Like America, Canada is a nation comprised of people from around the world. And like America—perhaps even more than America—Canada is wearing racial blindfolds that make the government incapable of seeing that, just as “people of color” represent many different races, lands, and cultures, the same is true for “pale faced” people. This blindness erases Canada’s rich ethnic history.
As an anthropologist who spent 17 years living and working in Sub-Saharan Africa, where Black lives really matter and where everyone belongs to a tribe with which they identify, it pains me that I must explain to fellow Canadians (and Americans) that pale-faced people are not all the same. Are they just one thing — that is, one ethnic group in contrast to the myriad of “others”? No.
