Wednesday, August 5, 2020

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

The news shows that hope in human nature is often misplaced. Mr. Rogers shows that it doesn’t have to be

By Andrew Regnerus, Representative

I just watched the Mr. Rogers movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, with Tom Hanks. I watched the show as a kid.

Mr. Rogers is relentlessly and sometimes nauseatingly hopeful. He chooses to be contagiously positive.

In the film, Rogers agrees to an interview with Lloyd Vogel, a notoriously negative journalist. Rogers believes he can find good in this reporter and redeem him. Mr. Rogers is extremely hopeful about common decency and human nature.

Hopeful about human nature?

The news shows that hope in human nature is often misplaced. Instead, we see racism in not wanting to be neighbours on the basis of skin tone or ethnicity. Racism systemically keeps a right or privilege from a group. Whether racism is rooted in hate, fear, or a preference for homogeneity, it’s wrong.

I am saddened that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is not apparent to all people. Negative reaction to BLM itself proves that racism exists.

Canada’s long history of mistreatment of Indigenous peoples, including in my neighbourhood in the Curve Lake First Nation territory, is further proof. The CBC documentary Cottagers and Indians shows how economic and cultural interests are a crucible for racist tension.

On BLM, I stand with John Cartwright, a Toronto labour leader. Upon discovery of nooses on job sites he said,

Every employer and every political leader needs to show the people of Toronto there is zero tolerance for racism and hate in our workplaces and communities. Those with power in our society have a special duty to speak up and take decisive actions that are bold, lasting, and truly transformative.

A noose? Really? In 2020?

Who could display such a symbol of hatred and vigilante injustice! Labour—its leaders and members—must speak and act and transform. Amen.

BLM isn’t about special treatment for a minority group. It’s about defense from race-based hate, crime, and mistreatment in neighbourhoods where that still happens.

We are obligated to look out for each other. Silently tolerating persecution, especially if we exert influence, makes us complicit in murder, mistreatment, racism, and any other evil.

My colleague Roberta Vriesema wrote about the importance of building hope and holding dreams for persons and nations.

Hope is what allows us to keep going when there is no other reason to go. Hope is hard to describe, can be hard to create, and, at times, it is very elusive. Yet, hope is something for which we function and live. It is a profound motivator and an underestimated power.

Systemic racist mistreatment of people crushes their hope. Hope is an awful thing to take from people and nations.

In Mr. Rogers’s neighbourhood, people are treated with a good measure of human decency, incurable optimism, and indefatigable insistence on fairness. I would like to live in that neighbourhood. Won’t you be my neighbour?

Fred and Joanne Rogers

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

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