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Who doesn't like a good parade? Parades are celebrations of community identity, when neighbours get together to renew their ties and have fun.

Or at least they're supposed to be. But today, parades are a lightning rod for the politics of grievance. Who's in? Who's out? Who's allowed to march, or not? And whose identity is it, anyway?

I pity the poor folks who organized last weekend's Fête Nationale parade in Montreal. What was supposed to be a celebration of Quebec's distinct history, complete with happy habitants, is now being condemned for systematically excluding the marginalized and oppressed. It all started when the organizers decided to reduce the parade's carbon footprint (a good thing!). Instead of using cars and trucks to pull the floats, they decided to get a bunch of volunteer students to push the floats instead. Disaster! The floats were mostly occupied by white people. The students (recruited from a local high-school sports team) were mostly from minority groups. The optics were unfortunate. Social media went berserk. People invoked images of black slaves and white masters.

"As a black Quebecker, you're expecting to go out there in the street and celebrate Fête Nationale like everyone else, and what you're seeing is a representation of your actual place in society," complained Emilie Nicolas, the president of a Quebec anti-racism group.

Actually, there do seem to have been black performers in the parade. The students were volunteers, and their coach said they were glad to be part of it. But never mind. The bar for outrage is very low these days. An outraged Muslim group weighed in, too. So did some outraged Latinos. The organizers were forced to explain that they had intended no offence and apologized profusely.

Division has overtaken Pride parades as well. Pride parades began as symbols of defiance and solidarity among the gay (now known as "queer") community. Gradually they grew into symbols of inclusion and acceptance. Pride's greatest strength is its traditional message of love and unity. But now, that message is increasingly being supplanted by messages about Them and Us. To the distress of many, Toronto's Pride organizers voted to remove the police presence from the parade this year after heavy pressure from Black Lives Matter. This, despite the fact that Toronto's race relations are the envy of nearly every U.S. city.

So far, no Pride parade in the United States has banned the police – not even in Minneapolis, where a police officer was recently acquitted of manslaughter and two other charges after he shot and killed a black man during a routine road stop a year ago. In the aftermath of that scandalous verdict, the organizers disinvited the police. But the police pushed back. Police chief Janeé Harteau, who is a lesbian, called the decision "divisive." Bob Kroll, president of the Police Officers Federation said, "For an organization that prides itself on being accepting and inclusive, the hypocrisy amazes me." The police carried the day, and the march went on as usual.

Unfortunately, most Pride parades are fraught with politics these days. Even people who have suffered from exclusion can find it all too easy to exclude others. In Chicago last weekend, three women were kicked out of the Dyke March for showing up with Israeli flags superimposed on the rainbow flag. According to the organizers, "they repeatedly expressed support for Zionism" and their flags made people feel "unsafe." As one excluded marcher told the Windy City Times, "The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional. I don't know why my identity is excluded from that. I felt that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here."

In case you're not familiar with it, "intersectionality" is the problem. The theory of intersectionality maintains that people are systematically oppressed by powerful groups along the lines of race, class and gender. It is a thoroughly Marxist view of the way the world works, and it is the core of progressive social thought today. You are defined by your identity, never to escape it.

It's hard to have parades when everyone is stressing people's differences, rather than their similarities. It's hard to march together when people are so focused on what divides us. Instead of focusing on our common humanity, we've unleashed a form of oppression Olympics, in which victim groups compete for the title of most marginalized.

It's hard to have parades in an age when we're more intent on building walls than bridges. Too bad. They used to be such fun.

Justin Trudeau and his family marched alongside Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and other dignitaries in Toronto’s 2017 Pride parade

The Canadian Press

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