appeared in “brown face” and, oh heavens, even blackface left prominent pundits white-faced, or at least whiter faced than usual.

On Wednesday evening, Trudeau did the only thing he could at that point. He apologized. “I recognize it was something racist to do,” he said, something he should have, could have, said in 2015, but still. On Thursday afternoon, he added another layer of understanding when he spoke to journalists in Winnipeg. “Darkening your face is always unacceptable ... I didn’t see that from the layers of privilege that I have.”

It’s been pretty priceless — no, the word I’m looking for is annoying — seeing all the hand-wringing around this news development and to see our media decide that *this* is the point the election becomes about racism.

Let’s break it down.

The racist act. The misplaced concern around racism. The exploitative politicization of it.

Colouring a white face brown or black is not OK. We are all agreed on that, all including Trudeau and his Conservative party rival Andrew Scheer. It’s demeaning. It’s racist. If only costume chameleons would recognize that some of us aren’t able to shed our skin colour when convenient. In a whiteness-centred country, brown skin, but particularly black skin, remains a stubborn and loud mark of otherness.

It’s important to note that while “brown face” has contemporary meaning, the historical significance of the offence comes from blackface when white actors in the U.S. and Canada painted their faces black and mimicked caricatures of Black people.

This was no innocent ha-ha mimicry, but one more tool of the white supremacist tool box to cement the position of Black people as unintelligent, overly sexual, savage beings. This is why even if it does not offend all brown-skinned people, “brown face” or blackface today reinforces the contempt, discrimination and physical violence against Black people and must be seen in that context.

In the 1840s, Black Canadians petitioned Toronto City Hall to end this racist practice which was eventually accepted. Blackface was out — only to return a few decades later when Jim Crow laws in the U.S. deepened anti-Black hostility north of the border. (For more, read The Underground Railroad: Next stop, Toronto!)

Trudeau’s past actions also come to light in the context of an election when one of his rivals, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, is a brown-skinned man who wears a turban out of profound respect for his faith. He faces racism from outside and within his own party. Jonathan Richardson, an NDP executive member for Atlantic Canada, who defected to the Greens, said racism was a major reason why they couldn’t find candidates in New Brunswick.

A racialized person being discriminated on the job was news, but not a scandal.

The public discourse on Trudeau’s blackface reduces racism to narrow, specific actions that white people accept as being racist, namely showing up in blackface or uttering a racial slur. Racism also gets cast in shallow terms of a good/bad dichotomy as if “good people” can’t also be racist.

The journalist Tom Parry said on The Current on Thursday that it was going to be difficult for Trudeau to say “you’re intolerant” to Maxime Bernier’s far-right positions on immigration when these photos exist. As if racism at the level of individual bigotry bears equivalence to systemic racism at the level of policy.

Forgive me, but I find the feverish outrage of those who’ve never faced racism hopelessly misguided and a distraction from wider issues of racism. Showing up in blackface is reprehensible and hurtful, but if people are genuinely concerned about racism, I would much rather see them robustly and consistently challenging our leaders on policies that would materially impact the lives of those in the margins.

Where do they stand on pipelines? What specific policies do they have that would benefit Black families? Where do they stand on complying with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling on First Nations child welfare? What will their policy be on minimum wage? Will they get rid of the Safe Third Country Agreement that allows us to hide behind the grotesque American racism against refugees while having to do nothing on that humanitarian crisis?

The only journalist who made this demand from Trudeau in Winnipeg on Thursday was from Indigenous broadcaster APTN, when she asked about federal plans to address child suicide.

“We have a lot more to do” worked in 2015. Trudeau is going to have to get mighty specific about these plans, and soon.

As for politics, it took nerve for Scheer to call out Trudeau’s racist choice and say, “What Canadians saw this evening is someone with a complete lack of judgment and integrity and someone who’s not fit to govern this country.”

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Unlike Singh’s emotional response (“I say you are loved,” he told racialized Canadians), Scheer’s reaction was all political opportunism, no sympathy for the people actually hurting. Meanwhile we still await an apology from the man whose campaign retweeted a known promoter of neo-Nazi ideology, who legitimized a xenophobic Yellow Vest rally and who compared homosexuality to dogs’ tails.

There is also this one other little thing: since when did being racist disqualify anyone from the Canadian prime ministership?

This marks Shree Paradkar’s return to writing columns, after a year researching Education Without Oppression as the Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy. Her final Atkinson articles will be published in the coming days.

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