Why being ‘nice’ is bad for Canada

Why being ‘nice’ is bad for Canada

It’s difficult to determine what qualifies as “nice.” The words “nice” and “kind” are 

often used interchangeably. When Canadians are characterized as nice, it has 

more to do with being polite. And 66 per cent of Canadians believe we’re as nice 

as the world thinks we are, according to a survey conducted as part of   The 

Canada Project Survey, in partnership with Abacus Data. But this Canadian

 niceness is worth a closer look, particularly because “nice” is how the world often 

defines us and how Canadians define themselves. Yet it’s used to erase and 

undercut many things that aren’t so nice.

Niceness has historically been utilized to undercut progress toward dismantling 

systemic oppression. In a piece published earlier this year entitled “You Can’t Kill 

Racism with Kindness,” Lindsay King-Miller wrote: “I can think you’re an asshole 

and still fight for your rights. You can find me unbearable and still fight for mine. 

And when we simplify oppression into mere unkindness, we provide cover for 

friendly people who support oppressive policies.” In Canada, this is all 

compounded by the fact that nuanced and accurate conversations on race 

remain 

rare. Here, niceness and politeness are utilized to shut down race discourse and 

create what Anthony Morgan calls Canadian “racial exceptionalism”- the 

falsehood that positions Canadians as too nice to take racist actions and to talk 

about racism itself. “Having avoided the depth and scope of American Jim Crow, 

we imagine ourselves innocent,” wrote Rosemary Westwood in a 2016 piece that 

asked “Is Canada too Polite to Talk About Racism?”

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The problem is that there’s a wealth of evidence that racism can actually look like 

it’s nice. Characterizing racism as mean and blatant is misguided and inaccurate. 

It also means there’s no accountability for subtle, harmful behaviour that is 

indeed racist.  What Christy DeGallerie aptly describes as “nice racism”—subtle 

“microagressions” and friendly forms of discrimination—can easily describe what 

Black Canadians tolerate dressed up with the veneer of niceness. Among these 

“nice” actions: Being asked where you are from, being told you’re intelligent for a 

Black person or offhand comments about a hair style. They all serve to center 

whiteness and frame a racialized identity as different. Blackness (and by default 

Black experience and Black thought) remains characterized as irrational, angry 

and misguided, while whiteness remains juxtaposed as rational, calm and 

intelligent.The concept of racial “microaggressions,” coined by 

psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, is rooted in the notion of unconscious racism. The 

idea is commonly discussed in the anti- oppression and anti-racism training. But 

by discussing intention versus impact, it still lets problematic behavior off the 

hook. Microagressions aren’t harmless- they arise out of implicit bias, and have 

real life implications for racialized people. For example, if white Canadians rely on 

stereotypes to even partially govern their view on Black people, decision-making 

is often not neutral—or nice—it is simply white.  Confronting racism means 

having uncomfortable conversations, which runs counter to the nice narrative. 

Apparently, it’s not nice to feel uncomfortable. When it comes to race, this 

reasoning falls flat and quickly becomes about white feelings versus Black 

humanity. There’s no comparison here, but every Black person I know—Canadian 

or otherwise—has faced the same white resistance to these conversations, in 

which the narrative becomes about how the individual’s  intentions are not racist.

We see this play out constantly, this month when liberal darling and serial 

offender Bill Mahr claimed his n-word reference was nothing more than a joke. 

Katy Perry recently sat down with famed activist DeRay McKesson and on cultural 

appropriation, told the world something all Black people have heard before: I 

would like to be educated on these issues—but nicely. Of course, being educated 

on other folk’s lived realities through niceness is neither useful nor necessary, but 

it continues to happen. Here, in Canada, I don’t know any Black Canadian without 

at least one account of the same story. They call out the racism inherent in a 

friend’s joke, or statement, and get blamed, or labelled angry. Yet whiteness 

continues to be understood as neutral—and nice. When it comes to race, once 

again it seems that many Canadians are under the impression that being nice, or 

polite, means silent.

Perhaps more dangerously, our niceness leads us to allow anyone to have a 

platform to speak about race. If a truly anti-racist lens was used in our country, 

Christie Blatchford would not feel comfortable using the Black Lives Matter 

protests last summer, in the middle of one of the biggest moments highlighting 

anti-Black racism in recent memory, as an opportunity to provide a misplaced 

Martin Luther King Jr. quote (but no reference to his work) and characterize Black 

activism as a mob. We certainly did not ask for her assessment on race, and 

deserve much more depth.

If racism was a critical issue that Canadians generally wish to discuss, we wouldn’t 

be given the piece that Margaret Wente recently published on white privilege—

which wasn’t about that topic at all. Wente mention a discussion on a CBC radio 

show, Ontario Today, on white privilege being taught as an element of the ntario 

curriculum. She highlighted a guest on the show, Karen Walker, a racialized arent 

of a multiracial child, who said she, as a woman of colour, had “never really felt 

outside of the Canadian culture” and that she hoped that Canada was becoming 

“the colour-blind society that Martin Luther King advocated for.” Walker’s emarks 

contradict countless Black Canadians who have spoken of their experiences with 

anti-Blackness. But Wente employs a method common among members of the 

Canadian press when writing on race—she found one person to fit the narrative 

that she wanted to tell. Despite quoting Arlo Kempf, who spoke of “invisible 

spaces of whiteness where privilege goes unchecked,” Wente puts weight on 

Walker’s personal feelings. Here, the existence of white privilege is swapped for 

feelings and packaged as the truth. Wente then focuses on white people’s 

emotions and opinions on white privilege, highlighting callers who “were angry, 

defensive and dismayed…they pointed out that not all white people are equally 

advantaged, and cited their own family histories at length.” She and these callers 

missed the fact that white privilege is not defined by automatic wealth and 

success. Rather, it reduces the barriers faced when attempting to acquire both of 

those things.

We can no longer accept a bare-bones conversation on race in Canada. If Elle 

Dowd argues “white niceness is the antithesis of Black liberation” in the American 

Midwest, an identical argument can be made to white Canadians—niceness is 

irrelevant, and acknowledgement of humanity is key.