There are endless instances of unfair, insensitive and racist treatment in Canada. No longer de jure though, which is vitally important. And visible minorities are typically on the short end of that stick. That’s life. We must counter it as best we can. A century ago in North America and before then, invisible minorities faced de jure and de facto prejudice, Jews, the Irish, Italians, Slavs, Poles, others. But against all the instances you cite, you cannot think, setting aside the situation of Canada’s indigenous, that in North America every institutional effort is not being made to be supportive, sympathetic, fair, promoting of, encouraging of, lending a hand to, proactive for, black and brown North Americans.
(In my view, that effort in its passion is subject to a big conceptual flaw, among others, which is conflating equality of opportunity, including the good of lending a state hand, with equality of outcome.)
I remember attending law school at Osgoode at York in the early seventies and being blown away at how multi cultural York was then, even though the law school was predominantly white. Then I remember going to my daughter’s graduation from law school and being impressed with how diverse her graduating class was. And there’s no way, that it (and other Canadian law schools) isn’t even more diverse now. I remember my more recent visits to UBC while out west and being happily amazed by the big number of Asian students on campus.
I like you can’t quantify racism in Canada. But what my own experience tells me, what the possibilities for success for visible minorities tell me, what the mainstream cultural honouring of inclusiveness tells me, what the attitudes of my friends, acquaintances, former colleagues, former clients, people I worked with, appeared before and generally interacted with across a wide variety of experiences tell me, what the diverse faces I constantly see around me and interact with in all walks of life tell me, what the institutional efforts I see everywhere in Canada at all levels of government tell me, what I see as the changing face of my own neighbourhood tells me, what they all tell me is that the ascription “systemic” to such racism that does exist in my country is a massive distortion.
I disagree vehemently with your assessment that a lot of good has come out of “anti-racism,” insofar as that phrase is understood as a term of art for a specific set of understandings rooted in CRT—Critical Race Theory, the notion of White Fragility, intersectionality, and other related ideas. I take it this is what you mean by the “anti-racist movement.” For me, the cons in the movement decisively outweigh its pros, such as they may be.
The issue isn’t but a few examples of a few activists going too far. That’s bizarrely seriously to understate things. One issue is a moral panic that has infected institutions, businesses and the culture generally such that the pernicious, canceling stories, incidents and microcosmic examples are legion. Do I really need to list specifics to convince you of this? If I do, then I can only think the world you perceive is at great odds with the world I perceive. And the issue underlying this tidal wave of instances concerns the intellectual flaws at the root of CRT, White Fragility, intersectionality and their moribund relatives, one such flaw I refer to above, another I highlighted in my last post to you, (that was the fallacy of the notion of “racist gaps,” that any disproportion or underrepresentation is evidence of racism), some I incorporate below and here’s another flowing from a concrete situation: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/meta-arguments-about-anti-racism/615424/
(Obviously, no right thinking person objects to anti-racism insofar as it merely designates being opposed to racism.)
Listen, I applaud the steps you’ve taken better to improve your teaching. And if that’s a result of the impact of CRT, then so be it. Mind you, I don’t notice in those steps that you’re copping like a mortal sinner to your white privilege and ineradicable deep structure racism, or getting your white students to cop to theirs, or calling for equality of outcome as the measure of equity, or teaching how Canada is a white supremacist, patriarchal, genocidal—with all due attribution to Justin Trudeau for genocidal—systemically racist country, or arguing that good writing and doing math systematically are white supremacist carry overs, or arguing against grading (or for disbanding grading) since grading is inherently racist, or arguing that the experience of marginalization evinces a wisdom that can supplant evidence and logic, or arguing that science is a hegemonic structure, or arguing against merit, or arguing against the category “gifted” for students who demonstrate intellectual superiority, or arguing that we whites are fragile and terrified at being shown to be the incipient racists we all are deep down, or arguing that one’s racism is evident in one not actively combating racism, or arguing that heteronormative white males are at the top of a hegemonic structure of oppressive power who do all they can to keep the oppressed under them ongoingly oppressed, or arguing that underrepresentation is irrefutable proof of racism, or teaching racial essentialism, or pitting whites against blacks and browns, or promoting any kind racial divisiveness, or calling for the “cancellation” of historic giants like John A. MacDonald or more generally pointing to Canada’s history as one of unvarnished evil, or teaching about the past from the viewpoint of “presentism,” and all other matters of unloveliness that are consistent with the constellation of ideas rooted in CRT and intersectionality.
And it’s to your credit that you don’t.
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