When asked why violence against women remains a problem with young men today, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said music lyrics, pornography and absentee fathers are factors in “a lot of communities.”

“I think there’s probably an awful lot of factors that come together to shape societal behaviours, certain types of music — you know, there’s an awful lot of misogyny in certain types of music, there’s issues around pornography and its prevalence now and its accessibility . . . and there’s also the shifting parental roles as well. There’s a lot of communities in which fathers are less present than they have been or they might be in the past. There’s more need to have engaged, positive role models,” Trudeau said in response to a question posed by journalist Francine Pelletier off-camera.

This response, recorded as part of an interview aired during Up For Debate Monday night, which the Toronto Star co-sponsored, has led some to accuse the candidate of perpetuating racial stereotypes and ignoring structural causes of women’s inequality.

“Is it a coincidence that two of the three factors Trudeau cited about violence against women are well-worn stereotypes about black people?” tweeted an anti-racism advocate and weekly Star columnist Desmond Cole.

Cole tweets about Trudeau’s comments, as well as about comments made by Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe about the niqab, have sparked a debate over deep-seated racism and sexism in Canada.

Angela Robertson, a member of the panel at Up For Debate and the executive director of Central Toronto Community Health Centres, said Trudeau’s response was “inadequate” and that his words were a “poor choice.”

“Those words have sometimes been used as code words to reference particular communities,” she said. “When we use the code language of absent fathers in certain communities, it has often been code word for black communities, for racialized communities, possibly indigenous communities. Those are communities that have experienced colonization, which deliberately tore families apart.”

A spokesperson for Trudeau said the Liberal leader was not speaking about any community in particular.

“As leaders, as parents, as community leaders, we need to make sure we are combating misogyny in all its forms wherever it’s found, whether fashion magazines or popular music or popular culture. We all have to work together,” Trudeau said in a statement issued through the spokesperson.

The question posed to Trudeau by Pelletier was: “A lot of the abuse that we’re seeing now . . . these are young men, they’re not old men, they’re young men. How do you explain that?”

Robertson’s concern is that people might think that violence against women is only a problem in minority communities, when actually it touches all women’s lives.

“It could lead those to think that violence is more prevalent in those types of family structures, and we know that’s not the case,” she said.

Cole said it didn’t matter whether Trudeau intended to be racist — his comments stem from ingrained racist beliefs.

“Some of you will say that Justin Trudeau is not racist. The point is that his responses were a very careless nod to anti-black stereotypes,” he tweeted.

She said the issues Trudeau described are examples of sexism, but they are symptoms of structural economic equality, not the cause. Robertson is careful to say that she did not think Trudeau was being deliberately racist, but that his comments “can be used by others to make racist inferences.”

Pelletier, the journalist who interviewed Trudeau, said his comments did not strike her as racist.

“I didn’t really dwell on it,” she said. “I don’t think he’s thinking that, God knows he’s very conscious of those things. For me, I don’t think he was making a faux pas necessarily.”

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Pelletier said Trudeau’s response showed that he himself was stumped by the cause of violence, and struggling to come up with an answer to her question.

“For me, the revelation of the interviews is they all have really pat and good answers . . . they’ve done their homework to a large extent. But when you confront them with the question of violence, they struggle.”

When Pelletier asked him directly if he was a feminist, Trudeau said he was “proud to be a feminist.”

“Yes, Yes. I am a feminist. Proud to be a feminist. My mom raised me to be a feminist. My father raised me, he was a different generation but he raised me to respect and defend everyone’s rights, and I deeply grounded my own identity in that, and I am proud to say that I am a feminist,” he said during a portion of the interview that was not aired. “The things we see online, whether it is issues like gamergate or video games misogyny in popular culture, it is something that we need to stand clearly against.”

Both Pelletier and Robertson agree it’s women’s economic inequality — women earn about 80 cents for every dollar a man earns — that make them vulnerable to abuse.

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