It is, unfortunately, not all that unusual for an American audience to learn that a politician dressed in blackface. Yet the case of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau manages to surprise.
For one thing, there’s Trudeau’s age. He is just 47, and one might expect an ambitious young man of his generation, and especially one whose father was prime minister, to be more politically savvy. Yet Trudeau was captured on film wearing face paint not once, not twice, but three times, including once on video—and that’s just what’s known so far. In one case, Trudeau wore brown makeup to an “Arabian nights” party at a private school where he taught in 2001. He also wore blackface in high school, and on another occasion, not yet explained.
“What I did hurt them, hurt people who shouldn’t have to face intolerance and discrimination because of their identity. This is something I deeply, deeply regret,” Trudeau said yesterday—but, astonishingly, also said he did not know how many times he had worn blackface.
Read: Yearbooks aren’t the only place to find blackface on campus
As superficially surprising as the individual culprit is the location. While America’s history of racism is well known, Canada has often been portrayed—by residents of both countries—as a beacon of comparative progressivism, on race as well as a host of other issues. Trudeau himself has embraced and burnished this image, with high-profile apologies to indigenous peoples and gestures of feminism, all a part of his courtship of favorable comparisons with President Donald Trump.