A success story that made its way to our main story for the week. Three young well trained ladies caught my attention this week in how they behaved and handled a situation when they were racially assaulted by a man at the Superstore in Clareview. In a video one of them, Yasmin Ugas, shared on Twitter, she was skillful in getting the man to repeat his hateful comment on camera using her cell phone to capture him. They were going about their business, without any provocation and a man came from no where and fired at them with the words, “…I’m sorry you have to wear this slave garment in Canada…”
When another man who was not pleased with how this man “stood up for Canada”, as he claimed, tried to force him out of the store, the ladies came to his defense. Interestingly, when the man tried to force out their attacker, he defended himself by saying, “…if you don’t want to stand for Canada, I do…”. He was quick to call security to his aid when the man tried to force him out. Luckily for him, the three wonderful ladies asked the gentleman to leave him alone. A blue-shirted Superstore staff who came to the scene could be seen on her phone, physically doing nothing to diffuse the situation.
Unfortunately, this is what some Albertans face on a daily basis in a province where one in every five Albertan is a visible minority. An Albertan Government Report on, Taking Action Against Racism, published in June, 2018, shared that In 2016, there were 88 hate crimes against racial minorities reported to police in Alberta, and another 25 hate crimes based on religion, with most of these against Muslims or Jews. To add some perspective to this statistics, the report noted that a police-reported hate crime occurs in Alberta about once every three days. The Alberta Human Rights Commission is also seeing an increased caseload, and receives more than one complaint every day about racial or religious discrimination.
The Alberta Human Rights Commission also says lots of hate crimes are not reported. This sounds scary, right? Yea sure because this could be you, your family, a friend or neighbour uploaded with horrible memories by someone in a place called home, or being attacked on any aspect of religion or culture. It could even be the Mayor of Calgary being attack on his religion. Oh! Yea he is a Muslim.
Going down Edmonton’s racism memory lane, Jesse Lipscombe was bombarded with racial slurs on the streets of Edmonton. Bashir Mohamed was pelted with the N-word while cycling home from work. 45 years old Alberta Human Rights Commission has more complaints than it can deal with. Its former chief said it is in desperate need of re-structuring after 45 years. The commission has power to bark but cannot bite.
Bashir chose to ask for apology from his attacker. Jesse made it awkward. While the three wonderful ladies chose to educate their attacker who clearly was in no mood to be educated on the Muslim faith. In a week where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had his own encounter with a heckler who asked if Quebec will be reimbursed for the cost of asylum seekers, and the Prime Minister responded to a great applause, “Madam your racism has no place here”.
The man who attacked the fantastic, peaceful, harmless, ladies, and the woman who threw a racially motivated question at the Prime Minister did not stop after the education, they kept going. If the Prime Minister is not immune to racism, at least his policies, a big business with enough resources to protect customers chose not to, who is safe?
Some people are ignorant, while others are outright racist. More needs to be done at a time when, Edmonton Police Commission, City of Edmonton, and Alberta Government are working on different ways to address racism. Assault is a crime in Canada, but for some reasons, verbal unprovoked, uninvited assault on a peaceful person going about their business is not. There is no form of deterrence so this just keeps going on, as a matter of fact, increasing. The people who verbally assaulted others in all the cases we wrote about physically look in dire need of help than the people they assaulted, however, we will keep you updated on this topic on future developments.
To support the work of Diversity Magazine, to tell multicultural stories, and celebrate diversity and inclusion, become a member today here
To receive weekly emails on community stories, please subscribe here
https://twitter.com/YasminUUUUUUgas/status/1035039582310424576?s=04
