WE ALL NEED TO PLEDGE TO END RACISM

Let’s harness energized movement to dismantle unjust legacy facing Blacks

As a high school student

I was fortunate to go to a school that was a mini United Nations. In the Flemingdon Park/thorncliffe Park neighbourhood of Toronto, in a school with a population of over 1,200, we had people who came from 81 countries from every region of the world. They represented every ethnicity, and every belief system you could think of.

Within the school we had a sizable Black population, some of whom were my friends. I carry a little bit of each of these people within me, and those friendships of long ago are part of who I am. However, despite these relationships I was unaware of the challenges they and their families faced navigating a world dominated by white privilege and racism.

Like Black Canadians, I have been a target of racist violence during my life, with my earliest memory of a racist incident at the hands of some older white boys when I was six. It resulted with me in an emergency room in a downtown Toronto hospital. However, I have never walked in the shoes of any Black Canadian when it comes to racism, and don’t know their lived reality.

Unlike them, I have never left home for a walk or gotten in my car to drive somewhere, feeling worried about crossing paths with police. I have never felt the anxiety they feel when a police car drives by, or stops near them when they are peacefully going about their business. In those instances where I have been stopped by police, I have never felt the fear they must feel about how the encounter might turn out. I have certainly never been “carded” by police, or racially profiled by them as many young Black men have been in Canada’s big cities.

In addition, I will never understand the anxiety Black parents must feel when their teenage or young adult children step outside the front door. For those with sons, I will never know how they feel when they have to instruct their sons on what they must do and how they must behave if they are stopped or questioned by police, in order to come out of the encounter unharmed.

When I saw the eyewitness video of the death of George Floyd, under the knee of a police officer as he begged for his life, I felt sickened and horrified, like millions of others. But I will never feel the depth of pain and injustice that Black Canadians feel each time there is another such incident reported in the news. Their lived reality is one that is alien to me despite my own experiences with racism and bigotry, and it is certainly alien to anyone who is white.

We are all living through a seminal moment in history, and Canadians seem to have had an epiphany about racism in Canada in response to Floyd’s death. In order to harness this social movement we all have to ask: What is our next step to dismantle the racist legacy that Blacks and other communities of colour are confronted with in this country?

Like thousands of others across Canada, I attended an anti-racism protest last week. I saw people of all ethnocultural backgrounds and ages stand together, calling out “Black Lives Matter.” I was heartened by all those who joined in the call for justice, and to say there is no place for racism or police violence against Blacks or any people of colour, in a society that claims to be committed to defending human rights and the rule of law. In order to achieve success, Canadians need to make a long-term commitment to eliminating the systemic and endemic racism that is ingrained in our society. We need to commit to changing the systems that created this reality, and commit ourselves to the goal of racial justice. Finally, we need to work towards a society where regardless of our skin, our tribe, our blood, our belief, our language or our nation, we are all seen and treated equally.

This is my pledge to fight racism, and I ask other Canadians to make it as well. Fareed Khan is founder and chair of Canadians United Against Hate.