I spent most of the last two weeks glued to the Ontario Judicial Council (OJC) hearing into a second complaint about the conduct of Federation of Black Canadians founder and former chair, Justice Donald McLeod. McLeod is facing claims, still unproven, of perjury, political lobbying and giving legal advice – all stuff judges aren’t supposed to do. McLeod’s defence, by both his legal team and his supporters on social media, can be summed up as, “Justice McLeod is a great guy and didn’t do any of this bad stuff or, if he did, it was for good intentions because, like we said, he’s a great guy.”
The problem with this is that it focuses on what McLeod is instead of what he does (or allegedly did), and discussions about what someone is often offer only two choices: good or bad. People’s defenders spend time giving examples to prove their guy (or girl) is good while their opponents do the opposite. The argument is that, if the person is bad, they deserve whatever happened to them and if they’re good they don’t.
One of the most recent, and most horrible, examples of this was comments by Black conservative commentator Candace Owens in videos like I DO NOT support George Floyd! And here’s why. In this video Owens says she doesn’t “support George Floyd” because she doesn’t support “turning criminals into heroes”. Meaning she doesn’t support turning “bad guys” into “good guys” just because something bad happens to them. She doesn’t say Floyd deserved to be killed. In fact, she says, “What I’m saying is not any defence for Derek Chauvin [the cop who killed Floyd]. I hope that he gets the justice he deserves and that the family of George Floyd deserves justice.” However, she also says:
“The Black community is unique. Not every Black American is a criminal, not every Black American is committing crimes, but we are unique in that we are the only people that fight and scream and demand support and justice for the people in our community that are up to no good.”
The implication is clear: Floyd was a bad guy who had gotten “up to no good” too many times and, therefore, doesn’t deserve the global outpouring of rage that followed his death.
One of the main problems with this “good or bad” thinking is that it only requires tarring someone with one bad act, real or implied, to label them as all bad. That’s why the term “known to police” in media reports about Black men is a problem. The person could be “known” simply because they got carded once but it’s enough to label them as “bad”, and deserving of their fate, in too many readers’ minds.
This same thing is used in reverse.
When COVID first hit, our group supported a young Black man who had been confronted by Ottawa school board trustee Donna Blackburn. During the confrontation Blackburn made some racially charged remarks and was eventually sanctioned by her fellow trustees for acts of anti-Black racism. In her defence, several of Blackburn’s supporters brought up that she has a Black daughter, suggesting that she, therefore, “couldn’t be racist.” (We countered that idea by saying Blackburn could have committed the racist acts in the morning then read a bed time story to her Black daughter at night – but that wouldn’t make her earlier actions any less racist.)
Another example of this was the July 2020 coverage of the heavily armed white man who drove his truck through the gate of the Governor General’s residence where Prime Minister Trudeau and his family live.
In the initial CBC story, Corey Hurren was described as an active member of the military who serves as a Canadian Ranger. It said he ran a meat products business called GrindHouse Fine Foods. It mentioned he was past president of his local Lion’s Club, an active volunteer in his community of Bowsman, north-west of Winnipeg, and that his group of Rangers were on call to be part of the military’s assistance with the COVID-19 response. In other words, Curren was a nice guy just having a really bad day – and was treated accordingly by the RCMP officers who apprehended him that day “without incident” and took him into custody for questioning.
Donald McLeod’s defenders, like Justice for Justice McLeod, want the OJC review panel, and us, to believe that McLeod is a good guy who did everything for the community and that his critics are bad people who misconstrued his actions and landed him, unfairly, in front of the OJC once again. They cite all the great work he’s done with programs he helped start, like the 100 Strong Foundation which aims to produce strong, ambitious leaders by changing the narrative of African-Canadian boys. They gloss over the facts that are the basis of the charges and, instead, stick to one narrative: he’s doing great stuff so he obviously couldn’t have done the bad stuff.
But this reasoning ignores the simple truth: people do good and bad things and deserve praise for the good stuff and to be held accountable for the bad stuff. McLeod’s supporters only want to praise his good deeds and vilify those who try to hold him accountable for his bad ones.
But, as McLeod’s second hearing shows: if we don’t hold our leaders accountable for the bad things they may have done, eventually someone else will, and the result won’t be good for anyone in our community.