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Ontario NDP candidate exits over past comments about Black women

The late withdrawal is unlikely to really affect her riding’s race results

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The late withdrawal of a London-area NDP candidate who crashed out on the provincial election campaign trail over past comments about Black women may be spectacular – but it’s unlikely to really affect her riding’s race results.

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Elgin-Middlesex-London, held by the Progressive Conservative since 2011, lost one candidate last week when New Democrat Amanda Zavitz announced she was quitting after comments she made in a lecture surfaced. Her name remains on the ballot for Thursday’s election.

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Rob Flack, seeking re-election for the Tories, won with more than 50 per cent of the vote in the 2022 election, 33 percentage points ahead of his closest rival. One political observer says in that context, the exit of Zavitz will have little real effect.

“It wasn’t overly competitive (in 2022) and I suspect we wouldn’t see it be too competitive this time around either,” Fanshawe College political science instructor Matt Farrell said of the riding that takes in south London, St. Thomas and Elgin County.

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A part-time professor of sociology at Western University and business owner, Zavitz’s resignation last week came a day after the Progressive Conservatives issued a statement quoting comments she made about her “secret desire” to be a Black woman.

“My secret is that I want to be a Black woman,” Zavitz, who is white, said in a video of her talk that’s been taken down from YouTube, “because I think Black is much more beautiful. The easy answer is that I want to be Bell Hooks (the penname of American author Gloria Jean Watkins), and Bell Hooks was a Black woman.”

Zavitz also said she wished she had lived-experience of poverty and addiction. The Tories accused Zavitz of “trivializing” the life experience of Black Ontarians.

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Her exit caught the attention of the British news media, which dubbed it an “attempt to be woke” that “backfired.” Zavitz has apologized.

NDP Leader Marit Stiles called Zavitz’s original comments “deeply concerning” before her resignation was announced.

Flack’s campaign did not return a request for comment from The Free Press, but he re-shared a party social-media post highlighting the comments.

— with files from The Canadian Press

jmoulton@postmedia.com
@JackAtLFPress

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