O
OnTheWayOut
The title of this article intrigued me :
What Americans tend to get wrong about racism in Canada
After reading it I was very surprised as I expected another USA bashing by Canadians. Interesting article, worth a read.
"The truth is: Canada and the United States share centuries-old twin histories of Indigenous genocide, mass displacement and chattel slavery. We share in histories of sanctioned segregation: theirs called “Jim Crow”, while ours has been referred to as “Jacques Crow”. It’s a history that extends to the internment of the Japanese, the creation of laws explicitly designed to ban Black immigration, and the discriminatory practice of redlining.
Much of this has been obscured by a mono-vocal telling of Canada’s national story, one that inundates our classrooms and commentariat. It positions us somewhere between the primordial brutality of America, and the paternal coloniality of Britain or France. As it relates to the U.S. and the question of racism, Canada is depicted as a north star. We are the good guys.
It’s a historical assessment that distances Canada from responsibility and complicity in the franchise of racism. It has recreated the country in the vision of a kind of apologia—that we were bad, but not as bad as them. Sure we’re a little racist, but they are worse. Under the aegis of this story, we have conditioned the world to view Canada as a historical tabula rasa, rather than an extension of the same instrument used to marginalize and oppress.
It is not well known that in the 18th century enslaved Black people in Canada smuggled themselves into the United States in search of a freedom denied to them at home, or that many would follow after the American Civil War. The fact Canadian racism served as a rubric for Apartheid South Africa is largely unremarked. As is the fact that the first reported race riot in North America is believed to have happened in Atlantic Canada. Even the institution of “stop and frisk” is presented as uniquely American, despite the fact some Canadian police departments practiced it at higher rates. Not many understand the extent to which both nations share a national story rooted in the logics of settler colonialism. The landed gentry that turned mass death and human bondage into an engine of nations in America, did the same here, too.
In addition to Canada’s history of systemic racism, we are bombarded by the spoils of these centuries-old systems today. Despite a dearth of race-based data in this country, much of the same empirical evidence and anecdata that Americans tout as confirmation of systemic racism exists here, too. Racial disparities in wealth and family income, incarceration, educational opportunity and poverty persist, meanwhile disparities in infant and maternal mortality are harder to substantiate due to a lack of data. Canada’s inner cities also suffer under similar regimes of disproportionate police surveillance, harassment and violence. Our neighbourhoods are residentially segregated and our schools are manifestly underfunded. "
What Americans tend to get wrong about racism in Canada
After reading it I was very surprised as I expected another USA bashing by Canadians. Interesting article, worth a read.
"The truth is: Canada and the United States share centuries-old twin histories of Indigenous genocide, mass displacement and chattel slavery. We share in histories of sanctioned segregation: theirs called “Jim Crow”, while ours has been referred to as “Jacques Crow”. It’s a history that extends to the internment of the Japanese, the creation of laws explicitly designed to ban Black immigration, and the discriminatory practice of redlining.
Much of this has been obscured by a mono-vocal telling of Canada’s national story, one that inundates our classrooms and commentariat. It positions us somewhere between the primordial brutality of America, and the paternal coloniality of Britain or France. As it relates to the U.S. and the question of racism, Canada is depicted as a north star. We are the good guys.
It’s a historical assessment that distances Canada from responsibility and complicity in the franchise of racism. It has recreated the country in the vision of a kind of apologia—that we were bad, but not as bad as them. Sure we’re a little racist, but they are worse. Under the aegis of this story, we have conditioned the world to view Canada as a historical tabula rasa, rather than an extension of the same instrument used to marginalize and oppress.
It is not well known that in the 18th century enslaved Black people in Canada smuggled themselves into the United States in search of a freedom denied to them at home, or that many would follow after the American Civil War. The fact Canadian racism served as a rubric for Apartheid South Africa is largely unremarked. As is the fact that the first reported race riot in North America is believed to have happened in Atlantic Canada. Even the institution of “stop and frisk” is presented as uniquely American, despite the fact some Canadian police departments practiced it at higher rates. Not many understand the extent to which both nations share a national story rooted in the logics of settler colonialism. The landed gentry that turned mass death and human bondage into an engine of nations in America, did the same here, too.
In addition to Canada’s history of systemic racism, we are bombarded by the spoils of these centuries-old systems today. Despite a dearth of race-based data in this country, much of the same empirical evidence and anecdata that Americans tout as confirmation of systemic racism exists here, too. Racial disparities in wealth and family income, incarceration, educational opportunity and poverty persist, meanwhile disparities in infant and maternal mortality are harder to substantiate due to a lack of data. Canada’s inner cities also suffer under similar regimes of disproportionate police surveillance, harassment and violence. Our neighbourhoods are residentially segregated and our schools are manifestly underfunded. "
