Hamilton hatred demands robust community response
Last week the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, the Hamilton AntiRacism Resource Centre and Dr. Ameil Joseph launched We Support Hamilton. This is a community-centred approach to tracking hate incidents and crimes in Hamilton and providing support and resources to residents who have experienced or witnessed hate.
This project started in 2019 in response to three pivotal incidents that rocked the city. First, YellowVesters congregated weekly at city hall with mostly xenophobic, racist and homophobic messages. Second, Statistics Canada released its annual report on hate incidents/ crimes, and Hamilton ranked No. 1 per capita in the country. Lastly, the violence at Hamilton Pride shook the core of the LGBTQ community when Hamilton police compromised their safety at Pride. The lack of protection from Hamilton police was later confirmed in the Bergman Report. These pivotal incidents are why HCCI, HARRC, Dr. Joseph and others came together to develop a community response to addressing hate in the city. For many residents who haven’t experienced hate, they can’t believe that this could be happening. But the seeds of hatred are sown in every corner of our society, and we don’t even realize it.
One of my favourite songs from
Hamilton-based musician Mother Tareka has a poignant line “Race is made up, but hate is real.” This line feeds anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, Islamophobia and other acts of hate in the city. Many reading this would say why can’t we all just get along? But the reality is that race is socially constructed and has been the bedrock of how our society is built.
Scientific race scholars like Carl Linnaeus divided human beings based on geographical continents and skin colour; Europeaeus albus (White), Africanus niger (Black), Asiaticus fuscus (Yellow) and Americanus rubescens (Red). He would further apply characteristics to each group. For Europeanus — light, wise, inventor; Asiaticus — stern, haughty, greedy; Americanus — unyielding, cheerful, free; Africanus — sly, sluggish, neglectful. How can one man decide the fate of people based on skin colour, physical traits and manner of clothing (stereotyping)? When we say one group of people are inventors and another is not, we delve into ideas of supremacy, hence the term white supremacy. Yet these ideas were framed as academic work in 1758 and have been used to foment white superiority globally. These ideas inform Canada’s laws, such as the Indian Act, immigration policy, education policy, policing in the community, and health care access. For example, there was a time when the federal immigration department was called the Ministry of Colonization and Immigration. I provide these examples to make the connection between Carl Linnaeus’s work, white supremacy and hate.
Addressing hate in Hamilton requires enormous work, but it begins with understanding that white supremacy is the root cause of the hatred we see in our community. It is essential to name it and know how it works today, whether addressing the rise in antisemitism, Islamophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism and other forms of hate. The manifestations of white supremacy take many forms, and we must be vigilant. It could be KKK members marching down James Street, carding residents, white supremacists running to be mayor, flying confederate flags, teachers using racial slurs, anti-LGBTQ protesters using homophobic epithets or microaggressions in the workplace, hospital, schools etc. It’s essential to track all of the above, refute their ideas, and know the impact on our community.
We Support Hamilton is one way to address hate in Hamilton by hearing from people who have experienced hate and responding to their needs. On a structural level, it will take all of us to start peeling back centuries of stereotyping and discrimination to create new relations around compassion, care, understanding, and reciprocal learning to undo the monumental impacts of the social construct of race and the real implications of hate on the city.