Digital revolution forcing the reckoning of racism

Can social media's repeated revelation of explosive examples lead to social change?

Racism, both blatant and systemic, became much harder to deny in 2020.

A stomach-churning bystander video of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd as the life seeped out of him was the fuse that lit the powder keg of tense race relations in the U.S. and beyond.

Joyce Echaquan, an Atikamekw woman who livestreamed her harrowing final moments as medical staff at a Joliette hospital made racist remarks, exposed the scourge of anti-indigenous racism closer to home.

Students at a Montreal North high school who posted recordings of their teacher using the N-word during online classes revealed the stunning depth of casual racism.

In 2020, smartphones and social media platforms helped provide the shocking, overt, incontrovertible proof of what minorities and racialized communities have been saying for years: racism is alive and well in every nook and cranny of our society, from our police forces to our health-care system to our schools. And Quebec is certainly not exempt.

Without the power of ubiquitous hand-held technology, it's almost certain these incidents would have been swept under the rug like so many others before and since. Floyd would have been portrayed as a threatening Black man resisting arrest, justifying the cops' use of lethal force; the slurs that rang in Echaquan's ears as she died would never have been amplified to a deafening roar; the teacher's use of a loaded and hurtful term would have been dismissed as words taken out of context.

Instead, we all bore witness to the everyday injustices experienced by Black, Indigenous and other people of colour. We watched for eight excruciating minutes as Floyd struggled to breathe. We heard for ourselves the cruel taunts of hospital staff in Joliette and the offensive statements of the Montreal teacher. We have report after damning report pointing to all manner of bias and discrimination in Quebec, but the videos allowed us to judge for ourselves and ensured we can no longer hide behind the privilege of reasonable doubt.

For once, there were consequences. The four officers involved in the ill-fated arrest of Floyd were not only terminated, but arrested and charged in his death. The nurse and orderly who berated Echaquan in her last minutes were fired. Meanwhile, the CEO of the Lanaudière health authority responsible for the Joliette hospital was removed from his post and transferred elsewhere in the health system. The Henri Bourassa High School teacher was suspended and then dismissed by the Centre de services scolaire de la Pointe-de-l'île.

This is a start — a departure from the usual impunity with which allegations of racism are met. But tempting as it may be for governments, institutions and the wider public to see these events as one-offs, we must recognize that they are but the tip of the iceberg.

We must go much deeper in addressing the hulking mass of poisonous attitudes, unequal opportunity, bureaucratic indifference and systemic discrimination that lurks beneath the surface of our society for those who are not white, not male, not Christian, not heterosexual, not heteronormative and so on.

But will we? This is where an extraordinary reckoning bumps up against the limitations of what a digital revolution, no matter how explosive, can achieve in short order. Although there have been hopeful steps in the right direction, it's not immediately clear that the social media accounting of 2020 will bring about lasting and meaningful social change for 2021.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have acknowledged the existence of systemic racism. In Plante's case, it was in response to hearings by the Office de consultation publique de Montréal. She followed up with measures like creating a new anti-racism czar for the city and efforts to diversify the ranks of her party. But getting Montreal police to change their ways has proven a trickier, slower process.

Trudeau has stuck to his habitual platitudes. But at least his rhetoric is better than Quebec Premier François Legault's defensiveness.

Although Legault has made important strides in recognizing racist incidents, apologizing to Echaquan's family and reaching out to Indigenous leaders in reconciliation, he categorically refutes the very notion of systemic racism. He puts some Quebecers' fears about being viewed as racists above the very real grievances of people who have been hurt by racism — despite Echaquan's final, courageous act revealing a textbook definition from her hospital bed.

Racism has become increasingly difficult to ignore in Quebec. But apparently it's still not impossible to deny.