I was once asked by the Ontario Human Rights Commission
staff interviewing me for a job, what “systemic discrimination” was. That was
thirty-five years ago. I did not get the job.
There is a lot of talk about systemic discrimination these days. It is largely in the context of racism. Many
say we have it here in Canada. Some disagree. It has become a cry of political
jousting. But I do not believe people are talking from the same standpoint.
If one means our society is systemically discriminatory because
our laws were, and indeed our very Constitution was fashioned by rich white men, then
yes, there may be hidden biases embedded. But tell me how to fix it. Do we toss
out Parliament because it is a Caucasian and European invention? What do we replace
it with: tribal councils? I have seen nothing that works any better and much that functions far worse.
A wise woman has once stated that hindsight is a poor judge of history. I concur. Taking down statues or changing the names of streets, schools or towns is not the answer. One should not whitewash the past anymore than one should glorify its wrongs.
We know dreadful things have happened throughout time. The
witch hunts of the New England colonies and elsewhere, the inquisition, the
criminalization of homosexuality, the Jewish pogroms, the enslavement of blacks
– and the socially forced servitude of others, the extermination of indigenous
people, religious massacres, the expulsion of people from Acadia, Ireland,
Scotland and other places. And of course, there has been conquest and colonization
since time immemorial: by France of England, by Rome, by Greece, by Islamic
countries of Europe, by European countries of the world, and more recently by
the United States, and by China. Dreadful things are still happening worldwide and
at home. And of course there has been mass migration, which has caused great upheaval, since homo sapiens first arose in the belly of Africa.
In Canada, I agree, there is systemic racism against indigenous people written into our Constitution of 1867. It was somewhat tempered by the embedding of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms into it over one hundred years later; but not perfectly so. We still have a form of apartheid.
We are conflicted. Did Europeans conquer Canada, or did they
settle here under non-European terms? What do these so-called treaties with
various tribes mean? I have not seen any conclusive or convincing answer. Sometimes one must
accept reality and practicality. One cannot go back in time anymore than the Anglo-Saxons
could undo the Norman conquest of 1066, or the ancient Picts could undue the Scots' invasion many centuries earlier. One must go forward. Sometimes “good” does arise from the ashes of “bad”.
One says that our police forces are home to “systemic
discrimination”. If one means that the laws and policies around policing are in a system-wide manner filled with discrimination, then I think this is not correct. The
problem is not the system. It is, I believe, the people. People are racist,
homophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist, xenophobic. What we lack is education. People
learn these discriminatory stances at home. They learn them in their churches,
and sometimes in their exclusive clubs and schools. We have come a long way to
change the laws and the policies. We have failed, however, in the education of
the people. We have failed in the recruitment and screening of people in
positions of authority: be they law enforcement officers, politicians, preachers,
bureaucrats or educators.
From some of these dreadful events, we have learned. And from
others we are still learning. But does anyone have a solution or are they just advocating
change without knowing what that looks like. The latter is dangerous. There is
no consensus, even among the different interest groups.
Another wise old woman, my maternal grandmother, used to
say: “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater”. When someone, - politician,
activist or whoever - can offer a practical solution, I will listen. Until
then, from my perspective, we need to work on education. We need to weed out the remaining laws and policies, or perhaps it's only their application, which have an impact on people in a
discriminatory fashion. This is not just about racism.
