Ien’s racism claims are intricate matter
Re Toronto police reaction to Marci Ien shows woeful ignorance of racism basics, Paradkar, March 4 The Toronto police have reacted shamefully to Marci Ien’s opinion piece.
Ien’s column should have incited concern and willingness to improve the police’s relationship with Toronto’s Black communities. Being a bad driver does not mean that someone should fear abuse, injury or death at the hands of the police; that is where police interactions vary significantly between white and racialized people.
Jumping to castigate Ien over social media shows how fragile the police are. With numerous indictments of racism and abuses of power, they found one inconsequential detail and laud it in an apparent attempt to disprove systemic racism in policing. Emily Conlon, Toronto Shree Paradkar is absolutely right that “For speaking up, Marci Ien is now placed in the centre of a circle of doubt.” However, her novel interpretation, that such a skeptical reaction is the triumph of unconscious collective racism doubling down its prejudices and prevailing by disrupting “the innocent Black person narrative,” isn’t logically persuasive.
Clearly the evidence is in and, undoubtedly, racism exists. That’s why it isn’t necessary for Paradkar to resort to a false mode of reasoning to discredit those who challenged Ien’s accusations of racism. Paradkar claims that motive isn’t necessary for racism to exist. Thus racism can happen free of individual agency, according to her. However, to disentangle motive from racism distracts from the truth of the nature of racism. If it exists independent of human agency, then surely individuals play no part in its practice and are therefore not accountable for its detrimental effects to society. Also, how can society demand that racists change their ways if their behaviour is beyond their will?
It’s telling that, after Paradkar’s lapse into the collective mind manifesting unconscious racism, her conclusion assigns culpability to the “wilfully ignorant.” Such blaming of ill will makes the most sense in discussing racism. Racism is clearly not motiveless. That’s the reason it’s dangerous: It’s clearly intentional and that’s why society must intervene to stop it every time it happens.
That’s the anti-racist narrative that is worth repeating and not disrupting. Tony D’Andrea, Toronto