Facebook pages with racist comments may lead to change in Thunder Bay

Racist comments, posted online, are hurtful and disturbing, but may lead to positive change said both an expert in new media, and a Thunder Bay city councillor.

• Thunder Bay police investigate racist Facebook pages

Police in the northwestern Ontario city are investigating two Facebook pages, which include offensive remarks and posts of pictures of people who appear to be Aboriginal.

The pages appear to originate in Thunder Bay.

This kind of online activity flies in the face of efforts to make Thunder Bay a welcoming place, said councillor Rebecca Johnson, who is also a member of the city's Anti-Racism Committee.

"It's sad. I think it's just a situation that we're trying to overcome, and how do we get at this? To me, we've gone a couple of steps backward."

But Johnson said one positive is that people are talking about racism now, and hopefully that dialogue can help move the community forward.

University of Waterloo professor Aimée Morrison studies what people write in the digital world. She said the issue of racist or hateful comments is concerning.

"The fact of it happening on social media is mostly just revealing the kind of biases that people feel they aren't able to express out loud in what we would call polite company, " she said.

However, she said the benefit of seeing all these comments online is that it opens people's eyes to attitudes that are all too common.

"That type of speech becomes more visible to the type of people who would maybe not necessarily engage in it, and who find it shocking. And that inaugurates a broader public conversation around who is speaking like this in this day and age, and why," said Morrison.

She hopes the shock of seeing hateful comments online will spark conversations about how to change racist attitudes.