The Humboldtt bus crash, white privilege and the media

By Arthur Weinreb —— Bio and Archives April 13, 2018

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It was a horrific incident that made news around the world. Last Friday a bus carrying members of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team crashed with a tractor trailer at the intersection of two Saskatchewan highways. Currently the death toll stands at 16; the female trainer, the coach of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League team, two members of the media travelling to cover the playoff game and 12 young players.

"The maleness, the youthfulness and the whiteness of the victims are, of course, playing a significant role"

In a day and age where politicians and the media do their upmost to divide people according to race and gender, the fact all the victims were white and all but one male was bound not to go unnoticed. Two days after the fatal crash, Nora Loreto sent out the following tweet,

I'm trying to not get cynical about what is a totally devastating tragedy but the maleness, the youthfulness and the whiteness of the victims are, of course, playing a significant role.

— Nora Loreto (@NoLore) April 9, 2018

Loreto describes herself as an activist but she is no ordinary social justice warrior. She is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in mainstream Canadian publications such as Maclean’s magazine and the Globe and Mail that bills itself as “Canada’s National Newspaper.” While Loreto’s views are in line with current progressive thinking, ordinary Canadians expressed their outrage at the journalist’s tweet, accusing her among other things of politicizing the tragedy and calling for her employers to fire her.

The mainstream media coverage was extensive. This reportage led to a moment of silence in Arlington, Texas before a Blue Jays/Rangers game. And Prime Minister Trudeau took time from doing who know what he does all day to take a call from President Trump who expressed his condolences. Without this extensive coverage, news of the deaths of mainly young people would have been restricted to those who live in and around the small city of Humboldt with a population of around 6,000. While people have a right to be angry at Loreto’s tweet, it must be asked what exactly she meant when she wrote “the maleness, the youthfulness and the whiteness of the victims are, of course, playing a significant role.” Ordinary hard working taxpaying Canadians who were moved by the seemingly senseless deaths of so many young people assumed she was speaking about them. But there is another interpretation indicating Loreto’s comments are not that farfetched. It is doubtful the freelance journalist was speaking about ordinary Canadians. The progressive elites have no idea how ordinary people live or what they think and there are plenty of examples to illustrate this point. One is the Manhattan socialite who, after the 1980 American presidential election could not understand how Ronald Reagan won because no one she knew voted for him. A better and more recent example are the political and media elites who to this day have no understanding of how Donald Trump ended up in the Oval Office instead of their beloved Hillary. Closer to home, a lot of people, including members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, have no clue how someone like Doug Ford could win the leadership and be poised to become the next premier of the province. As far as saying the players’ maleness and whiteness played a significant role, they undoubtedly do in Loreto’s world. Does anyone really think if a bunch of inner city black kids were killed on their way to play a championship basketball game, the media coverage would have been as extensive? To progressives, blacks and other minorities are not really people; they are members of a group who the left likes to use to portray as victims in order to further their political agenda. Such a crash would have likely been a one day story. Ordinary Canadians should not be upset at Loreto’s tweet. She really wasn’t talking about you, she was talking about herself and the progressive world she inhabits.