Race played role in how Quebec premier, Montreal mayor handled 2 teen deaths, experts say

As Quebec's premier and the mayor of Montreal defend their reactions to the deaths of two teenagers and insist it did not represent a double standard, not everyone is buying it.

Thomas Trudel and Jannai Dopwell-Bailey, both 16, were killed in Montreal in recent weeks.

Trudel, who was white, was shot and killed in Montreal's Saint-Michel neighbourhood 10 days ago. Dopwell-Bailey, who was Black, was fatally stabbed outside a high school in the city's west end a month earlier.

Last week, François Legault and Valérie Plante each stopped by a makeshift memorial that was set up for Trudel and mourned the teenager's loss in public. But when a vigil was previously held for Dopwell-Bailey, both were absent, and neither made any public appearances to show support to his family.

Some people took notice, including Dopwell-Bailey's older brother, Tyrese.

"Jannai got a lot of support from the community, but not from officials and people in power — and that's what we need," he said, speaking outside the teen's funeral last week.

WATCH | Jannai Dopwell-Bailey's brother says politicians did not offer support to his family:

"I don't think they understood the gravity of the message they were sending," said Myrna Lashley, an associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University and the former director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

"It sent a message that a white child's life is worth more than a Black child's life," she said. "And that the premier of the province and the mayor of the City of Montreal should attend commemorations for that child but ignore the other child."

Lashley and other experts CBC News spoke to used words like "unacceptable," "disturbing" and "harmful" to describe the actions of the premier and the mayor.

But they also all agreed it wasn't surprising, pointing to a wealth of research that has looked at how biases shape differences in how Black and white youth are viewed, whether consciously or not.

Two days after paying respects to Trudel near the scene of the teenager's death, Legault lamented the recent string of violence involving Montreal youth in a Facebook post.

In it, he wrote about the deaths of Trudel and Meriem Boundaoui, a 15-year-old girl shot last winter.

His post initially made no mention of Dopwell-Bailey.