impermanent-marker:

allthecanadianpolitics:

Some Canadians seem to be glossing over Canada’s own problems with racism lately.

With chaotic events outside our borders – from Donald Trump’s blatantly racist and bigoted statements to the xenophobia that surfaced during the Brexit campaign – some Canadians have gotten the false impression that everything’s perfect up here at home.

Anyone on social media lately might have noticed the “Meanwhile in Canada” meme: usually in response to something terrible happening elsewhere in the world, Canada is shown as a peaceful paradise where Canadians only deal with minor, trivial problems as an exaggerated contrast. Oh, and Justin Trudeau usually makes an appearance too.

Here are a few examples:

[in article linked above]

Taking these images at face value, you’d think Canada is a multicultural paradise that doesn’t have issues with racism ingrained in attitudes and insitutions as they’re found in other countries: from racialized policing, to poverty, to the regular stream of ugly racist incidents that seem commonplace in the United States. Foreign journalists sometimes play this game, as well.

But here’s the problem: even though we may embrace and celebrate its diversity more than other countries, all of these problems still exist here in Canada.

Let’s stop and think about a few facts you won’t find in the latest “Meanwhile in Canada” meme:

Meanwhile in Canada, racism is still a big problem in Canada’s policing and justice systems

Sorry Uncle Dave, Canada’s racist, too.

According to a 2014 report issued Canada’s Correctional Investigator, between 2005 and 2015 Canada’s prison population grew by 10%.

During the same period, the number of black inmates grew by 69% and the number of Aboriginal inmates grew by 50%.

In fact, almost a quarter of Canada’s total prison population is Aboriginal, despite Aboriginal Canadians representing only 4.3% of the population, and the incarceration rate for black Canadians is “three times their representation rate in general society.”

There are also the well-known instances of black Canadians commonly being subjected to random police “carding” checks. Not to mention cases of police shooting black men like Andrew Loku and Jermaine Carby dead for no particular reason with the officers involved rarely facing subsequent disciplinary action.

Continue Reading.

a good friend of mine who is a black artist and activist was interviewed on my local cbc radio a few weeks ago along with a black woman who is a teacher and activist. they were prepared to talk in-depth about the state of black communities in our area, about the black lives matter movement in canada, and about what can be done to combat racism.

but the (white) interviewer legit started asking them questions like “is racism still a problem here”. they couldn’t even talk about how to fight racism because they spent the whole interview trying to prove it still exists.

and that’s what the general public here thinks - e.g. when BLM shut down toronto pride to demand inclusion, most white lgbt people reacted by saying BLM had nothing to complain about and were just causing a scene. and tbh when i was younger i would have reacted that way, because everyone here is raised to think that way. all our schooling and all our media teaches us to use america as our foil, acting like we couldn’t possibly have the same problems, as if we don’t share any of the same history. our history classes literally teach us about segregation and slavery in the us, but don’t mention that these things also existed in canada. and god forbid they teach us about colonial genocide or residential schools. ‘’’progressive’’’ canadians will criticize american racism and deny canadian racism in the same breath. we’re literally taught to do it.

we as white people in canada are trained to not even listen to black canadians and other poc canadians by default because we’re taught from the beginning that this whole framework of racism doesn’t apply to us. our journalists aren’t reporting racism because they still think it might not exist.