Canadian Racism

Malcolm X once said that anything below the Canadian  border was the South, referring to the existence of white racism throughout the United States. That led other blacks to label the so-called "liberal" North as "Up South."

The "Up South" label could just as easily apply to Canada, a destination many fugitive slaves  headed for to gain freedom.

In Norman Jewison: A Director's Life by Ira Wells (Sutherland House Books, 2021), I learned that the Canadian-born film director (born in 1926),whose many films include In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier's Story, and The Hurricane, grew up in a Toronto neighborhood that was a five-minute walk from a Lake Ontario beach. At the beach, there was a sign Jewison would see that said, "NO JEWS, N******[NIGGERS], OR DOGS." The sign, writes Wells, a Canadian academic and journalist, was there to ensure that "the sight of a Black person or Jew" would not hinder the enjoyment of the beach by families seeking relief on a hot summer day. 

So despite being seen as a refuge for runaway slaves and a land that promotes racial tolerance and multiculturalism, Canada had its own struggles with racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry.

Note: Despite his surname, Norman Jewison is not Jewish. He is a white Protestant of British ancestry.

Fighting Homophobia Within Law Enforcement

In 1983 the Gay Officers Action League (GOAL) was twice turned down for membership by the New York Police Department-sponsored Police Groups's Brotherhood-in-Action, a fraternal law enforcement umbrella organization. It was later disbanded by then-police commissioner Benjamin Ward because of its rejection of GOAL on the basis of sexual orientation.

Most recently, GOAL has encountered similar bigotry in its attempt to join the five-year-old Committee of Police Societies (COPS), made up of 21 ethnic, religious, and honor groups.

Although GOAL has traditionally been supported in its membership efforts by the Guardians Association (African-American officers) and the Hispanic Society, three other COPS groups have joined the cause: the Viking Association (Nordic officers), the Policewomen's Endowment Association, and the Shomrim Society (Jewish officers). All five have threatened to drop out of COPS if GOAL is rejected.

Said one source, a member of one of the affiliated organizations, to New York Newsday: "Every society in COPS has gay members. They don't want their membership money spent on a group that discriminates against some of their members."

Although it's "great" having allies, admits GOAL co-founder and executive director Sam Ciccone, "that's not going to determine what our action is going to be. We're taking this on. We're not asking anybody else to take it on with us."

As things stand now, GOAL is "waiting for a response from [COPS]," says Ciccone. "We have requested application last year [November 1989] and still have not been accepted. But they haven't refused us yet."

COPS, founded in 1985, was set up to provide members with a forum to discuss job-related issues as well as to promote brotherhood and understanding.

However, brotherhood and understanding become empty words when it comes to the immediate admission of GOAL into the fold. Art Strier, COPS's attorney, in comments to Newsday, has gone so far as to call into question GOAL's legitimacy as an "organized, recognized fraternal" organization in the eyes of the NYPD.

Sam Ciccone fires back: "That's bullshit!" It's COPS, not GOAL, that is not recognized by the department. He also asserts that the NYPD "doesn't have any  regulations as to what is a group or not." Despite Strier's comments, the department records do indicate that GOAL (with its 300-plus membership) is recognized by the NYPD and has been since 1983, one year after its founding by Charles Cochran and Ciccone, both now retired. As far as Ciccone is concerned, it comes down to one thing: many of the members of COPS are "bigots."

According to GOAL and NYPD estimates, between 2,800 and 3,000 officers on the New York police force are gay or lesbian.

Says Ciccone of GOAL: "We're a very unique fraternal organization. We span every culture, every race, every gender. How could we not?"

This article was originally published in the Philadelphia Gay News (December 21, 1990).