The Vanilla Option

There has been a lot of chatter recently about the revamped $100 bill and its alleged involvement in ethnic cleansing. In this world that panders to faux outrage its apparently OK to liken the redesign of a bank note with genocide, but I digress. I actually like the little brown notes much more than the little red ones or the little green ones....but again I digress. ;)

For those of you who are not following this story with the fervour of a Green Peace activist at a GOP convention, I will give you the Cole's notes version of the story.

The Bank of Canada (BOC) has started printing money on this fancy shmanzy plastic material as opposed to the now 'old fashioned' paper. Its more durable, has more security features, blah blah blah blah. The fact that it looks like a cross between Monopoly money and the Azerbhaijani ruble seems lost on people. It could be worse though, it could resemble that bastion of currency high fashion the Euro. Anyways, rambling again. Back to the story. One of the draft designs featured what looked like an Asian looking lady peering down an old fashioned microscope. Pictured close by was a vial of insulin, the whole ensemble an apparent homage to Dr Banting the discoverer of insulin....a Canadian....just saying. Its pretty standard practice with any new design to send it before a bevvy of focus groups to get the OK. I mean, you do not want to go against the will of a Canadian focus group - they may, I stress may, exhibit mild displeasure if they don't like the design, you know, resulting in the odd raised eyebrow or possibly even a sharp intake of breath followed by a quick change in the topic of conversation. Nice weather eh?

The focus groups, made up of people with a diverse range of ethnicities,  objected to the use of an Asian looking (read Chinese) woman on the note. Some of the objections were because people didn't think the Chinese girl looked Canadian enough, some because they thought it stereotyped the Chinese (as hard working over achievers), some because, well, people like to object about everything and anything given the opportunity.  Reacting to this negative feedback, and trying to live up to their policy of neutral ethnicity, presumably a policy born out of the fear of generating negative reactions from some or other sector of the community, the Asian girl was cut and replaced with a more ethnically neutral looking girl (read white).

Despite this happening last year and despite the fact the draft note never made it into circulation, the dropping of the Asian girl has generated cries of racism. Reacting to the 'outcry', the BOC has publicly apologized for the way it executed the redesign process and has fallen on its sword. There are still a lot of ticked off people though, and frankly its hard to understand why.

There is a lot about this story that annoys me. First and foremost are the over the top reactions of the groups playing the race card. I mean, seriously? Ethnic cleansing? We live in an imperfect world where racism, real racism exists.  This is not an example of it. Misguided and bumbling? Yes. Racist? No. When groups cry racism over incidents such as this they cry wolf.....and in doing so they mute the response of society to incidents of real racism. In effect one could argue they actually do harm to the very people they purport to defend. I was also ticked off to hear that the BOC had caved and issued an apology. They really did nothing wrong. In apologizing they actually reinforce the faux outrage rather than quell it. Ridiculous.

There are other things that bug me about this fiasco.

If the bank has a policy of neutral ethnicity on its bank notes, why was a draft prepared that contained a visible minority?

Why does the bank have a policy of neutral ethnicity in the first place? If the policy is commemorate important Canadians or Canadian achievements what happens if the important Canadian is a visible minority?

Why is neutral ethnicity always defined as 'white'? Is there such a thing as neutral ethnicity?

Does anybody really give a crap what is depicted on our bank notes? I mean its usually dead guys that nobody gets taught about at school anymore anyway.

This whole drive to vanilla-ize society is rampant. If we continue to embrace and pander to the complaints of the Faux Outrage Generation (FOG) we will eventually lose one of the key elements that makes our world the wonderful place it is.....its diversity. So rather than taking the vanilla option, we should be celebrating that which makes us different and not burying it. We should be choosing the politics of inclusion through mutual acceptance rather than the politics of suppression. We should be choosing to adorn the world in a million colours rather than applying a shroud of white wash.

But what do I know? I'm just a white Christian boy.