Trudeau was so eloquent: “We all watch in horror and consternation what’s going on in the United States,” he finally said. “It is a time to pull people together, but it is a time to listen. “It is a time to learn what injustices continue despite progress over years and decades. But it is a time for us as Canadians to recognize that we, too, have our challenges,” he said. “That black Canadians and racialized Canadians face discrimination as a lived reality every single day,” Trudeau continued. “There is systemic discrimination in Canada, which means our systems treat Canadians of color, Canadians who are racialized, as differently than they do others.

Looking at violence and protest might summon tropes of indignation, but I think every white person should look at their ancestry.com history and reckon with how many people did your people own? They might be hard to find as they’re often recorded under Property with furniture and buckets. Look at wills and notice how Property was handed around like less-than “the good china” for dining. There was a cost of looting generations of lives. We have to reckon with this at some point. In a real, measurable, economic (to say nothing of humanitarian) privation happened. That the legacy of that privation haunts us in ways that ruptures loose often should be addressed and healed.