Canadians remain naive about systemic racism
Canadians sit at the top half of North America and look south with moral superiority. We compare ourselves with that cesspool to the south and maintain that we are better.
This week, that moral superiority was on full display across Canada. Quebec Premier Francois Legault stated that there was no systemic discrimination in Quebec and only a “very, very small minority of the people that are doing this discrimination.”
Over in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford commented, “Thank God we’re different than the U.S. and we don’t have the systemic, deep roots they’ve had for years.”
Later, Stockwell Day, a former cabinet minister in the Harper government, in giving a commentary on CBC Newsworld, stated, “There’s a few idiot racists hanging around, but Canada is not a racist country and most Canadians are not racist. And our system … is not systemically racist.”
He went on to compare the mocking he received as a child who wore glasses with racial discrimination.
These three examples come from high-profile individuals whose comments are influential and very public. I wonder, on the other hand, how many people in politics or corporate boardrooms share their points of view. Fortunately, Premier Scott Moe didn’t deny racism; otherwise, he would have had the Gerald Stanley case thrust in his face.
Canadians have a collective naivety that we are free from the sin of racism. The bad examples of the United States and South Africa are tossed around as examples of extremism that doesn’t exist in Canada.
But as people of colour, we have grown up in a country that has both a history and a present that reeks of racism. Slavery existed in Canada under both French and British rule. We learned in school that Canada was the terminus of the Underground Railroad, giving sanctuary to runaway slaves from the United States. What we didn’t learn was that their descendants were segregated and ghettoized. Chinese labourers built the railway in British Columbia, but a head tax kept them separated from their families.
The story of the Indigenous people is one of neglect and genocide. If we didn’t sign treaty and take reserve land, we were starved into submission. The government wanted to settle the West and we were considered an impediment to settlement. We were colonized by the churches and the federal government. Colonialism is also racism.
The racism and repression continue to the present. Last November, the Globe and Mail obtained a document from the RCMP that stated that from 2007 to 2017 the RCMP fatally shot 61 individuals, and one-third of them were Indigenous people. This winter, the Winnipeg police killed three Indigenous people within the span of 10 days, causing the Indigenous Bar Association to call for an inquiry.
Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, we have the legacy of the killing of Colten Boushie at the hands of Gerald Stanley. The all-white jury acquitted Stanley, revealing the racist underbelly of this province.
Saskatchewan jails are crammed full of Indigenous prisoners, despite the fact that while we make up 15 per cent of the province’s population, we make up 76 per cent of the inmate population. Colonialism has institutionalized our people, first in boarding schools, confining us to reserves with the pass system, then in the Sixties Scoop and now in the jail system. This is an admission of failure. The only way to control our people has been to take away our freedom and confine us in some kind of institution.
Racism is a pathology, and nobody wins. The effects of racism continue generation after generation. People fail to realize their potential, lives are lost, the glass ceiling limits us. We pay a terrible price, but so does the rest of society. When a group is a victim of racism, the accompanying social pathologies cost the society. Jails are costly; so are social workers, welfare programs and excessive policing. In Saskatchewan, we have a whole industry built on our suffering.
Canada is addicted to racism and any addictions counsellor will tell you that the first step is to recognize the problem and the second step is to do something about it. We have too many leaders and commentators who need to take that important first step.