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Why? Humans have an instinct to save lives, not take them. For some horrible reason it appears that instinct was ignored when shots were fired into a car.

Even if Boushie was, as the RCMP implied, up to no good, there is still the uncomfortable realization that someone decided in the middle of the day to not call the RCMP but to fire at an unarmed person who was sitting in a vehicle.

Instead of being horrified by that, the shooting prompted all sorts of people to go online and publicly say that more aboriginals should be shot and violence is the best course of action. In the deep south, the Klan hide their faces. In Saskatchewan, people post under their real names.

Such comments led to some strong rebuttals by both Premier Brad Wall and interim NDP leader Trent Weatherspoon, which generated even more racist comments.

Where do we go from here? First of all, I don’t believe that kind of desensitized hatred is widespread in urban or rural Saskatchewan. By and large, we are a charitable, helpful and generous province. Yet for the last week we have all been seeing how vile and hateful a vocal minority of us is. It is there.

We can denounce the social media hate, but it will take a concentrated effort by all provincial leaders to move the province forward and challenge those that will take short term political gain by playing to racists.

A week ago MP Jason Kenney showed how it was done in Alberta when he called out one of his supporters online for using a graphic of Premier Rachel Notley lined up in gun sights. It’s a constant process of standing up and calling out those who espouse racist views and violent views as unacceptable. It’s not a one-time thing; it’s got to be constant and it will take decades.

For people who have looked the other way at the darker aspects of our province for too long, it is time to realize that staying quiet and hoping it goes away isn’t going to work. It is going to take a concentrated effort from all of us — politicians, citizens and neighbours, to confront the hatred and racism.