Race

This article first appeared April 10, 2018 in Policy Options.

The Liberal government shouldn’t bend to critics of its antiracism consultations, but it should also know racialized Canadians expect meaningful change.

The federal government is about to embark on nationwide antiracism consultations. The initiative is not without its naysayers. The announcement of the $23-million plan in the 2018 budget has been critiqued by prominent Conservative MP Maxime Bernier and media pundits. Warnings to the government to “be careful” and to “keep a low profile” have cast a shadow over the process before it has even begun. If the Liberals intend to follow through on their statement of “standing up for diversity” and “building communities where everyone feels included,” backing down from the consultations and giving in to mainstream media and the right is not an option. Rather, their goal should be to ensure that the time of racialized Canadians and Indigenous people isn’t wasted by this process and that these consultations result in much-needed policy changes.

The Broadbent Institute's new project, Change the Game, takes a critical look at the history of social democracy in Canada, with the intention of learning from the successes and challenges of the past in order to build the best possible path forward. We invite you to join us in rethinking and renewing social democracy by reading other entries in this series.

When the Broadbent Institute invited us to join forces with them to write about social democracy from the perspective of critical race theory, we were both struck by the challenge that lay in front of us. 

The speed, scale and ferocity of racist attacks across the United States in the wake of Trump’s victory are revealing. Doubly revealing, in fact.

Data from the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS) which replaced the long- form census indicate that racial status remains a significant factor in shaping advantage and disadvantage in the Canadian job market and in influencing the overall level of poverty and income inequality.

Put bluntly, non-whites do significantly worse than whites, in part because of racial discrimination.

Truth, progress and science.

The relationship between these concepts is unwieldy and complex. As media scholars, we read Margaret Wente’s column heralding journalist Nicholas Wade’s new book and cringed, recognizing the ease with which these concepts were used to tell a misleading story about race.

Renowned lawyer Clayton Ruby’s intervention into the Rob Ford spectacle got me thinking about the ways in which this civic mess has unfolded. Namely, it has brought into focus how privilege continues to be accrued unfairly to certain individuals and communities and not others in Canadian society.

Toronto Police Chief William Blair’s announcement concerning the recovery of the infamous video came just as a judge’s ruling on disclosure of the warrant became public. Some of what has been revealed in those documents is more damning than the reality of the video. The video vindicates the reporters and the Toronto Star in particular. However, the documents raise a whole other set of issues and concerns, ones that are bigger than Rob Ford and the specifics of his actions and represent a far more troubling, systemic scandal.

Detroit's recent bankruptcy filing led me to re-read a fine award-winning book by Thomas J. Sugrue, “The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.” The basic argument of the book is that the crisis of that city  – now a mainly black, overwhelmingly poor city, a fraction of its former size and a shadow of its former magnificence  – is deeply rooted in persistent discrimination against blacks at the workplace and in housing.