Juno News - June 13, 2020


Is Canada systemically racist？


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

199.14421

Word Count

3,475

Sentence Count

2

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 so everybody's talking about racial discrimination right now and that is a good thing it's important
00:00:12.420 that we have conversations about the country that we're trying to build as we move forward
00:00:16.420 and that we make sure that everyone in canada has the same opportunity for success regardless of
00:00:21.520 race color creed gender or anything else and so that's a discussion that we shouldn't continue
00:00:26.460 having and i hope that it can be a productive discussion that's what i try and do here
00:00:30.280 with these videos making sure that we can have a discussion talking about data points where we
00:00:35.040 agree where we disagree and really see if we can move forward because yelling into an echo chamber
00:00:39.620 does nothing and yelling at a wall where someone is not even listening to you equally does nothing
00:00:44.320 so in that spirit abacus has released a poll that i want to examine and that poll talks about the
00:00:52.600 views on racial discrimination it was conducted for city news and we'll pull up some of the
00:00:56.800 questions from there so this is the first question here and it is does discrimination happen in canada
00:01:03.560 today the responses were 28 frequently 37 quite often 33 from time to time and 1 never we'll throw
00:01:11.540 the 1 out the window because it's well within the margin of error which is 2.3 as you see on the bottom
00:01:16.600 so we really we we basically have um nearly a hundred percent uh or if you throw out the one
00:01:22.260 percent as an outlier we have basically a hundred percent agreement that racial discrimination does
00:01:27.160 happen in canada and then it's just really a debate on the frequency now when you're looking at this poll
00:01:33.040 we don't have the background data that abacus you know the full data on people's age people's gender
00:01:38.840 people's location um people's race or ethnicity if they volunteer that information or if they ask that
00:01:43.520 information so we don't have any of this and it's tempting to think that you know this is a mix of
00:01:51.920 everyone who lives in canada it's may or may not be true you don't know what the the um you know what
00:01:58.100 the makeup of this group is but we'll just say that it is a generic makeup of you know example of uh of
00:02:03.380 the standard um canadian demographic and so we'll just take it from there so again it's just everyone
00:02:09.100 agrees it's just a debate on the frequency and so is it a lot is it a little and what does a lot mean
00:02:14.460 to you what does a little mean to you could you be you know confused between frequently and quite
00:02:18.640 often you know i think that's that's reasonable um from time to time same thing maybe you're not
00:02:23.020 quite sure what that means you you don't believe that canada is an overly racist country but you
00:02:27.880 think that from time to time there is racial discrimination especially when you see something
00:02:32.300 in the news especially when you uh you know you read about something then you know you might think
00:02:36.600 okay this is one of those times where it happens and uh you know you're you're more looking at the
00:02:41.300 the larger scale issues as opposed to the next question here which we'll pull up and that is the
00:02:46.720 question on systemic or institutional racism now here 29 said that there certainly is 32 were pretty
00:02:54.360 sure that there is 30 said that there might be and 9 said probably or certainly not now again with
00:03:01.520 this question we have to look at are they defining is there a pre-question or can someone in the survey
00:03:07.620 ask the question what do you define as systemic or institutional racism and this is i think the
00:03:13.680 heart of a lot of the discussion that we're having right now how are we defining systemic or
00:03:18.740 institutional racism if you look at the textbook letter of the law then one of the main things which
00:03:25.900 you could say would be that canada is systemically or institutionally racist possibly because of the
00:03:32.560 indian act i know a lot of people in the first nations community have issues with the indian act
00:03:37.540 um i've heard that there is a large consensus that they want to get rid of the thing they're just they
00:03:41.800 just don't want to lose rights that they already feel that they have lost or they don't want to lose
00:03:46.160 um treaty rights or or land rights these type of things but by and large that they don't really like
00:03:52.040 the act it's just a question of what do you replace it with without without losing anything
00:03:55.780 so the sheer fact that we have an indian act and you know a law for one group of people that governs
00:04:02.860 very specifically what happens to them and other laws for other groups of people you could say okay
00:04:08.320 let's have that debate or let's say flat out you might say that the indian act is an example of
00:04:13.680 systemic or institutional racism and that's a good place to start because now we're talking about
00:04:18.000 something that is very specific it's very definable and you can have a proper discussion
00:04:22.260 the issue that's going on right now is that no one is defining in such a way that is understandable
00:04:29.640 to someone who's not steeped in this and i you know i try to be steeped in this because this was
00:04:34.820 something i did for a living i worked at a human rights organization for a number of years and i've
00:04:40.440 generally been very involved in combating anti-semitism and working towards human rights and so i might be
00:04:46.680 more um more used to these type of words or these concepts than people who don't deal with this on
00:04:51.920 a regular basis and so i might have a different understanding of what systemic or institutional
00:04:56.360 racism might be than the average person and so systemic or institutional racism could be the
00:05:03.600 societal outlook and that really is a word that used to be uh discussed that we don't talk about
00:05:10.880 anymore and that word is stereotyping stereotypes often you might hear the word like unconscious bias
00:05:17.340 or again this is sort of institutional racism or systemic racism that's talking about the society
00:05:23.700 the system of the society so again without defining the terms here it's it's difficult to say what it is
00:05:31.760 and it's difficult for us to say when we're trying to analyze this data point to say that everyone
00:05:37.560 believes this now just looking on what the answer was here between the certainly and pretty sure
00:05:44.160 that's about half so it's about 50 percent um there might be again they're not sure uh so we'll take
00:05:49.740 it as a not sure and then nine percent certainly or probably not and again if you say that there
00:05:53.880 certainly or probably is not institutional racism or systemic racism it really depends how you define
00:05:58.560 that if you want to say that there is no uh systemic racism or institutional racism because you don't
00:06:03.480 think you can you're not aware of any law that says that you know one group is x and another group
00:06:08.700 is y that would be why you might say no again it really depends on how you define it um i think that
00:06:15.440 if you're just talking about racism you're probably safer to say that there is so the nine percent i'd want
00:06:20.420 to have a discussion with those nine percent and really see if we can flush out why they think that
00:06:25.240 there isn't and ask them what they think it means if we're not willing to say it ourselves you know if
00:06:29.940 the person asking the question is not willing to say what they are defining systemic or institutional
00:06:34.740 racism as then we have here do you yourself have racist views and again this is i think where we
00:06:41.020 get into a lot of issues because here as the uh as the survey goes you have one percent say a lot i
00:06:47.260 have a lot of racist views uh that's again in the margin of error even if you did i find it hard to
00:06:53.260 believe that someone would really admit to such a thing i mean that it's not a positive thing i don't
00:06:58.300 think that was ever really a positive thing in our society to say that i'm you know i'm a racist
00:07:02.520 person i hate other people of other races uh so i kind of find it hard to believe but you know you
00:07:07.920 never know and either way it's within the margin of error so not statistically significant for this
00:07:12.980 discussion um 22 said some and so there you have you know you might feel you have some racist views
00:07:19.360 maybe again this is stereotyping maybe you have some some stereotypical views of different groups
00:07:24.360 and so when asked in this context based on what's going on based on sort of what we're all thinking
00:07:30.240 about right now the way that we're just having this discussion you might say some i have some
00:07:34.260 racist views because they're stereotypical um and then you have 76 that said no i have no i have no
00:07:41.400 racist views a really interesting point with the next data set and we're going to have to talk about
00:07:46.880 both of them together is their discrimination against these groups in canadian society today
00:07:52.140 so number one muslims people believe that the 97 of people that there was discrimination against
00:07:58.980 muslims 97 believe that this was true 95 against black people 95 against refugees 94 against indigenous
00:08:08.120 people so a couple things i want to pull out and i'll start with the two data points so number one
00:08:13.940 back to here you've got 76 of people saying that they do not have any racist views but then you have
00:08:22.120 97 and these are all high 90s and mid to high 90s saying that these groups face racism so my
00:08:29.540 question is the sum the 22 are these people making up for all of that racism and discrimination
00:08:36.900 because if 76 say that they do not have racist views there's got to be a couple of hitlers here
00:08:42.260 that are really weighing down the discrimination side and so it doesn't really match if you say that
00:08:48.980 you do not have any racist views and yet you also think that these groups say these groups face
00:08:55.740 discrimination on a regular basis or or are discriminated against if the majority and a high
00:09:00.900 majority 76 are saying that they do not have racist views but they also say that these groups face
00:09:05.760 discrimination you have to think that there are some really really horrible people out there
00:09:09.240 and that that's why these groups face discrimination so it really doesn't really doesn't jive and i think
00:09:15.720 that's something that we should all ask ourselves if you think you have racist views and i think it's
00:09:20.740 fair to say that a lot of us might have stereotypical views especially with groups that we don't think
00:09:24.520 about often or we're not exposed to often we we might not know anything about often or we might
00:09:29.980 know very little about then we're exposed to maybe generalities or stereotypes and that doesn't
00:09:36.100 always have to be bad you can stereotype or make a generalization without it it being negative or you
00:09:41.640 having any any negative intentions or ill will and that's just what we do as humans we we generalize
00:09:47.660 and going into detail on every topic would simply cause our brains to explode because we don't have
00:09:53.320 the mental capacity to deal with it and so we make generalizations but if you're going to be the 22%
00:09:58.440 that say you have racist views my question for those people is what are you doing about it if you
00:10:03.960 think you have some racist views but you're you're not even liking something on facebook you're not even
00:10:08.680 retweeting something you're not even you know you're not even doing the slacktivism as as they say
00:10:13.480 um i really have a question for you i mean you're basically what are you contributing to this and
00:10:19.180 you're not even doing anything you're just you're just a contributor to the racism so that's the first
00:10:23.460 on the double data points here the second one is the fact that 97% of respondents believe
00:10:31.100 that muslims faced uh discrimination compared to 95% of uh black people and so one of the things that
00:10:39.600 i've been talking about is the fact that a lot of our canadian uh discussion is really is really colored
00:10:44.960 by the american experience a lot of people we watch so much american news so much american tv um we watch
00:10:51.640 so much american culture that it it kind of becomes a part of our culture i mean how often you know you
00:10:56.940 might use an expression like he's going 100 miles an hour even though we don't use miles in this
00:11:01.000 country so there's a lot of american culture and a lot of american influence in in canada and so
00:11:07.820 everyone is familiar with the george floyd issue with the george floyd protest and what happened for
00:11:12.440 the guy um but it showed that 97 still believed so two percent more again that's within the within the
00:11:20.120 margin of error but two percent more believe that muslims faced um discrimination than black people
00:11:24.740 and so this is an example that i would say goes through what happens when our political leaders
00:11:32.920 talk about something now oftentimes people feel that it's virtue signaling and it is a lot our prime
00:11:38.240 minister has done a lot of virtue signaling um a lot of times people feel that it's a waste to have
00:11:42.900 our politicians talk about something but i would say that the the high response rate for whether or not
00:11:49.080 muslims face discrimination and they do obviously they do there's hate crime stats which i have in
00:11:52.920 another tab here i can pull up but the fact that it is the highest group i think would speak to
00:11:58.820 um a lot of focus on what's going on in quebec with uh bill 21 a lot of um focus on m03 a lot of
00:12:08.040 focus on islamophobia and so clearly that's having an effect people people are understanding this and
00:12:13.800 that's becoming part of their thought process with um black canadians again you know the george floyd
00:12:20.840 obviously had a george floyd incident obviously had a a influence i would say especially since this is
00:12:26.120 recent um but i think the numbers would have been would have been super high regardless i don't you
00:12:30.080 know i find it hard to believe that people would say that it's none especially when there might be
00:12:34.260 some uh some overlap between different groups as we're looking at all three um refugees also 95
00:12:40.580 um that one i wasn't so sure about because uh refugee you know i can discriminate against a
00:12:49.360 refugee if i know that someone is a refugee or i can go online and say that you know refugees are
00:12:53.700 bad etc etc and say i would never hire one or you know whatever type of discrimination i want to do
00:12:58.380 but it's hard to it's almost it's not hard it's impossible to identify someone just walking down
00:13:04.580 the street and say that they're a refugee so that one is a bit interesting choice to to throw in
00:13:09.220 um indigenous people 94 again that that's very high um which is also surprising because a lot of
00:13:16.360 times when i have spoken about this people feel that they you know there is none or there isn't
00:13:22.380 discrimination and you know they have a lot of government benefits they they get a lot of things
00:13:26.620 from the government and so on one hand i was you know i'm in a weird position i was gonna say i was
00:13:31.380 pleased i wasn't pleased to see that people feel they're being discriminated against but i guess
00:13:34.560 i am pleased to see that they might be open to uh understanding what the the indigenous experience
00:13:40.100 is like and hearing from those people so i guess that is a good thing um so overall that's the kind
00:13:46.560 of interesting mix um the thing that was interesting that i found is that when i conducted a survey through
00:13:53.180 an organization i volunteer with called la'ad um we had a similar question about do you do believe
00:13:58.540 people face discrimination and we had jews in addition to one of the list and people felt that
00:14:03.780 muslims um experienced islamophobia on a higher percentage than jews experienced anti-semitism
00:14:09.640 even though and here i'll pull up the actual stat um so this is the hate crime stats from from 2018
00:14:14.820 um here you can see the dark blue is the is the uh uh sorry the green is the 2018 hate crime stats
00:14:21.380 so you can see that jews are the number one victims of hate crimes um for all three years and muslims are
00:14:29.720 the second um a big spike in 2017 um but jews stayed very high very high rate of incidence on
00:14:36.720 um on 2018 so again just sort of an interesting mix um you know they didn't have to include it i'm not
00:14:43.320 you know i have no issue with that but just an interesting choice and i think something that
00:14:47.300 you know you may want to discuss um just for reference to pull it up since i have the tab here
00:14:51.660 this is the police reported hate crimes against um people uh divided by race or ethnicity and so you
00:14:58.140 have black canadians as the number one victim and here in 2018 police reported 283 incidents
00:15:04.240 motivated by hatred against the black population and these are the hate crimes the ones that are
00:15:08.200 actually you know someone is charged with a hate crime by the police so overall a lot of interesting
00:15:14.080 points to discuss and i think the main takeaway here is i think we can all agree that there is racism
00:15:21.380 and discrimination in canada i don't think anyone i don't think anyone would say that there is none
00:15:27.000 right you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find someone who says that there is never any racism these people
00:15:31.680 do not face any challenges at all i think it's really just a discussion of the frequency and i think
00:15:37.740 it's a discussion of what does that racism look like is that stereotyping is that the you know
00:15:42.620 unconscious bias that you see someone of um see a person of color or someone of a different ethnicity
00:15:48.380 and you automatically assume something and that thing that you assume is automatically negative
00:15:52.260 um or you know what is the frequency so again the frequency up at the top here um the frequency with
00:15:58.740 which this does happen and what areas it happens in so overall i think this is a discussion that we're
00:16:04.440 going to have and we're going to continue to have as canadians um they're definitely going to have
00:16:09.360 that in the united states that's going to be a huge uh discussion that i'm sure will stay with us
00:16:14.300 well into the election season which is coming up um but i think the most important thing is that we
00:16:19.660 have that discussion in canada and we make sure that we have the canadian discussion because the
00:16:24.680 canadian experience is very very different from the american experience we don't have the same history
00:16:29.920 we don't have the same immigrant groups we don't have the same immigrant waves we don't have the same
00:16:34.680 makeup of our population and so it's important we have a discussion in a canadian context and i would
00:16:39.400 like to continue that discussion with you i really appreciate a lot of the comments and feedback that
00:16:44.660 we get on some of these articles and i know that has been something that has always attracted me
00:16:49.060 to true news to this organization which i am happy to contribute to because they are all about and we
00:16:55.900 are all about having discussions and giving you the other side of the story giving you the full
00:17:00.800 full context and so please let's have some interesting discussion i'd love to come back with you and talk
00:17:06.180 about maybe some of my experience and some of the stories i could tell about working for a human
00:17:11.840 rights organization dealing with police dealing with policy and government um government officials
00:17:16.620 and policy makers and so i think that is something that we can definitely talk about but in the
00:17:21.180 meantime for true north i am sam ashkenazi thank you very much for watching and have yourself a great day
00:17:26.460 and stay safe