You may have seen the video of George Floyd,
a forty-six-year-old Black American,
being killed by a Minneapolis police officer on May the twenty-fifth, two thousand and twenty.
The officer's knee was pressed against Floyd's neck,
preventing him from breathing.
If you've seen this deeply disturbing video, you're not alone.
Tens of millions of people across the world have viewed it.
and many more know the circumstances of George Floyd's death,
which triggered a summer of protests in cities across the United States, Canada,
and in many other countries.
The rallying cry of these protests was "Black Lives Matter".
In addition to being a rallying cry for a protest movement,
Black Lives Matter is an organization that began in twenty thirteen as an online community
in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman,
a neighbourhood watch captain in Florida, who shot and killed a young Black male
by the name of Trayvon Martin on February twenty-sixth, two thousand and twelve.
In thousand and fourteen, the first Canadian chapter Black Lives Matter was started in Toronto
after the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
The weeks and months following the killing of George Floyd saw a surge in
awareness of the racial inequalities that continue to exist in the United States, Canada,
and in other democracies.
A survey of the Twitter activity of Canadian MPs
found that among those who tweeted during the two weeks after Floyd's death,
forty-four percent posted about his killing and/or about Black Lives Matter.
Among MPs of the major political parties,
Liberal and NDP legislators were those most likely to have posted such tweets.
Canadians have been as likely as people anywhere to support peaceful protests
sparked by Floyd's killing, four to five, supporting such protests.
They have been much less supportive, however, of violent protests.
About seven of ten Canadians polled in June of 2020 said that
violent protests are an inappropriate response.
In the conversation that has unfolded over the past several months,
the term systemic racism has become better known to Canadians.
Prime Minister Trudeau weighed in early when during a press conference
on June the eleventh, two thousand and twenty,
he said the following: "Systemic racism is an issue right across the country,
in all of our institutions, including in all our police forces,
including in the RCMP.
That's what systemic racism is."
Trudeau added, "In many cases it's not deliberate, it's not intentional,
it's not aggressive individual acts of racism, although these obviously exist.
It is recognizing that the systems we have built over the generations have not
always treated people of racialized backgrounds, of indigenous backgrounds,
fairly through the very construction of the systems that exist."
Well, most Canadians agree with the prime minister.
An IPSOS poll taken in early July of two thousand and twenty found that six in ten Canadians agree
that there is systemic racism in Canada.
Agreement is somewhat less, however,
when respondents are asked whether such institutions as the police government,
the courts, the education system, and the media tolerate racism.
About half of Canadians agree that they do.
The same poll found that four in ten Canadians agreed with the statement,
"I believe that people of different races are fundamentally different from one another."
Hmm. Perhaps not what you expected to find,
given the multicultural and tolerance self-image that most Canadians have of their country.
Now, one other finding from this IPSOS survey deserves our attention.
Although fifty-two percent of Canadians disagree that racism is an American issue,
forty percent agreed that it is an American problem, not one that afflicts Canada.
Only one in five strongly agree that racism is a Canadian problem.
Sandra Hudson, founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto,
agrees with the one in five who strongly agreed that racism is a Canadian problem
and not just a challenge for American society.
In an interview with the CBC a few weeks after George Floyd's killing she said,
"I grew up in Toronto.
I'm telling you, the brutalization of Black people and the anti-Blackness that we face,
it's not that different because the little imaginary line that separates what is called Canada
and what is called the United States.
Our cultures are very, very similar.
The thing that is very different about Canada is
the denial that Black Canadians are faced with
when we tell people outside of Black communities
that this is a problem that needs to be addressed."
Hudson goes on to situate the lived
circumstances of Black Canadians and the systemic discrimination they experience
in the same reality of colonialism and control
experienced by Indigenous Canadians in the past and present.
A reality in which, she says,
quote "police officers patrol, patrol indigenous communities and Black communities,
and they stop and arrest Black people and Indigenous people far more than anyone else,
and they incarcerate Black people and Indigenous people at disproportionate
rates to everyone else.
We've never stopped being a community to be controlled and patrolled controlled
and patrolled and surveilled by police forces."
This connection between the experiences of Black and Indigenous Canadians,
perhaps most egregiously when it comes to their encounters with the justice sytem,
from policing to penitentiaries, has been an important aspect of the
recent protests and conversations in Canada on race-based inequality.
When protestors toppled and decapitated a statue of Prime Minister John A. MacDonald
at Place du Canada in Montreal in late August of two thousand and twenty,
this came after a day of protest in cities across the country in support of defunding the police.
These protests were inspired by a broader narrative of decolonization
that is seen as the root cause of race-based systemic discrimination
whether experienced by Black or Indigenous Canadians.
The conversation on systemic, or institutionalized discrimination faced by Black Canadians,
did not begin with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Indeed, in an important way it first exploded onto the Canadian scene in Montreal
in the winter of nineteen sixty-nine
when about two hundred demonstrators occupied the computer center at Sir George Williams University,
now known as Concordia University.
Many of the protesters were Black students from the Caribbean,
including Anne Cools, who would eventually be appointed to the Canadian Senate.
They were protesting what they claimed were the discriminatory grading practices of a biology professor.
You can read accounts of what ensued online.
In short, it resulted in a major fire and the arrest of ninety-seven persons,
some of whom, including Anne Cools, were sentenced to prison terms.
Since then the focus of public protest for justice for Black Canadians
has usually involved policing practices
triggered by the deaths of Black persons during encounters with the police.
But until the months following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis
and the days of violence that followed,
nothing close to the scale of the racial justice protest that took place in Canada
in the summer of twenty twenty had ever been seen.
So here's the question.
What if any aspects of Canadian society and institutions would need to be changed
in order to eradicate what most Canadians believe to be systemic discrimination in their country?
Okay, that's a big question.
But, if you agree with its premise, that race-based systemic discrimination exists,
identify just one or two of the first and most important steps
that would need to be taken in order to achieve greater racial equality.