I recently experienced an ethical dilemma. A letter was circulated by people I admire and respect and with whom I share many political positions concerning the attack on Amira Elghawaby. Elghawaby was appointed in January as the Trudeau’s government’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia. In Québec, Elghawaby’s appointment was greeted with disdain and calls for her to step down were initiated by leading government officials who accused her of being anti-Québec. Every statement and written element of her public record was scrutinized to locate this supposed anti-Québec sentiment. It was reminiscent of how the former Globe and Mail journalist Jan Wong was excoriated in Québec in 2006 after an article she wrote on the Dawson College shooting attempted to link “the decades-long linguistic struggle” within the province to a string of gun massacres. I followed the Elghawaby controversy closely. So, when the letter arrived in my inbox, I struggled with whether to add my name to it or not.

I believe that Islamophobia not only needs to be challenged but that in challenging it we should work with the notion that it can be eradicated, too. Of course, wherever there is Islamophobia, anti-Black racism is also simultaneously present and I am committed to challenging it wherever it rears its head. Too often, the ways in which strategies for challenging Islamophobia are developed results in making Black Muslims disappear.

After 9/11 the insidious language of the Muslim as a “brown body” did much to hive off how anti-Blackness structures Islamophobia. It is not only Orientalism that is a foundation of Islamophobia. Indeed, Islamophobia relies on anti-Blackness for both its violent form and practice (for example the term ‘sand n-word’) on the one hand, and on the other, for its ability to bind some “brown” Muslims into formations that tacitly support anti-Blackness both in Muslim communities and beyond them. Any challenge to Islamophobia that will achieve a powerful reorientation of social relations will also have to take anti-Black racism seriously as the foundation of its intervention. In fact, a failure to do so would simply amount to rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

I get the importance of the idea of a special representative. I can see its function. It could be an important role in a society that is seriously ready to tackle not just Islamophobia but all kinds of racial, religious, gendered and other forms of hatred meant to produce insiders and outsiders—who is valued in the nation and who is not. This is especially relevant at a time when a crisis of meaning around racism and bigotry has ensued, and as conservative and far-right forces seek to interrupt and reorient what justice might be. I also understand the push to appoint a special representative because in Canada Islamophobia has led to spectacularly deadly events. These should produce an urgency to transform how we live together.

But there is an unsettling truth to Trudeau’s appointment of Elghawaby and it is that it cannot be taken seriously. In my view, the attack that leading figures in Québec launched at Elghawaby had less to do with her and more to do with a Liberal government that frankly refuses to tackle Islamophobia in Québec in the first instance. Trudeau’s spectacular failure to challenge Québec’s anti-Muslim Bill 21 should give us all pause. The prime minister has been repeatedly clear that he will not step in to disrupt the province’s “religious symbols ban,” the legislation that many have (correctly) termed Islamophobic and that was part of the basis for Elghawaby being attacked by Québec Premier François Legualt (she criticized the bill in a 2019 op-ed). Legualt is a man who has claimed institutional racism does not exist in Québec. He has advocated and fought for professors and teachers to use the n-word in educational settings in Québec and Ontario. Trudeau’s non-interference strategy should give anyone serious about the deadly effects of Islamophobia second thoughts before accepting an appointment from him. The PM’s lack of leadership on Bill 21, played as a game to retain votes in Québec for the Liberal Party, is a terrible case of chicken for Muslims and other non-white people in that province and beyond.

The letter arrived in my inbox, and I was stuck. I read it a few times. I agreed with much of what it said. I do not know Elghawaby personally. However, what was said of her in the letter about her credentials to hold such a position seem to fit the usual pattern of the sort of people who are vetted and tapped on the shoulder for these kinds of government appointments. Even with the information provided I could not with good conscience sign the letter in support and defense of Elghawaby. I could not sign the letter because I could not make sense of why anyone would accept such a position offered from a government that is so very feeble on an important piece of legislation in a province where a white supremacist Islamophobic mass killing occurred. Indeed, it seems to me that to accept such a position in the face of Trudeau’s politicking with the deadly seriousness of Islamophobia is out of step with the demand for the position itself. And furthermore, to accept the position seems to collude with the PM’s lack of moral and ethical leadership on the very thing the special representative is supposed to advise on. That anyone would accept the position at all baffled me. I could not sign the letter for that principled reason. To be blunt, the Government of Canada has not demonstrated seriousness on the matter at hand.

We are living in interesting times. Governments, universities, museums, even some corporations, and many leading institutions that organize our lives have taken to appointing special representatives, advisors, special committees (see the recently announced Black Justice Strategy) and all manner of go-betweens with the claim of seeking advice before action can be taken. For the most part these practices delay action while giving the appearance that something is being done. At the state level this structure and practice of governance is often reserved for racialized communities and people that are barely citizens. While those appointed to these positions might be deeply devoted to the issues and work at hand, the roles themselves mostly only do something for the people who hold them and not for the effected communities. These proxies function in place of direct governance and need to be abolished.

The Elghawaby controversy and the letter that landed in my inbox highlighted for me how an agenda gets set for us even as the forces setting that agenda manipulate our deepest desires for change as they stand by and do nothing while still holding the power to act. I could not sign the letter because I could not become party to the ongoing fiction that this form of governance is a legitimate way to proceed.

Rinaldo Walcott is a writer and critic. He is professor and chair of Africana and American Studies at the University of Buffalo (SUNY).