Years of degradation, murder and wrongful charges have led us to today. Years of society turning a blind eye, of allowing authority figures to ruin the lives of people of colour. Today’s conversation in Canada is about the black and indigenous communities and how our political and social systems have failed to protect and empower them.
The recent murder of George Floyd shed light on a bizarrely evil action. How can a person lay on someone’s knee for long enough that they die of strangulation? It sounds impossible. It sounds wrong. It sounds like something that should not happen. But surrounding George Floyd are other men and women who have been wrongly charged or even murdered, without the police claiming responsibility.
As a country we have ignored this issue for much too long.
Listed here are links to donate and support right now.
Link Tree for Canadians: https://blcryerson.com/
Donate by Watching Youtube Videos: https://lifehacker.com/support-black-lives-matter-by-watching-this-youtube-vid-1843952737
The Bail Project: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/the-bail-project
Black Lives Matter https://blacklivesmatter.ca/
The Movement For Black Lives: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/movement-4-black-lives-1
Black Visions Collective: https://www.blackvisionsmn.org/
Across Boundaries: https://www.acrossboundaries.ca/
COVID-19 Black Emergency Support Fund: https://ca.gofundme.com/f/black-emergency-support-fund
Black Business and Professional Association: https://bbpa.org/
Black Women in Motion: https://blackwomeninmotion.org/
Black Legal Action Centre: https://www.blacklegalactioncentre.ca/
Black Health Alliance: http://blackhealthalliance.ca/
Nia Centre for the Arts: https://niacentre.org/
Black Youth Helpline: https://blackyouth.ca/
Black Mental Health Matters: https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-fund-for-blackled-mental-health-supports?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet
Support for Chantel Moore: https://ca.gofundme.com/f/support-for-family-of-chantel-moore
Support for Regis Korchinski Paquet: https://ca.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-regis
We need to give time, energy and money to the Black Lives Matters movement now – we need to focus.
However, to properly dismantle the racism that perpetuates education, housing, hiring practices and more we have to challenge anti-blackness and shadeism within our own communities.
I am South Asian. The community is rife with anti-blackness and it is well beyond time that we start to talk about it. Our communities are carrying a perspective about skin-colour that is very damaging. We have to understand where our biases come from, discuss them and then break down these beliefs. We need to be better.
What is a topic that could star the conversation, something most South Asians could relate to? A topic that could start to unravel where these ideas come from, British colonization of India.
It’s a topic that brings up emotions and starts the conversation of why South Asians still hold some racist beliefs.
The British established the East India Company in 1600 and over the next 200 years slowly gained control of the entire country. The people of India are highly diverse in their physical characteristics so it was impossible for the British to normalize colonization over a single racial difference [1]. It could only be maintained by constructing categories such as caste or religious subgroups and then attach race to these categories. These constructed categories were characterized as being biological and hereditary, thereby racializing the very categories [1]. It also set up a hierarchy where all Indians were deemed racially inferior to the colonizers which legitimized the colonial rule since they were ‘providing benefits’ to the native people.
The caste system in India is currently known to be a very nonprogressive and harmful system system, reducing people to a ‘caste’ they are given by birth. Before the British rule (in 1500 – 1000 BCE), a person’s caste was related to different occupations, all performing essential functions to further society. Personal inclinations and interests were held in high regard so a person did not have to follow the caste they were born into [2]. The British enforced these castes to particular physical attributes to legitimize colonization and make India easier to govern.
The attitude of the British towards India was steeped in racial superiority [3]. They were quick to undermine anything Indian, while lauding British culture, appearance, and language. The examples of mistreatment are numerous; refusing Indians into restaurants and establishments, forcing them to sit at the back of trains and denigrating them with insults, injury and incarceration. The reason they had to suffer? They did not look like their British overlords.
Through usage of caste and colour the British were able to take control of the entire nation.
They equated darkness of skin to incompetence and weakness.
However, even though India has since gained independence from the British for 73 years, the ideals and expectations have been hard to release. The expectations for light skin are perpetuated in many industries; film, fashion, skincare and even marriage!
Streets in India are lined with bright billboards, showcasing the most beautiful faces to the masses. The faces that are privileged enough to be on these billboards are commonly white and if not, heavily photoshopped light-skinned Indian women. What a large spectrum of people in the media!
Aunties and uncles go to numerous weddings, gossiping about how the bride is pretty but, “Ayo, it is too bad that she is so dark.” As if that is a quality that she must make up for by being better than average.
We denigrate our own people for not living up to these standards of whiteness. India and other parts of Asia has a booming skin-whitening industry that continuously perpetuates that being whiter can solve your life problems. According to a 2017 study 28% of women reported using skin fairness products, even though around 50% of these products contain toxic ingredients [4].
Even here in Canada, kilometers away from India, South Asians have not still been able to let go of the idea that ‘white is right’.
South Asians remain racist against black people so we must unlearn these biases and we must do our best to help them.
The feelings run deep but they are predicated on years of false information, harassment and violence. It is important to understand how shadeism and casteism colours the way South Asians look at the world.
Systematic racism is the concept that white superiority is inherent in everyday thinking, in personal biases and is firmly entrenched in our politics, government systems and society.
Canada is celebrated for its multiculturalism; however racism still pervades the fabric of our society. Just because we face a different type of racism than black and indigenous people, does not mean that we can step back from this fight.
Here are just a few statistics based on data from Statistics Canada compiled by CTV news that visually showcase how the black community in Canada is facing undue hardship [5].
Why is it that black people suffer from a higher unemployment rate or a higher rate of hate crimes? Systematic racism hits them harder than anyone.
Systematic racism is also used as a crutch to allow the police to torture, murder and wrongly arrest communities in peril; such as poor people or minorities. Individual cops may not be causing harm, however as a justice system they are operating in a vacuum that allows them to unnecessarily exert force and somehow not face the consequences of their actions.
The current #defundthepolice movement has the potential to make true change. Currently the Ontario police budget is $1.1 billion. Defunding the police is a move to combat the truth that the current police are not fulfilling their duty – and therefore they should not be receiving the amount of funding that they do. The idea is to demilitarize the police, provide funding back to the community, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, create a task force to deal with violent crimes and bring in psychologists and mental health workers to deal with specialized cases instead of expecting police to be responsible for everything. If you want to read more about it here is an article outlining the idea: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/defund-police-canada-black-indigenous-lives_ca_5ed65eb2c5b6ccd7c56bdf7d
And here are a few ideas of policies that need to be enacted now: https://8cantwait.org/
In Toronto a motion was recently released by councillors to give the city council oversight into Toronto Police budget line items and defund it by 10% or $122 million dollars. Conversations like this is what we should be calling for from all our politicians. Conversations and then change.
Shadeism in South Asian culture is subtle but influences our everyday thinking. We owe our rights and opportunities to the black community who fought for their civil rights many years ago. We are benefiting more than they are today. To better assist and understand the Black Lives Matter movement we must simultaneously acknowledge our own issues with anti-blackness in our community and denounce shadism once and for all.
Sign petitions. Donate to organizations. Vote for politicians that are promising the change that we need.
And of course, educate your families. They too are necessary to enact real change.
References & Additional Articles
[1] https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1501&context=faculty
[2] https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1501&context=faculty
[3] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/blighted-by-empire-what-the-british-did-to-india/
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5787082/
If you are interested in how and why the black community is facing these hardships, particularly in unemployment, here are a few links:
Center for American Progress – Persistence of the Black-White Unemployment Gap https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2020/02/24/480743/persistence-black-white-unemployment-gap/
Economic Policy Institute – Black unemployment is at least twice as high as white unemployment: https://www.epi.org/publication/valerie-figures-state-unemployment-by-race/
If you are interested in understanding the current plight of aboriginal people in Canada.
Origins – Canada’s Dark Side: Indigenous Peoples and Canada’s 150th Celebration https://origins.osu.edu/article/canada-s-dark-side-indigenous-peoples-and-canada-s-150th-celebration
Amnesty International – Indigenous Peoples In Canada https://www.amnesty.ca/our-work/issues/indigenous-peoples/indigenous-peoples-in-canada
If you are interested in learning more about systemic racism, there are a set of videos at RaceForward that are easy to watch and educational.
https://www.raceforward.org/videos/systemic-racism