Neighbours in the Glencairn neighbourhood of Regina are alarmed and angry after finding spray paint tagging their property that includes racial and offensive language.
Stanley Bowes had no idea his property had been tagged with racial and white supremacist slurs until the media alerted him. His fence facing the back alley was slandered with pro- KKK visuals.
“Normally the neighbourhood’s pretty good, don’t have any problem that way at all,” Bowes said.
Charles Kooger, a neighbour down the alley from Bowes, found out after his wife had walked the dogs past the graffiti and came home very upset.
The Koogers are parents of adopted mixed race children.
“We have a multi-cultural family. We have seven kids, two homemade and five adopted, and they were adopted from three different countries and so four of our kids are of black heritage, Brazilian and Haitian, so we have several mixed race grandchildren,” Kooger said.
“It’s not personally directly towards us, but it’s certainly personal for us.”
He thinks the brazen racism could be a result of the U.S. election.
“I think events south of the border have opened up an area of discourse that used to be sort of out of bounds,” Kooger said.
“I don’t think it’s acceptable by the general public but certainly there are individuals who think that their darkest thoughts have been vindicated,” Kooger said.
READ MORE: ‘Go back to your f—ing country’: Videos show racist altercation on Toronto streetcar
Barb Dedi, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Human Rights said racially offensive incidents in Regina have increased since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.
“There was an incident the morning after the election in the United States when Trump was elected, there was some graffiti in a neighbourhood stating ‘n***ers go to the U.S and let Trump deal with you,” Dedi said.
Dedi is also with Spring Free From Racism Regina and when she spoke with Global News, she had just finished addressing a racially motivated incident at a Regina middle school. An eight-year-old boy from Ethiopia had been physically abused by a fellow student and told he should return to his own country.
“Over the past week or so it has really, really increased after the U.S. election.”
Dedi suggests this is a time for parents to talk to their children about racism.
“Trump got elected, and about his racist behavior, kids take that back to school,” Dedi said.
“It’s important that we from this point forward again, go out and re-educate. We have to get back into the school systems, and we have to get back into the work places,” she added.
Comments